question stringlengths 3 301 | answer stringlengths 9 26.1k | context list |
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how does new york have a service economy when the rent is so high? | They don't live in Manhattan or Brooklyn... they live in the less expensive boroughs like the Bronx or Queens. And they cram more people/family members into apartments than elsewhere. | [
"New York City has a shortage of affordable housing resulting in overcrowding and homelessness. New York City attracts thousands of new residents each year and housing prices continue to climb. Finding affordable housing affects a large portion of the city’s population including low-income, moderate-income, and eve... |
Monday Mysteries | Secret Societies, Cults and Organisations | My favourite cult has always been the one created by [Hassan-i Sabbah](_URL_0_) and his assassins, which was adopted by the game Assassin's Creed, where it was loosely based on Hassan's group. It is said that the origins of the whole concept of an "assassin" is traced back to Hassan-i-Sabbah, who had an incredibly inte... | [
"There are also a number of strongly rumored secret societies with less documentation including The Magnolia Society, which has apparently formed within the past decade and taps men and women from all classes into something like an elitist supper club. Magnolians, as they are called, can be identified only on their... |
Have terrorists through history ever succeeded in achieving their political/ideological aims? | In short, no, at least going off of the definition of terrorism you wish to be used. This isn't, however, to say that terrorist groups do not effect change in the domestic or international scene. There are really two levels of objectives for terrorist groups: short-term and long-term. Short term objectives would be ... | [
"Right-wing terrorists aim to overthrow governments and replace them with nationalist or fascist-oriented governments. The core of this movement includes neo-fascist skinheads, far-right hooligans, youth sympathisers and intellectual guides who believe that the state must rid itself of foreign elements in order to ... |
when using virtual reality devices like the vive or rift, how do our eyes focus on 'distant' objects when they are really only centimetres away? | The lenses in VR device put the image at a distance. Early prototypes used infinite distance because reasons(similar how stars are essentially infinite distance away as far as your eye focus goes), it didn't really affect immersion, but now I understand the distance they use is less than that, not sure by how much.
Si... | [
"Another technique to select and manipulate objects in 3D virtual spaces consists in pointing at objects using a virtual-ray emanating from the virtual hand. When the ray intersects with the objects, it can be manipulated. Several variations of this technique has been made, like the aperture technique, which uses a... |
why was dragon ball gt considered so bad compared to dragon ball and dragon ball z? | I don't know what the general criticisms are, but, personally, Z did a better job building tension and had far stronger villains/plot arcs. GT felt like a hokey pseudo-parody of Z. Then again, I was quite a bit older when I watched GT as well. | [
"Harris commented that \"Dragon Ball GT\" \"is downright repellent\", mentioning that the material and characters had lost their novelty and fun. He also criticized the \"GT\" character designs of Trunks and Vegeta as being goofy. Zac Bertschy of Anime News Network also gave negative comments about \"GT\", mentioni... |
A good biography of Lenin | There's a great little book called ["Lenin for Beginners"](_URL_0_), which I highly recommend.
If you're looking for something more standard, give [this one](_URL_2_) a go.
If you ask me, I'd say you can't view Lenin in a proper context without understanding the workings of the Party as well. The [official Histor... | [
"Lenin: A Biography is a biography of the Marxist theorist and revolutionary Vladimir Lenin written by the English historian Robert Service, then a professor in Russian History at the University of Oxford. It was first published by Macmillan in 2000 and later republished in other languages.\n",
"Regarding Russian... |
are the acid levels in the hot springs at yellowstone park enough to dissolve a human body? | It's not so much his body was dissolved, it's more that his body was swept into the massive system of underground rivers flowing under Yellowstone.
I'm wondering if he could end up being blown out Old Faithful while school kids look on... It would make an epic field trip - or find a place in the plot line for a great ... | [
"Hot Springs Basin is located 15 miles (24 km) north-northeast of Fishing Bridge and has one of Yellowstone's largest collections of hot springs and fumaroles. The geothermal features there release large amounts of sulfur. This makes water from the springs so acidic that it has dissolved holes in the pants of peopl... |
Comrades: A World History of Communism - Its just me or this book is biased ? | **Part 1**
Ah yes, Robert Service, focal point of lots of controversy and yet still somehow getting glowing press reviews for the most part.
To put it very succinctly: Your impression that Service is biased is completely spot on, at least for both his books *Comrades* as well as for his more recent biography of Trots... | [
"The Lost World of Communism is a three-part British documentary series which examines the legacy of communism twenty years on from the fall of the Berlin Wall. Produced by Peter Molloy and Lucy Hetherington, the series takes a retrospective look at life behind the Iron Curtain between 1945 and 1989, focusing on th... |
if a helicopter were to hover 12 hours without moving forward, would it be on the other side of the world? | No.
All of the air in the atmosphere is spinning with the Earth. If it wasn't there would constantly be very fast wind always travelling West - but there isn't.
Just like how the air moves with the Earth, a helicopter moves with the air.
This is a good watch which is kind of on topic (10 minutes): _URL_0_ | [
"A helicopter normally encounters this condition when attempting to hover out of ground effect above the hovering ceiling for the aircraft, hovering out of ground effect without maintaining precise altitude control, and while making downwind or steep, powered approaches when the airspeed drops to nearly zero.\n",
... |
How have the nutritional value of crops such a wheat changed over the last 1000 years and why? | This is nearly impossible to determine considering the chemical makeup of our foods hasn't been studied with modern peculiarity for very long. The history of enrichment and GMO sourcing would be a good start and you can almost rest assured that fortified foods are fortified for a reason. Unless there is a repository ... | [
"Sequencing the wheat genome completely is important for producers all over the world. Wheat currently makes up more than 20% of all calories consumed in the world, and as the global population increases, so does the need for wheat. Recently, however, wheat production has been stagnating because technological advan... |
Is it possible that dinosaur fossils played some role in the origin of dragon myths? | It is possible, yes, that fossils (not necessarily just dinosaur fossils) did play a role in the development of dragon myths. It's mostly all speculation, really.
Most fossils that people find are either recognizably some smallish organism, like a seashell or a small fish, or a disarticulated bone or piece of a bone.... | [
"Jones then argues against the common hypothesis that dragon myths might be motivated by primitive discoveries of dinosaur fossils (he argues that there are widespread traits of dragons in folklore which are not observable from fossils), and claims that the common traits of dragons seem to be an amalgam of the prin... |
why is hitting your child legal (corporal punishment) when hitting an adult isn't? | the fuzzy gray line lies around intention to discipline not intention to inflict harm. | [
"In England and Wales, section 58 of the Children Act 2004 enables parents to justify common assault or battery (crime) of their children as \"reasonable punishment\", but prevents the defence being used in relation to Assault occasioning actual bodily harm (i.e. when causing anything beyond \"transient and triflin... |
how does edward snowden's protection in russia work? | * Russia is not the US, so US law doesn't apply there. They can't just invade Russia and take him.
* The US must ask for Russia to "extradite" him (meaning to willingly turn him over to US authorities). Russia can choose to say no.
