question stringlengths 3 301 | answer stringlengths 9 26.1k | context list |
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Are we born to like certain things? | I'd just like to add a couple things quickly. It would be incorrect to attribute our likes or preferences (for example) to either nature or nurture exclusively. Rather, they develop through complex interaction of the two.
Evolutionary psychologists will tell you that we developed our preferences over a long period of... | [
"We are not just born with these abilities. They can only be acquired during a lifetime. It can happen in many ways, as for example in fellowship and cooperation with people who are important for our development. Often it begins with our parents, then teachers and other inspiring and charismatic people. These are p... |
where is edward snowden and what will probably come of him? | Edward Snowden is living in Russia and is supported by the Russian government. As he has FSB bodyguards on him 24/7, it is unlikely that unless the Russians give him to the US voluntarily, or he can be tricked out of the country somehow -- *so the CIA or FBI can arrest him* -- he will likely be living in "exile" in Rus... | [
"BULLET::::- Edward Snowden (born 1983) was revealed in June 2013 as an NSA whistleblower, leaking classified government documents to \"The Guardian\" newspaper of Britain. Snowden spent part of his childhood growing up in Elizabeth City.\n",
"In October 2015, at the annual Politicon non-partisan political conven... |
A few questions about indentured servants in the early 18th century | If you're looking for a primary source, I highly recommend William Moraley's [*The Infortunate*](_URL_0_), an autobiography of an indentured servant from the early 18th century - the introduction by Susan Klepp and Billy Smith and should provide you with an excellent introduction to the subject and answer most of the q... | [
"Moreover, the origins and \"types\" of servants changed over time. Whereas indentured servants in late-17th and early-18th centuries migrated predominantly from England, Scotland, and Wales (Great Britain after 1707 Acts of Union), a majority of those in the mid-to-late 18th century consisted of (northern) Irish a... |
why do car companies design strange looking electric cars instead of following telsa's clear success of making cool looking cars people want. | The Prius is a hybrid, not an electric car. The Prius looks just like any other car to me. If people "don't want" them why is it one of the top selling cars? And Nissan has sold twice as many EV's as Tesla.
Some of it is function over form. The Leaf has weird headlights because they're designed to redirect air away fr... | [
"On January 7, 2014, an article in CNNMoney announced a partnership between AT&T and car manufacturers Audi and Tesla. AT&T head of emerging devices, Glenn Lurie, told CNNMoney that these advancements reflect a major step forward in converting cars form mindless machines to intelligent gadgets. AT&T says everything... |
Does general relativity really affect GPS? | Yes. Very much so. Three things to consider;
1. Because of their altitude (lower gravitational field) their clocks tick faster than clocks here by about 45 microseconds per day. This needs to be corrected for.
2. Because of their speeds their clocks tick slower than clocks on the ground by about 7 microseconds per d... | [
"Although the Global Positioning System (GPS) is not designed as a test of fundamental physics, it must account for the gravitational redshift in its timing system, and physicists have analyzed timing data from the GPS to confirm other tests. When the first satellite was launched, some engineers resisted the predic... |
[Biology] What causes some people to be more prone to headaches than others? | There are a lot of different types of headaches, and like almost every trait, both genetic background and environment play in role. It's also a hard question, because some of the most common types of headache, including migraines, are not perfectly understood yet.
For example, there is a heritable component to frequen... | [
"Like other types of pain, headaches can serve as warning signals of more serious disorders. This is particularly true for headaches caused by inflammation, including those related to meningitis as well as those resulting from diseases of the sinuses, spine, neck, ears, and teeth.\n",
"A headache-prone CNS may ha... |
how much can our life choices change our dna and how much of that could get transferred to our children? | Your DNA is changed by random mutations, not by any actions of yours. Any injuries that remove a sense wil not be passed on. Any abilities that you acquire will not be passed on. [Lamarckism](_URL_0_) was the disproven hypothesis that this occurs. | [
"In the specifically protein coding regions of the human genome, it is estimated that there are about 0.35 mutations that would change the protein sequence between parent/child generations (less than one mutated protein per generation).\n",
"More and more people are getting their DNA sequenced. But the use of gen... |
In understanding language, does hearing an utterance and reading a text work differently in the brain? | It's a bit more complicated than yyzed76 makes it out to be but we do build the same sort of representations to represent concepts transmitted via language regardless of the channel used. However, there might be slight differences due to the loss of intonation, emphasis, etc for a particular utterance - so what is tran... | [
"When reading aloud, people must decode written language to decipher its pronunciation. This processing takes place in Broca's area. The reader might use previous knowledge of a word in order to correctly vocalize it, or the reader might use knowledge of systematic letter combinations, which represent corresponding... |
What makes the International Space Station or any other object stay in a precise planetary orbit? | The ISS is very much not in a stable orbit and it is boosted back up every month or so by burning several thousand pounds of fuel per year. The primary cause of the orbital decay is atmospheric drag from Earth's outer atmosphere. The atmospheric drag varies due to density changes caused by the Sun.
Here's a graph of t... | [
"The purpose of maintaining an orbital outpost varies depending on the program. Space stations have most often been launched for scientific purposes, but military launches have also occurred. , one fully operational and permanently inhabited space station is in low Earth orbit: the International Space Station (ISS)... |
what makes each cell in a fetus differentiate into different types of cells? | You've asked two questions here, I'll answer the second (and easier) one first.
Gametes (sperm and eggs) are created by a process called meiosis. Basically a cell divides and, instead of getting its DNA being copied to each daughter cell, the DNA is instead split in two so that each daughter gets half. So for humans... | [
"Most distinct cell types arise from a single totipotent cell, called a zygote, that differentiates into hundreds of different cell types during the course of development. Differentiation of cells is driven by different environmental cues (such as cell–cell interaction) and intrinsic differences (such as those caus... |
Does any organism's hair, other than humans, go white with age? | Sure, [gorillas](_URL_0_) and [golden retrievers](_URL_1_) both have fur that lightens as they age | [
"Humans are the only primate species that have undergone significant hair loss. The hairlessness of humans compared to related species may be due to loss of functionality in the pseudogene KRTHAP1 (which helps produce keratin) Although the researchers dated the mutation to 240 000 ya, both the Altai Neandertal and ... |
What was a soldier's life expectancy during the Thirty Years War? | Pretty terrible. The first data that springs to mind, Geoffrey Parker provides in *The Military Revolution,* where he catalogues the astounding wastage of men in the Swedish parish of Bygdea. In 1620, there were about 400 men of military age, of whom 36 were drafted to fight in Germany. In 1639, there were still 36 ... | [
"Analysis of death records from the Hundred Days in 1918 suggests that around 60% of those who died were conscripts, and that despite the recent lowering of the age limit for service on the Western Front to eighteen-and-a-half, the average age was still in the mid-twenties. Although incompleteness of records makes ... |
What's the reasoning for PEMDAS? | Turns out that polynomials are best thought of as sums of terms with powers of the variable with their coefficients. That is, oftentimes, representing a polynomial like x^(2)+3x+2 is much better than (x+1)(x+2). The easiest way to do this is with PEMDAS. | [
"SPMD usually refers to message passing programming on distributed memory computer architectures. A distributed memory computer consists of a collection of independent computers, called nodes. Each node starts its own program and communicates with other nodes by sending and receiving messages, calling send/receive ... |
how do hand warmers stay warm for up to 10 hours? what makes them stay at a temperature perfect to warm me, but not burn my hands? | It lasts 10 hours because it is a very slow chemical reaction. The temperature is not exactly a delicate balance. Anywhere from 70 - 110 Fahrenheit will warm without cause any harm. So staying in a 40 degree temperate range is not that hard. | [
"Hand warmers are small (mostly disposable) packets which are held in the hand and produce heat on demand to warm cold hands. They are commonly used in outdoor activities. Other types of warmers are available to provide soothing heat for muscular or joint aches.\n",
"When the fingers are exposed to cold, vasocons... |
how does something like google maps work on the software side? what kind of software is used to make it interactive like it is? | Most interactive websites use JavaScript for the interactive code. This is because JavaScript is supported in all browsers and have the ability to interact with the browser and website elements in a way that other browser elements like Flash and Java can not. There are already similar open source applications to Google... | [
"Software maps can express and combine information about software development, software quality, and system dynamics by mapping that information onto visual variables of the tree map elements such as footprint size, height, color or texture. They can systematically be specified, automatically generated, and organiz... |
I've never been able to comprehend the concept of faster than light travel and its impacts. Help? | It's not about "time particles" it's the fact that rulers and clocks **aren't** absolute measurement devices. Two equal clocks, moving relative to each other, will appear to run at different rates. And two equal rulers moving relative to each other will appear to measure different lengths.
