query stringlengths 20 300 | positive listlengths 1 1 | negative listlengths 1 1 |
|---|---|---|
How big do people from "pygmy" groups get when raised with a post-scarcity diet? | [
"So it's kind of outside the scope of the effect of diet on genetically small ethnic groups - e.g. \"pygmies\"; but the post WW II economic changes in Japan are a classic case of a people who were stereotypically small, but only due to general dietary/protein scarcity. In the japanese economic boom of the late 1950... | [
"Evolution has shaped our preferences to help us survive and thrive, *in the lifestyle our ancestors had for thousands of years,* which is a farming or hunter/gatherer lifestyle. The desire to conserve energy, and only use it for the physically challenging tasks you had to do, was a good adaptation."
] |
Have humans always had acne? | [
"A better question might be have mammals always had acne? There are documented occurences of many different types of animals that also experience this. For reddit, here is a research paper done on Feline acne: _URL_0_"
] | [
"Typical, just after posting this I found out that one can easily make lye at home from ashes: _URL_0_ Anyhow, I guess we didn't know about lye all the time and soap has been around for ages, so the question still stands :)"
] |
Can you get a mental illness, without being born into one? | [
"IIRC, schizophrenia, generally comes on and develops in people in their late teens and early twenties. Otherwise, undetected nor suspected prior to that. My sister in law, after having a fairly normal childhood and young adulthood, was diagnosed when she was 33. mental illnesses, such as histrionic, borderline, an... | [
"This isn't exactly the answer to your question but I figured you might find it interesting. The nocebo effect: _URL_0_ when people start feeling side-effects of medication due to finding out about those side-effects."
] |
Why is orange juice opaque, but apple juice translucent? | [
"Apple juice is filtered, it would be cloudy otherwise although not as cloudy as orange juice."
] | [
"C'mon this is explainlikeimfive **Linux** - *Legos* - there are sets you can get or you can just build whatever you want. Might need a manual for some things. **Windows** - *GI Joe* - Everyone knows it and there are all kinds of cool accessories for it, but still a GI Joe in the end. Vulnerable to dogs and little ... |
Why do the Santa Ana Winds make people feel so ill? | [
"Maybe you have an allergy and the winds are blowing the pollen and dryness is aggravating it."
] | [
"I read an article a somewhere that said it was do the the \"roughness\" or randomness of the noise. As the fingers nails catch and slip it produces random variances in the amplitude and frequency of the noise. Our brains find the signal unpredictable and that somehow causes it the view it as a danger. There are a... |
Why are home solar panels considered such an ineffective solution to energy and environmental challenges | [
"Because they are very good at turning solar light energy into electrical power that can be used at this second in this building. But they are very ineffective in storing power for future use or sharing power with other buildings"
] | [
"Extrasolar planets are small and dim and really far away and their light is swamped by the light from their nearby stars. Existing telescopes for the most part don't even have the ability to distinguish the light from a planet direcdtly as a dot, much less map the planet. There is a proposal to devise a system to ... |
Which European colony made it's home nation the most money? | [
"India. India was called the \"Jewel in the Crown\" of the British empire. In the 1750s the British landed on the west coast primarily to trade spices and textiles, but the East India Company soon expanded beyond a mere trading post and eventually its governers ended up formulating governmental policies all across ... | [
"A woman named Frances Wright did something like what you are asking in 1824. In Memphis, TN she bought two thousand acres of land from Andrew Jackson and would buy slaves. On this land she set up a co-operative labor system where they could basically work off their price of purchase and then they would be set free... |
Why is it harder to keep your balance you close our eyes? | [
"There are 3 systems involved in maintaining balance. * Vestibular (Inside your ear there's fluid which kind of acts like a bubble level. Telling you when you're not leveled in a direction) * Somatosensory (A bunch of sensors in the skin, tendons, ligaments, and muscles which tells the brain what's going on. Imag... | [
"This is a more scientific answer than it sounds: it's all in your head. Try having a friend hold a pen there randomly half of the time. You guess when it's there, the more you guess the closer to chance you should get."
] |
How can it be said that Bill Clinton presided over 4 years with a surplus when the national debt increased every year he was President? | [
"Because expenditure was less than revenue which is the definition of budget surplus. 1,721,728 1,652,458 69,270 1,827,452 1,701,842 125,610 2,025,191 1,788,950 236,241 1,991,082 1,862,846 128,236"
] | [
"Products should never get cheaper unless the technology/process to do so allows. If you could buy a car today for $10k or buy a car tomorrow for $9k which would you choose? This is what causes the death spiral, basically people stop buying things today so they can get it cheaper tomorrow. Our economy relies on pur... |
What do people that upload torrents benefit from? Like EZTV do they do it for free? | [
"There isn't any benefit. People just do it because they like sharing, as well as the thrill of internet fame/popularity. It's the same reason that people here hunt for karma."
] | [
"The Taxes tanken from our checks are estimates. Sometime people pay too much or too little. When doing our taxes we figure out how much we really owed. Some payed too much and get a refund. Some paid too little and need to make up the difference"
] |
Why do newspapers hold political bias (and any other news outlet, for that matter) despite the fact that their job is to report fact, not opinion? What do they gain from this? | [
"The job of a newspaper is not to report fact. It is to sell newspapers. The reason they have political bias (apart from the fact that everyone has their own biases, and it's pretty impossible to avoid them no matter how hard you try) is because they can sell more newspapers that way. A right-wing bias will sell ne... | [
"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... |
If F=ma, and I'm accelerating (due to gravity) in a cast iron cart going down a hill so I can go off a jump, will I travel further/higher off the jump if there's a second person in the cart with me to increase m, since a is constant? | [
"An object does not \"have force\"; there are forces acting on it. F=ma says that the (net) force *being exerted on an object* is equal to the mass of that object times the acceleration of that object. What an object has is momentum. Force is the rate of change of momentum, so if the force being applied to you is l... | [
"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... |
Why does steam come out of water that's hasn't reached the evaporation point yet? | [
"It has reached it's evaporation point. Water evaporates at any temperature above absolute zero - even frozen solid as ice through a process called sublimation. It hasn't reached it's *boiling* point, which is different from it's evaporation point. Water still evaporates below boiling."
] | [
"The stingy appearance might be laminar air flow, which is characterized by smooth even air flow. Since the smoke is initially a higher temperature then the surrounding air there is a pressure difference in the \"air current\", these tubes of different pressures are called stream tubes. Think of drawing a bunch of ... |
Why is there such a stigma against smoking tobacco in the US? | [
"Enough people complained. There's no conspiracy here. Tobacco costs our healthcare system [billions](_URL_0_). Also, it's fucking annoying to us non-smokers."
