question stringlengths 3 301 | answer stringlengths 9 26.1k | context list |
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how does the human body which had a cold stop sneezing when asleep, but keep sneezing when awake ? | When we’re awake, particles, allergies or an illness can stimulate the nerve cells in the nose. The nerves then send signals to the brain in order to initiate a sneeze to get rid of whatever is irritating it. But during rapid eye movement (REM) sleep, certain neurotransmitters shut down. This means that the motor neuro... | [
"Sneezing cannot occur during sleep due to REM atonia – a bodily state where motor neurons are not stimulated and reflex signals are not relayed to the brain. Sufficient external stimulants, however, may cause a person to wake from sleep to sneeze, but any sneezing occurring afterwards would take place with a parti... |
Sometimes when I'm about to fall asleep, I feel an almost electric like shock that jolts me awake. | Do you mean a [hypnic jerk](_URL_0_)? | [
"Myoclonic seizure can be described as \"jumps\" or \"jolts\" experienced in a single or even the entire body. The feeling experienced by the individual is described as uncontrollable jolts common to receiving a mild electric shock. The sudden jerks and twitching of the body can often be so severe that it can cause... |
What sort of rules of war/engagement existed for the ancient Greeks and how seriously were they taken by combatants at the time? | > ancient Greek warfare
You just know we're going to hit up u/Iphikrates here. You may have already encountered his later post in that thread [regarding the "customs of the Greeks"](_URL_0_), but just in case you haven't, there it is. Your question also touches a little bit on [a matter of historical debate](_URL_1_... | [
"At least in the Archaic Period, the fragmentary nature of Ancient Greece, with many competing city-states, increased the frequency of conflict, but conversely limited the scale of warfare. Unable to maintain professional armies, the city-states relied on their own citizens to fight. This inevitably reduced the pot... |
How do antlers form branches? | Antlers grow like literally any other bone! The structure itself is a complex signalling process that encourages cellular proliferation in some areas and apoptosis in others to shape the inherent structure as cartilage before mineralisation occurs to turn it to bone.
Antlers are very dramatic, and one of the fastest a... | [
"Antlers are bony structures that are shed and replaced each year in members of the family Cervidae. They grow from a permanent outgrowth of the frontal bone called the pedicle. Antlers can be branched, as in the White-tailed deer (\"Odocoileus virginianus\"), or palmate, as in the Moose (\"Alces alces\").\n",
"E... |
What's the point of linear algebra? | Let me give a concrete example. I use linear algebra every day for my job, which entails using [finite element analysis](_URL_0_) for engineering.
Imagine a beam. Just an I-beam, anchored at one end and jutting out into space. How will it respond if you put a force at the end? What will be the stresses inside the ... | [
"Linear algebra is central to almost all areas of mathematics. For instance, linear algebra is fundamental in modern presentations of geometry, including for defining basic objects such as lines, planes and rotations. Also, functional analysis may be basically viewed as the application of linear algebra to spaces o... |
How do historians determine the difference between "real" history and very well done propaganda? | There is no "real" history if by "real" you mean a document or source- some piece if evidence that can tell us about the past without the contextualization.
Even if something is not outright propaganda, its production, its meaning, etc, are all circumscribed by cultural-temporal-spacial context.
Honestly, sometimes p... | [
"Identifying propaganda has always been a problem. The main difficulties have involved differentiating propaganda from other types of persuasion, and avoiding a biased approach. Richard Alan Nelson provides a definition of the term: \"Propaganda is neutrally defined as a systematic form of purposeful persuasion tha... |
To what extent as 'American Exceptionalism' warped our view of the US' history? | Nowadays historians are a lot better about avoiding the tropes of American exceptionalism in their narratives, though I won't suggest that it's a completely solved issue. Some authors specifically try to contradict ideas of American exceptionalism in their research. Whatever the case, a good research work will discuss ... | [
"In this view, America's exceptionalism stems from its emergence from a revolution and developing a uniquely American ideology, based on liberty, egalitarianism, individualism, populism and laissez-faire. This observation can be traced to Alexis de Tocqueville, the first writer to describe the United States as \"ex... |
why is it that reddit only displays some of my subreddits in the drop down at one time? | The maximum number of subreddits for the drop down list is 50. | [
"Reddit is known in part for its passionate user base, which has been described as \"offbeat, quirky, and anti-establishment\". Also known as the \"Slashdot effect\", the Reddit effect occurs when a smaller website crashes due to a high influx of traffic after being linked to on Reddit; this is also called the Redd... |
why do homonyms and homophones exist? | Homonymes (as did homophones) started out being written/pronounced differently. It's actually a common fallacy to assume that the current state of a language is the 'right one' (you can see a lot of it in the word literally) but this isn't the case.
Especially in language the lazy and volatile nature of humans shows i... | [
"Homophones are words that sound the same but have different meanings, such as \"night\" and \"knight\". Homophone clues always have an indicator word or phrase that has to do with phonetics, such as \"reportedly\", \"they say\", \"utterly\" (here treated as \"utter(ing)-ly\" and not with its usual meaning), \"voca... |
Is there a theoretical cap to the amount of data that can be sent down/uploaded at one time? | So the description of wave propagation through a medium is described by the dispersion relation. The dispersion relation relates frequency with a wave vector. In order to localize information, a wave packet is prepared by a distribution of frequencies around some mean value. In free space the dispersion relation is l... | [
"Assuming your data cannot be compressed, the 8.192 seconds to transmit a 64 kilobyte file over a 64 kilobit/s communications link is a theoretical minimum time which will not be achieved in practice. This is due to the effect of overheads which are used to format the data in an agreed manner so that both ends of a... |
how is it possible for us to know if a sound comes from the top or the bottom given that we only have two ears aligned horizontally? | The shape of your ears directs sound into your ear canals difforently based on the angle it comes in at. If you change the shape of your ears with something like play dough you lose this ablilty all togeather. Other animals like dogs aren't as good st this and so tilt their heads to get a better idea of what virtical a... | [
"Humans have just two ears, but can locate sounds in three dimensions – in range (distance), in direction above and below, in front and to the rear, as well as to either side. This is possible because the brain, inner ear and the external ears (pinna) work together to make inferences about location. This ability to... |
why do our minds switch around beginning and ends of words when speaking? example, the jox fumped over the log. | This is because in the process of thinking and preparing for the next word you're going to say, you mix the order up.
In your example, when you say "the", your brain gets ready to say fox but also prepared for "jumped". And while its thinking of the next word "jumped", it accidentally puts part of it in your mouth.
... | [
"If the answer to clue \"B\" is \"IDLE\", one could narrow down the 5/6/7 word to \"AND\" and the following word starting with \"JI\". Some people might already begin to recognize the phrase \"Jack and Jill went up the hill.\"\n",
"British and other Commonwealth English uses the ending \"-logue\" while American E... |
For my body, is there a difference between an orgasm that results from masturbation and one from sexual intercourse? | Yes. For both males and females, according to [this paper](_URL_0_) the increase in prolactin levels after an intercourse is 5x that of masturbation. The hormone is said to be related to satisfaction, so it seems that the body recognises the difference. | [
"Human orgasms usually result from physical sexual stimulation of the penis in males (typically accompanying ejaculation) and of the clitoris in females. Sexual stimulation can be by self-practice (masturbation) or with a sex partner (penetrative sex, non-penetrative sex, or other sexual activity).\n",
"In both s... |
With our current capabilities, would we be able to tell that our own system contained a habitable planet if we were a number of light years away? From how far out would be be able to identify this? | This has been the subject of multiple spacecraft investigations.
