question stringlengths 3 301 | answer stringlengths 9 26.1k | context list |
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how do "game rooms" and other illegal casinos get away with it for so long in places where gambling is illegal i.e. texas | It probably varies based on the location, but in Texas some of them are basically skirting the rules. They have a membership to go in and play, and don't take a cut, so it effectively becomes just people getting a place to gamble against other people, which is legal.
In other cases, the casino is on a reservation. Tha... | [
"Casino games as well as spread betting and betting exchange are not licensed, because the lawmakers said they were too addictive. Poker is one of the games played at casinos, but it is legal, because the outcome of the game depends on the skill of the player, who can alternate their strategy depending on the game ... |
what happens to stomach acid once food is ready to move to the next step of digestion? how does the body dispose of it without causing harm to itself? | If you mix an acid and a base, you get salt and water. Your stomach has hydrochloric acid. It also has a special lining that protects it from acid. Food and acid then goes from your stomach to the duodenum. There is another connection from your pancreas to the duodenum. The pancreas secretes a base called bicarbonate. ... | [
"Digestion begins in the mouth with the secretion of saliva and its digestive enzymes. Food is formed into a bolus by the mechanical mastication and swallowed into the esophagus from where it enters the stomach through the action of peristalsis. Gastric juice contains hydrochloric acid and pepsin which would damage... |
what is the white stuff on my tongue and where does it come from? | Bacteria and debris. Comes from eaten food and dead cells. You should clean your tongue more often, as it isn't supposed to be white. | [
"BULLET::::- The tongue starts out by having a white coating on it while the papillae of the tongue are swollen and reddened. The protrusion of the red papillae through the white coating gives the tongue a \"white strawberry\" appearance.\n",
"A normal, healthy tongue is pale red or pink with a thin white coating... |
Is it possible to make metallic hydrogen on earth? | I did a project on this and there has been a few claims of creating metallic hydrogen over the years. These use methods which should produce the pressures required for metallic hydrogen. The problem is when you are dealing with such high pressures, there are lots of things that can go wrong to give false positives.
Y... | [
"In January 2017, Dias and Isaac F. Silvera (Thomas D. Cabot Professor of the Natural Sciences) at Harvard University reported the creation of metallic hydrogen in a laboratory. They claimed to have gathered experimental evidence that solid metallic hydrogen had been synthesised, using a diamond anvil cell.\n",
"... |
How accurate is the stigma surrounding "Gypsies" throughout history, specifically in Russia immediately preceding and during the Reign of Czar Nicholas II? | I don't have a lot of primary sources, but I ran through the articles on the Russian wikipedia and there's some good stuff. My initial feel based on general knowledge of the period seems to be correct that it was a different attitude towards gypsies (Roma) in the Russian empire.
The Roma are known as цыгане (pronounc... | [
"Many Russians believed that tsars and tsarevichs bore special marks on their bodies symbolising their royal status, which became known as royal marks. Four of the pretenders claiming to be Peter III showed royal marks to legitimise their claims. The first fake Peter to have royal marks was Gavrila Kremnev who Lev ... |
Can the visual cortex be stimulated in ways that
cause the perception of 'impossible' colors? | Some possible answers -- depending on the definition of impossible you had in mind.
* Some scientists think that 2-4% of women have Tetrachromacy - meaning they can see colors impossible to the rest of us: _URL_1_
* You can selectively desensitize some of the cones in your eyes, but not the others; letting you tempor... | [
"A change in brain structure (typically lesions) disturbs the psychological process of understanding sensory information, in this case visual information. Disturbance of only visual motion is possible due to the anatomical separation of visual motion processing from other functions. Like akinetopsia, perception of ... |
how is medicine made/dispensed at a pharmacy? | For most common things, sure. A normal corner pharmacy probably stocks 1,000's of different pills and liquids. For uncommon things, they have it shipped in from the manufacturer. My wife has prescriptions that are overnighted directly to our house in cold containers. | [
"Formulated drugs are stored in container closure systems for extended periods of time. These include blisters, bottles, vials, ampules, syringes, and cartridges. The containers can be made from a variety of materials including glass, plastic, and metal. The drug may be stored as a solid, liquid, or gas.\n",
"An ... |
how did "special head" on america's got talent do his levitation act? | It appears to be a variation of the traditional version of this that street performers do:
_URL_0_
Basically he has a bar in his arm and around his back to hold his weight (must have some special apparatus to allow him to stand beforehand. It's probably bulky which is why he moved so slowly) and the staff connects to... | [
"Martin Joe Laurello (born Martin Emmerling, 1885-1955), also known by the stage names Human Owl and Bobby the Boy with the Revolving Head, was a German-American sideshow performer and biological rarity who could turn his head 180 degrees. He performed with groups such as Ripley's Believe it or Not, Ringling Brothe... |
Could fatal diseases such as AIDS eventually evolve to spread by different means, such as airborne? | The route by which infectious diseases spread is based on a number of factors.
- Where they live (e.g. cold virus lives in the nose and throat)
- Number of particles required to cause disease (which in turn is usually related to a bug's ability to replicate and avoid the immune system)
- Makeup of the bug (some diseas... | [
"When in July 1982, the first cases of AIDS appear in hemophiliacs receiving highly filtered blood samples, the scientific community realized that AIDS was most likely caused by a virus. Jacques Leibowitch noticed some intriguing similarities between AIDS and the pathology linked to HTLV (Human T Cell Leukemia Lymp... |
Why does the body not process pain after a serious injury? | When placed in a stressful situation, e.g. the cutting open of one's hand, your body has a fight-or-flight response. This is the term for a combination of several effects including increased heart rate, slowing of digestion, etc. These effects are the result of an increased presence of a group of neurotransmitters whic... | [
"Pain motivates the individual to withdraw from damaging situations, to protect a damaged body part while it heals, and to avoid similar experiences in the future. Most pain resolves once the noxious stimulus is removed and the body has healed, but it may persist despite removal of the stimulus and apparent healing... |
how do hypnotists make people do stupid things on stage? | They're not really pretending. The brain has a great capability to trick itself...if it wants to. The object of stage 'hypnosis' is to make the subject want to fool themselves.
If you got up on stage, firmly set that you wouldn't do anything the hypnotist wanted, it wouldn't work. The only reason it does is because th... | [
"Out of the crowd the hypnotist will spot people who appear trusting, extroverted and willing to put on a show. The hypnotist starts them off by having them imagine ordinary situations that they have likely encountered, like being cold or hot, hungry or thirsty then gradually builds to giving them a suggestion to d... |
how bacteria appears in its enironment? | > Or is it in the egg "by default"?
