Subset (10)

eli5 · 25k rows

Split (1)

train · 25k rows

query stringlengths 20 300	positive listlengths 1 1	negative listlengths 1 1
Why do my eyes move smoothly when I fixate on a moving object, but jump from object to object when I try to move them smoothly?	[ "Evolution really: You track an object of interest with \"smooth pursuit\" because it has your distinct attention. When you're \"searching\" for an object to give your attention the eye moves differently and \"Saccades\" until it finds something to track. You do this when reading. You can train your eye to move sm...	[ "Althoguh not an entirely scientific response, people can generally \"focus\" on one intensive thought process while also being able to perform a more \"automatic\" thing. Take your example of singing the song: if you know the song very well, the words just come naturally and doesn't cost a lot of brain processing,...
Do musicians get paid everytime one of their songs is played on any radio station at any given time?	[ "They do get paid royalties, but it's not a one-to-one pay out (i.e. you typically do not get paid in relation to each time your song is played). Basically radio stations report which songs they've played during what programs to performing rights organizations which then decide how to divide up the royalties approp...	[ "You like it 'cause the brain fires happy signals. Listening too much is like if you eat your favorite food too much. You get dull to it. The neurons stop rewarding you for listening. Like taking drugs to be happy, your brain get dull against those signals after a while, and you have to take more than before." ]
What is that yellow foil around space probes and what is its function?	[ "The gold and silver colored sheets you see are often a single layer of aluminized polyimide with the silver aluminum side facing in. The yellowish-gold color of the polyimide on the outside gives the satellite the appearance of being wrapped in gold. Multi-layer insulation is used on satellites primarily for therm...	[ "Me and a buddy of mine at a NASA internship got a chance to get inside the JPL cleanroom the Curiosity was assembled in. He had to take 2 special showers before he went in, and wore a special anti-static robe, mask, and hairnet. Before they let us in they detailed the extraordinary precautions they take before let...
Why does light travel in waves and not just straight from one point to the other?	[ "This is a common misconception about light. Light does travel in a straight line, and the speed it travels at in that straight line is the speed 'c.' So, what is the \"wave length\" of light? Light is made up of electric and magnetic fields (at 90 degrees to each other). [This picture](_URL_0_) helps illustrate t...	[ "Any physically straigth line will always appear arc shaped if it covers long enough area of your vision. Its just our brains can make us realise they are really straigth if there is enough context. For the case of milkiway center there isnt. Cameras can cause further confusion. Its like inverse version of the prob...
What was "winter" or off season like for American slaves in the 18th and 19th centuries. What was the day to day for those that normally picked cotton in the summers?	[ "As described in 12 Years a Slave, in the south, they had crops all year round, so there was no time off for slaves. Sometimes slaves did more skilled labor when one couldn't work in the fields--they might be hired out as carpenters, carry heavy things, or clear new ground for cultivation. House slaves had lots o...	[ "digifox appears to have you covered on the dating of horseshoes. In terms of horses as a work animal, until the advent of the [Horse Collar](_URL_0_) horses weren't super useful for tasks such as pulling plows, carts etc, as they would choke. In Europe this takes a fairly long time to develop (less time in Asia). ...
Why is Sulphur used in the vulcanization process instead of some other element?	[ "Ok so I worked in Zinc Oxide which is used as a catalyst for the rubber curing. I only did a bit on the rubber side so hopefully someone can come and fill that in, but yes Sulphur I presume works to form di/trisulfide bridges similar to what it does with amino acid structure. Oxygen is more likely just to burn it ...	[ "At the time, it was the best means of transporting water. Meaning, it was cheap, malleable & most, of not all plumbers were able to literally, make pipes & fittings while on the site." ]
Why isn't a one second video at 24 fps 24x the file size of a picture?	[ "Video compression uses the fact that consecutive frames tend to be similar to each other. Instead of storing each frame separately, the file only stores the differences between the frames (except for some frames known as \"key frames\" which are stored in full), which takes up much less space." ]	[ "The cone of the speaker has to move. So there would have to be a smoothing out of the samples. How many samples are required to reproduce a sound is related by the nyquist frequency. If your signal sampling rate matches or exceeds that you hear a sound of the recorded frequency. :edit: So back to your actual quest...
Are there any millionaires alive today who's only source of wealth is inheritance from slave owners.	[ "You may be interested in the [Legacies of British Slavery](_URL_0_) project. When Britain emancipated its slaves, it paid compensation to the slaveowners. This project traces the families and institutions that benefited from that payout." ]	[ "hi! Could you clarify the scope of this question? Are you mainly asking about practices in Scotland / the British Isles roughly around the Civil Wars, or landowners anytime anywhere? [hint: [say the former](_URL_0_) ]" ]
Why do mirrors reflect your image horizontally but not vertically?	[ "Mirrors do not reflect your image horizontally. If you move your right hand, the right side of the image in the mirror also moves. You're so used to interacting with other people though, that the mind interprets your reflection as another person who is moving the opposite hand." ]	[ "Your head isn't thick enough to have an effect on the frequency that you hear. When you listen to a recording of your own voice, what's missing is the deeper harmonics that result from the sound travelling through you skull to the bones in your ear, but it doesn't really affect the accuracy with which you can judg...
Why are people in ebola-stricken nations so against accepting help from ebola workers/ relief efforts?	[ "Say everyone around you started getting very sick for no apparent reason. Every doctor who tests them comes back negative for any kind of disease that we know of. Suddenly, alien life forms show up and abduct your sick loved ones. Everyone so abducted dies, but the aliens insist they're trying to help you. Do you ...	[ "Part of the explanation may be that folks are dying of other things first. Also consider that available information can only include cancer that is diagnosed. The rate, naturally, may very well be the same, they're just walking around oblivious to it. People need to see a doctor first for anyone else to know (a...
Dwarfs / short people. Have there been any significant historical figure of short stature?	[ "In ancient Egypt, [dwarves commanded respect](_URL_0_), and their depiction in art was mostly very positive. For example, [Seneb](_URL_1_) was a landowner and a high-ranking court official with twenty palace and religious titles, and married to a high priestess." ]	[ "This submission has been removed because it is [soapboxing](_URL_1_.), [promoting a political agenda, or moralizing](_URL_0_). We don't allow content that does these things because they are detrimental to unbiased and academic discussion of history." ]
If the moon is 1/81th the size of earth, why is the gravity 1/6th?	[ "Gravity depends on the mass of the source object, and decreases with the square of the distance to the source (the radius, in the case of gravity at the surface of a spherical object). The moon 1.2% of the mass, but 27% of the radius (remember that mass is proportional to the cube of radius, if this seems like a d...	[ "Rockets are complicated. Saturn V is a three-stage rocket with 7.8 Mlbs, 1.2 Mlbs, and 0.2 Mlbs thrust. All three stages are used to insert into earth orbit with a significant amount of fuel left over for injecting into a trans-lunar orbit. The SpaceX mars spacecraft is a two stage rocket with 29 to 31 Mlbs for th...
