question stringlengths 3 301 | answer stringlengths 9 26.1k | context list |
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Why are some charging cables faster than others even when using the same power supply? | Wire length, wire diameter, and wire material all effect total wire resistance. If you know the resistance of the cable, r, you can calculate the maximum theoretical power transfer across that cable to a phone, which is a maximum when the phone appears to have the same resistance as the cable (for an ideal power suppl... | [
"Where devices (for example, high-speed disk drives) require more power than a high-power device can draw, they function erratically, if at all, from bus power of a single port. USB provides for these devices as being self-powered. However, such devices may come with a Y-shaped cable that has two USB plugs (one for... |
what exactly happens when we bend paper? why is it permanent? | [Here's what paper looks like under a microscope.](_URL_0_) These are ~~collagen~~ cellulose fibers that came from the pulp of the trees used and they all kinda mesh and weave together all tangled up - giving paper its strength. When you crease a fold, the fibers that get bunched up on the inside of the crease force t... | [
"The degree of reduction in thickness under compressive forces or pressure is known as compressibility of the paper. It influences the ability of paper to change its surface contour and conform to make contact with the printing plate or blanket during print production.\n",
"Shrinkage is a characteristic of paper ... |
Will we ever be able "read" a brain ? | I do know that pictures you are observing can be recreated with software that uses nothing but scans of your brain. From [NewScientist](_URL_1_) in 2008:
> Pictures you are observing can now be recreated with software that uses nothing but scans of your brain. It is the first "mind reading" technology to create such ... | [
"Professor of neuropsychology Barbara Sahakian qualifies, \"A lot of neuroscientists in the field are very cautious and say we can't talk about reading individuals' minds, and right now that is very true, but we're moving ahead so rapidly, it's not going to be that long before we will be able to tell whether someon... |
Why is it impossible for an object to have an absolute velocity of 0? | How would you like to define absolute velocity? Which frame of reference are you choosing to be your absolute reference frame for measuring speeds, and why is that frame of reference preferred rather than any other frame you could choose?
In short, Special Relativity states that there simply isn't any preferred absolu... | [
"Aristotle proposed that the speed at which two identically shaped objects sink or fall is directly proportional to their weights and inversely proportional to the density of the medium through which they move. While describing their terminal velocity, Aristotle must stipulate that there would be no limit at which ... |
how does nasa take super detailed pictures of space? | Taking them takes ages. Whereas a normal camera requires a split-second worth of light to produce a picture, the big telescopes (such as Hubble) stare at a single point in space for weeks, sometimes even months. That way much more photons hit the camera, and thus produce a better picture. | [
"The crew also photographed the Earth from orbit. Despite instructions not to do so, the crew (perhaps inadvertently) photographed Area 51, causing a minor dispute between various government agencies as to whether the photographs showing this secret facility should be released. In the end, the picture was published... |
How were French soldiers who participated in the mutinies during WWI punished? | Your history lecturer (I'm assuming University by lecturer) refused to talk about somthing because it was too horrific? ...how is he/she not the worst history lecturer ever? A fairly large proportion of history is horrific, surely?
| [
"BULLET::::- French Army Mutinies – The French Army began to crack down on mutinying soldiers, resulting in 3,427 courts-martial. Close to 3,000 soldiers were sentenced to hard labor, and 629 were sentenced to death, although only 43 executions were actually carried out. Rather than severe discipline, French army c... |
gluons | Ok since you understand the principles of bosons, and fermions, I'll step the cutesy analogies, and just explain it simply. Gluons are basically the exchange particle of the Strong interaction. The strong interaction is what keeps the quarks together. It works just like electromagnetism, where the photons are the excha... | [
"The two aims of GLUT are to allow the creation of rather portable code between operating systems (GLUT is cross-platform) and to make learning OpenGL easier. Getting started with OpenGL programming while using GLUT often takes only a few lines of code and does not require knowledge of operating system–specific win... |
Has there ever been a city that feigned defeat, letting in enemy troops, to only trap them once inside the city walls? | Sorry, we don't allow ["trivia seeking" questions](_URL_0_). These tend to produce threads which are collections of disjointed, partial responses, and not the in-depth discussions about a particular topic we're looking for. If you have a specific question about an historical event, period, or person, please feel free... | [
"After besieging the city, the enemy force did not immediately attack, but instead, made preparations by building fire support stations and digging trenches that extended all the way to the foot of the city wall. The fire support stations were built by creating hills higher than the city wall with earth so that the... |
why do male orgasms get more intense in relatively short amounts of succession? | Well everyone is different. Wildly so, in fact. Some people are capable of sustaining multiple, repeating orgasms of increasing intensity. This is more common in women, but certainly possible in men. Others can only have one orgasm of great intensity, after which they lose sexual stimulation for a long refractory p... | [
"The observation that women tend to reach orgasm more easily when they are ovulating also suggests that it is tied to increasing fertility. Evolutionary biologist Robin Baker argues in \"Sperm Wars\" that occurrence and timing of orgasms are all a part of the female body's unconscious strategy to collect and retain... |
what is the feasibility of a (manufactured) organic computer, and what are the scientific obstacles to making it a reality? | Women have been pushin' those things out for years now. | [
"The subfield of organic computers and wetware is still largely hypothetical and in a preliminary stage. While there has yet to be major developments in the creation of an organic computer since the neuron based calculator developed by William Ditto in the 1990s the research mentioned in the sections above continue... |
i spent a frustrating hour with gimp before coming to you guys, please eli5 how to make animated .gifs. | You'll need each individual 'frame' to be on a separate layer. If you already have all your pictures you want to turn into a .gif made (and named in proper order), simply go File > Open as layers, select all pictures, and it will imported as layers.
