Split (2)

train · 226k rows

question stringlengths 3 301	answer stringlengths 9 26.1k	context list
Why was there a large quantity of music from Europe, Africa, India while other countries in Asia or the (Native) Americas are barely represented?	> Music Bands, Choirs & Orchestras That sounds very very European... Most of the standard repertoire was composed by European musicians, it is still very normal to find a lot of their music if you are into the Western musical tradition (even if you are somewhere else in the world). European concert music certain...	[ "The music of the Americas is very diverse since, in addition to many types of Native American music, the music of Europe and the music of Africa have been found there for some five centuries, creating many hybrid forms that have influenced the popular music of the world.\n", "Prior to the arrival of the European...
what's the point of a silent letter?	These usually come up because pronunciation changes faster than spelling. Furthermore, it's possible for a language to adopt the spelling of a word from one parent language, but the pronunciation from another - this is the case with the word "colonel," which came up recently here on reddit. So, the point of silent ...	[ "Silent is also used in forms of the verb \"avere\" ('have') – \"ho\", \"hai\" and \"hanno\" – to distinguish these from their homophones \"o\" ('or'), \"ai\" ('to the') and \"anno\" ('year'). The letter is also silent at the beginning of words borrowed from other languages, such as \"hotel\".\n", "BULLET::::- Si...
instead of all the costly and/or inhumane methods of death penalty execution, why don't they just open convicts' veins and let them bleed out safely and hygienically?	You think opening their veins is the humane way ? Why would it be more humane than putting them "to sleep" ? Plus it's waaaaay more messy.	[ "Execution of criminals and dissidents has been used by nearly all societies since the beginning of civilizations on Earth. Until the nineteenth century, without developed prison systems, there was frequently no workable alternative to ensure deterrence and incapacitation of criminals. In pre-modern times the execu...
Is it possible for intelligent life to be of a different sex system?	Completely random. They could be single sex, two sexes or something completely different.	[ "It is possible that even if complex life is common, intelligence (and consequently civilizations) is not. While there are remote sensing techniques that could perhaps detect life-bearing planets without relying on the signs of technology, none of them has any ability to tell if any detected life is intelligent. Th...
How did ancient empires/kingdom (Roman Empire, Warring States) equip their armies?	For the Roman Empire, the answer is that weapons and equipment were mostly provided by the private sector. In the imperial period new units were always set up in Italy, "where they could take advantage of well-established Italian industries" (Herz p.314). The state paid the producers and handed over the equipment to th...	[ "Outside the regular army were substantial numbers of allied forces, generally known as \"foederati\" (from \"foedus\" = \"treaty\") or \"symmachi\" in the East. The latter were forces supplied either by barbarian chiefs under their treaty of alliance with Rome or \"dediticii\". Such forces were employed by the Rom...
What's c to the power of i if c is a complex number and i the imaginary unit?	(See sidebar of /r/math to render equations.) Powers of complex numbers are defined in terms of the exponential and logarithm functions. So we have `[; c^i = e^{i\log(c)} ;]` where "log" is a logarithm of c, and there are infinitely many of them. Let's write `[; c = a+ib ;]` with a and b real. Then `[; \log...	[ "Integer powers of nonzero complex numbers are defined by repeated multiplication or division as above. If \"i\" is the imaginary unit and \"n\" is an integer, then \"i\" equals 1, \"i\", −1, or −\"i\", according to whether the integer \"n\" is congruent to 0, 1, 2, or 3 modulo 4. Because of this, the powers of \"i...
when referencing a black hole and speaking of matter, why is it referred to as information?	Matter is not the same as information. If I have a rock and I make it vanish, I've destroyed matter. But I haven't necessarily destroyed information. I might remember the rock. Or maybe I've forgotten about it, but there's still light moving away from it that someone far away could see to tell that it's a rock. Or it h...	[ "The question whether information is truly lost in black holes (the black hole information paradox) has divided the theoretical physics community (see Thorne–Hawking–Preskill bet). In quantum mechanics, loss of information corresponds to the violation of vital property called unitarity, which has to do with the con...
Organized Crime during the Weimar Republic	Organised crime certainly did exist in Weimar Germany, much of it in the form of groups known as Ringvereine. You can read more about them, how they were organised and what happened to them in these earlier responses, with u/commiespaceinvader: [Fritz Lang's "M" (1931) gives the impression of a large organized crim...	[ "Most of the judicial system and legal codes of the Weimar Republic remained in place to deal with non-political crimes. The courts issued and carried out far more death sentences than before the Nazis took power. People who were convicted of three or more offences—even petty ones—could be deemed habitual offenders...
In the Antebellum South, what was the infant mortality rate of enslaved children?	Basically, we don't know precisely. Slave records are frustratingly rare, incomplete, and vague. I say this as someone who has been attempting to identify slaves belonging to one family in one decade in one state since January; I think we're up to six names (out of ninety or so slaves). For the most part, the documenta...	[ "There have been many different ways to estimate the amount of slaveholding in the south. One estimate is that in 1860, about 25% of households and 5% of the population (384,000 people) in the South owned at least one slave. An alternative estimate is that 36% of men lived in slaveholding families, and the percenta...
how does sitting close to the tv affect my eyesight? it's not like i have to strain to see what i'm watching because i'm nice and close.	It doesn't. "Contrary to the popular myth, sitting too close to a TV will not damage your eyes but it may cause eyestrain. Children can focus at close distance without eyestrain better than adults. Therefore children often develop the habit of holding reading materials close to their eyes or sitting right in front of t...	[ "Using an eyetracker, researchers have discovered a strong center-of-screen bias with a distribution of gaze points approximately peaking at the screen center. However, eye gazes rarely focus on the same location. Visual dispersion across the screen increases over time and particularly, after repeated exposure to t...
How can a species evolve a counter-measure to a threat or predator, ie poison, when those that fall prey to it aren't passing on their genes?	Firstly, this take millions of years. One common aspect I find among questions about evolution is many cannot grasp how long allele fixation takes. Also it is not a concious act by any means, trilobites did not think 'hey I need armour to defend myself against other trilobites'. It took millions of years for armour to,...	[ "Predation is hunting another species for food. This is a positive–negative (+ −) interaction in that the predator species benefits while the prey species is harmed. Some predators kill their prey before eating them (e.g., a hawk killing a mouse). Other predators are parasites that feed on prey while alive (e.g., a...
What was the largest city in the Americas 1000 years ago, before Tenochtitlan (the Aztec capital) was built?	That would be Teotihuacan, located just northeast of where Mexico City is today in a sub-valley of the Valley of Mexico. At its height, Teotihuacan had a population of between 100,000 and 200,000 people. It's ceremonial core, which is what you mostly see today in the partially restored and open tourist area of the city...	[ "At its height, just before the Spanish arrived, Tenochtitlan was the center of the vast Aztec Empire, stretching from the Atlantic to Pacific coasts and south towards the Yucatán Peninsula and Oaxaca. With a vast income of tribute, Tenochtitlan grew to become one of the largest and richest urban areas in the world...
that feeling you get in the pit of your stomach when looking over the side of a tall building.	It's the fight or flight response. When you encounter something that is frightening or potentially threatening, your body releases hormones like adrenaline to help you prepare to deal with it. That feeling is a side effect of the hormones.	[ "The hypothesis suggests that the air bubble in the stomach stimulates the sensory limb of the reflex at receptors in the stomach, esophagus and along the diaphragm. This triggers the hiccup, which creates suction in the chest, pulling air from the stomach up and out through the mouth, effectively burping the anima...
