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train · 226k rows

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How have US presidents who won reelection differed between their first and second terms?	Woodrow Wilson won his reelection on the slogan "he kept us out of war" and then went in to ww1 in 1917.	[ "Fourteen Presidents also served as vice president. However, only John Adams (1796), Thomas Jefferson (1800), Martin Van Buren (1836), Richard Nixon (1968) and George H. W. Bush (1988) began their first term after winning an election. The remaining nine began their first term as president according to the president...
It's the year 1100 and I'm on my way to join the Varangian Guard. Who am I, how do I get from my homeland to Constantinople, and who do I talk to about joining the Guard?	You're probably taking a boat at some point along your journey, but depending on your starting point, the trip will differ in various ways. The first Varangians were soldiers from the kingdom of the Kievan Rus people—the ruling elite were ethno-linguistically Scandinavians who had settled in Eastern Europe during the ...	[ "The Varangian Guard (, \"Tágma tōn Varángōn\") was an elite unit of the Byzantine Army from the tenth to the fourteenth century, whose members served as personal bodyguards to the Byzantine Emperors. The Varangian Guard was known for being primarily composed of recruits from northern Europe, including Norsemen fro...
Why the lack Roman villas in Cornwall / Dumnonia?	Cornwall is remote from the Roman center in SE England, around London. There are only archaeological remains of two Roman roads that go west into Cornwall. Further, my understanding is that Cornwall had been important as a source of tin before the Roman occupation, but the Romans had much easier access to tin in Spain....	[ "The Romans occupied southern Britain, including the Isle of Wight, for nearly four hundred years. The Romans built no towns on the island, but it became an agricultural centre, and at least seven Roman villas are known. The Roman villas at Newport and Brading have been excavated and are open to the public. When fu...
atomic mass? moles? molecules?	A molecule is just a singular unit of whatever compound, for instance, a molecule of H2O is exactly one oxygen atom bonded with two hydrogen atoms. A mole of H2O is a specific number of those molecules: 6.022 * 10^23 molecules of H2O makes up one mole of H2O. (1 mol is always = 6.022 * 10^23) The atomic mass of H2O ...	[ "The mole and the relative atomic mass were originally defined in the International System of Units (SI) in such a way that the constant was exactly 1 g/mol. That is, the numerical value of the molar mass of an element, in grams per mole of atoms, was equal to its atomic mass relative to the SI unit of atomic mass ...
Thanksgiving is upon us. How can meat temp continue to rise after being removed from the heat source (aka carry over heat)?	The heat comes from the outside of the meat. A turkey (continuing the Thanksgiving example) is a huge chunk of mass, and the oven does not heat the entire mass evenly. The outer layers absorb the bulk of the heat from the oven, and it is then carried by (mainly) conduction and (slightly) convection through the rest of ...	[ "At some holiday meals, such as Christmas and Thanksgiving in the United States, it is customary to prepare much more food than necessary, specifically so the host can send leftovers home with guests. Cold turkey is archetypal in the United States as a Thanksgiving leftover, with turkey meat often reappearing in sa...
I've heard that smiling actually does make you happier overall. Is there some physiological principle behind this or is it purely psychological?	Some answers here: _URL_1_ _URL_0_	[ "BULLET::::2. Smile. Happiness does not depend on outside circumstances, but rather on inward attitudes. Smiles are free to give and have an amazing ability to make others feel wonderful. Smile in everything that you do.\n", "Among humans, smiling is an expression denoting pleasure, sociability, happiness, joy or...
how do music rights and royalties work in the case of artists performing other artists' music?	Let's start with "mechanical royalties". This is a part of the law where anyone can cover a song by paying a fixed amount to the songwriter (or whoever owns the rights to the music). No permission is required, just payment of the royalties. It's about nine cents per song per copy. So if you made a CD with ten covers on...	[ "Performers' rights should not be confused with performing rights, which are the royalties due to the composer for a piece of music under copyright in return for the licence (permission) to perform the piece in public. In other words, performers must pay performing rights to composers. Under the Rome Convention (Ar...
how does a calculator know what addition/subtraction is? likewise, how does a digital clock know exactly what a second/minute is?	digital clocks have a quartz crystal inside shaped like a tuning fork. When an electrical voltage is applied to it it vibrates at a certain frequency; conversely, when the crystal is deformed it creates a small current. These fluctuations in current are counted to see how much time has elapsed.	[ "Clock rate of a processor chip refers to the frequency at which the central processing unit (CPU) is running. It is used as an indicator of the processor's speed, and is measured in \"clock cycles per second\" or the SI unit hertz (Hz). For basic calculators, the speed can vary from a few hundred hertz to the kilo...
why does whetting your whistle help you whistle better?	to whet actually means to sharpen. it’s not the same as to wet. i have no idea what that has to do with whistles, though.	[ "Whistling is usually considered to be bad luck with the possible exception of the sources mentioned below. It is said that to whistle is to challenge the wind itself, and that to do so will bring about a storm. Another tale is that it has been considered bad luck ever since the mutiny aboard HMS \"Bounty\"; Fletch...
california's new gun laws.	Here are the new laws and the dates they take effect: Theft/loss reporting - When it becomes a crime to falsely report a firearm has been lost or stolen -- Jan. 1 - Start date for requirement that theft or loss of a firearm must be reported to law enforcement within five days -- July 1 Lending firearms - W...	[ "California has state preemption for many, but not all, firearms laws. Actual enforcement of California's firearms laws also varies widely across the state. Urban areas, such as the San Francisco and Los Angeles metropolitan areas strictly enforce firearms laws, and some communities within these areas have passed l...
how do horses become so good at acting?	Horses are trained specifically to do those sorts of stunts, to fall safely, to mimic fighting maneuvers, etc. It is notable though that most humans aren't really that adept at gauging the acting ability of a horse; any horse going through the requisite motions will be convincing because humans usually aren't very good...	[ "The primary purpose of training horses is to socialize them around humans, teach them to behave in a manner that makes them safe for humans to handle, and, as adults to carry a rider under saddle or to be driven in order to pull a vehicle. As prey animals, much effort must be put into training horses to overcome i...