Once you have every frame on it's own layer, select File > Save A... | [
"GIF lets users make a custom animation with a background and a series of frame. With the Blockly programming language, four images can be constructed which will then cycle so as to form an animation. The first step is to select the background, which includes characters such as Licky Ricky, Mayday Mary, Puss in Moo... |
What would happen, physiologically, if you drank Febreze? | [Here](_URL_0_) we go. Looks like beta cyclodextrin is the one in Febreze, and the listed instructions in the event of ingestion are:
> "Do NOT induce vomiting unless directed to do so by medical personnel. Never give anything by mouth to an unconscious
person. Loosen tight clothing such as a collar, tie, belt or wai... | [
"In addition to its cytotoxicity, cereulide causes nausea and vomiting. This effect is believed to be caused by its binding and activation of 5-HT receptors, leading to increased afferent vagus nerve stimulation.\n",
"Health experts have warned that the herbal ingredients in Drank and similar beverages induce dro... |
georg cantor and set theory | He came up with a new proof technique, called diagonalization, and was able to show some infinities were bigger than others. It goes something like this:
There are an infinite number of natural numbers, and also an infinite amount of real numbers. If these infinities are equivalent, it should be possible to come up ... | [
"Cantor's work initially polarized the mathematicians of his day. While Karl Weierstrass and Dedekind supported Cantor, Leopold Kronecker, now seen as a founder of mathematical constructivism, did not. Cantorian set theory eventually became widespread, due to the utility of Cantorian concepts, such as one-to-one co... |
how would the earn it act negatively affect end to end encryption? | Hopefully a simple example:
No matter how good a safe you install to store your valuables, the government wants the safe manufacturer to make a door at the back with a key available to the government. This is just in case, the government feels that you might be storing something illegal in the safe. This means the saf... | [
"BULLET::::2. Encryption provided by service providers can prevent unauthorized third party access, but the service provider implementing it would still have access to the relevant user data. End-to-end encryption is an encryption technique that refers to encryption that also prevents service providers themselves f... |
Why is the clock industry so strong in Switzerland? | The history of the Swiss horology industry is a surprisingly cyclical one. As others have pointed out, many of the most notable early master watchmakers were not in fact Swiss (France, Germany, and to a lesser extent, England were leaders in the early development of mechanical timepieces), but by the 18th century as te... | [
"Switzerland established itself as a clockmaking center following the influx of Huguenot craftsmen, and in the 19th century, the Swiss industry \"gained worldwide supremacy in high-quality machine-made watches\". The leading firm of the day was Patek Philippe, founded by Antoni Patek of Warsaw and Adrien Philippe o... |
how someone can recover from being paralyzed. | Your brain uses nerves to tell your body to move (think of your brain as a power strip and your nerves as the outlets) sometimes an injury destroys ALL the outlets, and your brain can't do anything causing a paralysis. Other times, only one outlet is destroyed, and the brain can just plug the function into another pa... | [
"Critically ill people that are in a coma can become completely paralyzed from CIP/CIM. Improvement usually occurs in weeks to months, as the innervation to the muscles are restored. About half of patients recover fully.\n",
"In case of a serious disability, such as caused by a severe spinal injury or brain damag... |
Did the Romans understand what inflation was? | It's not exactly inflation, but debasing the quality of coinage has a similar effect, and Romans did understand that. The reason to debase coinage is because you want to pass off the cheaper coin for the value of the more expensive coin. This periodically produced economic crises, such that people like Constantine ha... | [
"The very notion of inflation leads the origin of the Latin word inflare, which means to inflate, or to say inflatio which means overwhelming. The word inflation, in the sense of inflating the money circulation, was used for the first time in economic literature in the book \"The Big Paper Deception or the Approxim... |
why is autism seemingly more common now that is has been in the past? | The answer from the medical community is: 'we're not entirely sure'
One factor may be increasing awareness so cases that were previously undiagnosed or misdiagnosed are coming under the ASD umbrella.
It's also not entirely clear what causes autism, and there may be multiple causes - there's certainly a genetic compon... | [
"Diagnoses of autism have become more frequent since the 1980s, which has led to various controversies about both the cause of autism and the nature of the diagnoses themselves. Whether autism has mainly a genetic or developmental cause, and the degree of coincidence between autism and intellectual disability, are ... |
the fine print on the xkcd website | It was a viral marketing campaign that XKCD took over, [like a boss](_URL_0_).
No idea why they're still there. Probably because the author thinks they're funny, or is proud of them.
