Subset (10)

eli5 · 25k rows

Split (1)

train · 25k rows

query stringlengths 20 300	positive listlengths 1 1	negative listlengths 1 1
Best way to get a basic understanding of quantum physics?	[ "Yes! Richard Feynman's [Q.E.D.](_URL_0_) is a truly excellent book on the topic, aimed squarely at the layman. It describes the basics of the math behind quantum mechanics in a way that is completely general and requires virtually no knowledge of mathematics. Even as a graduate student, this book was (by far) the ...	[ "I would check out It's Okay to Be Smart on youtube. They do a good episode on this (im bad at links)" ]
Why do train locomotives have one going forward and the next going backwards?	[ "So they can just hook up cars to the other end and go in either direction without the hassle of turning the locomotive." ]	[ "There is a back door into every house. People put alarms all over their house. Have a key? You can get in the front door. When you need to break in you use the back door. Now only bad people use the back doors. So when someone comes in the back door, the alarm goes off. Your crack is a bad person, technically. He ...
Why do so many U.S. states have capitals in small and rather insignificant cities?	[ "Yo ho ho! Yer not alone in askin', and kind strangers have explained that the choices were usually made on geography, or on some historic significance of the place: 1. [ELI5: How come state capitals in the US are usually not the state's largest or most important cities? ](_URL_6_) 1. [ELI5: Why are so many State c...	[ "This practice is ancient. The Greeks named a town they founded on the Italian coast Neapolis (New City); this is what is now known as Naples. Constantine renamed Byzantium to New Rome when he refounded it in 330 AD. The town of Salisbury was relocated in the mid 12th/13th century, with the new site being called Ne...
Why are many shoes called "tennis" shoes even though most are not made for tennis?	[ "Simple convention of description, nothing more. People have been calling them tennis shoes for years, so they just continue to do so." ]	[ "Quoting my 2nd all-time top scoring post: --- In the early days of motoring, the Michelin company put together a travel guide which rated hotels and restaurants. The idea was to encourage people to drive to distant cities. Over the years, the travel guide grew more & more respected. At some point, it lost its conn...
Were British schools as harsh as they were made out to be by British rock songs from the 70s and 80s?	[ "Roald Dahl did an autobiography going into detail on his childhood in those types of schools. Early versions of the text can be seen in 1970's copies of The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar and Six More. An advance preview of his bio, it contained more brutality than the final version of his autobiography did, I'm g...	[ "We were also invaded by the Dutch, during the second Anglo-Dutch war in 1667. Whilst only a minor skirmish, it did result in a number of small towns and villages situated on the banks of the River Medway being attacked by a Dutch raiding party. As an aside, the village of Queenborough surrendered to the Dutch duri...
What causes the "pressing" feeling in your lungs that makes you want to cough when inhaling marijuana smoke?	[ "That is your lungs wanting to expel what is in them because they need something richer in oxygen content." ]	[ "Find a kitchen sponge. Soak it with water. Now try drying it out with a syringe. If you spent enough hours to succeed, the sponge would fall apart from the huge number of holes you've made. And lungs are much bigger than kitchen sponges and the air cavities are smaller. And there are ribs and things in the way too...
If i take a paternity test with my fathers identical twin, what will the result be ?	[ "Paternity tests, and in fact all genetic fingerprinting tests, rely on the fact that there are certain regions of DNA which are \"hypervariable\", meaning that these region are more likely to be different amongst non-related individuals. Your father's twin will have the exact same genetic material (in theory) as y...	[ "This has been done. He even won an [Ig Nobel Prize](_URL_0_). There was no difference between his hands." ]
How is it that areas that reside on similar lines of latitude have vastly different climates and biomes?	[ "Oceans and mountain ranges. They influence wind and ocean currents, and the influence how humid the air is (if it moves over the ocean, it gets more humid for example). You get the most rain if you have wind coming from the ocean and hitting a mountain range, e.g. south of the Himalaya for the rain season: The hum...	[ "Epigenomics is the simplest of answers, you should read about it, I think you'll find it interesting. The wiki page is a nice summary. It talks about processes that affect the translation/expression of our DNA. Simply put having the same DNA, as the twins do have, does not mean those genes that are key in developi...
How much did war horses and coconuts (if you could even get one) each cost in 10th Century England? Also, did 10th Century English knights use the same horse for battle and travel?	[ "This is rather a thorny question, given that warhorses did not exist in any appreciable numbers in England until the Norman Conquest of 1066. The English kept horses, but they were strictly riding horses and beasts of burden. Similarly, I am not aware of any 10th century sources for the price or even availability ...	[ "Someone watched Game of Thrones yesterday ;) Anyways. It's CGI or models. You are right that horses would get easily hurt, and because of the unique way a horse's bone works, once they have a broken leg you kinda have to kill them if you don't want to be cruel. So, that's a big no, and the only way around that wo...
Why do we have that uncomfortable feeling when sleeping with limbs uncovered or hanging out of the bed?	[ "Evolution. People who didn't get that weird feeling when dangling their limbs from the trees they were sleeping on were killed by cheetahs." ]	[ "I read an article a somewhere that said it was do the the \"roughness\" or randomness of the noise. As the fingers nails catch and slip it produces random variances in the amplitude and frequency of the noise. Our brains find the signal unpredictable and that somehow causes it the view it as a danger. There are a...
Why can't doctors cut large amounts of fat off the body?	[ "They do. It's called liposuctioning. There are just limits on how much you can reasonably remove. Some of it is cosmetic but the more fat removed the riskier the surgery. Fat is part of your living tissue. It's connected to your blood supply. Nerves. Lots of other things. You can't just remove it like stuffing. Th...	[ "That has been done by Congress. The US officially switched in the 1970s. It did not stick. Those industries like the Sciences where it is much more useful switched, but general society where there is virtually no difference in the usages as we do not need to be that accurate in things there is not enough of a bene...
