Subset (10)

eli5 · 25k rows

Split (1)

train · 25k rows

query stringlengths 20 300	positive listlengths 1 1	negative listlengths 1 1
Why does garbage always seem to have a common smell regardless of what's in it?	[ "The smell is composed of small Nitrogen and Sulfur based molecules, produced when microbes break down organic matter. So as long as it's organic material. Because these molecules are small, they are easily blown into the air and up your nose. It does not really matter what you start out with, it all ends up as the...	[ "Fires don't burn everything equal, you can look in a room and see if the fire looks like it came into that room through the door or a wall or if that is where the fire started, once you know what room looks like it spread from you can try and figure out what around that room would start a fire and narrow it down t...
Why is it that man is the only intelligent species on Earth?	[ "I would say we aren't, we are just arrogant enough to think so. > Why are we the only ones that cook food, speak different languages, and named ourselves Dolphins and whales have different dialects and possibly languages, dolphins have their own names, elephants have language as well. As for the food, seems the r...	[ "We don't have to cook our meat. We also could walk around with a heavy parasite load, like most animals do." ]
Has it been a really long time since we've had an iconic song come out or is this another sign I'm getting old?	[ "It's an error in perception. There are just as many iconic songs, and they come out just as often (if not more often). You just don't realize it, or care, or consider them iconic. You'll realize how iconic it is when your kids are making fun of you for singing \"Moves Like Jagger\" or that darn Friday song." ]	[ "Most neighborhoods built after the 1950s, ie subdivisions in the suburbs, are built all at once. Meaning they will all be built within a year of each other and use 1-5 building plans. Homes built in cities or on privately owned lots outside the city limits that are not a part of a subdivision are built as the owne...
Why are books so much more in Canada than in the US, even when you account for exchange rates?	[ "It is exchange rates, different taxes, shipping costs, and import tariffs." ]	[ "The difficulty doesn't come from a one-time trip across a border. It comes with making numerous multiple trips across a border. As for a barrel of oil, how many normal people buy a barrel of oil? It's something unusual that would warrant an extra look by customs agents." ]
Explain what a Discrete Fourier Transform is?	[ "A Fourier transform is a tool that lets us take a certain signal (function) and find the parts that make it (the frequencies). In ideal condition, like a math problem, we know the signal to an infinite amount of detail: we know exactly what was its value at every point in time. In real life signal analysis we are ...	[ "Not seen it but I am guessing it is a technique commonly used where authorities play music by The Spice Girls or One Direction on a loop and terrorists give up rather than have to endure constant bad music. The joke here being that this character enjoys the terrible music." ]
How or why does moon sometimes appear bigger and in different colour?	[ "When moon is near the horizon, we compare its size with trees, houses, building etc, which makes it look bigger compared to when it is not on horizon. You can test this by closing one eye and covering moon with your thumb and repeat again when moon is not on horizon. Your thumb should be at the same distance from ...	[ "If you are going somewhere for the first time you are devoting a lot more processing power to following directions and looking out for signs/landmarks, etc. That makes time and distance seem greater. There is also the anticipation of some event/experience to keep you mind working hard; again creating a feeling of ...
Difference between jam, jelly, and preserves?	[ "Jelly is made from fruit juices. Jam is made from crushed or cooked fruits. Preserves are made from pieces of fresh fruit and a syrup or jam There's also marmalade, which is made from jam and fruit rinds" ]	[ "Here's a pretty good explainer. _URL_0_ Basically it comes down to different memory, different promises (reliability and service life), and different marketing." ]
My son's acorn question	[ "The acorn opens from the side opposite the cap (usually the cap is lost by this point, but not always). Here's a nice picture showing an instance where one sprouting with the cap still on for reference: _URL_0_" ]	[ "Speech-Language Pathology graduate student here. Substituting /r/ with /w/ is common in kids because /w/ requires less muscular control, especially of the tongue. Motor control develops over time, and most kiddos outgrow this by age 5." ]
Was the cosmic background radiation ever visible?	[ "The cosmic background radiation dates from when the universe cooled to a temperature of about 3000 K (cool enough when atoms could form; they're electrically neutral, and thus the universe becomes transparent, and so those photons form background radiation from that point forward). If you look at [this image](_URL...	[ "It really depends on what you mean by \"see.\" If you mean see with the unaided eye, then no we cannot. If you mean unambiguously detect and visualize, then we can. _URL_0_" ]
Why do the phrases "Cut it out!" and "Knock it off!" mean stop? What is their origin?	[ "Etymology online says knock it off is a request given to an auctioneer to end bidding (by knocking his gavel). While the entry puts the first usage as 1880, the same entry cites a US Senate record of 1834. _URL_0_" ]	[ "Because we count the hours that are, not the hours that are not. The original 12-hour clock of the Babylonians (and the Romans and the Greeks) counted the number of hours during the day, and the number of hours during the night. They divided the day into 12 periods, and called each one an hour. There was the f...
The thing I want most in life is a telescopic view of an extrasolar planet with a resolution and picture so clear that we are capable of making out analogs of things like trees, bushes, or large mammals. Will this be possible in my lifetime?	[ "Probably not (though I don't know how old you are). The next generation of mega-scopes are things like TMT ([Thirty Meter Telescope](_URL_0_)) - which will be online in the next 5 years or so. These scopes should allow us to directly observe an exoplanet. The best we can do now is sub-pixel to one-pixel resoluti...	[ "XKCD What If: \"Which of the following would be brighter, in terms of the amount of energy delivered to your retina: A supernova, seen from as far away as the Sun is from the Earth, or The detonation of a hydrogen bomb pressed against your eyeball? Applying the physicist rule of thumb suggests that the supernova i...
What are private prisons and how do they make a profit?	[ "They're private corporations that buy contracts from the state to house prisoners. The state figures its cost to house the prisoner. If the private can do it for less, that's profit." ]	[ "Because there are no laws that govern the entirety of the internet. There are laws in countries that limit what the people living inside of its borders can do with the internet, but those laws dont apply if you arent in that country. All pirate bay has to do to stay operational is to find a country that doesn't ca...
What is the reason for the movie clapper, i understand it might help with editing but why the clap?	[ "It has already been answered, but I will add some more detail. A camera records the visuals, an microphone records the audio, obviously. The problem is, that unlike with consumer cameras, the audio isn't recorded to the same file as the video. So, you are left with a very high quality audio track, and a separate v...	[ "To make sure that the food at McDonald's is identical every time, there is nothing left to chance. A bag of frozen French fries will be opened and poured into a wire basket. The basket gets lowered into the hot oil and the staff member presses a timer button. Once the fries have been cooked for the correct amount ...