Edit: For a less disappointing response, ask again in r/shittyaskscience. :D | [
"Using this steganographic process, high-quality copies of an original (e.g. a bank note) under blue light can be made identifiable. Using this process even shredded prints can be restored: The 2011 \"Shredder Challenge\" initiated by the DARPA was solved by a team called \"All Your Shreds Are Belong To U.S.\" cons... |
why are dogs no longer found in the wilderness? | There are dogs in the wilderness; they're known as coyotes, dingoes, wolves and foxes. Modern domestic dog breeds are all descendants of these species that have been bred to have certain traits and split off into subspecies. | [
"Dogs are not permitted on any trails in the park due to the presence of bears and other large mammals. Dogs are permitted at front country campsites that can be accessed by a vehicle and along paved roads.\n",
"\"This dog is an athlete of all terrain able to make many miles along rugged landscapes, protecting bo... |
This Mathmatical problem has been bothering me for over a week | What you want is called a [de Bruijn sequence](_URL_1_). They are well-studied and also awesome.
In this case, you have an alphabet of *k* = 10 symbols (0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9) and want all words of length *n* = 4, so the total number of de Bruijn sequences is (10!)^10^3 / 10^4 , [which is approximately 5.79*10^... | [
"BULLET::::- Nightly math problem: Bedtime Math's core offering is its daily math problems for kids, broadcast by email and posted daily on the website's homepage and Facebook page. The mental math problems are designed “to promote both giggles and mathematical thought” as a means to “increase ‘math awareness’ in o... |
Suppose I'm a typical voter in the U.S in the late 18th century. Am I aware the founders based the structure of the country on the work of other enlightenment philosophers (John Locke & so fourth), or do I think they made it all up them selves? | The short answer is that the typical voter in the US in the late 18th century was well aware of both the work of American and non-American enlightenment thinkers.
In the late 18th century, a "typical voter" would be, in most states, a white, land-owning male. [*Charters of Freedom - The New World At Hand*](_... | [
"Most of the Founding Fathers rejected political parties as divisive and disruptive. By the 1790s, however, most joined one of the two new parties, and by the 1830s parties had become accepted as central to the democracy. By the 1790s, the First Party System was born. Men who held opposing views strengthened their ... |
Could a really skilled knight or swordsman really take on and kill 5 or so other opponents at a time? Or is that just movie bs? | It's been done, so it's clearly possible.
One example: William MacBean. From his VC citation, "For distinguished personal bravery in killing eleven of the enemy with his own hand in the main breach of the Begum Bagh at Lucknow, on the 11th March, 1858." In the Indian Mutiny, he fought, single-handed, against 9 trooper... | [
"BULLET::::- The Red Cross Knight, who almost won the battle all on his own, and could not be beaten, \"not by goblin or troll or giant. Not by the dozens or the hundreds.\" He was finally killed when the enemy set a dragon against him.\n",
"BULLET::::- The Red Cross Knight, who almost won the battle all on his o... |
what is the difference between constant and variable bitrate mp3 files, and what makes the latter supposedly "better"? | Bitrate means how many bits are used per second of song. In general, the more bits you have the higher quality the recording.
The thing is, some sounds are more 'complicated' and have finer details (higher frequencies). To accurately capture this, you need more information per second. You could just record the entire... | [
"Variable bitrate (VBR) is a term used in telecommunications and computing that relates to the bitrate used in sound or video encoding. As opposed to constant bitrate (CBR), VBR files vary the amount of output data per time segment. VBR allows a higher bitrate (and therefore more storage space) to be allocated to t... |
How can every point be the center of the universe if it isn't homogeneous? | The best current models indicates that the universe is flat and infinite.
