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Why can you get addicted to 1st hand smoke but not 2nd hand smoke?
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Addiction to cigarettes comes in two main ways. The first is the physical habit. Cigarette smoking is a repetitive, comforting practice - a less athletic version of Tai Chi. So merely smoking the cigarette is enjoyable even if you exclude the pharmacological effects. It should be obvious that this provides no benefit except to the person who is actually smoking the cigarette. The second is the nicotine in the cigarette. However, the nicotine is almost entirely absorbed by the body. You can't realistically get 'high' off of second-hand smoke - the smoke you see exhaled is particulates and other largely inert chemicals. So there's no chemical rush from secondhand smoke to get addicted to.
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What's the difference between and ponzi and pyramid scheme? What are examples of companies that use these models?
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In a ponzi you give a guy some money and he gives you back more money (or makes you feel like he would) by telling you a lie and saying he has a good investment but really he is just telling a bunch of people that and paying the older people with the newer people's money. A pyramid scheme is basically the same thing but with less direct lying. Everyone knows the older people are being paid with the older member's money but they have just been convinced in some way that that is a good idea and someday they will be the older member getting paid with the even newer people's money. There is a lot of overlap and something can be both at the same time or be slightly different in the particulars but generally a ponzi pays new investors old investor's money instead of making money some other way and then lies about it, pyramid scams skip the pretending there is some secret investment and just trick people into thinking it's a good business model that is sustainable.
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Why is CO much deadlier than CO2?
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Carbon Dioxide mostly dissolves in the plasma as carbonic acid which is fine and the body is adapted for the removal of it since it is a waste product of respiration. Carbon Monoxide on the other hand associates very strongly with hemoglobin, which is supposed to be carrying diatomic Oxygen for us to use. CO actually binds more strongly than Oxygen and so this really reduces our ability to effectively get Oxygen to our bodies, meaning we slowly asphyxiate. In answer to your follow-up question, a one atom difference in chemistry is a huge deal in many reactions, just because it's small, doesn't mean it doesn't matter.
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Why do we need to write "ELI5" in front of every post when obviously that's the topic if it's in this subreddit?
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Likely for those either on the front page or on /all/ who may think it's AskReddit, and then downvote them for having a bad question.
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What Does make a Western country be considered part of the West?
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It's a largely a cultural distinction based on 'Western' values. Nations with a free market, broad conceptions of liberty and low levels of corruption tend to be considered 'Western'. That's why clearly non-European nations like South Korea and Japan with distinctly non-European cultural heritage are 'Western' but most of South/Central America isn't.
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How do sheep keep from turning into massive wool-clouds when they are in the wild and not being sheered?
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Wild sheep shed their wool seasonally. Domesticated sheep do not because humans specifically bred them not to shed
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Why is cell service so erratic in the mountains? Mountains don't move, so why is the connection not constantly good or bad?
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For one, rock and other materials on a mountain can block signals (akin to how yiu might Not Have service underground in a tunnel due to the dirt and stone. Secondly, On rigid mountains, it can be hard for cell companies to place anntenas, as they usually require flat services for support.
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Do productions really crash expensive sports cars for a single shot in films?
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I doubt they buy full actual sports cars to crash. The most likely scenario is they build a replica model of the body and put it on a 'normal' car chassis. I know a few of the cars blown up in Skyfall were relatively cheap 3D printed replicas.
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What is the deal with the unholy trinity of Kroger, CVS pharmacy and Walgreen's?
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Kroger store manager here... 1) Proximity to one another allows stores to potentially steal customers away from eachother based on better service, instocks, cleanliness and speed of checkout. 2) there really arent a ton of high traffic intersections available to retailers, and it gets even lower when you factor in the size of the lots we need to build on. 3) cvs and wal-greens break even on scripts and make their money on the convenience goods and impulse products they sell. Compare their OTC prices to a Kroger, Target or Wal-Mart and it is stunning. You will typically find us at the exits to freeways entering area zoned as residential.... Anyway, not a full list but definitely some of the answers I have received over the years from our Real Estate department! I suggest you get your scripts transferred to Kroger! :)
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Why is ADHD treated with stimulating drugs?
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ADHD is diagnosed based on symptoms of either hyperactivity and/or inattention. Stimulant drugs are so named because they "stimulate" the brain to release certain chemicals called neurotransmitters. They aren't necessarily named because they "stimulate" an individual's behavior or give somebody more energy. By releasing these stored neurotransmitters, the symptoms of ADHD are better controlled. Research is still being done to figure out exactly how stimulant drugs work at the cellular level to improve ADHD symptoms.
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if our basic human instinct to survive is so strong, why do humans willfully continue to destroy things we need to survive?
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You seem to think that the brain is a perfect, logical truth-seeker. We are the first species on Earth that can completely destroy ourselves if we're too shortsighted with our use of technology and exploitation of the environment. Before recent times, there was *no need* for any animal to be able to think long-term. Our brains are good at immediate, simple benefits like, "I am hungry, so I hunt," or "I am under attack, so I will run," or even, "I *will* be hungry, so I'll plant these seeds." When it comes to things like pollution and global warming, where the effects are very gradual and may not effect us much for decades, the brain is basically like, "Yeah, that sounds like a *future*-me problem," and goes on its way, whistling merrily. Hence why we destroy the environment for short-term rewards, ignoring the long-term disaster it could bring. TL;DR, the brain isn't perfect, humans are bad at long-term thinking because before the last few hundred years, we haven't really needed it to survive.