For more, [there's this famo... | [
"In 2018, the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency made public a 2010 report that surveyed multiple different approaches to faster-than-light travel. One physicist who reviewed the report explained, that, while the theories were legitimate, they did not represent \"something that's going to connect with engineering any... |
if the speed of an object is relative to another object, then why can't matter travel faster than the speed if light, but in relation to something else? | Velocities do not actually add up like you learned in high school/freshman physics. That is called Galilean relativity, and in the early 20th century it was found to be incorrect - velocity addition actually have a more complex formula, and they always add in a way that relative velocities do not surpass the speed of l... | [
"When an object is pushed in the direction of motion, it gains momentum and energy, but when the object is already traveling near the speed of light, it cannot move much faster, no matter how much energy it absorbs. Its momentum and energy continue to increase without bounds, whereas its speed approaches (but never... |
What was American religion like prior to the First Great Awakening? | The growth in the Baptist and Methodist Churches was a product of the Great Awakening, so they're not quite part of this question. As to the rest of it, there is much to say.
First and foremost, remember that nothing "replaced" the Anglican and Puritain faiths. The Episcopal Church (the name for American Anglicans aft... | [
"In the American colonies the First Great Awakening was a wave of religious enthusiasm among Protestants that swept the American colonies in the 1730s and 1740s, leaving a permanent impact on American religion. It resulted from powerful preaching that deeply affected listeners (already church members) with a deep s... |
Does irradiation of food for safety purposes affect nutritional content? | Not particularly. Ionizing radiation kills microorganisms by damaging macromolecules like DNA and proteins. We do not incorporate whole macromolecules from our food, and many of them would be quite harmful if we did. The digestion process disassembles these molecules into their components. Denaturing them (basically, c... | [
"Food irradiation is another notable biological engineering process to achieve food safety. Research into the potential utilization of ionizing irradiation for food preservation started in the 1940s as an extension of studies on the effect of radiation on living cells. The FDA approved usage of ionizing radiation o... |
What is the historical basis for having the dollar sign appear before the sum where units are standardized as appearing after the quantity? | If you write me a check like this 100.00$ then I can easily turn it into 1100.00$ before cashing it.
It is much harder to employ shenanigans with $100.00 | [
"Yet another explanation suggests that the dollar sign was formed from the capital letters U and S written or printed one on top of the other. This theory, popularized by novelist Ayn Rand in \"Atlas Shrugged\", does not consider the fact that the symbol was already in use before the formation of the United States.... |
does anything actually have any color? | Things do have a color, but in the end how we "see" it is based on how our human sight has developed. Let me explain.
Our sun emits radiation over an entire electromagnetic spectrum. The human eye has evolved to detect a very narrow band of that spectrum called visible light. Light behaves like a wave (sometimes), and... | [
"The spectrum does not contain all the colors that the human eyes and brain can distinguish. Unsaturated colors such as pink, or purple variations like magenta, for example, are absent because they can only be made from a mix of multiple wavelengths. Colors containing only one wavelength are also called pure colors... |
What do you think of Guns, Germs and Steel? | There's a reason it's used so frequently in undergraduate history courses- It's an entertaining introductory text that forces people to look at world history from a different vantage point. That being said, Diamond writes a rather oversimplified narrative that seemingly ignores the human element of history, instead por... | [
"Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies (previously titled Guns, Germs and Steel: A Short History of Everybody for the Last 13,000 Years) is a 1997 transdisciplinary non-fiction book by Jared Diamond, professor of geography and physiology at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). In 1998, \... |
How do we know that some sub-atomic particles respond differently to observation? | This actually isn't unique to subatomic particles. It's an effect called the "observer effect". Imagine heating up a beaker of metal (let's say iron for the fun of it). You're goal is to heat it to a couple hundred degrees C above the melting point. Once the sample is completely melted, how do we normally measure tempe... | [
"The positions of the particles are considered to be the hidden variables. The observer not only doesn't know the precise value of these variables of the quantum system considered, and cannot know them precisely because any measurement disturbs them. On the other hand, one (the observer) is defined not by the wave ... |
If you point your phone camera at an IR LED (like in a TV remote) it is visible but why does it show up as blue/purple rather than red? | The explanation has to do with how digital cameras try to determine the color of an object. Cameras usually use a sheet of silicon sensors to detect the intensity of incoming light. However all the intensity tells you is how much total light falls on a given pixel (weighted by how responsive the sensor is in that spect... | [
"The camera is mounted on a pivot, allowing for positioning. Focusing the camera is performed by rotating a ring around the lens. It comes with two LED lights on the front. A blue light turns on when the PS2 is on, indicating that it is ready to be used, while the red light flashes when there is insufficient light ... |
when looking at atoms through an electron scanning microscope, why are there no abundance of nitrogen/oxygen(air) atoms getting in the way? | As CommissarAJ says, SEMs typically have a vacuum chamber - whatever you're looking at is put inside, and then the air is pumped out. What little remains doesn't really matter, because the image is built up as a computer model by a beam that scans back and forth (hence the "S" in SEM) and the odd air molecule that's le... | [
"The high energy of the electrons leads to the electron beam interacting not only with the surface of a material, but forming a tear-drop interaction volume underneath the surface. While the spot size on the surface can be extremely low, the electrons will travel into the bulk and continue interacting with the samp... |
why does the length of music files differ from how long the file plays? | In streaming especially, media files come with not only the media content but also some metadata like Title, Artist, and Length. This is important because you can't estimate the length of a song you haven't finished downloading. Since this data isn't directly calculated from the actual length of the song, it can be wro... | [
"A side effect of the second session containing the music in compressed form is that the maximum length of music on a CDS disc is reduced, being approximately 70 minutes. The remaining space is use for the compressed audio (and the player software and other files though these are small by comparison).\n",
"This i... |
- how do video game servers work? | I'm going to assume you're talking about servers for typical FPS (First Person Shooter) games.
