Subset (10)

eli5 · 25k rows

Split (1)

train · 25k rows

query stringlengths 20 300	positive listlengths 1 1	negative listlengths 1 1
People to mention that white bread is "bleached" rather than whole grain wheat. What is actually happening here and why do we have white bread?	[ "I imagine my comment will get removed for some miscellaneous reason. Bread is made from flour, which is made from wheat seeds that have been ground up into a powder. Inside a wheat seed, there's a core called the \"endosperm.\" This endosperm is white, and the outer layer is brown. In whole wheat flour, the entire...	[ "I have a chackboard with 100 words written on it. You ask me to delete every word that starts with A which there are 6 words. They're written randomly on the chalk board. I need to search for the words, and then neatly delete the words without deleting anything nearby. But you instead asked me to delete everythin...
How long could you actually swim in a swimming pool full of liquor before your body succumbs to alcohol poisoning as the liquor absorbs into your body?	[ "From [Quora](_URL_0_): > You would find it much harder than usual to swim and may drown in an unusually horrible way, for two reasons: > 1) Distilled liquors have quite a bit lower density (and thus less buoyancy) than a swimming pool because alcohol is lighter than water. You cannot float in 80 proof alcohol --...	[ "in a pond, the surface freezes first as it's closest to the cold air. the dirt in the ground is the last to freeze. liquid water that's in the middle is insulated from the cold air by the frozen ice. if the pond is sufficiently deep like 4-5ft, the bottom water never freezes because it's so insulated by the fro...
Once you have an idea, how do you get it into production?	[ "1. Have money to invest in the idea 2. Find other people to invest in the idea 3. Legal costs to know if you're actually the first to have the idea 4. Legal costs to patent idea 5. Make more business contacts, potential customers 6. Finding a manufacturer 7. 100/0 split on costs & profit for you & manufacturer **o...	[ "Most of the time the people who go to these places are either already successful or some kind of athlete. The majority of the people you are talking about already have a lot of money to finance these trips. The alternative is usually some kind of athlete like the ones you see on YouTube doing extreme sports (base ...
How do talent shows like American Idol, The Voice, and America's Got Talent obtain the rights to all the songs their auditionees and contestants play and/or sing?	[ "They have a pre-authorized list that people select from, and it has a pretty wide selection, meaning that there are songs for everyone. Other people like \"Pants on the Ground\" make their own songs, which they would obviously have rights to." ]	[ "As a surfer, you have to pick the wave that best suits the tricks you want to perform. That's part of the skill, being able to read the wave. Just like how fishing competitions rely on the fishermen picking the best fish to keep, not just catching fish." ]
We've dealt with and survived Ebola outbreaks before, what makes this one different?	[ "The main difference is that this time, patients from large, dense population centers got infected, where the virus can spread more easily, and there are a larger number of people to spread it to. Couple this with the relative ease of world travel from such cities as compared to the rural villages that have been th...	[ "From some quick digging it appears that people normally just \"dug in\" when large snowfalls occurred early on. Horse-drawn plows were at the top of the technology tree for effectively plowing snow until modern plows came around with automobiles. Some carriages and carts were even made into sleighs. That is, if th...
When Donating Blood/Bone Marrow/Plasma, why do they ask if you have ever had sex with a man, if you're male? (Maybe NSFW)	[ "There is good [evidence](_URL_2_) that homosexual men have a higher prevalence of HIV infection than comparable heterosexual populations. [A study involving american populations as well.](_URL_0_) The tests for HIV are good, but not perfect. [See here](_URL_1_) that 3 in 1000 is a false negative. This is an unacce...	[ "Membership in a political party allows you to do things like vote in primaries. Election boards need this information to determine who can vote in what primaries. I would imagine it's also done at the request of political parties to ensure membership." ]
"The magnetic component [of the heart] is approximately 5000 times stronger than the brain's magnetic field and can be detected several feet away from the body with sensitive magnetometers." Can someone please either debunk this or explain how it is possible and what are the implications?	[ "I'm not aware of a specific study, but it's quite possible; the magnetic field is related to firing nerve cells, and the heart has to have a very strong and complex enervation pattern because it has to operate continuously, precisely, and with great strength. Also, whereas the neurons in the brain fire at very noi...	[ "High coercivity vs. low coercivity. You're never going to need to re-write the information on the magnetic stripe of your credit card, so its stripe has high coercivity. That means it took a lot of energy to produce, but will take a lot of energy to erase. Hotel keys need to be re-written almost daily, so their st...
In LOTR, what exactly made the One Ring "powerful"?	[ "The One Ring can be used to control those who wear the other Rings of Power. So, if the Elven lords etc. etc. wear the other Rings and Sauron wears the One Ring, he can control them (or at least their power). That it makes you invisible to some beings is more of a side-effect, apparently, and you probably need som...	[ "It's all about having an atmosphere, since that's what helicopters need to fly. [This article explains it quite nicely ](_URL_0_) Here's a relevant quote: *\"Elysium was that—unlike an airplane cabin—its atmosphere wasn’t canned up in some hollow tube. A landing spacecraft could enter its air like it would on Eart...
When I move my phone left to right in a dark room while looking at this image, the text appears to jiggle back and forth like jello, or almost like a parallax. Why?	[ "This is related to the [Pulfrich effect](_URL_0_) and can be enhanced by doing in a dark room or with a strobe light (can set up on your computer to have your screen flicker and turn off the light in your room). If you do the strobe light, the text might appear outside of the phone, floating in space. The effect...	[ "When it comes to keeping limbs steady, the issue is due to the nervous system. You see, to keep your hand steady, you need to use muscular force to keep the hand up. The muscle flexes because the brain sends impulses down the nerves which excite the muscles and the muscles contract. This is a discrete phenomenon, ...
