Split (2)

train · 226k rows

question stringlengths 3 301	answer stringlengths 9 26.1k	context list
What sort of evidence is there of the interactions early modern humans had with other species of archaic humans that were alive at the same time?	There are a few anthropologists in this sub who might take a run at this post, but fyi, the question would do better in /r/AskAnthropology. In fact, there have been many posts in that sub asking related questions	[ "Modern humans appeared in the island during the Upper Paleolithic, a phalanx dated to 18000 BC had been found in the \"Corbeddu cave\", near Oliena. Mesolithic human remains had been discovered at \"Su Coloru cave\" of Laerru but also in the south (Sirri, Arbus).\n", "There is evidence of human activity in the a...
the finances of power grids	My explanation is for the US -- I believe the UK system is similar. The entire system is kind of a masterpiece of capitalism, run by interacting private corporations and nonprofit organizations, with no central government control. The players are: * Generators, companies who make electricity * Transmission line own...	[ "In simple terms, the public electric grid that a power company operates was originally designed to take power from a single source: the operating company's generators and power plants, and feed it into the grid, where the customers consume the power. Now, some customers are operating power generating devices (sola...
Does dyslexia only effect your reading skills, or does it effects other aspects of your life as well?	I have only minor problems so I’m probably not the best person to answer this. Firstly, dyslexia is not well understood or defined. So there is a broad spectrum of cognitive disabilities that make it difficult to read, write and understand written text, but it is caused by a multitude of different symptoms. In my cas...	[ "National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke defines reading disability or dyslexia as follows: \"Dyslexia is a brain-based type of learning disability that specifically impairs a person's ability to read. These individuals typically read at levels significantly lower than expected despite having normal...
Does it make a difference if I turn my clothes inside out before I wish them?	Side note - Stop using auto-correct if you're not going to at least proof read what it's typing for you	[ "Changing is done simply by stepping into the new longyi and pulling it up, at the same time loosening and dropping the old one, or the new one can be pulled over from the head down. However, even when in private, women change without removing all their clothes. Instead, they will wear one htaimin while changing in...
Follow up on my previous question "Does light orbit black holes?": Is it possible that light from a star is warped around a source of gravity such that it appears as two points of light in the sky?	When a bright object is behind a heavy object (like a black hole) relative to our line of site, it's called an Einstein Ring and [it looks awesome](_URL_0_). It's also possible for the same object to appear [multiple times](_URL_1_) depending on the geometry.	[ "During 1783 geologist John Michell wrote a letter to Henry Cavendish outlining the expected properties of dark stars, published by The Royal Society in their 1784 volume. Michell calculated that when the escape velocity at the surface of a star was equal to or greater than lightspeed, the generated light would be ...
Are/were there any ancient tombs that resemble ones depicted in the Indiana Jones series?	It seems this question is asked fairly regularly in some form or another. A search of r/AskHistorians gives [quite a selection.](_URL_0_)	[ "Indiana Jones and the Emperor's Tomb is an action-adventure video game developed by The Collective and published by LucasArts in 2003 for the Xbox, Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 2 and OS X. It features cover art by Drew Struzan. The game is an adventure of fictional archeologist Indiana Jones. The story takes pla...
cyprus banking crisis	- _URL_9_ - _URL_4_ - _URL_7_ - _URL_6_ - _URL_3_ - _URL_5_ - _URL_8_ - _URL_2_ - _URL_0_ - _URL_1_ --- My post from the first link: Cyprus has a large banking industry that functions largely as a tax haven for foreigners (read: "legitimate businessmen" in Russia). Cypriot banks had enormous deposits, and invested ...	[ "Cyprus banks first came under severe financial pressure as bad debt ratios rose. Former Laiki CEO Efthimios Bouloutas admitted that his bank was probably insolvent as early as 2008, even before Cyprus entered the Eurozone. The banks were then exposed to a haircut of upwards of 50% in 2011 during the Greek governme...
How many revisions of the bible did it take to get to the current, most widely accepted English version?	The answer: not many, and not much. Various sects have their own bible preferences, of course, but the the best translation from an academic point of view is currently the NRSV. This edition was created from the Greek and/or Hebrew text, and we have copies of (almost?) all of these at least from the 3rd century. While...	[ "Near the time when the copyright to the English Revised Version was due to expire (1935), the Oxford University Press and the Cambridge University Press, who were the current English Revised Version copyright holders, began investigations to determine whether a modern revision of the English Revised Version text w...
How many ants are there in the world? I've heard for every human on Earth there comes more then a million ants	Holldobler and Willson (The Ants, 1990) estimate 10 000 trillion individuals. So that's probably closer to 1.4 million per person. But ants are a large and diverse group with about 14 000 species. They also have a communal ecology wherein most individuals don't reproduce and cannot survive without the rest of the co...	[ "It has been estimated by E.O. Wilson that the total number of individual ants alive in the world at any one time is between one and ten quadrillion (short scale) (i.e., between 10 and 10). According to this estimate, the total biomass of all the ants in the world is approximately equal to the total biomass of the ...
If the goal was to win WWII, why on earth would the American military segregate white and black soldiers?	By the start of WWII, the U.S. Army had been segregated since the Civil War, nearly 75 yeard ago. The Army had fought and won the Civil War, the Plains Wars, the Spanish-American War, the Philippine Insurrection, and WWI as a segregated force. From the Army's point of view, segregationist policies hadn't been an obstac...	[ "During the war, the C.S.A. military suffers massive losses and tries to solve its manpower shortages by recruiting a black regiment, promising the slaves freedom after the war. This regiment receives the most dangerous missions and suffers high casualties, and despite earning the respect of white officers, when th...
what makes "the cloud" different from just a regular server? why is there a new term for something that was already done before?	The "cloud" is mostly just a buzzword to refer to a concept that is a little more abstract than just "server". Instead of your data being stored on one particular server (e.g. that you own or rent), your data is being passed off to a third-party company (i.e. "the cloud") that handles the data for you and stores it as...	[ "In many ways cloud servers work in the same way as physical servers but the functions they perform can be very different. Typically, the cloud server is an on-premises device that is connected to the Internet and gives users the functions available on the online cloud but with the added benefit and security of the...
explain contemporary indian politics like i'm 5	I'm commenting because I'm 5 and also want to know (when someone answers).	[ "Studies in Indian Politics is a Peer reviewed journal. It provides a forum to explain different aspects of Indian politics. It covers a wide variety of sub-fields in politics, such as political ideas and thought in India, political institutions and processes, Indian democracy and politics in a comparative perspect...