How does undo-ing an email that's already been sent work?	[ "In general, you cannot undo an email. Now, Google Mail introduced an undo feature, but you'll notice that it only works for 30 seconds after sending the email. So what really happens is that Google hold on to your email without sending it away for a short period of time, and if you \"undo\" it during that time, i...	[ "a program is like a piece of cloth occasionally a hole is found so you put a patch on it but the cloth remains the same size when you want to make a cloth a blanket then you make it bigger this is called bloat" ]
This cat, and her reaction	[ "This is a response cats have to their mothers grasping them as kittens. I guess it is instinctual. Using her mouth, the mother grasps the kitten by the scruff. I suppose staying perfectly still helps the mother do whatever she needs to do, like moving the kitten to safety." ]	[ "Because fuck you. I don't know if videos are acceptable, but this pretty much sums it up. _URL_0_" ]
Why is it so hard to get rid of rabbits in Australia?	[ "Because they breed like rabbits, they have no natural predators, and the predators we introduce decide that kangaroos are tastier instead." ]	[ "They don't. It's a marketing ~~lie~~ gimmick. I used to work for a company that did a similar thing by mail. New customers were supposed to sign up by a certain time for special rates but as a specific matter of policy we'd give those rates to anyone who mailed back the special offer." ]
USB 2.0 constant transfer speeds vs USB 3.0 rollercoster transfer speeds	[ "How big are the files you are talking about? You may have noticed that transfer speed always ramps up slowly. Therefore it will always be faster to transfer one 10gb file than a hundred 100mb files. This is because the file system needs to open a data stream of the file, read the data, write the data, close the ...	[ "Natural uranium that we mine from the ground is mostly composed of uranium 238, with less than 1% uranium 235. Uranium 235 is the useful isotope for nuclear applications like reactors and weapons, and uranium 238 by itself isn't very useful, so we enrich it by increasing the percentage of u-235. This can be anywhe...
Why does eating raw beef, pork, or poultry make you sick, yet you can eat many kinds of raw fish with no bad results?	[ "Most \"sushi grade\" fish is specially prepared to be eaten raw. That means the intestines are quickly and cleanly removed, leaving fewer opportunities for parasites to get into the flesh. It is also flash frozen to extremely low temperatures, which kills any remaining parasites. Fish also have different enough bi...	[ "Many Swedish traditional dishes contain animal organs. Pölsa contains liver and heart of pig. Lungmos was nearly the same thing, but included lugns. Leverpastej, paté of liver is still a very common sandwhich spread in Sweden. Blodpudding, blood pudding/black pudding is a common meal as well. Liver in stew...
The Patriot Act and why anyone voted for it	[ "Picture this: It's September 2001. The worst terrorist attack on American soil has just occurred. The twin towers were demolished in spectacular fashion. The Pentagon has one of its wings in rubble. Over ~~5,000~~ 3,000 Americans are dead, 6,000 injured. People are shocked, bewildered, and angry. \"How could this ...	[ "> Obviously my question was biased and I was trying to prove a point As the sidebar says: > Don't post just to express an opinion or argue a point of view. Don't do this here. This thread has been removed. Try /r/changemyview or /r/politics." ]
Where does the electricity the body uses actually come from?	[ "Okay, very very generally: You have various ions in your nerve/muscle cells (potassium, sodium, and chloride to name a few). The concentrations of these ions are pretty strictly controlled, which give the cells a particular . When an electrical signal is to be sent, various channels start opening making the potent...	[ "Just imagine the electrons in a cable as little balls pushing each other trough a pipe. That means the pipe is always full and If you flick the lightswitch it just needs the distance of one electron to be moved to start the lightbulb" ]
What would it be like to move through a superfluid with zero viscosity?	[ "[Here's a 1966 PhD thesis studying exactly that.](_URL_0_) Experimental findings have shown that at low velocity, you do get 0 drag to within experimental error, and the flow looks identical to potential flow. Weirder stuff starts happening as you accelerate the flow, and you do get drag. There are suggestions tha...	[ "This video created by Vsauce 3 (Jake Roper) does a very good job explaining this: _URL_1_ I hope this answers your question. He also did another video on a simmilar line of - could you survive: _URL_0_" ]
Why do people have baby teeth?	[ "I'm not sure as to where the division of baby teeth/no baby teeth lies in the general division of the animal kingdom, but as to why: You're adult teeth will not fit into you're baby sized jaw at birth. If we had only baby teeth our entire lives we would never have molars which would greatly impact our adult diets....	[ "They grow evenly, but the uneven parts are rounded by wear. Your finger tip is rounded, so any irregular part sticking out would get worn much faster." ]
Why would we want to do the Mars One mission and how is it possibly ethical?	[ "You would be the first person from earth to visit another planet. You would have your name in the history books along with every other great explorer we currently celebrate. It's a chance to do something that litterally no other human has ever done. As for ethics, well what's unethical about it. Everyone who signs...	[ "A lot of experiments to see what happens when there is little to no gravity going on. How it affects human body, how it affects, plants, animals, bacteria, equipement ect. It's also much easier to set up experiments that require very cold temperatures or very low pressures. [Here's a list.](_URL_0_)" ]
Are humans Natural Vegetarians?	[ "The article contains the line \"carnivores have short intestines so they can quickly get rid of all that rotting flesh they eat\". What a load of bollocks. Meat is digested by enzymes and the resulting fats and amino acids are absorbed by the body. Food is digested, it doesn't rot inside our guts!" ]	[ "You should try reading \"World Without Us\" by Alan Weisman to answer that question." ]
Does the human brain differ on a physical level, before and after acquiring knowledge?	[ "Your question is super interesting but science cannot yet explain consciousness, and it seems like \"knowledge\" refers to a conscious awareness of some fact or state of affairs, so your question is primarily addressed by philosophy (and is often called the mind-body problem). Assuming that there's nothing like a ...	[ "Imagine you're trying to find a coffee shop in a city. If you've been there recently, it should be pretty easy to find. If it's been 10 years since you've been to the coffee shop or the city, it might take you a LONG time to find. It also might take long to find if you've been to other, similar coffee shops in the...
Why is it that when we take a picture of the sun or moon with our phones it never really looks like we see it with our naked eye.	[ "Dynamic range. Your eye can resolve a candle a mile away at night, or the sun shining on white walls at noon, basically at the same time. Phone cameras are more limited, and tend to adjust for the brightest object in the field of view. That tends to darken everything else relative to your eyesight." ]	[ "Grab a tennis ball and a lamp. Turn off every other light in the room. Hold up the tennis ball. Half is lit, half is dark. If you are looking from the side (you can see the lamp and the ball) you can see some of the dark side of the ball. The ONLY way to see nothing but lit ball is to have the lamp directly behin...
When I eat something that is labeled 300 calories. Protien, Carb, or Fat--Does my body utilize 100% of those calories as energy/store it or is there wastage. And, would the calories be labeled differently if they were intended for an animal other than human.	[ "Food calories are simply are not based on you or your metabolism (much), or any other human being, or animal. They come from lab measurements from over 100 years ago. Conventional food energy is based on heats of combustion in a bomb calorimeter and corrections that take into consideration the efficiency of digest...	[ "Neurons do not just store one thing. A 'pixel,' in your analogy, would actually be represented by a specific combination of many different neurons. Each of those neurons may be used in many other combinations to represent many other pixels. And there are [around 140 million neurons in the primary visual cortex](_U...
