Split (2)

train · 226k rows

question stringlengths 3 301	answer stringlengths 9 26.1k	context list
are their medications for increasing dopaminein levels in your brain for extended periods of time?	Define 'extended'... and 'medication'. Cocaine will work, but obviously not if addiction and all that entails are considered unacceptable. There are plenty of more legitimate pharmaceuticals that prevent reuptake of dopamine but it's inherently very abusable and thus not a preferred way to treat anything. The risks...	[ "DOV-102,677 (20 mg/kg IP) increased extracellular levels of dopamine and serotonin in the prefrontal cortex to 320 and 280% above baseline 100 min after administration. Dopamine levels were stably increased for the duration (240 min) of the study, but serotonin levels declined to baseline by 200 min after administ...
what the difference is between the district of columbia and a regular state in the us.	In the United States there are levels of government. Federal Government, State Government, County (not important in some states), City/Town etc. Each state government has a lot of latitude in passing laws as they see fit, essentially free of Federal interference, as long as their laws abide by the Constitution and cert...	[ "In the United States, the District of Columbia offers an illustration of devolved government. The District is separate from any state, and has its own elected government; in many ways, on a day-to-day basis, it operates much like another state, with its own laws, court system, Department of Motor Vehicles, public ...
Why was there such a long gap (millions of years) between bipedalism and stone tools?	Because tool use and bipedalism have very different purposes and requirements. Bipedalism is by no means the only requirement for tool use - nor is it even a terribly important one. Especially not stone tools, which require all sorts of advances in mental ability and social knowledge to be possible.	[ "There are at least twelve distinct hypotheses as to how and why bipedalism evolved in humans, and also some debate as to when. Bipedalism evolved well before the large human brain or the development of stone tools. Bipedal specializations are found in \"Australopithecus\" fossils from 4.2-3.9 million years ago, al...
can someone explain why the water is smoother in some parts but rougher in others?	What is causing the ripples is most likely the wind, and the calmer spots are because either the wind is blocked our the gust of wind hasn't gotten there yet. You can mimic this by filling a bowl with water and blowing across it... Then blow the same way with two fingers in front of your mouth.	[ "Surface roughness can also affect the adhesive strength. Surfaces with roughness on the scale of 1-2 micrometres can yield better wetting because they have a larger surface area. Thus, more intermolecular interactions at closer distances can arise, yielding stronger attractions and larger adhesive strength. Once t...
History books often tells the western version of the cold war, but how was the cold war seen from Soviets side?[x-post to askreddit]	To get a good idea what the Cold War was like from the other side I would definitely recommend Khrushchev's Memoirs. In it he details what he felt at major events during his tenure as the Leader of the Soviet Union. He is very frank, and candid in his discussion because he wrote the memoirs after he was disposed from p...	[ " As soon as the \"Cold War\" began about 1947 the origins of the conflict between the Soviet Union and the West became a source of heated controversy among scholars and politicians. In particular, historians have sharply disagreed as to who was responsible for the breakdown of Soviet-U.S. relations after the Secon...
Are there ways to chemically suppress emotion?	Well, what AgentAsterisk is suggesting happens isn't really what Lamictal does by design (though it is used as, but is not formally, a mood stabilizar), but most of our "mood stabilizers" have different primary functions like Lamictal, so it's not too far off. Emotions are we know them seem to have two primary origins...	[ "Suppressing the expression of emotion is one of the most frequent emotion-regulation strategies utilized by human beings. Clinical traditions state that a person's psychological health is based upon how affective impulses are regulated; the consequences of affective regulation have become, therefore, a main focus ...
why don’t we use atmospheric water generators to solve the water crisis literally everywhere in the world?	Building such an infrastructure would be unfathomably expensive and take incredible amounts of energy in order to run it.	[ "People involved in power generation say that water should be filled up as much as possible as it would be better for power generation. People involved in flood control department says water storage should be lowered, so that in case of excessive rain a flood like situation arises then it will be a flood cushion. T...
Please explain this picture of the moon for me!	You got it. It's earthshine. And it is indeed cool :)	[ "Conventionalized illustrations of the Man in the Moon seen in Western art often show a very simple face in the full moon, or a human profile in the crescent moon, corresponding to no actual markings. Some depict a man with a face turned away from the viewer on the ground, for example when viewed from North America...
how the hell does a global economy/market work?	Let's say there's a bottle of French wine I want. Personally, I think the bottle of wine is worth 50 bucks. I'm willing to pay 50 bucks for the wine. I look at the price of the wine: 40 euros. If I can get an exchange rate of 1.25 dollars or less = 1 euro, I can get the wine for the price I'm willing to pay. So I ...	[ "One Global Economy was founded in 2005, with the goal of expanding One Economy's domestic efforts to communities around the world. One Global Economy's methodology involves identifying underserved international areas and then identifying the key developmental issues facing those communities. One Global Economy con...
How easy was travel in Edo period Japan?	Travel inside Japan, for an authorized person going to someplace on the beaten path-- remarkably easy, for the level of technology. Travel outside of Japan, or for someone of a class that didn't have the means to travel? Much, much harder; potentially illegal and impossible -the Tokugawa's sakoku ("closed country") p...	[ "During the Edo period, the Tōkaidō (road) developed as the major highway linking Edo with Kyoto, and \"daimyōs\" from the western domains were forced to travel on a regular basis to Edo to attend to the \"shōgun\" in a system known as \"sankin-kōtai\". However, the Tokugawa shogunate prohibited the building of bri...
What methods are used to predict the "island of stability" in nuclear physics?	Any model of nuclear structure could be considered "many-body theory"; that's a class of theories rather than a specific technique. But anyway, it would be way too computationally expensive to model superheavy nuclides using QCD or EFTs. It's mostly density functional theory.	[ "In nuclear physics, the island of stability is the prediction that a set of superheavy nuclides with magic numbers of protons and neutrons will temporarily reverse the trend of decreasing stability in elements heavier than uranium.\n", "The hypothesis for the island of stability is based upon the nuclear shell m...
Its often mentioned that the eastern front in WW1 was a lot more mobile than the western. How exactly did tactics and strategy differ?	* [What was fighting on the Eastern Front like?] (_URL_3_) * [Why was WWI dependent on trenches? Wasn't there a better way?] (_URL_2_) * [Why was Trench Warfare present on the Western Front but not the Eastern?] (_URL_0_) ^ these older answers I've given should be pertinent. First of all, the reason why the war in th...	[ "The front in the east was much longer than that in the west. The theater of war was roughly delimited by the Baltic Sea in the west and Minsk in the east, and Saint Petersburg in the north and the Black Sea in the south, a distance of more than . This had a drastic effect on the nature of the warfare.\n", "The m...
