Subset (10)

eli5 · 25k rows

Split (1)

train · 25k rows

query stringlengths 20 300	positive listlengths 1 1	negative listlengths 1 1
Why are most skyscrapers gray or blue and not other colors?	[ "Well, skyscrapers are covered by glass on the outside. Glass is light, resistant and allows you to have great views. If the sky is blue, the building will look blue. If the sky is cloudy then it will look gray. Look at a skyscraper when the sunset is happening and it will reflect a different color. Also there are ...	[ "For the cathedral, they wouldn't just be building a new roof, it will be a restoration process which takes time. It is also a cultural heritage site which means it's important to history and protected by many rules and laws. Any plan to rebuild should be reviewed and approved by the pertinent authorities and the p...
How do the strings on my guitar become sharper (increase frequency) when I do not play it for a while?	[ "Because the wood of the guitar is very sensitive to things like heat and moisture. It is possible that with a hotter, more moist guitar than when you tuned it last, would result in a sharper tone." ]	[ "I highly doubt that chlorine would do anything to help grow your finger nails. If anything, chlorine would make them brittle and weaker. I believe that the \"growth\" that people experience is an illusion. Because of the wrinkly skin effect, from prolonged exposure to water (chlorinated or not). When the skin wrin...
How Ron Paul is "winning states" that have already voted. Also, does he still have a legitimate shot at winning the primary using this method?	[ "From Wikipedia: \"Despite having early caucuses, Iowa, Maine, Colorado, Minnesota and Missouri were not penalized, because their contests did not allocate national delegates\" [Source](_URL_1_) Basically they had votes that didn't count, now they had the \"real\" vote. They did that because they wanted to matter m...	[ "_URL_0_ \"The Milwaukee protocol (MP), a procedure reported to prevent death after the onset of rabies symptoms, has been performed over 26 times since its inception in 2004 but has only saved one life. Overwhelming failure has lead health officials to label the protocol, a red herring.\"" ]
Why does the sound really hurt my ears when I open a can of pop in the car versus in a large room?	[ "It will sound louder in tfhe car because it is smaller and has hard glass windows, which reflect sound back towards you." ]	[ "You could have [tinnitus](_URL_0_). You should see a doctor if you want any further information, since asking for medical advice is not allowed in this forum." ]
Why are there so many types of vitamin B (B1, B2, B3, B6, B9, etc), but only one type of some other vitamins (such as C and D)?	[ "At one point we thought that there was just a single Vitamin B that you would get from your food source. As we later realized, it was actually several different molecules that do different things for your body, but because they often come from the same source (same type of food) there was that initial miscategoriz...	[ "For Infrared Remote Controls: The RC5 standard specifies a 5 bit address before the command is send. The NEC standard specifies a 16 bit address before the command is send. So by giving the different appliances different addresses, the remote control only works on one. The \"shortage\" of addresses in RC5 (only 32...
What are the physical characteristics of 'ground' that makes it a perfect electrical conductor?	[ "The conductivity of soil is as large as a few Siemens per meter. The conductivity of most common metals (including copper) is a few times 10^(7) Siemens per meter." ]	[ "Water is really great at transferring heat energy out of you (that's what the sensation of cold is, the transfer of heat out of your body). Air, not as good. & #x200B; Put 2 benches in a room at, say 20 degrees C. One is made of stainless steel, one is made of wood. & #x200B; Both of them will measure at 20 degr...
Can someone explain primordial goo/soup to me?	[ "I'm going to link you to wikipedia, but first let me give you a quick background. Primordial soup was the mix of substances that were present on early Earth. It is now believed that all living organisms can trace its lineage back to this 'soup.' This 'soup,' coupled with other factors, such as lightening, provided...	[ "Dave was actually in that room for a very long time. The Aliens made it look like a hotel room in the same way we make primate habitats look like jungles." ]
If "Warp Drive" is actually feasible, wouldn't relative velocities still be a huge problem after "warping" to another star?	[ "It's not actually feasible, nor is it actually happening. All those articles about cool 3D renderings that have nothing to do with what NASA is working on. There is a guy there who has made a few powerpoint slides and a picture of an optical table, but there are no plans to make a faster than light spaceship." ]	[ "We communicate with space ships by turning our message into radio waves, sending those radio waves through space, and having the space ship pick up and translate the radio waves into the message. Radio waves travel at the speed of light. Over very large distances, even something traveling at the speed of light can...
In regards to "nitrogen narcosis", how does the gas we inhale while diving suddenly become narcotic to us at great depths?	[ "Most gasses are lipid-soluble, meaning that they can diffuse into fats, which includes cell membranes. At standard pressure, the amount that dissolves into tissue is negligible, but at higher partial pressures that amount increases and eventually it's enough to interfere with the chemical signaling of nerve cells....	[ "Actual nebulas are nothing like their portrayal in movies and tv. The density of matter in a real nebula is so low that if we put it in a box and brought it back to Earth it would be considered a vacuum. Traveling within a nebula would bear little resemblance to being in an atmosphere, it would be very much like t...
How deaf people hear their own voice?	[ "Deaf people do not hear their own voice, assuming they are profoundly deaf, meaning they cannot receive any auditory information via their ears. In terms of the internal monologue, Deaf people think exactly like the rest of us do. Since language and the sounds we make are symbols, the things hearing people think o...	[ "I would suspect something like binaural recording would come into play. You can listen to the results here: _URL_0_" ]
How do you identify good acting in a movie?	[ "Its hard to define objectively.. I guess for me it comes down to whether or not you're left with the impression of having had a relationship with a character, or just observing an actors potrayal of a story. If by the end of the movie you feel like you have a genuine emotional response to a character, that's usua...	[ "I'm not 100% sure, but I feel like it's because the person who sang it perfectly is really only interested in getting all the notes and stuff correct. Whereas the other, just wants to sing it whether it's perfect or not. It's sort of the same with jazz music. There's white jazz, and there's black jazz... White jaz...