Is it true that a car would use more gas to turn off and then on instead of idling for five minutes?	No. It does cost some amount, [but it only takes 10 seconds of idling to spend more than that amount](_URL_1_) Edit: the details of exact timing may differ from article to article I've seen. Here's another one: _URL_0_ Let's just say, order of magnitude is ~10s of seconds	[ "The preliminary version of the engine was first seen in the \"i\" Concept test car introduced in 2003, and used Mitsubishi's \"Smart Idling\" system which turns off the engine automatically when the vehicle is stationary, and can restart it within 0.2 seconds. So equipped, Mitsubishi claimed the prototype was capa...
how do fashion designers gain fame when they start out	You know how people always laugh at those really outlandish outfits at fashion shows that nobody would ever wear? That's how fashion designers get famous. They make unbelievable, over the top outfits to grab attention, then once they have it they use their renown to sell things people actually wear like jeans or t-shir...	[ "As time has progressed fashion accessories have become more and more prominent in the immediate fashion world ranging from the runway to street wear. Today's generation of fashionistas has adopted a new way of wearing certain items to complete an outfit. Celebrities such as A$AP Rocky and Lil Uzi Vert have a uniqu...
how do cultures develop in the first place and what defines a culture?	A little like evolution. Throw shit at a wall until something sticks. The collective social practices, behaviour and etiquettes of a demographic.	[ "Wherever one comes from, \"culture\" consists of beliefs and values learned through the socialization process as well as material artifacts. \"Culture is the learned set of beliefs, values, norms and material goods shared by group members. Culture consists of everything we learn in groups during the life course-fr...
explain like i'm 5 how moisturizer works.	All it really does is make your skin LOOK better. Moisturizers make it easier for water to get into your skin, and it brings the water already in your skin to the surface so it looks pretty and feels soft. Once you wash off the moisturizers though, they lose effect. Some stay behind, but if you stop using moisturizers...	[ "Applying moisturisers may prevent the skin from drying out and decrease the need for other medications. Affected persons often report that improvement of skin hydration parallels with improvement in AD symptoms.\n", "Moisturizing lotions are mainly intended to improve the skin, but can also harm it. Moisturizers...
pros and cons of using an ionizer on an air purifier?	Charged particles in the air a) stick to things (like walls, upholstery, you) and also raise the static electricity level for the particles. If the air is being ionized in too great a concentration, you also run the risk of that ionization hitting your lungs, causing those larger particles to lodge in your lungs inste...	[ "An air ioniser (or negative ion generator or Chizhevsky's chandelier) is a device that uses high voltage to ionise (electrically charge) air molecules. Negative ions, or anions, are particles with one or more extra electron, conferring a net negative charge to the particle. Cations are positive ions missing one or...
why youtube videos always seem to get stuck at 306 view count.	When a video is getting a lot of views in a short period of time (like right when someone popular uploads a video) it stops, the number they use is about 300, so when it gets to many views in that short period of time, youtube stops counting views for a bit, and makes sure all the views are from different people, and n...	[ "On December 3, 2014, the video reached 2.1 billion views (close to the largest representable number in a 32-bit binary number), and YouTube jokingly wrote on Google+ that it had to change the view counting system to prevent an integer overflow. In fact, YouTube had already updated to a 64-bit integer months before...
How does tidal heating work?	Think of the ebb and flow of the tides on Earth. These are caused by the gravitational pull of the moon, as well as the sun. Jupiter causes similar tidal movements of the masses of the moons orbiting it where the difference in gravitational pull on one side of the moon isn't the same as the force felt by the other. So,...	[ "Tidal heating (also known as tidal working or tidal flexing) occurs through the tidal friction processes: orbital energy is dissipated as heat in either the surface ocean or interior of a planet or satellite. When an object is in an elliptical orbit, the tidal forces acting on it are stronger near periapsis than\n...
[WW2] Are there any memoirs of the major figures on the German side worth reading?	Hans Von Luck's Panzer Commander is a good read. It's not a complete whitewash of his role in WWII, but it is biased (as are most memoirs). He served in nearly every corner of the war. In particular, I found his post D-Day accounts to be compelling.	[ "In late October 2010 upon reading Grocher's book, Artur Szulc, a Polish-born military historian from Sweden has noted, that aside from perpetuating long-debunked myths about the German attack on Poland, a large part of \"I survived\" has been copied verbatim from the book of fiction written in 1961 by Leon Uris an...
Do all neutrons have the same mass?	Every neutron is fundamentally identical to every other. So they all have exactly the same mass. > but the math didn't make sense because the only change should have been in neutrons adding roughly one more AMU but the change was different, from magnesium-24 to magnesium-25 was 1.0008 AMU and from magnesium-25 to mag...	[ "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...
nasal congestion	The majority of nasal congestion is caused by swelling of blood vessels in your nasal passages. This expands the flesh and blocks off the airway. The reason it changes when you lie in different positions is that the blood will collect in your tissue based on gravity. The reason it changes over time is that there is a 2...	[ "The nasal cycle is the often unnoticed alternating partial congestion and decongestion of the nasal cavities in humans and other animals. It is a physiological congestion of the nasal conchae, also called the nasal turbinates, due to selective activation of one half of the autonomic nervous system by the hypothala...
how can some countries that rely on resource extraction and agriculture, like australia for instance, be really rich, but others, like say zambia, be really poor?	There is nothing inherently wrong with resource extraction and agriculture. Those things can be done efficiently or inefficiently. The nation of Rhodesia which changed its name to Zimbabwe, used to have very profitable farms which exported food and provided a basis of the national economy. However the farmers were w...	[ "In many poor countries, natural resource industries tend to pay far higher salaries than would be available elsewhere in the economy. This tends to attract the best talent from both private and government sectors, damaging these sectors by depriving them of their best skilled personnel. Another possible effect of ...