We know all-caps text is harder to read than regular-case. Is this a learned behavior from seeing regular-case letters more often, or is there something inherently different between the two styles that makes regular-case more readable? If the latter, what is it?	There's an experiment, to demonstrate this effect: Print out the same text twice - one in sentence case, the other in all caps. Use another sheet of paper to cover the lower half of each text and attempt to read the texts. You'll find the sentence case easier to read, even though there are fewer/less marks visible...	[ "Colin Wheildon stated that there is an \"apparent consensus\" that lower-case text is more legible, but that some editors continue to use all caps in text regardless. In his studies of all caps in headlines, he states that, \"Editors who favor capitals claim that they give greater emphasis. Those who prefer lower ...
why is it so hard to bring manufacturing jobs back to the us?	That would be a solution... if we didn't export anything. See, we do have some manufacturing jobs. We could levy a huge import tariff on China and other countries. But then, they cancel orders for things we do make. Like airplanes. Then Boeing has to lay off 50,000 people. After Canada and Mexico, we export more st...	[ "\"The Economist\" reported in January 2017 that manufacturing historically created good paying jobs for workers without a college education, particularly for men. Unions were strong and owners did not want to risk strikes in their factories due to large capital investments. Such jobs are much less available in the...
why can´t we predict the chances of a collision with a meteor or asteroid more precisely?	It's the "ball of ice" part that causes most of the problems. As they approach the sun, they start to boil off in places, causing jets that change their trajectory. And it isn't uniform, since they are usually "dirty" balls of ice. When they are very far away, these small, small changes can amount to big difference...	[ "While the chances of a major collision are low in the near term, there is a certainty that one will happen eventually unless defensive actions are taken. Astronomical events—such as the Shoemaker-Levy 9 impacts on Jupiter and the 2013 Chelyabinsk meteor, along with the growing number of objects on the Sentry Risk ...
why does soap work? the two major components (i learned this from fight club) fat and lye seem like they'd just make you feel dirty.	Soap is made from fat and lye, but saponification creates a new substance out of those two things that we call soap. Here's how soap works: First, remember that oil and water don't mix. So when you have grease and oils on your skin or your clothes, it is difficult to wash them off with just water. You could wash t...	[ "Glycerin soaps are soaps that contain glycerin, a component of fat or oil. They are recognizably different from other soaps because they are translucent. The clarity is due to the alignment of the soap molecules, which can be induced through the addition of alcohol and sugar. This is usually done for homemade glyc...
what is the physics behind hydroplaning while driving in the rain?	Water does not compress except under extreme force, and your car is not capable of making that much force. When you hit a puddle of water at very high speed, the puddle resists moving out of the way, so your tires are no longer touching pavement, they're touching water. At this point, what the tires are doing is basi...	[ "Aquaplaning or hydroplaning by the tires of a road vehicle, aircraft or other wheeled vehicle occurs when a layer of water builds between the wheels of the vehicle and the road surface, leading to a loss of traction that prevents the vehicle from responding to control inputs. If it occurs to all wheels simultaneou...
how is the equivalent weight of tnt calculated when an explosion happens?	One ton of TNT releases 4.2x10^9 joules of energy. They estimate the amount of energy released in the explosion and convert it into tons of TNT. The reason they do this is because people don't really have any idea what 10^x joules really means.	[ "TNT equivalent is a convention for expressing energy, typically used to describe the energy released in an explosion. The \"ton of TNT\" is a unit of energy defined by that convention to be 4.184 gigajoules, which is the approximate energy released in the detonation of a metric ton (1,000 kilograms or one megagram...
When and how did the proper kingdoms of Sweden and Norway form from the Norse tribes that preceded them?	The Kingdom of Norway was nominally formed primarily during the conquests of Harald Fairhair. Before him it was a group of disparate kingdoms spread all the way up what was at the time called the "Northern Way) in Norse. Harald, through a series of wars and conquests, united these kingdoms into the first recognizable k...	[ "In the early Viking Age, there were several different petty kingdoms in Norway. Spurred by the unification of several of these kingdoms under Halfdan the Black and his son Harald Fairhair, the country unified around the year 872. Some of the kingdoms were:\n", "The three Scandinavian kingdoms joined in 1387 in t...
if counterfeiters continue to fake money and adapt to whatever imperfections they made, will they eventually make a perfect copy?	They don't have to make a perfect copy. They just have to make a good enough copy to fool the basic control machines. There are money in circulation that nobody knows they're fake. A story comes to mind some years ago about how they caught large sum of fake euros. They caught them only by infiltrating the group, othe...	[ "Some of the ill-effects that counterfeit money has on society include a reduction in the value of real money; and increase in prices (inflation) due to more money getting circulated in the economy - an unauthorized artificial increase in the money supply; a decrease in the acceptability of paper money; and losses,...
why is it that each decade from the 20th century has its own very distinctive styles and looks but the 2000s and the 2010s look virtually the same?	The things we tend to remember as '60s fashion', '70s fashion', etc are mostly distinctive extremes. We remember them because they stood out so much as unusual, or because they appear in movies and music videos, which tend to be very stylized. Stuff like Happy Days and Back to the Future exaggerated the periods they we...	[ "2000s fashion is often described as being a global mash up, where trends saw the fusion of previous vintage styles, global and ethnic clothing (e.g. boho), as well as the fashions of numerous music-based subcultures. Hip-hop fashion generally was the most popular among young people of both sexes, followed by the r...
why is that if i aim a laser pointer at mirror, as the dot approaches the reflection of the pointer in my hand, the laser approaches my eye?	When you look at your hand in a mirror, you're seeing light that came from your hand, went in a straight line toward that particular spot on the mirror, bounced and went in a straight line toward your eye. When you point a laser at that same spot, it bounces in the same direction, and thus ends up in the same place.	[ "BULLET::::- The Triangle Knight, which has a diagonally-oriented mirror on it to bend a laser's light 90 degrees. The other two sides of the piece are vulnerable, however, and the piece will be removed if a laser hits it from a non-mirrored side.\n", "When the piezo-tube is positioned above the cantilever and ti...
if water goes in a cycle, how are we running out?	Sam and Paul are walking through a desert. Sam, holding out an empty plastic bottle. "We are running out of water," he says, dropping the bottle to the dry sand. Paul replies, "What do you mean we are running out? The water we drank is still water, and when we need to pee in a few hours it will still be water. Even t...	[ "The water cycle, also known as the hydrologic cycle or the hydrological cycle, describes the continuous movement of water on, above and below the surface of the Earth. The mass of water on Earth remains fairly constant over time but the partitioning of the water into the major reservoirs of ice, fresh water, salin...
why is wood generally thought of as not conductive when trees are some of the most dangerous things to stand under during a lightning storm?	Conductivity is like a scale. Wood is not a good conductor of electricity but it does conduct better then air. So a lightning bolt will move though the tree better then it moves though air and therefore the lightning will more often hit trees then just bare ground. Humans are also not particularly good conductors of el...	[ "Trees are frequent conductors of lightning to the ground. Since sap is a relatively poor conductor, its electrical resistance causes it to be heated explosively into steam, which blows off the bark outside the lightning's path. In following seasons trees overgrow the damaged area and may cover it completely, leavi...