Could a dinosaur regrow a severed tail like some lizards?	Neither birds nor crocodiles can regenerate lost body parts, and being the closest living relatives to dinosaurs (in birds case they are direct descendants) it's likely that dinosaurs couldn't regenerate body parts either.	[ "Like most lizards, these anoles possess autotomic tails. If the lizard is captured or pursued, the end portion of the tail may break off and continue to move for several minutes, hopefully distracting its attacker and giving the lizard enough time to escape. Given time, the dislocated portion of the tail may be re...
how do scientist figure out when man-made things will decompose, like how do they know styrofoam takes 1000 years?	Actually, we don't. Plastic bags have only been around for about 50 years, so there's no firsthand evidence of their decomposition rate. To make long-term estimates of this sort, scientists often use respirometry tests. The experimenters place a solid waste sample—like a newspaper, banana peel, or plastic bag—in a vess...	[ "BULLET::::- Nullentropy – Technology akin to the science fiction concept of stasis, in which the natural processes of time, such as decomposition, are ceased. In this way, perishable matter such as food and even human cells may be stored for millennia and remain undamaged.\n", "Decomposers are organisms that bre...
Would it be possible to make a bio-luminescent tattoo?	I couldn't find anything that had already been done the way you're looking for (UV tattoos have already been mentioned and I think you're looking for something that glows under any amount of light). So, I went about trying to figure out how this could be accomplished. The idea of bio-luminescent organisms was interesti...	[ "A light-emitting diode tattoo is a type of body modification similar to a tattoo, but specifically involves implantation of technologically based materials versus traditional ink injection into the layers of the skin. LED tattoos are accomplished by a combination of silicon-silk technology and a miniature lighting...
How fast do newly formed stars move away from the nebula where they were born?	Stars form from molecular gas clouds, which tend to be large. As more stars form in the cloud, the radiation pressure disperses the gas leaving what we see as an [open cluster](_URL_0_). While the stars form close together, gravitational perturbations make the stars disperse and the open cluster basically falls apart...	[ "After a star passes through the asymptotic giant branch (AGB) phase, the short planetary nebula phase of stellar evolution begins as gases blow away from the central star at speeds of a few kilometers per second. The central star is the remnant of its AGB progenitor, an electron-degenerate carbon-oxygen core that ...
why won't a pair of aaa batteries neutralize their charges when you touch one positive end to the other's negative end?	Batteries contain chemicals that will react when given a path for electrons to flow from the positive end to the negative end. Touching the positive end of one battery to the negative end of the next doesn't complete a circuit and allow electrons to flow, therefore nothing happens.	[ "The negative electrode uses the nitroxide - hydroxylamine anion redox pair to create an electrochemical potential, i.e. when the battery discharges the nitroxide radical is reduced to the hydroxylamine anion and when the battery charges the hydroxylamine anion is oxidized back to the nitroxide. This half-reaction ...
How many WWII draftees were working in the CCC before they were drafted?	The Civilian Conservation Corps was far and away the largest of the make-work projects during the New Deal. It was operated by the US Army, since they were the only government organization in 1933 that had the ability to handle such a large number of men. The CCC workers...	[ "Drafted into the U.S. Army, he was ordered in 1944 to the Graphics Division of the Office of Strategic Services in Washington, D.C. where he made war posters, including \"Save Waste Fats\" and \"Someone Talked\", the latter winning an award from the Museum of Modern Art. Shipped to London, he documented, in pen an...
why can news stations not delay the broadcast by a few seconds incase something goes wrong?	They can and do. However, the process still has some dependency on human attention and reaction time. [Here](_URL_0_) is a relevant article.	[ "In radio and television, broadcast delay is an intentional delay when broadcasting live material. Such a delay may be short (often seven seconds) to prevent mistakes or unacceptable content from being broadcast. Longer delays lasting several hours can also be introduced so that the material is aired at a later sch...
What effect might hallucinogens have on a comatose patient? Could it bring them out of the coma?	Hmm, interesting idea. I have heard of Zolpidem (Ambien) being used recently for comatose patients [link](_URL_0_), which is kind of ironic since it's a sleep aid (and also a hallucinogen at clinical doses)	[ "This type of hallucination is usually experienced during the recovery from a comatose state. The migraine coma can last for up to two days, and a state of depression is sometimes comorbid. The hallucinations occur during states of full consciousness, and insight into the hallucinatory nature of the images is prese...
when is it the proper time to use the characters ; , : - in writing? examples would be helpful too!	Colon (:) is used when making a list or explanation. For example: hey, look at that, I'm making an explanation already. Comma (,) is simply used to separate things within a sentence. For example: in this example, i am using both a colon and a comma, and the comma is separating ideas. Semi-colon (;) is basically used...	[ "The art of writing Chinese characters is called Chinese calligraphy. It is usually done with ink brushes. In ancient China, Chinese calligraphy is one of the Four Arts of the Chinese Scholars. There is a minimalist set of rules of Chinese calligraphy. Every character from the Chinese scripts is built into a unifor...
If hitler was arrested what crimes would he be charged for?	Borrowing from a previous answer I have written, with some minor addendum So obviously, we can't know what would happen, but as has been noted by several mods, we can say what was discussed in the event that Hitler was captured. In the tome "What If?", Roger Spiller's chapter, "The Führer in the Dock", focuses o...	[ "Arrested by the authorities and tried for treason, Hitler manages to use the trial to his advantage, winning over the audience and the Judge with his courtroom theatrics. Consequently, he is awarded a lenient sentence in Landsberg Prison, during which he writes his memoirs (later published as \"Mein Kampf\"). In 1...
Why was there such a backlash against disco?	I was trying to get into the music biz around then, as a rocker. Although I didn't hate disco, I could under stand why mt friends didn't get into it. It's over-produced and most of the "artists" were just singers put up to sing someone else's music. And the lyrics were almost universally uninspiring, and mostly soun...	[ "Factors that have been cited as leading to the decline of disco in the United States include economic and political changes at the end of the 1970s, as well as burnout from the hedonistic lifestyles led by participants. In the years since Disco Demolition Night, some social critics have described the backlash as i...
why do people think that blacking out their eyes in pictures protects their identity?	Eyes presumably show the most emotion / personality etc of any body part, so we're most likely to remember those, if we see them again. Also, who blacks out their own eyes..? It's usually done by others to protect the identity of someone.	[ "In addition, he noticed that when black people were depicted it was usually in a negative light. Research has shown that Black images in the media adversely affect how members of the Black community view themselves. These harmful images are not only seen by the Black community, but by everyone who has access to a ...
What's happening to the human body when it faints for 3 or 4 seconds, then regains consciousness for 3 or 4 seconds, then faints back again and so on? An example is on amusement park rides.	The short answer: Your brain loses oxygen for whatever reason, you pass out, you drop to the floor so gravity works less, the vessels relax etc, and more blood flows to the brain, which thus regains consciousness. The long explaination (this is gonna be pretty complicated) There are a lot of reasons for syncope (Fain...	[ "Onset of symptoms may be after just a few minutes, but usually occurs after at least 20 minutes of free hanging. Typical symptoms are pallor, sweating, shortness of breath, blurred vision, dizziness, nausea, hypotension and numbness of the legs. Eventually it leads to fainting, which may result in death due to oxy...
why does the freight elevator in a building require a union employee to operate? (nyc)	> Is it a safety thing? No, it is a union thing. There was a time before unions when companies could offer whatever jobs they wanted, and workers were free to take them or leave them. A big problem was that companies would offer dangerous jobs with low pay, and yet workers would still take them and get angry about t...	[ "An elevator mechanic is someone who constructs, modernizes, repairs, or services conveyances. Typically elevator mechanics only work on elevators, escalators, dumbwaiters, wheelchair lifts, moving walkways, and other equipment providing vertical transportation. In many countries, particularly in North America, the...
gravitational pull in relation to the ocean's tide...	[I wrote this a few days back](_URL_0_), let me know if anything needs clarifying.	[ "Gravitational Tides are caused by changes in the relative location of the Earth, sun, and moon, whose orbits are perturbed slightly by Jupiter. Newton's law of universal gravitation states that the gravitational force between a mass at a reference point on the surface of the Earth and another object such as the Mo...
