Split (2)

train · 226k rows

question stringlengths 3 301	answer stringlengths 9 26.1k	context list
Why is it that during winter it's not uncommon to have days with abnormally high temperature and summer-like weather, but in the summer it never drops to winter-like weather for a day?	Hmm, lots of incomplete answers here. Take a look at [this graph](_URL_0_) of solar intensity vs latitude. As you can see, the summer pole receives about as much sunlight as the equator (actually, slightly more because of the 24-hour days in the arctic circle!). On the other hand, there's a huge difference in energy...	[ "Winter is an interesting season, low temperatures occurring quite frequently. This is caused by the polar invasion, that produces the cold weather which is very common at this time of the year. The medium temperature of the coldest month oscillates between , and the average of the minimum temperatures ranges from ...
How do I get on an archeology expedition?	It's also important to point out that you will not be Indiana Jones. You will not be exploring ancient tombs and realistically, the chances of you getting on an excavation in a newly disovered city are nigh on impossible. The archaeological method is a broad and deep field. What you end up doing could be participating...	[ "Survey and excavation projects are an integral part of the Caribbean Archeology Program. Since 1987, research teams from the museum have undertaken surveys and excavations in Antigua, the Bahamas, Grand Cayman, Grenada, Haiti, Jamaica, and the Turks and Caicos Islands.\n", "Research at the Institute covers field...
Why did the pilum used by Roman infantry have a butt-spike?	It's not certain the addition of a butt-spike on a pilum was uniform, as a lot of depictions do not make note of it. If it was there, I can't see it being hazardous to the soldiers in the rank behind, as the soldiers are drilled to not get hit in the head by the back of the pilum anyway when it is raised to throw. If...	[ "A spiculum is a late Roman spear that replaced the pilum as the infantryman's main throwing javelin around 250 AD. Scholars suppose that it could have resulted from the gradual combination of the pilum and two German spears, the angon and the bebra. As more and more Germans joined the Roman army, their culture and...
How effective were navies before the use of gunpowder?	Can you be more specific? what do you mean by effective?	[ "During the Crimean war, the first use of steam armored ships in the military history took place. Three Dévastation-class floating batteries were successfully used against the sea fortress of Kinburn in the autumn of 1855. The direct initiator of this military innovation was the French Emperor Napoleon III. The mil...
how do names work in sign language?	Just as all other communication occurs in this language, names are expressed visually. Sure they can be spelled out using signed alphabet letters, but that's so phonetic and not really how sign language works. If my hearing name is Roxanne and my right eye is a lazy eye, I can almost guarantee you my signed name wil...	[ "There are three types of personal name signs in ASL: arbitrary, descriptive, and finger-spelled. Once given, names are for life, apart from changing from one of the latter types to an arbitrary sign in childhood. Name signs are usually assigned by another member of the Deaf community, and signal inclusion in that ...
Is there such a thing as positive schizophrenia where people hear voices telling them to improve their life?	Sure, it happens, though it is somewhat rarer than negatively oriented hallucination content. My institution doesn't have access to ["The Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease"](_URL_0_), but the abstract here alludes to positive content... I'm sure there are other articles that describe content of hallucination if so...	[ "Most language production and processing occur in the left hemisphere while the majority of the emotional processing and production of emotion in speech occurs in the right hemisphere. Persons with schizophrenia usually have difficulty processing prosody. These patients also show a remarkable increase in lateraliza...
Dear Historians, I want to learn and I'd appreciate your assistance.	You're in luck with the Mycenaean Bronze Age, as I found a website only relatively recently that actually does a good job of looking at the possible Iliad period. Disclaimer; the author seems to have been responsible for a lot of rather dodgy reconstruction drawings/pictures, and the author's wife claims to have exper...	[ "\"To foster a deepening understanding of the past by collecting, preserving, and sharing the historically significant memories of individuals according to the highest ethical and professional standards, to work with scholars across disciplines to design and execute innovative research projects, to equip community ...
What are some notorious "bad history" sites/sources, in the vein of _URL_0_ and the Institute for Historic Review?	Rather than provide you with a list of sites, your educators would do better to teach you to be critical of all source material. When you find a site that looks suspicious (amateurish layout, sensational headlines), find out who the writers are and what their background is. For instance, at the bottom of the front page...	[ "The Rotten Library contains the hundreds of articles presumably by the owner of the rotten.com site with sarcastic and entertaining views under the headings of Culture, Art, Medicine, Crime, Travel, The Occult, Sideshow, Language, Cryptozoology, Sex, Imagery, Conspiracy, Religion, Death, Hoaxes, History, Biographi...
Is there a "astronomical coordinate system"? How do astronomers tell each other where something is and how far away it is?	There are a few different coordinate systems that an astronomer might use. The most common is to specify right ascension and declination in the equatorial coordinate system (as mentioned by iorgfeflkd). However, depending on what object/feature one is interested in, another coordinate system might be more useful. For ...	[ "In astronomy, a celestial coordinate system (or celestial reference system) is a system for specifying positions of celestial objects: satellites, planets, stars, galaxies, and so on. Coordinate systems can specify an object's position in three-dimensional space or plot merely its direction on a celestial sphere, ...
Is it possible that the universe is the "surface" of a four-dimensional hypersphere?	We've considered this, but we've tried to measure the curvature of the large scale universe, and found it to be remarkably flat. The smallest possible "sphere" it could occupy has a "surface" (volume) with no less than 251 times our observable universe within it. More realistically though, we just think the universe is...	[ "Some spheres are not hyperspheres: If \"S\" is a sphere in E where , and the space has \"n\" dimensions, then \"S\" is not a hypersphere. Similarly, any \"n\"-sphere in a proper flat is not a hypersphere. For example, a circle is not a hypersphere in three-dimensional space, but it is a hypersphere in the plane.\n...
why can you get food poisoning from cooked chicken that has been left out for 12 hours on the counter, but not from a piece of chicken that has been stuck in your teeth for 12 hours before you brush?	The difference is which type of bacteria grows on the chicken. Since the chicken is cooked, any bacteria on/in the chicken was killed, meaning that only environmental bacteria will grow on it afterwards. On the counter, bacteria from people touching the counter, dust and air, and all the other things that may be in th...	[ "A 2012 chicken meat study found 60% of home cooks were at risk of food poisoning by washing whole poultry before it was cooked, which can spread bacteria around the kitchen. A further 16% of those surveyed incorrectly tasted chicken to see if it was cooked properly rather than using a safe meat thermometer.\n", ...
the difference between aerobic and anerobic fitness	Aerobic is when your cells can receive oxygen adequately from the blood. You're currently in aerobic respiration. Anaerobic is when you are hard at work and your muscles can't get adequate oxygen. Aerobic respiration is 26x more efficient than anaerobic. Anaerobic produces lactic acid I think.	[ "The term metabolism refers to the various series of chemical reactions that take place within the body. Aerobic refers to the presence of oxygen, whereas anaerobic means with series of chemical reactions that does not require the presence of oxygen. The ATP-CP series and the lactic acid series are anaerobic, where...