Supernova explosions are caused by the star's matter collapsing in on itself and then bouncing back out. This matter moves beyond the initial radius of the star. Where does this energy come from that allows this star matter to travel out into the universe?	Largely from the gravitational potential energy released by collapse. When the core implodes, it allows the outer layers to fall farther in, and when they hit during the 'bounce' phase energy is transferred from the core onto the infalling matter. Ultimately, that proto-neutron star that exists in the collapsed core ...	[ "A star with a core mass slightly below this level—in the range of —will undergo a supernova explosion, but so much of the ejected mass falls back onto the core remnant that it still collapses into a black hole. If such a star is rotating slowly, then it will produce a faint supernova, but if the star is rotating q...
How do we know where the tectonic plates are?	Layman here. I am pretty sure that [mid-ocean ridges](_URL_1_), [oceanic trenches](_URL_0_) and [tranform faults](_URL_2_) are pretty visible as plates boundaries.	[ "Plate tectonics is a theory developed during the 1960s which describes the movement of continents by way of the separation and collision of crustal plates. It is in a sense structural geology on a planet scale, and is used throughout structural geology as a framework to analyze and understand global, regional, and...
what part of a computer's cpu is 14nm, and why is it so important to keep going smaller?	CPUs are essentially just a massive collection of transistors all connected to each other through wires. These transistors are essentially electronic switches, you have an input, and output, and a gate, and only when the gate is powered, will electricity be allowed to flow from the input to the output. As it turns out...	[ "The CPU has 10.4 million transistors, an order of magnitude more than the RAD6000 (which had 1.1 million). It is manufactured using either 250 or 150 nm photolithography and has a die area of 130 mm. It has a core clock of 110 to 200 MHz and can process at 266 MIPS or more. The CPU can include an extended L2 cache...
how do you get a stable satellite in to orbit?	You just need to get it high enough to no longer be greatly effected by the atmosphere, while going fast enough. That's about it really there are specific heights and angles for different types of orbit and geocentric orbits, but besides from that it's all about speed.	[ "When satellites reach the end of their mission (this normally occurs within 3 or 4 years after launch), satellite operators have the option of de-orbiting the satellite, leaving the satellite in its current orbit or moving the satellite to a graveyard orbit. Historically, due to budgetary constraints at the beginn...
Why does some damage caused by UV radiation take so long to manifest?	The reason is cancer is pretty complex, and your bosy is pretty good at handling it. Mutated cells occur constantly in our bodies, and our immune system is able to take care of them. The time delay you're talking about is a result of several factors, one being that, though cells are mutating more quickly, our body can ...	[ "Overexposure to UVB radiation not only can cause sunburn but also some forms of skin cancer. However, the degree of redness and eye irritation (which are largely not caused by UVA) do not predict the long-term effects of UV, although they do mirror the direct damage of DNA by ultraviolet.\n", "Too much UV ultrav...
why do scare pranks/terrible pranks in general make us laugh?	Those can't be real. There's no way you could get away with that. Could you?	[ "The pranks are often planned out very well before they are actually done in order to work out details such as not being caught or blamed for the disruption they cause. Often these are harmless and more often hilarious pranks, but sometimes the pranks can be taken too far, causing serious problems such as damage to...
How does the uncertainty principle work with multiple observers?	> Couldn't you have multiple observing tools tell the direction, position, and velocity of a particle separately? The uncertainty is a property of the state itself rather than the measurement or measurement apparatus. No matter how many people you have measuring the particle, you can't get around the uncertainty pr...	[ "The uncertainty principle has been frequently confused with the observer effect, evidently even by its originator, Werner Heisenberg. The uncertainty principle in its standard form describes how precisely we may measure the position and momentum of a particle at the same time – if we increase the precision in meas...
what is a lagrange point, and what is its significance in space travel and astronomy?	Lagrange points are special points found within what is called a three body system, where there are 3 different massive objects. These are points where if two of the objects are orbiting each other via a barycenter, the third, if placed at one of those points, will orbit the same period as the other two without enterin...	[ "In celestial mechanics, the Lagrangian points ( also Lagrange points, L-points, or libration points) are the points near two large bodies in orbit where a smaller object will maintain its position relative to the large orbiting bodies. At other locations, a small object would go into its own orbit around one of th...
What kind of a diet did ancient Greeks have to achieve the physiques we associate with them?	Although it doesn't address diet, this earlier answer by u/Iphikrates, which discusses ideal athletic body types in Greece, may also be of interest: _URL_0_	[ "The mainstay of the Ancient Greek diet was bread, and this was accompanied by goat's cheese, olives, figs, fish, and occasionally meat. The vegetables grown included onions, garlic, cabbages, melons, and lentils. In Ancient Rome, a thick porridge was made of emmer wheat or beans, accompanied by green vegetables bu...
why does air cool down when it expands?	Edit: i am somewhat wrong see comment below. Temperature is basically a measurement of the average speed of the particles in an area. When the area increases, but no energy is added to it, the average goes down.	[ "When a parcel of air expands, it pushes on the air around it, doing work (thermodynamics). Since the parcel does work but gains no heat, it loses internal energy so that its temperature decreases. The process of expanding and contracting without exchanging heat is an adiabatic process. The term \"adiabatic\" means...
why are cars safety tested at 30mph?	Few collisions occur at highway speeds. Even open highway accidents typically involve some braking. They do test for high speed collisions. While the safety record is good, it isn't exactly good enough to advertise. "Probably won't kill you! Buy one today!" Taking the reasonable position that most accidents occ...	[ "In December 2009, \"The Wall Street Journal\" editor Joseph White conducted an extended test-drive and determined that \"you can have enormous fun within the legal speed limit as you whoosh around unsuspecting Camry drivers, zapping from 40 to 60 miles per hour in two seconds while the startled victims eat your el...
what is the deal with devin nunes?	He's the chair of the House Intelligence Committee. Basically, as he was receiving intelligence about connections between the Trump campaign/administration and Russia, instead of passing that information onto the democrats who are also on the House Intelligence Committee, he went directly to the White House to tell th...	[ "Creative, impulsive and extroverted, she is always getting herself into trouble as she attempts to get her family out of poverty, although the truth is that the money is obtained sporadically from shady businesses that she undertakes without her husband's knowledge. Her good nature pushes her to try to help the ot...
