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How historically accurate are Bernard Cornwell's novels?	Bernard Cornwell is actually one of my favourite historical fiction authors. The Grail Quest is one of his least historically true tales, his standalones tend to be the best simply because they don't need a continuing story. So 1356 and Agincourt are both pretty accurate for the most part, some things have to be assume...	[ "The book is a prose recounting of myths and stories from three eras: Greek and Roman mythology, King Arthur legends and medieval romances. Bulfinch intersperses the stories with his own commentary, and with quotations from writings by his contemporaries that refer to the story under discussion. This combination of...
how come sometimes our brains can predict the notes in a melody we've never heard?	Well, you should first know that the song you gave us is a [four chord song](_URL_1_), which uses one of the most common chord progressions in popular music. Second, the song's melody is primarily in a [pentatonic](_URL_2_) scale, which is an almost universal scale that is found in many cultures. You only have 5 uniqu...	[ "In music cognition and musical analysis, the study of melodic expectation considers the engagement of the brain's predictive mechanisms in response to music. For example, if the ascending musical partial octave \"do-re-mi-fa-sol-la-ti-...\" is heard, listeners familiar with Western music will have a strong expecta...
Do green fruits and vegetables also use photosynthesis?	Fruits and veggies are still part of the plant, and consequently are composed of plant cells. Plants cells have chloroplasts which will photosynthesize, therefore fruits and veggies also use photosynthesis. I agree with the last post, in that, surface area is likely a big factor in their energy contribution. I also wou...	[ "Plants are photosynthetic, which means that they manufacture their own food molecules using energy obtained from light. The primary mechanism plants have for capturing light energy is the pigment chlorophyll. All green plants contain two forms of chlorophyll, chlorophyll \"a\" and chlorophyll \"b\". The latter of ...
Why didn't the Nazis bomb things like Big Ben when they bombed London?	The Houses of Parliament was bombed 14 times during the war. The Clocktower (what people mistakenly call Big Ben) was also hit during one of the raids. It blew out the glass on the clockface and damaged the roof. The Commons Chamber was destroyed by fire from an incendiary bomb. So it's not as if the building and the ...	[ "Harassing fire also expanded to civilians as terror bombing of cities became the norm. In a 1944 report on the recent introduction of the V-1 Flying Bomb, \"Time\" magazine referred to the attacks on London as a form of harassing fire, since they were random and frightening attacks (usually at night) designed to d...
why does the led continue to glow on a powerpack (the box between the device and the outlet) once it’s been disconnected from ac (household) power? occurs frequently with my laptop.	The AC adapters have capacitors in them that store electricity coming from the wall and regulate its flow to the device being powered. When the adapter is disconnected, it continues to power the LED until those capacitors have fully discharged. Usually this will only take a second or two.	[ "LED bulbs are also made that will retrofit incandescents with the same base, but may affect the electrical relay that controls the blinking of turn signals, or cause others sensors to assume that a light bulb is out (see idiot light). In this type of \"bulb\", all of the LEDs may light regardless of which of the c...
Why are symptoms caused by Mononucleosis only temporary when the virus is with you for life?	Once your body produces a sufficient quantity of antibodies, the virus has a much harder time infecting cells (as the antibodies bind the virus, interfering with its normal function, and marking it for destruction), and thus the acute symptoms disappear. However, it remains latent in certain cells, and virus particles ...	[ "A minority of cases of infectious mononucleosis is caused by human cytomegalovirus (CMV), another type of herpes virus. This virus is found in body fluids including saliva, urine, blood, and tears. A person becomes infected with this virus by direct contact with infected body fluids. Cytomegalovirus is most common...
How close do two objects have to be for the objects force of gravity to act as one like one big object?	Here is the formula for an electric dipole (two things close together). Gravitational is near identical other than a few constant for the most part. _URL_0_ Basically the answer is never. Ignoring the constants (which are the only real difference) only way to make it appear as a single charge (or mass) is to take the...	[ "Two bodies, placed at the distance \"R\" from each other, exert a gravitational force on a third body slightly smaller when \"R\" is small. This can be seen as a negative mass component of the system, equal, for uniformly spherical solutions, to:\n", "If the bodies in question have spatial extent (as opposed to ...
do copper sleeves and braces for your body really work? if so, how?	They absolutely don't work at all. But wait, there's more! Ok sadly there isn't, it's just basically a scam, there's no evidence this stuff does anything.	[ "A wrist brace is a garment that is worn around the wrist to protect it during strong use or for allowing it to heal. Wrist braces are common accessories in injury rehabilitation processes affecting the wrist. They immobilize the joint and provide heat and compression to the wrist bones and ligaments. Currently, th...
how does water evaporate from seas if the temperature never actually reaches 100 degrees. does it just slowly gain energy from the sun until it has enough to break bonds?	Water is always evaporating, even at 0 degrees. The temperature of the water is an average value for all the molecules in it, some of them will be hotter than average and they evaporate.	[ "Cold water upwells from the deep, and this water is deficient in carbon. Once this water comes into contact with the warmer atmosphere, the anthropogenic carbon (CO2) and heat is absorbed into the ocean. The now warm and carbon containing surface water is then moved by means of the Ekman transport. Along with this...
Has there ever been an artifact that's so weird that historians just consider it an ancient act of trolling?	Slightly off-topic admittedly: from the flip side of this question, an act of trolling which fooled all the key academics for some 40 years was the [Piltdown Man](_URL_0_) Hoax. Discovered by Charles Dawson in 1912 he was initially regarded as a vital palaeoanthropological find, was heavily studied and was believed to ...	[ "The artifacts found on the site in the mid-19th century included stone-axes, flint arrows and spear heads, broken crockery, many earthen and stone pipes, bears' teeth with holes bored through them, polished teeth of beaver, deer and moose for decorative use; bone needles, and fish-spears made of deer shoulder-blad...
How are CPU scheduling algorithms implemented, what actually in the processor says when its time is done?	As /u/cryo already said, interrupts are one way to jump into the kernel to check whether the current process should yield the CPU, but that's not the only way (There are some operating systems for micro controllers that are "tickless", as in, they function without a timer interrupt) Another time where the kernel can st...	[ "To schedule processes fairly, a round-robin scheduler generally employs time-sharing, giving each job a time slot or \"quantum\" (its allowance of CPU time), and interrupting the job if it is not completed by then. The job is resumed next time a time slot is assigned to that process. If the process terminates or c...
I am a Persian satrap/general at war with Greeks in Asia Minor, in 477-449 BC. How do I fight against a hoplite army and what battles exemplify these tactics?	I can imagine that, as a Persian satrap on the edge of the Empire, you're pretty nervous about the Athenians and their allies getting all up in your business. But let's not overstate the matter. After their initial campaigns against Western Asia Minor and the Hellespont in 479-7 BC, the Greeks only won 3 major victorie...	[ "This was the first true engagement between a hoplite army and a non-Greek army. The Persians had acquired a reputation for invincibility, but the Athenian hoplites proved crushingly superior in the ensuing infantry battle. To counter the massive numbers of Persians, the Greek general Miltiades ordered the troops t...
why does thunder and lightning have a comforting and relaxing effect on some, while it can completely stress out others?	Thunder is a form of colored noise, which often has a relaxing effect to people who don't fear said thunder. It's like listening to the rain hit your window. However, some people simply have a strong fear of lightning due to its potential destructive force. For them, the thunder and lightning makes them feel in danger...	[ "It has been proposed by W. J. Humphreys that \"earthquake weather\" is not of geological causes, but merely a psychological manifestation. Humphreys argued that \"the general state of irritation and sensitiveness developed in us during the hot, calm, perhaps sultry weather given this name, inclines us to sharper o...