if chess is considered a sport, why not checkers?	A lot of people wouldn't consider chess a sport, a few people would consider checkers a sport. To get to what you're asking in why someone would consider chess a sport, but not checkers, chess has a damn near infinite amount of possible moves that to this day, we've not been able to build a computer that has solved che...	[ "In friendly games, the checking player customarily says \"check\" when making a checking move. Announcing \"check\" is not required under the rules of chess and it is usually not done in formal games . Until the early 20th century a player was expected to announce \"check\", and some sources of rules even required...
why is russia a very hated country by a majority of people?	A lot of it is residual distrust from the Cold War. But Moscow under Putin has performed a destabilization in Europe by annexing the Crimea and Russian politics has taken on a somewhat sinister cast. Now we could have used a different sort of diplomacy in Ukraine (like not inviting them to join NATO) and minimized th...	[ "There is the question of whether or not negative attitudes towards Russia and frequent criticism of the Russian government in western media contributes to negative attitudes towards Russian people and culture. In a Guardian article, British academic Piers Robinson claims that \"Indeed western governments frequentl...
why is pcr significant? what can it be used for?	There's a lot of uses of PCR The basic usage is that we have a limited starting sample, and we want more of it so we use PCR to replicate We can also use PCR to convert RNA to DNA and test for concentration of RNA in a cell (measures gene expression). This is called RT-PCR, and qRT is the method of measuring gene exp...	[ "PCR is another molecular method that has become increasingly important for epidemiological studies. The technique detects and amplifies small amounts of DNA; 10–100 copies of the templates are enough to perform DNA amplification. Thus, PCR can be used to type organisms that grow slowly on laboratory media, such as...
NASA confirms huge lakes of liquid methane on Titan. Can R/DNA life and Biochemistry happen with liquid methane as solvent, instead of water as it happens on Earth?	no, it doesn't really work. Methane is liquid at those temps, but theres no dissolved ions, so dna wouldn't properly fold and hold its shape. on earth, the interactions of dissolved salt ions with DNA and other biological systems is essential: the shape of the protein is in many ways defined by how the salt ions fit ar...	[ "Methane (CH) is a simple hydrocarbon: that is, a compound of two of the most common elements in the cosmos: hydrogen and carbon. It has a cosmic abundance comparable with ammonia. Hydrocarbons could act as a solvent over a wide range of temperatures, but would lack polarity. Isaac Asimov, the biochemist and scienc...
How long does it take my heart (on average) to circulate all the blood in my body?	70ml heart volume, 72bpm = 5040ml per minute. This conveniently is approximately the total blood volume of a human giving us the answer of one minute. Obviously this varies hugely depending on heart rate and could vary slightly based on your personal cardiac output : total blood volume ratio.	[ "For a healthy human heart the entire cardiac cycle typically runs less than one second. That is, for a typical heart rate of 75 beats per minute (bpm), the cycle requires 0.3 sec in ventricular systole (contraction)—pumping blood to all body systems from the two ventricles; and 0.5 sec in diastole (dilation), re-f...
how snipers adjust their sights so that they get a 'headshot'?	1) Experienced shooters, from military snipers to police officers don't aim for a "headshot" in normal circumstances. They aim center-mass. This means they aim for the torso. 2) For a sniper, they'll know how far away thier target is. They'll adjust the sight so it hits more or less in the crosshairs. They'll hav...	[ "Rear sights on rifles are usually mounted in a dovetail on the barrel or receiver, closer to the eye of the shooter, allowing for easy visual pick-up of the notch. Front sights are mounted to the barrel by dovetailing, soldering, screwing, or staking close to the muzzle, frequently on a ramp. Some front sight asse...
i was watching a documentary and it said that Trajan had a strong ''Spanish'' _URL_0_ there any descriptions of different accents in the roman empire?	There is one that comes to mind, but it's unfortunately not the Spanish you're looking for! The translation comes from a rather fantastic book - the only complete, surviving novel from the Roman World, and the caricaturization honestly sounds extraordinarily modern. I'm using Sarah Ruden's translation of *The Golden ...	[ "There is evidence that, at least from the 2nd century , the vocabulary and phonology of Roman Tarraconensis was different from the rest of Roman Hispania. Differentiation arose generally because Spanish, Asturian, and Galician-Portuguese share certain peripheral archaisms (Spanish , Asturian and Portuguese vs. Cat...
what makes hair go gray for several inches in the middle of a strand then grow dark again?	Gray hair is caused by the absence of melanin. Your hair follicles use melanin to color the hair. Over time for some people you begin to lose the melanin in your hair. In your case you appear to have lost melanin for a period of time. This can be caused by any number of health issues, diet, stress, or even the natur...	[ "The change in hair color occurs when melanin ceases to be produced in the hair root and new hairs grow in without pigment. The stem cells at the base of hair follicles produce melanocytes, the cells that produce and store pigment in hair and skin. The death of the melanocyte stem cells causes the onset of graying....
how do "extended release" work? does the tablet just sit in your intestines fizzing away? or is it more complex?	It depends on the type of medication. However, typically half the medicine will dissolve very quickly while the other half has a coating of material on it that it takes your body a certain amount of time to break down. An example would be half the dose now and the other half in four hours. For reference, the form of me...	[ "There are a number of methods by which tablets and capsules can be modified in order to allow for sustained release of the active compound as it moves through the digestive tract. One of the most common methods is to embed the active ingredient in an insoluble porous matrix, such that the dissolving drug must make...
If I'm using a black background for my desktop and browser, am I saving energy?	No. Your LCD monitor has a back-light which illuminates the entire screen and is always on. When you perceive the color black, it is a shutter configured to block the light. This video explains how LCDs work and does it in a very clear way. _URL_0_ However, if the transistors controlling the TFT shutters are n-doped...	[ "Blackle is a website powered by Google Custom Search and created by Tony Heap of Heap Media, which aims to save energy by displaying a black background and using grayish-white font color for search results. Blackle claims having saved over 7 MWh of electrical energy as of February 2019, a claim under public disput...
how do salt evaporation ponds work?	It's mostly for operational efficiency. The water will evaporate the same no matter where it is. Imagine you have 10 evaporation ponds. Fill 7 with sea water. When those reach a certain level, pump the brine concentrate into 2 spare ponds, and refill the original 7 ponds. When the 2 concentrate ponds are further concen...	[ "A salt evaporation pond is a shallow artificial salt pan designed to extract salts from sea water or other brines. Natural salt pans are geological formations that are also created by water evaporating and leaving behind salts. Some salt evaporation ponds are only slightly modified from their natural version, such...
depression	[Allie explains it quite well.](_URL_0_) It can also not always be a 'sad' thing, and be rooted in things like attention span and desire. When I was depressed I just had to keep buying things so I'd have something to look forward to, then attain. After I had the thing, I'd start to slump again, and I'd have to repeat....	[ "Depression is a widespread, debilitating disease affecting persons of all ages and backgrounds. Depression is characterized by a plethora of emotional and physiological symptoms including feelings of sadness, hopelessness, pessimism, guilt, a general loss of interest in life, and a sense of reduced emotional well-...
how companies like valve and gog get rights to sell games, when the game creators are out of business?	When a company goes out of business the IP will be sold off or acquired by another company as part of the deal or to pay off debts.	[ "Valve has full authority to remove games from the service for various reasons; however games that are removed can still be downloaded and played by those that have already purchased these games. Another reason would be games that have had their licenses expired may no longer be sold, such as when a number of \"Tra...