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EILI5: How come English doesn't use compound nouns like other Germanic languages?
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I'm on my cell phone in bed right now so I can't offer a long comment, but Old English used to have some pretty rad compound nouns called "kennings," back in the days of Beowulf and The Wanderer. Google them. As for the reason kennings fell out of use, well, language evolves. Old English split from Old German longer ago than you might think, even though they are both Germanic languages. Think monkey/human evolution--it's a bit difficult to answer the question "Why do humans have trait X that monkeys dont have" because even though we share a common ancestor, lots of change has occurred.
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The great depression ended because we entered World War II. Why did the wars in Afghanistand and Iraq screw our economy?
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Entering into WWII made a lot of jobs for people without jobs. When we entered into the Afghan and Iraq wars it only created more money for the corporations who make guns. WWII: Back when it started we needed a whole lot of manual labor to make guns/bombs/vehicles/equipment. It took a lot of people to do this so a lot of people were hired by companies to do this. People who were once poor and now had jobs had money to spend and stimulate the economy. Afghan/Iraq wars: Everything these days is made by large well established companies. Also, everything these days is automated. Government puts in orders for new military equipment, companies turn up the speeds on the machines making that equipment. Large companies make more money and put more money in their bank accounts.
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Why isn’t the temperature of a vacuum absolute zero if there is nothing to store the heat energy?
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It would be if it was absolute vacuum (0 kpa). But we cannot get true 0 pressure even in laboratory conditions. Just like temperature we just try our best to get very close.
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Why does a full suspension mountain bike require more energy to pedal than a hard tail?
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In full suspension mountain bikes there is a storage for kinetic and potential energies in the suspension device (e.g.) the spring. When you are pedaling on flat ground you exert a force and some of this will get absorbed by the spring, unlike a hardtail which would just transmit it to the wheel and move along the ground.
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why the waves don't interfere?
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For waves to interfere, i.e. cancel each other out or amplify each other, they have to have a very similar frequency, as in "almost the same". Imagine a lake. You throw two small stones in it, 5 meters apart. The small concentrical waves around each stone will interfere with those from the other and build a nice pattern on the lake. If you now take a muuuuuch bigger stone and throw it somewhere in the lake, the resulting waves will be much higher and have a much larger wavelength. They will not interfere with the smaller waves in the sense I explained above, but will simply "carry" the smaller waves on top. The interference patterns from the two small stones will still exist on the big wave. Since all electronics are highly regulated, everything that emits data has a distinct frequency and often times a mechanism to switch to another one, if there s a similar device around to avoid interference. Was that ELI5 enough? :)
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Why are there, for the most part, no "villages" in the US?
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There are all kinds of small towns all over america, maybe not QUITE as smal as a few houses on a road, but there are plenty of towns with one main street, a few small businesses and not much else.
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What exactly happens with dissolvable stitches?
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To your body, stitches are a foreign substance, and the body is programmed to destroy foreign substances. Dissolvable stitches are made from natural materials, such as processed collagen (animal intestines), silk and hair, as well as some synthetic materials that the body can break down. This allows the body to dissolve the stitches over time. Usually, by the time the stitches are dissolved, the wound is completely healed. Pretty much, they are made of natural materials that your body breaks down until you can't see them anymore
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Why iTunes inconsistently "Checks its library", and why it takes so long.
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Most likely it is due to improper program termination. I use iTunes (Win 7 x64 version) everyday and only rarely have encountered the "check library feature" after a crash. You could delete the existing itunesmusiclibrary.xml in the iTunes folder in your music folder and force a rebuild. Good luck!
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How does the sun provide vitamin D?
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It doesn't. Ultraviolet light just breaks down chemicals you store in your skin, with the result being usable vitamin D.
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How does one sell their soul to Satan?
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It's a simple process. Disavow any religion, never give respect to religious procedure or show reverence towards priests, bishops, etc. Make sure not to follow any moral teachings, unless you're just a nice person and you feel like it. Anytime someone tries to proselytize you, openly mock them. Gamble once a week, lie once a day, and steal once a month. Or make it up as you go.
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Is it just me, or does the volume actually increase during television commercials?
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it's a well known phenomenon. In most cases it *hasn't* increased in volume - most broadcasters have regualtions forbidding it - but the sound is compressed in such a way to make to make it seem louder, combined with the use of music and jingles which don't have much rise and fall in terms of volume levels
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Why do pet cats want you to watch them eat?
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When cats are eating, they lose their ability to hear. This makes them vulnerable to predators. You are their "look out."
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If the average human hearing is 20Hz to 20KHz, why do they sell headphones with higher ranges, like 30KHz?
