question stringlengths 3 301 | answer stringlengths 9 26.1k | context list |
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why do high volt chargers fry a circuit but high amps one doesn't seem to affect it? | The voltage rating of the charger is the amount that the charger will put out, regardless of what you attach to it.
However current (amps) is drawn by the device. So the current rating on the charger is the max amount that it *can* provide. The device only takes as much as it wants. So if a charger says 5 Volts and 2 ... | [
"As a result, mobile phone manufacturers have become increasingly focused on reducing the no-load consumption of their power chargers. For example, in 2002, a typical design might use about 3 watts on average and in 2007 less than 0.5 watts.\n",
"BULLET::::- Capacitance: To achieve higher power levels, transforme... |
because fish oil is so good for you, why don’t we use it for cooking? | One very good reason in addition to the more scientific ones : it tastes like fish. Most people do not want all their food to taste like fish. | [
"BULLET::::- Fish oil is recommended for a healthy diet because it contains the omega-3 fatty acids, eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA), and docosahexaenoic acid (DHA), precursors to eicosanoids that reduce inflammation throughout the body.\n",
"Fishmeal is a brown, flour-like material made by specialist producers that ... |
why does israel insist on building settlements on lands not considered theirs and at great political cost? what internal politics drive this when the "costs" seem to be enormous? | Short answer, they do consider the lands theirs. | [
"The indirect cost to the Israeli economy for defense outlays and maintaining operations in the territories has also been substantial. One analysis has concluded that the costs of maintaining Israel's occupation is a contributing factor to the rise of poverty in Israel, where poverty levels have jumped from one in ... |
why can apex predators feel fear? | Getting wounded in a fight, even one that you win, will reduce your ability to hunt and compete with uninjured same-species competitors.
Additionally, being an apex predator doesn't mean that you can kill everything or are even safe from everything, it just means that no other predator can hunt you. A lion has every r... | [
"Because apex predators have powerful effects on other predators, on herbivores, and on plants, they can be important in nature conservation. Humans have hunted many apex predators close to extinction, but in some parts of the world these predators are now returning. They are increasingly threatened by climate chan... |
Why was Stettin/Szczecin given to Poland after WW2? | From [an earlier answer of mine](_URL_0_)
The reason why Stettin became Szczecin in 1945 is apparent when looking at the map. The core of the city, including its port facilities, was on the Western half of the Oder. Bisecting control over the mouth of the Oder would have been a clumsy arrangement and also give the Ger... | [
"As a result of the Versailles Peace Treaty (1919) after World War I, Pomerania was divided between Poland and Germany. Most of the German-Prussian province of West Prussia fell to Poland as the so-called Polish Corridor, and constituted the Pomeranian Voivodeship (województwo pomorskie) with the capital at Toruń (... |
why do fish and sharks swim together at the aquarium won't the sharks just eat them all? | They only kill to eat. And, killing is a lot of work. If the aquarium staff feeds them, they aren’t hungry, don’t need to kill to eat, and don’t kill.
This is true in the wild, too, but you just don’t see it. | [
"Sometimes sharks are unwittingly put in harm's way when aquarists include potentially dangerous tankmates in the same aquarium. Hobbyists generally don't think of other fish being a threat to sharks, but triggerfish, angel fish, puffers, and wrasses can all injure them. A large grouper is capable of consuming smal... |
what is happening atomically during a nuclear explosion? | Fission - fuel is unstable, adding a neutron to the nucleus makes it even more unstable and it breaks apart almost instantly. This breaking apart releases energy and *more neutrons* which collide with other nuclei and cause *them* to split, releasing yet more neutrons. You get the idea. Eventually (and we're talking bi... | [
"There are two main considerations for the location of an explosion: height and surface composition. A nuclear weapon detonated in the air, called an air burst, produces less fallout than a comparable explosion near the ground. A nuclear explosion in which the fireball touches the ground pulls soil and other materi... |
What was the popcorn and hot dogs of the Roman coliseum? What did Romans have for snack foods while watching the events? | Not to discourage any future answers but we have actually had a few interesting thread on Roman street food:
[I'm sitting here eating chips. Did the people of the Roman empire have an equivalent of such snack foods?](_URL_0_) by /u/samadhii
[What kinds of street food would of been available in Ancient Rome?](_URL_1_)... | [
"In the cities of Roman antiquity, much of the urban population living in \"insulae\", multi-story apartment blocks, depended on food vendors for much of their meal; the Forum itself served as a marketplace where Romans could purchase baked goods and cured meats. In the mornings, bread soaked in wine was eaten as a... |
Benzodiazepines and dementia: correlation or causation? | The studies have controlled for the possibility of confounding by dementia prodrome through statistical methods but I don't think anyone is convinced that that has really been ruled out. The unfortunate facts as I see them are that we don't really have a good sense of either the full neuropsychiatric effect of chronic ... | [
"Benzodiazepines enhance the effect of the neurotransmitter gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA) at the GABA receptor, resulting in sedative, hypnotic (sleep-inducing), anxiolytic (anti-anxiety), anticonvulsant, and muscle relaxant properties. High doses of many shorter-acting benzodiazepines may also cause anterograde a... |
Can pharmaceuticals be removed from a water supply? | Does it matter if its there? Concentration is very important. For the most part pharmacueticals only exist in our water supply in basically nonexistent quantities. That being said if you're feeling really really anal there are plenty of ways to purify water, such as reverse osmosis.
here's a link to a commercial sy... | [
"Trace amounts of pharmaceuticals in both groundwater and surface water are far below what is considered dangerous or of concern in most areas, but it could be an increasing problem as population grows and more reclaimed wastewater is utilized for municipal water supplies.\n",
"Traces of prescription drugs — incl... |
why do all bollywood movies have songs in them? | Hollywood movies all used to have songs in them too. If you have Netflix you should watch some old movies. I'd suggest Beach Blanket Bingo, any of the Dean Martin, Bing Crosby or Elvis Presley movies. (Not because they are particularly outstanding, but because they give you an introduction to some history of the mov... | [
"Bollywood films are primarily musicals, and are expected to have catchy song-and-dance numbers woven into the script. A film's success often depends on the quality of such musical numbers. A film's music is often released before the film itself, increasing its audience.\n",
"Songs in Bollywood movies are deliber... |
how to use a combination of tor and a vpn to download torrents safely/anonymously | Tor is _not_ good for torrenting. You can do it, but without getting into the technical details, the way torrents work means that Tor does not give you any anonymity, because it uses a kind of web traffic that Tor does not know how to make anonymous. Also, even if you do hack it to work, it slows the network down somet... | [
"The BitTorrent protocol has also been extended to exchange node UDP port numbers between peers that are introduced by a tracker. In this way, clients can get their routing tables seeded automatically through the download of regular torrents. Newly installed clients who attempt to download a trackerless torrent on ... |
How was Marxist thought treated by American academia prior to the Cold War? Prior to the Russian Revolution? | Prior to the probably around the late 19th century, the US and Russians were fairly close allies. They shared common enemies, France and Britain, expanded similarly, Siberia and the American west, viewed the abolishment of serfdom and slavery similarly, and were christian. In the late 1800's Americans really began to d... | [
"Many New Left thinkers in the United States were influenced by the Vietnam War and the Chinese Cultural Revolution. Some in the U.S. New Left argued that since the Soviet Union could no longer be considered the world center for proletarian revolution, new revolutionary Communist thinkers had to be substituted in i... |
Do all acids taste sour? | My understanding of how acids and taste works is that the sour taste happens because H+ ions enter the cell and cause a membrane potential change which causes release of neurotransmitter which the brain recognizes as sour. Each of the 5 tastes (sweet, sour, bitter, salty and umami) have a different way of releasing neu... | [
"Sourness is the taste that detects acidity. The sourness of substances is rated relative to dilute hydrochloric acid, which has a sourness index of 1. By comparison, tartaric acid has a sourness index of 0.7, citric acid an index of 0.46, and carbonic acid an index of 0.06.\n",
"Certain organic and inorganic aci... |
What happend when someone dies? | There is no scientific support for the idea of a "spirit". | [
"In some cases, a person will be declared dead even without any remains or doctor's declaration. This is under one of two circumstances. First, if a person was known to be in mortal peril when last seen, they can often be declared dead shortly after. Examples would be the passengers of the \"Titanic\" that were not... |
If someone were to ejaculate much more frequently than normal, would their body produce sperm quicker, effectively having larger 'loads'? | i think you need to rephrase the question.