Why do lasers have such a visible diffraction pattern?	Do you mean like [this](_URL_0_)? That pattern is called "[speckle](_URL_1_)." It occurs because light from each point on the surface travels a slightly different distance to reach your retina, and then interferes there. Normal (fluorescent, incandescent) light doesn't do that because it's not [coherent](_URL_2_). Si...	[ "The speckle pattern which is seen when using a laser pointer is another diffraction phenomenon. It is a result of the superposition of many waves with different phases, which are produced when a laser beam illuminates a rough surface. They add together to give a resultant wave whose amplitude, and therefore intens...
when suspects are being interviewed, why are they advised by their lawyer to say “no comment”?	Literally anything you say can be used against you. You wont help yourself by speaking to the police in any way.	[ "Suspects questioned by the SFO have no right to silence and must answer questions and produce requested evidence, even if it incriminates them. However, evidence at an interview cannot be used against a suspect at his or her trial, unless he or she gives evidence which contradicts their SFO interview. Witnesses ca...
what does statistically significant mean?	It means "it's very unlikely this happened by chance". Take a coin, and throw it into the air. It can either land heads or tails. If it's a fair coin, the probabilities are 50/50. Half the time it's going to be heads, half tails. How likely are you to get heads twice in a row? 0.5 * 0.5 = 25% How likely are you to g...	[ "Statistical significance is a measure for testing statistical correlation. It was invented by English mathematician Ronald Fisher in the 1920s. It defines a “significant” result as any data point that would be produced by chance less than 5 (or more stringently, 1) percent of the time. A significant result is wide...
what’s the difference between a bionic human and a cyborg?	It depends on the work of fiction you're referring to, but generally: From Wikipedia > The term cyborg is not the same thing as bionic, biorobot or android; it applies to an organism that has restored function or enhanced abilities due to the integration of some artificial component or technology that relies on some...	[ "The term cyborg is not the same thing as bionic, biorobot or android; it applies to an organism that has restored function or enhanced abilities due to the integration of some artificial component or technology that relies on some sort of feedback. While cyborgs are commonly thought of as mammals, including humans...
Is there a way for humans to gather information faster than reading?	Interesting question.. But I guess it depends on what you define "learning" as. Reading is simply using our sense of vision to recognize symbols and lines on a page, and our brain applies meaning to them. You could say that we "learn" not to touch a hot stove because after touching it once, our sense of touch tells ou...	[ "Speed reading is a skill honed through practice. Reading a text involves comprehension of the material. In speed reading practice this is done through multiple reading processes: preview, overview, read, review and recite; and by read and recall (recording through writing a short summary or a mental outline) exerc...
Why have popular antibacterial soaps gone away from triclosan, and now use benzalkonium chloride?	Apparently studies have suggested it's linked to cancer and liver toxicity. The FDA still maintains that it's not harmful, however. I read in one study it did not cause cancer in mice, but in mice that they introduced cancer to, it caused progression of the cancer. Most likely people are buying less products with t...	[ "In September 2016, the FDA ruled that antibacterial soaps containing triclocarban and triclosan can no longer be marketed. Dial replaced these ingredients with benzalkonium chloride (for bar soaps) and benzethonium chloride (for liquid hand soaps). In its 2016 ruling, the FDA also stated that it is deferring the f...
Can someone please explain why Methenol poisoning can be counteracted with Ethenol?	There was a [similar question a while ago](_URL_1_) - though it addresses antifreeze poisoning, the mechanisms are pretty much the same for methanol poisoning: Antifreeze poisoning is due to the [ethylene glycol](_URL_2_) in it. Ethylene glycol by itself is not intrinsically toxic (and in fact has a rather sweet tast...	[ "Ethylene glycol poisoning is poisoning caused by drinking ethylene glycol. Early symptoms include intoxication, vomiting and abdominal pain. Later symptoms may include a decreased level of consciousness, headache, and seizures. Long term outcomes may include kidney failure and brain damage. Toxicity and death may ...
america's midterm election?	Every two years, the entire House of Representatives and 1/3 of the Senate is up for election. In addition, states and cities/counties hold elections every year or multiple of years to fill state legislature/executive/judicial/miscellaneous spots and ask referendums questions.	[ "Midterm elections in the United States are the general elections that are held near the midpoint of a president's four-year term of office. Federal offices that are up for election during the midterms include all 435 seats in the United States House of Representatives, and 33 or 34 of the 100 seats in the United S...
why would intel be interested in making "inferior" 14nm chips, if qualcomm has apparently been making 10nm chips?	Intel can make 10nm chips. Setting up a new fab is expensive so they have to sell something on the old process before they retire it and spend a billing dollars refitting the fab. Desktop and server chips are high margin parts so they get the new process. Mobile chips get the hand-me-downs.	[ "BULLET::::- Intel – Intel has ceased all development in the area of network processors in 2006, but its market share still grew in 2007 and 2008, topping at 38%, due to previously developed products. Netronome currently has the license to develop and manufacture IXP processors with more than 16 cores.\n", "When ...
What was Saddam Hussein's game plan for holding and controlling Kuwait and what was his justification for invading in the first place?	The lynchpin to Saddam's strategy for holding onto Kuwait rested upon his very skewed understanding of global politics and where Iraq stood within the international community. Iraq had garnered economic and military support from the various Gulf states during the Iran-Iraq War (for example, the Iraq Air Force had some ...	[ "Some analysts have speculated that one of Saddam Hussein's main motivations in invading Kuwait was to punish the ruling al-Sabah family in Kuwait for not stopping its policy of overproduction, as well as his reasoning behind the destruction of said wells.\n", "During the period of negotiations and threats follow...
what does it mean for a sports game to be 'blacked out'?	The NFL has a policy that says that if a home game is not sold out within 72 hours of kickoff, no channel which broadcasts less than 75 miles from the stadium can show the game. It's to force people to either shell for tickets to the game, or for cable (both of which the NFL makes money on).	[ "In team sports, a shutout (US) or clean sheet (UK) is a game in which one team prevents the other from scoring any points. While possible in most major sports, they are highly improbable in some sports, such as basketball. \n", "Redout is a futuristic racing video game developed and published by Italian studio 3...
In layman's terms, what does it mean to take a partial derivative of something? What does this accomplish?	If you have a function which depends on multiple variables, maybe you'd like to know how the function changes when one of the variables is changed a little bit, but the others are all left the same. That's what a partial derivative is.	[ "Partial derivatives themselves are functions, each of which represents the rate of change of parallel to one of the axes at all points in the domain (if the derivatives exist and are continuous—see also below). A first derivative is positive if the function increases along the direction of the relevant axis, negat...
how do signatures hold up in court?	Cause you'd be lying under oath if you said you didnt sign it. What's to prevent you from doing that? Nothing. Just consequences	[ "The plaintiff delivers to the court the original liquid document on which the action is based and moves for judgment on it. The plaintiff's onus of proving the authenticity of the defendant's signature may be decided on the papers alone, or the court may allow the plaintiff to discharge the onus by calling for ora...
Do Millipedes/Centipedes have the same number of legs for life? Do they grow more?	Millipedes add segments with each molt until they reach adulthood, though even then some species continue to molt. Juveniles for the species studied in the source paper (Pseudopolydesmus pinetorum) molted 7 times before maturity, increasing their number of segments, legs, and overall length with each molt: they started...	[ "Among myriapods, millipedes have traditionally been considered most closely related to the tiny pauropods, although some molecular studies challenge this relationship. Millipedes can be distinguished from the somewhat similar but only distantly related centipedes (class Chilopoda), which move rapidly, are venomous...
