Split (2)

train · 226k rows

question stringlengths 3 301	answer stringlengths 9 26.1k	context list
How is it that two of history's greatest civilizations' most notable feats of engineering were pyramids if they were seemingly unaware of each other's existence?	Pyramid structures happened pretty much everywhere. E.g., [Greek pyramids](_URL_2_), [Chinese pyramids](_URL_3_), pyramids in [Mesopotamia](_URL_5_), [North America](_URL_0_), [India](_URL_4_), [Spain](_URL_1_), etc. They're common because of physics. Look at mountains; it's roughly pyramid sha...	[ "The pyramids are chiefly impressive for their enormous size and the staggering manpower that must have been employed in their construction. The largest is the Great Pyramid of Giza which remained the tallest structure in the world for 3800 years (see List of tallest freestanding structures in the world). The engin...
- how do baggage scanners at the airport work? what do the different colors on the x-ray mean?	The x-ray devices in luggage scanners are a bit more complicated than the x-ray medical imaging devices. In particular, they're set up to identify and distinguish between different kinds of objects, whereas medical x-rays are pretty much only interested in one: bones. The trick is that not all x-rays are created equ...	[ "Screening Technology has advanced to detect any harmful materials under a traveler's clothes and also detect any harmful materials that may have been consumed internally. Full body scanners or Advanced Imaging Technology (AIT) were introduced to U.S. Airports in 2006. Two types of body screening that are currently...
What happens if you mix all the elements together on the periodic table?	> It would be nice to be walked through the first few reactions that would occur or the final result. OK, I'll try to go up to sodium, how's that? But realize that we have to make a lot of guesses and assumptions along the way... Our tour begins with our enclosed container that holds 1 L in volume. Its walls are ma...	[ "The ordering of elements in the lyrics fits the meter of the song, and includes much alliteration, and thus has little or no relation to the ordering in the periodic table. This can be seen for example in the opening and closing lines:\n", "In Theodor Benfey's periodic table the elements form a two-dimensional s...
homeless & unemployed people in first world countries?	It's hard to get a job if you don't have a home (and clean clothes, a place to shower, etc). It's hard to rent a home if you don't have a job. So once you start down the path of homelessness, it's very difficult to recover. Further, unless you are single, healthy, and have zero debt and zero kids, you can't actually ...	[ "The heavily indebted poor countries (HIPC) are a group of 37 developing countries with high levels of poverty and debt overhang which are eligible for special assistance from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank.\n", "In a country of 6.5 million, the number of unemployment working-age adults ...
when looking for specific street signs, why do we turn down the music to see better?	“Directing attention to listening effectively ‘turns down the volume’ on input to the visual parts of the brain. The evidence we have right now strongly suggests that attention is strictly limited — a zero-sum game. When attention is deployed to one modality (say, talking on a cell phone) it necessarily extracts a cost...	[ "Eye movement in music reading is the scanning of a musical score by a musician's eyes. This usually occurs as the music is read during performance, although musicians sometimes scan music silently to study it. The phenomenon has been studied by researchers from a range of backgrounds, including cognitive psycholog...
why is baseball considered "the american pastime"?	Because for a long time, it was America's most popular sport. Baseball as a sport developed in the mid-1800's and it wasn't until the late 1950's that football overtook it as America's most popular sport. (the 1958 NFL Championship game is thought of as the seminal moment of the NFL). So for like 100 years, baseball...	[ "Though baseball has historically been called the \"national pastime\", American football has considerably grown in popularity with the advent of television over the last several decades. Most debates about \"America's most popular sport\" tend to center on the degree of Americans' identification with either of the...
Otto von Bismarck famously predicted that the next major European war would be the result of "some damned foolish thing in the Balkans" well before it happened; how was he able to anticipate that this would be the flashpoint? What made it a natural candidate to set off a major conflict?	I'd like to link to a previous thread. Not only because of usual reasons of relevancy, but also because user /u/Aleksx000 also tackles the question of whether Bismarck actually even said the quote: _URL_0_ There are also links to other previous forms of the question contained in the comments of the thread I linked a...	[ "Bismarck announced there would be no more territorial additions to Germany in Europe, and his diplomacy after 1871 was focused on stabilizing the European system and preventing any wars. He succeeded, and only after his ouster in 1890 did the diplomatic tensions start rising again.\n", "\"Sink the Bismarck!\" wa...
Historically, how much did martial skill in combat matter between two armies?	Battles were never about martial skill, it was about who ran away first. That could be caused by simple intimidation, actually killing enough of your opponents, or an ambush/flank attack that triggers a panic. Morale was always the most important factor. Poor morale and you could have Allia where the Roman army panicke...	[ "In the course of the 19th century, Western martial arts became divided into modern sports on one hand and applications that retain military significance on the other. In the latter category are the methods of close-quarter combat with the bayonet besides use of the sabre and the lance by cavalrists and of the cutl...
How did the end of slavery affect agriculture in the American south? Did the major plantations collapse?	The American south still used a system called share-cropping. This system allowed wealthy white farmers to keep the poorer black farmers constantly in debt and farming land that they did not own. This means that large plantations were still able to stay open even if the slaves were freed.	[ "The market revolution further exacerbated sectional tensions in the United States. As King Cotton became the primary crop in the South, the need for increase in labor arose; thus, the South increased its use of slaves in producing crops. The North and European countries banned slavery in their countries/regions, a...
Did the Nazis learn other languages prior to invading countries or did they employ translators? For example, did a few soldiers get made to learn Czech before they annexed Czechoslovakia?	Czechoslovakia actually has cohabited by Germans Czechs Slovaks Hungarians Ukranians Polish etc for a very long time. After World War I and the sudden decline of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy, the newly found Czechoslovakia had more germanspeaking inhabitants than slovak ones. When Germany invaded there, Prague, Brno a...	[ "During the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968, Heim was in Prague employed as translator by UNESCO. When the tanks rolled into Prague, he was in the unique position of being able to translate between Czech and Russian, thereby facilitating communications between the Soviet soldiers and the Czechoslovaks on ...