] | [
"\"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..."
] |
Can you drown a wasp? | [
"I don't know about wasps, but I did a science experiment in high school where I learned that ants can remain submerged under water for over a week without dying. They just dry out and go on their way."
] | [
"Instead of draining the ocean, what about a cofferdam down to the ocean floor? Something like a giant tube all the way down so that you were at the elevation of the bottom of the ocean. Are you interested in whether we could breath there or if the pressure would be too high?"
] |
How are wooden bows so flexible without breaking while the same type of wood used to make a table (for example) would break if you flexed it that far? | [
"I don’t know if they make tables out of yew, but the geometry makes a difference. A table is a slab designed not to bend, but to hold up a load. A bow is tapered towards the ends so the flex is distributed in a way the wood can support. Many bows are laminated to increase this ability."
] | [
"[This is someone's doctoral thesis which contains information on the vibration of flat plates. On page 38 of the PDF (31 of the document), you will see some vibrational modes drawn for a flat plate. The higher-frequency AA mode ought to look familiar.](_URL_0_) While this is water and not a flat plate, the behavio... |
Did Albert Einstein’s professors ever regret their decision to not offer him a teaching position in their school? | [
"According to Issacson (Einstein: His Life and Universe), Adolf Hurwitz was the first person to nominate Einstein for the Nobel Prize. I guess that's about a good an apology as it gets. By the way, here is the full communication with Hurwitz including the plea from Einstein's father which also went unanswered. _URL... | [
"It's actually a popularized myth that \"scientists thought an ice age was coming in the 1970s\". [This PDF](_URL_2_) contains a study of all peer-reviewed literature from 1965-1979 concerning climate change. Of the 49 articles that predicted changes to global temperatures, 42 predicted warming, while only 7 predic... |
If you put a lit cigarette in an air tight container, and then reopen it in few hours, all the smoke seems to be gone. What happens to it ? | [
"smoke is a colloid of carbon rich particles in air. If it is confined in a glass bottle, the particles could coalesce and fall the the bottom, they could be attracted to the glass surface by the moisture there or with reaction free silica active sites. Other components of smoke such as steam/water vapour would sim... | [
"Think of your brain like a billion streams of water that flow over the surface of a rock. The more you use a certain stream, the more \"powerful\" that stream becomes by digging away that rock. Now even if you have a nice dug place for a stream, sometimes randomly that stream won't have needed to flow for a while ... |
Why is it considered rude to discuss income in America? | [
"Its incredibly rude in the UK as well. Its private information and can create... uncomfortable situations. Consider if you and John are working in a company. The subject of income comes up and you find out that John is making $10,000 more than you even though he does the same job. Now you feel undervalued, or that... | [
"> Obviously my question was biased and I was trying to prove a point As the sidebar says: > Don't post just to express an opinion or argue a point of view. Don't do this here. This thread has been removed. Try /r/changemyview or /r/politics."
] |
Why are fragrance commercials (usually women's perfume) so incredibly strange? It seems like it's always attractive people doing weird things. | [
"Well, we can't transmit smells yet. So how do you sell a smell to someone who can't sample it? You create an image of the smell, be it dreamy or sporty or sexy. And that's the direction a lot of designers and ad companies go with it."
] | [
"Many mating displays are a way of showing off how much extra energy you have to spend. Generally, having good genes means you hunt better and get sick less often; only creatures with strong genes can spend the time and energy doing a mating dance. Thus, by watching to see who does the best mating dance, potential ... |
Our ancestors started farming other animals for resources, so why didn't this happen with elephants? | [
"Elephants were used in agriculture (as work animals) but mostly they make for a very poor animal to farm for ivory. Elephants don't breed very well in captivity so every elephant you want to use has to be taken from the wild which is dangerous. Because you are constantly bringing in wild animals, you can only (at ... | [
"Hi OP, this is a cultural question, so it would greatly assist anyone considering answering if you could specify which culture you're asking about. For example, the name of a cultural group / country / geographic region, plus a rough time period. Otherwise, this question is simply too broad, as it encompasses almo... |
Gaussian Distrubition - What it is, and how it works | [
"The Gaussian distribution is the formal name for the statistic that it will be more probable to have a middle value than the max/min value. Simple case: Get two dice. Each die has a side from 1-6. So two dice has a minimum of 2, and maximum of 12. But there is only one way to make 2 (1+1) and much more ways to ma... | [
"You can find the gravitational field as a function of distance from the center of the Earth [here](_URL_0_)."
] |
If a CPU were to be overclocked to the point where it is not stable enough to run Prime 95, would that mean that it could give a wrong answer to a math calculation? | [
"Yes, in fact that is exactly what that program tests for."
] | [
"There is no *algebraic solution*, so you can only write down or calculate an approximate solution. She states in the video that a solution *exits*, because the the number is defined by the equation, and indeed as you point out the solution is exactly where the graphs of x^4 - 1 and -1/x cross. But you cannot calcu... |
ExplaintomelikeI'm5 what is the difference between 3G and 4G connections | [
"Simply put, the difference is speed. 4G connections support faster data speeds than 3G connections."
] | [
"Think of it as asking \"How can a push-mower and a riding mower have different speeds? They're both mowing the same amount of lawn.\" They're not saying the *data* is faster or slower. They're saying the browser *processes* the data faster. That is, it can render the web page you're viewing faster and possibly wit... |
Marcus Aurelius died 180 AD. Jesus died 33 AD. How come there are so many busts of Marcus Aurelius but only paintings of Jesus. Why aren't there any busts of Jesus? | [
"Hi, while waiting for an answer to your specific question, you may be interested in checking out our FAQ section \"[Did Jesus exist](_URL_0_)\"."