Why are pet hedgehogs so popular in the UK but almost unheard of in the USA?	[ "Hedgehogs are not native to the Americas, so there is less awareness of them than in the UK and Europe. Also, being an non-native and potentially invasive species, many states and provinces have laws restricting them." ]	[ "\"Just about everyone here\" Where is \"here\" for you? It sounds like your question's premise is based on a small sample set based on personal observation. Before your question is addressed, you should be making sure the premise is valid..." ]
Was Ser or Sir more commonly used in Medieval Europe?	[ "\"Ser\" is an invention by Game of Thrones author George R. R. Martin. The English word \"Sir\" is the only correct honorific for a Knight, and is translatable in Italian as \"Cavalier/e\" and in French as \"Chevalier,\" however in France all titleholders are addressed with a normal \"Monsieur\" and \"Madame.\"...	[ "If it's okay, I'd like to ask an add-on question: could anyone, theoretically, do the exam, or was it restricted to the middle classes? I mean, clearly a peasant would probably fail because of their poor education, but were they allowed to try?" ]
Why do we get a "lump" in the throat when we get really emotional?	[ "When under stress, our nervous system goes into fight or flight mode. To increase oxygen intake, body expands the glottis, which regulates the opening for air intake to lungs. The resulting muscle tension is felt as lump in the throat. _URL_0_" ]	[ "You know how when you exercise too much you are sore the next day and can't run/jump/whatever as much as normal? It's like that except instead of your arms or legs being sore it's your vocal chords. When your vocal chords can't work as well your speech is handicapped similar to running when your legs are sore." ]
How does electricity do work?	[ "AC power is what naturally comes out of spinning an electric generator or motor with fixed windings. Some motors/generators uses brushes to make the power DC, but the natural connection between a rotating mechanical thing is a rotating magnetic field, which results in varying voltages in several wires out of phase...	[ "Lightning occurs when you build up large charges. In storm clouds that happens due to the ice particles in a tall thunderhead transferring charges as they collide and building up strongly charged areas within the cloud. We know charge separation occurs, we're not entirely sure what the process is. The actual light...
Numbers Divisible by 3.	[ "Let's get a generic 3-digit number, where the digits are abc. If we were to write out this number in long form, it would be: 100a + 10b + c Which we can rewrite as: 99a + 1a + 9b + 1b + c We can regroup: (99a+9b) + a + b + c The terms in parentheses will always be divisible by 3, because 99 and 9 are bo...	[ "Well, this is not the reason, but I think if this were true, many high-school people would be in 3rd grade." ]
The difference between DVD-R and DVD+R, CD-R and CD+R?	[ "DVD-R and DVD+R are two DVD formats. This means that the way the data is stored on the discs themselves is slightly different. From a user's perspective they both function the same and have almost the same capacity (-R has 7MB more). DVD-R came first and is the \"old\" format. DVD+R is newer and has some advantage...	[ "The world currently adheres to the Gregorian colander, which sets the year 1 AD at the believed birth year of Jesus Christ. (The calender does not have a 0 year, it goes from 1 BC to 1 AD) Anything before that is marked as BC or Before Christ. (Or BCE for Before the Common Era) Anything after is marked AD or Ano ...
Why do college have individual sexual assault policies?	[ "Violence Against Women Reauthorization Act (“VAWA”), which President Obama signed into law on March 7, 2014 imposes new obligations on colleges and universities under its Campus Sexual Violence Act (“SaVE Act”) provision, Section 304. Those obligations — which to some extent refine and clarify, and to some extent ...	[ "Since it goes state to state as far as rules my first inclination would be power. If you live in a state with a powerful majority party, it's in the interest of that states party to go for winner take all so that the party ,with it's deep reach in all districts, can try to coerce said districts to support the cand...
Would a biological radio be possible?	[ "Well, it surely wouldn't be impossible. There are animals featuring [electric organs](_URL_1_). Also, it seems that some of them can already communicate modulating weak electric fields ([see here](_URL_0_) for example), which is probably the closes thing we have to radiocommunicating animals. To do that long-dista...	[ "Quoting [Wikipedia](_URL_0_) (a bit naughty, but it's a nice way to express what I think): > The proposed theory is inconsistent with quantum mechanics and critics have ruled it out on those grounds. Which is essentially saying what you pointed out, yes. If what they're doing is as easy as it sounds - just runnin...
Why do stereotypes exist?	[ "It comes from how we learn and remember things. It is like a shortcut for our brain to group things based on a real or perceived pattern. For example, a child gets bit by a dog. The child then thinks all dogs will bite them. The child now has a stereotype that all dogs bite. When we were not the dominate species,...	[ "The best answer here is going to include the phrase \"confirmation bias\" I guarantee it." ]
Why is the divorce rate so high now, when it was much lower 50 years ago?	[ "\"No fault\" divorces first appeared in the US 50 years ago. Prior to that, it was more difficult to get a divorce. Plus there's now more women in the workplace (who can support themselves instead of relying on a husband) and we have birth control so that couples can be childless if they want (making divorce more ...	[ "Politics. It's an easy issue to use to paint your opponent as \"evil\" regardless of which side of the debate they are on." ]
American Undergraduate History Majors Plummet 1/3 in Six Years: What Can we Do?	[ "> What can history as an academic discipline do to regain students' interest? Offer a path to actual, well-paying jobs. College in 2018 is too expensive to get a degree just because you like the subject, or just for the sake of having a degree." ]	[ "This question is getting a lot of traffic after being [tweeted by @reddit](_URL_5_), so I thought I'd welcome those of you that haven't visited /r/AskHistorians before to the subreddit. Please do bear in mind that in order to keep the quality of answers here high we have [strict rules on comments](/r/AskHistorians...
The Hanging Man Paradox	[ "The problem with his reasoning is that having eliminated Friday he applies the same logic to the other arguments. The \"cannot be on Friday\" scenario can only occur in the context of his current argument and not a new one. He cannot carry it over to a new argument to eliminate days in the new argument, it only wo...	[ "If the two way mirror was \"perfect\" you would not be able to see anything inside of the box because there wouldn't be a light source." ]
Why didn't the cities in Italy betray Rome during the Second Punic wars?	[ "I don't understand. A bunch of cities defected after Cannae. Livy gave a list: * Apuliani * Atellani * Bruttii * Calatini * Campanians * Crotoniates * all the Greeks on the coast * Hirpini * Locri * Lucanii * Metapontines * Tarentines * Uzentini Are you asking why the Latins didn't defect?" ]	[ "I think one of the constants that you can see throughout the history of the Church is the cry that it must be urgently reformed, that the majority of priests are terrible, ignorant, and immoral, that all the monks are too busy getting drunk and banging farmers' daughters to properly praise God, and so on. And you ...
Animals, e.g. (wild) cats, have loads of anonymous sex and know nothing about protection or medicine. Why aren't they decimated by cat aids?	[ "FIV is much less deadly than HIV. Cats have been dealing with FIV for a long time, somewhere in the 10's of millions of years. Overtime they have built up some resistance; you see the same thing happening in human populations that are under intense selection from HIV. CCR5 delta 32 is a famous mutation that provi...	[ "HIV infects CD4 T cells, a subset of immune cells in our body. The virus makes a reservoir in those cells by integrating its DNA in the host cell genome. So, infected adults who seek treatment are harboring multiple copies (tens of thousands) of the integrated genome and are pumping out viruses like no tomorrow. W...
