Split (2)

train · 226k rows

question stringlengths 3 301	answer stringlengths 9 26.1k	context list
how does wine (the linux application) work?	An emulator emulates a whole system from the ground up. When you look at an NES emulator, it's in charge of recreating all the graphics, sounds & even simulating the CPU of the system. WINE is not an emulator because it doesn't need to be. Software on a modern OS doesn't ever do direct hardware access, it just exp...	[ "Wine (recursive backronym for \"Wine Is Not an Emulator\") is a free and open-source compatibility layer that aims to allow computer programs (application software and computer games) developed for Microsoft Windows to run on Unix-like operating systems. Wine also provides a software library, known as Winelib, aga...
On Armistice Day--November 11, 1918--what was the timekeeping technology? How precisely could 11am be determined, and were there any known anomolies which arose from imprecisions, differences between or within the sides, etc?	It goes back to 1884, but the development of standard time and GMT was ultimately settled out by 1911, when the French finally abandoned the Paris Meridian (which was mostly cosmetic anyhow). Timekeeping and its correction were telegraphic, then wireless; that would have assured that the 11am Paris time was recognizab...	[ "In 1925, time synchronisation began to be relayed through omnibus telephone systems and control circuits to organisations that needed to know the precise time. This continued until the 1940s, when time signals began to be broadcast using the radio by the government. Briefly during World War II, clocks under Indian...
if cancer exists in someone's testicles (or any other body part), why can't they just cut them off and have that be the end of it?	Because it spreads. My father had a tumor on his arm. They took a biopsy and determined it was cancerous. They removed the tumor, and two lymph nodes from his armpit (which is how they test to see if it spread) and the lymph nodes had traces of cancer in them. So they removed all of the lymph nodes and could not find...	[ "The main way testicular cancer is diagnosed is via a lump or mass inside a testis. More generally, if a young adult or adolescent has a single enlarged testicle, which may or may not be painful, this should give doctors reason to suspect testicular cancer.\n", "In metastatic disease, where cancer has spread beyo...
what is spaghetti code?	Have you ever read (or tried to read) a post where they OP wrote 1000 words of text but didn't use any punctuation or linebreaks? And their spelling and capitalization were bad? And they used text-speak? Sure, you could read it 10 times and kind of - but not completely - understand what they meant. But you could al...	[ "Spaghetti code can also describe an anti-pattern in which object-oriented code is written in a procedural style, such as by creating classes whose methods are overly long and messy, or forsaking object oriented concepts like polymorphism. The presence of this form of spaghetti code can significantly reduce the com...
at what point is a dollar bill taken out of circulation? and who's the person that finally decides it's time to take it out? where does it go?	I can add some insight to this. I used to work as a bank teller and we had carte blanche in determining if a bill should be taken out of circulation. When our branch deposited with the Federal Reserve we would also deposit bills that were deemed bad. So example $1,000 in 1's, $5,000 in 5's and so on. Then in a seperate...	[ "While walking, they drop the money without knowing it. When their restaurant bill comes to 50 cents, they suddenly realize they must have lost it. Someone leaves a coin on the table, Bill tells Cora to steal it, which she does. Bill spots a slot machine in the restaurant and tells Cora to gamble, which she does an...
why are the bottoms of colored people's feet white	The original Homo sapiens came out of Africa and was, fairly certainly, "black". Not being black is an evolutionary advantage in areas of the world with less sun light and not eating lots of meat. Vitamin D. But if you look at the soles of anyone's feet and the palms of their hands, it's a different kind of skin. Ther...	[ "Their color is typically similar to that of the skin. Small black dots may occur on the surface. One or more may occur in an area. They may result in pain with pressure such that walking may be difficult.\n", "Their ground color varies from pale tan or ash gray to deep brown or green. Markings also vary signific...
We always hear about larger stars then our Sun, but what are some of the smaller stars out there and how much smaller are they?	Personally I think the best way to think about stars is in terms of their mass. (Radius can be a bit of a pain to work with. A very very rough rule of thumb though is that Rstar ~ Rsun*(Mstar/Msun) for main sequence stars. But bear in mind this is an especially bad approximation for very high mass or very low mass star...	[ "Stars range in size from neutron stars, which vary anywhere from 20 to in diameter, to supergiants like Betelgeuse in the Orion constellation, which has a diameter about 1,000 times that of our sun. Betelgeuse, however, has a much lower density than the Sun.\n", "This object is currently the most massive star th...
Was there a feeling of pan-Italian identity for the various people living on the Italian peninsula prior to Unification?	This is a little before my area of expertise, but I can briefly comment on sentiments. There was absolutely a sentiment for unification, and most notably, a mutual hatred among the various city-states against Austria (and eventually Austro-Hungarian Empire). The areas of Tyrol and the Swiss Alps border was always a sec...	[ "For many nationalist intellectuals and political leaders the process of unification of the Italian peninsula under a single national state was not complete however because several areas inhabited by Italian-speaking communities remained under what was seen as foreign rule. This situation gave rise to the idea that...
how do devices automatically turn themselves back on after turning themselves off	It doesn't completely turn itself off: there's some circuitry that stays live, and is "smart" enough to get everything else up and running. Also, some of the instructions for restart are stored in permanent memory (ROM/NVRAM) that doesn't require power.	[ "Due to the electromagnet in the contactor, if power to the machine should fail the contactor will automatically disengage. Unlike machines with an ordinary latching switch (such as a common light switch), when the power is resumed the machine will not operate until being turned on again. As a result, magnetic star...
how did sites like grooveshark, spotify, and google play get all that music available for free streaming?	Grooveshark is currently in a number of lawsuits over copyright infringement. Spotify has licensing deals with music studios so that they are allowed to stream music on demand. On the free version, they pay for these license fees with ads. In the US, due to streaming music laws, anyone can use music for Internet Rad...	[ "Some websites allowed downloadable audio shows, such as the comedy show The Dan & Scott Show, available on AOL.com from 1996. However, the development of downloaded music did not reach a critical mass until the launch of Napster, another system of aggregating music, but without the subscription services provided b...
How is it possible that something as large as a possible Planet 9 has completely evaded visual observation?	It's a combination of a few things. First, it really is very far away. The amount of sunlight that it receives, if Mike Brown's estimates about distance being hundreds of AU are right (and he's pretty good at this), is extremely low. Then the light it receives is scattered back in every direction, not just towards Ea...	[ "By taking two exposures of the same section of the sky days or weeks apart, it is possible to find objects such as asteroids, meteors, comets, variable stars, novae, and even unknown planets. By comparing the pair of images, using a device such as a blink comparator, astronomers are able to find objects that moved...
the effects of greece pulling out of the eurozone for both greece itself and the rest of us left within.	The effect on the other Eurozone countries is the million dollar question everyone is worried about. Most likely what would happen is similar to the financial crisis of 2008 but much worse, where the exit of Greece would make people would panic and look to see if countries such as Spain, Portugal and Italy (+ Ireland ...	[ "As the debt crisis expanded beyond Greece, these economists continued to advocate, albeit more forcefully, the disbandment of the eurozone. If this was not immediately feasible, they recommended that Greece and the other debtor nations unilaterally leave the eurozone, default on their debts, regain their fiscal so...
what's going on politically in hungary (prime minister, internet tax, protests)?	Hungarian here! This is rather a longer story, but let's see if I can sum it up. In 1989, the socialism in Hungary finally collapsed. There was a young, liberal politician, Viktor Orbán, and his party, Fidesz (the name literaly means young democrats). Some older parties were refounded after the one party system and ...	[ "The 2006 protests in Hungary were a series of anti-government protests triggered by the release of Hungarian Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsány's private speech in which he confessed that his Hungarian Socialist Party had lied to win the 2006 election, and had done nothing worth mentioning in the previous four years ...