If someone with 20/20 vision tries on my prescription glasses, do they see just like I would without them?	[ "No. When you need glasses, it is because your eye's lens is not capturing light correctly. It's bent, or stretched, or smushed, or otherwise distorted. When you wear glasses, the lens in the glasses compensates and re-directs light (what you see) as it enters your eye's lens so it's normal. For example, if you a...	[ "Velocity is not additive at relativistic speeds. Well, technically it's not additive at any speeds, but the closer you get to 0, the more accurate of an approximation you get by adding up the two velocities. [Here's a page on Wolfram Alpha](_URL_0_) where you can plug in various numbers to see how it works. In ...
When did people start using oil for cooking? What made them think to use oil for cooking?	[ "There are are variety of different cooking methods we know of from prehistory. Spitted meat seems broadly common, in British Isles and Scandinavia there's evidence of heated stones and water pits being used to cook as well as spitted meat (Keating 1908:326), in Polynesia and other places there's evidence of essent...	[ "Here's a review that you can [read for yourself](_URL_0_). > Although the protection time of citronella oil is shorter than that of DEET, citronella oil could provide sufficient protection time against mosquitoes. The protection time of citronella oil alone is at least 1.5 h against Aedes spp., 3 h against Anophe...
Why do barcode scanners use lasers instead of just an led and a camera to capture the barcode?	[ "When barcodes first came out in the 80's, you'd often see light pen scanners that required you move the tip across the barcode to scan it. These allowed the scanner to have very simple circuitry as the barcode scan results in a series of pulses corresponding to the light and dark lines. A laser barcode scanner at...	[ "The retail stores can buy in bulk. And when they do, they get a special discount from the manufacturer. This is part normal, and part enticement from the manufacturer to get their product out there. Typical electronics markup from manufacturer to vendor is 20-30%. That 30% allows the vendor to discount the device ...
Pre-Civil War: 1859-1860, Were there signs within, that even without war or intrusion of government laws, that slavery was in trouble? That the working mechanics of it in the South were somehow breaking down?	[ "It's doubtful. The economy of the slaveholding portion of the United States was based on expansion, rather than maximizing efficiency. As long as there was land to be cleared for new cotton plantations (or mines, which publications of the day thought to be the future of slavery in the American West), the system wo...	[ "The sharp drop in oil prices has been considered to be a major factor in the break up of the Soviet Union. The USSR was an oil exporter and prices dropped from around $66 bbl (per barrel) in 1980 to $20 bbl in 1986. This was a substantial financial blow that has been recorded as one of the 'last straws.' Their bud...
Why can tiny quantities of ricin (I've read, as little as the size of one grain of salt) kill a person so quickly?	[ "\"Toxic RIPs act at low doses because their catalytic activities allow complete inactivation of ribosomes and protein synthesis at a less-than-equimolar ratio to their substrate.\" - taken from Walsh et al 2013 (view here; _URL_0_). RIP here being an (unfortunate) acronym for Ribosome-inactivating protein- ricin i...	[ "He's covering the sugar in a hydrophobic coating. Scotchgard is a common one. [Here](_URL_0_) is a video of sand with a hydrophobic coating. Note that when he picks it back up out of the water, it's dry. This happens because water won't stick to or penetrate a hydrophobic surface. So, the sand/sugar stays \"dry\" ...
Why do people wait on death row for years before being executed?	[ "They aren't waiting for the seat to be free, they're given the right to appeal their conviction or alter their sentence - which can take years." ]	[ "This is a very common question. You can use search to find [all the other really good answers](_URL_0_ ). This is instant, and faster than ust typing in your question every time. It's a way of cheating elections. Read the others, and then ask a more specific question." ]
Sent over here from AskReddit. How common was anal sex in America in the 1950s between straight couples? How did this fit in with the homophobic views of this era?	[ "Coming out of the victorian era, this sort of talk was very taboo. And research non-existent. The first major survey/poll done was the rather infamous Kinsey study (1948-53). Kinsey of course was aware of people's reluctance to speak about sex so in an attempt to balance out the responses, he made leading question...	[ "* /u/pangerandipanagara answered [\"If modern ideas of 'civil rights' like freedom of speech arise out of Western Enlightenment thought, what kinds of parallel or perpendicular ideals can we identify in pre-20th century \"Eastern\" cultures?\"](_URL_3_) * /u/mikedash on [\"Was everyone religious in the old days, l...
Historians, what civilizations were successful in holding off the Roman advances, and how did they do it?	[ "The Germanic tribes beat off the legions in the famous battle of Teutoburger forest where 3 Roman legions were destroyed. _URL_1_ Rome eventually settled for a fortified frontier along the Rhine & Danube. In the east it was the Parthians who were able to hold off the Romans. Parthia was an empire in the Iranian/Pe...	[ "1. Appease the priests. You aren't going nowhere without Amun-Ra behind you. 2. Make offerings to the Gods, I get the vibe you are a bit of a Horus person, so go with that. 3. Kill all the rebels in the flashiest way possible. Tying their king to the front of a ship is a fun one, Thutmoses did that to the Nubians ...
If a family from a strife-torn country such as South Sudan, where polygamy is practiced, were to make a refugee claim in a country where polygamy is outlawed, what would happen?	[ "I'm assuming subsequent marriages (after the first)would not be legally recognised." ]	[ "It's to protect people forced into the sex trade. When prostitution is illegal, prostitutes are reluctant to report abuse for fear of being arrested, and have to rely on pimps to bail them out." ]
Why is the tide more effected by a full moon? The mass of the moon does not change in any other phase!	[ "Positioning; there are tidal effects from both the sun and the moon. These effects work together when the sun and moon form a line with Earth, and work against each other when the sun and moon form a right-angle with Earth. A full moon corresponds to the first case, so the tidal effects from the sun and moon work ...	[ "The damage from a claymore comes not from the explosive directly, but from a bunch of ball bearings embedded on the front side of the device (it's a rectangular panel, curved so that it can hit an arc). It's essentially a C4 powered shotgun. Shaped charges in general do have an equal but opposite effect, they rely...
What is gaseous iron like, and can it rust?	[ "The problem is that Iron's boiling temperature is so high ([2861°C](_URL_1_)) that you will pretty much never actually encounter it outside of a controlled environment. If you were to introduce oxygen to it, it would oxidize easily and create iron oxide (which is a gas above [1565°C](_URL_0_))." ]	[ "The answer to this, as far as I know, is still not really known. One of the purposes of the Juno probe was actually to answer this exact question. Since Jupiter is so huge, that means that the pressure at the core would be enough to solidify certain elements (for example, the core of Jupiter might be a chunk of so...