Why didn't Ming dynasty invade and conquer nearby empires such as Japan, Korea or Vietnam?	First of all, a bit of clarification – the Ming waged several wars against Vietnam – whilst I’m not entirely qualified to write in depth about it, see the Ming–Hồ War and subsequent control of Vietnam by the Ming. To more directly answer your question, it can be conversely asked, why would they invade and conquer thei...	[ "The Ming focused on building up a powerful standing army that could drive off attacks by foreign barbarians. Beginning in the 14th century, the Ming armies drove out the Mongols and expanded China's territories to include Yunnan, Mongolia, Tibet, much of Xinjiang and Vietnam. The Ming also engaged in Overseas expe...
In the 1930s would most people in the western world have understood the concept of what a computer was suppose to be?	In the 1930s, "computer" wasn't a thing, it was a job description. Insurance companies and banks employed thousands of people wielding mechanical calculators to balance spreadsheets and do what we take for granted with a single computer. In the second half of the decade, a handful of the world's best minds (Konrad Zus...	[ "The first modern computers were the massive code breaking machines of the Second World War (such as Z3, ENIAC and Colossus). The latter two of these machines were based on the theoretical foundation laid by Alan Turing and developed by John von Neumann.\n", "The birth of modern computing was in the 1970s. The wo...
why don't developers in california, and other drought-stricken areas of the u.s., have to include solar panels and drought-resistant landscaping, as well as water-efficient appliances, in all new buildings?	Because the impact of requiring this for residential homes would be minimal at best. When it comes to the California water crisis, 80% of the water is used by agriculture. Residential buildings just don't have a big enough impact to warrant it. Additionally, measures like this would increase the house prices. House pri...	[ "An estimated 85% of U.S. residents can neither own nor lease systems because their roofs are physically unsuitable for solar or because they live in multi-family housing. At least 52 projects are under development in at least 17 states, and at least 10 states encourage their development through policy and programs...
that jet of warm air as i walk into a shopping mall - what does it do?	Keeps the bugs out	[ "In a pre-mall era, Via Mizner became a unique experience in America, where one could get fresh air while walking and shopping in small stores and galleries that were welcoming in a non-commercial atmosphere.\n", "BULLET::::- Evening: temperatures outside drop. The warm internal air is vented through chimneys, as...
When and why did people stopped portraying Jesus as the Middle Eastern man that he was and started portraying him as we do today?	I just wrote out a super long response to this with links to examples and everything and my phone refreshed the page and my response was gone. The short answer is that Jesus has never been depicted as a Middle Eastern man in Western art. If anyone's interested in the long answer, I will retype it up later when I can ge...	[ "More recent artistic and cinematic portrayals have also made an effort to characterize Jesus as an ancient Middle Eastern resident. In the 2004 movie, \"The Passion of the Christ\", Jesus was portrayed by Jim Caviezel who wore a prosthetic nose during filming and had his blue eyes digitally changed to brown to giv...
i know stores can't legally stop shoplifters anymore, but seriously- why the hell don't they at least have someone standing at the door for appearances?	Both of your premises are wrong. Detaining shoplifters varies by state, it's not illegal across the board. Many small stores don't bother with loss prevention because it isn't worth it. Hiring a full time guard costs money, so unless you're getting so much merchandise stolen that it outweighs the guard's salary, it's...	[ "Some shoppers fill a shopping cart with unconcealed merchandise, and walk out of the store without paying. Security workers call this method \"walkout\" or \"pushout\". With clothing, some shoplifters may simply put on a coat or jacket from the store and walk out wearing the item. This tactic is used because busy ...
why were cigarettes the norm then and now are considered deadly?	Several reasons. * We know a lot more about the health impact of tobacco than we did then. There's been tons and tons more scientific studies that link tobacco to harmful health effects than back in the 50's. * Cigarette companies actively worked to quash any links to their product and health concerns. They were very...	[ "BULLET::::- Cigarettes are often seen as the source of fire, as the improper disposal of smoking materials causes one in every four fire deaths in the United States. Natural causes such as heart attacks may lead to the victim dying, subsequently dropping the cigarette, which after a period of smouldering can ignit...
synchronous vs. asynchronous, in terms of ajax, ftp, etc.	FTP uses two channels - a control connection which includes things like navigating the file system and starting transfers, and a data connection which performs the transfers. The control connection can queue up multiple transfers without that blocking the control connection, so that's why it's asynchronous.	[ "In computer science, a synchronizer is an algorithm that can be used to run a synchronous algorithm on top of an asynchronous processor network, so enabling the asynchronous system to run as a synchronous network.\n", "The APIs support both modes. Synchronous provides a simpler programming model because program ...
From what cup size on does a woman have more breast than brainvolume?	You can get information on the [brain volume very easily](_URL_1_). Breast volume data, although I thought would be hard to find, was [almost as easy to obtain](_URL_0_). For the lazy: Average woman brain size: ~ 1130 cm^3 Size of breast that is 590 cm^3 : 40A, 38B, 36C, 34D, 32E, 30F and 28G. A pair of eit...	[ "Obtaining the correct size is complicated by the fact that up to 25% of women's breasts display a persistent, visible breast asymmetry, which is defined as differing in size by at least one cup size. For about 5% to 10% of women, their breasts are severely different, with the left breast being larger in 62% of cas...
how are combination and permuation different?	For the latter: different sets containing the same values picked, just arranged differently are treated as unique sets. For combinations, they would be considered the same. Ie: "1 2 3" and "3 2 1" (let's just say out of a set of the positive integers) would be considered the same combination but different permutat...	[ "In mathematics, a linear combination is an expression constructed from a set of terms by multiplying each term by a constant and adding the results (e.g. a linear combination of \"x\" and \"y\" would be any expression of the form \"ax\" + \"by\", where \"a\" and \"b\" are constants). The concept of linear combinat...
how distilleries repurpose to make hand sanitizer?	Hand sanitizer is 70% alcohol (140 proof). The other 30% is water and thickening agents. Distilleries have giant machines for making alcohol. They have water, and with some thickening agents, and bottles, that's all they need.	[ "Hand sanitizer is a liquid generally used to decrease infectious agents on the hands. Formulations of the alcohol-based type are preferable to hand washing with soap and water in most situations in the healthcare setting. It is generally more effective at killing microorganisms and better tolerated than soap and w...
Has there been an increase in the amount and severity of storms in the last 10 years?	I am not a meteorologist, but [this](_URL_0_) is a paper that specifically discusses tornadoes. It's from 2008, but is a non-paywalled paper that addresses the question "Does Global Warming Influence Tornado Activity?". (If anyone has access to more recent papers or information, definitely share.) Check out the graphs...	[ "As the World Meteorological Organization explains, \"recent increase in societal impact from tropical cyclones has largely been caused by rising concentrations of population and infrastructure in coastal regions.\" Pielke \"et al.\" (2008) normalized mainland U.S. hurricane damage from 1900 to 2005 to 2005 values ...
when did american healthcare become so terrible, ie when did jobs with benefits become the epitome of a career?	Health care being tied to employment started in World War 2. The government realized that with a lot of young men joining the military, and the increase in military production, that there would be a serious labor shortage. To try to control things somewhat they prevented employers from increasing wages. Once employers ...	[ "Early industrial sickness insurance purchased through employers was one influential economic origin of the current American health care system. These late-19th-century and early-20th-century sickness insurance schemes were generally inexpensive for workers: their small scale and local administration kept overhead ...