] | [
"The Ancient Romans certainly recognised being extremely overweight as unhealthy. As an example let's look at the Roman physican and philospher Galen; who was actually one of the earlist to record and treat clinical cases of morbid obesity. He classified overweight individuals as being either pachis (fat), efsar... |
If I drill a hole directly from one side of the Earth to the other, then throw my sister down it, what would happen to her speed and trajectory as she approached/crossed the dead centre? | [
"If the Earth was still and your hole was a vacuum, she would accelerate until she passes the core then begin to slow down, eventually stopping as she came out of the other side. Energy in = energy out. In reality though, she would slam violently into the side of your hole due to the Earth's rotation long before sh... | [
"Yes, an object could *orbit* around it. Assuming that an object with mass M is near the center of the pole, at a distance R, and that the pole is very long compared to this distance (L > > R), the gravitational force experienced by the object would be (if my calculations are correct): F = pi * gamma * m * M/(L * R... |
Why the video of the Hawthorne police officer shooting the dog keeps getting removed. | [
"Mods of /r/videos have a strict policies that \"witch hunts\" must be avoided at all costs. So whenever something like this happens, people in the comment start investigating and posting information about the people (in this case the cops) in the videos, and the mods shut everything down before it gets too big."
] | [
"Greetings everyone. In the few minutes this sub has been up, it's attracting sub-standard responses. Just a reminder of a few of the rules: * no responses covering events/conditions post-1994, per this sub's \"20-year rule\" prohibiting discussion of current events * no anecdotes * no speculation OP: your question... |
What's happening to your stomach when you feel nauseous? | [
"Nausia is just your stomach telling your brain that something is wrong, same as you feeling pain when you stub your toe. Its your stomach/intestines way of telling your brain \"Hey, something is wrong please be careful and give me a bit to sort thing back out\" if you stub your toe youll jump around, not trying to... | [
"There are little tubes inside of your ear that have water in them. Normally, they help you tell which direction you're turning. Try it! Close your eyes and sit in a chair, and have your parent turn you in a circle. You can tell you're turning, right? Even though your eyes cant see anything, those tubes in your ear... |
What's going on in Anaheim? | [
"TL;DR police did some bad things, had a really poor reputation in the area. The pot boiled over and people responded by assembling on the streets in initially \"peaceful\" protests. Large numbers of people are using this as an excuse to cause destruction to private property. Police are responding with a strong vi... | [
"Google Android has a feature that sends location data to the google servers, even if you have GPS turned off. If you use a Google Android phone, you can actually view your own data if login to Google and goto this site: _URL_0_ What Google is doing is fetching all this data that is sent from all the Google Android... |
Why does a car decelerate smoothly in 2nd gear or higher, but "see-saws" when doing so in 1st gear? | [
"When you use the engine to brake, you are essentially turning it into an air pump as it tries to draw in air from a very low pressure manifold. Additionally first gear has a very high gear ratio, and a much higher change in ratio exists between 1st and 2nd, vs. 2nd and 3rd etc.. This high ratio is there to make it... | [
"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... |
What are benign tumors and why/how do they grow if they aren’t cancerous? | [
"Tumors are excessive tissue growths in places which you dont normally expect and they are named after what they're made of (myoma: made of muscle; lipoma: made of fat etc). Of course there are other tumors named differently but i'm telling only this part to create a general sense. Malignity/benignity concept is us... | [
"When you take a pill it's not 100% the labeled medication. There are other ingredients that help it do its job and release when and how it is supposed to. Sometimes a medicine needs more extra ingredients to do its job so you end up with a bigger pill."
] |
How did the Native Americans of the plains deal with storms? | [
"One thing to realize is that the population density was much lower. If we take all of kansas as an example, only a few of the thousands of towns have been really devastated by tornadoes in the last generation. Thus if we take that whole area of kansas and assume a similar rate of large tornados, then the odds of ... | [
"It depends on how much money they had. In a one way migration from town to town, If they were poor or even middle class they had it on them in a physical way, either in cash, coinage, or mostly they bought supplies with it (wagon, oxen, rifles, etc) before they left. Later migrations they might have a check or a b... |
Is it possible to "silence" a gun like they do in TV/movies? | [
"Currently no. In fact, \"silencer\" is the less preferred term to \"suppressor\" because the device only lowers the report by at most 40ish decibels. The use of sub-sonic ammo helps to dampen the sound, but at the cost of bullet speed and accuracy. The most effective suppressors that achieve the most noise reducti... | [
"Your stereo is telling you what it's actually doing. The amplifier runs at full power, and the stereo reduces the output signal with a resistor, so it's reporting how many decibels of reduction it's applying, since it's reducing the power the decibels are shown as negative, and decrease as you reduce the amount of... |
How and when did the Irish people go from being considered an inferior people to being generally considered equal? | [
"If you're talking about the Irish in America, Noel Ignatiev's \"How the Irish became White\" gives you an answer (if not 'the' answer). I haven't read it since I was an undergrad, but his argument is essentially: in the nineteenth century, the Irish in America tried to undermine their status as a racialised Irish ... | [
"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."
] |
- How will the loss of 'net-neutrality' in America affect the rest of the world? | [
"The thing many people don't realize is that, at present, all threats to network neutrality are at the consumer ISP level. The way that ISPs and businesses buy and sell network connectivity, deliberate failure to deliver packets to/from *any* site would be a contractual violation with consequences. As such, it is t... | [
"The supreme court had previously held that making private copies available for use by others was legal in Canada (see BMG vs. John Doe). As such, there was no legal copyright infringement that copyright holders could use as leverage to get (the subpoenas required to get) ISPs to disclose the identities of the file... |
Do "higher thinking mammals" like primates and dolphins have names, like we do, for each other? | [
"Birds do: _URL_0_ > **Baby Parrots Learn Their Names From Their Parents** > > ... each bird has its own signature call that others use when addressing it and that the bird uses itself in avian “conversation.” Scientists have long wondered where these calls come from. Now, a new study of wild parrots shows that e... | [
"I initially was extremely sceptical, as the thread question is both wide-ranging and oddly specific. However, reading your explanatory post I got a much better idea of what it was you are looking for. You raise several valid points and I think the questions you are asking are interesting ones. But you mostly answe... |
What causes the effect of propeller blades to appear to slow down and then reverse direction? | [
"It's a trick of persistence of vision, check [this](_URL_0_) out."