First the chicken needs to have salmonella living in it, and then the bacteria can enter the egg as it is forming in the oviduct of the chicken. | [
"Prosthecate bacteria are a non-phylogenetically related group of Gram-negative bacteria that possess appendages, termed \"prosthecae\". These cellular appendages are neither pili nor flagella, as they are extensions of the cellular membrane and contain cytosol. One notable group of prosthecates is the genus \"Caul... |
why does bring your knees up to your chest relieve stomach pain? | Something along the lines of: when you bend your knees up to your abdomen, it relieves the pressure inside your abdominal cavity that is causing the pain (usually triggered by the nerves in the lining of the abdominal cavity rather than from organs, themselves)
Edit: Textbook answer:
"A patient with severe abdominal p... | [
"Symptoms can include abdominal pain, chest pain, nausea and radiating pain to the back, neck, and shoulders. Lifting heavy objects or trauma to the chest may be the cause of this musculoskeletal disorder and pain may be heightened by bending or twisting. Anesthetic and steroid injections are commonly employed to t... |
Why does my face gets flushed after drinking alcohol? | Are you Asian? If so, it's probably [this](_URL_0_) | [
"Alcohol flush reaction is a condition in which a person develops flushes or blotches associated with erythema on the face, neck, shoulders, and in some cases, the entire body after consuming alcoholic beverages. The reaction is the result of an accumulation of acetaldehyde, a metabolic byproduct of the catabolic m... |
why do old people always put those bright green tennis balls on their walkers? | its to make it easier to push along a carpet and less risk of catching or buffing wooden floors | [
"Required equipment is fairly simple and inexpensive: junior tennis racquets and standard lawn tennis ball. In decades past, modified tennis balls were manufactured for the game. They had higher pressure and were slightly smaller than tennis balls. The last specially manufactured ball was green, so that it could be... |
The Articles of Confederation allowed Canada to join the US if desired. Was this a serious prospect at the time? | It was indeed, though more so before the American Civil War. Donald Warner's 1960 book, *The Idea of Continental Union: Agitation for the Annexation of Canada to the United States, 1849-1893* is one of the more complete works. I'm more familiar with it in the context of British Columbian annexation, which ended as a se... | [
"The Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union was an agreement among the 13 original states of the United States of America that served as its first constitution. It was approved, after much debate (between July 1776 and November 1777), by the Second Continental Congress on November 15, 1777, and sent to the s... |
why does sleeptalking happen? like, why do our in-dream actions correspond with our real ones? | It's your body not completely disengaging your body from your brain during dream state. Call it a mild form of sleep walking. Ever get those ticks in your arms or legs as you fall asleep? This is your mind "testing" to see if it has disengaged from your body. I don't remember the specifics from the lecture but i'm sur... | [
"Oftentimes people experience external stimuli, such as an alarm clock or music, being distorted and incorporated into their dreams. Freud explained that this is because \"the mind is withdrawn from the external world during sleep, and it is unable to give it a correct interpretation ...\" He further explained that... |
At what point does .9 repeating differ from 9.../10...? | Once it is infinite/recurring. There is a distinct difference between going on for a really long time, and being defined as an infinite sequence of 9s. | [
"For numbers greater that nine, there is only one word for each numeral. they no longer vary depending on what they are being used to count. The Pingepalese words for numbers greater than 9 are as follows:\n",
"When represented as a digit, the number \"10\" is used to encode the number zero. Because there are onl... |
How did the passage of the 14th amendment change the powers of the US states? [US History] | Here is John Bingham, author of the relevant section of the 14th Amendment, talking about it, post-ratification:
> Sir, before the ratification of the amendment, the State could deny to any citizen the right of trial by jury, and it was done. Before that the State could abridge the freedom of the press, and it was so... | [
"The Convention did not start with national powers from scratch, it began with the powers already vested in the Articles Congress with control of the military, international relations and commerce. The Constitution added ten more. Five were minor relative to power sharing, including business and manufacturing prote... |
What makes peanut butter & jelly different in terms of stickiness? | Here's a recipe for peanut butter:
_URL_0_
And here's one for jelly:
_URL_1_
Look at the sugar difference: The peanut butter has 1.5 teaspoons of honey for 1.5 cups of PB. Since the jelly recipe makes 8 cups, that works out to about 8 teaspoons of honey if we made that much PB. Honey and sugar substitute at about ... | [
"Peanut butter is served as a spread on bread, toast, or crackers, and used to make sandwiches (notably the peanut butter and jelly sandwich). It is also used in a number of breakfast dishes and desserts, such as peanut-flavored granola, smoothies, crepes, cookies, brownies, or croissants. It is similar to other nu... |
why do rich people always pursue more money? isn't there a ceiling in which they can already have everything they've ever wanted/needed? | $1 million seems like a lot of money. I'll be set when I have $1 million.
Shit, $1 million is hardly enough to have a decent retirement, I need $2 million.
Hmm, $2 million is nice, but I could have a nice cottage on the lake travel to Europe regularly if I had $4 million.
Well, $4 million is good, but what if the ma... | [
"Corresponding to financial resources, the wealthy strategically organize their money so that it will produce profit. Affluent people are more likely to allocate their money to financial assets such as stocks, bonds, and other investments which hold the possibility of capital appreciation. Those who are not wealthy... |
During the Late Bronze Age, what kinds of objects would be made of iron, and how common/available were they? | Early iron wasn't particularly better than bronze. In fact, crude iron is often _softer_ than bronze. As both copper and tin melt at low temperature, bronze is easy to work with. It's also easy to mass-produce objects in bronze, where early steel was close to alchemy and requires very skilled smiths to work it properly... | [
"During the initial centuries of the first millennium BC bronze was still the most used metal, although iron was progressively introduced. Main products include tools (sickles, hoes, ploughs, axes), domestic items (knives and cauldrons), and weapons (antenna swords, spearheads). During the initial Iron Age the loca... |
if scientist can reach absolute zero what will it provide in the field of science and everyday living? | It would mean that a lot of our understanding of physics and chemistry is wrong so we'd have to do a lot of serious work to try to fix science. Absolute zero being impossible to reach is one of the most fundamental tenets of science right now, it would be a huge blow if it turned out to be possible.