Someone told me recently that the UK is the only country to have ever paid off an entire national debt is this true?	Nope, Andrew Jackson paid of the entire national debt in the United States. (Not entire but down to 32,000 dollars which is about 2 million in today's money) Also as your question implies, they paid off the debts of the very expensive napoleonic wars, not necessarily the existing debt.	[ "The United Kingdom National Debt is the total quantity of money borrowed by the Government of the United Kingdom at any time through the issue of securities by the British Treasury and other government agencies.\n", "The UK national debt is often confused (even by politicians) with the government budget deficit ...
How small can an astronomical body (e.g. an asteroid) be before a human could no longer "stand on" it?	A suggested rephrasing of the question: "How large of an object is required before a human can no longer achieve escape velocity by jumping?" Escape velocity depends on the mass of the object and the distance from the center of the object. To keep math simple (and I'm lazy), I used a sphere of water so I could easily...	[ "Data shows asteroid to have a diameter of about . Scientists think that could be the exposed core of an early planet that could have been as large as Mars and lost its surface in a series of violent collisions.\n", "Vesta, the next-most-massive body in the asteroid belt after Ceres, is roughly spherical, deviati...
Why is Russia's Eastern half so underdeveloped?	This is one of those questions whose answer will be colored by how you define "Eastern half" and how you define "underdeveloped". There's a general tendency to classify Russia into European Russia (west of the Urals) and Asiatic Russia (east of the Urals). Indeed, in the 18th century pretty much everything east of th...	[ "The former Soviet Union had to deal with a number of unique obstacles during the post-Soviet transition including political reform, economic restructuring and the redrawing of political boundaries. The discomfort associated with these changes was not felt the same in each former Soviet republic. As a general rule,...
I found an interesting crest on a grave in Lübeck, Germany and was wondering if anyone knew what it was/represented.	Not sure how many heraldry experts there are on this subreddit. I'm far from an expert, but maybe I can help. As far as I'm aware, barred helmets were typically reserved for nobility. The field is a landscape rather than a typical design with charges and ordinaries, which may point to a more modern design. If that tru...	[ "Deutsches Eck (, \"German Corner\") is the name of a headland in Koblenz, Germany, where the Mosel river joins the Rhine. Named after a local commandry of the Teutonic Order (\"Deutscher Orden\"), it became known for a monumental equestrian statue of William I, first German Emperor, erected in 1897 in appreciation...
why is arizona a desert if it has monsoons?	The term "desert" has to do with rainfall amount. There are deserts in Antarctica. Arizona has high deserts (Mohave, Colorado Plateau), a huge pine forest on the Mogollon Rim, and low deserts (Sonoran, Chihuahuan). The Sonoran Desert is the wettest desert in North America. When "wet summer" begins, fronts come ...	[ "The desert is mainly a rain shadow desert because the two main mountain ranges covering the desert, the Sierra Madre Occidental to the west and the Sierra Madre Oriental to the east block most moisture from the Pacific Ocean and the Gulf of Mexico respectively. Climatically, the desert has a dry climate with only ...
Why did Denmark ally with France during the Napoleonic Wars?	One thing that isn't discussed enough (and I will admit I don't know enough of) is the economic power of Denmark in Northern Europe. Due to the geographic situation, Denmark is positioned to be a sort of gateway to the Baltic Sea which serves as a filter for Prussian, Russian, and Swedish trade. So, in order to keep t...	[ "During the Napoleonic wars in 1808 Denmark had allied herself with France and Spain against among others Sweden and England. It was decided that 30.000 French and Spanish soldiers were to be stationed in Denmark to assist in a campaign to recuperate the Scanian lands lost to Sweden 150 years earlier.\n", "Denmar...
D-Day Invasion (German PoV)	> But i became curious as an american , is there any documented history on how these German soldiers felt as they saw hundreds of landing craft on the horizon. Plenty, if you know where to look; here are some accounts documented by Hastings in Overlord. This response will be far from exhaustive, but it will quote ...	[ "Also, as part of Operation Quicksilver, which was designed to deceive the Germans about where the invasion of France would take place, Clastres was attacked by Eighth Air Force B-17 Flying Fortress heavy bomber groups in early June 1944, just prior to the D-Day landings in Normandy.\n", "Planning for the operati...
why are there no solar systems with a huge planet in the middle instead of a star?	By definition a 'solar system' is a group of planets orbiting a star, you cannot have a solar system without a star in the middle. There may be planets orbiting planets in a solar system like scenario (I mean, theoretically why not?) but we would not be able to see it We can only see planets orbiting other stars with ...	[ "Observations of exo-planets have shown that arrangements of planets similar to our Solar System are rare. Most planetary systems have super Earths, several times larger than Earth, close to their star, whereas our Solar System's inner region has only a few small rocky planets and none inside Mercury's orbit. Only ...
why do car doors have those “checkpoints” when you open them that causes the door to swing back if you don’t get it just right?	There is a spring-loaded wheel with notches at specific points. It is good at holding the door steady with no effort by you, but the side effect is that it pushes the door away from spots between the steady spots.	[ "A conventional door, also known as a regular door is a type of door that is hinged at the front-facing edge of the door, and so allows the door to swing outward from the body of the car. These doors are relatively safe, in that if they are opened during forward motion of the vehicle, the wind resistance will work ...
why does stretching after long periods of staying still feel so good and suddenly turn tiring?	As a massage therapist I would say that you're probably tired to begin with, and the act of standing and stretching brings your attention from your task at hand back to your body. Once you finish the stretch you probably feel more relaxed physically and mentally and that tired feeling is able to come to forefront of yo...	[ "Stretching prior to strenuous physical activity has been thought to increase muscular performance by extending the soft tissue past its attainable length in order to increase range of motion. Many physically active individuals practice these techniques as a “warm-up” in order to achieve a certain level of muscular...
why do outer electron orbitals hold more electrons?	It's because the number of solutions to the Schrödinger Equation (on a simplified level) increase in terms of the orbital angular quantum number. In other words, at a given quantized energy level denoted by quantum number l, an electron is allowed to have a specific number of values of the magnetic quantum number (m_l...	[ "The wider the electron shells are in space, the weaker is the electric interaction between the electrons and the nucleus due to screening. In general we can order the electron shells (s,p,d,f) as such\n", "If the separation between the orbitals is large, then the lower energy orbitals are completely filled befor...
