Subset (10)

eli5 · 25k rows

Split (1)

train · 25k rows

query stringlengths 20 300	positive listlengths 1 1	negative listlengths 1 1
Do different animals have different types of acid in their stomachs?	[ "At least some do. Vultures, being a carrion feeder that has to deal with decaying flesh, have exceptionally strong stomach acid to deal with the more nasty pathogens that may have already started growing on rotting flesh." ]	[ "Did a little digging, from what I can tell, there are several banks throughout the world that house animal DNA, but some are trying to push for a singular bank to house all known endangered species DNA. Here's the article I found: _URL_0_" ]
Why can't billion dollar companies such as Facebook or Skype produce quality mobile applications when smaller developers can produce high quality applications with much less manpower/funding?	[ "A huge company like Facebook has hundreds of people who can say \"NO\" to an idea. This means that you spend months building consensus and negotiating with different departments to make everyone happy, or at least not piss anyone off. Multiply this by the number of design decisions that need to get made in order t...	[ "When you use you web browser to read a forum, basically what happens is: 1. Your browser requests the data for a particular url 2. The forum's server responds with the data 3. Your browser formats that data (HTML, CSS, and Javascript) properly to display the page ANY app that wants to can do steps 1 and 2, and sim...
Why Build Nuclear Power VS Renewable	[ "Nuclear power is way more efficient. If you build wind or solar for the same money you will not get the same amount of power, and maintenance will also be more expensive. Nuclear is at the moment the cleanest from of energy, it's cheaper than renewable, it's more reliable and it takes up way less space." ]	[ "What's the point of supersoldiers when everyone has enough nukes to destroy the planet in the event of war?" ]
How is the Dead Sea the lowest point on Earth ( 400m) if the Grand Canyon has a depth of 1800m?	[ "You are comparing depth with altitude - they are not the same thing. The Dead sea is the lowest point on Earth at an altitude of -400 m relative to sea-level. The maximum depth of the Grand Canyon is measured from the surface, in the middle of the continent. The actual altitude relative to sea-level of that po...	[ "To give a slightly different example that /u/Vampire_Seraphin's a current excavation off of the coast of Sri Lanka at a fishing village called Gotavaya is the first marine excavation of an ancient shipwreck in Indian waters. It is dated from the first century BCE/CE, which was the peak of the ancient trade, but as...
What is Black Body Radiation?	[ "A black body is an idealized perfect absorber of electromagnetic radiation. All of it, regardless of angle or wavelength. Including your wifi signal. Given that it doesn't reflect or scatter any of it, we call them black. What does it do with the radiation it has absorbed? It gets warm. Each object emits infrar...	[ "The Schwarzchild solution describes the vacuum outside of a spherically symmetric mass distribution. So if you drew a big sphere around a large enough part of the universe and removed all of the mass outside it, that would be sphere with radius smaller than the Schwarchild radius. But since there is mass outside a...
Why is fighting in professional hockey accepted by referees and overarching committees?	[ "Because it is actually necessary. Here is a scenario, player from team A is being a little bitch and drawing penalties by faking being tripped \"a la soccer/football\". Well in soccer you get away with it very often and is actually a part of the game strategies. In hockey team B knows whats going on even if the re...	[ "Star Trek has some battle scenes that has craft all on differing headings and axes. I think the Battle of Wolf 359, vs the Borg was a good example. But I agree. It seems that they always rendez vous eye to eye" ]
If a 4 legged table wobble whereas a 3 legged does not, why aren't we making more 3 legged tables?	[ "Stability is more important and while 4-legged tables wobble, 3-legged tables can tip over more easily." ]	[ "From Quora: Semi-oscillating turntable hitch'. Truck trailers are known by their hitch. The name is a contraction of 'semi-oscillating turntable hitch'. (Americans: turntable hitch = 'fifth wheel') Truck trailers come, generally, in two forms and they get described by their connectors, which are not interchangeabl...
Why does the universe form multiple galaxies instead of one super galaxy?	[ "Galaxies are gravitationally anchored by extreme masses like supermassive black holes at their cores. A \"universal galaxy\" would require a single core that is able encompass the whole universe within its dominant gravitational influence. Gravity is too weak to work so effectively across such universe-spanning di...	[ "All species have a typical \"litter size\" for when they successfully breed. It depends greatly on the amount of care the offspring require (this includes the energy put into the eggs). There is a trade-off between how many offspring you can make and the quality of those offspring [(Source)](_URL_4_) For example, ...
Can somebody explain to me the concept of shorting a stock like I'm a five year old?	[ "very simple. ... shorting a stock is like you coming over to borrow my xbox and promising to give it back to me later. now you sell it for a market price right away. a couple weeks later the price of a xbox has gone down and you buy one and return it to me. You profit." ]	[ "It's to differentiate between ELI5 posts and say, askscience posts on your front page. It also helps the answerer figure out how to word their post, as they will word it differently for an ELI12 or ELI18." ]
Implosion. How can engineers make buildings collapse into themselves?	[ "The middle collumn of a building explodes first, so all the tension of the building starts facing inwards, since the inner support is gone. Then the supports at the exterior are destroyed, the tension is facing towards the interior so everything will fall to the middle point. This happens in very quick succession....	[ "Wildlife photographer here. They do it with long lenses, and weeks of squatting in cold, damp nature blinds, waiting for the right scene to happen in front of them. I cruise around Yellowstone for days at a time with a 600mm lens looking for critters. Or if you happen to be Walt Disney, you cheat. For the 1958 wil...
Why do the animated characters on the PBS show Daniel Tiger pulse every few seconds?	[ "_URL_0_ I don't see any \"pulsing\". It is a stylistic choice to have the characters move a lot. Likely to catch and keep the attention of young children watching." ]	[ "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 do wavefunctions "collapse?"	[ "What you describe is more or less the [many worlds interpretation](_URL_0_) (MWI) of quantum mechanics, in which we do in fact think of the particle/observer wavefunction (actually it asserts that there is only a single wavefunction describing the entire universe). MWI does not invoke wavefunction collapse. The tr...	[ "Sean Carroll has a decent blog post about this [here](_URL_0_). The basic statement is that this is what you expect for a universe that is (at least very nearly) spatially flat." ]
Why is some military and police headgear designed to be worn with a "chin" strap that sits between the chin and the lower lip, not under the chin at all?	[ "I would imagine so if it gets caught it won't break your neck. Like cat's collars being elasticated so they don't strangle themselves in trees." ]	[ "For a four-four time signature, the conductor moves his baton down on beat one, to his left for beat two, to his right for beat three, then up for beat four. (Think six o'clock , nine o'clock, three o'clock , noon) Other time signatures have similar motions, but beat one (the down-beat) is always at the bottom of ...