How do we know how much gold has not been mined yet?	[ "Think of an orchard, we know that it is 1000 Sq ft, and we can measure how many oranges are on one square foot of the ground in several different spots, then average those numbers and find out how many oranges we have in each square foot of the whole field! The areas with no oranges balance out the areas with lots...	[ "YouTube started doing this a while ago, many people would pre-load minutes/hours of content without ever watching it, which is wasting YouTube's bandwidth. So, they now only stream video in segments, like 5-sec each. As for why the already played content isn't cached on your browser, these sites simply didn't allo...
Where does the air in bubbles in fizzy drinks come from?	[ "Gasses can dissolve in water. Like when you put sugar in water and it \"disappears\" The fizziness is dissolved Carbon dioxide that was put there by the manufacturer. You put it under high pressure to help the gas disolve." ]	[ "They purchase these 5 gallon boxes of the coke product. There is a different box for each drink (one for Mello Yello, one for Coke, one for Diet Coke, etc.). These boxes are essentially just the syrup, the machine adds the carbonated water as it is going into your cup. It's really simple, the restaurant orders how...
What biological function kick-starts a fetus's heart?	[ "It's technically not a fully formed human \"heart\" that starts beating at around 4-6 weeks. It's a mass of tiny cells (that will someday form a human heart) that start to spontaneously contract, one cell contraction initiating the cell next to it to contract alongside and the next, like a chain reaction.. The rhy...	[ "> Why is this process so hard for humans? Because we are smart and use tools. Being smart requires a big brain, which means a big skull. Using tools means we need to walk upright which is easier with narrow hips. But the skull needs to go through the hips at birth! To compensate human infants are born relatively...
Why were the space shuttles never launched from mountains or other elevated areas?	[ "A few thousand feet of fuel costs isn't that much when you're going to low earth orbit. Besides, your still have to get the launch up up there (expensive) and use fuel to get the shuttle up there in the first place. So you're not saving any costs, just moving them elsewhere, and giving yourself a logistical headac...	[ "you are part of the system of the bus. you are moving at 40mph too. if the doors and windows are closed, there's nothing to change your velocity. now if you were in a convertible with its top down moving at 40mph and jumped up, the air, which is not moving at 40mph in the same direction, will hit you and reduce yo...
If you were born on Mars and you visited Earth as a adult 30 apx, would you be able to stand?	[ "The gravity on Mars is 38% of Earths. That means to a Martian, Earth's gravity is 2.6 times on Mars. That means that walking on earth would be about the same as carrying a backpack with 1.6 times his weight. That's not impossible, but would require significant training before leaving Mars and on the voyage." ]	[ "OP, you need to clarify: are you white, black, Native, or some class of immigrant? Rich or poor? Are you (presumably) free or are you a slave? How old are you? There are a lot of variables to \"a man,\" and most males wouldn't have fought at all." ]
what happens when someone objects to a marrige when the priest asks if anyone objects to the marrige and should speak now or forever hold your peace?	[ "The person shouts their objection and the priest asks the bride and groom if they want to continue with their vows or not." ]	[ "An object does not \"have force\"; there are forces acting on it. F=ma says that the (net) force being exerted on an object is equal to the mass of that object times the acceleration of that object. What an object has is momentum. Force is the rate of change of momentum, so if the force being applied to you is l...
why do we have dominate hands?	[ "Your brain is constantly telling how your limbs should move. Because it takes a lot of energy to do the maths for your hands and feet, it gives more detailed instructions to one side than the other side. If both sides were equally good at movement, you'd need to eat more to power the calculations." ]	[ "Evolution. People who didn't get that weird feeling when dangling their limbs from the trees they were sleeping on were killed by cheetahs." ]
How much total energy in joules is contained within a standard BIC lighter?	[ "8.9 mL butane * 27.7 MJ/liter = 246.5 KJ" ]	[ "These devices operate on a DC power source. As the battery or power source is depleted, the voltage, or the electrical potential of the power source decreases and thus the overall power output, or watts of the device decreases." ]
Why does a US Dollar (for example) buy more in some places?	[ "It's because the cost of labor is cheaper. This impacts the price of everything. Imagine that every job in the entire country is done for 1/5 of the pay. You can see how this would make a hotel cheaper to build, cheaper to stock with food and drink, and cheaper to manage and run." ]	[ "If you have Netflix there's a very good documentary titled \"the world without US\" It explains your exact question." ]
Why does horseradish burn your nasal passages so intensely, but doesn't affect your mouth at all?	[ "Horseradish produces a chemical called isothiocyanate, which is extremely volatile. It turns from liquid to vapor very quickly, and this enters the nasal passages. It's a totally different effect from the capsaicin found in chili peppers, which binds to receptors in the mouth to mimic the sensation of heat. Crucia...	[ "The sour taste of foods is created by acid. The spicy taste of spicy foods is created by capsaicin. Capsaicin is not an acid." ]
If a man has his testicles removed, will his levels of testerone in his body drop? And if so, what can be done to keep it at normal, pills etc?	[ "Since testosterone is mostly made in the testes, yes their levels will drop if a person has them removed. Testosterone can be replaced medically, and it comes in various forms (tablets, injections etc..). Here are [a bunch of studies](_URL_0_) done on castrated mice who subsequently received testosterone replaceme...	[ "Uh...probably not. Mars has a few problems going for it. Musk's suggestion would help with one of them: lack of an atmosphere. Mars is cold and there's basically no atmosphere because the planet doesn't have a magnetic field to keep solar radiation from blasting the atmosphere away. Seeding the planet with greenho...
Friday Free-for-All \| March 04, 2016	[ "[I freelanced a story](_URL_0_) for The Guardian this week, which was nice." ]	[ "Hi there, I've approved this question but you may want to reword it so the question is actually in the title. Most of our flaired users have alerts set up that search titles for keywords, that one isn't going to get you anywhere unfortunately :-)." ]
How did pirates in the Caribbean/Americas get their ships?	[ "[A similar question was asked on this subreddit a few years back](_URL_0_), it does a good job of answering this question." ]	[ "_URL_0_ Excellent article that gives more detail: * Everyone uses it, and want to keep to one brand, so someone in better times gets used to using Tide, all of a sudden can't afford it, either steals or buys it on the black market, rather than buying something cheap. * Since everyone uses it and sales volumes are ...