It's impossible to... | [
"Absolute zero cannot be achieved, although it is possible to reach temperatures close to it through the use of cryocoolers, dilution refrigerators, and nuclear adiabatic demagnetization. The use of laser cooling has produced temperatures less than a billionth of a kelvin. At very low temperatures in the vicinity o... |
if men are required to register with selective service, why not automatically have men registered when they turn 18? | Because this way, you have to sign a document promising to go to war if needed so when they tell you and you say "no" they can force you. | [
"In the United States, men between the ages of 18 and 25 and residing in the country with limited exception are required to sign up and maintain their registration in the Selective Service System, established by the Military Selective Service Act. Failure to register or maintain that can lead to fines and prison, a... |
What are birds calling for every morning, hours on end? | There are [many reasons](_URL_2_) why birds call, and it has more to do with just reproduction. Calling happens at dawn and dusk because the air is more likely to be still. Calls carry father at these hours then during the middle of the day. It sounds like you are specifically asking about a [dawn chorus](_URL_0_. The ... | [
"The birds have a wide range of calls which can be heard at any time of the day or night: the warning call, a loud defending call, courtship calls, calls to its young, and others. Since this bird lives on the ground it is always alert and even though it rests it never sleeps properly.\n",
"Birds wake up before da... |
if jupiter is made of gas and has no solid surface how did shoemaker-levy 9 make impact craters? / marks? | First, the center of Jupiter has such high pressure, it does become solid. But the impact marks aren't craters as much as an insane amount of energy disrupting the normal currents in which the gases flow around the planet. After a number of months, the currents resumed their normal flow, covering the impact sites. | [
"Impact craters are roughly circular shaped depressions in the surface of a planet due to high velocity impacts with extraterrestrial bodies. The surface of Venus contains almost 1000 impact craters. However, unlike some planets in our system, Venus' thick atmosphere creates a strong shield that decelerates, flatte... |
What Native American cooking traditions have made their way into other cultures' cuisines? | Many of the foods eaten today in Mexico have their roots in pre-Columbian indigenous cuisine. Mexico is, after all, a part of North America. Everytime you eat a taco, a tamale, a bowl of pozole, drink hot cocoa, add chili powder or fresh chillies to a dish, eat popcorn or corn on the cob, and drink a shot of tequila yo... | [
"Native American cuisine includes all food practices of the indigenous peoples of the Americas. Modern-day native peoples retain a varied culture of traditional foods, some of which have become iconic of present-day Native American social gatherings (for example, frybread). Foods like cornbread, turkey, cranberry, ... |
Were pirates like Kidd and Blackbeard mythologized in their time as they are today? | If by "in their time" you mean while they were active pirates, not really - but in the years after happened quite a bit. Books such as Alexandre Exquemelin's *History of the Bouccaneers of America* and Charles Johnson's *A General History of the Robberies and Murders of the most notorious Pyrates* brought much attenti... | [
"\"Kidd the Pirate\" is a short story by American author Washington Irving, based on legends of Captain William Kidd. The story was published in \"Tales of a Traveller\", an 1824 collection of Irving's writings, where it immediately precedes that work's most famous story \"The Devil and Tom Walker\", which also inv... |
Is there a good way to quantify how "random" a given method of shuffling cards is? | In cryptography, there are multiple tests used to try to "quantify" how random a set of numbers is (usually a set that's been created by a random number generator). I'm sure you could assign numbers to cards and use similar tests. Look in any good crypto text and you should find some randomness tests.
But all s... | [
"In the mathematics of shuffling playing cards, the Gilbert–Shannon–Reeds model is a probability distribution on riffle shuffle permutations that has been reported to be a good match for experimentally observed outcomes of human shuffling, and that forms the basis for a recommendation that a deck of cards should be... |
Did ancient explorers ever go to the north or south pole? If not, how close did they come? | No, ancient - I assume you mean the ancient civilizations of the Mediterranean, Near East, etc. - explorers never reached that far. Reaching the north and south poles required navigational techniques/instruments and shipbuilding technology that didn't exist in those times. For the most part, their ships stayed near to ... | [
"In 1827 he attempted one of the earliest expeditions to the North Pole. He reached 82°45′N, setting the record for human exploration Farthest North that stood for nearly five decades before being surpassed at 83°20′N by Sir Albert Hastings Markham in 1875.\n",
"In the years before reaching the pole was a realist... |
Is there an estimated maximum number of planets that can orbit a star? | The mass and density of the initial accretion disk limits the total cumulative size (and number) of the orbiting bodies that form around a star. The term "planet" is used to refer to objects of a certain size or larger. The number of planet-sized bodies that would form would likely be quite low, although, there may not... | [
"Additional data is needed to confirm the possibility of more sub-Saturn planets between 0.5 (really, 0.3) and 30 AU from the star. An Earth-mass planet in the star's habitable zone (which would still be too small to detect with current technology) remains possible.\n",
"Orbiting the star are three planets, whose... |
why is the sound quality at a drive through so bad? | You mean like the speaker to talk to the guy taking the order?
There isn't any incentive to make it good quality. it's not like your rocking out to some heavy metal through it. You're just talking to the guy. If you can understand the words the quality is fine enough. | [
"Cars significantly contribute to noise pollution. While on common perception the engine is the main cause for noise, at city speeds the noise produced by wheel and asphalt is commonly the dominant factor while at highway speeds air friction noises become a major factor.\n",
"The engine noise in the interior of t... |
I there a theoretical limit to how heavy an atom can be? | Yes. I mean we're kind of already there right? Making atoms that are barely able to hold their nuclei together. The strong nuclear force that holds nucleons together is quite short ranged and can't really "reach" across the entire nucleus. It barely holds on to nearest neighbor nucleons. There's a thought that there ma... | [
"Density criteria range from above 3.5 g/cm to above 7 g/cm. Atomic weight definitions can range from greater than sodium (atomic weight 22.98); greater than 40 (excluding s- and f-block metals, hence starting with scandium); or more than 200, i.e. from mercury onwards. Atomic numbers of heavy metals are generally ... |
Is there a reason why tiny Pacific Island nations exist? | This is a bit like asking "Why don't Canada and America become one state? It would benefit both of them!"
They exist for the same reasons that any other nation exists. You have areas of land populated by people with fairly homogeneous backgrounds (language, religion, culture, ethnicity, economics, history, etc.). T... | [
"Many of the present-day Pacific Island nations in the Oceania region were originally populated by Polynesian, Melanesian and Micronesian peoples over the course of thousands of years. European colonial expansion in the Pacific brought many of these under non-indigenous administration. During the 20th century sever... |
why are side scrolling platformers almost always scrolling from right to left? | What games are you thinking about...Mario and Sonic are left to right ? | [
"A side-scrolling game or side-scroller is a video game in which the viewpoint is taken from the side, and the onscreen characters generally can only move, to the left or right. Games of this type make use of scrolling computer display technology, and sometimes parallax scrolling to suggest added depth.\n",
"The ... |
Did married couples actually sleep in separate twin beds as depicted in old movies from the ‘30s, ‘40s, and ‘50s? Or was it just for the propriety of the movies? | Yes, some did!
First of all, we have to recognize that bedroom habits historically varied by class. In the nineteenth century, to be brief, working-class and middle-class couples shared beds, while the upper classes, with lots of room in their grand mansions, kept separate bedrooms for the husband and wife; upper-midd... | [
"Creators and writers Brian Cooke and Johnnie Mortimer had to get special permission from the IBA (the then governing body of Independent TV in Britain) to be able to portray an unmarried couple living together; special concern arose at scenes in which Robin and Vicky were seen in an obvious state of undress in bed... |
please eli5 ... why is the headrest part of most car's seats designed to be so angled forward? | Headrests aren't there to rest your head against, but to protect you from whiplash or worse if you're in an accident. When a car decelerates VERY quickly (like in a head-on collision) and you are wearing your seat belt, then your arms and upper torso will fly forward very quickly. The three-point seat belt keeps you fr... | [
"The car itself was designed from the start as a four-seater. The rear seats are smaller than the front, a design commonly referred to as a \"2+2\". However, the interior is designed so that the passenger seat can slide farther forward than the driver's seat. This allows more room for the person sitting behind the ... |
Anyone here work with holographic technology? Are we getting anywhere near the stuff we've seen in movies for the last 30+ years? | A research group where I work is working on something very similar to the type of device shown in [this video](_URL_0_). This is, of course, nothing like a hologram in science fiction.