Build the enterprise within 20 years, crazy or not	[ "You have to take his statement with a lot of salt. If everything he says is true, then we'd have something that was Enterprise-shaped, which would travel through space. Slowly. No phasers, photon torpedoes, replicator, transporters, warp drive, holodeck (?), etc. Still a pretty cool project, though." ]	[ "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 a song become and remain uninteresting if you listen to it repeatedly for a short amount of time?	[ "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." ]	[ "You can't compress something more than once. It will just make it bigger. Ever seen one of those vacuum bags that you can use to pack clothes more tightly for storage? You put your clothes inside, then vacuum the air out. Would it make any sense to try to wrap that inside a SECOND vacuum bag and suck the air out? ...
Someone gains access to someone else's nude photos and publishes them online. I go to that site and view said photos, but don't re-publish, host, link to, etc. those photos. Am I an accomplice in some legal way, or just a garden-variety perv doing nothing legally wrong?	[ "Based on previous incidents: The person that first (illegally) obtained the photos can be held liable and everyone beyond that is off the hook. Even if you publish the pictures for money as long as the pictures are considered \"newsworthy\" by the public you can't be held liable. I answered this question in anothe...	[ "Let's say you wanted to gamble at the horse track. You think Three-Legged Limpet is the horse to win on (despite having only three legs). You decide to place a $100 bet, but you don't have $100 on you now (payday isn't until tomorrow). The bookie agrees to take only $20, with the understanding that you will pay up...
Is there a term for experiencing sensations in dreams that are actually physically foreign to you?	[ "I don't believe it has a term. It's just vivid imagination. Besides, if you've never cut your own throat, you have no way of knowing if what you dreamt was actually accurate or if your mind just thought it must be. Or, for all anyone knows, the dream was reality and you really did bleed out and die, and now you're...	[ "Think about it like this. When learning an additional language you are suggesting that you learn it in the following manner: New Language -- > Known Language -- > Association with actual object or action. So, when learning a language for the first time, you simply have no middle man. You are associating the word d...
Why does the screen of a calculator turn a blue colour when you press in on it?	[ "You must be talking about a Liquid Crystal Display (LCD). If that is the case, then the actual crystals that bend the light are essentially liquid, so if you press down, you deform them, and they half-turn, and begin reflecting random bits of light." ]	[ "Your eyes work by constantly producing chemicals that is broken down by light. By measuring how much chemicals is in your vision cells you can find out how much light they receive. When it is light there is very little chemicals present and when it is dark there is lots of chemicals. However it takes your cells ab...
Why do other countries (outside of the US) have little or no commercial breaks on TV?	[ "As an example, I believe England has their stations technically run by the government, kind of like PBS here The US on the other hand leases out different bands to companies (nbc, cbs, etc) so they have to pay for their costs" ]	[ "A few ways. First thing to know is Company's only pay tax on profits, not revenue. 1. Setup headquarters in low taxing country and shift profits there. One of the big mining company's in Australia sells it's own coal to a Singapore based company they own. In Australia then pay tax on the heavily discounted rate th...
Is there a point at which hippocampal atrophy caused by depression is no longer reversible? Is there a particular antidepressant that is significantly better at reversing damage?	[ "The literature on reversal of hippocampal atrophy by SSRI antidepressants is extensive (with the most obvious example of general hippocampal neurogenesis being _URL_0_ , but there are also lots of examples of reversal of stress effects on the hippocampus by SSRIs in rats) . The adult brain is almost devoid of neur...	[ "The article actually has a pretty good ELI5 inside of it: > Antiretroviral therapies target and suppress active infected cells but they leave millions of dormant infected T-cells lying in wait throughout the body. This means existing treatments can effectively control HIV but do not cure the disease. > The new t...
I'm Iranian. If I immigrated to America during the segregation era how would I be treated by mainstream society?	[ "It would depend how dark your complexion is, where in the U.S. you were, and whether or not they knew you were Iranian. Most likely you would be taken for Native American, Italian, or Mexican, and treated however the locals treated those ethnicities. It is also possible, depending on how dark skinned you are and h...	[ "You might be interested in some previous threads on Saddam Hussein being left in power after the first gulf war: * [Why was Saddam Hussein left in charge of Iraq after the Persian Gulf War?](_URL_0_) - 14 comments, over 1 year old. * This thread discusses the issue as a matter of obeying the terms of the UN resolu...
How do seasonal businesses such as pumpkin patches and x-mas tree shops or even tax services turn a profit with such a small sales window?	[ "A lot of businesses actually lose money most of the year and make it up by just making so much at the right time of year. The name \"Black Friday\" for the day after Thanksgiving refers to the start of the holiday shopping season that puts most stores in the black (vs in the red) for the year. Others keep their co...	[ "The retail stores can buy in bulk. And when they do, they get a special discount from the manufacturer. This is part normal, and part enticement from the manufacturer to get their product out there. Typical electronics markup from manufacturer to vendor is 20-30%. That 30% allows the vendor to discount the device ...
How long did Kings and other royalty wait before eating after the food was tasted for poison? What happened if the taster was resistant to diseases like Salmonella, but the King was not and died?	[ "This question comes up now and again. There was an excellent response the last time: _URL_0_" ]	[ "I'm sorry, I'm not clear what exactly you mean. Is the goal of playing dead to ambush the enemy somehow or is it to escape unharmed? Either way, it would be a fairly risky idea. Medieval soldiers (and locals near the battlefield) saw it as their right to loot the dead and wounded, and would often either kill wound...
Is there a size limit for living organisms? Is it possible to have planet sized organisms?	[ "It kind of depends by what you mean by \"size limit\". Fundamentally, organisms are limited in size by the available environment and physical constraints. But there's no intrinsic limit on size. If you had a universe that was a flat, infinite plain of dirt, provided with suitable temperature, light, and irrigation...	[ "Some things are already made in bacteria/yeast. However you need to consider some things: * starting materials: can the plant/bacteria/fungi import the starting materials efficiently? are they nontoxic to the host? * is the final product toxic to the host? are the intermediates toxic? * are the intermediates going...
- The roll(s) of oxygen and electricity in the human brain.	[ "Oxygen does the same thing in the brain as everywhere else: provide an electron dump at the end of the electron transport chain that makes most of our cellular energy. Electricity is kind of a misnomer for the impulses which power neural communication. What is actually happening is more like a wave of charged part...	[ "There is a common misperception that memories are stored like books in a library where you can grab a memory and flip to the correct page. If that were so, why do most people need to sing the alphabet song when asked, \"What is 3 letters before M in the alphabet?\" instead of immediately replying \"J\"? Our memori...