Not sure if this is the correct subreddit, but you're historians and this is (I'm assuming) a historical thing. Found on the back of a bayonet, any idea what it is/says?	It says Mre d'armes de St Etienne Janvier 1876. Mre is short for "Manufacture" and d'armes means (you guessed it) "arms". So it is the makers mark for the state owned arms manufacturer in St Etienne, France in January 1876. A little more information about the [site](_URL_0_) I have a sword from the Napoleonic Era t...	[ "The bayonet has become a symbol of military power. The term \"at the point of a bayonet\" refers to using military force or action to accomplish, maintain, or defend something (cf. Bayonet Constitution). Undertaking a task \"with fixed bayonets\" has this connotation of no room for compromise and is a phrase used ...
how is fat attached to the rest of the body?	In humans, adipose tissue (fat) is can occur in several locations, such as beneath the skin (subcutaneous fat), around internal organs (visceral fat), in bone marrow (yellow bone marrow), intermuscular (Muscular system) and in the breast (breast tissue). The kind you're asking about here is subcutaneous fat. Subcutaneo...	[ "Fat body (\"Corpus adiposum\") is a loosely organized tissue or organ in some arthropods, composed primarily of storage cells and distributed throughout the animal's body. Its main functions are nutrient storage and conversion (intermediary metabolism), for which it is commonly compared to a combination of adipose...
everyone knows it's ridiculous that stores have christmas decorations up before halloween and that radio stations play christmas music in november. so why do they keep doing it?	Because people buy it. Say what you want about corporations they're usually good at turning a profit, I can't imagine something being so widespread if there wasnt a benefit. As a parallel, look at Black Friday. Plenty of people gripe about it but have you seen the crowds? Moreover there's no inherent risk. You're not g...	[ "As a part of a phenomenon known as \"Christmas creep\", radio stations—responsible for so much of Christmas music broadcasting, popularization, and appreciation—are \"going Christmas\" earlier each year. Many stations now start rolling out holiday music in early November instead of Thanksgiving or Black Friday (an...
why is it that a tumor that is beyond a certain size can't be cut out?	There are a couple of reasons of why this sometimes happens: It could cause a lot of bleeding and tissue destruction, the surgery might cause more damage than good, the tumor might invade certain areas of the body which if damaged could put the patients life in immediate danger. Thats why sometimes if cancerous tu...	[ "A benign tumor is a mass of cells (tumor) that lacks the ability to invade neighboring tissue or metastasize. However, they can sometimes be quite large. When removed, benign tumors usually do not grow back, whereas malignant tumors sometimes do. Unlike most benign tumors elsewhere in the body, benign brain tumors...
Do protons and neutrons maintain distinction inside the nucleus of an atom or do they combine into a quark soup?	It does not appear to form a completely homogeneous soup, with elements all misched together; but exactly how a nucleus is structured is still unclear. You can read more about it in [the Wikipedia article about nuclear structure](_URL_0_).	[ "The above treatment compares neutrons with protons, allowing the complex behavior of quarks to be subtracted out between models, and merely exploring what the effects would be of differing quark charges (or quark type). Such calculations are enough to show that the interior of neutrons is very much like that of pr...
neutrinos	neutrinos are incredibly low mass and have no charge. Since they have no charge and are so very, very tiny, they pass through normal matter without interacting, except in EXTREMELY rare circumstances. every second of your life, trillions and trillions of neutrinos pass through your body. The sun produces them in incr...	[ "BULLET::::- Neutrinos are elementary particles that travel close to the speed of light, lack an electric charge, are able to pass through ordinary matter almost undisturbed, and are thus extremely difficult to detect. The neutrino was first postulated in 1930 by Wolfgang Pauli and later discovered in 1956 by Clyde...
what is the difference between the u.s. standard of living today and 100 years ago?	life expectancy has improved by 20+ years. labor standards and conditions have improved. most diseases are now known and treatable. travel is faster. vehicles are safer. everything is better.	[ "The standard of living in the United States is high by the standards that most economists use, and for many decades throughout the 20th century, the United States was recognized as having the highest standard of living in the world. Per capita income is high but also less evenly distributed than in most other deve...
What did Victorian era women carry in their purses?	Quite an interesting question! The [Old Bailey records](_URL_1_), which have been digitized and put online, are an excellent resource for this sort of thing, as handbags/reticules were often stolen or stolen from. We have the most detailed records from the early decades of Victoria's reign; in the second decade, the c...	[ "The oldest known purse dates back more than 5000 years, and was a pouch worn by a man, Ötzi the Iceman. Men once carried coin purses. In early Modern Europe, when women's fashions moved in the direction of using small ornamental purses, which evolved into handbags, men's fashions were moving in another direction. ...
What exactly is tooth plaque and is there a chemical or enzyme you could swill around your mouth to get rid of it in one go?	It's a bunch of different things, but it's mostly multispecies biofilm. Biofilms are complex communities of bacteria and matrix (mostly polysaccharides and nucleic acid). They form when certain bacteria get together or when enough of certain types of bacteria get in one place at a given density. Multispecies biofilms ...	[ "Plaque is a biofilm consisting of large quantities of various bacteria that form on teeth. If not removed regularly, plaque buildup can lead to periodontal problems such as gingivitis. Given time, plaque can mineralize along the gingiva, forming \"tartar\". The microorganisms that form the biofilm are almost entir...
How big of a deal is bacteria on cell phones?	I don't see why wiping your phone off with an alcohol pad wouldn't do the same thing. The major point that is missed here is that these bacteria don't originate from phones. They are placed there by dirty hands/ears/faces. Keep those areas clean and phones should stay relatively clean. And as a note to the germaphobes:...	[ "According to the article \"Mobile Phones and Nosocomial Infections,\" written by researchers at Mansoura University of Egypt, it states that the risk of transmitting the bacteria by the medical staff (who carry their cellphones during their shift) is much higher because cellphones act as a reservoir where the bact...
Can someone please explain the Cherenkov radiation and how light is slower than the other particles?	There was a recent thread about Cherenkov radiation [here](_URL_0_). Nothing can exceed the speed of light in a vacuum (c), but there is no law of physics preventing a charged particle from exceeding c/n, where n is the index of refraction in some medium. When this happens, the charged particle creates a sort of "shoc...	[ "than the velocity of light in the medium.\". However, some misconceptions regarding Cherenkov radiation exist: for example, it is believed that the medium becomes electrically polarized by the particle's electric field. If the particle travels slowly then the disturbance elastically relaxes back to mechanical equi...
Has the concept of the "Unconscious"(In Psychology) been experimentally verified?	That depends on what you call call "unconscious." There is absolutely cortical processing that occurs below our awake attention (consciousness). A simple example of this is vision. We perceive the visual world around us as a robust, colored, spatio-temporally continuous, detailed environment; filled with recognizable ...	[ "The idea of \"unconscious\" is contested because human behavior can be observed while human mental activity has to be inferred. However, the unconscious is now a popular topic of study in the fields of experimental and social psychology (e.g., implicit attitude measures, fMRI, and PET scans, and other indirect tes...
why is it so difficult to swallow food while feeling nervous?	It is because when you are stressed or experiencing anxiety (or other forms of heightened emotion), the muscles around your throat tighten, causing what is known as the "Globus Sensation" - the feeling of having a lump in your throat. Swallowing is difficult when the smooth muscles of the Pharynx and Esophagus are t...	[ "The weakness of the muscles involved in swallowing may lead to swallowing difficulty (dysphagia). Typically, this means that some food may be left in the mouth after an attempt to swallow, or food and liquids may regurgitate into the nose rather than go down the throat (velopharyngeal insufficiency). Weakness of t...