I believe that some companies are working on holographic displays but it is outside my field so I will not comment on it. I would sug... | [
"BULLET::::- In J.G. Ballard's book \"Hello America\" (1981), holographic technology is used by President Charles Manson to scare nomad peoples along the United States of America, showing images of American pop culture icons such as Gary Cooper, Mickey Mouse, or the starship \"Enterprise\".\n",
"Video games have ... |
what would the pros and cons of having your kid learn an additional langauge when they're little in a special program? | The only con is that you have to pay for it, and transport the kid to class. Language classes are worthwhile at all ages--it doesn't matter what age they start at, but the younger the better. | [
"A 2e student’s grades commonly alternate between high and low, sometimes within the same subject. The child might have advanced vocabulary and ideas but be unable to organize those ideas and express them on paper. They might be a skilled artist or builder but turn in assignments that are messy or illegible. They m... |
when i'm talking and all of a sudden air just halts, i nearly choke and can't talk for a second until i take a breathe? (with air still in my lungs) | Are you sure it's not a mild panic attack? | [
"The main symptom is choking and difficulty or inability to breathe or speak, a feeling of suffocation, which may be followed by hypoxia-induced loss of consciousness. As the airway reopens, breathing may cause a high-pitched sound called stridor. The episode seldom lasts over a couple of minutes before breathing i... |
why do oceans exist? | Oceans cannot be absorbed into the sea bed because below the sea bed there is bedrock and the water is already saturated within the sea bed. Open water sits on top of the water within the sea bed. | [
"As the world ocean is the principal component of Earth's hydrosphere, it is integral to life, forms part of the carbon cycle, and influences climate and weather patterns. The World Ocean is the habitat of 230,000 known species, but because much of it is unexplored, the number of species that exist in the ocean is ... |
the differences between synthetic marijuana and actual marijuana and why synthetic is apparently more dangerous. | Synthetic marijuana is in no way related to real marijuana. It is plant material that has been sprayed with one or more of any number of chemicals that happen to affect the same parts of the brain as the THC in real weed. It is dangerous because all it takes is to find a chemical that is an agonist of those receptors t... | [
"Use of the term “synthetic marijuana” to describe products containing synthetic cannabinoids is controversial and, according to Dr. Lewis Nelson, a medical toxicologist at the NYU School of Medicine, a misnomer. Nelson claims that relative to marijuana, products containing synthetic cannabinoids “are really quite ... |
Is there a limit to how big speakers can be made today? | They can get [pretty big](_URL_0_). Big speakers indeed work less well for higher frequencies, but its more to do with the fact that they start to [beam](_URL_1_). A 2m wide speaker that plays anything above 500 Hz will send the sound pretty much in a straight line, and only be audible if its pointing at you.
The ... | [
"Fabrication of finished loudspeaker systems has become segmented, depending largely on price, shipping costs, and weight limitations. High-end speaker systems, which are typically heavier (and often larger) than economic shipping allows outside local regions, are usually made in their target market region and can ... |
the "power factor" of ac electric power and how it relates to things we use in the home and office | Alice buys stuff from Amazon and they ship it to her and she likes it and keeps it. Everyone is happy! Alice has a power factor of 1.0.
Bob buys stuff from Amazon and they ship it to him but he doesn't like half of it and returns it. Amazon likes that they're selling stuff to Bob, but they're kinda annoyed that the... | [
"In electrical engineering, the power factor of an AC electrical power system is defined as the ratio of the \"real power\" absorbed by the load to the \"apparent power\" flowing in the circuit, and is a dimensionless number in the closed interval of −1 to 1. A power factor of less than one indicates the voltage an... |
When did it become popular to group the Caribbean with Latin America? | Part of this is politics not history, I would doubt very much that Jamaica, Haiti and other English and French ex-colonies associate primarily with Latin America. However, debating this is not the point of this subreddit so I'll leave this here.
Its important to understand that the Caribbean was colonized by quite a f... | [
"In 1899, the All Cubans, consisting of Cuban League professional players, were the first Latin American team to tour the United States. The team returned in 1902–05, exposing white Cuban players to U.S. major league and minor league scouts, and introducing black Cuban players to competition against the Negro leagu... |
Couple questions on medieval cities | This is going to differ widely based on the location/culture, and medieval Europe isn't my field, but I'll take a stab:
1) Cities usually had a charter that they negotiated with a monarch which gave them the privilege to form their own systems of governance: town councils, courts of law, taxation, the regulation of tr... | [
"The medieval city was made up of the cathedral, castle and administrative buildings on the peninsula. The outlying areas were known as the townships and owned by the bishop, the most famous of these being Gilesgate (which still contains the mediaeval St Giles Church), Claypath and Elvet.\n",
"European Medieval c... |
Why did military uniforms suddenly change from bright colours to kakki? | Because at the late 19th century firearms (rifles) became increasingly deadly, reaching their maximum fire range (up to 1500-2000m, Mauser 98, for example), not to mention introduction of machine guns with high rate of fire (around 600 rounds per minute - Maxim guns). In following conflicts it became obvious how fatal ... | [
"When khaki was adopted for the continental British Service Dress in 1902, the shade chosen had a clearly darker and more green hue. This color was adopted with minor variations by all the British Empire Armies and the US expeditionary force of World War I, in the latter under the name olive drab. This shade of bro... |
Why can't we use smaller wavelengths of light instead of electron microscopes? | Electron microscopes can get in the order of 50 pm resolution, while diffraction based systems rely on the wavelengths (as you've picked up on). However to get down to 50 pm visual resolution, you need light with a wavelength in the order of 100-150 pm. This is down in x-ray territory, so you need to have a source of x... | [
"Until the invention of sub-diffraction microscopy, the wavelength of the light limited the resolution of traditional microscopy to around 0.2 micrometers. In order to gain higher resolution, the use of an electron beam with a far smaller wavelength is used in electron microscopes.\n",
"The electron microscope is... |
where do worms go in the winter? | If you're referring to earthworms, they simply go deeper into the ground. Even in harsh winters the ground doesn't usually freeze more than ~~an inch or two~~ a few feet deep, so the worms just burrow below the frozen layer and wait for a few weeks until it thaws out again.
*Edit* corrected how deep the ground freeze... | [
"Winter bugs on crops and in natural clover plants in the soil, at a depth of up to 5 cm, in forest belts, fringes, ravines, on the borders, roadsides - under fallen leaves and plant remains. Beetles from wintering places come out in 1-2 decades of April during the period of clover growth and feed on the parenchyma... |
how does a company separate from a parent company, or rather, how is the parent company compensated for the lost value? | Any company, be it parent or a subsidiary/child company, has shares, meaning who owns the company (Simple way to imagine it would be- if a company has 100 shares, each share is 1% of the company, limited liability companies simply have owners, who own some % of the company).