All the server is doing is acting as a "middle man" to ensure all of the players (clients) know what all of the other players are doing, and to handle any reactions to those players actions, and again, ensuring all of the pl... | [
"A game server (also sometimes referred to as a host) is a server which is the authoritative source of events in a multiplayer video game. The server transmits enough data about its internal state to allow its connected clients to maintain their own accurate version of the game world for display to players. They al... |
How successful was African American participation in politics during the post-emancipation period? | This is a huge question, you're basically asking for an overview of the Reconstruction era. I don't have time to type it all out but since no one else seems to be answering I'll give the cop out answer. People can feel free to downvote it once if/when real answers show up.
Check out Eric Foner's *Reconstruction.* It a... | [
"The later 19th century was a high point in the history of civil rights for African Americans. Reconstruction for a time limited the power of former slaveholders in Texas. Leaders, such as George T. Ruby and Norris Wright Cuney, worked to establish educational and employment opportunities for blacks and organize bl... |
Do men who have homosexual intercourse have less or more likeliness of getting prostate cancer? | You may want to consider thinking beyond homosexual intercourse. I've witnessed more than enough straight men come throught the ER needing surgical removal of objects. | [
"In 2003, an Australian research team led by Graham Giles of The Cancer Council Australia found that males masturbating frequently had a lower probability to develop prostate cancer. Men who averaged five or more ejaculations weekly in their 20s had significantly lower risk. However they could not show a direct cau... |
Are there any accounts of a battle ending with only 1 or 2 men on both sides? | There was a battle called "The Battle of 300 Champions" which took place between Sparta and Argos in 546 BC. There were only three survivors: two on the Argive side and one on the Spartan side. The two Argives assumed they were victorious and left the field. The sole surviving Spartan claimed otherwise since he had rem... | [
"A battle pair is the smallest unit above the individual soldier, in the modern era chiefly employed by Baltic militaries. It consists of two soldiers with one soldier acting as senior of the two fighters (decided amongst the two or by their superior). A fireteam in turn consists of at least two fire and manoeuvre ... |
why do you get air bubbles all over your skin when you submerge yourself in a tub with hot water? | For the same reason bubbles form on the inside of your glass of soda.
Air can dissolve in liquids just like a solid like salt can. However, there's one big difference. With solids, warm water is generally able to dissolve more of a solid than cold water. With gases it's just the opposite. Cold water can dissolve more ... | [
"Bubbles on top of the water, less ambiguously known as a foam bath (see photo), can be obtained by adding a product containing foaming surfactants to water and temporarily aerating it by agitation (often merely by the fall of water filling the tub). The practice is popular for personal bathing because of the belie... |
A question about wind chill factor. | Some info here _URL_0_
I believe the wind chill is intended to represent the rate of heat loss. For instance, in your example, it is negative -5 outside, but the increased heat transfer due to wind speed causes your face to lose heat at the same rate as though it were -20. | [
"Many formulas exist for wind chill because, unlike temperature, wind chill has no universally agreed upon standard definition or measurement. All the formulas attempt to qualitatively predict the effect of wind on the temperature humans \"perceive\". Weather services in different countries use standards unique to ... |
raspberry pi | It is basically a computer, including processor, memory and graphics processor in a single, very small, board.
To function properly, you have to add storage space (sd card) for operating system, software and data, and a power supply.
It can also benefit from a screen to display stuff and some sort of HID (Human Inter... | [
"The Raspberry Pi is a series of small single-board computers developed in the United Kingdom by the Raspberry Pi Foundation to promote teaching of basic computer science in schools and in developing countries. The original model became far more popular than anticipated, selling outside its target market for uses s... |
the contribution of eating meat and thusly derived amino acids to the evolution of human intelligence. | meat is a rich source of protein, but this isn't really what is considered important for human brain development.
the theory, as far as I understand it, claims that increased meat consumption allowed a much more efficient source of calories for human ancestor species and this calorie surplus is what really drove the ... | [
"Due to the variety of environments inhabited, physiologies of the humans and human ancestors alive during the Paleolithic over 2.8 million years, we can’t ascribe a single set diet to any species, regional or cultural group. Increasing amounts of animal protein is viewed by some scientists as essential to the evol... |
why are cold showers so uncomfortable compared to pools? | They're both equally unpleasant to me, but if this is the case for you, I think it's for the same reason it feels colder when wind is blowing. In a still medium (water, air), you feel cold at first, but over time the temperature of your body and its close environment starts to equalize, making you a little colder but a... | [
"Under many circumstances, temperatures approaching and exceeding would be completely intolerable and possibly fatal if exposed to long periods of time. Saunas overcome this problem by controlling the humidity. The hottest Finnish saunas have relatively low humidity levels in which steam is generated by pouring wat... |
Why does the UK, for its size, have the largest amount of universities near the top of this list that aren't American? | Number of reasons.
1. Language. English is the lingua franca, which means that it's very easy for an english speaking university to "pull" people from a HUGE pool. For example I'm Finnish and went to one of the 3 English universities listed there. Why not France? I don't speak French. A lot of the top universities glo... | [
"Considering the four systems together, about 38 per cent of the United Kingdom population has a university or college degree, which is the highest percentage in Europe, and among the highest percentages in the world. The United Kingdom trails only the United States in terms of representation on lists of top 100 un... |
When did Ukraine become culturally separate from Russia? | While it's certainly true that many Russian historians like to conceive of an unbroken line of Russianness characterizing Kievan Rus and stretching through various successors to the modern Russian Federation, such a reading is at best lazy and at worst dishonest. As Serhii Plokhy discusses at length in his book *The Or... | [
"The territory of modern Ukraine has been inhabited since 32,000 BC. During the Middle Ages, the area was a key centre of East Slavic culture, with the powerful state of Kievan Rus' forming the basis of Ukrainian identity. Following its fragmentation in the 13th century, the territory was contested, ruled and divid... |
Can viruses account for evolutionary "leaps"? | > 2) If this is possible, could a genetically engineerd virus be used to exterminate certain handicaps, i.e., would it be possible to create a specific DNA change using a virus?
Phage (viruses that infect bacteria) have been used to engineer specific DNA changes in bacteria for a while. See this description of [phage... | [
"Viral evolution is a subfield of evolutionary biology and virology that is specifically concerned with the evolution of viruses. Viruses have short generation times and many, in particular RNA viruses, have relatively high mutation rates (on the order of one point mutation or more per genome per round of replicati... |
how are synthesized sounds created, like those in today's music? | The concept was based off of speaker vibrations and the study of sound as a wavelength.
If you look at a large speaker, you'll see it moving up and down, which is how it creates sound. Every possible sound has a vibration speed and wavelength, so speakers wiggle up and down like that to produce the vibration and wa... | [
"Sound synthesis can be used to mimic acoustic sound sources. Generally, a sound that does not change over time includes a fundamental partial or harmonic, and any number of partials. Synthesis may attempt to mimic the amplitude and pitch of the partials in an acoustic sound source.\n",
"Audio synthesis is the el... |
what would be the immediate result of the u.s. declaring an end to its support of israel? | Israel would be fine.