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To get better results at 20KHz. The rules on this subreddit are forcing me to elaborate, but this is the simplest answer. Speakers with a 'response' from 20Hz to 20kHz cannot have a nice linear response (same output power for same input level, which is what you want for accurate reproduction of sound) across that range of frequencies, and then immediately drop to no output at all at 19Hz and 20,001Hz. On headphones marked as 20Hz-30KHz the audible range from 20Hz-20kHz can be made lovely and linear, with increasingly poor response between 16Hz-20Hz and 20kHz-31kHz, and worse response still outside that range.
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if you were a multi billionaire, say you had 100 billion dollars. And you liquidated all your assets into cash. Then you burned all that cash. What would happen to the economy?
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The government would reprint the cash to keep the dollar value steady. Congratulations, you've just given $100b to the government!
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Is light a particle or a wave?
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Neither. Both just happen to be things we are familiar with that approximate the behavior of light in certain situations. Light is exactly what the equations that govern it say it is. That is independent of how you choose to conceive of it in your head, and the true nature is hard (if not impossible) to imagine. A lot of physicist like to use the 'wave packet' as a way to think about it but of course that's not exactly right either. As a side note, according to special relativity, from the perspective of light, every photon exists for zero time (it is absorbed the exact instant it is emitted), so you can almost imagine the universe as a place where charges oscillate and that immediately causes oscillations in other charges everywhere else in the universe.
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What factors are involved with the decrease in the value of the Canadian dollar?
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A very big one is the current drop in oil prices
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Why is hotel internet/cell service always so terrible.
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Lots of people concentrated in a small area all trying to use the same resources at the same time. Want fast hotel internet? Try it at 10 am on a weekday (if there are no conferences going on). Some hotels also now cap basic service and want you to pay for faster access. So they have "free" internet but it's only about 2-3mb/s. Ditto for cell phones. A few hundred people in your hotel all trying to use the same cell sites to get better internet than the shitty hotel wifi.
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Why are reheated fries always so much worse than fries you just purchased from a restaurant/fast food place?
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When frying, you quickly boil away the water on the outside of whatever you fry by dropping it in hot oil and dehydrate the exterior of it. Normally, there's something starchy there that then forms a barrier for the inside of your food (in the case of french fries, the potato itself), which then retains moisture and cooks by steaming. As the steam hit the outside of the food, it is again boiled away by the oil. This is why french fries have that crisp outer shell around a moist potato interior. If you reheat fries in a microwave, you will once again steam the inside of it by heating that water up, but you no longer have a protective layer of oil on the outside to boil away the water and keep the outside of it dehydrated. Instead, that crust you built up before can just absorb the water. Baking or heating up your fries in a frying pan (even without oil) will do a much better job of keeping the outside crisp when reheating.
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Red, Green and Blue make all the colors for TVs/monitors... Why not Red, Yellow and Blue?
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Monitors emit light, so they use *additive* colour mixing. Paints absorb light, so they use *subtractive* colour mixing. The primary colours of each process are directly opposed. You have red, green and blue in additive colour mixing because those are the peak wavelengths of the three kinds of cone cell in the typical human eye. You can mimic the mixture of cone cells activated by any visible wavelength by mixing different amounts of light at each of those peak wavelengths. Then you have the subtractive primaries that each remove one of the additive primaries from white light. Cyan subtracts red, magenta subtracts green and yellow subtracts blue.
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Why is it hard to emulate old game systems with low-specs on computers with much more powerful specs?
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So emulation requires a LOT of power. Imagine that your PS2 is French. The games are French. Your PC only speaks English. So to try and read those French games, it needs to translate the French to English. The emulator program is the French to English dictionary. BUT, unless your PC is powerful enough, it can't translate fast enough to make the game work. It needs to flip through the pages to find each word in order to do the translations.
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Why aren't land speed records set by huge vehicles?
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> So I'm wondering why land speed records aren't set by huge rockets tipped sideways on wheels. Their are different categories for the different records, all with their own sets of rules and regulations. There is a governing body, so you can't just "build whatever you want". > And in regards of Piston powered cars what is preventing me from making a 600v engine the size of a house and driving it really fast? Mainly the weight of it.
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What do they mean by 'corridors' when talking of the MH370 going missing?
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I believe the ping delay allows them to have a basic understanding of how far the aircraft is away from the satellite, they know exactly where the satellite was. Not horribly dissimilar to how GPS works, only with one instead of three or four satellites. The other information they have (fuel, speed, last known, radar, already searched locations...) I believe let's then rule out the middle portion leaving you with two corridors.
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Why does it seem normal and natural for older siblings to pick on their younger siblings when the parents aren't around? (Ages 1-8)
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As the eldest sibling it is our duty to assert our dominance of course. We are unofficially charged with keeping the baby siblings in line when our adults aren't around.
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Can I develop a visible jawbone through excercise or is it just based on genes during childbirth?
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Nothing is determined "during birth" your genetics are set at conception. That being said, a "strong jaw" is usually tied to testosterone levels during the developing years. Increasing testosterone levels during adulthood may help to define the jaw line slightly, giving a more "masculine" look, but It's not going to create a square jaw.
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Why is Disney allowed to merge with all of these other big companies, most recently 21st Century, and not suffer from monopoly laws?