Why does it matter to have both Big and Little Endian?	The original computer architectures used different circuitry for retrieving bytes assembling into word sizes matching the register size in the CPU. When you were looking at the memory sequentially, independent from the CPU, you needed to know which way the CPU assembled the data into register values to understand why ...	[ "Big-endianness may be demonstrated by writing a decimal number, say one hundred twenty-three, on paper in the usual positional notation understood by a numerate reader: \"123\". The digits are written starting from the left and to the right, with the most significant digit, \"1\", written first. This is analogous ...
how does one become a musical conductor? at the job interview do they just say "here, wave this stick to the tune of this music, that the band already thoroughly know"?	Speaking as a lifetime musician who's been playing in brass bands, wind bands and orchestras since I was ten years old, if that's all you think a conductor does, then you're spectacularly unqualified for the position. A conductor's role is threefold: * 1: direct the music. Just like a movie director will guide and di...	[ "At the beginning of a piece of music, the conductor raises his hands (or hand if he only uses a single hand) to indicate that the piece is about to begin. This is a signal for the orchestra members to ready their instruments to be played or for the choristers to be ready and watching. The conductor then looks at t...
what sort of chance does gary johnson really have of winning the presidential election?	None. Realistically the American political system will only sustain two parties. Historically very few third party candidates (i.e. not a Democrat or Republican) have ever had any real success in elections. Most of the time, when a third party candidate does get a good portion of the vote, they're splitting the votes o...	[ "Throughout 2010, Johnson repeatedly deflected questions regarding his potential presidential candidacy by explaining that his 501(c)(4) status forbade him from expressing a desire to run for federal office. Despite his evasiveness on the subject, speculation of a 2012 presidential bid by Johnson continued to be fu...
why do the fog lights on my car turn off when i turn on my highbeams? why can they not be on at the same time?	The for lights try to shine underneath the fog. If you turn on your highways, the light reflects off of the for or snow back to your face, blinding you. Disclaimer, apologies if I don't make sense, I'm baked.	[ "Front fog lamps provide a wide, bar-shaped beam of light with a sharp cutoff at the top, and are generally aimed and mounted low. They may produce white or selective yellow light, and were designed for use at low speed to increase the illumination directed towards the road surface and verges in conditions of poor ...
An atom hits you!	Nope. But that's not very fast, nor heavy. But even if we were to take lead, and have it move at 99.999% of the speed of light, it's impact would have an energy of [less than .007 J](_URL_0_).	[ "Atoms interact with rays in three ways. A direct impact on an atom by a ray is a \"hit\". Thus, ray 1 fired into the box configuration at left strikes an atom directly, generating a \"hit\", designated by an \"H\". A ray which hits an atom does not emerge from the box.\n", "Atom's actions consists of a standard ...
where did the phrase "used to" come from?	Found it! To be used to "accustomed, familiar" is recorded by late 14c. Verbal phrase used to "formerly did or was" (as in I used to love her) represents a construction attested from c.1300, and common from c.1400, from use (intransitive) "be accustomed, practice customarily," but now surviving only in past tense form...	[ "Other words and meanings, to various extents, were brought back to Britain, especially in the second half of the 20th century; these include \"hire\" (\"to employ\"), \"quit\" (\"to stop\", which spawned \"quitter\" in the U.S.), \"I guess\" (famously criticized by H. W. Fowler), \"baggage\", \"hit\" (a place), an...
why do we shed tears because of certain emotions? why not other body fluids, or sort.	Look I know you want to ejaculate when you cry, but it just isn't normal m'kay?	[ "The question of the function or origin of emotional tears remains open. Theories range from the simple, such as response to inflicted pain, to the more complex, including nonverbal communication in order to elicit altruistic helping behavior from others. Some have also claimed that crying can serve several biochem...
What was the nature of the relationship between Richard I and Phillip II?	It was in-tents. Because they once slept together in the same tent. Man I am on a dad joke roll today. Anyway, that time they slept together in the same tent is the root of the myth - and let's re-emphasize this word myth - that Richard and Philip were lovers. While it is true that Richard seems to have a tenden...	[ "Philip II of Macedon (), who spent much of his adolescence as a political hostage in Thebes, was twenty-four years old when he acceded to the throne and immediately faced crises that threatened to topple his leadership. However, with the use of deft diplomacy, he was able to convince the Thracians under Berisades ...
Why are some people flat-footed and what are the known disadvantages/advantages of this trait?	Orthotist here: We naturally pronate our foot during gait as it helps to absorb shock and helps us to balance as our other foot leaves the ground. Babies pronate more due their bones being a little nubby. this allows for better shock absorption protects the developing hips and it gives better balance. Most spontaneousl...	[ "This leaves humans more vulnerable to medical problems that are caused by poor leg and foot alignments. Also, the wearing of shoes, sneakers and boots can impede proper alignment and movement within the ankle and foot. For example, High-heeled footwear are known to throw off the natural weight balance (this can al...
why raising ones arms behind the head is a sign of relaxation?	Well, first things first, try it yourself, it doesn't actually require much energy. But why it is a sign of relaxation? Because it is a very vulnerable position, implying you have nothing to fear or worry about.	[ "Raising either shoulder beyond a natural relaxed position is an easy habit to acquire without noticing it. Like any other unwarranted tension, it limits freedom of motion, and increases the risk of injury, while decreasing sound quality. It is useful to pay attention to the \"square\" formed by the right arm and b...
what is creativity?	Creativity is the ability to come up with new ideas that have some value. It's how we solve engineering problems or create revolutionary art. The medial prefrontal cortex is used for self-expression. Typically, most abstract thinking is done in the right hemisphere, but there are other parts of the brain that play int...	[ "Although, as commonly used, the term creativity has been applied to a wide range of behavior, events, and practices, these have often consisted of simply different or deviant, uncommon, or unusual occurrences. Many studies have been derived from personal intuition or anecdotes, and have often focused simply on ski...
which part of the brain helps us focus?	Your brain is broken down into different parts: _URL_0_ The cortex (all the colored parts that can be seen on the surface of the brain) is made up of the frontal, temporal, parietal, and occipital lobe. Each of these lobes is thought to be associated more with a certain function. The frontal lobe of the cortex is a...	[ "The function of the brain is to provide coherent control over the actions of an animal. A centralized brain allows groups of muscles to be co-activated in complex patterns; it also allows stimuli impinging on one part of the body to evoke responses in other parts, and it can prevent different parts of the body fro...
Did the Hindenburg Disaster discourage any further research into airship/balloon powered travel, or were we already moving towards planes for air travel?	Airships had reached the limits of their possibilities in the 1930's, while planes were making rapid advances in speed, range, ceiling and rough-weather capacities. The Nazi's weren't very interested in airships, and a number of other disasters before 1940 (USS Akron, USS Macon and British R 101) has shown the weakness...	[ "The newsreels and photographs, along with Morrison's passionate reporting shattered public and industry faith in airships and marked the end of the giant passenger-carrying airships. Also contributing to the downfall of Zeppelins was the arrival of international passenger air travel and Pan American Airlines. Heav...
If I shine a flashlight or laser pointer into the night sky, does emission of stimulation radiation continue on infinitely?	Unless it hits something, it is ever so slowly absorbed by interstellar gas and dust.	[ "Studies in the early twenty-first century found that the risk to the human eye from accidental exposure to light from commercially available class IIIa laser pointers having powers up to 5 mW seemed rather small; however, prolonged viewing, such as deliberate staring into the beam for 10 or more seconds, can cause...
How did european infantry tactics change between 1860 and 1910?	For the Prussian, and then German, Army one of the defining characteristics of their way of war was Auftragstaktik, loosely translated into modern English as Mission Command. This is a philosophy whereby you give your soldiers the freedom to decide how best to achieve their mission. You give them your intent, speci...	[ "Ever since the introduction of breech-loading infantry rifles there had been a growing realization that the days of close order infantry assault were coming to an end. For a time, up to the turn of the 19th century, armies tried to circumvent the problem by moving into range in dispersed formations and charging on...
why does orange juice with pulp have the same fiber content as pulp-free?	Fiber is soluble in water (try it with some Metamucil!) and the actual pulp adds an insignificant amount of fiber to that already in the OJ.	[ "In orange juice, pulp is responsible for desirable flow properties, taste, flavor, and mouth feel. However, pulpy orange juice precipitates based on a rate dependent on the diameter, density, and viscosity of the suspended particles as well as the suspending juice. In order to remain suspended in orange juice, pul...