Besides psychology/context, is there a reason the same bottle of wine tastes so good at a wine tasting and so comparatively underwhelming at home?	[ "It's most likely the knowledge of the wineries. The type of glass, the shape of said glass, pairings, temperature of the wine when poured/drank and how it's stored can alter the taste pretty severely. if you find a good wine ask, do they serve in crystal, take note of the shape of glass, how long they let it sit, ...	[ "Downforce settings, camber settings, fuel levels, etc. The cars are supposed to be carbon copies of each-other prior to the engineers \"tweaking\" several settings, giving the driver a different feel on the track." ]
Why did the Soviet government initiate secret military cooperation with Germany despite being ideological enemies?	[ "For one, the Soviet Union didn't lose a war to the Weimar Republic, the Russian Empire lost a war to the German Empire and the Bolsheviks signed Brest Litovsk with the defunct Kaiserreich. Neither imperial empires existed (at least in their old form) by the time of the Rapallo treaty. Both the Weimar Republic and...	[ "Another example raised by the noted scholar of Chinese Indonesians, Charles Coppel is he compares Chinese in Indonesia to Germans settlers in Eastern Europe. \"In sociological terms, the relationship of Chinese settlers in Indonesia to their host societies is more akin to that of the German settlers in Eastern Eur...
how heat becomes electricity	[ "Heat is used to boil water, creating hot steam. The steam expands and rises, which means it can displace stuff in the way, like a turbine. As it rises, with the pressure of the heat, it's forced past a turbine, spinning it. The turbine is attached to magnets moving through coils of wire. One of the principles of e...	[ "... you ever felt warm standing in the sun? bam your feeling lights energy...." ]
President Clinton's fiscal policies, and how it yielded a reduction in the national debt.	[ "Clinton, though a Democrat, was actually quite centrist, especially on economic issues. That said, the balanced budget during his administration was due to several factors. Here are a few. * A major tax increase on the wealthy, passed in 1993 (without a single Republican vote) * Enormous economic growth in the cou...	[ "This post is confusing. The title is 'Pirenne Thesis' which is a reference to his thoery of transition from Roman to Frankish worlds up to 8^th CE (which is roughly summarized as 'Without Islam there is no Frankish empire; without Mohammed, no Charlemagne'). But your comment is about his theory of the 'resurgence'...
. Why is music subjective? How can one persons music taste differ completely from another’s?	[ "Almost everything in existence with a taste preference is subjective. I had read somewhere that people’s music taste is generally fixed by age 14, baseline that is. It’s a lot to do with familiarity, what you were raised with, this is why certain musical tastes are highly geographic or cultural. So, if you had an ...	[ "First there's the technical skill involved. Photography doesn't perfectly capture an image exactly as it looks in real life. If you think it does take a picture of a person standing in front of a sunset and notice that they're just a black silhouette in your picture. You've got to use your lighting, frame your su...
Why are animal genitals always in roughly the same anatomical location?	[ "It's at the same position because the genetic program responsible for the formation of genitalia is actually connected to the formation of the kidneys and the hind limbs (in humans our legs) and this plan is shared by all vertebrates. It makes anatomical sense to derive a tube that produces large cells, ie genital...	[ "They mutate. Take H1N1 for example. Until recently, that particular brand of influenza was only found in animals. Then, on a pig farm in Mexico, one strain of the virus mutated to be communicable to humans, and then infected the farm boy and spread across the world. It's basically evolution happening at a speed fa...
Is there a "filter" that can shift infrared light into the visible spectrum?	[ "Not all night vision goggles work that way. The more traditional approach is to use the photoelectric effect - incoming IR photons hit a screen, which emits electrons. These are then accelerated through an electric field and strike another screen, which causes the emission of even more electrons, and these then st...	[ "In the video, the first part you can see the pilots actually moving (big cross hairs) the ATFLIR's view to keep the thing in view - this is manual or they can slave the view to the aircraft radar to some extent. Next, when that expanding box appears, the system has been told by the pilot to start picking up a the...
Why have languages like Spanish not changed that much over the past several hundred years, but English has?	[ "English experienced some major changes around that time that Spanish did not. In 1066 the Normans, who spoke French, took control of England. The fact that the ruling class spoke French greatly affected the native English language and a lot of French words made their way into the language. Additionally, there was ...	[ "Forming words and sentences is a different skill set to matching heard words with their translated counterpart. You can hear cheval and connect that with a horse but being able to know you want the word for horse and that the word is cheval is harder. Basically multiple choice being easier versus short answer on ...
How do we determine elemental composition of stars?	[ "Stars emit a continuous spectrum of photon energies. But every element has a very narrow range of frequencies which correspond almost exactly to the energies of its electron orbitals. So atoms in the star filter out certain frequencies from the continuous emission spectrum. We can measure the [absorption spectrum...	[ "It depends on the specific combustion reaction, but in most fossil fuels, like coal, the reaction that is taking place is the combustion of hydrocarbons and oxygen to carbon dioxide and water. What's left over is a mixture of compounds in the coal that either don't react with oxygen in the air, or the reaction pro...
What are pets doing when they wander around??? It doesn't seem "natural".	[ "Are your pets getting enough exercise? In the wild, they would be on the move a lot. Activities which are likely to extend their lives includes looking for food, and that means hunting. They therefore have a strong hunting instinct: with dogs, this can be channelled into play or even work (e.g. dogs used to herd s...	[ "Factory line machines generally deal with precise, unchanging patterns of movement. The devices come in in the same way. They're moved in the same way. They leave in the same way. Walking has to deal with terrain, which can vary in elevation, height, traction, slope, all sorts of things. You could undoubtedly make...
Why can cats never decide if they are going out or staying in?	[ "They can decide . . . it just takes time. Any animal that sleeps 20 hours a day is on a different temporal wavelength. Why choose between \"out\" or \"in\" when you can do both?" ]	[ "As far as my studies have gone, it's instinctual. Some birds use the earth's magnetic field, some use their parents and follow them and learn the path, others are genetically engineered to just know where to go. There's a term in ecology that we borrowed from German - zugunruhe. It's basically how animals exhibit ...