How did couriers find their recipients in old times?	[ "Typically couriers were given information such as the name of the recipient and the town in which they resided. If the courier arrived in the town and asked where the person lived the locals could provide that information. People who were important enough to have couriers delivering them documents would be known."...	[ "It's usually professions that don't earn that much that get tipped by richer people. waiters and cleaners often earn the minimum wage. Taxi fares might seem high but after taking off petrol and other costs for the car, they might not be making that much if the firm they work for takes a cut too." ]
Can you provide an example of a social justice warrior?	[ "[Here you go.](_URL_0_) Social justice warriors only attack white christian men knowing they won't be attacked back. They aren't looking for justice just for an opportunity to attack a target which won't defend itself so they can enjoy being a bully." ]	[ "Robert kardashian (the OG patriarch) was a high profile lawyer who was a part of OJ Simpsons defense team. Then he died of cancer, his wife remarried and his daughter fucked a c list celebrity and released the tape of it." ]
If I buy a software or a pc-game and upon installation I decide that I Do Not Agree with the EULA can I return the package and have my money back?	[ "Usually, the EULA will state that if you disagree with the it, take it back to the store for a refund. Usually the store will refuse the refund as you had to open the package to read the EULA. At this point, you can do what others have done: Get a lawyer and force the issue or accept the loss ... good luck. For ...	[ "Because they would get sued. The legal system isn't like some kind of beep-boop robot that overlooks totally obvious loopholes. Any company that claimed \"No, we were really advertising the endorsement of Bill Gates, plumber, from Bumfuck, Nebraska.\" would get laughed out of court. As /u/Snewzie pointed out with ...
Why if I bend me knee at a certain angle and lift my heel up, while keeping my forefoot down, why will my leg continue to shake?	[ "In rock climbing, it is usually called sewing machine leg. When you are walking or running, there is a constant cycle of contracting and resting the calf muscles as you alternate legs. If you keep your heel slightly off the ground, often halfway between contracting and resting, the calf gets tired quickly and spas...	[ "Essentially it’s because computers are smart. Sound is a wave, with how high or low a sound is being determined by how many waves it has per second. More waves = high pitch. So when a recording gets played at a faster speed, be that a record or on a computer, more waves come out in the same amount of time, so ever...
Why are green screens green?	[ "The human body has pigments (colored molecules) of certain colors, such as red and brown. Human skin and hair doesn't have any green or blue pigments in it, so there's no way for a green or blue screen to be confused with the person standing in front of it." ]	[ "You want to easily be able to identify where the missing texture is, and a purple/black checkerboard is pretty damn noticeable in 99% of cases. And once one person used it, some more started using it, and it kind of just self-standardised" ]
What did the people and authorities living in Rome and the Papacy in the year 1000 call the colloquial language they spoke? Did they still call it Latin, or something else?	[ "They probably would have called what they spoke \"Latin\" or the \"Roman tongue\", but there was a slowly-growing awareness from ca. 950 on in the Italian peninsula that what they were speaking was not, in fact, Latin, at least among intellectuals. So, by 1000, you are almost certainly beginning to see a different...	[ "In addition to [Pompeiian graffiti](_URL_1_) and other [epigraphy](_URL_3_), much of which was quite crude, we also have the books for a number of comedic plays by [Plautus](_URL_4_) and [Terence](_URL_0_) and satirical poems by [Horace](_URL_5_) and [Juvenal](_URL_2_). And what were they like? Much like humor in ...
How pushing a magnet through a coil of wires creates electricity.	[ "The movement of the magnet (and thus the magnetic field) pulls the electrons into the conductive material (the coil of conductive wires)." ]	[ "Lightning doesn't propagate in a vacuum. In any case, lightning is the phenomenon of a current of charged particles propagating through a thin conducting channel within an otherwise non-conducting medium. Since the particles moving around have non-zero mass, they will never propagate at the speed of light, regardl...
Could we have reproduced with Homo Habilis?	[ "Homo habilis is roughly 2 million years diverged from modern humans (perhaps 100k - 200k generations). This is roughly comparable to [recent estimates](_URL_1_) of divergence between bonobos and chimps. Although bonobos and chimps do not naturally hybridize due to geographical separation, they [will hybridize in c...	[ "Humans also know instinctively. We just do sex education to ensure that it is done safely and responsibly. How do you think kids without sex ed are getting pregnant?" ]
How and why did Mao mobilise the peasants for a Marxist revolution, when a Marxist revolution would typically use industrial workers (proletariat)?	[ "Super quick and generalized answer but China was still mostly agricultural at this time; so the peasants were all there was to have for a revolution. By traditional Marxist theory China should not have had a communist revolution yet. As for industrial workers, one of Mao's main goals was to industrialize China (Lo...	[ "The Brunswick rifle was in service as early as 1836, and was actually still refurbished/produced until the mid 1880's! I'm pretty sure it wasn't the universal longarm, but definitely saw widespread use. It fired a .76 caliber ball, had two groove rifling. The Brown Bess \"New Land Service\" pattern was used until...
Why zero factorial (0!) is equal to 1.	[ "One way to look at it would be that factorials are a way to represent combinations of arranging a set of numbers. 1! = {1} = 1 arrangement 2! = {1,2}, {2,1} = 2 arrangements 3! = {1,2,3}, {1,3,2}, {2,1,3}, {2,3,1}, {3,1,2}, {3,2,1} = 6 arrangements So, thinking about it that way: 0! = {} = 1 possible arrangement o...	[ "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 energy is released from 2 Hydrogen - > Helium Fusion reaction?	[ "What isotopes of hydrogen and what isotope of helium? [Here](_URL_0_) is a Q-value calculator for arbitrary nuclear reactions (assuming ground states)." ]	[ "While there are some organisms with more than 2 sexes, like [Tetrahymena,](_URL_0_) no organisms combine more than 2 gametes at a time. Plants do something sort of close though. Most species of flowering plants use a process called double fertilization. When the sperm (delivered by a pollen grain) arrive at the eg...