How true to history is this anecdotal account of Nazi-occupied Austria?	Memories, facts, half-truths, presumptions and defamation mixed together.	[ "In the 1970s the historians, following the political order, focused on investigations of the interwar period; the Nazi governing was interpreted as absolution from sins of the First Republic and still within the boundaries of the \"victim theory\". Authors of the standard \"History of Austria\" (1977) Gorlich and ...
Since the sun is largely composed of helium and hydrogen, could you theoretically fly through it?	No, for very much the same reasons (and more) that [you can't fly through gas giants](_URL_0_). You can only fly through hydrogen and helium at earth-like pressures, and pressures (and temperatures) in the sun get astronomically bigger than that (pun definitely intended). No substance, even theoretical, could survive a...	[ "The atmospheric proportions of hydrogen and helium are close to the theoretical composition of the primordial solar nebula. Neon in the upper atmosphere only consists of 20 parts per million by mass, which is about a tenth as abundant as in the Sun. Helium is also depleted to about 80% of the Sun's helium composit...
what are the properties of software licenses?	### Standard Disclaimer - I am not a lawyer. This is not legal advice. If you require legal advice, seek the services of a legal professional. GPL is a copyleft, open source software, Free Software license. MIT/X11 License (aka MIT) and the various BSD licenses (except the original four-clause version) are copyfree...	[ "The hallmark of proprietary software licenses is that the software publisher grants the use of one or more copies of software under the end-user license agreement (EULA), but ownership of those copies remains with the software publisher (hence use of the term \"proprietary\"). This feature of proprietary software ...
how is it possible that we have developed a drug that is 95%+ effective in preventing the transmission of HIV, but the best we can do with cancer is reactive treatment that is invasive and uncomfortable at best, with no real guarantee of success?	HIV/AIDS is a single condition. Cancer is simply a catch-all term for an entire group of conditions with commonalities but each has unique symptoms, causes and treatments. Chemotherapy and the like mainly attacks the things they have in common ie the uncontrolled cell division. Basically, what I'm saying rather p...	[ "Worldwide, the most effective treatment for HIV are antiretroviral drugs, which in internationally accepted clinical trials have been the only proven way to keep patients alive, often for years. The drugs work by directly attacking and reducing the amount of HIV in the body, keeping the patient from developing Acq...
what are those white stone looking things that come out of you mouth that smell horrible?	Tonsil stones? Not everyone gets them. They are also called tonsilloliths. They are basically made out of bone material.	[ "They reckon that the treasure is in the Isle of Skullions, an island inhabited by dragons called Skullions, that while being blind, deaf, and flightless, have a keen sense of smell. According to the riddle, the hunting dragon of the heir to the Hairy Hooligan's tribe will sniff out the treasure. The Hooligans trav...
how come manufacturers can get pixels so small for a phone screen and can't do the same on big led screens?	They absolutely can do this. However, they don't usually bother - because it's very rare that you'd look at a big screen from the same kind of distance (just a few inches) as you'd look at a phone. Creating this many pixels so close together is expensive, and at the distances from which you'd normally look at larger ...	[ "Screen sizes are measured in diagonal inches; feature phones generally have screen sizes below 3.5 inches. Phones with screens larger than 5.2 inches are often called \"phablets.\" Smartphones with screens over 4.5 inches in size are commonly difficult to use with only a single hand, since most thumbs cannot reach...
why do so many shows for children in elementary school feature characters in middle and high school?	Just like when kids play with dolls that are grown up, they are drawn to characters older than themselves. They can imagine themselves older and more mature. The same goes for books. The first Harry Potter book is him at 11 years old, but it is mostly first read by 8-10 year olds.	[ "Every grade in elementary (K-6) acts out a play around Christmas time. One memorable play was done in the theme of Disney by the 5th grade students, in which the students dressed in mouse hats, as dalmatians and Cruella de Vil from \"101 Dalmatians\", as Mary Poppins, as Siamese cats from \"Lady and the Tramp\", a...
Does the dilation of our iris work like the f-stops on a camera, increasing depth of field as the hole gets smaller?	WhatDoes is correct, albeit a short answer. But I don't think that warrants downvotes just because he didn't go into intense detail. The answer is yes, your pupils constrict both in high light situations and from parasympathetic (rest and digest) activation to allow for better "distance" vision. This is called accommod...	[ "In photography, the size of the entrance pupil (rather than the size of the physical aperture itself) is used to calibrate the opening and closing of the diaphragm aperture. The f-number (\"relative aperture\"), \"N\", is defined by \"N = f/E\", where \"f\" is the focal length and \"E\" is the diameter of the entr...
What made melee cavalry so effective in ancient times? Was there much variation in their usage before the advent of gunpowder?	This is simply an incredibly broad question. Different armies at different technological levels with different cultural backgrounds made practically every use of cavalry. Some were merely scouts and harassing units; others were directly involved in heavy fighting. If you'd like to see the classic example of ancient cav...	[ "The rise of gunpowder reduced the importance of the once-dominant heavy cavalry, but it remained effective in a new role into the 19th century. The cavalry, along with the infantry, became more professional in this period but it retained its greater social and military prestige than the infantry. Light cavalry was...
If electrons are perfectly spherical, how do we know they have spin?	One of the most challenging things about quantum theory is that you have to abandon notions of elementary particles being like common macroscopic particles. An electron is not a ball that is orbiting a nucleus like the earth orbits the sun, at the subatomic scales, electrons exhibit particle and wave properties, kind o...	[ "Suppose that the spin is to be measured in the direction a. Then the natural assumption, given that all atoms are detected, is that all atoms the projection of whose spin in the direction a is positive will be detected as spin-up (coded as +1), while all whose projection is negative will be detected as spin-down (...
what happens when someone od's on specific painkillers?	An overdose on opiates causes respiratory depression to the point where you stop breathing and die. Benzodiazepines also have cause some respiratory depression as well. Both also cause a flood neurotransmitters that are responsible for feeling pleasure. Essentially, an overdose on both would cause you to fall asleep an...	[ "Painful dysesthesias caused by alcoholic polyneuropathy can be treated by using gabapentin or amitriptyline in combination with over-the-counter pain medications, such as aspirin, ibuprofen, or acetaminophen. Tricyclic antidepressants such as amitriptyline, or carbamazepine may help stabbing pains and have central...
how do messages in a bottle work?	Pretty much just throw it out there and hope. I'm sorry to have to tell you this, but the portrayals of the practice in BC are largely inaccurate.	[ "The term \"message in a bottle\" has been applied to techniques of communication that do not literally involve a bottle or a water-based method of conveyance, such as the Pioneer plaque (1972, 1973), the Voyager Golden Record (1977), and even radio-borne messages (see Cosmic Call, Teen Age Message, A Message from ...