] | [
"Light travels at different speeds through different mediums, and as the density of the mediums vary. The air is being heated at different rates between you and the horizon creating different air densities, like ripples on the surface of a river. Light from the horizon refracts as is passes through the different bo... |
Why are Mexicans half as likely to develop/die from cancer than US/Canadian citizens? | [
"Part of the explanation may be that folks are dying of other things first. Also consider that available information can only include cancer that is *diagnosed*. The rate, naturally, may very well be the same, they're just walking around oblivious to it. People need to see a doctor first for anyone else to know (a... | [
"Hey everyone! I'm back from conducting two months of fieldwork in Belize. While I cannot discuss the specifics of this season's fieldwork, I can talk a little bit about the area if anyone is interested. I was working in the Xunantunich/Buenavista/Arenal region of Belize near the Guatemala border. Cahal Pech was lo... |
At what speed would our eyes not perceive an object passing through our field of vision? | [
"This is a difficult question to answer since your eye does not work like a CCD with a refresh or frame rate per se. There is a small delay when after recieving a photon a retinal cell cannot recieve another (since the molecule needs to be \"recharged\"). I actually don't know what this time delay is perhaps a bett... | [
"> I don’t even know if this question makes any sense I’m just curious. It makes sense in that I understand what you're asking, but it doesn't make sense in that it's a meaningless question; it has no answer. A photon is always traveling at c in all reference frames, and to measure the passage of time, that can't b... |
If words or prestablished form of communication are required to define a term, how were human languages developed? | [
"If I point at a tree and say 'tree' you'll eventually get the concept. Just keep going from there. Me Tarzan, you Jane."
] | [
"There has been. Esperanto was designed after World War 2 to reduce the possibility of war due to miscommunication."
] |
What is it called when one's foot suddenly bends to one side, causing the person to trip or suddenly fall down, and why does it happen? | [
"It's called \"rolling\" or \"spraining\" your ankle. Your ankle joint is a rounded rod pushing down on a cup. Normally, if you put weight straight down on the cup, it will stay still. However, if the cup is slightly tilted and you put weight down on it, it would push the cup to the side until it falls over! Your f... | [
"Our brains didn't evolve with cars in mind. They evolved with, like, being hunted by a jaguar (or whatever) in mind. So your brain doesn't know what to do with a car. It thinks hey, we're sitting, our body's not really doing anything physical, there's very little activity or stimulus... this seems like a good time... |
Why does it take time for some people to have an appetite in the morning? | [
"I remember seeing this somewhere else, so let me do my best to recall the information: After not eating for a certain amount of time your body produces (or stops producing, this is the hazy part) a hormone that controls your hunger response. This is to keep your stomach from waking you up in the middle of the nigh... | [
"Seeds don't know when it is autumn, when it is winter, or when it is spring. What they do is react to various environmental triggers, such as temperature, moisture, available nutrients, sunlight, etc. They will remain dormant until the triggers they are \"programmed\" to react to reach a sufficient level to trigge... |
Why is "tattling" on someone a bad thing? | [
"It's not effective conflict resolution. Tattling defers cognitive thinking. That isn't to say that kids should 100% keep their mouths shut, but learning how to deal with issues on their own is an important part of their developmental process."
] | [
"If you started a company called Blue Bonnet's Banjos Emporium and it became the #1 brand for banjo and banjo accessories but you sold all of your shares then you no longer get any profits from the company, regardless of how successful it goes on to be. Your children, grandchildren, great grandchildren and so on wo... |
If heavy metals come from supernovas, are there regions of space where more supernovas have occurred so that rocky planets there have more abundant heavy metals? | [
"Yes, and the yields of different elements will vary substantially between different supernovae depending on the mass and composition of the star that explodes. I don't think this variation will ever be so severe that you'd get e.g. entire planets made of gold though. Heavy elements like gold will always be relativ... | [
"A long time ago in places like Greece, Rome and even before that in really, really long ago places like Sumeria, and Egypt people made up stories about the stars/planets and the pictures they thought groups of stars made. These stories were usually about beings they considered to be gods or demigods (the word demi... |
Why does orbital radius increase with increased velocity? | [
"TL;DR at steady state a circular orbit velocity decreases, but in order to get to a further orbit circle you can (depending on your burn plan) temporarily increase velocity to get there. The teacher said a \"short amount of time\" to distinguish from an equilibrium, where everything has settled down. Think about a... | [
"To clear things up: You want to transfer power over long distance. This Power is P=VxI (Lets use DC current for simplifying stuff) Now you want to minimize losses and/or material cost. With high voltage for the same Power P you have less current. This smaller current need smaller diameter in the transmission lines... |
How do sex scenes in movies work? | [
"They don't really stick it in if thats what you want to know. Its a lot like wrestling, they don't really punch. They kiss and grope but they usually cover up the female genitals, there are lots of way to do that, stringless panties for example. Body doubles are sometimes used if an actor or actress is not hot eno... | [
"They know their market. Who doesn't like the idea of watching some 18 year old girl get pounded? The funny thing is a lot of them probably aren't even 18. Who the hell cares? Who would be able to tell? Just give her some pigtails and a cheerleader outfit and you're good. They'd say 16 if it were legal. Also, this ... |
The current conflict in Yemen | [
"From what i've gathered, Yemen was effected by the Arab Spring back in 2011, they ousted their leader and his VP (Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi) took his spot. Unrest still continued with various groups including: The Hadi supporters, Al-Qaeda and The Houthi's (a Shia militant group led by Mohammed Ali al-Houthi). The Ho... | [
"Meta question : Bearing in mind, this is comparatively contemporary topic and a bit more pop culture than a lot of the subjects covered in this sub, what kind of sources would be considered acceptable?"
] |
How do headphones work? | [
"Headphones are simply 2 baby speakers that sit very near your ear.. Since they're tiny they require very very less power, are less loud and the dynamics of sound are more notable as they are very near your ear!"
] | [
"Essentially, yes. The reason your foot doesn't go through the ground is because of the electromagnetic interactions between matter. The fact that they can't collide means that the kinetic energy of your shoe is transferred. Some goes into the ground as heat, some goes back into your foot as heat and as reverberati... |
Did the Hanging Gardens of Babylon actually exist? | [
"In a book \"The mystery of the hanging gardens of Babylon\", author Stephanie Dalley argues that there were such gardens, associated with a royal palace, and using Archimedean screws to water tiers of plants, but that they were located in Assyria (Nineveh), and built by Sennacherib around 700 BCE."
] | [
"What did a \"successful\" balloon-bomb campaign look like in the imagination of Japanese planners?"
] |
Why do we consider adultery immoral, but most people are against criminalization? | [
"Adultery is immoral because of the breach of trust between individuals. There's no crime there. Lying is immoral, but it's not a crime (unless you commit perjury). Being disloyal to a friend is immoral, but not a crime. There's 2 distinctions you need to make: 1. There's a difference between civil law and criminal... | [
"\"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..."
] |
5G mobile networks and why they are considered such a big deal | [
"It's the next step in mobile network data transmission. There's new stories causing a big deal about it but it's the same as if Apple was releasing a new iOS or if Microsoft was releasing a new version of Windows. 5G is just going to be faster. Some experts say could be 20 times faster then 4g. Bonus fact: the \"... | [
"I thought it was explained pretty well by this old tek syndicate video _URL_1_ Definitely worth a watch!"