What is the net metabolic benefit of the caffeine in a cup of coffee?	EDIT: Caffeine Only "Measurements of energy expenditure (EE) in a room respirometer indicate that repeated caffeine administration (100 mg) at 2-h intervals over a 12-h day period increased the EE of both subject groups by 8-11% (p less than 0.01) during that period but had no influence on the subsequent 12- h night E...	[ "The world's primary source of caffeine is the coffee \"bean\" (the seed of the coffee plant), from which coffee is brewed. Caffeine content in coffee varies widely depending on the type of coffee bean and the method of preparation used; even beans within a given bush can show variations in concentration. In genera...
Suppose you visited Ireland in 1415, what would the farmland that would later be used for potatoes, have been used for at that time before they were brought back from the Americas?	You'll expect a sizable arable farming component, based on wheat, barley, some oats, probably still rye in areas with monastic influence. Rye was big in the Early Christian Period and associated with monasteries. Some peas and perhaps other crops as well. However, Ireland's farming economy has always been (since the st...	[ "The obelisk, erected in 1810 by Sir Thomas Chapman some 200m to 300m from the house, marks the position where Sir Walter Raleigh planted some of the first potatoes that he imported to Ireland. Antoine Parmentier who promoted the cultivation of potatoes for human consumption and the Spanish conquistadores who first...
why does playing music on devices at full volume decreases the lifespan of the speakers?	Why do fat people have knee problems? Because there's more force acting on the same object over time. The same goes for speakers. When you play music louder, the suspension of the speaker cone is being driven with more force. Over time that wears it down faster than if it was played quietly.	[ "Digital audio players such as the iPod, demonstrate the need for a common alignment level. While tracks taken from recent CDs sound loud enough, many older recordings (such as Pink Floyd albums which notably allowed lots of headroom for stunning dynamic range and rarely reach peak digital level) are far too quiet,...
During conditions of severe smog, etc, is the air quality indoors actually appreciably better?	It depends on the building and the nature of the air quality crisis. Buildings have a turnover time of air, and you can lengthen that time by closing doors, windows, and vents. The air might get stuffy inside, but the smog won't mix much. If there is a few-hour smog event, that could reduce the interior smog level. ...	[ "Weatherization can have a negative impact on indoor air quality, especially among occupants with respiratory illnesses. This occurs because of a decrease in air exchange in the home, and resulting increase in moisture. This leads to higher concentrations of pollutants in the air.\n", "Considering that North Amer...
does sunlight coming through a windowpane onto skin provide any benefits at all?	It would depend on the type of glass — with just straight window glass with no coatings, yeah, there’d be some vitamin D benefit. With highly tinted or UV-coated glass, probably significantly less benefit, if any. There are mood benefits to being able to see the sun, even through a window, so there’s that, at least....	[ "While determining how much UV light should be filtered by art glazing, it may also be important to consider the amount of UV light present inside a room or a building. Note that regular window glazing filters away a significant portion of the UV light, which originates from the sun.\n", "Objects struck by sunlig...
Is the Hubble sphere expanding or shrinking?	The Hubble sphere is not the same as the observable universe. The Hubble sphere is the radius beyond which light emitted now will never reach us, whereas the observable universe is the radius from which light that reaches us now was emitted from. The Hubble sphere does expand in an accelerating universe, but the ...	[ "However, the Hubble parameter is not constant in various cosmological models so that the Hubble limit does not, in general, coincide with a cosmological event horizon. For example, in a decelerating Friedmann universe the Hubble sphere expands with time, and its boundary overtakes light emitted by more distant gal...
Gilgamesh in Cuneiform	What you are asking for is the two-volume [The Babylonian Gilgamesh Epic by A. R. George](_URL_0_). This masterful work includes the editions of all of the known tablets of the Gilgamesh epic (except for [the most recenly discovered tablet](_URL_1_)), an English translation, and images of the cuneiform tablets. These...	[ "The \"Epic of Gilgamesh\" was discovered by Austen Henry Layard, Hormuzd Rassam, and W. K. Loftus in 1853. The central character of Gilgamesh was initially reintroduced to the world as \"\"Izdubar\"\", before the cuneiform logographs in his name could be pronounced accurately. The first modern translation was publ...
Does fiber simply speed up our digestive system, or do our bodies want to expel fiber quickly?	Fiber acts as a bulking agent, and as mentioned by HonorAmongSteves, it carries water, creating a rather substantial mass that moves through one's digestive tract. Peristaltic movements by the colon and eventually defecation are stimulated by stretch receptors present in the wall of the colon. Due to the increased bulk...	[ "Whole grains, beans and other legumes, fruits (especially plums, prunes, and figs), and vegetables are good sources of dietary fiber. Fiber is important to digestive health and is thought to reduce the risk of colon cancer. For mechanical reasons, fiber can help in alleviating both constipation and diarrhea. Fiber...
If you could make a race car's tires, and the road it drives on, out of any materials know to man, what combo would perform the best?	Well it depends what you mean by "perform the best". Let's start off at the most basic level. Wheels work because of friction. An ideal wheel is one that does not slip at the point of contact. Imagine a car on ice - it wouldn't be going anywhere. The higher the [coefficient of friction](_URL_1_) the better. This allow...	[ "BULLET::::- \"Race-car tires\"—Race car tires come in three main categories, \"DOT\" (street-legal), \"slick\", and \"rain\". Race car tires are designed to maximize cornering and acceleration friction at the expense of longevity. Racing slicks have no tread to maximize contact with the pavement and rain tires hav...
When did local lords lose their political authority in England?	I asked a related question (about when making knights became a royal monopoly rather than something any lord could do) about a month ago, and despite a very courteous effort by a mod, it wasn't really his field and I didn't get a satisfactory answer. However it prompted me to do a bit of research and the answer is 15...	[ "The House of Lords developed from the \"Great Council\" (\"Magnum Concilium\") that advised the King during medieval times. This royal council came to be composed of ecclesiastics, noblemen, and representatives of the counties of England and Wales (afterwards, representatives of the boroughs as well). The first En...
color correction glasses	[This question has just been asked and answered](_URL_0_?).	[ "Plastic glasses, developed in recent years, provide both the diopter \"fix\" noted above, and a change in the cyan filter. The formula provides intentional \"leakage\" of a minimal (2%) percentage of red light with the conventional range of the filter. This assigns two-eyed \"redness cues\" to objects and details,...