First, let's be clear: Israel has been winning wars since its inception, with or without outside help. It has a powerful, well-trained military with a strong and well funded military industry to back it up which is more than I can say for it's neighbors.
Second, with whom would they go to war? S... | [
"The United States responded to the announcement by rebuking Israel for taking measures that were 'counter-productive' to the two-state solution in peace talks. The expropriation was also condemned by the United Nations, the United Kingdom Egypt, France, Spain, Russia, European Union, Turkey, Norway, Japan and Amne... |
purpose of tv commercials and other advertisements having the background speaker's voice sound unnatural and sillier? | It makes it more noticeable. If the voice is weird it's harder to tune out, so people often retain more information from it. | [
"In 1956, when Woodweev Blinds needed someone to provide a voice for their radio commercials, Naylor was \"co-opted\" into the role – reportedly because his voice made him sound like \"a nice family sort of fellow\". This led to a two-year stint as the radio presenter of the company's program on radio station 3AK. ... |
How accurate is the television series Downton Abbey's portrayal of the Edwardian/Pre-World War I era? | It's a highly romanticized portrayal. Popular history broadcaster A. N. Wilson [trashed the show's idealistic portrayal of country life](_URL_1_) on BBC 4's _Today_:
> We all know that during the years before and after the First World War, life was miserable for most people and we did need a re-ordering of society.... | [
"The second series of the British historical period drama television series \"Downton Abbey\" aired from 18 September 2011 to 6 November 2011, comprising a total of 8 episodes and one Christmas Special episode aired on 25 December 2011. It was broadcast in the United Kingdom on ITV, and in the United States on PBS,... |
how can plant seeds be stored for weeks and grow and be “alive” and have a life? | Plants seeds are so tough that they are capable of dormancy. It's an evolved response because seeds are incapable of choosing where they fall - if they land on a piece of rock they can't root in, then trying to grow would result in failure and death. Instead, the seeds are capable of sensing things like water content a... | [
"The seeds are dispersed short distances by wind, but can travel longer distances by water, animals, and people. The vast majority of seeds (95%) are found in the top of the soil within a few meters of the parent plant. Seeds may stay alive in the seed bank for more than five years.\n",
"The seeds maintain their ... |
waste management | In the United States, there are two major processes depending on where you live, I will cover both.
**Homes with sewage systems**: When you flush a toilet the waste is pushed down the pipes in your house and into the neighborhood sewage pipes. From there it makes its way to a sewage treatment plant, helped along by pu... | [
"The waste management hierarchy indicates an order of preference for action to reduce and manage waste, and is usually presented diagrammatically in the form of a pyramid. The hierarchy captures the progression of a material or product through successive stages of waste management, and represents the latter part of... |
In 1996, the nintendo 64 was released and was '64' bit. The dreamcast which followed was billed as 128 bit. Why did it take so long for 64 bit home PCs to arrive and what's different between a 64 bit PC and a 128 bit dreamcast? | "128 bits" in consoles was just marketing. The CPUs were not 128bit like the N64 was 64 bit. The memory bus might have been 128 bit but that is completely unrelated to how many bits the CPU operates with internally. A 128bit memory bus is basically just having a wider "highway" into the CPU, not changing anything insid... | [
"Released June 23, 1996, The Nintendo 64, commonly called the N64, and codenamed Ultra 64, was Nintendo's third home video game console for the international market. It was released with three launch games in Japan (\"Super Mario 64\", \"Pilotwings 64\" and \"Saikyo Habu Shogi\") and two in North America (\"Super M... |
Why is it that when we look at bright objects we see extra artifacts surrounding it, such as vertical lines of light? | The bright lines in that particular picture look like [CCD smear](_URL_0_), an artifact caused by a certain type of image sensor.
For the vertical lines that you see with your own eyes, do they get more pronounced (brighter, longer, or larger) when you squint? If so, I think it may be [the phenomenon described here](_... | [
"In the real world, objects and surfaces are visible due to the fact that they are reflecting light. This reflected light then illuminates other objects in turn. From that simple observation, two principles follow.\n",
"Variations in surface texture directly influence the level of specular reflection. Objects wit... |
Discussion thread: Promising "FTL neutrino" explanation published yesterday. | I am 99.7% certain that the theorist (Contaldi) has the experimental details incorrect. He states:
> Due to both receiver and atmospheric transmission effects it is still not possible to use the GPS signal received at the two ends of the baseline as synchronous UTC markers with the required ns precision. To counter ... | [
"The novel explores one possible outcome of the solar neutrino problem, that was unsolved when Clarke wrote the work and has since been explained. There seemed to be a lack of neutrinos reaching the Earth from the Sun, because scientists were only looking for one particular state of the neutrino particle.\n",
"Fu... |
How big could a spinning space station reasonably get? | As it turns out, gravity inside a hollow sphere or annulus cancels itself out, so no, it would not be an issue.
Acceleration due to rotation is linear with radius (assuming fixed angular velocity) so artificial gravity at 1/2 distance would be 1/2 the artificial gravity at full distance. | [
"Both scientists and science fiction writers have thought about the concept of a rotating wheel space station since the beginning of the 20th century. Konstantin Tsiolkovsky wrote about using rotation to create an artificial gravity in space in 1903. Herman Potočnik introduced a spinning wheel station with a 30-met... |
what laws are actually broken when a parent bribes someone to get their kid into a prestigious school? | The main thing here was that the company that they were paying to help get their kids into better colleges was illegally posing as a charity, so that the parents appeared to be donating to charity and getting tax writeoffs at the same time that they were cheating to get their kids into a prestigious school. That's the... | [
"In practice, a student can usually be subject to permanent exclusion for a total of five disciplinary breaches, for which the student does not have to receive formal warnings. Depending on his or her offence, a child can be excluded from the school system within any range of time after his or her misdeed. Though t... |
Is longevity of use a recurring event with military firearms and equipment before the 20th Century. | Forgive me kerri; alas! But to answer this question, I must beg that it belies an assumption - ie, that the most important thing in warfare is the quality of your equipment.
Surely it is so that equipment helps the soldier to fight, and some of those things (the jump boot) are marvelously well designed now. But Armie... | [
"As happens, the Army's men often had the weapons to fight the \"last\" war by the time of the following conflict. Most of the 19th century weapons were technologically obsolete at their introduction or within five years, and despite the apparently exhaustive testing many inadequate weapons were issued.\n",
"This... |
Question about Nazi nerve gas. | most likely they were referring to [Zyklon B](_URL_0_) - it was a cyanide based pesticide that was used to gas large groups of people inside concentration camps like Auschwitz-Birkenau, Majdanek, and Sachsenhausen. some numbers put the casualty count in these camps due to Zyklon B up to 1 or 1.2 million deaths.