The shareholders can be other companies, o... | [
"The separation between the shareholder and the company has one other important consequence. If a company is wound up, its shareholders will lose their stake, but their separateness from the company will prevent its creditors from pursuing them for fulfilment of the its debts. If, on the other hand, an unincorporat... |
why when looking at a certain point without blinking for few seconds you start seeing double? | Not everybody sees double. If you do, it is probably because your eyes get tired and stop looking in exactly the same direction. This is technically known as a strabismus. | [
"The corneal reflex, also known as the blink reflex, is an involuntary blinking of the eyelids elicited by stimulation of the cornea (such as by touching or by a foreign body), though could result from any peripheral stimulus. Stimulation should elicit both a direct and consensual response (response of the opposite... |
why does “cleaning” our ears with a cotton swab feel so good when we’re told not to put anything in them? | Because you are touching the Vagus nerve. It's a cranial nerve and one of the longest in your body. It controls a lot of stuff, like heart rate and swallowing. Stimulation to this nerve can feel good! To the point that some women have reported to had orgasms from just stimulation to the Vagus nerve. This nerve is also ... | [
"Cleaning of the ears is very important for treatment of ear infections. Home remedy cleansing and antiseptic mixtures are made from isopropyl (rubbing) alcohol, boric acid, acetic acid (vinegar), and many herbal extracts in various proportions. In some recipes, povidone-iodine (\"betadine\") is added as well. Some... |
Who else, other than the British Empire, profited from long distance communications in the 1800s? | This is only tangentially a partial answer or side note to your question but it's one of my favorite historical anecdotes so I hope you don't mind me sharing it.
In 1876 Egypt basically went bankrupt and the French and British exercised joint direct control of Egypt's finances under a system called the Caisse de la De... | [
"At Porthcurno in 1870 Britain became wired to the world. For the first time telegraphy made it possible for Britain to communicate with its colonies in the British Empire. Originally, the intention was to land telegraphy cables at Falmouth, Cornwall, but a last minute change by the \"Falmouth Gibraltar and Malta T... |
how are people born "geniuses"? | The actual answer is that we don't know.
The origin and nature of human intelligence and creativity is one of the most hotly debated subjects. Much of what has been written about it has been bullshit. You've just asked a question that hasn't been resolved with any kinda of clear explanation. Sorry.
Also, Einstein was... | [
"A genius is a person who displays exceptional intellectual ability, creative productivity, universality in genres or originality, typically to a degree that is associated with the achievement of new advances in a domain of knowledge. Despite the presence of scholars in many subjects throughout history, many genius... |
why does a sudden influx of energy break objects? | Newton's second law, F = ma. When a fast moving object is suddenly stopped, acceleration is very large and the resulting forces are enormous. If these forces exceed the yield strength of the material involved, the object breaks. Stop the same object travelling at the same speed over a longer time and you get smaller fo... | [
"Electromigration, which means to physically move the atom to new locations (to physically alter the device itself) is another type of attack. It involves the relocation of metal atoms due to high current densities, a phenomenon in which atoms are carried along by an \"electron wind\" in the opposite direction to t... |
Is it true that income inequality in Ancient Rome was less than in the modern United States? | First of all, neither the Business Insider, Huffington Post, nor ThinkProgress are historical publications. The story from that Business Insider article is sourced from a website called Per Square Mile and is written by the creator of that site, Tim De Chant. He is also not a historian, nor is Per Square Mile a histori... | [
"After the Second Punic War, there was a great increase in income inequality. While the middle class was drafted to serve in increasingly long campaigns, their farms and homesteads fell into bankruptcy. With Rome's great military victories, vast numbers of slaves were imported into Italy. In the middle of the secon... |
why do heating pipes make a loud banging sound? | Based on the one that sits next to our couch-bed in our very small NYC apartment, it is the expansion/contraction of the metal and wood around the heated pipes/radiator that cause the loud banging, pops, and cracks that occur as the heater heats up, loses heat, and heats up again. | [
"The noise known as “steam hammer” sounds like someone hammering on a pipe. It is caused when water condenses and is trapped in a horizontal section of pipe where it cannot drain back to the boiler. When the system is next turned on, this water is hurled through the pipes by the steam pressure, creating a loud bang... |
How to the water drops in clouds affect a plane's flight? Do they slow the plane down, or interfere with its thrust or lift vectors? | Most of the droplets in a cloud will flow around the airplane. Water droplets will accumulate on the wings and body, and flow off of the back of the trailing edges. The drag imparted on the plane due to the mass of water is usually negligible, the droplets on the wings will affect the performance just noticably.
Flyin... | [
"In flight, droplets of supercooled water often exist in stratiform and cumulus clouds. They form into ice when they are struck by the wings of passing airplanes and abruptly crystallize. This disrupts airflow over the wing, reducing lift, so aircraft that are expected to fly in such conditions are equipped with a ... |
the constitutional breaches of the national defense authorization act? | > I understand the removal of Habeus Corpus is in violation of the Bill of Rights
Why? | [
"The National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2010 (, , 123 Stat. 2190.) is a law in the United States signed by President Barack Obama on October 28, 2009. As a bill it was H.R. 2647 in the 111th Congress. The overall purpose of the law is to authorize funding for the defense of the United States and its... |
What are some other proposed dates for the end of the Roman Empire aside from the traditional 476? | A date for you to consider is 1453. The Fall of Constantinople was the death blow to the Byzantine Empire, and in essence the Eastern Roman Empire. | [
"The history of the Roman Empire covers the history of ancient Rome from the fall of the Roman Republic in 27 BC until the abdication of the last Western emperor in AD 476. Rome had begun expanding shortly after the founding of the Republic in the 6th century BC, though it did not expand outside of the Italian Peni... |
what makes something look modern? | There's really nothing "modern." The gist of it is that every period has "modern" styles. To our current day and age, sleek = modern. What sleek means is really curved edges, shiny, futuristic looking, etc.
In architecture, every age had it's modern look. There was the Gothic style a long time ago that was considered ... | [
"Modern design grew out of the decorative arts, mostly from the Art Deco, in the early 20th century. One of the first to introduce this style was Frank Lloyd Wright, who hadn't become hugely popularized until completing the house called Fallingwater in the 1930s. Modern art reached its peak in the 1950s and '60s, w... |
Why did the nazis spend time and resources transporting Jews to concentration camps by train to gas them rather than shooting them on the spot? | They did start off by killing them on the spot. The large scale extermination of the Jews started with the invasion of the Soviet Union. Accompanying the army were special SS and police units called Einsatzgruppen whose task was to execute all communist officials and all Jews in the newly conquered territories in the B... | [
"Shipments of Jews to the camps had priority on the German railways over anything but the army's needs, and continued even in the face of the increasingly dire military situation at the end of 1942. Army leaders and economic managers complained about this diversion of resources and the killing of skilled Jewish wor... |
sometimes when doctors flash light in your eyes, what do they exactly look for? | Except for the ophthalmologist, they are looking to see that your iris contracts quickly to the bright light. This shows that the eye - > brain - > eye pathway is working. If it works on both sides, that reduces the likelihood of a whole class of problems. | [
"A doctor examining an eye with retinopathy may be able to see no signs at all, or a slight macular edema, which is a sort of blister on or under the macula, an oval colored spot normally visible to an eye doctor on each person's retina.\n",
"Just as an experienced doctor is able to diagnose certain ailments the ... |
how do college degree concentrations work? | First of all Bachelor of art and bachelor of science has more to do with the type of university or college you go to than what you are studying. For example, I go to BU and study chemistry, but will graduate with a Bachelor of Arts degree with chemistry...despite it clearly being science. It's because BU has so many li... | [
"The college grants undergraduate degrees (B.Ed and B.Ed.F.A.) and graduate degrees (M.Ed and M.Teach) in a variety of disciplines in teaching and education (formal and informal), in the Arts (Fine Arts, Film, Art Education, Art Therapy), Humanities, and Social Sciences. The college also issues teaching certificate... |
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 coffee, ... | [
"In the US and Canada the standard McMuffin consists of a slice of Canadian bacon, a griddle-fried egg, and a slice of American cheese on a toasted and buttered English muffin. The round shape of the egg is made by cooking it in a white plastic ring surrounded by an outer metal structure.\n",
"Their signature \"n... |
what are "common sense" gun laws? | In politics "common sense" means "vague to the point everyone thinks I agree with them".