> If someone were to ejaculate much more frequently than normal, would their body produce **seminal fluid** quicker, effectively having larger 'loads'? | [
"One of the primary ways in which a male's ejaculate has evolved to overcome sperm competition is through the speed at which it travels. Ejaculates can travel up to 30-60 centimetres at a time which, when combined with its placement at the highest point of the vaginal tract, acts to increase a male's chances that a... |
Why does the natural logarithm appear so much in the world? | All logarithms are basically equivalent; log_a(x) and log_b(x) differ only by a [factor of a constant](_URL_0_).
So we could, if we wanted, write all those formulas using base 10 logarithms (or base 2, or base 731, or whatever) by either changing our units or adding a constant to each formula. Using the natural logari... | [
"An early mention of the natural logarithm was by Nicholas Mercator in his work \"Logarithmotechnia\" published in 1668, although the mathematics teacher John Speidell had already in 1619 compiled a table of what in fact were effectively natural logarithms. It has been said that Speidell's logarithms were to the ba... |
How often WERE peasant revolts in the Middle Ages? Feel free to segregate early middle ages from high middle ages. | In Sweden, they were quite common during the era of the Kalmar Union.
1434-36. The peasants rise against feudalistic policies in the Engelbrekt rising. The King is forced to agree to all their demands.
1453: A peasant army rising against King Kristian I's campaign to claim the Swedish throne defeats the Danish army, ... | [
"Depopulation caused labor to become scarcer; the survivors were better paid and peasants could drop some of the burdens of feudalism. There was also social unrest; France and England experienced serious peasant risings: the Jacquerie, the Peasants' Revolt. These events have been called the Crisis of the Late Middl... |
why are chicken eggs usually sold in 6s and 12s? | Dozens are a very common number of items for a great variety of trades due to their ability to be evenly divided by 2, 3, 4, and 6.
I'm not sure what you are using eggs for, but it is very easy for many people to plow through a dozen eggs in a few days. I can't remember the last time I had eggs go bad. For people who ... | [
"Whole mature chickens are marketed in the United States as fryers, broilers, and roasters. Fryers are the smallest size (2.5-4 lbs dressed for sale), and the most common, as chicken reach this size quickly (about 7 weeks). Most dismembered packaged chicken would be sold whole as fryers. Broilers are larger than fr... |
i understand trading stocks, but what is trading bonds? how can there be a market based on loans (bonds)? what are you investing in? | I am the King of Rasfertia, and I say to the financial world, "If you pay me a dollar, I'll repay it at 3% interest for 5 years -- I'm only selling 300 dollars with this promise.
If you think Rasfertia will be around in 5 years time, and still be taking in tax revenue, speeding tickets, things like that, you say, "Hmm... | [
"Basis trading is done when the investor feels that the two instruments are mispriced relative to one other and that the mispricing will correct itself so that the gain on one side of the trade will more than cancel out the loss on the other side of the trade. In the case of such a trade taking place on a security ... |
How big would the moon have looked 4 billion years ago? | The moon is receding at about 4 cm a yr right now, but the overall average for the last 2.5 billion years is less than 2 cm a yr. before that I have not seen any data.
currently the moon ranges between 355,000 and 405,000 km from the Earth every month, with a mean of about 385,000. Using 2 cm a year for 2.5 billion ye... | [
" has one moon, S/2005 () 1. This moon was discovered by the Hubble Space Telescope on 5 October 2013. It orbits 3,267 kilometres away from 1999 OJ, completing one orbit every 84.115 days. At 72 km, it is nearly the same size as . From the surface of 1999 OJ, S/2005 (1999 OJ) 1 would have an apparent diameter of ro... |
why do people want to live forever? | Because we can't ever imagine a situation where we would want to die. Life is great and awesome and preferable to the nothingness that awaits us. Why would I want it to end? | [
"For this reason, life in the world of humans is known as \"the precious human rebirth\". Born close to the pivot point of happiness and suffering, humans have a unique capacity for moral choices with long-term significance.\n",
"With regard to the subject matter of this CD, Anasol says that she wishes to transmi... |
How do they differentiate foreshocks and aftershocks from the actual earthquake? | In short, the answer is yes for both of your questions. In terms of what we actually measure using a seismometer, there is nothing that differentiates a foreshock, mainshock, or aftershock from each other. These are terms we apply in relation to a series of EQ events and the designations are based on the relative magni... | [
"A foreshock is an earthquake that occurs before a larger seismic event (the mainshock) and is related to it in both time and space. The designation of an earthquake as \"foreshock\", \"mainshock\" or aftershock is only possible after the full sequence of events has happened.\n",
"The observation of foreshocks as... |
Why didn't more African Americans flee from the South that enslaved them to the North that had waged war to free them? | Enslaved people tell us again and again that slavery is horrific in just about every possible way. The violence, including sexual violence, the overwork, torture, scanty provisions (sometimes literally starvation rations and/or stuff too nasty for whites to eat) and conditions all factor in. But what they found most pe... | [
"With the independence of African Americans in the South came a violent reaction from Southern whites. The scarce law enforcement of rural areas mixed with Confederates’ bitterness about their loss of the Civil War, which was frequently blamed on African Americans, lead to groups of former Confederate soldiers raid... |
How much energy would it take to accelerate the mass of Earth to 99.999% light speed? | Relativistic kinetic energy is gamma-1 times mc^2 where gamma is the Lorentz factor, which is 223 in this case. 222 times mass of earth (6x10^24 kg) times c^2 is 1.2 x 10^44 Joules, or the total output of the sun over 8 billion years. | [
"According to special relativity, the energy of an object with rest mass \"m\" and speed \"v\" is given by , where \"γ\" is the Lorentz factor defined above. When \"v\" is zero, \"γ\" is equal to one, giving rise to the famous formula for mass–energy equivalence. The \"γ\" factor approaches infinity as \"v\" approa... |
How come some medication comes in gel capsules while others are large, solid pills? | The most common reason is diffusion kinetics of the drug of interest. Liquids are processed by the body more quickly and the effect of the drug would then be noticed more quickly. If you want a fast acting drug, something like Nyquil, for example, then it's better to have it in gel form. For drugs that operate over a l... | [
"As with solid formulations, liquid formulations combine the drug product with a variety of compounds to ensure a stable active medication following storage. These include solubilizers, stabilizers, buffers, tonicity modifiers, bulking agents, viscosity enhancers/reducers, surfactants, chelating agents, and adjuvan... |
Why there are no blue people, green people, etc., when there are blue birds, green birds, etc.? | > Mammals and even monkeys have a range of different colors and patterns.