why does the stock market respond to falling oil prices with sell-offs? shouldn't every sector that uses energy to make and ship their products see increased profits?	If you need financial issues explained to you on ELI5, you just shouldn't be following the financial news. Your stocks will rise in value over time if you invest them in a diversified, passively managed index fund. Your job as a responsible investor is to only put in money you don't need right now, and not check th...	[ "Crude oil is the greatest contributing factor when it comes to the price of gasoline. This includes the resources it takes for exploration, to remove it from the ground, and transport it. Between 2004 and 2008, there was an increase in fuel costs due in large part to a worldwide increase in demand for crude oil. P...
why does the us senate vote on whether witnesses may appear?	We say that the Senators are to act as jurors, but it’s more accurate to say that each acts as a judge. As for why they are allowed to vote on having witnesses: the protocol states that only the Senate may try an impeachment, saying they MUST hear testimony is as incorrect as saying the House MUST vote to start impeach...	[ "During debates, senators may only speak if called upon by the presiding officer. The presiding officer is, however, required to recognize the first senator who rises to speak. Thus, the presiding officer has little control over the course of debate. Customarily, the Majority Leader and Minority Leader are accorded...
how can companies that sell "aged" goods (e.g. wine, cheese) predict the demand for their goods so far in the future?	Wine and cheese are pretty common and basic items so the demand for them is pretty stable through time. They look at their previous sales and current demand, look at population growth, and then predict how much wine will be in demand in say 10 years. Unless something major happens there is no reason for wine and cheese...	[ "Food manufacturers have added AGEs to foods, especially in the last 50 years, as flavor enhancers and colorants to improve appearance. Foods with significant browning, caramelization, or directly added preformed AGEs can be high in these compounds. A very partial listing of foods with very high exogenous AGEs incl...
When, why, and how did the U.S. prison system become privatized?	Your question is a bit ambiguous and rests on a couple of false assumptions. First, there's no single US prison system. There's a mishmash of systems--the federal civilian system for those imprisoned for crimes committed under federal jurisdiction, the military system, and individual state systems for crimes committe...	[ "The privatization of prisons can be traced to the contracting out of confinement and care of prisoners after the American Revolution. Deprived of the ability to ship criminals and undesirables to the Colonies, Great Britain began placing them on hulks (used as prison ships) moored in English ports.\n", "In a Bur...
When did humans start keeping track of their age?	This is more of a question for r/AskAnthropology. People have known how to count for far longer than we have a historical record for, so other means are needed to find the answer to this question. I have some thoughts on how to get an approximate answer, but they're not appropriate for this sub.	[ "The main purpose of counting age in terms of years from birth is for the convenience of grouping individuals by age, as is needed in industrialized society. The medical practices and compulsory schooling that resulted from industrialization factored largely into the need for counting age in terms of years since bi...
why, when we see aesthetically pleasing things such as pretty sun sets, do we think they are beautiful?	I think there is something beautiful about something so unique. Aside from that, seeing variations in color that set a sky apart from a typical scene definitely doesn't hurt.	[ "Beauty is also studied by psychologists and neuroscientists in the field of experimental aesthetics and neuroesthetics respectively. Psychological theories see beauty as a form of pleasure. Correlational findings support the view that more beautiful objects are also more pleasing. Some studies suggest that higher ...
why do politicians always seem to have two mics at debates/rallies?	It's largely to cope with failures. If Obama is in the middle of a significant briefing, the last thing you want is some technician running up to the podium shouting "Hold on... can we do that last bit again? The microphone wasn't working." You can also find that small differences in microphone positioning can really ...	[ "During sessions, members may speak after being called on by the President. Members of the Council or Commission may also attend and speak in debates. Partly due to the need for translation, and the politics of consensus in the chamber, debates tend to be calmer and more polite than, say, the Westminster system. Vo...
why are restaurants owned by the same company always right next to each other? i get offering variety, but isn't it a really bad idea to go into competition with yourself?	One would assume the restaurants are marketed differently and are vying for different segments of the population.	[ "Competition in the food service segment is also becoming increasingly fierce as restaurants look to attract diners from other types of restaurants in order to increase their own traffic. Competitors who have not kept up through menu innovation or by offering new services have felt the strongest pressure competitiv...
why do i sometimes see microphones set up facing the crowd during a (music) concert?	For a few reasons. One reason is that the concert may be being recorded. In that case the band will want to record the sound of the audience to mix into the recording. The other reason is that many performers use in-ear monitors to hear themselves and the other performers. While this had many benefits, one downside...	[ "The Wall of Sound acted as its own monitor system, and it was therefore assembled behind the band so the members could hear exactly what their audience was hearing. Because of this, Stanley and Alembic designed a special microphone system to prevent feedback. This placed matched pairs of condenser microphones spac...
if gay marriage is made legal (which is a good thing) what arguments would one use to keep polygamy illegal?	It makes an absolute mess of family law. Right now, a marriage is between two people & a child has, at most, two parents. What happens to the children in a 3-marriage if A divorces B & C because B is abusive? Obviously, we would want to minimize B's custody rights but that would unfairly penalize C. What about a ...	[ "Some proponents of same-sex marriage argue that laws limiting civil marriage to opposite-sex couples are underinclusive because they do not prohibit marriages between sterile opposite-sex couples or to women past menopause; therefore, they take the view that the procreation argument cannot reasonably be used again...
How much power does a radio receive from the wireless radio signal? Is this enough to do anything with?	Back in the cold war days, many small "bug" radio transmitters in Britain worked by rectifying BBC Radio 1, a powerful radio station that blankets that nation. Instead of trying to incorporate and hide a battery, spies would run a little wire out from the bug to pick up tiny amounts of power from the aether. The powe...	[ "Radio stations usually report the power of their transmitters in units of watts, referring to the effective radiated power. This refers to the power that a half-wave dipole antenna would need to radiate to match the intensity of the transmitter's main lobe.\n", "Shortly after WLW began operating with 5,000 watts...
the greek protests. how did greece get in such a hole? what do the protesters want? does the government have any other choice?	Here's are some previous eli5 posts that might help out: * [1](_URL_1_) * [2](_URL_0_)	[ "On May Day in 2010, there were major protests all over Greece, most notably Athens and Thessaloniki, by many left, anarchist and communist supporters and some violent clashes with riot police who were sent out to contain the protesters. They opposed economic reforms, an end to job losses and wage cuts in the face ...
what are the lingo/acronyms to enable me to converse on reddit?	AFAIK: As Far As I Know... AMA: Ask Me Anything AMAA: Ask Me Almost Anything DEA: Does Anybody/Anyone Else... FTFY: Fixed That For You (correcting you, possibly jokingly) IAMA: I Am A... IANAL: I am not a lawyer IIRC: If I Recall Correctly... IMHO: In my humble opinion IMO: In My Opinion IRL: In Rea...	[ "Most of the posts focus on language use in the media and in popular culture. Text available through Google Search frequently serves as a corpus to test hypotheses about language. Other popular topics include the descriptivism/prescriptivism debate, and linguistics-related news items. The site has occasionally held...