] |
What are the tall vertical shafts of vapor or whatever it is that we see the moment a atomic bomb has gone off? | [
"They're trails left by rockets. These were purposely launched before the detonation so that there is a visual cue to be able to trace the shockwave propagation through otherwise clear air."
] | [
"From a distance you're only viewing the largest features of the smoke cloud. Up close, you're viewing much smaller, faster moving features of that cloud. Due to the fractal nature of such an object these features are different sized but similar looking. Next time approach the cloud but be mindful to focus only on ... |
What happens to electrons in a flashlight ? | [
"The electron begins its life in the zinc anode of the battery, which, when it reacts with the KOH electrolyte, produces zinc oxide, water, and free electrons. The electron then travels through the circuit, meeting resistance at the filament. This resistance heats up the filament but doesn't (on average) slow down ... | [
"The formula E = mc^(2) holds only when in the rest frame of the particle (or system of particles). A single light particle has no rest frame, and so it's not the correct formula. The full formula, valid for all particles (massless or not) and in any frame is E^(2) = (mc^(2))^(2)+(**p**c)^(2), where **p** is the mo... |
What determines the direction something floats in zero gravity? | [
"zero gravity technically doesn't exist in our universe, as gravity attracts all masses to each other regardless of distance (just the effects are incredibly small at long distance). zero-g is the term used for perpetual freefall of something in orbit. You basically have such a high horizontal velocity that you are... | [
"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... |
Why do "nice guys" finish last? | [
"Mainly because they lack confidence. There's a huge bunch of social pressure preventing a woman from approaching you or escalating an existing friendship in to a relationship. If you lack the knowledge and confidence to communicate to a woman that you are sexually attracted to her, then you have next to no chance ... | [
"I notice a lot of these natural selection questions are a lot easier to understand if you question the fate of the opposite, in this case the answer becomes clearer if you ask instead \"What happened to the living things that didn't try their best to produce offspring?\" Well they had fewer heirs and eventually di... |
how does Major League Baseball's anti-trust exemption work, as how is that work differently than the NFL, NBA, NHL? | [
"A long time ago, A bunch of men thought that MLB was a monopoly. They sued the MLB for violating anti trust laws. The case went to the supreme court where the supreme court found that they were DEFINITELY NOT a monopoly. That decision stand even today. [source!](_URL_0_)"
] | [
"Ha, I wrote a paper on this once. If I had to boil it down to one cause... I would say its the fact that in the US railroad infrastructure is (mostly) owned by private companies, which is fairly unique in the world. The US has the most sophisticated and impressive freight railroad transportation in the world (thin... |
If a person is multilingual, would they "think" in their first language and then convert if necessary, or whichever language they are using at the time? | [
"Depends on proficiency. I translate in languages where I am less proficient and just think/respond in languages where I am more proficient."
] | [
"Let me give an example. Let's say you walk into a rose garden. You smell the roses, you notice the vibrant colors and recoil your hand when it brushes over a thorn. Your brain just processed an extremely high quality image, flipped it, fed it into your conscious mind, associated it with sensory data coming from t... |
Apoptosis vs. Autolysis? | [
"Simply put, apoptosis is controlled and intentional, autolysis is not controlled and unintentional. In autolysis, the internal membranes of the cell just kind of break down and the cell \"eats itself\" form the inside. This is a messy process, resulting in cell guts flying all over the place. It generally does no... | [
"Yep - Australian cricketer Phillip Hughes died last November when a ball hit his neck and caused a vertebral artery dissection. The artery was compressed from the impact, causing it to split and leading to a massive bleed into the brain."
] |
Why did silver come to be regarded as a precious metal instead of all the other grayish metals? | [
"The best metals to use for money/valuables are rare, durable, fungible, divisible, and portable. Silver is rare without being super-rare like osmium, corrosion-resistant, not very reactive, easy to melt down and mint into money from another form or melt into bricks, and is fairly light. It is also aesthetically st... | [
"Same reasons some some consider pink, purple and pastels to be \"girly\" colors. Or why traditionally men wore pants and women dresses, men have short hair and women long. Archaic gender norms."
] |
How do desert people like bedouins, tuaregs, etc, get enough water to live? | [
"A village well's. There is enough water deep undeground, just not at the surface. And most beduins today have satelite dishes and internet, So i think they are managing just fine :D"
] | [
"Hi, this question was asked not too long ago, I recommend you check out this link: _URL_0_ That should answer your question. In short, I believe you would nut suffer from dehydration in the traditional sense, but various other problems arise, which I suggest you explore that link for more info."
] |
How do we produce earwax? And what is its function? | [
"Wax is called cerumen, and is created by special glands in the outer portion of the ear called cerumenous glands. For the most part it Clair's like a sticky trap preventing bugs and particles and other foreign matter from entering the war causing infection or damage."
] | [
"This is a common trait in most mammals, not just humans. And evolution doesn't need a reason for anything, if it doesn't stop you from breeding then it moves on down the line."
] |
Why Will it Take Months to Rescue the Thai Boys Trapped in a Cave? | [
"Waters have risen since they entered the cave, as such they need to scuba dive out. The dive is so perilous in its flooded condition that only special rescue divers have traversed it so far. So you essentially need to train 11 year olds to dive and then line up specialist divers to accompany them. You could probab... | [
"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... |
Why are the Beatles considered one of most influential bands ever. | [
"*Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band* was the first album to include printed lyrics. First music video: \"Paperback Writer,\" 1966. In April, 1964, they had 14 songs in the Billboard Top 100, including the top five songs. First band to play stadium concerts. In the studio, they either pioneered or popularized Art... | [
"Not trying to be a hater but this sounds awfully like a highschool/college essay question which aren't really allowed in this subreddit. Just saying."
] |
Why do autonomous car companies do their testing in congested Bay Area? And not an island or isolated/gated area? | [
"They started in well regulated environments and did a lot of testing before the Bay area, however to fully learn how to drive you have to put the vehicle in the chaos of lots of other vehicles."