Is there a Radar equivalent of a Laser?	Yes,we have masers (m=microwave),which despite the name can be also tuned for infrared and radio frequencies.funnily enough,the maser came first,the laser is just more famous since it's more ubiquitious/useful You should be able to do it for basically any wavelength,if you can find atoms with the proper energy diffe...	[ "Laser radar is used for multi-dimensional imaging and information gathering. In all information gathering modes, lasers that transmit in the eye-safe region are required as well as sensitive receivers at these wavelengths.\n", "Photonic radar is a technique by which radar may be produced and analysed with the he...
If we can get the flu multiple times due to changes in the virus, why doesn't the same apply to mono?	What Xeta8 said is partially correct. Influenza viruses have a very high mutation rate and new strains are constantly arising, whereas Epstein-Barr has a very low mutation rate and generally does not have a great number of strains; in general, RNA viruses have a much higher rate of mutation than DNA viruses do. I will...	[ "Influenza A virus subtype H3N2 is endemic in pigs in China, and has been detected in pigs in Vietnam, increasing fears of the emergence of new variant strains. The dominant strain of annual flu virus in January 2006 was H3N2, which is now resistant to the standard antiviral drugs amantadine and rimantadine. The po...
In WW2, what levels of losses temporarily neutralized or even destroyed military units?	A good resource that can partially fill in what you want to know regarding the experience of a typical (I say "typical" as it is not one from a very well-known unit like the 1st Infantry "Big Red One" or 101st Airborne) infantry unit is G Company's War, taken directly from the diaries of Lee Macmillan Otts and Bruce ...	[ "War destruction can be illustrated by looking at World War II. Industrial war damage was heaviest in Japan, where 1/4 of factory buildings and 1/3 of plant and equipment were destroyed; 1/7 of electric power-generating capacity was destroyed and 6/7 of oil refining capacity. The Japanese merchant fleet lost 80% of...
how do bighorn sheep and other various mammals withstand the impact of head-butting one another?	They commonly have more pressure in their cranial cavity and more tissue that prevents the brain from sloshing around. As well as layered skulls and large tendons that help absorb the shock of their hits.	[ "In addition to combat with predators using horns, \"Triceratops\" are popularly shown engaging each other in combat with horns locked. While studies show that such activity would be feasible, if unlike that of present-day horned animals, there is disagreement about whether they did so. Although pitting, holes, les...
How do you prove a number is transcendental?	Actually you sort of just stated how to prove it. You start by assuming that you can write the number as the root of a polynomial and then use the properties you know about the number to see if there is any contradiction. Now as far as the actual path used to prove this it can get a little complex just because of...	[ "In 1882, Lindemann published the result for which he is best known, the transcendence of . His methods were similar to those used nine years earlier by Charles Hermite to show that \"e\", the base of natural logarithms, is transcendental. Before the publication of Lindemann's proof, it was known that \"if\" was tr...
Found an interesting-looking bible, might anyone know anything about it?	Paternoster Row and Whitefriars are in London near St. Paul's Cathedral, the seat of the Anglican diocese of London. Paternoster Row was the center of English publishing at the time this Bible was printed. Given the time and location of publishing, the Bible is almost certainly the King James version. The emblem on th...	[ "The library has a collection of ancient Bibles and English Bibles. The Ancient Bible Collection includes a Hebrew Bible from 1264, in which the comment was so written as to form decorative pictures. It also includes three tenth-century Gospels, one decorated with colored miniatures, and a complete Latin Bible from...
Was the flag of France during the Bourbon Restoration ever mistaken for an attempt to surrender? Furthermore, where does the usage of white flags to signal surrender (or truce) come from?	Earliest mentions of using white flags to surrender or parley come from the Han dynasty (AD 25 - 220). The modern use of the white flag in Europe was standardized in The Hague Conventions of 1899 and later in 1907. Mis use of the white flag is considered a war crime. As the pure white flag was no longer used at that ...	[ "When the Bourbon dynasty was restored following the defeat of Napoleon in 1815, the \"tricolore\"—with its revolutionary connotations—was replaced by a white flag, the pre-revolutionary naval flag. However, following the July Revolution of 1830, the \"citizen-king\", Louis-Philippe, restored the \"tricolore\", and...
Questions on Genocide	I think these questions would be more appropriate for /r/Politics, as none of these questions are directly related to history.	[ "The determination of whether a historical event should be considered genocide can be a matter of scholarly debate. Historians often draw on broader definitions such as Lemkin's, which sees colonialist violence against indigenous peoples as inherently genocidal. For example, in the case of the colonization of the A...
How did slaves learn of Great Britain's offer to free them during the American Revolution?	Considering that most of the black slaves were illiterate, it would be difficult to reach out to a large percentage of slaves. Remember that he was a slave owner as well and eventually took his slaves with him when he left in 1776. At this point, he was desperate for support as he was now on a British ship after fleein...	[ "During the American Revolutionary War, the British offered freedom to slaves who left rebel masters and joined their forces. Thousands of slaves escaped during the war, disrupting some of the slave societies in the South, and many joined the British lines. After the British lost the American War of Independence, i...
when organizations do those “ run for the cure“ cancer run fundraisers aimed at finding the cure to different types of cancers, where does that money go?	Research is inherently expensive - you need to buy expensive scientific equipment as well as pay specialist scientists to work on potential routes to a cure, most of which will not be successful. The money raised is usually donated to a charity, who will spend it in different ways. Some will spend it on hospice care (i...	[ "Proceeds raised by Endure to Cure fund its three primary programs: Small Miracles which provides children who are undergoing cancer treatment with customized experiences or small gifts to help them get through treatment; Travel for Treatment Assistance which helps families in financial need with the uninsurable an...
Why are angular momentum and each of the linear momentums (in the x,y, and z directions) all conserved independently?	Noether's theorem establishes a one-to-one relationship between continuous symmetries and conservation laws. Translation in each direction corresponds to linear momentum conservation in that direction. And rotational symmetry in each direction corresponds with conservation of each component of the angular momentum. E...	[ "The angular momentum about the \"z\" axis is \"not\" , but the quantity , which is not conserved due to the contribution from the magnetic field. The canonical momentum is the conserved quantity. It is still the case that is the linear or translational momentum along the \"z\" axis, which is also conserved.\n", ...
if i was traveling on a bus going the speed of light and i ran from the back end of the bus to the front, would i be going faster than the speed of light?	No. Velocities don't actually add. What actually adds is the hyperbolic arctangent of the normalized velocity. "Dude, what?" Here's your imaginary bus, moving along at some speed relative to me (which is not the speed of light, for reasons we'll get to in a second). Call that speed V1. Here's you, walking down the a...	[ "A passenger on the bus stated that \"he felt as if the bus was travelling at \". Investigator Lo Kok-keung estimated the bus entered the bend at up to , and said a safe travelling speed for the turn would be .\n", "As the column passed the municipal swimming pool, a particularly dark part of the street (since a ...
as an australian and a 5 year old, please explain to me as to why there is a huge controversy and debate over gun restrictions in the united states?	some people, especially the bad guys that are already gonna go to jail for extended periods of time and/or even life sentences have no problem in breaking the law, acquiring a gun, and do as they please. only law-abiding citizens would hand over or get rid of their lawful right to have guns, so the question becomes, ...	[ "Some studies on the effects of Australia's gun laws have suggested that Australia's gun laws have been effective in reducing mass shootings, gun suicides and armed crime, while other studies suggest that the laws have had little effect. Polling shows strong support for gun legislation in Australia with around 85 t...
why do street lamps' power cables run underground and not overhead like those between pylons?	I've been building and maintaining street lights for a decade or so. Unfortunately, the answer is that it kind of depends. Let's start with why cables are in the ground. There are several reasons. * a cable won't interfere with traffic. I.e, it will never hinder any kind of heavy machinery transports. You know the k...	[ "The use of overhead wires allows higher power supply voltages to be used. Although overhead wires are more likely to be used on metro systems without many tunnels, an example of which is the Shanghai Metro, overhead wires are employed on some systems that are predominantly underground, as in Barcelona, Fukuoka, Ma...