> The Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) has confirmed that the observable universe is **flat** with only a 0.5% margin of error. Within the Friedmann–Lemaître–Robertson–Walker (FLRW) model, **the presently most popular shape of the U... | [
"In cosmology, if one assumes the Copernican principle and observes that the universe appears isotropic or the same in all directions from the vantage point of Earth, then one can infer that the universe is generally homogeneous or the same everywhere (at any given time) and is also isotropic about any given point.... |
Some planes from WW2 were designed in such a way that the bullets they fired had to go between the propeller blades. How did the designers make sure they won't hit a blade and was the fire rate affected? | > How did the designers make sure they won't hit a blade
As far as I know the trigger mechanism to fire each bullet was coupled via a [cam](_URL_0_) to the shaft of the propeller. As the propeller shaft turned to a particular position the cam would trigger the gun to fire the bullet. This would mean that the bullet ... | [
"Following World War I, automatic propellers were developed to maintain an optimum angle of attack. This was done by balancing the centripetal twisting moment on the blades and a set of counterweights against a spring and the aerodynamic forces on the blade. Automatic props had the advantage of being simple, lightw... |
Was the Holy Roman Empire really a singular state? Or was it at best a loose league of states? | The answer to your question(s) would be a resounding "neither", I'm afraid. I'll try to get a bit more in-depth for the 1648-1806 period of HRE history where I'm best informed in, but hopefully you'll get other answers expounding on the many centuries before that. I can already give you a tl;dr though, if you like, and... | [
"The Holy Roman Empire was not a highly centralized state like most countries today. Instead, it was divided into dozens – eventually hundreds – of individual entities governed by kings, dukes, counts, bishops, abbots, and other rulers, collectively known as princes. There were also some areas ruled directly by the... |
Why couldn't Chiang Kai-Shek lead a unified Kuomintang, despite being appointed by Sun Yat-Sen to be the new leader? | Chiang Kai-shek didn't want to lead a unified KMT. In fact, he totally planned, executed, and then perpetuated the persecution of communists and the CCP from 1926-1937. And to be fair, Sun Yat-sen also had no interest in seeing the party unified with communists either, he was forced to by the USSR who was funding the K... | [
"Chiang Kai-shek's entire tenure as \"de facto\" leader of the Republic of China from 1928 until 1948, when the Nationalist army was decisively defeated by Mao Zedong's People's Liberation Army and the KMT fled the Chinese mainland to establish the ROC on Taiwan; was maintained under the auspices of his position as... |
A question about how American right-wing religious rhetoric shifted around the end of the Cold War | The soviet union's potential connection to scripture was based on a relatively pragmatic reading of the passages regarding Gog and Magog. These are the two allied forces that are supposed to invade Israel. Gog and Magog have long been thought to be connected with the scythians(and central asia), who would have existed... | [
"America's isolationist philosophy after World War I gave rise to a xenophobic feeling across the nation. This was concentrated in rural areas and especially in the Southern United States and Indiana, where the Ku Klux Klan gained widespread support and sought to persecute immigrants and minorities in the 1920s. At... |
why does it feel so nice/good to sing along to a song? | There's complicated theories behind why this happens but basically we get pleasure out of having an anticipation satisifed, which is why "catchy" songs tend to have repetitive lyrics and melodies which you can easily catch on to and remember. Since you know what's coming, you have an anticipation which is then satisfie... | [
"Chapin said, \"there's not a single line that tells how the guy or the girl felt. It's a very cinematic technique. But it's also a very uneconomical technique. That's why my songs are so long. I literally put you in that cab and let you experience. It's a more involving form of music than sitting and hearing someb... |
why is reddit composed mostly of male, middle class liberals? | Reasonable conjecture:
Because young teenagers tend to be more liberal.
Also, reddit draws a lot of focus towards technology related issues, which men are on average more interested in.
Finally, middle class americans have more free time to blow on reddit then lower class americans.
Also, upper class americans are ... | [
"“Sexism in the systematic inequitable treatment of girls and women by men and by the society as a whole”. Implications of sexism include girls having lower expectations of their own capabilities and also being subject to ridicule for being assertive. These factors have a direct effect on women who want to run for ... |
if one company buys out another company for a monetary fee, wouldn’t the money go back to the parent company, therefore the parent company essentially gained capital for free since they own the other company? how does that work? | No, because when the company is bought it is bought from its owners. You know, the shareholders? They get the money from the buyout.
The only way it would stay with the company is if the company owned itself which is silly. | [
"When a company spins off part of its business as a new separate company and gives shareholders new shares in that new company, the taxpayer's cost base of the original shares is split between the original and the new holding. The company advises the appropriate proportions and the shareholder would allocate the or... |
Can Allergies be inherited? If not, how do they develop? | Your immune system is constantly creating new antibodies. It does this basically by throwing spaghetti at the wall and seeing what sticks, except with DNA from a certain region of the genome. Allergic reactions happen when the immune system recognizes a substance (such as peanut proteins or pollen) as dangerous and veh... | [
"Allergies in children are those causes, pathophsiology, treatments, management, practices and control of allergies that develop in children. Up to 40 percent of children suffer from allergic rhinitis. And children are more likely to develop allergies if one or both parents have allergies. Allergies differ between ... |
What does "thinness" or "thickness" of air imply and how does it happen and change? | Thick and thin are referring to density, I.e. how much air is contained in a given volume. On planets like earth the atmosphere's density changes because gravity pulls it down. The air high in the atmosphere pushes down on the air lower in the atmosphere, compressing it and increasing its density. So, in places with hi... | [
"The terminology \"thin\" may be justified by the fact that if \"A\" is a thin subset of the line over Q then the number of points of \"A\" of height at most \"H\" is ≪ \"H\": the number of integral points of height at most \"H\" is formula_1, and this result is best possible.\n",
"Another type of thinning is cal... |
John D. Rockefeller - man of greed or a visionary? | I doubt you'll get a meaningful answer. 'Man of greed' and 'visionary' are personal judgements. So what causes some to call Rockefeller a man of greed causes others to call him a visionary.