* They're saying no. | [
"Human Rights Watch said that if Snowden were able to raise the issue of NSA mass surveillance without facing espionage charges, he would not have left the United States in the first place. Human Rights Watch writes that any country where Snowden seeks asylum should consider his claim fairly and protect his rights ... |
Why do electric engines don't have gear box? | I'm not an engineer, but I am a physicist with a car hobby, so I think I can answer. The simplest answer has to do with the speeds of the energy source involved. Let me explain:
The reason why an internal combustion engine, such as the [reciprocating engine in most cars](_URL_1_), has such a variable "torque curve" ... | [
"Surprisingly, the three-speed manual gearbox, was mechanically a four-speed box with first gear blanked off. This was done due to the perceived high torque of the engine, so that first gear was deemed unnecessary.\n",
"A box motor, in railroad terminology, is a self-propelled boxcar, normally powered by electric... |
when financial companies "buy" commodities, how are they stored? or they buying "rights" to have them at that price? | no, sugar spoils anyway, you would never store it as an investment.
They own the future rights to buy sugar at a future date (hence why the contract is called a future).
when that date comes, they *could* demand physical delivery. This might make sense if we were talking about Delta airlines and they had a jet fue... | [
"Commodities can be traded on financial markets, where there will be a single offer price (asking price), and bid price. Although there is a small spread between these two values the law of one price applies (to each).\n",
"A commodity market is a market that trades in the primary economic sector rather than manu... |
Has any virus or bacteria in humans ever mutated within us to then become a serious illness elsewhere in the animal kingdom? | _URL_0_
Chitrid disease in amphibians which is single handedly wiping out species across the earth is apparently spread by skin to skin contact from a fungus sometimes found on the hands of people.
It doesn't really affect people as far as I know.
Edit: And as far as I understand it didn't really start causing mass d... | [
"A large proportion of viral pathogens that have emerged recently in humans are considered to have originated from various animal species. This is shown by several recent epidemics such as, avian flu, Ebola, monkey pox, and Hanta viruses. There is evidence to suggest that some diseases can potentially be re-introdu... |
what happens when a person such as myself, who's maybe worth $18,000 on a good day, gets sued for $10 million? | You retain an attorney and defend against the lawsuit. If you cannot afford an attorney, one may be willing to help you for free--there are legal aid societies dedicated to this, and American Bar Association asks all lawyers to donate some of their time each year. Defendants in highly publicized cases often receive don... | [
"There is a rule that \"Grama benizakin patur\". If somebody caused financial harm to somebody else via an action that was not guaranteed to harm them, the person cannot be forced by a court to pay, although he might be morally obligated to.\n",
"In 2008, she appeared as a defendant on \"The People's Court\". She... |
why do computers have a shutdown process instead of just cutting it's own power? | For the same reason that people generally lie down before going to sleep instead of just falling over: To avoid damage.
At any given time, a computer is running a lot of programs in the background, and they need to be safely closed before the computer shuts down. Many of them also save their state during their shu... | [
"To shut down or power off a computer is to remove power from a computer's main components in a controlled way. After a computer is shut down, main components such as CPUs, RAM modules and hard disk drives are powered down, although some internal components, such as an internal clock, may retain power.\n",
"BULLE... |
internet infrastructure. | Inside your computer is something called a NIC (Network Interface Card). It has two main jobs - send data, and receive data.
Hook it up to another computer via an Ethernet cable and you have a simple network. Your computer's send is hooked up to the other's receive and vice-versa.
What if you want another computer? Y... | [
"The infrastructure by which individuals, households, businesses, and communities connect to the Internet refers to the physical mediums that people use to connect to the Internet such as desktop computers, laptops, cell phones, iPods or other MP3 players, Xboxes or PlayStations, electronic book readers, and tablet... |
What are the best books on the everyday life of individuals in the past? | Well, there is Greenwood Press's *Daily Life in ________* series. These are of variable quality, at least the ones I've looked at. One of the strengths is the narrow scope of their focus. Like, there is a "Daily Life during the Spanish Inquisition," "Daily Life in Renaissance Italy", AND "Daily Life in the Reformation... | [
"\"A Brief History of Everyone Who Ever Lived\" won gold at the 2017 Foreword INDIES Book Awards for science, and won the 2018 Thomas Bonner Book Prize. The book was also a 2017 National Book Critics Circle Award non-fiction finalist, featured on the 2017 Wellcome Book Prize longlist, and appeared on National Geogr... |
What is the worst anachronism: To impose modern theory on the past, or to assume that we're able to understand history "as it was" | Rankes 'bloss zu zeigen wie es eigentlich gewesen' is the core for your (and a historians) 'as it was'. Now, calling that an anachronism is in the light of Ranke a bit weird.
In 'as it was' histories, we are trying to recreate a (not the) picture of the past as best as we can, based on sources from that time. We are ... | [
"In historical writing, the most common type of anachronism is the adoption of the political, social or cultural concerns and assumptions of one era to interpret or evaluate the events and actions of another. The anachronistic application of present-day perspectives to comment on the historical past is sometimes de... |
What actually causes you to throw up when you have the "stomach flu" ? | "Stomach flu" is a generic term for any number of illnesses--usually something like gastroenteritis--that are caused by an infection of the stomach and intestines. This causes inflammation all throughout the gastrointestinal tract, and makes it more sensitive. So eating, which always irritates the GI tract to some ex... | [
"The outlook depends on the cause. Most people recover within few hours or a day. While short-term nausea and vomiting are generally harmless, they may sometimes indicate a more serious condition. When associated with prolonged vomiting, it may lead to dehydration or dangerous electrolyte imbalances or both. Repeat... |
What would have pre-colonial North American battles looked like? | **The Early Colonial Example**
Looking at some of the earliest clashes between Colonists and Natives can give some indication of how groups at the "tribe/complex chiefdom" level of organization and population would have waged war. The general pattern is of a sort of sustained guerrilla warfare (i.e. [endemic warfare](... | [
"In 1857, the Battle of Pima Butte was fought in the area of the mountains. The allied Yuma, Mohave, Yavapai and Apache peoples attacked the Maricopa village of Sacate. The Maricopa and their allies, the Akimel O'odham, defeated the attackers, leaving approximately 200 of them dead or wounded. It is notable for bei... |
Does holding up your cell phone really increase reception? | it's not that altitude intrinsically gives better signal, it is that your line of sight increases with altitude. If you can get better line of site to the tower, then you get better signal. if you have low buildings or rolling hills, a few feet could make all the difference. | [
"Radio waves decrease rapidly in intensity by the inverse square of distance as they spread out from a transmitting antenna. So the cell phone transmitter, which is held close to the user's face when talking, is a much greater source of human exposure than the cell tower transmitter, which is typically at least hun... |
why do we not have a universal chatting (im) service/client? or do we? | Basically [this](_URL_0_). To expand, each messenging service does well enough on its own to allow for its continued existence. Furthermore, most of them have some feature that makes them better for certain tasks. Skype is the king of video chatting. Facebook Messenger is, well, tied to Facebook. iChat blends seam... | [