Why is paramagnetism seemingly stronger than diamagnetism?	Your example of "crushing fingers" probably involves a ferromagnet, not a paramagnet, but you are right that paramagnetism tends to be stronger than diamagnetism. Usually, paramagnetism comes from the spins of unpaired electrons, whereas diamagnetism comes from the orbital motion of electrons. In metals, you can have...	[ "Consequently, diamagnetism is a form of magnetism that a substance exhibits only in the presence of an externally applied magnetic field. It is generally a quite weak effect in most materials, although superconductors exhibit a strong effect.\n", "Paramagnetism is a weak positive response to a magnetic field due...
Can someone explain to me the Fetch Decode Execute cycle?	1. Fetch: copy an instruction from memory to CPU 2. Decode: look at the instruction and, based on what type of instruction it is (for example, "store value in memory" vs "add two values", decide what to do next 3. Execute: Do that	[ "The first decompilation phase loads and parses the input machine code or intermediate language program's binary file format. It should be able to discover basic facts about the input program, such as the architecture (Pentium, PowerPC, etc.) and the entry point. In many cases, it should be able to find the equival...
What would have happened if the Apollo astronauts were stranded on the Moon?	The plan was, once it was obvious the astronauts were beyond rescue, for NASA to allow the astronauts to record a final statement for their families and posterity. NASA would then end communications and allow them privacy in their final minutes or hours. The astronauts would have been allowed to decide what happened ...	[ "Apollo 15 splashed down in the Pacific Ocean north of Honolulu on August 7, 1971. The first crew to land on the Moon and not be quarantined on return, the astronauts were flown to Houston, and after debriefing, were sent off on the usual circuit of addresses to Congress, celebrations and foreign trips that met ret...
Do dyslexic people read Arabic/Hebrew backwards or is dyslexia not a problem for languages read right to left?	_URL_0_ Dyslexia is a broad term...	[ "The majority of currently available dyslexia research relates to alphabetic writing systems, and especially to European languages. However, substantial research is also available regarding dyslexics who speak Arabic, Chinese, Hebrew, or other languages.\n", "Dyslexia is a disorder in which the person affected ha...
When I happen to get shot or stabbed in a dream, I wake up with "pins and needles" in that spot. Why is this, and which one causes the other?	> Research has been able to show that pain is rare but perceptible in dreams. Three explanations for pain dreams are postulated: incorporation of pain during sleep, memories of self-experienced pain (first-person memories), and pain seen in others (third-person memories). [Complete Abstract](_URL_0_) External stimuli...	[ "BULLET::::- Nightmare – After waking from a scarily vivid nightmare where he murdered a man in a strange mirrored room, Vince notices that strange details from his dream are real. A scratch on his wrist, a strange old key, in his pocket - if they are real, then could the murder be too?\n", "In 1962, Dalí said th...
why does the vending machine not take my dollar until it feels like it?	Well, the machine checks the dollar for being genuine. Being it a machine and not a human there are multiple kinds of tests. Magnetic, optical and some others I do not know about. Based on an algorithm and looking at the defects, it determined that the dollar is genuine or not. The point of the test is 100% rejection...	[ "When Franklin puts his last dollar into the machine, it malfunctions and will not spin. Franklin begins yelling and pushes the machine over. He is taken out of the casino screaming. Later in bed, Franklin tells Flora that the machine was about to pay off, but deliberately broke down so that it would not have to gi...
why do people want to live on mars?	Its more like your Lamborghini is reaching 300k miles and you need to prove that you know how to buy a car so you stop by a used car dealer real quick before you order your new Lamborghini. Humanity will not be able to live on earth for ever. Global warming, Resource depletion, Overpopulation are all happening its just...	[ "A Mars habitat is a place that humans can live in on Mars. Mars habitats must contend with surface conditions that include almost no oxygen in the air, extreme cold, low pressure, and high radiation. Alternatively, the habitat may be placed underground, which helps solve some problems but creates new difficulties....
ounces; measuring liquids and measuring weight?	There are two unrelated units: Ounces are a measure of mass. [Fluid ounces](_URL_0_) are a measure of volume. They are not the same thing as ounces, although sometimes when the context makes it clear that it's talking about volume, it's common to see "fluid ounce" abbreviated to "ounce".	[ "In the U.S., only the ounce, pound and short ton – known in the country simply as the ton – are commonly used, though the hundredweight is still used in agriculture and shipping. The grain is used to describe the mass of propellant and projectiles in small arms ammunition. It was also used to measure medicine and ...
How are we able to sense roughness / smoothness of a surface by touch?	Dermal papilla, aka fingerprints may help you detect this. You have mechanosensitive nerves that detect pressure and deformation of your fingertips, and the grooves on your fingers can get caught on small bumps on a surface, enhancing your sensation of the bumpiness of said surface. There is also likely a learning aspe...	[ "Roughness perception is one of the multidimensional scaling of texture perception, which is the judgment of the substance and quality of an object. The studies of roughness perception demonstrate that it is unidimensional, it depends on element height, diameter, shape, compliance, and density; and that the relatio...
why do home dishwashers need to take 3 hours? i know it’s for energy star requirements, but commercial machines get the job done in 90 seconds. why the massive difference? wouldn’t even a more powerful motor take less electricity for such a big time difference?	The dish machines in kitchens are SUPPOSED to be sanitizers, not dish washers. The poor sucker getting paid barely enough money to survive is the dishwasher. All the machine is for is removing whatever small bits are left over after the dishwasher has already mostly cleaned them off. Long story short: If you want clean...	[ "The energy efficiency of a dishwasher is calculated according to the number of place settings. For the most common size of appliance, the 12 place setting machine the following classes apply up to 2010. \n", "Most consumer dishwashers use a 75 °C (167 °F) thermostat in the sanitizing process. During the final ri...
How accurate is the relationship between Aaron Burr and Alexander Hamilton as depicted in the musical "Hamilton"?	It's pretty unlikely that Burr and Hamilton were friends as young men. Burr, a descendant of Jonathan Edwards and as close to an aristocrat as early Americans came, went to the College of New Jersey (later Princeton). Hamilton was an illegitimate child born on the West Indies island of Nevis. He was eventually sent to ...	[ "In addition, in Act I, Aaron Burr's role in Hamilton's life is overstated, and much of the early interactions between the two men in the show are fictionalized. For example, while Burr was present at the Battle of Monmouth, Burr did not serve as Charles Lee's second in his duel with John Laurens as seen in \"Ten D...