That said, I'd seriously reconsider those 'sources' you posted. The first seems to be a site about Linux, the second one is an a... | [
"The Rockefeller wealth, distributed as it was through a system of foundations and trusts, continued to fund family philanthropic, commercial, and, eventually, political aspirations throughout the 20th century. John Jr.'s youngest son David Rockefeller was a leading New York banker, serving for over 20 years as CEO... |
Why did Germany colonize Africa in the late 1800s and what did they gain from it? | I agree with czela's point, but I'd like to expand a bit. There were really two types of Imperialism: Old Imperialism and New Imperialism. The Old Imperialism consisted of the exploration of the New World and the search of spices. The motives for this exploration was mostly gold (economic), God (the spread of Christian... | [
"The German colonization of Africa took place during two distinct periods. In the 1680s, the Margraviate of Brandenburg, then leading the broader realm of Brandenburg-Prussia, pursued limited imperial efforts in West Africa. The Brandenburg African Company was chartered in 1682 and established two small settlements... |
how does the "vote weight" system work--on reddit/res and elsewhere? | Vote weight simply tracks the total net points you have given to a certain person. The ability to manually set it to whatever number is a novelty feature.
Also, I believe the creator of xkcd (Randall Munroe) wrote reddit's ranking algorithm. | [
"A weighted voting system is characterized by three things — the players, the weights and the quota. The voters are the players (\"P\", \"P\", . . ., \"P\"). \"N\" denotes the total number of players. A player's weight (\"w\") is the number of votes he controls. The quota (\"q\") is the minimum number of votes requ... |
how does championship unification in boxing work, and how do championships get separated again? | In boxing, there are 4 major sanctioning bodies that offer World Championship titles. (The WBO, WBA, WBC, and IBF)
So in each weight class, there are four world championship titles. That means in each weight class up to four separate fighters can each say they are the world champion in that weight class. (There's actu... | [
"A two-ring variation on a battle royal, the wrestlers start in one ring and try to throw wrestlers into the second ring, after which they can be eliminated by being thrown out of that ring. The last remaining wrestler in the first ring can rest until only one wrestler was left in the second ring, after which they ... |
If global warming continues at its current rate is sea level rise an inevitability? If it is what will the rate be? | First, sea level rise isn't an inevitability, in the sense that it will happen some time in the future. It is happening now, and it has been happening quite steadily since the start of the increase in greenhouse gasses released into the atmosphere through anthropogenic behaviours about a century ago.
From the [IPCC](_... | [
"BULLET::::- under the IPCC business as usual emissions scenario, an average rate of global mean sea level rise of about 6 cm per decade over the next century (with an uncertainty range of 3 – 10 cm per decade), mainly due to thermal expansion of the oceans and the melting of some land ice. The predicted rise is ab... |
why is it when you take a nap, you get indents and marks from your sheets/body, but when you sleep normally you don't? | There would be no difference, other than when you sleep normally you move around a lot so you're not in one position for long enough for your skin to be indented. When you take a nap you tend to move less as you only really enter 1 R.E.M. cycle. | [
"A nap is a short period of sleep, typically taken during daytime hours as an adjunct to the usual nocturnal sleep period. Naps are most often taken as a response to drowsiness during waking hours. A nap is a form of biphasic or polyphasic sleep, where the latter terms also include longer periods of sleep in additi... |
why do(almost) all police cars use the same car/model? | buy in bulk for a cheaper rate. | [
"Terms for police cars include area car and patrol car. In some places, a police car may also be informally known as a cop car, a black and white, a cherry top, a gumball machine, a jam sandwich or panda car. Depending on the configuration of the emergency lights and livery, a police car may be considered a marked ... |
How would a vaccine against a different strain of flu minimize symptoms of the other flu? | The immune system fights viruses and bacteria by recognizing foreign [antigens](_URL_3_). There are essentially two arms of adaptive immunity: humoral and cellular. The humoral response is the one people are most familiar with, as most people know about antibodies and how they target pathogens that might be a part of a... | [
"The CDC recommends the flu vaccine as the best way to protect people against the flu and prevent its spread. The flu vaccine can also reduce the severity of the flu if a person contracts a strain that the vaccine did not contain. It takes about two weeks following vaccination for protective antibodies to form.\n",... |
How diverse was the Mongol Empire at its peak? | Carpine came a little bit early for the diversity that would define the [Pax Mongolica.](_URL_0_) However, within the next 100-200 years the mongol empire was extremely diverse. Kublai khan was heavily influenced by the chinese during his reign, and later many leaders were influenced by islam and arabic architecture. F... | [
"This article discusses the political divisions and vassals of the Mongol Empire. Through invasions and conquests the Mongols established a vast empire that included many political divisions, vassals and tributary states. It was the largest contiguous land empire in history. However, after the death of Möngke Khan,... |
Why is the major key considered cheerful and the minor key considered sad? Is this a nurtured trait or a natural predisposition? | There's a lot of unscientific speculation in the answers to this post, and repetition of folk stories of music composition that were discredited by psychoacoustic research in the mid 20th century.
[actual research](_URL_0_) has shown that some characteristics of music (lively vs. calming) tend to generalize between cu... | [
"Many musicians have pointed out that every musical key conjures up specific feelings. This idea is further explored in a radio program called The Signature Series. American popular songwriter Bob Dylan claimed the key of C major to \"be the key of strength, but also the key of regret.\" French composers such as Ma... |
We seem to agree on the metric system, but why not UTC? | I think there's something interesting to be said here about the fetishization of units of measurement, but I can't quite seem to put words to it at the moment.