What exactly did the nazis stand for and how did those positions compare to other political positions 50-100 years ago?	[ "As per #6, and this is a fairly unpopular view mind you, but one that I think many people don't consider and has some weight to it. The Nazis offered Germans pride in their country again, beyond the sort of fascist propaganda that everyone knows about. After the terms of WWI were established there was a great sens...	[ "They control the British Crown, they keep the metric system down. They keep Atlantis off the maps, they keep the Martians under wraps. They hold back the electric car, they make Steve Guttenberg a star. They rob cave fish of their sight, they rig every Oscar night." ]
What is a filibuster? Why is it so important?	[ "A filibuster is when a senator makes a speech to take up as much time as possible in a legislative assembly in order to delay action for the passing of a bill/law as long as possible. It's important because people use it to delay or stop a vote from happening on that bill. Some famous examples of this include Stro...	[ "I could try to explain it to you, but this video is all you really need: _URL_9_" ]
Why you can't take pictures in museums using flash?	[ "It's not about the crowd, it's about the art. Light fades a number of the materials used, and hundreds or thousands of flashes can accelerate that process. That's the belief, anyway." ]	[ "\"Muslim's\" don't. There's no specific prohibition of it in the Qu'ran and in many countries they're absolutely fine with it. Some muslims are of the opinion that it encourages idolatry and false worship, which is prohibited in Islam. Some of those some muslims are extremists who just want any excuse to commi...
Why do some things cut better with a serrated knife and others with a straight blade?	[ "Is there also an effect where a serration tooth puts tension into a piece of material and then the material springs over the tooth and slams into the next tooth?" ]	[ "Surface area difference of food to taste buds/nasal passages. Sipping a drink versus chugging a drink makes for very different tasting experiences." ]
How do we know the universe is expanding? And what is it expanding into?	[ "You know how a train horn changes pitch when it is coming towards you fast compared to going away fast? That is the Dopler Effect. Light does that, too. If we look at light from stars, the farther away a star is, more the light appears to be coming from something going away fast. The farther away, the faster the s...	[ "We have to apply whatever mathematical models and theories that we do know or have sufficient evidence to believe to be true. We do have at least some knowledge about plasma's behavior (we can make if after all) and the rest has to do with extrapolating from our current understanding of physics. We just try our be...
What's the psychology behind people who self harm? Specifically cutting.	[ "When you are injured, your brain releases a bunch of chemicals to make you feel better and dull the pain. Its a non-specific process, and these chemicals go everywhere in your body, not just the injured area. By cutting yourself, you trigger that response. The interesting thing about the brain is that to it, there...	[ "Conveniently, PBS' It's Okay to Be Smart covered exactly this [a few days ago](_URL_0_). The short answer, if you don't want to watch the video, is because scratching causes very minor pain that cancels out the itchy signal (pain neurons override pretty much everything) and also releases serotonin to help soothe...
How historically accurate is the typical male haircut in Akira Kurosawa's 'The Seven Samurai'?	[ "[The hairstyle is known as the Chonmage.] (_URL_0_.) Theories suggest that it became a popular derivative of the Hondamage hairstyle that gained popularity during the Edo period among samurai serving under [Honda Tadakatsu](_URL_1_), a famous general who served Togukawa Ieyasu. From the way an individuals hair wa...	[ "Are you watching blu ray? Is it a good transfer? (Example: despite being made in the early 80's Blade Runner Ultimate Director's cut blu-ray is one of the best you can buy) How good is your blu ray player? Is it a ps3? All of these factors contribute to what you determine as a home viewing experience being inferio...
How and why does the Speech Jammer work?	[ "Speech utilizes a feedback loop. You don't just think of a sentence and your mouth automatically says it from vocal memory. Your brain is constantly monitoring the sound of your voice in real time to keep it sounding like you want it to. Sort of like walking across a tightrope. You don't have a memorized sequence ...	[ "Breathalyzers actually detect the alcohol level in your breath. There is little you can do to _decrease_ that amount, and you cannot mask it. Popping in a breath mint is similar to adding a blue food dye to a glass of orange juice, and expect a test of its citric acid content to change." ]
Once meat is defrosted, why do people say that you shouldn't refreeze it again?	[ "Freezing doesn't kill microbes, only suspend their reproduction. Defrosting brings the temperature of the product up to a level where microbial action starts up again. Add to this, many people defrost food on bench tops where at least parts of the food are at room temperature. Defrosting should be done in a fridge...	[ "I think we develop a \"been there, done that\" mentality in ways. I can not watch cartoons now. No matter what the topic. The irony is I just can't pay attention to cartoons." ]
How many slave owners were there in the US at slavery's peak vs the us population at the time?	[ "I think you might be interested in this past answer by /u/sowser: [At the peak of slavery in the continental United States, what percentage of the population would have owned one or more slaves?](_URL_0_) Then, as a follow-up to that, you might also be interested in this one by /u/Georgy_K_Zhukov: [Why were so man...	[ "This submission has been removed because it is [soapboxing](_URL_1_.), [promoting a political agenda, or moralizing](_URL_0_). We don't allow content that does these things because they are detrimental to unbiased and academic discussion of history." ]
why can't video game developers "copy and paste" maps from previous games into the next version? Like for example battlefield 3 maps being ported into battlefield 4	[ "They usually run on different graphics engines. In your example, bf3 runs on frostbite 2, while bf4 runs on frostbite 3. \"basically the same engine\" doesn't mean much. They're probably similar enough sure but the instruction set varies just enough that it would probably lead to a lot of bugs without them doing a...	[ "Everyone's bodies make cells and tissues in a slightly different way. This leaves little protein tags on the surface of cells. If your immune system sees tags that aren't yours, it's like finding a stray footprint in your house. They freak out and track down the \"invader.\" Replacing the bone marrow replaces the ...
What did they call pre-dreadnought ships before dreadnoughts but after ironclads were used?	[ "The RN just called them battleships. Within this, there were several distinctions. First-class battleships were the most modern, powerful designs, those that are commonly thought of as being pre-dreadnoughts. Second-class battleships were, in the 1890s, older turret-ships, built in the late 1870s and early 1880s, ...	[ "It's a good ghost story, in the typical version - \"Settlement vanishes, the only clue is the mysterious word CROATOAN carved into a fencepost\". It's not much of a mystery to people who have done research on the area, though. The Roanoke colony was friendly with the local Indians, who had a settlement on the nea...