Why was Spain during its imperial period not able to colonize any other territories or islands in Asia, the Indian or Pacific Oceans save for The Philippines, the Marianas and the Carolines?	Because it would have violated treaties with Portugal. The Treaty of Tordesillas (1494) established a line of demarcation in the Atlantic. Spain was granted rights to lands westward, Portugal to the east (it travelled through Brazil this allowing colonization there). The line confirmed Portuguese feitorias in Africa an...	[ "Spain's influence on its former colonies in Asia-Pacific is significant to this day. The majority of the people of the Philippines, Guam and the Mariana Islands belong to the Roman Catholic faith which was introduced by Spanish missionaries in the 16th and 17th centuries. A large part of the population in these co...
how did earth and other planets get moons, and is it possible for earth to get more?	Sometimes they were just things that were in the neighborhood that got captured by a planet's gravity. Sometimes they formed alongside the planet. Just as the planet formed from a particularly dense bit of dust and gas gathering up more and more mass through gravity, a moon can form from a separate, smaller dense bit o...	[ "Earth has one Moon, the largest moon of any rocky planet in the Solar System. Earth also has at least two co-orbitals: the asteroids 3753 Cruithne and 2002 AA; however, since they do not orbit Earth, they are not considered moons. (See Other moons of Earth and Quasi-satellite.)\n", "Although no other moons of Ea...
What is inside of an insect's exoskeleton? [biology]	If by meat you mean muscle, then yes. Insects have muscle tissue. _URL_0_, _URL_1_ Insects are much smaller and lighter than anything we typically associate with having meat, so their muscular composition is tiny.	[ "The exoskeleton or integument of insects acts as an impermeable, protective layer against desiccation. It is composed of an outer epicuticle, underlain by a procuticle that itself may be further divided into an exo- and endocuticle. The endocuticle provides the insect with toughness and flexibility and the hard ex...
how does running improve your oxygen uptake capacity?	Physiologist here, some answers are correct some BS. To understand how your cardiorespiratory fitness, or maximum oxygen uptake (VO2), increases after a period of running you have to know what this terms actually means. The VO2max is the maximum volume of oxgygen that is used by the body measured during incremental ex...	[ "One's aerobic capacity or VOMax is the ability to maximally take up and consume oxygen during exhaustive exercise. Long distance runners typically perform at around 75–85 % of peak aerobic capacity, while short distance runners perform at closer to 100% of peak.\n", "Though some recent data may suggest otherwise...
Ratio of Cavalry to Infantry in 19th Century Warfare?	It depends highly on the specific era. I will talk about what I know, which is Napoleonic Wars. The ideal proportion was 6-7 foot infantry for each rider (Waterloo had 4:1!). This was mantained for the French even in the hard conditions of the Peninsula campaign. The spanish army, big but badly administrated, had a mu...	[ "In the 19th century distinctions between heavy and light cavalry became less significant; by the end of the Peninsular War, heavy cavalry were performing the scouting and outpost duties previously undertaken by light cavalry, and by the end of the 19th century the roles had effectively merged. Most armies at the t...
Why didn't the Allies use ballistic shields when disembarking at Normandy?	Not practical at all. Lets do the math. Let's use [these dimensions](_URL_0_), 50 x 87 cm for the width and height of these hypothetical shields. To stop a full-power rifle round reliably you want 13mm of armor-grade steel. 50cm * 87cm * 13mm = 5655 cubic centimeters of material coming out to a roughly 98 pounds or...	[ "The hedgerows of Normandy became barriers that slowed the advance of Allied troops following the D-Day invasion of WWII. Allied armed forces modified their armored vehicles to facilitate breaking out of their beachheads into the Normandy bocage.\n", "The mission was vital to the success of Operation Tonga, the o...
Do Native Americans who didn't have direct contact with the early Spanish explorers have oral history about the introduction of horses? Where did they think they came from?	I'm not an expert on the arrival of horses on the Great Plains, but I do use similar sources of information to understand [the spread of epidemic disease](_URL_3_) into the center of the continent. While we imagine horses transforming Plains cultures completely before sustained European contact, the confluence of guns,...	[ "There are multiple theories for how Native American people obtained horses from the Spanish, but early capture of stray horses during the 16th century was unlikely due to the need to simultaneously acquire the skills to ride and manage them. It is unlikely that Native people obtained horses in significant numbers ...
Literacy of Muhammad	You'll find some disagreement among historians. I hesitate in using the word literacy because the word carries connotations that don't apply in this time period. Being educated did not mean being literate as in knowing how to read and write. Educated people knew poetry, geneology, and stories of various tribes. A few p...	[ "The Quran describes Muhammad as \"\"ummi\"\", which is traditionally interpreted as \"illiterate\", but the meaning is rather more complex. Medieval commentators such as Al-Tabari maintained that the term induced two meanings: first, the inability to read or write in general; second, the inexperience or ignorance ...
I’m a Medieval English peasant. How much am I concerned with personal hygiene?	Dirty peasant tropes are indeed vastly exaggerated. While we might think an average medieval person a little grubby compared to the particularly germaphobic standards of our time, they still valued hygiene and cleanliness. I wrote a longer answer about it [here](_URL_2_). I also wrote a little bit about how a decline i...	[ "Modern sanitation was not widely adopted until the 19th and 20th centuries. According to medieval historian Lynn Thorndike, people in Medieval Europe probably bathed more than people did in the 19th century. Some time after Louis Pasteur's experiments proved the germ theory of disease and Joseph Lister and others ...
Does draining water exhibit a spiral motion at or near the equator?	> So today I've been learning about the coriolis force and I knew it was responsible for the rotational motion of water when it drains in a sink and that the direction of the force depends on which hemisphere one observes this in This is actually false. The coriolis force is basically nothing on the scale of your si...	[ "Water flowing downhill ultimately encounters downstream conditions slowing movement. The final limitation in coastal flooding lands is often the ocean or some coastal flooding bars which form natural lakes. In flooding low lands, elevation changes such as tidal fluctuations are significant determinants of coastal ...
When the brain sends a signal to both hands, do the signals arrive at the exact same time?	There is no magic in your neurons that guarantees exactly the same signal speed. Differences definitely occur, and show up easily in slow-motion video or other high-precision recording. However, there are coordinating neurons in your spinal cord that make it particularly easy for your brain to send a signal that the...	[ "In the brain, messages are passed from a nerve cell to another via a chemical synapse, a small gap between the cells. The presynaptic cell that sends the information releases neurotransmitters including serotonin into that gap. The neurotransmitters are then recognized by receptors on the surface of the recipient ...
Why wasn't Johann Reichhart, a judicial executioner in Nazi Germany, charged with a single war crime for carrying out executions on behalf of Nazi Courts?	Firstly, he could not have been charged with a "war crime" because he didn't participate in the war and didn't execute POWs, but that's just semantics. According to his biography "Tod durch das Fallbeil" by Johann Dachs, he was arrested by American soldiers in 1945. They brought him to a cemetery and performed a mock...	[ "Johann Reichhart ( – ) was a state-appointed judicial executioner in Bavaria, Germany from 1924–1946. During the Nazi Germany era, he executed numerous people who were sentenced to death for resisting National Socialism.\n", "In 1951, the case being pursued in the German legal system was similarly halted by the ...