What is the ideal average surface temperature for the Earth?	The main problem with the rising global temperature is that it is increasing at a rate way too fast than what happened in the past. Such rapid shift in climate conditions can have a drastic impact on agriculture. Therefore, if we were to use geoengineering to control global temperature (not that we should, because of a...	[ "The Earth has an albedo of about 0.306. The emissivity is dependent on the type of surface and many climate models set the value of the Earth's emissivity to 1. However, a more realistic value is 0.96. The Earth is a fairly fast rotator so the area ratio can be estimated as . The other variables are constant. This...
what is the difference between medication being injected into a vein vs into a muscle? further, does it matter where the injection is administered? (thigh, arm, stomach, etc)	It's easier to inject a substance into muscle than a vein, you've got a bigger target to work with. Veins can be hard to target, it takes longer to do, and requires more precision. You can also inject more material into muscle, and it can be less prone to irritation. That being said, different medications can call fo...	[ "Intravenous injections involve needle insertion directly into the vein and the substance is directly delivered into the bloodstream. In medicine and drug use, this route of administration is the fastest way to get the desired effects since the medication moves immediately into blood circulation and to the rest of ...
how do tax plans get implemented?	Tax policy is set by Congress, not the president. When candidates talk about their "tax plans," that's just what they will propose to Congress with the help of a friendly Congressman. It will have to go through the usual committee, debate, amendment and reconciliation process, and by that time it may or may not look an...	[ "A tax strategy is a document required to be published annually by businesses which operate in the United Kingdom with a turnover above £200m or a balance sheet above £2 billion. This requirement is set out in Section 161 of the Finance Act 2016. A group of companies may produce a \"group tax strategy\".\n", "In ...
Can you still find or watch the propaganda films from the Soviet Union and Communist China?	Yes there are many films of both nations' propaganda departments on youtube.	[ "In 1947, studio executives told the committee that wartime films – such as \"Mission to Moscow\", \"The North Star\", and \"Song of Russia\" – could be considered pro-Soviet propaganda, but claimed that the films were valuable in the context of the Allied war effort, and that they were made (in the case of \"Missi...
how are electrons moved through a single wire connected to one terminal?	Don't think of it as two separate wires. What an antenna really is, is a capacitor. You know that's where you have two plates close together and when you link that up to a plus and a minus, electrons build up in the capacitor on the minus side and are pulled out on the plus side? And then when you disconnect them ...	[ "In 1820, André-Marie Ampère showed that parallel wires having currents in the same direction attract one another. To the electrons, the wire contracts slightly, causing the protons of the opposite wire to be locally \"denser\". As the electrons in the opposite wire are moving as well, they do not contract (as much...
Why did the scientists involved with the Manhattan Project think the atomic bomb had a chance to ignite the atmosphere?	This never was really an issue. There was a thought that the fusion of nitrogen nuclei in a fusion bomb could create a self-propagating reaction (similar to the explosion propagation). This is because nitrogen is ~78% of the atmosphere. After researching certain nitrogen/magnesium/helium reactions the scientists concl...	[ "Rotblat continued to have strong reservations about the use of science to develop such a devastating weapon. In 1985, he related that at a private dinner at the Chadwicks' house at Los Alamos in March 1944, he was shocked to hear the director of the Manhattan Project, Major General Leslie R. Groves, Jr., say words...
how to wipe sitting down.	Right Handed: lean to the left. Left handed: lean to the right. Wipe front to back.	[ "The sitting defecation posture involves sitting with hips and knees at approximately right angles, as on a chair. So-called \"Western-style\" flush toilets and also many types of dry toilets are designed to be used in a sitting posture.\n", "Sometimes stools are provided for elderly or injured people even when o...
When using a solar sail is it possible to sail "against the wind"	You can get closer to the sun by using your sail at angle to accellerate or decellerate your orbit such that the perapis is lower.	[ "Another possible method is a solar sail. Solar sails use radiation pressure in a way to achieve a desired propulsive force. The perturbation model due to the solar wind can be used as a model of propulsive force from a solar sail.\n", "Many people believe that spacecraft using solar sails are pushed by the Solar...
When did monotheistic religions begin precluding the existence of other divine entities? How did this process occur?	You are referring to [Henotheism](_URL_0_), the belief in the existence of multiple gods, but exclusive worship of a single one. Early Judaism is believed to have been henotheistic, but at the time of the exile were fully monotheistic. Christianity were monotheistic from the beginning, since it inherited monotheism f...	[ "The first recordings that survive of monotheistic conceptions of God, borne out of henotheism and (mostly in Eastern religions) monism, are from the Hellenistic period. Of the many objects and entities that religions and other belief systems across the ages have labeled as divine, the one criterion they share is t...
how do the companies that sponsor benefit from having game shows give away their products to contestants?	I was on a game show with my family once and the show had a specific rule. "If we offer a prize you act excited. You clap, cheer, etc. if you miss out on a prize, act disappointed. Whether or not you like the prize, or already own the prize, you will make that prize seem like the best thing in the world or we'll send y...	[ "Many of the prizes awarded on game shows are provided through product placement, but in some cases they are provided by private organizations or purchased at either the full price or at a discount by the show. There is the widespread use of \"promotional consideration\", in which a game show receives a subsidy fro...
when and how did gifs stop being static images like jpegs and become videos like mpegs?	It was designed to animate from the start.	[ "In multimedia, Motion JPEG (M-JPEG or MJPEG) is a video compression format in which each video frame or interlaced field of a digital video sequence is compressed separately as a JPEG image. Originally developed for multimedia PC applications, M-JPEG is now used by video-capture devices such as digital cameras, IP...