Why has the storm that makes up Jupiter's red spot been going for so long?	[ "It probably lasts much much less than that. Anyway, the red spot is exactly in between two belts, parallel with the equator, that move at different speeds (they are basically jet streams). Some vortices are bound to happen at the interface between the belts. By chance, what we're observing now is a single very lar...	[ "You mean the Animal Planet one? Hype and marketing. Then it became a euphemism for menstruation (I'll fill you in if you want, but it's gross sex stuff...) and took on a life of its own." ]
Why don't we visit the Moon any more?	[ "There's not all that much on the moon. Even originally, a big driving force behind the manned landings was the political race against the Soviet Union. Without that, the massive cost would have been much harder to bear. Nowadays, if we wanted to go back we'd almost certainly send robotic probes. This is vastly che...	[ "Costs money to build and maintain the facilities, some countries don't feel like taking on the burden of that cost." ]
What role did Machiavelli actually play in Florentine and Italian Politics?	[ "He was a secretary to the Florentine court. He had a diplomatic role and lived in a time of conflict on the Italian peninsula. He was very close to the conflict lines as part of his job. When the Medici returned to Florence in 1512 he went out of favor and wrote his \"Discourse on Livy\", \"The Prince\" and other ...	[ "You should read Anne Rice ' s Memnoch the devil. AND Milton ' s Paradise Lost. \"It's better to rule in Hell than serve in Heaven.\" Or something like that." ]
What is the potential harm of eating raw cookie dough?	[ "It's because the Eggs can be contaminated with salmonella bacteria, we eat it though because it's absolutely delicious." ]	[ "Women are born with all the eggs they will ever have, they aren't created month to month. Those eggs age and can break down like all the other cells in the body. Autism and other disorders happen because of problems of brain development, most often between parts of the brain that create links between the part of t...
What is with the fighting culture in hockey?	[ "Your question's a little vague. If you're asking why do people like watching people fight in hockey, it's because it's entertaining in the same way that mixed martial arts cage fighting events and boxing are entertaining. People get a kick out of people kicking the shit out of each other, even if that's not the p...	[ "\"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..." ]
Why do we use super colliders to study atomic structure?	[ "The trouble is that coliders are our only option. We would love to be able to carefully take apart matter into it's fundamental constituents and observe how they work in isolation, but we can't. The best option we have is to smash them together and see what happens. A crucial part of this study is using theory to ...	[ "Have you ever wondered what's inside your bouncy ball? Imagine it was too small to cut but you really, really wanted to know. What you might want to try is throwing it into something so hard that it breaks and you can see the smaller parts. Of course, if you only have another bouncy ball because that's the only th...
Why does fire, or any heat source, produce light particles/waves? And why do some non-heat or low-heat sources produce light? Do they work differently?	[ "Deep down it's all the same. First, electrons are given energy. But they don't like to have extra energy, so they emit light to get back to a lower energy state. Electrons can receive energy in different ways. In a fire pit old-school light bulbs, that energy is in the form of heat. In LEDs, the energy comes from ...	[ "The microwave primarily heats polar molecules (such as water) in the food. If the moisture content of the food is not homogeneous, the heating also might not be. Also, the intensity (power) of the microwaves vs position in the chamber can vary quite a bit. Newer microwave ovens use a couple of techniques to help...
How do doctors start a non beating heart?	[ "You watch too much TV. Asystole, or flatline, is usually fatal. It is not considered a \"shockable\" heart rhythm. Doctors try to treat it with CPR and adrenaline, but that's generally unsuccessful. I found a study that said that after asystole occurred in an ICU, only 11% of patients were alive after a year and o...	[ "A safety measure. The chance is low but its still the responsibility of the vet to make you aware and informed of it. Be happy you have a vet who is covering all the bases." ]
What would happen to photons in a perfect sphere?	[ "Yes. Where \"eventually\" means an almost immeasurably tiny fraction of a second." ]	[ "Grab a tennis ball and a lamp. Turn off every other light in the room. Hold up the tennis ball. Half is lit, half is dark. If you are looking from the side (you can see the lamp and the ball) you can see some of the dark side of the ball. The ONLY way to see nothing but lit ball is to have the lamp directly behin...
Is there any historical overview of the book market? As in, is there any serious study of the history of people's reading habits, and the connection between their literary appetites and the political mood of the times?	[ "All of this falls under the heading of \"history of the book,\" which is a pretty well-developed and (arguably) currently booming sub-field of history. It covers not only the obvious stuff (printing press history and so on), but also how literary tastes change, how books circulated, how writing and reading habits ...	[ "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_...
the results of the NSA leaks from Snowden. What has changed from 2013, what were the results and what seems to be the future of NSA spying program.	[ "Yes it was a big deal, now at least people can't deny anymore that global surveillance is a thing, but the general interest in the whole ordeal gradually faded because of two things mainly: the evergreen \"if I did nothing wrong I have nothing to hide\" and \"they are doing it for our own good because, you know, t...	[ "Your employer takes money out of your paycheck throughout the year to pay your local, state, and federal taxes. The amount they take out, however, is just an estimate how much tax you will probably owe at the end of the year. There's no way for the state, local, and federal governments to know what you actually do...
How life on Earth and climate would be if our planet had 30% oceans and 70% land?	[ "I no expert but since the oceans/large bodies of water help regulate temperature is assume we would have much colder winter Temps and much hotter summer Temps. also the drop in temperature at night would be much greater ( like how deserts while hot in the daytime can also be dangerously cold at night)." ]	[ "If you want a slightly biased but accessible and interesting source for a lot of the factors that have played into this phenomenon, you should check out \"before the flood\" documentary by Nat Geo. It came out pretty recently and is really informative, while being pretty engaging. The best part is that rather than...
Why can paying off your student loans hurt your credit score? It seems like it would be a good thing.	[ "Part of a credit score is being able to prove you can pay off debt, which requires having debt to begin with. That’s why people who have never had a credit card or loan generally don’t have good credit. Without any debt, you can’t prove you have the ability to pay it off, hence the lower score. To summarize, lots ...	[ "One theory is that [we're too clean](_URL_0_). By keeping our kids clean and not letting them chew on UFOs (unidentified floor objects), we're either preventing their immune systems from building a proper \"database\" of pathogens early on, or we're preventing them from coming into contact with symbiotic species t...