Both the Galileo mission and the EPOXI mission observed Earth to determine if they could detect signatures of life from only spectra of our planet to determine its chemical make up.
A few things stand out strongly among those:
- Free Oxygen in the atmo... | [
"The outermost planet discovered appears to be within the system's habitable zone, where liquid water would remain stable (more accurate data on the primary star's luminosity will be required to know for sure where the habitable zone is). HD 69830 is the first extrasolar planetary system around a Sun-like star with... |
why does a sound sound different after you've heard it more than once in a row? | When your brain notices repetition, it filters out what stays the same so it can better notice what changes. | [
"When one sound is presented for a long interval before the introduction of a second one originating from a different location, individuals will hear them as two distinct sounds, each originating from the correct location. However, when the delay between the onset of the first and second sound is shortened, listene... |
Why were cities in Medieval Japan "cleaner" than European cities? | I'm going to make a tentative 2nd post on the sub, Firstly I'll point out that medieval era is generally only a term applied to Europe and it ended in the 15th century about 150 years earlier than when Shogun is set (1600). However, easy mistake to make and the rest of the question is valid so I'll go with 1600s.
Ther... | [
"Medieval Japan had many towns that fell into three categories: castle towns, post towns, harbor towns. In addition, the rise of commerce contributed to some place names. Here are some parts of names connected with medieval Japan:\n",
"Most of the world's walled cities comprise a castle and a city inside the defe... |
Why did United States coinage frequently feature Native Americans during the period of the American Indian Wars? | "Cultural appropriation" is something of a buzzword these days as white society, as a collective, becomes more aware of how we have in the past used, and more importantly *misused*, imagery with strong cultural meaning to marginalized groups, but it is hardly a *new* phenomenon, and the use of Native American imagery b... | [
"Before the American Revolutionary War, coins from many European nations circulated freely in the American colonies, as did coinage issued by the various colonies. Chief among these was the Spanish silver dollar coins (also called pieces of eight or eight reales) minted in Mexico and other colonies with silver mine... |
can biological cells only divide or can they also be create/assembled? | That's a great and exciting question. According to the [abiotic hypothesis of the origin of life](_URL_1_), the first living organisms came to be from the "assembling" of biomolecules that came to be due the primordial environment in Earth. With that idea in mind, a branch of biology known as [synthetic biology](_URL_0... | [
"Some cells divide asymmetrically by budding, for example \"Saccharomyces cerevisiae\", the yeast species used in baking and brewing. This process results in a 'mother' cell and a smaller 'daughter' cell. Cryo-electron tomography recently revealed that mitochondria in cells divide by budding.\n",
"Differentiated ... |
Were there any repercussions for those who fought in International Brigades during the Spanish Civil War when they returned home? | Swedish volunteers were about 550 who served in the international brigades, of which 164 fell in battle and about 50 that served in militias or the regular army.
Generally they were not prosecuted when they returned to Sweden, despite breaking the law of enrollement in foreign armies of the time. They were greeted by ... | [
"Of those who survived or avoided arrest, many followed the call of the Second Spanish Republic during the Spanish Civil War (1936–39). They joined the of the International Brigades to fight against the Nationalist rebels. During World War II former Red Front fighters fought in the Soviet Red Army against Nazi Germ... |
how do mri and fmri work, are they used simultaneously? | Your body is exposed to a strong magnetic field, it forces all the protons to align with it. You are then exposed to a radio pulse which knocks the protons out of alignment. Sensors then measure things like how long the protons take to realign and how much energy they give off when they do so. Different body tissues... | [
"Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) is a form of MRI that is most frequently used to take advantage of a difference in magnetism between oxy- and deoxyhemoglobin to assess blood flow to different parts of the brain. Typical sampling rates for fMRI images are in the tenths of seconds.\n",
"Magnetic reson... |
Did Louis XVI, or any other monarch at the time, anticipate that he (Louis) would not survive the revolution? | I would argue that some did fear that he would die. The Revolution was a mess for the nobility and there were nobles interested in returning France to the Pre-Revolution state, such as the Duke of Brunswick whom made a Manifesto that declared that if the Revolution harmed the Royal family, then there be reprocussions. ... | [
"Charged with undermining the First French Republic, Louis XVI was separated from his family and tried in December. He was found guilty by the Convention, led by the Jacobins who rejected the idea of keeping him as a hostage. On 15 January 1793, by a majority of one vote, that of Philippe Égalité, he was condemned ... |
Why are algae blooms worse in recent years? | There are a variety of reasons, but they all revolve around an increase in the number of nutrients needed for algal growth. All lakes sit somewhere on the [trophic state index](_URL_0_), which is a measure of the productivity of a body of water. Virtually all lakes (left to their own devices) become more eutrophic over... | [
"There are many sources of harmful algae blooms. For instance, coastal upwellings can bring harmful algae to surface waters where they can photosynthesize due to an increase in light at the surface waters. This increase in photosynthesis can increase algal reproduction and the release of domoic acid. In addition to... |
What does science not know? What haven't we been able to explain? | Wikipedia has a decent sized [list of unsolved problems](_URL_0_). | [
"Thomas explains science as a wild manifestation of human behavior. He explains that science and discovery is a compulsion that scientists seem to have written in their very genes. Science cannot be organized and forced; it must be free to go where the next question leads. It is similar to a bee hive in some sense,... |
Does any historical evidence or reference to Gaius Verres exist besides Cicero's writings? Would we know he existed if not for his case with Cicero? | The writings of Cicero provide the majority of information regarding Gaius Verres, as well as a lot of information regarding Roman Sicily. There are other references to Verres, however, those are from later authors (Plutarch. *Cicero*. 7-8; Quintilian. 7.2.2; Pliny. *Natural History*. 34.6). It is more than likely that... | [
"The historical Cicero was a courageous intellectual who, by dint of his talent, learning, and rhetorical ability, had risen through the ranks of the Republic to become the last of her novi homines. He had a history of brave public and vocal opposition to real and would-be tyrants such as Sulla and Catiline, as wel... |
why do company's sponsor the pga when it seems like pro golf doesn't make much money? | Golfers and golf fans are rich, relatively speaking. The value of the eyeball of a golf watcher is more valuable than the eyeball of a nascar watcher or an NFL watcher. Advertising cost is about the value of the audience, not just the size of it.