Why do storms develop after a hot day? And why do these storms sometimes get forecast but then seem to get pushed back later and never end up developing?	Storms develop on hot days because the sun causes hot spots on the earths surface to form. Air above these hot spots rises up quickly. Now there is a lower pressure at the hot spot which causes air to move in from the side \(also known as wind\). As the air rises up it cools down and the water starts to condense on the...	[ "Tropical storms and hurricanes have become more intense in recent years. While warming waters make these storms more intense, \"scientists are not sure whether the recent intensification represents a long-term trend.\" But it is likely that storms will tend to worsen as the climate warms.\n", "Summertime weather...
I don't get vernacular Jewish languages.	The development story of each of those languages is different, so I'm going to confine this post to broad strokes and specifically Yiddish. First, the broad strokes. There are two terms usually used for "mixtures" of language: pidgin and a creole. A pidgin is developed when two different language speakers need a means...	[ "Despite efforts to revive Hebrew as the national language of the Jewish people, knowledge of the language is not commonly possessed by Jews worldwide and English has emerged as the lingua franca of the Jewish diaspora. Although many Jews once had sufficient knowledge of Hebrew to study the classic literature, and ...
Is it theoretically possible for dark matter to form bodies (similar to asteroids and rogue planets) that could travel through the galaxy and destabilize a solar system?	the reason it's called "dark" isn't just to make it sound spooky or mysterious, it happens to be literally dark. dark matter is matter that is not electromagetically reactive. since light is electromagnetic radiation it is invisible. but it's not just light that is electromagnetic. almost every way that we interact...	[ "However, it is possible that dark, low-density objects like Salacia retain internal porosity from their formation, and are not planetary bodies. In this case, only , 2002 MS4, Quaoar, Orcus and Sedna are likely dwarf-planet candidates.\n", "These same galaxies and groups of galaxies appear to be surrounded by da...
light is a form of energy, where does the energy go when it's absorbed into blackness?	Essentially, yes. Black, gray and white things have those colors because they reflect all wavelengths of visible light equally. White things reflect a lot of light, gray things less, and black things the least. A "truly" black surface would reflect 0 visible light. However, our eyes only have a limited range of sensit...	[ "Absorption of light is contrasted by transmission, reflection and diffusion, where the light is only redirected, causing objects to appear transparent, reflective or white respectively. A material is said to be black if most incoming light is absorbed equally in the material. Light (electromagnetic radiation in th...
why did most ancient cultures associate their gods with animals?	What else is there? People, animals, natural forces... and most cultures associated gods with all of those at once.	[ "The classical author Diodorus explained the origin of animal worship by recalling the myth in which the gods, supposedly threatened by giants, hid under the guise of animals. The people then naturally began to worship the animals that their gods had disguised themselves as and continued this act even after the god...
shell (computing)	A shell or command shell is a program which has a special purpose: it reads keystrokes from the keyboard and interprets the "commands" that it receives in this way. The general idea is to have a human user interact with the command shell in order to accomplish system or computer maintenance related tasks, such as manip...	[ "In computing, a shell is a user interface for access to an operating system's services. In general, operating system shells use either a command-line interface (CLI) or graphical user interface (GUI), depending on a computer's role and particular operation. It is named a shell because it is the outermost layer aro...
when _url_0_ reports that my internet speed is 900 mb/s and the test runs for several seconds, is it downloading several gigs worth of stuff?	Speedtest measures in Megabits per second or kilobytes per second depending on the display setting. Megabits are not the same thing as megabytes. Thats about 112 megabytes, not a few gigs. Your computer downloads some small temporary files that are deleted after the test is done. The speed is calculated based on the av...	[ "The service measures the bandwidth (\"speed\") and latency of a visitor's Internet connection against one of 4,759 geographically dispersed servers (as of August 2016) located around the world. Each test measures the data rate for the download direction, i.e. from the server to the user computer, and the upload da...
why are hairs over old wounds thicker and darker?	I'm guessing that they grow thicker because it's a targeted area of your body where copious about of healing resources (blood, nutrients, etc) were sent and thus the hair there is overdeveloped and beefier. My guess for deeper color would be since the hair is thicker it doesn't let light through as well so the genetica...	[ "Shaving does not cause terminal hair to grow back thicker, coarser or darker. This belief arose because hair that has never been cut has a naturally tapered end, as it emerges from the skin's hair follicle, whereas, after cutting, there is no taper. The cut hair may thus appear to be thicker, and feel coarser as a...
why do websites more frequently have you scroll through multiple pages for the rest of the article or to see the subsequent photo in a long list?	More pages = more ads = more revenue	[ "This phenomenon also occurs in the Internet. Counting the number of links to a page can give us a general estimate of its prominence on the Web, but a page with very few incoming links may also be prominent, if two of these links come from the home pages of sites like Yahoo!, Google, or MSN. Because these sites ar...
why does xbox and ps4 charge for multiplayer but pc does not?	Xbox and Playstation are closed ecosystems -- the manufacturers control what can and can't connect to it, so they are in a position to charge for multiplayer access. A PC is an open system -- there's no one company that controls your access to other systems. So, while you may pay for multiplayer games, you'd be paying...	[ "PlayStation 2 users had the option to play select games over the Internet, using a broadband Internet connection and a PlayStation 2 Network Adaptor. Instead of having a unified, subscription-based online service like Xbox Live as competitor Microsoft later chose for its Xbox console, online multiplayer functional...
how do you clean up the water in a situation like west virginia?	Clean up the spill. Let the river clean itself for a while, or dredge the muck that is contaminated off the bottom and dump it in a chemical landfill. Clean the water treatment plants if needed, or run water through them until no more hazardous level of contaminant remains. Run the taps, the fire hydrants, the hose...	[ "The cleansed water then travels via storm water pipes to Brown Hill Creek and to the sea. This process is arranged and funded by the City of Mitcham. In 2011 construction began on pipes and facilities for some of the water to be pumped to tanks at the High School and used for watering grounds during summer months....
What is the earliest known instance of a type of weapon/warfare being "banned" by both sides of an armed conflict?	Chemical weapons were actually banned before the UN came about. The 1929 Geneva Protocol to the Hague Convention banned their use in international warfare, but in theory they had been already banned by the 1899 Hague Convention. As for Nukes, my understanding is that there is no treaty that explicitly bans their use b...	[ "International law has prohibited the use of chemical weapons since 1899, under the Hague Convention: Article 23 of the Regulations Respecting the Laws and Customs of War on Land adopted by the First Hague Conference \"especially\" prohibited employing \"poison and poisoned arms\". A separate declaration stated tha...