It was... | [
"In May 1937, he joined the Nazi Party (NSDAP). On 7 September 1939 he and Henry agreed with the Army Ordnance Hörlein the production of the gas Tabun, an extremely toxic nerve agent. More than 100 prisoners of war were used during construction of the designated poison gas factory in Dyhernfurth. \n",
"Bauer cite... |
What is the oldest expression we still use in modern times? | A lot of enduring phrases are usually religious in origin simply because preaching in olden times was the main way to convey an idea. "A drop in the bucket" can be linked to Isaiah 40:15 (KJV) for example. Now if this became an everyday expression more recently or not is harder to prove, but the strong imagery is somet... | [
"The oldest known written uses of the word are in the book \"The Student\" (1750–1751), ii. 41, where it is called \"a word very much in vogue with the people of taste and fashion\", and in Ferdinando Killigrew's \"The Universal Jester\", subtitled \"a choice collection of many conceits ... bon-mots and humbugs\" f... |
what is so horrible about the "new" simpsons seasons? | When the Simpsons started out, they set out to mock and spoof old family television and movie cliches.
The show was quite subversive and rebellious for its time, with children casually swearing, the family worshiping Television, the show mocking authority figures, and generally turning moral lessons on their ear, and ... | [
"Some critics felt season 13 was an improvement over the previous Scully seasons. DVDDizzy rhetorically asked how the season \"stand[s] up for someone just looking to jump into a full, semi-recent year of episodes\", answering \"Pretty darn well\". It explained \"Nearly everything that makes \"The Simpsons\" what i... |
What is the mechanism by which a virus dies outside a host cell--and what happens to the RNA inside? | If a virus is ripped apart by soap, the genome will be exposed to extracellular nucleases that will chop it up really quickly.
Radiation inactivation, like with gamma or UV, will cause major genomic damage that may allow the virus to enter a cell, but never replicate to produce new viruses.
Fixing chemicals like for... | [
"Once inside the host's body, the virus will attach itself to a cell's surface through receptor-mediated endocytosis. This essentially means that the proteins and DNA material of the virus are ingested into the host cell. The viral RNA material will undergo several changes and processes inside the host's cell so th... |
How many friends do you need on Facebook to get a > 99% chance that at least one of your friends have birthday each day of the year? | This problem is identical to the [coupon collector's problem](_URL_2_). The "coupons" are the 365 possible birthdays. We are ignoring February 29 and we are assuming birthdays are uniformly distributed by day of the year. (There is a solution for nonuniform distributions, but it's bit more difficult to describe.) A "dr... | [
"It may well seem surprising that a group of just 23 individuals is required to reach a probability of 50% that two individuals in the group have the same birthday: this result is perhaps made more plausible by considering that the comparisons of birthday will actually be made between every possible pair of individ... |
why are dogs' noses wet? | There are several reasons, actually. The first, and most important, is that the chemo-receptors (the things that actually pick up smells) on a dog's nose are more functional when wet. Similarly, our tongues can't taste anything when they are dry (stick your tongue out, let it dry, put something salty on it). Same id... | [
"The wet nose of dogs is useful for the perception of direction. The sensitive cold receptors in the skin detect the place where the nose is cooled the most and this is the direction a particular smell that the animal just picked up comes from.\n",
"The most common types of canine ear infections are caused by mic... |
why do tanning oils (any oils?) make you tan/burn faster? | They work similar to how light works when burning things with a magnifying lens. It attracts, then refracts the light creating a more powerful beam and focusing the UV rays. You can get similar effects if you tan while wet from the pool or if you rub mineral oil on your body | [
"Leather can be oiled to improve its water resistance. This currying process after tanning supplements the natural oils remaining in the leather itself, which can be washed out through repeated exposure to water. Frequent oiling of leather, with mink oil, neatsfoot oil, or a similar material keeps it supple and imp... |
The advent of firearms largely made the bow and arrow obsolete, but also the heavy body armor that could defend against arrows. As infantry became increasingly unarmored, was there ever a resurgence of the bow and arrow before firearms became so advanced as to obsolete them entirely? | Others have linked to discussions on the shock value of firearms, but I specialize in Tudor and Stuart England, and can speak to the role of heavy armor during the time of transition from arrows to muskets in that respect. Heavy armor actually *did* stand a very good chance at stopping musket fire, particularly pistol ... | [
"The advent of firearms eventually rendered bows obsolete in warfare. Despite the high social status, ongoing utility, and widespread pleasure of archery, almost every culture that gained access to even early firearms used them widely, to the relative neglect of archery.\n",
"While bows remained in use long after... |
why are archers in movies instructed to fire all at once? | Well usually we see it in movies in the context of the first volley against a force moving towards the wall. In that case the commander can simply say 'on my mark' if they want the arrows to start only when the enemy forces are close enough to get a reasonable hit on with the arrows.
Also it's a lot more devastating t... | [
"BULLET::::- two-way shooting: two shooting lines and two sets of flags are set up. One shooting line and one set of flags is placed at one end of the range; the other shooting line and other set of flags is placed at the other end. The archers shoot from one shooting line towards one set of flags, walk to the flag... |
why is a budget surplus a good thing and a fiscal deficit bad? | Well a budget surplus simply means that the Government is making more money than it is spending. On the surface this is good because that's what you want to do. You, yourself would like a job that pays you more each month than your bills come to.
But a surplus or deficit on their own may or may not be a good things - ... | [
"In any given time period, the government’s budget can be either in deficit or in surplus. A deficit occurs when the government spends more than it taxes; and a surplus occurs when a government taxes more than it spends. Sectoral balances analysis shows that as a matter of accounting, government budget deficits add... |
When did it become common to have a calendar in your house? | It certainly was around in Rome, often for horoscopes and such. Allusions to them are recurrent throughout Roman literature, such as in the Cena Trimalchionis, by Petronius.
> Fragment 30 (translated by JP Sullivan):
> [In the house of Trimalchio on the walls there was a fixture which] displayed representations of t... | [
"A calendar house is a house that symbolically contains architectural elements in quantities that represent the respective numbers of days in a year, weeks in a year, months in a year and days in a week. For example, Avon Tyrrell House in Hampshire was built with 365 windows, 52 rooms, 12 chimneys, 4 wings and 7 ex... |
Without modern equipment, how did early civilizations build those wood and rope bridges that go across huge canyons? How did they get it to the other side to connect it? | First step: get somebody on both sides of the gap you want to bridge (which can be tricky).
Second step: Bring your bow, an arrow, some very light cord, and some heavier rope.
Third step: Tie the light cord to the arrow and shoot it across the gap.
Fourth step: Tie the heavier rope to the light cord.
Fifth step: Ge... | [
"Inca rope bridges also provided access across narrow valleys. A bridge across the Apurímac River, west of Cusco, spanned a distance of . Rope bridges had to be replaced about every two years: to this end, the communities around the river crossing were commanded into a \"mita\" for the construction of the new bridg... |
What problems existed before Matthew Perry's arrival that contributed to the Tokugawa fall? | Ok I hope I can answer your question having read the book by Jansen and many others.
Sorry this is all off the top of my head but if you pm later I will be able to send you some other good books to read about this topic.
I find it easier to split it into economic, social and political factors for this.
