Subset (10)

eli5 · 25k rows

Split (1)

train · 25k rows

query stringlengths 20 300	positive listlengths 1 1	negative listlengths 1 1
With the most advance and current technology we have, is it possible to make an Iron-man suit?	[ "Perhaps a more insightful question would be to ask what technologies are needed to make something that performs like the Iron Man suit." ]	[ "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." ]
Thoughts can change the state of water?	[ "Even without referencing any papers or research I can tell you with almost 100% confidence that there is absolutely no way to change the physical state of water with thought." ]	[ "You are currently processing crystal clear images of your surroundings, focusing on this post, reading squiggles and translating them into sounds, connecting those sounds into words forming sentences with meaning while simultaneously feeling your hand on your mouse, smelling the air, hearing and interpreting sound...
Explain bandwidth throttling to me likeimfive	[ "Let's say you're playing with a hose outside. You're having a lot of fun, but mommy comes outside because she thinks you've been playing for too long. She won't be able to pay the water bill. So she puts something heavy on the hose, which makes less water come out at once. Bandwidth is water, and the heavy thing ...	[ "basicaly sending a lot of trafic to a destination you intend to take down, there is so much trafic the destination can handle before it gets cloged and legit users cant access, imagine like its a highway, be it 10 lines or more no matter how big, if you sudenly start moving thousands of cars on it trafic jam will ...
Is it true that the scientific community concluded that the world was in danger of "global cooling" in the 60s and 70s? And if so, when did they begin to move past that hypothesis?	[ "There were scientists then proposing \"global cooling\" as a result of aerosol pollution blocking the sun (a problem that is now much reduced and which rich countries have now largely exported to poor countries). The \"new ice age\" was a popular media scare story at the time which may have helped boost the appare...	[ "They did! [Wikipedia](_URL_1_) (and this is a really good wiki article in my opinion) led me to a doctoral thesis [The Legacy of Genius: Improvisation, Romantic Imagination, and the Western Musical Canon](_URL_0_) which does talk about historical group improv (check page 12, unfortunately I can't copy/paste the te...
Are there any first hand accounts from a medieval style battle?	[ "Jean de Joinville was not your typical medieval chronicler. He was not a monk or a scribe, instead he was a knight who was a part of King Louis IX of France. He followed the king on the Seventh Crusade and was involved in the battles of that failed campaign. While he does not go into great detail of the battles he...	[ "Slightly off-track, but why does it have to be a movie?My aunt teaches that age-group History, and sometimes will show them a sketch-show called \"Horrible Histories\". Its a BBC comedy sketch show that is aimed towards children, has high-level professional actors in it, its very educational and its hilarious aswe...
Why photosynthesis is the cornerstone of life on earth.	[ "Because all animals either eat plants, or eat animals that eat plants, or eat animals that eat animals that eat plants. So if there is not more photosynthesis, then the plants die, then the animals that eat the plants die, so the animals that eat those animals die, and so on." ]	[ "You ever see an old movie or slideshow projector? Shine a light through a tiny picture then through a lens and it projects this massive image on the screen from a tiny picture. Turns out we can do that in reverse. Shine a light through a big picture and lens and we can project a tiny image on a tiny screen. Sc...
[Physics] Why did AirPlay still work from inside a microwave and fridge?	[ "None of those are perfect Faraday cages. They will, however, reduce signal strength - maybe you could check your WiFi access point, to see if it gives a readout on received strength? Or your iPod may be able to give a readout on WiFi strength? Certainly you can get smartphone apps which do so - see if there's one ...	[ "The same reason you can walk through an airplane isle even though you are unable to move at hundreds of miles an hour (or fly). The same reason you are able to survive walking around outside even though the earth is spinning around at thousands of miles per hour. Ir more precisely, why you can swim in a pool even...
what is a byzantine rhyme scheme?	[ "It's using the adjective \"Byzantine\", which means excessively detailed or complicated, referencing the byzantine administrative and governmental system which was absurdly bureaucratic, complicated, and unwieldy. They are saying the rhyme schemes Eminem employed where way too complicated or overly drawn out, redu...	[ "Related question: what was the size and importance of the medieval bleach industry?" ]
How can my body continue to produce so much poop when I've hardly eaten in days??	[ "You have a few days of meals, about 3 - 5, worth of waste sitting in your colon. If you continued to not eat, once you are all cleared out, you will cease pooping." ]	[ "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 is a Jewellers tool more like, a 'Magnifying glass' or a 'mini telescope'? Please Help.	[ "It's called a [Jeweler's Loupe](_URL_0_), and it does NOT telescope, so it is a magnifying glass." ]	[ "I saw a segment in a Louis Theroux documentary about a guy who makes a living 'mining' gold on/in the sidewalks of NYC. He'd dig in the cracks of the sidewalk and find little bits of gold, diamonds and other precious metals/stones that had been dropped over the years and ground into the dirt. Apparently he made a ...
Are bird/whale (animals in general) songs learned or genetically programed? IOW, are animal songs the same in captivity as nature?	[ "This is a very large topic area, so I'll just touch a piece of it and leave you with a more thorough source. In the case of birds, it has generally been found that birds raised in total isolation from their own species will eventually start singing regardless, and that song will resemble the songs sung by other in...	[ "Too many things to count, but I'll generally try to divide it into two broad categories: 1. The way our muscles and cavities are made and aligned. This refers to the composition of the muscles which make up our vocal folds, pharynx, soft palate, etc. Also, the ways the tunnels and tubes in our throat are connected...
How does EU Parliament work?	[ "Under the Lisbon Treaty, states are allocated a number of MEPs based on their population. Croatia has 11 and France has 74. MEPs are elected by national elections in each country. This usually forms part of the normal voting process with local government elections. Yes the parties are cross country. They tend to i...	[ "Singing quality is not really what Eurovision is about. It's just this crazy, kinda camp show where quality of the songs pretty much takes a backdrop to how flashy a show you can put on. And politics. Also a lot of politics." ]
Why is it before and during work I am tired and then as I walk out of work I have so much energy?	[ "You hate your job and don't like being there." ]	[ "It's basically to do with thermodynamics and the time your body is in contact with the surrounding air. Humans cool down by dilating blood vessels and effectively making their skin as hot as possible. When two materials with different temperatures come into contact, the hotter one transfers heat onto the colder on...