] | [
"Phones are already expensive. Using the absolute best parts available at the time to create some überdevice would cause the price to skyrocket and only a select few people would be able to afford it. It would probably cost the company more money to put something like this together than they could earn by selling i... |
Who designed/engineered ships in the late Middle Ages to early Renaissance Europe? Were they organized in guilds and do we know anything about anyone in particular or their innovations? | [
"More can be said, but previous answers by /u/jschooltiger answers some reasonably similar questions: [How did ship design, especially warships, work during the 18th and early 19th century? Was it centralised, like it would be in the 20th, with a central corps of naval architects passing designs out to the shipyard... | [
"You aren't typically looking at physical repairs (although the Space Shuttle did famously repair the Hubble Space Telescope). Most malfunctions are worked around by changing the control software or invoking backup or alternate control paths. Sometimes it is as simple as a reboot of the system. Since engineers on t... |
How did France lose to Germany so quickly in 1940? | [
"In a nutshell, the French's defense plan hinged on the idea that the German attack wouldn't come in through Belgium, thinking that the Ardennes forest would be impenetrable and too risky. This ignored the fact that the Ardennes was how Germany invaded France during WWI... So essentially the Germans broke through a... | [
"Can I ask a related question? \"The strategy of tension is most closely identified with the Years of Lead in Italy from 1968–1982, wherein both far-left Marxist extremists and far-right neo-fascist groups performed bombings, kidnappings, arsons, and murders. Activists have accused NATO of allowing and sanctioning ... |
how can companies file bankruptcy but still operate? | [
"Businesses are usually worth more as \"going concerns\" than as a pile of office furniture. Allowing the company to keep operating is likely to lead to a greater recovery for their creditors than forcing it douse itself in gasoline and fling a match. This is half of the point of having bankruptcy laws in the first... | [
"It's an excuse to be assholes. I live in St. Louis, which is where the Ferguson debacle was. Half of the stores there are closed. They do it to themselves."
] |
Why reddit loves Ron Paul? | [
"unlike most republicans, he seems to genuinely believe in limiting the size of government, not just where it benefits himself and his buddies, but all around. instead of merely pushing for tax breaks and deregulation, he's also against the patriot act, the TSA, the drug war, the wars in iraq/afghanistan. also, red... | [
"[**Search before submitting**, especially when asking about current events. The search box is in the upper righthand corner of the page.](_URL_0_)"
] |
What causes reflection on dry roads (usually on hot, summer days)? | [
"The reflection is coming off the boundary between the hot air layer directly above the bitumen and the cooler air above it. The hot air layer has a higher effective refractive index which enables total internal reflection of light rays at this boundary. Think of it as a reverse [fata morgana](_URL_0_)."
] | [
"Your car acts as a [Helmhotz resonator](_URL_1_), just like when you blow in a bottle, but the frequency is obviously much lower because a car is much larger than a wine bottle. You can also look [here](_URL_0_) for more comments."
] |
Men's Razors and Deoderant Vs. Women's Deoderant and Razors | [
"The difference between men's razors and women's razors is they put pink plastic in the injection mold with women's razors, blue for men's."
] | [
"Here's what I understand: Everyone in the world has a list of instructions in their body called DNA. DNA affects how someone looks, if they're a boy or girl, and other things. If you're a boy, your list is divided into X and Y. If you're a girl, your list is two Xs. If you're a girl you have two copies of the hair... |
Why are sone illnesses (i.e. chickenpox) relatively harmless when we are younger, but much more hazardous if we get them later in life? | [
"One of the things to remember here is that children are not just short adults. Many of the body systems work differently, and that includes the immune system. The immune response of the adult is, in some cases, more potentially damaging to the person than the immune response of the child would be. Also, children a... | [
"The bigger you make something, the weaker it gets, because as you increase the size, mass grows faster than strength. Say you have an ice cube that's 1 cm x 1 cm x 1 cm. That's one cubic centimeter in volume, and it has a footprint of one square centimeter. If you make this cube 10 times larger in all dimensions,... |
If Bees communicate by dancing. Is this "dance language" universe or unique among different hives and species. | [
"The dance language is universal but there are regional dialects. While the specific parts of the dance language are the same, such as the waggling of the abdomen to represent distance and the the angle of rotation to represent direction, the exact translation between waggles and angles to specific distances and di... | [
"I can't speak to quantum mechanics, but I know it is used occasionally in string theory. In *String Theory and M-Theory*, by Becker, Becker, and Schwarz, they take several approaches to show that bosonic string theory works in 26 dimensions. One involves deriving an expression which has a sum over all the integers... |
How are services like Uber or Lyft cheaper than a typical taxi service and more profitable for the driver? | [
"Lack of regulation. Taxi driver have to be licensed by the local municipalities, who set caps and charge a whole lot (a NYC taxi medallion can auction for over $1 million). Uber and Lyft drivers are technically limos, which aren't nearly as restricted. And since there is no validation and Uber and Lyft are just ma... | [
"Adding to other comments on weather modelling and data, it depends on where the raw data comes from. In Australia, the government weather bureau is not used by most popular weather apps - e.g. Apple weather, Yahoo weather and Android's default weather app. They use a service called Weather Underground, which crowd... |
Was 'The Prince' by Niccolo Machiavelli actually read by monarchs or their heirs? | [
"I don't know about reading and following it, but Foucault does mention in Security, Population, Territory, that The Prince apparently had more influence as a book that other writers of that time try to critique and the entire political thought and ruling was influenced by the thoughts based on criticising and bein... | [
"The only example I can think of is Saddam Hussein's son used one in Iraq. Uday Hussein kept an iron maiden in his torture chamber. _URL_0_"
] |
Does cancer remain specific to a person's DNA? For example, if cancerous tissue were transplanted from one person into a non-relative, would it take over the new body? | [
"Usually it would be recognized as foreign and not be able to replicate, as the immune system would kill it pretty quickly. There could be exceptions, in closely related people, or tumors lacking MHC markers, that could become contagious. I am unaware of \"contagious cancers\" in humans, however dogs have a \"Trans... | [
"Cell towers do in fact transmit the same information to every cellphone in range. However, the data is encrypted, so that only the correct phone can understand the information meant for that particular phone. Each phone gets a time slot where the data sent is for that phone, and each phone gets a time slot where ... |
Why does music sound so much better when you're drunk? | [
"probably the same reason that girl or guy looks really hot till you wake up next to them."
] | [
"Think of your vocal cords as if they were rubber bands. Brand new rubber bands (like when you are young) are tight and bounce right back after being stretched. Now think of an older rubber band (like when you are old), having being stretched over and over. It doesn't have the same elasticity it once had."
] |
why do mountains look blue from a certain distance? | [
"Thats due to the refraction of light in our atmosphere. Its basically the exact same phenomenon that makes our sky blue..."