Economic: The... | [
"The Tokugawa did not eventually collapse simply because of intrinsic failures. Foreign intrusions helped to precipitate a complex political struggle between the \"bakufu\" and a coalition of its critics. The continuity of the anti-\"bakufu\" movement in the mid-19th century would finally bring down the Tokugawa. H... |
What is the practical and observable difference between mitosis and amitosis? | I'll jump in here real fast, but hopefully someone else will know more: In the early days of studying cell division, it wasn't clear whether most cells divided through mitosis or "amitosis." It's now clear that the vast majority of cell divisions take place through mitosis (in other words, with DNA replication and spin... | [
"In cell biology, mitosis () is a part of the cell cycle when replicated chromosomes are separated into two new nuclei. Cell division gives rise to genetically identical cells in which the number of chromosomes is maintained. In general, mitosis (division of the nucleus) is preceded by the S stage of interphase (du... |
Why does xenon an inert gas interact with flourine? | "Xenon reacts directly with fluorine because fluorine is a very powerful oxidizing agent (hence it gets reduced and it gains an electron from Xenon). Xenon has larger radii; therefore the electron attraction to the nucleus is weaker in comparison to the smaller noble gases. Fluorine on the other hand is very tiny and h... | [
"Liquid xenon is used in calorimeters to measure gamma rays, and as a detector of hypothetical weakly interacting massive particles, or WIMPs. When a WIMP collides with a xenon nucleus, theory predicts it will impart enough energy to cause ionization and scintillation. Liquid xenon is useful for these experiments b... |
How did the Norse treat people with dwarfism? | Dwarfs in norse mythology and people with dwarfism in norse society are not necessarily the same, nor would they have been treated the same. Dwarfs are often portrayed the same height as normal humans, but as ethereal creatures that either lived underground or lived in stones and possessed magical skills or abilities. ... | [
"After the Christianization of the Germanic peoples, tales of dwarfs continued to be told in the folklore of areas of Europe where Germanic languages were (and are) spoken. In the late legendary sagas, dwarfs demonstrate skill in healing as well as in smithing. In the early Norse sources, there is no mention of the... |
Why do Intel's next gen processors have lower clock-rate (~1.7GHz or ~1.9GHz) ? | I work in supercomputing and my first thought is, "Don't get caught up in clock speed comparisons." These newer processors have additional instruction sets that allow them to do more work per clock cycle.
Due to this benefit, newer processors do not need these insanely high clock speeds that people associate with spe... | [
"Older processors such as the Pentium 4-M, which use older versions of SpeedStep, have fewer clock-speed increments. SpeedStep technology is partly responsible for the reduced power consumption of Intel’s Pentium M processor, part of the Centrino brand.\n",
"Between 2001 and 2003, Intel and AMD made few changes t... |
Best books to understand how government *really* works and is constrained? | The thing is, I don't think this is really a history question; it's more of a political theory or political science question.
The interaction and interplay of rules and constraints, written and unwritten, legal and customary, that impact the behavior of individuals in government is one of the primary topics of study i... | [
"In recent editions, the book stipulates that groups have urged decentralization and citizen participation. It emphasizes an important need for individuals to exercise a greater degree of control over local services and facilities, and ask how much democracy really exists in the United States. The book states that ... |
why does my mouth feel more slimey and my breath smell significantly worse after waking up or working out as compared to throughout the rest of the day? | Well, to answer that question, we have to first go to one of the common causes of halitosis -- dry mouth. When your mouth is dry, bacteria have a field day. See, your saliva washes away and control bacteria, so when it's not there, bacteria thrive. And what do those bacteria do when left to themselves? Well, imagine sc... | [
"The intensity of bad breath may differ during the day, due to eating certain foods (such as garlic, onions, meat, fish, and cheese), smoking, and alcohol consumption. Since the mouth is exposed to less oxygen and is inactive during the night, the odor is usually worse upon awakening (\"morning breath\"). Bad breat... |
why isn't there displayport on new tvs in general and most tv's just have hdmi 1.4? | HDMI is the standard for TVs. No one is asking for or wanting displayport, so there is no reason to put it on. TVs use HDMI. | [
"Current models are vastly improved, and offer a cost-effective HDTV large-screen display. While still thicker than LCD and plasma flat panels, modern rear-projection TVs have a smaller footprint than their predecessors. The latest models are thin and light enough to be wall-mounted, although by this time the marke... |
i consumed 2100 net calories yesterday, how did i gain 4 pounds? | You didn't, but you did eat food and drink water which has weight. That stuff is still in your body until your piss/shit it out. Body weight naturally fluctuates a few pounds on a daily basis. | [
"Calories expended, however, changed little. Accordingly, Cutler posits that the 20 min average reduced time of food preparation has resulted in an average increase of 100 Cal per day per individual. The extra 100 Cal can largely account for a weight gain of 10-12 lb in the American population over the past 20 year... |
how are old movies so clear today? | If the original prints of the film are available, they can create movies in newer formats directly from these prints. Due to the method of filming used decades ago, they are not limited to pixels and have a "resolution" far higher than DVD and even Blu-Ray. So they aren't taking the VHS footage and using it to make DVD... | [
"Nostalgia for old Hollywood movies would be a theme of Donen's next film: \"Movie Movie\" (1978), produced by Lew Grade's ITC Entertainment and scripted by Larry Gelbart and Sheldon Keller. The film is actually two shorter films presented as an old fashioned double feature, complete with a fake movie trailer and a... |
Why do glasses get scratch marks after washing in a dishwasher? | Unlike bath or liquid dishwashing soap, a component of dish-washing powder is an abrasive compound. It's like sand eroding driftwood but at a less intense scale. The graininess is responsible for providing the friction that does the cleaning. Similar to a dentist's toothpaste, actually. | [
"Because the glass comes in direct contact with the marver, it must be kept exceptionally clean in order to prevent points of poor conduction or the transfer of debris into glass worked upon it. Metallic marvers are generally rubbed with steel wool and then wiped with rubbing alcohol to prevent rust.\n",
"When de... |
why does a small amount of urine come out when you put your dick in your pants after peeing? | The remaining pee in the penis gets squeezed out when you put it back in the underwear. This is why it’s good practice to squeeze the pee out from the base of the shaft. Squeeze twice though, otherwise you’re just playing. | [
"For men, because of the flexible and protruding nature of the penis, it is simple to control the direction of the urine stream. Many men urinate in a standing position although they could urinate sitting down or squatting.\n",
"Ultrasounds from a 2014 study, involving seven women who reported recurring massive f... |
why does blood pressure increase with age? | To control blood pressure the arteries are elastic. However they become stiff with age which means higher blood pressure. | [
"The rise of blood pressure is correlated to ageing. The arterial compliance - the amount of tension produced per stretch of arteries, decreases with age, and the stiffness of arteries increases with age. The structural change in blood vessels causes the elderly to be more susceptible to hypertension, which leads t... |
what exactly does a travel agent do? | They organize flight times, book hotels, and possibly contact entertainment venues like sky-diving companies, or scuba diving instructors, etc and make appointments for you. They might buy your Disneyworld tickets for you in advance.
So basically, they don't do much that can't be done for yourself online nowadays. T... | [
"The American Society of Travel Advisors (ASTA) is a trade association which was formed to represent and defend the business and regulatory public policy interests of travel intermediaries, including travel agencies (including traditional \"brick and mortar\" agencies, online portals, mega- and corporate agencies, ... |
Does exercising on an empty stomach train your body to burn fat not carbohydrates when normally exercising? | The basic concept behind this is a metabolic state called ketosis, which is a process in which the human body begins converting long-chain fatty acids into molecules called ketones. These molecules are then used by the body as an alternative source of energy.