Why there are no weight divisions in running/cycling while they in most of other sports?	[ "Fighting sports have weight divisions because weight is an enormous advantage. It's nearly impossible for skill to bridge the disparity in power and durability significant weight differences provide. Weight is generally a disadvantage in running/cycling because you have to waste energy moving all that weight. On t...	[ "Costs money to build and maintain the facilities, some countries don't feel like taking on the burden of that cost." ]
Do Asian countries self recognize as being Eastern?	[ "I'm not sure about others, but the Viet definitely do. I know the Vietnamese term for Europe is Tay, which literally means West, and we refer to the Orient as A Dong, literally East." ]	[ "Most historians reject the idea of a 'Dark Age', it doesn't make any sense and is entirely Eurocentric." ]
What & why does the US government research so heavily in health sciences?	[ "Partially politics, partially practical considerations. On the political side, almost no one argues against health research spending. Both parties represent groups that need that funding (the elderly and universities). As such, it's easier to get funding for them than something like energy research, which has stro...	[ "Here is a short list of things that NASA has been involved with designing. While a long-term goal might be to colonize a planet, it is nowhere in the feasible future. A real focus continues to be doing space travel cheaper, safer and faster. Along with keeping the health of space travelers up, you could look into ...
Booster shots, why is there a time frame?	[ "It's a way of helping ensure the vaccine takes effect and that your body develops the protection (antibodies) it needs from the vaccine. For instance, a vaccine given one time might effectively develop protection in 85% of people, but then you give them the second shot and that percentage goes up to 95%." ]	[ "A safety measure. The chance is low but its still the responsibility of the vet to make you aware and informed of it. Be happy you have a vet who is covering all the bases." ]
What exactly is an electron microscope?	[ "Normal microscopes use visible light, which reflects off of the object you are looking at, back through the lens, and into your eye. The constraint to that is that light has a specific wavelength, and it is very difficult to see things that are smaller than the wavelength of light you are using. Electron microscop...	[ "_URL_0_ The wikipedia article is excellent and better than any of the answers in here so far. If you have specific parts you don't understand, ask away and I can help explain them to you." ]
Why can't astronauts on the I.S.S. eat normal food?	[ "Normal food particles would tend to float around and mess up everything. Space food is specially formulated not to do that. Water is water. It doesn't matter if you use it to moisten your space food or drink it, it all goes to the same place." ]	[ "Not sure if it's the same link ecakir meant, but this is awesome: _URL_0_ It has the live camera feed, as well as a chart of exactly what each person is doing at that time. For example, at this moment: * Kotov is on Routine Activities - Exercise * Hopkins is on Routine Activities - Lunch (Experiments next) * Mast...
Did they make paper airplanes before the invention of the airplane?	[ "Hi there, Not to preclude further discussion, but you may find [this](_URL_1_) answer by /u/cthulhushrugged and [this](_URL_0_) answer by /u/ashkenazeeyankee to be of interest. :)" ]	[ "Typical, just after posting this I found out that one can easily make lye at home from ashes: _URL_0_ Anyhow, I guess we didn't know about lye all the time and soap has been around for ages, so the question still stands :)" ]
Why did humans lose the opposable "thumbs" on their feet like the ones that other apes retain? If two opposable thumbs are good, aren't four better?	[ "If I remember my biological anthropology correctly then it may have to do with several factors: 1) There is less muscle force used for bipedal motion in the human foot, and 2) there is less force due to the increased arch that comes with the human foot. In human evolution it became essential as our ancestors began...	[ "/u/flooey is right, but in addition to that: we have a lot more in common than people realize. For the vast, vast, vast majority of political issues that have been debated through the ages we have essentially a consensus on how to answer them. We are not going back to the gold standard, we don't want a king or que...
(US) - Paying your mortgage every 15 days in instead of once a month to save "HUGE" amounts of money	[ "Argh. So much misinformation here.... First of all, it's usually \"pay 1/2 of your mortgage payment every 2 weeks,\" not \"pay every 15 days\". The difference is important: pay every 2 weeks, and you end up making 13 payments per year instead of 12. The extra payment goes toward principal, so you end up paying it...	[ "A woman named Frances Wright did something like what you are asking in 1824. In Memphis, TN she bought two thousand acres of land from Andrew Jackson and would buy slaves. On this land she set up a co-operative labor system where they could basically work off their price of purchase and then they would be set free...
Why does the minus end of microtubules grow more slowly than the plus end?	[ "There is usually a protein anchor that remains stable for a while and falls off and reattaches as the tubule grows. During the period that the anchor is off, the tubule can grow on that end as well so long as it is energetically favorable. As the tubule approaches certain structures, proteins and compounds, this o...	[ "All planets have elliptical orbits. Newton’s laws mandate it; Earth is no exception. Something having an elliptical orbit has no effect on wether or not it has Lagrange points. However, most objects with very elliptical orbits probably don’t have them because objects that have very elliptical orbits are usually sm...
If a person gets an organ transplant (and assuming their body doesn't reject it) is there a point, after the body's cells have been refreshed with new ones, in which the replacement organ will have no DNA of the person that it originally belonged to?	[ "They refresh their own cells, so it will always have the donor DNA. Cells don't come from a different place in the body. The existing cells just split in two, keeping their DNA intact. The only way to get an organ with your own DNA would be to grow them with stem cells." ]	[ "CRISPR uses a protein (cas9) to make double stranded cuts in DNA. The natural double stranded DNA repair mechanisms in the cell, chew the DNA back from the break to generate the single stranded DNA ends needed to complete the repair. The result of this is that he DNA at the site of the damage is lost. Cas9 require...
What does the claim that our Universe is a hologram mean?	[ "It is a very rough description of something called the holographic principle, you shouldn't take it too seriously. Basically, the holographic principle states that sometimes physics in some space can be described by a theory that lives in the boundary of that space. For example, the entropy of a black hole is det...	[ "Before I answer, may I ask who the speaker is for this particular lecture? Or if you have a link for me to listen to? I would like to know where they are coming from in their argument." ]
Why we hear about new cancer treatments, but patients still just get surgery, chemo, and radiation?	[ "Those new treatments are chemo... Not all chemo is the same. We have much better drugs than we did 30 years ago. For example, in 1975, a patient diagnosed with breast cancer had a 75% chance of being alive after 5 years. Today, that's over 90%." ]	[ "Most people copy ideas. If the tribe A comes up with a good idea, then tribe B next door will copy it. Or tribe A's good idea may make it powerful enough to conquer tribe B and force them to adopt their idea. Isolated communities may not be exposed to outsiders' ideas (like modern technology) so they don't copy th...
If CEO pay were to be cut and redistributed to employees, how much would that effect the average pay of said employees?	[ "Glassdoor recently ranked the companies with worst CEO to employee pay ratios. #2 on the list is Chipotle (#1 is Discovery Communications, but their median salary is $80,000 so I skipped them). Chipotle employee median pay is $19,000. The CEO makes $28.9 million, a ratio of 1522 to 1. According to Wikipedia, Chipo...	[ "Centripetal acceleration is roughly 0.03 m/s^2 at the equator (4 * pi^2 * r / T^2, where T is the time it takes for the earth to revolve once, and r is its radius). Also, the earth is a little 'fatter' around the equator due to this, and (mountains and valleys aside), its radius is about 13 miles greater at the eq...