Oxford University was established c. 1096. How have applications and admission processes changed throughout these past 900+ years?	Okay, I know nothing about admissions to Oxford over the centuries ([but something about them in the Middle Ages](_URL_0_)), but let's clear up one thing: Oxford was not founded in 1096. I know the website says "there was evidence for teaching at Oxord in 1096." Let's talk about what that means, and why Oxford trie...	[ "Oxford University required students seeking admission to subscribe to the 39 Articles of the Church of England. Cambridge required that for a diploma. The two ancient universities opposed giving a charter to the new University of London in the 1830s because it had no such restriction. The university, nevertheless,...
Does Celtic music have anything to do with the music that ancient Celts actually played? What was their music like, do we know?	There's always more to be said, but you can read my answer to essentially this question here: _URL_0_ The TLDR; is "not really," but it generally depends on how you define "Celts" and "Celtic" and "anything to do with." Feel free to ask any follow-up questions, although I'll say that my knowledge of the current ite...	[ "\"Celtic music\" means two things mainly. First, it is the music of the people that identify themselves as Celts. Secondly, it refers to whatever qualities may be unique to the music of the Celtic nations. Many notable Celtic musicians such as Alan Stivell and Paddy Moloney claim that the different Celtic music ge...
Does the word "Vandal" have anything to do with the ancient barbarian group?	Yes...and no. While the words Vandal, from the Latin Vandalus-i,was present in a lot of languages before the XVIIIth century, vandalism is a recent enough word as it appears in 1794, coined by Henri Grégoire, a radical revolutionary priest, during the French Revolution. L'Abbé Grégoire was supporting radical changes ...	[ "The modern term \"vandalism\" stems from the Vandals' reputation as the barbarian people who sacked and looted Rome in AD 455. The Vandals were probably not any more destructive than other invaders of ancient times, but writers who idealized Rome often blamed them for its destruction. For example, English Restorat...
how was arnold schwarzenegger's rein as governor.	Not great, and in the end, shameful. He liked to give speeches and hear the people cheer, but had no stomach for taking the criticism the comes with pushing a governor's agenda. For example, in 2005, he called for a special election to approve four fiscal reform ballot initiatives he considered essential for solving ...	[ "After Arnold Schwarzenegger's election as California governor in the 2003 recall election, Hertzberg served as both a formal and informal advisor to Schwarzenegger. In 2003, Schwarzenegger appointed him to his Transition Committee and Hertzberg helped guide the passage of the new governor's \"Economic Recovery Pac...
How did the earliest monotheistic religions address polytheism?	Zoroastrianism is a bit difficult. We just don't know much about the earliest formations of the religion. It most likely began with a people called the Aryans, which is where Hinduism also develops from. There are a lot of connections between Hinduism and Zoroastrianism, including a lot of similarity in the languages t...	[ "Alleged traces of primitive monotheism were located in the deities Assyrian Ashur and Marduk, and Hebrew YHWH. Monotheism in Schmidt's view is the \"natural\" form of theism, which was later overlaid and \"degraded\" by polytheism after deceased ancestors' veneration became worship, and personified natural forces ...
nasa engineers just communicated with voyager 1 which is 21 billion kilometers away (and out of our solar system) and it communicated back. how is this possible?	> I can't get a decent cell phone signal and these guys are communicating on an Interstellar level. Mobile phones work off UHF (Ultra High Frequency), so the range is very short. There are usually signal repeaters across a country, so it gives the impression mobiles work everywhere. > wouldn't this take an enormou...	[ "Built with the intent for eventual interstellar travel, \"Voyager 2\" included a large, parabolic, high-gain antenna () to transceive data via the Deep Space Network on the Earth. Communications are conducted over the S-band (about 13 cm wavelength) and X-band (about 3.6 cm wavelength) providing data rates as high...
the big bang theory. lately, all this talk about the big bang has made me wonder exactly what it is. but from what i can find online, i still don't completely understand.	Nobody really knows.	[ "English astronomer Fred Hoyle is credited with coining the term \"Big Bang\" during a 1949 BBC radio broadcast, saying: \"These theories were based on the hypothesis that all the matter in the universe was created in one big bang at a particular time in the remote past.\"\n", "\"Big Bang\" chronicles the history...
Why has Canadian federalism become more decentralized, and Australian federalism more centralized, despite each starting out as the respective opposites?	Canada decentralized so much thanks to the actions of Ontario's premier, [Sir Oliver Mowat](_URL_1_) (premier 1872—1896). He was a very strong believer in provincial sovereignty and argued vehemently that the British North America Act, 1867 was created to ensure the protection of provincial rights. Mowat was instrumen...	[ "While the American federalist system allocates both legislative and administrative powers to each division of government, European federations have historically allocated legislative powers to the federal government and left constituents to administer and implement these laws. Most western federalist systems in re...
When and where did people learn how to make wells?	This isn’t really my area (I am a PhD student, and my research focuses upon the medieval era), but I would say that the answer to your question depends upon which type of well you have in mind. Dug wells are quite common from the Iron Age onwards with earlier, Neolithic examples occasionally cropping up, e.g. accord...	[ "The earliest wells were water wells, shallow pits dug by hand in regions where the water table approached the surface, usually with masonry or wooden walls lining the interior to prevent collapse. Modern drilling techniques utilize long drill shafts, producing holes much narrower and deeper than could be produced ...
What causes the gradient of control ability over the movement of eyebrows?	Eyebrow raising is controlled by the [frontalis muscle](_URL_0_). Like any muscle, it can be strengthened by repeated use.	[ "The muscles of the forehead help to form facial expressions. There are four basic motions, which can occur individually or in combination to form different expressions. The occipitofrontalis muscles can raise the eyebrows, either together or individually, forming expressions of surprise and quizzicality. The corru...