Selective De-evolution in pathogenic bacteria?	It's an interesting concept you bring up. My only guess is that while you could probably de-evolve bacteria in a lab-environment, you couldn't replace those which are currently existing in transmission-environments, and thus your drug used to affect the new bacteria would still be useless. I saw something interesti...	[ "The opportunistic bacteria \"Pseudomonas aeruginosa\" also uses quorum sensing to coordinate the formation of biofilms, swarming motility, exopolysaccharide production, and cell aggregation. These bacteria can grow within a host without harming it, until they reach a certain concentration. Then they become aggress...
what is gene expression?	A gene is a region of the DNA that by itself has the information to create a protein. That's the expression, it's when a gene is being read by the cell to create a protein. The gene is like a set of instructions to create that protein. It's through proteins that the cell produce different effects on itself or on its su...	[ "Gene expression is the process by which information from a gene is used in the synthesis of a functional gene product. These products are often proteins, but in non-protein coding genes such as transfer RNA (tRNA) or small nuclear RNA (snRNA) genes, the product is a functional RNA.\n", "The process of gene expre...
why do companies (google, apple, boeing etc.) not buy all their stock back and increase their treasury stock to reduce dividend payouts once they become a large and self-sustaining corporation?	Most large modern tech companies have done better than this -- they don't pay any dividends at all to most of their shareholders. They are not legally obliged to do so.	[ "This is a disadvantage to companies and the market at large because it allows profit to be made without any successful business practice being conducted. The ethics of firms are compromised in the interest of increasing share value.\n", "If the market is not efficient, the company's shares may be underpriced. In...
How do the arms in spiral galaxies maintain their form when faced with differential rotation?	Don't think of it as the galaxies having "fixed structures" like it's the whole spiral acting as a single object. Think of the spirals as the current location of high density. This is called [density wave theory](_URL_0_). There's some really good animations on the Wiki page which goes over this. In this, the spiral a...	[ "In spiral galaxies, the spiral arms do have the shape of approximate logarithmic spirals, a pattern that can be theoretically shown to result from a disturbance in a uniformly rotating mass of stars. Like the stars, the spiral arms rotate around the center, but they do so with constant angular velocity. The spiral...
What were Jefferson and/or Madison's reactions to Alexander Hamilton's death?	On Jefferson, I'd like to provide more than this quote from "Jefferson Vs. Hamilton: Confrontations that Shaped a Nation" by Cunningham, but sadly nothing else comes to mind. -*Jefferson's voluminous extant papers are virtually silent on the death of Hamilton. Although Burr had been estranged from Jefferson since th...	[ "Speculation regarding Madison's potential succession of Jefferson commenced early in Jefferson's first term. Madison's status in the party was damaged by his association with the embargo, which was unpopular throughout the country and especially in the Northeast. With the Federalists collapsing as a national party...
after transplant, do the ligaments and capsule that hold the liver in place grow back?	It will scar into place. Surgery is 'organized trauma' and will result in scarring. Cells called fibroblasts are activated and will lay down collagen in a process called fibrosis (which is basically a fancy word for scarring). As for the liver specifically the capsule is just the outermost layer of the liver so that...	[ "Bone transplants have proven successful in filling the lesions caused by OFC. A report showed that in 8 out of 11 instances where cavities caused by OFC were filled with transplanted bone, the lesion healed and the transplanted bone blended rapidly and seamlessly with the original bone.\n", "When a liver is bein...
why do animals and birds know to flee to higher ground before a tsunami strikes?	Just to be 100% clear on this, there is no scientific concensus or studies with significant results as to why or even if this happens. There are hundreds, if not more, of eyewitness reports. The most famous is from the 2004 Sumatra tsunami, during which, again, according to eyewitness, a group of elephants was seen ...	[ "Some animals have been thought to perceive the infrasonic waves going through the earth, caused by natural disasters, and to use these as an early warning. An example of this is the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami. Animals were reported to have fled the area hours before the actual tsunami hit the shores ...
why is it that when you hit snooze and go back to sleep you feel more tired when you wake up again?	Sleep has a few different stages. The part of sleep that makes us actually feel rejuvinated and the part that matters in REM sleep. It takes a decent amount of time to get to this point. As your body moves closer to it, things start shutting down more and more, and your body makes you more tired as a result. If you don...	[ "\"Whatever the cause, it is definitely the case that, when faced with a kid who refuses to go to sleep, we get annoyed, like all parents before us, but, rather than just abandoning the child to the dark and telling it that it can go to sleep or stay awake as it likes but it is staying in the bed until morning (rem...
How would an escaped slave seek out the underground railroad? Was its existence common knowledge among slaves?	It's difficult to say with any confidence what slaves did and didn't know about the Underground Railroad for a bunch of related reasons. It's illicit knowledge that they have every incentive to hide. It's also hard to speak for slaves in general considering the vast distances, numbers of people, and the decades involve...	[ "The Underground Railroad consisted of meeting points, secret routes, transportation, and safe houses and assistance provided by abolitionist sympathizers. Individuals were often organized in small, independent groups; this helped to maintain secrecy because individuals knew some connecting \"stations\" along the r...
why do countries even bother blocking websites if people can easily bypass and access them?	Because : 1. Most politicians don't have any idea about IT topics such as VPNs and proxies. 2. Blocking websites does prevent average users, children and people who aren't technically savvy from accessing them 3. It allows them to look like they are taking action and get political capital, votes from the conservativ...	[ "Governments are also getting online. Some countries, such as those of Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Myanmar, the People's Republic of China, and Saudi Arabia use filtering and censoring software to restrict what people in their countries can access on the Internet. In the United Kingdom, they also use software to locat...
I was always taught that if you cut a tree down, there were rings in it. Can anyone explain this photograph?	That tree is not super resinous and you evidently live in an area where the weather does not have hot and dry extremes. And what samichat said.	[ "A photo dating from 1956 is in a book by Josef Vaniš (cs) and Vladimír SIS. There is a bell with a large crack on its side, as an \"L\" in reverse, which according to the Jokhang monks would be due to the violence of the Red Guards during the Cultural Revolution in Tibet.\n", "The archaeologist Aubrey Burl noted...
Why do elements have multiple spectral lines?	The spectral lines come from electrons jumping between allowed energy states. This jumping is either electrons absorbing a photon and increasing in energy or emitting a photon and decreasing in energy. Because there are many allowed energy states above the ones that are filled in an element's ground state electron co...	[ "Atomic spectral lines are due to transitions of electrons between different atomic energy levels \"E\", followed by emission of photons. Atomic levels are a manifestation of the electromagnetic interaction between electrons and nuclei. The energy levels of two atoms, the nuclei of which are different isotopes of t...
why does the us go to war?	Korea, Vietnam, Yugoslavia and Syria. It is very important to remember that these wars happened in different time periods and that there's is different reasons for them. I will try to do this chronologically. Keep in mind that the newer the wars are the less established facts are to be made. Korea: the Korea war happ...	[ "Because of these facts Senator Nye, many war critics, and members of the American public concluded that the US entered the war for reasons of profit, not policy — because it was in American commercial interest for the United Kingdom not to lose.\n", "During the interview portion, Garber was asked \"When must Ame...
when someone admits their guilt to a crime, why is the case "not over."	There's a concept in the law called an affirmative defense. An affirmative defense is basically saying "Yes, I did it, but I had a really good reason!" Pleading insanity, self-defense, and entrapment are all examples of affirmative defenses which, if it meets the burden of proof, can result in a judicial decision in fa...	[ "In criminal law, guilt is the state of being responsible for the commission of an offense. Legal guilt is entirely externally defined by the state, or more generally a \"court of law\". Being \"guilty\" of a criminal offense means that one has committed a violation of criminal law, or performed all the elements of...