Even further, people _play_ golf much more than they play, for example... | [
"The PGA Championship was established for the purpose of providing a high-profile tournament specifically for professional golfers at a time when they were generally not held in high esteem in a sport that was largely run by wealthy amateurs. This origin is still reflected in the entry system for the Championship. ... |
What are Hordes? | The name "Horde" itself derives from the word "Orda" or "Ordu". This is where the term "Horde" comes in to convey a meaning of a devilish force that seems like a wave as the word has connection to Genghis Khan's expeditions and armies. This connotation lingers from the Mongol conquests of Russia where the Russians were... | [
"Horde Troopers or Hordesmen are robotic soldiers that serve the Horde Empire, and form the bulk of the Evil Horde's vast army. They wear grey armor emblazoned with the Horde insignia. Debuting in the She-Ra cartoon series, they also appeared alongside Hordak in various MOTU comics. A Horde Trooper action figure wa... |
as far as the oscars are concerned, what is the difference between cinematography and film editing in a film? | Cinematography is the setting up of and framing of shots, while editing is how those shots are strung together. Hope this helps. | [
"The Cinematography category has existed since the creation of the Academy Awards. Until 1938, only one award was given. From 1939 until 1966, two awards were given, one for black-and-white films, the other for color films. The two awards were briefly merged at the 1957 Academy Awards, and were permanently combined... |
[META] Suggestion for rules clarification regard answers. | Because that isn't the only rule we have in place. In the case of [the thread that spurred this META post](_URL_1_), the entire text of the top level response removed was *"Evidently historians are tucked in their beds, but I found this"*, with a hyperlink embedded that goes to a Wikipedia page.
This violates the foll... | [
"Closed questions are questions which provide a limited choice (for example, a participant's age or their favourite type of football team), especially if the answer must be taken from a predetermined list. Such questions provide quantitative data, which is easy to analyse. However these questions do not allow the p... |
how do interpreters hear the next line while interpreting what was just said? | Years and years of training and they work in pairs. Real time interpreters like in the UN will have one person translating speech to speech in real time, and another taking notes, preparing relevant slides and such to help the active interpreter and they switch off back and forth to get a rest due to the intense mental... | [
"Consecutive interpreters, in order be accurate, used a specialized system of note-taking which included symbols abbreviations and acronyms. Because they waited until the speaker was finished to provide translation, the interpreters then had the difficult task of creating from these notes as much as half an hour of... |
why news organizations don’t sue for libel when a truthful article is called ‘fake news’? | That's not what libel is. Libel means that the information in the article itself is harmful or false. Saying an article is “fake news” after the fact simply because it might hurt someone's feelings is not libel as long as the article is factually correct. | [
"In the United States, celebrities or public figures can sue for libel if their private lives are revealed in gossip columns and they believe that their reputation has been defamed — that is, exposed to hatred, contempt, ridicule, or pecuniary loss. Gossip columnists cannot defend against libel claims by arguing th... |
Why does the 'wave' pixelation effect occur when looking at a computer screen through a camera? | Back in the day at least, where you had CRT monitors, the way they worked is that electrons were shot across the screen in a line, so the line had to scan the entire screen, row by row, for it to work.
A camera works by taking pictures. I'm guessing a home camera will take 30 frames per second. This means that at any... | [
"Many LCDs also use a technology called \"overdrive\" which buffers several frames ahead and processes the image to reduce blurring and streaks left by ghosting. The effect is that everything is displayed on the screen several frames after it was transmitted by the video source.\n",
"Pixel shift for displays is a... |
why do we find "sweet" things so pleasurable? even other animals really seem to enjoy sweet things. | Sweet implies calories, and animals need calories to survive. Animals evolved not knowing where their next meal was coming from, so it benefits them to eat as many calories as possible while they can. By making calories pleasurable, it creates a desire to eat them. | [
"Sweetness is produced by the presence of sugars, some proteins, and a few other substances. It is often connected to aldehydes and ketones, which contain a carbonyl group. Sweetness is detected by a variety of G protein-coupled receptors coupled to a G protein that acts as an intermediary in the communication betw... |
Shakespeare's mature tragedies are generally considered his finest work; has this always been the case, or has this varied with the times? | The elevation of the tragedies is mainly an aspect of 19th century thinking, where the tragedies were elevated because they were theatre that was of a higher moral nature. This was especially true when selections from the plays were made for textbooks (students memorized huge amounts of text as part of their education)... | [
"Though most of his plays met with success, it was in his later years, that Shakespeare wrote what have been considered his greatest plays: \"Hamlet\", \"Othello\", \"King Lear\", \"Macbeth\", \"Antony and Cleopatra\". In his final period, Shakespeare turned to romance or tragicomedy and completed three more major ... |
how did the military phonetic alphabet get its letter/word combinations? and why is "f" fox-trot and not just "fox"? and why is 9 "nin-er"? | Verbal communications, particularly over radio, are subject to noise. Ambiguity needs to be avoided as much as possible. "Nine" and "five" sound too similar, saying "nine-er" and "five" is clearer. Foxtrot is two syllables, so it's harder to confuse it with something else of one syllable that might sound similar to ... | [
"Throughout World War II, many nations used their own versions of a spelling alphabet. The U.S. adopted the Joint Army/Navy radiotelephony alphabet during 1941 to standardize systems among all branches of its armed forces. The U.S. alphabet became known as \"Able Baker\" after the words for A and B. The Royal Air F... |
Did pirates really make people walk the plank or leave them on deserted islands? | They absolutely did leave people on deserted islands. "Walking the plank" though, that's more sketchy.
**Part 1: Marooning on Islands**
Firstly, the islands. Marooning was a punishment that was prescribed in almost all pirate articles of the early 18th century. Here is an excerpt of the pirate John Philips' articles... | [
"Some residents of the Outer Banks, known as wreckers, made part of their living by scavenging wrecked ships—or by luring ships to their destruction. Horses with lanterns tied to their necks would be walked along the beach; the lanterns' up and down motion would appear to ships to represent clear water and a ship a... |
why is it so difficult to stop crying once you start? any sad thought and the tears will burst again | Because your moods tend to follow thought. Your state of mind is likely to shift to the thoughts you are having. Saying that, the catharsis felt after releasing emotions is good for you and once you've been through the things you need to process, you can start to heal and feel better.
More simply - Your state of mind ... | [
"William H. Frey II, a biochemist at the University of Minnesota, proposed that people feel \"better\" after crying due to the elimination of hormones associated with stress, specifically adrenocorticotropic hormone. This, paired with increased mucosal secretion during crying, could lead to a theory that crying is ... |
What causes pain and why do opiates change the perception of it? | In your brain you have a number of pain centres. These cause pain when stimulated. You have lots of nerves in your body that can activate them when you are cut or burnt or damaged.
On other brain cells or on nearby cells that stimulate them are opioid receptors. There are a variety of types but
_URL_0_
Is the main o... | [
"Opioids are a class of drugs that alter consciousness. Examples of opioids include heroin, morphine, hydrocodone, and oxycodone. Opioids produce analgesia and often feelings of euphoria in users. Opioid abuse may result in decreased production of endorphins in the brain, natural pain relievers whose effects may be... |
is the universe actually expanding and getting bigger? or is light from farther away just now reaching us and allowing us to see what was already there? and how would we tell the difference? | The universe is expanding in the sense that everything we've already seen is getting more distant. The rate at which it is getting more distant roughly corresponds to how far away it already is. | [
"The current accepted answer is that, although the universe is infinitely large, it is not infinitely old. It is thought to be about 13.8 billion years old, so we can only see objects as far away as the distance light can travel in 13.8 billion years. Light from stars farther away has not reached Earth, and cannot ... |
why does my cars air conditioner burn fuel and not just use the battery like my car radio? | The compressor for the AC doesn't burn fuel itself, but it's driven by the car's engine via a belt and clutch assembly. It saves weight and space to have the compressor be run this way, rather than fitting an extra electric motor to run it.