Why do boobs vary so much in size, many being 4x larger than others, but no other body part , like hands and feet, can be 4x larger than others, generally speaking.	[ "Hands and feet size is determined by bone growth. Unless there is a medical issue like giantism, bones are only going to get so big. Boobs don't have bones in them, they're full of fat and mammary glands. Fat CAN keep growing. Think about how a person's stomach or arms can be 4x larger than another person's. This ...	[ "In short, Neuroplasticity. Pain and pleasure are both literally \"just in your mind\". By that, I mean that what our minds interpret as pain or pleasure is dictated by the firing of certain neurons in our brains. The pain and pleasure areas lie fairly closely together in the brain. Neurons from one \"area\" can gr...
How does Imgur host all of Reddit's content for free? I don't see any advertisements on there, and as far as I have noticed there hasn't been a storage cap.	[ "Imgur does have ads, and promotional posts that appear on the Front Page gallery regardless of upvotes or downvotes. [Here's some examples ads on imgur's page, and a promotional ad paid for by Ebay that appeared on the front page](_URL_0_) (Ebay makes great ads, if you noticed I bookmarked it). [Also, imgur has a...	[ "Because storage is dirt cheap... like... it is almost silly how cheap storage is. A gigabyte of storage costs fractions of a penny when stored in the cloud. Oracle (where I work) charges $33 a month for a terabyte of storage." ]
when people throw axes and knives, how do they make the side with the blade hit the target, when it is spinning?	[ "Practice. You get good enough that you can judge the distance to the target and adjust the rotation you put into the projectile so that it lands with the blade side facing forward." ]	[ "The surface of the stainless steel fridge is not smooth like a mirror. Rather, the steel has a microscopic pattern scratched into it across the surface. Each scratch acts like a tiny angled mirror, and reflects light in a certain direction. A perfect mirror would reflect the laser spot perfectly, but since the scr...
Why won't a movie like Star Wars: The Force Awakens ever be nominated for Best Picture?	[ "Children's movies are never nominated and although it can be argued that it was not a children's movie in the eyes of the Academy it is. They snubbed Harry Potter for the longest and only nominated them for best makeup(Voldemort) in the final film and lost to Meryl Streep in The Iron Lady. They also retuinely thin...	[ "3 Main reasons According to Wikipedia: > The unmanned Dawn spacecraft, launched by NASA in 2007, is en route to Ceres. The probe has been orbiting asteroid 4 Vesta since July 15, 2011. After completing one year of explorations there it will continue on to Ceres, arriving in 2015, five months prior to the arrival ...
Could a substance get so hot that it behaves relativistically?	[ "Yes. A nonrelativsitic ideal gas and an ultrarelativistic ideal gas have different specific heat capacities, for example." ]	[ "It's because all observers measure c to be a constant value. They find that they all disagree with how they make measures of distance and time. So it turns out that what is faster than light for one observer is actually backwards in time for another observer with a relative motion away from the first. This i...
Why are we born with black/brown/blonde/red hair and not other colours such as pink/blue/purple?	[ "Because hair, like skin colour is determined by melenin and the most common type in humans that makes up hair colour is Eumelanin which is Brown/Black _URL_0_" ]	[ "Setting aside the terminology of \"race\", it's entirely down to selective pressures of the different environments. In equatorial regions where the sun is plentiful, having a lot of melanin is useful in protecting against cancer. The further north/south you go from there, the less sun there is, so having less mela...
Why do we have earlobes?	[ "Wikipedia doesn't know what they're for, usually random traits like this are caused by either: 1) The genes that cause it to grow also have other functions (maybe brain development?) that are selected for 2) Sexual selection - earlobes (for some reason) make a person look better to the opposite sex so you have mor...	[ "The ear without the headphone is listening to the live mix, what the audience hears. And the ear with the headphone is listening to a track that hasn't yet been mixed in -- usually for the purpose of matching the tempo to the live mix so when it's faded in the live mix the transition is smooth and natural." ]
Thermodynamics in the Brewery?	[ "The energy you use to heat the water will be the same if you do or don't recirculate it. (It might be a little less with the recirculating since the act of mixing adds some heat to the water.) But if you have a very large tank, it does take some time to reach a uniform temperature, so you might have local hot spot...	[ "> In space there isn't any matter to transfer the heat into, so where does it go? Thermal radiation. Conduction isn't the only method of heat transfer, it can leave through things like infrared radiation as well." ]
Why extraordinary rendition is not explicitly stated to be illegal under international law?	[ "\"International law\" likely isn't what you think. It is voluntary on the part of member countries and many countries want to keep their options open for such things. For example a country might want to snatch up one of their own citizens away from a country which is planning to torture them, or to detain wanted c...	[ "Bell's Theorem put a limit on quantum mechanics. The simplest way of phrasing it is that a \"local hidden variables\" theory cannot explain experimental data. Local means that any sort of signaling happens at the speed of light or slower. Hidden variables means \"maybe there's some other thing that is more fundame...
What did medieval rural peasants do all winter in northern Europe?	[ "In some areas like the Canadian arctic and Siberia, it's actually easier to get around in the winter because the ground is frozen (instead of mud) & one can [drive on water](_URL_7_). Similarly, it can be a convenient time for logging since it's easier to tow logs over snow than through bush. Here are some previ...	[ "Do you have a particular geographical region or time period in mind? You're more likely to get a good answer if you are more specific than \"people in the past\"." ]
Why does our own voice sound different on a recording than it does listening to our voice in real life?	[ "You don't hear yourself through your ears, or rather - when you hear yourself, the sound isn't going out of your mouth, then into your ears from the outside. When you speak, the vibrations from your voice bounce around within your skull and give it a different timbre (or colour of sound) before reaching your ears ...	[ "It's not really an answer to your question, but a related thought... I think I look like a \"normal\" though not particularly attractive guy when I look at myself in the mirror. However, in one room of the house I'm currently living in, there are 2 adjacent walls with mirrors meeting at a 90 degree angle, and look...
When were standardised equipment and uniforms introduced by the British army?	[ "It's often[0] taken to be from the New Model Army of 1645, but does depend on what you mean by 'standardised' (and how much of the equipment you include); prior to the new model army some regiments and units had their own standardised uniform. 1707 was when the crown started issuing a uniform rather than having of...	[ "What do you consider \"early medieval\"? We have one main source - the [Rule of St. Benedict](_URL_0_) - for what monastic life was supposed to be like. The Rule begins to be adopted under the papacy of Gregory I (d. 604), and is firmly established as the primary governing rule of western monasticism by the ...