How did post pigeons worked?	[ "“Homing” pigeons do just that, they always fly home. So you’d raise pigeons in each town and then once they established a home “nest” they always fly back to it. Once pigeons reached adulthood they would be transported over land to various towns so each town would have a few pigeons from various others. If you wa...	[ "The same way they do now: using satellite and microwave transmissions. Using the internet is kind of sketchy, because of a lack of control of the bandwidth that can cause the connection quality to drop, which is why other technologies are preferred when feasible." ]
How do terrestrial animals get salt? Where does it occur naturally?	[ "Many types of moths obtain salts via puddling, in which they actively imbibe liquid nitrogenous waste of other animals. In fact, if you visit a butterfly exhibit during the summer, they'll land on you and drink your sweat." ]	[ "There's one from my area of study. A die called tekhelet was commonly used in Jewish ritual items, made from a sea creature of some sort. At some point due to the destruction of the Temple (and, by extension, the Jewish ritual apparatus) and the progressively smaller share of Jews who lived in the area where thi...
How can you colorize old pictures, if they are made with 0 color intensity?	[ "You have to add the color. The colors are not somehow extracted from the image. It's not that different from coloring in a coloring book." ]	[ "The original master negative is scanned at an IMAX facility and is scanned at 8K. They fix blemishes and small errors and then either project it digitally at 8K filling the screen or print it to IMAX film and then project it. I definitely know the 8K thing is legit as that's what they scanned Wizard of Oz at for t...
Why is the drinking age the US 21?	[ "_URL_0_ > The National Minimum Drinking Age Act of 1984 (23 U.S.C. § 158) was passed on July 17, 1984 by the United States Congress as a mechanism whereby all states would become thereafter required to legislate the age of 21 years as a minimum age for purchasing and publicly possessing alcoholic beverages. Under...	[ "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." ]
If a shower heats up your core body temperature and a pool cools it down why are you cold when you come out of both?	[ "You're soaking wet. The water on your skin evaporates, which carries away a large amount of heat, leaving the surface of your skin very cold." ]	[ "Look at it like a phone and charger. If you put a load of energy into the phone (more than it's rated for), it'll do serious damage almost immediately. If you use an underrated charger, it'll put only a little energy in, but the phone will use more than it's getting and eventually die. Heat is just a form of ener...
Why did insurance companies from the 1800s and early 1900s often have the word "society" in the name or call themselves a society?	[ "They were not corporations but we're owned by their policyholders. More commonly known these days as mutual companies." ]	[ "Most neighborhoods built after the 1950s, ie subdivisions in the suburbs, are built all at once. Meaning they will all be built within a year of each other and use 1-5 building plans. Homes built in cities or on privately owned lots outside the city limits that are not a part of a subdivision are built as the owne...
How does the data encryption standard (DES) from 1977 work?	[ "The message is broken into blocks of bits, which are scrambled and combined with bits from the secret key (the password, so to speak). The same secret key can be combined with the data again to undo the process. _URL_0_" ]	[ "_URL_0_ The wikipedia article is excellent and better than any of the answers in here so far. If you have specific parts you don't understand, ask away and I can help explain them to you." ]
Why are people in old westerns portrayed as wearing long sleeves and vests in the hot sun?	[ "I thought it was common knowledge that this would be for sun protection... for the same reason many people in the South working outdoors wear long sleeves and such." ]	[ "I can't speak for all items, but guns and uniforms were common war trophies. Soldiers were permitted to bring back captured small arms and uniforms and other similar items. A token form had to be filled out, but this was not always enforced. Generally, this was just a permission to possess the captured arm. Here i...
What are the squiggly eye floater things you see and why do you see them?	[ "They are actually commonly referred to as \"floaters.\" The technical name is \"Muscae volitantes\" , and the seeing of them is called \"myodesopsia.\" The reason why you see them is because the part of the eye called the \"vitreous humour\" is usually transparent. Sometimes imperfections can develop in it, and th...	[ "Although the theory involving refresh rate is a commonly held one, in this case (and most cases involving LCDs) the strange effect is caused by having the fine grid of pixels displayed on the fine grid of pixels in front of you now (your computer/tablet/phone screen). If you zoom in, the effect will change/disappe...
Could a vagina cook a chicken or quail egg?	[ "I'm not sure about 140 degrees, but an egg certainly would not cook inside of a healthy human. The average internal temperature of a human is under 100F (about 99.5). For a fertilized chicken egg to hatch, it must remain at about 99F for 21 days, and the result is a chick, not a hard-boiled egg." ]	[ "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." ]
During a nuclear disaster, is it possible to increase your survival odds by applying sunscreen?	[ "It’ll be about as useful as bringing an umbrella to a fire fight. There are five hazards outside of the fireball of death. Radiation; Alpha (free helium), Beta (free electrons), and Gamma (high energy photons), and Neutrons (high kinetic energy). Those four will burn you similar to a sun burn. The fifth and least ...	[ "When cells divide they make pretty much exact copies of themselves. Introduce radiation to the equation and the copying process goes screwy and the new cell is different. Rinse and repeat over and over and you end up with body cells which are completely different in shape size and function to what they were origin...
Calling 911 without a sim card - how does it work? and how can they block spam calls?	[ "a SIM card tells the tower who the call should be billed to 911 calls aren't billed. the carrier is required by law to route the call to the local emergency services. nothing stops you from spamming 911. you are an asshole if you do it from a SIM-less phone." ]	[ "I was curious about this as well, so I did some google-fu and found some results. This is all secondhand so take it with a grain of salt. It seems that the stations contract survey companies to get a rough estimate based on a sample population in the area. Arbitron is one of those companies. How do they do it? The...
why can we freeze sperm and have it survive but we cant freeze humans without killing them?	[ "A number of sperm cells die each time when freezing. You just need a small number to survive, and the survivors can still carry out the job. In fact, you only need 1 sperm cell out of trillions. Unfortunately, this doesn’t work for whole humans. 70% of a live human is still a dead human." ]	[ "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...
Why does waiting until you're older to have a baby increase the chances of it having autism?	[ "Women are born with all the eggs they will ever have, they aren't created month to month. Those eggs age and can break down like all the other cells in the body. Autism and other disorders happen because of problems of brain development, most often between parts of the brain that create links between the part of t...	[ "> If I know I'm going to be taxed, why go out and spend more money to be taxed less? Wouldn't it just be redundant? If you spend money, you get something for it. If you get taxed, the money is gone. If the government was gonna tax my $1 unless I spent it, I could spend it on a hot dog, and now I'm down one dollar ...
Why does my USB flash drive feel very warm after transferring information to my PC?	[ "Electricity warms the circuitry as it passes through it. This is why computers need cooling. A flash drive doesn't generate as much heat as many computer components so it doesn't need independent cooling. However the warmth is noticeable." ]	[ "Foodservice professional here: heating foods increases the general rate of oxidation(combustion) in the food product, this has several effects of note, not the least of which is the \"Malliard browning process\" which is the high temperature combination of a lipid, a protein and relatively simple starches that are...