"TalkFree targets citizens and migrant workers in emerging countries who (1) cannot make online payments because they do not have access to Internet or mechanisms (e.g., credit card, PayPal) to make online payments; or (2) do not have access to VoIP due to legal restrictions. Unlike other VoIP providers, who cater ... |
can masturbating make your muscles bigger? | To grow muscle you need to do few reps with high exertion. Masturbation is the opposite of this. You will improve muscular endurance in this way but that does not make your muscles bigger. That's why weightlifters are bulky and marathon runners are skinny. | [
"It is physically possible for men with sufficient flexibility, penis size, or both, to perform fellatio on themselves as a form of masturbation; this is called autofellatio. Few men possess sufficient flexibility and penis length to safely perform the necessary frontbend.\n",
"Although uncommon, some men can ach... |
How appropriate is to call "The American Civil War", a "Civil War", instead of something like "Southern States Revolt"? | There's a lot of debate on 'what' the war was, which has carried on to today. And revisionism is a hotbed topic between the majority of America and regional nationalists like the *League of the South,* or the *Sons of Confederate Veterans.* (Let alone the overtly racist KKK.) There are more than a few places in the ru... | [
"The most common name for the American Civil War in modern American usage is simply \"The Civil War\". Although used rarely during the war, the term \"War Between the States\" became widespread afterward in the Southern United States. During and immediately after the war, historians often used the term \"War of the... |
Is there going to be a WW3? Why weren't there any major wars like WW1 and WW2 in the past 67 years? | As DrNoFriends said, nuclear proliferation has played a huge role. The world's major powers have been reluctant to engage in war with each other, with the risk of mutually assured destruction looming. Another important thing to keep in mind is that the power distribution throughout the world is drastically different no... | [
"World War II is generally viewed as having its roots in the aftermath of World War I, in which the German Empire under Wilhelm II, with its Central Powers, was defeated, chiefly by the United Kingdom, France, and the United States.\n",
"Prior to the beginning of the Second World War, the First World War (1914–19... |
What is happening when you drive on a highway and have only one window down? | Pretty much the same thing that happens when you blow across a jug. Essentially, the stream of air hits the open window / jug top. The leading edge of the stream of air creates a vortex, and spins off. There's a low density region that follows, which helps to create the next vortex. This cascades for as long as the... | [
"All cars must have a nylon window net to protect the driver from flying debris and to contain the driver’s arms during a crash. In addition, the drivers are instructed to lower the window net after a wreck to signify that they are uninjured.\n",
"BULLET::::- In case a person, while exiting a car from a driver si... |
why do so many free wifi hotspots have a gateway page? | There are concerns that if you use a wifi connection and you commit computer crimes, libel or harassment the owner of the wifi connection could be held liable. The boilerplate text provides a mechanism for the wifi owner to disclaim liability for your actions. | [
"A hotspot gateway is a device that provides authentication, authorization and accounting for a wireless network. This can keep malicious users off of a private network even in the event that they are able to break the encryption.\n",
"A wireless hotspot gateway helps solve guest user connectivity problems by off... |
Did scientists at Los Alamos genuinely believe that atomic bombs could ignite the earth's atmosphere? | No. Their general opinion was that the atomic bombs couldn't "ignite" the atmosphere (the suggestion was that the bomb might be able to trigger a fusion reaction). The only dissenting opinion was Arthur Compton, who was not convinced of the complete impossibility of it, but he didn't think it likely (he estimated the p... | [
"On November 3 Dr. Kaplan brought the plan to the Air Force Scientific Advisory Board at the Pentagon. Kaplan by this time had decided the fireballs might be a new type of rare meteor. Nonetheless, most of the scientists remained puzzled by the brightness, trajectories, and absence of sound. Seeming to contradict h... |
why bodybuilding competitions are not considered eating disorders? | It *can* be a disorder. There is a specific name for it: Muscle Dysmorphia.
That said, disorders are patterns of thought, not single occurrences. It has to control your entire life, not just occur one day every once in a while. | [
"Eating disorders are generally not a primary concern amongst youth athletes, however they are unusually prevalent in wrestling and aesthetic sports such as gymnastics. These place heavy emphasis upon weight and body image as ingredients for success in competition. In order to compete, 81% of wrestlers will deliber... |
Friedrich Engels owned multiple factories. Did he manage them based on communist principles? | The simple answer to this is "No, he did not". Now, this is not because Engels was a hypocrite,but rather because of the following two reasons:
a) Friedrich Engels never actually owned any factories.
There were plenty of factories within the Engels estate, both in Germany and Britain, but because of Friedrichs radica... | [
"Wehrwirtschaftsführer (WeWiFü) were, during the time of Nazi Germany (1933–1945), executives of companies or big factories called 'rüstungswichtiger Betrieb' (company important for the production of war materials).\n",
"Geheimrat Koppel, who owned \"Auergesellschaft\", was later intimately involved in the financ... |
how come some peppers "burn" your skin if you touch them, but your mouth doesn't get burned if you eat them? | So it depends on the pepper, but it's not a burn like a fire would cause.
When it comes to spicy peppers, the reason you get the spicy sensation in your mouth is because of a chemical called Capsaicin. This chemical opens up the calcium channels in your tongue which tricks your body into thinking that it's on fire (t... | [
"Electrical burns in the mouth are usually caused by chewing on live electrical wiring (an act that is relatively common among young children). Saliva acts as a conducting medium and an electrical arc flows between the electrical source and the tissues, causing extreme heat and possible tissue destruction.\n",
"6... |
how can thailand go through a military coup when the same king is still in power, and has been for so many years? | The King of Thailand doesn't have any real power. Thailand is a constitutional monarchy, just like England. | [
"On 19 September 2006, less than a month before the scheduled elections, members of the Royal Thai Army staged a coup d'état against the government of Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra. It is the country's first coup in 15 years, though the practice used to be commonplace, with 17 having occurred between 1932 and 1... |
why does water taste worse when our throat is sore? | Not a doctor but I get the same thing, and I would say it's because the throat is infected and you're getting teh bacteria into your mouth and on your tongue. | [
"A sore throat is usually from irritation or inflammation. The most common cause (80%) is acute viral pharyngitis, a viral infection of the throat. Other causes include other infections (such as streptococcal pharyngitis), trauma, and tumors. Gastroesophageal (acid) reflux disease can cause stomach acid to back up ... |
why does football go by scores of 7 instead of 1 ' s like hockey and soccer? | It doesn't "go by scores of 7." There are different ways to score points, and each type of score is worth a certain amount of points. Some are only possible in certain situations. A common misconception is that a touchdown is worth 7 points - it's actually worth 6. | [
"Scoring is the same as in 11-man football, with the exceptions being on the point after touchdown attempt and the field goal. A point-after kick is worth two points, while a conversion made by running or passing the ball is worth one point; this is the opposite of standard 11-man football. In addition, a field goa... |
why are some viruses shaped like an icosahedron? | Most likely because it's a compact shape that can be built easily (make a triangle of protein 8 times, join them together).