It would also drain your battery in no time if you had your AC on without the ... | [
"The '57 radio used tubes that required only 12 volts of plate voltage and a transistor for the output stage. This lowered the power drain on the battery to an insignificant amount when the engine was off. Playing the radio with conventional tubes for extended periods occasionally drained the battery to the extent ... |
Kegerator/refrigeration question. | This would only have a significant effect if you frequently opened it. The point of a kegerator is that you don't need to open it to get the beer out. Also, the water weight would be a significant consideration for both the structure of the freezer and the floor it is on. Further, how would you keep your barrel from... | [
"A kegerator is a refrigerator that has been designed or altered to store and dispense kegs. By keeping the keg in a refrigerated environment and using CO to pressurize and dispense the keg, it will allow the contents to remain fresh and carbonated for an extended period of time, generally a couple of months. Speci... |
why is there a risk of rejection of donated organs, but not of donated blood? | There is actually a large chance of rejection if you use the wrong blood type. But the best comparison comes dow to why is my car more likely to be totaled having to replace the transmission vs. changing oil. Oil is super simple and can do its job even if you have cheap/ different oil from last time, but you’d transmis... | [
"Since medication to prevent rejection is so effective, donors do not need to be similar to their recipient. Most donated kidneys come from deceased donors; however, the utilisation of living donors in the United States is on the rise. In 2006, 47% of donated kidneys were from living donors. This varies by country:... |
How can smart scales using bioelectrical impedance differentiate water from muscle/fat? | Your underlying assumption is flawed, so let's start with that.
Fat is made of lipids, hydrophobic organic molecules with little to no conductive properties. While some water is present in human adipose tissue, there's far less of it than in muscle tissue.
Muscles are made of protein and activated by ionized elemen... | [
"Bioelectrical impedance analysis (BIA) is a commonly used method for estimating body composition, in particular body fat and muscle mass. In BIA, a weak electric current flows through the body and the voltage is measured in order to calculate impedance (resistance) of the body. Most of our body water is stored in ... |
How much did the Soviets know about the F-117? | I'd like to tag on an additional question to this if that's ok.
Typically, weapons development during the cold war seemed like a constant game of one upping the other guy.
Why wasn't there a similar stealth aircraft developed by the Soviets in response to the F117? | [
"To avoid having the 4450th's aircraft seen during the day by Soviet reconnaissance satellites, all F-117 flying took place at night. During the day, the aircraft were kept inside special hangars. Its A-7Ds were parked outside on the ramp, and training flights were flown during the day to deceive Soviet Intelligenc... |
Why is Romanian the only Romance language in Eastern Europe, even though the Romans conquered the entire Balkan peninsula? | Well, the good news is that Romanian is not the only Romance language in Eastern Europe. It's the only well-known one.
There's also Aromanian (throughout the Balkans and Greece), Istriot (Croatia), Dalmatian (Croatia and Italy), and Megleno (Greece, Macedonia, Turkey).
Okay, that being said, all of those aforementio... | [
"As a Romance language, Romanian shares many characteristics with its more distant relatives: Italian, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Catalan, etc. However, Romanian has preserved certain features of Latin grammar that have been lost elsewhere. This could be explained by a host of arguments such as: relative isolatio... |
Were spartans, gladiators and other warriors muscular as they are portrayed in movies? | No and I can speak specifically to gladiators here. The main constraint is food; the kind of diet needed to build a body like that simply wouldn't have been available to them and the Roman lower class specifically didn't have regular access to animal flesh. Gladiators actually tended to be built on the chubbier side- m... | [
"Herodotus of Dorian Halicarnassus, consistently portrays the Spartans, except when actually facing battle, as rustic, hesitant, uncooperative, corrupt, and naïve. Plato had Socrates argue that a state which really followed the simple life would not need a warrior class; one which was luxurious and aggressive would... |
why can expedia offer half off on hotels regularly, yet rarely has specials on flights? | Actually, you can get some great deals on flights, but you have to basically be at the airport ready to go before the deals become available. Why? Because the airlines often don't know which seats are open and need to be filled until flight check-in is completed and closed... often only 30 min before the flight itself... | [
"The hotel has a complimentary airport shuttle for guests who have just flown into the country as well as for guests who would like to be transported to the airport. It also offers discounts particularly for guests who have an extended stay at the hotel, promotions, benefits, loyalty programmes and competitions whe... |
how do antidotes stop poisons from working? | It depends on the poison and antidote, but some work by directly disabling the poison itself. The toxin might be a chemical that binds to specific receptors within the body and the antidote binds to the toxin instead, filling up all the available binding locations rendering it inert. Or the antidote might work the othe... | [
"An antidote is a substance that can counteract a form of poisoning. The term ultimately derives from the Greek term φάρμακον ἀντίδοτον \"(pharmakon) antidoton\", \"(medicine) given as a remedy\". Antidotes for anticoagulants are sometimes referred to as reversal agents.\n",
"There are no antidotes, and treatment... |
why is there so much crazy lightning in the pictures of chile's calbuco volcano erupting? | Volcanos emit a whole bunch of matter into the air which bumps into each other, creating a static charge which leads to lightning once the charge builds up sufficiently. | [
"Volcanic activity produces lightning-friendly conditions in multiple ways. The enormous quantity of pulverized material and gases explosively ejected into the atmosphere creates a dense plume of particles. The ash density and constant motion within the volcanic plume produces charge by frictional interactions (tri... |
Are Mosquito Effected by Drug Content in Blood? | It really depends on the type of drug and/or the amount of alcohol. In previous studies it has been noted that insects have high tolerance to alcohol and can have a much greater percentage of it in their bloodstream to get them drunk. And let's say for example you have high THC levels in your blood and a mosquito sucks... | [
"Recently, the potential for mosquito saliva to affect the course of WNV disease was demonstrated. Mosquitoes inoculate their saliva into the skin while obtaining blood. Mosquito saliva is a pharmacological cocktail of secreted molecules, principally proteins, that can affect vascular constriction, blood coagulatio... |
Did the Roman Empire's massive movement of slaves leave any notable genetic impact on modern populations? | It is important to note slavery in ancient Rome was not a race based institutution like it eventually became in some European countries and the Americas. Rome acquired slaves from conquering lands, this meant that high amounts of slaves were European, gauls, celts, greeks and slavic peoples. This is addition to norther... | [
"During the period of the Roman Empire, historical sources show that there were many movements of people around Europe, both within and outside the Empire. Historic sources sometimes cite instances of genocide inflicted by the Romans upon rebellious provincial tribes. If this did in fact occur, it would have been l... |
Can you build a tolerance to anaesthetics? | Theoretically, it would work like any other drug. You can develop a tolerance to pretty much anything that causes changes in your body (narcotics, psychotropic meds, even advil). Although there's also a chance that you'll develop an allergy to it. This was common in people who were treated for kidney stones with iodine... | [
"Some inhaled anaesthetics used for general anesthesia, such as cyclopropane and halothane, may reduce the effect of oxytocin and ergometrine. There may also be an increased risk of a drop in blood pressure and abnormal heart beats if oxytocin is given with these general anesthetics.\n",
"Therefore, the correlati... |
Was Gandhi sexist, racist, uncaring about the plight of Untouchables? | It's downright absurd to claim, as the article does, that Gandhi "predicated his rhetoric on anti-blackness".