Why shouldn't I drink alcohol while on anti-depressants?	[ "it prevents the anti-depressants having the desired effect - which as a seratonin uptake inhibitor is to parce out your brain's use of those chemicals so it doesn't get depleted and depressed. if you are drinking a lot of alcohol that is going to override any attempt at limiting seratonin by literally flooding you...	[ "You're actually supposed to do that. Antibiotics just kill bacteria. All bacteria, indiscriminatingly. That includes beneficial bacteria, of which we have a LOT. Probiotics help replenish the beneficial bacteria you're supposed to have." ]
Why has technology not been able to replace subjective feedback style eye exams? Shouldn't we have a device by now that can just tell how bad your eyes are?	[ "Almost every modern optometrist will have a machine that can automatically determine your prescription. You might have used one; it's a machine that asks you to focus on a picture through a small lens. The optometrist will use the results from this machine as a starting point. The subjective tests are still used b...	[ "Audit trails. In every good elections system, there's a way to go back to the physical ballots and count them again, and to compare how many ballots there are as compared to the number of people who showed up at the polls. There's no need to tie a specific ballot to the person who cast it." ]
What is the most likely theory on how the universe will end?	[ "In my opinion, the Big Freeze hypothesis is most likely correct. My reasoning for this is simply that the expansion of the universe seems to be accelerating, which makes the Big Crunch hypothesis unlikely. But the Hubble parameter seems to be decreasing with time, which makes the Big Rip unlikely." ]	[ "not disproven per se, but yeah, it seems to strongly indicate that Big Crunch won't happen." ]
How do you read music?	[ "It's like a book, going left to right. Basically, there are 7 notes called A, B, C, all the way to G. These are the white keys on a piano. Then, you have black keys, which are sharp or flat, higher or lower in pitch compared to the surrounding white keys. For example, black key D Flat is between C and D. I'm assum...	[ "Like this! Oh, sorry. Forgot you weren't a real 5-year-old." ]
Please help me understand cloud storage such as GoogleDrive	[ "Imagine cloud storage as a flash drive that you can access from anywhere, without the risk of damage/loss to the drive itself.. Do with it what you please. If you want to store a few larger files and delete the local copies, you can." ]	[ "Different sources have different upload bandwidths. Think of bandwidth as a river. A website like netflix has a huge bandwidth (the ability of the river to move a lot of logs, people, whatevever (data), but a free site may have a much smaller bandwidth and can hardly move leaves." ]
Why do they blur things out on certain shows or images instead of just redacting using a black square.	[ "Also a black figure would look odd and distract the viewer from what is actually going on in the picture." ]	[ "Stations charge by the second to run a commercial. Shaving down to the most recognizable parts after the long version has run saves money." ]
How does mitochondrial DNA get passed in species that are both male and female?	[ "It gets passed down the maternal line, or in other words, only females can pass it on. A male offspring will receive his mother’s mitochondria, but does not pass this on to his children. All his sisters will, however, be able to pass the same mitochondria as his on to his own children (btw this is one of the theor...	[ "The government has two houses of Congress, which is called bicameralism, as a compromise to large and small states. There was a very big debate in the writing of the constitution over how representation should be decided — small states wanted a level playing field, and large states wanted representation based on p...
Non-Euclidean geomotries.	[ "Well, as a physics student, use of non-euclidean geometry that immediately jumps to mind is general relativity, which is entirely described in such mathematics. As for how they are possible, geometry is non-euclidean in any space which has curvature, like the surface of a sphere, or according to GR, anywhere there...	[ "Ordinary navigation and surveying tools like sextants and transits are actually pretty accurate." ]
Why are so many animals intolerant to theobromine (an active ingredient in chocolate) but humans have no problem eating it?	[ "Humans do have a problem with theobromine, it's just that the fatal dose for a human is very high. Iirc, the fatal dose for humans would require eating 6kg of dark chocolate in one sitting (over 40kg if you prefer milk chocolate) A lot of cheap chocolate is so processed it contains hardly any theobromine at all." ...	[ "At the heart of the minty matter is a protein called the transient receptor potential cation channel subfamily M member 8 (TRPM8), which is expressed in sensory neurons. TRPM8 is an ion channel, a type of protein that regulates the movement of ions across the membranes of cells. Just like only certain keys can ope...
How can companies like Ancestry tell your "exact" ethnicity mix from a DNA sample?	[ "I did 23 and me. You get a list of estimates with confidence intervals. About the furthest thing from \"exact\". Thing is they initially show you their estimates with 51% odds or better. If you choose 95% certainty the estimates go way down. Personally, I know my family history pretty well and the 95% estimates we...	[ "Every gun barrel leaves unique marks on the bullets it fires. Police can fire a test bullet into water or ballistic gel and then compare the marks to a bullet used in a crime." ]
The Texas-Indian War lasted from 1820-1875. Why is this war NOT considered the longest in US history?	[ "It was multiple wars with different groups on different sides, so it wasn't really consistent enough to be considered a single war." ]	[ "Not sure if this helps but what you describe is common for two things. A pan can be old, usually passed down through generations having been seasoned over the years from every meal that was cooked in it. Usually cast iron. The other thing that seems more likely to your question is when someone uses a traditional s...
How would the coldest (27C) star / brown dwarf feel to a touch (WISE 1828+2650)?	[ "You'd get radiation burns and probably radiation poisoning. Conventional stars can't be alive and not emit radiation (usually). What would that feel like? You'd feel tingling of the limbs, swelling of the tongue, and a \"burning up\" sensation (to quote from a very unfortunate worker at some plant that was mixin...	[ "Because we started finding lots of objects that are like Pluto. Pluto is not unique, there are dozens of pluto-like objects that are much, much further out, and probably hundreds more to be found. So, the IAU sat down and decided that this whole thing was problematic, we can't just start giving all of these other...
Why is it that lakes/ponds around the world have fairly similar fish, instead of them each having their own unique species of fish like land ecosystems do for animals?	[ "The water in the lake came from somewhere. Most lakes are fed by rivers and streams, or were originally parts of a river network as is the case with [oxbow lakes.](_URL_0_) A lake that was completely isolated from any other sources of water would eventually see evolutionary divergence if it had unique stressors, b...	[ "Free agency, the owner's willingness to invest in top tier players, and the effectiveness of the pitching staff all contribute to the yearly differences in an MLB team. It's very rare to see the same lineup and pitching staff two years in a row on any given MLB roster. The addition or loss of a single good startin...