Who are the bourgeoisie and how do socialists, Marxist or otherwise, view them?	'In high school I was taught that the bourgeoisie were society's middle class.' What you've got here is a problem of definitions. I'll clear this up first before addressing your main question. Bourgeoisie: Marxist theory defines the bourgeoisie as those who own private property. In Marxist terminology, private prope...	[ "\"Conservative\" or \"bourgeois socialism\" was a term used by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels in various pieces, including in \"The Communist Manifesto\". The Marxian view is such that the bourgeois socialist is the sustainer of the current state of bourgeois class relations. Opinions vary as to whether this or th...
how does water vapor exist at room temperature and atmospheric pressure?	Any liquid (or solid, in fact) has something called a vapor pressure. It will very slowly evaporate, because while the temperature of the whole object is too low to have molecules break off and run free, the temperature of particular molecules (their kinetic energy) can be high enough to do so. This is because the mo...	[ "The maximum partial pressure (\"saturation pressure\") of water vapor in air varies with temperature of the air and water vapor mixture. A variety of empirical formulas exist for this quantity; the most used reference formula is the Goff-Gratch equation for the SVP over liquid water below zero degree Celsius:\n", ...
Why is everyone related to Ghengis Khan?	This claim is based on a paper by Tatiana Zerjal titled [The Genetic Legacy of the Mongols](_URL_0_), which appeared in the American Journal of Human Genetics. Couple of things to clarify first: * Genetics can't narrow down descent to one person who lived so long ago. What the paper actually says is that about 1/20...	[ "Genghis Khan had been revered for centuries by Mongols and certain other ethnic groups such as Turks, largely because of his association with Mongol statehood, political and military organization, and his victories in war. He eventually evolved into a larger-than-life figure chiefly among the Mongols and is still ...
is making glass just as easy as heating up sand and that’s it?	No, for one it has to be a fairly pure type of sand, additionally you generally need to add something that makes the sand have a lower melting point such as sodium or potassium carbonate. In general it is actually a really complicated and difficult process, if you want some more insight into to process I'd suggest look...	[ "Warm glass or kiln-formed glass is the working of glass, usually for artistic purposes, by heating it in a kiln. The processes used depend on the temperature reached and range from fusing and slumping to casting.\n", "Glass is a useful material that has such advantages such as Transparency, Natural Day-lighting,...
why don't metal detectors at the airport go off for the zippers on pants	The term "metal detector" is a bit of a misnomer. Generally, they work based on a magnetic field that they transmit. This field activates other metal bits within range and they transmit a magnetic field of their own. Now, only ferrous metals (metals that contain iron or an iron alloy) will work like this. Most zipper...	[ "A \"zipper blocker\" prevents the zipper from sliding down its shaft. One version is a locking safety pin in which a piece of the metal bar simply rests across the shaft, thereby blocking movement of the zipper's channel in that direction. Other versions, which are sewn onto the garment, involve two pieces of meta...
After Japan surrendered in WW2 were there immediately Japanese women marrying Western servicemen and moving West? Or was there too much racism and bitter feelings for marriage?	Part I All told, there were some 60000 Japanese war brides that made their way to the US between 1945 and 1967. This was a much smaller number than their equivalent German war brides, as well as other European women. Marriage between Japanese women and American men was an issue laden with a good deal of racial dis...	[ "About 650 Japanese war brides migrated to Australia after the ban on Japanese migration, imposed at the outbreak of the Pacific War, was lifted in 1952 when the San Francisco Peace Treaty came into force. They had married Australian soldiers involved in the occupation of Japan.\n", "Furthermore, it is estimated ...
why is it impossible to completely remove stretchmarks?	Stretch marks are a kind of scar. The collagen (a primary structural protein) in uninjured skin is laid out in criss-cross, basket-weave like pattern. The collagen in scar tissue mostly lines up, resulting in tissue that's generally less flexible and different in appearance. Over time, scars generally come to ...	[ "Stretch marks (technically called \"striae\") are also a form of scarring. These are caused when the skin is stretched rapidly (for instance during pregnancy, significant weight gain, or adolescent growth spurts), or when skin is put under tension during the healing process, (usually near joints). This type of sca...
what is this bug and why is infesting my room?	I think it's a stink bug. To verify just squish one.	[ "Bugs is traveling by tunneling underground—and runs straight into a tree. He heads for Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, as he observes \"these Pennsylvania hardwoods ain't too soft!\", but he does not immediately notice that a sign nailed to the tree reads \"Pittsburghe, Transylvania\". He asks a two-headed female vultur...
How is data/memory stored on pieces of metal (microchips) or plastic (tapes & CDs)?	All of them are different. Microchips are generally silicon (not metal), and there are a number of ways for them to store data depending on the application and whether you need to be able to store data without power. Very roughly-speaking though, it involves trapping charge in individual circuit cells so that you cou...	[ "Recently, electronic devices such as digital cameras, MP3 players, cellular phones, etc., are required with larger capacity of storage to store data. A memory card, such as a Micro SD card, a MMC card, etc., which has larger capacity of storage and a small size, is extensively used to expend the capacity of storag...
what is a bond in us justice system?	When someone is arrested and waiting for a trial, they are sitting in jail. In the US system, people are innocent until proven guilty. This means that you could have an innocent person sitting in jail. Therefore you have the option of putting money down as a deposit for your release. Basically you're telling the court...	[ "Bond v. United States, 564 U.S. 211 (2011), is a decision by the Supreme Court of the United States that individuals, just like states, may have standing to raise Tenth Amendment challenges to a federal law.\n", "At its simplest, a bond need only state who is to be paid, what sum, when, and where (for example: \...
how do windows restore points work?	Most 'restore points' and 'snapshots' are actually a point-in-time registration of file data and from then on all files or all system and application install files which are updated after then are logged and the old versions kept. Additionally, dependant upon what you have assigned as included in the monitored files yo...	[ "BULLET::::- System Restore is now based on Shadow Copy technology instead of a file-based filter and is therefore more proactive at creating useful restore points. Restore points are now \"volume-level\", meaning that performing a restore will capture the state of an entire system at a point in time. These can als...
how do retainers help maintain crossbites, overbites, underbites etc. etc. ?	Because teeth in a correct orthodontic position have an opposing tooth to interlock with. Relapse of tooth position can lead to relapse in bite therefore: holding a good position = locking in a suitable bite. As far as strong class 2 and 3 and openbite cases sometimes retainers are helpless to fight nature.	[ "Being more complex, self-checkouts are more prone to failure. For example, they use scales to weigh goods in the bagging area, and if the scale fails, the machine does not work. Also, in a manned checkout lane, any simple problems like lack of receipt paper would be immediately fixed by the operator, while self-ch...
why is heat depicted as red and cold as blue?	Because cold things such as ice and people are blue and hot things like metal and people are red.	[ "For colors based on black-body theory, blue occurs at higher temperatures, while red occurs at lower, cooler, temperatures. This is the opposite of the cultural associations attributed to colors, in which red represents hot, and blue cold.\n", "For colors based on black-body theory, blue occurs at higher tempera...
how come many people have lots of mental disabilities, not only one.	There are a lot of gray areas in psychology. Mental order diagnoses are an attempt to catalog a wide variety of behaviors into neat little boxes, but no two brains are the same. So you might be a dead ringer for bpd, but you only have mild symptoms of schizophrenia and ocd. Since there's no specific term for that exac...	[ "Mental health issues, and psychiatric illnesses, are more likely to occur in people with developmental disabilities than in the general population. A number of factors are attributed to the high incidence rate of dual diagnoses:\n", "Mental disorders have been found to be common, with over a third of people in m...
how there is a water shortage in the world when we live in a closed system.	The issue is that that rain may fall hundreds or thousands of miles away. Water shortages are really just times where getting _fresh_ water to people is prohibitively expensive. They could pump or truck water into any area that is having a drought, but it wouldn't be cost effective.	[ "Water shortages and increasing consumption of freshwater make this right incredibly complicated. As the world population rapidly increases, freshwater shortages will cause many problems. A shortage in the quantity of water brings up the question of whether or not water should be transferred from one country to ano...