If you only are food that was cold (say, the temperature of ice cream) how significant would the calorie loss be from heating the food to body temperature?	Let's say you drank 1 liter of ice cold water a day. Your body would have to warm it from 0 to 37 Celsius. This would take 37 calories per gram of water, so 37 kilocalories total. One kilocalorie is what is ordinarily referred to as a Calorie in the world of nutrition. So heating up a liter of ice cold water takes ...	[ "Some Turks believe that cold foods, such as ice cream, will cause illnesses – such as sore throats and the common cold; it is held that consumption of warm liquid while consuming ice cream will counteract these effects.\n", "Cooling the food product to a temperature just above freezing in a refrigerator is gener...
how are hackers/script kiddies/crackers caught?	If they use this secured setup to visit a legal website linked to a personnal account (like webmail or pasteboard) then logs back to same website with an unsecure connection, it's easy to connect the dots.	[ "Crackers (malicious or black hat hackers) have consistently used IM networks as vectors for delivering phishing attempts, \"poison URLs\", and virus-laden file attachments from 2004 to the present, with over 1100 discrete attacks listed by the IM Security Center in 2004–2007. Hackers use two methods of delivering ...
Monday Methods: "They'll take our lives but they'll never take our transcripts!" Grad School Admissions part 2: The Basics and getting started	Last week there were some great tips on going to grad school in the US, here's some thoughts on doing a MA/PhD in the UK, which can be a very different experience. Due to the nature of funding/the system here, it's worth thinking about the following things before you decide to apply: **What is doing a PhD in the UK li...	[ "Former admissions director Michele Hernandez agreed, and suggested that the best essay topics were a slice-of-life story with poignant details, in which the writer \"shows\" and does not \"tell\". She suggested that a student show their essay to a literate friend and ask if would they admit this person to the coll...
why do busses have a stop request button when they won't stop anywhere but the marked bus stops?	Because if there's nobody waiting at the bus stop, the driver will likely just drive on without stopping unless someone presses the button.	[ "In bus transport the term \"request stop\" may also be used to refer to a stop on a hail and ride section of a route. In hail and ride operations, there are few or no marked stops and passengers can request the bus be stopped at any point where the driver can safely and reasonably do so. For example, in London, Tr...
what do people actually do during server maintenance?	A server, as you might know, is just a computer that you are retrieving information from remotely. Since it's a computer, it uses a lot of the same components as your desktop, though different models and a lot more of them. But hard drives still wear out over time. RAM and CPUs can fail. Sofware and firmware updates st...	[ "Server provisioning is a set of actions to prepare a server with appropriate systems, data and software, and make it ready for network operation. Typical tasks when provisioning a server are: select a server from a pool of available servers, load the appropriate software (operating system, device drivers, middlewa...
where does the battery "juice" (or charge) in my laptop, phone, etc. go when it runs out?	It is converted into kinetic energy used to spin your hard drive, heat from the various components in your computer operating, light from your monitor and from the various indicator lights on your laptop and the various laser reading heads on different devices you may have, magnetic fields as you write new data to your...	[ "They may be a single unit comprising a battery, coil and filling saturated with e-juice in a single tube to be used and discarded after the battery or e-liquid is depleted. They may also be a reusable device with a battery and cartridge called a cartomizer. The cartomizer cartridge can be separated from the batter...
What was Columbus's source for the "width" of Eurasia	Wow, there are a lot of questions there. I'll try to take them one at a time. > It is my understanding that Columbus significantly underestimated the diameter of the earth and this was one reason he thought he could reach east Asia. Yes, Columbus appears to have thought that the earth's cicrumfrence was about 25% ...	[ "The issue in the 1490s was not the shape of the Earth, but its size, and the position of the east coast of Asia, as Irving in fact points out. Historical estimates from Ptolemy onward placed the coast of Asia about 180° east of the Canary Islands. Columbus adopted an earlier (and rejected) distance of 225°, added ...
If aging is partially caused by cell oxidation, then why is exercise good for you?	Lots of reasons. Cell oxidation is only a part cause of cellular injury, and not necessarily the only type that is bad. For instance, exercise lowers the heart rate during periods of non-exercise, so even elevating your heart rate for a short amount of time in aerobic exercise is balanced by the rest of the day being l...	[ "With normal aging comes a gradual diminishing of the body's immune system. This phenomenon called immunosenescence is largely due to a decline of T cell function, including the capacity for T cells to properly support germinal center responses. This may be in part due to lower CD40L levels on the cell surface of T...
AskScience AMA Series: We are the Ask an Astronomer Team at Cornell University. Ask Us Anything!	What kind of jobs are there for people with Astronomy degrees and how hard are they to get into? I'm mostly talking undergraduate degrees. If you believe that PhD's are more wanted in the field feel free to clarify.	[ "Donald B. Campbell is an Australian-born astronomer and Professor of Astronomy at Cornell University. Prior to joining the Cornell faculty he was Director of the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico for seven years. Campbell's research work is in the general area of planetary studies with a concentration on the radi...
fifthworld problems	☪͔͙̻̓ͥͨ̉́Ⓗ̤̬̯̜̮̾̓̊̑͘ᴬ̶☦͍̜̻̝̮̱̣̌͌͗͛ͦͩ̓ℝ̥ͨ́ͮͪ̓͑ℴ̵͙͖̘͌̿̓̿ͧ͋ῠ̮̼͎̘́͒∳̈̂ͬ͏͍̮€͚̼ͣ♁̫̯͉͎̺̜̼ͮ̾̊ͫͪ̑♁̙̝̥ͥ̒̊͑̓€͚̼ͣ < Straight from the horses mouth.	[ "The worlds created specifically for the game mirror the overall appearance of the other worlds and feature either new characters or ones from several \"Final Fantasy\" games. The new worlds include: the Destiny Islands, where the story opens; Traverse Town, which serves as a launching point for most of the game; H...