what image quality do our eyes see in? is it possible to give this a value in pixels? if not, how does our brain process each tiny piece of colour?	Your highest angular resolution is about 1 minute of arc(20/20 vision), and your vision spans 114 degrees so that's roughly 6840 "pixels" wide, but you don't get this resolution across the whole field of vision. You have really good central vision with far worse resolution and color sensitivity on the peripheral visio...	[ "The number of distinct colors a pixel can represent depends on color depth expressed in the number of bits per pixel. A common way to reduce the amount of data required in digital video is by chroma subsampling (e.g., 4:4:4, 4:2:2, etc.). Because the human eye is less sensitive to details in color than brightness,...
why do development countries seem to have the craziest drivers and lax traffic laws?	Less strict police because they usually got enough other things to worry about. You still kinda need all those policemen trained & ready in first world countries for special occasions like certain football matches, demonstrations & public events etc. but the rest of the time they don't have as much to do due to lower c...	[ "Developed countries are constantly faced with high maintenance cost of aging transportation highways. The growth of the motor vehicle industry and accompanying economic growth has generated a demand for safer, better performing, less congested highways. The growth of commerce, educational institutions, housing, an...
What are the major unanswered questions of biology?	This is definitely a biased list, especially since it's a Wikipedia page that's subject to anonymous editing. Multiple reason exist to why the pages are so disparate, but I'll save that argument since it leads nowhere. I would argue that biology has TOO many big questions, especially since so many of them are tied to ...	[ "The theoretical background of biology, as is the case with modern natural sciences in general, is fundamentally materialistic. The objects of study are, in the first place, physical processes, which are considered to be the foundations of mental activity and behavior. The increasing success of biology in the expla...
Are facial muscles thicker in males than they are in females?	"Thicker"? well, generally speaking, the muscular development of men is more efficient and "thicker" than the muscular development of women. That being said, the risorio de santorini, the masetter, the orbiculars (Lips/eyes), the quadrangular (Not sure if that is the proper translation, it sounds wrong. English is no...	[ "In general, the male skeleton is more robust than the female skeleton because of the greater muscles mass of the male. Males generally have more pronounced brow ridges, nuchal crests, and mastoid processes. It should be remembered that skeletal size and robustness are influenced by nutrition and activity levels. P...
what cause the modern unpopularity of ternary computing? what about it made it not able to be stable or work properly in many cases, and is the concept still under development?	Binary is fundamentally easy on a hardware level: all your memory bits and circuits and transistors are either ON or OFF. Then you build out from there. Ternary requires more complex states, you need some way to measure magnitude or polarity instead of just crude on/off. It's possible and working models have been bu...	[ "With the advent of mass-produced binary components for computers, ternary computers have diminished in significance. However, Donald Knuth argues that they will be brought back into development in the future to take advantage of ternary logic's elegance and efficiency. One possible way this could happen is by comb...
Do pupils dilate and constrict in unison?	Okay everything in this thread is a lie. Assuming you don't have nerve damage to your optic or occulomotor nerve, both your eyes dilate/constrict at the same time. It does not matter if both eyes or only a single eye receive light input; both SHOULD dilate/constrict equally. This is known as the pupillary light reflex ...	[ "A dilation response (mydriasis), is the widening of the pupil and may be caused by adrenaline, anticholinergic agents or drugs such as MDMA, cocaine, amphetamines, dissociatives and some hallucinogenics. Dilation of the pupil occurs when the smooth cells of the radial muscle, controlled by the sympathetic nervous ...
if reddit is a huge diverse community full of different opinions, why do we always see the same interests and opinions upvoted so much?	Reddit serves many purposes for internet users. It is a recipe book, a porn site, a mass blog, a news outlet, a social thread, and many more. But foremost, it is used by a younger generation that generally have similar attitudes to society. While people from all backgrounds use the website, it is dominated by a group ...	[ "Macropartisanship shows that people respond to the political world when making up their party identification. Older and more politically sophisticated people are less likely to take current events into account because they are more set in their ways. Normally, those affected by outside influences tend to be young,...
what were the main religions of pre-Christian Europe? How did they perish?	It's important to understand that at the time, gods were only considered to have power in their locality. There therefore was no problem with worshipping a new deity in its own region, so when the Roman Empire expands, you get a lot of assimilation between various pagan religions. So you get Egyptian and Asian gods, su...	[ "According to Fitzgerald, religion is not a universal feature of all cultures, but rather a particular idea that first developed in Europe under the influence of Christianity. Fitzgerald argues that from about the 4th century CE Western Europe and the rest of the world diverged. As Christianity became commonplace, ...
why is it so important to raise our space budget? how will it benefit our economy?	Space programs have a huge potential to feed back into the economy, and historically have. NASA doesn't make all of their equipment, they contract with private companies that build what they need. That pumps money into the economy and creates jobs. Space programs also tend to push against the very forefront of scientif...	[ "The research that is conducted by national space exploration agencies, such as NASA and Roscosmos, is one of the reasons supporters cite to justify government expenses. Economic analyses of the NASA programs often showed ongoing economic benefits (such as NASA spin-offs), generating many times the revenue of the c...
How come some types of sound more easily drowns out other sounds?	In general, with wave dynamics (including acoustics) smaller objects will interfere with smaller waves and bigger objects will interfere with bigger waves. So on average, more objects are able to intercept smaller waves, since there are more smaller objects than bigger objects. This is one reason why you can he...	[ "For Liquid Sound, for instance, a special stereo set is necessary because one hears differently underwater than in the air: it is impossible to hear from where the tones are coming. The reason is that sound waves go through water about five times as fast as through the air. Due to its higher speed, the sound seems...
what voip is and the difference between it and normal landlines?	This is ELI5, what are these people babbling about. A landline is an analog device. When you place a call (at least, as it was originally designed and implemented), you quite literally end up with a wired connection (plus some boosters to keep the volume up) between you and your target phone. It used to be done with...	[ "As Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) technology matured, service providers began to interconnect VoIP with the public switched telephone network and marketed the VoIP service as a cheap replacement phone service. However, E911 regulations and legal penalties have severely hampered the more widespread adoption of...
why do radio active nuclear facilities cores glow blue?	The blue glow is something known as Cherenkov radiation, first detected by Soviet physicist Pavel Cherenkov in the early 20th century. This radiation occurs when a charged particle passes through a medium like water or air at a velocity greater than that at which light passes through said medium. This velocity is s...	[ "BULLET::::- Light blue is often reported as the color of the visible light coming off of a source when ionizing radiation is released during a nuclear chain reaction. The signature \"light blue glow\" of Cherenkov radiation seen in nuclear reactors is a result of the constant particles and photons being ejected ou...
why are you supposed to eat the seeds of some fruits and not with others?	It depends largely on how the plant in question is adapted to spread it's seeds. No seed wants to be destroyed; the ones that tend to get eaten generally use that as a mechanism to travel. Some seeds are made to be eaten (by people, birds, etc) and can survive a trip through a digestive system. This spreads them a...	[ "Fruits are the ripened ovaries of plants, including the seeds within. Many plants and animals have coevolved such that the fruits of the former are an attractive food source to the latter, because animals that eat the fruits may excrete the seeds some distance away. Fruits, therefore, make up a significant part of...
little red balls on telephone wires.	They're placed on wires near to where helicopters may be flying (eg hospitals). They make it easier for the pilot to see the wire and thus avoid it.	[ "Although wiretaps go back to the very beginning of telephony, the term \"Beige Boxing\" has become the generic term for illegally connecting to a phone line. The first known usage of the term Beige Box by phone phreaks was in a text file released by The Exterminator and The Terminal Man on May 17, 1985.\n", "To ...