Viruses hijack the cells of other creatures (or bacteria) to reproduce, so they need to keep things super simple. | [
"Capsids are broadly classified according to their structure. The majority of viruses have capsids with either helical or icosahedral structure. Some viruses, such as bacteriophages, have developed more complicated structures due to constraints of elasticity and electrostatics. The icosahedral shape, which has 20 e... |
why is gasoline sold per 9/10 gallon? | That is not 9/10 of a gallon. It's 9/10 of a cent.
When you see the price "$3.78 9/10", that's really $3.789 per gallon, not $3.78 per 9/10 of a gallon. | [
"In 2011 the United States Environmental Protection Agency introduced the \"gallon gasoline equivalent\" as a unit of energy because their research showed most U.S. citizens do not understand the standard units. The gallon gasoline equivalent is defined as 33.7 kWh, or about 1.213 joules.\n",
"Gasoline contains a... |
How CRT TV controls the beams so quickly back in the old days? | Well superhuman speed maybe but when it comes to electronics it is a fairly low speed thing.
Realize that the vertical refresh happens only 50/60 times per second - that's glacial speed, even for the 1930s electronics when tubes and oscillators running up to hundreds of MHz existed already. In fact, the 50/60Hz is or... | [
"In a CRT television, the electron beam is moved in a raster scan on the screen. By adjusting the strength of the beam current, the brightness of the light produced by the phosphor on the screen can be varied. The cathode ray tube allowed the development of all-electronic television. \n",
"In conventional black a... |
Is there any plausible evidence for occurrences of single combat by "champions" or highly esteemed soldiers in the field of combat? | Single combat is mentioned quite frequently in the history of Ancient Rome – the Horatii's defeat of the Alba Longan Curiatii in the 7th century BC is reported by Livy to have settled a war in Rome's favor and subjected Alba Longa to Rome; Marcus Claudius Marcellus took the spolia opima from Viridomarus, king of the Ga... | [
"Instances of single combat are known from Classical Antiquity and the Middle Ages. The champions were often combatants who represented larger, spectator groups. Such representative contests and stories thereof are known worldwide.\n",
"Sometimes however, such single combat would merely initiate a battle rather t... |
what's all the fuss about megaupload? do that many people really need file storage? | Online storage is generally seen as the way of the future. If you have a fire at home and your hard drive is destroyed, what happens to your data? If you collaborate with people on many projects, how do you keep your files in sync? If you work at home and on the road and in the workplace, how can you keep your data in ... | [
"People who used Megaupload for personal and business storage, such as large audio and video files for family and work, have also voiced their complaints about the fact that they no longer had access to their files on the service. Examples cited in the media included staff at public interest group \"Public Knowledg... |
Does motion/speed influence sound waves? | Absolutely. It's called the [Doppler effet](_URL_0_). A source moving towards the observer will sound higher pitched, and a source moving away from the observer will sound lower.
The same effect happens with light, too! Sources moving towards the observer look more blue, and away look more red.
E: As pointed out by... | [
"BULLET::::- Motion of the medium itself. If the medium is moving, this movement may increase or decrease the absolute speed of the sound wave depending on the direction of the movement. For example, sound moving through wind will have its speed of propagation increased by the speed of the wind if the sound and win... |
since all digital memory has to be stored as physical hard copies, will we ever have an information technology crisis? | We're going to have a lot of other problems before we run out of computer storage. Silicon is one of the most commonly occurring elements on Earth, and it doesn't take all that much to create a flash drive or solid state drive. Plus we can make storage out of other things too, like plastic (CD/DVD/Blu-Ray) and aluminum... | [
"A common attack on digital evidence is that digital media can be easily altered. However, in 2002 a US court ruled that \"the fact that it is possible to alter data contained in a computer is plainly insufficient to establish untrustworthiness\" (US v. Bonallo, 858 F. 2d 1427 - 1988 - Court of Appeals, 9th).\n",
... |
how do machines calculate body fat percentage? | Usually scale use two electrod under your feet and use Tiny Ac current. By measuring the impedance and frequency responce of the human body they can deduce the ammount of fat and water. | [
"In contrast with clinical tools, one relatively inexpensive type of body fat meter uses the principle of bioelectrical impedance analysis (BIA) in order to determine an individual's body fat percentage. To achieve this, the meter passes a small, harmless, electric current through the body and measures the resistan... |
Can a fruit without seeds be genetically modified? | Most likely, no. Most fruits and vegetables are the result of simple breeding (that we've been using for millenia) experiments to develop produce with the most desirable qualities. If that's your friend's reasoning for not eating oranges, then there isn't anything see can eat except what she finds in the wild. | [
"Seedless fruits can develop in one of two ways: either the fruit develops without fertilization (parthenocarpy), or pollination triggers fruit development, but the ovules or embryos abort without producing mature seeds (stenospermocarpy). Seedless banana and watermelon fruits are produced on triploid plants, whose... |
How did Houston communicate with the astronauts on the moon? | [USB](_URL_0_). But not the adapter type. Radio waves - the general method of communication in space for basically everything (laser links are a very recent development).
By changing the amplitude or (better) the frequency of the radio waves you emit many times per second you can transmit information. | [
"During a mission the capsule communicators (CAPCOMs), always fellow astronauts, were the only people who normally would speak to the crew. For Apollo 15, the CAPCOMs were Allen, Brand, C. Gordon Fullerton, Gordon, Henize, Edgar D. Mitchell, Parker, Schmitt and Alan B. Shepard.\n",
"For long-duration missions the... |
If male lyrebirds are so good at mimicking the sounds of other objects and animals , how do female lyrebirds know what is a bird and what is the real deal? | Having seen many lyrebirds to the south of Sydney, it seemed to me that they're curious about any loud noise. I'm going to guess the the calls attract the female's attention, but it's the courtship displays which count the most. | [
"A lyrebird is either of two species of ground-dwelling Australian birds that compose the genus Menura, and the family Menuridae. They are most notable for their superb ability to mimic natural and artificial sounds from their environment, and the striking beauty of the male bird's huge tail when it is fanned out i... |
Is the graphical fidelity of games limited by computational power available currently or is it very difficult to make a realistic looking game? | It's both. You need a lot of data to represent all the realistic details, and that means either scanning them from real life objects (limited by scanner quality, issues with lighting, animation etc.), generating them procedurally (requires effort to make it look realistic), or creating them in the traditional ways (a l... | [
"The computational complexity of a game describes the asymptotic difficulty of a game as it grows arbitrarily large, expressed in big O notation or as membership in a complexity class. This concept doesn't apply to particular games, but rather to games that have been generalized so they can be made arbitrarily larg... |
Who really built the Kaaba in Mecca | There is no simple answer to this question, I'm afraid. As has already been posted on here, Islamic tradition - and the tradition at the center of the Haaj - states that it was a construction of the Prophet Abraham, who had traveled there to settle down with Hagar and Ishmael, although some stories even suggest it was ... | [
"The \"Kaaba\", a cuboid structure located within the \"Masjid al-Ḥarām\" (\"Sacred Mosque\") in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, according to Islamic tradition was rebuilt by Ibrahim (Abraham) and his son Ismail (Ishmael), and is one of the holiest places in Islam. During his life the Prophet Muhammad laid the Black Stone in ... |
when you mix the same quantity of cold and hot water in a bucket, is the result the average of the two temperatures? | In a perfectly closed system with no loss of temperature to the air or buckets, yes. A 50 degree bucket and a 100 degree bucket will make a 75 degree double bucket.