Was the middle east on a path to secularism in the early twentieth century? If so, what changed?	The short answer to your question is that the leaders of those secular movements (Hafez al-Assad, Saddam Hussein, Muammar Gaddhafi, others) tended to be mind-blowingly iron-fisted and corrupt, even as they educated women, provided greater social services, etc.--so, since about the late 1970s, Islamists have successfull...	[ "Many of the early supporters of Secularist principles in Middle Eastern countries were Baathist and non-Muslim Arabs, seeking a solution to a multi-confessional population and an ongoing drive to modernism.\n", "In the mid-20th century, many Christians in the Middle East saw secular politics as a way out of thei...
i like very spicy food, but how come sometimes my sissy friends can easily eat food i would consider "quite spicy"?	The feeling of heat you experience when you consume spicy food is probably Capsaicin, the chemical found in chilli peppers that stimulates the same receptors used to detect actual heat. It doesn't actually damage your cells at all it just makes you feel like it is. Anyway, while cells in your mouth are all pretty much...	[ "There is a general belief that eating spicy food and chili pepper in particular heats up passion, but as Jon Bonné says in an article on MSNBC, \"it's a big leap from heat in the mouth to heat between the sheets.\" The penile shape Bonné signals is confirmed by Michael Albertson and Ellen Albertson in their book \...
Why aren't spheres used instead of wheels in cars?	You don't want it to be easy for the car to slip and slide sideways. A sphere makes that a much harder problem to overcome than a wheel. You'd need to add a texture. But if you add a texture, you're essentially just adding a tire, and most of texture doesn't contact the ground and is essentially wasted. There's no way ...	[ "Bearings are used in most rotating machines in the modern world - found throughout the rotating parts in cars, bikes, trains, planes etc. These modern ball bearings work in much the same way as Vaughan's initial invention. They make vehicles more efficient by reducing the friction between the moving parts. Without...
If you continued to grind sand into finer and finer particles, would it ever begin behaving like a like a liquid?	Powders with a spherical morphology that can slide past one another will behave like a liquid even with a rather large particle size. I have some spray dried silicon nitride powders at work that are ~30-40 um spherical agglomerates and you would think I was pouring liquid if you saw it come out of the bottle. The prob...	[ "In addition, particulate solids can be prevented from being captured by surface charge repulsion if the surface charge of the sand is of the same sign (positive or negative) as that of the particulate solid. Furthermore, it is possible to dislodge captured particulates although they may be re-captured at a greater...
When should scientists not use excel?	Spreadsheets are great for simple finance related stuff, such as keeping a budget. But most people use them for all of the wrong reasons: MATLAB or SciLab (free version) is useful if you've got lots of numerical data, and need to plot/write functions/manipulate/regression analysis or do numerical approximations. Orig...	[ "Microsoft Visual Basic for Applications is not supported in this version. As a result, such Excel add-ins dependent on VBA, such as Solver, have not been bundled in the current release. In June 2008, Microsoft announced that it is exploring the idea of bringing some of the functionality of Solver back to Excel. In...
Can a person get sick from getting "chilled"?	The 'common cold' is usually caused by a rhinovirus. Cold temperature itself does not cause illness. [However, temperature effects may facilitate viral infection:](_URL_0_) > Although not all studies agree, most of the available evidence from laboratory and clinical studies suggests that inhaled cold air, cooling of...	[ "Some Turks believe that cold foods, such as ice cream, will cause illnesses – such as sore throats and the common cold; it is held that consumption of warm liquid while consuming ice cream will counteract these effects.\n", "Cold has numerous physiological and pathological effects on the human body, as well as o...
How do genetics effect muscle strength/growth?	Yes! However as most things it is an interplay of nature and nurture. Nature is responsible for supplying the genes we need to build the structures and molecules and cells associated, the will also be the basis for metabolism and body "shape". But these genes interact with our environment or our nurture. We need proper...	[ "Individual differences in genetics account for a substantial portion of the variance in existing muscle mass. A classical twin study design (similar to those of behavioral genetics) estimates that about 52% of the variance in lean body mass is estimated to be heritable and that about 45% of the variance in muscle ...
when commercials say "call within the next 5 minutes" do they really mean it?	Never. It's just a technique to motivate you to act.	[ "The 60-second radio commercials used a donut (15 seconds of jingle at open, a number of items on sale, and then 15 seconds of jingle at close) started with an attention-getting \"Moo and Oink! Moo Moo Moo!\" and eventually ends with a well-known sign-off \"Moooooooooooooo 'n' Oink!\". In 2005, Tina Fey and Amy Poe...
what is it that can make us so indecisive about which way to move when someone walks towards us?	Without established system for which way to move, which has been agreed upon earlier, this problem doesn't have a definite answer. You might never get past the other person. For computers this types of problems are more severe, actually leading to eternal deadlocks. Humans can act in a way to make prolonged clash prett...	[ "When we walk, we take the time out of busy society to reflect, and according to Thoreau this self-reflection accompanied by trees, and fresh air inspires us and makes us better, spiritually, and intellectually.\n", "Pedestrian etiquette is the general courtesy expected from those walking among other pedestrians....
how the great barrier reef is now considered "dead" and what factors lead to it?	It's not dead. That's click bait. The great barrier reef is absolutely massive. A significant portion of it is in serious decline, but other parts of it are doing just fine. So far.	[ "The Great Barrier Reef could be killed as a result of the rise in water temperature forecast by the IPCC. A UNESCO World Heritage Site, the reef has experienced unprecedented rates of bleaching over the past two decades, and additional warming of only 1 °C is anticipated to cause considerable losses or contraction...
why does it matter to my bank if i use my bank card as a debit card or a credit card?	Your bank makes more money from the merchant if you use your debit card as a credit card. It's all about the money.	[ "From the bank's point of view, when a debit card is used to pay a merchant, the payment causes a decrease in the amount of money the bank \"owes to\" the cardholder. From the bank's point of view, your debit card account is the bank's liability. A decrease to the bank's liability account is a debit. From the bank'...
If a ball bounces 50ft when dropped from 100ft, will it bounce 100ft when dropped from 200ft?	In the real world? No. - Air drag will affect the speed of the ball on the way down. - The [coefficient of restitution](_URL_0_) is not constant. - Material deformation is not elastic (see #2) In a contrived physics problem? (Big edit, I screwed up earlier -- the answer is yes, in the ideal case, the bounce heig...	[ "For a ball dropped against a floor, the COR will therefore vary between 0 (no bounce, total loss of energy) and 1 (perfectly bouncy, no energy loss). A COR value below 0 or above 1 is theoretically possible, but would indicate that the ball went \"through\" the surface (), or that the surface was not \"relaxed\" w...
Will your body use alcohol or store it as fat, or does it all just get filtered out by the liver? Similarly, where do the calories in beer come from?	The liver does not "filter" alcohol. It metabolizes alcohol, via a two-step pathway (Ethanol- > acetyl aldehyde- > acetic acid). Acetic acid is then used to regenerate acetyl-coenzyme A, which is an energy currency in the citric acid cycle. Alcohol has caloric energy in it, and your body has the enzymatic machinery...	[ "Alcohol is metabolized by a normal liver at the rate of about 8 grams of pure ethanol per hour. 8 grams or is one British standard unit. An \"abnormal\" liver with conditions such as hepatitis, cirrhosis, gall bladder disease, and cancer is likely to result in a slower rate of metabolism.\n", "During the metabol...
