question stringlengths 3 301 | answer stringlengths 9 26.1k | context list |
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the difference between tactic and strategy | Tactics win battles.
Strategy wins wars.
Tactics are decisions and things done by soldiers fighting in a single battle. But a war is typically many battles, and the overarching set of decisions and things done to win the war are called the strategy. | [
"Strategy differs from tactics, in that strategy refers to the employment of all of a nation's military capabilities through high level and long term planning, development and procurement to guarantee security or victory. Tactics is the military science employed to secure objectives defined as part of the military ... |
how do i know that a headphone is good? | There are plenty of ways to benchmark the quality of headphones but really it comes down to what you like and how you'll use them. I'm going to say it comes down to three factors:
1) Sound quality: If you're a sound engineer you need a completely flat response but the fact is that most of us are neither sound engineer... | [
"Effectively, a headphone amplifier is a small power amplifier that can be connected to a standard headphone jack or the line output of an audio source. Electrically, a headphone amplifier can be thought of as an amplifier that presents a very high input impedance (ideally infinite) and presents a lower output impe... |
why would supermarkets and resturants rather throw out their food than give it to the employees | They don't want to be liable for what happens if you ingest the food and get sick. | [
"Retail stores throw away large quantities of food. Usually, this consists of items that have reached either their best before, sell-by or use-by dates. Food that has passed the best before, and sell-by date, and even some food that passed the use-by date is still edible at the time of disposal, but stores have wid... |
Why did the Sikhs generally side with the British during the Indian Rebellion of 1857? | Notes
1. In the following text I will use the terms 'British' and the 'East India Company (EIC)' interchangeably. Please note that pre-1857, there was no 'British empire' in India - it was just territory controlled by the East India Company, either directly or through vassalage.
2. I will not be going into the age-ol... | [
"The loss of British prestige at Chillianwala was one of the factors which contributed to the Indian rebellion of 1857 some nine years later. However the Sikh soldiers serving in the British army remained loyal to Britain and helped crush the rebellion.\n",
"Sikh support for the British resulted from grievances s... |
why does a link in a word document takes too long time to open when clicked in? | Because Microsoft Word is not a web browser. So when you click the link it has to take time to open the web browser before it actually searches the url and opens the page.
Just a guess. | [
"A file's access time identifies when the file was most recently opened for reading. Access times are usually updated even if only a small portion of a large file is examined. A running program can maintain a file as \"open\" for some time, so the time at which a file was opened may differ from the time data was mo... |
Help With the Facts of a WWI/WWII Story I Partially Remember | There were 2 country-wide censuses in 2nd Polish Republic - in 1921 and in 1931. Both were mandatory and asked about religion among other things.
I've never seen arguments that religion was included because of problems with proper burial.
Also - in 2nd RP religious organisations participated in local administration (... | [
"A War Story is a 1981 Canadian docudrama produced, written, and directed by Anne Wheeler. It tells the story of her father Major Ben Wheeler when he was captured by the Japanese during the Second World War.\n",
"This Canadian World War I narrative starts in Montreal, where an unnamed soldier of 18 years old is a... |
why can't julian assange claim diplomatic immunity | Diplomatic Immunity is established by the Vienna Convention and has laws and procedures that must be followed, it can't just be granted to people to get them out of a situation unless you want serious blow back. | [
"In 2012 Kai Ambos argued that the \"misuse\" by the Ecuadorian government of its London embassy to protect Julian Assange from prosecution in Sweden in respect of rape charges was a breach of human rights. Pointing out that Assange had been able to arrange matters so that it had taken three English courts a year a... |
If you are paralyzed, can you still move some muscle-
groups. If yes/no, why? | Paralysis has a cause, and that cause determines what muscles are paralyzed. In cases of spinal cord injury, all muscles whose nerves leave the cord below the injury are lost. That's why some people have leg parlysis, but their arms are fine, etc.
Hawking has ALS, or Lou Gehrig's disease, which causes the loss of m... | [
"Paralysis is a loss of muscle function for one or more muscles. Paralysis can be accompanied by a loss of feeling (sensory loss) in the affected area if there is sensory damage as well as motor. In the United States, roughly 1 in 50 people have been diagnosed with some form of permanent or transient paralysis. The... |
Was the modern American homeschooling movement in part a reaction to desegregation of public schools? | It's on the mark to a certain extent, and in a certain context. It's helpful, for the sake of an explainer, to think of the history of homeschooling a bit like an hourglass; wide at the top, pinched in the middle, widening out again towards the bottom.
The first wide bit represents education on the land that would be... | [
"In the 1960s, a growing homeschool movement arose in the United States, due to parental concern about the quality and nature of the government system of free public schools. By 2003, the number of homeschooling children in the United States rose to over 1 million, an increase of some 29% from 1999. In this growing... |
why is it that when we’re exhausted suddenly everything becomes so much more funny? does this have to do with a possible correlation between lack of sleep and brain function? | One of the common themes of comedy is things not meeting our expectations. When we're very fatigued, our mind doesn't have the ability to predict things quite as well - so we're more likely to find something doesn't match our expectations, and thus amusement. | [
"Sleep deprivation is known to have negative effects on the brain and behavior. Extended periods of sleep deprivation often results in the malfunctioning of neurons, directly affecting an individual's behavior. While muscles are able to regenerate even in the absence of sleep, neurons are incapable of this ability.... |
how can it be ok for parcel carriers to leave packages in front of someones house? who is responsible if it gets stolen? and how is this system not abused (pretending it was stolen)? | From what I understand, the system is abused. If you report a package stolen that was from Amazon, and Amazon did not require a signature for said package, then they will send you a new one. Happened to my brother with a laptop. The flipside to this is, he could have just stashed the computer in his house and claimed i... | [
"Recipients often choose to use a high capacity “parcel box” which will store large numbers of items and mail at the same time. Deposited items are securely stored with the use of internal security baffles which allow parcels to drop down into the lower portions of the box whilst restricting the theft of items thro... |
what citizenship status does a child who is born in a non-territorial region (international waters, antarctica, disputed territory, etc) have? | That would depend on the citizenship of its parents I suppose. Not all nations have the same requirements for citizenship. In the United States, for instance, a child of US citizens in many cases receives US Citizenship regardless of the location of birth. | [
"In addition to the question of a child's citizenship, there is also a question of how to report \"Place of Birth\" for children born in transit. US State Department guidance instructs that a child born in international waters should have their place of birth listed as \"AT SEA\", while those born in the territoria... |
Two headed animals? | The simple answer to this is that there is a huge difference between early embryonic development in different organisms. Some organisms may well be more prone to producing conjoined-twins then others. It occurs the same way that mono-zygotic twins are produced, only they do not completely separate. Mono-zygotic twins t... | [
"Two-headed animals (called bicephalic or dicephalic) and three-headed (tricephalic) animals are the only type of multi-headed creatures seen in the real world, and form by the same process as conjoined twins from monozygotic twin embryos.\n",
"Polycephalic animals often make local news headlines when found. The ... |
AskScience AMA Series: I’m Dyann Wirth, Chair of the Department of Immunology and Infectious Diseases at Harvard T.H Chan School of Public Health and Director of the Harvard Malaria Initiative, and I’m here to talk about malaria eradication; Ask Me Anything! | In the setting of the ongoing Zika epidemic, recent press attention has focused on the notion of eradicating mosquitos that are vectors for pathogenic parasites (anopheles, aedes, etc.), thereby removing the primary host for many infectious diseases - including, of course, your dear Plasmodium genus. What are your thou... | [
"In 2004 Wulsin was hired as an epidemiologist by the Heimlich Institute to conduct a four-month literature review on \"malariotherapy\", the AIDS treatment based on infecting HIV+ patients with malaria. Wulsin wrote a draft report for the Heimlich Institute summarizing her findings, entitled \"Immunotherapy and Be... |
how do they make bamboo, which is circular, into flat flooring which looks like one piece? | It's large bamboo, cut into strips, planed or steamed into rectangles, then edge-glued into sheets.