Ketone bodies are only produced once the body runs out of g... | [
"Diet itself helps to increase calorie burning by boosting metabolism, a process further enhanced while gaining more lean muscle. An aerobic exercise program can burn fat and increase the metabolic rate.\n",
"Phillips maintains that aerobic exercise is more effective for fat loss when done first thing in the morn... |
If electrons move in a copper wire not by each electron travelling all the way, but by bumping into the one ahead and pushing it forward, how can electricity travel faster than the speed of sound of copper? | The electrons do not bump into one another, this is simply a convenient way to explain what is happening in simple terms to people new to the idea.
When a potential difference is applied to the ends of a wire it sets up an electric field all the way through. This field propagates through the wire at an extremely high... | [
"Therefore, in this wire the electrons are flowing at the rate of . At 60 Hz alternating current, this means that within half a cycle the electrons drift less than 0.2 μm. In other words, electrons flowing across the contact point in a switch will never actually leave the switch.\n",
"The 90° redirection of the w... |
Whys is sound quality over the phone still much worse than a sound recording taken on the same phone? | [Significant compression is applied over the phone.](_URL_1_) There is actually a long history of compression with speech, and today the compression can go as low as 700 bits/sec. If that number does not shock you, let me explain why it should.
Uncompressed 8-bit quantized speech requires 54.4 kbits/sec. This comes fr... | [
"A problem with recording a telephone conversation is that the recorded volume of the two speakers may be very different. A simple tap will have this problem. An in-ear microphone, while involving an additional distorting step by converting the electrical signal to sound and back again, in practice gives better-mat... |
what is the source behind christianity's hate of sodomy/anal sex? | This is an inaccurate use of the word hate on your part. Anything seen as a distraction from procreation was forbidden. Masturbation and homosexuality were equally scorned, if I recall correctly. This was in the old Testament, so not just Christianity. It would include Jusaism as well. | [
"This has precipitated crises in various Christian denominations, resulting from divergent construals of Christian ethical doctrines (see Homosexuality and Christianity), which in turn are associated with the interpretation of the Bible (exegesis and hermeneutics). Traditionally, Christian doctrine has categorized ... |
When did we refer to the Middle Ages as such? What is it the middle of? Eventually we will have a new middle age wouldn't we? | Yes. The middle ages are a construct of the renaissance. No one is sure when they start or stop, and they start or stop at different times in different places anyway.
Most historians dislike the term. | [
"BULLET::::- Middle Ages – Lasted from the 5th to the 15th century. It began with the collapse of the Western Roman Empire in 476 and is variously demarcated by historians as ending with the Fall of Constantinople in 1453, merging into the Renaissance and the Age of Discovery.\n",
"The term \"Late Middle Ages\" r... |
why does the top comment thread on every front page post consist of a chain of puns? |
The competition is fierce. On ten different occasions I've tried writing a pun in my comments, but as far as reaching the top -- no pun in ten did. | [
"Puns are a common source of humour in jokes and comedy shows. They are often used in the punch line of a joke, where they typically give a humorous meaning to a rather perplexing story. These are also known as feghoots. The following example comes from the movie \"\", though the punchline stems from far older Vaud... |
Anglo-Saxon England Books | This is pretty much [everything written up until recently](_URL_0_).
You'll have to hunt for the relevant sections, but its my go-to list for all AS stuff. | [
"Anglo-Saxon England is an annual peer-reviewed academic journal covering the study of various aspects of history, language, and culture in Anglo-Saxon England. It has been published since 1972 by Cambridge University Press and is available in print and digital form. Every volume is concluded with a bibliography gi... |
Admiral Yi Sun-sin is often portrayed as almost single handedly defeating Hideyoshi's invasion force. How true is this? Just how much did his command affect the outcome of the war? | Admiral Yi Sun-Sin was certainly a naval genius and a major factor in repelling the japanese invasion of Korea but he wasn't the only factor that led to a Japanese defeat.
First of all hideyoshi never went to Korea himself but rather dekgated the invasion to his generals. What was poor planning on bideyoshi's part how... | [
"After the battle, he kept his position, until the peace talks between Ming Dynasty and Toyotomi Hideyoshi began. Then he moved to Jeolla province, and from then on, Gwon Yul became the Dowonsu, the Commander-in-chief of Korean forces. He was briefly removed from office due to his harsh treatment of deserters, but ... |
- how do catalysts work without being consumed? | They lower how much energy is required for the reaction.
Lets say you're trying to get over a wall. It would take a lot of effort to try to climb over it. Now lets introduce a ladder. It would make getting over the wall easier without changing the end result. The ladder never changes throughout the action, but it stil... | [
"A catalyst is a substance that alters the rate of a chemical reaction but remains chemically unchanged afterwards. The catalyst increases the rate of the reaction by providing a different reaction mechanism to occur with a lower activation energy. In autocatalysis a reaction product is itself a catalyst for that r... |
Is there a standard distance for measuring decibels? | Out in the field, the measurement is often taken where the sound is going to be commonly perceived. Distance plays a big factor in sound, see the [inverse square law](_URL_1_).
But, a lot of equipment is measured in anechoic chambers which allows us to know how many decibels the actual piece of equipment generates wi... | [
"Since it is referenced to the watt, it is an absolute unit, used when measuring absolute power. By comparison, the decibel (dB) is a dimensionless unit, used for quantifying the ratio between two values, such as signal-to-noise ratio.\n",
"Probably the most common usage of \"decibels\" in reference to sound leve... |
Did germany have a plan to invade the US or they just hoped Japan was enough to invade the US ? | At no point in the war or before did either Germany or Japan in anything approaching a serious manner consider attempting a landing on the US mainland.