Were there major events from 1940 to 1945 not related to WWII?	Peru and Ecuador waged a short war against each other from July 5 to July 31 1941, in which the Peruvians remained victorious and annexed the disputed territory between both parties. It was one of several conflicts between Peru and Ecuador about this issue.	[ "1945 is an alternate history written by Newt Gingrich and William R. Forstchen in 1995, describing the period immediately after World War II wherein the United States had fought only against Japan, allowing Nazi Germany to force a truce with the Soviet Union, after which the two victors confront each other in a co...
what is the evolutionary advantage of having very pale skin?	I don't think you can really call it an "advantage". It is more like "adaptation". Pale or what we call white skin is an evolutionary adaptation to the colder, darker European climate - for more Vitamin D absorption in the shorter duration of sunlight exposures.	[ "Skin pigmentation is an evolutionary adaptation to various UVR levels around the world. As a consequence there are many health implications that are the product of population movements of humans of certain skin pigmentation to new environments with different levels of UVR. Modern humans are often ignorant of their...
am/fm radio business. how is this still working for people? is there really a big enough audience where this is profitable? it seems incredibly ancient at this point.	The radio is used in the automobile while drivers are using said automobile.	[ "However, even in the largest of markets, the decline of AM radio is such that some stations are no longer economically viable. XEDA-AM in Mexico City signed off in May 2015 after seeing listenership, commercial advertising income and federal government advertising all drop; its owner stated that \"there's no marke...
When did cosmic inflation stop?	Inflation ends when the inflaton field settles into its stable value; getting to this value is what caused inflation. The expansion of the universe can continue after that happens, but this expansion is no longer of the form that we call inflation.	[ "It is not known exactly when the inflationary epoch ended, but it is thought to have been between 10 and 10 seconds after the Big Bang. The rapid expansion of space meant that elementary particles remaining from the grand unification epoch were now distributed very thinly across the universe. However, the huge pot...
the whole "mining" thing with rx video cards?	Crypto currency "mining" is basically solving a bunch of complex math problems, in exchange you get some of that crypto currency. It just so happens that Radeon graphics cards, specify the newer RX ones, are very good at it. GPU's are better in general at this than CPU's and Radeon based graphics cards are better at i...	[ "Blake Stone: Aliens of Gold is a first-person shooter for MS-DOS created by JAM Productions and published by Apogee Software. It uses the \"Wolfenstein 3D\" game engine while adding features such as floor and ceiling textures.\n", "Wenco's systems rely on a combination of GNSS technology, wireless infrastructure...
Could we make an artificial cell?	We are still far away from that goal. The DNA for some minimal bacteria can be made, but a cell has many components that we cannot produce yet.	[ "A living \"artificial cell\" has been defined as a completely synthetic cell that can capture energy, maintain ion gradients, contain macromolecules as well as store information and have the ability to mutate. Nobody has been able to create such a cell.\n", "In the area of synthetic biology, a \"living\" artific...
Does the legend that the US army and colonial citizens gave small pox ridden blankets to natives have any basis of truth?	This question has been asked and answered several times before. A few of the previous answers are [here](_URL_2_), [here](_URL_1_), and [here](_URL_0_)	[ "It wasn't long before it was obvious that soldiers on both sides would need blankets and quilts for warmth. In the North, women either made quilts or remade quilts from bed coverings. Since the cots were narrow two bedspreads could be made into three quilts for soldiers. The United States Sanitary Commission was i...
why/how do some people hold the belief that only white people can be racist?	There are two kinds of racism, personal and systemic. Personal racism is when an individual judges a person based on the color of their skin. Anyone can be racist, of course. However, the systemic racism in the US is geared in favor of white people and against people of color. For example, the old practice of red lin...	[ "Yet, according to Seidman, Whites are most commonly unaware of their privilege and the manner in which their culture has always been dominant in the US, as they do not identify as members of a specific racial group but rather incorrectly perceive their views and culture as \"raceless\", when in fact it is ethno-na...
what actually goes on in your body when you grow taller?	In short you have [growth hormone](_URL_0_) that is anabolic (growing up)it stimulates growth as per its name, it affects your whole body basically except the brain. Other factors come into play when deciding your height, bones growth is mediated by a number of chemicals but estrogen is one of the most important.Hig...	[ "Growth in stature, determined by its various factors, results from the lengthening of bones via cellular divisions chiefly regulated by somatotropin (human growth hormone (hGH)) secreted by the anterior pituitary gland. Somatotropin also stimulates the release of another growth inducing hormone Insulin-like growth...
why is it that a light flashing at 60 hz is perceived by our minds as "always on", but not "always off"?	When you see a light that is off, you see no light coming from it. A light running on mains power receives oscillating AC power at 50 or 60 Hz. This graph shows what the voltage would look like osscilating back and forward in a sine curve: _URL_0_ With a maximum/minimum of +/- 120 V (or 240V in Europe). So, the fir...	[ "Flicker occurs on CRTs when they are driven at a low refresh rate, allowing the brightness to drop for time intervals sufficiently long to be noticed by a human eye – see persistence of vision and flicker fusion threshold. For most devices, the screen's phosphors quickly lose their excitation between sweeps of the...
If I blow into a straw that's in hot tea, does the tea cool down?	If the tea is warmer, yes. If the tea is cooler, most probably not. Most probably because there could be evaporative cooling which I find unlikely given the high humidity of breaths.	[ "The temperature of the tea brewed in this manner is never heated high enough to kill any bacteria, leaving the water potentially unsafe to drink. The tea should be discarded if it appears thick, syrupy, or has rope-like strands in it, though it may be hazardous even without such indicators.\n", "The directions f...
if the main goal of our brain is survival, why does it let get depressed and in some cases commit suicide?	Psychologist and Suicide Counsellor. If you see the brain as a tool for solving problems then suicide is adaptive. Problems solved, pain ended. I do not condone suicide - there is usually another option... But reading through this thread, maybe it's society that contributes to depression and suicide by shaming people ...	[ "Suicide thought is often a temporal thought of mind which is possible to help and provide emotional support to those people who had strong depression and anxiety, in order to reduce the risk of suicide(Health Service Executive, 2011). A focused campaign indicated that the suicide rates among 25-34 years old men de...
people who are hearing at an older age for the first time- how do they understand the language?	They're still lip-reading.	[ "The languages spoken at home also vary from age; for example, approximately 68.2% of children who are 5–17 years old speak only English, while 16.9% of those children speak other Indo-European languages.[2] Among adults aged 18–24 years, 23.4% speak other Indo-European languages; while 63.9% of adults who are 18 t...
why do some houses/buildings have balconies without a door leading out onto the balcony?	These balconies are meant only as decorations, to make the building look prettier from the street.	[ "A sign of its New Orleans heritage, the house is usually raised two to three feet off the ground. There is a single door and window in the front of the house, and often a side door leading into the back room, which is slightly wider than the rest of the house. The front door and window often were originally covere...
How fast does smell "travel?" In other words, if a shark can smell blood 3 miles away, how long does it take for that scent to get to the shark?	Odor is the molecules of a particular substance evaporating into the surrounding air (or dissolving into water) and travelling to an individual's nose where they are detected. Transport happens one of two ways: Advection and diffusion. Advection is bulk flow, i.e. odor carried by the wind or ocean currents, while diffu...	[ "Preston claimed that his dog could smell human traces years or months after a suspect walked over the ground, on heavily trafficked streets, or both. He claimed that his dog could smell underwater, and, in a case against a man who was eventually freed on DNA evidence, Preston claimed that his dog could track a hum...