How accurate is the TV series "Rome" in depicting the daily life of both plebians and patricians?	Alrighty, first off - I'm going to preface this with a couple of disclaimers. Or a few. Whatever :P * *I LIKED Rome. What I say below doesn't change that.* * The show is more accurate than most movies that are "based on history. * **Obviously, there are spoilers. I've only seen most of the first season, and...	[ "BULLET::::- \"Rome\": A historical drama set in Ancient Rome that primarily chronicles the lives and deeds of the rich, powerful and historically significant, but also focuses on the lives, fortunes, families and acquaintances of two common men, Lucius Vorenus and Titus Pullo. They both manage to witness and often...
when i have to "stop and think" to solve a problem, what is going no in my body as i stare at nothing? is this different from "stopping to think" to remember a fact?	You are simply shutting down the other activities that your brain is usually forced to multi-task, in order to divert more of your brains attention to the task at hand. You have markedly diminished critical thinking skills when you are multi-tasking, so if you can just quiet down for a second and stop intaking other se...	[ "For example, when a student has forgotten an answer to a question in an exam, he will likely think something such as \"I have forgotten the answer\". The more they try to think of it, the more the answer becomes blurred and obscured. However, if this negative thought is replaced with a more positive one (\"No need...
Ancient Greek helmets on heads	Hi, not discouraging direct answers here, but you may be interested in some earlier threads: * /u/Iphikrates in [Is it true that those helmets of the kind Pericles is shown wearing in the now famous bust never "closed"? If yes, why? Is it supposed to represent an owl or was it an intimation thing?](_URL_2_) * Iphikr...	[ "The Iberians did wear bronze helmets, sometimes of Greek and Corinthian shape (due to Greek influence and trade in the southern and eastern parts of the peninsula), with either a low or high crest, but they seem to have been rare. They were probably worn only by the nobles and the tribal leaders. The crests are sa...
governing during american civil war	Its super complicated. Some representatives of these states stayed as like a goverment in exile, some positions were left vacant, representaives who took direct part in seccesion were expelled. This gives a general overview of the beginning of the war. _URL_0_ There was definitly more pro union and north bills pass...	[ "The American Civil War (1861-1865) was fought over the issue of tariffs as well as slavery. At the time of independence, the agrarian interests of the South were opposed to any protection, while the manufacturing interests of the North wanted to maintain it. \n", "In April 1861, the American Civil War began when...
how is it in tennis that players ranked in the hundreds and thousands are matched against players in the top 20?	Traditionally, large single elimination tournaments are seeded, meaning that the 'more qualified' participants are given an easier set of opponents. Obviously this sucks for the poorly seeded participants, but it also serves to encourage viewers to watch the tournament to the end. If you wanted to watch really high-cl...	[ "Most large tournaments seed players, but players may also be matched by their skill level. According to how well a person does in sanctioned play, a player is given a rating that is adjusted periodically to maintain competitive matches. For example, the United States Tennis Association administers the National Ten...
Why was Shakespeare not knighted?	Most knights were either of low noble background, or knighted after making their fortunes. Most also had done governmental or military service to the crown; the modern practice of recognizing the arts with a knighthood simply didn't exist. Francis Drake, for instance, was already a successful privateer in the service ...	[ "William Shakespeare stands out in this period as a poet and playwright as yet unsurpassed. Shakespeare was not a man of letters by profession, and probably had only some grammar school education. He was neither a lawyer, nor an aristocrat as the \"university wits\" that had monopolised the English stage when he st...
Why is the earth so wet?	A partial answer to your first set of questions. > Why is water so common in the universe in general? Hydrogen is the most abundant element in the universe and oxygen is the third most abundant element in the universe (per mass). Since the second most abundant element (helium) is chemically inert, it shouldn't be...	[ "Weather is one of the fundamental processes that shape the Earth. The process of weathering breaks down the rocks and soils into smaller fragments and then into their constituent substances. During rains precipitation, the water droplets absorb and dissolve carbon dioxide from the surrounding air. This causes the ...
why a person can feel groggy and fatigued after getting very little rest, but feel energized after work with no sleep in between (no caffeine/drugs involved)	Being tired isn't just caused by being awake for a certain amount of time, it's also caused by your natural biorhythms. It's a balance of the two. Most people are programmed to get tired at night, because we evolved to sleep when it's dark out. In your case, my guess would be that, for some reason, your body's 'clock' ...	[ "Fatigue can be a symptom of a medical problem, but more commonly it is a normal physiological reaction to exertion, lack of sleep, boredom, changes to sleep-wake schedules (including jet lag), or stress.\n", "Fatigue is generally considered a more long-term condition than sleepiness (somnolence). Although sleepi...
Why are there so many variations of some names? For example: Edward, Edwin, Edmund, etc.	In this case, this is due to the nature of ancient Germanic personal names. They were “dithematic,” i.e. composed of two meaningful elements (though there were “hypocoristic” names, of which only one element was commonly used; over the course of time, these monothematic names became normal names of their own right—cf...	[ "Ellsworth is a surname, originating in England prior to or around the 11th Century A.D. in the Cambridgeshire area. The name comes from as \"Ellesworth\" or possibly Elsworth, from the place-name (and family seat) which in turn was derived from the Old English name \"Eli\" and \"worth\", an Old English word for fa...
Why did Greek cuirasses and Roman-style plate armor disappear from Western Europe?	By "Roman plate" I assume you mean lorica segmentata, which is what you tend to see a lot of in popular culture. We're not exactly sure which Roman troops used it, or even how the Romans themselves called it, but it was used from 1st - 3rd century AD. Lorica hamata (mail armour) is what most Roman troops wore through...	[ "As Western European metalwork became increasingly sophisticated, the traditional image of the cataphract's awe-inspiring might and presence quickly evaporated. From the 15th century and onwards, chain mail, lamellar armor, and scale armor seemed to fall out of favour with Eastern noble cavalrymen as elaborate and ...
how to government officials get away with proposing/enforcing laws with the argument "because of my religious belief."	The 1st Amendment prohibits the US government from establishing a State religion that people must be a part of and it prohibits the government from hindering people from practicing their religion. For those who are religious that religion is the foundation that their ethical and moral codes are built. When our electe...	[ "The law protects the right of individuals to choose and change their religion and to interpret their religious beliefs for themselves. Members of all religious groups worshiped freely. There is no state or otherwise dominant religion, and the Government practiced no form of religious favoritism or discrimination e...
Can you experience time faster than it actually passes?	What you're talking about does not require relativity or time dilation at all. It's merely the [Doppler effect](_URL_0_). If you walked toward a metronome playing at 100 bpm, you would hear the beats slightly faster than 100 bpm. The effect is of order v/c, where v is your velocity relative to the stationary met...	[ "The person affected by Alice in Wonderland syndrome may also lose a sense of time, a problem similar to the lack of spatial perspective. Time seems to pass very slowly, akin to an LSD experience. The lack of time and space perspective also leads to a distorted sense of velocity. For example, one could be inching a...