The Kriegsmarine was simply a broken force in so many ways, from design, to organization, to political leadership. It bounced between multiple concepts of operations ... | [
"Imperial German plans for the invasion of the United States were ordered by Germany's Kaiser Wilhelm II from 1897 to 1903. He intended not to conquer the US but only to reduce the country's influence. His planned invasion was supposed to force the US to bargain from a weak position and to sever its growing economi... |
why are interest rates for bank-funded credit (personal loans, credit cards, etc.) much higher than government bonds? | You're comparing the cost of someone else lending you money (and thus absorbing all the risk of you defaulting) with you lending someone else money. Naturally, the interest rate to borrow money is going to be higher than the interest rate you're going to get from privately lending someone else your money - everyone wa... | [
"The researcher found it intuitive that basic interest rate caps are most likely to bite at the lower end of the market, with interest rates charged by microfinance institutions generally higher than those by banks and this is driven by a higher cost of funds and higher relative overheads. Transaction costs make la... |
Why was Confucius named Confucius? | Confucius stems from the 16th century latinization of the Chinese honorific "孔夫子/Kong Fu Zi"
*Source: 'Catholicism and Confucianism: An intercultural and interreligious dialogue' by Peter Phan*
edit: also OP just a bit of a correction, in mandarin the philosophical school of Confucianism is "Ru Jia" not "Yu Jia". I... | [
"The name \"Confucius\" is a Latinized form of the Mandarin Chinese \"Kǒng Fūzǐ\" (, meaning \"Master Kǒng\"), and was coined in the late 16th century by the early Jesuit missionaries to China. Confucius's clan name was \"Kǒng\" (; Old Chinese: ), and his given name was \"Qiū\" (; OC: ). His \"capping name\", given... |
[Thanksgiving question] Who invented pie and why don't we honor them? | I believe the general consensus is that it was a Greek invention (Aristophanes mentions pastries in The Clouds, so 5th Century BC at least), but the pastry was used to carry and preserve the contents, rather than being designed to be one edible article. The convention of eating the crust came far later during late medi... | [
"It was not until the early nineteenth century that the recipes appeared in Canadian and American cookbooks or pumpkin pie became a common addition to the Thanksgiving dinner. The Pilgrims brought the pumpkin pie back to New England, while the English method of cooking the pumpkin took a different course. In the 19... |
How restricted was hunting by ordinary citizens in the Soviet Union? | People living in the countryside could legally own hunting rifles, particularly after the Civil War. It wasn't necessarily easy to get a permit and you basically had to prove that it was a necessary part of your work/livelihood. It was highly regulated, and there were times (right after the Revolution and later under S... | [
"Since the death of Joseph Stalin in 1953 the USSR saw a small wave of liberalisations for civilian gun ownership. Soviet civilians were allowed to purchase smoothbore hunting shotguns again, even without mandatory submission of hunting licenses. However, this lasted for not more than six years. The buyer again had... |
why is 0 plural? like 0 seconds or 0 apples. | It is only plural when referring to objects you can count discretely (eg. zero matchsticks). Zero does not pluralize a noun which can't be quantified (eg. zero tolerance, zero effort). Grammatically, *zero* is synonymous to *not any*, and since *any* refers to an arbitrary number of countable objects, we pluralize th... | [
"The number of apples is marked on the noun—\"apple\" singular number (one item) vs. \"apples\" plural number (more than one item)—on the demonstrative, \"that/those\", and on the verb, \"is/are\". In the second sentence, all this information is redundant, since quantity is already indicated by the numeral \"two\".... |
Based on the time periods and geography in the mythology around King Arthur, what type of sword could Excalibur have been if real? | Perhaps a variant of the Roman spatha. The spathas resembled a lengthened gladius, and increasingly supplanted the latter as more and more Franks, Saxons, Goths, etc were recruited in the Western portion of the Empire as auxiliaries and cavalry grew in prominence. In an account of the botched 1st century rebellion of a... | [
"There are a number of references to the legend of King Arthur, with ships named \"Excalibur\" appearing in the main series and the \"Crusade\" spin-off, and a character in \"A Late Delivery from Avalon\" claiming to posess the sword itself. Straczynski links the incident which sparked the Earth-Minbari war, in whi... |
when they find a fossilized piece of a skeleton, how do they determine what the rest of the animal looked like? | Sometimes scientists are fortunate enough to be able to base their reconstructions on complete skeletons, but most excavated skeletons have missing pieces. Fortunately, individuals of the same species, as well as those of closely related species, tend to be similar. This allows scientists to combine information from di... | [
"Apart from the specimens mentioned above, mostly consisting of rather complete skeletons preserved in large slabs, though not fully prepared from the rock matrix, several other fossils have been found. Together they allow for a good impression of what the animal looked like.\n",
"It is composed of fossilized bon... |
"Hannibal was recalled to Carthage when the Romans attacked it" - how exactly did they 'recall' him? | Carthage and Hannibal were in contact throughout the war. Hannibal sent his brother Mago back after Cannae to ask for money and reinforcements, both of which Carthage sent and Livy records that Hannibal received them. Hannibal was also aware that Hasdrubal was going to cross into Italy prior to his defeat at the Battle... | [
"In 203 BC, Hannibal was recalled from Italy by the war party in Carthage. After leaving a record of his expedition engraved in Punic and Greek upon bronze tablets in the temple of Juno Lacinia at Crotona, he sailed back to Africa. His arrival immediately restored the predominance of the war party, which placed him... |
Why are vegetables / fruits better than multivitamins? | There are at least two reasons why multivitamins are not sufficient: (1) the vitamins/minerals in them are not identical to those you obtain from fruits and vegetables, and (2) there are likely to be a lot of nutrients that you miss because we can't synthesise them or we're just not aware of them and their function.
A... | [
"According to US Food and Drug Administration reports, Fruits are known to be rich in nutrients such as Vitamin A, C and Calcium. This is why in addition to its communication as containing No Added Sugar, No Preservative, No Artificial Colours, Chivita 100% Fruit Juice also considers its 100% juice a Nutrient densi... |
why is it that in most species, especially birds, that it is the male who is more "dressed up and colorful" but with humans it's the other way around? | [There is a ton of info available on why birds have colored plumage](_URL_1_), but humans do also do similar selections but not with color.
The issue is as humans, we try to subdue the things that make us animals. Pubic hair, facial hair, the size and shape of our bodies (muscles, figure, genitals); humans are the ... | [
"In birds, males often have a more colourful appearance and may have features (like the long tail of male peacocks) that would seem to put the organism at a disadvantage (e.g. bright colors would seem to make a bird more visible to predators). One proposed explanation for this is the handicap principle. This hypoth... |
why do call center agent's voices sound so distorted and how are they often able to fix the problem? | If you have a call center person who you're talking to and their voice is muffled or garbled, the chances are good that the problem is in the position of the microphone on their headset. Call center people aren't talking on normal phones, they're using headsets with a stalk type microphone. If that microphone gets pu... | [
"Complaints are often logged by callers who find the staff do not have enough skill or authority to resolve problems, as well as appearing apathetic. These concerns are due to a business process that exhibits levels of variability because the experience a customer gets and results a company achieves on a given call... |
when we switch off a phone and switch it back on after say 5 hours, the clock has automatically set according to the time, how is this possible? if it didnt have power how did it have memory? | Like computers, cell phone have a Real Time Clock RTC. Even when turned off, there is a tiny amount of power used to count the seconds/milliseconds. When you turn it back on, the network also provides timestamps to the device to synchronize time.
On computer motherboards, there is even a small battery that keeps the RT... | [
"Most digital clocks use electronic mechanisms and LCD, LED, or VFD displays; many other display technologies are used as well (cathode ray tubes, nixie tubes, etc.). After a reset, battery change or power failure, these clocks without a backup battery or capacitor either start counting from 12:00, or stay at 12:00... |
Where and why did humans start using utensils to eat rather than their hands? | The Greeks were the first to craft kitchen forks; their two-tined specimens helped them secure meat while it was being cut. By the seventh century, Byzantine nobles had begun to use the fork for dining as well. An oft-mentioned tale in forklore is that of a Byzantine dogeressa of Venice, who brought forks with her to h... | [
"A variety of eating utensils have been used by people to aid eating when dining. Most societies traditionally use bowls or dishes to contain food to be eaten, but while some use their hands to deliver this food to their mouths, others have developed specific tools for the purpose. In Western cultures, cutlery item... |
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