In reality it will be slightly less than 75 as some heat is lost to the bucket and the air.
| [
"Temperature is a quantity for which there is an absence of concatenation operations. We cannot pour a volume of water of temperature 40 °C into another bucket of water at 20 °C and expect to have a volume of water with a temperature of 60 °C. Temperature is therefore an \"intensive\" quantity.\n",
" The temperat... |
what is the point of having the marine corps and the army separated? | The missions of the Marine Corps and the Army are entirely different, those differences came out of design and necessity. The Marines are a department of the navy, operating as their own entity and are constantly defending why they exist.
The Marines are referred to as "America's expeditionary force in readiness", the... | [
"The existence of the Marine Corps as the independent service was in question in 1945–1947, because newly appointed President Harry S. Truman intended the reorganize the United States Armed Forces. Due to cuts in Marine Corps budget, the threat of merging in the United States Army was more realistic. Platt was mean... |
why does it seem like the large majority of movies from the 80s were set in either chicago or illinois in general? | John Hughes was arguably the 80s movie king, and he filmed most of his stuff in and around Chicago. | [
"Chicago became a leader in motion pictures with innovative trailblazers and an interested public. In 1907, Chicago had more theaters per capita than any other city in the United States. Nickelodeons or five-cent theaters became extremely popular with the number of venues growing each year until the Great Depressio... |
How much value has been placed on humor by societies of the past? Has being funny always been considered such a positive trait as it is today? | Rhetoric scholar here. Cicero and Quintillian wrote extensively about the persuasive use of humor, and at least some of Cicero's reputation as an an orator derived from his wit.
Roman jokes tend to seem [not too funny](_URL_0_) to contemporary taste, though. | [
"The style of humor that flourished in the United States during the latter half of the 19th century was shared by DeQuille, Artemus Ward, Orpheus C. Kerr, Petroleum V. Nasby, Major Jack Downing, and most notably Mark Twain. It has since been theorized that America's hunger for this type of humor sprang from a sort ... |
what keeps people who work at kfc/coca-cola from stealing a sample of their secret recipes, reverse engineering them, and then selling them? | Not a huge amount, really. We already pretty much know what's in these products (I mean, with Coke, you can basically just read the label). The difficulty is only getting the exact formulation and mixing right. For most people, the prohibitive part of that is not knowing how it's done - it's having access to the kind o... | [
"A copy of the recipe, signed by Sanders, is held inside a safe inside a vault in KFC's Louisville headquarters, along with eleven vials containing the herbs and spices. To maintain the secrecy of the recipe, half of it is produced by Griffith Laboratories before it is given to McCormick, who add the second half.\n... |
Nomadic animals | Migratory describes species which regularly return to the same spot at a particular point in time. Examples (as you noted) are most frequently birds, but also many marine mammals (humpback whales for example) and sea turtles. These species usually move to foraging areas in one part of the world where food is abundant, ... | [
"Nomads keep moving for different reasons. Nomadic foragers move in search of game, edible plants, and water. Australian Aborigines, Negritos of Southeast Asia, and San of Africa, for example, traditionally move from camp to camp to hunt and gather wild plants. Some tribes of the Americas followed this way of life.... |
how do manufacturers get the little "pop/freshness seal bubble" on the tops of jars to stay down? | You can. /r/canning
You boil what is inside so the steam pushes out all the atmospheric gasses. Then when the can cools the water vapor condenses (mostly) back to water and leaves a vacuum. | [
"Jars of food items soon started appearing with a metal bubble-top lid, commonly known as a \"safety button\", which—like the lid of a Mason jar—popped out if the jar had ever been opened and stayed flat if the jar was in pristine condition. Customers were advised to never buy a product with a popped lid. (These li... |
I am a typical peasant farmer in western Europe in the 16th century. Where do I get my drinking water from and how safe is it? | There's always room for discussion, but perhaps the sections [Drinking Water](_URL_1_) and [Beer](_URL_0_) from our FAQ will answer your inquiry. | [
"In the 14th century Goslar was one of the very few towns that was able to provide all domestic properties with a water main system using wooden pipes, so that the kitchens were equipped with running water and the townsfolk did not have to collect water from a well.\n",
"Also noticeable was the planned network of... |
how do teeth know how to grow in the pattern so they fit together when you bite down? | They don't "know". Your body starts out with some stem cells. These are basically cells without an assigned function. They don't know where to go and what to do yet. They just divide. When your cells divide functions do get assigned to the new cells that form. This is done based on what it says in your DNA, which is ba... | [
"The curve or bend may occur anywhere along the length of the tooth, sometimes at the cervical portion, at other times midway along the root or even just at the apex of the root, depending upon the amount of root formed when the injury occurred.\n",
"The mouth is unique, in that the teeth are well secured to the ... |
How did US gov't mints turn mined ore into coins? | This also involves the Carson City federal mint in Nevada (drawing on the famed Comstock Lode), established in 1869. These mints purchased bullion, either directly from major mines or from banks, which purchased bullion from the market (including from smaller producers). Although the mints were capable of refining the ... | [
"The mint produced coins from 1838 until 1861, when Confederate forces occupied the building and used it briefly as their own coinage facility until it was recaptured by Union forces the following year.\n",
"After the establishment of the Territory of Oregon, the mint producing the coins became an entirely privat... |
why doesn’t isopropyl alcohol damage electronics? are there other liquids that also don’t do damage to electrical components? | it's neither corrosive nor conductive, so it doesn't dissolve or short anything. it also evaporates at low temperatures, so cleanup is a nonissue
candle wax shares the first 2 properties, but not the 3rd. this means letting a candle drip into your PC won't destroy it, but requires careful cleaning as it traps heat | [
"To prevent corrosion the fuel system must be made of suitable materials, electrical wires must be properly insulated and the fuel level sensor must be of pulse and hold type, magneto resistive or other similar non-contact type. In addition, high quality alcohol should have a low concentration of contaminants and h... |
When is a rock's birthday? At what point in it's formation does a rock become a rock? | That's a fun question.
Let me distinguish between 2 things: the date when some geological material becomes a rock vs the date when a rock becomes "the specific rock it is".
The answer plays into the general classification of rocks classes [sedimentary, igneous & metamorphic].
**Sedimentary rocks** start from loose... | [
"The oldest dated rocks on Earth, as an aggregate of minerals that have not been subsequently broken down by erosion or melted, are more than 4 billion years old, formed during the Hadean Eon of Earth's geological history. Such rocks are exposed on the Earth's surface in very few places. \n",
"Although there have... |
Around 1975, almost every major progressive rock band "sold out" and started producing more radio friendly material. Why did this happen? | Your question is unanswerable because its central premise is flawed.
With Genesis, the change is easily explained - Peter Gabriel left as bandleader, Phil Collins took over. Phil Collins has a different style and sensibility, so naturally their work reflected that.