What was going on in Cuba when the Soviet Union collapsed?	The Special Period is pretty interesting. I know a bit about it from the food systems and energy perspective. Basically when the USSR collapsed Cuban oil supplies dried up. Cuban has a small amount of offshore oil but it's heavy oil and couldn't be refined or produced at rates that would satisfy demand. This had huge i...	[ "The collapse of the Soviet Union put Cuba into a crisis because Cuba relied on the latter to remain a viable economy. People in Cuba suffered from daily shortages such as electricity blackouts, severe gasoline rationing, huge cuts in public transportation, and bicycles from China. Filmmakers, artists and intellect...
If there are 3 space dimensions and one time dimension, is it theoretically possible to have multiple time demensions and if so how would it work?	Yes, we can consider spacetimes with any number of temporal or spatial dimensions. The theory is set up essentially the same. Spacetime is modeled as a smooth n-dimensional manifold with a pseudo-Riemannian metric, and the metric satisfies the Einstein field equations (Einstein tensor = stress tensor). A pseudo-Riem...	[ "BULLET::::- Multiple time dimensions, i.e. the possibility that there might be more than one dimension of time, has occasionally been discussed in physics and philosophy, although those models have to deal with the problem of causality.\n", "Our physical space is observed to have three large spatial dimensions a...
Why are there Iroquois names and words all over Seattle?	To be fair, Seneca was the name of two major Roman philosophers.	[ "The name Iroquois is purely French, and is formed from the [Iroquoian-language] term \"Hiro\" or \"Hero\", which means \"I have said\"—with which these Indians close all their addresses, as the Latins did of old with their \"dixi\"—and of \"Koué\", which is a cry sometimes of sadness, when it is prolonged, and som...
why is it that when i wiggle my finger in my belly button, i feel it in my penis?	How does it feel to know that, after just typing a few letters and hitting "submit", you've forced thousands of strangers to fondle their belly buttons?	[ "The navel and the region below when touched by the finger or the tip of the tongue result in the production of erotic sensations. Madonna has told in an interview to the SPIN magazine (May 1985 issue), \"When I stick my finger in my belly button, I feel a nerve in the center of my body shoot up my spine.\"\n", "...
How many and what type of people migrated INTO East Germany/Eastern Europe during the Cold War?	There was a book published recently on this topic, or very close it. The title is "Burned Bridge", with some subtitle. I'm on mobile right now, so I can't provide a better source. The goal of the book is to examine the formation of that border, to look at who moved in both directions and why, to examine why the bord...	[ "Between 1944 and 1948 about 31 million people, including ethnic Germans () as well as German citizens (), were permanently or temporarily moved from Central and Eastern Europe. By 1950, a total of approximately 12 million Germans had fled or were expelled from east-central Europe into Allied-occupied Germany and A...
Should I take ancient Chinese history with a pinch of salt because of The Mandate of Heaven?	I'm not sure what you mean by saying "But then I learned about the Mandate of Heaven." The "Mandate of Heaven" was a religio-political theory invented by the Zhou dynasty to justify its overthrow of the Shang dynasty, and later adopted by subsequent dynasties for their own political purposes (as well as by dissidents t...	[ "Ancient China was among the earliest civilizations in the world with cultivation and trade of salt mining. They first discovered natural gas when they excavated rock salt. The Chinese writer, poet, and politician Zhang Hua of the Jin Dynasty wrote in his book \"Bowuzhi\" how people in Zigong, Sichuan excavated nat...
can a chicken hatch from a non fertilized egg?	No because an unfertilised egg only has half the number of chromosomes - genes compared to a live chicken. It’s essentially like the egg that human females have in our ovaries. You need the other half set of genes from a males to create a living organism	[ "The fertilized eggs typically hatch into trochophore larvae, which float among the plankton, and eventually metamorphose into the adult form by adding segments. A few species have no larval form, with the egg hatching into a form resembling the adult, and in many that do have larvae, the trochophore never feeds, s...
why do governments fund private schools?	They are paying for the teachers and the buildings and the books and so on. When the government fund private schools, it's because the point isn't to have public schools, but public education -- that is, the idea is that the state pays for the education, and not necessarily directly employ those doing it.	[ "A private schools can accept money from the federal government otherwise called \"Federal financial assistance\" which can come as funds in the form of grants or loans, donations, assets and property or interest in property, services by federal employees or contract of intent to receive federal assistance, involve...
how are rappers being inducted into the "rock n' roll hall of fame"?	Agreed: Rcok n' Roll music is something you can go "cha cha cha, cha cha cha, rock, step" to. Closely related to swing, jive, and cha-cha. Rappers should be inducted into the hip-hop hall of fame, as they share a history with soul/hip-hop and dance hall, not rock and roll. Then again, there are all sorts of pop hits...	[ "BULLET::::- Rock and Roll Hall of Fame: The following artists are inducted: The (Young) Rascals; the Bee Gees; Buffalo Springfield; Crosby, Stills and Nash; The Jackson 5; Joni Mitchell; and Parliament-Funkadelic.\n", "It was recorded with contributions from a number of locations, more specifically Kansas City, ...
When Mongolia was a communist state, how did the government portray Genghis Khan? Did they ever manipulate his image for propaganda purposes?	The government (and by extension, Moscow), tried to suppress any glorification of Genghis as a threat to the system. This is from Alan Sanders's "Historical Dictionary of Mongolia": > In the 20th century, the demands of communist ideology came into direct conflict with historical tradition. After the onslaught again...	[ "A cult of Genghis Khan had existed until the 1930s, centered on a shrine which preserved mystical relics of Genghis, that was located in the Ordos Loop of Inner Mongolia. The Japanese, during the occupation of China, tried to take possession of the relics in order to catalyse a pro-Japanese Mongol nationalism, but...
Cambodian/Vietnamese Conflict - Various Questions	Let me start with the first question. No, Cambodia was not bombed because of that. Cambodia was bombed due to the North Vietnamese bases at the border, and continued to be so due to North Vietnam. By the time the genocide actually started with the take over in 1975, the bombing had stopped. The second one, which is r...	[ "The Cambodian–Vietnamese War (), known in Vietnam as the Counter-offensive on the Southwestern border (), was an armed conflict between the Socialist Republic of Vietnam and Democratic Kampuchea. The war began with isolated clashes along the land and maritime boundaries of Vietnam and Kampuchea between 1975 and 19...
How factual was Neil DeGrasse Tyson when he says Hamid al-Ghazali's work was the primary influence on Islamic society to reject scientific temper during 12th century?	If memory serves correct, I am not familiar with Hamid al-Ghazali, though I do know that he rejected Neoplatonist and Aristotelian philosophies as being incompatible with Islam, the Mongol Sack of Baghdad, the Collapse of the Fatimid Caliphate, and the Spanish Reconquista were the main forces that drove Islam away from...	[ "The literary quality of the Qur'an has been generally acknowledged by Muslim and some non-Muslim scholars and intellectuals. and there is evidence that Muslims accepted Islam on the basis of evaluating the Qur'an as a text that surpasses all human production. Whilst western views typically ascribe social, ideologi...

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