] | [
"I'm guessing that you're mainly thinking of domesticated animals and not wild ones. In that case the answer is here _URL_1_ - The tl;dr = there is a coloring pattern (known as \"Merle\" in dogs) considered attractive in inbred domestic animals (think border collies). It confers a very high incidence of heterochrom... |
If the Universe is 92 billion light years across, how is it only 13 billion years old... given that it would take 46 billion years for stuff moving at the speed of light to get from the center (Big Bang) to the "edge"? | [
"A couple things - first, the observable universe is 92 billion light years across; the entire universe is much larger, if not infinitely large. Second, there is no \"center\" of the universe - the Big Bang happened everywhere. (Granted, there is a center of the observable universe, and it's wherever you happen to ... | [
"I believe you're referring to the Hubble Ultra Deep Field. The UDF was assembled from a large number of pictures, with typical exposure times around 1200 seconds (about 20 minutes), taken over the course of 2 sessions, in September/October 2003 and December/January 2003-4. The telescope had to be kept very stable ... |
What was the international reaction to Napoleon's death during that time period (1820's)? | [
"Emannuel Las Cases' [memoires of Bonaparte's final days on St. Helena](_URL_2_) were published in several languages in the early 1820s, sold incredibly well and were widely reviewed to critical acclaim. [Here's a series of excerpts](_URL_0_) if you want something more focused, and [here's a review] (_URL_1_) publ... | [
"Here's a paper by the Roper Center on political scandals (comparing Watergate to the Monica Lewinsky scandal): _URL_0_ In it they show polling from early 1974, about 6 months before Nixon resigned, and it is broken down to show responses from Republicans, Democrats and Independents. At the time, 57% of Republicans... |
How did the word Asia come to mean all the lands and societies east of Europe? | [
"\"Asia\" is from a Greek word, refering to the land to the east: > speculated to be from Akkadian asu \"to go out, to rise,\" in reference to the sun, thus \"the land of the sunrise.\" [source](_URL_1_) Here are some previous posts discussing the naming of continents [When and from who did each of the 7 continent... | [
"They probably didn't. [Sweet potatoes, a south american crop, are found in Polynesia](_URL_0_), and [chicken, an Asian bird, is found in south america](_URL_1_), both pre-contact. Also, [Polynesia DNA is found in south america](_URL_2_)."
] |
How long can whiskey age until it reaches a point that it will no longer change flavour as it ages. | [
"I don't think it would ever completely stop. It will extract less and less flavor from the barrel over time, but you also lose around 2% to evaporation every year, which will affect the concentration of the flavors."
] | [
"During the First World War the Central Control Board was established in 1915, which \"effectively nationalised the brewery and pub industry in areas where the efficiency of munitions factories might have been damaged by drunkenness among workers\" ( _URL_2_ ). It should be noted that Lloyd George, who was Chancell... |
What causes the stomach to growl and why is it so loud? | [
"Lack of food in the stomach leads to the Migrating Myoelectric Complex (MMC) via the induction of motilin. Motilin stimulates peristalsis from the stomach to the terminal ileum about every 90 minutes start 4-5 hours post prandial. It is believed that the MMC works as a cleansing mechanism to rid the GI tract of re... | [
"Imagine every time you eat something, a large burly man appears in front of you and dances a burlesque routine. Without fail, this goes on for several years. Soon you fail to even think that this rotund mustachioed man is anything out of the ordinary. After all, every time you even begin to take a bite of somethin... |
What actually happens when you swallow chewing gum? | [
"It goes into your stomach, through your intestines, and then back out of you fairly rapidly. It's no different than any other small piece of food you might swallow."
] | [
"Think of fiber like a paper towel. A paper towel can easily wipe away some amount of dirt/dust etc before they get stuck on. When it's collected enough, all you need to do is to throw the dirty towel in the trash. Your body can't break down fiber so it goes through your body and helps pick up everything along the... |
What did Precolumbian societies such as the Aztecs, Puebloins, or Incans use to light their cities/homes? | [
"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."
] | [
"not discouraging more contributions on this topic, but FYI there have been several similar questions, so I'm taking this opportunity to do a round-up. if anyone can remember more, please add links in a reply - thx [Why is South America poorer than North America today?](_URL_2_) [Why is Latin America so far behind ... |
Is this as worrying as it sounds? "Resistance to last-resort antibiotic has now spread across globe" | [
"It's pretty terrible, yes. R & D on new treatments, especially antibiotics that aren't based on tetracycline, mycins, or macrolides, is slow going and has significant maturation time. In the meanwhile, drugs that are used to treat life-threatening infections will become ineffective. Last resort antibiotics have ... | [
"Regarding expired medications that are still in the pharmacy: there are return services that will return medications back to the manufacturer for a credit or incinerate the drugs. An example of a company that manages these returns is Guaranteed Returns (_URL_0_). If you click the link, you will see a figure explai... |
why when you combine all paint colors it turns like grey? | [
"Okay so things have colors because they absorb all light except for the color they are, which is reflected resulting in what we see. If the pigments covered the entire visible spectrum and were mixed perfectly, the result would be black because it absorbs all of the light and very little reflects back. It's gray b... | [
"Imagine you are made of genetic soup. Some people have ingredients that just don't go well together and make the soup taste bad. But that's ok, because when you have a kid, we just take some of my soup and some of my wife's soup and pour it in together. So even though my soup has some bad ingredients, her ingredie... |
double-entry bookkeeping | [
"I'm not an accountant, but basically double-entry bookkeeping keeps track of where money came from (one entry) and where it went (the other entry). Since you can't invent money unless you're a counterfieter, the two sides have to add up to the same amount. A business would have income and expenditure. Income would... | [
"Commonly used letter combos had to be placed far apart to avoid jams on mechanical typewriters. The QWERTY layout became popular because it rarely jammed."
] |
How were carrier pigeons trained? | [
"Pigeons only go one way, and that is home. The pigeons for a destination were caught there, then brought somewhere else. For round-trips, they used food. I'm sure someone else can elaborate."