Why when we photograph the sky from earth do we see millions of stars that are lightyears away but every picture I have seen taken by astronauts in space the sky is black and starless?	[ "It's purely incidental. You can find plenty of photos taken by astronauts where the stars are quite visible. You just don't see very many, because most photos are taken while a well-lit object is in the foreground of the shot, like the Earth, a spacewalking astronaut, or a piece of the ISS. Under these conditions,...	[ "Pupils aren't black in the sense of true color (like your iris, which may be brown/blue/green), but rather in the sense that you're looking at a \"shadow.\" It's like looking at a red shirt in a very dark closet and seeing it as almost black. They look black because we can't really see the light that's passing int...
What does Obama's proposal re: tuition debt relief/forgiveness REALLY mean to the masses?	[ "A lot of private schools are for profit corporations...vocational schools, tech schools, beauty academies, basically anything you see advertised on TV. A lot of people feel these schools have been abusing the student loan program, letting people pay $15K for 8 months of school that lets them earn $10 an hour inste...	[ "Let's say you're starting a business and I loan you the money to get started. You make your payments and manage to keep the lights on. Soon, you start making a profit. I, who loaned you money, don't come demanding more money because you're making the payments on which we agreed. Your buddy Jeff has a business, to...
Why are volcanoes so explosive?	[ "You know when you have a big explosive burp from your tummy after you drink some fizzy drink? Thats the same sort of thing that happens when a volcano goes pop. Your tummy is so full of fizzy drink 'air' and more is being produced so that your tummy is forced to burp. Just like how a volcano goes pop because its f...	[ "_URL_0_ Newton's Third Law of Motion. The combustion reaction expels mass behind the rocket, and that pushes the rocket forward. It's not an exclusive mechanism to combustion rockets - it would work in the same basic way if a vehicle flung rocks behind it with a slingshot - but combustion provides a much stronger ...
Books on WWII from German, Russian, Italian, French, Japanese etc perspectives	[ "Tigers in the Mud. It is the memoirs of Otto Carius, a German Tiger Ace. He recounts his own experiences, and also put together an impressive collection of documentation relating to his unit. It's a really excellent read because he relates his own personal experiences, while also keeping the reader oriented to the...	[ "There are. One of the most easily accessible collections is [\"Documenting the American South\"](_URL_0_) which is a digitization project carried out by the Uni. Of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. [\"First Person Narratives of the American South](_URL_0_/fpn/) and [\"The Southern Homefront, 1861-1865\"](_URL_0_...
Why is scaling up so difficult?	[ "How much something weighs is proportional to its volume (length cubed). How strong something is is proportional to its cross sectional area (length squared). The end result is that if you just take, say, a normal car, and make it twice the size, it will be about 8 times as heavy but only about 4 times as strong. S...	[ "Take a picture, any picture. Now zoom in. Zoom in more. Keep going. Eventually you'll get to the point where you can see the individual pixels and the image stops looking good. That's exactly what's happening here. SNES games were designed for small screens with a small number of pixels. If you put that same game...
Could we send messages with neutrinos?	[ "Yes, [and it has been done](_URL_0_). It's not a matter of \"capturing\" them though, they are produced in pulses with a particle accelerator. The message was encoded in binary ASCII as the pulses or lack thereof. It took 142 minutes to send the message \"neutrino\". Practically though, it is extremely expensive a...	[ "We aren't really sure why, but it doesn't seem that something like that can be done. Think about it like your bladder; you can build up a need to urinate, but you cannot urinate so much that your bladder is more than empty." ]
How do we see through glass?	[ "No. It's not at all like that. That would be totally easy to understand, and optics are crazy hard. I'm not smart enough to explain it like you're five, but this guy is: _URL_0_" ]	[ "because there are rotating .. if you spin a transparent ball with water inside you will have the same 2d shape. phisics first class" ]
When you see a shockwave what are you actually seeing?	[ "Air at different densities refracts light differently, like when heat waves coming off the pavement or a grill create pockets of air at different densities. The shockwave has different densities of air ahead of and behind the shockwave, which gives a lensing effect." ]	[ "The impact causes your diaphragm to spasm preventing you from inhaling or exhaling. The spasming is that awful feeling that you get. It probably freaks you out because you cannot breathe." ]
Can you find e in pi?	[ "It is believed that pi is a normal number in base 10. If this is true, then you would be able to find every finite sequence of numbers in its decimal expansion (because it is a disjunctive sequence, as implied from the normal property), but not any infinite sequence. So you would be able to find every finite t...	[ "You know how authors write long stories using letters and words and the rules of grammar and writing? Its just like that. With enough knowledge of how to read (math), these kinds of explanations make sense. Dont feel bad that you cant read it. Its just like if you tried to read a story in a language you dont know....
Why is considered horrible to kill a person who is in extreme suffering?	[ "The real answer is that death is an irrevocable final solution to things which some people could get through and go on living from. Even if someone is missing limbs, getting through a day of intense suffering and going on living afterwards is something many still do, and would have been glad for. So while this is ...	[ "To quote an earlier post: > Massive amounts of paperwork and bureaucracy go into an execution, not to mention last meals, housing, death row, phone calls, last requests, etc." ]
Actual Rocket Science	[ "First a quick correction: rockets go sideways to defeat gravity. They go up a while to get above terrain and some of the atmosphere, but then they accelerate to 8-10 kilometres per second horizontal velocity. Obviously, since they do a lot of this above the atmosphere, atmospheric control surfaces such as fins ar...	[ "We need a \"[Rosetta Stone](_URL_0_)\" to know the real language." ]
When did people begin smiling in photographs?	[ "It's not really a question of when people started to smile and more a question of when people stopped having to keep still. The reason why people didn't smile on early photographs is that the exposures were long. In early photographs the exposure time was as long as 30 minutes. The subjects would have had to keep...	[ "Cause our diet is completely different now. Sugar is everywhere and it destroys your teeth." ]
I have been watching Deadwood, what would the whisky they are drinking have been? Would it have been imported Irish or Scotch, if so what distillery?	[ "Neither. It would most likely be locally distilled, or imported from the east coast. Distilling whisky was an important part of the American economy since before the union was formed. Enacting an excise tax on whisky production in 1791 led to one of the first crises of the newly formed country. _URL_0_" ]	[ "Southwest England - although archaeology shows human settlement in the area goes back to before the last major-ice-age we don't get names until the first century AD as the society was not literate until contact with the Romans. The pre-Roman Celtic tribes were fairly advanced and minted their own coins, but frustr...