Can we say that the efficiency of an heating device (in term of energy converted) is 100% ?	[ "In a closed system, yes. But in something like a house, no. The reason is that a furnace needs to vent exhaust gases to outside, which will be warmer than the air it takes in. Therefore, some of the heat is being vented outside. The same is true of something like radiant floor heating - some of the heat will go do...	[ "Very interesting subject. The reason lies in the cold-receptors of your skin, that measure cold. If you slowly increase the heat of the skin you observe this: They usually have a maximum activity when they reach 25 celsius degrees, stopping at about 30-35. A curious phenomenon, though, is that they start being act...
If you are about to drive on a bridge that's rather shaky and seems weak, should you drive fast or slow on it to avoid it from breaking?	[ "If you go too fast you are increasing the dynamic loading on the bridge because you have more momentum, which is transferred to the bridge. If you spend a lot of time in one area, the structural parts would be under stress for a longer time, which will only cause an issue if it is about to break (i.e. if you appli...	[ "Have you ever blown in a bottle to get a tone? What's happening is that as you blow across the top of the bottle, it excites the air in the bottle and causes it to resonate. Now, when you open a car window, you're effectively turning the car into a giant bottle, but because it is so big, we hear the resonance as ...
How did ancient people know that mixing flour, eggs, yeast etc. make bread	[ "The short answer is that they didn't. Humans didn't know that yeast was a living microorganism that ate sugar and pooped out CO2 until Louis Pasteur in 1857. Ancient people would have known that if they grind up plants, they get flour, and if they mix flour with water that it'll make a dough, and the dough will r...	[ "Your question is like: > Why do people keep telling me to take a pill my doctor prescribes when in ye olden days people didn't have access to the same pills? Clean water is way easier to get now than it was then. Since you have access to clean water you should use it. In the same way, getting a doctor to prescri...
If you know multiple languages fluently, when you have inner reflection, do you think with different languages too?	[ "I can if I choose to. I'm not sure what it's like for those who speak two native languages, but when I was living in Austria, speaking German and English every day, I would remember past conversations in English. Similarly, I would imagine all future conversations in German. This led to the odd feeling of plannin...	[ "No. That higher physical performance under stress is the result of muscle inhibition. Which basically means that under normal non-stressful conditions, your brain and nerves don't allow your muscles to operate at their full potential because you could pull your own body apart. (Literally, you could flex your own m...
When Joseph Goebbels becamse Minister of Propaganda, was his job title and description kept secret from the German public or was this widely known and accepted by the German people?	[ "I asked myself the same question some time ago, wondering if the general public of Germany actually referred to/knew all this media and social propaganda was, well, \"propaganda\". I have to agree with tlumacz, propaganda only experienced negative connotation in relatively \"recent\" times. Back then it was a term...	[ "Kim DotCom is the founder and owner of the file sharing site, MegaUpload. The purpose of the site is to help share files (whether it's a photo, document, or video) that are ultimately to big to share through means of email. One can simply upload their file to this site and then send their friend(s) a link that all...
What I should know about Facebook updating their terms and policies on January 1st.	[ "Stuff you put on their website they can use/sell for advertisements. Now they need to ask for permission so they are updating the ToS." ]	[ "It depends on the source of your ethics. Do your ethics come from societal norms? Those change. What if there were an isolated society where 90% of the members agreed that raping babies was ethical? Would that then, truly be ethical to them? Or do you base your ethics on something that is absolute? Is there an abs...
How do internet pirates make money?	[ "Mostly through donations or advertisements if they have a website, although money isn't the main motivation for internet pirates. They usually want to show other releasing groups what they're capable of (by cracking software or releasing music very early)" ]	[ "Why pay for the next Star Wars movie when old episodes of Buck Rodgers is available for free. They are pretty much the same, right? While many people see porn as a single use commodity, there is a core of hardcore porn fan (hardcore fans, not the porn). They have performers and series they like and follow, and whe...
the Hudson river plane landing and NTSB scandal.	[ "The scandal was that there was no scandal. A recent movie about the event took some dramatic license by having the NTSB try to blame the pilot, and condensed a 15 month investigation into a 2 week courtroom like drama. Nothing like that occurred. In the end, NTSB simulations showed that if the pilot had the superh...	[ "I have a question for you. Do you want the version that is super, super long and includes a write-up on what actually went down at Munich, and the subsequent responses back and forth? Or do you want the shorter version that only talks about media coverage of the incident and how it changed things?" ]
If you dissolve salt into water is it still H2O?	[ "When you dissolve salt into water the NaCl will disassociate into Na+ and Cl- ions, which will each be surrounded by several water molecules. Here's [an image](_URL_0_) depicting that. All of the water molecules will remain water molecules, but the solution will have different properties than pure water or salt." ...	[ "Saliva came from your body in the first place. You're not adding any new water to your system." ]
What occurs in a natural death?	[ "[I asked this question on ELI5 a few weeks ago.](_URL_0_) The best answer I received was by elzio: > In medical and legal contexts, there is a difference between manner of death and cause of death. The only labels for MoD are natural, accidental, homicide, suicide, or unknown. The CoD explains what medically cause...	[ "We depend on our cells dividing and replicating continuously to keep us healthy as a whole. The instructions on how to do the dividing need to be perfect and there are built in error correction systems to ensure it is correct. As we age our error correction systems break down and copy errors degrade our organs a...
How can a coin stop an Electromagnetic door lock from being locked?	[ "Iron and nickel are magnetic metals, which means that they will direct magnetic fields through themselves. [Here's an image](_URL_1_), [here's another image](_URL_0_). So, basically, the magnetic detector thinks your coin is the door itself, and acts as if the door has closed. The coin \"shorts out\" the magnetic...	[ "While common sense says \"No\", newton's third law and all that, Mythbusters have actually proven that it DOES work due to some clever physics. Its similar to how old ships used to sail against the wind and all that." ]
Does a trinary star system like Alpha Centauri have stable Lagrangian points?	[ "Proxima has pretty much no effect on the orbital dynamics of the other two. It's basically a comet star: really small and far away. The question is a very interesting one. I'm not an astronomer but I believe the answer is \"it's way too complicated for neat simple answers.\"" ]	[ "If you are looking for anything honest or science based in AiG, you will always be disappointed. For a good ripping of many lies and bs from AiG, I highly recommend _URL_2_ http://www._URL_2_/indexcc/list.html Try the section in the CC100 area for what you are talking about, but if you are honestly answered in fac...