Rush released their first record in 1974, so to sa... | [
"The idea of rock music as a serious art form started in the late 1960s and was the dominant view of the genre at the time of new wave's arrival. New wave looked back or borrowed in various ways from the years just prior to this occurrence. One way this was done was by taking an ironic look at consumer and pop cult... |
There were ancient Pacific Islanders- were there Atlantic Islanders? What happened to them? | In the north, the Irish and then the Norse settled the Faeroes before the Norse jumped off to Iceland, Greenland, and (briefly) the coast of North America.
In the south, the Canary Islands were inhabited by the Guanches, who were present on the islands around 1000 BC and were originally from North Africa. (Although a... | [
"At the time of the European arrival, three major Amerindian indigenous peoples lived on the islands: the Taíno in the Greater Antilles, The Bahamas and the Leeward Islands; the Island Caribs and Galibi in the Windward Islands; and the Ciboney in western Cuba. The Taínos are subdivided into Classic Taínos, who occu... |
how does fingerprint authentication store the fingerprint information? | Fingerprint scanners are basically capacitive touchscreens minus the screen part. Fingerprints are made of ridges and valleys. When you press your finger against a scanner, it registers what parts of your finger are ridges and what parts are valleys based on what touches it. It then takes several parts of this infor... | [
"Today, Identix' computerized fingerprint identification products are used by federal governments and law enforcement agencies around the world. Additionally, the verification of personal identity using fingerprints has propagated into everyday life. Fingerprint access is now used in smart phones, laptops, time and... |
How can I understand the motion of gyroscopes intuitively? | A gyroscope doesn't resist movement, it resists moment. So if you had a box with a gyroscope in it on a table, you could push it forwards/backwards/left/right with ease, but it would be difficult to spin it.
To see why this is, imagine you have a friction-less disk spinning clockwise and you want to reverse its spin. ... | [
"Gyroscopes measure the angular rate of rotational movement about one or more axes. Gyroscopes can measure complex motion accurately in multiple dimensions, tracking the position and rotation of a moving object unlike accelerometers which can only detect the fact that an object has moved or is moving in a particula... |
What's the deal with the Celts and the Norse? | One of the most thoughtful recent scholars on this subject was the late Bo Almqvist (1931-2013) - a Swedish folklorist who was the director of the Irish Department of Folklore at University College, Dublin. His "Viking Ale: Studies on Folklore Contacts between the Northern and the Western Worlds", edited by Éilís Ní Dh... | [
"The Celts (, see pronunciation of \"Celt\" for different usages) are an Indo-European ethnolinguistic group of Europe identified by their use of Celtic languages and cultural similarities. The history of pre-Celtic Europe and the exact relationship between ethnic, linguistic and cultural factors in the Celtic worl... |
What is the total population of all life on our planet? | Do you count bacterias? The rest of the animals are just a rounding error for the bacteria population.
| [
"Some estimates on the number of Earth's current species of life forms range from 10 million to 14 million, of which about 1.2 million have been documented and over 86 percent have not yet been described. However, a May 2016 scientific report estimates that 1 trillion species are currently on Earth, with only one-t... |
would 2 equally loud noises combine to make a louder sound? why or why not? | Depends on where you're standing. Sound waves can add or cancel as they mix together.
(That's the science behind noise canceling headphones, which actually create a sound that is opposite in phase to the noise it's cancelling.) | [
"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... |
Have there ever been mafias/organized crime syndicates in the United States that were German, French, or Scandinavian? | There has been one case of plagiarism, several jokes, and a number of contentless posts offered up as "answers" to the OP's question.
This is AskHistorians. We ask that your answers be in-depth, comprehensive, and such that an historian might give. You should also be able to back your post with proper sources if reque... | [
"The same large and politically connected gangs from New York, Philadelphia, Cleveland, Boston, Detroit, Chicago and New Orleans that controlled gambling, prostitution, extortion, thefts and narcotics since the early to mid-19th century, now controlled bootlegging operations across America in the 1920s. These recen... |
since essentially everything nowadays causes cancer, should we just assume that we still don't really know what causes it? | Here's the thing with cancer: at its most basic level, whether or not you get cancer comes down to statistics and randomness. Cancer happens when you get a combination of mutations that cause a cell to reproduce continuously, avoid cell-suicide, infiltrate other tissues, etc. All a carcinogen is is a substance believed... | [
"In recent years it has come to the attention of researchers that many types of cancer are caused largely due to epigenetic factors. Cancer can be caused in a variety of ways due to differential methylation of histones. Since the discovery of oncogenes as well as tumor suppressor genes it has been known that a larg... |
why are tickets (to concerts, sports events, etc) purchased through third parties (stubhub, ticketmaster, etc) as opposed to directly from the venue hosting the event? | Back in the day you had to buy directly from the venue. You had to get in line and buy paper tickets often having to campout overnight for best seats or for high demand shows. Buying from a ticket seller is much easier for everyone. | [
"Ticket exchanges allow people to buy and sell tickets online. For example, an individual who purchased tickets to a football game may find that they can no longer go and hence sell their tickets on a ticket exchange. Those most likely to use the services of a ticket exchange are ticket brokers (commonly known as \... |
us federal income taxes | It is complicated, but the part that throws most people is the progressive tax rate. Think about it that instead of you specifically being taxed at one tax rate, each individual dollar you make is taxed at a changing rate. Let's say the first 10,000 dollars aren't taxed at all, dollars 10,000-20,000 are taxes at %10, a... | [
"The federal income tax is only one of several taxes Americans pay. Americans who pay zero federal income taxes do pay other taxes, such as payroll taxes (a.k.a. FICA), excise taxes, sales taxes, tariffs, gift taxes, unemployment taxes, state income taxes, property taxes, and self-employment taxes.\n",
"Federal p... |
How do surgeons sew arteries together? | I'm really hoping someone will answer your question.
And if you'll allow me to make a related comment: Does anyone know of a freely available source the general public can learn about surgical procedures *in detail*? I mean... say you take someone's intestines out. *How do you know how to fold them back in?* | [
"Coronary artery bypass grafting, also called revascularization, is a common surgical procedure to create an alternative path to deliver blood supply to the heart and body, with the goal of preventing clot formation. This can be done in many ways, and the arteries used can be taken from several areas of the body. A... |
the negative effects of the industrial revolution | Immediate or long term?
The immediate negative effects was the lowering of living standards (today we have higher living standards because of it). Working hours increased, deaths due to injury increased, pollution shot through the roof.
Long term is, well, still the pollution. | [
"The Industrial Revolution is an example of a positive technology shock. The Industrial Revolution occurred between the 18th and the 19th centuries where major changes in agriculture, manufacturing, mining, transport, and technology occurred.\n",
"The effects on living conditions of the industrial revolution have... |
why are motorcycle helmets so heavy when the human neck is comparatively fragile? | Now think about what happens in a car wreck. The body is fastened to the car via seat belt so in an accident, the neck is the moving part which gives you whiplash. In a motorcycle accident , your entire body is in motion as you flail across the horizon to your new destination. So there is no worry of whiplash in a sens... | [
"Motorcyclists are at high risk in traffic crashes. A 2008 systematic review examined studies on motorcycle riders who had crashed and looked at helmet use as an intervention. The review concluded that helmets reduce the risk of head injury by around 69% and death by around 42%. Although it was once speculated that... |
how did bugs such as bees and ants come to have "queens"? how did physiologically different creature originate but remain the same species? why is there no "queen" human? | Efficiency!