Why does "tilt-shift" make photo's look like miniatures.	[ "Because when imaging small up-close objects, cameras and your eyes cause items in the foreground and background to blur a lot. Objects imaged further away (like room distance or farther) do not have such an extreme blurring of the other non-target objects. Faking or intensifying the blur of the foreground and back...	[ "_URL_0_ Short answer: the physics change with the scale. If you built a house exactly to scale, but 3 times its normal size, it would collapse under its own weight. Conversely, if you build the house at 1/10th scale, you could probably drop it several times its height without much damage." ]
How come when people get kicked in the balls the pain goes up to our stomach	[ "What you are referring to is called referred pain. Your balls are actually within a sheath of tissue that is actually continuous with the outer layers of your abdominal cavity called the spermatic cord. This sheath contains a nerve that lies within both the abdomen and the cord itself, and is why the pain seems to...	[ "Here's a diagram of male pelvic anatomy: _URL_0_ As you can see, the testicles pass sperm through the vas deferens (or ductus deferens) which eventually becomes the ejaculatory duct, which passes through the prostate, and joins the urethra. This is where semen and urine have a common route out of the body (though ...
On a given construction site, why are there usually 4 people standing around doing nothing or watching someone work, for every 1 person actually working?	[ "Construction worker here. Sometimes there is nothing that needs doing, especially if you're a laborer. Sometimes the task is a one man task and the other workers are not needed. Sometimes the people standing around are foremen. Sometimes something arrives on site that halts business, like a crane lifting huge pane...	[ "Think of a rare baseball card. If there's only 10 of them in existence, then everyone would want them and they would be willing to trade hundreds of chocolate bars for it. Now think if they printed 990 more of that rare baseball card. Now everyone has one, and no one is willing to trade a chocolate bar for it." ]
Could there be planets orbiting black holes? What effect would that have on them?	[ "Anything can orbit a black hole. The planet would be subject to tidal forces which, depending how far the planet was from the black hole, could potentially rip it apart or simply heat it through internal stress like Jupiter's moon Io. The main thing is that without a star, it would get rather cold, unless the blac...	[ "The magic astronomical phrase to Google here is \"[Hill sphere](_URL_1_)\" - that's the volume around a body where the body's gravitation dominates the gravity of whatever it's orbiting around. Anyhow, [here](_URL_0_)'s a pretty good explanation of the situation. Short answer: yup. But usually they're not very sta...
H.265 vs H.264, what's the difference?	[ "I can't give you an in depth description on how each differs on the technical level (by that I mean how they're programmed), but I know a bit about them. They're both video codecs, both ways to take raw pixel data and turn it into a nearly equivalent video file but with a small fraction of the size through video c...	[ "Because the data that is gathered from someone's private life, taken out of context, can hurt them. Even if you have 'nothing to hide', what is taken out of context can sometimes be damning. Like say you had a lot of Muslim friends, and you decided one day you wanted to buy a pressure cooker because you need one f...
Why do you lose alcohol tolerance if you take a break from drinking?	[ "Johnny loves math, he's very good at it. But every summer break in between grades, he doesn't practice his math. He does other things like skating, baseball, and playing spin the bottle. No math equations or learning takes place all summer long. When Johnny returns to school, his brain hasn't kept up on math what...	[ "Think of your brain like a billion streams of water that flow over the surface of a rock. The more you use a certain stream, the more \"powerful\" that stream becomes by digging away that rock. Now even if you have a nice dug place for a stream, sometimes randomly that stream won't have needed to flow for a while ...
Dark Matter and Dark Energy.	[ "We can roughly estimate the mass of galaxies by seeing how many stars are shining. We can also roughly estimate the mass of galaxies by seeing how they rotate. The problem is, the second estimate is much larger. Thus, the difference must be made up by some kind of matter which is not radiating light... or in oth...	[ "This is a small complaint, but you don't have a theory about antimatter. You have a conjecture. I don't know enough about the topic to say if it has any possible credence or not, but a theory requires a lot more work than \"hmmm, maybe it's this!\" This is not supposed to discourage you wondering or asking, just h...
Why has religion in Asia never been as a big as a factor as religion in other parts of the world?	[ "As to the stereotype that Buddhists are somehow exceptions, I'd ask anyone holding that view to look at Burma and the fate of the Rohingya Muslims who the UN describes as one of the most persecuted minorities in the world. Despite hundreds of years of history of living in Burma they still are very often treated as...	[ "Back then people still needed jobs, now they dont and can practice harder for longer. And science helps by showing then methods on improving motions. You cam find cool videos on youtube" ]
How did the brain first evolve?	[ "Cephalization is the term you are looking for- the congregation of sensory cells in a part of the body. This evolved because an animal that could sense it surrounds better was more likely to to reproduce and pass on its genes- Having a concentrated cluster of sensory cells in one area also opened the possibility f...	[ "I guess one example would be some species of cave fish. Their ancestors became trapped in caves with very little or no light, and so there was no need to have eyesight, and it was gradually lost. _URL_0_" ]
how a moon pool (aka wet porch) works, and why a ship with one doesn't sink.	[ "There are a few different kinds of moon pools. The easiest one to understand are basically a hole in the floor above the waterline of a drilling platform or ship with multiple hulls that lets you look down into the water. You're probably thinking of moon pools below the water line though. Imagine taking a cup, tur...	[ "Human babies live the womb surrounded by and breathing amniotic fluid. Their hearts have extra holes which seal themselves after birth which accommodate their reversed blood flow. We mammals adapt from an all fluid environment to a—gasp—no fluid environment. Tadpoles are humans. Ta da!" ]
Why is it recommended to connect the black jumper cable to a bolt on the engine and not the negative post on the dead battery when jumping a car?	[ "Batteries generate hydrogen gas when the are charging. This can sometimes explode when connecting the battery cable as there are usually sparks. Ideally, connect the positive first, then connect the ground further away from the battery." ]	[ "When you shoot an arrow from a bow, the energy of the bow is transferred to the arrow. It gradually (doesn't seem like it, I know) pushes the arrow downrange, from a full stop at full draw, to full speed when the arrow leaves it. All that pent up energy of the bow at full draw is efficiently transferred to the arr...
Did the Roman army ever have any "special forces" type units?	[ "Well, from what I know and have studied there were no \"Roman special forces\" that fit our modern idea of special forces; however, there were task forces composed to handle specific duties: Praetorian Guard were the Emperors elite body guards. They were usually hand picked and Italian born. They actually had a su...	[ "It's a time-honored technique. The Viet Cong, for just one example, often used feces to contaminate their booby traps. In a related scatological note, the U.S. military experimented with [scent sensors](_URL_0_) which would pick up humans (avoiding false positives from animals on seismic sensors or tripwires) tra...