What is the relationship between fracking and coal seam gas (CSG)/coal-bed methane (CBM) exploitation?	Fracking (hydrofracturing) is a process for increasing the permeability of a hydrocarbon reservoir so that you can recover fluids from a situation which otherwise has too low a flow rate. Coal gas is simply gas which is associated with coal beds. It may or may not require fracking to access, depending on what the perm...	[ "Underground coal gasification (UCG) is an industrial gasification process, which is carried out in non-mined coal seams. It involves injection of a gaseous oxidizing agent, usually oxygen or air, and bringing the resulting product gas to the surface through production wells drilled from the surface. The product ga...
What is the oldest known example we have of humanity introducing an invasive species to a new area?	Humans introducing themselves to areas outside of Africa. Although, this depends somewhat on your definition of "humanity", as there were several times in pre-history when hominids seem to have migrated out of Africa. If you mean "anatomically modern humans", or "homo sapiens sapiens" then this would be circa 100,000...	[ "Yet another prominent example of an introduced species that became invasive is the European rabbit in Australia. Thomas Austin, a British landowner had rabbits released on his estate in Victoria because he missed hunting them. A more recent example is the introduction of the common wall lizard to North America by ...
Why are Italian surnames so varied?	In Italy, surnames have generally been formed in many more ways than in other countries. For example, surnames can be patronymic (e.g. Di Michele), geographical (e.g. Ancona), occupational (e.g. Sarti), or they can be based on a nickname (e.g. Basso), etc. To this, add the fact that, for well over a millennium, Italy ...	[ "Most of Italy's surnames (\"cognomi\"), with the exception of a few areas marked by linguistic minorities, derive from Italian and arose from an individual's peculiar qualities (e.g. \"Rossi\", \"Bianchi\", \"Quattrocchi\", \"Mancini\", etc.), occupation (\"Ferrari\", \"Auditore\", \"Sartori\", \"Tagliabue\", etc....
why are there so many abandoned cars in the woods?	Drive car into woods, file a stolen vehicle report, collect insurance money. same reason they wind up in water bodies as well. Insurance fraud	[ "In a nearby, small forest is a well known automobile graveyard. The legends say that this graveyard of cars was started when US servicemen, stationed in the area following World War Two, hid their cars in the forest due to the cost of shipping them overseas. Plans to retrieve the vintage vehicles at a later date w...
14th century islamic explorers reached the Americas before Columbus?	No, no, and no. Islamic sailors from SW Asia or N/E Africa theoretically had the know-how, but they had no reason for doing so. This is a variant of the "Abu Bakr II sent a Malian fleet westward into the unknown in 1310" account that has become sort of a staple of radical Afrocentric history. Molefi Kete Asante is...	[ "Sezgin has argued that Muslim seafarers had reached the Americas by 1420, citing as evidence the inscription on a map and the fact that the high longitudinal precision of early maps of the Americas would not have been attainable using Western navigational technology.\n", "Although Christopher Columbus was credit...
Has the nuclear age prevented future carbon dating?	Limnologist here (lake study). I don't know about Carbon dating, but for more recent work (10 - 500 years) we use Lead-210 dating. Exact same principles apply, one form of lead is produced at a steady rate, and decays with a known half life. By looking at the amount of these in lake sediments we can tell when they were...	[ "The half-life of carbon-14 is 5,730±40 years. Libby realized that when plants and animals die they cease to ingest fresh carbon-14, thereby giving any organic compound a built-in nuclear clock. He published his theory in 1946, and expanded on it in his monograph \"Radiocarbon Dating\" in 1955. He also developed se...
why do musicians make music and then put it in the vault instead of releasing it?	Oftentimes, they don't feel like it's worthy of being released to the public, i.e. unreleased demos. That, or the record company won't let them put it on an album. Sometimes, they do release them, but under small-released EPs, much like what Linkin Park does for it's Underground members.	[ "First, a problem common to all curators: source material degrades over time. In particular, the magnetic audio tape used to make many live audio recordings physically decays and, as it is repeatedly played back, loses its clarity. Preserving musical source material, therefore, meant restricting access to it. As a ...
is it the same time everywhere in the universe?	There is no way to define a universal present. Observers moving relative to each other or even at different gravitational locations will disagree on what constitutes "the present" (and by extension, the past and future as well).	[ "Until Einstein's reinterpretation of the physical concepts associated with time and space, time was considered to be the same everywhere in the universe, with all observers measuring the same time interval for any event.\n", "Galileo, Newton, and most people up until the 20th century thought that time was the sa...
why do noise canceling headphones amplify wind drag?	I've not an expert on noise cancelling headphones, but from an audio/electrical background, I would guess the noise cancelling mics are saturating and that distortion is being amplified. It could also be the non-uniformity of the noise profile that's throwing off the processor (they're very good at cancelling steady, ...	[ "To cancel the lower-frequency portions of the noise, noise-cancelling headphones use active noise control. They incorporate a microphone that measures ambient sound, generate a waveform that is the exact negative of the ambient sound, and mix it with any audio signal the listener desires.\n", "Active noise-cance...
Why are some metals stronger than others?	As stated it depends on electron structure and bonds BUT almost everything in our daily life depends on them so its not a good explanation. One higher level is crystal structures, the arrangement of the atoms effect their properties. If the structure is FCC or HCP the metal maybe more ductile. However the real thing th...	[ "Some metals and metal alloys possess high structural strength per unit mass, making them useful materials for carrying large loads or resisting impact damage. Metal alloys can be engineered to have high resistance to shear, torque and deformation. However the same metal can also be vulnerable to fatigue damage thr...
what prevents services like spotify from being available in all countries?	The streaming service has to make agreements with the copyright management system in each country it works in, as they ahve to pay royalities for use of material. IF they haven't got the agreement, the service can't operate. This is also why different offerings are available in different countries; the rights for dif...	[ "In February 2009, Spotify opened public registration for the free service tier in the United Kingdom. Registrations surged following the release of the mobile service, leading Spotify to halt registration for the free service in September, returning the UK to an invitation-only policy. Premium cards were offered f...