Can someone explain inverse-square law to me. I need to use it to work out the cutting measurements to build a pendulum wave.	When a pendulum's swing is quite free It's always a marvel to me The each tick and each tock Of the grandfather clock #Equals [2 pi root L over g](_URL_0_) Note that this is the small angle approximation.	[ "From the diagrams two points of the pendulum swing can be chosen to project straight down to two points on opposite sides of the Earth (180° apart). This makes it easy to obtain the velocity vector difference and then the time observed for a full rotation from the inverse ratio.\n", "For any two points in the pe...
trick candles	The wicks of trick candles have a small amount of magnesium mixed in so that it wont blow out fully when you extinguish the flame. It's still hot enough to reignite the wick each time you blow it out because magnesium ignites at a much lower temperature, and that catches the rest of the wick on fire.	[ "Trick candles are a novelty candle often used at children's birthday parties. These candles relight themselves, using a fuse similar to those in dynamite sticks, the principle being that by igniting magnesium inserted into the wick of the candle, the paraffin vapour given off when a candle is blown out can be set ...
how is lithium, a monoatomic element, such an effective treatment for bipolar disorder? how does it work and how was its function discovered?	To address the simple "monoatomic element" part: Lithium as medicine is in the form of charged lithium ions rather than stable atoms. Swallowing a chunk of metallic lithium would not be an effective medicine. Usually lithium carbonate is the form of the medicine Lithium ions have the same charge as the other alkali me...	[ "Inositol monophosphatase has historically been believed to be a direct target of lithium, the primary treatment for bipolar disorder. It is thought that lithium acts according to the inositol depletion hypothesis: lithium produces its therapeutic effect by inhibiting IMPase and therefore decreasing levels of myo-i...
- why do soap operas look different on tv compared to all other shows?	they are shot in higher frames, so it looks more fluid, and that makes it look like you are there watching them shoot a scene instead of watching a scene in a movie/tv show	[ "BULLET::::- The visual quality of a soap opera is usually lower than prime time U.S. television drama series due to the lower budgets and quicker production times. This is also because soap operas are recorded on videotape using a multi-camera setup, unlike primetime productions that are usually shot on film and f...
Does the speed of light remain constant as it falls from the event horizon to the simgularity of a black hole; or does the speed increase beyond C as its is pulled nearer?	There's really no way to answer this question unambiguously. On the one hand, you can say that in your frame (and let's assume you are a fixed observer very far from the black hole), the coordinate speed of the light signal asymptotes to 0 as it approaches the event horizon of the black hole. On the other hand, if you ...	[ "BULLET::::- At the event horizon, formula_30 the speed of light shining outward away from the center of black hole is formula_31 It can not escape from the event horizon. Instead, it gets stuck at the event horizon. Since light moves faster than all others, matter can only move inward at the event horizon. Everyth...
how does donating to a charity save you money on your taxes?	Only a portion, a very small portion. Someone will correct me if I'm wrong but they subtract it from your taxable income.	[ "Like the home mortgage interest deduction, charitable giving receives preferential treatment under current tax law allowing individuals to deduct the donation, to certain charities, from taxable income. Someone paying a 25% income tax rate would receive $250 back from the government for a $1,000 donation. While th...
how do you weigh co2? what does a kg (or a million kg) of co2 do?	You dont have to weight something to know its mass. You can calculate the amount and mass of a gas if you know temperature, volume and pressure or the reaction that produced co2 and how much other products do you have.	[ "According to the World Bank's Carbon Finance Unit, 374 million metric tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (tCOe) were exchanged through projects in 2005, a 240% increase relative to 2004 (110 mtCOe) which was itself a 41% increase relative to 2003 (78 mtCOe).\n", "350 parts per million is what scientists, climat...
Does Earth have more luminosity than other planets?	"Since Earth is an “inner planet” from Mars’ perspective, the same way Venus and Mercury are inner planets for us, it never strays too far from the sun and goes through phases just like the moon and other inner planets. Curiosity will see Earth best during morning and evening twilight. At Mars current distance from Ear...	[ "The uncompressed density of terrestrial planets trends towards lower values as the distance from the Sun increases. The rocky minor planet Vesta orbiting outside of Mars is less dense than Mars still at, 3.4 g·cm.\n", "Planets and stars have radial density gradients from their lower density surfaces to their muc...
I found a decent amount of mercury the other day and had some questions.	I would advise you to make sure you are dealing with pure mercury metal, and not some strange mercury compounds. Many of the compounds are far more dangerous than the metal. That being said, mercury is not really that dangerous. In a well ventilated area or a fume hood, pour the old containers into the new ones. Do t...	[ "Red mercury was offered for sale throughout Europe and the Middle East by Russian businessmen, who found many buyers who would pay almost anything for the substance even though they had no idea what it was. A study for the \"Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists\" in 1997 has perhaps the best summary of the topic:\n",...
worker unions.	The company can do that. The problem is that all the workers are united in order to strong-arm the company into meeting their demands. The company can totally fire them all and hire new workers who aren't part of that union. However, for skilled trades, that means the entire staff needs to be trained , and al...	[ "Labor unions in the United States are organizations that represent workers in many industries recognized under US labor law. Their activity today centers on collective bargaining over wages, benefits, and working conditions for their membership, and on representing their members in disputes with management over vi...
What are the measurable neurological differences between a human with depression and a human without depression?	Generally, yes. What you're asking for is called a biomarker, or something measurable that indicates presence of a disease. There's a number of things that science has found, such as [FKBP5 expression](_URL_1_) or [5-HT2A receptor activity](_URL_0_) which can be associated with depression. Similarly, neuroimaging ...	[ "While there are theories that animals can experience depression it is important to keep in mind that human brains are much more complex than rat brains. Since the brains are different the way emotion is processed could also be different. These uncertainties make it difficult to determine if animals can experience ...
Why don't neutrons in neutron stars decay into protons and electrons like free neutrons?	There are protons and electrons inside the star but there is a limit. Once that limit is reached there are no more energy levels to accomdate the decay products due to the Pauli exclusion principle. With no where for the products to exist the decay cant occur. Hopefully someone else can give you some better details b...	[ "Neutron stars form as remnants of massive stars after a supernova event. Unlike their progenitor star, neutron stars do not consist of a gaseous plasma. Rather, the intense gravitational attraction of the compact mass overcomes the electron degeneracy pressure and causes electron capture to occur within the star. ...
- why are animals more attracted to their own species than to others?	Because otherwise they wouldn't be able to breed? Different species of animals can't breed with one another. If humans were attracted to cows, you would never see a cow-human hybrid, or a baby cow, or a baby human. Different amount of chromosomes prevent inter-species breeding.	[ "Ultimately, animals were created solely for the purpose of reproduction, therefore, choosing distinctive attractive qualities is the most important factor in their quest for choosing the perfect mate. Attraction among animals is based mostly on what will give the females the best chance of having the most and heal...
why exactly is bouncing your legs when sitting bad?	I've never heard it being bad and can't think of a reason it would be. I would bet people have said that because it's disruptive to them, and they're hoping to scare you into stopping. I know I do it, and now and then, people will bring to my attention that I'm shaking the table in class.	[ "Nash has a medical condition called spondylolisthesis, which causes muscle tightness and back pain. Due to the condition, when he is not playing in basketball games, he lies on his back rather than sitting on the bench to keep his muscles from stiffening.\n", "Active or dynamic sitting is the opposite of static ...