About how many water molecules are in an average size water droplet?	As /r/ahhwell said, one drop of water is about 1/20th of a milliliter. This is called one [metric drop](_URL_0_). If you look at the bottom of that very page, the number of water molecules would be 1.671*10^(21).	[ "The table below shows how the internal pressure of a water droplet increases with decreasing radius. For not very small drops the effect is subtle, but the pressure difference becomes enormous when the drop sizes approach the molecular size. (In the limit of a single molecule the concept becomes meaningless.)\n", ...
How would the neolithic inhabitants of cold, isolated places like Fair Isle have kept warm, considering there are no trees on the island, and the nearest land is 25 miles away?	It's highly counterintuitive, but open fires are actually pretty terrible for keeping your body temperature up. As with most of the northern world, early farmers in the shetlands would have used animal skins for clothing, alongside weather resistant shelter to live in. As the Inuit today can attest, layers and layers o...	[ "Nobody lives upon it, but it is used in winter for keeping cattle, horses, oxen, hogs and others, which are able to obtain there sufficient to eat the whole winter, and to shelter themselves from the cold in the thickets. This island is not so cold as Long Island or the Mahatans, or others, like some other islands...
how can you know the ratings of a netflix series?	Netflix—like all distributors— have their own internal metrics that are almost never revealed publicly and when they do, it’s highly suspect as there is no way to verify the info. There are companies out there attempting to gauge viewership of Netflix but as of yet, none of them are regarded as much and their analysi...	[ "Sarandos said the comparison of TV network ratings to Netflix isn't meaningful as the typical Netflix release model of pushing out content is full season availability at once. No advertising means there's no need for typical ratings. He said Netflix aggregates audiences over a very long period of time, where Netfl...
A question on Ancestry and to a degree genetics.	There's no flaw in your friend's thinking. What he maybe didn't make apparent is that while you do have 8.5 billion different line of ancestry 33 generations back, you don't have 8.5 billion independent ancestors, because many people who lived 33 generations ago were your ancestor multiple time over via different rou...	[ "Such autosomal DNA studies, which measure total genetic contribution, continue to reveal differences between how individuals identify, which is usually based in family and close community, with genetic ancestry, which may relate to a distant past they know little about. Such DNA studies were conducted of students ...
Is drinking water from a few days old water bottle really bad for you?	I'm not sure what the concern of OP is. If the concern is contamination from the plastic: (1) older polycarbonate bottles do leach out low levels of BPA (there is some evidence this isn't good for you). One bottle won't make any difference, but it might be a good policy not to let water sit in such a bottle. Most ne...	[ "Some experts state that there's generally no harm in reusing your own drinking bottle, but the risk for ingesting harmful bacteria increases if you share your bottle with others. University of Nebraska Medical Center Microbiologist Pete Iwen, Ph.D., says, “If it’s my bottle, my germs, I probably would not be all t...
what do the regional federal reserve banks do?	The fed directs fiscal policy throughout the US, the regional banks provide a central point for that control. Furthermore they act as a place holder for regional cash, your local bank doesn't have nearly as much money in it as you might think. They place orders with the fed on a weekly basis for cash deliveries and ...	[ "The twelve regional Federal Reserve Banks were established as the operating arms of the nation's central banking system. They are organized as self-financing corporations and empowered by Congress to distribute currency and regulate its value under policies set by the Federal Open Market Committee and the Board of...
why do we need domain name registrars? why can't we register domain names ourselves, without a company doing it for us?	Because ICANN (the organization in charge of all of that) doesn't feel like putting up with customers. It takes a lot of work and infrastructure, and that detracts from their overall purpose. So they farm the job out to companies to handle.	[ "Registrants of domain names also sometimes wish to register the domain names themselves (e.g., \"XYZ.COM\") as trademarks for perceived advantages, such as an extra bulwark against their domain being hijacked, and to avail themselves of such remedies as \"confusion\" or passing off against other domain holders wit...
what is marginal utility of income?	OK. Lets look at 2 people. Person 1 makes $1,000,000 per year. They spend 25% of their income on the necessities of life, like housing and food. They spend some on car payments and other luxury items. They spend $1,000 per month on food. They save around 33% of their income for retirement. Next is a person who ...	[ "The marginal utility of a good or service is the utility of the specific use to which an agent would put a given increase in that good or service, or of the specific use that would be abandoned in response to a given decrease. In other words, marginal utility is the utility of the marginal use.\n", "While \"marg...
Does time travel slower at the center of galaxies?	> If time travels slower when nearer to high gravitational masses, does time travel slower for things nearer to the center of galaxies where there is a high density of stars and perhaps a supermassive black hole? Yep. Spot on. > And, more of what I'm really trying to get at here, does this affect our perception ...	[ "Relativistic time dilation allows a traveler to experience time more slowly, the closer his speed is to the speed of light. This apparent slowing becomes noticeable when velocities above 80% of the speed of light are attained. Clocks aboard an interstellar ship would run slower than Earth clocks, so if a ship's en...
How an average medieval city guard (both a single person and the larger division) work and function?	I'd like to add a follow up question: Did guards actually exist in times of peace? There is a common trope in videogames of a castle being heavily defended by guards, but is this actually true?	[ "The walls are punctuated by four main gatehouses, or 'bars', (Bootham Bar, Monk Bar, Walmgate Bar and Micklegate Bar below). These restricted traffic in medieval times, and were used to extract tolls, as well as being defensive positions in times of war.\n", "A city guard, city watch, town guard, or town watch w...
if all elements are made in stars, and stars don't destabilize until they're making the heaviest natural elements, then where did this range of elements we know come from?	So there are a few mechanisms at work. Stars will make a lot of elements up to Iron by fusion. However, the heavier elements only get made in the center of the star, so you end up with this layered effect where the center of the star might have lots of iron in it, but the outer parts 'stop' at lower weight elements. ...	[ "In general, elements up to iron are made in large stars in the process of becoming supernovae. Iron-56 is particularly common, since it is the most stable element that can easily be made from alpha particles (being a product of decay of radioactive nickel-56, ultimately made from 14 helium nuclei). Elements heavie...