Maybe it'll come to me. | [
"Australia has kept a version of the UTC atomic time scale since the 1990s, but Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) remained the formal basis for the standard times of all of the states until 2005. In November 2004, the state and territory attorneys-general endorsed a proposal from the Australian National Measurement Institu... |
why do we, humans need to have wars when we can just talk problems over?u | You ask me for some ice cream.
I say no.
You really want the ice cream.
I say no.
I'm the only one with the ice cream.
I say no.
You try to talk to me nicely about it.
I say no.
You try to negotiate.
I say no.
You beg me.
I say no.
You get fed up and get all your friends to come and force me to share the ic... | [
"War is often used as a last ditch effort to prevent deteriorating economic conditions or currency crises, particularly by expanding services and employment in the military, and by simultaneously depopulating segments of the population to free up resources and restore the economic and social order.\n",
"Various p... |
What are the main differences between Valence Bonding Theory, VSEPR Theory, and Molecular Orbital Theory? | The best place to start is probably VSEPR theory. VSEPR theory is basically concerned with the geometry taken by the bonds in a certain molecule as a function of basic electron-electron repulsion; bonds between atoms (which constitute the sharing of an electron pair basically at this stage) want to be as far from one a... | [
"Modern valence bond theory now complements molecular orbital theory, which does not adhere to the valence bond idea that electron pairs are localized between two specific atoms in a molecule but that they are distributed in sets of molecular orbitals which can extend over the entire molecule. Molecular orbital the... |
What were major differences between the Federalist Party and the Democratic Republican Party? | The key differences were on issues of nationalism and localism. The best way to compare the two parties is to compare their ideological leaders. Alexander Hamilton was a driving force behind the Federalists while Thomas Jefferson was the founder of the old Republican Party (Democratic-Republican, Jeffersonian Republic... | [
"The American two-party system began to emerge as political parties coalesced around competing interests. A Congressional caucus, led by Madison, Jefferson and William Branch Giles, began as an opposition group to Hamilton's financial programs. Hamilton and his allies began to call themselves \"Federalists\". The o... |
If we were to create a bottomless vacuum on Earth and dropped a ball in it, could it ever reach a "terminal velocity?" | So just to be clear, you mean you apply a constant force forever on something in a vacuum?
In this case, it would accelerate forever. It wouldn't ever reach a terminal velocity, except in the sense that as it reaches high relativistic speeds its velocity asymptotically approaches that of light. However, in its rest fr... | [
"Aristotle proposed that the speed at which two identically shaped objects sink or fall is directly proportional to their weights and inversely proportional to the density of the medium through which they move. While describing their terminal velocity, Aristotle must stipulate that there would be no limit at which ... |
What were movies like in Soviet Russia during the Cold War? | Could you explain your question? Soviet cinema is a broad subject, one that cannot be explained in a single answer. What are you looking for? Major themes? Cold war via cinema? Prominent figures in its development? | [
"Between 1946–54, the Soviet Union mimicked the US adoption of cinema as a weapon. The Central United Film Studios and the Committee on Cinema Affairs were committed to the Cold War battle. Under Stalin's rule, movies could only be made within strict confines. Cinema and government were, as it stood, inextricably l... |
How are we able to put more space/memory into processors, GPU's, ram, hard drives, etc. as time progresses? | The process which circuits are made is called photolithography. A source of UV light shines on a film and the exposed parts harden. Then the remaining soft film is washed off and some etching fluid is applied. The hard film controls which parts of the silicon wafer is etched, allowing you to get very precise patterns f... | [
"As microprocessors are becoming faster, mainly because of the cores being added every few months, memory latency gap is becoming wider. Memory latency was few cycles in 1980 and it is reaching nowadays almost 1000 cycles. If the micro-processor has enough cores and hopefully they are not sending requests to the ma... |
why can i kick a soccer ball farther when it's rolling towards me? | Soccer balls deform under stress.
When it's moving towards you, there's a certain momentum in that direction, which causes it to deform more when your foot impacts it than it would if it was stationary.
Then when it snaps back to its normal shape, more energy is imparted to the ball causing it to fly off with more fo... | [
"The result is a towering ball which should rotate end on end. The height of the kick makes the ball susceptible to wind which causes the ball to change direction. Also, the ball gathers speed as it falls closer to the ground and this combined with the swirling can also cause the ball to change direction, making it... |
Were there classical/medieval versions of ambulances? | Yes and no.