Do bees know that they will die if they sting? If so, how do they prioritize when to sting and when not to?	[ "No. Bees don't \"know\" things the same way that humans do. They act pretty much entirely on instinct. Also, bees only die if they sting mammals. They can sting other insects and be just fine, and protecting the hive against invading insects is the reason that bees have stingers in the first place. They just got u...	[ "Adrenaline (aka epinephrine) has the effect of constricting blood vessels in the skin and superficial tissues. Notably it has the opposite effect in other tissues like heart tissue or muscles. Epinephrine causes the \"fight or flight\" response - get the body ready to run or fight. To do this, your body needs to d...
How does light energy become thermal energy at the atomic and molecular level (as in, how does sunlight make my car hot)?	[ "The other folks answering so far have the answer partially right, but are missing a bit. (Particularly because the amount of IR light emitted by a blackbody with the temperature of the sun is actually pretty small relative to the amount of visible light.) If only IR light were responsible for heating your car, bla...	[ "Although lipids are less polar than water, they do not entirely lack dipole moments and therefore they can, in fact, be heated in microwaves. While microwaves are not \"ineffective\" at heating food with high lipid content, they can be considered \"less efficient\" at heating molecules with a small dipole moment c...
How are giant piles of random shredded metal scrap recycled? Do they have a way to separate the different types of metal? Or can a random hodgepodge of metal be melted down and still be useful?	[ "There are several methods for sorting out the different metals. Some you can easily do yourself and some are best left to the pros. The most basic would be to separate ferrous and non-ferrous metals using a magnet. The magnet sticks to ferrous metals like iron, and not to non-ferrous like alluminum. Further sort...	[ "You're on the right track. Microwaves, as you'd expect, heat with waves. Depending on where you are in the waveform, you may get lots of heating or hardly any, so the food doesn't always heat evenly. Rotating platters improve this a fair bit, but it's still not perfect. This gets worse if anything's frozen. Liquid...
If my phone is near a speaker, its transmissions make sounds. Could someone record those sounds and figure out what my phone is doing?	[ "The noise you hear from your speakers when your cell phone is near is due to the time division multiplexing system. The phone is transmitting only during its allotted time slice, causing a pulsing in the range of human hearing that can be picked up by a speaker. There is no obfuscated audio data in that speaker no...	[ "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...
Is there an infinitesimal equivalent to the Dirac delta function?	[ "In statistics there are improper priors, which are similar. For example, the uniform prior over the real numbers. It has a constant probability density over the reals, but since it's a probability distribution, it has to integrate to one. This would be your w(t)." ]	[ "It can be represented by the Standard Model Lagrangian which can be shrunk to a (somewhat inaccurate, has too many h.c.'s) form that appears on [mugs and T-shirts](_URL_1_). However, those terms are all contracted forms of more complicated expressions, to write it out full you'd end up with something like [this mo...
Why do we take medication to lower fever/inflammation?	[ "Two reasons. One, people don't enjoy having fevers. They want to feel good, not sick, but they will settle for not having a fever even if it means they might be sick slightly longer (though I don't think in any significant way). Two, inflammation is not always a good thing. Often inflammatory processes might ...	[ "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...
Who is oldest warship still sailing? The H.M.S. Victory, or the U.S.S Constitution? I googled it, and couldn’t find any conclusive results, and I’ve heard both. (Also, I read somewhere that the H.M.S. Victory sank in a storm in 1744? Which dosen’t make any sense)	[ "HMS Victory is currently in drydock in Portsmouth and isn't in any state to sail. It is the oldest commissioned warship in the Royal Navy and in the world, since it was built in the 1760s. The USS Constitution, built in 1797, is the oldest commissioned warship in the U.S. Navy and the oldest seaworthy warship in t...	[ "Assuming a flat horizon in all directions... Yes, I believe there may be two regions on Earth which during the course of a year experience at least one 48 hour period without a sunset, but never have a corresponding 48 hour period of \"night\". These regions exist just north of the Arctic Circle and just south of ...
What makes a CPU well, a CPU?	[ "A CPU can be considered a \"jack of all trades\" processor. It packs many functions under the hood to be able to do all sorts of things. At one time before graphics cards became pretty much standard for playing PC games, they even did the processing for that. A CPU can and in most situations has other chips helpin...	[ "Modern televisions, and also cable TV adapter boxes, contain tiny computers that reassemble the picture and sound being transmitted to them before it can be played. These computers take a little time, and different models take different amounts of time." ]
Why are early Sci-Fi depictions of space ships a completely different shape than real space ships	[ "Early rockets did look like their depictions, [the V2 rocket looked like your standard artistic rocket](_URL_0_) Modern rockets are too different from these early designs. We no longer give them fins because they don't spend long in the atmosphere and we now stage most rockets, but for the most part a rocket is st...	[ "How much something weighs is proportional to its volume (length cubed). How strong something is is proportional to its cross sectional area (length squared). The end result is that if you just take, say, a normal car, and make it twice the size, it will be about 8 times as heavy but only about 4 times as strong. S...
Why are fish in the depths of the sea so ugly?	[ "Literally the eye of the beholder. Huge teeth are ugly to us because they are threatening. Lumpy skin is ugly to us because in humans it is a sign of disease, so it's also a threat. You notice those things on deep-sea fish because your brain compares them to your various templates of fish - tuna, trout, bream etc....	[ "My guess? When you're dealing with a lot of makeup, prosthesis, special effects its easier to hide flaws. You can see acne under makeup in high def, you couldn't really see that back in the day. Just a guess." ]
Are there any examples of immigrant groups actually bringing economic ruin to a country?	[ "If you stretch the definition of \"immigrant\", it's possible that some mass-migrations might count - perhaps the Partition of India, which was an economic disaster for Pakistan?" ]	[ "So, I don't know if you know this, but Blackstone did just what you are suggesting. After the housing crash of 2009, they went out and bought up homes in different cities. They put them all under the umbrella of a REIT (real estate investment trust) called \"Invitation Homes\" and then spun it out in an IPO a few...