Why do automotive engineers design vehicles that are next to impossible to repair without taking to a shop?	[ "The #1 reason components are hard to access is weight. If you add 8\" all the way around the engine bay, you're adding maybe 100 lbs of sheet metal to the car. Weight is important for fuel mileage and handling. A lighter body allows for a smaller, more efficient engine, which helps meet EPA regulations. Another im...	[ "Audio engineer- using \"natural sound\" AKA \"wild sound\" from the set is pretty uncommon. We spend many hours adding sound and ADR (dialog replacement) in a sound studio. TL;DR All the sound you hear is not from where the scene was shot." ]
I have 20 teams and 10 competitive (Team vs. Team) games, how do I make every team play each game once?	[ "I'm assuming you also want all the teams to never have the same opponent more than once. Because otherwise you could just pair of the teams, keep the pairs the same, and just circle the games. i.e. Round 1: A B C D E F G H I J 1 3 5 7 9 11 13 15 17 19 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18 20 Round 2: B C D E F G H I J A ...	[ "It doesn't know. Most pain killers you use work in the same or similar ways, in that they reduce inflammation. The differences in treatment is based off of strength of the painkiller or whether it can cross certain barriers in your body (to get to your joints or brain). People also react differently to different d...
Why did we create litres (or other liquid measurements)?	[ "Liters measure volume - the amount of space an object takes up - not mass. One liter of water takes up the same amount of space as a liter of mercury, but one liter of mercury is much heavier." ]	[ "It is more efficient to use currency. If you are selling a good, let's say, pens, and you want some pizza, you have to find someone who sells pizza and wants a pen in order to get the pizza. If you had currency, you have the same form of exchange from all parties which provides you with greater possibilities. Now...
How is it that we are the most advanced species on the planet, yet our young take so long (much longer than most species) to be self-sufficient?	[ "That's just it. It takes a while to amass information and use it. An animal just does whatever comes natural, aka 'instinct'. But humans are taught and trained and learn and practice and... and... Layers and layers of information and training to get us to the point where we can actually achieve more than the previ...	[ "Hi OP, this is a cultural question, so it would greatly assist anyone considering answering if you could specify which culture you're asking about. For example, the name of a cultural group / country / geographic region, plus a rough time period. Otherwise, this question is simply too broad, as it encompasses almo...
Why are halos seen as "holy?" When were angels and such originally depicted with halos? And why do we automatically associate halos with divinity or goodness?	[ "In the late Roman/early Byzantine world, a halo represented power rather than sanctity. See, for example, the Missorium of Theodosius, c. 388, a large silver plate on which the Emperor Theodosius is shown with a halo; he is also significantly larger than the other figures in order to show his power. _URL_0_ This t...	[ "One of the main ways animals distinguish prey animals from predators is by the eyes. The eyes on prey animals tend to point to the sides, while a predator's eyes are directed forward. Another crucial factor in how animals behave around others is apparent size. I don't know if you were expecting the rabbit to be fr...
The dark web and how it works	[ "We consider dark web like beeing a part of the internet who required an encrypted connection where users are anonymized. You can navigate on dark nets (dark web is the name for all the dark networks) by using some softwares or gate servers (proxy). Please, feel free to ask me your questions about dark web if you w...	[ "Thank you for your submission! Unfortunately, your submission has been removed for the following reason(s): You can find the basic answer with a google / wiki search. Please start there and come back with a more specific question. If you disagree with this decision, please send a [message to the moderators.](_URL...
Why might somebody want to exercise Open Carry with their firearm?	[ "My personal reasoning was, when I lived in a not-so-nice area, to act as a deterrent against being a target of a crime." ]	[ "Cooked something really nice? Show it. Lost a few/lot of extra pounds? Show your transformation off. Have kids that make you feel proud to be their parents? Show why you are. Have cats that you love? Sure why not, just show it, people love animals. People like to show others things that they are proud of." ]
Why are the majority of taxis yellow?	[ "[Yellow is the easiest color to see from far away.](_URL_1_) Another fun fact: \"Taxi\" is short for \"[taxicab](_URL_2_),\" which is short for \"[taximeter](_URL_0_) [cabriolet](_URL_3_).\"" ]	[ "Nostalgia, too ~ a lot of older guys that now have lots of money are reliving their youth - they either had one when they were young & want another, or wanted one when they were young and can now afford to pay the big bucks to get one." ]
What is the science behind curling ribbon?	[ "[I assume you're referring to this.](_URL_1_) I don't have a full answer for you. While I was initially inclined to dismiss your question, I think its more interesting than I was originally giving it credit for. I think what you're looking at here is inelastic deformation of the polymer chains that make up the rib...	[ "yes--tied to changes in air pressure. [here's one version of the explanation](_URL_0_)." ]
Why are some buildings not rectangular? Their tops are L shaped	[ "There can be regulation needs. Or simply aesthetic desire for more visibility (imagine all the buildings in a row arw 40 stories - they have good views front and back but nothing to the side. Make half the building 20 stories high and now three sides of the top half have good views - can charge more! There may not...	[ "There are authors who claim the practice began during the colonial period as an early \"mens\"/ \"ladies\" designation for an illiterate populace (the sun and moon being popular symbols for the genders during those times). The book : The Little Red Schoolhouse: A Sketchbook of Early American Education has the fo...
How Did Nations Go About Declaring Wars?	[ "Your question is too vague (or too broad). Giving us a time-frame and area, like the 16th century of Western-Europe for example, would help." ]	[ "This is a broad question do you have a specific time period or place in mind?" ]
How a programming language is used to create a graphics engine for a video game?	[ "Objects in games are usually modeled by a set of data. You can imagine that as a big file that lists all the different triangles that are used to create the object. It's kind of like an architectural blueprint. The graphics engine reads those files, and then is able to display what the object would look like from ...	[ "Depends on the way the online stuff is done. It's either server side calculations, where you pressing the button sends a message to the server along the lines of \"hey he pressed shoot, tell me what happened please\" or client side which is \"hey he pressed a button so I figure the bullet went here and hit that gu...