What would cause a drinking glass to break right after pouring liquid in it?	Typically when glass breaks without being struck, thermal shock is to blame -- if hot glass is cooled too quickly, different regions will contract at different rates, developing stresses too quickly for flow to be able to dissipate them. At a certain point, if the stress is too great, the glass may fracture. If it does...	[ "Glassing is a physical attack using a glass or bottle as a weapon. Glassings can occur at bars or pubs where alcohol is served and such items are readily available. The most common method of glassing involves the attacker smashing an intact glass in the face of the victim. However, the glass may be smashed before ...
who owns ancient roman artifacts? if i privately sponsored an archaeological dig, could i keep any ancient artifacts i found, or do countries have laws against that? if i wanted to purchase an ancient roman artifact, could i do so online? how much would it cost?	The laws vary from country to country, and the question would need to be more specific.	[ "Dealers claim that most of their antiquities come from private collections and are purchased legally. By legal they mean from collections that were completed before 1978 when it was still legal to excavate on private property and collect artifacts. It is difficult to prove otherwise because it would take a large a...
why is staring at the sun painful? what happens if you stare too long?	Your eyes have a focusing lens in front of them somewhat similar to a magnifying glass lens. Just like a magnifying glass, the lens will focus the sunlight tightly and begin to rapidly heat up whatever the light is focused on: in this case, onto the back of your eye, which is a very fragile tissue called the Retina. If...	[ "When concentrating on a visually intense task, such as continuously focusing on a book or computer monitor, the ciliary muscle tightens. This can cause the eyes to get irritated and uncomfortable. Giving the eyes a chance to focus on a distant object at least once an hour usually alleviates the problem.\n", "BUL...
why is taiwan valuable to china under the "one china" policy? they've been ruled separately for so long, what would the real benefit to controlling it again be?	Taiwan is the legitimate government of China that fled when the communist revolution occurred. Allowing them full autonomy erodes their own legitimacy.	[ "Owing to the controversial political status of Taiwan and the People's Republic of China's One-China policy, foreign governments have felt a need to be ambiguous regarding Taiwan. The PRC pressures states to recognize it as the sole legitimate representative of China, with which most states comply. In practice, ho...
the 'rail-gun' and why it's such a big deal?	Imagine you have a long metal rod. One day you go to a local abandoned train track and decide to perform an experiment. You take the metal rod and lay it across the top of the tracks so that it touches both rails, making a sort of H. Then, you get some car batteries (please don't ever actually try this) and you connect...	[ "Rail guns are highly advanced in \"Rifts\", and are used in a way similar to machine guns in modern times. However, the weapon, ammunition belts/drums/clips, and energy packs to power the weapon make most rail guns very heavy, and are usually restricted to Powered Armor, 'Borgs, and vehicles. One of the most famou...
If a person is falling at a speed faster than terminal velocity, will he slow down to reach terminal velocity?	Yes, if you move faster than terminal velocity, aerodynamic drag will slow you down until you reach terminal velocity, which is the velocity at which the aerodynamic forces (that slow you down) and the gravitational forces (that accelerate you) cancel out.	[ "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", "Using the fig...
why do we experience a movie's plot as exciting when we know the good guys will win?	It's the journey not the destination. Plus we may still want to know how the plot will resolve itself, or the fate of secondary characters we may care about, both of which are independent to whether the main character dies or not. Or we may just enjoy the style of storytelling or watch for the fancy effects. Or we ju...	[ "Rooted in magical realism, the film depicts an underground trade in \"luck\", where fortune flows from those who have less to those who have more; the premise purports that luck can be amassed and transferred as any other commodity. The story follows several participants as they engage in literal games of chance, ...
if it is a myth that skinny people have higher metabolism, how is it that we all have a non-active friend who can eat truckloads of junk yet be skinny or, more alarmingly, fit?	Metabolism can account for swings of roughly 300 kcal/day, in most of the population. That's really not a lot of food, all told. [This is what 300 kcal of French fries looks like](_URL_0_). What you are seeing when one guy eats "truckloads of junk" is a snapshot. You are not seeing their tiny breakfast, or nonexistent...	[ "Taubes states in the book that it's not about fat people eating too much and exercising too little or skinny people eating well and exercising a lot. In hunter-gather time periods, humans' lives were spent finding food so when they found a surplus the human body would go into storage mode. Today we don't have the ...
How would a citizen of Rome experience the fall of its Empire?	Depends on when you date the fall of the Empire actually. But you can bookend one's experiences as a resident of the city of Rome on the basis of whether they witnessed/survived one or both sacks of Rome in 410 and 455, and whether they had to live through the 20 year long Gothic War in 535-554 and the multiple sieg...	[ "Many theories have been advanced in way of explanation for decline of the Roman Empire, and many dates given for its fall, from the onset of its decline in the 3rd century to the fall of Constantinople in 1453. Militarily, however, the Empire finally fell after first being overrun by various non-Roman peoples and ...
Nature vs. Nurture	It's both. There is no such thing as "vs". It's an old silly argument.	[ "Nature versus nurture refers to the theory about how people are influenced. The nature mentality is around the idea that we are influenced by our genetics. This involves all of our physical characteristics and our personality. On the other hand, nurture revolves around the idea that we are influenced by the enviro...
How do the gulf stream and the jet stream and other large scale streaming effects stay together?	It's a bit unclear from your question. Do you mean A) why don't these features slowly die away? or B) why do they exist as narrow jets rather than broader flow? I'll try to tackle to ocean case. The Gulf Stream exists because of the large-scale winds blowing across the Atlantic. The pattern of the large-scale wind f...	[ "Jet streams are typically continuous over long distances, but discontinuities are common. The path of the jet typically has a meandering shape, and these meanders themselves propagate eastward, at lower speeds than that of the actual wind within the flow. Each large meander, or wave, within the jet stream is known...
how come so many canned goods like soups and vegetables have really high sodium content but do not taste that salty.	Lots of things have a high sodium content but don't taste salty because of the presence of other chemicals that overwhelm the salt. Also, it's pretty critical to consider what a serving size is when you evaluate the overall sodium concentration. For example, I just went to my pantry and looked at a few food items. On...	[ "Many canned soups, including Campbell's condensed and chunky varieties, contain relatively high quantities of sodium and thus are not desirable for those on low-sodium diets. However, Campbell's Chunky, Healthy Request and other soups, as well as their V-8 and Tomato juices, are claimed by Campbell's to contain re...
why is being flat-footed a hindrance?	Feet are supposed to have an arch, and the bones/muscle in them require it for proper function. It's a bit like a bridge. If you look at large bridges that support a lot of weight, you see those giant cables that 'curve' up and to a point in the middle. So when you put a lot of weight on the bridge, it's not just the ...	[ "This leaves humans more vulnerable to medical problems that are caused by poor leg and foot alignments. Also, the wearing of shoes, sneakers and boots can impede proper alignment and movement within the ankle and foot. For example, High-heeled footwear are known to throw off the natural weight balance (this can al...