First of all, we need to speak about presentism. That is, to look with our contemporary morals, opinions and views and apply it to the past in which they didn't exist. To us today, having a man like Gandhi spe... | [
"In 1952 in a letter to her American friend Dorothy Norman, Gandhi wrote: \"I am in no sense a feminist, but I believe in women being able to do everything...Given the opportunity to develop, capable Indian women have come to the top at once.\" While this statement appears paradoxical, it reflects Gandhi's complex ... |
why can djs make money by playing copyrighted music when youtubers can't have copyrighted music in their videos? | They (or, more commonly, the venue) pays for the right to play those songs.
Your own YouTube video can have copyrighted music if you pay for that right. It's just people who don't pay who get their videos yanked. | [
"The licensing system has been criticised by DJs as being unfair and overly expensive. The major points of criticism are the double charges for copying music from an original CD to a hard drive (first buying the CD and then paying for the licence to make a copy), and the unintuitive differentiating between download... |
Is there evidence of neurons synaptically connecting back to themselves, forming a signal loop? | Neurons don't connect to themselves because of a protein called Dscam that acts during neuronal development. Dscam is a membrane protein that can form a high number of isoforms through alternative splicing and thereby provides an identity to the developing neuron to prevent forming connections to itself.
However a neu... | [
"Most neurons receive signals via the dendrites and soma and send out signals down the axon. At the majority of synapses, signals cross from the axon of one neuron to a dendrite of another. However, synapses can connect an axon to another axon or a dendrite to another dendrite.\n",
"Until the early 20th century, ... |
does the united states have secret laws? | It depends on your definition of "law".
If your definition includes the effects of legal precedent, then yes there are secret laws. There is a secret court, the FISA court, which hears certain cases related to national security. The rulings of that court are secret, but they are binding on everyone. If you become in... | [
"Since about 2015 the branches of the United States federal government have accused one another of creating secret law. Journalists, scholars, and anti-secrecy activists have also made similar allegations. Scholarly analysis has shown that secret law is present in all three branches. One scholar, Professor Dakota R... |
Are electromagnetic wavelengths infinitely divisible? | A priori there is no reason to believe that photons have any bounds on wavelength. However, the energy of a photon is inversely proportional to its wavelength, and generating a photon of increasingly shorter wavelength requires ever more energy.
In all likelihood, our models probably break down at some high enough en... | [
"Although the function can be and often is a monochromatic sine wave, it does not have to be sinusoidal, or even periodic. In practice, cannot have infinite periodicity because any real electromagnetic wave must always have a finite extent in time and space. As a result, and based on the theory of Fourier decomposi... |
how do crickets make such a loud noise with their tiny legs? | The bottom of a cricket wing is covered with teeth-like ridges that make it rough. The upper surface of the wing is like a scraper. When crickets rub the upper and lower parts of their wings together, they create a chirping sound called “stridulating." -goog | [
"Most male crickets make a loud chirping sound by stridulation (scraping two specially textured limbs together). The stridulatory organ is located on the tegmen, or fore wing, which is leathery in texture. A large vein runs along the centre of each tegmen, with comb-like serrations on its edge forming a file-like s... |
Greek Historians: How were women in Thebes treated? [Ancient Greece] | You've touched on a very tricky problem here. We have basically no sources on women in Classical Thebes, *other than* Athenian sources. And that means they're affected by an underlying agenda. The only direct *textual* source we've got, in fact, is a fragment of a play by Krates of Thebes, in which a character named Mi... | [
"In \"The Book of the Bath\", Françoise de Bonneville wrote, \"The history of public baths begins in Greece in the sixth century B.C.,\" where men and women washed in basins near places of exercise, physical and intellectual. Later gymnasia had indoor basins set overhead, the open maws of marble lions offering show... |
Why no Reformation and 30 years' war-like events ever happenned in the Islamic culture? | I'm sure someone will be able to give you a much more detailed answer, as unfortunately I'm travelling and don't have access to my notes. However, I can offer a little detail.
The notion of Islam not having a 'reformation' is a fairly common framework of armchair-analysis to explain the religiosity of the Middle East... | [
"Later religious trends of the period saw the end of the aforementioned Muslim expansion. Christians and Christendom saw the end of the Crusades and of religious unity under the Roman Catholic Church. It was during this time that the Inquisitions and the Protestant Reformation took place.\n",
"This Counter-Reform... |
why does ray tracing take such an immense amount of processing power? | With rasterisation (what is currently done, i.e. not ray tracing) a scene is only as complicated as the pieces that make it up. A single box is a relatively simple shape, so it can be drawn with very little processing. A giant complex tree with lots of leafs and branches is very complicated, so it takes a lot of proces... | [
"Ray-tracing images suffer strong aliasing because the \"projected geometric signal\" has very high frequencies exceeding the Nyquist-Shannon maximal frequency that can be represented using the pixel sampling rate, so that the input signal has to be low-pass filtered - i.e., integrated over a solid angle around the... |
Are there any “rare” blood types besides -O? | Medical student here! Human blood groups can be classified by a few different systems which all look at erythrocyte surface antigens (proteins on the outer surfaces of your red blood cells). There are in reality many more blood types than just the 8 typically described (A/B/O/+/-). In fact, scientists and physicians ha... | [
"Research by Ludwik and Hanka Herschfeld during World War I found that the frequencies of blood groups A, B and O differed greatly from region to region. The \"O\" blood type (usually resulting from the absence of both A and B alleles) is very common around the world, with a rate of 63% in all human populations. Ty... |
how can stores such as ross and t.j. max sell their clothing for so cheap? | Say you have some clothing item that costs x to produce. Normally, it retails for 10x. At the end of the season, the store has to clear out their stock, so they sell this item (along with others) in bulk to stores like Ross/TJ Maxx, at a rate of say 2x, so they're still making a profit, however minor. The discount stor... | [
"Ross Stores, Inc., operating under the brand name Ross Dress for Less, is an American chain of off-price department stores headquartered in Dublin, California. It is the largest off-priced retailer in the U.S.\n",
"It offers brand name clothing, footwear, bedding, furniture, fine jewellery, beauty products, and ... |
if your brain was split vertically, would your conscience split for the remainder of life? i.e would either side of you brain experience it's own conscience? | Splitting the brain is actually a very common procedure used to treat epilepsy. It's called a corpus calloscotomy.