As an historian are you allowed into museum archives for personal research?	The policy will vary by institution and country - in my experience, many if not most places are willing to allow any researcher access. Some places are more concerned about credentials though - they might want confirmation that you are affiliated to a university, for instance, or to know exactly what you want to look a...	[ "The study of archives includes the training of archivists, librarians specially trained to maintain and build archives of records intended for historical preservation. Special issues include physical preservation, conservation and restoration of materials and mass deacidification; specialist catalogs; solo work; a...
what stops a restaurant from noting down my credit card info and using it?	Only the law stops them. It's totally feasible in practical terms, but the legal consequences, as well as the impact on their business, are deterrents. You can protect yourself by being careful where you use your card and by keeping an eye on your credit card statements.	[ "Clark describes one study where a researcher telephoned fifty restaurants around Palo Alto, California, asking without embellishment the question \"Do you accept credit cards?\" The three forms of reply given were:\n", "The restaurant's finances worsen when American Express will not let its customers use its car...
how is stepping on the flag illegal if any form of non-violent protest is allowed by the constitution?	It isn't illegal. laws against flag desecration were found unconstitutional by the supreme court. And the constitution does not allow for "any non-violent protest".	[ "The \"Street\" court did not consider whether a prohibition on burning the flag, without also prohibiting words against the flag, would be constitutional or unconstitutional. This question would remain open until 1989, when in \"Texas v. Johnson\", 491 U.S. 397, the Court invalidated a flag-burning statute.\n", ...
How much would it cost me to keep my house 1 degree warmer?	If you really want to know, then you need a proper thermal rating assessment of your property and software like this: _URL_0_ I would suggest that the most effective way (and accurate) would be to take readings of your meter for a sample period, and then turn the heat up 1 degree and then compare over the same length...	[ "The most durable time you will ever have outside during the hottest summer month is , with peak temperatures above . The average outside temperature during the coldest winter month is , with lowest temperatures below .\n", "A home with simple equipment then cost 18,800 DM, which was relatively expensive compared...
Question about the size of the human brain through its evolution	Changes in diet may have allowed Homo ancestors go increase their brain size. Morphological evidence for cooked food and fire use date back 1.8 mya, physical evidence dates back about 350,000 to 700,000 years ago. Humans evolved about 200,000 years ago. So the selection for larger brains has been going on well before...	[ "\"The increase of brain size relative to body size—encephalization—is intimately linked with human evolution. However, two genetically different evolutionary lineages, Neanderthals and modern humans, have produced similarly large-brained human species. Thus, understanding human brain evolution should include resea...
What policies did Abraham Lincoln and the Congress throughout the Civil War push that were not related to slavery or the war itself?	Well, it's impossible to know what kind of President Lincoln would have been without the ACW, as the event (or threat of it) informed the politics of the Republican Party's formation, the previous two Presidential nomination cycles, and the vast majority of Lincoln's presidency. We have an understanding of Lincoln's po...	[ "Abraham Lincoln's and the Republicans' political platform in 1860 was to stop slavery's expansion. Historian James McPherson says that in a famous speech in 1858, Lincoln said American republicanism can be purified by restricting the further expansion of slavery as the first step to putting it on the road to 'ulti...
How does the cost of gasoline in gasoline burning cars correlate to the cost of electricity in electric cars?	There are four variables required to solve this: * The current price of gasoline * The current price for electricity * The fuel efficiency for each car in question. Generally, electric cars cost less per mile than gasoline-powered cars. There's a really [convenient PDF](_URL_0_) from the U.S. Dept. of Energy that le...	[ "The Edison Electric Institute (EEI) conducted an analysis that demonstrated that between January 1976 and February 2012 the real price for gasoline has been much more volatile than the real price of electricity in the United States. The analysis is based on a plug-in electric vehicle with an efficiency of 3.4 mile...
if after serving years in prison someone was found to be 100% innocent, why aren't they automatically given a large monetary compensation and support by the state?	I think the main reason is that this is an entirely new phenomenon - it wasn't until the advent of DNA testing that we can conclusively prove that someone was or was not at a certain location if there are no witnesses. The judiciary, like every other bureaucracy, is slow and resistant to change. We just haven't gotten ...	[ "In 2014 a study involving the Registry found that 4% of those sentenced to death in the US turned out to be innocent. This 4% error rate has been extrapolated by commentators to the 2.2 million people in prison in the United States, giving them a figure of 88,000 innocent people behind bars, few of which have acce...
those celebrates who earn $500k to $1 million per instagram post, who actually pays them? and how many posts a day are they allowed?	When you see a character in your favorite cartoon drink a soda that your mom buys at home. That's an advertisment. Now these people on really any creative sharing site may it be YouTube or insta. Have companies come to them because they have a big following like that cartoon we talked about. And when they can get alot ...	[ "On Instagram alone a profile with three-to-seven million followers can charge as much as $75,000 per endorsement, even a profile with 50,000 to 500,000 followers might make $1000 for a post on Instagram. At the top end of the digital celebrity pay scale some posts can earn around $300,000, especially when Instagra...
why do they say not to mix grape and grain when drinking alcohol?	It's just a silly superstition. People say all sorts of things about mixing drinks & blaming it for hangovers. The reality is that drinking a lot of alcohol leads to hangovers. Period. Drinking whiskey after beer isn't the cause of hangovers. Hangovers are caused by getting drunk on beer & thinking it's a good ...	[ "The unfermented grape must is fortified with brandy until the solution reaches an alcohol level of 16%–22%. The resulting wine is left with a high level of residual sugar because most strains of yeast cannot reproduce at such a high alcohol level.\n", "Although alcohol is permitted in Judaism, grape juice is som...
Has there ever been anything in our culture that has been on the same or close too fandom as Beatlemania? (x-Post from beatles)	Elvis. How many Beatles impersonators and look-alike contests and dolls and statues and paintings and... do you see? I would argue that Elvis was actually a larger phenomenon over a longer period of time. Today kids say "who were the Beatles" but they know Elvis. In 1637, [Tulip mania](_URL_0_).	[ "Beatlemania was the intense fan frenzy accompanying the English rock band the Beatles in the 1960s. Their popularity grew in the United Kingdom throughout 1963, and by the end of the year the press had adopted the term \"Beatlemania\" to describe the scenes of adulation that attended the group's concert performanc...
how are we able to type fast without thinking about the key placement, yet probably wouldn't be able to recollect where the keys are without a keyboard	Muscle memory versus actual memorization. They are stored differently than regular learned memories. Therefore accessed differently. Which is why when you need a key you very seldom use you still look.	[ "The layout only has 30 keys so that you can type punctuation without changing keyboard layouts. The implementation is simple since you don’t have to press the shift key at the same time as your keystroke. It conserves keystrokes and also has a high ratio of hand alternation. It rarely requires the use of the same ...
Question about these photos of great grandfather during the Russian Civil War	That distinctive wrap-around jacket is the uniform of the Royal Flying Corps.They used to call it the "maternity jacket". There seems to be one "pip" on each shoulder, so he was a 2nd lieutenant when the pictures were taken. As to where they were taken, I doubt that most are in Archangel (usually written Arkhangelsk t...	[ "Sergei Ulagay (1875/1877 – April 29, 1944?) was a White Army general in the Russian Civil War. He was a veteran of the Russo-Japanese War and World War I. He was a recipient of the Order of St. George. He died in Marseille, France. He is buried at Sainte-Geneviève-des-Bois Russian Cemetery.\n", "Through his son ...