How does ATP release energy when it loses a phosphate?	[ "The concept of the \"high energy phosphate bond\" is taught wrong, and is a pet peeve of mine. The energy of ATP is not stored in the phosphate bond. The energy is stored in how far away from equilibrium ATP is kept in the cell. Your cells work really hard to keep ATP concentrations high compared to the concentra...	[ "The very short, simple answer (in case this doesn't get to the front page): It happens in the same way that almost everything is transcribed. There are highly conserved sequences in the beginning and end of introns which signal spliceosomes ( to attach, excise, remove the intron, and then reattach the loose ends."...
If the sense of smell is the interaction between your nose and a thing's molecules, does that mean all things are decaying slowly? Why do 'stable' materials have a smell?	[ "Well, if you are smelling it then it is giving off molecules, so yes everything is constantly decaying unless it is at 0 kelvin. Do not confuse stablility with volatility. Stable chemicals are ones that are in their preferred energy state and in chemical equilibrium with the environment. Volatile chemicals are one...	[ "Think of nutrients as lego sculptures. Some are simple and easy for you to take apart, but sometimes they're really complicated and you have to ask your brother to help you take them apart. Beans have nutrients called complex oligosaccharides that are like really complicated lego sculptures. They're really hard to...
what did a 15th century medieval army consist of and how were they organized in a battlefield?	[ "\"15th century medieval army\"-- Where? A 15th century medieval army in Persia would have been organized quite differently than one organized in Poland." ]	[ "There may be earlier examples, but I do know about the Moche Warrior queen, discovered back in 2006. She was a tattooed mummey from Huaca Cao Viejo near Trujillio, Peru. This woman died around 450 AD and had tattoos on her arms. She was also buried with weapons and other artifacts of the type found in other elite ...
How to ophthalmic emulsifiers work?	[ "If you leave a bowl of water on your kitchen counter for a few days it will dry up (water evaporation). Similarly, your eyes will dry up faster if you only had water on them. To prevent that, your eyes has a thin layer of lipids (like oil) that reduces water evaporation. Certain eyedrops (refresh endura, systane b...	[ "Your question is too vague to give you a concrete answer, but you can't really use ethanol for liquid-liquid partitioning because ethanol and water are miscible. Ethyl acetate and water are not." ]
Why do black holes have such strong gravitational fields ?	[ "They don't. If our sun was suddenly crushed to a black hole of 1 solar mass, Earth's orbit would be entirely unaffected. Hollywood and pop culture has some strange idea that black holes are like magical sucking machines or something. That's false. As you say, a spherical mass of mass M has exactly the same gravita...	[ "Nice idea, but it won't work. There are a few reasons: (1) We know dark matter does not feel the electromagnetic force. If the dark matter were Dyson spheres, from absorbing the energy of the stars they surround, they would radiate in the infrared, and so we'd detect this. In fact, people have looked, and [no Dyso...
What are the benefits of leasing a car over buying one?	[ "None. Buy a used car... It will save you so much money. Also buying used doesn't mean your buying junk. You can buy used cars from a dealership or private party with less than 10,000 miles easily, and save thousands of dollars." ]	[ "I could think of some reasons why but they may not be the whole truth: * You don't need as much staff because you aren't serving people at their tables * You have a set menu so you can make things in bulk and have less chefs required for cooking * You can order food in bulk since you will have a pretty good idea o...
When defusing a bomb, would you actually need to cut a specific wire instead of all of them?	[ "If a wire is providing input to a NOT gate, then \"on\" turns to \"off\". So by clipping a wire, you could be preventing the signal that keeps the bomb from exploding. Most bombs are not built with the intention of being found, and as such, they're going to hastily be slapped together. If you clipped all the wire...	[ "That's precisely what the government does. They take the correct amount out of your paycheck. Except it's not a perfect system. Your taxes depend on not just how much you earn in a year, but what you spend your money on that year. So the precise amount you owe can't be computed until after the year's over, and a...
How come you can touch oven paper from a hot oven with your bare hands?	[ "Different materials are good or bad at \"conducting\" heat. Conducting heat is just like conducting electricity, it's a measure of how good it can transfer heat. Paper is really bad at conducting heat. It's bad at absorbing it and it's bad at releasing it. Have you ever felt a really cold or a really hot piece of...	[ "Their surfaces aren't exposed to the oxygen or fire. Same reason food cooks from the outside towards the center or a block of wood burns outside first then burns towards the inside." ]
How exactly does an Einstein Lens work.	[ "Ah I can do this one :) Imagine a ball, and you pour water over it (like in a sink). The ball will stop the water from going through it, but because of how fluid flows, the water will curl back in a small amount as it goes over the surface of the ball, so the flow will be smaller than if it did not curl back over....	[ "[Richard Feynman](_URL_1_) ELI5's it pretty well in about 2 mins. Alan Alda had a contest and this [8 min video](_URL_0_) won." ]
Why is so much importance held on the presidential election, but almost no attention is given to Congressional elections?	[ "The do get coverage, but there are a few reasons why they don't get as much national coverage... 1) Very few races are actually competitive. Between gerrymandering of House districts and states' entrenched political slants, maybe 50 of the 470 Congressional seats are actually races of any kind. 2) The races that a...	[ "Ha, I wrote a paper on this once. If I had to boil it down to one cause... I would say its the fact that in the US railroad infrastructure is (mostly) owned by private companies, which is fairly unique in the world. The US has the most sophisticated and impressive freight railroad transportation in the world (thin...
Why do injuries hurt less when they are compressed?	[ "I think it was answered as simply as \"Pressure signals are let through over pain signals\"." ]	[ "Computerphile explain it quite well - _URL_0_ Think of it like removing parts of a sentence but allowing it to still make sense. eg. 'The weather today will be sunny' compresses to 'weather today sunny' - it still somewhat makes sense, but there's less information. Hope this helps." ]
Where/When does this bayonet come from? (x-post to r/antiques)	[ "Why didn't you post a link of the actual article instead of the subreddit? May be the reason no one is responding." ]	[ "Hi OP, I've temporarily removed your post per our rule to protect personal privacy - _URL_0_. Could you either remove the link to your grandfather's docs, or modify the images to block out his name (and the names of any other people not serving in an official capacity), and any other identifying information. Then ...
How do master keys work?	[ "Inside a lock there is a barrel, the barrel is filled with rods of different lengths. The bumps on your key raise the rods so that their ends are perfectly lined up with the edge of the barrel, so it can turn. Each lock has a different combination of rod lengths so that the lock matches up only to its key. In a l...	[ "Hi there, while I don't claim to be an expert, I have studied the GDR extensively and I have not come across this anecdote before. It seems unlikely to me, for the following reasons: * Any goods imported into the GDR would have most likely been manufactured within the Communist Bloc, and therefore of questionable...