Did the USSR have amusement parks?	[ "They most certainly did have them. One of the spookier parts of Chernobyl today is the [Pripyat Amusement Park](_URL_0_) which was scheduled to open before the nuclear disaster intervened. [/u/Minardi-Man 's answer](_URL_1_) covers a lot of the basics of amusement parks especially as the state authorities, especia...	[ "Is this what Doctor Strangelove was based on?" ]
As a male that is afraid of heights, why when up high on a ladder or peering over a high balcony, do I get a tingling sensation in my balls to go along with the fear?	[ "Well, I was intrigued by this, because I get the same feeling as a female. There's a muscle in your balls called the cremaster muscle, which is also responsible for pulling the balls up when you're cold, or dropping them down when it's hot outside. According to a [thread](_URL_0_) elsewhere on the Internet, both s...	[ "The cochlea in each of your ears is a spiralling organ that contains a bunch of tiny little \"hairs.\" When sound is transmitted from the air into your cochlea, it travels through the cochlea and depresses hairs corresponding to different frequencies. [The hairs further and further in the spiral](_URL_0_) corresp...
How does sweeping the ice during curling work?	[ "The sweeping generates friction which in turn melts the ice on the surface and creates a thin film of water that the stone glides over more easily enabling stone travel further. If the sweeper does this on one side of the stone more than the other then the direction can be influenced too." ]	[ "_URL_0_ The TL;DR version is that our throats are lined with special cells that use the wet mucus to trap the dust particles and little cellular \"hairs\" called \"cilia\" to transport them back up the windpipe and into the mouth, where we swallow them." ]
If productivity is up, and work week hours are not down, where does all the 'extra productivity' go?	[ "if i give you a new version of a tool that allows you to do 5% more work or i re-arrange your office/workshop in such a way you spend less time walking and more time working, your productivety went up without increasing your workload/time" ]	[ "Richard Muller's recent book \"Now: The Physics of Time\" is a great read that may provide you with fodder to appease your kid. Basically, his hypothesis is that the reason time flows from past to future is because of its necessary connection to space in the form of space-time. Because new space is being constant...
If a person with 20/20 vision put on a pair of prescription glasses, is the distortion they see what the wearer of the glasses uncorrected vision looks like?	[ "1) Have the person hold their glasses in front of a camera with one of the lens occupying half of the shot. 2) Focus on an object through the glasses lens, take the picture. 3) The remainder of the picture (outside the glasses lens) will be an accurate representation of the blurryness that the glasses wearer will ...	[ "The Earth is round, maps are flat. It's simply impossible to accurately represent the surface of a sphere on a flat surface. So the only way to do it is to stretch or distort some parts out. There are many different ways to do this, with different advantages and disadvantages. The common Mercator projection has th...
What would happen if Bill Gates withdrew his 80 billion dollars in cash, piled into a mountain of green, and lit it on fire? Where would all that money essentially go?	[ "The economy would shrink by 80 billion dollars. The government would likely make up for that by printing another 80 billion dollars -- like they do for all money that gets too damaged for circulation. Essentially, he'd be giving it to the government, with a small printing fee." ]	[ "If you're describing what I think you are, you're referring to budget surplus in a department. So, if I give you $10 to run a lemonade stand per year, but it turns out you only need $8 to run it, next year I'll only give you $8. So, to avoid losing money that you might want to use next year, you spend that $2 at t...
why are the Kardashians famous to begin with	[ "Robert kardashian (the OG patriarch) was a high profile lawyer who was a part of OJ Simpsons defense team. Then he died of cancer, his wife remarried and his daughter fucked a c list celebrity and released the tape of it." ]	[ "Follow up: How new/revolutionary was the concept of a magazine like playboy? Was it particularly noteworthy? Or are we just aware of it because it is the most successful magazine of its kind?" ]
A wheel is bound to the car by lug nuts, but how does an inflatable rubber tire stay bound to a wheel, especially under tremendous forces?	[ "The hole in the tire is reinforced with a steel cable. With air out of the tire, the tire store can slip these reinforced holes over the wheel. Then when the tire is filled with air the tire can't get off because the hole is smaller than the flange of the wheel." ]	[ "For ELI5, I would compare an airplane experiencing turbulence to a boat caught in a storm. Speaking in terms of dynamics, both air and water act \"fluid\", so if you can have \"waves\" in the water, you can have areas of more or less pressure and turbulence in the air as well. In the air this can be triggered by w...
How does the same model of device get software updates at different times during a rollout?	[ "Every device had a unique serial number. The device sends its serial number to the update server which uses it to decide whether the device gets an update." ]	[ "> surely they must be fairly similar to each other And that's where you're wrong; there's huge genetic diversity. The only thing cancers really have in common is uncontrolled cell growth. For example, [this paper](_URL_10_) examined the genomes of cancers from 50 different breast cancer patients and found 1,700 g...
Are all kinds of software theoretically hackable? Why / Why not?	[ "Theoretically, software can be made unhackable. In theory there is no difference between theory and practice, in practice the difference makes all the difference. In practice software is made for money, and to save money most of the code required to make a system work is reused from prior work. This reuse saves mo...	[ "There's a few ways, but it's all about how you deliver the gRNA and the Cas9 protein and your repair DNA (these are the components required to use Cas9 to cleave a certain site in the DNA). If you modify germ cells (like egg or sperm cells), then any progeny from these cells will have the modification in all cells...
Why do I have to increase microwave time if the quantity of food is increased (i.e 2 hotpockets instead of 1)	[ "Microwaves output energy, which heats the food. If you have the same amount of energy but more food, the food gets heated less. This is in contrast to the oven, where you measure the temperature inside the oven instead of the energy being outputted." ]	[ "Simply put for the same reason drinking water when you're not thirsty isn't as refreshing as when you're REALLY thirsty. Anticipating the bodies' needs doesn't trigger the same reward responses in the brain as fulfilling a need that is already present. Your muscles don't NEED to stretch right now, so you can't ant...