You say that, but in truth, mammals only produce two types of pigment; eumelanin (black-brown pigment) and pheomelanin (reddish-yellow) - which is why, with little exception, almost all mammals have a sort of 'earthy' colouration. There are n... | [
"BULLET::::- However, the colours of these birds may be brighter to the birds themselves since birds are tetrachromats and can see colours in the ultraviolet range that are invisible to humans, who are trichromats.\n",
"Animals typically use the color green as camouflage, blending in with the chlorophyll green of... |
why would you choose a trebuchet over a catapult? | By "catapult", I assume you mean a device where a wooden length is bent back to gather force to hurl a stone.
The upper limit of the force you can gather for this device (which thus sets your upper bounds for range and weight of projectile) is a function of the tensile strength of your "bending arm". With a fixed max... | [
"The rotation speed of the throwing beam increases smoothly, starting slow but building up quickly. After the projectile is released, the arm continues to rotate, allowed to smoothly slow down on its own accord and come to rest at the end of the rotation. This is unlike the violent sudden stop inherent in the actio... |
why is it we can we send a robot outside of our solar system, and exploring the surface of an entirely different planet, but the deepest oceans are unknown to us? | Space is empty. You're dealing with vaccum.
The ocean is full of water. Water crushes shit. | [
"A robotic spacecraft is an uncrewed spacecraft, usually under telerobotic control. A robotic spacecraft designed to make scientific research measurements is often called a space probe. Many space missions are more suited to telerobotic rather than crewed operation, due to lower cost and lower risk factors. In addi... |
Microhistory - what is it? | I doubt you'll find a perfect definition of microhistory. I introduce the topic to students by telling them that a microhistory generally makes no overt attempt to link the story told to a larger narrative. Certainly the author implies at least a bit of this, but s/he is most often cognizant of the fact that they are t... | [
"Microhistory is a genre of history writing which focuses on small units of research, such as an event, community, individual, or a settlement. In its ambition, however, microhistory can be distinguished from a simple case study insofar as microhistory aspires to \"[ask] large questions in small places\", to use th... |
why are people now so much taller than they were hundreds of years ago? | Generally speaking, it's access to better nutrition and healthcare.
The human body needs to have a good supply of nutrients at certain key points in life (ex. puberty) to grow properly. Children in poverty-stricken areas without the same access exhibit stunted growth. As we can assume, people hundreds of years ago... | [
"Taller people have an increased risk of cancer because they have more cells than shorter people. Since height is genetically determined to a large extent, taller people have a heritable increase of cancer risk.\n",
"At the extreme end, being excessively tall can cause various medical problems, including cardiova... |
why is hairloss so hard to cure? | I'm really struggling with losing my hair. I'm 31 and getting really thin on top and around my crown. It's getting to the point where I am going to need to shave it to avoid looking a little silly.
Some blokes start to lose there hair and think, meh never mind, for others it can be very damaging psychologically. I d... | [
"Folliculitis decalvans is an inflammation of the hair follicle that leads to bogginess or induration of involved parts of the scalp along with pustules, erosions, crusts, ulcers, and scale. It begins at a central point and spreads outward, leaving scarring, sores, and, due to the inflammation, hair loss in its wak... |
how did mp4 technology improve? | > I remember for the longest time that the dialogue was incredibly quiet and one had to turn up the volume almost to max. Then suddenly an action sequence would come up and end up waking the neighbours.
This is more of a function of how the thing was made, audio-wise. People expect to be hit over the head with sound... | [
"In 2007, Pixel Perfect HD Engine was launched. This version was the first to be able to perform motion reinterpolation on 1080p material, and introduced 720p and 1080i motion interpolation in US products.\n",
"Initially, MPEG-4 was aimed primarily at low bit-rate video communications; however, its scope as a mul... |
The convoy system worked great against U-boats in WWI. Why did it have to be "relearned" in WWII? | The question describes the traditional picture of British anti-submarine efforts in the interwar period. It is ultimately derived from Stephen Roskill's *Naval Policy Between the Wars*, and to a lesser extent from Arthur Marder's monograph *The Influence of History on Sea Power*. These two authors were hugely influenti... | [
"Consolidating merchant ships into convoys protected by one or more armed navy vessels was adopted later in the war. There was initially a great deal of debate about this approach, out of fear that it would provide German U-boats with a wealth of convenient targets. Thanks to the development of active and passive s... |
what is it that makes some glues able to stick with plastik where others won't? | As far as I know, the glue sort of melds the plastic, so that the two peaces that have been glued together form a very strong bond!
Source: Been doing a lot of model building with plastic glue! | [
"Most glue sticks are designed to glue paper and card together, and are not as strong as some liquid based variants. They can be used for craft and design, office use and at school. There are now permanent, washable, acid-free, non-toxic, solvent free, and dyed (e.g. to see where the glue is being applied easier) v... |
why is it easier for non-native english speakers to sing, than to speak, with good pronunciation? | That's because we repeat the sounds we hear, instead of processing the sound from scratch.
Imagine speaking like drawing a horse, isn't it easier to copy one from your drawing book than drawing one from a blank piece of paper?
| [
"The biggest problem regarding non-native English speakers' transmissions is speech rate. In order to understand alternative and unfamiliar accents, people's rate of comprehension and response slows down. Accents also affect transmissions because of the different pronunciations across languages. Some of the earlier... |
How historically accurate is Ken Burns' Civil War? | u/Georgy_K_Zhukov has written a lengthy [response](_URL_0_) in [other](_URL_1_) similar [threads](_URL_2_). | [
"Mathew Brady's photographs inspired Burns to make \"The Civil War\", which (in nine episodes totaling more than 10 hours) explores the war's military, social, and political facets through some 16,000 contemporary photographs and paintings, and excerpts from the letters and journals of persons famous and obscure.\n... |
why does having general anesthesia feel like you blink and you're in the recovery room when normal sleep feels like time passed? | No one really knows. Seriously we do not understand how it works. An anaesthetised unconscious state is not like sleep at all but more like a coma, though the exact details of what happens remain a mystery so far. Obviously the parts of the brain that are responsible for creating a sense of time having passed when we ... | [
"General anaesthesia or general anesthesia (see spelling differences) is a medically induced coma with loss of protective reflexes, resulting from the administration of one or more general anaesthetic agents. It is carried out to allow medical procedures that would otherwise be intolerably painful for the patient; ... |
Could much elements heavier that those on the periodic exist in black holes or other super massive celestial bodies? | Inside a neutron star there is something akin to a giant fluid mass of neutrons held together by gravity...but it is not known exactly what it is like. | [
"Some stars may once have been heavier than they are today. It is likely that many have suffered significant mass loss, perhaps as much as several tens of solar masses, expelled by the process of superwind, where high velocity winds are driven by the hot photosphere into interstellar space. This process is similar ... |
torrents and pirate bay and their dangers | torrents: You can download stuff on the internet using a special program.