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Monopolization is, generally speaking, when you control all (or a substantial portion) of a _market_ or _industry_. Standard Oil was a monopoly because they controlled almost all of the oil industry; Microsoft was thought to be a monopoly because they controled 90% of the PC OS market. Disney, even as big as they may be, controls only a tiny fraction of the entertainment industry. There are many, many other companies producing entertainment, so they are not where near the level of market share you'd need to think of them as a monopoly.
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Who are the people commenting on news sites with extremist views and upvoting them?
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Assholes who are well liked by other assholes. Part of the problem is a sampling bias called response bias. The type of people who are most likely to comment are the ones who hold the strongest opinions. Those opinions are unusually extreme, and the only people who respond to them are people who hold equally extreme views. This doesn't hold true for absolutely everyone, but it does skew what you see.
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How does the spray the ref uses during the world cup work?
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I thought they used shaving cream EDIT: apparently this is wrong... they use a shaving cream-like substance, from what I can gather it's a kind of foam where all the foam bubbles pop quickly (about 90 seconds) after being sprayed, thus leaving no visible mark.
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- why your breath smells bad in the morning
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Hours of sleeping give the bacteria in your mouth plenty of time to reproduce. This is what causes your breath to smell nasty when you wake up.
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Why do we hate SimCity?
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_URL_0_ They're forcing you to always be logged in to their server to play a SINGLE PLAYER game. Annnnnnd, icing on the cake, the servers have been down since launch, which means no one can play it. Its a direct blow to the face, and a big-ass I TOLD YOU SO. DRM is Digital Rights Management, a way for them to copy-protect their game. Other forms of DRM include having to put in a CD key when you first install a game, for example. Its a way so that you can't just install the game, and give it to your buddy to install too. They're selling you a crippled game (limited city size... in a city-building game... that you reach the city size in under an hour? OH, don't worry, a future Download (that will cost $20) will unlock bigger cities for you!).... Stuff like that is really pissing people off.
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Why is it when you way oversleep, you get a headache?
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You might be dehydrated. The longer you sleep, the longer you're going without water. Also, you might be over sleeping because you're sick.
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Why can't we generate fake voices as well as we can generate realistic looking CGI?
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The benefit of CGI is that you can use it to create scenes that you couldn't easily produce with traditional methods, but it still takes artists a lot of work to do it. Hypothetically, I guess it is possible to engineer a realistic-sounding voice, but there's no point in doing so when having a voice actor is just as good, if not better, likely cheaper, and definitely easier.
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When people are sad, why do they want to listen to sad music?
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It's like when someone tries to cheer you up when you're sad versus someone telling you how they've been there and know how you feel so you don't feel alone in your troubles, either one can produce positive feelings. It's basically a cathartic treatment, a release to get rid of the sadness you have or take your mind off of it. Where that fine line between releasing the sadness and possibly perpetuating it ends depends on the song, the person, repetition and many other factors. Basically funny clowns don't always work, sometimes it takes a sad clown to make a sad person happy. Source: I think about music and emotions a lot.
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Is microwaving food bad for you in any way?
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The most damage you could do is nuke it so hard that it burns your hands or mouth. You can't get cancer from it, and you're extremely unlikely to burn yourself by standing in front of it.
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Why is it that you never think anything is weird when you are dreaming, it's only when you wake up you realise how strange things actually were?
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To be brief, during a dream it's basically your brain taking a rest. So like a computer it shuts off all non-essential functions, and one of them is called the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. This part of the brain controls things such as memory and judgement. Thus, without this part of the brain "on" you lose the ability to a) remember the real world and b) judge that the dream you're in is weird. On top of that, a dream is only weird because it doesn't usually follow the same laws of science that you're used to in reality. So after waking up it might be weird, but during the dream without the ability to recall the "true" laws of science, you don't think it's weird.
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What did de Blasio do, that is making NYC cops turn on him?
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Part of it has to do with what he told a reporter during a one on one interview. DeBlasio told this reporter that he has been teaching his son Dante, who is bi-racial to be careful around police officers. This led people to think that he is perpetuating the image of the white, racist police officer via the media.
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Being a millennial who has been raised around screens of all types; how -realistically- have I been affected?
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By screens? As in LCD displays? As a millennial you are probably safe. Us old people who were raised around CRT TVs and displays have more to worry about. LCD displays are pretty safe as far as radition and other harmful effects are concerned.
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how does Pi never repeat when there are only ten different numbers (0,1,2,3 etc.)?
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It's not that you can't find repeating sequences, it's that any such sequence is guaranteed to end, and not match the digits that came before. So there is no sequence of digits in there that just repeats forever.
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Why is pink a girlish colour? When and how did this association start?
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Pink was a boys colour back in the 18th/19th century, and blue for girls. It's entirely a fashion thing, led by advertising and the media.
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Why does alcohol withdrawal give you such vivid, and sometimes very scary, dreams?
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Alcohol suppresses REM stage sleep (the period when you dream), which your brain adjusts for as you become dependent. Once the alcohol is removed from the equation, your brain still tries to compensate for REM sleep being suppressed, leading to increased REM activity and vivid dreams.
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Why are JPEG files still used today when internet speeds have increased which would allow for less compression to be needed?