Why is Rhode Island a state?	The United States isn’t a country divided into states; it’s a country formed when states joined together. So your question is a bit like asking why Luxembourg wasn’t simply slotted in with Germany or Belgium. Who would do the lumping together? Roger Williams and others who had been banished from the Massachusetts Ba...	[ "Rhode Island (), officially the State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, is a state in the New England region of the United States. It is the smallest state in area, the seventh least populous, and the second most densely populated. Rhode Island is bordered by Connecticut to the west, Massachusetts to the...
Basques in North American prior to Columbus?	I am almost done reading his book "The Basque History of the World" in which he discuses it in a bit more detail. Flavored_crayons is right in that there is little evidence but after having read Kurlanksy I have come away with the impression that they did: in the book (which I encourage you to read if you enjoyed "Cod"...	[ "There has been a Basque presence in the Americas from the age of Columbus. Basques under the crown of Castile were among the explorers, priests and Conquistadors of the Spanish Empire. Placenames like Durango, Colorado, Trepassey, Biscayne Cove and Biscayne Bay remember their foundations. Basques began to come to ...
why mustangs don't need anyone to maintain their hooves, but domesticated horses do?	Their hooves get worn down because they're almost constantly moving. Even when ridden all the time, domestic horses don't travel enough to significantly wear down their hooves because they're still stalled/pastured. In fact, a lot of farriers have taken to studying the shape of mustang hooves in order to find different...	[ "The debate as to what degree mustangs and cattle compete for forage is multifaceted. Horses are adapted by evolution to inhabit an ecological niche characterized by poor quality vegetation. Advocates assert that most current mustang herds live in arid areas which cattle cannot fully utilize due to the lack of wate...
Is there a case in nature in which a species A can breed with species B, which can breed with a species C, but A and C can't breed with each other?	Yes, what you describe exists, they are called [Ring species](_URL_0_). All populations involved in such a ring may be considered the same species since gene flow can still occur between the most distant populations, through the intermediaries. However if the populations in the middle were to be wiped out, the two dist...	[ "Some hybrids between similar species have been achieved by housing males of one species and females of the other together to limit the choice of mate. To create a \"natural\" macropod hybrid, young animals of one species have been transferred to the pouch of another so as to imprint into them the other species. In...
c3, c4, and cam pathways. what is the difference between them, and in what type of plant are they used?	C3 converts CO2 into a 3-carbon acid. Most plants use this mechanism, but it works best in wetter areas with moderate temperatures. As temperatures go up, growth is stunted because it becomes less efficient. C4 converts carbon into a 4-carbon acid, and this works in warmer weather with less water. Tropical plants tend ...	[ "A C3 plant uses C3 carbon fixation, one of the three metabolic photosynthesis pathways which also include C4 and CAM (described below). These plants are called \"C3\" due to the three-carbon compound (3-Phosphoglyceric acid, or 3-PGA) produced by the CO fixation mechanism in these plants. This C3 mechanism is the ...
It is the year 900 in the kingdom of Wessex. What’s for dinner?	Who's eating? The average peasant, a petty noble, or the King himself?	[ "Western Europe: Since the year 1066 English royalty ate lavishly. During the Victorian era, formal meals consisted of twelve or thirteen courses; informal meals of five or six courses. A single breakfast might have consisted of soup, roast turkey or pork with potatoes or rice, two vegetable side dishes, citrus ice...
Was the Southern Defensive War really that crucial to the South's early wins?	I disagree entirely. While the Confederacy won an early initial victory at Manassas/Bull Run, the overall picture for the South for much of late 1861 and 1862 (the period in which the South stood on the strategic defensive) was incredibly gloomy. Let's run through the list of disasters briefly. November 7 1861: the US ...	[ "Scholars have debated what the effects of the war were on political and economic power in the South. The prevailing view is that the southern planter elite retained its powerful position in the South. However, a 2017 study challenges this, noting that while some Southern elites retained their economic status, the ...
food tax, why in a restaurant but not a store?	Likely because buying food at a store is basically a necessity of life, especially if you can't afford to eat out every meal. Eating at a restaurant is basically a privilege, not a necessity, so it makes more sense to tax that, than to tax basic food. Up here in Canada, our national tax (GST) applies at all stores,...	[ "In grocery stores, unprepared food items are not taxed but vitamins and all other items are. Ready-to-eat hot foods, whether sold by supermarkets or other vendors, are taxed. Restaurant bills are taxed. As an exception, hot beverages and bakery items are tax-exempt if and only if they are for take-out and are not ...
Why do atoms "want" to form covalent bonds?	When someone tells you atoms or molecules "want" to do something it is almost always code for "would be in a lower energy state" if they did that. Saying that two atoms want to form a covalent bond just means that the state in which the two atoms are bonded is lower in energy than the one in which they are not.	[ "Chemical bonds between atoms in a molecule form because they make the situation more stable for the involved atoms, which generally means the sum energy level for the involved atoms in the molecule is lower than if the atoms were not so bonded. As separate atoms approach each other to covalently bond, their orbita...
Ignoring the difficulty of capturing a comet or adjusting its orbit: If we could arrange for a comet to strike Mars, what would the effect be? Could we terraform Mars by hitting it with a cubic mile of water?	The smart thing to do would be not to smash a comet into Mars directly, but to aerobrake one in Mars' atmosphere. The temperature of atmospheric entry would be enough to not only break up & melt the comet, but also split the water molecules into their constituent oxygen & hydrogen. If you planned the comet's entr...	[ "In 2013 it was thought possible that Comet Siding Spring would create a meteor shower on Mars or be a threat to the spacecraft in Mars orbit. Studies in 2014 showed the threat to orbiting spacecraft to be minimal. The greatest threat would be about 100 minutes after closest approach. Mars passed about from the com...
why do men get a weird feeling in their penis when they see an injury or cut	Ummm no we don't? You should go see a doctor.	[ "While less often depicted in media, a strike to the groin can cause pain for female victims too. The skin of the vulva and the clitoris are highly sensitive, making laceration injuries especially painful. In extreme cases, nerve damage can occur to the clitoris.\n", "The body's physical arousal response (vaginal...
How did the Seven Years War begin?	In 1740, a new king came to power in Prussia, Frederick the Great. His predecessor built a large, well-organized army, and Frederick immediately used it to defeat Austria in the War of the Austrian Succession from 1740-1748. By doing so, Prussia became a great power in Europe, attracting the suspicions of other nations...	[ "The Seven Years' War was a global conflict fought between 1756 and 1763. It involved every European great power of the time and spanned five continents, affecting Europe, the Americas, West Africa, South Asia, and the Philippines. The conflict split Europe into two coalitions: one was led by the Kingdom of Great B...
let's say, everything in the universe (not the atoms!!) get's 10 times bigger. would it effect anything?	If you were 10 times bigger you would weigh 1,000 times more, so you and most everything else would be crushed under its own weight.	[ "Such a number may be incomprehensibly huge. If the Big Bang is reckoned to have occurred 13.8 billion years ago, there have been \"only\" about 4.35 x 10 seconds since the birth of the universe. It is estimated that the Earth is made up of roughly 5.5 x 10 atoms; the number of atoms in the Milky Way Galaxy is appr...