Pirate bay: A website where you can find a list of files that can be downloaded with a special program.
Dangers: None of the files that you download should be copyright because that is illegal, and they will put you in jail, and you will never ... | [
"The Pirate Bay allows users to search for Magnet links. These are used to reference resources available for download via peer-to-peer networks which, when opened in a BitTorrent client, begin downloading the desired content. (Originally, The Pirate Bay allowed users to download BitTorrent files (torrents), small f... |
Does driving a pickup truck with the tailgate lowered improve fuel efficiency? | [Mythbusters](_URL_0_) demonstrated there was more drag with an open tail gate. | [
"FedEx claimed that the hybrid truck in the 2003 test decreased soot by 96% and emissions by 65%. It also claimed that the truck achieved more than 50% better fuel consumption while still having the same cargo capacity as a conventional truck.\n",
"The angle and width of trucks also come into play with most falli... |
where did the original vinegar "mother" come from, if you need vinegar to make a "mother"? | Vinegar is Latin for “sour wine.” All you have to do is let wine go bad under certain conditions and you’ll get a mother eventually. | [
"Mother of vinegar is a substance composed of a form of cellulose and acetic acid bacteria that develops on fermenting alcoholic liquids, which turns alcohol into acetic acid with the help of oxygen from the air. It is added to wine, cider, or other alcoholic liquids to produce vinegar. \n",
"Mother of vinegar ca... |
Why were there so few night battles during the Civil War? | Night battles could not be controlled, and navigation was extremely difficult. Large masses of armed men moving at night have little way to distinguish friend from foe without prompt communication that didn't happen until the widespread adoption of radio.
Those night battles that did take place were typically against ... | [
"Following the Battle of Ball's Bluff on October 21, 1861, major offensive action was halted in the eastern theater, as both armies went into winter quarters. Small detachments were still occasionally sent out to probe the enemy's position and to obtain forage. On the night of November 5, 1861, a shootout occurred ... |
After the swift defeat of the majority of British forces in the Pacific, did Japan believe that Australian and New Zealand forces maybe a considerable threat in halting Japanese advance, particularly in New Guinea, New Caledonia and Fiji? | After the collapse of Singapore, Australia and New Zealand were effectively isolated and while their manufacturing capabilities were developing, they were not capable of supporting offensive actions in the pacific. (in fact after the supposed threat of invasion had passed, Australia had drastically reduce their militar... | [
"The rapid Allied defeat in the Pacific caused many Australians to fear that the Japanese would invade the Australian mainland. While elements of the Imperial Japanese Navy proposed this in early 1942, it was judged to be impossible by the Japanese Imperial General Headquarters, which instead adopted a strategy of ... |
Was the United States close to joining the Central Powers in World War I? | Well, the United States never joined the Triple Entente/Allies period (the Triple Alliance in the context of WWI usually refers to the [German, Austro-Hungarian, Italian Alliance of 1882](_URL_0_), which was actually in force until 1914 when Italy pulled out); Wilson kept the U.S. as an "Associated Power" to the Allies... | [
"With its recent entry into World War II, the United States was eager to present a united American continent. At the third Pan-American Summit, held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, the United States encouraged a settlement between the two countries.\n",
"Following the Second World War, most countries in the Americas, ... |
why does customer service always say "high number of calls/emails" no matter what. how am i supposed to know when they actually are having a high number and not just saying it for seemingly no reason? | It's pre-emptive. They say it to prepare you for the worst, and hopefully they can get to you reasonably fast and you say, "Oh, that wasn't actually that long."
As opposed to saying "we'll get to you as soon as possible", and if that takes a long time, you get angry.
Saying high calls/e-mails means they set the bar ... | [
"Clients are attracted to 084 and 087 numbers because per minute revenue is generated for them from each call, and call queuing is permitted. Call centres may generate very high revenue from high call volumes. Questions have been asked in the British House of Commons about how much money the UK government is receiv... |
How was agriculture invented? Given the low amount of usable food from pre-domestication plants and the long time it takes between planting seeds and harvest, why did the first agricultural society take it up in the first place? | This is a question for /r/AskAnthropology since it predates the historical record by many millenia.
Just to touch upon a few points briefly:
* Humans were aware of the basics of agriculture (i.e., bury a seed, eventually it becomes a plant and produces seeds of its own; or the connection between rainy/dry seasons and... | [
"Agriculture has been theorized to have become the dominant way of producing food since the Neolithic Revolution. Through early biotechnology, the earliest farmers selected and bred the best suited crops, having the highest yields, to produce enough food to support a growing population. As crops and fields became i... |
Which kings of Rome are likely to have been real? | Most historians believe that the first king, Romulus, is entirely legendary. His name simply means Roman. The next six kings - Numa Pompilius, Tullus Hostilius, Ancus Marcius, Tarquinius Priscus, Servius Tullius and Tarquinius Superbus - probably existed in some form, but after this disagreements begin.
On one side we... | [
"The names of the kings are often based on places around Rome, such as Tiberinus, Aventinus, Alba, and Capetus. Others are rationalizations of mythical figures, or pure inventions to provide notable ancestors for status-seeking families. In the \"Aeneid\", Virgil invents characters into living beings not unlike the... |
If clouds are formed by evaporation, then does global warming increase cloud formation and subsequent storm formation? | Clouds are not responsible for storms, clouds are caused by storms. The storms result from differences in temperature and pressure from place to place.