_URL_1_
An interesting excerpt:
> "several patients who had undergone a complete calloscotomy suffered from split-brain syndrome. In patients with split-brain syndrome the right hemisphere, which contro... | [
"After the right and left brain are separated, each hemisphere will have its own separate perception, concepts, and impulses to act. Having two \"brains\" in one body can create some interesting dilemmas. When one split-brain patient dressed himself, he sometimes pulled his pants up with one hand (that side of his ... |
why does cold wind have a higher pitch than warm wind? | In all likelihood what you’re feeling isn’t so much “colder” wind as it is “faster” wind. When the wind is blowing faster then it blows away your body heat faster, so it feels colder, even if the air itself is still the same temperature. (And in temperate places like the US fast wind can also be caused by hot air and c... | [
"Wind is initially accelerated from areas of high pressure to areas of low pressure. This is due to density (or temperature and moisture) differences between two air masses. Since stronger high-pressure systems contain cooler or drier air, the air mass is denser and flows towards areas that are warm or moist, which... |
If we put all matter in the universe in one spot without condensing it, how much empty space would there still be? | How to you put all the matter in one spot and at the same time not condense it? That violates quantum mechanics. | [
"Because of his philosophical beliefs, René Descartes proposed in 1644 that no empty space can exist and that space must consequently be filled with matter. The parts of this matter tend to move in straight paths, but because they lie close together, they can not move freely, which according to Descartes implies th... |
the die hard: with a vengeance water bottle scene | Have you tried googling? I googled your text verbatim and the first link is very clear with pictures 'n all: _URL_0_ | [
"In 2005, an ex-Marine, who had many friends, including Ronnie, and a boyfriend, committed suicide to the surprise of many, but left no suicide note or explanation. This real-life tragedy inspired \"Saltwater\". Filming took place in various locations in North Hollywood, Sherman Oaks and San Diego.\n",
"\"Water's... |
Is there a single film which accurately portrays antiquity or the middle ages? | I am anal about historical accuracy in films. For accurate, convincing films set in medieval times, check out
-*The Trilogy of Life* films made by Pier Paolo Pasolini; *The Decameron*, *The Canterbury Tales*, and *The Arabian Nights*. All excellent historical films.
-*Marketa Lazarova*
-*The Seventh Seal* and *The Virg... | [
"Film has been one of the most significant creators of images of the Middle Ages since the early twentieth century. The first medieval film was also one of the earliest films ever made, about Jeanne d'Arc in 1899, while the first to deal with Robin Hood dates to as early as 1908. Influential European films, often w... |
how can the department of homeland security actually run out of money? (since the house just failed to extend funding) a | Congress doesn't budget for departments to build reserves like that, so when they stop cutting checks that's all she wrote | [
"The Department of Homeland Security Appropriations Act, 2014 (, ) is an appropriations bill that was introduced into the United States House of Representatives during the 114th United States Congress. The bill would appropriate money to various government agencies (primarily, but not exclusively) related to the Un... |
The wave/particle duality of photons. Is there actually something to be visualised/thought of or is it kind of ambiguous and simply states it satisfies conditions for both? | No. The problem is that in the macroscopic world, we can see things that are like particles (except bigger) and waves. Photons are not either of these things, but can act somewhat like either of them. We simply have no experience with something quite like them. Sometimes they are described as "wavicles" or "wave p... | [
"The concept of wave–particle duality says that neither the classical concept of \"particle\" nor of \"wave\" can fully describe the behavior of quantum-scale objects, either photons or matter. Wave–particle duality is an example of the [[complementarity (physics)|principle of complementarity]] in quantum physics. ... |
What was the downfall of the Teutonic Knights? | The Teutonic Knights weren't a great power in Outremer. Therefore, they gained power in Prussia via the Prussian Crusades against the Semigallians, Samigotians, Old Prussians, and whatnot. After they established themselves, they proceeded to get a bit too full of themselves and attack Novogorod, and was thoroughly driv... | [
"The Teutonic Knights intercepted the Prussians near Lubawa. Their heavy warhorses smashed the Natangian formation, but Herkus Monte with trusted warriors attacked and killed the master Helmrich and marshal Dietrich. Leaderless knights were defeated, and forty knights perished along with a number of low-ranking sol... |
why does oil pop and fly out of pans when cooking? | That is actually water.
Oil has a much higher boiling point than water. Oil and water do not mix. Oil is less dense than water.
When a droplet of water gets in the oil, it sinks. However, the oil it hot, so the water is instantly heated up beyond its boiling point. This causes it to very quickly expand and rise. Basi... | [
"Then cooking oil (whatever is used in the kitchen for regular cooking like sunflower oil, vegetable oil or groundnut oil) is poured in a pan and heated up. Once the oil is hot, small dumplings of the batter is put in the oil and deep fried.\n",
"With other types of pans, some oil or fat is required to prevent ho... |
how come you can be falling asleep watching tv, then wide awake when you go to bed five minutes later? | The brain is like a group of people talking to each other. When you're watching TV, the part of your brain that watches TV says "Shut up guys, I'm watching TV," so you can focus without thinking about cake or math. As a result, the others sit silent, grow bored, and fall asleep, until only the TV watcher part of the ... | [
"A boy decides to sleep in one day, extolling his deep pillow and warm bed. He boasts that his family, police, neighbours, news media and the U.S. Marines could do nothing to rouse him, even with variety of noisemakers. In the end, his family realize he is serious and give his breakfast egg (which he earlier sugges... |
how do animals/insects know they are the same and don’t attack each other | I don't know the answer to this. I just wanted to second the question. I wondered the same thing mostly about dogs. Dogs come in a wide variety of shapes and sizes but somehow they recognise their own species, even at distance (i.e not using scent). Is there something that instinctively tells them "that's a dog too? | [
"Predators and prey are natural enemies, and many of their adaptations seem designed to counter each other. For example, bats have sophisticated echolocation systems to detect insects and other prey, and insects have developed a variety of defences including the ability to hear the echolocation calls. Many pursuit ... |
If Cavendish bananas were targeted by a disease not unlike the Gros Michel bananas, what would be the next species in line to replace the Cavendish? | Heeyyyyy I just spent two months in Central America researching this exact question and consulting with the experts of banana pathology and the top figures of the banana industry. First, I must say that your hypothetical scenario is already happening. Panama disease (Fusarium oxysporum cubense) is what wiped out the ... | [
"While in no danger of outright extinction, the most common edible banana cultivar Cavendish (extremely popular in Europe and the Americas) could become unviable for large-scale cultivation in the next 10–20 years. Its predecessor 'Gros Michel', discovered in the 1820s, suffered this fate. Like almost all bananas, ... |
What happens if you give a patient a non-compatible blood type? Eg. an O- patient is given AB+ blood. | Medical laboratory science student here. O type blood does not have either A or B type antigens, and thus do not identify AB blood as self. Because of this patient's with O type blood have antibodies against the antigens present on AB type blood. When an O type patient is transfused with AB blood the O type patient an... | [
"Universal donor blood, which is both type O and Rh negative, can be given if the recipient's blood group is not known, as may happen in an emergency. Some institutions will only release O+ for male and O- blood for female patients. This serves two purposes. First, it preserves the lower stock of O- blood and secon... |
Why is a small sliver of California on the Pacific Plate, and not on the North American Plate? | I have been continually meaning to reply to this, since I saw nobody else did. It's really not my area of focus even though I researched faults associated with the San Andreas, but I can say that while some plate boundaries (like divergent, or subduction plate boundaries) do a good job of keeping land masses "separate"... | [
"The Pacific Plate is the largest known plate on Earth. It is considered an oceanic plate because it is much more dense than a continental plate. That is the reason why oceanic plates always subduct under another plate. There are only a few places where the Pacific Plate is actually above the ocean. Most of the coa... |
why are mandatory arbitration clauses not considered to be unconstitutional in the us, under the 7th amendment? | The 7th amendment states that in civil cases, your right to a jury is preserved. By signing an agreement with an arbitration clause, you are waiving your right to bring a lawsuit in the first place. There is nothing in the Constitution that preserves your right to bring a case.