what is the difference between blood types? And why is receiving the right blood type during a transfusion so important?	[ "Your blood cells have either A or B or both or no receptors (antigens) on their surface, neither meaning you are O type. If you are type A but given type B blood your immune system won't like it and it will make antibodies against the foreign receptors, and make your whole body inflame and bad things occur. Anythi...	[ "You know there has been a lot of version of html, like HTML5 or xHTML? There are also XML (which html is based upon) and SVG which uses almost the same syntax. Well the doctype is used by the browser to tell those apart, and interpret your file correctly." ]
When FaceTiming someone on speaker, how do they not hear themeself through the microphone from the other person?	[ "It's due to \"echo cancellation\". The software checks the microphone input for the same sounds going out of the speaker. If it is there, it tries to subtract it out. Good speakerphones all do this. Older (or crappier) speakerphones just cut off the mic when playing anything out of the speaker. This not only pre...	[ "Sound works like numbers. If I give you 3 apples and you give me 5 apples back, I can just subtract 3 from 5 to know that you added 2 apples to the pile. If I play a sound while you record a sound, I can just subtract what I played from what you recorded to find out what you said." ]
So Pre-Columbian Meso Americans always took their chocolate unsweetened? They never sweetened it...ever?	[ "They did not have sugar. Sugar comes from sugarcane and sugarcane is indigenous to South and Southeast Asia. Mesoamericans did have honey. The most notable beekeepers were the Maya, but [coastal Nayarit people](_URL_2_) were also beekeeping in the Postclassic/early Colonial period. As for agave, I don't believe it...	[ "Michael Coe and Rex Koontz's [Mexico: From the Olmec to the Aztec](_URL_0_) is a great read, and it's not pricey. Coe, more than most other scholars, puts out very readable books for a public audience. Mexico is his most comprensive, but he does have two other good books on the Maya: The Maya, and *Breaking ...
Do tornadoes historically prefer flat terrain and avoid hills, or is that merely coincidence?	[ "[Link](_URL_0_) Tornadoes can and do occur at high elevations. In fact, a tornado was recorded at 12,000 feet in California's Sequoia National Park in July 2004. The majority of tornadoes in the USA occur east of the Rockies, where atmospheric conditions are more favorable in the relatively flat Plains states. Pa...	[ "Ebola is endemic to these regions. As [Sunmann](_URL_0_) has linked, the virus has its own cycles in the animals that populate these countries. It's always around. It doesn't really \"stay away\" so much as humans either properly handle, or don't have the chance to come in contact with, infected animals." ]
Are there enough jobs for everyone to be employed?	[ "I cover Economics in teaching Jr. High kids but am no expert. Formerly the majority of people were 'employed' in farming prior to the Industrial Revolution and Mechanization . Now we allow machines to do most of the work for us wherever possible because it is Cheaper, often faster, and safer. Corporations primaril...	[ "AFAIK, there is no objectively accepted answer to this question. Economists still disagree strongly on the effect government spending has on the economy, and whether stimulus during WWII helped the economy. Anyone who tries to tell you the \"right\" answer to this without acknowledging the complex disagreements on...
What is the reason for news headlines that say "N people died in the [traumatic event], including M women and children." Why not just say "N people died in the [traumatic event]?"	[ "news agencies are businesses. they serve up stories in a way that customers want them. you have indicated in the past that you are more interested in reading stories if women and children have died - hence, they now get specifically mentioned when possible. (you = society, not just you specifically) Similar reason...	[ "The stress of syllables and cadence will have a lot to do with how names fit together in speech. There is some sense of familiarity like Sonny and Cher vs. Cher and Sonny, but the rhythm of Sonny and Cher feels better than Cher and Sonny. \"Jack and Jill went up a hill\" vs. \"Jill and Jack went up a hill\" are ve...
What has higher photosynthesis rates, Blue or red light?	[ "This question doesn't really make sense. Light doesn't \"have a respiration rate\"... Are you asking which wavelengths of light will cause a higher rate of photosynthesis? In that case, it actually depends on the pigment that's absorbing the light. It doesn't really matter that blue light carries more energy if...	[ "Look [here](_URL_0_) Notice how on the left side of the total absorption graph everything is absorbed? If you are a plant, you don't want to be absorbing things in that region... so violet is less efficient than things to the right of it." ]
The differences between the various honours British people get, and their history.	[ "They are different ranks in the Order of the British Empire. The highest ranking is a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE), followed by OBE (Officer) and then the MBE (Member). These were started after the 1st world war and were originally for civilians who helped in some way but are now given for lo...	[ "Is this a homework question? It says in our [rules](_URL_0_): Our users aren't here to do your homework for you, but they might be willing to help. Remember: AskHistorians helps those who help themselves. Don't just give us your essay/assignment topic and ask us for ideas. Do some research of your own, then come t...
What’s the difference between sleep and just laying down/resting?	[ "Frankly, nobody knows for sure. It's one of the great unresolved questions in psychology and neurology. Hypotheses for the function of sleeping range from consolidating new memories to cleaning up metabolic waste products accrued in the brain. All we know that deprivation of sleep eventually incapacitates you no m...	[ "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...
[Rocketry] Is the specific impulse of the space shuttle (LOX/LH2) rocket based on the molecular mass of H2 or H2O?	[ "If I remember my college propulsion class correctly, it's the average molecular weight of the exhaust gases. I remember hearing somewhere that sometimes in LOX/LH2 engines deliberately run rich, which puts more H2 in the exhaust, and lowers the average molecular weight of the exhaust, improving the specific impuls...	[ "On Earth wherever there is liquid water there is life, and wherever there is no liquid water there is no life. Its a direct correlation water is the one thing that all life on this planet depends on. Does that hold true on Mars? On Earth water = life. On Mars, water = life? Maybe. Obviously it does not mean ther...
Would a white population eventually turn black if they lived many generations in Africa?	[ "That's not true at all. They might turn a bit darker on an individual basis due to getting a bit of a tan, but that would be no different 500 generations down the line than it is now, there'd be no genetic change. Modern society gives us a lot of protection from a lot of what used to be selection pressures. We hav...	[ "I don't mean to be flippant, but when was the last time you invented something as profound as writing or even the bicycle? My point is the following: there is no teleology in history. There is no reason why people should have gone about feverishly inventing new stuff until they ended up with the iPad. Mostly pe...
why Google and Facebook use URL's that redirect to the desired site instead of direct links	[ "Servers can't see what you do in your browser, they can only see requests you actually make to them. So google forces you to make a request to its servers so that it knows what you clicked, and then shoots you along to your destination." ]	[ "Those weird characters are the ID of whatever it is you are looking for. Let's say we have all of your toys in bins in your room and each bin is labelled with a letter of the alphabet. I tell you to go get toy B and you know right where to go and get it for me. If you have a lot of toys, maybe we'll label some of ...