The impact that warming has on global evaporation rates, humidities and cloud cover is the subject of a great deal of ongoing research so I can't really give you defin... | [
"Cloud cover may change in the future. To date, cloud changes have had a cooling effect, with NASA estimating that aerosols produced by the burning of hydrocarbons have limited warming by half from 1850 to 2010. An analysis of satellite data between 1983 and 2009 reveals that cloud tops are reaching higher into the... |
if the earth rotates at an angle, why are summers at the poles not boiling hot? | The amount of energy from the Sun's rays that make it to the Earth depends heavily on the amount of atmosphere that the rays travel through. The more atmosphere the rays travel through, the more energy is reflected back into space. Despite the axial tilt of 23.4 degrees, the Sun's rays are only perpendicular to the Ear... | [
"Because of Earth's axial tilt (often known as the obliquity of the ecliptic), the inclination of the Sun's trajectory in the sky (as seen by an observer on Earth's surface) varies over the course of the year. For an observer at a northern latitude, when the north pole is tilted toward the Sun the day lasts longer ... |
how do lines of code and text make up a game, or anything graphical overall? | Like all programming, there's layers of complexity. At the highest level, you have a line of code that tells the computer to display a certain picture at a specific time. Drilling down, the part of the code that references the picture is actually a code pointing to a location in memory in which a series of binary (ones... | [
"Line numbers were a required element of syntax in some older programming languages such as GW-BASIC. The primary reason for this is that most operating systems at the time lacked interactive text editors; since the programmer's interface was usually limited to a line editor, line numbers provided a mechanism by wh... |
why do some people blink a ton? | For other people who can't blame contact lenses for their dry eyes, it can often be a mild form of Tourette's Syndrome (TS), where the person is compelled to move the eye or blink.
Most of the times, the blinking is done without thinking about it. Other times, it's like when a fly sits on your arm. You can't just ign... | [
"BULLET::::- Blinking - Blinking is also a natural response that can occur for no other reason than having dry eyes. It can also be the result of a person feeling greater levels of stress. Rapid blinking can indicate arrogance while reduced blinking can move towards a stare.\n",
"A reflex blink occurs in response... |
do alpha particles form any compounds? | Helium forms some unstable compounds, like [hydrohelium](_URL_0_), which is basically an alpha particle bound to a proton. | [
"Alpha particles are tiny, positively charged particles that are spontaneously emitted by certain substances such as uranium and radium. Rutherford had discovered them in 1899. In 1908, he was trying to precisely measure their charge-to-mass ratio. To do this, he first needed to know just how many alpha particles h... |
How did the United States of America get the Declaration of Independence back? | The signed copy was kept by the United States, it is currently residing in the National Archives. Copies were made of it and were sent out to other countries, including Britain, and were made available for the American public to see also. | [
"The signing of the United States Declaration of Independence occurred primarily on August 2, 1776 at the Pennsylvania State House, Independence Hall in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The 56 delegates to the Second Continental Congress represented the 13 former colonies which had declared themselves the \"United State... |
Did particles obey the same laws before the Big Bang? | There wasn't a "before the Big Bang", time as we know it was created during the Big Bang. | [
"Though the Big Bang theory was met with much skepticism when first introduced, it has become well-supported by several independent observations. However, current physics can only describe the early universe from 10 seconds after the Big Bang (where zero time corresponds to infinite temperature); a theory of quantu... |
After 1066, what did the Anglo-Saxons think of their new Norman rulers and vice-versa? | It’s important to understand that until at least the reign of John I, the title “King of England”, was merely an appendage to the title of leader of the [Angevin Empire](_URL_0_). William the Conqueror himself spent little time in Britain, and his descendants spent even less, with only 6 months of Richard I’s 10 year r... | [
"The Anglo-Normans were the medieval ruling class in England, composed mainly of a combination of ethnic Anglo-Saxons, Normans and French, following the Norman conquest. A small number of Normans had earlier befriended future Anglo-Saxon King of England, Edward the Confessor, during his exile in his mother's homela... |
Do objects constantly lose a tiny bit of mass due to emitting infrared radiation because of e=mc^2? | Well at equilibrium, they are absorbing just as much radiation on average as they are emitting. But yes, radiating away internal energy does decrease the mass of the object slightly. | [
"The energy of particles of non-ionizing radiation is low, and instead of producing charged ions when passing through matter, non-ionizing electromagnetic radiation has only sufficient energy to change the rotational, vibrational or electronic valence configurations of molecules and atoms. This produces thermal eff... |
when doctors say that an antibiotic or some other medicine attacks certain types of cells, how can you make a drug target certain cells? would creating medicine to target cancer cells work to treat cancer? | This is the basis of modern pharmacology in general, not just with respect to infectious diseases. Penicillin, for example, targets the cell wall, literally breaking microbes apart. The problem is that some cells may be resistant to this mechanism. Some can neutralize the mechanism of the drug itself, while others m... | [
"In addition, cytotoxic drugs, such as alkylating antineoplastic agents, used in treatment of cancer, work by inhibiting the proliferation of dividing cells, with the malignant cells as the desired target. However, this has the adverse effect of also striking against the cells normally dividing in the body, and thu... |
Significance of the Phaistos Disk | The greatest significance of the Phaistos Disc, is that it undecipherable. People have tried and tried but nothing works out right and seems forced. We can't understand it's purpose without understanding what is on the damn thing.
Now the Antikythera Mechanism...that is where the truly humbling work of art lay. | [
"The Phaistos Disc (also spelled Phaistos Disk, Phaestos Disc) is a disk of fired clay from the Minoan palace of Phaistos on the island of Crete, possibly dating to the middle or late Minoan Bronze Age (second millennium B.C.). The disk is about 15 cm (5.9 in) in diameter and covered on both sides with a spiral of ... |
Can flow that has exited the throat of a converging-only nozzle exceed Mach 1? | A divergent section is required to accelerate the flow to supersonic speeds.
A convergent nozzle is not capable of supersonic flow. If the nozzle pressure ratio for a convergent nozzle is high enough, there will be a normal shock at the exit/throat so the exhaust will be subsonic downstream of the exit. Here, the exh... | [
"Convergent nozzles accelerate subsonic fluids. If the nozzle pressure ratio is high enough, then the flow will reach sonic velocity at the narrowest point (i.e. the \"nozzle throat\"). In this situation, the nozzle is said to be \"choked\".\n",
"A de Laval nozzle will only choke at the throat if the pressure and... |
how does lung capacity increase? | As others have said, the lungs themselves don't change. It's mainly the cardiovascular system becoming more efficient. However, increasing the strength of your respiratory muscles (certain muscles in your abdomen and neck) also plays a big part. These muscles help you expand/contract your chest wall, indirectly expa... | [
"Lung capacity can be expanded through flexibility exercises such as yoga, breathing exercises, and physical activity. A greater lung capacity is sought by people such as athletes, freedivers, singers, and wind-instrument players. A stronger and larger lung capacity allows more air to be inhaled into the lungs. In ... |
if you stick food in a vacuum sealed chamber will it decay? | It will still decay, just slower. The aerobic bacteria that are present in the food will die after a while, as there is no oxygen for them to grow. Some anaerobic bacteria present in the food, which don't need oxygen, will simply go about their business as usual provided that other compounds required for growth are sti... | [
"Vacuum packing reduces atmospheric oxygen, limiting the growth of aerobic bacteria or fungi, and preventing the evaporation of volatile components. It is also commonly used to store dry foods over a long period of time, such as cereals, nuts, cured meats, cheese, smoked fish, coffee, and potato chips (crisps). On ... |
why are torrents more popular than regular downloads when it comes to illegal material? | Because a "regular download" has to be hosted by a server that somebody owns. If the copyright holder complains, it takes like five minutes to find out who owns it and go knock on their door.