If I spin a bar magnet fast enough, will it perpetuate the motion by its poles being attracted to the 'tail' of the other's field?	[ "A magnet in this configuration will lose energy to [magnetic dipole radiation](_URL_0_)." ]	[ "Yes. That's why the second law is treated as a statistical law in modern times; it governs what will tend to happen, not what absolutely must happen every time." ]
How good was Union artillery relative to other nations at the time throughout the Civil War?	[ "WRT your questions about speed: doctrine created in 1856 by an artillery review panel, consisting of William French, William Barry, and Henry Hunt favored rigidly controlled rates of fire to approximately 1 round per minute. Hunt is reported to have considered firing faster than that to be a sign of cowardice, as ...	[ "I have been puzzled for a few weeks why I could not find any printed listings of all the singers in the Naples Royal Chapel, considering it was a pretty major music group through the early modern period, and boasted many distinguished singers and composers, such as Scarlatti, and Caffarelli. Turns out most of tho...
Is there a case in which a base unit to the power of another base unit (e.g., meters^kilogram) has physical meaning? What about logarithms or roots?	[ "Interesting thought. I personally can’t think of any cases, and I don’t really see how raising something to the power of another unit in this way could relate to anything in the world of physics. Will be keeping an eye out for other responses though" ]	[ "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...
What happened to local co-op in games? Aside from the Internet (of course).	[ "A local coop game requires more processing power to render the game from multiple viewpoints. As the last generation of consoles dragged on longer and longer, developers were having problems making the game continue to make the game look better and better while also leaving enough ram and processing power for the ...	[ "> Where was it when I was a kid? It used to just not get recognized as often, attributed to other disabilities or just labeled as \"retardation\" and other blanket conditions. Nowadays we have much better screening and more accurate tests so that we can identify it properly, which is why we now see many more diag...
Why is Cos(a) used when its the same thing as Sin((a)+PI/2)?	[ "For convenience, because it saves having to write out sin(a + & pi; / 2). Most of mathematical notation is shorthand for something. Even though the cosine function is the sine function with a phase difference of & pi; / 2, it's useful to treat it as a different function in many areas of mathematics." ]	[ "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...
What impact did the Wall Street crash of 1929 have on the Soviet Union?	[ "_URL_0_ The same question was made before on this subreddit. Many great awnsers there !" ]	[ "You might want to check out Saul Norman's Distant Friends: The United States and Russia, 1763-1867. Suffice it to say this isn't the first time that question's been asked and there's a reasonable number of articles on it. since it's actually an interesting thought. The two, for the most part, were rather friendl...
The vaccination war: Aren't the only people at risk those who don't vaccinate	[ "No. Vaccines aren't perfect. For example, two of the people who caught measles at Disneyland were vaccinated. They are very, very good, but just getting the vaccine does not completely eliminate risk. Also, there are some people who would otherwise take the vaccine, but can't for legitimate medical reasons. Those ...	[ "_URL_2_ columnist William Saletan waded into this issue several years ago with similar questions to yours. Here's an article posted AFTER his initial article and several followups, all of which can be reached via links within the article. It's an interesting journey with commentary from psychologists, statistician...
How can an unprotected 18650 Battery gas out by just contacting with a coin in your pocket while nothing happens if you scrape it accidentally against the contact of your device (e.g. a vape) you use it in? Or is this danger blown out of proportions?	[ "The entire case on your battery is a ground/negative. Only the top is a positive terminal. The contact on your mod only touches the positive terminal. A coin can bridge between the positive and the case." ]	[ "Sure. It happened to cigarette smokers for decades." ]
Why are grey hairs associated with stress?	[ "Hair goes “gray” (actually white) from internal production of hydrogen peroxide, largely when under stress. It basically bleaches the hair from inside out." ]	[ "[\"All around the Mediterranean there are wide stretches of beaches composed of crushed murex shells, silent witnesses to the geographical scope and longevity of the Phoenician dyeing industry\".](_URL_0_) It was all from a gigantic murex snail farm off the coast of modern day Lebanon, which was notably monopolize...
Were Syria or Egypt ever considered a part of Europe?	[ "If anyone has ever described it as Europe, I've missed it. Of course, it's possible, but I doubt it. Traditionally, going all the way back to the ancient greeks, Asia was the eastern side of the Aegean Sea. Originally just the area of modern Turkey(often mentioned as Asia Minor) but evolving into the entirety of t...	[ "Couscous is quite widespread in France: > Couscous was voted as the third favourite dish of French people in 2011 in a study by TNS Sofres for magazine Vie Pratique Gourmand and the first in East of France _URL_2_ Drinking chocolate comes from the Mayas and Aztecs. _URL_0_ Spain has appropiated Valencian paella, ...
Why is it in Netflix's best interest to hide all the categories and make browsing for something difficult?	[ "I'm pretty sure everyone referencing this shit didn't even read the [original article](_URL_0_) about it. They aren't \"hiding all the categories\", they developed an algorithm to categorize movies. Many of these categories don't even make sense, they only exist because the model tried its best to group movies tog...	[ "Imma answer your question, but first let me tell you about this time I watered the lawn on a warm july afternoon, there were clouds in the sky and childrens laughter.... ok seriously, who knows, maybe they just like to hear themselves type, or create an emotional connection to the recipe, perhaps they are just kil...
What's the difference between static electricity and ionising radiation?	[ "Static electricity is due to an increase in the potential energy in electrons (voltage). It's usually caused by friction or interaction of certain substances and is relatively low energy. Electrons generally aren't liberated in this process. Ionizing radiation imparts so much energy it literally knocks electrons ...	[ "There is something similar called the nocebo effect: if you believe something will make you ill, it will. This is what is seen in people that get a rash from being near a Wi-Fi router - whether it's turned on or not. It's not the Wi-Fi signal that's causing the rash, it's the belief. Whether the same is true for...
How do free apps with no ads (snapchat, instagram) make money?	[ "Generally speaking, they don't. Startups like this cruise for years on investment capital in the hopes that they can (i) sell themselves to a bigger company; or (ii) find out a way to monetize the service themselves. It's also interesting you ask, since Instagram (which was bought by facebook) is now exploring mon...	[ "They just changed their terms. They've done it a lot. People who don't read the terms thinks it means they can use anything you upload for anything anywhere, but it only applies to things that are uploaded publicly. Their new terms state that they're allowed to (for example) not delete your message you sent to som...
How do FHRs(Flameless Heating Rations) in MRE packs work?	[ "FHR's are essentially like rusting iron. But with a few differences. Instead of Iron rusting the FHR's use Magnesium rusting to generate heat. But this process on its own is too slow. To be of any use this process must be accelerated. In essence a catalyst is needed just like the catalytic converted in your car wh...	[ "The dental plaque on Neadnerthal teeth shows evidence of plant grains that have been cooked: > Here we report direct evidence for Neanderthal consumption of a variety of plant foods, in the form of phytoliths and starch grains recovered from dental calculus of Neanderthal skeletons from Shanidar Cave, Iraq, and S...