If you look you can see the dark patches which are the nodes in the original bamboo - think of the "knuckles" in a piece of grass, which is essentially all bamboo is. Those dark patches stretch across just one strip of ... | [
"Various structural shapes may be made by training the bamboo to assume them as it grows. Squared sections of bamboo are created by compressing the growing stalk within a square form. Arches may similarly be created by forcing the bamboo's growth into the desired form, costing much less than it would to obtain the ... |
Did West Germany get punished either formally or informally in international sporting events in the aftermath of World War 2? | Yes, both Germany and Japan were banned from the first World Cup ([1950 in Brazil](_URL_1_)) and the first Olympics ([1948 in London](_URL_0_)) after the war had ended. They were both still under Allied occupation at the time. The East German football federation hadn't been formed by 1950 to attempt to qualify for the ... | [
"West Germany gained a measure of revenge in the 1970 World Cup by knocking England out in the quarter-finals 3–2, having been 2–0 down, before they suffered another memorable extra time loss, this time in the semi-final against Italy at Estadio Azteca. Karl-Heinz Schnellinger scored during injury time to level the... |
what exactly is a "mhz" when talking about cpu's? | Imagine the CPU is a producton line of people, making a car; one guy lifts the body and puts it onto the conveyor belt, the second guy fits the undercarriage, the third guy puts on the wheels, the the fourth guy puts in the seats etc.
Now, in a CPU, there is a conductor who basically goes "NEXT!" and every time he goe... | [
"66 (more specifically 66.667) megahertz (MHz) is a common divisor for the front side bus (FSB) speed, overall central processing unit (CPU) speed, and base bus speed. On a Core 2 CPU, and a Core 2 motherboard, the FSB is 1066 MHz (~16 × 66 MHz), the memory speed is usually 666.67 MHz (~10 × 66 MHz), and the proces... |
What cultures have historically frowned upon surrendering in battle once all hope is lost? | Perhaps not quite answering the question, but just commenting on a couple of the ones you listed.
Ancient Spartans, whilst certainly a fearsome fighting force and for a long time the peak of Greek land based military prowess, were actually kind of terrified of their citizens dying. Their societal structure had numerou... | [
"If a side in a war is willing enough, as through religious zeal, nationalism or ideological belief, defeat or surrender to the enemy can be seen as worse than death and thus being rejected. Humiliation and war honor are a common reason, but also fear of torture, pillaging, enslaving or other crimes might convince ... |
Are there any records for how ancient or older civilizations dealt with snowy roads? | You should be able to find adequate answers to this question in the archives. To sum up what many of these say, it that sufficient amounts of snow were not necessarily a bad thing, as sleads could often get around faster. Snow is a bigger problem for motorized veichles than older means of transportation.
But I'll leav... | [
"Great Indian epic, Mahabharata gives account of the ancient roadways. It refers to Uttarapatha (northern highway) which linked the territories of Kirata (perhaps of Magadha), Kamboja, Gandhara and Yavana countries (Shanti Parva, 207.43; Foreign Trade and Commerce in Ancient India, 2003, p 107, Prakash Chandra Pras... |
european parlament's article 13 on copyright directive | First off, linking what on earth you're talking about might help, searching on Google ment I had to wade through a 1000 think pieces before finding anything offical.
Second, from what I can tell, it removes the limited protection Hosting sites had for hosting copyrighted material.
So before if I was a hosting service... | [
"The Copyright Directive (also known as the Information Society Directive) is a directive of the European Union enacted to implement the WIPO Copyright Treaty and to harmonise aspects of copyright law across Europe, such as copyright exceptions. The directive was first enacted in 2001 under the internal market prov... |
nuclear reactions | Think about a ping pong ball sitting on the floor. It's just kind of chillin'. Maybe rolls around a bit, maybe just sits there. But the point is that it doesn't have a lot of energy.
Now, imagine we could balance that ping-pong ball on the top of a steel rod, maybe about the diameter of the ping-pong ball. The s... | [
"Natural nuclear reactions occur in the interaction between cosmic rays and matter, and nuclear reactions can be employed artificially to obtain nuclear energy, at an adjustable rate, on demand. Perhaps the most notable nuclear reactions are the nuclear chain reactions in fissionable materials that produce induced ... |
How (culturally) important was the Pony Express? | The Pony Express (1860-1861) was short lived and soon to be replaced by telegraph wires. It represented an early - and important - attempt to bind the far-reaches of the nation. At a time when the nation was threatening to break apart at the seams with the Southern Rebellion, it was important that the Far West recogniz... | [
"The Pony Express demonstrated that a unified transcontinental system of communications could be established and operated year-round. When replaced by the telegraph, the Pony Express quickly became romanticized and became part of the lore of the American West. Its reliance on the ability and endurance of individual... |
This Week's Theme: the 1940s | **[Previously](_URL_0_)**
**Current**: The 1940s
**Upcoming**: Literature (Previously the week of [December 6th, 2015](_URL_1_))
**In the hole**: Games and Sports (Previously the week of [September 20th, 2015](_URL_2_))
Remember to ask theme-related questions in [a new thread!](_URL_3_) | [
"The Fifties (1993) is a history book by David Halberstam centered on the decade of the 1950s in the United States. Rather than using a straightforward linear narrative, Halberstam separately profiles many of the notable trends and people of the post-World War II era, starting with Harry Truman's stunning President... |
why don't bugs try to fly towards the sun or moon? | They use bright light like the sun or moon to know when they are flying straight. If they want to fly straight, they just keep the sun or moon in the same part of their view.