What keeps the atmosphere on Earth? Is it purely gravity?	gravity and yeah earth's magnetic field deflects solar wind. solar wind can blow away the atmosphere, which is what happened to mars (although mars does have some atmosphere still)	[ "The atmosphere of Earth is the layer of gases, commonly known as air, that surrounds the planet Earth and is retained by Earth's gravity. The atmosphere of Earth protects life on Earth by creating pressure allowing for liquid water to exist on the Earth's surface, absorbing ultraviolet solar radiation, warming the...
is there any scientific basis in the idea that full moons affect the world in strange ways (e.g., more births, more murders, more freakouts, more gettin' lucky)?	other than the psychological effect? nope. We can make astrology be true without intending it, or even realizing it. If people say full moons are an aphrodisiac, that will hang in the back of your mind.	[ "Full moons are traditionally associated with insomnia (inability to sleep), insanity (hence the terms \"lunacy\" and \"lunatic\") and various \"magical phenomena\" such as lycanthropy. Psychologists, however, have found that there is no strong evidence for effects on human behavior around the time of a full moon. ...
defined benefit pension	I'm having a little trouble translating the "If you leave before retirement" portion. I think you're saying that if you terminate prior to retirement, then your benefit is reduced by a factor of 'actual credited service' divided by 'total service projected to normal retirement'. But, in hopes that I don't give you te...	[ "A defined benefit pension plan is a type of pension plan in which an employer/sponsor promises a specified pension payment, lump-sum or combination thereof on retirement that is predetermined by a formula based on the employee's earnings history, tenure of service and age, rather than depending directly on individ...
How much did a Chinese peasant know of the emperor?	Well, I can't really speak to the Ming or Qing dynasties, but I can speak to the Han dynasty. It's far before the Ming/Qing, but it might be interesting. For starters, a bit about regnal names: when they took the throne, Chinese emperors effectively did away with their names. It became a rather huge faux pas to use th...	[ "Puyi or Pu Yi (; ; 7 February 1906 – 17 October 1967), of the Manchu Aisin Gioro clan, was the 12th and last Emperor of the Qing dynasty. When he was a child, he reigned as the Xuantong Emperor (pronounced ; ; ) in China and Khevt Yos Khaan in Mongolia from 1908 until his forced abdication on 12 February 1912, aft...
When we launch something into space that records, why don't we see the earth spinning?	The earth rotates once a day about its axis. THink of watching a ball rotate once a day - the motion is very subtle. However, the most controlling factor here is that satellites are in orbit, which means they are circling the earth N times a day, with N controlled by how high the orbit is; geostationary orbit means th...	[ "Accurate telescope pointing and tracking is critical for obtaining good astronomical images and astrophotographs. However, because the Earth rotates, the sky appears to be in a constant state of motion relative to the Earth. Although this movement appears to be relatively slow when viewed with the naked eye, with ...
Why was Victorian culture so revolutionary and so enduring?	Can you explain why you think it was revolutionary or enduring? I'm just not quite sure what you're asking.	[ "The cultural social attitudes and conventions that many associate with the Victorian era are inaccurate. In fact, many of the things that seem commonplace in modern life began in the Victorian era, such as sponsorship, sensational journalism and popular merchandise.\n", "Cultural changes were also an important f...
why does pi(π) never end?	Its called an irational number. It cant be represented by the ratio of two integers. And some super smart math people proved that its irrational. Using math.	[ "Pi certainly seems to behave this way. In the first six billion decimal places of pi, each of the digits from 0 through 9 shows up about six hundred million times. Yet such results, conceivably accidental, do not prove normality even in base 10, much less normality in other number bases.\n", "Π is based on a cal...
Why do radio stations occasionally pick up other broadcasts?	Shadowing by terrain, or multipath propagation causing fading (direct and reflected signals nulling). Either will cause the desired signal to reduce in strength at the receive antenna. What you hear is when a station further away has a better path to your receiver.	[ "Fewer radio stations (except on medium and major market, depending on daypart) maintain a call-in telephone line for promotions and gags, or to take record requests. DJs of commercial stations do not generally answer the phone and edit the call during music plays in non-major markets, as the programming is either ...
why can people with alzheimer's easily remember their childhood and young adult life but not recent events?	It could be that long term memories are stored in the frontal lobe of the brain and Alzheimers first targets the hippocampus, which is responsible for memory reconsolidation (the creation of long term memories from short term memories)	[ "One of the key concerns of older adults is the experience of memory loss, especially as it is one of the hallmark symptoms of Alzheimer's disease. However, memory loss is qualitatively different in normal aging from the kind of memory loss associated with a diagnosis of Alzheimer's (Budson & Price, 2005). Research...
why is baltimore such a violent city?	Same thing that drives violence in other cities, since Baltimore isn't the most violent city. A lot of single parent families, drug addiction, alcohol abuse, poverty, people who are poor decision makers due to poor schools and poor parental role models, police use of excessive force, high rates of incarceration being...	[ "Baltimore, Maryland, U.S. is infamous for its very high crime rate, including a violent crime rate that ranks high above the national average. Violent crime spiked in 2015 after the death of Freddie Gray on April 19, 2015, which touched off riots and an increase in murders. The city recorded a total of 344 homicid...
Is there such a thing as a truth drug, and if so, how does it work and how effective is it?	Interestingly, [cannabis](_URL_0_) was used as a truth serum during WWII.	[ "Truth drugs such as sodium thiopental, ethanol, and cannabis (historically speaking) are used for the purposes of obtaining accurate information from an unwilling subject. Information obtained by publicly disclosed truth drugs has been shown to be highly unreliable, with subjects apparently freely mixing fact and ...