When a child is in the womb of a mother does that child have his own blood type or does he/she share a blood type with his/her mother?	[ "Children may have different blood types than their mothers. Normally this is ok, because the blood of the mother and fetus does not intermix. But in cases where there is some mixture the mother's blood may form antibodies against the fetus's blood, which can lead to a dangerous birth." ]	[ "During the colonial period, clothes were modified to simplify breastfeeding. Women's clothing of the time typically included stays (we would call them a corset today, but that's not quite the same thing). Stays were almost exclusively back laced. It was (and is) possible for women to lace themselves into their sta...
Could anyone recommend me a book on the history of the USSR (from its inception until its dissolution)?	[ "A History of the Soviet Union from the Beginning to the End is what my professor for Russia in the 20th Century assigned: _URL_0_" ]	[ "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_...
How is it that a bar of soap always stays clean? Is there a point, after use of many people with different germs on their hand, that a bar of soap becomes unsanitary and therefore counterproductive?	[ "The chemical composition of soap is both great at whisking away dirt and killing bacteria and other pathogens, so you don't really have to worry about the soap itself being home to too many nasty things. Additionally, whenever you use soap, you're dissolving and washing away the outer layer and exposing fresh soap...	[ "Ooch, this is a tough topic. We don't actually know exactly how SMBHs form. While we know that galaxies tend to have mass concentrations in the centre, so it seems likely that having all that mass in a small space will give you an SMBH, the exact process is unknown, and why some galaxies have SMBHs and others don'...
Why do antidepressants vary so much in effects, efficacy and side-effects from person to person?	[ "See [this thread](_URL_0_) asking the same question from a few years ago. & nbsp; Basically, SSRI is a class of many different drugs (Prozac is fluoxetine and Lexapro is escitalopram, for example) each with a different structure. This structure can affect how the drug affects you. > Also, is there any other cla...	[ "Basically they all start from the oil we pump out of the ground.All of these things are inside that oil. We then heat the oil in a large tube that has many different levels. As the oil heats up all the different parts become a gas at different temperatures and they settle in the level where the temperature is cool...
During Nazi occupations, why didn't Jewish citizens just denounce Judaism to blend in with the rest of the population?	[ "You couldn't really denounce Judaism, as you are Jewish by Birth, meaning when your mother was a Jew so were you. The Nazis went to all extremes so you had to prove (with birth certificates and copies from other registries such as the Catholic church's) that you were in fact not Jewish by blood. Whether or not you...	[ "This has essentially been answered by the preceding comments, but what hasn't been contributed is this: _URL_0_. Muster and enrollment records, transfer lists, honours lists, etc, for the period of 1730 through 1898. Worth having, OP, if you're writing or researching the topic academically. To succinctly summarise...
What's the difference between a war and a 'cold war'?	[ "The cold war was a period where neither side liked each other, but both were too afraid of the consequences to fight an actual war against each other (since both had nuclear weaponry). The cold war involved spies, propaganda, arms races, foreign coups, supplying aid to terrorist groups attacking your enemy, suppor...	[ "Dick waving contest. Despite being overly brusque, this is pretty much it. Plus, if this time proves to be different, you're ready." ]
If two objects depart each other in opposite directions going a little over half the speed of light each, would they be visible to each other?	[ "It will be redshifted, but only because the object is moving away from the source, not because of the source moving away. This is because the photon of light that departs form an object does not care about the velocity of the object it came from, but it will still be blue or redshifted by the velocity of the objec...	[ "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....
Time Crystals (yeah, they are apparently now an actual thing)	[ "If you have a quartz clock, it tells the time because when you push electricity through a quartz crystal, it vibrates. Count 32,768 vibrations and one second has gone past. The important thing is that this vibration requires energy (in this case from electricity). These scientists found a way to make a specific ma...	[ "if two natural metal deposits existed in the right lengths, shape and deposited close enough and if lightning hit the right spot I would assume you could get a natural TEA Laser. something like this [_URL_0_](_URL_0_)" ]
Why we don't feel a stronger gravitational force at different times of day.	[ "Because the gravity we feel is from the earth, not the sun. Our orbit is based on the sun, but our gravity is Earth's" ]	[ "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 ...
Is there any factual differences between toothpaste types?	[ "As the dental nurse explained, whitening toothpastes contain abrasive particles. Toothpastes for sensitive teeth use different chemicals. For example some use Strontium salts, others use potassium nitrate while others like sensodyne repair and protect use stannous fluoride. The way they work varies but in General ...	[ "All the other reasons people are giving are valid, but I think for the majority of people it's down to advertising, pretty packaging, and the idea that spending more will get you something that's better." ]
Were there Roman-Empire political "cartoons?" What other ancient political "cartoons" do we know about?	[ "If wall graffiti counts in this instance then yes, they did have political cartoons and attack ads in ancient Rome. [Source](_URL_0_)" ]	[ "Not really, the name \"republicans\" (picked in the 1850s) was a reference to the republicanism that Thomas Jefferson supported in his own republican party at that time. It came from a quote: > some simple name like 'Republican' [that] would more fitly designate those who had united to restore the Union to its tr...
Reading List of Fall/Transformation of the Roman Empire	[ "One which I would recommend is [Guy Halsall's Barbarian Migrations and the Roman West, 376–568](_URL_0_)." ]	[ "Just asked this in the other sticky, but maybe this is the better place for it: Does anyone have any good book recommendations about the Nigerian Civil War or about Biafra as a country?" ]
Is there such a thing as a graviton?	[ "Changes in the gravitational field propagate as gravitational radiation; if the source of a gravitational field undergoes a quantum change then the gravitational wave that propagates must also be quantized. That is a graviton. Whether gravitons can ever be directly detected by humans...that is less clear." ]	[ "> they have to be somewhere? A tidal wave has to be somewhere, but you can't determine its location more precisely that a few meters. For a ship, you could define it's center of mass and find that location very precisely, but something like a wave doesn't even have a well-defined shape." ]
What did palace life consist of for royal families at the end of the 19th century, and what did their households look like in terms of staff?	[ "Can you be a little more geographically specific? England and China are going to have pretty different royal households!" ]	[ "hi! there's lots of room for the musical historians to jump in here, but fyi, there have been a few related posts that you may be interested in: check this one out, it includes links to several more * [Classical Music currently has a stigma of being a luxury that the upper classes are able to enjoy. Was this alway...