Now imagine you’re a moth using that technique with a candle flame to your left. You try to fly straight, but the bright light moves backwards i... | [
"Moths frequently appear to circle artificial lights, although the reason for this behavior (positive phototaxis) remains unknown. One hypothesis is called celestial or transverse orientation. By maintaining a constant angular relationship to a bright celestial light, such as the moon, they can fly in a straight li... |
Why do stuff like wood and fingernails get soft with water? | The molecules in wood or fingernails are mostly held together by hydrogen bonds. When water gets in-between the molecules that make up these materials it forms hydrogen bonds to them and disrupts the existing hydrogen bonds in the material. Without these bonds the material loses its strength. When the water evaporates ... | [
"The general effect of the water content upon the wood substance is to render it softer and more pliable. A similar effect occurs in the softening action of water on rawhide, paper, or cloth. Within certain limits, the greater the water content, the greater its softening effect.\n",
"Wood is the traditional boat ... |
how the spacecraft docking to the iss is slow while orbiting at high speed? | The craft is slow relative to the speed of the ISS. As an example, drive on the highway at 65. Someone going 70 will appear to be going 5mph in relation to you. | [
"As part of its phasing maneuvers to catch up with the ISS, 3.5 and 4.5 hours into the mission, the Soyuz Spacecraft performed two large SKD Main Propulsion System Burns changing the vehicle's speed by 41.5 m/s and 23.9 m/s, respectively. These burns were followed by a minor maneuver on July 16 for a velocity chang... |
why do i perceive that there is a metallic taste on a metallic fork after it touches aluminium? | Aluminum is more reactive than the stainless steel that you are used to eating with. The sensation of it reacting with your saliva is is what you taste.
(gold is even less reactive, even noticeably different than steel) | [
"A metallic taste may be caused by food and drink, certain medicines or amalgam dental fillings. It is generally considered an off flavor when present in food and drink. A metallic taste may be caused by galvanic reactions in the mouth. In the case where it is caused by dental work, the dissimilar metals used may p... |
Just how much do we know about the daily life of a regular citizen of Tenochtitlan, pre-Cortez? | Quite a bit. I found Jacques Soustelle's book *Daily Life of the Aztecs: On the Eve of the Spanish Conquest* to be informative and a decent summary of what is in the Florentine Codex coupled with other sources, but /u/400-Rabbits may have a better recommendation. | [
"In his analysis of the 1790 census of Mexico City and its surrounding area, Dennis Nodin Valdés shows that the major colonial metropolis had a higher proportion of Spaniards and mixed-race castas than Indians. He compared the population of the capital of New Spain with the census of the Intendancy of Mexico in 179... |
Was the Manhattan Project always intended exclusively for use on Japan? | No. Many of the early participants were Europeans who specifically wished to stop Hitler. | [
"In addition to developing the atomic bomb, the Manhattan Project was charged with gathering intelligence on the German nuclear energy project. It was believed that the Japanese nuclear weapons program was not far advanced because Japan had little access to uranium ore, but it was initially feared that Germany was ... |
how do scanners at the front of stores detect unpurchased items? | Most items have stickers containing metal that will trigger the alarms as you walk through. By scanners, do you mean those metal things by the exit? | [
"Some backscatter X-ray scanners can scan much larger objects, such as trucks and containers. This scan is much faster than a physical search and could potentially allow a larger percentage of shipping to be checked for smuggled items, weapons, drugs, or people.\n",
"An alternative system (self-scanning) consists... |
What caused the rift between the People's Republic of China and the U.S.S.R? | First of, it's important to note that Stalin was playing his own games and he didn't wholeheartedly support the Chinese communists during the civil war. However, once the war was won he supported China with technical assistance, military aid and capital loans.
The conflict between these emerged from ideological confl... | [
"Since the end of the Chinese Civil War, the United States had refused to formally recognize the People's Republic of China (PRC) as the legitimate government of China, though the PRC controlled Mainland China. The U.S. had instead supported the Republic of China (ROC), which controlled Taiwan. By the time Nixon to... |
art forgery | By mimicking brush strokes. There once was a con man who would purchase moderately priced paintings ($20k-$200k), hire student artists to reproduce specific artworks, then sell them to museums for a bit more while stashing the real one. Doesn't seem like he would make much money off doing this, but he would have the ... | [
"Art forgery is the creating and selling of works of art which are falsely credited to other, usually more famous artists. Art forgery can be extremely lucrative, but modern dating and analysis techniques have made the identification of forged artwork much simpler.\n",
"There are essentially three varieties of ar... |
Are there any opaque, liquid solutions that become transparent or at least translucent when agitated? | The stimulus has either to be mechanical (shear stress) or thermal (friction, heat from holding).
My best guess is either liquid crystals (on resting they organize in scattering phases giving opacity, on shaking the become anisotropcally solvated in the medium) or a biphasic thixotropic mixture. I would discard thermoc... | [
"Most liquids and aqueous solutions are highly transparent. For example, water, cooking oil, rubbing alcohol, air, and natural gas are all clear. Absence of structural defects (voids, cracks, etc.) and molecular structure of most liquids are chiefly responsible for their excellent optical transmission. The ability ... |
how this thing called love works. | Interesting question. Love is very subjective so it's difficult to give an objective answer but I'll give it a shot.
IMHO love is really a willful choice to be with someone rather than be alone. In doing so, you give up certain things like time to be with the other person. You also help to support them emotionally... | [
"The Thing Called Love is a 1993 American comedy-drama film directed by Peter Bogdanovich and starring Samantha Mathis, River Phoenix, Dermot Mulroney and Sandra Bullock. While the film involves a love triangle and various complications in Miranda's route to success, it provides a sweetened glimpse at the lives of ... |
What is the most exciting and promising developments in your field of science today? | [The memristor](_URL_0_). If HP manages to ramp production up on a large scale with these devices, and a third party develops a competing manufacturing method to drive costs down, they'll change the face of computing.
You could build entire computers out of *stateful, nonvolatile logic.* With a sufficiently large ba... | [
"Notable scientific accomplishments at the Lab since World War II include the observation of the antiproton, the discovery of several transuranic elements, and the discovery of the accelerating universe.\n",
"Today nearly 2,000 scientists and researchers - including roughly 600 with Ph.D.s - pursue new opportunit... |
if england is a constitutional monarchy with the queen and the rest of the royal family being more or less celebrites with little political clout, how do they stay so relevant and so wealthy? are they funded by the people of england? | The Queen is also a property owner, with a lot of real estate. She isn't just a politician, but also very wealthy.
All of these lands are leased to the British Government at a discount rate. But she is still the owner, and if the monarchy was dissolved that would devolve back to her. | [
"Due to the \"unmoralic behavior\" of the royal family and the high cost of maintaining the royal court, the British parliament passes a bill to abolish the monarchy with immediate effect. Queen Elizabeth II (Irm Hermann, depicted as the stone-hearted head of the family), Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother (Brigitte ... |
big public companies like jpmorgan, gm, ge, boa and apple have millions of different shareholders, both private and institutional, what is the process to fire and appoint the ceo? | The Board of Directors hires and fires all Executive Officers. The Board of Directors is elected by the Shareholders. | [
"In the emerging countries there are usually some major shareholders who come together to form the company. Each usually has the right to nominate, without objection of the other, a certain number of Directors who become nominees for the election by the shareholder body at the AGM. The Treasurer and Chairperson is ... |
Why is earth's rotation slowing down? | It is caused by tidal forces, specifically from the moon.