How did realestate work in medieval times? (cities especially)	Well, you'll need to be more specific than 'medieval times' if you want a detailed answer. This is a thousand years of history and with great geographical variation. Also, the development of legal and documentary systems played a huge part in how historians can trace what was going on. Immovable property, whether castl...	[ "This newly acquired autonomy brought into being a new group of \"managers\" next to the sovereign's deputy, the schout, to run the city. These city councillors were often recruited from the wealthiest citizens. Medieval city-dwellers were of the opinion that the vroedschap, from which the magistrates were chosen, ...
why does netflix offer streaming of only some movies and disc-only for others? why can't they all be streaming?	For both the dvd rentals and the instant streaming, netflix has to pay licensing fees to the movie studios. Its part of where your monthly subscription goes. If netflix isn't granted the license from the movie company to do it, they can't stream it. Streaming services aren't quite the best way for studios to make money...	[ "Initial DVD discs sent to customers via US mail often received criticisms of being scratched and unable to fully play the rented movie. The popularity of Netflix dramatically increased with the addition of streaming through an online queue. This led to the majority of Netflix users reliably streaming movies and te...
what has happened to the oroville dam?	So the dam wall has three components, each is at a different level. The lowest portion of the wall is the primary spillway. It's a fully concrete lined channel and spillway with radial gates that block the spillway to either prevent water draining or to control the amount of water draining. Water should be able to fl...	[ "In February 2017, Oroville Dam's main and emergency spillways were damaged, prompting the evacuation of more than 180,000 people living downstream along the Feather River and the relocation of a fish hatchery.\n", "Oroville Dam was designed to withstand the strongest possible earthquake for the region, and was f...
if the powerball jackpot is 450 million, and there are only 292.2 million combinations to win, why couldn't i just buy all 292.2 million combinations and pocket the extra 150-ish million?	1. Tickets cost $2, so you'd lose money even without any of the following problems. 2. Buying 290 million tickets, even at the rate of one second per ticket, would take you nine years. 3. There can be multiple winners, so you may suddenly find your jackpot reduced by half or more. 4. You'll owe close to 50% income t...	[ "While Mega Millions and Powerball each have similar jackpot odds despite having a different double matrix (Mega Millions is 5/75 + 1/15), since Powerball is $2 per play, it now takes $584,402,676 (not counting Power Play side bets) on average to produce a jackpot-winning ticket.\n", "In bonusball lotteries where...
why are indian and european languages lumped together under the "indo-european" family when india and europe are so far apart and the languages seem to have nothing in common?	They do have things in common, that's the point. Very little is obvious to a lay person, but linguists have been able to trace back the history of the languages and have good evidence that the languages did all start from a common root language. It's possible all human languages are related. But there is no evidence...	[ "Because the Proto-Indo-European language was highly inflected, all of its descendant Indo-European languages, such as Albanian, English, German, Ukrainian, Russian, Persian, Kurdish, Italian, Irish, Spanish, French, Hindi, Marathi, Urdu, Bengali, and Nepali, are inflected to a greater or lesser extent. In general,...
Do we need a FAQs page?	The people that refuse to use the search function most likely aren't going to read a FAQ	[ "Since the acronym \"FAQ\" originated in textual media, its pronunciation varies. FAQ is most commonly pronounced as an initialism, \"F-A-Q\", but may also be pronounced as an acronym, \"FAQ\". Web page designers often label a single list of questions as an \"FAQ\", such as on Google Search, while using \"FAQs\" to...
let’s say you’re flipping a coin an infinite amount of times. can we prove that eventually, we would have come across all possible patterns? can it be that we won’t see a specific pattern in the infinite times of flipping, or is every outcome just ought to happen?	Infinity is big. Every pattern will happen. Chances of finding it might be vanishingly small however. Some patterns are so rare that if you flipped 1000 coins a second since the big bang, they may still have never shown up. But with infinite time, it will eventually	[ "This does not state if the coin flip is for each question, or each \"session\", that is the entire series of questions. If interpreted as being a single random selection which lasts for the duration of the session, Rabern and Rabern show that the puzzle could be solved in only two questions; this is because the co...
what separates the brain's ability to consciously control the body from being able to consciously control healing or attack cancers?	Your brain can only specifically control things that have nerves running to them (I'm simplifying here but I think it gets at the heart of your question). Nerves fire, and it causes muscles to contract, other nerves to fire, etc. Most healing related processes are controlled by cells floating around in the blood vess...	[ "Cancers often grow in an unbridled fashion because they are able to evade the immune system. Immunotherapy is a method that activates the person's immune system and uses it to their own advantage. It was developed after observing that in some cases there was spontaneous regression. Immunotherapy capitalises on thi...
why can't we just build more turbines, dams, solar panels, wind mills, yada yada	1) Well first because they cost money. Nobody have infinite amout of time and money to build all of those, so you can only build a certain amount each year. On top of that, we already have power plant that produce electricity, so either you wait for more demand and build new power plant at a slow rate, or you need to d...	[ "Water turbines are generally considered a clean power producer, as the turbine causes essentially no change to the water. They use a renewable energy source and are designed to operate for decades. They produce significant amounts of the world's electrical supply.\n", "Many countries, including Russia, South Kor...
how can creatures with small brains be smart? isn't there just less space for neural connections?	Are you asking why am elephant with a much bigger brain isn't smarter than us?	[ "Nonetheless, they seem to be relatively slow \"thinkers\", as is to be expected since they solve tactical problems by using brains vastly smaller than those of mammalian predators. \"Portia\" has a brain significantly smaller than the size of the head of a pin, and it has only about 600,000 neurons, hundreds of th...
In the show Band of Brothers we are shown numerous woman who had slept with German soldiers while their heads are being shaved after a Dutch town is liberated by American Soldiers. Similarly, we are shown women whose head was shaved with a baby. What happened to these women and their children?	Normally this would be out of my area of expertise. There is nothing in this that ties itself to the inquiries about the Middle Ages that I normally answer, but in this particular case I have had the privilege of doing some local research through the Amsterdam City Archives, as well as access to some of the sources on ...	[ "After the expulsion of German troops from France, those women who were known to have had relationships with German soldiers, were arrested, \"judged,\" and exposed in the streets to public condemnation and attacks. Having their heads shaved in public to mark them was a common punishment. Such descendants have form...
why do one-digit numbers are up to 9 and not more? why 10 is a 2-digit number and cannot be written as one-digit?	No problem in math. What you are talking about is the base. For example, in base-16, or hexadecimal, the numbers are 0123456789ABCDEF, where A is the decimal (base 10) value of 10. It doesn't break math at all. Just how the numbers are represented. As for the why, we use base 10 because we have ten fingers.	[ "When represented as a digit, the number \"10\" is used to encode the number zero. Because there are only six letters in the Letters(+30) group (letters 30–35, or U–Z), the other four positions in this group (36–39) are used to represent three symbols (dash, period, space) as well as the start/stop character.\n", ...