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It is desirable to have compression no matter how much speed you have, since this allows more photos to be sent in less time and stored in less space forever. A popular website may send out the same photo millions of times. It adds up for them. The amount of compression in a JPEG is adjustable, so it doesn't have to be "excessively" compressed.
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Where do metal sparks come from?
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They are closer to the equivalent of sawdust for wood. They glow due to the heat from the friction of sawing the metal.
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Are D-Waves actually quantum computers?
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In one sense, yes. In the most common sense, no. The most famous proposed quantum algorithms, like Shor's algorithm (which would break most of today's encryption), run on a universal quantum computer. D-Wave is not a universal quantum computer, and instead performs an operation known as quantum annealing. In order for the D-Wave to solve a problem, the problem must be formulated in such a way that it can be solved using quantum annealing. Not all problems can be formulated like that. But for problems that can, it has benefits over regular simulated annealing, like speed.
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Why is there an anti-african movement in Isreal right now?
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Much like the situation involving Mexicans coming into the US, Israel is having a tense situation with people coming into the country undocumented from Africa. The Africans are coming in part because they can get jobs and be paid much more than they would in other places. Israel has taken some measures like building a border fence. They also have a policy where illegal immigrants can be kept in a holding facility while arrangements are made to send these people back to their countries of origin. There are a whole bunch of issues associated with this, like determining which immigrants qualify as refugees. Some, but not all, Israelis are particularly unhappy with the behavior of the African immigrants because their behavior is viewed as being responsible for a variety of costs, including native Israelis losing their jobs. When losing one's job is combined with the fact that these immigrants are of a different race than most Israelis, that causes racial tension.
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Why is the skin of many penises darker than the skin of the surrounding area?
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Same reason vaginal areas are darker than surrounding skin. Not only is there increased blood flow in the region, but also greater levels of melanin, which causes dark skin tone. The more melanin, the better one's skin can hold out against the sun and damage. Considering that human males have their first penis on the exterior of the body and would naturally walk without clothing, it's important that that sensitive area be able to avoid damage by the sun. It wouldn't be fun to have a sunburned cock
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Why Americans and Brits have different accents.
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Accents are a product of who you hang out with, kind of like your hobbies. If 7 out of 10 of your friends like baseball, there is a very high chance that you will also like baseball, or at least know some baseball terms. Same with accents. Even though Americans and Britons speak the same overall language, we have our own local varieties in how we speak. And those small variations get larger over time since we keep hanging out with ourselves. As time goes on, our accents will get more and more distinct (ignoring the effect of globalization/traveling to different countries frequently).
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Why can't Koko the gorilla just teach other gorillas sign language?
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Koko did teach a friend sign language. Koko's gorilla friend Michael, _URL_0_
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How is it physically possible for one-way mirrors to be seethrough from one side but a mirror from the other side?
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They are only partially reflective. If you look at a standard window, you can see through but you can also see a bit of reflection in them, especially if trying to peer into a dark room from a sunny outdoor location. One-way mirrors are closer to reflective windows than true mirrors, and they require the observation room to be dark and the observed room to be well-lit. This makes it so very little light shines out from the observation room into the better lit observed room while also keeping reflections from inside the room minimal. Meanwhile, the observed room has much more light both reflected back into the room itself and shining into the observation room. If you were to turn up the lighting in the observation room and/or dim the lights in the observed room so they are at about the same brightness, it would become more like a standard window. And if you completely reversed the lighting, the mirror effect would flip.
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why do so many people film cellphone videos in portrait mode?
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Because that's how you hold a phone when doing most other things. It doesn't occur to them or they don't care. It's easier to hold a phone one handed especially with how huge phones are these days.
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Why does diarrhea come so quickly when food takes hours for the stomach to digest and days to pass through the intestines?
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Digestion takes significant time *if everything is going nominally.* Diarrhea is well outside the range of nominal digestive operations. Your guts want to get rid of something, stat, and your asshole is the most appropriate exit.
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Why are mobile websites much faster and more responsive than the dedicated App they beg you to install?
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Follow-up question: does it have something to do with revenue? Are there more ads on the horrible apps? Good question, OP!
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What did the Marbury vs Madison exactly deal with and why is that case so significant?
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The *extremely* ELI4 version is that *Marbury v. Madison* established "judicial review" in America: The idea that a court's job isn't just to decide individual cases based on the law, but also decide if laws themselves are in line with the constitution, and strike them down if they aren't. This is a big deal, as judicial review is now 95% of what the Supreme Court does.
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WHY do females ejaculate during intercourse?
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It's a happy accident of evolution. It doesn't have a functional reason as far as we're aware, which is probably why it only happens in some women, some of the time. Just when you orgasm, everything contracts down there and all the glands that are normally providing lubrication (and also the bladder) can be squeezed, thereby expelling fluid. You can read all the science of it in [this paper](_URL_2_), including the difference between squirting and female ejaculation.
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What exactly makes cannibalism so unhealthy?
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I have a layman's understanding of cannibalism, but... Meat is full of stuff that can get you sick. Luckily for us, when we eat a different species, the pathogens that are dangerous to that animal aren't dangerous to us (this is excepted by parasites and bacteria, which are bad for most animals). It's the same principle that makes it so that we can catch the flu from other people, but not from our pets. This is why diseases that cross species and diseases that are dangerous to humans but not animals are such a big deal (swine flu, avian flu, the Black Death, Mad Cow Disease, every disease transmitted via mosquito, etc).