What's the actual risk of getting pregnant compared to the advertised effectiveness rate of the contraception method?	[ "It is the chance that a sexually active, healthy, fertile couple will become pregnant using that method correctly over the course of an entire year. Out of 100 such couples, 8 will be pregnant by year's end." ]	[ "Most websites don't care what ads appear. They only care about how much the ad pays per click. So if the website (say reddit) has both a malware ad and a legit say amazon ad, and the malware ad payed $1.50 per click where as amazon payed $0.60 per click they would prefer the malware to stay. Although they cant rea...
Guy Fawkes and the 5th of November	[ "Well, we set fire to effigies of him so it isn't really glorifying him. It started with anti-Catholics celebrating his failure to install a catholic monarch. I think most people would recognise: Remember remember the 5th of november the gun powder treason and plot I see no reason why the gun powder treason should...	[ "Sorry to jump in with a follow up so quick. I was discussing this topic the other night and we came up with a question no one could answer. Slaves were counted as 3/5 for representation purposes. Were freed slaves (whether runaway or released) counted the same or as a whole person?" ]
Is there a consensus where indo-europeans came from?	[ "The generally accepted theory among linguists is that PIE speakers lived ~~about five or six thousand years ago~~ in the fourth millennium BCE in the steppes north of the Black and Caspian seas. We can be reasonably certain that their divergence post-dated the invention of wheeled vehicles, for which we can constr...	[ "The video you linked to is 35 minutes long; could you provide a more specific indication as to where Lindybeige makes these claims? (It should be noted that Lindybeige is not a historian and his opinion should not be taken too seriously.)" ]
Why air flow makes you sneeze?	[ "Sudden rush of air into your nostrils can cause you to sneeze, as it agitates the nostril hair and causes the sneeze response to clear any contaminants brought in by the air. Dust, pollen and other airborne particles can also influence this" ]	[ "It does not; this is an extremely common piece of misinformation. _URL_0_ The equal transit time of air over and under a wing is just completely wrong. The proper explanation of how an airplane flies depends on Newton's laws and Bernoulli's principle (which is derived from Newton). When a plane is going down the r...
Is there friction during general space travel (speed loss)?	[ "There is a small amount of gas in outer space that can lead to a very very minuscule friction. In low-earth orbit this is more of an issue because of the upper atmosphere. The ISS decreases in altitude by 2 km/month because of this and has to continually correct itself." ]	[ "I mean, you can work out and gain mass, but the statement about muscle is taking into account that you follow the same routine as in earth and were stabilized on not gainong/losing muscle. What it means is that since you don't make work against gravity to walk, move things, etc. Doing the same workout with the sa...
Is it better in the long term for a car to be "warmed up" in cold weather before using it?	[ "Michigan native, automotive engineer (mechanical) and general gearhead here. To expand on what botanist said: Start the engine and give it 30 seconds of running to build oil pressure. It will build faster than that, but it's fine. If your car is covered in snow/ice, take the 5 minutes to get it all off. Drive away...	[ "I believe its the oxidation and polymerization of the oil that increases with re-use that makes it unhealthy. The hydrogenation is actually somewhat difficult to achieve because it involves breaking a pretty stable double (pi) bond between carbons. Usually you need a special catalyst (like palladium) to do this. ...
How does tilt shift photography work and why does it make things look toy-like?	[ "It forces a very narrow depth of focus (which is almost exclusively used to photograph small things) onto a large landscape which tricks our brains into thinking it is actually toy sized. As to how this is done, it was called tilt shift photography because you actually detach the lens from the camera (if I underst...	[ "[Here ya go](_URL_0_) tldr; Tiny tax long ago became a marketing gimmick." ]
Would putting more objects in a room allow the air conditioner unit to cool the room with less effort?	[ "The key thing is the balance between the heat entering the room, the heat leaving the room, and the heat generated in the room. Generally speaking, adding objects inside the room affects none of these things, so you would not expect it to have any effect. Whatever temperature the objects start out at, they will a...	[ "Refrigeration works on the concept that changing phase from liquid to gas absorbs heat, and the other way releases energy. Also, the temperature that a fluid changes phase at varies based on the pressure it is under. While the fluid is inside of the fridge, air is blown over the coil while the liquid is turning to...
If we find things cute because they look like human babies, then why do I find animals like chickens and rabbits cute, even though they look totally different from babies, while I find human babies themselves gross and ugly?	[ "_URL_0_ Babies look too similar to (grown up) people, but not exactly like them and it makes them gross for some people." ]	[ "Its commonly called \"motherese, \" \"parentese\" for the politically correct, or scientifically infant directed speech. And it is totally cultural. There is still some debate at to the universality of it, but there have been some studies done on a tribe that does not talk to their children until a certain age. An...
What Happens to the Kinetic Energy in Positron Annihilation?	[ "The photons will have more energy than just the rest mass of the electrons, to account for the electrons' kinetic energy. Other particles can also form, if the energy is high enough. CERN ran a very high energy electron-positron collider where the LHC is now." ]	[ "Look at the \"normal\" and \"misfolded\" states in [this admittedly ugly graphic](_URL_0_). The red and yellow dots are both a energy minimums, and the barrier separating them is high. Going from one to the other is hard. For something like a prion, though, the misfolded protein can associate with a normal one and...
Tracert/traceroute and it's purpose.	[ "It lets you see where the problem is when you can't reach specific sites (or when they are slow). Seeing every step on the route makes it much simpler to work out where in the network the problem is located." ]	[ "I usually explain it to my friends using phones: & nbsp; Switch - You can call anyone in your area code but can't get anyone outside of your area code. & nbsp; Router - You can call people in your area code(switch), but anything not in your area code is forwarded from the switch to the router. The Router can for...