The idea of an ambulance where a sick or injured person is transported, treated on route and brought to a place of medical care didn't exist for civilians until 1832 when London's Cholera outbreak lead the city to setup horse drawn carriages to transport the ill that served as the first form of the ambula... | [
"The history of the ambulance begins in ancient times, with the use of carts to transport patients. Ambulances were first used for emergency transport in 1487 by the Spanish forces during the siege of Málaga by the Catholic Monarchs against the Emirate of Granada , and civilian variants were put into operation in t... |
the different parts of web development and the languages/tools that are used for each part. | This explanation is a huge oversimplification but this is ELI5 after all... there are basically three levels of code in any code base as follows:
1. Database Tier (MySQL, Oracle): this consists of database tables which contain all the data for your website like user name, address info, etc. This tier also contains all... | [
"Web development is the work involved in developing a web site for the Internet (World Wide Web) or an intranet (a private network). Web development can range from developing a simple single static page of plain text to complex web-based internet applications (web apps), electronic businesses, and social network se... |
what happens when your body "adjusts" to a high-fiber diet | Any dietary change can cause rumbletummy. Your gut flora adapts to dealing with slower digesting food. However, some people have more difficulty than others. I eat lots of bran fiber as well as raw and cooked vegetable fiber... And chicory root (in fiber bars, some yogurts, and fiber cereals) gives me awful rumbly tum... | [
"Fiber is defined by its physiological impact, with many heterogenous types of fibers. Some fibers may primarily impact one of these benefits (i.e., cellulose increases fecal bulking and prevents constipation), but many fibers impact more than one of these benefits (i.e., resistant starch increases bulking, increas... |
- why is microwaving metal objects dangerous? | Microwaves can induce electric current in metallic (or any conductive) objects. They are, quite literally, antennas. And while normally antennas receive signals of low power, these are high power signals meant for transferring energy.
The effect of these currents depends alot on the object's makeup. "Pure" metal in a... | [
"Great potential exists in the scrap metal industry for accidents in which a hazardous material present in scrap causes death, injury, or environmental damage. A classic example is radioactivity in scrap; the Goiânia accident and the Mayapuri radiological accident were incidents involving radioactive materials. Tox... |
What is it about the American Revolution that allowed it to"work" when there are so many other revolutions (the French and Russian Revolutions come to mind) that end up horribly? | To my consideration, the answer lies within the terms. While the Russian and French revolutions were, basically internal affairs, as they wanted to overthrow the government held by actual Russians and French people respectively, the American revolution was actually an independence, as the government that was sought to ... | [
"The Revolutions of 1917–1923 were a period of political unrest and revolts around the world inspired by the success of the Russian Revolution and the disorder created by the aftermath of World War I. The uprisings were mainly socialist or anti-colonial in nature and were mostly short-lived, failing to have a long-... |
how is tv static from the big bang? | Most of the TV static is from the amplifier itself; only ~1% of that is cosmic background radiation. CBR is spread across a pretty wide band, 0.3 GHz to 630 GHz, which broadcast TV is within that band. It's also really quiet, which is why almost all the static is local (part of the TV circuit itself) electrical noise. | [
"Cramer's simulation of the sound of the Big Bang, created using Mathematica, attracted some mainstream press attention in late 2003 and again in 2013. The simulation originated with an \"Alternate View\" article, \"BOOMERanG and the Sound of the Big Bang\" (January 2001). Cramer describes the sound as \"rather lik... |
Why would some knights during the Middle Ages name their weapons? | I would put forward the following -
- Possessions were few and far between in the middle ages; a sword was one of the most valuable things a person could have. As a result, knights wanted to show off their pride for their weapons by naming them.
- The tradition of naming weapons probably arose in the early middle ag... | [
"The medieval heralds also devised arms for various knights and lords from history and literature. Notable examples include the toads attributed to Pharamond, the cross and martlets of Edward the Confessor, and the various arms attributed to the Nine Worthies and the Knights of the Round Table. These too are now re... |
50 years ago $20 was a lot of money, today it's almost spare change. where does all the extra money come from? | The more money printed the less it's worth. Why QE is so controversial. But that is what happens constantly. | [
"As of June 30, 1969, the U.S. coins and banknotes in circulation of all denominations were worth $50.936 billion of which $4.929 billion was circulating overseas. So the currency and coin circulating within the United States was $230 per capita. Since 1969, the demand for U.S. currency has greatly increased. The t... |
Since flames burn at different temperatures, are there any flames that are safe to touch? | They are borderline for "safe to touch", but some materials burn as so-called ["cool flames"](_URL_0_) with temperatures in the 200-400 degree C range | [
"In addition some solvents, such as methanol, can burn with a very hot flame which can be nearly invisible under some lighting conditions. This can delay or prevent the timely recognition of a dangerous fire, until flames spread to other materials.\n",
"An air-only torch will burn at around 1,995 °C (3,623 °F), l... |
I can't seem to understand what a virtual image is in optics. Secondly, is a rainbow an example of a virtual image? | When you look at something, your eyes see and your brain interprets rays of light diverging from individual points of the object. This is called image formation.
When you look through a magnifying glass at something, you still see rays of light that *appear to be* emanating from a common point, but those rays of ligh... | [
"In optics, a virtual image is an image formed when the outgoing rays from a point on an object always diverge. The image appears to be located at the point of apparent divergence. Because the rays never really converge, a virtual image cannot be projected onto a screen. In diagrams of optical systems, virtual rays... |
What is the significance of the use of "I am" instead of "I have" when Vishnu says, "I am become death, the destroyer of worlds"? | You would probably receive a more thorough and knowledgable answer if you asked this question in /r/linguistics.