It is a way to campaign against something without offering any real solutions of your own, because, hey, who can be against common sense?
Once details are provided, supporters start to realize what you consider common sense is di... | [
"The usage of firearms by the police is covered by statute (such as the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 and Human Rights Act 1998), policy (such as the Home Office \"Code of Practice on Police use of Firearms and Less Lethal Weapons\" and the ACPO \"Manual of Guidance on Police Use of Firearms\") and common l... |
we donate to cancer research and treatments are getting better, but why do we still have to pay the enormous costs for said treatment? | Cancer treatment costs *much more* than the amount being paid to the research centers. The donations are used to do investigations to discover new, better ways to treat cancers; but it does not include enough money to pay for the doctors, nurses, and hospital facilities used to treat hundreds of thousands of separate c... | [
"He says the Cancer Drugs Fund should be scrapped because the money would be better used on 21,000 patients with heart, lung and gastro-intestinal diseases who are denied cost effective evidence based treatment. He was the author or a report saying that the maximum threshold, currently around £30,000 a year used by... |
When evidence of water is found on very distant planets through the Hubble telescope, what distinguishes it as water from that distance and not another liquid? | Actually, it is not liquid water that was detected, but the presence of water in the atmospheres of several planets.
To detect the presence of different compounds in the atmosphere, absorption spectroscopy was used. Light from the planet's host star is detected on Earth, and a comparison is made between the intensitie... | [
"BULLET::::- 31 August – Astronomers at the Hubble Space Telescope report the first hints of possible water content within the TRAPPIST-1 multiplanetary system, which includes seven Earth-sized exoplanets, about 40 light-years away from Earth.\n",
"In October 2013, water was detected on an extrasolar body for the... |
if whatsapp chats are encrypted then how facebook is going to collect data from whatsapp chats for targeted advertising? | Theoretically, if they are using end to end encryption correctly, no-one, Facebook included, can read the messages other than the sender and recipient(s). Now what is NOT encrypted is the meta-data. Meta-data, in comparison with an email, is basically like all the stuff that is related to an email, except for the email... | [
"An app named \"WhatsApp Sniffer\" was made available on Google Play in May 2012, able to display messages from other WhatsApp users connected to the same network as the app user. At that time WhatsApp used an XMPP infrastructure with encryption, not plain-text communication.\n",
"On January 15, 2017, a research ... |
Can a black hole singularity be created by man? | So, first thing, in the video they most certainly are not encountering a black hole. The amount and concentration of energy that is involved w/ that engine is so dispersed that there is absolutely no way it could happen.
Now, as to the headline question, the answer at present (afaik, not my area of expertise) is th... | [
"While in a non-rotating black hole the singularity occurs at a single point in the model coordinates, called a \"point singularity\", in a rotating black hole, also known as a Kerr black hole, the singularity occurs on a ring (a circular line), known as a \"ring singularity\". Such a singularity may also theoretic... |
Besides Solar, and Hydro, are we likely to develop a method of generating electricity that isn't ultimately steam turning a fan? | Maybe not forever, but for the foreseeable future... yeah probably. All of those things generate heat, and there are only so many things you can do with thermal energy. You can directly convert it to electricity via the [Seebeck effect](_URL_1_), as is used in [RTGs](_URL_4_), but it's extremely inefficient. The conver... | [
"A solar fan is a mechanical fan powered by solar panels. The solar panels are either mounted on the device or are installed independently. Solar fans mostly do not require secondary power sources other than solar power, as most of them are used for cooling purposes during day time. Some types are also used for hea... |
the president, what he can and can't do, and what makes him different from prime ministers and such? | Most western democracies fall under one of three categories: The presidential system (e.g. the USA), the semi-presidential system (e.g. France) and the paliamentary system (e.g. Germany). These terms may seem confusing, as all three countries have a parliament and a president. But the difference is as follows:
In a **... | [
"The president appoints as prime minister, the person most likely to command the support of the majority in the Lok Sabha (usually the leader of the majority party or coalition). the president then appoints the other members of the Council of Ministers, distributing portfolios to them on the advice of the prime min... |
When a substance is stretched beyond its elastic limit i.e. undergoes plastic deformation, in what form is the work done on it stored? And can we get it back? | When you deform a material you're causing atoms/molecules to displace, so you're adding kinetic energy. Unsurprisingly, it is dissipated as heat.
_URL_0_
> can we get that energy back?
In theory, yes, if heat is useful energy in any way. However for most practical purposes it isn't useful, so we would consider it ... | [
"Elastic deformation stretches the bonds between atoms away from their equilibrium radius of separation, without applying enough energy to break the inter-atomic bonds. Plastic deformation, on the other hand, breaks inter-atomic bonds, and therefore involves the rearrangement of atoms in a solid material.\n",
"In... |
When do birds developing in an egg start breathing or using their lungs? | There's an event called "pipping", just before hatching, when the bird breaks through a membrane into an air cell just under the shell. This is when the lungs start working, and it's also when you sometimes start to hear the chick (still in the shell) start to vocalize. | [
"Birds have lungs but no diaphragm. They rely mostly on air sacs for ventilation. These air sacs do not play a direct role in gas exchange, but help to move air unidirectionally across the gas exchange surfaces in the lungs. During inhalation, fresh air is taken from the trachea down into the posterior air sacs and... |
How did drummer boys/trumpet players actually function in battle? | Field musicians were/are required to learn numerous calls. I played with various Fife & Drum groups, including Williamsburg Fifes & Drums. Some of the calls include the Breakfast Call, The General (signal to strike the tents and prepare for departure), The Parley (desire to conference with the enemy), The Assembly,... | [
"Ancient Fife and Drum Corps, as well as modern drum corps have been used by early modern armies for signalling and ceremonies, occasionally played by drummer boys in conflicts such as the American Civil War.\n",
"Before motorized transport became widespread, drummers played a key role in military conflicts. Mili... |
what is the lorentz contraction? | Imagine a car moving away from you. The time it takes for the light reflected off the front of the car to reach you, and the time it takes for the light reflected off the rear of the car to reach you, are for all intents and purposes the same when considering the speed of the car. You can then measure the car's apparen... | [
"The Lorentz factor or Lorentz term is the factor by which time, length, and relativistic mass change for an object while that object is moving. The expression appears in several equations in special relativity, and it arises in derivations of the Lorentz transformations. The name originates from its earlier appear... |
How does your body know when someone is behind you? | In a quiet environment your sense of hearing is better than you think. If you stand near a wall, and lean in closer to it with your eyes closed, you can easily pick up audible, "ambient" sounds that will tell you fairly accurately how close you are to the wall. We're not bats, but we have a limited ability for passive ... | [
"BULLET::::- Orientation of the body. Usually people talk directed toward each other, but not squarely face to face, which can be indicative of a confrontational stance. In conversation, the participants' bodies are usually turned toward each other at an angle. When a person ignores someone else, they tend to ignor... |
is every square inch of land in america owned by someone or some entity? | All land in the US is technically owned by someone or by the federal or a state government. If there were any "unclaimed" land, it would (and did and does) default to state government ownership. | [
"The fifth largest federal landowner is the U.S. Department of Defense, which owns, leases, or possessed 26.1 million worldwide, of which 11.4 million acres are located in the United States. DOD land is mostly military bases and reservations. The largest single DOD-owned tract is the 2.3-million-acre White Sands Mi... |
each decade of the 20th century had a distinct character ie the 60s and hippies, the 80s and hairspray... what about the 19th century? was each decade defined by a certain style/music? | Back in the day, cultural trends would move more slowly. We didn't have TV, Radio, cars & airplanes to spread pop culture & then replace it with the next big thing.