Who owns copyright on The Bible/other religious books?	[ "Nobody. after 2000 years it becomes public domain." ]	[ "Basically from what I understand there's a few simple reasons. One, it's too make sure there is no risk of those people making money off of their IP. Two, that runs the risk of bad press." ]
What were the suicide rates in the Middle Ages?	[ "My specialty is rather esoteric, but I can tell you that it was perfectly acceptable among the followers of the Cathar heresy. They were not allowed to inflict harm on any being other than themselves. Additionally, there were only two acceptable ways on committing the act; the first was to starve oneself to death ...	[ "Follow on question: How often did rural sheriff's carry out capital sentences with no courts/appeals?" ]
Why does water extinguish the fire ?	[ "there's 3 key elements to a Fire: 1) Heat, 2) Fuel, 3) Oxygen. The Fire Triangle. Water is great at cooling down the fire and then turned into steam/smoke (surface cooling). The steam/smoke acts as a blanket to smother the fire (smoke cooling). With less heat, wet fuel and less oxygen the fire will most likely ext...	[ "Its entirely possible to make water chemically from hydrogen and oxygen. Take the hydrogen internal cumbustion engine, for example, takes 2 hydrogen and 2 oxygen atoms (H202) and with combustion, changes to water + energy (H20 + energy). This method of making water has actually been known for a couple hundred year...
Is there a reason or purpose for having fingerprints?	[ "All those grooves and ridges help our fingers achieve a better grip. It's as simple as that, really. As an example, take a cellphone and place it screen-side down on the back of your hand and then slowly rotate your wrist. You should find that fairly quickly the phone slides off. Now take the same phone and place ...	[ "To access additional functions - before mice existed (or at least before they were common), it was an easyish way to get your program to do things. Software often came with a bit of card that you could stick on top of your keyboard so that you knew just what each F-key did. _URL_0_" ]
Why is an orbit not an example of perpetual motion?	[ "the definition of a perpetual motion machine is not something moving indefinitely, but a system from which work can be extracted indefinitely. an orbiting body is not a perpetual motion machine because if work were extracted from it the orbit would decay." ]	[ "* it isn't very big, and would have to spin really, really fast to simulate 1g * spinning makes it hard to dock with * part of the point is to do experiments in a weightless environment." ]
[Biology] Do birds of a flock obey some sort of hirearchy? Is there an "alpha" bird or birds?	[ "Some birds do. Some birds don't. You may have heard of \"pecking order\" That comes from chickens, because there can be an alpha chicken. Sometimes things like geese may seem like they have an alpha male because he's flying in the front of the V, but that's not true. they take turns flying in the front because tha...	[ "The new Pirate Bay (Beach) is currently being hidden behind many proxy servers. When you go to the Beach all you download is a magnet or a torrent file. These files give basic information such as what is in the file and where to get it from. The downloads themselves are actually stored on peoples computers. All th...
What is the best way to memorize history facts?	[ "The best way I can think of studying history is to see it not as a pile of facts you should memorize, but as a long sequence of influences, movements and gradual changes, occasionally marked by a certain event which counts as an accumulation of several factors. Quantifying things helps too: There were four stages ...	[ "You can, you'd just be really bad at it. See: Campbell, S. S. (1990). Circadian rhythms and human temporal experience. In R. A. Block (Ed.), Cognitive models of psychological time, (pp. 101-118). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. I think where you're going wrong is that memory is not dependent on external sensory input. R...
Why isn't the public allowed to read the details of the TTP trade deal?	[ "It is an agreement made among those negotiating the agreement that it be done in secret. Negotiators argue that a trade agreement among so many countries could never be agreed upon or negotiated if everyone had a chance to read it because the debate would go on forever and it would never get to the point of being ...	[ "In addition to what others have said nations often sell export variants of hardware. These versions are usually less capable than what is in the selling nations' arsenals. When the US sells planes they will usually have a less capable avionics and radar systems. US tanks are sold with export armor that is less cap...
Does losing 500 calories on the treadmill equal to reducing 500 calories from daily intake?	[ "I would say no. Any physical activity that burns calories should also increase help metabolism, providing more efficiency in burning future calories, rather than just cutting intake. Edit: I understand that, 500 calories is 500 calories. My point is that I think it is better to burn than cut intake, as burning hel...	[ "You lose detail. How much detail depends on the resolution of the display. It is possible to have a high-resolution 4:3 display, however most 4:3 television displays have a low \"standard definition\" resolution of around 704×480 pixels (in the US/Canada) or 704×576 pixels (in most countries outside the US/Canada)...
Do viruses have a solubility limit in water?	[ "Im pretty sure viruses dont dissolve in water at all, they just float around. Theyre just so small that you cant see them. If you would add horrendous amounts of a virus in to an amount water im sure it would become turbid. I encourage you to look up the definition of dissolution." ]	[ "_URL_0_ Basically, any treatment program available to a developing country includes access to free condoms and early screening tests. If caught early and treated aggressively, it is possible to rid the body of HIV (_URL_1_). In developing nations, if a person or government is likely to take the treatments, they ar...
Were ancient people, such as Ancient Greeks, Romans, Egyptians, or the Han, aware that humans once lived in caves with stone age technology? Were they aware of human technological progression on that sort of scale? If so, how did they know, and did they keep record of it?	[ "The best example of a lack of understanding of the progression of technology is Classical Greek artwork depicting the Trojan War. The [Euphorbus Plate](_URL_0_) being a good example - Bronze Age-era soldiers are depicted using Classical Greek armour and weapons. Similarly, they concluded that Mycenae, a Bronze Age...	[ "Disregarding the argument about solipsism, or anything else anyone said, dogs bark at us when asking for food. They bark to go outside. Sometimes they just keep barking until we fix whatever they find wrong. They assume that we will be able to respond to their stimuli, so yeah, I think they do realize we are senti...
How does "home field advantage" work?	[ "While these other factors certainly play a role, the vast majority of homefield advantage arises because officials tend to be subconsciously biased towards home teams. In the book \"Scorecasting\", by L. Jon Wertheim and Tobias Moskowitz, the authors studied home field advantage and found that officials in every s...	[ "The movie was [Days of Thunder](_URL_0_) and he was talking about [Slipstreaming or Drafting](_URL_1_). As to your question, this depends on * The velocity of the cars * Geometry of both cars * Atmosphere status (temperature, rain, snow ... although they have very little effect at higher speeds) On the street it's...