A small number of specialized *breeding caste* is enough to supply eggs for the whole hive. Keep in mind the queen is not *in charge*, she is just another specialized caste like workers or soldiers or drones.
Worker bees can override and evict a queen if circumstances require, and some ant nests have mul... | [
"The term \"queen bee\" can be more generally applied to any dominant reproductive female in a colony of a eusocial bee species other than honey bees. However, as in the Brazilian stingless bee \"Schwarziana quadripunctata\", a single nest may have multiple queens or even dwarf queens, ready to replace a dominant q... |
what makes deer/moose antlers symmetrical? | A symmetrical set of antlers are called typical, as opposed to a set of non typical which are not symmetrical. Antlers are "shed" and regrow every single year, a mature rocky mountain elk can grow 1 1/2" in mass a day during the peak. What trips me out about antlers... during the antler growth they're covered in ski... | [
"One of the principal means of distinguishing the closely related black-tailed deer and white-tailed deer is the growth habit of the buck's antlers. In the case of the Black Tail and California mule deer, the antlers fork in an upward growth, whereas the other species' antlers grow in a forward direction.\n",
"Th... |
How do technological changes affect musical styles? | You're asking kind of a lot of questions here. Typically classical music developed and changed with technology.
Take Baroque instruments, for example. You have [Baroque Horns](_URL_0_) with no valves, so they can only play in a handful of keys, and can't play scales, chromatics, and so on, so what you write for them ... | [
"Music technology is connected to both artistic and technological creativity. Musicians and music technology experts are constantly striving to devise new forms of expression through music, and they are physically creating new devices and software to enable them to do so. Although in the 2010s, the term is most com... |
why is the prices of games going up in canada even though the dollar has remained the same for about a year. | There is an ever increasing competition between game makers, and the cost of development is increasing. | [
"Nintendo Australia has also been criticised for the expensive cost of their games, but this is the same with all video game distributors and subsidiaries in Australia, and Rose Lappin has said that the Australian and New Zealand dollar are weak on the exchange conversion rate, and they must raise the prices in ord... |
if i try to hit a small insect, e.g. a fruit fly, with my hand at high speed, will i hit it or will the air which my hand pushes in front of it will save the insect? | The air in front of it will actually be hitting it itself if you swing hard enough. Of course this is way faster than your hand can really go on its own. So it depends on what you mean by 'high speed'.
That's why the space shuttle coming down from space catches fire. Not from friction, but by pushing the air so hard i... | [
"The adult insect is an excellent flier and is able to travel great distances. While they prefer to attack palms that are already infested or weakened by other stresses, they will colonize healthy palms.\n",
"BULLET::::- Drone bees - These muscular bees can fire their stingers but they die if they fire them. If R... |
in a microwave, can i heat my food on half the heat for twice the time? | Pretty much that is what you can do. You can also in a sense turn it into a slow cooker if you set the power low enough. I do not know if your power level goes low enough, or why you want to do this at all.
I use mine to prepare fine chicken soup inside ten minutes using things from the refrigerator and freezer. Froze... | [
"Microwave ovens produce heat directly within the food, but despite the common misconception that microwaved food cooks from the inside out, 2.45 GHz microwaves can only penetrate approximately into most foods. The inside portions of thicker foods are mainly heated by heat conducted from the outer .\n",
"BULLET::... |
how do throttleable rocket engines work? | Simply put you alter the fuel flow using pumps on the fuel line. More fuel means more thrust being generated in the combustion chamber.
Due to the inability of the pumps to work arbitrarily fast and the inability of the combustion chamber to handle all fuel combusting simultaneously you have an upper limit on how much... | [
"Rockets can be throttled by controlling the propellant combustion rate formula_11 (usually measured in kg/s or lb/s). In liquid and hybrid rockets, the propellant flow entering the chamber is controlled using valves, in solid rockets it is controlled by changing the area of propellant that is burning and this can ... |
why does shaking (like in a train or bus) and rocking a baby's crib help us sleep? | I am going to take a dig at this. I think the exact word you are looking for is "Rocking to sleep".
As to why Rocking helps us sleep, it is a matter of brain waves.
Firstly, we have been put to sleep a hundred times since our birth by gentle swinging motions of our parents. Hence our **brain associates these gentle m... | [
"Many adults find rocking chairs soothing because of the gentle motion. Gentle rocking motion has been shown to provide faster onset of sleep than remaining stationary, mimicking the process of a parent rocking a child to sleep.\n",
"Children and adults will often rock themselves when distressed: there appears to... |
why couldn't you lose weight by just not eating until you were thin? | Because of the starvation response.
Your body is meant to be digesting food pretty much all the time. It's the constant digestion of food that supplies your brain with glucose.
If you go without eating at all long enough for your digestive system to stop producing glucose — anywhere from six to twenty-four hours, dep... | [
"As a young adult, Ellen had fluctuations with her weight and that was when her fear of becoming fat began. In her writings, she expressed her strong cravings for food, yet she had an extreme fear of gaining weight. These thoughts eventually led to the development of depression. In order to stay thin, Ellen started... |
How much farmland was needed to sustain classical/ancient cities? | Quite a lot. Indeed, most large cities in the Mediterranean world got that way because they were able to exceed the production limitations of their surrounding hinterland by importing food. Few cities, even in the most productive regions, could sustain a particularly large population from their local area alone. Even s... | [
"The ideal farmland habitat is a mixture of grass and arable fields, divided by thick hedgerows with pockets of dense scrub. They can tolerate a certain degree of urbanisation, and are found in green spaces in towns and cities, even Rome.\n",
"At the height of the city's occupation, the population reached the lim... |
Why did the Germanic invasions of Britain result in conqueror's language becoming the spoken tongue compared to the rest of the Germanic conquests in Europe? | The traditional narrative is that it was just that, a large scale population exchange with the Romano-British being killed, dying of plague and being driven West by the Anglo-Saxons, later becoming the Welsh and Cornish. The remaining small population of Romano-British in what became England and Lowland Scotland, merge... | [
"Germanicist John A. Hawkins sets forth the arguments for a Germanic substrate. Hawkins argues that the Proto-Germans encountered a non-Indo-European speaking people and borrowed many features from their language. He hypothesizes that the first sound shift of Grimm's Law was the result of non-native speakers attemp... |
If milk chocolate has milk in it, how does chocolate have such a long shelf life? | Chocolate has almost no water in it. [There is a minimum water activity that is necessary for microbial growth](_URL_0_). Chocolate is below that, so microbes can't get in there and spoil it. Even when making things like truffles with liquid centers a lot of care is taken to make sure that the amount of water is low... | [
"Some nutritionists have criticized chocolate milk for its high sugar content and its relationship to childhood obesity. In New York City, school food officials report that nearly 60 percent of the 100 million cartons served each year contain fat-free chocolate milk. Because chocolate milk can contain twice as much... |
why is airplane fuel measured by weight instead of volume? | Many aircraft are limited by their “maximum gross weight” for takeoff and/ or landing. It makes the math easier when you don’t need to multiply the gallons by the specific weight of the fuel / gallon. Make sense? | [
"The weight of fuel forms a significant part of the total weight of an aircraft, so any fuel calculation must take into account the weight of any fuel not yet burned. Instead of trying to predict the fuel load not yet burned, a flight planning system can handle this situation by working backward along the route, st... |
why are some photographs considered art? | From google:
art
noun: art; plural noun: arts; plural noun: the arts
1. the expression or application of human creative skill **and imagination**, typically in a visual form such as painting or sculpture, producing works to be appreciated primarily for their beauty or emotional power.