CERN claims faster-than-light particle measured	[ "Since there are presently 5 threads on this same topic, I'm going to recommend moving to [this one](_URL_0_), with the largest conversation at the moment." ]	[ "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...
How do astronauts get enough air?	[ "The ISS atmosphere is 21% oxygen 79% nitrogen at 1atm pressure. Oxygen production is carried out by electrolysis of water in the station's 2 oxygen generation systems (ECLSS in the US Discovery module, and Elektron in the Russian Zvezda module). Backup is provided by oxygen tanks and emergency solid fuel oxygen ge...	[ "Here is a link to help. They basically have a tube that is separate from their throat, so they do not choke [click here](_URL_0_)" ]
How did denim become so popular?	[ "In 1849 when gold was discovered in California, the miners who flocked there to see their fortune just wore normal pants, and they wore out too quickly. An enterprising tent maker saw there was a need and started making very heavy duty pants out of the excess denim he didn't need for his tent making business. Th...	[ "1) IS there an increase in peanut allergies in the US, or is it just more public awareness?" ]
Why is it widely believed that torture is ineffective?	[ "Because it's an objective fact that torture is ineffective. Torture is good at making people talk. It's not good at making them tell the truth. It's only good at making people say things they think you want to hear, and things that they think will make you stop torturing them." ]	[ "You should read [this](_URL_0_) from PBS/Nova. One of the interesting scenarios is the Hagedorn temperature that appears in string theory. As you approach this temperature, as you put a given amount of heat into the system, it increases the temperature less and less. As a result, there is a limiting temperature th...
Flour in the middle ages	[ "I think they stored grain rather than flour. Flour is harder to store. Some people stored hard bread instead, but I've never heard of british hard bread so I don't know. The farms didn't usually have their own mill, so yes, then went to the miller every once in a while to get grain milled. Unrelated but interesti...	[ "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 is it that you can usually tell a person's gender by their handwriting/penmanship?	[ "Females' fine motor skills development earlier than males', meaning girls usually have better handwriting. Thus, we usually assume really good handwriting to be female." ]	[ "The shaft of the penis is made of three different chambers. The corpus spongiosum and two corpora cavernosa. If one of those chambers is longer than the other, it becomes curved. If the corpus spongiosum is longer than the corpora cavernosa, it will point up and if it’s shorter than the corpora cavernosa, it will ...
How can a U.S. President be elected if they would not ordinarily qualify for a security clearance?	[ "The qualifications to be president are enumerated in be constitution. They include being thirty-five years old and having been born in the United States. There's no requirements for a security clearance or a background check in the constitution, so it's not required. The presumption is that if the voters choose yo...	[ "This one has been pretty thoroughly debunked: _URL_0_ The gist is, that when you are a public figure, you are going to come into contact with a lot more people than the average person, and those contacts are going to be a matter of public record. If some random person I met ten years ago wound up dead in mysteriou...
How they build bridges, and how they build tunnels that go underwater	[ "For bridges, they usually build from sides into the middle so they meet each other. Like so: _URL_0_ For underwater tunnels, they'll build dams to hold the water back, construct the tunnel on dry ground, then take down the dams, letting the water flow back, covering the tunnel" ]	[ "The next time you're on a highway, look for pairs of embedded inductive loops in the roadbed. By measuring how long it takes a vehicle to pass between the two loops an accurate measurement of vehicle speed can be calculated. Since we know the distance to the next exit and the velocity of vehicles passing through, ...
why aren't ovens white on the inside? Since black absorbs heat the best, wouldn't that be the worst color?	[ "Black does not necessarily absorb heat the best. It absorbs light best. The color of different materials comes from what colors they absorb and what colors they reflect. White reflecting all visible colors and black absorbing all visible colors. The color spectrum extends in both ends. Heat at the temperatures you...	[ "Biologist here! Its a protection method by our body. As the UV radiation reaches the lower levels of our skin, it tickles melanocytes, cells that basically act like photoreceptors They detect the radiation and release Melanin, a pigment that browns our skin, making it harder for UV radiation to penetrate into th...
why does the moon sometimes look bigger/ closer and yellower or whiter	[ "Sometimes the Moon is closer and sometimes it is farther away, but this is not the cause of your perception. The change is very, very, small. Rather, your eye's ability to judge size is not very good without things of known size in the same view. Close to the horizon, where you can also see other things, it se...	[ "Point a flashlight at the wall and turn it on. See the small circle? Now, let's say your flashlight is delivering xyz power to the wall. So xyz power is landing in that circle, right? Tilt the flashlight in any direction. The circle spreads out across the wall doesn't it? But you didn't change the batteries or any...
Questions on the lethality of swords on humans.	[ "Based on what I was taught during stage combat training, it only takes around 2 inches of penetration in the torso to hit major organs, so thrusting the sword all the way through the body is probably more common in movies than in real life for a few reasons: It puts you in range for a counterattack, it ties your s...	[ "I don't think you would be making this post. because you probably wouldn't be alive. KY sensations would go out of business though." ]
I filled a form out that asked for my race. The only two options were "Hispanic" and "Not Hispanic". Why does it single this out?	[ "What was the form for? And what area do you live in?" ]	[ "[It's not always clear](_URL_0_). Generally, a species is a group of organisms that can produce fertile offspring -- babies that can go on to have babies of their own. A horse and a donkey are different species, that can breed and produce a mule. But a mule is almost always sterile, because its parents were too ge...
Can you gain more weight than the weight of the food consumed?	[ "I think you're taking some rules of thumb and extrapolating out as if they were established facts, I.e. that 3500 kcal surplus over TDEE definitively translates to one pound of weight gain. That's more of a guide than a hard and fast rule -- eating 3500 calories worth of olive oil is going to be processed differen...	[ "Below comment is not true, pruning isn't caused by your skin absorbing water. Not all poison can pass through your skin. It's just a matter of the chemical in question and how it interacts with the outer layer of skin. Water can't pass through that layer, but other chemicals might. If you could absorb water one wa...