Is it possible to cool water down past 0C without it turning into ice?	Yes, it's called [supercooling](_URL_0_). When the supercooled liquid is finally disturbed, it freezes rapidly, usually in [spectacular fashion](_URL_1_). Look around the 1 min mark.	[ "When water is in a conventional freezer, a dynamic phase transition is triggered. The resulting ice depends on how quickly the system is cooled: If the water is cooled below its freezing point slowly, an ice crystal will result, rather than the poly-crystalline solid that flash freezing produces.\n", "Freezing c...
Why are white people white and black people black?	It has to do with the amount [Eumelanin](_URL_0_) found in our skins. Eumelanin helps protect us from UV rays. So it makes sense that people closer to the equator would need darker skin (and thus more melanin) to combat the higher rates of skin cancer you would see there. People farther from the equator would have to ...	[ "White people is a racial classification specifier, used mostly and often exclusively for people of European descent; depending on context, nationality, and point of view. The term has at times been expanded to encompass persons of Middle Eastern and North African descent (for example, in the US census definition),...
Why is it impossible to be (or at least perceive to be) sucked into a black hole?	I think your question is misworded. If you fall into a black hole, you will experience it! (I mean, if you could survive getting TO the black hole in the first place). What you may be referring to is the fact that an outside observer will not be able to watch you cross the event horizon of the black hole. This is bec...	[ "As recounted in \"Lollipop and the Tar Baby\", there is an additional complicating factor which humans are unaware of - i.e. the black holes (or at least some of them) are sentient beings, highly intelligent, with enormous knowledge gathered during millions of years of life, and who don't at all like the idea of b...
Why are holy religious cities not their own city states, the way the Vatican is for Catholics?	> Why is the Vatican the only one that is a city state? Because what we know today as Vatican City used to be the much larger Papal States, which ruled much of Central Italy... long story short, by 1860 it had lost a great deal of its lands to the upheavals in favour of an unitary Italian nation - and its fate w...	[ "Although the Holy See is sometimes metonymically referred to as the \"Vatican\", the Vatican City State was distinctively established with the Lateran Treaty of 1929, between the Holy See and Italy, to ensure the temporal, diplomatic, and spiritual independence of the papacy. As such, papal nuncios, who are papal ...
how are tv commercials played with correct timing during live television events?	Producers/directors in the control room have everything timed out. They know exactly when to cut for commercials. It may be live but everything is planned ahead. Also, some live programs usually have a bit of a delay. I used to do graphics for a 24/7 news channel-type, and there were screens in the CR showing a timer...	[ "During the broadcast’s commercial breaks, Corden started Broadway Karaoke whereby Broadway performers in the audience would karaoke a show tune without preplanning or rehearsal. Equipped with a songbook, microphone, and with a pianist to accompany, Corden would pick various stars to sing during three of the teleca...
when the tide is high and the water is pushed to the edges, does the middle of the ocean become shallower to some degree?	There is a bulge of water on each side of the earth that rotates around the earth under the influence of the sun and moon, predominantly the moon. If the earth was only water you could think of it as two big waves with troughs between them moving around the planet. however the land masses get in the way water pile...	[ "Deep-water waves travel to shore and become shallow water waves. Shallow water waves have depths less than ½ of their wavelength. Shallow wave's wavelengths are long relative to water depth and have elliptical orbitals. The wave velocity effects the entire water basin. The water interacts with the bottom as it app...
since aids is no longer considered a “homosexual disease” why do blood banks still ask if a man has had sexual contact with another man, on the questionnaire?	While it's not still considered a "homosexual disease" HIV/AIDS is still very prevalent in the homosexual community. Gay and bisexual men make up 70% of all new cases of HIV, despite them being less than 1.7% of the population (assuming 50% of homosexuals and bisexuals are male). This is partly because of behavioral ...	[ "Initially, the disease was seen in hemophiliacs receiving it from tainted blood supply in the early 1980s, however, in the mid 80s to the present, there was increasing prevalence in homosexual and then heterosexual demographics. About 1,500 HIV/AIDS cases arise each year, of this group, homosexual men dominate thi...
from how far away could an extraterrestrial alien observe us?	Diffraction's your biggest enemy here. Literally. Light spreads out, so you need a massively wide telescope to differentiate between two nearby points. If your telescope is any smaller, those two points will blur into one, and it becomes physically impossible to tell them apart. Lord Rayleigh proved that the diamete...	[ "BULLET::::- \"At 8 months of age, I made my first high-powered telescope by cannibalizing a video camera and an Atari 2600 (not like anyone was going to miss it). And my studies have concluded that extraterrestrials exist...and they're generally a bunch of jerk-offs. Alien visitation to Earth falls into two catego...
How do we know what we should expect for the angular sizes of spots in the CMB under different geometries of the universe?	It comes down to trigonometry. In the early Universe, before the CMB was emitted, matter particles (baryons) and light particles (photons) were interacting with each other so frequently that they could be considered a single fluid, a baryon-photon plasma. Because the early Universe wasn't perfectly uniform (why it wasn...	[ "The Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) radiation signature presents a direct large-scale view of the universe that can be used to identify whether our position or movement has any particular significance. There has been much publicity about analysis of results from the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) an...
the difference between the processor and memory of a computer?	Like you're 5: Processor - does the sums. Memory - is the paper on which the sums are written.	[ "A digital computer's main memory consists of many memory locations. Each memory location has a physical address which is a code. The CPU (or other device) can use the code to access the corresponding memory location. Generally only system software, i.e. the BIOS, operating systems, and some specialized utility pro...
"Oh God!" How long has shouting a deity's name been seen as a way to express sexual satisfaction?	Roman plays and in particular Plaute's plays abound with profanity as would have been used in the late republican period. Some of the most common words used are "Hercle" (by Hercule !) or "Pol/Edepol" (corrupted forms of "Polluce", by Pollux). A good example is the Asinaria around verse 842 : Argyrippe managed to bu...	[ "Others derive the name of the god from the word \"ridiculus\", signifying a thing to be laughed at. Hannibal's failure to enter Rome made him an object of scorn for the Romans, and in order to perpetuate his shame, they erected a temple to the god of laughter. Varro give the god the epithet \"Tutanus\" (protector)...
Would it be possible to establish an orbit within a gas planet?	The atmosphere on a gas planet is too thick to allow for an orbiting spacecraft, as the orbit would quickly decay. Just make an aircraft.	[ "In 2002, the Geneva Extrasolar Planet Search Team announced the discovery of an extrasolar planet orbiting the star. Based upon the orbital elements, most of this gas giant's orbit lies within the habitable zone (HZ) of the host star; it only passes outside this region at apogee. As such, it is unlikely that a ter...
why did north america never “settle” like europe?	They did. 1. A native American city Cahokia existed in what is now Illinios, estimates place the population as high as 40,000 people. 2. Pueblo(s), not one but multiple cities scattered throughout the southwest. This has been posted before also. And the answers are better here. _URL_0_	[ "The Eastern coast of the United States of America, due to its proximity to Europe, was among the first regions of the continent to be widely settled by Europeans. Over time, the cities and towns founded here had the advantage of age over most other parts of the US. However, it was the Northeast in particular that ...