How did Wild West travelling shows influence and cultivate the mythology of the American West?	What does the Frontier myth mean? This section will draw from cultural historian Richard Slotkin's majestic trilogy on the creation of the Frontier myth. Please see sources below. The North American frontier has been a space of both fascination, hope and fears ever since the first European settler colonists arriv...	[ "The Wild West shows intended to celebrate American progress and technology by demonstrating the superiority of American history and society. The American West served as a formative characteristic in American exceptionalism. The frontier, according to Frederick Jackson Turner's famous thesis, was \"breaking the ave...
All I heard the day of the eclipse was NOT to look at the sun directly or you'll get permanent, noticeable eye damage. I believe that's hyperbolic, like saying smoking one cigarette will give you lung cancer. What is the likelihood of permanent noticeable eye damage?	You can get permanent eye damage from a single exposure to intense UV light, no doubt about it. (I got permanent damage to one retina by a short accidental look at a hollow-cathode lamp in a AAS spectrometer) Your analogy to cigarettes is plain wrong. Cancer is usually caused by probabilities and _cumulative_ DNA dama...	[ "BULLET::::- The BMJ a month after the eclipse reported only 14 cases of eye damage from improper viewing of the eclipse, a number lower than initially feared. In one of the most serious cases the patient had looked at the Sun without eye protection for twenty minutes, but overall the public health campaign had suc...
What was the status of Saint Pierre-Miquelon during the Nazi occupation of France?	I'm not sure what their status was during the war but I know it was "liberated" (I.e visited) by De Gaulle and the free French army towards the end of the war.	[ "Paris was occupied by the Germans during World War II. Many Allied citizens were interned, and Dolores (born in England and married to an American) was detained at the German internment camp at Vittel. The exact dates of her detention are unknown, and it is possible that Dolores did not spend her whole detention a...
why do school buses not have seat belts? can people sue the school district when collisions happen?	School buses don't have seat belts because of something called compartmentalization. If you'll notice all school buses (that I've seen) have high padded seats that are relatively close together. This way in the event of an accident, whoever is sitting in the seat gets thrown a short distance forward into a padded seat....	[ "A person involved in a car accident who was not using a seat belt may be liable for damages far greater than if they had been using a seat belt. However, when in court, most states protect motorists from having their damages reduced in a lawsuit due to the non-use of a seat belt, even if they were acting in violat...
what does it look like when a plant breathes?	How do we exchange Gases? We inhale, air is in our lungs, deep in the small air sacs called alveoli. These are thin walled and covered in blood vessels. CO2 and O2 diffuse to and from the inside of the gas sacs by crossing out of the capillary walls and the gas sacs walls, respectively. Then we exhale, and get a fresh ...	[ "As in blood circulation in animals, (gas) embolisms may form within one or more xylem vessels of a plant. If an air bubble forms, the upward flow of xylem water will stop because the pressure difference in the vessel cannot be transmitted. Once these embolisms are nucleated , the remaining water in the capillaries...
Did pre-capitalist nations have boom and bust cycles?	The obvious instance of this would be Malthusean cycles in which the population would go through a period of growth, spurred on by previous depopulation or some new agricultural technique, before hitting the limits of existing agricultural capacity and collapsing again under plagues, famines and so forth. This would mo...	[ "Capitalist countries began acknowledging the importance of knowledge regimes following the end of the Golden Age; this period was characterized by economic stagflation, eventually leading to inflation throughout the 1970s and 1980s. Economic bubbles and crises occur as a result of the processes that countries prev...
uv protection on sunglasses.	So the photons from light have energy. Glass has atoms and electrons with energy levels as well. The energy from the UVB photons is enough that they are absorbed. My professor said: "it's like going on a date. If you have money the girl goes with you. If not she says no. So when the photon has enough energy it is absor...	[ "Sunglasses provide more comfort and protection against bright light and often against ultraviolet (UV) light. To properly protect the eyes from the dangers of UV light, sunglasses should have UV-400 blocker to provide good coverage against the entire light spectrum that poses a danger. Photochromic lenses, which a...
Why do electromagnetic rail guns have an explosion when fired?	One of the early prototype rail guns used plasma as the conducting element between the rails. If this gun works the same way, the "explosion" you see is the plasma escaping the end of the barrel. Basically, rail guns work because electrical current in a magnetic field experiences a force proportional(?) to the curren...	[ "Railguns use two parallel metal rails connected to a power supply. When a conductive projectile is placed between the rails, the circuit is completed and a magnetic field is created down the rails up to the point of the projectile. This creates a force which pushes the projectile along the track, accelerating it t...
why some websites accept https connections and others don't	SSL/https needs to be specifically setup on every site that wants to use it. It is not an automatic feature. Part of the process is getting an certificate. A site administrator can make their own SSL certificates for free (called self signing), but your browser only trusts certificates signed by certain other sites. I...	[ "Historically, HTTPS connections were primarily used for payment transactions on the World Wide Web, e-mail and for sensitive transactions in corporate information systems. , HTTPS is used more often by web users than the original non-secure HTTP, primarily to protect page authenticity on all types of websites; sec...
when looking at my phone screen, why is the reflection of my face out of focus?	For the eye to focus on an object, the lens must change its shape. In a normally sighted person, a relaxed lens is focused at 20 ft and more. As an object is brought closer to the eye, the lens begins to bulge to bring it into focus (called accommodation) . The closer the object, the greater the bulge (the more work t...	[ "When looking at a picture, people's brains are constantly making decisions about what object they are looking at, where they need to move their eyes next, and what they find to be the most salient aspects of the input stimulus. As these images hit the back of the retina, these stimuli are converted from varying wa...
Regarding the way the muscles in your eyes behave, is looking at a distant horizon in a photograph the same as looking at distant horizon in real life?	No, they are different. You are focusing on the plane of the image in a photo (your eyes are turned inward / converging) and on the horizon in real life (eyes turned outward / diverging).	[ "BULLET::::- Accommodation – This is an oculomotor cue for depth perception. When we try to focus on distant objects, the ciliary muscles relax allowing the eye lens to flatten, making it thinner. The kinesthetic sensations of the contracting and relaxing ciliary muscles (intraocular muscles) is sent to the visual ...
It seems that all of the meteorites that have been carbon-dated are about 4.5-4.6 billion years old (dating to approximately the formation of the solar system). Potentially, could there be a meteorite older than that (from outside the solar system)?	Any extra-solar rocks that came flying by the solar system would just get flung out of the solar system again because their energy exceeds that needed to escape. In other words, since they originate outside of the solar system their velocity is, at minimum, the escape velocity (like how the minimum impact speed onto Ea...	[ "The oldest inclusions found in meteorites, thought to trace the first solid material to form in the pre-solar nebula, are 4568.2 million years old, which is one definition of the age of the Solar System. Studies of ancient meteorites reveal traces of stable daughter nuclei of short-lived isotopes, such as iron-60,...