What is the evolutionary mechanism that makes people want to pinch babies' cheeks?	[ "Your question presupposes that the behavior of pinching cheeks is an evolved behavior. Have you considered it might be a culturally learned behavior?" ]	[ "It's the association of a new toy/item that we get from it. You're unlikely to associate that action with anything else in any case. It's like how some people associate a biker bell as to get out of the way." ]
What is Net Neutrality and why is there a lot of controversy surrounding it?	[ "The idea of Net Neutrality is that all internet traffic has equal access to bandwidth/speeds. Doing away with it would be akin to allowing for highway speed limit signs that read \"Speed Limit: 65, BMW Owners Speed Limit: 85\" if BMW decided to pay for such access as a selling point. Or conversely, it'd be like a ...	[ "I thought it was explained pretty well by this old tek syndicate video _URL_1_ Definitely worth a watch!" ]
Why do plants produce fruit? what's the biological benefit for them?	[ "I believe one of the evolutionary benefits is that so animals eat the fruit and carry the seeds to different territories before excreting them. Thus allowing the range of whatever plant bares the fruit to cover a wider variety of geographic areas, strengthening the integrity of the plants ability to adapt to its e...	[ "Sugar tastes good. When faced with a choice between that which is smart and that which is pleasing, most people will spend their money on the latter. A business exists to sell people what they want to buy, not what some might feel they should buy." ]
What causes the Strong interaction to only operate under a very short range and not go on forever like gravity?	[ "The strong interaction (described by a theory called quantum chromodynamics) exhibits [confinement](_URL_0_). Confinement is when a theory becomes so strongly coupled that the interaction between particles increases with distance. This doesn't allow any extended states to occur, since it would cost so much energy ...	[ "The \"standard model of cosmology\", i.e. [the lambda-CDM model](_URL_0_) treats dark energy as the result of having a non-zero cosmological constant. \"Constant\" being the key word. Ideas like the Big Rip only come about when you imagine a cosmology where the cosmological \"constant\" is actually some elaborate ...
Where do prions originate from?	[ "A protein is recognized as misfolded if it cannot achieve the native state of a protein. This can be due to unwanted mutations in the amino acid sequence or could be caused through errors in the folding process.[62] The misfolded protein typically contains beta-sheets that are organized in a polymeric arrangement ...	[ "The common methods? Nuclear pants are the common method. Neutron research facilities tend to be built at them. Another way is use a particle accelerator to create unstable nuclei that decay by neutron emission. The [Spallation Neutron Source](_URL_0_) collides protons into mercury to produce neutrons." ]
Water is converted into steam at 100 deg. centigrade. Than how does water from water bodies evaporate to form clouds when temperature on earth doesn't cross even 50 deg. centigrade?	[ "Temperature is an average measure of the kinetic energy of all the molecules in a substance. Some molecules will have more, some less. With a constant energy input (eg. the sun, or simply an ambient temperature), some molecules will gain enough energy from the environment to transition to a gaseous state. In the a...	[ "It's possible to cook an egg at the top of Mt. Everest. First, I assume you mean \"Is it possible to hard boil an egg...\" because you could obviously fry/bake/cook by any other means and it would be pretty much the same as cooking at sea level. It's possible to cook eggs at 70 °C, however. [Here's](_URL_0_) a pag...
Have any QUALITY studies been done on the long term effects of LSD, mescaline and/or psilocybin use?	[ "Dr. Roland Griffiths has been doing excellent work at John's Hopkins University School of Medicine. His studies are multi-year; he follows the lives and personality changes of people that have taken hallucinogenic drugs. His work is very rigorous and not all that controversial when compared to someone like Dr. Tim...	[ "Not sure if this helps but what you describe is common for two things. A pan can be old, usually passed down through generations having been seasoned over the years from every meal that was cooked in it. Usually cast iron. The other thing that seems more likely to your question is when someone uses a traditional s...
Why do we, in English, use different names for countries than those countries use in their native language?	[ "I always thought it would be cool to have a globe where each country is labeled with what they call themselves." ]	[ "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 are certain youtube videos blocked in certain countries ?	[ "Generally due to copyright and licencing issues. Different companies may own the rights to the same content in different countries." ]	[ "Costs money to build and maintain the facilities, some countries don't feel like taking on the burden of that cost." ]
Why does the media and people put importance or make a deal when talking about the royal family.	[ "Because if we are all paying attention to that we aren't paying attention to the real problems in the world" ]	[ "Horse meat isn't rare at all. You can get it in many parts of europe. Tastes ok too. Anyway, that's culture. The same reason we think that bacon and eggs is a breakfast food, and don't eat grasshoppers." ]
why do most video games release on Tuesday?	[ "Retail releases, like video games, music and DVD, are released on Tuesdays, generally to give the retail outlets additional traffic in what would otherwise be slow mid-week sales. The stores are already going to be busy on Friday and Saturday, plus they are competing for your dollar with movie theater releases the...	[ "It's just an obsolete tradition now, that few care about. It started back when summer clothes and winter or formal city clothes were different, often made out of different materials. Such as cotton vs wool. And often the families of the gentry class would relocate from their winter home in the city to their summer...
Were various anti-gay laws ever used against lesbians in modern times?	[ "Can you be more clear about what exactly you mean? Obviously the defense of marriage act was used against lesbians in the US until Obergafell. This year in Uganda, an 8 year old girl was arrested for lesbianism. Is there a specific country or law you are curious about?" ]	[ "US states can't deny the validity of legal documents in other states. So if I own some property in Texas, and I bring that up as evidence in an Oklahoma court case, the court can't decide it doesn't count because it's from the wrong state." ]
How did the 20th century [hyper]urbanization boom in Latin America happen?	[ "I can't answer the specific question but I can say this: historically, it was agricultural _improvements_ (not ineptitude) that allowed large number of people to move from the countryside and into the cities." ]	[ "Could you perhaps present us with your original source so we can see what the author writes about it? I think I know the answer, but I would like to know what exactly the author wrote. Also, could you remove the bonus question? We do not allow discussions of events after 1993." ]
Why can’t the Panama Canal just dig a deep canal and remove the locks?	[ "Oceans are in constant motion. This means that they surge up and down. Because the Pacific and Atlantic Ocean aren't connected anywhere but the Panama Canal, you're channeling the entire difference in wave height at any given time through the canal. Without the locks, that means you'd mostly get a fast running c...	[ "The Atlas V and Delta IV rockets aren't man-rated. There's a certain failure rate and operational/vibrational loading that is acceptable for human cargo that those two rockets haven't shown their capable of, and which they were never designed for. NASA would have either needed a new rocket, or dusted off an old on...
Can a sound effect a person's nervous system?	[ "Sound absolutely affects a person's nervous system, that's how we hear. But, more in the spirit of your question, there are [Infrasounds](_URL_0_) that are a really low frequency and have been hypothesized to affect humans & animals physically. Specifically, they have been correlated with feelings of awe/fear, na...	[ "They actually debunked that, same with that nonsense about listening to classical music in the womb making your child smarter. It was all just BS to sell some cds. I'll see if I can find an article about it, and I'll edit this to put it in. And now to see if this answer is long enough, or if it will get auto-modd...