What methods do scientists use to reconstruct dinosaur postures from discovered fossils?	There’s a lot actually! But mostly, tldr: it’s really educated guessing. So first off they use the fossil records, which is usually only bones. From this, they can develop a general body plan. Soft things like tissues (Fat, muscles, organ systems) cannot fossilize, which pose an extreme issue, and the fossil record f...	[ "BULLET::::- An international symposium for paleontologists performing research on \"Dinosaur Tracks and Traces\" was held in New Mexico. The gathering was a success and \"led to the rejuvenation and maturing of the discipline of dinosaur ichnology\".\n", "Dinosaur behavior is difficult for paleontologists to stu...
jumping on a grenade	Real grenades don't work like they do in the movies. There isn't some massive fiery explosion which vaporizes everything in a 50 foot radius. There's a small explosion, and then a ton of shrapnel, which is what does most of the killing. So if you jump on the grenade, your body takes up most of the fragmentation, protec...	[ "The grenade proper is a container of explosive material with an iron fragmentation band. The fuse was of the impact sort, detonating when the top of the grenade hit the ground. A long cane handle (approximately 16 inches or 40 cm) allowed the user to throw the grenade further than the blast of the explosion.\n", ...
exactly where is the new horizon now after passing by pluto?	It's just on the other side of Pluto. It's traveling at about 14.5 km/s, or about 32,500 miles per hour, which is really fast, but Pluto is about 3 billion miles away from Earth, so it's not going that fast relative to the distance it's already traveled. It won't ever come back to Earth. Its next stop is a few other...	[ "When \"New Horizons\" first sent back data from Pluto, Pluto was thought to be losing hundreds of tons of its atmosphere an hour to ultraviolet light from the Sun; such an escape rate would be too great to be resupplied by comet impacts. Instead, nitrogen was thought to be resupplied either by cryovolcanism or by ...
why is pressure cooking (instant pot) affected by altitude, when cooking pressure inside the pot is preset?	Pressure cookers report internal pressure as how much they are higher than outside. So a 10 psi pressure cooker at sea level would have an effective pressure of about 25 psi (10 + \~15 psi in the atmosphere), whereas if you are up at 3km, the atmospheric pressure is only about 10 psi, leaving you with a total of 20 psi...	[ "Increasing the pressure has a more dramatic effect on the boiling point, that is about at 220 atm. This effect is important in, among other things, deep-sea hydrothermal vents and geysers, pressure cooking, and steam engine design. At the top of Mount Everest, where the atmospheric pressure is about 0.34 atm, wate...
does heat produces light or light produces heat ?	Both An object emits radiation which changes with its temperature. A hot enough object will produce visible light. Objects absorb some of the light that hits them and that energy becomes heat. If you hit an object with enough light then it will become hot enough to emit visible light of its own which can heat up a ...	[ "A heat lamp is an incandescent light bulb that is used for the principal purpose of creating heat. The spectrum of black-body radiation emitted by the lamp is shifted to produce more infrared light. Many heat lamps include a red filter to minimize the amount of visible light emitted. Heat lamps often include an in...
what is an electric field?	I like to think of a field as a "region of influence". For example: earth has a gravitational field. It has an area around it that can influence other objects with mass like people, cars, and the earths atmosphere. This region technically extends infinitely away from earth, but its strength decreases the farther away y...	[ "Electrical fields can be represented mathematically in many different ways. In the Huygens–Fresnel or Stratton-Chu viewpoints, the electric field is represented as a superposition of point sources, each one of which gives rise to a Green's function field. The total field is then the weighted sum of all of the indi...
An aspiring history major has a question about Japanese internment.	So, you want to know if internment was "justified". Like any historical question, it depends on what you means by "justified". Lets define justification along these lines: were the concerns regarding Japanese Americans as a potential "fifth column" justified? To ascertain this, we need to understand who Japanese Amer...	[ "Unfortunately, the Japanese Internment Camps following WWII put a halt to a lot of Asian American artists. Art that resulted from this time serves as some of the only documentation of the trials and tribulations of the many Japanese Americans who were forced into camps.\n", "The Japanese American Internment Muse...
Were longswords used in the 13th century?	The 13th century was a transitional period in arms and armor in western Europe. The Oakeshott Type XIIIa "Gran Espees" do start appearing, and mark a shift from one handed arming sword to two handed longsword. But they tend to be beefier with one or more fullers rather than a central ridge and a less defined point. ...	[ "The \"longsword\" type exists in a morphological continuum with the medieval knightly sword and the Renaissance-era Zweihänder. It was prevalent during the late medieval and Renaissance periods (approximately 1350 to 1550), with early and late use reaching into the 13th and 17th centuries.\n", "The longsword as ...
Where did the early Byzantines get all of their gold?	There are two questions here. One about the source of the empire's gold, and the other about the general wealth of the empire, AKA how the state managed to get its hand on so much gold. In the first case, we can only really look at the archaeological evidence and a small set of literary sources, which reveal that there...	[ "The traditional gold currency of the Byzantine Empire had been the \"solidus\" or \"nomisma\", whose gold content had remained steady at 24 carats for seven centuries and was consequently highly prized. From the 1030s, however, the coin was increasingly debased, until in the 1080s, following the military disasters...
what are the actual negative effects of drugs like ecstasy and molly?	Molly/ Ecstasy is supposed to be MDMA (see [3,4 Methylenedioxymethamphetamine](_URL_1_) for the wiki article) But can sometimes be cut with stuff nothing of the sort; like research chems (another topic) Basically, MDMA activates a part of your brain which releases serotonin and that part is like a bank or a "holding s...	[ "Opioid overdoses are often associated with benzodiazepines or alcohol use. Other CNS depressants, muscle relaxers, pain relievers, anti-convulsants, anxiolytics, treatment drugs of a psychoactive or epileptic variety or any other such drug with its active function meant to calm or mitigate neuronal signaling (barb...
why are the mega-rich praised for committing their fortunes at deaths to charity when the majority of charities have been proven to be fraudulent with no benefits to those they supposedly commit to serve?	It is a common urban legend among the miserly that charities do not benefit those they serve. But it is absolute bunk. Few charities spend more than 20% of their operational budget on administrative staff, and all give tangible services. Food banks give out hundreds of thousands of tons of food a year in every state. ...	[ "In 1994, \"The Chronicle of Philanthropy\" released the results of the largest study of charitable and non-profit organization popularity and credibility. The study showed that MADD was ranked as the \"most popular charity/non-profit in America of over 100 charities researched with 51% of Americans over the age of...
why are spiderwebs so durable and what are they made of? do we have a synthetic equivalent?	It is made of spider silk, a sort of protein. And we do not have a synthetic equivalent - but we really would like to. That stuff is pure magic and a true SciFi material that would allow us to replace steel cables with something much lighter, thinner and stronger, would open whole new ideas reagarding super strong, s...	[ "Replicating the complex conditions required to produce fibres that are comparable to spider silk has proven difficult in research and early-stage manufacturing. Through genetic engineering, \"Escherichia coli\" bacteria, yeasts, plants, silkworms, and animals have been used to produce spider silk proteins, which h...
how am i able to play complex chords and intricate riffs on guitar with my non-dominant hand, yet can't even write my name with it properly?	Because you practiced and learned muscle memory. Spend 2 hours a day writing your name with that hand and youll be able to do that too	[ "Violinists may also pluck a string with their left hand, denoted on written music as a \"+\" symbol above the note desired. Left-handed pizzicato is generally less flexible pitch-wise than the right-handed technique, but allows the right hand to either stay where it is or simultaneously play, a technique composer ...