Why can't humans identify other humans through seeing other body parts as easily as seeing their face?	Actually, there are extensions to the work on the fusiform gyrus (a brain region sometimes called the fusiform face area, but also argued it's a region for visual expertise) where humans identify other (unknown) humans by body regions. We're not great because we're not as tuned, but that doesn't mean we can't identif...	[ "Among human beings, the sense of sight is usually in charge of recognizing other members of the same species, with maybe the subconscious help of smell. In particular, the human brain has a disproportionate amount of processing power dedicated to finely analyze the features of a human face. This is why we are able...
wine pairings. how do chefs and restaurants know how to pair wines with certain foods?	A lot of really good restaurants have a sommelier, which is a fancy name for an adult who knows everything about wines. To do this they have to go to school, earn good grades and pass aallllll their tests regarding wine. They taste thousands of wine through a special routine, trying to find out what they taste like. ...	[ "Wine and food matching is the process of pairing food dishes with wine to enhance the dining experience. In many cultures, wine has had a long history of being a staple at the dinner table and in some ways both the winemaking and culinary traditions of a region will have evolved together over the years. Rather tha...
Is there any truth to the idea that men are more affected by common colds and the flu than women and is there any correlation to life span?	Actually, there [appears to be](_URL_1_) a strong association between higher levels of testosterone and a weaker immune response against influenza. Because testosterone is known to activate a number of genes involved in lipid biosynthesis that are correlated with decreased neutralizing antibody activity, this could exp...	[ "In the Christmas 2017 edition of The BMJ, a review of existing research found some evidence to indicate that men were more frequently hospitalized and had higher influenza-related death rates than women. The review also suggested that the underlying cause could be evolutionary hormonal gender-differences affecting...
What caused the fall of the Caliphate? Why have there been no attempts to recreate the title?	Just to help, which Caliphate are you referring to? The Umayyad Caliphate, Abbasid Caliphate, Fatimid Caliphate, etc? There wasn't one caliphate and often times there were two simultaneously, such as the Umayyads, who ruled mostly over Spain, and the Abbasids, who ruled mostly over traditional Arabia and the Levant. Wh...	[ "The abolition of the Caliphate was the abolishment the world's last widely recognized caliphate on 3 March 1924, decreed by the Grand National Assembly of Turkey as one of reforms following the replacement of the Ottoman Empire with the Republic of Turkey. Abdulmejid II was deposed as the last Ottoman Caliph and a...
why some credit card transactions require a billing address and some only require a zipcode?	CVV codes are not mandatory, it is up to the person/company as to whether or not they want to require it or not. In some cases their Merchant provider will offer cheaper rates on transaction when CVV is used, as it leads to less fraud however some retailers choose not to do that. Many merchants still refuse to includ...	[ "The Senate report identified \"data pass\", or the automatic transfer from the merchant after the transaction of the customer's credit card information. Information provided by the Federal Trade Commission and the National Association of Attorneys General, and information collected from telephone billing has found...
why do people touch their nose when saying something that makes them uncomfortable?	Protecting your face with your hands is a defense mechanism. It happens whether the danger is real or perceived.	[ "In Filipino slang, to \"have a nosebleed\" is to have serious difficulty conversing in English with a fluent or native English speaker. It can also refer to anxiety brought on by a stressful event such as an examination or a job interview.\n", "McGinley says in the Season 1 DVD bonus features that Dr. Cox's habi...
excluding lack of engine power, shouldn't a plane flying straight end up in space?	Airplanes fly because of their airfoils interacting with the atmosphere. The higher an airplane goes the less dense the atmosphere becomes and the less well its airfoil performs. Pilots (or autopilots) do continually compensate for all sorts of things. This includes changes in atmospheric pressure. Gravity is pretty ...	[ "In the simplest explanation, the FAA concluded that after a failure of one engine the plane had inadequate power to maintain altitude during a turn (insinuating they could not dump fuel fast enough to achieve a weight to power ratio that allowed level flight). After a few miles, eventually the plane flew into the ...
the difference between a nurse practitioner and an md?	About 100 grand...	[ "BULLET::::- Nurse practitioners – Most of these nurses obtain a minimum of a master's degree and a desired post grad certificate. They often perform roles similar to those of physicians and physician assistants. They can prescribe medications as independent or supplementary prescribers, although they are still leg...
Assuming we had (nuclear?) power plants producing electricity at 'near zero' cost, - what technology or process would we then use to product a liquid energy store?	Hydrogen is the easiest one to produce (but maybe not to use).	[ "Currently nuclear power provides approximately 15.7% of the world's electricity (in 2004) and is used to propel aircraft carriers, icebreakers and submarines (so far economics and fears in some ports have prevented the use of nuclear power in transport ships). All nuclear power plants use fission. No man-made fusi...
What happened to all the chariots?	Chariots were used mostly out of necessity, not because they were superior to riding on horseback. When horses were first domesticated, they simply weren't that big (look at [Przewalski's horse](_URL_0_) as an example; they were proportioned more like a donkey than a modern horse). They could pull someone in a chariot ...	[ "\"The Chariot\" was an all-terrain, amphibious tracked vehicle that the crew used for ground transport when they were on a planet. The Chariot existed in a dis-assembled state during flight, to be re-assembled once on the ground. The Chariot was actually an operational cannibalized version of a Thiokol Snowcat Spr...
why is north korea so secluded?	Ok. So here's the "non-loaded-rhetoric" version. The isolation in North Korea has two aspects. The ideological aspect, and the "actually useful" aspect. THe ideological aspect deals with the ruling political philosophy of the nation, Juche. Juche is, in simple terms, the idea of self-reliance. And not the "'murican" s...	[ "More than 80 percent of North Korea is mountainous with cultivation largely confined to coastal strips in the east and west. According to a United Nations Environmental Programme report in 2003, forest covers over 70 percent of the country, mostly on steep slopes. However, other studies have suggested that, due to...
why couldn't oil companies and gas stations keep gas prices artificially high during the recent period of over-production of oil?	To do so would require collusion between several companies, agreeing to fix prices. That's illegal in most countries. If you tried it only in countries where price fixing is legal, and I can't think of any, it would stick out like a sore thumb.	[ "During the significant oil price rise through 2007, a theme among several industry observers was that the price rise was only partially due to a limit in crude oil availability (peak oil). For example, an article by Jad Mouawad cited an unusual number of fires and other outages among U.S. refineries in the summer ...
how the fuck does fallout: new vegas' caravan game work?	SET UP 2 players, each with a deck of at least 30 cards. The deck cannot contain the same card from the same casino (can't have a pair of 7 of clubs from the Tops). The table is set up with 3 bases (caravan). Each base has a suit and a direction that dictates what card can be played on it. Suit - the suit...	[ "The game had a somewhat short development cycle of 18 months. \"New Vegas\" is similar to \"Fallout 3\", in that both games use the Gamebryo engine, yet it improved on the previous installment's source code, with some graphics rendering improvements and new art assets, while also reworking the engine to accommodat...