Can someone explain what standard deviation is? (wikipedia is impossible to understand)	[ "Standard deviation is the average distance from the average. It tells you how spread out the data is. Let's say you decide to move, and you were looking at temperatures of various cities. An average over 21 C might sound pretty good, but that doesn't tell you the whole picture. If the standard deviation were 2 C,...	[ "The school is selling cookies to raise money. S & P 500 is a collection of the 500 highest selling students. Dow (Dow Jones Industrial Average) is the average of the schools 30 best students. NASDAQ is the schools largest bake sale (stock exchange), but students can't buy baked good from each other, it's done via...
Why is the Flint Water Crisis so hard to fix?	[ "Digging up and replacing a million miles of underground contaminated pipe is not easy. Nor is it quick." ]	[ "In short, marketing. Long answer, just repeat that phrase like you're [Steve Ballmer at the MIX '08 conference] (_URL_0_). Dasani (Coca-Cola), Aquafina (Pepsi), and co marketed the hell out of Bottled Water claiming all these health benefits and the \"purity\" of it and how much \"better\" it was for you compared ...
- What exactly happens to our eyes when we look at the sun with our eyelids closed (like sunbathing) does the sun pierce through and damage them?	[ "Your eyelids are really thin, it's like the top 2 layers of your skin thin (really thin). UV is pretty penetrative. That's why you get melanomas. The cells that turn into melanoma are like on the top of the second layer of your skin. When you look at the sun with your eyes closed, it acts like a cloudy filter that...	[ "Yarr! Yer not alone in askin', and kind strangers have explained: 1. [ELI5: Why do humans feel the need to wear clothes when the rest of the animal kingdom is naked? ](_URL_6_) 1. [ELI5: Why do we wear clothes? ](_URL_0_) 1. [When, why and how did we start wearing clothes? ](_URL_3_) 1. [ELI5: Why do humans, unlik...
How does encryption work and what makes it safe?	[ "Encryption is about taking data, scrambling it up so no one else can read it, then unscrambling it at the other end For symmetric encryption we both have the same key. If your data is this [big Rubiks cube in a solved form](_URL_0_) then the encryption key would be the instructions on how you scrambled it up. Sinc...	[ "Your employer takes money out of your paycheck throughout the year to pay your local, state, and federal taxes. The amount they take out, however, is just an estimate how much tax you will probably owe at the end of the year. There's no way for the state, local, and federal governments to know what you actually do...
What flips the switch in a bi-polar person?	[ "Seriously anything. My Ex-girlfriends dad was BP and he once went from happy and friendly to bat shit angry because my then GF made peanut butter cookies. Not like he hates peanut butter or cookies or any combination of the two it just set him off. Most people go through natural emotional highs and lows but BP peo...	[ "They don't know yet and they don't yet. They have kind of worked out brain chemicals causing it sometimes and pills to regulate the brain chemistry, but clearly it's not as easy as it sounds and it's different for different people." ]
Are humans designed to eat meat? I get that we have canines, but aren't our digestive tracts too long?	[ "Much like our mouths being somewhere between the mouths of carnivores and herbivores, the length (and structure) of our digestive tracts as compared to similarly sized animals is somewhere between that of herbivores and carnivores. If we had been designed to be herbivores, not only would we have another source for...	[ "I don't know for sure, but the configuration of the arm and hands (one bone, two bones, lots of bones) is ancient and originated in our fish ancestors. It is shared by virtually all vertebrates. The bones of our hands correspond to the lateral fin bones in ancient fish. The different bone lengths are what shape th...
When measuring astronomical distances do we take into account the distance the object has traveled during the time it took the light to reach us?	[ "Not usually, no. Most astronomical distances are rounded. Typically the numbers are so large that people just say things like \"millions of light years.\"" ]	[ "Everything on board the ship will experience time to behave normally. You can not experience your own time dilation, and neither can the camera. You can also say that you are in fact stationary and experiencing no time dilation, and it is the solar system that is moving relative to the ship, since there is no abso...
Why Does Water Make Absorbed Objects Significantly Darker?	[ "Educated guess: I imagine it has to do with the fact that light refracts more through water than solids whereas it tends to reflect off solid objects (obvious exceptions like glass etc aside). This would mean that a portion of the light hitting a wet object likely refracts or at least reflects at a more oblique an...	[ "This is an example of a negative after image illusion. Essentially the light receptors in your retina's cone cells are being over saturated with a single colour (or set of colour frequencies), those receptors then stop responding strongly to those colours but this manifests in your brain as a hyper-sensitivity to ...
Why do professional service companies like dentist, doctor or insurance keep regular business hours when no one can visit them?	[ "Because the business that they conduct is important enough that people will make time to visit them. They do not have to operate at the whims and schedules of their customers, their customers have to adjust to their schedules and whims." ]	[ "When the head of a large organization (CEO of a company, Dean of a University) leaves, there's usually lengthy, formal process for hiring his replacement. It usually involving forming a search committee, who identify and interview candidates, and then recommend a replacement. That can take months. In the meantime...
2000 years ago Troy was still inhabited, were the Romans aware that it was the site of Homer's poem?	[ "I believe Caesar actually visited the Troy of this age and specifically honored the city for several reasons, one of which was its connection to Aeneas. Aeneas was one of Ceasar's mythologic relatives. So it seems that they had some idea." ]	[ "Do you mind if I link you to some old threads? [Here's the section in the FAQ](_URL_0_) on the subject, and here are what I think are the best of the posts that I've written: [number one](_URL_2_), [number two](_URL_1_). The upshot is: \"it's not impossible that there was a Trojan War, but the available Bronze Age...
Why do saying or writing our thoughts out can help relieve stress?	[ "Once you express a thought, the brain “checks it off the list,” considering it a done deal even if you don't actually act on the thought you express. This is also why you might feel less motivated toward a goal after telling someone about it." ]	[ "To pay less in taxes. The government takes taxes evenly. When they take income tax, they have a set book that everyone follows. And then, you submit your write-offs/deductions based on your personal situation and they have you pay less in taxes. This is good for a lot of self-employed people, or contract workers w...
Does your body process alcohol calories(hard liquor) the same as it does food?	[ "The vast majority of ethanol is converted to acetate in your liver. The metabolism of the acetate then takes preference over the metabolism of fat, carbohydrates, and protein. So ethanol doesn't turn into (much) fat, but anything you eat while acetate is in your system - that you don't burn - will." ]	[ "Ibuprofen/Asprin work by reducing swelling (blocking the production of prostaglandins). They are good for pain that involves swelling (ear infection, twisted ankle, etc). They can damage your stomach if taken too much or too regularly. People with stomach and GI issues usually avoid these. Acetaminophen works in t...