Why is it so hard for countries or large terrorist organizations to make a Fission or Fusion Bomb?	[ "All fusion bombs currently require at least one, normally two fission stages. Also, the main difficulty is getting the enriched fuels. After that, you have to have a significantly SUBcritical mass to prevent it just going off when manufactured, then use a carefully shaped explosive 'lens' to compress it evenly til...	[ "Not enough energy to. It's like lighting a match in a snow storm and expecting it to melt everything. Sure, the match is hot, but theres a lot more cold than there is hot." ]
why can't student loans be discharged or "forgiven" like other loans?	[ "By definition, when you graduate college with student loans, your debts probably out weigh your assets. The argument is that people would graduate and declare bankruptcy right away and discharge your student loans because of this. Edit: source: a NY times article I read many years ago." ]	[ "There are. Before I got my current job I was looking at both electrician and HVAC trade schools (pullig from my GI bill). There are also welding, plumbing, and cosmotologist trade shool programs, off the top of my head. Architecture and Engineering are Masters and Batchlors-level college degrees respectively in th...
Why does paper, especially newspaper, become yellow over time?	[ "Wood (from which we get paper) has a lot of a dark substance in it called lignin, which ends up in the paper. The exposure of lignin to air and sunlight is what turns paper yellow. The lignin itself is undergoing oxidation, and absorbs more light, giving off a darker colour. Newsprint has more lignin in it than fi...	[ "What will the roadster look like after 1000 years of direct exposure to the sun?" ]
Do relativistic light sources decelerate?	[ "> > given the intensity of radiation is greater in the forward direction, will the source not be acting like a photon drive, and hence decelerate? No - the total force due to the photons emitted in the forward and backward directions will be equal in the reference frame of the moving object. Hence, no deceleration...	[ "Not by any physical law. There are practical limits, such as what a human could survive if you are talking about rockets. There are also practical limits in terms of “it would take more energy than exists in the universe”. But you could accelerate at any rate, as long as velocity stays below c." ]
What was the driving force for Ottoman expansion in 16th - 17th century?	[ "Hi - we as mods have approved this thread, because while this is a homework question, it is asking for clarification or resources, rather than the answer itself, which is fine according to [our rules](_URL_1_). This policy is further explained in this [Rules Roundtable thread](_URL_3_) and this [META Thread](_URL_...	[ "> empirical powerhouse Did you mean imperial? Because something is empirical if it's based on verifiable information, I doubt that's what you meant. Anyway, your question has been answered before, have a look at these threads: [To what extent is Portugal just another one of the Spanish kingdoms?](_URL_0_) [How did...
Why can't we put symbols like ! and / in filenames?	[ "Slashes are used to define directorys, so a file with the name \"some/file.jpg\" would really be a file named file.jpg in a folder called /some/. So its not allowed, I dont know about \"!\" though." ]	[ "Answering the first part of your question: _URL_0_ _URL_1_ _URL_7_ _URL_3_ _URL_5_ _URL_6_ _URL_2_ _URL_4_" ]
What exactly IS a belt drive motor?	[ "A motor with a pulley and a belt which drives another pulley. The alternative is direct drive. That can include drive via gearing, shaft, friction wheel, or other." ]	[ "Before I get all high & mighty about the term \"Dark Ages,\" can you define what you mean for us?" ]
Do babies have imaginations, inner lives, or inner monologues?	[ "Babies imagine and think. Their worldview is very different from an adult. They don't have language, it takes them a while to understand that they control their limbs, and they can't recognize themselves in a mirror at that age. Can they tell the difference between being awake and asleep? I'd say, if you want a b...	[ "Sort of. As you can see in Jurassic park 3, they can find out the shape of the voice box and get an idea of the nature of their vocals. They probably couldn't work it out exactly, and a lot of Jurassic Park is sort of filled in gaps." ]
Rising Ocean Levels a Lie?	[ "Sea levels won't rise due to floating ice melting but rather due to ice sheets on land ice melting. EDIT: I taught at a science camp for young elementary school kids and we used [this](_URL_0_) lesson to help explain it to them." ]	[ "Yes I agree and would say that the video is misleading. These should thoroughly answer your question: _URL_2_ _URL_3_ _URL_0_ Also, something easier to read: _URL_1_" ]
When an engine is overloaded and can't pull the load, what happens inside the cylinders?	[ "The detonations that take place in the cylinders can only do so while the engine is spinning. When you stall an engine by overloading it you stop the rotation of the crank, stopping the pistons from moving up and down and stopping the sequence of events that leads to more combustion cycles. Even in modern e.f.i. E...	[ "Imagine that you are at home and you are waiting for a really important phone call from your best friend. All of a sudden, tens of thousands of people call your phone number at the same time trying to tell you something. The odds of your friend's important information getting through to you go down drastically, be...
What is Cop Baiting?	[ "It's when you do something in order to provoke a cop into doing something. The most common topical example would be to harass a cop with insults while filming them until they respond inappropriately. You then share the last half of the video where the cop acted inappropriately." ]	[ "Don't have an answer but had to throw in a side note. Asparagus used to be included in emergency kits for pilots because within 15 to 30 minutes after eating it, you can urinate in the water and attract fish. _URL_0_" ]
I am nearsighted, how come when I look into a mirror I can not see things far away?	[ "Your assumption is correct. The mirror just reflects the light, it doesn't focus or unfocus it. When you look at a mirror at something that is 10 meters in front of it, it's the same as looking at something that is 10 meters behind it." ]	[ "It's because the sense of smell gets exhausted easily and you might become accustomed to it. For the same reason, you might not smell your own perfume after a few hours, but other can smell just fine." ]
why don't grocery stores and restaurants give unsold food to shelters?	[ "This practice, while charitable and laudable in theory, is a liability nightmare. Even if the stores do comply with local food safety regulations, they're going to be subject to frivolous lawsuits and legitimate lawsuits (if the food harms someone). Additionally, some nanny state mayors (like Michael Bloomberg) ha...	[ "I'll add my 2 cents. I work in retail and for my company, the actual selling of giftcards isn't what generates the profit. When someone buys you a gift card for my brand we know that at some point in the future you will buy something from us. Many times people will attempt to use the whole gift card which means th...
Explain it like I'm 5 - what evolutionary advantage not getting pregnant could have.	[ "If five male ducks all have sex with one female, her being able to reject the sperm of the weaker 4 and only allow the strongest one to give her offspring gives her children a better chance at reproducing themselves." ]	[ "Setting aside the terminology of \"race\", it's entirely down to selective pressures of the different environments. In equatorial regions where the sun is plentiful, having a lot of melanin is useful in protecting against cancer. The further north/south you go from there, the less sun there is, so having less mela...