Would my father have the gene for blue eyes?	[ "It turns out the genetics of eye color is more complex than is typically taught in schools. [HudsonAlpha put out this educational piece last year to help answer questions about our current understanding of eye color](_URL_0_). In summary, it seems there are at least 8 genes that contribute to eye color and althoug...	[ "Paternity test is done by collecting cells from the inside of your cheek, not by drawing blood. So no, you couldn't alter the test's outcome." ]
From where did the KKK draw the names of its ranks and titles?	[ "Initially, the Klan was founded in Pulaski as a place for local men to drink, socialize, and dress up in silly garb (among other things). Katz points out that the early Klan picked absurd and grand sounding titles as both a point of intimidation and as a tongue-in-cheek joke. Cheops1853 also makes a good point abo...	[ "Most of it is guesswork. Basically taking photoshop and trying to fill in the right colors. The original colors arent on the original film, so it has to be done digitally with programs, and people just figure out what the right colors were supposed to be, through looking at artifacts of clothing etc." ]
Why does the hormonal IUD cause menstruation to stop?	[ "The IUD contain the hormones known as Progestogens. The body produces these hormones when already pregnant. The body uses progestogens as a signal to stop the menstrual cycle so the fetus doesn't get flushed,. Because the user is not pregnant and the menstrual cycle is stopped, this prevents the release of a ne...	[ "Every time you make a copy of a cell, there is a chance for errors. For example when you photocopy a first print, it is pretty crisp and close to the original, but there are a few minor discrepencies. Now if you photocopy the copy, it gets more distorted, and so on until some letters get hard to read, it gets diff...
What's the difference between malignant narcissism and psychopathy?	[ "Malignant narcissism can fall under the category of grandiose narcissism which can also be termed things like \"psychopathic\", but there are differences between the two. Although they are very similar in terms of traits (such as lack of empathy), there is a fine line between malignant narcissism and psychopathy. ...	[ "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." ]
Why does unstable water in a cup calm and flatten as you turn the cup?	[ "Have you compared to see how fast the water would calm and flatten if you didn't turn it? You might have to have tighter control and better reproducibility on how you disturb the water in the first place." ]	[ "It means that physics, as we know it now, is actually a low energy solution to a more general high energy theory. The common analogy is the ferromagnet. Above a high temperature (the Curie Temperature) the magnetic domains are all randomly aligned. But as the ferromagnet cools, the solution will snap into an align...
What do IT people do?	[ "The most simple answer is they keep systems running behind the scenes so you don't ever have to see or talk to them, but there are lots of different types of IT jobs and everyone does something different. If you don't ever have a problem with your IT then your IT guys are killing it and you should send them donuts...	[ "nothing. ppl just have their heads stuck up their asses." ]
How does hypnosis work? Is it a myth and just acting when you watch a magic show or is it the real deal?	[ "Not a myth. It is an observed psychological phenomenon, and is an ability of the subject, not the hypnotist. People who can be hypnotized can be hypnotized by someone with little training. It is used to treat smoking addiction, nail biting, compulsive eating, stuff like that." ]	[ "Vaccinations never are 100% effective. They're very effective, but every person who is vaccinated has some small risk of catching the disease. But what vaccinations do, if enough of us get them, is they provide what's called \"herd immunity\". This means that enough people are protected well enough, that the vi...
Why are auroras mostly seen in high northern and southern latitudes?	[ "The Earth is a big 'ol magnet. In space, there is a constant onslaught of charged particles (often electrons and protons) coming from the sun, other stars, and pretty much everything in space. These particles are deflected by the Earth's magnetic field, and due to some weird physics stuff, often find themselves bo...	[ "Get a protractor, tape or glue a straw to the straight edge, and tie a weighed down string to the middle. When you get on the plane, look down the straw at a star that you can easily pick out from the night sky (hope you're travelling at night!) and is viewable from both hemispheres, and mark where the string hang...
How do you restart a liquid fuel rocket in zero gravity when the fuel is floating and not near the fuel intake?	[ "\"Secondary engines\" (the technical term is ullage engines) are often used for second/third stage ignition in orbital rockets, where the rocket is, after stage separation, briefly in pretty much free fall. These are small solid rocket engines that fire right before the engines of the stage they are attached to ig...	[ "A seed would be confused and probably pick a random direction to grow. Astronauts have special ways in which they help seeds decide which direction to grow. If it's already a plant, and then you took away the light, it would ultimately stop growing very quickly, but for a while it would continue growing the direct...
Why is one of our hands more dominant than the other?	[ "Yours might be. I have a hand that I prefer to use, rather than a hand that is dominant. I also have the advantage of being able to do most things with both hands. I write with my right, I throw with my left, etc. Im pretty balanced when it comes to using my hands... and it's great to throw people off by using the...	[ "> I mean whether you put your left earphone on your right ear or vice versa. I still hear the same thing. Not at all. If you have stereo sound on, and a train is coming from left of your screen to the right, the left earphone will play the sound louder." ]
When scientists predict the length of time until a cosmic event, are they predicting the amount of time until it actually happens? Or until it's visible on earth?	[ "Generally speaking we can't talk definitively about what we can't yet observe so people usually mean when _we see it_. For example [eta carinae\|_URL_0_] is expected to go nova in a relatively short time, anywhere between today and the next million years or so. However since it is 7500-8000 light years away it coul...	[ "> Why are the lanthanides (and actinides) down there? Because it's easier to print on a page than [this](_URL_0_). > Why are some masses in parentheses? Some large elements are really unstable and aren't observed in nature. Instead of putting a weighted average of the atomic masses of the isotopes we observe in t...
Is Aquabounty's Genetically engineered salmon really a threat to the natural salmon populations	[ "Environmental Impact Statements and Environmental Assessments are two different things. EIS are issued only if the EA finds a significant risk of environmental harm. The [latter has already been issued by the FDA](_URL_0_) in a draft version for public comment, and given that they also have a draft [Finding of No ...	[ "My inclination was to reject your teacher's assertion out of hand, but then I remembered the Eskimo Scouts, who I have a soft place in my heart for. [Here](_URL_2_)'s a bit of audio for you from NPR, and [here](_URL_1_)'s a text story from 1988. In brief: During World War II, Col. \"Muktuk\" Marston traveled Alas...