Is soil composed primarily of organic or inorganic substances?	[ "/u/AromaticSupernova is right that different soils have very different compositions. But averaged over all soils in the world, the answer is: inorganic by a large margin. Basically, the average chemical makeup of soil is pretty close to the average of the Earth's crust. _URL_1_ It is silicates, metal oxides (alumi...	[ "The burger has a lot of heavily subsidized ingredients. It depends heavily on things like corn and soy for the beef feed, which is federally subsidized, besides filler and ingredients for the bun and corn syrup for the ketchup. The salad has no subsidized ingredients." ]
atheletes and their lungs and hearts	[ "This may not answer your questions but as a student athlete that plays 3 sports, I find it fascinating that my resting heart rate averages 50-55. I'm glad the answers above explained why" ]	[ "They have 2 signature, one for signing for fans and another for professional setting, also they have enhanced security around them because they are public figures / have more money generally" ]
How do we know that dark energy isn't just the Cassimir effect?	[ "Arxiv paper from 2011. > Unknown short-distance effects cancel the quartic divergence of the zero-point energies. If this renormalization took effect in the early universe after the last phase transition and applied only to modes whose wavelengths λ were shorter than the Hubble length H−1(t∗) at that time, then t...	[ "Congrats, you've stumbled upon a major open question in astrophysics." ]
Why did Sadam refuse UN weapons inspectors if he didn't have WMD's anyway?	[ "1. France and Russia were whispering into Saddam's ear that the US wouldn't take any meaningful military action, despite the threats, and that France and Russia would each veto any UN Security Council resolutions that authorized military force against Iraq. 2. He wanted Iran -- his and Iraq's mortal enemy and aga...	[ "Hi, I've approved the post, but just a note to you and potential respondents: this subreddit has a 20-year rule against discussing current events, so any answers will have to cut off at 1997. If you're looking for answers that can include 1998-2012, do consider x-posting elsewhere, eg. a foreign affairs sub like /...
How we can eradicate a deadly virus such as Small pox, but not the everyday cold/flu	[ "Because small pox is one specific virus, whereas the words \"cold\" and \"flu\" actually refer to a wide variety of different diseases that all have very similar symptoms. Furthermore, they mutate very quickly. It's sort of like people saying that they're looking for the \"cure for cancer\" - that's similarly misl...	[ "Largely because news stories sensationalize science without fully understanding it. There is a relevant XKCD comic that has a guy in a lab coat standing over a petri dish with a gun that says, \"When you see a claim that a common drug or vitamin 'kills cancer cells in a petri dish', keep in mind: so does a handgu...
why do some vaccines confer life long immunity while others just a few years?	[ "Vaccines work by presenting an inactive version/element of a disease causing agent (antigen) to the patients immune system, allowing their immune system to develop antibodies against said antigen. This is analogous to police posting wanted posters of a criminal's face around a town the criminal is likely to hit. T...	[ "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...
Why are humans completely dependent on their guardians for so long?	[ "There are two primary reasons: 1 At Birth) If we waited until our brains were developed enough to walk and do a bunch of other stuff, our heads wouldn't be able to pass through the birth canal. Our heads are really big relative to our bodies. 2 During childhood)We also just have a lot more to learn because we ar...	[ "I think it is hardwired into us. [Tommy Edison](_URL_0_) explains it better." ]
how do airline pilots predict turbulence?	[ "They get reports from other planes in the area, primarily. They also have weather radar that can help them see storms and other disturbances. There are also areas that basically always have it (like coming over the Rockies into Denver)" ]	[ "As a builder, I eye ball things everyday for the last 11 years. I can get most things +\\- a bees dick amount. The only thing I can accurately estimate is roof pitches, but there are only certain pitches used where I work. It comes with experience I guess. I don't know if someone can consistently know distances an...
How come illegal music download sites are not taken down quickly, yet they are so easy to find through Google?	[ "A simplified technical answer is that these sites more often than not are not actually hosting content, they are simply pointing users, through a link, to where users can download content. The underlying technology that these sites use are completely lawful which creates a complicated legal situation where it isn'...	[ "\"America\" can't, but Texans in his district certainly can. Once every two years they get the opportunity Mr. Smith is a congressman, and he represents one particular place. Only people from that place get to vote for or against him. Unfortunately Mr. Smith represents a wealthy area near Austin, Texas where I sus...
What are the actual physical changes that happen inside a computer while it's running?	[ "Permanent storage in computers generally is done by one of two technologies. For magnetic hard drives, there's a spinning plate covered with magnetic material and a mechanism that allows to detect and change the \"direction\" of the magnetism in very very small segments of that platter. So writing a file would inv...	[ "From [visual tim]( _URL_0_) I don't see why hummingbirds wouldn't operate faster. The hummingbird's metabolism is what fuels their high speed, and their nutrient rich diet supports it. If their nervous system can perform at such high speeds, it stands to reason their brain could. I wasn't going to mention this wit...
Why is there no species of human which are further down the chain of evolution which share more common attributes with the apes?	[ "This is because you're kind of looking at evolution the wrong way. There wouldn't be an intermediary between humans and chimps because one didn't evolve from the other; they evolved seperately to fulfill seperate niches, from a common ancestor. edit: didn't realize this was already answered when I started answeri...	[ "Right now it the closest we have gotten is using artificial neural networks. _URL_0_ It isn't quite as complex as mapping all of the synapses in the human brain. Basically we can make a neural network, and by feeding it a set of inputs and the correct output, we can teach it what kind of output we want in the futu...
Tuesday Morning, I will be explaining to an entire high school how Net Neutrality is on life support, what points would ELI5 suggest making in my explanation?	[ "We both know the basics and I'm sure that will be covered by others so I'll point out something different. The internet is the brain of our country. Kids learn and get part of their culture from the internet. If ISP's control what content is viewed (indirectly by allowing fastlanes) they will control the flow of i...	[ "Standards for data presentation have changed. If you attemted to load a site as it were when 3g was in its prime, it would load wonderfully. The problem is that as wireless data capabilities have increased, so has the complexity and amount of data in sites to make good use of it, to the point where the outdated tr...