[META] Would there be a way for a thread to be marked once it has an answer from a flared user?	[ "This has been asked before, and it's generally been regarded as unworkable because of the nature of how history works. There is rarely \"an\" answer to a question; any one question can have several good answers; and marking a question as \"answered\" would discourage further discussion. There also the related issu...	[ "hi! just a heads up that this sub is inundated with April Fools content right now, so if your post gets lost in the shuffle and is left unanswered, do resubmit when normal service has been resumed in a couple of days." ]
How do we know what neurons look like?	[ "We can look at them with a microscope. I mean they are small but not so small that you could not see them in an ordinary light microscope. To make contrast better they developed (already in the 19th century) a method to stain the samples so that the cellular tissue turns [black](_URL_0_)." ]	[ "Here's one as seen on an electron microscope: _URL_0_" ]
In the U.S. how can something become legal on the state level if it is not legal on the federal level?	[ "The city/county/state law enforcement officers are under no obligation to enforce the federal laws. If the state says it's legal, the only way to get busted is for federal agents (DEA, FBI, etc) to to it themselves." ]	[ "The word is that the Denver Colorado dispensary was funded by money received from Mexican drug cartels. The DEA got word through an informant and shut it down. Tldr: local$$= ok Cartel $$= fed jail" ]
How did Shia Islam move from Egypt to Iran?	[ "I think this is a misconception. The Fatimid Caliphate may have ruled Egypt, but the Shia population of Egypt was always miniscule. The Fatimids themselves were Ismaili, today a relatively minor sect even within Shiism. The largest Ismaili group today are the Nizaris, who were once the \"Assassins\", who broke off...	[ "I'm not familiar with that claim. Where did you hear it? I know Herodotus claims Phoenicians sailed from the Red Sea to the Levant coast. Is that what you're talking about?" ]
Tesseract 4th dimension	[ "The square doesn't have to be within the other cube. When you see a tesseract drawn... What you're looking at is a 2 dimensional representation of a 3 dimensional representation of a 4 dimensional shape. If you were to build one out of matchsticks and view it front on at the correct angle, you'd start to get the i...	[ "I used a rubics cube, glued it to fix and labled the sides accordingly to make an epsilon tensor. Did it for a birthday gift to a physics nerd, he was amused. Dunno if your prof would like it aswell or if he even recognizes it. :) Budget ~10$" ]
Why do Instagram filters make things "look better"?	[ "It's like concealer for pictures. It blurs things so you don't notice imperfections as much" ]	[ "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." ]
Relating to the recent Simpsons syndication purchase by FXX, why would a Fox owned company pay $750mil for a series to which the parent company already owned the rights.	[ "A couple reasons. 1. What the show sells for determine its value, so if they want to sell it to another network it's good to establish a value over a buck. 2. They can, if the accountants can pull it off, report the sale as income for fox and inventory for FXX, improving the value of both companies. AOL was infamo...	[ "The domain name system (DNS) is what computers use to create hierarchical names for IP addresses that they connect to. Remember all your friends' phone numbers? No; when you call them, your phone says \"Calling Bob\", not \"Calling 555-5555\". It's the same for websites in web browsers: replace Bob with _URL_1_ an...
Can rational numbers be represented in unary?	[ "By unary do you mean a system like \| for one, \|\| for two and so on? You could use a ratio. 1.5 would be \|\|\| / \|\| A decimal place wouldn't make sense because this system is not really base one, it works different than other bases because it's not positional---the strike always means one no matter where it is." ]	[ "Sure and in fact this has already been done. The Russians built a fully electronic ternary computer in the 50s. _URL_0_ Worth noting that DNA uses a Quaternary encoding of information (although there isn't really what we would consider to be calculation logic inside cells)" ]
Why do people say the size difference between countries means economic policies won't or will work less efficiently?	[ "The size argument is fairly weak. Scaling can be achieved. A large country could save more money by being efficient compared to a small country. A better argument against using small countries as models is the diversity of large countries. Rules promulgated for a large country may just not work in Alaska, New Mexi...	[ "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." ]
When your car displays the RPM's on your dashboard, what part does the actual rotation that the car gets this measurement from?	[ "This can come from several sources but usually a crank angle or cam position sensor. The crankshaft and camshaft are mechanically connected at a fixed ratio. The position of the crankshaft is important for this like spark timing and fuel injection timing. Basically the sensor tells the computer where each piston i...	[ "In cities and towns there are organizations whose job is to keep track of traffic on their roads and highways. These are usually radio or tv stations, but some larger cities (LA or NYC) have specially designated groups who just keep track of traffic. All of these places have databases that are constantly updated ...
Why can’t you eat or drink before surgery, and how does that affect emergency surgery?	[ "The main reason is because while in anesthesia, basic reflexes like coughing are suppressed, and if you throw up during surgery (because of the anesthesia for example) the food and liquids would go down your respiratory tract. This can be extremely damaging due to the acid and bacteria contained in your stomach. I...	[ "> If I know I'm going to be taxed, why go out and spend more money to be taxed less? Wouldn't it just be redundant? If you spend money, you get something for it. If you get taxed, the money is gone. If the government was gonna tax my $1 unless I spent it, I could spend it on a hot dog, and now I'm down one dollar ...
How can people overpay their taxes?	[ "Your employer takes money out of your paycheck throughout the year to pay your local, state, and federal taxes. The amount they take out, however, is just an estimate how much tax you will probably owe at the end of the year. There's no way for the state, local, and federal governments to know what you actually do...	[ "Well, if it were hypothetically possible... Say goodbye to roads, fire departments, police, schools...." ]
Why does cold water seem to quench thirst more than warm water?	[ "Here are some prior discussions you might find helpful: [one](_URL_1_), [two](_URL_2_), [three](_URL_0_)." ]	[ "Your body can only process a certain amount of water within a certain amount of time. Anything extra gets pushed through the system faster. Think of it like putting a bucket under a faucet and another bucket under a waterfall. Your body can only process one bucket at a time, so even though the waterfall will fill...
Did people living in Polynesia (and other Pacific isles) know about people on other islands, or were they largely cut off from each other?	[ "Yes, Polynesians (and Micronesians) were aware of other islands and often traded with them. There were certainly battles between islands/groups of islands and centralised political control of large groups of islands. [The Tu'i Tongan Empire](_URL_2_) is probably the most famous of these. In the Marshalls, as in m...	[ "Most neighborhoods built after the 1950s, ie subdivisions in the suburbs, are built all at once. Meaning they will all be built within a year of each other and use 1-5 building plans. Homes built in cities or on privately owned lots outside the city limits that are not a part of a subdivision are built as the owne...