Neurologically how do our fears work??	Fear is a response to a stressful and potentially noxious stimulus. It involves multiple brain areas: the thalamus, sensory cortex, amygdala, hippocampus and hypothalamus. There are two different paths in which the fear response may be created. I will explain through examples for simplicity: You're out in the garden,...	[ "Fear can be learned by experiencing or watching a frightening traumatic accident. For example, if a child falls into a well and struggles to get out, he or she may develop a fear of wells, heights (acrophobia), enclosed spaces (claustrophobia), or water (aquaphobia). There are studies looking at areas of the brain...
Why do balls curve when spinning through the air?	I think you're talking about the [Magnus Effect](_URL_0_). In simple terms, when an object is spinning as it moves through the air, one side is moving with the air and one side is moving against the air. This leads to a higher pressure on side compared to the other, and just like an airplane's wing, this acts as ...	[ "However, optical illusion caused by the ball's spinning may play an important part in what makes curveballs difficult to hit. The curveball's trajectory is smooth, however the batter perceives a sudden, dramatic change in the ball's direction. When an object that is spinning and moving through space is viewed dire...
wombats faeces are cubed. how is that possible??	You totally only posted this as an excuse to say a square peg coming out of a round hole.	[ "Wombats dig extensive burrow systems with their rodent-like front teeth and powerful claws. One distinctive adaptation of wombats is their backward pouch. The advantage of a backward-facing pouch is that when digging, the wombat does not gather soil in its pouch over its young. Although mainly crepuscular and noct...
why does every newly discovered virus out there always seem to cause the same "flu-like symptoms"?	Wall of text version (skip ahead for ELI5) The symptoms of a virus are just the way the body attacks it. A fever is trying to kill the virus with heat, for example. Also, many flu viruses are almost the same, except for one key difference: glycoproteins. Glycoproteins are basically a key that covers the outside of...	[ "The American Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) agrees that the \"spread of novel H1N1 virus is thought to occur in the same way that seasonal flu spreads. Flu viruses are spread mainly from person to person through coughing or sneezing by people with influenza.\" The CDC also says that a person may b...
What led to the design and implementation of the colorful military uniforms of the Napoleonic era, and when/how did this shift to uniforms focused more on camouflage?	There are a few things you have to realise when you think of warfare in older times. I will list them before going further. * Communications within a unit are by shouted order, drums, whistles or trumpets. Orders to the unit are done by flags, runners or messengers or other visual signals. * Cavalry presents a clear ...	[ "The development of military camouflage was driven by the increasing range and accuracy of infantry firearms in the 19th century. In particular the replacement of the inaccurate musket with weapons such as the Baker rifle made personal concealment in battle essential. Two Napoleonic War skirmishing units of the Bri...
Why can't diabetes type 2 be interpreted as a mechanism of action, instead of a malfunction?	There are multiple theories about type II diabetes. One says that fat is gumming up the works and preventing insulin from having the proper effect on glucose absorption. Another says that is about energy storage; the problem is that glycogen stores are full and that there is no good and quick energy sink for the excess...	[ "Because the autonomic response is, in effect, the body's backup system for responding to hypoglycemia, patients with type 1 diabetes are forced to rely almost exclusively on a backup system for protection, which can unfortunately, deteriorate over time. The reduced autonomic response (including the sympathetic neu...
why can i smell food better farther away than when i'm eating it?	Your nose becomes aware to new smells and over time lessens the ability to smell it. Same reason pubescent boys drench themselves with cologne. Everyone around the person can smell it fine but the boy is used to the smell and thinks it isn't working so they spray five times when once was always enough. It's a evolved m...	[ "Unlike smelling, which occurs upon inhalation, the sensing of flavors in the mouth occurs in the exhalation phase of breathing and is perceived differently by an individual. In other words, the smell of food is different depending on whether one is smelling it before or after it has entered one's mouth.\n", "Ano...
when a guys pee hits the toilet water and causes splash droplets that spray out of the bowl are the droplets pee or toilet water?	I would imagine the line between piss and water gets fuzzy pretty quickly.	[ "In fluid mechanics, a splash is a sudden disturbance to the otherwise quiescent free surface of a liquid (usually water). The disturbance is typically caused by a solid object suddenly hitting the surface, although splashes can occur in which moving liquid supplies the energy. This use of the word is onomatopoeic;...
In a post-apocalyptic zombie world scenario, would all the world's nuclear reactors melt down Fukushima style because there are no humans to keep them stable?	Iaane (posting from a plant service building ) Just a talk about safety systems in existing light water BWRs. First, the plant would probably scram either due to loss of offsite power cause by zombies crashing cars into power lines and the like or it would be scrammed manually by the operators because of a security i...	[ "The reactors will take 30–40 years to be decommissioned. On August 1, 2013, the Japanese Industry Minister Toshimitsu Motegi approved the creation of a structure to develop the technologies and processes necessary to dismantle the four reactors damaged in the Fukushima accident.\n", "On 28 October 2011, the Japa...
I heard that Jim Jones, of Jonestown fame, sold monkeys to raise money for his church, what other fundraising methods did he use?	Edit: answer is not real, and part of AskHistorians's April Fools joke. Do not rely on the information provided below. If you want a serious response, please repost it in the subreddit. Monkeys were the most famous, but that doesn't mean that this was the only way he raised money to run Peoples Temple. Back in t...	[ "In March 2010 Jones performed for guests at the 18th annual Elton John AIDS Foundation Academy Award Viewing Party. The Elton John AIDS Foundation is one of the world's leading nonprofit organisations supporting HIV prevention programs, and works to eliminate the stigma and discrimination associated with HIV/AIDS....
von neumann machines	Simply put they are machines that travel through space, land on a planet and build more of themselves then repeat that process	[ "A von Neumann probe is a spacecraft capable of replicating itself. The concept is named after Hungarian American mathematician and physicist John von Neumann, who rigorously studied the concept of self-replicating machines that he called \"Universal Assemblers\" and which are often referred to as \"von Neumann mac...
if sweating is supposed to cool you down, why is high-humidity heat more unpleasant or draining than "dry heat"?	Both of those are true because your body tries to cool itself by having water evaporate off the skin. Your body creates sweat so that the sweat will evaporate, taking heat with it and leaving the skin cooler than before. When the air around your body is already high in humidity, then the air is saturated and won't "t...	[ "This is why we feel cooler in dry air. The drier the air, the more moisture it can hold beyond what is already in it, and the easier it is for extra water to evaporate. The result is that sweat evaporates more quickly in drier air, cooling down the skin faster. But if the relative humidity is 100%, no water can ev...
why do we dismiss the idea of life on a planet just because nothing on earth could live on it?	No, we don't dismiss planets, or even moons of planets because nothing on Earth could survive there. We do know a couple things about how life formed on the Earth and tend to think you need the same things for life to form anywhere else. Water is an important thing. The reason we look for planets with water is that w...	[ "The idea that every planet has \"its own creatures\" is controversial. While no direct evidence has been found of extraterrestrial life, theories range from the Rare Earth hypothesis, that the earth may be unique in hosting life, to the more common idea that it would be improbable for life \"not\" to exist somewhe...