What's so bad about CNN?	[ "Its Reddit. CNN is both good and bad in its own ways. Dont listen to what Reddit says (ironic) because they are biased towards a lot of things, and hate a lot of things." ]	[ "A neural network is trained with data. Whatever your \"purpose\" is, you represent it in the labeling you make on the training data. If you feed in data about the stock market and you label it with \"Should buy\" and \"Should sell\", you're making a NN that will tell you when you should sell and when you should bu...
How do streaming services analyze the success of their shows/movies?	[ "Netflix/hulu/shomi or all other good streaming services have an international database. It analyzes every movie and how many people watched it, and how many people rated it. The importance is more of public rating, rather than views. It also has an algorithm to group movies together for the \"For You\" section. Bo...	[ "It's a joke. I first heard it on Saturday Night Live when they did a skit called \"the change bank\". Basically it was a bank that gave you change for your money. Say you have a fifty dollar bill and you want 2 twenties and a ten, they can do that for you. At the end of the skit the bank CEO says, \"You may ask h...
How does the NLF tournament works?	[ "There are 32 teams in the NFL. 16 each in two conferences, the AFC and NFC. That's broken down into 4-team divisions. Each season, each team plays the other 3 teams in its division twice, and the rest of the schedule is filled out with remaining teams, mostly from within the conference. 6 teams from each conferenc...	[ "Guilty: I did it. Not guilty: I'm not saying I did or didn't do it, but you'll have to prove it. No contest: I'm not saying I did it, but I'm not arguing with the charges." ]
If a new digit(s) is introduced to our numeric system, how does that effect our maths?	[ "It doesn't, math works no matter what base system you use. Whether it be base 10, base 16, base 234...." ]	[ "I don't know where you experienced this but I do it all the time. I bought a tv one day. It came up to $500 and something. I handed the dude 4 100 dollar bills, and told him I was going to put the rest on a card. He punched in the $400 and got my new Total of $100 something. Then I ran my card like normal." ]
Why hasn't evolution rooted out suicide/suicidal tendencies?	[ "Evolution can only remove factors which are solely or mostly genetic. Suicide is not." ]	[ "For example, let's say that you have captured a prisoner of war (POW) from an enemy you're at war with. The POW is your leverage, your way of getting something in return from the other country (could be prisoners of war that they have). You could potentially trade. The POW's have some value as long as they are hig...
Why are there so many vastly different languages in India?	[ "(a) India is not as small as you think it is; it's roughly 1/3 the size of the United States. (b) before there were cars and trains, it was difficult for people to get from one area of India to another, because of (i) rivers that were hard to cross, (ii) thick forest and jungle, and (iii) mountains. (c) before the...	[ "When Mohammed died his followers disagreed on who should lead them....Abu Bakr, His senior advisor and father in law, Or Mohammeds Cousin and brother in law, Ali. Much as the christian church has split into dozens of related sects that each practice their own interpretation of the same religion....So has Islam. E...
Why have Americans and Canadians "lost" the British accent, and why has Australia "retained" it (in a morphed form)?	[ "Americans and Canadians didn't lose any accent. Their accent diverged, as did the accents in Britain. The reason the Australian accent is more similar to modern British accents than American and Canadian ones are is mainly because it was a more recent colony. It wasn't settled en masse until much later." ]	[ "Lower right corner, there is your tray, click on the icon that looks like a keyboard, and change the setting to US English, or just US. If you don't have this little icon, look for a little taskbar that can be anywhere on your screen, usually at the top. Change it to US settings. It happens whenever you change yo...
Why do people only see terrifying things during sleep paralysis, but never cheerful or happy things?	[ "The second you're even a little aware of your paralysis - enough to remember our dream-thouhts - you're experiencing the anxiety said paralysis creates. That anxiety is turned into crazy dream shit." ]	[ "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...
If neutron stars are made up of only neutrons, how do they have magnetic fields?	[ "Neutrons have their own intrinsic magnetic moments that arise due to the fact that they are made up of 3 quarks, similar to how an electrically neutral bar magnet can still have a magnetic moment even though its net charge is zero." ]	[ "They start out as a giant blob of gasses and space dust, Sort of like pizza Dough. As they continue to spin they flatten once again like pizza dough." ]
How can someone die in an overcrowded place? (Not necessarily rowdy)	[ "What happened there was [compressive asphyxia.](_URL_0_) Basically what happens when you shove thousands of people where there should only be hundreds. Imagine you're buried neck deep in sand. Dry sand is like a medium sized crowd, a bit constricting but you can breathe just fine. Get that sand wet and you have a...	[ "Draw an imaginary square and count how many people fit inside, then count how many squares are in the crowd and you a pretty good guess" ]
minesweeper strategy	[ "The numbers mean how many bombs are in the immediate surrounding squares, which is why when you click on a space that doesnt have any bombs surrounding it, it auto-selects the surrounding squares. Start with numbers that you see the fewest un-clicked boxes, and as you uncover more numbers, the easier it gets Edit:...	[ "Insert \"i have the high ground\" meme. Its not only in games, highround has the vision advantage." ]
How did they prove guilt of major crimes in the old west era?	[ "From what I gather, they just arrested the person the lawman thought was responsible, and he turned them over to the Federal Marshals where they were shipped off to somewhere like Kansas City or Cincinnati on a train to go to a federal courthouse with whatever statements were taken. It wasn't terribly sophisticate...	[ "The answer to your second question is that guns that emit enough smoke to pull off this cheeky maneuver aren’t prevalent. There were developments in firearm technology after that that eliminated that smoke and you don’t see that volume of smoke with the guns commonly used today." ]
Why doesn't honey expire?	[ "Honey has very low water content. So low, in fact, that water is pulled out of the cells of any bacteria in it. Generally speaking, this kills them, and thus prevents the honey from decaying. There are a few nasty things that can hide in it (botulism spores are the most common example), but most stuff can't grow...	[ "Well, I'm glad people \"researched\" this. It started out as a poem or nursery-rhyme that was first published in England in 1784. The original line is this: > Roses are red, Violets are blue, Sugar is sweet, And so are you. [Source (Wikipedia)](_URL_0_). What occurred is basically an amazing \"lyric\" so-to-sa...