The force of gravity from an object decreases the further you are away from it. This means the side of the Earth closest to the Moon is attracted to it more than middle, which is in turn attracted more than the far side. This causes the Earth to "stretch out" s... | [
"The main reason for the slowing down of the Earth's rotation is tidal friction, which alone would lengthen the day by 2.3 ms/century. Other contributing factors are the movement of the Earth's crust relative to its core, changes in mantle convection, and any other events or processes that cause a significant redis... |
If the universe is 46.5 billion light-years across and has been constantly expanding since the Big Bang then how big would it have been back at the time of the Big Bang? | 46.5 billion light years is the he size of the observable universe. The farther back in time you go the closer you get to the earliest things that you can see, those stars would have also expanded away from you less
We can only see about 12.7 billion light years away, but those stars that were 12.7 light years away ... | [
"It is 55,000 light years across (half the diameter of our galaxy), and at the time of discovery, said to \"hold more than 10 times as much mass as the next largest object found in the early universe, or roughly the equivalent mass of 40 billion Suns\".\n",
"Other large numbers, as regards length and time, are fo... |
why are cans for canned goods not square? | Cans are round because it maximizes the volume per amount of metal used and because being round makes them stronger than cubes. | [
"A bin is typically much shorter than a silo, and is typically used for holding dry matter such as cement or grain. Grain is often dried in a grain dryer before being stored in the bin. Bins may be round or square, but round bins tend to empty more easily due to a lack of corners for the stored material to become w... |
the gametophyte and sporophyte, and the alternation of genrations | This confused me so hard when I was in AP bio. It's actually pretty simple but it is really confusing to understand in higher plants like trees.
Essentially your sporophyte is your 2n plant. For Angiospersm (anything with flowers or fruit and grasses) as well as for gymnosperms (mostly pine trees) this is the whole pl... | [
"Apomixis in plants is the formation of a new sporophyte without fertilization. It is important in ferns and in flowering plants, but is very rare in other seed plants. In flowering plants, the term \"apomixis\" is now most often used for agamospermy, the formation of seeds without fertilization, but was once used ... |
Why did Britain not assist the US in Vietnam and did the US use British tactics that was used in the Malayan Emergency (if so why wasn't it successful?) | The answer is a resounding no.
In the early years of US involvement in South Vietnam, the ARVN was trained in conventional warfare, shaped in the image of the US Army. The belief was that the future conflict between South and North Vietnam would be that of a conventional one, resembling perhaps the Korean War in its ... | [
"The British experience in counter insurgency was passed onto the Americans during their involvement in the Vietnam War, where the battlegrounds were, again, the jungle. Much of British strategic thinking on counter-insurgency tactics in a jungle environment was passed on through BRIAM (British Advisory Mission) to... |
how and when did society come to be almost entirely financially dependent on the stock markets? | what makes you think society is fiscally dependent on the stock market? | [
"Social historian Karl Polanyi wrote that before markets became the world's dominant form of economic organization in the 19th century, most human societies would either starve all together or not at all, because communities would invariably share their food.\n",
"Social historian Karl Polanyi wrote that before m... |
what is happening when you’re anxious/suffering from anxiety, and what do anti-anxiety drugs (xanex etc) do to fight this? | Xanax and other benzodiazepines work on a part of the brain that releases an inhibitory chemical called GABA. The drugs stimulate GABA release which effectively shuts down/off other chemical receptor reactions. GABA is an extremely potent inhibitory chemical in the brain. I take advantage of this in anesthesia on a dai... | [
"An anxiolytic (also antipanic or antianxiety agent) is a medication, or other intervention, that inhibits anxiety. This effect is in contrast to anxiogenic agents, which increase anxiety. Together these categories of psychoactive compounds or interventions may be referred to as anxiotropic compounds or agents. Som... |
Why do the titles of classical/baroque pieces commonly include their keys? | Let's look at the first edition of [Beethoven's 5th Symphony](_URL_1_), a set of parts published by Breitkopf and Hartel in 1809. As you can see by the title page, the main identifier is the dedicatee and composer. And if you squint, at the very bottom of the page, you can see "Ouvr. 61," situating the symphony within ... | [
"Each major and minor key has an associated key signature that sharpens or flattens the notes which are used in its scale. However, it is not uncommon for a piece to be written with a key signature that does not match its key, for example, in some Baroque pieces, or in transcriptions of traditional modal folk tunes... |
how does the nba draft system, trades, picks, and transfers work? | Every year there is a draft where teams gets to pick from a pool of eligible young players. Every team is has two picks, one in round 1 and one in round 2. The order in which teams pick is determined roughly by how the standings finished the season prior, with the worst teams receiving the top picks. There is a bit of ... | [
"In the first round of the draft, each team has five minutes to decide which player they would like to select. During the five minutes, the team can also propose a trade with another team before making their final selection. The NBA commissioner then announce the selection and the player, wearing a basketball cap s... |
regarding american football: what is a 'salary cap penalty' | First, you need to know what the salary cap is: For the 2013 season, the cap for each team is set at $123 million. This means that no team can spend more than that amount of money against the cap (although we will talk later about what counts against the cap and what doesn’t). Teams must be in compliance with the cap... | [
"The NFL's cap is a hard cap that the teams have to stay under at all times, and the salary floor is also a hard floor. Penalties for violating or circumventing the cap regulations include fines of up to $5 million for each violation, cancellation of contracts and/or loss of draft picks. Violating the salary floor ... |
Were there any Asian plantation owners? | OP can you clarify, are you asking about, say, slavery-era USA, or where/when? Thanks | [
"Chettiar invested in real estate in and around Singapore. He purchased estates in Malaysia and established the Veerakesari Rubber Estates in Gelang Patah, Malacca, which was the first asian plantation in Malacca. While a majority of the estates were owned and run by expatriate planters of British and Scottish orig... |
what would a photon "see" if it "looked" at a different photon traveling in the same direction? | You actually can't do this! The way you'd do it would be to measure the velocity of the other photon from the rest frame of the first photon. However photons have no rest frames! So the answer unfortunately is undefined. | [
"In the top diagram, it seems as though the trajectories of the photons are known: If a photon emerges from the top of the apparatus, it seems as though it had to have come by way of the blue path, and if it emerges from the side of the apparatus, seem as though it had to have come by way of the red path. However, ... |
If a human has no labyrinth (inner ear), does it mean they have no sense of balance or does the brain somehow makes it work? | I'll take a stab at this even though I'm not in the medical field. My sister's inner ears are screwy and the body relies on a combination of inner ear, sight, and body feel to stay balanced. And two out of the three is enough but if she closes her eyes, she'll fall over | [
"The main symptom of labyrinthitis is severe vertigo. Rapid and undesired eye motion (nystagmus) often results from the improper indication of rotational motion. Nausea, anxiety, and a general ill feeling are common due to the distorted balance signals that the brain receives from the inner ear.\n",
"Labyrinthiti... |
why do all big cities have a highway or series of highways making a circle around the center? | These are commonly called Ring Roads and they're simply an efficient way to move traffic around a city. The centers of these cities are generally dense and hard to build in. So, when developing a high speed road it's easier to build it outside the city instead of straight through the middle. | [
"Due to the grid pattern of the roads, the central city has a high number of traffic signals. Four pairs of one-way streets are located only a few hundred metres away from Cathedral Square, making it easy to drive through the city centre. The avenues in the north, east and south surrounding the central city are gen... |
why do milk jugs in the us invariably leak from their cap, but not other liquids? | Not sure about the US but in the UK the bottles are cheap and leak in the way you described.