[Chemistry] Are there reactions that aren't endothermic or exothermic?	The H-O bond that is broken turns H2O into a OH-. The H-O bond that is formed (in autoionization) turns H2O into H3O+. The bond-breaking and bond-forming reactions are nonequivalent, as the products side (hydronium and hydroxide) and reactants side (water) are nonequivalent. deltaG is defined as 0 at chemical equili...	[ "A reaction is said to be exergonic if the final state is lower on the energy scale than the initial state; in the case of endergonic reactions the situation is the reverse. A reaction is said to be exothermic if the reaction releases heat to the surroundings; in the case of endothermic reactions, the reaction abso...
Where are we on fusion power? How clean would it be? How long can we see fusion power in grid?	We cannot sustain fusion without enormous energy usage. We cannot produce any energy from fusion yet. It will probably be a long time before it's used for commercial power production.	[ "This is a key concept in the hybrid concept, known as \"fission multiplication\". For every fusion event, several fission events may occur, each of which gives off much more energy than the original fusion, about 11 times. This greatly increases the total power output of the reactor. This has been suggested as a w...
Why did Republicans become so conservative so suddenly in the 1920s?	/u/Samuel_Gompers has your number. He previously answered: * [Can someone address a brief history of Democrats vs Republicans, specifically the change in Dems from the early 1900s being against civil rights to a more progressive party in the 50/60s leading much social change in the U.S.](_URL_0_) * [Why was there suc...	[ "In the United States, the Republican Party has been the party of conservatism since the 1890s, although there was a strong Eastern liberal wing. Since 1964, the conservatives largely took control. Meanwhile, the conservative wing of the Democratic Party, based in the South and strongly opposed to Civil Rights, gre...
why does ctrl+alt+del'ing into task manager sometimes unfreeze frozen applications in windows?	Most likely it doesn't. Unless freeze is somehow fixed by changing window focus, pressing ctrl+alt+del doesn't affect the program in anyway. Probably application just wasn't completely frozen or suck in forever loop. Windows shows application being frozen if it doesn't handle events in certain time. Some applications ...	[ "Because the window controls are being rendered by the application process, if the application freezes the controls will often become unresponsive too. This can make it more confusing when trying to close unresponsive applications as the display server has to detect this. \n", "BULLET::::- A (complete) feature fr...
What factors determine how fast a CPU runs?	Well there are a bunch of things. We have billions of transistors to utilize to make our CPUs work. Utilizing them in different ways is going to cause variations in how the CPU performs. Here are a few other things that matter. It's not just hardware that improves performance, it's how well the software can utilize th...	[ "The \"performance\" or \"speed\" of a processor depends on, among many other factors, the clock rate (generally given in multiples of hertz) and the instructions per clock (IPC), which together are the factors for the instructions per second (IPS) that the CPU can perform.\n", "The clock rate of a CPU is most us...
At what point is a system considered random as opposed to just too complex to predict? Is there any difference?	in science, we use 'random' to describe effects that aren't determined by the parameters of the models used to describe whatever phenomenon we're looking at. often you have an idea that you could parameterize those effects, but it's not worth the trouble because they're very small and average to zero. for example, th...	[ "Irregularity and local representativeness affect judgments of randomness. Things that do not appear to have any logical sequence are regarded as representative of randomness and thus more likely to occur. For example, THTHTH as a series of coin tosses would not be considered representative of randomly generated co...
What happens when you superimpose two coherent, out-of-phase beams of light?	This is basically a [Michelson interferometer](_URL_0_). The semi-transparent mirror is semi-transparent in both directions. Destructive interference on the path to the right will mean that no energy goes that way: instead, there will be a beam with constructive interference going downward from M on your diagram. ...	[ "If a coherent, narrow bandwidth laser is applied to a two-level system, the wave function will undergo Rabi flopping (Rabi oscillation) between the ground and excited states. At some point in time the system will undergo spontaneous decay and its wave function will collapse to the ground-state wave function. From ...
If someone were to die today because of an accident involving an unexploded WW2 bomb, would they be added to the list of WW2 casualties?	So I considered taking a stab at this question last evening, and while there are a few comments which do strike in the direction of an answer, I think that a META answer is also in order here. First, and perhaps most important, there is no "list of WW2 casualties", at least in the sense of an official, agreed upon on...	[ "On 23 August 1945, shortly after the Second World War had ended, the war claimed three more victims locally. Three youths, Helmut Keul, Ernst Josef Probst and Werner Ullrich, went to the Dreis munitions depot to undertake the disarming of the weapons there, left over from the war. Their efforts resulted in a treme...
the passage of time	I think you think antimatter is something other than it is. Antimatter is exactly the same as regular matter, but with opposite charge. If our entire universe was switched from matter to antimatter, everything would be exactly the same when observed.	[ "Time travel is the concept of moving backwards or forwards to different points in time, in a manner analogous to moving through space, and different from the normal \"flow\" of time to an earthbound observer. In this view, all points in time (including future times) \"persist\" in some way. Time travel has been a ...
do good quality tires improve gas mileage?	proper tire inflation will have more of an impact than tire "quality".... but you shouldnt buy quality tires for the MPG.....you should buy quality tires because that is the only thing responsible for stopping your 2 ton death trap.....	[ "Fuel efficiency is further improved by six percent by utilizing: a new front air dam and rear spoiler, along with revised underbody panels, reducing the drag coefficient from 0.30 to 0.28; replacing traditional power steering with electrical power result as reduction in parasitic losses and special lower rolling r...
how come when i have to pee, i can sometimes postpone it for a pretty long time, and sometimes my bladder can't even hold it in for a couple of minutes.	It will vary with how much food and drink you've had. Think of your bladder like a balloon. It will expand as it fills up with urine. If your bladder is full, it will take up a certain amount of space in your abdominal cavity. Suppose you eat and drink a large amount. As things digest and pass down to your intesti...	[ "If an incontinence is due to overflow incontinence, in which the bladder never empties completely, or if the bladder cannot empty because of poor muscle tone, past surgery, or spinal cord injury, a catheter may be used to empty the bladder. A catheter is a tube that can be inserted through the urethra into the bla...
if being attractive is an important aspect of sexual attraction, why hasn't natural selection turned us all into super models?	Ugly people will still mate with ugly people.	[ "Successful couples of differing physical attractiveness may be together due to other matching variables that compensate for the difference in attractiveness. For instance, some men with wealth and status desire younger, more attractive women. Some women are more likely to overlook physical attractiveness for men w...