Why are pupils in our eye black? Shouldn’t the light entering them allow you to see inside the eye?	[ "Pupils aren't black in the sense of true color (like your iris, which may be brown/blue/green), but rather in the sense that you're looking at a \"shadow.\" It's like looking at a red shirt in a very dark closet and seeing it as almost black. They look black because we can't really see the light that's passing int...	[ "The event horizon of a black hole scales with the mass of the black hole. r_h=2GM/c^2 for a Schwarzschild black hole, where M is the mass. What we really mean by the mass of the black hole is the energy content of the black hole (since E=mc^2). So any energy that crosses the event horizon is added to that total en...
I've seen the total population of the entirety of humanity being estimated at somewhere between 70-120 billion people. How did we get these numbers?	[ "> Guesstimating the number of people ever born requires selecting population sizes for different points from antiquity to the present and applying assumed birth rates to each period. One complicating factor is the pattern of population growth. Did it rise to some level and then fluctuate wildly in response to fami...	[ "The \"grandmother hypothesis\" is one that has been put forward to explain why women go through menopause and spend a significant portion of their lives post--menopausally. That is, grandmothers do a lot to help raise their grandchildren, and in that fashion, reproductive success is increased through women living ...
CO2 levels above 945ppm, a normal rate in indoor environments, have been shown to reduce cognitive function by 15%. What is the most efficient way CO2 can be removed from indoor air in situations where ventilation is not feasible?	[ "The International Space Station uses ~~lithium hydroxide~~ zeolite to scrub CO₂ by ~~chemical reaction/absorption~~ adsorption, and the ~~chemical~~ zeolite can then be regenerated by heat. The equipment is called the Carbon Dioxide Removal Assembly (CDRA). *edit: zeolite not LiOH per /u/RuNaa's comment below." ]	[ "Most Christmas trees are grown on tree farms, not harvested from forests. In order to get the ideal shape for the tree, the tree needs space to grow, must be trimmable, kept free of critters, disease, etc. A christmas tree takes about 7-10 years to grow, and during that period of time it is extracting carbon from ...
Who was Henrietta Lacks and why are her HeLa cells so important?	[ "She was a Black woman who got cancer and had a tumor biopsied in the 1950s. Her doctor decided to use the biopsied cells for research without her consent. This is, of course, fucking terrible, but it was normal at the time. I'd like to imagine that we've all grown a lot since then. Anyway, it's easier to order an ...	[ "technically because of [HOX genes](_URL_1_) and related things like [homebox](_URL_0_). That is, similar genes in all ancestors" ]
What do entertainment products (movies, video games, etc.) have different release date in different countries?	[ "It has to do with how culturally they consume entertainment. There is really only one constant in choosing a release date, the makers want it released on a day that will sell the most units/tickets. In some countries that is going to be a Tuesday. In some it will be a Friday." ]	[ "One reason is taxes. Most US states do have sales tax, but it's not included in the MSRP of the car. US sales tax is usually around 6%. Another thing is that exchange rates are a very flawed way of comparing prices. It doesn't quite work that way most of the time. There are a bunch of other economic factors that ...
Why is current the same everywhere in a circuit with series combination of resistances?	[ "Current is a measure for the number of charged particles that flow through a certain part of the circuit. Imagine a closed circuit with one power source (say, a battery) and some amount of other components. The amount of charged particles that comes out of the battery on one pole has to be the same as the amount t...	[ "To put it simply, they don't. Every equation we use is a \"model\"; a system we have developed that we use to predict behavior. Different systems require different levels of complexity to describe; Ohm's law and momentum are fairly simple, but describing, say, the behavior of individual water molecules in a bulk l...
Are there any historical topics that academic historians might be discouraged from investigating due to the risk that such research could damage their reputation? If so, does this change once tenure is granted?	[ "When you mess with people's sense of identity, it can lead to trouble. That said, at least in the US, there's a fairly strong sense that the academic community will protect you." ]	[ "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_...
Why is it more difficult to breathe when traveling at speed?	[ "When we breathe, we use our diaphragm to create a negative pressure in our lungs, and air rushes in to fill our lungs. To breathe out, we release our diaphragm, which causes the air pressure in our lungs to be slightly higher than outside, so the air rushes out. When you stick your head out of a moving car, the a...	[ "How do you know you don’t have exercise induced asthma?" ]
What is a mormon and why are people so relieved when they stop being so?	[ "A Mormon is a member of the Church of Jesus Christ and the Latter Day Saints, a sect of Christianity that was founded in the US in the 1800s. They are, as religious groups in the US go, fairly restrictive in their behavior, and encourage a very community-oriented life for all their followers, which leads to a soci...	[ "Similar [questions has been asked many times](_URL_2_). Please refer to those questions for further information. [This might be the simplest summary for Republican candidates](_URL_0_). Note that as of now, only Romney, Santorum, Gingrich, and Paul are still in the race. Obama is the incumbent president, therefo...
Explain Reddit to my sister. Like she's 5	[ "It's like a big plaza. People walk into it and share something (a picture, a video, whatever), and see if other people like it. If someone likes it, they'll gather a crowd of people around it. The biggest crowds move near the entrance of the plaza. Naturally, these crowds get more attention, since they're at the f...	[ "There's the issue of oversimplification leading to misinformation. Some things are complex enough that a simple answer doesn't really give the OP what they want AND leaves them with a more or less incorrect understanding of the answer to their question." ]
Why American colonist didn't use native American as slave?	[ "Not to discourage further discussion, but you might be interested in these previous threads on Native American slavery: * [Were Native Americans ever taken back to Europe, as slaves or to be assimilated into European society?](_URL_1_) by u/anthropology_nerd. * [Were native American's ever taken as slaves?](_URL_0...	[ "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 is the reason beavers build dams?	[ "They're creating a habitat. Beavers make dams across streams and small rivers in order to create a large, still pond. They then build a lodge out in the middle of the pond. Contrary to certain media portrayals, beavers don't live in or on their dam. They may not even build a dam if they find a suitable natural pon...	[ "This is a very common question. You can use search to find [all the other really good answers](_URL_0_ ). This is instant, and faster than ust typing in your question every time. It's a way of cheating elections. Read the others, and then ask a more specific question." ]
Why is it that in this day and age of wireless Bluetooth game controllers, our TV remotes still rely on clunky infrared to communicate with the set top box?	[ "An IR LED & a receiver costs about $1. A pair of Bluetooth radios costs at least $10 and you need to write more complicated software to handle pairing. TV remotes don't really need the higher data rates of BT, nor are you frequently using them without line of sight to the TV. Consumer electronics are generally...	[ "Most people copy ideas. If the tribe A comes up with a good idea, then tribe B next door will copy it. Or tribe A's good idea may make it powerful enough to conquer tribe B and force them to adopt their idea. Isolated communities may not be exposed to outsiders' ideas (like modern technology) so they don't copy th...