What is the eighth dimension?	[ "Dimensions aren't numbered. You can say how many of them there are in a given space, and this number is usually called \"the dimension\" of the space. But you cannot say which one is \"the first\", \"the second\", etc. unless there is something special singling out specific directions." ]	[ "It's just bullshit. They're making up gibberish and pretending it's a real thing. Ignore." ]
Why do boys and girls have 'different' handwriting?	[ "It's from early childhood. Many theorize that girls develop fine motor skills, including handwriting, at an earlier age than boys. However, there's also undeniably some sociological factors at work - little girls are encouraged to draw and write more than little boys, so they practice more and get better. Practice...	[ "It's arbitrary. Before cars were invented, there wasn't a set way to go --- on a super-busy street in a big city, lanes would naturally tend to develop. But otherwise it was pretty much a free-for all, because horses are smart enough not to crash into each other 99.9 percent of the time. You can check out old pict...
If you had a 1000 mile steel beam and spun it such that each end was approaching the speed of light, what would it look like to an observer?	[ "I'll answer the OP since no one else is. Assume we're in space and we are looking perpendicular to the plane of the spinning beam. We'd see a partly transparent disc, getting less transparent as you got closer to the center. The disc would sparkle the most on the outside, as each atom that collides with the beam i...	[ "This question is pretty tough to imagine. Here's something that might help: Imagine you live on a [Möbius strip](_URL_0_). You're facing straight down at all times. You leave a ghost image of yourself as you go around the strip. Travel fully around and you get back to where you started, still looking the same way....
Why do people scream when they find a corpses or other body parts?	[ "Shock. Presumably we evolved to cry out when we see danger / shock, to alert others nearby." ]	[ "The concert, for these people, is an experience. If they just wanted to listen to the music, they could do that at home or in their car. At a concert, the music is live (and alive), it is louder, and the whole experience is different. Many people cannot contain themselves. They are overcome with emotion and ener...
if an old person gets a lung transplant from a teenager who dies, can they live a longer life because the organ is younger? (Longer than say if they got a persons lungs who was older) Same goes for a heart or liver etc.	[ "If we're talking about flawless transplant with no problems, then yes, people with younger organs have a certain chance of living longer. For example, if you have a new heart. But don't forget that your brain and the rest of your body will still be old and prone to various failure. And you can't transplant your co...	[ "You normally do not adopt the accent of the country you move to unless you move while you're still a child (when the language centers in the brain are still developing). Children who move before the age of 8 are likely to adopt the local accent of the new country/culture almost perfectly (if not just like a nativ...
Why people act funny after drinking alcohol? and why shouldn't a 5y old drink alcohol?	[ "Alcohol inhibits brain functions and lowers inhibitions, it basically causes you to act without thinking, all the time. You shouldn't give it to children because alcohol damages your brain and liver, and in children who's brain and liver aren't properly developed yet this could cause severe damage or death." ]	[ "First off any change in the chemical formula means there can be vast changes in reactivity and properties. As you gave an example of sodium and sodium chloride there is no relation at all between their properties. The second part is that your body has receptors which are a certain shape. This means only certain sh...
what's the difference between and engagement ring and a wedding ring?	[ "Engagement ring is traditionally the ring you give when you ask them to marry you. Usually has a diamond on it. Though this is beginning to change to other precious rocks as well. The wedding ring is traditionally rings that each wear that are exchanged at the wedding and then worn forever, etc etc. Typically th...	[ "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 mathematical constant, "i?" And, what is the importance of it?	[ "Complex numbers can be written using two notations. Polar which is a magnitude and an angle, and rectangular. Rectangular gives the magnitude along the real axis and separately the magnitude along the imaginary (i) axis. If you took both notations together, you'd see that the magnitude and angle in polar form exa...	[ "Think about things bouncing around. Imagine a box with a fan in it. Put 20 balls in ithe box. Now imagine a basket to one side just the right size for the balls. Turn on the fan. The balls jump around randomly. At some point a ball will fall into the basket. This will happen at a given rate which will depends on h...
How much credibility can be afforded to the theory that the Viking invasion of Britain was a kind of 'pagan crusade' or attempt by Scandinavian pagans at halting the spread of Christianity and 're-paganising' Northern Europe?	[ "That has very little, if not no, credence in the academic world. The Vikings attacked monasteries and churches because they were very wealthy (the church was one of the wealthiest establishments in Europe, if not the wealthiest) and were incredibly easy to attack, churchmen were not allowed or trained to fight, Vi...	[ "Leaving religion aside and just focussing on historical accuracy, let's remember that the Spanish Inquisition was a tribunal established by Spanish Catholic Monarchs and replaced the Medieval Inquisition which was under Papal control. Do you regard the crimes of the Inquisition as crimes of the Papal Catholic ...
Why exactly do refracting lens magnify electromagnetic radiation?	[ "They don't really magnify it like you might be thinking... They're not making something small into something bigger (ie., less energy into more energy). They're simply redirecting the things coming into the lenses into a smaller area. That's focusing." ]	[ "yes they do for the specifics of how rainbows are created [look here](_URL_0_) First of all, water droplets have a certain size. Frequencies low enough that have wavelengths that aren't much smaller than the water droplets don't \"see\" them as a single entity, sort of treating the whole rain as a single material....
Will the earth ever revert to Pangaea or a similar land congregation?	[ "Earth has had several supercontinent cycles, taking somewhere between 250 to 500 million years to go from supercontinent to many continents to supercontinent again. Pangea was only the most recent, with Gondwana before that, Rodinia before that, Nuna (or Columbia) before that, Nena before that, and several before ...	[ "Not an expert, but our CO2 concentration and global temperature used to be much higher than they are now. See the [Azolla event](_URL_0_). Until we get back to those conditions (which would be very disruptive if it happened), I don't see how we could have anything more catastrophic." ]
Why were the now-Canadian British colonies in North America not invited to join the revolution of the now-America British colonies?	[ "they were invited to join, they just didn't want to _URL_1_ _URL_0_" ]	[ "It is worth noting that Cromwell did take a number of months after The Humble Petition and Advice was presented to decide whether or not to accept the crown. It can be argued that this is evidence enough that he wanted the crown for himself, after all, he was King in all but name at this point. The fact of the mat...
How much of a bureaucratic nightmare was the procurement of ships and other equipment in the age of sail?	[ "The original six frigates built for the United states Navy in 1797 were originally designed to be built, rigged, provisioned and manned for 688,000 dollars. Then congress had to add $172,000, and pause the building of three frigates. Then the congress had to add $200,000 more for manning and provisioning. All told...	[ "War. EDIT: Oh. Super sorry about that. I mean that because of WWI the aviation industry made some massive leaps in a very small amount of time to try and get an edge in the war. Same with WWII. The technology they had at the beginning of the wars was obsolete once or twice over by the end. I have a source somewher...