The ELI5 answer would be that ... | [
"The aesthetics of photography is a matter that continues to be discussed regularly, especially in artistic circles. Many artists argued that photography was the mechanical reproduction of an image. If photography is authentically art, then photography in the context of art would need redefinition, such as determin... |
Why did England and France develop a strong centralized government while the Holy Roman Empire stayed decentralized and fragmented? | #**Summary**
Possible reasons for a decentralized and fragmented HRE
1. Structural causes
- Elective monarchy and papal coronation
- No single "capital city"
- Harder taxation and recruitment?
2. Religious and political causes
- Augsburg and Westphalia led to confessional stalemate
- Religious fragmentation trig... | [
"Although most of its neighbors coalesced into relatively centralized states before the 19th century, Germany did not follow that path. Instead, the Holy Roman Empire largely maintained its medieval political structure as a \"polyglot congeries of literally hundreds of nearly sovereign states and territories rangin... |
Do stars normally complete a full rotation around a galaxy? | Our sun, roughly middle, takes ~225-250 million years to make a full trip around. (this is called a cosmic or galactic year).
There are stars that are much bigger, and as such burn so quickly, that they do not make it a full trip around.
It would vary heavily based on type of star, and orbital period but it definitel... | [
"The stars and gas in the Milky Way rotate about its center differentially, meaning that the rotation period varies with location. As is typical for spiral galaxies, the orbital speed of most stars in the Milky Way does not depend strongly on their distance from the center. Away from the central bulge or outer rim,... |
Why is moonlight white? | > why, on a brightly moonlit night, is everything so devoid of colour compared to the daytime?
It's a function of your eyes, not of the scenery.
Retina:
rods return something akin to luminosity (sensitivity peaking around the blue end of green) with no colour response;
cones respond to colour but are less sensitive... | [
"The color of moonlight, particularly around full Moon, appears bluish to the human eye compared to most artificial light sources due to the Purkinje effect. Moonlight is not actually tinted blue, and although moonlight is often referred to as \"silvery\", it has no inherent silvery quality.\n",
"The Sun is a G-t... |
what's happening in our brain when we're looking for an object, but we're actually holding it in our hand? | Sensory information is represented in 'maps' in your brain. Meaning a certain small area in your brain (eg if you poke the back of your head, your primary visual cortex is around that area. If you poke the top of your head your primary somatosensory (skin sensations) is located around there. So zoom in to the top area ... | [
"By turning the attention inward, one discovers that no \"self-nature\" can be found in the movements of the mind. Eventually, dhyana leads to the realisation that awareness is empty, and cannot be grasped by concepts:\n",
"An explanation for this phenomenon is that observers see the critical object in their visu... |
A recent Crusader Kings II expansion introduced a mechanic that allows your ruler to join a secret society of demon worshipers. Is there any actual historical precedent for the existence of anti-Christian, organized demonic worship in Christian Europe during the Middle Ages period? | I haven't played the game, but this sounds a lot like the fate of the Knights Templar.
Before I go into this story, let's make one thing clear: There is no evidence of organized Satanic ritual activity on any scale. I assume there are small groups of iconoclasts who paint themselves as faux "Satanists," and at var... | [
"Throughout the Middle Ages, there were a number of Christian sects, cults and movements that sought a return to the purity of the Apostolic church and whose teachings foreshadowed Protestant ideas. Some of the main groups were: Paulicians (6th to 9th centuries); Tondrakians (9th to 11th centuries); Bogomils (11th ... |
what makes elevators so safe? seems like few deaths occur on what seems like a potentially dangerous machine. | There are usually triple redundancies on elevators. i.e. far more than one cable holds the weight, so even if one snapped it would still be absolutely fine and would just be closed for maintenance. People are just stupid on stairs. | [
"Statistically speaking, cable-borne elevators are extremely safe. Their safety record is unsurpassed by any other vehicle system. In 1998, it was estimated that approximately eight millionths of one percent (1 in 12 million) of elevator rides result in an anomaly, and the vast majority of these were minor things s... |
How would early Anglo-Saxons decorate their shields? | Frustratingly, we don't know. Everything we know about shields in this period comes from archaeological sites (we don't have any contemporary art showing shield faces), and the fronts of shield, along with any decoration they may have displayed, have never survived.
We do know from archaeological excavations that shie... | [
"The shield was another extremely common piece of war equipment used by the Anglo-Saxons—nearly 25% of male Anglo-Saxon graves contain shields. In Old English, a shield was called a \"bord\", \"rand\", \"scyld\", or \"lind\" (\"linden-wood\"). Anglo-Saxon shields comprised a circular piece of wood constructed from ... |
If dragonflies see almost 360 degrees how come they don't go blind looking at the sun? | First a side note about insect vision, many insects, including dragonflies and damselflies, have ocellus. These are single lens eyes and are located on the top of the insect's head. So many different insects have "eyes" point up at the sun.
To answer your question: I'm not sure. [Scholarpedia](_URL_1_) makes a ... | [
"The Komodo dragon can see objects as far away as , but because its retinas only contain cones, it is thought to have poor night vision. It can distinguish colours, but has poor visual discrimination of stationary objects.\n",
"It appears with more distinctness against a blue background. With practice, it is poss... |
numbers and letters on processor model? | For starters, that's an Intel Chip.
i7 is the product line. i3 is entry level, i5 is a step up, i7 is higher end.
4710HQ is the model, which is assigned to that specific chip.
4=4th generation (the current generation of the "i" product line)
710=model number (the specific chip from this generation and product line... | [
"As of November 2007, AMD has removed the letters from the model names and X2/X3/X4 monikers for depicting the number of cores of the processor, leaving just a four digit model number with the first character being the sole identification of the processor family, while Sempron remained using the LE prefix, as follo... |
why is mouth breathing bad for humans and why are we able to do it? | They don’t really say that mouth breathing is bad it’s just that breathing through your nose is better... the hairs in your nose “filter” the air hence why you get boogers(they are the “bad” stuff in the air) | [
"The adaptation from nasal to mouth breathing takes place when changes such as chronic middle ear infections, sinusitis, allergic rhinitis, upper airway infections, and sleep disturbances (e.g., snoring) take place. In addition, mouth breathing is often associated with a decrease in oxygen intake into the lungs. Mo... |
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