Are 'good germs' dying in your mouth due to mouthwash, what are the consequences ?	[ "Bacteria in the mouth are wholly responsible for the reduction of dietary nitrate to nitrite, which in turn is reduced to nitric oxide - this is very important for blood vessel tone and blood pressure. As humans do not possess a nitrate reductase enzyme, we rely on this relationship with oral bacteria. Use of anti...	[ "It's like weeding a garden. If you don't get the roots out, the weeds come back. Kill all the weeds and you keep a healthy garden, leave the roots and they come back. But with anti-biotics it survival of the fittest, the most resistant survive the die off and re-populate with a more resistant strain." ]
How do we percieve horizontal directions?	[ "It may be interesting to know that when in the absence of visual clues on the x axis, humans are actually really bad at this. I remember reading about a study where a scientists asked blindfolded people to walk, swim, and drive in a straight line, and in all cases they ended up making spirals instead. I just did ...	[ "You can, your brain is just really good at ignoring it, just like your nose is always in your vision but it never bothers you because your mind is used to it and doesn't see it as important information." ]
What has been going on between the Baltimore Orioles and the Boston Red Sox?	[ "A week or 2 ago, Manny Machado had a hard slide right into Pedroia's leg. Pedroia had to leave the game. Tempers flared. They threw at him the next game and Pedroia was caught on video telling Machado it wasn't him who said to do that. Fast forward to Monday. They're playing again and Adam Jones says he was called...	[ "I suppose it depends on what you mean by 'American'. With regards to the colonies that later formed the US, then the answer is no. If you include the colonies that later became Canada, then from 1624 to 1707, baronetcies were sold in the newly created Baronetage of Nova Scotia in order to fund the plantation of th...
Why did the swiss bank change the value of the franc and what effects does that have on the economy?	[ "The Swiss Central Bank has been holding the Franc/Euro Exchange rate at a 1.20 Francs per Euro minimum rate since 2011. Today they announced to no longer keep it this way, which made the rate shortly drop to 0.85 Francs/Euro, right now it's about parity/1:1. At the same time they announced to push interest rates ...	[ "Environmental Impact Statements and Environmental Assessments are two different things. EIS are issued only if the EA finds a significant risk of environmental harm. The [latter has already been issued by the FDA](_URL_0_) in a draft version for public comment, and given that they also have a draft [Finding of No ...
This article describes a 'diamond planet' several times the size of earth. How do we know what a planet billions of miles away is made of? How can we know the science is good if we can't actually verify it? What is the science behind astrogeology (if that's the correct term)?	[ "It's not an accurate representation of the actual paper. It's overstepping what we know. While we know it's around a carbon-rich star, we don't know the composition of the planet. We do know, though, the planet's mass and radius. Based off that, we can suggest possibilities of what structure would allow that sort ...	[ "They don't. There really isn't a good way to actually drill a hole in someone's head and check out their serotonin levels. Instead, they look at the symptoms, compare it to other cases, and then make a prescription. If the medicine works, great! If it doesn't, they discontinue that script and try something else. I...
How are colleges and universities allowed to handle drug cases without getting the police involved?	[ "They have the right to confiscate items due to contract. Under contract, you agreed to abide by the college rules for being there. They don't have any right to do anything with the criminal justice system, only their own rules that you sign that you agree to. You gave them the right. Colleges have a financial inte...	[ "To answer a little more specific from the perspective of a Californian and answering directly about PG & E: They’re simply going to have to pay a fine. Maybe someone higher up in the company gets a sentence. That’s really it. This isn’t the 1st, and it certainly won’t be the last, time that PG & E is responsible ...
What is the difference between a neurological disorder and a mental illness?	[ "This is a very good questions, but difficult to answer. A neurologic disorder is pathology affecting the central nervous system (brain and spine) or the peripheral nervous system - sensory (somatic and autonomic). Examples include - an ischemic stroke (dry stroke) occurs when blood flow does not get to a certain p...	[ "We'll be helping with an AMA on Monday for Dr Hannah Newton, alternately known as @17thCenturyMum on Twitter. She's just published the first book devoted to the history of recovery from illness, Misery to Mirth, and is an expert on the histories of medicine, emotion, and childhood, particularly early modern Englan...
Why are transition element complexes coloured?	[ "> But when the electrons jump back to the original energy state, do they not emit the same wavelength they absorbed initially? The energy can be lost as heat which happens in most materials. Or they can lose a bit of energy and then jump back to the ground state emitting a different colour. A good example is a mer...	[ "You want to easily be able to identify where the missing texture is, and a purple/black checkerboard is pretty damn noticeable in 99% of cases. And once one person used it, some more started using it, and it kind of just self-standardised" ]
Could airplanes save fuel by having support solar panels?	[ "No. The added weight would counteract any (small) savings in fuel required." ]	[ "Need more detail! Was the pilots voice being played through the speakers? If so, are your headphones wireless? Or did the headphones not cancel out the noise like you thought they should? Edit-- * If playing through the speakers, your headphones are wireless and the signal sounded fine: digital comm problem (im...
Hypothetically, if there were a man-made (solid) bubble of sorts around the Earth, would it need support beams?	[ "A [shell of matter](_URL_0_) around the earth would not be gravitationally bound to the earth, so any perturbation would cause it to change its position relative to the earth, and ultimately it would collide with the earth. Something would be needed to keep it in place. Mathematically, any point on the sphere wou...	[ "There's an amazing portion of Lucian's \"True History\" wherein the narrator's fleet gets swept up into the stratosphere: > About noon, when the island was no longer in sight, a whirlwind suddenly arose, spun the boat about, raised her into the air about three hundred furlongs and did not let her down into the se...
The "Straw Man" Argument	[ "a \"straw man argument\" is when you misrepresent your opponent's stance, and defeat it, creating an illusion that you defeated their argument." ]	[ "That ambiguously labeled chart, with no description as to what exactly is measured, nor how it is measured, and generously providing zero references, rears its literally ugly head on this sub periodically. Please help yourself to the FAQ section, linked on the right hand side, for the many frequently asked questi...
why have the most recent E. Coli outbreaks been in romaine lettuce (out of any other produce)?	[ "Romaine grows on the ground, cow poop fertilizes, eaten raw and only lightly washed. Water (rain or from sprinklers) can easily splash manure inside the plant whereas the other most popular lettuce (Iceberg) it just goes on the outside which is often peeled. Same reasons why Spinach (also popular) frequently has E...	[ "This passage really struck me from Fernand Braudel's book \"The Structures of Everday Life\": \"A lapse in vigilance, an economic setback, a rough winter, and they multiplied, In 1420, packs entered Paris througha breach in the ramparts or the unguarded gates. They were there again in September 1438, attacking peo...

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