Why do rare events that result in death, such as terrorism, elicit more fear than more common events, such as riding in a faulty elavator?	[ "We are aware of mundane risks like elevators or cancer. Terrorism, on the other hand, is dramatic and shocking. But you're making an assumption that may not be true. There are lots of people who live lives terrified by the possibility of boring, common causes of death." ]	[ "Humor is literally a shift in the frame of reference. You expect one thing, you get another. (Alternately, you don't know what to expect, and what you get is still unexpected.) Consider the knock-knock joke: When you say \"who's there?' the expectation is the name of the knocker. Instead you get something else. Wh...
Why did the bronze age come first?	[ "It did not, everywhere. Some places had an iron age and no intervening bronze age. Bronze has some advantages, it's easier to smelt, it can be worked cold, it can be melted down in a relatively simple fire and it can be cast. Iron is harder to smelt, needs furnaces designed to achieve substantially greater temper...	[ "Please consult our handy [list of popular questions](_URL_0_) regarding this - it's a question that's been asked and answered many times here. Short answer, the idea of being \"more advanced\" is a logical fallacy, and in many ways civilizations in the Americas were as advanced as any in the Old World." ]
How could two shapes or places that have same the perimeter, have different area?	[ "Take a loop of string to represent your fixed perimeter, and try arranging it on the table to make different shapes which have that perimeter. You can make it into a circle and have lots of area inside the string, or you can stretch it out until it's almost just two lines side by side, and there's hardly any area ...	[ "Nice work, you've discovered Olbers' Paradox :) This was a much-discussed problem in antiquity. _URL_0_ Take a read of the wiki page, it's very good at explaining. And ask away if there is more you want to know." ]
Why are some colds way worse than others? If I have a bad cold and transfer it to someone else, is it guaranteed to be bad for him/her?	[ "It depends on your immune response. Inflammation, fever, coughing and runny nose are mostly caused by your immune system fighting the virus. Depending on the effectiveness of the immune system it might be a single day of hell or a week of minor problems. Not to mention that a \"bad cold\" is subjective." ]	[ "From my understanding (will need to edit in a source one I track it down,) the different hemispheres are actually pretty consistent as far as spread and symptom patterns go. In fact, they used data from this past southern hemisphere season to identify that this upcoming season will be rough for the northern hemisp...
Why does microfiber clean glasses so well but other fabrics don’t?	[ "Basically, microfiber cloth is like regular cloths, but very tightly wound compared to regular cloth. This allows it to pick up extremely small particles, like the tiny bits of dust and dirt off of glass, and it's soft, so it doesn't scratch. Meanwhile other cloths would probably just spread it around, or scratch ...	[ "Do you have a fly screen over the window? If so what you are observing is a [Moiré pattern](_URL_0_) being projected onto the window. Essentially the light is passing through the screen and the light waves get split up and then interact with each other causing spots of superposition where some regions are darker a...
Uber vs Taxis. Outrage justified?	[ "Taxi drivers have legitimate reason to be upset. As you say there are rules and regulations to be a taxi driver - this adds hassle and cost. Then a \"ride share\" company comes in, doesn't have those fees, and therefore is either cheaper or more profitable than you - not because you have a bad business model but a...	[ "They started in well regulated environments and did a lot of testing before the Bay area, however to fully learn how to drive you have to put the vehicle in the chaos of lots of other vehicles." ]
What are new chips in recent credit and debit cards? What are the benefits and why should we use chip readers over sliding?	[ "Sliding is simply reading a magnetic strip sequence. There's no security to this and it's easily replicated by someone wishing to defraud you if they get a hold of your card in anyway. A chip is a lot more sophisticated and harder to replicate making it a stronger security measure, coupled with a PIN it's a very s...	[ "So every somatic nucleated cell in your body (for all intents and purposes here) diploid and do indeed carry two versions of chromosome 1, two versions of chromosome 2 ... etc down to either 2 versions of X or an X and a Y. When sequencing you smash all of it into peices and read everthing as shorter snippets. ...
How big does a landmass have to be for it to no longer be considered an island?	[ "It has to be \"sub-continental\", basically, not a continent itself. They generally define it based on what chunk of earths crust it sits on, called a \"tectonic plate\". Ocean plates look different then continental plates. If it's surrounded by water and isn't a continental plate, then it's an island, or if it's ...	[ "Hi there -- while we've approved this question, we would like to remind potential respondents of our [current events](_URL_0_) (AKA \"20-year\") rule -- it's fine to discuss events through 1997 (inclusive) and their effects, but not events after 1997. Thanks!" ]
Did people ever believe that humans couldn't exceed a specific speed?	[ "I'm having an impossible time finding a source for this, but when the train was first invented/becoming common, especially in the UK, there were urban legends that the speed of the train (even being inside of it) was too fast for humans to tolerate and could cause seizures, make it impossible to breathe, and even ...	[ "Let's say you want to travel to Chicago from Atlanta by car. Can you predict your exact position at any given time? No. You can predict where you are going to be in the next few seconds but as you look further ahead you lose accuracy. Sure, you could say, \"I'll be near Indy around 6pm on this road, but you don't ...
If our immune system is weakest when asleep, why is rest reccomended when youre sick?	[ "Who said your immune system is weakest when you're asleep? There's study to suggest that your immune system is weaker between 2am - 6am but I've never seen anything that said it's weaker because you're sleeping. I've seen lots of study saying that a lack of sleep weakens your immune system." ]	[ "Two social psychological concepts come to mind here. State dependent memory encoding and Erickson Arousal theory of learning. State dependent learning states that what ever state of mind you are in during encoding is the state of mind where recall would be optimal. Erickson arousal theory states that learning is m...
Will ice in your beard, or a frozen beard, insulate your face or will it get colder due to the ice?	[ "If it's touching the skin, it will make it colder. Conduction is the fastest form of energy transference. If it's not touching the skin, it might... * A) Stop wind from hitting the face * 2) Trap a layer of warmer air against the skin" ]	[ "The bigger you make something, the weaker it gets, because as you increase the size, mass grows faster than strength. Say you have an ice cube that's 1 cm x 1 cm x 1 cm. That's one cubic centimeter in volume, and it has a footprint of one square centimeter. If you make this cube 10 times larger in all dimensions,...
How much power did confederate governors have in the American Civil war	[ "They had the power to answer your homework questions" ]	[ "This has essentially been answered by the preceding comments, but what hasn't been contributed is this: _URL_0_. Muster and enrollment records, transfer lists, honours lists, etc, for the period of 1730 through 1898. Worth having, OP, if you're writing or researching the topic academically. To succinctly summarise...