Was it normal for ancient Romans/Greeks to name children after gods?	With respect to classical Greek names, direct theonymy was exceedingly rare yet definitely attested. This can be easily seen by searching on the [Lexicon of Greek Personal Names (LGPN)](_URL_0_); we can see that, while some gods are not attested in theonymy (Zeus and Hades, for instance), other gods and goddesses are a...	[ "This suggests that the Greeks, Romans, and Indians originated from a common ancestral culture, and that the names Zeus, Jupiter, Dyaus and the Germanic Tiu (cf. English Tues-day) evolved from an older name, *Dyēus phter, which referred to the sky-god or, to give a perfect English cognate, the \"day-father\" in a P...
Is there a relation between the amplitude and the frequency of electromagnetic waves?	No there is not. The amplitude can be thought of as the number of photons that make up a wave (although it is a bit more complicated than that), each with their own energy.	[ "For periodic waves in nondispersive media (that is, media in which the wave speed is independent of frequency), frequency has an inverse relationship to the wavelength, \"λ\" (lambda). Even in dispersive media, the frequency \"f\" of a sinusoidal wave is equal to the phase velocity \"v\" of the wave divided by the...
Why was the Confederacy allowed to vote in the 1864 election? They seceded, shouldn't that mean they gave up their right to vote?	As far as I know they didn't. The wikipedia article claims that parts of Union occupied Louisiana and Tennesse did vote but the number of people that voted was only about 10% of that in 1860. Either way no electoral votes from these or any of the other [confederate states](_URL_0_) were counted. Not sure where you got...	[ "Following South Carolina's unanimous 1860 secession vote, no other Southern states considered the question until 1861, and when they did none had a unanimous vote. All had residents who cast significant numbers of Unionist votes in either the legislature, conventions, popular referendums, or in all three. Voting t...
flying hot air balloons	It’s just wind. Hot air balloons have no steering mechanism other than wind. They are able to move up/down to various altitudes where the wind is moving in different directions to control their movement. Source: went on a hot air balloon ride a few years ago.	[ "The next step in a hot air balloon flight is unpacking the balloon from its carrying bag, laying it out on the ground, and connecting it to the basket and burner. A fan, often gasoline-powered, is used to blow cold (outside) air into the envelope. The cold air partially inflates the balloon to establish its basic ...
The "common knowledge" explanation of what caused Viking invasions is that they were seasonal farmers who got bored during long Scandinavian winters, but that doesn't seem like it makes sense given the massive scale and colonizing goal. Why were they so aggressive and desperate for new territory?	Oh where to start, with the idea that raids were launched in winter, that the Huns triggered the Germanic migrations, or with the actual question being asked.... First and foremost, raids by necessity were a summer phenomenon. The famous raid on Lindisfarne is generally agreed to have occurred in June of 793 for exam...	[ "By the end of the 9th century the Scandinavians shifted their attention from plundering to invasion, mainly due to the overpopulation of Scandinavia in comparison to resources and arable land available there.\n", "At that point, the Scandinavians had entered their medieval period and consolidated their kingdoms ...
Why are Werewolves and Vampires often depicted as enemies? Is there any historical context?	Werewolves and vampires were occasionally connected in folklore before the 20th century, but their proper "meeting" took place in cinema. Universal Studios found critical success with horror movies in the 1930s and 40s, particularly Dracula (1931), Frankenstein (1931), The Mummy (1932), The Werewolf of London (...	[ "Werewolves have been around since the dawn of civilization. Contrary to popular belief, they have not always been at odds with vampires. They just had one huge disagreement, but they get along pretty well most of the time.\n", "In the \"Harry Potter\" series (1997–2007) the most prominent werewolf is Remus Lupin...
What sort of interactions were there between Native Americans and Vikings?	[This wikipedia article](_URL_0_) gives you some information on the subject. Native Americans and Vikings did some trading, and they also killed each other on occasion.	[ "There is also evidence for Viking contact with Native Americans. The Vikings referred to them as Skraelings or ’uglies’. Fighting between the Natives and the Vikings did take place with the natives having the advanced weaponry of bows and arrows. However trade by barter did also take place between them. This conta...
why do hotels have beauty bars, glycerine bars, moisturizing bars, lotion bars, etc but not soap. because it's all soap.	Soap is actually a specific substance manufactured by reacting a fat with a strong base. Ancient soap was made by mixing oil or rendered pig fat with lye made by soaking ashes in water. The "beauty bars" and whatnot you're seeing are artificial detergents mixed with some sort of gel that gives them a texture similar t...	[ "Handmade soap from the cold process also differs from industrially made soap in that an excess of fat is used, beyond that needed to consume the alkali (in a cold-pour process, this excess fat is called \"superfatting\"), and the glycerol left in acts as a moisturizing agent. However, the glycerine also makes the ...
to the canadians and french-canadians of reddit, what's the difference between you guys? (besides the names obviously.)	This is more of an /r/askreddit question Or /r/canada if askreddit doesn't work out. It's not really appropriate here though.	[ "Canadians () are people identified with the country of Canada. This connection may be residential, legal, historical or cultural. For most Canadians, several (or all) of these connections exist and are collectively the source of their being \"Canadian\".\n", "Canadian Australians refers to Australians who identi...
why does cold water feel great in our mouths, even when we are cold, yet painful on our skin?	Your body tries to maintain a certain temperature for it to function properly. 37°C is the best for your basic respiratory (blood circulation, biochemical reaction) processes. So most of the mammalian bodies designed a specific way to make sure these temperatures stay stable, even if we are in the arctic and breathing ...	[ "The most common, everyday cause is temporary restriction of nerve impulses to an area of nerves, commonly caused by leaning or resting on parts of the body such as the legs (often followed by a pins and needles tingling sensation). Other causes include conditions such as hyperventilation syndrome and panic attacks...
Which is worse for the environment Landfills or Incinerators?	It boils down to what you are looking to burn/bury. Is it going to be environmentally worse to have the stuff airborne (what an incinerator does) or buried under the ground in landfill?	[ "Modern landfills are designed to handle normal amounts of HHW and minimize the environmental impacts. However, there are still going to be some impacts and there are many ways that homeowners can keep these wastes out of landfills.\n", "Various studies have investigated the environmental and health effects of th...
Burning lithium	Lithium is violently reactive with air and water, you'll have a very difficult time obtaining it or storing it for any prolonged period without proper training and equipment. Edit: name is supremely relevant?	[ "Lithium burning is a nucleosynthetic process in which lithium is depleted in a star. Lithium is generally present in brown dwarfs and not in low-mass stars. Stars, which by definition must achieve the high temperature (2.5 × 10 K) necessary for fusing hydrogen, rapidly deplete their lithium. \n", "When placed ov...