How come the US spends a higher percentage (25%) of its budget on healthcare than the UK (18%) even though it doesn't provide free healthcare like the UK does?	[ "Because in the US, a large amount of the healthcare money passes through insurance companies between the payer and the provider. Insurance companies exist to make a profit. The profit they extract from the exchange does not provide healthcare for anybody. This way, a large amount of the money spent on healthcare i...	[ "This is because American English is kind of like a time capsule of older British English. Back in the early 1600s when America was settled, English used -or that came from Latin words. However in the mean time of the 1700 and 1800s British people decided they wanted to have French spellings which use -our for thei...
How I can seamlessly stream an HD movie but small GIFs take forever to load.	[ "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." ]	[ "I don't want to get into information that will allow you to do illegal stuff, not what eli5 is for, but I'll tell you this. It saves the files in a specific location on your phone, for most android devices its all in the same place, and its accessible with pretty much any file browsing app. It isn't really hidden ...
heart murmur (for instant on cats)	[ "Your heart has valves that open and close to allow blood into a chamber and to stop blood from entering. A murmur occurs when a valve doesn't close completely which allows blood to leak extra blood into the chamber. You can usually hear a murmur with a stethoscope. To go along with the \"lub-dub\" sound a person w...	[ "They have a huge database of analyzed songs/tv shows/ commercials/etc., they create a spectrogram that measures frequency, BPM, and amplitude. When you use they app, your phone's microphone is recording the sound and your phone sends it to Shazam where they find its matching song and info card, and they send that ...
Why can't Canada just abolish The Indian Act	[ "Doing so would strip all the reservations for native peoples of the right to self govern, and it would revert all property within said reservations to the ownership of the Canadian Federal Government. You would be taking the property of everyone who lives on them away from them." ]	[ "Hi, this is just a reminder to posters to abide by our [subreddit rules](_URL_0_) and remember that unless you're posting an in-depth reply about the history of the issue, your post will be deleted. Pay particular attention to the rules about soapboxing and the 20-year-rule. We don't need discussion of present-d...
Why is corruption in developing countries so seemingly (a) commonplace and (b) tolerated	[ "As a Brazilian I can tell you why: we do it because we don`t trust the government and because we all feel that if we were in power we would exploit it as well. So basically because most believe that , given the chance, they would say \"screw everyone\" and take as much advantage as possible, they do NOT find thems...	[ "Inflation. Let's put it this way, in America it used to be that you could buy a steak dinner for let's say $5. Then today that same steak dinner would cost $50. How much we pay for things, and how much we get paid has increased slowly over time. In other countries, it has increased way faster, so something that us...
Why is there a correct way to turn off a computer?	[ "So imagine you're writing some notes in class. If the teacher asks \"is everyone done?\" and you aren't, you can tell the teacher and get more time. But if the teacher just erases everything off the board without warning, you wind up with incomplete notes. Now modern computers handle this well so you don't brick y...	[ "In a super crazy simple world where every variable was controlled other than energy in + energy out, then no, it would not matter, same overall result. In the real world, it matters a lot. Try putting your down jacket over your raincoat on a wet day. There are 100s of examples like this one where order and other ...
Early Irish Mythology	[ "I recommend anything by Dáithí Ó hÓgáin. Consider, for example, his book, The Lore of Ireland: An Encyclopaedia of Myth, Legend and Romance (Cork: Boydell, 2006). His work lacks the layer of Celtic mysticism and romantic haze that often clouds the subject. Too often, modern enthusiasts - pursuing Neo-paganism, wit...	[ "Could you please cite the article or paper you read? I'm Icelandic and I had no idea about this and am interested to learn." ]
How big of a role does programming play when it comes to working in a science lab (mainly physics)?	[ "Basically everyone I know does some programming. Some only occasionally and some constantly, but everyone does it." ]	[ "If you are cooking potatoes you don't need to look at them to know when they're done. You can simply set a timer and take them off it rings. In the same way we usually know how many iterations of some calculation is needed until we should arrive at the correct result. In some instances this is not exactly the cas...
Why do we find it difficult, or even painful, to look at something bright for an extended period of time?	[ "Pain from brightness is called [photophobia](_URL_1_). It is an evolved response to protect you from staring at the sun and burning holes in your retina. I couldn't find whether it is mediated through [photosensitive retinal ganglion cells](_URL_0_) or through the optic nerve directly, but it's one of the two. Int...	[ "I found this article about it: _URL_0_ Here's the tl;dr of it: Atoms emit photons occasionally. Our retinas occasionally pick these photons up, even if the source is inside your own body. Plus, photons can sometimes stimulate other nerves directly." ]
How do airport codes work when there are 17,678 commercial airports but only 17,576 possible combinations of letters?	[ "IATA codes are only used for airports that have scheduled passenger service. Pilots use ICAO codes for airports. Ticket booking and baggage systems use IATA codes and there are only about 3000 airports that need those." ]	[ "There are two big reasons why we have lots of different types of batteries. The first is that different electronic devices require different voltages to operate. That is why you have AA batteries which are 1.5 volts, car batteries which are 12 volts, and 9V batteries which are of course 9 volts. The other reason ...
When using sign language - is there a way to indicate you are just making a gesture as opposed to signing? Or is it just obvious?	[ "As you said. It is obvious. Its much like if someone who actually speaks saying one or two words that dont relate to something. You wouldnt assume they are actually trying to form a sentence ." ]	[ "I like this. However, pictures are awesome. Your pictures with the flame on the drawing board? Good stuff. The video with candle/flame? Good stuff. Your face? Great face for TV, but I don't want to see it the majority of the time. It makes the viewer lose interest over a period of time. Personally, I liked learnin...
Would be possible to keep both Earth and Venus on stable shared (Earth's) orbit?	[ "It would be highly unstable. Perturb either of them by a tiny amount, and they would fall out of equilibrium, which would result in them getting flung around the Solar System." ]	[ "Do the best with what you have. Florida and California are US launch sites because they are good enough. There's certainly an advantage to an equator launch, but logistically and practically its far easier to launch from home... and cheaper! Baikonur (Kazakhstan) fits a similar idea... although being the USSR's la...
Why doesn't our natural survival instinct kick in against thoughts of suicide in some people?	[ "It does. I tried to kill myself twice (the second time was exactly 10 years ago today, yay!) and both times I had great difficulties to actually do it because of survival instinct. I foud it very unnatural and had to fight the fear to actually do it." ]	[ "I don't so much think of it as an evolutionary thing. There's really no benefit to being confused. It comes down to computing power. Your brain just takes a minute to recall old information/piece together new information to develop an idea of where you are and how you got there. I'm currently in flight school and...