I always assumed this was to keep the costs down, as its such a high volume product a little saving per bottle goes a long way.
There is also the fact that unlike the pop bottles there's not much brand loyalty with milk as fa... | [
"Consumers have criticized the square milk jug for being difficult to pour, especially for children. When tilted shallowly, the larger opening (larger than a traditional milk jug), combined with its small lip, generates a wide stream of milk. This causes spills and leaks onto the sides of the container.\n",
"In t... |
How did youth culture develop in the United States? | I actually know the answer for this, but in a Canadian context. So I hope someone comes along and provides a more appropriate answer, but I think they followed similar trends, so I am going to hazard an response.
Most of this draws from the work of Cynthia Comacchio's *Dominion of Youth: Adolescence and the Making of... | [
"Youth activism as a social phenomenon in the United States truly became defined in the mid- to late-nineteenth century when young people began forming labor strikes in response to their working conditions, wages, and hours. Mary Harris \"Mother\" Jones organized the first youth activism in the U.S., marching 100,0... |
gas prices have been on the decline for a while, but why have food prices not dropped, since they were originally raised (in part) due to high transportation costs? | Companies are always quick to pass on rising costs to their customers, but slow to pass on savings. This is especially true when there are multiple companies the product has to go through (farms, transportation companies, processing companies, supermarkets) before it gets to you. | [
"While supply interruptions have caused repeated spikes in pricing since 1990, longer range price trends respond to limitations in resources and their rates of development. As of 2006 the U.S. Interior Department estimated that the Outer Continental Shelf of the United States held more than 15 trillion cubic meters... |
What determines how often geysers erupt? | Not an expert but I have been to Yellowstone quite a few times and know a decent amount about geysers. It basically all boils down to how interconnected the geyser's plumbing system is. Old Faithful's plumbing system appears to be fairly isolated from the rest of the Upper Geyser Basin and therefore activity from other... | [
"Generally the geysers are known to erupt during the completion of the above cycle, although there have been eruptions that begin with Lower Mortar, and ever rarer: Upper Mortar. Preceding an eruption, the water levels in the whole complex will generally rise. However, the geysers may erupt at any time. The geysers... |
why do meteors burn when they enter earth's atmosphere? | The answers here mentioning friction are incorrect. While friction plays a small role it's not responsible for the main heating. When a fast moving object enters the atmosphere the air in front of it is compressed rapidly and can't get out of the way quick enough. When gases are compressed they heat up, this massive pr... | [
"Most meteoroids burn up as meteors before hitting a planet's surface. When meteoroids do impact, the effects are often erased by the action of wind. As a result, craters are rare on objects with atmospheres.\n",
"Many explosions recorded in Earth's atmosphere are likely caused by the air burst that results from ... |
Does any amount of mold on food indicate that the entire thing has gone bad? | Depends on the food - the USDA [has a neat chart]( _URL_0_) that explains what's safe to eat with mold. | [
"Signs of food spoilage may include an appearance different from the food in its fresh form, such as a change in color, a change in texture, an unpleasant odour, or an undesirable taste. The item may become softer than normal. If mold occurs, it is often visible externally on the item.\n",
"Prevention of mold exp... |
why is working the graveyard shift damaging to our health? | For most people, it's because they're not wired to sleep well during daylight hours and be awake all night. Lack of good sleep will destroy you, either quickly and obviously or slowly and grindingly over time. Sleep is the "repair and clean up" phase for the brain. Remember what a wreck your dorm room was around exam t... | [
"Shift work also can worsen chronic diseases, including sleep disorders, digestive diseases, heart disease, hypertension, epilepsy, mental disorders, substance abuse, asthma, and any health conditions that are treated with medications affected by the circadian cycle. Artificial lighting may additionally contribute ... |
Do humans instantly die when the heart stops? | Your brain and other organs don't die instantly, but you do go into shock immediately. When your heart stops, your blood pressure collapses, triggering a wave of biochemical responses. Your body has a strict hierarchy of organs to protect, and skeletal muscles are not high on the list. They get shut down while all of t... | [
"While most causes of sudden cardiac death relate to congenital or acquired cardiovascular disease, an exception is commotio cordis, in which the heart is structurally normal but a potentially fatal loss of rhythm occurs because of the accident of timing of a blow to the chest. Its fatality rate is about 65% even w... |
How important was Opticks by Sir Isaac Newton? | At the time, I'd say it was very important. Light has always been important in the study of physics, and Opticks provided a complete theory that addressed many important properties of light. For instance, Einstein relied, implicitly or explicitly, on essentially Newtonian idea about the transmission of light when he ... | [
"The \"Opticks\" was widely read and debated in England and on the Continent. The early presentation of the work to the Royal Society stimulated a bitter dispute between Newton and Robert Hooke over the \"corpuscular\" or particle theory of light, which prompted Newton to postpone publication of the work until afte... |
Do the vitamins in vitamin supplement pills really just get pissed away, or do they do us some good? | Your last sentence answered your question. Your body does utilize the vitamins. However, taking vast excess of what your body can handle at once does result in you simply pissing it out. | [
"Some vitamins cause acute or chronic toxicity, a condition called hypervitaminosis, which occurs mainly for fat-soluble vitamins if over-consumed by excessive supplementation. Hypervitaminosis A and hypervitaminosis D are the most common examples. Vitamin D toxicity does not result from sun exposure or consuming f... |
Are there statistics for casualty rates among non-White American combatants in WWI? | There were quite a few black combat units in the U.S. Army during the war.
The black soldiers who saw combat were volunteers, draftees, or National Guardsmen from northern states who'd been called up. Although many of these men ended up in support units, some did see combat. There were two large frontline formations t... | [
"Detailed American casualties are not available because many of the relevant records were destroyed by fire in 1800. British and Hessian estimates placed the total American losses at around 3,000, and a return prepared by General Howe listed 1,097 prisoners, including Generals John Sullivan, Lord Stirling, and Nath... |
when elephants suck water with their trunks, how do they not accidentally drown? | Imagine having a straw in glass of water.
Now imagine sucking water into the straw. Not drinking it. Not filling your mouth completely with it. Just sucking water into the straw.
That’s what elephants do. They suck it up that way and then squirt it back into their mouths to drink. | [
"Elephants with floppy trunk syndrome typically initially exhibit a loss of their trunk's prehensile abilities. The paralysis has been observed to start at the tip and work its way upward over the course of several months. As their trunks become increasingly paralyzed, elephants have difficulty feeding and learn to... |
Is it possible that one day people could use some kind of bio-electricity to power stuff like phones? | Are you referring to a literal power "plant?" Or that humans themselves would generate electricity bodily?
For the former, it may one day be possible to have naturally assisted electricity generation but out would likely be inefficient and low voltage.