How do alternating temperatures in showers work when you rotate the valve/handle?	[ "There is a hot water line and a cold water line. You adjust the amount that each line is using by turning the handles in the shower. They both are fed into a central line that exits the shower nozzle. Happy showering!" ]	[ "Your first question somewhat answers your second question. A neuron that is re-polarizing cannot fire another action potential. (This is known as the absolute refractory period.) Because it is unable to fire during this period the action potential traveling down the axon cannot go back the way it came. Note, when ...
Why have there been no large-scale regional wars between the Arabs and Israel since 1973?	[ "Wars between states have become incredibly less common since ww2 because they tend to be so destructive and almost unwinnable. Andrew Bacevich in his book 'the New American Militarism' refers to the arab-Israeli wars as wars US commanders wish they could fight because they have clear military objections. But becau...	[ "Awesome question, you’re right that the research about this kinda sucks. If you are good at interpreting/understanding research articles then check this out, if not then I’ll cover the details below so don’t worry: _URL_0_ Generally, research of this nature is done using model organisms, in the case of this study...
Is there a material man mad or otherwise that camera's have trouble recording?	[ "[Striped shirts](_URL_0_) tend to cause problems with video recording and, if the pattern is fine enough, photos. It is due to the creation of a [moire](_URL_1_) pattern where 2 sets of parallel lines that are not quite parallel (the lines on the shirt and the pixels on the sensor) create a illusion of density wav...	[ "This is possible and if you have a smart phone that has the facebook app on it, most likely happening. The technology is possible because in your pocket you are carrying a device that has (among other things): -A microphone -A connection to the internet. That's it. That's all it takes. The only way to 100% ensure ...
Why does the NYPD blame Mayor Di Blasio for the killings of the 2 officers?	[ "The mayor is seen as supporting and validating grievances against NYPD and thus encouraging anti-police sentiment." ]	[ "Can you source your claim? And can you cite who in particular you are referring to? The New Democrat Party was the culmination of about 40 years of movements to create a viable third party. I don't know of one person who can claim responsibility for creating it?" ]
How is it that Russia was ever able to get so large? How were they able to control such a large area with a military that, until the 40's, wasn't really any stronger than its contemporaries?	[ "The only nations of comparable strength to the East were China and Japan, both of whom were suffering from severe internal issues (isolationist Japan, semi-colonized and opium addicted China) at the time. There was virtually nothing stopping the Russian advance to the East. However, when China and Japan got over t...	[ "Muscle size is an awful indicator of strength and it often comes down to the type of muscle fibers the person has, how much torque those muscle fibers can generate and the neurological ability of that person to combine those muscles to apply force. Some of it is genetic ability but often it comes down to specific...
American politics, for English people	[ "Left is Liberal or Democratic. Right is Conservative or Republican. To give you the shortest most stereotypical view ... Left wing politics favors the group. Hippies. Big, bleeding hearts. They want less money for the rich to give it to the poor. They like taxes, and they like to invest this tax money into educati...	[ "well if Romney gets 270 electoral votes he'll win. There are a set of states that Romney will definitely win, and a set that Obama will defnitely win. According to 538: _URL_2_ Obama will likely win enough of the toss-up states to win, but they only give like a 2:1 odds for Obama. It will not be a landslide that's...
What causes different animals to have such vastly different life expectancies? Does it have anything to do with body size?	[ "In truth, we don't know. There is correlatory data indicating that average heart beats over lifetime for mammals is approximately similar. However, this does not actually give the cause of senescence. Some animals show no senescence at all and some die incredibly fast. Size seems to be irrelevant considering that ...	[ "Please use the search function. _URL_11_ _URL_12_ _URL_13_ _URL_11_ _URL_12_ _URL_11_ _URL_12_ _URL_13_ _URL_12_ _URL_13_ _URL_13_ TL;DR: Why is a bad question with no good answer. We can't tell entirely with other animals, because we can't directly communicate though anecdotally, many seem to." ]
What is the process of remastering old films/movies? Also, as a followup, how long does this typically take?	[ "Strangely, (at least it seems strange to some people) regular old film is extremely detailed, somewhere around 25 megapixels per image. In order to distribute a movie, it gets converted to an easier-to-use format, but this process loses some of the detail. This isn't a problem because if they convert it to DVD, fo...	[ "I'm not a camera pro, but basically: A smartphone camera lense or even a Go pro doest have 1/10th of a cinema camera quality. There is much more than resolution and megapixels when it comes to cameras. Why does some 8mp phone camera does a better job than some 13mp ones? Same stuff. Lense, picture processing, etc....
Why was Jesus crucified?	[ "hi! while this question may get answers here, you might consider x-posting to /r/AskReligion or /r/AcademicBiblical" ]	[ "This is like asking \"why does a fire burn itself out - what's the point of using up all the fuel if it can't sustain itself?\"." ]
Looking for someone to concisely refute (or support) the claim that "negative ions" are generated near water active sources and are responsible for health benefits.	[ "I've been reading a peer-reviewed [paper (pdf)](_URL_1_) cited by the article you linked to, and it appears the mechanism is actually kind of interesting. The water droplets have a certain number of positive (H3O^+ ) and negative (OH^- ) ions, and they're usually balanced (as you would expect). But when the drople...	[ "In general, yes, but it depends on the specific effect you're asking about. Probiotics can help antibiotics be more [effective](_URL_3_), but they can also reduce or negate many of the problematic side effects (for example: [1](_URL_1_), [2](_URL_2_), [3](_URL_4_)). However, their effects on gastrointestinal flora...
Why was the US effort to rehabilitate Japan's economy after WW2 such a huge success?	[ "Partly because Japan was already going in that direction before the war. In the mid 19th Century, US gunboats showed Japan how backward they were, which lead to a massive modernization and westernization movement. One of the things other world powers had that Japan did not were colonies, so Japan made some out of ...	[ "Governments give tax breaks and subsidies to corporations to lure them in to their area. The idea is that bringing that business to the area will, ultimately, bring more business and jobs to the area which, theoretically, will bring jobs to the locals and more tax revenue for the government. Again, theoretically, ...
In Herodotus, it mentions the Otanes family "submit[s] to the rule of the king only so far as they themselves choose.". Does this still apply to modern day?	[ "When you say \"Does this apply to modern day\", do you mean to ask whether it is still the case that the family of Otanes \"submit[s] to the rule of the king only so far as they themselves choose [and] continues to be the only free family\" in modern-day Iran (or Afghanistan, or Iraq, etc.)? If that's really what ...	[ "Following orders isn't a good enough excuse for most people. If everybody in Germany just said no, it never would have happened. And when you have those statistics that say most Germans didn't like what was going on? Doesn't help. It's just modern day people trying to atone for an 80 year old crime and prevent it...

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