How was Ahmad Shah Massoud important in Soviet-Afghan War?	Ahmad Shah Massoud was fairly important to the war effort. While he did not have much clout in the majority of the country, he dominated the Tajik north, particularly the area around the Panjshir Valley. This area contained important supply lines for the Soviet forces, so the constant harassment by Massoud's forces act...	[ "Ahmad Shah Massoud (Dari Persian/Pashto: ; September 2, 1953September 9, 2001) was an Afghan politician and military commander. He was a powerful guerilla commander during the resistance against the Soviet occupation between 1979 and 1989. In the 1990s he led the government's military wing against rival militias a...
Why does hot chocolate stay in lumps if you don't make a thick chocolatey paste out if it beforehand?	It's the interaction between surface tension, the non-polar components of the powder and your mechanical ability to work the powder and water together. Hot chocolate powder is mixture of a sugar, powdered cocoa solids and sometimes powdered milk. The sugar and milk powder are somewhat easily dissolved/dispersed in the...	[ "A second type of capsule allows hot chocolate drinks to be made. Although chocolate powder very quickly turns to a thick impenetrable paste when wetted, the jetting technology ensures complete emptying of the capsule and thorough mixing.\n", "Chocolate is very sensitive to temperature and humidity. Ideal storage...
How did sculptors afford stone/marble?	Sculptors who work with marble either have a patron ([Pietro Bernini worked for a famous cardinal and the pope](_URL_0_)), worked as an apprentice ([Lorenzo Bartolini](_URL_1_) worked for François-Frédéric Lemot), or have some kind of financial or art background (Michelangelo was raised by a stonecutter and his father ...	[ "Marble, travertine, and onyx are at about 6 on the Mohs scale. Marble has been the preferred stone for sculptors in the European tradition ever since the time of classical Greece. It is available in a wide variety of colors, from white through pink and red to grey and black.\n", "BULLET::::- Marble is a fine, ea...
Was science fiction a common theme in literature and art before the 20th century?	there was no isaac asimov of the 1700s, although you might consider some of voltaire's writing science fantasy (micromégas, specifically). somnium (ca. 1630), by johannes kepler, is considered by asimov to be the first science fiction story, because the protagonist is transported to the moon by occult forces. it kin...	[ "Fiction that incorporates real science into works of fiction that are not science fiction has also been referred to as \"science in fiction.\" \"Frankenstein\" has been seen as an early precursor., but realistic portrayals of science in fiction were relatively rare throughout most of the twentieth century. An exam...
why are there holes in a road?	Water in the road freezes, expands, and melts. This creates racks in the road.	[ "A pothole is a depression in a road surface, usually asphalt pavement, where traffic has removed broken pieces of the pavement. It is usually the result of water in the underlying soil structure and traffic passing over the affected area. Water first weakens the underlying soil; traffic then fatigues and breaks th...
why do microwaves use standing waves?	Travelling wave might eliminate the hot/cold spot problem, but it means you've got to have a source and a drain; the wave has to travel throguh your food, then just keep going in the same direction until some surface absorbs it somehow. It's not very efficient. With a standing wave, you bounce the unabsorbed energy ba...	[ "Microwaves propagate solely by line of sight; because of the small refraction due to their short wavelength, the groundwave and ionospheric reflection (skywave or \"skip\" propagation) seen with lower frequency radio waves do not occur. Although in some cases they can penetrate building walls enough for useful rec...
how can a person become a dictator and control millions of other people by force?	They run the ruling party. Dictators don't rule in a vacuum and they don't oppress everyone, or they wouldn't last long. They have the support of a specific group of the population that permits this. Usually they stack the military with party supporters and play the existing racial tensions in the country to their...	[ "Dictators either inherit the position from a previous ruler, rise up the ranks in the military/party or seize power as entrepreneurs. Early texts called only the entrepreneurs tyrants, distinguishing them from \"bad kings\". Such tyrants may act as renters, rather than owners, of the state.\n", "A head of state ...
how do human crushes even happen?	You're thinking about it from the perspective of the people at the front, not the people at the back. When the people at the front reach a barrier, they stop. Seems simple. You would expect the people behind them to stop too. The people behind them will stop, and so will the people behind *them*. But then you get...	[ "Crushes often occur during religious pilgrimages and large entertainment events, as they tend to involve dense crowds, with people closely surrounded on all sides. Human stampedes and crushes also occur in episodes of panic (e.g. in response to a fire or explosion) as people try to get away.\n", "Crush Injury is...
what exactly happens when you get "out of breath"? what tells our brains that we are back "in breath"?	You might think that breathing is driven by oxygen demand, but paradoxically, it's driven by the need to get rid of carbon dioxide. There are chemical sensors in your brain that detect the amount of carbon dioxide in your blood. When it gets too high, it signals that you need to breathe more to get rid of it.	[ "When breathing is paused, carbon dioxide builds up in the bloodstream. Chemoreceptors in the blood stream note the high carbon dioxide levels. The brain is signaled to awaken the person, which clears the airway and allows breathing to resume. Breathing normally will restore oxygen levels and the person will fall a...
How "green" was the fertile crescent back in biblical times? Was it a land of lush green farmland like the US Midwest, or was it in fact not too different from modern day Iraq, which is a bit scrubby, but not exactly all desert.	Depends on what area you're referring to in the fertile crescent. Even in modern day Iraq there are areas that are remarkably lush, think more like Florida than the Midwest. In particular the region from Balad to Baghdad is still well irrigated and fertile. Additionally there was a great deal of swampland in Iraq be...	[ "The Green named after the Egyptian Sun god Wadjet (the Green One) is a design created by Stanley Davenport Adshead who was renowned for his exquisite craftsmanship and the Baroque building style. The Green is a road layout which forms the shape of our Sun rising above the horizon. It is surrounded by eleven houses...
how come adsl upload speeds are generally just a fraction of the download speed; whereas with cable or fiber optic internet they are usually the same?	It's by design; the "A" in ADSL stands for "asymmetric", meaning that it's been engineered so that bandwidth is heavily favored towards downloading. It's not really a matter of slowing down uploading, as it is speeding up downloading. Maybe an example will help. Let's say we have a DSL line that can handle 12 Mbps. S...	[ "Google Fiber provides an Internet connection speed of up to one gigabit per second (1,000 Mbit/s) for both download and upload, which is roughly 100 times faster access than what most Americans have. Google Fiber says its service allows for the download of a full movie in less than two minutes.\n", "BULLET::::- ...