How does a button click captcha work?	[ "You mean reCaptcha? It tracks mouse movements from right before the button is pressed. Humans move the mouse unevenly and somewhat erratically, while bots move the mouse very smoothly." ]	[ "What you're describing is called the Turing test. Named after Alan Turing. You can easily write an entire essay on this test alone. Simply put, it is the test that decides that a machine is AI or not, by whether it can fool people into thinking it is real person. _URL_0_" ]
How exactly does a video game get corrupted when turning it off while saving?	[ "Imagine you were wring a shopping list, and halfway though writing it I rip it from you hands and give to to your partner to go shopping with. They wont have the full list of things you want, and there might even be a item at the end that doesn't make any sense (What is a \"cerea\"?). When you save a video game, t...	[ "To answer your question of which file extensions are used, that doesn't really matter. File extensions are just naming conventions, which helps an operating system know what programs can open that file. But ultimately it's just part of the file's name, and can be anything, or even nothing. On consoles, they're pre...
is true Britain was undergoing climate trouble in and around 750 BC?	[ "Could be, my go-to list would be here: _URL_0_, and it doesn't mention anything specific to Britain. There are some reports that the climate became wetter, causing bronze-age settlements to move to the uplands, but I don't know what the evidence for this is." ]	[ "You're going to need to narrow down your time frame here, keep in mind you're asking about a time frame of 1000 years over a very, very large area of land with vastly different cultures. You'll be more likely to receive an answer if you narrow the question down to a more specific time." ]
what is (video) rendering, why is it necessary, and why does it take such an enormous amount of time?	[ "hmmm... I guess a very simple way of saying this is that the computer is ‘drawing’ all the things in each frame of the video." ]	[ "Imma answer your question, but first let me tell you about this time I watered the lawn on a warm july afternoon, there were clouds in the sky and childrens laughter.... ok seriously, who knows, maybe they just like to hear themselves type, or create an emotional connection to the recipe, perhaps they are just kil...
Question about enzymes.	[ "While a covalent intermediate may be formed during the reaction, it is resolved and the enzyme ends up being unchanged ([see diagram on this wikipedia page](_URL_0_) and [another example with a cofactor](_URL_1_))." ]	[ "Worked as a cosmetics chemist for 2 years after school. It varies depending on the function of the lotion/cream. If its a general moisturizer very little difference, maybe a slightly different ratio for the thickener to decrease tackiness for something facial rather than something advertised for the body. However ...
Why is the Moon now considered a planet based on Alan Stern's findings?	[ "The new definition is simply that the body 1) never underwent fusion on its own and 2) has sufficient gravity to maintain a spheroid shape. Under the new definition, moons like Luna and Titan, dwarf planets like Pluto and Eris, as well as rogue planets and exoplanets, will all be called Planets. Basically, he hate...	[ "It will freeze-dry at night and boil in vacuum during the day. With a bit of practice, salt and spices you could probably do a decent beef jerky. Be warned that the surface of the moon is rich in calcium oxide and other basic compounds, which are bad for you and will make the steak taste bitter. Use only clean su...
I see that a lot of coffees use Arabica beans, but tout different flavors/roasts. How can the same beans be used to produce different darkness and roasts?	[ "The roast level just depends on how long and how hot it's roasted. It's like the difference between a rare steak and a well done one. The same bean variety can also take on different flavors depending on its source. It picks up different taste signatures from the soil. How the bean is processed and dried makes a d...	[ "Linux refers to [the Linux kernel](_URL_1_), and it's a relatively small part of what you might usually think of as an OS. It does not include your desktop environment, window manager, configuration tools, or many other things that people often include in the term \"OS\". So any OS that uses the Linux kernel can b...
Why do the A.P. and Reuters always get news stories first?	[ "Because they are massive news-gathering organizations with correspondents and exclusive sources/informants located all over the world. AP and Reuters aren't like conventional television news stations or newspaper companies. Instead, their main objective is to gather and collect all the news they can and then they...	[ "You know how apps require permission for your location? It's like that. GPS networks process information from other users currently stuck in traffic. In some cases, like Google Maps and Waze apps, the permission for your location is exactly the reason they are so accurate for traffic." ]
How do Captcha's know that I'm not a robot when all I had to do was click on a box?	[ "The boxes usually capture mouse movement, to see if it's \"natural\" movement, versus just sending the commands directly. It also looks at your public cookies to see if they're consistent with a real internet user, versus a single-purpose bot." ]	[ "Have you ever those reCaptcha tests that ask you to select the squares with street signs in them? They are used to help teach self driving cars how to identify what is and isn't a street sign. Edit: CPG Grey does a video about it - _URL_0_" ]
How many strands of RSV are there and does RSV mutate like the flu?	[ "There are a large number of strains of RSV (i'm not sure of the exact number), but they are grouped into 2 subtypes, A and B, by antigen. RSV, like any nucleic acid, has the potential to mutate, but is considered more antigenically stable than influenza (which has a higher potential for antigenic drift)." ]	[ "Many missions do use multiple slingshot encounters (aka \"Gravity Assist Maneuvers\"). If I recall correctly, the Rosetta mission performed two Earth GAMs and a Mars GAM. Cassini performed two GAMs past Venus, one past Earth, and another at Jupiter. However, this takes time. In order to pull off the double-earth s...
Scientifically speaking, why would a "Jurassic Park" be impossible to create?	[ "DNA cannot survive that long. It will last a few thousand years before it degrades too much to be useful for anything. It's not a matter of filling the holes like in the movies, there's nothing left to fill. We can potentially start designing critters like dinosaurs using birds, but we'd be guessing at best." ]	[ "Cost, safety which is a component of cost, and the reception of the consumer to having to order and pay in some kind of interface when a large group of people can't even figure out credit card terminals at the grocery store. Additionally, wherever the food comes out you'd have to make sure it got I the right perso...
If alcohol is so easy to produce, why doesn't everyone just start making their own liquor companies?	[ "Why doesn't everyone make their own soda? Or their own bread? Or wash their own cars?" ]	[ "I've worked in the industry so I've dealt with this before so here: If you were making a wood shelf you could cut the trees and make the boards, go to a metal foundry and make your screws. Come up with the design and order of things and put it all together. Or you can go buy the prepackaged, assemble yourself shel...