Why is Carbon used for building objects, and why are other elements not used?	[ "As Lokiorin said, Carbon bonds are stronger than those of a lot of other elements. It is also a solid and not a gas like Hydrogen. It would be pretty hard to build something out of gas. Carbon is also one of the most abundant elements. It is also easier to purify. While being strong it is also flexible, allowing i...	[ "Water is really great at transferring heat energy out of you (that's what the sensation of cold is, the transfer of heat out of your body). Air, not as good. & #x200B; Put 2 benches in a room at, say 20 degrees C. One is made of stainless steel, one is made of wood. & #x200B; Both of them will measure at 20 degr...
Ask Anything Wednesday - Biology, Chemistry, Neuroscience, Medicine, Psychology	[ "Many primates have complex social structures with similarities to ours. Have we ever observed \"grandparents\" trying to help their offspring reproduce? It makes sense to me that natural selection would select both for phenotypes that help the immediate offspring survive to sexual maturity and also those phenotype...	[ "/u/idjet has done great (and patient!) work with his/her [AMA](_URL_0_) on medieval witchcraft, heresy, and the inquisition. He/she deserves our thanks." ]
Why is volcanic soil so fertile?	[ "The lava that comes out of a volcano is full of minerals containing phosphorus, potassium, etc. The things that plants need to grow. As the lava rock gets broken down and mixed with organic material, it creates a nutritious soil for plants. Over time, nutrients get washed or blown away by rain and wind, returning ...	[ "A. Any person's remains buried up there would have rotted away B. As /u/guilty_as_cataline put it, the story of rome's founding is probably just a myth created to explain rome's institutions and origins _URL_0_" ]
Why are my pets (cat, dog, and llama) seemingly unafraid of the dark?	[ "Partially because they don't have the Imagination you do, they don't create this unreasonable paranoia to fuel them into irrational fears. That and animals have very heightened senses, while you rely mainly on your sight to perceive threats this fails you in the dark... Because you can't SEE you don't know what's ...	[ "Several insects navigate using the position of the sun (and moon) as a reference point. Sun is relatively stable on the sky, only moving as the earth revolves during the day, so when you move 100 meters in one direction, the sun is still in the same place relative to you. But if you have a lamp and move 100 meters...
How come we don't throw away cancered part of body and transplant healthy one of dying person who's ok to donate his organs?	[ "We can and do remove and transplant cancerous organs when possible. The supply of suitable donor organs is limited though, and the operation is risky and carries lifelong problems. It's typically a last resort when other treatments have failed and the tumor is inextricably tangled into the organ. You need to spen...	[ "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...
Why does it hurt when water goes up your nose?	[ "This one’s been answered before, check out: _URL_0_" ]	[ "your sinus cavity is an open space that is now clogged. The pressure from an unadjusted atmospheric pressure and excess mucus is literally pressing to get out." ]
How works the compass, gyroscope, plumb in my tablet? No moving parts?!	[ "As for the compass, the tablet computer has a magnetometer built inside, which is a small device used to measure the strength and direction of magnetic fields. Similar to how physical compasses work, the magnetometer can sense orientation relative to the Earth's magnetic field using the [Hall effect](_URL_0_). The...	[ "The solar system is rotating in more or less the same plane. It's not perfectly flat, but they're mostly within a few degrees of each other. [Here](_URL_0_) is a pretty good video explaining why that is. There are also a bunch of other posts on this sub about why the solar system is flat." ]
What is the fourth spacial dimension and how does it apply to us (coordinates)?	[ "Let me give you an example using a bit of math. If I have a point in 2D space, I need 2 coorinates to describe its position, x and y. The distance to the point is sqrt(x^2 + y^2) Ok now in 3D space I need three points: x, y, z. The distance to the point is sqrt(x2 + y2 + z2). See the pattern? Ok now about about 4D...	[ "This video from Sagan will help. I couldn't explain it in a better way. _URL_0_" ]
In one of my classes, we received a list of the greatest mass killings in human history. The top was, of course, World War 2, but number two was the Mongol conquests under Genghis Khan, to whom they attribute forty MILLION deaths! Can this possibly be true? How do we calculate something like that?	[ "I do not have an answer for you unfortunately, but I would be interested in seeing a picture of that handout if you have it available." ]	[ "First of all it would be false to claim that Jochi's paternity caused no issues. While he was afforded respect and authority as Genghis Khan's first born son it appears that the questionable parentage was raised as a point against him by Chagatai when Genghis Khan's was choosing his successor. That said the Mongo...
Why do materials like glass and ceramic shatter, and is it possible to cut them without them shattering?	[ "Yes ceramic tiles are cut all the time. They make special power saws to cut them. The blades are diamond coated and they have a stream of water that covers the blade so it stays cool." ]	[ "Blood doesn't rush around your body in one big tube. What happens is the blood vessels split and become thinner and thinner. Think of a fan where the bottom is the main artery which splits into finer tubes called capillaries. This splitting happens all through your skin, so there are millions of very fine capilla...
Using metal objects (like a necklace) while holding vitamins and using the way it swings to determine how many of the said vitamin to take.	[ "What it sounds like you're describing is something called \"Applied Kinesiology\" which is nothing more than pseudoscience as there's no evidence anywhere that it works at all. If she continues to accuse you of being \"closed minded\" then get her to read the replies to this thread. Also, get her to read a book c...	[ "Light is a form of electromagnet radiation. It has a frequency that's in a particular range which we can see, but there are lots of other frequencies we can't see. The idea that electromagnetic radiation can pass through things is probably not at all strange to you. For example: - Light can pass through air, water...
how does dyslexia work? are you dyslexic in all languages?	[ "Dyslexia isn't just about words and reading/writing. It's about how the brain uses working memory, for example dyslexic people may have issues organizing things and remembering certain details. I am dyslexic and I can read fine but have trouble forming sentences when writing / trying to explain something out loud....	[ "Look at the genes of people who get disease X, look at the genes of people who don’t. See which genes are only present in people who get disease X." ]
Was the Borneo Confrontation the most effective use of anti-terrorist tactics in modern time?	[ "This is an interesting question, mainly because the quote itself seems to mix-up different aspects of what is essentially counterinsurgency. Yet the Borneo Confrontation is not remembered as a counterinsurgency operation, but rather one that seemed to mix both conventional and unconventional warfare. However, tha...	[ "Hi there! This is a reminder to potential respondents to this question that we have the [no current event rule](_URL_0_) in effect that in order to discourage off-topic discussions of current events confines questions, answers and all other comments to events that happened 20 years ago or more, inclusively (e.g. 1...