However, mandatory arbitration claus... | [
"Since the FAA allowed arbitration agreements to be voided under the same principles applicable to contracts generally, but did not specifically enumerate what principles might be applicable, \"hence it would appear that the judiciary must fashion the limitations as a matter of federal common law\". Such a federal ... |
Does moons like Europa and Enceladus experience solar eclipses for long periods of time? | Sunlight does very little to warm those moons, even in the best circumstances.
The noontime surface temperature on Enceladus only gets to about -200 °C. There isn't enough solar radiation to fuel photosynthesis or similar processes.
If any life does exist there, we think it must rely entirely on the energy of geot... | [
"On the other three gas giants, eclipses only occur at certain periods during the planet's orbit, due to their higher inclination between the orbits of the moon and the orbital plane of the planet. The moon Titan, for example, has an orbital plane tilted about 1.6° to Saturn's equatorial plane. But Saturn has an ax... |
how is the outcome of a contested or brokered convention determined? | After the first ballot, delegates are free to vote for whichever candidate they like, even one who wasn't running. Candidates and party leaders are free to lobby those delegates and try to get them to change their mind. Party leaders can also try to lean on candidates and get them to accept and endorse a compromise. ... | [
"In United States politics, a brokered convention (sometimes referred to as an open convention and closely related to a contested convention) can occur during a presidential election when a political party fails to choose a nominee on the first round of delegate voting at the party's nominating convention.\n",
"T... |
Why do humans (and some other animals) help other species? | Essentially it is evolutionarily advantageous. Can you imagine trying to survive on the basis of your skills alone? Can you imagine a highly skilled leader being stuck in a world which only their skills was useful to them and nobody else, and nobody elses skills was useful to them? Cooperation is so advantageous that i... | [
"Humans cooperate for the same reasons as other animals: immediate benefit, genetic relatedness, and reciprocity, but also for particularly human reasons, such as honesty signaling (indirect reciprocity), cultural group selection, and for reasons having to do with cultural evolution.\n",
"In real life situations,... |
what exactly went wrong at the end of the superbowl for the seahawks? | Generally speaking, when you are close to the opponent's end zone, it is a safer option to run the ball rather than pass it, for precisely the reason shown in this game - passes can be intercepted.
This is doubly true for the Seahawks, whose running back (ie the guy you give the ball to run with) is nicknamed 'Beast M... | [
"The Seahawks entered Super Bowl XL after finishing the regular season with an NFC-best 13–3 record. After a rocky 2–2 start, they won 11 consecutive games before losing to the Green Bay Packers to finish the season. The 13–3 record and 11-game winning streak set new team records.\n",
"The following season, the S... |
Did Chinese Christianity ever pose a threat to the legitimacy of the emperor? | Gotta keep this brief because I'm on my way out the door, but let me know if you have follow up questions and I can get them a bit later.
> I'm under the impression that the Chinese emperor was held in power through some sort of quasi-religious concept of the world that placed China as the center of the universe and ... | [
"Opposition arose to the Christians in 698-699 from the Buddhists, and then from the Daoists in 713, but Christianity continued to thrive, and in 781, a stone stele (the Nestorian Stele) was erected at the Tang capital of Chang-an, which recorded 150 years of Emperor-supported Christian history in China. The text o... |
what are aftermarket graphics cards and what is the difference between aftermarket and normal cards? | So, NVIDIA has released the 1080 and 1070 with what is called the reference cooler, this is the cooler that NVIDIA made.
Normally, NVIDIA does not want to make coolers/cards. It will pass on that responsibility to other companies such as MSI, Asus, or EVGA. NVIDIA simply wants to focus on the aspect of making and desi... | [
"A dedicated graphics card has its own RAM and Processor for generating its images, and does not slow down the computer. Dedicated graphics cards also have higher performance than integrated graphics cards. It is possible to have both dedicated and integrated graphics, however once a dedicated graphics card is inst... |
How many people living in the U.S. today can trace their lineage to living in the U.S. in the 1700s or earlier? | I don't know about the 1700's in particular, but there has been some research down on what proportion of Americans can trace their descent to people on the Mayflower. A *New York Times* article from 2001 says:
> And, perhaps in defiance of the laws of mathematics, 25 percent of the American people today believe they ... | [
"Today, over 20,000 people, can trace their lineage to Richard Sears. These people have influenced not only the British Colonies but the United States and the world. Today, many thousands of those descendants live in the United States alone.\n",
"It is estimated that between 40.2 million and 72.1 million American... |
Why have Spain and Portugal's borders remained mostly unchanged since the end of Al-Andalus? | You may find [this](_URL_1_) or [this](_URL_0_) useful. | [
"Portugal and Spain signed the Schengen Agreement in June 1991 which came into effect on 26 March 1995, making Portugal and Spain part of the Schengen area and thus the border then became an Open border. \n",
"In 1801, the Portuguese city of Olivença was occupied by Spain and passed to Spanish sovereignty as Oliv... |
if somebody commits a crime before they're 18, but the crime is only uncovered after they turn 18, would they be tried as an adult, or a minor? | It may vary from state to state, but I'm most familiar with people being tried as the age they committed the crime. That being said, your example is perhaps a bad one as particularly egregious crimes (like murder) can get someone tried as an adult regardless of the age of the defendant.
But something relatively benign... | [
"The Criminal Code describes “minors” who have reached the age of 14, but under the age of 18. Generally, persons reached age of 16 at the time of commitment of a crime are subject to criminal liability. However, persons, achieved age of fourteen, are subject to criminal liability for the commitment of the followin... |
why is the new nuclear fusion success of germany important? | Nuclear fusion is a way to transform mass into energy by fusing atoms. In theory this method is known for a long time and if it works it could provide a clean, nearly unlimited and non-polluting source of energy. But in practice it's very difficult to create energy this way. The experiment in Germany is making big step... | [
"Physicist Amory Lovins has said: \"Chancellor Merkel was so shocked by Fukushima that she turned Germany’s energy focus from nuclear (of which she closed 41% and will close the rest within a decade) to efficiency and renewables. That’s supported by three-fourths of Germans and opposed by no political party\".\n",
... |
Why is methane considered evidence for biological activity when Uranus and Neptune have abundant levels? | Uranus and Neptune are very hydrogen-rich, so in their equilibrium state, any elements you find tend to be hydrogen saturated. For example:
- Oxygen is hydrogen saturated to form H2O, water.