There were definitely trends & fashion but it didn't come out of nowhere & replace the existing thing overnight. | [
"In the 1960s and 1970s, it catered to hippie and bohemian culture. From the 1980s to the end of the 1990s, it catered to punks, new romantics, metal heads, ravers, goths, trance, acid house and various sub-cultures of modern music, fashion, hair stylists, body arts, crafts and accessories, vintage rock 'n' roll we... |
why do high income and developed countries place such high taxes on their population compared to poor and undeveloped countries? | Rich people can afford to pay high taxes while still having enough left over to pay for food, clothing, shelter, and other necessities.
And rich countries tend to provide costly government services like nice transportation systems, clean water supply, sanitary waste disposal, police and fire protection, and a professi... | [
"Some low-income countries have relatively high tax-to- GDP ratios due to resource tax revenues (e.g. Angola) or relatively efficient tax administration (e.g. Kenya, Brazil) whereas some middle-income countries have lower tax-to-GDP ratios (e.g. Malaysia) which reflect a more tax-friendly policy choice.\n",
"In h... |
why do animals and other mammals follow the same body structure? | There's a few things to dissect here.
1. Mammals are a Class (high level category) of animals.
2. Mammals in particular, and any animal under different classes (like a Salamander, an Amphibian) share common evolutionary ancestors and as such, are likely to have certain base traits in common. There's no reason for a s... | [
"Weiss also compared the anatomical structures of humans and animals in order to establish proof that the reason why human and animals have different behaviors is because of their anatomy. He concluded that humans are capable of having biosocial responses and animals are not. Animals are unable to have biosocial re... |
What have been some of the crazier Endtimes theories throughout history? | my favourite recent one was when the Jehovah's Witnesses claimed the world was ending in '75 - of course they'd previously claimed a lot of dates including 1799, 1874, 1878, 1914, 1918 and 1925 but *THIS* was gonna be the real deal...
Of course they'd been burnt so many times before that they knew not to be too su... | [
"Since the development of the concept of deep time in the 18th century and the calculation of the estimated age of the Earth, scientific discourse about end times has centered on the ultimate fate of the universe. Theories have included the Big Rip, Big Crunch, Big Bounce, and Big Freeze (heat death).\n",
"The te... |
What do these markings on my Grandfather's helmet mean? _URL_0_ | Aaaaaaaaand I formatted it wrong... Sorry about that.
Here's a link. _URL_0_ | [
"The remaining portions of the helmet consist of three main parts: a head-piece with face mask, a brow band, and ear and neck guards on either side. It would have originally had an iron skull cap, of which only fragments remain. The head-piece, made of silvered bronze, depicts a youthful face. The eyes, mouth, and ... |
Why does hot water make more bubbles than cold when I'm washing my hands? | Hot water has less surface tension. This is also why it is better at cleaning. The molecules of warm water move around more than cold water and as a result are less tightly bonded. Soap works by bonding the hydrophilic end of a soap molecule to a water molecule. The other end of the soap molecule is hydrophobic and wil... | [
"BULLET::::- Soap bubbles have very large surface areas with very little mass. Bubbles in pure water are unstable. The addition of surfactants, however, can have a stabilizing effect on the bubbles (see Marangoni effect). Note that surfactants actually reduce the surface tension of water by a factor of three or mor... |
if you burn more calories than you take in, how do you manage to remain alive? | Because the car still has gas in the tank. That's what fat is; it's the amount of gas you still have in your tank.
And yes, if you continually are at a caloric deficiency indefinitely (which would require you to constantly adjust it down because as you lost muscle/weight your base consumption levels would drop some) t... | [
"As the calories required for energy homeostasis decreases as the organisms's mass decreases, if a moderate deficit is maintained eventually a new (lower) weight will be reached and maintained, and the organism will no longer be at caloric deficit. A permanent severe deficit, on the other hand, which contains too f... |
Is it a coincidence that all elements are present on Earth? | Astrophysicist here -
1. past supernovae and kilonovae produced a lot of these elements. Just this past discovery of the colliding neutron stars that got a lot of news for its gravitational wave, it produced ~~solar~~ many earth masses of gold.