If the latter, look up electric eels: the biology to create thes... | [
"Powering the over 1 billion personal computers, the millions of corporate data centers, the over 4 billion fixed and mobile telephones and telecommunications networks around the world requires approximately 1.4 Petawatt-hr a year () of electricity, approximately 8% of the global electrical energy produced in 2005.... |
why aren't there planets that orbit perpendicular to the orbital plane? | [This is why.](_URL_0_)
Everything starts out going all different directions, but just by chance there is a net angular momentum, and as everything collides that's going different directions, they all cancel out and fall into the center. You're left with only things that sum up to the net angular momentum of the syste... | [
"The theories Copernicus gives in the \"Commentariolus\" for the motions of the outer planets all have the same general structure, and only differ in the values of the various parameters needed to specify their motions completely. Their orbits are not coplanar with that of the Earth, but do share its centre as thei... |
What type of effect do events like July 4th or Thunder over Louisville have on the atmosphere? | It doesn't come close to industrial emissions, and the pollution from fireworks is more heavily tilted toward heavy metals and [perchlorate](_URL_0_) than greenhouse gases. The impact is observed in standing water, rather than the atmosphere. | [
"On August 4 at 9:25 am EST a major thunderstorm producing large hail and winds in excess of advanced at the leading edge of a cold front moving across the American Midwest, causing a flash flood that struck Louisville and portions of the surrounding Kentuckiana region. The National Weather Service estimated that b... |
What was the impact of the publication of Darwin's evolutionary theory in the average Pokemon trainer's life? | Disclaimer: I'm in no way accustomed to the newest developments in Pokemon science, my area of expertise is about ancient version pokemon. I recommend you ask our friends in [r/askscience](_URL_0_) too.
Darwin is a highly controversial figure in the Pokemon World. As a matter of fact some part of his theory are common... | [
"Darwin's research and experiments on plants and animals continued, and his extensive writings countered the arguments against evolution, particularly those put by the Duke of Argyll and St George Mivart.\n",
"Darwin's theory radically altered popular and scientific opinion about the development of life. However,... |
What determines a person's reaction to capsaicin-rich foods? Is it physiological, psychological, or genetic? | Capsaicin selectively binds to a protein known as TRPV1 that resides on the membranes of pain and heat-sensing neurons. TRPV1 is a heat-activated calcium channel that opens between 37 and 45 °C (98.6 and 113 °F, respectively). When capsaicin binds to TRPV1, it causes the channel to open below 37 °C (normal human body t... | [
"Plasma cell gingivits and plasma cell cheilitis are thought to be hypersensitivity reactions to some antigen. Possible sources of antigens include ingredients in toothpastes, chewing gum, mints, pepper, or foods. Specifically, cinnamonaldehyde and cinnamon flavoring are often to blame. However, the exact cause in ... |
why can't files (documents, pictures, presentations etc.) open in some program be moved to a new folder while they're open? | It's to maintain version control. Let's say there are 3 people in my department at work who are required to keep a specific file updated. I start making changes at 12:05, but I haven't saved the file. The person next to me makes changes at 12:06 and then saves the file. I then save the file I have open. Well, all... | [
"Traditionally, when a folder is opened, the icon representing the folder changes—perhaps from an image showing a closed drawer to an opened one, perhaps the folder's icon turns into a silhouette filled with a pattern—and a new window is opened. Attempting to open that \"already opened\" folder will simply reveal t... |
Is there something like an "immediate concentration overflow"? | You may be inducing your adrenaline in order to think as best as you can. Doing so burns calories fast and if you're not prepared, you can easily burn out much the same as if you were to sprint for 20 metres versus jog for 100 metres. You are able to focus instantly and get into a zone, but our minds are designed to b... | [
"Directed overflow is a special case of damage pre-emption, where excess of a normal, but reactive metabolite could lead to toxic products. Preventing this excess is thus pre-emption of potential damage.\n",
"Overflow metabolism refers to the seemingly wasteful strategy in which cells incompletely oxidize their g... |
why is it that when we touch a very hot surface, we have the same sentation as touching a cold surface before the pain kicks in ? | Pain doesn’t go to your brain right away, it goes to your spine. Since hot and cold are both temperature related pains, they feel the same in your spine, since it’s only important for your nervous system to tell you “PULL AWAY”. That’s why your first response to that pain is to jerk yourself away from it. Then it goes ... | [
"When a person touches a hot object and withdraws their hand from it without actively thinking about it, the heat stimulates temperature and pain receptors in the skin, triggering a sensory impulse that travels to the central nervous system. The sensory neuron then synapses with interneurons that connect to motor n... |
graphene | Graphene is a network of carbon atoms that looks like a honeycomb. One really cool thing about (single layer) graphene is that it's one atom thick. This means that it's pretty much a 2-dimensional material.
Why is graphene special? Well, lots and lots of reasons. Here's a few.
* If you write down the equation that te... | [
"Graphene (/ˈɡræfiːn/) is an allotrope of carbon in the form of a two-dimensional, atomic-scale, hexagonal lattice in which one atom forms each vertex. It is the basic structural element of other allotropes, including graphite, charcoal, carbon nanotubes and fullerenes. It can also be considered as an indefinitely ... |
Why were the Late 70's/Early 80's a low point for many American cities? | Urban sprawl and misguided urban renewal projects. There was a mass migration to the suburbs at this time. Largely due to the way automobiles reshaped cities. Something that had obviously started earlier in the century but by the 70s/80s had totally transformed American cities. When the mass migration was hitting the h... | [
"By the 1960s and 70s, times had changed. America's flight to suburbs was having a damaging effect on downtown business districts across the country. Hardest hit were the downtown movie palaces which dotted America's urban landscapes. Audiences dwindled and costs rose. Many of our nation's finest movie palaces were... |
Were Augustus and Caesar close while Caesar was alive, or was their relationship purely for political reasons? | Suetonius says that Caesar and Octavius met on one occasion, during Caesar's Spanish campaign. Octavius was supposed to meet Caesar at several points, but always something got in the way. Octavius was going to join Caesar early in his Spanish campaign, but his chronic poor health prevented him from leaving until quite ... | [
"After Caesar's assassination, Mark Antony, who at the time had been Caesar's fellow consul, eventually formed an alliance with Caesar's adopted son and great-nephew, Gaius Octavian. Along with Marcus Aemilius Lepidus, who was Caesar's magister equitum (master of horse) at the time of his assassination, they formed... |
Those huge cargo ships and oil tankers have a really small anchor compared to the overall size of the ship. How does such a small anchor manage to keep the ship in place? | Holding at anchor is the chain. The chain is what is the part that actually keeps the ship in place.
The anchor is only set to keep the chain from dragging around and will represent the circle that the ship will swing at while at anchor.