what makes denim such a durable fabric?	From what I understand, it's two layers of fabric woven together to create a very sturdy weaved pattern. The white and blue threads are woven together diagonally giving the fabric its signature texture.	[ "Denim has been used in the United States since the mid-19th century. Denim initially gained popularity in 1873 when Jacob W. Davis, a tailor from Nevada, manufactured the first pair of rivet-reinforced denim pants. At this time, clothes for Western labourers, such as teamsters, surveyors, and miners, were not very...
difference between pond, lake, and lagoon?	It's easy ! * Pond : Small, freshwater, often unrelated to flowing water sources like brooks, rivers and streams (though not always - sometimes they are as the result of our source of these flowing waters on land); Shallow, and not navigable by anything bigger than a model boat. * Lake : Large, freshwater, often the r...	[ "Lagoons are shallow, often elongated bodies of water separated from a larger body of water by a shallow or exposed shoal, coral reef, or similar feature. Some authorities include fresh water bodies in the definition of \"lagoon\", while others explicitly restrict \"lagoon\" to bodies of water with some degree of s...
the chances of there being other forms of intelligent life in the universe	Imo intelligent life like human life (equally capable) is _extremely_ low. Reason being we don't appear to have evolved at the earliest possible moment - our sun had at least several generations of other suns before it. In other words if intelligent life evolving is somewhat common then there would be other civiliza...	[ "Scientists have not uncovered any evidence of intelligent life elsewhere in the universe. Although absence of evidence is not necessarily evidence of absence, Mundane science fiction writers believe it's unlikely that alien intelligence will overcome the physical constraints on interstellar travel any better than ...
not sure how eli5 this can get, but how is that two atoms of hydrogen and one atom of oxygen combine into something (water) that's heavier than air even though they're lighter than air separately?	> water is heavier than air Oh but that's the typical riddle: which one is heavier, 1 Kg of water or 1 Kg of air? Answer: naturally, they weight exactly the same, 1Kg. What to want to look at is not the weight but the weight per unity of volume. While it's true that one molecule of water (H2O) is lighter t...	[ "The rules state each oxygen is covalently bonded to two hydrogen atoms, and that the oxygen atom in each water molecule forms two hydrogen bonds with other oxygens, so that there is precisely one hydrogen between each pair of oxygen atoms.\n", "It just so happens that hydrogen (H) and oxygen (O) are both diatomi...
why do my eyes water when i drink fizzy drinks really fast?	Cause the fizzies go up into your eyes	[ "Mixing alcohol with normal soft drinks, rather than diet drinks delays the dizzying effects of alcohol because the sugary mixture slows the emptying of the stomach, so that drunkenness occurs less rapidly.\n", "BULLET::::- Alcoholic beverages do not make the entire body warmer. The reason that alcoholic drinks c...
why is the us so socially conservative compares to most other western democracies?	A lot of America's wealth comes from primary industries: mining, drilling, farming. Those jobs don't require much in the way of education. People with less education tend to be socially conservative. The way the American senate is designed means voters in low-population states have more power. Low population states ten...	[ "In North America, South America and Australia, the other three continents where Christianity is the dominant professed religion, religious observance is much higher than in Europe. At the same time, these regions are often seen by other nations as being uptight and \"Victorian\", in their social mores. In general,...
Why did Christianity survive while something like Norse mythology didnt?	This is something I've written a bit on before. [This one is actually fairly recent](_URL_0_) [this is more broadly on conversion to begin with](_URL_2_) [this might also be of interest](_URL_1_) If you have any other questions I'd be happy to take a stab at some follow ups.	[ "Due to the use of Old Norse and Germanic iconography by the Nazis, academic research into Old Norse religion reduced heavily following the Second World War. Scholarly interest in the subject then revived in the late 20th century. By the 21st century, Old Norse religion was regarded as one of the best known non-Chr...
why is satan bad? isn't he just an angel who rebelled against serving god for eternity, made humanity gain massive intellect and the only representative of those who oppose the ethically questionable actions and ideas of god?	That is a complicated question to answer, because the role of "Satan" changes depending on what part of the bible we are reading. In the Garden, he was the snake that tempered Adam and Eve to rebel against God, in Job he was more of an advocate to challenge God's ideas acceptably, in Revelations he is the King of the ...	[ "has been Satan's studied purpose to persuade angels and men that God is not worthy of their faith and love. He has pictured the Creator as a harsh, demanding tyrant who lays arbitrary requirements upon His people just to show His authority and test their \n", "To make things worse, many Angels sent by God in the...
where does the blocked sperm go with male contraception like vasalgel?	The built up sperm gets reabsorbed by the body. Very similar to what happens when a male gets a vasectomy. No, it's not painful at all...you won't know the difference.	[ "Vas-occlusive contraception is a form of male contraception that blocks sperm transport in the vas deferens, the tubes that carry sperm from the epididymis to the ejaculatory ducts. Various vas-occlusive contraceptive methods have been researched for human-use, with interest in both reversible and irreversible met...
Would you still be able to see or think for a little while after being beheaded?	[This was studied using rat models:](_URL_0_) > Two conclusions were drawn from this experiment. It is likely that consciousness vanishes within seconds after decapitation, implying that decapitation is a quick and not an inhumane method of euthanasia. It seems that the **massive wave which can be recorded approxi...	[ "The King also quietly pardons many of the subjects the Queen has ordered to be beheaded when the Queen is not looking. This guarantees few people are actually beheaded. Nevertheless, when the Queen plays a game of croquet in the story, the only players who remain at the end are himself, the Queen, and Alice.\n", ...
how did culture's such as ancient egypt and ancient china write names?	They would name people after their words, such as King Tuts name literally meaning “the living image of Aten” This is why a lot of cultures names have a word meaning associated with them	[ "From the Shang to Sui (581–618 AD) dynasties, Chinese rulers (both kings and emperors) were referred to by their posthumous names in records and historical texts. Temple names, first used during the reign of Emperor Jing of Han (\"r\". 157–141 BC), were used exclusively in later records and historical texts when r...
among animal species, why do humans have a need to be clothe, especially in public	I'm pretty sure it's just a societal thing. If you look at pictures of indigenous tribes in Africa or South America some of them don't dress for modesty at all but for tradition and whatnot. Basically, our society and culture has decided that the naked human body is something that should be covered up when in public so...	[ "Animal rights activists generally protest the use of animal hides for human clothing. Forms of protest range from PETA's \"I would rather go naked than wear fur\" campaign, although more shocking and direct action, like damaging furs with red paint in imitation of blood, has been toned down, like the \"Ink, not Mi...
What is a DNA schedule?	It's a pseudoterm [Huckabee probably made up himself](_URL_0_).	[ "The temporal order of replication of all the segments in the genome, called its replication-timing program, can now be easily measured in two different ways. One way simply measures the amount of the different DNA sequences along the length of the chromosome per cell. Sequences that duplicate first, long before ce...

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