With a torrent, there's no central distributor to go after. There's like a thousand or more people offering up little pieces a... | [
"The first business model that dissuades illegal file sharing is to make downloading digital media easy and cheap. The use of noncommercial sites makes downloading digital media complex. For example, misspelling an artist's name in a search query will often fail to return a result, and some sites limit internet tra... |
does bursting audio too loud ruin a speaker? | Yes, in any "Speaker" there are two components, the driver(s) and the amp. The driver(s) are the cones that actually move back and forth at specific frequencies to produce sound (sometimes there are multiple that allow the speaker to replicate more frequencies more accurately). The amp converts the relatively low signa... | [
"Ligyrophobics may be fearful of devices that can suddenly emit loud sounds, such as computer speakers or fire alarms. When operating a device such as a home theater system, computer, television, or CD player, they may wish to have the volume turned down all the way before doing anything that would cause the speake... |
Faraday Cages: Is there a minimum width to wavelength ratio to be able to block it? | The cage material can be as thin or thick as your material will allow; it will work fine independent of the thickness. You can also have holes in it,
a general rule is that the holes need to be no larger than 1/10 of the wavelength of the signal. | [
"Faraday cages are Faraday shields which have holes in them and are therefore more complex to analyze. Whereas continuous shields essentially attenuate all wavelengths shorter than the skin depth, the holes in a cage may permit shorter wavelengths to pass through or set up \"evanescent fields\" (oscillating fields ... |
Why is Vimeo's HD video streaming so much better than Youtube's? | _URL_0_
A lot of Youtube's problems come from peering issues. Certain IP ranges can be blocked that help. | [
"Williams has made all of his newer videos available to view and download in 720p HD on Vimeo, another video-sharing website that obtained high-definition capabilities before YouTube added \"high quality\" and \"HD\" features.\n",
"On October 9, 2007, Vimeo announced support for high definition playback in 1280×7... |
why when i weigh myself before and after i go number 2, i weigh more afterwards. (serious) | Sounds like your scale isn't giving consistent results. Measure your self three times in a row stepping off and on, do you get the exact same result each time? Is your floor smooth? | [
"\"Weigh\" as a verb means to \"bear\" or \"move,\" thus giving it several shades of meaning and derivation, including \"weight\" or \"heaviness.\" This lends itself to obvious plays on words, as with Flip Wilson's old routine about Christopher Columbus: \"Columbus cried, 'Weigh anchor.' A few minutes later, a crew... |
what causes the "blaster" sound on frozen lakes and what is it called? | It's the sound of ice cracking. The entire lake acts like a compressed spring, and when it cracks, the entire lake surface acts like a giant loudspeaker.
_URL_0_ | [
"As a piece of iceberg ice melts, it produces a fizzing sound called the \"Bergie Seltzer\". This sound results when the water-ice interface reaches compressed air bubbles trapped in the ice. As this happens, each bubble bursts, making a \"popping\" sound. The bubbles contain air trapped in snow layers very early i... |
donating to eradicate starvation in africa... will it ever work? | It's more because charities have to implement small localised solutions to problems that need massive infrastructure investments. Also, because these adverts often talk about 'Africa' rather than talking about specific countries it seems like there is only one problem in one place that needs solving, when Africa is a m... | [
"Live Aid eventually raised $127 million in famine relief for African nations, and the publicity it generated encouraged Western nations to make available enough surplus grain to end the immediate hunger crisis in Africa.\n",
"The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations mission is to stop the star... |
why does pollution from china and other polluted states not drift with the westerlies to the us? | It totally does. The pollution may be dangerous in those Chinese cities but as it blows out into the Pacific it gets dispersed into the much larger volume of air over the ocean. Your city may look big to you but each one is a small dot on the planet. The pollution is relatively small compared to the overall volume of t... | [
"Pollution from China has already affected other countries, and some ozone-forming particles have travelled across the Pacific Ocean to the United States, contributing to a relatively high level of ozone on the American West Coast. While these particles, along with other ozone-related chemicals, can be carried up t... |
why does an ipad cost $500, an ipod touch cost $200, but an iphone costs $700 (without an upgrade) | > An iPod touch is the same thing as an iPhone except it doesn't make calls.
It used to be, not anymore. The current iPod Touch has a 4" 640p screen with a 800:1 contrast rario, the 6s has a 4.7" 750p screen with a 1400:1 contrast ratio, full sRGB color gamut, and dual-domain pixels. The 6s undoubtably has a be... | [
"The iPad received mixed reviews. It was significantly praised for performance, with reviewers asserting that the model is noticeably faster than older iPad models, and it also received positive reviews for its price and battery life. It was criticized, however, for lacking a laminated and anti-reflective screen, a... |
how does superman exercise and build muscle? | Saw something the other day how he has a weightroom with kryptonite in it so it weakens him and allows him to actually work out.. Im sure someone has a better answer | [
"Since \"Action Comics\" #1 (1938), Superman has superhuman strength. The cover of \"Action Comics\" #1 shows him effortlessly lifting a car over his head. Another classic feat of strength on Superman's part is breaking steel chains. In some stories, he is strong enough to shift the orbits of planets and crush coal... |
Where does all the salt eventually go that we put on roads in the winter? | It's washed into the water system via runnoff and is a significant source of [nonpoint source polution](_URL_0_). And it does have an effect on the ecosystem, salination of streams and rivers can be a major problem to local ecosystems (it's pretty obvious that freshwater organisms don't take too well to saltwater envir... | [
"As a result of Canada's icy winters, salt is needed in order to deice slippery roads. The primary ingredient of road salt is sodium chloride. Road salt, while helping cars and people to gain traction in the winter, can have serious consequences for soil. As National Geographic found, \"Road salt can pollute soil a... |
Does a neutron, weighing more than a proton, have to be larger in size because it has more mass? | Fundamental particles have a very poorly defined "size". Also, there is no reason for a more massive particle to be "larger". | [
"Neutrons have no electrical charge and have a free mass of 1,839 times the mass of the electron, or . Neutrons are the heaviest of the three constituent particles, but their mass can be reduced by the nuclear binding energy. Neutrons and protons (collectively known as nucleons) have comparable dimensions—on the or... |
why do i feel physically exhausted after an argument, even if i argued calmly? | Because any sort of conflict triggers the 'fight or flight' response.
[Wikipedia] Fight-or-flight response - _URL_0_ | [
"BULLET::::1. The only way to get the best of an argument is to avoid it. Whenever we argue with someone, no matter if we win or lose the argument, we still lose. The other person will either feel humiliated or strengthened and will only seek to bolster their own position. We must try to avoid arguments whenever we... |
why do we need to wash our fruit and vegetables before eating them? what exactly are we washing off? | You know how you grab fruit to check it before you buy it? And then you frequently put it back? So does everyone else. You don't know whose handled that before you bought it, and where they've been. | [
"Technically, according to Jewish law, whenever one partakes of fruits or vegetables dipped in liquid while remaining wet, one must wash one's hands if the fruit or vegetable remains wet. However, at other times of the year, one has either already washed their hands before eating bread, or dry the fruit or vegetabl... |
why do materials in the earths crust group together in vains? | In any given volume of molten rock in the core of the earth there is a mixture of different elements, roughly equally distributed like sugar stirred into a cup of coffee.