Question about the Herpes Virus...	Yes, you can be infected by both if infected simultaneously. If not, one confers immunity to the other since they do share some antigenic similarities. HSV1 mostly infects the mouth, while HSV2 mostly infects the genitals. Immunity is conferred by one strain of the virus because it is presented to the immune system, l...	[ "There are two types of herpes simplex virus, type 1 (HSV-1) and type 2 (HSV-2). HSV-1 more commonly causes infections around the mouth while HSV-2 more commonly causes genital infections. They are transmitted by direct contact with body fluids or lesions of an infected individual. Transmission may still occur when...
if climate change is such a massive problem, why can't the government create laws to begin to limit the usage of items that increase greenhouse gases, until they can gradually completely ban it?	In economics, it's called an "externality" when the impact or cost of some action will affect a person other than the person who's performing that action. Air pollution is a famous example of an externality. Factories and trucks produce large amounts of smog that can affect plenty of people who had nothing to do wit...	[ "Climate change is not something that citizens can entirely prevent from happening even if they wanted to. There are many natural causes such as volcanic activity and the Earth's orbit around the sun that are strong contributing factors to the phenomena. There are, however, prevention measures that can be taken to ...
Why do male lions have manes and not just long hair over their whole body?	Given that it only appears in male lions, it is very likely an example of [sexual selection](_URL_1_). Sexual selection often leads to pretty unintuitive outcomes, like the unwieldy feathers on a peacock. Lions live in a hot climate, so long fur seems like it wouldn't be helpful directly to fitness. So maybe female lio...	[ "Tsavo male lions generally do not have a mane, though colouration and thickness vary. There are several hypotheses as to the reasons. One is that mane development is closely tied to climate because its presence significantly reduces heat loss. An alternative explanation is that manelessness is an adaptation to the...
who pays for the search of malaysia airlines mh370?	Tax payers. Solved!	[ "In June 2014 the Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB) awarded Fugro the contract to conduct the search for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, which disappeared on 8 March 2014. In August 2014 it awarded an additional contract for the deployment of two specialist vessels. The contract was worth AUD$39 million and l...
Early and Medieval Islam	Were there any previous attempts before Muhammad by Arabs to unite Arabia and conquer adjacent lands?	[ "Aside from the theological narrative, Islam is historically believed to have originated in the early 7th century CE in Mecca, and by the 8th century the Umayyad Caliphate extended from Iberia in the west to the Indus River in the east. The Islamic Golden Age refers to the period traditionally dated from the 8th ce...
Are Infrared lamps red to make us believe that they are working? Or is it just spillover to visible light?	You're thinking of heat lamps, which produce EM radiation at wavelengths of 500nm to 3000nm. Visible red light is about 650nm, so some of the radiation from heat lamps is visible as red light. Yes, these are designed to be visible for convenience. There are also "far infrared lamps" which do not produce visible ligh...	[ " Infrared is used in night vision equipment when there is insufficient visible light to see. Night vision devices operate through a process involving the conversion of ambient light photons into electrons that are then amplified by a chemical and electrical process and then converted back into visible light. Infra...
At what points and places in history were atheism/agnosticism considered acceptable?	The idea of what actually constitutes atheism has changed greatly over time. For instance, early Christians were persecuted for being atheists. Right before the Reformation, people called others atheists for rejecting the sacraments. Modern, generally materialist, atheism really wasn't much of a live option before t...	[ "Atheism and agnosticism have a long history in India and flourished within Śramaṇa movement. The \"Cārvāka\" school originated in India around the 6th century BCE and is one of the earliest form of materialistic and atheistic movement in ancient India. Sramana, Buddhism, Jainism, Ājīvika and some schools of Hindui...
Why did the Progressive Conservatives get destroyed in the 1993 Canadian election?	This is an excellent question! The 1993 federal election represented a shift in Canadian federal politics, featuring both the ultimate defeat of the old Progressive Conservative party as well as the entry of the Bloc Québécois into the political scene. There are many factors that can explain how and why the Liberal Pa...	[ "The Progressive Conservatives won 21 seats in the 1973 election, up one from their position at the dissolution of parliament. Schreyer's New Democrats, however, were re-elected with a majority, and Spivak was blamed for the party's loss by many in the Progressive Conservative ranks. (Some have suggested that the T...
why are 911 calls, when played back, always in such low quality?	When you have something like the 911 call system, something that lives depend on, and something that you know works as it is right now, you DO NOT fuck with it. That means if the recording component makes it a little grainy, you live with it.	[ "During the September 11 attack in 2001, traditional telecommunications were stretched and overloaded. Phone networks along the entire East Coast were congested into uselessness. 911 operators were overwhelmed with calls and could do little more than offer encouragement because of the confusing information they wer...
What leaders were completely unprepared/untrained/unqualified for their station, but succeeded anyway?	11 hours with no reply... I'll give it a shot, off the top of my head. While not exactly unqualified (and maybe not exactly what you are looking for), Alfred the Great was never expected to become king (it was incredibly unlikely). He had three older brothers, was not a particularly healthy person and doesn't seem to ...	[ "Soon after becoming speaker, he set out to restore to the speakership many of the powers that had been stripped away during the revolt against Joseph Cannon. He also punished 13 progressives, who supported Robert M. La Follette instead of Calvin Coolidge in the 1924 election. He expelled the rebels from the GOP ca...
Did India get its independence through non-violence?	Clement Attlee, the British Prime Minister during whose rule India became independent, mentioned that the [Indian National Army](_URL_0_) activities of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose (which weakened the Indian Army – the very foundation of the British Empire in India) and the Royal Indian Navy mutiny in 1946 were major rea...	[ "The Indian independence movement gained traction following the Indian Rebellion of 1857. Opposition to British rule increased, both through violent revolutions (as exemplified by Bhagat Singh and Subhash Chandra Bose) and through nonviolent resistance (as exemplified by Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi) eventually led t...
why is that when you take a picture of a computer screen it looks all squiggly?	Because your computer screen is basically a grid. An X by Y grid of [pixels](_URL_0_), each of which has a little tiny red bulb, green bulb, and blue bulb, the lighting of which, in different ratios, produces all the [colors we see on a screen](_URL_1_). Normally, when we look at this with our eyes, it looks smooth, ...	[ "Those portions of the left and right images that are coincident will appear to be at the surface of the screen. Depending upon the subject matter and the composition of the image it may be appropriate to make this align to something slightly behind the nearest point of the principal subject (as when imaging a port...
in movies, how do actors point an apparently loaded bow and arrow at someone safely?	The Bow isn't strong enough to launch the arrow fast enough to pierce somebody. The Arrow's tip isn't sharp enough to cut somebody. The actor goes to a safety class + training on how to handle the Bow/Arrow. Normally with actually lethal bows and arrows so the actor can actually act out what shooting the bow/arrow i...	[ "The weapons master is present whenever a scene with a weapon is to be shot. They present the actor with the weapon just prior to the scene, and they take control of the weapon when the scene is done. It is the primary function of the weapons master to ensure that the weapons under their control do not cause harm t...
why do so many people dismiss the idea of psychological addiction to cannabis?	Anything can be psychologically addictive though, and it much depends on the person themselves, not the thing the person is addicted to.	[ "Cannabis is a psychoactive drug that is known to alter the state of consciousness. Cannabis alters mental activity, memory, and pain perception. One who is under the influence of cannabis may (or may not) experience degrees of paranoia, increased sensitivity, and delayed reactions not normal for their usual consci...