Just spent the last 5 hours reading about Julius Caesar thanks to a particular frontpage post. Can anyone recommend any books that explore his life and times in greater detail?	[ "Caesar himself wrote some works about his times, including his Commentaries on the War in Gaul and his Commentary on the Civil Wars. There are also the works of Cicero, who was a contemporary of Caesar's. You should be able to pick most of those up at any major bookstore's history section. Suetonius and Plutarch ...	[ "I assume you are taking about the contest between Britain and Russia in Central Asia? Peter Hopkirk's The Great Game work is a classic. It focuses on the agents involved and their expeditions and schemes. Very readable." ]
How do doctors or veterinarians distinguish between different types of skin cancer?	[ "I am a Veterinarian. I never go by appearance or feel as it's unreliable. I always recommend to perform a needle biopsy (fine needle aspirated) which collects cells from the tumor. Then I submit the samples to the lab for analysis. They analyze the cells types that are present and then determine the possibly tumor...	[ "Go to a new area of Australia (or wherever). Comb one acre very carefully, cataloging every species. Figure out how many new species there are. Do this in a few different places, figure out about how many new species there are in general, and extrapolate." ]
What would be the impact if in the next Presidential election, a Republican wins, thus controlling both Congress and White House?	[ "\"can they make a ridiculous, highly partisan law/bill come to life?\" Yes. If the Democrats have enough members they can fillibuster and use other procedures to prevent votes. But in general the Republicans would have free reign. And of course, if the new law is ridiculous enough to be potentially unconstitution...	[ "Essentially the events in Crimea threaten to destabilize the European continent. To give you some scale Crimea is about roughly the same size as Belgium. The real scale of territory that Russia seized really did not hit me until I really compared them on a map. Anyway, since the Second World War there has not been...
How come clouds alone are white but a sky full of clouds is grey?	[ "The darkening of clouds is caused by shadows, either from other clouds or the cloud itself being thick enough to extinguish more light than the surrounding skies. Of course, this depends on the angle of the sun relative to the clouds and your direction of observation. If you're looking at distant clouds and the s...	[ "Inflatable beach balls are mostly empty space, too. The thing is, light bounces off the outside surface of the beach ball and back into our eyes, just like it bounces off the electrons around an atom's nucleus." ]
how do boxtops fund education?	[ "School collects box tops & sends them to the company. The company sends the school money. The idea is that people will buy more products from the company if they know it'll help the local schools. It's just an advertising campaign." ]	[ "Can't you deduct your student loan interest on your tax return? That's same effect as paying pre-tax because it drops your taxable income, and just comes back to you as a tax refund. All the pre-tax items you mentioned are typically employer administered, but your student loans are not." ]
Does poor sleep lead to depression? Or is it the other way around?	[ "Potentially both at the same time. You're depressed so you get poor sleep. The poor sleep makes you more depressed. This along with several factors is why depression is often described as a downward spiral. Each of the factors makes the other factors worse." ]	[ "Genetically speaking it exists because it poses a survival advantage. Sometimes the guys who go out hunting get killed by the tiger, and the ones who gather nuts and berries near the cave live to pass on their genes. Also some studies show that depresses persons have a more accurate appraisal of the world. So in...
Why do we throw-up (or feel like we are going to) from nervousness or fear?	[ "Part of the fight or flight syndrome. Animals do this do--people can also urinate or defecate in these circumstances, also like animals. Basically the body has to figure out whether the blood goes to the brain, to the large muscles, arms and legs, or to the abdomen--specifically to digest food. In the wild, the ad...	[ "It is supposed to be a natural reaction that our ancestors used to survive. It would keep them away from the nests of dangerous insects such as termites. It was the body's way of trying to avoid the danger and keep alive. If you believe in evolution you could say that it is part of evolution." ]
Why do completely random memories pop into my head?	[ "If you could definitively answer this and prove your theory, you'd probably win a Nobel Prize. There is a lot of theory on how memory works, but no one knows for sure. The best explanation would be that somehow the right combination of neurons in your head fired in just the right way to trigger that memory. I thi...	[ "I know exactly what you're talking about man. I'd really like to know an answer for this too" ]
why Iran is our "sworn" enemy?	[ "a) santorum is an idiot, just because he says someone is our sworn enemy doesn't much b) american politicians pander to jews c) israel and iran have trouble playing nice" ]	[ "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 /...
Why don't Americans have that accent and tone of voice that they did in the 20's-50's anymore, like the father in to Kill A Mockingbird?	[ "Because the Mid-Atlantic accent was a fake accent that actors acquired on purpose. It went out of fashion for the most part, but you still see it today in rare cases like Kelsey Grammer and the Mad Men character Pete Campbell. But no one spoke that way in real life. _URL_0_" ]	[ "$1 in 1950 would buy a lot more then than it does today. $1 in 1950 adjusted for inflation to 2016 is the amount of stuff that $1 in 1950 would buy today. for example. if a ford car costs $1000 in 1950 and $20000 today. we can say that $1000 in 1950 adjusted for inflation is equal to $20000 today. of course, the ...
In America, "middle class" is a humble term for the average family. In Britain, it's a subtly deprecating term for families with a little too much disposable income. How did this come to be?	[ "Do you have a source for that? I've never heard that usage of the term in Britain." ]	[ "The idea is that you would buy a house for, say, $100,000, of which $90,000 was financed (i.e. debt). Then, because housing prices were rising, in two years your house might be worth $150,000, and you still owed $90,000. Your house was worth $60,000 more than what you owed. This is called \"having $60,000 in equit...
Why does 65°F/18°C feel warm in the winter, and cold in the summer.	[ "For the exact reason that you might expect. You've been cold all winter, and gotten used to zero degree weather. Oh look, it's now 65? Holy shit that's warm! Likewise, it's been 110 all summer. Holy shit, it's 65?? That's so cold!" ]	[ "It would use less energy, yes. The reason is that the compressor and fans will still be using the same amount of power, but the AC will be on for shorter periods of time because the time taken to cool from 78 to 72 is shorter than from 90 to 72. The car also will absorb much more energy if the outside temperature ...
Why do birds like to hang out on power lines?	[ "Birds are not real. They're government surveillance drones. Kidding aside, birds perch everywhere. My front yard bush hides 50 birds at once. Since birds can't perch in middle of air where there isn't a power line, power line it is. Or on the ground.or on a tree branch, or on a building ledge or wherever there's...	[ "Speculative, as I know of no scientific study on the subject, but I am an electronics technician and electronic warfare specialist who works with various radio and radar equipment. It's possible that the angle of your radio station relative to the freeway (and thus overpasses) is such that just as you go through t...

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