Sometimes that molten rock is cooled - usually by being injected into a volcanic system that brings it to or close to the surface.
As the rock cool... | [
"Metamorphic rocks make up a large part of the Earth's crust and form 12% of the Earth's land surface. They are classified by texture and by chemical and mineral assemblage (metamorphic facies). They may be formed simply by being deep beneath the Earth's surface, subjected to high temperatures and the great pressur... |
what is the basic idea behind the concept of a "rainbow universe" and what does it mean for us? | The basic idea is that different frequencies of light would be affected slightly differently by gravity. The rainbow comes from just that -- looking at the color of the light as well as the effect that gravity has on it.
It would be very difficult to observe or test, though, since the effect would probably be very sma... | [
"The rainbow, a natural phenomenon noted for its beauty and mystical appearance, has been a favorite component of mythology throughout history. Rainbows are part of the myths of many cultures around the world. The Norse saw it as Bifrost; Abrahamic traditions see it as a covenant with God not to destroy the world b... |
why would an overweight person not be able to eat as much as a skinny fit person? (read below) | How much you can eat in one sitting is based on stomach size, not body size. The fact that you have a lot more fat stored around your body has nothing to do with how big your stomach is. In fact, it probably makes it harder for you to eat massive amounts at a time because your subcutaneous fat would limit your internal... | [
"Being underweight is associated with certain medical conditions, including anorexia, type 1 diabetes, hyperthyroidism, cancer, or tuberculosis. People with gastrointestinal or liver problems may be unable to absorb nutrients adequately. People with certain eating disorders can also be underweight due to lack of nu... |
why is it that i sometimes lose my complete sense of time and day after taking a nap? | When you sleep you go through different stages dictated by what are called alpha and theta waves. Being in certain stages of sleep will result in different levels of awareness upon waking up. I don’t remember what stages dictate what, but some involve not even being aware that you were asleep at all, and others involve... | [
"An adult who is compelled to nap repeatedly during the day may have excessive daytime sleepiness; however, it is important to distinguish between occasional daytime sleepiness and excessive daytime sleepiness, which is chronic.\n",
"Daytime naps offer a potential intervention for sleep deprivation in college stu... |
why do we prefer more width over more height on screens (movies, tv's, monitors, etc.)? | Our eyes naturally see in a wide screen aspect ratio so wider screens fill our vision more than square ones. | [
"Curved screens are also widely used in IMAX and standard movie theaters for their ability to produce natural expressions and draw the audience deeper into the scene. A standard IMAX screen is 22m wide and 16m tall, but there are screens with even larger dimensions. IMAX is the most successful large-format, special... |
humans and their ancestors didn't always have civilization to make caring for one another so easy. when/why did human babys get so useless? | They have been in tribes and small communities for hundreds of thousands of years. Depends how you define civilization but we have pretty much always had a group of other people to help out (at least as long as we were still considered people). | [
"Unlike in western civilization, children of the Mundugumor tribe were not welcomed to earth with warmth and love. Instead, babies were seen as a hassle until they could fend for themselves. Mothers were the primary caregivers for their children and continued with their daily routines shortly after childbirth. In f... |
If CO2 dissolved in water is basically the same as carbonic acid, could you carbonate water by dissolving carbonic acid in it instead of using a CO2 tank? | Pure carbonic acid was thought to be impossible to make for a longest time. It was only in 1991 that they finally figured out how to do it. It is only stable when completely water-free, so it wouldn't be very practical.
_URL_0_ | [
"Carbonated water is formed by dissolving CO in water under pressure. When the partial pressure of CO is reduced, for example when a can of soda is opened, the equilibrium for each of the forms of carbonate (carbonate, bicarbonate, carbon dioxide, and carbonic acid) shifts until the concentration of CO in the solut... |
History of military strategies | The historian Adrian Goldsworthy has made quite a successful career out of writing (normally very good) books about Rome and her military- depending on which era, I'm sure you can find something in his published works that could suit. Personally I'm very fond of [In The Name of Rome: The Men Who Won The Roman Empire](_... | [
"The father of Western modern strategic studies, Carl von Clausewitz (1780–1831), defined military strategy as \"the employment of battles to gain the end of war.\" B. H. Liddell Hart's definition put less emphasis on battles, defining strategy as \"the art of distributing and applying military means to fulfill the... |
; why do pills generally need to be kept at a certain temperature? | Heat typically accelerates the rate at which things degrade or break down, so keeping pills at a certain temperature reduces the likelihood and/or speed at which the active ingredient in your medicine breaks down and no longer does it's job.
The stability/shelf life of medicines is tested at *very* specific temperatur... | [
"Phages can usually be freeze-dried and turned into pills without materially reducing efficiency. Temperature stability up to 55 °C and shelf lives of 14 months have been shown for some types of phages in pill form.\n",
"Commercially available capsules should be stored at 15 - 30°C. It should be kept in a tight c... |
- what would happen to the ocean (and the earth) if all sea life was removed from the ocean. | Plankton in the ocean are responsible for producing most of the oxygen that is created by biological processes. Without them, there will be lots more CO2 in the atmosphere. This will probably also accelerate global warming and acidify the seas a bit.
Additionally, a large part of the human population depends on sea li... | [
"In 2018 a survey of Global Oceanic Environmental Survey (GOES) Foundation find that the ecosystem in seas and oceans can collapse in the next 25 years what would fail the terrestrial ecosystem and end the life on earth as we know them. The main causes: Plastic pollution, Ocean acidification, Ocean pollution. For p... |
why is the majority of education based simply upon regurgitating facts and memorizing details/formulas when nothing is gained simply from memorizing them, but rather using them in a meaningful way? | I'm just a burnt-out college senior sitting here late at night cramming for yet another midterm and pissed that I still have to take tests, but I'm fed up with education, at least as my experience with it has been. All I'm ever asked to do in my exam-based classes is cull down everything that's been taught to a small l... | [
"Certain kinds of learning are very expensive in terms of energy, i.e., \"ogdens\", while others are practically free. Memorization is a very expensive way to learn. The energy cost can be especially high when the content is of no particular interest to the learner. Memorizing dates in history or major exports of f... |
Why does my french bread go hard as a rock after 3 days? | It just dries out. Fresh bread has lots of moisture in it, but over time that moisture evaporates and the bread dries out. The fibres in the bread are soft and flexible when wet but hard and stiff when dry, so when the bread dries out it gets hard and brittle.