Cell phones are killing bees? Is this true?	sounds like BS to me. What's the proposed mechanism by which cell phones kill bees? That's almost always a good first question to ask yourself. "By what mechanism could this possibly happen?"	[ "An example of the way mobile phones and mobile networks have sometimes been perceived as a threat is the widely reported and later discredited claim that mobile phone masts are associated with the Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) which has reduced bee hive numbers by up to 75% in many areas, especially near cities i...
what is far infrared radiation and what are its benefits?	As a first point, just because you find a "paper" on something, doesn't mean that it's "true". Scientific research is organic, and there will always be papers claiming opposites, and they may be just as legit. That's just how humans operate. Thus the only way to gauge whether a paper is legit or not is to read it thoro...	[ "Infrared astronomy is founded on the detection and analysis of infrared radiation, wavelengths longer than red light and outside the range of our vision. The infrared spectrum is useful for studying objects that are too cold to radiate visible light, such as planets, circumstellar disks or nebulae whose light is b...
what's in it for the people who keep uploading movies and software to torrent sites	Let me re-phrase your question in order to answer your question: > It seems like there is a race to who ~~uploads~~ comments the fastest and the best quality and it's non stop, but what is in it for them? I don't see any ads in the ~~videos~~ comments. How do they make money? You do it for fake internet poin...	[ "Movieland advertises its movie download service by using pop-up ads at other sites. The ads offer a three-day free trial, with access to members-only content including music, news, updated sports scores and adult movies. The ads say there are no forms to fill out, and no need to provide a credit card number or an ...
i am very out of the loop apparently what does dank and meta mean?	Meta means self-referential. So there's a subreddit for the Hearthstone card game that is meant to talk about the game. But if I make a post in there talking about the subreddit, that would be meta. Dank, which used to be a word you'd throw around to describe a swamp or a dungeon is also slang used to describe high ...	[ "The humor of /b/'s many users, who refer to themselves as \"/b/tards\", is often incomprehensible to newcomers and outsiders, and is characterized by intricate inside jokes and dark comedy. Users often refer to each other, and much of the outside world, as fags. They are often referred to by outsiders as trolls, w...
if i set all my clocks in my house (and car) to the same time on daylight savings, why are they all a few minutes different from each other now? shouldn't digital clocks be unable to run slow if programmed correctly?	Quartz watches are sensitive to temperatures. At normal indoor temps, they can easily stay within 30s of drift per month. The one in your car, especially in winter, is subjected to more extreme temperatures and will likely drift considerably more.	[ "Because digital clocks can be very small and inexpensive devices that enhance the popularity of product designs, they are often incorporated into all kinds of devices such as cars, radios, televisions, microwave ovens, standard ovens, computers and cell phones. Sometimes their usefulness is disputed: a common comp...
What is acid rain?	Gaseous acidic oxides like carbon dioxide, nitrous oxides, sulfur dioxide dissolve in water to form acids. This process happen naturally when these oxides dissolve into rainwater. Acid in rainwater is corrosive and can weaken metal structures of buildings, can dissolve carbonates like the shells of crustaceans and oy...	[ "Acid rain is a rain or any other form of precipitation that is unusually acidic, meaning that it has elevated levels of hydrogen ions (low pH). It can have harmful effects on plants, aquatic animals and infrastructure. Acid rain is caused by emissions of sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide, which react with the wate...
Why do Jews stomp on a glass at the conclusion of their wedding ceremonies?	One interpretation is that the marriage will last as long as the glass is broken—forever. Other more superstitious say a loud noise is thought to drive away evil spirits. Another reason given was that this is a reminder that although the couple came together as a single union, the world as a whole is broken and needs m...	[ "Some Jewish groups observe several customs in remembrance of Jerusalem. A tiny amount of ash is touched to the forehead of a Jewish groom before he goes to stand beneath the bridal canopy. This symbolically reminds him not to allow his own rejoicing to be \"greater\" than the ongoing need to recall Jerusalem's des...
Why are high-explosives not used to fire projectiles?	My understanding is that you need to allow time for the projectile to accelerate. "Fast" explosives like C4 will simply rupture the vessel containing them before the projectile has time to move.	[ "Because of the instability of early high explosives, it was impractical to fire an explosive-filled shell from a conventional gun. The violent deflagration of the propellant charge and the sudden acceleration of the shell would set off the explosive in the barrel of the weapon. By using compressed air, the dynamit...
how is it possible that deserts exist right next to the ocean, when there is lots of water evaporating nearby?	Deserts are categorised by the lack of rainfall. The evaporating water is moving elsewhere before falling back down.	[ "In deserts, water inflow is low and loss to solar evaporation high, drastically reducing the formation of complete drainage systems. Closed water flow areas often lead to the concentration of salts and other minerals in the basin. Minerals leached from the surrounding rocks are deposited in the basin, and left beh...
If I were to pour a shot of vodka right next to its freezing point (-26C) in water at 1C, would it freeze parts of the water?	No answer from me, just a [relevant awesome video of super cold brine freezing sea water as it drips in.](_URL_0_)	[ "Macerate all ingredients in 50 ml of alcohol at 95% ABV with 25 ml of water for approximately 3 days. Filter out and add 400 ml of fresh vodka at 40% ABV to the alcohol, mix well and dilute with 60 ml of warm water. Let it rest one day and consume in room temperature in 30 ml glasses.\n", "Pour six ounces [180 m...
what would the (unforeseen) implications be on the consumers and car manufacturers if tesla was allowed sell it's cars freely in the us?	Dealers, the middlemen, get fucked. Like they should, because all they do is make the process tedious and horrible.	[ "In response to constant state auto dealers associations lobbying to prevent Tesla from selling cars directly to the public, Tesla has lobbied in several states for the right to sell cars. In June 2017, Tesla made a \"last-minute push near the end of the Albany legislative session to expand its sales force in New Y...
[Meta] List of questions for the FAQ on the side bar	What evidence do we have that Jesus was a real figure?	[ "The Question Block is a section of PNM that focuses on the magazine's readers. In The Question Block PNM features correspondence sent in by the readers with replies from the staff. This section of PNM was first published in June/July 2014 Issue 17.\n", "\"Forum\" is the opinion section of the paper with articles...