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How is wasting water bad for the environment?
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Water which has been purified for our use required energy to prepare. Making more will require the use of more energy which these days is typically generated by burning fossil fuels. So while the water itself is recyclable and renewable the energy used to do so is not.
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What happened in history to associate the Jewish culture with controlling the media?
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There literally are many jewish men in powerful positions within the movie and TV business. Here's a short list: *Gerald Levin - Time Warner, HBO CEO *Michael Eisner - Disney CEO, Succeeded by Bob Iger (who is also Jewish). *David Geffen - DreamWorks, Geffen Records *All the Warner Bros. *The Weinsteins (founders of Miramax) *Spielberg *Louis Mayer - Founder of MGM *President of ABC, Leonard Goldenson *Founder of CBS William Paley A very powerful group indeed!
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Why do researchers who do tests on mice have to comply with strict ethical regulations, and yet it is legal for me to use mousetraps and very painful poisons to remove them from my house?
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Research is just highly regulated in that any research animal must be treated with the utmost respect and dignity because its life provides us with valuable information that helps either their species or ours. Pest animals are slightly different in that they have the potential to carry disease, so they must be removed from the home or else you/your family is at risk. Poisons aren't the most humane things, but the snap traps are actually very humane and cause instant death through severing the spinal cord. They actually use snap traps in field research.
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How is /r/gonewild legal?
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Reddit doesn't own or even hold on to any images, it simply links to places on the Internet that do. To expand: Even though there are issues with assisting in the distribution of things like child pornography, as long as Reddit takes steps to ensure that shouldn't happen and doesn't willingly allow it to happen, then they're all good.
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this proof that 1 + 1 = 2
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The theorem states that if sets a and b each have 1 element, then being disjoint is equivalent to their union having two elements. The comment at the end refers to how the union of sets is used in their definition of arithmetic. Going through the proof line by line probably wouldn't be informative as it just refers back to other propositions that they've developed, and if you haven't read the entire book before this proposition, you don't know what facts they've already developed. At this level, everything seems obvious anyway. Basically: let a = {x}, b = {y}. By a previous proposition, a U b has two elements if and only if x != y if and only if {x} and {y} are disjoint if and only if a and b are disjoint. The last bit ties this up into the form of the proposition. Each of those if and only ifs are from a previous proposition.
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Why is the subject of blackholes so fundamental when learning about the nature of the universe?
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There are two prevailing theories that rule in physics: general relativity and quantum theory. General relativeity deals with really big or massive things like stars and galaxies, while quantum theory deals with really small things like subatomic particles. General relativity describes gravity, while quantum physics describes the other forces. The problem is they aren't compatible theories, and yet they both, as far as all our collected evidence suggest, are correct. This is a problem. Physicists want *one* theory that explains everything, not two that are both true but incompatible and incomplete. Black holes are super massive and super tiny; this is where relativity and quantum theory meet. Figuring out black holes will help us figure out how to marry quantum theory and gravity... at least that's the idea.
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Data Compression. How can information be reduced in size and still be the same?
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Let's do this in a really simple, visual kind of way. Here's two ways of expressing the same thing: WWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW 17 W's. Now, they both show the same thing. But the second takes up only 6 characters (including the space), while the first takes up 17 characters The same basic idea is how data compression works. If you've got a piece of information that repeats itself a lot, you can compress it like that.
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Why is Hypothesis part of the Scientific Method?
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It is possible to gather data with no hypothesis, and then create a hypothesis (based on looking at the data) and then test it (using numerical analysis of the data against the hypothesis). However, most a hypothesis is needed to tell you *what data to gather.* For example, if I have a hypothesis that protein in the diet affects the fertility of crows, then I need to gather a population of crows, divide them into at least two groups, and ensure that the groups get diets with differing amounts of protein. With no hypothesis, I would never have considered doing that.
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Why Internet Explorer is bad.
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This has been asked loads of times before, so have a search to get more answers but the some of the reasons are: Slow and sluggish when compared to other browsers, the worst web standard compliant browser, some people hate the fuck it is installed with Windows (i.e some people think Microsoft say "don't get a choice what browser I can" use before IE is preinstalled), and it's quite an insecure browser (ActiveX and quite a lot of vulnerabilities)
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Why do some websites tell you that they use cookies and have a 'got it' button, if almost every website uses cookies?
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The EU made it mandatory for websites in that region to inform users that they're putting a small file on the users computer, that can be used to track that users browsing habit on that and other sites. Privacy laws are a big thing in Europe, so it was a long thing common. It basically means that you now consent to them doing that, whereas before unless you were tech-savvy, you have no idea. If you're not in Europe, and/or browsing a European site, you might still see it, as it's easier to just make it a global site change, than to filter it depending on where the users are coming from. tl;dr: EU made it mandatory to tell people they're being tracked by cookies, as most people have absolutely no idea what a cookie even is, much less what they do, and people ought to consent to that kind of thing.
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How do surfers survive wipe outs on enormous waves?