Why is light a 'continuous' wave? Why isn't it damped? What keeps the electric and magnetic fields oscillating with the same max-amplitudes so far away from the source?	[ "What would damp it in free space? The energy of a classical light wave is proportional to its amplitude squared. Why shouldn't energy be conserved for a light wave in free space? Or else, where should that energy go?" ]	[ "For any one of them, really: How good is your memory? Or, how efficient would you say you are at storing scientific fact without constant review of the subject? I often feel like I am having to constantly review everything and I've always wondered this about top scientists." ]
How does the Hubble telescope stays on target for long exposure shot while traveling at 17 500 mph?	[ "The simplified explanation is that it is the telescope's center of mass that is in orbit around the Earth, so that the Earth is not imparting any torque on the telescope as it travels around the Earth. Therefore, the telescope keeps its alignment relative to a fixed outside point. This is a first approximation, o...	[ "The image you refer to is the result of an observation know as the 2dFGRS which stand for \"2 degree galaxy redshift survey\"- redshift being a measure of a galaxies distance. It's shape is like an hour glass because it was focused on the north and south galactic poles. They did that because the disk of our galaxy...
If an aluminum can can get recycled into another aluminum can why do we use plastic bottles?	[ "Several reasons: Recycling rates are not 100%, so some of that initially-more-expensive aluminium goes to waste instead of being recycled. And the recycling process itself is not perfect so you don't even get all of the aluminum of the cans that do get returned for recycling. You can enclose more drink with the sa...	[ "There is a lot of misunderstanding about the way nuclear power works, as well the risks and benefits of investing it. Nuclear power-related accidents always attract a lot of news compared to other accidents in power generation, which give the problems disproportionate attention. More legitimately, though, nuclear ...
Why is the dark side of the Moon not black or shadow like as opposed to the transparent look it gives off during the day?	[ "It is, but the sky is closer to you than the Moon so when the sky is blue there's blue light coming from the direction of the Moon, which is more apparent when there isn't strong light coming off the Moon itself. Here I'm assuming you're using \"dark side of the Moon\" to refer to the part of the Moon visible fro...	[ "Vantablack consists of a lattice of alligned carbon nanotubes of specific width to trap the electromagnetic waves of wavelengths specific to visible light. Within the layer of vantablack that is coasted onto a substrate the light continuously bounces between the nanotubes becoming more and more absorbed, of which ...
Are there any animals with any concept of "humor"?	[ "Not sure about humor exactly, but this [video](_URL_4_) shows rats \"laughing\" (after having their sound frequency lowered enough for human ears to hear) when being tickled and enjoying it" ]	[ "A follow up question: Is it possible that they are potentially as smart as we are, but the lack of hands, appropriate communication (etc.) limits their ability to develop their potential?" ]
How would we communicate with aliens if we ever find them?	[ "We constructed the [Arecibo Message](_URL_0_ ) to communicate with aliens. We used a lot of math, like making it 1,679 bits long because it is a semiprime (the product of two prime numbers). It can be arranged rectangularly as 73 rows by 23, to make picture, the 23 by 73 version is gibberish. Math = > Pictures = >...	[ "The same way that you and I do at home. Do not use too much toothpaste, and spit if you start to build up too much drool or foam." ]
How did the U.S.A. end up with the MM/DD/YYYY date format?	[ "I believe that the format was used alongside DD/MM/YYYY in Britain during the 18-19th Centuries until it was slowly replaced in Britain by the DD/MM/YYYY format. For example, if you can find any old copies of newspapers such as The Times, the header is written 'July 4th 1862' or 'Month/Day/Year'. Unfortunately I'...	[ "Humans have used many different number systems. Babylonians used base 60, a vestige of this being our measurement of angles in degrees. This is also a handy system because 60 is divisible by 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6- meaning you wouldn't have as messy fractions for thirds or sixths. This was likely the reason for the cho...
Why do genes want to reproduce?	[ "They don't \"care\" about anything at all. But if you have a gene that just tended to reproduce, an done that didn't, the one that didn't would die off and all you would have are genes that reproduce. This same principle goes all the way back to the stuff that floated around in oceans before \"genes\" even existed...	[ "Computers run on sets of instructions telling it how to run all the parts of the computer and build an interface so you can use those parts. Say you're following a recipe for a cake. Then you finish the cake and someone comes along with a better way to make a cake by adding another ingredient and changing how muc...
Why do auctioneers need to speak the way they do? It seems like 99% incomprehensible gibberish with some numbers in between.	[ "They want to tap into your impulse buying habit. They don't want you to think which your mind can't do as well when it's trying to process the auctioneer. It's also a way to increase the speed and thereby increase the pressure on you." ]	[ "I'll try an ELI5. Sound goes into the mic, sound gets amplified, sound comes out of the loudspeaker, the mic pics up that sound again from the speaker, and amplifies it again-in a loop. There is a slight delay in the electronics, and then a longer delay (speed of sound) in the time the sound goes from the speaker ...
Why do diabetes 2 patients sometimes need amputations??	[ "They are generally also at high risk to develop peripheral artery disease, where plaque deposition in the arteries of the limbs starts restricting blood flow. Eventually flow is too restricted to properly support the tissue, and it can die or become severely infected." ]	[ "Either they want it for themselves or they have a black market buyer. In general, they'd get caught if they tried to sell it to someone legitimate. Selling it to a specific person is far less dangerous." ]
Why can't I re-create something I imagined exactly?	[ "Need more XP in artistry and executing your vision. It takes a lot of time to get really good at that, and to be able to coordinate what you're thinking with how your tools work and what you can do with your tools. -Dali painted [this](_URL_1_) when he was 66. Here are some people next to it for [scale](_URL_0_)....	[ "How do you know you are perfectly recreating a sound in your head? Your head tells you it is." ]
Why does hair get dirty/oily overnight? Would it still get dirty if kept in a constant environment at all times?	[ "well it could be a few things. your pillow for one if you haven't changed your sheets recently has dirt and oil and such on it from sleeping on it before but also just because you are sleeping doesn't mean your body stops producing the oils and things that accumulate in your hair throughout the day. its also a bui...	[ "Because the alternator continuously recharges the battery as you drive. As the engine runs a belt makes the alternator operate like a crank flashlight to produce electricity. When the engine is off and the lights run, there is nothing recharging the battery." ]

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