Are tandem bicycles more efficient? Could there theoretically be a subway train powered by human kinetic energy? (Like a really large tandem bike).	[ "Theoretically? Sure. The subway idea is compelling for me because you could pull a vacuum in a long tunnel to make resistance very minimal, and though it would take a while, could get some good speed going. Of course it would take a bunch of energy to pull the vacuum... A tandem bike is more efficient because you ...	[ "The turtle you're referencing is an example of conjoined twinning. There are many types of conjoined twins, and the degree to which the body is shared is highly variable. With this type of twinning, called dicephalic twins (one body and two heads), the body may contain separate spines and organs for each twin, or ...
Is there more evidence of observable black holes now?	[ "Yes, one of the most striking examples is that the stars right at the centre of the galaxy are all [orbiting something massive and invisible](_URL_0_) over like a 20 year period. And just this year, LIGO detected gravitational radiation from two colliding black holes." ]	[ "Every object's gravity is stronger the closer you are to it. Until you get close to its event horizon, a BH's gravity is almost the same as that of ay other object with the same mass." ]
Why does smoking cause the deeper voice and jaggedness of a smokers voice?	[ "The smoke paralyses the cells of the throat cilia which causes your body to cough to remove debris. The coughing scars lungs and vocal cords. The scar tissue causes the change in timber and tone." ]	[ "This isnt a for sure answer, but I do have a hint. I was a swimmer for a long time. We trained to be able to swim down/back without coming up. After doing this for a number of years, x-rays and scans from my doctor have shown I have really big lungs. They have expanded due to the need to store oxygen for whole mi...
Why does mouthwash sting my mouth but liquor only burns when you swallow it?	[ "Try rinsing your mouth for a minute with liquor. It will start to burn. With mouthwash you have alcohol and the mixture of essential oils that kill bacteria, work as an antiseptic, and removes the biofilm that builds on teeth (plaque). The essential oils come from plants likes mint and eucolyptus; giving us mentho...	[ "Orajel is actually made up of a substance called Benzocaine, which interacts with open nerve endings that sense pain. Benzocaine will basically stops the nerve from sending those impulses of pain by blocking something called a Voltage Dependant Sodium Channel, something important to block because as soon as sodium...
How does humour work?	[ "A lot of what we think is funny hinges on the element surprise. Jokes are all about tricking your brain by ending the story different than you expect (aka delivering the punchline). What we percieve as cleverness is someone else stimulating our brains by inserting a common reference/relatable shared knowledge in ...	[ "Like this! Oh, sorry. Forgot you weren't a real 5-year-old." ]
What would happen if no-one in the entire world spent any money for a day?	[ "I don't think anything at all would happen. People would just spend that amount the next day. People still need the things that money buys. A few small companies might have trouble making payroll if they run things super tight but it really wouldn't change anything." ]	[ "So let's say I manufacture computer mouses. I need metal, plastics, lasers, and coding. We'll say I have all the other parts I need manufactured in house. So I trade computer mouses to miners for metal? And I pay my coder in mouses? Doesn't really work. Barter requires you to have the goods on hand that the person...
What biblical figures are considered to have been actual, historical figures?	[ "I asked a [similar question](_URL_0_) a couple of years ago." ]	[ "_URL_0_ Of all places, this thread has the answer. Their names are long and foreign: they are shortened and localized for ease of use. Mark Antony is probably the single most Anglicized name." ]
Why is student loan debt considered "good debt."	[ "You can't file bankruptcy on student debt. It's good for the banks, not you." ]	[ "It's not. If you took peaches and distilled out all of the sugar, it would be just as bad for you as table sugar. The difference is that peaches also come with a bunch of vitamins and micronutrients you need to live, so eating a peach provides benefits beyond empty calories." ]
The concept differences between weight and mass	[ "Mass is how much of a thing there is. Weight is how hard that thing is pulled towards a large gravitational mass. Mass is an inherent quality/information of an object, and remains unchanged regardless of what else it is near. It does play into the inertia. Weight is the force exerted through gravity. Force = Mass ...	[ "Voltage builds up, current (actual electrons) does not. Think of it this way: Just because there is a dam doesn't mean the steady-state flow of the river is different. If the damn tried to slow the flow of the river (too much), the river would crest the dam and it would catastrophically fail. Voltage is the height...
how does my stomach know to vomit when I eat something bad?	[ "When you swallow something, it's already partly broken up by both chewing and saliva. This makes it easy for the chemistry lab that's in your stomach to examine everything that lands there, and to arrange for the rejection of what it doesn't like. It's a bit more complicated than that, but I'm trying to explain it...	[ "Evolution. Our noses have evolved to be very sensitive to certain compounds and our brains have evolved deep rooted instinctual responses to what our noses are picking up. An example is hydrogen sulfide. Hydrogen sulfide is a toxic gas which can be produced by sewage and decaying organic matter. It makes sense tha...
American Italian here, wondering about the genetics of Italians. How did the Moors invasion of Italy change the Italian populus?	[ "Fellow True Romance fan, eh? You can see a [map of DNA haplotypes in Italy here](_URL_1_). The sharp line between north and south Italy has more to do with Greek vs Celtic/Germanic than North African influences. [This 2008 paper](_URL_0_) concludes that the Greek contribution to Sicily's gene pool is roughly 37...	[ "Moles are little areas of the skin that produce excess melanin (pigment) and cells, i.e., raised, dark areas of the skin. Damaging them isn't actually all that big of a deal. But any mole can become cancerous--excessive exposure to the sun is a big risk factor, but it can happen entirely spontaneously--specificall...
If an independent game studio goes under, who/which company owns the intellectual properties?	[ "When a company shuts down, it generally sells all its assets off to recoup as much money as possible. That includes whatever copyrights and other intellectual property it might own. So the rights are owned by whoever bought them when the company shut down. This is how you get things like the Atari brand being owne...	[ "Investment. It takes millions of dollars and years of getting construction permits to dig up roads or putting up new poles to put in wires. Back in the 90's many ISPs existed, because everyone was piggybacking on existing telephone connections. But once you had to deploy new hardware to telephone network, then ...
Why doesn't everyone in Star Wars have a light saber?	[ "Non-force sensitive beings can use them, but they're not very effective and quite dangerous without the extra boost in dexterity and strength from the force. It'd be like our world equivalent of \"Why doesn't everyone have an acetylene torch around the house to cut stuff?\" Sure, it would get the job done. But it'...	[ "Becsuse all tux's basically look the same, just different sizes and are a basic loose fit. Easy for many men to wear the same thing. But theres a bajillion styles of wedding dresses and different styles for different shapes and they're usually fitted. Odds of finding a generic sized dress in a style you like that ...