Was there any debate when Washington state was named, about it being confused with Washington, DC?	It was originally to be called Columbia, per the wishes of some Oregonians who thought it ought to be named after the Columbia River. Richard H. Stanton and Edward Stanly, two members of the House of Representatives, argued that Columbia would be confused with the District of Columbia, and so that state was instead cal...	[ "Washington was named after President George Washington by an act of the United States Congress during the creation of Washington Territory in 1853. The territory was to be named \"Columbia\", for the Columbia River and the Columbia District, but Kentucky representative Richard H. Stanton found the name too similar...
norway's nominal gdp per capita is extremely high, around $100,000/per capita. what does this actually mean for the typical norwegian person? how does it affect their lives?	I moved to Norway from Australia, and I would say I have a higher standard of living here. Many things are just...better. More thought out. More a question of incentives rather than punishments.	[ "Norwegians enjoy the second-highest GDP per-capita among European countries (after Luxembourg), and the sixth-highest GDP (PPP) per-capita in the world. Today, Norway ranks as the second-wealthiest country in the world in monetary value, with the largest capital reserve per capita of any nation. According to the C...
when paving a road, why is sand placed on the crease between the new and old pavement ?	If you mean the crease between new and old ASPHALT then it's because after the asphalt is laid the creases are then filled with pitch/tar in order to seal them. The sand is then put on it to cover it so it won't get spread around by car tires (and thus making your car dirty too). Also when old asphlat is grinded out an...	[ "In road construction, a worn-out Portland cement concrete can be rubblized and then overlaid with a new surface, usually asphalt concrete. Specialized equipment breaks up the old roadway into small pieces to make a base for new pavement. This saves the expense of transporting the old pavement to a disposal site, a...
why are primates the only species that have chins?	They aren't, the chin is just our name for the protruding lower jaw. Every mammal with a lower jaw has the same anatomy, just with a different appearance.	[ "Overall, human beings are unique in the sense that they are the only species among hominids who have chins. In the novel, \"The Enduring Puzzle of the Human Chin\", evolutionary anthropologists, James Pampush and David Daegling discuss various theories that have been raised to solve the puzzle of the chin. \n", ...
how can north korea not have nuclear weapons if they are a member of the jinr?	There's a big difference between knowing how to build a nuclear weapon and actually making one--it requires rare resources, advanced facilities, and time.	[ "According to several analysts, North Korea sees the nuclear arsenal as vital to deter an attack, and it is unlikely that North Korea would launch a nuclear war. According to a RAND Corporation senior researcher, Kim Jong-un believes that nuclear weapons are his guarantee of regime survival.\n", "During the 7th C...
Could the Common Medieval Soldier Survive?	We talked about some similar questions last week [in this thread](_URL_0_). It doesn't completely answer your question, but it might be a helpful start for you while you wait for others to answer you here.	[ "This is an incomplete list of the last surviving European veterans of several wars. The last surviving veteran of any particular war, upon his death, marks the end of a historic era. Exactly who \"is\" the last surviving veteran is often an issue of contention, especially with records from long-ago wars. The \"las...
Query about London dispersion forces	If the electron distributions are random, you'll be correct. However, the existence of a dipole (coming about randomly) will affect neighbouring molecules such that _their_ dipoles are not randomly oriented.	[ "London dispersion forces, named after the German-American physicist Fritz London, are weak intermolecular forces that arise from the interactive forces between instantaneous multipoles in molecules without permanent multipole moments. In and between organic molecules the multitude of contacts can lead to larger co...
If "fracking" causes small earthquakes, and if small earthquakes can relieve some of the stress at a plate boundary, can fracking be developed as an earthquake mitigation technique?	[This USGS FAQ](_URL_0_) does a good job of explaining why larger ruptures can't be prevented using smaller, harmless, "controlled" earthquakes. The main reason is that you need thousands of smaller quakes to release the equivalent energy. For example, 32000 M3 earthquakes release equivalent energy to one M6 event. T...	[ "The report noted that hydraulic fracturing has a low risk for inducing earthquakes that can be felt by people, but underground injection of wastewater produced by hydraulic fracturing and other energy technologies has a higher risk of causing such earthquakes. In addition, carbon capture and storage—a technology f...
How did the Romans physically capture and transport wild animals for use in the games?	/u/Enrico_Dandolo has a bit of information [here](_URL_0_). There's not a lot -- you get the sense that there are limited records about this sort of stuff -- but it's a starting point.	[ "Some documented uses of animals were not thermal or incendiary. Live insects were also used, to sting the enemy. 4th century BC writer Aeneas Tacticus suggested defenders should let wasps and bees into enemy mines, and jars of scorpions were sometimes fired during early bombardment in naval battles. In 189 BC Ambr...
What was first contact between the Romans and the Britons like?	Well the very first encounter occurred at a date unknown. Roman traders were common in Gaul prior to the Gallic wars and it seems likely that Romans and Britons first met through trade. The first major encounter came in 54BC, almost immediately after the Roman conquest of Gaul when Julius Caesar led a military expedit...	[ "The first direct Roman contact was when Julius Caesar undertook two expeditions in 55 and 54 BC, as part of his conquest of Gaul, believing the Britons were helping the Gallic resistance. The first expedition was more a reconnaissance than a full invasion and gained a foothold on the coast of Kent but was unable t...
explain why when fights break out at baseball/hockey games the cops stand around and do nothing and the players don't get charged with assault.	Not just support - but it's allowed. MMA fighters or boxers don't get arrested for their actions, unless the injuries are severe beyond the norm. It's an implicit agreement within hockey that it's part of the game, and you are free to _not partake in any fights as well_. In serious cases of injuries, criminal investiga...	[ "Before charging, the batter usually throws his bat and helmet aside so that he may face the pitcher unarmed (it is a very serious breach of baseball etiquette, not to mention dangerous, for the batter to charge the mound with a bat). Though serious injuries have occurred from charging in the past, usually fights a...
how do self-driving cars handle mexican stand-off situations at roundabouts?	If all three approached at roughly the same time wouldn’t all three be able to enter the round about since they wouldn’t be in each other’s way?	[ "In Guadalajara, Mexico, there is a grade-separated variation of this setup at the intersection of Mariano Otero Avenue and Manuel Gómez Morín Beltway (). Traffic flowing through Mariano Otero Avenue is routed onto an overpass above the beltway, with two access roads allowing right turns in all four possible direct...