How does sun bleaching work?	[ "The UV in the sun is pretty damaging and will chemically decompose many compounds (like dyes - whether artificial or natural) If you leave plastic out in the sun, the UV will usually make it brittle and yellowed fairly quickly unless the plastic is designed for outdoor use." ]	[ "If it's really intense it can just burn you. If it's not that strong, but a bit strong, the main damage is from breaking some of your DNA molecules, thus giving you cancer." ]
What is Raspberry Pi?	[ "Think of it as a small pc. You can plug a screen, a keyboard, a mouse and some sd card. Aaaaand, here you go, you have a small pc. It is mostly used for small/medium scaled applications on robotics or computer vision. Also, it is commonly used to teach children about programming and basic computer skills. Another ...	[ "Here's a pretty good explainer. _URL_0_ Basically it comes down to different memory, different promises (reliability and service life), and different marketing." ]
Shooting point blank with a blank, dangerous?	[ "Absolutely. People have been killed by blanks. One was an actor who's name escapes me that figured it would be safe and shot himself in the head with a blank-loaded gun." ]	[ "Your body can get addicted but you won't pick up the mental habits of you don't know what you did. They are two different things." ]
Do we feel heat or temperature?	[ "We feel the transfer of heat. Every substance wants to share its heat, but some want to more or less than others. For instance metal, really likes sharing or taking its heat while wood is super selfish and doesnt want anything to do with any other material. This value that represents the willingness to share is ca...	[ "Well, we don't, exactly. But we can estimate, since we know how big the Earth is (and thus how much pressure there is there) and what the Earth is made of (and thus how much radioactive decay is heating it)." ]
My Cell Bio professor and I were discussing whether or not there were viral species with both DNA and RNA. Are there any known species that have both DNA and RNA?	[ "Did you plan that timing? [This](_URL_0_) post on [this](_URL_1_) paper." ]	[ "There is almost certainly life on Mars. Life that we sent there. We know for a fact that some organisms are capable of surviving the rigors of space (hard vacuum, radiation) because they've been found on spacecraft that have returned from the Moon. The issue is that they can only survive that way in a [spore state...
How did the physical construction of Rome change after the decline of the empire?	[ "/u/shlin28 had a pretty good answer five months ago to a similar question. You might want to check it out here: _URL_0_" ]	[ "How would we know what an \"average citizen\" thought? Every text we have is produced by the elite class. Whether people lost friends or family is impossible to know in the specifics. We do know that military disaster did not affect the political careers of the generals involved. Rosenstein in Imperatores Victi ...
Given they communicate through electromagnetic waves, why are radios, laptops and cellphones not affected by the Doppler Effect?	[ "Doppler effect only becomes significant when relative velocity is at least near the same order of magnitude as the speed at which the wave travels. Light simply travels too fast for every-day relative velocities to make a difference." ]	[ "The air in the cabin is moving the same speed as the pilot and the engines' sound waves are traveling from the engine through the plane into the cabin. It's similar to tossing a ball while in a car. The ball doesn't shoot to the back of the car but travels the same speed. In the plane the sound waves travel at the...
When I pee, am I peeing out the water I drank recently, or the water I drank yesterday to make room for the new water?	[ "When you drink water, it eventually becomes part of your blood. Your kidney regulates your blood pressure by drawing out water from the blood, which gets excreted as urine. So it's not really possible to differentiate water you drank now from water you drank earlier or even water your body produced." ]	[ "There are layers of rock underneath your feet. Rain is absorbed by the soil when it falls and is pulled down by gravity. Passing through all this soil filters the water, but some contaminants can't be removed this way. After a long time it will be meet rock that it can't find its way through and accumulate in the ...
Why are humans so bad at growing teeth?	[ "As our brains got bigger, the shape of our jaw and mouth changed to get out of the way. This made our mouth smaller, but we continued to grow the same amount of teeth. Same number of teeth in a smaller space means they come in compact and crooked." ]	[ "Evolution doesn’t routinely do luxuries. Can your current form and life-processes keep you alive in your current environment long enough to breed the next generation? Yes? Then you are “successful enough”. Rinse, repeat, refine through those generations. If the need to regrow limbs and organs was the only thing ke...
Do children of today stop playing at a higher age, compared to the past, in order to compensate for a more complex environment (i.e. society and adulthood)?	[ "\"Play\" has no single definition, that's why this question is almost impossible to answer. But if you look at these: [_URL_0_](_URL_1_) different definitions of play, you'll find that it is a valuable addition to our lifes. So I hope for your sake that you never stopped playing and just changed the way in which y...	[ "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...
Let's say I poured 100 gallons of water into the Mississippi River at its headwaters in Minnesota. How much of that water actually makes it to New Orleans, 2500 miles later?	[ "> The only factors that I can think of that would lead to water loss would be evaporation and osmosis into the groundwater. Sure, if you ignore all the people that take water out of it. > Communities up and down the river use the Mississippi to obtain freshwater and to discharge their industrial and municipal w...	[ "The Gulf Stream that warms Europe is the Gulf Stream ocean currents that travel from the Gulf of Mexico up to the UK. They do not hit the US East Coast but instead cut out across the Atlantic. They hit the UK coast then travel up toward the arctic before looping around and carrying those cold waters down the US Ea...
How are drugs and other illegal things gotten into prisons? Is the security that bad?	[ "Security isn't that bad, criminals are that good. These aren't kindergarten teachers, these are criminals, many of whom were involved with illegal transportation, smuggling, etc. Whether it's spotting a hole in security checks, creating situations where protocols are violated, bribing/corrupting guards, or even ju...	[ "Look up the stories about the guy that just got ten years for hacking celebrity phones/emails to get those naked pictures. He pretty much researched their backgrounds, leveraged weak forgot my password questions (high school mascot / pet names) , then got access to large amounts of their information. It's a pret...

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