Since the Earth is getting more mass in the neighborhood of 100 tons a day, will the gravitational pull be strong enough to pull the moon into it?	[ "100 tons compared to the mass of the earth (~6x10^24 kg) is barely a rounding error. It would take approximately 1.8 x 10^14 years to increase the mass of the earth by 1/1000 of it's current mass at that accumulation rate. The universe is only about 13.75 x 10^9 years old. So the Earth's mass isn't changing much p...	[ "The easiest way to answer your question is to buy a double hook scale like [THIS](_URL_0_) ($20) and tow the truck with it. Do the same with various masses on the sled and you will have your answer. The amount of force to get the sled moving will probably be higher than to get the truck moving because it will lik...
Why do humans have certain hair colors (i.e. yellow, red, black, brown, white) but not others (green, blue, purple, etc). Would it be theoretically possible to manipulate our genes to produce any hair color?	[ "Pretty sure it's because our hair color is dictated by different ratios of the expression of two or three different kinds of melanin pigments. Their possible combinations are what we see today. They simply can't combine to make green, blue or purple." ]	[ "Most definitely. Part of it has already been done in alchemical history, though extracting iron was not the goal. [Prussian blue](_URL_0_) is a paint pigment that's first synthesized in the 18th century. It is an iron compound complexed with cyanide ligands. It was accidentally discovered when a paint maker used m...
Why do planes not leave their outline in a cloud when they enter it, like it is shown in many cartoons for example?	[ "Clouds look solid because they are very far, but they are very much not. Fog is more or less a cloud that formed low enough for us to be able to be inside it and it's very much not solid, right? In most selfexplanatory experiment: waving your arms inside a fog does not leave a fog-free area behind them and plane e...	[ "The answer to your second question is that guns that emit enough smoke to pull off this cheeky maneuver aren’t prevalent. There were developments in firearm technology after that that eliminated that smoke and you don’t see that volume of smoke with the guns commonly used today." ]
How does Ibuporfen "thin" your blood?	[ "Ibuprofen affects your production of a chemical called thromboxane, which makes blood platelets stick together to form blood clots. Blood clotting is when your blood sticks together to form these thick blobs. These clots stop you from bleeding out too much if you bruise or cut yourself. When you cut yourself after...	[ "I'm sorry that I'm no expert, but I remember reading about this the last time a similar question was asked: _URL_0_ Basically, you percieve time faster after your run because of endorphines released during the work out, which means that the music seems slower. This is apparently also why a lot of rock musicians pl...
Why does chloroform knock you out when you inhale it?	[ "Yes, but it takes like 5 minutes even with good dosage. So if the bad guy puts a rag over your mouth nose you will pass out in like 30 sec - 1 minute from the lack of oxygen and not the effects of the chloroform." ]	[ "Our brains didn't evolve with cars in mind. They evolved with, like, being hunted by a jaguar (or whatever) in mind. So your brain doesn't know what to do with a car. It thinks hey, we're sitting, our body's not really doing anything physical, there's very little activity or stimulus... this seems like a good time...
Scientists claim it is more hygienic to lick the toilet seat than bite your nails. Is this true?	[ "They say this to point out that there is bacteria everywhere. Toilet seats are designed to be very unfavorable to bacteria living there, so they're actually relatively clean when it comes to bacteria compared to most other surfaces. However, the underside of your nails are huge repositories of bacteria that ...	[ "Depends on what level the study is at. Look at people who regularly eat lots of red meat and bacon, and compare it to people who don't If there is a difference in cancer rates between the two groups, something is causing a higher rate of cancer. Maybe work place exposure, food, lifestyle etc. Then take genetically...
Why do some life forms still use RNA over DNA?	[ "Some viruses use RNA. The virus was generated when a bit of RNA broke off and went rogue, and was able to hijack a cell's machinery to make more copies of itself, along with proteins to encapsulate it. I think it's because hosts are very good at detecting foreign double stranded DNA that isn't in the nucleus or mi...	[ "Paper is cheaper to make and people don't like carrying coins around. In the US the Sacajawea dollar was tried for awhile a few years ago but never caught on because most people still preferred paper bills." ]
Why aren’t we allowed to lower the salaries of politicians? So that we can be sure that they are running not for money but because they really want to serve?	[ "Mostly because it would become a tool to control the have-nots. Lower the the salaries of politicians until it a burden even for those who want to serve. Net result is that the only people who would run wouldn't be the people who want to serve, but the people who are financially able. Side note. Most of the money...	[ "You have a lemonade stand. You sell it for 50 cents a cup. One day you find out it's going to be very hot outside and people are going to want more lemonade. You figure you can get away with selling it for a little more since the demand is there. So you start charging 80 cents. You notice that the number of people...
Why don't candies and drinks that are banana flavored actually taste like a real banana?	[ "They do. HOWEVER; they don't taste like the banana you eat. When the \"standard\" banana flavour was created the most popular banana was the [Gros Michel banana](_URL_0_). This species of bananas tasted just about like what we call \"banana flavour\" and was the main imported banana around the world well into th...	[ "The aluminum in the wrapper creates a slight electric shock when placed in the acidic environment of your mouth. This creates the pain. The heat comes from the folding of the wrapper that occurs when you squeeze it. The wrinkling of the wrapper pushes aluminum against more aluminum in extremely confined spaces, cr...
If the big bang theory is based on that the universe is expanding, how do we know it's not just pulsating?	[ "[For one thing, there is a 13 billion year old background radiation emitted when the universe was young when everything was still really dense that we can still observe today.](_URL_0_) The cosmic background radiation is the greatest source of information we have about the early universe." ]	[ "Because space is a vacuum. We know space is a vacuum because it does not absorb light and does not slow down the planets." ]
How do babies adapt to breathing air after being in the womb?	[ "An important change happens in the heart during birth. Beforehand there are holes between the left and right sides of the heart, a short-circuit that sends arterial, oxygenated blood to the lung tissue to keep it alive. Afterwards, these close, isolating the pumonary circuit so it carries depleted blood to the lun...	[ "By trying very hard, and by using an outside coach (usually through school). Children born to deaf parents are actually known to struggle when learning verbal communication, mostly because sign is their first language and English (or whatever) is their second language. It's difficult to raise a bilingual child whe...