What if there was more Anti-Matter than Matter in the beginning of the Universe?	[ "Then what's known as matter would be called antimatter and what's known as antimatter would just be matter. Like /u/BrentOGara pointed out, electrons would be positive (they'd be positrons) and protons would be negative, but that's debatable because our definition of positive and negative charge is arbitrary too. ...	[ "If you can't find an answer here you can always try e-mailing whatif@xkcd.com and hope it gets featured there, because it sounds like a question that would fit. Sorry I can't help any further =/" ]
How does Netflix make enough $ to keep producing all these shows when the monthly fee has barely risen in years?	[ "When you have about [50 million subscribers](_URL_0_) worldwide, those fees add up." ]	[ "Many ways. The traditional method is lending money to people or companies (to buy a house, build a factory, or whatever). And earning money on interests. These days thats only part of their business, as they also trade stocks and other financial products." ]
Is it truly possible to be born without gender?	[ "Others have answered for ambiguous, but here's the closest I could find for no gender (or sex, if you will) _URL_7_ But apparently you can't get any more genderless than immature female with no gonads...that's the genetically default body plan that develops when you leave out all the hormones." ]	[ "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." ]
Can water freeze if it can't expand?	[ "Ice has actually been discovered in 15 different forms, Ice I - XV. Each one of these forms at different pressures and temperatures. Ice I is likely every piece of ice you have seen and is formed at low pressure and near freezing temperatures. Ice II is formed at about 45,000 psi. So if you filled a hollow cannon...	[ "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 does "turning it off and back on again" fix such an array of different problems?	[ "Programs work by following really long lists of instructions. When something goes wrong it's often because programs get stuck in little loops, or several programs conflict, or something failed to load, etc. By turning it off and back on again, you start over. It's a bit like if you were counting sheep and suddenly...	[ "_URL_0_ Basically, given an infinite universe and infinite time (and assuming that matter/energy/etc. doesn't fundamentally break down and irreparably change over time), then you would expect that any given finite situation would reoccur within a long enough time frame. The amount of time involved for anything of ...
Stars collapse once they start producing iron at their core. How much iron would I need to throw into the sun to kill it?	[ "Short answer: You'd need 1.4x the mass of the sun in iron. Long answer: The reason that core collapses is because it exceeds the [Chandrasekhar mass limit](_URL_0_). When the core is no longer fusing to support itself, it balances the pressure of gravity with a thing called 'electron degeneracy pressure.' ...	[ "Crashing huge chucks of ice into Mars was also part of the terraforming recipe in Kim Stanley Robinsons Mars trilogy. It has occured to me that adjusting the orbit of a comet to crash it into a planet could be easier than doing the same thing with an asteroid. If a number of large flat mirrors could be put into so...
Are my clothes disappearing?	[ "Yes, you are. Cotton, linen, and wool gradually break down over time. The fibres end up caught in your lint trap. That is why you have to throw out old shirts after a while - you might notice that the fabric gets thin, they get holes in them, they just start looking tatty" ]	[ "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...
Why Syria is shelling civilians in Homs	[ "because they see the free syrian army as a credible threat to their regime; it's difficult to draw distinctions between civilians and non-uniformed combatants - as a matter of fact, the free syrian army falls under \"unlawful combatants\" according to the law of armed conflict and can be tried as war criminals if ...	[ "Greetings everyone. In the few minutes this sub has been up, it's attracting sub-standard responses. Just a reminder of a few of the rules: * no responses covering events/conditions post-1994, per this sub's \"20-year rule\" prohibiting discussion of current events * no anecdotes * no speculation OP: your question...
Is there anything that is solely dependent on the existence of mosquitoes? Why can't we just force mosquitoes into extinction?	[ "Plasmodium and West Nile virus would surely suffer." ]	[ "From the exact same XKCD article that you linked: > (Climates can be hard to predict—for example, in our world, Somalia and French Guiana both sit on the equator, at the eastern coast of a continent, and seem like they should both receive a tropical sea breeze. But coastal French Guiana is dense rain forest while...
How does music get on Itunes?	[ "When a band makes a song they normally need a group of people to tell other people about the song and handle the money the song makes. These people are the record labels. The record labels will have a deal with the people at Apple to put the songs they represent on iTunes. The record labels get the original high ...	[ "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." ]
How do painkillers work?	[ "There are a few mechanisms of action for painkillers, depending on the class of painkiller. Opiates block opioid receptors in the pain pathways in the nervous system at the synapses. This stops the signals going from the injury to the brain to be processed. Local anaesthetics, like lidocaine, work similarly but us...	[ "Liquids go bad much (_much_) faster than pills because the liquid (usually water) provides an active breeding ground for germs. Most of the long-shelf-life liquid medicines out there have a natural preservative in them: alcohol (next time you're in the drug store aisle, look at the ingredients on that bottle of ny...
why I should vote in a presidential election (US) if I don't live in a swing state.	[ "Let's say you decide to not vote because you don't think it matters. In fact, you tell all your friends about it, and they agree. So now there's 10 people not voting. Now imagine how many other people like you don't feel like voting for one reason or another. Could there be 100? 1,000? A million? If enough people ...	[ "Several things. On an installation level, each program you install adds 'weight' to the operating system by giving it more tasks. These aren't always removed cleanly when you uninstall, which makes it important to reimage your computer about every year. Additionally, if you use a standard hard disk drive, the driv...
Why hasn't Comcast been sued under anti-trust laws?	[ "They have to prove that Comcast is preventing competition. That's one of the main criteria required for anti-trust." ]	[ "Same technology, but Verizon likes making lots of money. They could offer much better plans, but as they are usually already the best option for their customers, so they don't need to. It does help that Google Fiber is in select densly populated areas, allowing for less infrastructure. $70/mo for 1Gbps up and do...
Why do hot things make the air around them "wavey"?	[ "You know when you stick a branch in a stream or lake the stick look bent? This is caused by the refraction. The light crosses materials with different densities (water and air) and this causes the light to refract. The \"wavy\" air you see is the same thing. Heat lowers the density of the air but it's not uniform...	[ "Your microwave oven is pushing several hundred watts into a pretty small enclosed space. It's not transmitting heat -- it's exciting water molecules in your frozen burrito. Your Wi-Fi access point is pushing less than a watt and scattering it in all directions, which is why it will do nothing to your burrito." ]
I've heard it mentioned a few times that NATO chose the 5.56 bullet because it more likely maim than kill outright, and thus wear down the enemy through attrition as they try to help wounded soldiers. Is this true? If so, won't this be against conventions of war?	[ "Been asked before here - your question specially is the second question comment down. It’s all a good read. _URL_0_" ]	[ "Rectangular parachutes are used by highly skilled and trained military personnel (think, special forces High Altitude Low Open jumps) These types of parachutes require more skill to operate effectively and accurately and can easily become extremely dangerous when controlled by someone with little to no training....
What is exactly happening during muscle building? Google left me with "jock" definitions.	[ "I direct you to: _URL_0_ Strength Training: myofibrillated hypertrophy Bodybuilding: sarcoplasmic hypertrophy" ]	[ "There is nothing special about your camera or camera phone that would let it correct such distortion. Even if it had a distortion correction system, it would be calibrated for the distortion produced by its lens -- it wouldn't detect distortion in the image automatically. What I think is going on here is that the...