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They relax until the wave lets them go then they head for the surface. By relaxing they don't get an elevated heart rate and can manage to hold their breath just fine. Remember, huge waves break into deep water so you're not going to get pile driven into a reef like at Pipeline and Teahupo'o Pretty much the longest you'll get held down for is 30 seconds (double wave hold downs and such) so you do have to be in pretty good shape physically
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what would happen if all consumer debt in the US was suddenly erased?
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It depends entirely with *how* it was wiped. If all the companies that lent the money just had to deal with the loss of writing off all the debt, there would be a massive financial collapse including all the major banks. People would no longer be able to get credit cards, car loans, or mortgages as every lending institution would no longer exist. If the government paid everyone's debt, than there would be a massive devaluation of the currency which would have dramatic economic effects to the entire world. Either way it is not a pretty picture.
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How does your eye react to small things that you can't see and close on its own.
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Your brain reacts to a threat it "sees" before it processes what it has seen. That combined with your body naturally also getting on high alert in this situation help it to respond quicker than what we can physically see. Theres always a slight delay between what is happen and what our brain processes because the nerve impulses have a finite speed; it is very fast, but still not instantaneous. So when faced with a threat, the body first sends a single to make sure the eyes closed, which (at this moment) is more important than knowing what exactly was headed our way.
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What can cause stuttering on a person who didn't stutter before?
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you might be like me in that you don't know the best way to put what you are trying to say into words because of all the thoughts running through your head. that's my 2 sense
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Why are DVDs region locked?
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So that DVDs can be sold at different prices in different regions. Without it, someone could buy the DVDs in a cheaper region, then sell them in a more expensive region to make money. That would force the price of DVDs in the expensive region way down, and the maker of the DVD wouldn't make as much money both by selling fewer DVDs in the expensive region, and those DVDs that they do sell will be for a lower price.
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How owning a server machine is useful.
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There are several benefits, but it depends on how you want to use it. Here are a few: * You can build your own web site - you yourself will handle and control the contents and maintenance of it locally * You can have a host computer server and buy cheap network clients, that way you only need to maintain one system rather than several * You can have the server automate a lot of tasks on itself and other computers (downloading, uploading/updating, etc.) Servers are meant to "serve"
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How come when an object starts spining (like a helicopter blade) it looks like it reverses it's direction after a certain speed?
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Just to make sure, don't believe anybody who says the eye can only see something at X fps. Of course, we can't see everything super clearly, but to say that we have a defined limit is inaccurate, especially since fps is a technological term, and is not even applicable to eyesight.
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Why does dictatorship come with poverty
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Because the more money the populace has, the better educated they will be. And the better educated they are, the less likely they will be to put up with a dictatorship. Also, in more affluent societies, there is wealth distribution away from the government, which means that economic pressure can easily be applied to the government. In an impoverished nation, that's much more difficult to do from the inside.
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"Light Pollution" and why it prevents us from seeing stars in cities
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When there is a lot of light on the ground, some of it goes up and makes the sky look brighter by lighting up dust in the air. And just like seeing a flash light in a dark room is easier then in a bright room, stars are easier to see in a dark sky then a bright sky.
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Why flies come right back to f*** with me even after I swat at them?
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They don't even know what you are. They don't understand the difference between you and an inanimate object. For all they know, your hand swatting them is an entirely different thing from your face or body.
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Why were most presidents attorneys before taking office? What is it about the legal profession that creates so many leaders?
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Our societies are founded on law; which if you think about it are just promises made by the general population to behave orderly (but of course we have the police for enforcement) - so to lead a society founded on law & order you have to be well versed in the laws which dictate how society conducts itself. Also the social circles of attorneys and politicians intersect often.
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If it's bad for you to eat late at night does that mean people who work night shifts are less healthy?
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The eating late at night stuff has been debunked. What actually happens is people who usually eat late (before bed) tend to gain weight because consume more calories - but this isn't a factor of eating late, but simply a factor of eating _more_.
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Sometimes when I close one eye at a time, I notice that each eye sees slightly different colors. Why does this happen and how does the brain resolve putting those two different images together?
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Aside from differences in the light that is entering each eye, it could have something to do with having a slightly different number of the types of cone cells in the retina of each eye. The cones come in 3 different types and they each pick up a different wavelength of light. If you have more of one type than another in one eye compared to the other eye, that could account for a slight difference in the tone or saturation of color that you are seeing. I have this too - one eye sees color as warmer than the other.
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With 1:175M odds, and the jackpot being $500M, why wouldn't you buy one of each possible lottery ticket?
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You may end up splitting the take, and then you pay taxes. The odds are long, but if someone else winds the pot, then you're splitting $500 million with another person, and getting only $250 million. The government takes 50% of that in taxes (roughly), so suddenly you've paid $175 million to make $125 million. Oh, and if you want all that money now, instead of pieced out over a few decades, you take 50% of *that*, so you're getting $125m *even if nobody else wins*. You can make more with that $175M if you invest it right, over the next 20 years, than you'd make from winning $500M paid out over 20 years with only a 4% annual increase.
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Why do hotels call it "continental" breakfast?