Since gravity is the curvature of space, would a static universe have gravity?	[ "No. The bodies' masses (or more honestly, their energies) would cause spacetime to curve, and that would in turn cause them to move towards each other. They wouldn't sit there static unless there were some force acting against gravity to hold them there." ]	[ "Put a slinky in a long glass tube and fix one end of the slinky to one end of the tube. Now lay the tube on your desk. The slinky is all curled up . Next, stand the tube upright. One end of the slinky is fixed to the top of the tube and the bottom of the slinky dangles down. What if you held the tube at an angle.....
We model the earth as having an infinite amount of charge for grounding purposes, but what would the actual limit be? How big a laundry machine would it take before you couldn't effectively use the earth as a ground? (x-post /r/AskScience)	[ "If you had some ideal voltage source that could supply a current to the Earth forever until it reached that voltage (and putting the negative charge somewhere not on the Earth)... the excess charge would build up on the surface, because of the shell theorem. This would cause everything on the surface to be charged...	[ "Cities don't really store electricity. Instead, electricity is constantly being generated and fed into the grid. If there's too much or not enough energy being produced, a central monitoring station will send the message to adjust output to generating stations. The reason for this is that it's really hard to store...
Why America uses the Electoral College	[ "There are historical reasons it was put in place, but in the modern day if we got rid of the electoral college small states would have less of an influence on the presidential election, this matters to small states." ]	[ "This CGP Grey video does a really good job of explaining it all. _URL_3_" ]
Why isn't all iron found as rust?	[ "Iron is found as iron ore, which is nothing more than rust. It is then reduced to iron metal, traditionally by reacting the iron oxide with carbon in a furnace." ]	[ "For the same reason that people who are blind from birth can't imagine color at all - imagination is about creating new combinations of stimuli that your brain is already familiar with." ]
Why haven't inspects and other "bug" species grown to comparable sizes of mammals, reptiles, birds, fish, etc.? Is it because of the fluid dynamics of exoskeletons and the hydraulic pressure required to move their appendages?	[ "Bugs breath through their skin. They need enough oxygen to support all the stuff inside that isn't skin. The bigger they get, their skin does get bigger, but their insides get even bigger than that. Basically the more mass the bug has, the more oxygen it needs to live, and thus the more surface area it needs expos...	[ "Rocks are able to skip on water because of surface tension. Larger, flatter rocks work better because they increase the contact area between the rock and the water. For two rocks with the same momentum, but one has a larger contact area with the water, the force exerted on the water by the rock with the larger are...
In 'Hitler's Table Talk' Hitler claims that after the 30 years war polygamy was tolerated due to the lack of men. What's the evidence for this claim?	[ "[This thread](_URL_0_) suggests the origin of the myth after the Thirty Years' War from the point of view of critiquing a Wiki article (which has since been edited). The scholars cited both trace the claim back to a 1790 popular article, point out that there would not have been an emergency law body to pass any la...	[ "The Holy Roman Empire (HRE) was the state first created by Charlemagne after he was crowned by Pope Leo III in Dec. 800, uniting a large area of land under his command. It briefly died in 888 when the last member of Charlemagne's family died, but was revived by Otto I and continued until 1806 when it finally died ...
Why do stimulant drugs make users like repetitive music?	[ "I really doubt there's any actual study on this, but obviously stimulant drugs make you want to move around more so people on these drugs want music they can move around to. Repetitive music is generally the kind of music you dance to, so there you have it. The techno/rave environment is also where a lot of peopl...	[ "Action movie stars aren't investigated in case they really shot all those guys and blew up that helicopter. Music is entertainment, it's not assumed to be factual." ]
If scientology is so awful, why aren't seemingly normal people such as Will Smith and John Travolta not against it?	[ "All you know about Will Smith or John Travolta is that they star in films you life. That has nothing to do with whether they are decent human beings. That being said, spend decades in a religion, and you aren't going to decide that your faith is a lie and actively making the world a worse place just because you re...	[ "They have lawyers & security companies they pay top dollar to help keep their information wiped from those databases. Also, they aren't giving out their information as frequently as we are. Our info gets out there when we sign up for accounts, online profiles, etc. Celebrities typically use the address of their la...
What was happening in the middle east and Africa during world war II? What sides were taken and how were they affected?	[ "> What sides were taken? The short version is that most of the area was colonized by France, England, Italy, and Spain. They did not really take side as much as go along with the colonizing powers. > How were they affected? After WWII, the colonial power had neither the strength nor the will to hold to their colo...	[ "Post-Roman England? Anglo-Saxon England? Viking England? Norman England? England of the Magna Carta? Late Medieval Elizabethan England? The middle ages stretched almost a thousand years with a lot of different societal, cultural and religious differences in that time. Regardless, we have no evidence that ethnicity...
My brother says that the slaves that were originally brought from Africa were sold by other Africans. I always thought that they were forced into being slaves. Am I right or wrong?	[ "Both are true, slaves would be taken during war by african chiefs and then sold to europeans But It is important to recognize 1. European chattel slavery and the slavery in Africa were different 2. The atlantic slave trade adds an major economic incentive for chiefs to raid other tribes for slaves to sell > _URL_...	[ "In the US most sugar comes from sugar beets, not sugar cane, because sugar cane grows best in warmer climates than are common here. It’s also to distinguish from corn syrup sweeteners. But yeah, it’s just sugar, and they think you’re stupid." ]
what’s the difference between a virus and a bacteria ?	[ "A bacteria is a living, breathing thing. It eats, it reacts, it wiggles around, it makes babies. It's the crudest form of life - a single cell with only the most basic functions - but it is alive. A virus is more sinister. A protein and gene sequence shell that has a single purpose: hijack a cell and order it to m...	[ "From our standpoint as users, nothing at all. From Reddit's standpoint, one of them means the backend computers told them \"sorry too busy\" and the other means that the backend didn't respond at all." ]
The phrase 'You can't prove a negative'	[ "I can, if I want to be an asshole, continually add to the \"There's no one sitting next to you on the bus\" statement to make it impossible to prove. He's invisible. You can't touch him. He actively changes his own properties to prevent detection. In that case proving a negative has to do with extremely broad abso...	[ "Put five apples onto a table. Now take no apples away. Now take no apples away again. Keep taking no apples away, and when you've finished, tell me how many times you were able to take no apples away from the five apples on the table." ]
If Ma Bell got broken apart for being a "regulated natural monopoly", why are cable companies allowed to function as monopolies?	[ "They didn't get broken apart for being a natural monopoly, they got broken up for how they used their monopoly. It's not against the Sherman act to have a monopoly, but many actions a monopolist attempts to leverage their monopoly advantages into other fields are against the law." ]	[ "I work for an ISP The Internet is like a series of roads. Let's say you built a road from your house to your friends. You and your friend could go real fast to each other's houses. But what if you wanted to go to some else's house? Or the mall, or school? You would have to connect your road with your towns road. ...

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