Normal anchoring is done by setting the anchor, then playing out at least 3 to... | [
"Anchors achieve holding power either by \"hooking\" into the seabed, or sheer mass, or a combination of the two. Permanent moorings use large masses (commonly a block or slab of concrete) resting on the seabed. Semi-permanent mooring anchors (such as mushroom anchors) and large ship's anchors derive a significant ... |
What happens to the DNA of the food we eat? Do our bodies metabolize it as fuel? | Yes. Basically you will break down the DNA or Nucleic acids into their component parts, much like you do for sugars and proteins (but not necessarily fats), which are then absorbed in the intestine by your brush border cells. | [
"The second hypothesis, DNA as food, relies on the fact that cells that take up DNA inevitably acquire the nucleotides the DNA consists of, and, because nucleotides are needed for DNA and RNA synthesis and are expensive to synthesize, these may make a significant contribution to the cell's energy budget. Some natur... |
Why hasn't an effective artificial gill been made yet? | _URL_0_
Apparently they would have to process a massive amount of water to sustain us. | [
"Artificial gills are unproven conceptualised devices to allow a human to be able to take in oxygen from surrounding water. This is speculative technology that has not been demonstrated in a documented fashion. Natural gills work because nearly all animals with gills are thermoconformers (\"cold-blooded\"), so they... |
What can be reasonably suggested about the thought processes of people during the late Middle Ages? | This would come under the umbrellas of social and intellectual history. Reconstructing intellectual processes or social milieus is an incredibly difficult thing to do, not impossible but incredibly difficult.
We need ideal sources to do such a thing and in many instances this simply doesn't exist. It also takes an inc... | [
"The term \"Late Middle Ages\" refers to one of the three periods of the Middle Ages, along with the Early Middle Ages and the High Middle Ages. Leonardo Bruni was the first historian to use tripartite periodization in his \"History of the Florentine People\" (1442). Flavio Biondo used a similar framework in \"Deca... |
Why haven't we been able to analyze samples of different foods to find out exactly what the ingredients are and the percent of each ingredient in the food? You know, to unlock the mysteries of Coca-Cola, Big Mac sauce, etc. | We can do this. We can tell you exactly what chemicals are in any particular food. The problem is, if you're attempting to replicate a "secret recipe" is that most of these chemicals will be complicated organic molecules, so we can't exactly reconstruct from scratch by adding chemicals to a vat because it'd be prohibit... | [
"Chemical analysis of food samples carried out in analytical laboratories is typically the preferred method for creating FCD. The food samples are carefully chosen using a defined sampling plan to ensure that they are representative of the foods being consumed in a country. This includes accounting for factors that... |
How do we know what ancient languages sounded like? | Another clue is in mistakes in manuscripts. Many ancient manuscripts were dictated, and so by looking at which words and letters get mistaken for others, we can understand how words were pronounced. | [
"An ancient language is any language originating in times that may be referred to as ancient. There is no formal criterion for deeming a language ancient, but a traditional convention is to demarcate as \"ancient\" those languages that existed prior to the 5th century. Linguist Roger Woodward has said that \"[p]erh... |
What happened when someone at sea got sick? | The sources I have for this period do not specifically mention such cases, so I am guessing they were treated similarly to how the other mariners/navies at the time dealt with such issues.
There is effectively very little one can do to avoid a sickness from spreading around a ship. Even today (from personal experience... | [
"Disease (malaria or yellow fever) was the most common cause of death among sailors. A high crew mortality rate on the return voyage was in the captain's interests as it reduced the number of sailors who had to be paid on reaching the home port. Crew members who survived were frequently cheated out of their wages o... |
How do you correct for selection bias in surveys? | To correct for your specific example you would need to use other sampling methods. Cold called phone interviews, or something like that.
The answer to your question will also depend somewhat on what the purpose of the survey is. Measuring people's attitudes to something is different to an experiment that uses surveys ... | [
"Selection bias is the, conscious or unconscious, bias introduced into a study by the way individuals, groups or data are selected for analysis, if such a way means that true randomization is not achieved, thereby ensuring that the sample obtained is not representative of the population intended to be analyzed. Thi... |
transcendental idealism | First off, I laughed pretty hard when I saw this. We've all been there. I don't know what /u/deludedude is on about, but transcendental idealism isn't explicitly about morality, but rather a statement about space and time. Specifically, that space and time are not themselves objects, but are something that pertains to ... | [
"Transcendental idealism is associated with \"formalistic idealism\" on the basis of passages from Kant's \"Prolegomena to any Future Metaphysics\", although recent research has tended to dispute this identification. Transcendental idealism was also adopted as a label by the subsequent German philosophers Johann Go... |
in philosophy, what is the difference between real definition, and nominal definition? | I assume this is about realism and nominalism?
Realism is the belief that concepts such as "beauty", "love", "honor", "good", "evil" ... exist independently from our world. They are real whether we believe in them or not. Founder of realism was Plato, who believed that definitions or ideas of objects existed seperatel... | [
"This leads to a corresponding distinction between \"nominal\" and \"real\" definitions. A nominal definition is the definition explaining what a word means, i.e. which says what the \"nominal essence\" is, and is definition in the classical sense as given above. A real definition, by contrast, is one expressing th... |
How was overlayed text and graphics created on television broadcasts of the '60s, '70s and '80s? | [Character generators](_URL_0_). I learned on a Chyron in college. Basically, the old way would be two different video streams: your main picture, such as an anchor at a desk, and the character (or key) which would be overlaid on top of the main picture. It had its own set of controls that let you fade it in and out... | [
"Set-top boxes were also made to enable closed captioning on older sets in North America, before this became a mandated inclusion in new TV sets. Some have also been produced to mute the audio (or replace it with noise) when profanity is detected in the captioning, where the offensive word is also blocked. Some als... |
What object shape and material can attain the highest terminal velocity during free fall? | When falling with air resistance, if you want to fall as fast as possible, you want to minimize the ratio of effective surface area divided by mass.
First, what is effective surface area? That is not the entire surface area of the object, but the surface area of the object that is facing the direction of travel. Thus... | [
"The terminal velocity of a falling body occurs during free fall when the force due to gravity is exactly balanced by the force due to air resistance, such that the body experiences zero acceleration. The formula for terminal velocity (where buoyancy in air is negligible) is given by the thrust\n",
"Terminal velo... |
why does fm stations starts at 86 to 110 rather than other numbers? (atleast where im from, sea) | The numbers represent the frequency, in megahertz (MHz) at which the radio station transmits. The reason that they're always odd (88.9, 89.1, 89.3, etc.) is because each station is allocated a 200 kilohertz (KHz) bandwidth. So those stations actually have a range of 88.8-89.0, 89.0-89.2 and so on. You're tuning the rad... | [
"87.5–87.9 MHz is a radio frequency which, in most of the world, is used for FM broadcasting. In North America, however, this bandwidth is allocated to VHF television channel 6 (82–88 MHz). The analog audio for TV channel 6 is broadcast at 87.75 MHz (adjustable down to 87.74). Several stations, most notably those j... |
how does a copying machine work? | Many newer photocopiers today are a combination of a scanner and a laser printer. Let's just deal with a black and white copy first.