When we say 70% of the human body is water, is that mass or volume?	The statement can be accurate in both senses. The human body itself is roughly about as dense as water (sometimes less, sometimes more depending on body fat percentage and other factors), so if your body is 70% water, and the rest of it is about as dense as water, then your mass fraction and volume fraction of water ar...	[ "In a research laboratory setting, the overall density of the body (Db) is calculated from its mass and volume (Db = mass/volume). The mass of the body is found by simply weighing a person on a scale. The volume of the body is most easily and accurately determined by completely immersing a person in water and calcu...
why can't wild animals who have been injured and rehabilitated by wildlife be released back to the wild instead of kept in zoos, aquariums, or sanctuaries?	Many ARE rehabilitated and released. Some individual animals are not suitable for release, though, either from lingering injuries, or perhaps from behavior issues like associating humans with food. A grizzly bear cub that thinks humans are all cafeteria lunch ladies isn't going to be safe to release into the wild. A z...	[ "Wherever possible, rescued animals and birds are rehabilitated and returned to the wild. If safe release into their natural habitat is not possible, animals are cared for and kept for educational purposes and zoological study. In the case of endangered species, captive breeding programs may also be undertaken.\n",...
why are some deaf people able to speak certain words like yes and no but they have never heard the sound the word makes when the letters are formed or the words are spoken.	It depends on whether the person was deaf from birth or somewhere along their life. for the question many learn to speak through speech therapy and talk knowing the vibrations of a word. for example, the difference between popcorn and noodles, notice how they have different vibrations in your throat. that pretty much h...	[ "When addressing a listener not skilled in the speaker's language, people may simplify their spoken language in an attempt to improve understanding. Some use sign language to communicate with others, especially if they have a hearing problem, although this is not always understood by people, as some signs in sign l...
When was the first instance of a bunch of guys with muskets lining up in a line and firing at each other in volleys?	While I'm no expert, I believe you are asking two questions at the same time, and I do not know if this is your intention. One question I got from your post was regarding volley fire. The second was on organizing musketeers on a line (linear formation). To answer the first one, we need to look back to archery tactics...	[ "Once this was resolved in the early 18th century, the accepted practice was for both sides to fire then charging with fixed bayonets; this required careful calculation since the closer the lines, the more effective the first volleys. One of the most famous example of this was at Fontenoy in 1745 when the British a...
How do geese know which way north/south is?	In the northern hemisphere the sun rises in the east sets in the west and is generally in a southerly direction all day. Keep the sun on your left in the morning on the right in the evening and head towards it adjusting to make sure you don't fly east or west and you go south, reverse and you go north.	[ "The place is named after a piece of land that juts out into the Saint Lawrence River and partially encloses the Outardes Bay: \"Pointe aux Outardes\". It literally means \"Point of Bustards\", but \"Outarde\" can also be translated as \"Canada goose\". In fact, Canada geese and snow geese use the nearby Manicouaga...
Thoughts after the superluminal neutrino data presentation	According to the paper, the chance that this is statistical or systematic error is less than 1 in a billion. (This is a 6.0 sigma measurement.) Having just finished reading the paper, I have to admit it's an impressive measurement. They've carefully examined every source of systematic error they could imagine (see...	[ "The five-year WMAP data were released on February 28, 2008. The data included new evidence for the cosmic neutrino background, evidence that it took over half billion years for the first stars to reionize the universe, and new constraints on cosmic inflation.\n", "IMB consisted of a roughly cubical tank about 17...
how did simple volcanic ash create statues out of its victims?	The "statues" were created by archaeologists. The volcanic ash covered the humans and as the ash compressed, the bodies remained inside the sediments. Then the bodies withered away while the sediments remained in place, creating hollow cavities in the shape of the victims. Then archaeologists poured plasters in these c...	[ "Some archaeologists believe that ancients made shrouds of asbestos, wherein they burned the bodies of their kings, in order to preserve only their ashes, and prevent them being mixed with those of wood or other combustible materials commonly used in funeral pyres. Others assert that the ancients used asbestos to m...
Why can every carnivore ear meat raw but humans need to cook it first?	Humans eat raw meat. I’ve had steak tartare, raw fish and raw oysters among other raw foods. Cooking kills germs and other pathogens in raw meat making it safer. Many carnivores are immune to those pathogens. Cooking is also supposed to break down the proteins and requiring less energy to digest the meal.	[ "Humans (species in the genus \"homo\") are the only animals that cook their food and Wrangham argues Homo erectus emerged about two million years ago as a result of this unique trait. Cooking had profound evolutionary effect because it increased food efficiency which allowed human ancestors to spend less time fora...
how does a betting house choose their 'super boosted' odds?	Whichever has less bet already made. Odds are constantly readjusted, based on bets. Betting houses want to make as much money as possible. If they think that a certain team is less likely to win, they'll put better payout on that team. If betters disagree with them and put a lot of money on that team, they'll boost th...	[ "A supermartingale is a betting strategy where the expected capital after a bet is no more than the capital before a bet, in contrast to a martingale where the two are always equal. This allows more flexibility, and is very similar in the non-effective case, since whenever a supermartingale \"d\" is given, there is...
why do some men last longer in bed and some only last 5-10 mins?	Why can some men eat 3 eggs for breakfast and some can eat 10? Because their bodies are different. Similarly, some react to the stimulation of sex more strongly than others. Young men are often 'faster' because their bodies are relatively inexperienced. Some medications can also inhibit the body's response so that ...	[ "The stress of maintaining a career and a household can also lead to a loss of sleep. In traditional gender roles it is usually the mother who is the one to get the family going in the morning as she fixes breakfast and takes the children to school before she goes to her own job. At night the mother cooks and does ...
how do plants form on remote volcanic islands?	Birds and airborne or floating seeds. For the animals, attached to flotsam, or being able to swim/fly.	[ "Because there are virtually no streams on the island, plants rely on rainfall for moisture. It has the largest forest of pōhutukawa trees in the world, as well as many northern rātā trees. In total, more than 200 species of trees and flowers thrive on the island, including several species of orchid, as well as mor...
can someone explain what trolling is? (eli5)	I'm just gonna answer assuming you're not trolling as well: Trolling is behaving in a way to get people worked up. It can be done in many ways. Making typos to get people all uppity about correcting you. Pranking people. Any behavior (generally on the internet) intended to get people upset/worked up is considered tro...	[ "In Internet slang, a troll is a person who sows discord on the Internet by starting arguments or upsetting people, by posting inflammatory, extraneous, or off-topic messages in an online community (such as a newsgroup, forum, chat room, or blog) with the intent of provoking readers into an emotional response or of...
Is there any validity to this statement? The amount of fluoride indirectly ingested through brushing your teeth makes the amount ingested through drinking water negligible.	Drinking water has fluoride at about 1mg/L (actually between 0.7 and 1.2). A squirt of toothpaste has around 0.4mg of fluoride. Fluoride starts causing stomachache at 0.3mg/kg, makes you sick at 3 mg/kg, and kills you at about 30mg/kg. Let's say you, intrepid reader, weigh 75 kg. It would take at least 22.5L (75kg*0...	[ "Many groups of people have spoken out against fluoridated drinking water, for reasons such as the neurotoxicity of fluoride or the damage fluoride can do as fluorosis. Fluorosis is a condition resulting from the overexposure to fluoride, especially between the ages of 6 months and 5 years, and appears as mottled e...

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