] | [
"Something similar to this was asked once before & u/intangible-tangerine [gave an excellent answer.](_URL_0_) As far as the explorers and international mail, as far as I know there was no real “system” in place. It was more just a matter of hand the letter to someone you trust on their voyage back, and say “here ... |
Considering that the US was still the only nuclear power at the time, what led to China's willingness to contribute men and materiel to North Korea during the Korean War? Were they never worried that men like MacArthur would get their way and launch a nuclear war in retaliation? | [
"In *\"We Now Know: Rethinking Cold War History\"*, Gaddis says that Mao acknowledged that Americans might use the atomic bomb against the Chinese, but he thought that China's huge manpower reserves would compensate for that. On the other hand, he also seemed to rely on Soviet nuclear capabilities (which were limit... | [
"I believe this was answered in another thread, so to make a long story short, the [Red Cross did most of the leg work of delivering mail to prisoners of war](_URL_0_), at least in the European theater. Mail would be routed through a neutral country such as [Portugal, Switzerland or Sweden] (_URL_1_), then sent on ... |
When I eat a thick steak, or leg roast or other large cut where are all the blood vessels? | [
"A big cut of meat comes from a large muscle. Big blood vessels (running to parts of the body other than that muscle) generally don't run through muscles (flexing the muscle would dramatically increase blood pressure), just the blood vessels that supply blood to that muscle (and the butcher cuts any exterior vessel... | [
"Depends on what level the study is at. Look at people who regularly eat lots of red meat and bacon, and compare it to people who don't If there is a difference in cancer rates between the two groups, something is causing a higher rate of cancer. Maybe work place exposure, food, lifestyle etc. Then take genetically... |
How come they don't charge more for popular movies and less for unpopular ones like they do for plays and music concerts | [
"When a movie is popular, they increase the supply of it. A movie theater can choose to devote 4 screens to it, instead of 1. This allows them to make as much money off of the movie as its popularity will allow. You can't do this as easily with plays, music concerts, and other things that are performed live, for ob... | [
"I would assume that its based off a variety of factors starting off with the cost of research and the estimate rate of return expected. The companies will want a quick return on their investment balanced off what people/insurance would be willing to pay and the expected prescription rate. So a common illness would... |
what's the difference between a police chief and a sheriff? | [
"Generally: A police chief is the top law enforcement official in a town or city. The chief is hired by the local government and reports to the mayor, city manager or other official or body. A sheriff is the top law enforcement official in a county, and is elected by the people of the county."
] | [
"Just a heads up: archaeologists study people, not dinosaurs. You want a palaeontologist. You might want to change the flair on your post."
] |
How do over the air transmissions (tv,radio) know how many are listening/watching to gauge the popularity/success of songs/programs? | [
"They don’t. However polling, streaming services, and in home devices like the Nielsen program allow statistics to be computed and extrapolated to the larger population set."
] | [
"Sometimes traffic lights may be interconnected with other traffic lights and communicate with a control that helps ease traffic. Other times they operate by themselves some even use gears kind of like a clock to predict when to change. Most modern lights are digital though. _URL_2_ Edit: I found this information f... |
How is anyone physically and mentally able to run a marathon? | [
"> I run a mile, and I already feel pretty tired. That's because you haven't trained to run long distances. Humans evolved to be able to run down prey in a process called [persistence hunting](_URL_1_). Our ability to shed heat by sweating (instead of having to pant), and the configuration of our skeletal system a... | [
"This video created by Vsauce 3 (Jake Roper) does a very good job explaining this: _URL_1_ I hope this answers your question. He also did another video on a simmilar line of - could you survive: _URL_0_"
] |
Why do most people hate Windows 8's Metro, and want the start menu back so badly? | [
"Change should increase the functionality of a product, not reduce it needlessly (sometimes simply for the sake of change). How many people's jobs at Microsoft depend on this constant need for change? People do not have this need, therefore there is a mismatch in needs. There's nothing Windows 8 or 10 can do that W... | [
"Horse meat isn't rare at all. You can get it in many parts of europe. Tastes ok too. Anyway, that's culture. The same reason we think that bacon and eggs is a breakfast food, and don't eat grasshoppers."
] |
Would it be possible to somehow correct for near/far-sightedness using a computer display, algorithmically or mechanically? | [
"Mechanically yes, algorthmically no. The reason not with rendering tricks is because making a display fuzzy is actually just lowering the information available on the screen but still sending focused light, a person with bad eyes gets this focused light of blurry information and just blurs it more. Mechanically, i... | [
"Totally winging this, but I'm guessing it just wasn't diagnosed much before reading small text became a part of daily life. If you learned to read when younger but need bifocals at 40, who cares if you already know everything you need to know?"
] |
Historians of Reddit, how do you feel about 'Popular History' publications? | [
"I think academic historians need to learn that it takes a lot more than \"endnotes rather than footnotes\" and saying in the introduction that you are writing for a general audience, for a book to **actually be written for a general audience**. (LPT: Not publishing with Brill, who charges $100-$300 per book, would... | [
"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 exactly is the ribosome an entropy trap if the molecules inside a ribosome are perfectly arranged? | [
"I think you're conflating the entropy of the ribosome with the entropy of the reaction being promoted. The ribosome expends energy to create negative entropy by binding the two substrates, going from 3 particles to 1 (decrease in entropy). This is prior to the occurrence of the transfer reaction. The positive entr... | [
"Many medications depend on the pathway of the disease. For example, diabetes insipidous (not the typical glucose diabetes) is characterized by excessive urination and thirst, which washes out lots of your ions and other important compounds. It has 2 causes. Either your brain isn't releasing ADH, a compound that pr... |
Could DNA decay affect a tardigrade if it spends longer time in suspension than the half-life of DNA? | [
"[According to this article](_URL_0_) most of the degradation of DNA is due to water and the rest is due to enzymes. Since metabolic activity is basically none during suspended animation its safe to rule out enzyme degridation. Now depending on where the tardigrade is during its suspension becomes the biggest facto... | [
"Most of those microbes (extremophiles) are actually in the Archaea domain and their membranes and proteins are [adapted](_URL_1_) to remain stable in extreme environments. For example, hyperthermophiles, organisms living at high temperatures, have membranes dense in saturated fatty acids to keep the membrane in ta... |
Why does McDonald's charge $3 for a McMuffin & Coffee, but $3.59 for just a McMuffin? | [
"This is a marketing trick. It does two things. One, it's get you in the habit of ordering the grouped items (for other things like meals, it cost more). You will subconsciously do this in the future out of habit. Two, if they add coffee then it sets you in the morning routing of going there. If you miss your coff... | [
"Suppose there are tax brackets of $100, $200, with rates of 10, 20 percent. The first $100 of your income is taxed at 10%. If you make a dollar, the tax is 10 cents; if you make the full $100, the tax is $10. Now, what happens when you bump your income up to $101. If we did it your way, the tax would be 101 * 20%,... |
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