The machine needs to scan the page, so it has a digital copy of it in its memory where the image of the page is represented by a bunch of pixels. The machine scans the page by moving a b... | [
"Copying is the duplication of information or an artifact based on an instance of that information or artifact, and not using the process that originally generated it. With analog forms of information, copying is only possible to a limited degree of accuracy, which depends on the quality of the equipment used and t... |
what the program is doing when it is changing the format of a file? | There are many different ways to represent, say, a sound, or a picture, or a movie, as computer data. We call these ways-to-represent-things formats.
When you change the format of something, you are taking a picture, movie, sound etc. represented in computer data one way, and representing it in a different way. | [
"The file format consists of its own, non-standard markdown language. Also, when editing, any equation fragments are typed in plain text and converted to the tree. The equation is represented in memory and converted to a tree map in order to display it to the user. The file format is plain text which is converted t... |
Is there a single species that would go extinct if humans were to go extinct also? | Species of lice that infest humans are obligate human parasites, i.e. they can [only live on human hair and skin](_URL_0_) and they [cannot live off other animals](_URL_1_). So if humans were to go extinct, the *Pediculus humanus* habitat would disappear, and they would go extinct as well. | [
"There are many species that have gone extinct as a direct result of human activity. Some examples include the dodo, the great auk, the Tasmanian tiger, the Chinese river dolphin, and the passenger pigeon. An extinct species can be revived by using allelic replacement of a closely related species that is still livi... |
how does hollywood cast for roles with a specific physical requirement (e.g. the person is extremely obese/unattractive/weasel faced)? | I was always under the impression that they would cast the actor that played the role the best, and then ask them to adapt their body to the requirements. For example, Renee Zellweger was on a 4000 calorie diet for Bridget Jones and Bradley Cooper put on 40 pounds of muscle mass for American Sniper. 50 Cent lost 50 pou... | [
"According to film critic Robin Wood Magnani's \"persona as a great actress is built, not on transformation, but on emotional authenticity... [she] doesn't portray characters but expresses 'genuine' emotions.\" Her style is notable by not displaying the more obvious attributes of the female star, with neither her f... |
how does the fuzzing of up- and downvotes protect against (spam)bots on reddit? | By obscuring the true vote counts, a bot (or really any user) doesn't know if they've been banned or not. Reddit has a type of ban (called a shadow ban) where your account is banned from voting, but you're still able to login, view content, etc. They use this type on detected bots because it stops the bot from knowing ... | [
"A spambot is a computer program designed to assist in the sending of spam. Spambots usually create accounts and send spam messages with them. Web hosts and website operators have responded by banning spammers, leading to an ongoing struggle between them and spammers in which spammers find new ways to evade the ban... |
is space-time discrete? | The answer is we don't know. All theories that deal with this are in the super spectulative realm. Quantum loop gravity, for instance, deals explicitly with discrete space-times but we have no strong tests of this in the foreseeable future (for what can be done, see the reply comments). Historically, discrete space-tim... | [
"While time is a continuous quantity in both standard quantum mechanics and general relativity, many physicists have suggested that a discrete model of time might work, especially when considering the combination of quantum mechanics with general relativity to produce a theory of quantum gravity.\n",
"In a furthe... |
is it true the snipers take into consideration that the rotation of the earth would eventually move their targets off their trajectory before shooting long targets? if a target's location is the same location relative to the geocentre, then wouldn't the trajectory be the same? | The locations are't actually the same. Think about how fast the earth is spinning around at the equator versus at the poles. At the poles, you aren't actually moving east/west, you're just in one spot turning around. At the equator, you have to go the entire way around once every day, so you're moving pretty fast. The ... | [
"Often in situations with multiple targets, snipers use relocation. After firing a few shots from a certain position, snipers move unseen to another location before the enemy can determine where they are and mount a counter-attack. Snipers will frequently use this tactic to their advantage, creating an atmosphere o... |
what causes a radioactive element to be more radioactive than others? is it their size? | Just as some molecules are more stable than others, and the least stable spontaneously fall apart, some atoms are more stable than others, and the least stable spontaneously fall apart. These atoms tend to be larger ones, but there are plenty of unstable isotopes of light elements (e.g. carbon 14). It all has to do wit... | [
"Every element has one or more isotopes that have unstable nuclei that are subject to radioactive decay, causing the nucleus to emit particles or electromagnetic radiation. Radioactivity can occur when the radius of a nucleus is large compared with the radius of the strong force, which only acts over distances on t... |
can someone explain how the tsa is ineffective? every time i go through airport security, from what i see, it'd be certainly difficult to get *anything* illegal onboard. what am i not seeing? | A year or two ago the DHS did undercover tests and they failed 67 out of 70 tests. They managed to get explosives and handguns through the checkpoints without any issues. The TSA is completely useless and pointless.
_URL_0_ | [
"The TSA develops broad policies to protect the U.S. transportation system, including highways, railroads, buses, mass transit systems, ports, and pipelines. It fulfills this mission in conjunction with other federal agencies and state partners. However, the TSA's primary focus is on airport security and the preven... |
why are almost all "list" websites made in form of "click to see next", when it would be much more comfortable to view them on one page? | Because every page has ads on it. Each one a person visits is more money for the person that runs the website. They don't care about your comfort, they care about their wallet. | [
"A 2010-era trend in websites called \"responsive design\" has given the best of viewing experience as it provides with a device based layout for users. These websites change their layout according to the device or mobile platform thus giving a rich user experience.\n",
"The reason for the increase in click throu... |
how come depictions of earlier humans always have dark skin? when did white people enter the picture? | White skin is really only practical in very far north locations. The pale skin is an evolutionary adaptation to increase the ability of humans to make vitamin D. Closer to the equator, dark skin protects against sun burn and vitamin D production is fine as is. Far north, sun burn is less of an issue and vitamin D produ... | [
"In the early years of film, black characters were routinely played by white people in blackface. In the first filmic adaptation of \"Uncle Tom's Cabin\" (1903), all of the major black roles were white people in blackface. Even the 1914 \"Uncle Tom\" starring African-American actor Sam Lucas in the title role had a... |
The Sun has gradually warmed since its formation, and will continue to warmer as it ages, but... (Not about red giant phase!) | As the core contracts gravitational energy is released, increasing the core temperature. The energy production of the pp-chain goes as d X^2 \*T^4, where d is the density, X is the mass fraction of hydrogen and T is the temperature.
"Thus the increase in density and temperature more than offset the decrease in the ma... | [
"Around 5.4 billion years from now, the core of the Sun will become hot enough to trigger hydrogen fusion in its surrounding shell. This will cause the outer layers of the star to expand greatly, and the star will enter a phase of its life in which it is called a red giant. Within 7.5 billion years, the Sun will ha... |
Which famous scientist do you most admire? | [Alhacen](_URL_0_). His theory of optics can be considered the first comprehensive scientific theory. Scientists build on the foundations laid by their predecessors. Alhacen built the first structure that could stand on its own. | [
"He also became famous as the doctor and friend of many leading personalities in the scientific, social, and artistic worlds of his day. For example, he was a close friend and doctor to Albert Einstein for 25 years. His biography contains two chapters that provide one of the most intimate glimpses of Einstein ever ... |
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