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It is based on traditional breakfasts held on Continental Europe (mainly France). It was inherited from our British origins.
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Why are 1080p 60fps videos easier to load than gifs?
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Gifs have notoriously bad compression, which means you're using way more bandwidth for the same image quality if you're considering 1080p60fps on youtube, for example, which has excellent compression.
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How do prosthetic limbs work above the elbow or knee?
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So in most cases, above the knee (AK) amputees actually don't have powered or robotic or hydraulic knees. They are very very expensive, heavy, and mostly experimental. Normal people don't get them. Most use a "free knee", which means they must land on it fully extended so they can weight bear on it. Then when they step onto the opposite leg they use hip flexion to swing it forward. It then kicks out and extends so they can land on it straight. People can get so good at it that only a PT can recognize the gait. This also allows the leg to bend naturally when the person sits (they control their descent with the good leg). There are many many ankle options out there, from the "runner" foot or blade to the pointed foot for dancers to a regular, nonflexible ankle and foot. With a prosthetic, the fewer moving parts the easier it is to predict and control. All this being said, prosthetics is a rapidly moving field due to all the soldiers coming back and needing innovative solutions.
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Why does ice cream taste sweeter after melting?
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Your tongue is better able to taste sweetness when the taste buds are not cold. So letting the ice cream melt somewhat prevents it suppressing your tongue's response.
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How can pro gamers stream music while playing without getting in trouble?
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IT would take the copyright holder of the music to go through the effort of trying to sue them or take legal action, etc. And that would be only if they didn't think it was a good thing for their music (they may like the publicity and not care about charging mere pennies to broadcast it) So you can go through a massive legal effort to deal with this, for pennies in return and bad PR, or just enjoy that people may find your music and possibly buy the albums etc. No copyright holder is going to bother with these niche people streaming a videogame. They have better things to do with their lives.
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How do reality tv contestants afford to be on a show and still pay bills at home?
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Those shows are not filming everyday like you might think. My family had one season on TV. The film crew would come into town for a weekend and they would give a very strict itinerary for the events. Many events and different places for each day they were in town. My family would have to bring a completely different outfit to each time slot in the day to give the illusion that the show films over many days. Oh and they would take pictures of every single item in everyones complete attire for each time slot. They would then give you pictures and tell you what outfit to bring to film those "behind the scenes" one on one interviews. I forget what they call them, but you know the little clips that look like you are talking about what just happened minutes ago? Those take place at completely seperate dates and are mostly scripted.
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Why don't the Palestinians push for enfranchisement within Israel instead of a separate state?
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Historically the, Israelis have been more opposed to a one-state solution than the Palestinians. This is because Israel is the "jewish state" and it is perceived that creating one state for both Israelis and Palestinians would compromise this identity. Furthermore, Palestinians have higher birth rates than Israelis, which prompts the fear that they would eventually become a majority. Furthermore, it's not very tempting for the Palestinians to submit themselves to an authority that is currently brutalising them and illegally seizing their lands. It'd be like India pushing for equal status in the Commonwealth as opposed to independence in the 40's.
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Aside from ethical reasons, why don't citizens physically take over a corrupt government and start a new one with new legislation?
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It's called a civil war. Happens all the time.
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Why is it that negative emotions can feel...nice?
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When you are feeling down, your body does two things. 1 - It tries to reverse this with happy feelings, caused by dopamine and serotonin. People who can't do this suffer from clinical depression. 2 - Because you feel sad, your happy moments feel nicer. If we never felt lonely, then being with friends wouldn't be as nice. If we never felt anger, then compassion wouldn't be as great. If we never felt sad, then laughing would not leave us feeling good. You have to go through valleys and canyons to recognize how tall the mountains truly are.
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Why can we take hi-def photos of galaxies light-years away, but yet can only get little pixel pictures of Pluto?
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With a pair of binoculars you will be able to view huge skyscrapers from miles away. But you can't see a gnat on a car just 50 yards away. Same idea basically. Galaxies are massive objects lit by the billions of stars within them. Pluto is just a speck reflecting a tiny bit of light from the sun.
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So what exactly are Hilbert's Problems?
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The problem here is that you're asking for a layman's explanation for something that really doesn't have one. In order to understand this specific problem you need to at least take a short lecture in the basics of group and field theories. Some of these problems however can be explained quite simply (for example #7 and #10), while others cannot.
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What's the difference between a theory, a theorem, a postulate, a law, etc?
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I'm no scientist or mathematician, but here is my understanding: A **postulate** is a basic fact that we assume to be true when we build a theory. For an example, one of Euclid's postulates is that for any line and a point not on that line, there will be a line parallel to the first line that runs through that given point. A **theorem** is something that you prove using postulates. Using Euclid's postulates, we can figure out that if two triangles have 3 congruent sides, the triangles themselves are congruent. A **hypothesis** is a proposed explanation for an observation. A **theory** is a general and relatively confirmed explanation for a set of observations. Evolution and general relativity all fit in this category. A **law** is an ~~analytical~~ statement that has been tested and confirmed many times. They contain constants and are usually expressed as an equation. Theories often contain laws. Ohm's law and the ideal gas law are both examples of a law. EDIT: Whoops; Euclid != Euler
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