During the Middle Ages, how easy was it to mess up and get yourself tortured?	You might have a better chance of getting a response if you specify a specific region. The answer to your question is probably very different if we're talking about France, China, Arabia, etc.	[ "Medieval torture devices were varied. One old English chronicle from the Early Medieval period reads, \"They hanged them by the thumbs, or by the head, and hung fires on their feet; they put knotted strings about their heads, and writhed them so that it went to the brain ... Some they put in a chest that was short...
why can't we splice the genes from plants for chlorophyll into humans and then we'd never need to eat again?	Because "having chlorophyll" is only one tiny step in the process of photosynthesis. And that is leaving aside the fact that plant cells themselves don't have it in their genomes - photosynthesis is done by organelles called chloroplasts, which have their own DNA, separate from the plant's primary genome. The list of p...	[ "It is unclear how the plant has managed to do this. It seems to have actually increased its genome first, in three successive rounds of whole genome duplication. It is possible that it did this in order to avoid deletion of important genes before reducing its total DNA. It is still uncertain why this happened but ...
Is there an example of a mathematical problem that is easy to understand, easy to believe in it's truth, yet impossible to prove through our current mathematical axioms?	The title of your post and the contents are different in a subtle, but important way. The title says "impossible to prove through our current mathematical axioms", whereas the post body says " it has not been able to be proven by our current mathematical knowledge". The first version is the most profound. Given a set ...	[ "Errors made by mathematicians occur because of (1) their reliance on general abstract ideas and (2) their belief that an object exists as such without being an idea in a spectator's mind. In arithmetic, those things which pass for abstract truths and theorems concerning numbers are, in reality, concerned with part...
why is the sun called the sun?	I'm assuming you mean the star and not the newspaper. Let's examine the [Online Etymology Dictionary](_URL_0_) : In English, we call it "sun". In Old English, it was "sunne". Old English came from a language we call 'Proto-Germanic', and in it, the sun was called "sunnon". The German language also came from P-G, so i...	[ "The Sun is the Atman (soul) of the world, it is that which moves and does not move, it is the creator of living beings, it is the source of fuel to yajna, it is the source of rains, food and drinks, states the Upanishad. Sun is the manifested form of the ultimate truth and reality Brahman, asserts the text, identi...
Montgomery seems to receive a lot of hate from WWII scholars. Why and what's a counter argument?	Is your professor American? Much of what I wrote over on this post is applicable here. _URL_0_ There are likely few serious students of military history who would say that Montgomery was the best general the British had in WW2. (Slim usually gets the nod). However, he was successful, there is no denying it. Unfortun...	[ "Montgomery was greatly upset by World War II, calling the war in a 1940 letter \"this nightmare that has been loosed on the world... unfair that we should have to go through it again\". In her only diary entry for 1941, Montgomery wrote on 8 July 1941: \"Oh God, such an end to life. Such suffering and wretchedness...
How did Pakistan repair its relations with Bangladesh so quickly despite the 1971 genocide?	During the war of independence, Pakistan destroyed most of the infrastructure and burnt all the money that was kept in the central bank. So it became very difficult for the AL Government to run the country with so few resources and very little international cooperation. The Arab world was not helping Bangladesh due to ...	[ "Prior to the independence of Bangladesh from Pakistani occupation, the Pakistan Army carried out massive campaigns of mass murder and genocide on the native Bengali population in East Pakistan, especially against Hindu minorities. A significant part of the genocide carried out by Pakistan involved the murder of in...
Who paid more tax, Roman Citizens or non- citizens?	Roman citizens paid no taxes, at least not necessarily. Roman state revenue was divided into the vectigals and tribute. Tribute was, by the late Republic, levied only on provincials, and it constituted by far the majority of state revenues. The vectigals included a number of duties, most of which were some sort of cu...	[ "But these taxes would probably have been outweighed by the loss of the annual poll tax previously paid by \"peregrini\", from which as Roman citizens they would now be exempt. It seems unlikely that the imperial government could have foregone this revenue: it is therefore almost certain that the Antonine decree wa...
Did the Russian military fail in World War One? If so Why?	The Russian Army entered the war with the largest standing army in the world with 1.4 million soldiers. While there was a plan in place to send four armies into East Prussia that plan was modified to send only two groups as many Russian perceived Austria-Hungary as a greater threat. Early defeats at the Battle of T...	[ "World War I had taken its toll on Russia, leading to a decline in the morale of the citizens as well as distrust in the government. Russia, having the largest of all the armies fighting in the war, sent its soldiers to the front ill-prepared. There were armament shortages which forced the soldiers to use the weapo...
how does the algorithm work for companies that block gaming related/non work related websites?	There's two ways to do it, really: you can maintain a blacklist of forbidden sites, or use keyword filters and the like to try and automatically detect a site with a forbidden topic. The former is more common--there are companies that make a business out of identifying sites related to gaming, pornography, social media...	[ "The company's founders have declined to explain the algorithm in detail, but state that it takes into account the entrepreneurs' experience, networks and mutual relations. Information provided by companies which use the site's networking features is used to improve the algorithm. As of August 2008, the algorithm w...
If a stationary airplane was met with a strong headwind could it achieve lift?	Here's a video of it happening: _URL_0_	[ "The second explanation is based on the aircraft reaching a speed of at least , compared to the aircraft's ordinary cruise speed of . This is possible under the extreme wind conditions, given that the pilots had lost use of the elevator. Simulations show that each gust of wind had a 0.5 percent possibility of the r...
Authorship of the iliad and of the odyssey : why homer isn't homer after all ?	This is what we call the 'Homeric Question', and it's a big one. The subject of many articles, books and careers. Consequently, I don't feel I can hope to answer it comprehensively by any stretch, but let's see what we can do... The Ancient Greeks absolutely thought that Homer wrote the Iliad and the Odyssey. (There m...	[ "The Homeric Question concerns the doubts and consequent debate over the identity of Homer, the authorship of the \"Iliad\" and \"Odyssey\", and their historicity (especially concerning the \"Iliad\"). The subject has its roots in classical antiquity and the scholarship of the Hellenistic period, but has flourished...
el niño and how it affects the weather	El Nino is roughly a large amount of warm water in the Pacific. This causes warm moist air to rise from the area, which changes weather patterns in a fairly regular way. The majority of weather starts with warm moist air coming from the oceans to later be turned into rain by a cold front. Having a big mass of warm wat...	[ "Because El Niño's warm pool feeds thunderstorms above, it creates increased rainfall across the east-central and eastern Pacific Ocean, including several portions of the South American west coast. The effects of El Niño in South America are direct and stronger than in North America. An El Niño is associated with w...
Are fruit juices that advertise as an acceptable substitute for a serving of fruit or a serving of vegetables the real deal?	Even V8 lacks fiber. Big part of why veggies are good for you.	[ "Ceres advertises their products being made from 100% fruit juice without preservatives. They are manufactured using aseptic processing. The products are widely sold in Africa and imported to over 80 countries in areas including North America, Europe, and Asia. The United States is one of their largest markets wher...
how does microsoft profit from windows 10?	Even if they give out the free version for the first year, companies and universities will still have to pay for valid licenses yearly if they decide to upgrade. I imagine they make a lot more money off corporate licensing then they do from individual use licensing.	[ "Windows 10 is an operating system developed by Microsoft. Microsoft described Windows 10 as an \"operating system as a service\" that would receive ongoing updates to its features and functionality, augmented with the ability for enterprise environments to receive non-critical updates at a slower pace, or use long...