Why did Russia support North Korea in the Korean war? Did winning the war actually stop communism.	[ "The USSR wanted buffer states around it, to protect from possible Invasion. (As seen by the warsaw pact in the west) If all of the korean peninsula (which has quite a large border with Russia) was governed by a capitalist, US friendly country, the USSR would have issue with that. Also it was PRC that contributed...	[ "Theoretically, the two approaches are different styles of surface-and-gap warfare. Which basically says, attack the enemy where there is a gap (weakness) in his forces rather than a surface (strength). The Germans exploited gaps through recon-pull, the Soviets used command-push. The Germans would send out recon un...
How is it that Sweden has a lower GDP per capita than Mississippi, but a much higher standard of living?	[ "Sweden doesn't have a lower GDP per capita. Mississippi's GDP per capita in 2015 was $35,717. Sweden's was around $50,000. GDP per capita also doesn't take into account wealth distribution. If a few people make billions of dollars in a year while most everyone else just makes a few thousand, you can have a high G...	[ "These days the most accurate answer comes from GIS data. This basically describes the shape of the country as a polygon, i.e., a shape made up of a sequence of straight lines connected together. There's a (relatively) simple [mathematical formula](_URL_0_) to determine the area of a polygon. There are some minor c...
How come Adobe does not support flash for mobile phones, tablets, and ipads?	[ "It was a choice by Apple, not Adobe, to not include flash on their mobile devices. They did because Adobe couldn't produce a version of flash that met Apple's requirements in terms of battery life, memory usage, & stability. They also felt flash was a dying medium due to the introduction of html5 video around that...	[ "Because companies like TurboTax have lobbied against filling directly or the IRS filling for you for years and years. They say it's too complicated. The IRS has all the information in hand to just send you a bill for what you owe. Makes me so upset." ]
How can we build massive skyscrapers that support so much weight?	[ "[Source](_URL_0_) A lot of concrete and steel, strategically placed and buried. Special concrete mixes and laying techniques that result in a concrete foundation that cures evenly (no cracking or variations in strength) and is denser, allowing it to hold more weight before buckling. Concrete was used all the way u...	[ "Civil engineer here. It depends on many factors which include what kind of vehicles will be traveling over it, what kind of forces it will have to sustain, what the geography is, what the climate is, what is it spanning across, what materials are going to be used, the length of the span, etc." ]
So my SO got a brand new laptop for Xmas. What kind of stuff should we download/avoid/uninstall to make it last as long as possible?	[ "[VLC Media Player](_URL_5_) is vastly superior to anything else. Plays basically every kind of file imaginable, runs fast, and doesn't shove an online store down your throat. Also as far as extensions for Chrome go (besides Ad Block obviously), I recommend [YouTube Options](_URL_4_), [Hover Zoom](_URL_4_) and of c...	[ "Chicken and pork are likely to carry diseases, specifically salmonella and trichinosis. Steak and fish are less likely to have disease, so rare steak and sushi are safe as long as they're sourced properly." ]
How do magnet factories make magnets without everything sticking together?	[ "Just watched a \"how its made\" video on youtube. The magnets are cast in bulk, but the metal isnt magnetized yet. Then they have a process to slightly magnetize them. They become magnetic, but super weak. They then run them individually through a machine that strengthens the magnetic field. The worker places them...	[ "How Stuff Works covered this in one of their podcasts, it was pretty interesting. Here's the link if you're still interested. _URL_0_" ]
Our planet is dominated by salt water, and we humans have not evolved to drink it. Why ?	[ "Evolution is not a guided process. Evolution doesn't think 'god there is a lot of salt water, it would be great to evolve the ability to drink that'. Random mutations just happen and if those happen to pay off (or at least not actively disadvantage the individual) they get passed on. Is it possible that during our...	[ "A couple important things to remember: First, this is the hottest year since we've started recording them, and recent years have been similarly high. But another reason is because of how we design buildings. We design them to use air conditioning and the like. But back before AC, people had buildings designed to b...
What is the process of laughing?	[ "How much of laughter is a physiological phenomenon and how much is socially constructed behavior? Here's a [NYTimes](_URL_1_) article that might get us started. From what I gather, its an evolutionary feature that allows us to feel close to each other as a group." ]	[ "From what I understand the nervous system doesn't really do anything differently per se. I think it's more a matter of which part/parts of the brain are sending the signal. I believe the Medulla is what normally controls things like breathing, but once you start doing it consciously, it may be that more frontal lo...
Most historical shows and movies show the king riding into battle, at what point in time did kings stop riding in to battle at or near the front lines? Or did they never ride in to battle and this is a myth?	[ "Hi, yes royalty definitely did/do that sort of thing. Oddly, a similar question came up just the other day; check out the response from /u/thejucheisloose * [Who was the last king to take part in combat while they reigned?](_URL_0_)" ]	[ "Not just support - but it's allowed. MMA fighters or boxers don't get arrested for their actions, unless the injuries are severe beyond the norm. It's an implicit agreement within hockey that it's part of the game, and you are free to _not partake in any fights as well_. In serious cases of injuries, criminal inve...
How come rivers aren’t salty, but when they get into the ocean it is salty? Where did the salt originally come from if the rivers never had it?	[ "* The rivers come from freshwater from rain. * As they flow the collect very small amounts of salt from the earth. * They deposit that tiny amount of salt into the ocean.....over and over and over. * When the sun evaporates the water out of the ocean, the salt stays behind. * So the rivers are always replenished ...	[ "You don't see all the light the enters your eye, you only see the light that hits your retina. Light comes from all directions, but once it hits the lens of your eye, it bends. Only the light that is bent so that it ends up moving toward your retina is actually detected. For any given place on your lens, only ligh...
Do water towers still serve a function in cities?	[ "There are two ways to keep consistent water pressure for a town/city. Method 1: start with a reservoir (or tank) that is higher than any building within the city. If it’s a water tower you may need a pump to pump water from a reservoir up into the water tower to keep it full. This is the method towns and cities u...	[ "In short, marketing. Long answer, just repeat that phrase like you're [Steve Ballmer at the MIX '08 conference] (_URL_0_). Dasani (Coca-Cola), Aquafina (Pepsi), and co marketed the hell out of Bottled Water claiming all these health benefits and the \"purity\" of it and how much \"better\" it was for you compared ...

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