Forgive my ignorance, but if I somewhat correctly understand Newton's laws of motion, then the moon is falling toward the earth. Is this true? And if so, why is the moon gradually moving away from the earth?	Yes it's true. If you can imagine someone running and then jumping down a flight of stairs (or tripping and falling if that's your thing) they are moving down and forward and are relatively the same distance from the stairs the whole way down. The moons gravitational attraction to the earth and its "forward" moment...	[ "Terrestrial rotation. Heraclides and others held that the Earth rotates from west to east and this is supported by Copernicus (the \"restorer of astronomy\"), but Aristotle said otherwise. \"If the rotations of the earth seems headlong and not to be permitted by nature because of its rapidity, then worse than insa...
what determines the shape and texture of human feces?	Mostly the amount of water content, along with fiber and other materials (mucus and fat content can have an impact, but their presence is usually an indicator of an issue).	[ "Human feces have similarities to feces of other animals and vary significantly in appearance (i.e. size, color, texture), according to the state of the diet, digestive system and general health. Normally human feces are semisolid, with a mucus coating. Small pieces of harder, less moist feces can sometimes be seen...
why is it that people are retiring later even though there are more people working?	People are retiring later due to them living longer. A person who retired say 50 years ago had a much shorter after retirement life span. With our longer lifespans after retirement, we need more money when we retire.	[ "Studies show that nearly half of all workers expect to delay their retirement because they have accumulated fewer retirement assets than they had planned. Much of this is attributable to the market downturn of 2008–2009. Various unforeseen circumstances cause nearly half of all workers to retire earlier than they ...
how is the chaplain of the us congress not a violation of the separation of church and state?	The Freedom of Religion clause says this: > Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof Simplified: > Congress won't make any laws that establish a state religion or stop anyone from practicing their own religions. Having a chaplain in Congress does...	[ "The question of the constitutionality of the position of the House Chaplain (as well as that of the Senate Chaplain, and at times, that of military chaplains as well), has been a subject of study and debate over the centuries. Opponents have argued that it violates the separation of church-and-state and proponents...
Would playing intense video games that raise your heart rate burn noticeably more calories than doing a different sedentary activity, like watching TV?	Yes, getting excited increases calorie consumption by about 20 calories/hour from a baseline of 85. In addition, just having to sit up and move the controller, etc burns another 15 calories/hour. [Source.](_URL_0_) However, this is dwarfed by the calorie increase of standing while you play/watch (+60 calories/hour) or...	[ "Studies conducted by John Moores University have shown that the device makes users exercise, saying that users will take between 6,000 and 10,000 steps per hour of gameplay while using the device, burning approximately 225 kcal per hour. Users have also experienced a 40% higher heart rate using the Wii jOG than pl...
Is dream interpretation legitimate or a pseudoscience/BS?	It's pretty much BS. Perhaps one day we'll have something interesting and scientific to say about dreams and what they "mean", but if we do it won't be in Freudian or psychoanalytic terms. EDIT: The most scientific thing I can find is [this](_URL_0_), though I'm sure it's considered controversial.	[ "There are many issues that current psychologists have with psychoanalysis and therefore with its form of dream interpretation. Psychoanalysis is a theory that is not easily testable. Because the drive behind psychoanalysis is looking at a person's subconscious, there is not an accurate way to measure this scientif...
why is getting tattooed becoming uncool?	I never realized it is. Obviously things go in cycles but I've never realized a huge dropoff	[ "Because it requires breaking the skin barrier, tattooing carries health risks including infection and allergic reactions. Tattooing can be uncomfortable to excruciating depending on the area and can result in the person fainting. Modern tattooists reduce risks by following universal precautions working with single...
why do some lights get brighter when you turn on other electronics instead of dimmer?	You probably have a broken or loose neutral connection. A neutral connection in the house regulates the voltage on both 'legs' of a household split-phase electrical system, but a disconnected neutral will cause the per-leg voltage to vary based on load, so if you put a heavy load on one leg the other leg will see much ...	[ "Many LED bulbs are not dimmable. While dimmable ones using different drivers are available, they may not work well with traditional dimmers - either the dimming range is narrow (the minimum brightness is too high) or the bulb flickers at lower brightness, or even both. The color temperature of incandescent bulbs —...
How does my Prius produce 95g of CO2/km, when it only uses 32 grams of fuel when driving the distance?	Gasoline is comprised primarily of hydrocarbons, of which the majority of the mass is carbon. The oxygen component of CO2, which makes up 73% of the molecule by mass, comes from the air. 27% of 95 g (i.e. the carbon component of the CO2) is 26 g, which well within the limit of the 32 g of fuel your car is using. Edi...	[ "The U.S. EIA estimates that U.S. motor gasoline and diesel (distillate) fuel consumption for transportation in 2015 resulted in the emission of about 1,105 million metric tons of CO and 440 million metric tons of CO, respectively, for a total of 1,545 million metric tons of CO. This total was equivalent to 83% of ...
Were Ancient/Medieval Spear/Pike shafts smooth and straight, or bumpy and somewhat crooked?	I'd question your belief that wood could not be precisely fashioned in antiquity. Most of our methods of shaping and finishing wood are exactly the same as those used in antiquity, except that we have machines to do it more efficiently and faster. To fashion a smooth beam or pole all that's really needed is something t...	[ "The stiffness of the shaft is known as its \"spine\", referring to how little the shaft bends when compressed, hence an arrow which bends less is said to have more spine. In order to strike consistently, a group of arrows must be similarly spined. \"Center-shot\" bows, in which the arrow passes through the central...
So, a babies gender is determined by the males sperm. Do some males have a higher ratio of X or Y chromosomal sperm based on heredity?	Sex ratios are pretty interesting in evolutionary biology. TL;DR: The sex ratio of a person's offspring is genetic, but the overall ratio remains pretty much always 50/50. For a group of humans, the optimal sex ratio for reproduction is a very small number of men per woman, because a woman needs 9 months for each pre...	[ "In contrast to the XY sex-determination system and the X0 sex-determination system, where the sperm determines the sex, in the ZW system, the ovum determines the sex of the offspring. Males are the homogametic sex (ZZ), while females are the heterogametic sex (ZW). The Z chromosome is larger and has more genes, li...
whats the difference between the navy, the coast guard, and the marines?	The Navy and Marine Corps belong to the same department (the Department of the Navy [and Marine Corps]), which is a part of the Department of Defense. The Coast Guard actually belongs to the Department of Homeland Security (a department that is at the same level as the Department of Defense), though some, most or all o...	[ "Marines, also known as naval infantry, are typically an infantry force that specializes in the support of naval and army operations at sea and on land and air, as well as the execution of their own operations. In many countries, the marines are an integral part of that state's navy. In others, it is a separate org...
the impact of the european fiscal treaty on ireland	A yes vote means that Ireland, like the rest of Europe, is slowly moving toward a federation. Basically Euro countries don't have monetary sovereignty, which means they have no national control over their currency, as we do in America with the Federal Reserve. With the fiscal treaty they will give up fiscal sovereignty...	[ "In the meeting of the European Council (the meeting of the heads of government of all twenty-seven European Union member states) in Brussels on 11–12 December 2008, Taoiseach Brian Cowen presented the concerns of the Irish people relating to taxation policy, family, social and ethical issues, and Ireland's policy ...
In evolution, the fittest survive. Why would the ability to breathe underwater be considered unfit?	So, from the phrasing your question I believe you are asking why did animals eventually come out onto land and breathe air and eventually lose the ability to obtain oxygen from the water. First, I want to just clear something up: evolution is random. There is never a decision by the organism or species or nature that ...	[ "While the phrase \"survival of the fittest\" is often used to mean \"natural selection\", it is avoided by modern biologists, because the phrase can be misleading. For example, survival is only one aspect of selection, and not always the most important. Another problem is that the word \"fit\" is frequently confus...