Why will there always be more of herbivores than predators?	Awesome question! In short, because the [Second Law of Thermodynamics](_URL_1_) necessitates that energy transformations are not 100% efficient. Think of it this way: living organisms are all part of an ecological system within which matter cycles and through which energy flows. We eat because we need the energy store...	[ "As long as natural enemies have some potential to be omnivorous, plants can provide food resources to encourage their retention and increase the impact they have on herbivore populations. This potential, however, can hinge on a number of insect traits. For example, hemipteran predators can use their piercing-sucki...
Is there any particular reason why most question-starting adverbs in English start with the letter w-?	Yes. It comes from Proto-Indo European _kwo-_ root of interrogative pronouns. You'll see the same pattern in other Germanic languages (e.g. Norwegian _hvad_, _hvem_, _hvor_, _hvordan_) and similar things in other branches of the Indo-European family (e.g. Latin _quod_, _quis_, _quid_, _quo_)	[ "In \"wh\"-questions, the question word generally remains in its usual grammatical position in the sentence, rather than being brought to the start as in English (that is, \"wh\"-fronting does not normally take place).\n", " is used in English to represent Proto-Germanic , the continuation of the PIE labiovelar (...
why are cough suppressants added to medications with guaifenesin such as mucinex?	So guaifensesin, as you said thins your mucus, allowing it to more easily be removed. It is often given with dextromethorphan, a cough suppressant. It does seem counter intuitive to mix expectorants and cough suppressants. But cough suppressants don't stop you from cough per say, so much as they decrease the irritation...	[ "Guaifenesin is used to control cough and is sometimes combined with dextromethorphan, an antitussive (cough medicine), such as in Mucinex DM or Robitussin DM. It is also combined with ephedrine to produce Primatene and Bronkaid tablets for symptomatic relief of asthma.\n", "Nicocodeine cough medicines are availa...
How does U.S. federal government raise its revenue before adoption of income tax?	Almost entirely from tariffs (customs duties) on imported goods. Excise taxes (direct taxes on the production and sale of specific goods within the US) were tried, but they were very unpopular, and in one case actually lead to [a rebellion.](_URL_1_) It wasn't until the massive expenditures of the Civil War that the ...	[ "A new income tax statute was enacted as part of the 1894 Tariff Act. At that time, the United States Constitution specified that Congress could impose a \"direct\" tax only if the law apportioned that tax among the states according to each state's census population.\n", "The United States Revenue Act of 1978, , ...
why and how do some animals (i.e. birds) move their heads in a quick way, almost as if snapping to an angle?	So I want you to hold both thumbs out in front of you, holding your hands apart. Look at one thumb, then look at the other. Chances are your eyes snapped from one to the other quickly. Eyes in general don't focus well when an image is moving too much, so tend to try to keep things stable by "snapping" from image to ima...	[ "Animals use this type of behavior when crossing between trees and other surfaces. This movement requires the use of the hind limbs to leap across extended areas. Small animals have an easier time leaping between gaps, while larger animals are more cautious due to their weight and typically swing from branch to bra...
how does the transmission of electricity work?	First thing first, electrons flow through metal wires because metal atoms share electrons with their neighbors, which means they're not really locked on to a particular atom. As long as there are enough electrons around the atom, it doesn't care where they're from or where they're going. That means they can flow, like ...	[ "Electric power transmission is the bulk movement of electrical energy from a generating site, such as a power plant, to an electrical substation. The interconnected lines which facilitate this movement are known as a transmission network. This is distinct from the local wiring between high-voltage substations and ...
How did the Italian nationalists justify the annexation of the Papacy to themselves during the unification of Italy?	The main driver of the Italian unification process was a peculiar union of certain segments of the Italian nobility and the urban bourgeoisie, and both were aggressively secular. It's important to note that it was the French Emperor Napoleon, through his conquest of the ten 18th century successors of the medieval Ita...	[ "During the unification of Italy in the mid-19th century, the Papal States resisted incorporation into the new nation, even as all the other Italian countries, except for San Marino, joined it; Camillo Cavour's dream of proclaiming the Kingdom of Italy from the steps of St. Peter's Basilica did not come to pass. Th...
intel cpus	Terms like Sandy Bridge and Ivy Bridge are related to the processor's microarchitecture. This is essentially the unique way a processor is built, but I'll explain it in a bit. To understand this better, you need to know Intel's Tick-Tock model. Intel switches its focus for a new processor's goals like a grandfather cl...	[ "On June 26, 2006, Intel released the dual-core CPU (Xeon branded 5100 series) codenamed Woodcrest (product code 80556); it was the first Intel Core microarchitecture processor to be launched on the market. It is a server and workstation version of the Intel Core 2 processor. Intel claims that it provides an 80% bo...
Martin Luther nailed 95 theses to the door. He wasn't the first to disagree with the Roman Catholic Church...why did his request for a dispute turn into a religious revolution?	I did a paper on Pope Leo X a few years back, actually. Leo didn't want to deal with it much, at first, and basically sent attack dogs after Luther. This pushed Luther to be more aggressive and extreme (he was incredibly stubborn, and hated the sort of visually indulgent Catholicism of Southern Europe, amongst ot...	[ "On 31 October 1517 (All Hallows' Eve) Martin Luther allegedly nailed his Ninety-five Theses (Disputation on the Power of Indulgences) on the door of the All Saints' Church in Wittenberg, Germany, detailing doctrinal and practical abuses of the Roman Catholic Church, especially the selling of indulgences. The these...
stephen colbert's character	Stephen Colbert is a political satirist and comedian who plays [Stephen Colbert](_URL_0_), who is a right-wing pundit. He is "egomaniacal, xenophobic and fiercely anti-intellectual". He plays your stereotypical Republican idiot. He often asks his guests "George Bush: Great president, or the greatest president?". Steph...	[ "Stephen Colbert's television program, \"The Colbert Report\" (2005–14), is instructive in the methods of contemporary American satire. Colbert's character is an opinionated and self-righteous commentator who, in his TV interviews, interrupts people, points and wags his finger at them, and \"unwittingly\" uses a nu...
if jesus's ministry overruled the old testament laws then how do christians use leviticus to demonize homosexuality?	They cannot in a logical fashion. Most Christians are not biblical scholars and only repeat what they are taught. The bible is so big and contradictory that you can use it to teach anything. So what you are seeing if people teaching their personal beliefs to others, using the Bible as evidence, who in turn use teach th...	[ "Critics argue that the selective invocation of portions of the Old Testament is hypocritical, particularly when those portions endorse hostility towards women and homosexuals, when other portions are considered obsolete. The entire Mosaic Law is described in as a tutor which is no longer necessary, according to so...
Why are humans in a better mood when the skies are blue and the sun shining, compared to wet, grey overcast skies?	I'm the opposite. I love rain.	[ "Because of the increased sensitivity of the human eye to blue and green wavelengths when viewing low-luminances (the Purkinje effect) in the night sky, different sources produce dramatically different amounts of visible skyglow from the same amount of light sent into the atmosphere.\n", "The Earth's atmosphere s...

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