- Nitrogen is hydrogen saturated to form NH3, ammonia.
- Carbon is hydrogen saturated to form CH4, methane.
- Phosphorus is hydr... | [
"Of particular interest to this astrobiology mission, is the detection and characterization of the atmospheric methane (), as it may be of geological or biological nature. Large differences in the abundances were measured between observations taken in 2003, 2006, and on 2014 NASA reported that the \"Curiosity\" rov... |
why can we have such huge hard-disk space but comparably so little ram? | RAM is much more expensive per gigabyte than disk storage is. There are systems out there that will allow you to install more than 16GB, but they tend to be professional-class workstations, again more expensive than basic computers. | [
"Some RAM drives use a compressed file system such as cramfs to allow compressed data to be accessed on the fly, without decompressing it first. This is convenient because RAM drives are often small due to the higher price per byte than conventional hard drive storage.\n",
"BULLET::::- 2.5-inch hard disk drives o... |
how can america rank so low in education yet reject workers with degrees from other countries? | In American education, it's important to note the difference between primary and secondary schools, and higher education. America ranks very low on the first group, but very high on the second. Our universities are top notch and very attractive around the world. It's the high schools that are terrible.
As far as why y... | [
"In the United States, vocational education is not often considered to be a suitable, satisfying alternative to a traditional academic curriculum. Notwithstanding the high college drop-out rates that incur from the enormous cost of higher education, and the disengagement many students feel from their academic studi... |
why are many craft beers made in the us often sold as imports at bars in the us? | Because the bar/restaurant in question has two beer prices. One price for Miller/Budweiser and a slightly higher price for imports.
They want to sell the craft beers for import prices so they just list them under imports (rather than making a third category called 'not imports' that has the same price) | [
"As of 2013, the beers are imported into the United States and available in Ohio, Michigan, New York and Pennsylvania. In Canada, they are only sold in the province of Ontario and are available at the brewery or in the LCBO and The Beer Store.\n",
"Breweries in New Mexico produce a wide range of beers in differen... |
why is the volkswagen advertisement "lemon" so famous? | Lemon was a clean break with the conventions of American advertising, not just automobile advertising, in 1959. You will see references to the ad appearing "in 1960". This refers to the American convention of "model years" which conventionally run from October to September.
At the time automobile advertising was a pla... | [
"At Sterling Cooper, Don discusses Doyle Dane Bernbach's new \"Think Small\" and \"Lemon\" ad campaigns for Volkswagen. Don hates it, Roger is puzzled why a Jewish advertising executive (Bill Bernbach) would want to help the Germans, while Pete says it's \"brilliant.\" Don says \"love it or hate it, we've been talk... |
Does fat spoil in the body? Does the body keep track of what fat is newer, and "rotate stock", so to speak? | Fats are also called lipids (I will use this term later). When fat spoils, it is called [rancidification](_URL_0_). Fat in our bodies is stored in special types of cells called [adipocytes](_URL_1_).
When our bodies store energy, these adipocytes take up more fat, and they can proliferate, too. When our bodies ne... | [
"The aging process has an inevitable impact on a person's body shape. A woman's sex hormone levels will affect the fat distribution on her body. According to Dr. Devendra Singh, \"Body shape is determined by the nature of body fat distribution that, in turn, is significantly correlated with women's sex hormone prof... |
What is the relationship between weight gain, calorie intake, and mass intake? | The short answer is that the weight itself of the food involved is not a factor in weight gain. (I am not an expert in nutrition so if this is oversimplified to the point of being wrong I do not mind an expert correcting me. This is my understanding from a chemistry standpoint)
Basically there are only 3 types of orga... | [
"While an increase in food intake is often the case after exposure, weight gain involves the body's maintenance of its metabolic setpoint as well. Given this information, it is particularly important to note that exposure during development and initial programming of these setpoints can be extremely significant thr... |
photosystems in photosynthesis | in *photosystem II*, a photon (packet of light energy) comes in and excites an electron (subatomic particle) in what's called a *chlorophyll B* molecule in the *light harvesting complex*. the excited electron jumps from chlorophyll molecule to chlorophyll molecule until it finally reaches a pair of *chlorophyll A* mole... | [
"Photosystems are functional and structural units of protein complexes involved in photosynthesis that together carry out the primary photochemistry of photosynthesis: the absorption of light and the transfer of energy and electrons. Photosystems are found in the thylakoid membranes of plants, algae and cyanobacter... |
what is stopping me from living a life of debt? | Eventually people will stop loaning you money, they might take you to court, and you can forget ever buying a house or even slightly expensive car.
EDIT: You will also never be able to get a job that requires a security clearance. | [
"A person who is heavily in debt builds a complex spreadsheet of how long it would take to repay using different payment options and interest rates, rather than attempting to understand and then stop his urge to overspend his money.\n",
"Some people argue against forgiving debt on the basis that it would motivate... |
why comcast "xfinity" ads are allowed to continue claiming they are the fastest isp in the country when they are clearly lying? | They offer 305mbit/s fiber residential service in certain metro areas - they are the fastest residential isp In those and likely other areas as well
_URL_0_
edit: also they may be saying something like "fastest national ISP" because one-offs like Google Fiber are not a nation-wide ISP. And when they offer 305mbit/s ... | [
"In February 2017, Comcast was ordered by the self-regulatory National Advertising Review Board to cease using a claim based on Speedtest.net data that it has \"America's fastest internet\", stating that \"Ookla’s data showed only that Xfinity consumers who took advantage of the free tests offered on the Speedtest.... |
When Did it Become Acceptable for Christians to be Bankers? | Your question isn't necessarily a bad one, but it's assumptive.
Christians have always been bankers. Christian banks were a way for people to keep stores of precious metals safe and in so doing, the receipts the bakers gave their customers were used as notes of exchange. Bankers grew wise to this and started making n... | [
"The rise of Protestantism, however, freed many European Christians from Rome's dictates against usury. In the late 18th century, Protestant merchant families began to move into banking to an increasing degree, especially in trading countries such as the United Kingdom (Barings), Germany (Schroders, Berenbergs) and... |
Could something similar to an emp be made to shut off the electricity in our brains? | Interesting theory. There have been many solar flares recorded in history (before electronics) and no one died because of it, but the possibility of being able to stop the brain with electric pluses, well, isn't that like being electrocuted? | [
"An energetic EMP can temporarily upset or permanently damage electronic equipment by generating high voltage and high current surges; semiconductor components are particularly at risk. The effects of damage can range from imperceptible to the eye, to devices literally blowing apart. Cables, even if short, can act ... |
What were "In-laws" called in the past? | Although the stand alone phrase 'in-law' does indeed date from the mid 19th c. it's an abstraction from much older specific phrases such as 'father-in-law' or 'brother-in-law'. The earliest recorded such usage is 'brother-in-law' from [13th c. English Canon law](_URL_1_) where it's used to outline who may marry whom (T... | [
"Although credit for popularizing the expression \"the rule of law\" in modern times is usually given to A. V. Dicey, development of the legal concept can be traced through history to many ancient civilizations, including ancient Greece, China, Mesopotamia, India, and Rome.\n",
"The law was named in 1860 by Henry... |
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