Is it possible to 'write' in Cuneiform?	Keep in mind that cuneiform, as a script, is not identified with any single language or language family, but was rather adapted via Sumerian origins to write a collection of Mesopotamian languages, some of which belong to extinct families and none of which are related to Sumerian itself. Which is to say, familiarity wi...	[ "Cuneiform script is one of the earliest systems of writing distinguished by its wedge-shaped marks on clay tablets, made by means of a blunt reed for a stylus. Emerging in Sumer c. 3500 BC, cuneiform writing began as a system of pictograms. Around 3000 BC, the pictorial representations became simplified and more a...
how come headphones/earphones can sometimes break in such a way that when you listen to audio, the background noise is audible but all the voices are completely mute?	If you look on most headphone plugs, there are rings. Some have 2, if they have a microphone there will be 3 or more. Inside the headphone jack, there are corresponding metal nipples, one transmits sound from the left and right, etc. When one of those rings or nipples gets damaged you get unpredictable sound. Life pro...	[ "To cancel the lower-frequency portions of the noise, noise-cancelling headphones use active noise control. They incorporate a microphone that measures ambient sound, generate a waveform that is the exact negative of the ambient sound, and mix it with any audio signal the listener desires.\n", "Active noise-cance...
Did the Roman Empire have its own Urban Legends, and if so what were they?	The term "urban legend" was created to describe modern, traditional stories to be believed. Legends have always fallen into several groups, but the genre hangs together as stories that are generally intended to be believed. Not all of the stories are traditional (even if they employ traditional beliefs). For example,...	[ "The myth of the city's origin was significant in ancient Roman mythology because Pallantium became one of the cities that was merged later into ancient Rome, thereby tying Rome's origins to the ancient Greek heroes. Other cities in the area were founded by various Italic tribes. \n", "Traditional stories handed ...
Can an object become a black hole by moving fast enough?	No. The easiest way to see why the answer is no is to remember the laws of physics have to work the same in every inertial frame of reference (per special relativity). If the object won't act as a black whole in its stationary frame of reference, the same must be true for any other frame of reference where its speed ca...	[ "As a black hole rotates, it twists spacetime in the direction of the rotation at a speed that decreases with distance from the event horizon. This process is known as the Lense–Thirring effect or frame-dragging. Because of this dragging effect, an object within the ergosphere cannot appear stationary with respect ...
How do languages develop unnecessary complications? Why don't they evolve out of the language?	Having agreement features - such as verbs agreeing with their arguments, genders on nouns (and their respective adjectives, determiners, etc) are all redundancy features. Think of them like a safety net. Language is not some perfect system, nor is the world we live in perfect for communication (due to things like backg...	[ "However, while arguing that language itself is adaptive and \"did not 'just happen'\" (p. 172), Hurford suggests that the critical period is not an adaptation, but rather a constraint on language that emerged due to a lack of selection pressures that reinforce acquiring more than one language. In other words, Hurf...
What side of the road did traffic drive on in allied occupied France in WWII?	Practice varied dependent upon the formation. 21st army group's (Anglo-Canadian and polish forces) area of operations had left hand drive, the American sector was right hand. This was due to an inability to agree on which side was the correct side, and was responsible for a significant amount of rage and confusion at a...	[ "To eliminate traffic accidents, everyone had to drive and cycle on the right. Furthermore, to avoid confusion over road names, the Germans introduced a colour and number code. Roads going northwest to southeast were yellow; those going northeast to southwest were red. Also, each route was given a number. Many road...
how much of my hunger is based on my regular eating schedule and how much on my body actually needing food?	Quite a lot is psychological. I feel hungry if I don't eat at lunchtime when I'm at work, when I usually eat a proper meal. I don't at the same time at weekends when I usually skip food until the evening. So feelings of hunger must be tied in to outside clues as to whether the body expects food.	[ "In daily diary studies, individuals have been found to eat from 30 to 40-50 percent more while in the presence of others versus eating alone. In fact, some research has indicated that the rate of intake is best described as a linear function of the number of people present, such that meals eaten with one, four, or...
If the human population were reduced to one man and one woman, which types of incest would give the race the best chance to survive?	This question was asked in a slightly different form in the past two weeks. The question comes down to population genetics and probabilities - how many people are necessary to keep a small population from becoming inbred. IIRC, the answer given there was ~16 people, where after a generation that large selective choice...	[ "While it is theoretically possible that natural selection may, under certain genetic circumstances, select for individuals that instinctively avoid mating with (close) relatives, biological evolution cannot select for punishing others for incest, since even genetically weakened, inbred individuals are better watch...
autoimmunity	Your immune systems attacks your own cells because they think they are foreign.	[ "Autoimmunity is a process in which the body fails to recognize itself and therefore attacks its own cells and tissue. Specific antibodies have been found in LS. Furthermore, there seems to be a higher prevalence of other autoimmune diseases such as diabetes mellitus type 1, vitiligo and thyroid disease.\n", "Aut...
The Western Way of War: How true is the assertion that the Greeks preferred pitched phalanx battle and despised cavalry, missile troops, and most of all, archers?	In respect to cavalry and missile troops, it isn't true. Cavalry had been used to cover the flanks of armies on the battlefield but due to terrain, cavalry wasn't heavily used until Philip II. As for missile troops, slingers and peltasts are commonly used after the Persian Wars to skirmish and soften up the enemy but ...	[ "One of these strategies was shown in the battle between Greek city states and Persia. The Battle of Thermopylae in which the Greek forces were outnumbered stood as a good military strategy. The Greek allied forces ultimately lost the battle, but the training, use of armor, and location allowed them to defeat many ...
What was Nazi Germany's attitude to the former German Royal Family?	Hitler and the Nazis took a very dim view of the German monarchy and were quite hostile to monarchist sentiment and supporters. That being said, he did allow the younger generation of nobles to serve as officers, seeing that they were more open to national socialism than their predecessors and seeing that they were inv...	[ "His death and the ensuing sympathy of the German public revealed that despite years of Nazi ideologic indoctrination large parts of the German society still were affectionately bound to the former German royal houses. Shortly after Wilhelm's death, a decree known as the \"Prinzenerlaß\", or Prince's Decree, was is...
when someone has their identity stolen, why is their responsibility to fix it and not those of the banks/organizations who allowed the thief to do so?	As a general rule, the bank/organization didn't let the thief steal your identity, you did. The bank didn't give them your info, they got it from something you did. Order online from a sketchy site? That's on you. Pay at a sketchy restaurant? That's on you. Use a tampered ATM? Also you. Bottom line is that unless someo...	[ "The majority of identity theft victims do not realize that they are a victim until it has negatively impacted their lives. Many people do not find out that their identities have been stolen until they are contacted by financial institutions or discover suspicious activities on their bank accounts. According to an ...
why do fingernails turn translucently clear and become more flexible when wet?	Nails are made of the same stuff as your hair, and rhino horns: a protein called keratin. Keratin can come in lots of sizes and shapes. In your nails, it is like stacks of thin scales one on top of the other (you've probably seen nails that are damaged can flake and peel). The whiteness of your nail tips isn't from the...	[ "The protein keratin stiffens epidermal tissue to form fingernails. Nails grow from a thin area called the nail matrix at an average of 1 mm per week. The lunula is the crescent-shape area at the base of the nail, lighter in color as it mixes with the matrix cells. Also, the stratum corneum is the top part of the e...