How is it that I can see my hands in total darkness?	There are many possibilities, here are my top three in diminishing order of likelihood; 1. You are not in total darkness if you can still see something. I have been in total darkness, in a cave, and there is no seeing anything under those circumstances. 2. The vision centres of your brain are playing tricks on you an...	[ "BULLET::::- \"As the hand held before the eye conceals the greatest mountain, so the little earthly life hides from the glance the enormous lights and mysteries of which the earth is full, and he who can draw it away from before his eyes, as one draws away a hand, beholds the great shining of the inner worlds.\"\n...
Is there a difference in the sound of thunder (volume, duration, "rumble") from cloud-to-cloud or cloud-to-ground lightning strikes?	lightning arcs and shoots in all sorts of directions, all zig-zaggy like. Each point a different distance from you. You are hearing the sound as each of the sound waves gets to you. That is why it rumbles and isn't one giant crack. The further away, the more the rumble, the closer the lightning is, well, it sounds ...	[ "Atmospheric noise is radio noise caused by natural atmospheric processes, primarily lightning discharges in thunderstorms. It is mainly caused by cloud-to-ground flashes as the current is much stronger than that of cloud-to-cloud flashes. On a worldwide scale, 3.5 million lightning flashes occur daily. This is abo...
why people living in deprived african villages that have to walk for hours a day to get water don't just move their homes closer to the water supply.	Living next to the water is dangerous. Many insects which carry parasites and diseases live the first part of their life in water and have to return to the water to lay their eggs. The closer you are to a body of water the higher the risk. Many early European settlers made the mistake of making their homes near the w...	[ "A group of volunteers raise money for water and sanitation projects for underdeveloped regions in Africa, where young people must travel to natural water sources every day. A water walk can be a very literal and impactful way to \"walk a mile in someone else's shoes.\"\n", "Lack of access to water and sanitation...
is it true that soviet soldiers yelled ura when beggining a charge?	Yes, it was a common occurance during ww2. Russian soldiers have used "Urrah" (or "Ura") with a very long last a as a battle cry for a charge for a long time, at least since the Russo-Ottoman War of 1877. Compare to the US Marines and their "Oorah!" war cry. It is still done at the victory parade in Moscow every year...	[ "When the order \"Na shturm, marshch!\" (Assault, march!) was given, the Soviet infantry would charge the enemy while shouting the traditional Russian battle cry \"Urra!\" ( - pronounced oo-rah, the sound of which many German veterans found terrifying. During the charge, the riflemen would fire with rifles and subm...
How many missions did the average RAF pilot fly during World War 2?	There are rather too many variables to be able to give a simple average, principally: type of aircraft, definition of "mission" and geographical location. 1941 is a good starting point, as that's when the Air Ministry started to formalise the idea for tours of duty. Prior to that it was generally down to the judgement...	[ "During World War II the unit flew 198 missions, including 179 bombing, 17 mine laying, one diversionary and one sea search. This was made up of a total of 2582 individual aircraft sorties, including 45 prisoner of war airlift sorties. It flew 14,622 operational flying hours and dropped 10,358 tons of bombs plus 22...
In 1996, Michael Jordan, the most successful basketball player of all time, starred in the experimental children's film Space Jam. Given his wealth and the nature of the project, what spurred Jordan to take on Space Jam?	"Experimental" feels like a strange word choice for an $80 million production based on a wildly successful series of shoe commercials that employed a couple hundred animators. It wasn't doing anything terribly new; mixing softly-rendered cartoon characters with live action was bold and risky in 1988 when "Who Framed Ro...	[ "Released theatrically by Warner Bros. Family Entertainment on November 15, 1996, \"Space Jam\" received mixed reviews from critics for its merits of combining Jordan and his profession with the \"Looney Tunes\" characters, while the live-action and animated mix especially the animated basketball scenes, Jordan's p...
why is red meat considered bad? didn't our ancestors eat it a lot?	Red meat isn't generally considered intrinsically bad. Our ancestors probably ate it when they could, as it's a really great source of protein and other nutrition. However, until the advent of animal husbandry it wasn't a staple or central part of our diet. So the idea that "red meat == bad" is mostly that "red meat i...	[ "According to the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), all meats obtained from mammals (regardless of cut or age) are red meats because they contain more myoglobin than fish or white meat (but not necessarily dark meat) from chicken.\n", "Understanding the health impact of red meat is difficult because...
why is it that our fingernails separate from our fingernail beds when hit hard.	You start bleeding underneath your nail, and it creates pressure and pushes your nail upward. A good way to prevent that from happening is if you crush your fingernail and see it turning black, create a hole in your nail to drain the blood. It’s instant pain relief, almost euphoric, and then it causes you to save your ...	[ "A bed of nails is an oblong piece of wood, the size of a bed, with nails pointing upwards out of it. It appears to the spectator that anyone lying on this \"bed\" would be injured by the nails, but this is not so. Assuming the nails are numerous enough, the weight is distributed among them so that the pressure exe...
Are software systems on Voyager I or other older spacecraft upgraded or improved?	In the 19~~70~~80's the Galileo probe had it's image software updated to allow for image compression. This resulted in the ability to transmit significantly more images using the limited bandwith available. To illustrate how dangerous interplanetary software updates are here are two cases where it went wrong: The Vik...	[ "During the years in the Delta Quadrant, the ship is augmented with custom, non-spec upgrades and modifications, some of which are modified from technology of other cultures, an example being Seven of Nine's alcoves and the Delta Flyer which both utilize modified Borg technology. Several pieces of technology from t...
why do loud pitches, high and low, affect us differently? i.e. loud bass makes our chest shake and high pitches our painful to our ears	Lower frequencies have big enough wavelengths to vibrate the bones in your chest, and high frequencies hurt because your ear drums are sensitive and high frequency sounds have more energy.	[ "A 2011 study by musicologists Michael Oehler and Christoph Reuter has led its authors to hypothesize that the unpleasantness of the sound is caused by acoustic resonance, as the shape of the human ear canal amplifies certain frequencies, especially those in the range of 2000 to 4000 Hz (the median pitches), at suc...
How is Chiang Kai-shek viewed by historians from the People's Republic of China?	Hey I'm actually working on a paper regarding the Communist Party's definition of the "Century of Humiliation" and this is kinda related to that! The current Chinese government frames themselves as the creators of a "New China" which freed and continues to free the people from the influence of imperial powers. While t...	[ "In \"The New Republic\", Columbia professor Andrew J. Nathan, reviewing the book along with Jay Taylor's \"The Generalissimo\", observed that Chiang Kai-shek and his wife had been eulogized during the Second Sino-Japanese War but also denounced as \"corrupt, venal, and weak.\" With these two biographies, he contin...

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