2. The most important thing though is turbulent mixing in the interst... | [
"As of 2010, there are 118 known elements (in this context, \"known\" means observed well enough, even from just a few decay products, to have been differentiated from other elements). Of these 118 elements, 94 occur naturally on Earth. Six of these occur in extreme trace quantities: technetium, atomic number 43; p... |
What would be the minimum number of transistors required to build a simple turing-complete computer? | While there's some research into the smallest possible Universal Turing Machine (the current best has 2 states and uses a tape with 3 colours), I have no idea how you would actually build that out of transistors. For one thing, an official Turing Machine needs to have an infinite amount of storage space. For another, y... | [
", the largest transistor count in a commercially available single-chip microprocessor is 19.2billion, in AMD's Ryzen-based Epyc, which is manufactured using Samsung's 14 nm FinFET process. , the highest in a GPU is Nvidia's GV100 Volta with 21.1billion transistors, and the highest in FPGA technology is Xilinx's Ev... |
why is black truffle so prized in the culinary industry? | It all boils down to their rarity. Truffles are mycorrhizal this which means they will only fruit if grown in conjunction with certain types of trees. The mycelium of the mushroom (the vegetative body) forms a net and grows in between the cells of the root hairs which allows nutrient moves between the mushroom and the ... | [
"In cooking, black truffles are used to refine the taste of meat, fish, soups and risotto. Unlike white truffles, the aroma of black truffles does not diminish when they are heated, but becomes more intense.\n",
"Ernest Matthew Mickler's \"White Trash Cooking\" (1986), based on the cooking of rural white Southern... |
difference between midi and mp3 file | A MIDI file is “instructions” for how a song should be played, like sheet music but with more options. An mp3 is a compressed (smaller file size by sacrificing some fidelity) version of an actual recording of a song. | [
".mp3 is the most common extension for files containing MPEG-1 Layer 3 audio. An MP3 file is typically an uncontained stream of raw audio; the conventional way to tag MP3 files is by writing data to \"garbage\" segments of each frame, which preserve the media information but are discarded by the player. This is sim... |
How was the Japanese Navy able to conceal their defeat at Midway from the Army or the population as a whole? | The IJN's efforts to conceal the scale of the defeat had a powerful patron in the form of Emperor Hirohito. The Naval General Staff informed the Emperor of the scale of the defeat on 8 June. This meeting was done privately, without any IJA representative or other state officials. The Emperor responded that although the... | [
"At the Battle off Samar, the effectiveness of the U.S. Navy's escorts was demonstrated when they managed to defend their troop convoy from a much larger and more powerful Japanese battle-fleet. The Japanese force comprised four battleships and numerous heavy cruisers, while the U.S. force consisted of escort carri... |
What is the process- start to finish, of a hurricane? | A hurricane requires a few things to form: warm, humid air, low vertical wind shear (the wind speed at the surface is similar to the speed in the upper troposphere), a latitude higher than about 5 degrees, and an instability to kick it off. I'm not a huge weather expert but I know there are ways to measure the stabilit... | [
"Hurricane response is the disaster response after a hurricane. Activities performed by hurricane responders include assessment, restoration, and demolition of buildings; removal of debris and waste; repairs to land-based and maritime infrastructure; and public health services including search and rescue operations... |
Why did scientists estimate the Opportunity Rover to only last for 90 days, and why did it last for that much longer (14 years)? | The main limiting factor was expected to be accumulation of dust on the solar panels. They had a good idea of the rate at which dust was likely to accumulate and made the panels large enough that they would still provide enough power to complete the 90-day mission even as the dust accumulated.
What they had not accura... | [
"BULLET::::- \"Opportunity\" (MER-B), Mars Exploration Rover, launched on July 7, 2003 and landed on January 25, 2004. \"Opportunity\" surpassed the previous records for longevity at 5,352 sols (5498 Earth days from landing to mission end; 15 Earth years or 8 Martian years) and covered a total distance of . The rov... |
why does holding your nose help stifle your vomit impulse? | Actually, allthough the nose is not directly connected to the muscles or gag reflex itself, the brain is very much involved in vomiting. So by holding your nose, you are blocking smells/neural signals that might trigger/help the urge to vomit.
Sometimes you vomit because of internal issues (disease or something you at... | [
"Irritation of nerve endings within the nasal passages or airways, can induce a cough reflex and sneezing. These responses cause air to be expelled forcefully from the trachea or nose, respectively. In this manner, irritants caught in the mucus which lines the respiratory tract are expelled or moved to the mouth wh... |
Did 'white' skinned humans originate with albinism? | This is a bit unknown. There are a number of theories. One of the wilder ones is that the white skin came from cross-breeding with Neanderthals. But more likely either light skin evolved to absorb more sunlight in darker/colder places (to get more Vitamin D, etc) or dark skin evolved in hot/sunny places to prevent s... | [
"Melanin theory is a claim in Afrocentrism that a higher level of melanin, the primary determinant of skin color in humans, is the cause of an intellectual and physical superiority of dark-skinned people and provides them with supernatural powers. It is considered a racist and pseudoscientific theory.\n",
"Albini... |
the whole "corporations are people" thing and why people hate it so much. | To fully understand this issue, we have to go back a few hundred years, before the idea of a corporation was invented. Prior to the industrial revolution, if you owned a business, you were personally liable for any debts that your business accrued. So, for example, if a piece of brick fell off your business' building... | [
"Some people consider corporations to be intrinsically amoral entities. This can refer to the \"ethical numbness\" of these organizations' executives and managers especially when approached from the view that corporations can be considered moral agents as well as a kind of legal person. \n",
"Corporate personhood... |
if calories are just a unit of energy then how can things like redbull have 0 calories but still give you energy? | Energy is an odd word when it comes to food. You derive energy only from foods containing calories. However, there are substances that for various reasons give you the perception of being energetic, or awake, or whatever. Consider that a pound of fat has approximately 3,500 calories worth of energy within it to use. T... | [
"The calorie equals the amount of thermal energy necessary to raise the temperature of one gram of water by 1 Celsius degree, from a temperature of 14.5 degrees Celsius, at a pressure of 1 atm. For thermochemistry a calorie of 4.184 J is used, but other calories have also been defined, such as the International Ste... |
In 1466 would the natives in Cuba have been aware of the Mayans or the Aztecs? If "yes" did the trade with either? If so what? | The indigenous peoples of Cuba were the Taíno, an Arawak people who inhabited most of what is now Cuba, along with other Carribean islands such as Jamaica and Hispaniola. The Taíno have their roots in South America, particularly in what is now the Orinoco Valley in Venezuela, and divided from the Arawak by migrating t... | [
"Christopher Columbus traded with Maya merchants off the coast of Yucatán in 1502, but never made landfall. Arriving in Yucatán during the decade following Columbus's first contact with the Maya, the first Spanish to set foot on Yucatán soil did so by chance, the survivors of a shipwreck in the Caribbean. Most of t... |
Why do U.S. politicians refuse to label the genocide on the Natives as a 'genocide'? | > For all intents and purposes, the United States actively teaches its citizens about the genocide on the Natives
Eh... I don't think so.
I'm from Nebraska and we've got a couple of reservations and a decent sized Native American population. I cannot think of a time where the term genocide was used to describe what... | [
"In a speech before representatives of Native American peoples in June, 2019, California governor Gavin Newsom apologized for the genocide. Newsom said, \"That’s what it was, a genocide. No other way to describe it. And that’s the way it needs to be described in the history books.\"\n",
"In the United States, bla... |
photon reflection off a mirror. | Say that we have a laser at point A and a detector at point B. We aim the laser so that the light coming out of it bounces off a mirror and goes into the detector. The actual physics of what's going on at the point where the light bounces off the mirror is extremely complicated and depends on material properties and th... | [
"Now, the same photon is moving through two different parts of the device. The photon that passed through the mirror is now on the \"lower path\". It may or may not encounter a bomb, which is designed to explode if it encounters a single photon. The photon that was reflected off the mirror is now on the \"upper pat... |
What are these WWII era Japanese men wearing? | They are wearing kimono, a traditional Japanese garment. The kimono itself is the long robe-looking piece of clothing that is secured at the waist by a sash (obi). On top of that, they seem to be wearing haori - a sort of coat commonly worn over kimono robes. Additionally, some of them are also wearing hakama - a sort ... | [
"Kempeitai personnel were dressed in the standard Japanese military uniform, but they were distinguished by an armband bearing the Japanese characters for \"Kempeitai\" (憲兵隊). They also wore khaki uniforms with an armband or were simply dressed in civilian clothes. While officers were armed with a shin guntō (milit... |
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