What specific part of cigarettes are cancerous?	There are a lot of carcinogens in cigarettes, with ~60 out of the 2000 - 4000 chemicals being known human carcinogens. The most common known carcinogens in cigarettes are: - Tar - Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (e.g. naphthalene, benzopyrene) - Nicotine (this hasn't be confirmed, however there have been associated l...	[ "This cancer usually is seen peripherally in the lungs, as opposed to small cell lung cancer and squamous cell lung cancer, which both tend to be more centrally located, although it may also occur as central lesions. For unknown reasons, it often arises in relation to peripheral lung scars. The current theory is th...
why is the letter "w" sometimes pronounced like the letter "v" and vice versa, the letter "v" is pronounced like the letter "w" in some non-english languages?	Not all languages have the same grammatical constructs as English. Latin didn't have all the letters of modern day english, it was missing the J and W, and had the I and V in their place.	[ "\"W\" was created in the 11th century from \"VV\". It represented in Germanic languages, not Latin, which still uses \"V\" for the purpose. \"J\" was distinguished from the original \"I\" only during the late Middle Ages, as was the letter \"U\" from \"V\". Although some Latin dictionaries use \"J\", it is rarely ...
If the speed of light changes when it travels through different mediums, does this mean light accelerates when it enter and leaves a medium?	The short answer is no, the process of refraction is actually tricky to explain properly, but I will do my best! If we consider the classical picture of light, we have an electromagnetic (EM) wave which consists of oscillating electric and magnetic fields. As this wave enters a medium (such as glass) the oscillating ...	[ "When light propagates in a medium, its speed is reduced, in the rest frame of the medium, to , where is the index of refraction of the medium . The speed of light in a medium uniformly moving with speed in the positive -direction as measured in the lab frame is given directly by the velocity addition formulas. For...
How did debtors’ prison work?	The assumption by the creditors, in having a debtor put into a prison, was that the debtor's friends and family would step forward and pay the debts, that the debtor would somehow find the money somewhere...and that, unless the debtor wasn't put in jail, they would never step forward and do that. It is a pretty bizar...	[ "A debtors' prison is a prison for people who are unable to pay debt. Through the mid 19th century, debtors' prisons (usually similar in form to locked workhouses) were a common way to deal with unpaid debt in places like Western Europe. Destitute persons who were unable to pay a court-ordered judgment would be inc...
is it even possible to make a perfect circle?	The inability to make a perfect circle is one of the things Plato points out to support his philosophy of "the forms." We can imagine a perfect circle, but it does not exist in the material world. Similarly, though Plato never speaks about this specific example, if you were to kill all the mosquitoes in the world, th...	[ "No one has ever seen a perfect circle, nor a perfectly straight line, yet everyone knows what a circle and a straight line are. Plato utilizes the tool-maker's blueprint as evidence that Forms are real:... when a man has discovered the instrument which is naturally adapted to each work, he must express this natura...
How important was the Carolingian Renaissance?	Perhaps the most important aspect of the Carolingian "Renaissance" is the issue of uniformity. All the individual accomplishments that wedgeomatic, bowies4, and others have touched on were all attempts at creating a single unified way of doing things. After Charlemagne had come to dominate such a disparate area, it b...	[ "The Carolingian Renaissance was a period of intellectual and cultural revival during the late 8th century and 9th century, mostly during the reigns of Charlemagne and Louis the Pious. There was an increase of literature, the arts, architecture, jurisprudence, liturgical and scriptural studies. The period also saw ...
; why does the usa have so many federal crime agencies?	The two major US political parties are BOTH a mix of authoritarian and borderline paranoid anti-authoritarian. Sometimes the same person can have both sentiments in their head at the same time. This means that a Republican sees a problem ("dope pushers corrupting our children!") and want a federal response (War on Dru...	[ "Law enforcement in the United States is primarily the responsibility of local police departments and sheriff's offices, with state police providing broader services. The New York Police Department (NYPD) is the largest in the country. Federal agencies such as the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the U.S. ...
tom bombadil in lotr	Tolkien on Tom Bombadil: "Even in a mythological Age there must be some enigmas, as there always are. Tom Bombadil is one (intentionally)." And additionally, Tolkien explained that Tom's existence demonstrates that there are entities in the world for whom the war is largely irrelevant or unimportant. Tom isn't an ano...	[ "He, along with Iggy, is skilled at making bombs and has a lot of knowledge about them, as Max states, \"You could lock the Gasman in a padded cell with some dental floss and a bowl of Jell-O, and he'd find a way to make something explode.\" For example, when he and Iggy had to escape from their original house in t...
What was the first life form that ever came into existence?	a self replicating chain of complex chemistry might be the first bit of "life".. life history from that deep in time is a bit hazy and we only have educated guesses. After that we expect self replicating cells and later more complex multi-cellular sorts of life. Quoting star trek and more importantly Q on abiogenes...	[ "The earliest life on Earth existed more than 3.5 billion years ago, during the Eoarchean Era when sufficient crust had solidified following the molten Hadean Eon. The earliest physical evidence so far found consists of microfossils in the Nuvvuagittuq Greenstone Belt of Northern Quebec, in \"banded iron formation\...
why is car insurance complusary and not optional like other insurances?	Because by driving a vehicle you're potentially putting other people at risk. If I don't have homeowner's insurance and my house burns down, that sucks for me and my family, but nobody else is really harmed if I can't afford to buy a new house. But if I drive my car into a sidewalk full of pedestrians and hurt a bunch...	[ "Vehicle insurance (also known as car insurance, motor insurance, or auto insurance) is insurance for cars, trucks, motorcycles, and other road vehicles. Its primary use is to provide financial protection against physical damage or bodily injury resulting from traffic collisions and against liability that could als...
Was Joseph Smith a convicted con-man?	Disorderly conduct is a really broad charge in NY, even today, where it's defined as > A person is guilty of disorderly conduct when, with intent to cause public inconvenience, annoyance or alarm, or recklessly creating a risk thereof: > 1. He engages in fighting or in violent, tumultuous or threatening behavior; ...	[ "Joseph Smith III was an ardent opponent of the practice of plural marriage throughout his life. For most of his career, Smith denied that his father had been involved in the practice and insisted that it had originated with Brigham Young. Smith served many missions to the western United States where he met with an...
how do viruses like hiv transmit through fluids like blood, breast milk, semen, and vaginal secretions?	I'm not sure what you are asking. The viruses are within those secretions, moving there as they do through any sort of tissue. By their presence they are transmitted to whatever encounters those substances.	[ "Hepatitis B, hepatitis C, and hepatitis D are transmitted when blood or mucous membranes are exposed to infected blood and body fluids, such as semen and vaginal secretions. Viral particles have also been found in saliva and breastmilk. However, kissing, sharing utensils, and breastfeeding do not lead to transmiss...

Subsets and Splits

No community queries yet

The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.