Writing a research paper on the media's effect on the Cuban Missile Crisis...any advice or anything interesting history buffs?	Covered up? I guess if you wanted to, you could discuss how the United States and Soviet Union, as part of the missile trade that brought an end to the crisis, didn't disclose the withdrawal of missiles from Turkey until much later. The Soviet withdrawal was widely broadcast, but that of American missiles from Turkey ...	[ "Essence of Decision: Explaining the Cuban Missile Crisis is an analysis by political scientist Graham T. Allison, of the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. Allison used the crisis as a case study for future studies into governmental decision-making. The book became the founding study of the John F. Kennedy School of Gover...
how do peer-to-peer connection in games work?	So the terms "dedicated server" and "peer to peer" can mean both the way players connect to each other, and where the "game logic" runs... I will use the term "computer" to generally mean "PC or console". In dedicated server games, there is a server set up to run the game. This server is not a player, and often ...	[ "A connection game is a type of abstract strategy game in which players attempt to complete a specific type of connection with their pieces. This could involve forming a path between two or more goals, completing a closed loop, or connecting all of one's pieces so they are adjacent to each other. Connection games t...
What does the second moment of Area say about a shape?	Its resistance to bending about the axis chosen is one of them. In civil and structural engineering, we call it moment of inertia. It's a misnomer since it has nothing to do with the mass moment of inertia, though the same symbol I is commonly used for both	[ "where formula_2. It looks like a rounded square with \"sides\" of length formula_3 and centered on the origin. This curve is a squircle centered on the origin, and it is a special case of a superellipse.\n", "It is sometimes necessary to calculate the second moment of area of a shape with respect to an formula_1...
What was the military state of New Mexico Territory during the American Civil War?	Combat indeed took place in New Mexico Territory. The Confederates staged an invasion in 1861, and the [Confederate Territory of Arizona](_URL_2_) was admitted to the Confederacy in 1862. Of course, the U.S. government had recognized the pro-South sentiments of the southern portion of New Mexico, and so had divided t...	[ "The New Mexico Territory, which included the areas which became the modern U.S. states of New Mexico and Arizona as well as the southern part of present-day Nevada, played a small but significant role in the Trans-Mississippi Theater of the American Civil War. Despite its remoteness from the major battlefields of ...
why can't r/eli5 take me directly to r/explainlikeimfive?	Because that's not the way Reddit was designed. Each subreddit can only be designed using a custom template (using what's called CSS; cascading style sheets). There is a lot of flexibility in how you can customise your subreddit, but there are also certain things you can't do. One of these things being the ability...	[ "The initialism \"RL\" stands for \"real life\" and \"IRL\" for \"in real life.\" For example, one can speak of \"meeting IRL\" someone whom one has met online, such as in \"LMIRL\" (\"let's meet in real life\"). It may also be used to express an inability to use the Internet for a time due to \"RL problems\". Some...
How many men were actually in a Roman Century?	Century comes from centum, a hundred, meaning a unit of hundred individuals (whence also our 'century' consisting of 100 years). Originally it was a unit for the division of the Roman Citizenship (ascribed to the Roman king Servius Tullius, introduced probably somewhere in the 6th century [ha!], which is why you'll o...	[ "The census grouped Rome's male citizen population in classes, according to status, wealth and age. Each class was subdivided into groups called \"centuriae\" (centuries), nominally of 100 men (Latin \"centum\" = 100) but in practice of variable number, further divided as \"seniores\" (men aged 46 – 60, of a suitab...
What is the mechanism behind the way large mammals' eyes change color upon maturation? (Ex. Lion cubs have blue eyes; adults' are generally yellow)	As mammals mature, they produce more melanin which affects the color of eyes. That’s why human babies are usually born with blue eyes. Blue eyes mean less melanin. The more melanin, the darker the eye color. Babies don’t start producing enough melanin to change their eye color until about 6 months of age.	[ "It is fairly common for mammalian eyes to change color in the first years of life. This happens, with human infants and kittens being some well-known examples, because the eyes of the baby, just like the rest of its body, are still developing. This change can be as simple as blue to brown, or can involve multiple ...
how come in this day and age there is still little or no consistently good internet connections?	Most of the issues with internet connections aren't necessarily on the end of the provider. A lot of the problems occur inside the person's home due to outdated equipment, interference from other devices (microwave is a big one), interference from other wifi networks (cause very few people know how to manually switch c...	[ "BULLET::::- Internet demographics: There are hundreds of millions of households in the developed world. In 1990, only a small fraction of these had Internet connectivity. Just 15 years later, almost half of them had persistent broadband connections. The many new Internet users in countries such as China and India ...
As an external observer, why does music I hear from passing cars sound "Bassy" and music from headphones (in other peoples ears) sound "Trebbly / Tinny" ?	Two different thing are happening. In the headphones, the tiny speaker inside of them cannot move enough air to be able to hear low frequencies at a distance. In the car, the speakers are much bigger, and can easily make the bass audible from farther distances. But when it's coming from inside the car, the higher fre...	[ "A number of the sound elements originate with composer Holly Herndon, who wanted to make sure that the sounds \"were not 'completely foreign to people, but that it had a new aesthetic.'\" Dryhurst has also contributed to the compositions. James Brooks of Sonic Movement has stated that the noises of an electric car...
how does my body know it's time to orgasm?	Imagine a balloon. Imagine it has tiny gates over it's entire surface that can be open or closed, but imagine them all closed, and also that they can only be open at a certain pressure lets say just double (2x) the pressure of the atmosphere and once open the will stay open until the pressure decreases back down to 1 ...	[ "Orgasm (from Greek ὀργασμός \"orgasmos\" \"excitement, swelling\"; also sexual climax) is the sudden discharge of accumulated sexual excitement during the sexual response cycle, resulting in rhythmic muscular contractions in the pelvic region characterized by sexual pleasure. Experienced by males and females, orga...
AskHistorians AMA Thread: History of Sexuality	Why/when did larges penis' become more desireable than smaller ones from the Greco-roman era?	[ "The History of Sexuality () is a four-volume study of sexuality in the western world by the French historian and philosopher Michel Foucault, in which the author examines the emergence of \"sexuality\" as a discursive object and separate sphere of life and argues that the notion that every individual has a sexuali...
Was adultery as sociably acceptable as portrayed in the show Mad Men?	I don't think adultery is portrayed as acceptable on Mad Men. Several marriages are destroyed or nearly so by cheating. Now, whether adultery was as COMMON in the 60s as on Mad Men is a valid question.	[ "By the late 1780s, thousands of pornographic pamphlets alleged that Gabrielle was the Queen's lesbian lover, including accusations that the pair had engaged in tribadism. Although there was no evidence to back up these accusations, they did immeasurable damage to the prestige of the monarchy, especially given the ...

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