It also gets lighter over time, for the same reason. | [
"It is not known when yeast was first used to bake bread. The first records that show this use came from Ancient Egypt. Researchers speculate a mixture of flour meal and water was left longer than usual on a warm day and the yeasts that occur in natural contaminants of the flour caused it to ferment before baking. ... |
This post will self destruct... (what is the history behind the idea of the self destruct button?) | Military equipment has long had some sort of process for self-destruction in order to prevent capture by the enemy. If they obtain functioning examples, not only might they press it into service with their own military, but more importantly, they can conduct exploitation. Thus, you'll find a "Zero" button on any modern... | [
"Plan for Destruction is a 1943 American short propaganda film directed by Edward Cahn. It looks at the Geopolitik ideas of the ex-World War I professor, General Karl Haushofer, who is portrayed as the head of a huge organisation for gathering information of strategic value and the mastermind behind Hitler's wars a... |
Questions about Norse North America | Yipes.. these are a lot of questions! Here are a bunch of previous posts on the Norse settlement in North America that address at least some of your questions. I don't see that any touch on your first questions about the state of the settlements & daily life, so hopefully an archaeologist can jump in here.
The TL;D... | [
"For centuries it remained unclear whether the Icelandic stories represented real voyages by the Norse to North America. The sagas first gained serious historic respectability in 1837 when the Danish antiquarian Carl Christian Rafn pointed out the possibility for a Norse settlement in, or voyages to, North America.... |
why are there no protections against a a rich person suing a poor person? why can a company sue a person and trap him for years, making him bankrupt? | Think about it: what is the purpose of suing someone? Typically, you either want to stop them from doing something that's illegal (get an injunction), or get compensation for an illegal act (a tort) they committed against you. It wouldn't be just if a person rich person wasn't be able to do these things--their property... | [
"In the common law tradition, only a person could sue or be sued. This was not a problem in the era before the Industrial Revolution, when the typical business venture was either a sole proprietorship or partnership—the owners were simply liable for the debts of the business. A feature of the corporation, however, ... |
how does a wooden sailing ship work in terms of the wheel steering it? | The wheel controls a rudder located underneath the ship. The rudder then displaces water allowing the ship to move freely within its surroundings. | [
"A ship's wheel or boat's wheel is a device used aboard a water vessel to steer that vessel and control its course. Together with the rest of the steering mechanism, it forms part of the helm. It is connected to a mechanical, electric servo, or hydraulic system which alters the vertical angle of the vessel's rudder... |
what is the invisible hand idea? | In the 1700s, people were still trying to figure out how production and consumption worked and what governments should do about it. One set of ideas, now associated with a man called Adam Smith, came up with some theories which essentially said that if there was an increase in demand for a product that they would compe... | [
"The concept of the \"invisible hand\" is nearly always generalized beyond Smith's original uses. The phrase was not popular among economists before the twentieth century; Alfred Marshall never used it in his \"Principles of Economics\" textbook and neither does William Stanley Jevons in his \"Theory of Political E... |
the hubble telescope | The farther a star is, the dimmer it appears. A star's color spectrum is a good proxy for its actual brightness, so given that and it's apparent brightness (how bright it appears), we can estimate its distance. We can also see if it's moving away or towards us by examining its Doppler shift - a shift towards the "red" ... | [
"The Hubble Space Telescope is a space telescope created by NASA, and was launched into low Earth orbit in 1990. It is still in operation today. The Hubble Space Telescope's four main instruments observe in the near ultraviolet, visible, and near infrared spectra. Hubble's images are some of the most detailed image... |
Did any medieval European countries have a proper standing army, or did they all rely upon the feudal system of raising levy forces? | Yes. The Byzantines had what you could consider a "standing army" in their Imperial *tagmata*, elite regiments of full-time professional soldiers used for a variety of operations, including the garrisoning of strategic sites and offensive campaigning. Sometimes seen as supplements for the *thematic* troops (part-time p... | [
"Like most fifteenth century sovereigns, the Kings of France sought to possess standing armies of professionals to fight their incessant wars, most notable of which was the Hundred Years War. By that period, the old form of feudal levy had long proven inadequate and had been replaced by various ad hoc methods of pa... |
If we can make diet soda with zero calories, why can't we make lite beer (or any other alcohol) with zero calories? | Because alcohol in and of itself *has* calories. Ethanol goes to acetaldehyde, which then goes to acetic acid and then acetyl CoA, which can enter the citric acid cycle. There are other chemicals which can mimic some of the effects of drunkenness, but then you'd basically be mixing up new recreational drugs, which th... | [
"Ethanol (CHOH) supplies calories. For spirits (vodka, gin, rum, etc.) a standard serving in the United States is , which at 40%ethanol (80proof) would be 14 grams and 98 calories. At 50%alcohol, 17.5grams and 122.5calories. Wine and beer contain a similar amount of ethanol in servings of and , respectively, but th... |
Without observing the sky, is it possible to prove that the earth is rotating/orbiting? | In the case of the Earth's rotation, yes, for instance, a relatively straightforward demonstration of the rotation of the Earth can be obtained with a [Foucault pendulum](_URL_0_). | [
"The Sagnac experiment and later similar experiments showed that a stationary object on the surface of the Earth will rotate once every rotation of the Earth when using stars as a stationary reference point. Rotation was thus concluded to be absolute rather than relative.\n",
"By dropping a vertical down to the E... |
Once the fate of the Mexican-American War was all but clear, was there any serious discussion amongst the Americans to annex ALL of Mexico? | There may be more to say, but you might like to start with a discussion from the FAQ section ["American Expansion"](_URL_1_) (in the app: about 25% of the way down the page). ["During Manifest Destiny why did the US not try to annex all of Mexico and the rest of Central and South America?"](_URL_0_) , replies by /u/Al... | [
"Alta California and Santa Fe de Nuevo México were captured soon after the start of the war and the last resistance there was subdued in January 1847, but Mexico would not accept the loss of territory. Therefore, during 1847, troops from the United States invaded central Mexico and occupied the Mexican capital of M... |
What is the closest another habitable planet could be near earth? | I understand; you are asking about a star's [habitable zone](_URL_0_)! I learned about this in astrobiology.
We define a habitable zone as the doughnut-shaped area around a star that provides the right amount of energy to maintain liquid water. Too close, and the planet dries up like Venus. Too far and it freezes, lik... | [
"When astronomers announced in August 2016 the discovery of a potentially Earth-like planet in the habitable zone of the star nearest our solar system, Proxima Centauri, Vakoch emphasized that if inhabited, the star's close proximity to Earth would allow a round trip exchange of messages with extraterrestrials in l... |
Theoretically, if a brain were to be continuously transplanted into different host bodies, would it be able to survive forever? | There are at least three issues:
1. We've never transplanted a brain, so it's hard to answer this question even hypothetically (not theoretically, hypothetically).
2. Mature brains don't produce new neurons, so you better hope you don't lose too many over time.
3. Age-related brain disorders such as [Alzheimer's](_U... | [
"Proof of principle experiments demonstrate that it is possible to convert transplanted human fibroblasts and human astrocytes directly in the brain that are engineered to express inducible forms of neural reprogramming genes, into neurons, when reprogramming genes (Ascl1, Brn2a and Myt1l) are activated after trans... |
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