What populations other than African Americans have risen from an utterly prejudiced social and legal status without migration?	There is actually a fairly common and interesting trans-historical tendency for ethnic change to proceed from the bottom up. For example, in Khmer texts from the ~10th century the Thai are described as hill people and good mercenaries. Fast forward a few centuries and they are ruling the kingdom, so to speak. There is ...	[ "Economically, African Americans have benefited from the advances made during the civil rights era, particularly among the educated, but not without the lingering effects of historical marginalisation when considered as a whole. The racial disparity in poverty rates has narrowed. The black middle class has grown su...
how can expired food grow mold/fungus on it if it's in a sealed container so any air carrying spores can't come into contact with it?	The air doesn't have to be "new." Mold spores can lay dormant for a significant amount of time before starting to grow. If there's mold growing inside a sealed container then the spores went in before it was sealed.	[ "Airborne spores can cause mold to grow in damp and unventilated areas, such as basements. Presence of mold can lead to \"respiratory symptoms, respiratory infections, allergic rhinitis and asthma\", as well as personal belongings being contaminated by mold.\n", "There are ways to prevent the fungus beetles from ...
why are some genes not "activated"?	You have lots of genes that do lots of different things that all of your cells don't need. Your nerve cells don't need to grow hair and your eyelid cells probably shouldn't be making stomach acid. As cells become specialized, they deactivate the genes they don't need so only the proteins from the ones they do need ge...	[ "Activated nuclear receptors attach to the DNA at receptor-specific hormone-responsive element (HRE) sequences, located in the promoter region of the genes activated by the hormone-receptor complex. Due to their enabling gene transcription, they are alternatively called inductors of gene expression. All hormones th...
how can your urine indicate that someone is dehydrated, but they don't feel thirsty?	If you are dehydrated your body tries to save as much water as possible so urination is less frequent and therefore the urine contains a higher level of waste products in it, measuring the concentration of these can indicate dehydration issues.	[ "A lack of water causes dehydration, which may result in lethargy, headaches, dizziness, confusion, and eventually death. Even mild dehydration reduces endurance and impairs concentration, which is dangerous in a survival situation where clear thinking is essential. Dark yellow or brown urine is a diagnostic indica...
How integral to the Manhattan project was Franklin Roosevelt?	Roosevelt's main contribution was providing the project with support. This was not at all a given: the idea of pushing for a full crash nuclear-weapon production project was not at all obvious (the fact that _no other nation_ attempted it is a nice sign of that). If Roosevelt had wavered in that support, or wavered in ...	[ "Groves appreciated the early British atomic research and the British scientists' contributions to the Manhattan Project, but stated that the United States would have succeeded without them. He also said that Churchill was \"the best friend the atomic bomb project had [as] he kept Roosevelt's interest up ... He jus...
How many Logs base 3 would we have to apply to Graham's number to bring it below 10?	The first of the 64 numbers used in constructing Graham's number, g1, is equal to 3\^\^\^\^3. The number of times you would have to take the log, base 3, of this number in order to bring it below 10 is far, far larger than the number of atoms in the observable universe. The number of times you would have to apply the b...	[ "An important property of base-10 logarithms, which makes them so useful in calculations, is that the logarithm of numbers greater than 1 that differ by a factor of a power of 10 all have the same fractional part. The fractional part is known as the mantissa. Thus log tables need only show the fractional part. Tabl...
why is malaysia "split in two". what are the differences between the two islands and how does it administrate itself?	Originally,back in 1948, Malaysia was called Malaya and it only consisted of the West part. However after making deals and trying to get Singapore, Brunei,Sarawak and North Borneo(all these countries generally had a Malay heritage as well) to join then and form a country called Malaysia. All those countries agreed with...	[ "The two halves were united for the first time with the formation of Malaysia in 1963. Modern Malaysia is a federal monarchy, consisting of 13 states (of which nine, known as the Malay States, are monarchical) and three federal territories. Of the Malay states, seven are sultanates (Johor, Kedah, Kelantan, Pahang, ...
Which country benefited the most from the creation of the railways?	I think a good case can be made for Canada, which in its modern form was essentially created by the Canadian Pacific Railway. The vast land area of Russia was similarly bound together by the Trans-Siberian Railway. Even the American West, though it had cultural and political ties to the eastern states, wasn't econo...	[ "In the early years, the railway was emblematic of the vast waves of European Immigration into the country, with many coming to work on and operate the railways, such as the Italian-Argentine Alfonso Covassi, the country's first engine driver, and also in the sense that the population boom experienced as a result o...
What are the differences between the modern Windows filesystem and the modern Unix filesystem? Where did those differences come from?	This is really an issue of engineering rather than science, so I'm not sure it's on-topic, but I'll try my best to answer anyway. The idea of a "logical file system" that you got from your class is fuzzy and conflates a bunch of different issues; it's not really a useful way of thinking about how operating systems wor...	[ "Unix had a drastically simplified file model compared to many contemporary operating systems: treating all kinds of files as simple byte arrays. The file system hierarchy contained machine services and devices (such as printers, terminals, or disk drives), providing a uniform interface, but at the expense of occas...
How do we know how much % of its fuel the sun has burned through?	i'm pretty sure it's an estimate based on the current mass of the star, it's current hydrogen to helium ratios, and how old we think it is based on carbon dating of the oldest meteorites on Earth. Plug in the numbers to the current model for stellar evolution (we have a very average sun, luckily) and you can see the wh...	[ "The Sun is about halfway through its main-sequence stage, during which nuclear fusion reactions in its core fuse hydrogen into helium. Each second, more than four million tonnes of matter are converted into energy within the Sun's core, producing neutrinos and solar radiation. At this rate, the Sun has so far conv...
how is it that the albino zebra still has visible lines?	_URL_0_ Leucism is a condition in animals characterized by reduced pigmentation. Unlike albinism, it is caused by a reduction in all types of skin pigment, not just melanin. (My degree is in zoology)	[ "Embryological evidence has shown that the zebra's background colour is dark and the white is an addition. The first subspecies to be described, the now-extinct quagga, had plain brown hindquarters. Various mutations of the zebra's pelage have occurred, from mostly white to mostly black. Rare albino zebras have bee...
How close to a perfect vacuum is space? How do satellite radiators work?	The answer to the first part of your question depends very heavily on what type of space you're talking about. In low-earth orbit the pressure is on the order of 10nPa (about 10 trillion times less than sea-level). Out in deep space it's much, much less than that, to the point where "pressure" becomes less-useful and i...	[ "In a vacuum or in outer space, there is no convective heat transfer, thus in these environments, radiation is the only factor governing heat flow between the heat sink and the environment. For a satellite in space, a 100 °C (373 Kelvin) surface facing the Sun will absorb a lot of radiant heat, because the Sun's su...
what's the point of the freedom of information act if you have to file a request, which can be denied?	The point is that government records are supposed to be accessible to the public unless there's a good reason to keep them secret, and the FOIA establishes the normal process for getting access to them. Without it, you'd be writing a letter to the Department of Agriculture asking for copies of files, and the most likel...	[ "The Law on Freedom of Information was signed into law by the State President in November 1998 and has been amended a number of times recently. Any person can ask for information in \"any technically feasible form\" without having to show a reason. The request can be oral or written. Bodies must respond in 15 days....
why is communism often associated with atheism?	Karl Marx, know for helping create the concept of communism basically said that communism starts with atheism. The communist leader of china in the 50's named Enlai said that we communists are atheists. While it isn't essential to be an atheist to be a communist and all atheists aren't communists, the belief system of ...	[ "Religious anarchism refers to a set of related anarchist ideologies that are inspired by the teachings of religions. While many anarchists have traditionally been sceptical of and opposed to organized religion, many different religions have served as inspiration for religious forms of anarchism, most notably Chris...

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