However, I can tell you that the [present perfect](_URL_1_) construction "I am become" is not the result of a direct translation of Sanskrit, but an artifact of early modern English that most likely stems f... | [
"\"God is Dead\" (German: ; also known as the Death of God) is a widely quoted statement by German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. Nietzsche used the phrase to express his idea that the Enlightenment had eliminated the possibility of the existence of the Abrahamaic God or of deities in general. However, proponents... |
how does giving to charity save rich people money? | This is just a basic example and not 100% accurate, but it will give you the idea. Lets say I make $1000. Normally I would pay taxes on the whole $1000.
Lets say I make $1000 and give $200 to charity. I would now only pay taxes on $800.
In reality, it doesn't really save you money. Because even if you were paying th... | [
"\"There is one kind of charity common enough among us... It is that patchwork philanthropy which clothes the ragged, feeds the poor, and heals the sick. I am far from decrying the noble spirit which seeks to help a poor or suffering fellow being... [However] what advances a nation or a community is not so much to ... |
why do we work so hard against extinction of any species, when 99.9% of species naturally die out? | you don't really adapt to having no food. learning how to stop killing bees is probably more worth our time than walking around with cotton swabs pollinating plants by hand
also "it was going to happen anyway" is not a good argument. everyone dies eventually murder is still illegal | [
"Currently, environmental groups and some governments are concerned with the extinction of species caused by humanity, and they try to prevent further extinctions through a variety of conservation programs. Humans can cause extinction of a species through overharvesting, pollution, habitat destruction, introduction... |
what are the properties of hydrogen/helium that enable physicists to distinguish them from 'metals'? | _URL_0_
> Metals are commonly:
>
> * Shiny
> * Good conductor of heat and electricity
> * High melting point
> * Malleable (this means that they can be hammered or distorted)
> * Ductile (this means that they can be drawn into wires)
> * Usually solid at room temperature. An exception to this is mercur... | [
"Hydrogen is highly soluble in many rare earth and transition metals and is soluble in both nanocrystalline and amorphous metals. Hydrogen solubility in metals is influenced by local distortions or impurities in the crystal lattice. These properties may be useful when hydrogen is purified by passage through hot pal... |
how do we know what the earth looks like on the inside? | In the simplest way I can think to explain it, different parts of seismic waves behave differently when they travel travel through different substances (solids, liquids, and different types of each.) Parts of the waves pass through fluids unaffected, parts bounce off, parts are absorbed, parts slow down, and so on. By ... | [
"The internal structure of the Earth is layered in spherical shells: an outer silicate solid crust, a highly viscous asthenosphere and mantle, a liquid outer core that is much less viscous than the mantle, and a solid inner core. Scientific understanding of the internal structure of the Earth is based on observatio... |
when not hunting, what do predators do when they meet prey animals? | Predators don't want a drawn-out stand up fight. A predator is only fighting for its food; the prey will be fighting for survival. Neither animal *wants* to get hurt, but the predator is the one that can afford to break off at any time and try again, so that means it'll be picky about starting one. Therefore if the pre... | [
"Predators may actively search for prey or sit and wait for it. When prey is detected, the predator assesses whether to attack it. This may involve ambush or pursuit predation, sometimes after stalking the prey. If the attack is successful, the predator kills the prey, removes any inedible parts like the shell or s... |
why are data measurement units (mb, mb, gb, tb) not even numbers of bytes? like why is a gigabyte not exactly 1000 megabytes? | Because computer measurements are based on multiples of 8. (Base 8)
This is why you've heard the term 8 bit, 64 bit and so on.
A gigabyte is 1024 megabytes, a megabyte is 1024 bytes and so on.
It's all in multiples of 8. There have been attempts to metricise this, but they've not really taken off. | [
"Many operating systems compute file size in mebibytes, but report the number as MB (megabytes). For example, all versions of the Microsoft Windows operating system show a file of 2 bytes as \"1.00 MB\" or \"1,024 KB\" in its file properties dialog and show a file of 10 () bytes as 976 KB.\n",
"Despite its offici... |
Did he British ever plan a direct naval invasion of Germany in World War I? Were there any defensive fortifications on the German coast? | There were a number of plans for amphibious assaults on German islands in the North Sea and even the Baltic coast of Germany, formulated in 1914-15, but these came to nothing as it was chosen to focus on knocking the Ottoman Empire out of the war instead. In 1916-17, planning focused on moves to outflank German lines i... | [
"The German Navy had decided on a strategy of bombarding British towns on the North Sea coast in an attempt to draw out the Royal Navy and destroy elements of it in detail. An earlier raid on Yarmouth on 3 November 1914 had been partially successful, but a larger-scale operation was later devised by Admiral Franz v... |
Vonnegut says that the Texas Revolution was based on the idea that Mexico had outlawed slavery, which caused Texas to rebel. Any truth to that? | Kind of a perfect storm.The Texans wanted slave ownership legal and church attendance voluntary; the Mexican government forbid slave ownership and had mandatory Catholic church membership. Not a few Texans had "absquatulated" from Mississippi and the South, losing their plantations and fleeing their debts when Jackson... | [
"In 1829, slavery was officially outlawed in Mexico. Austin feared that the edict would cause widespread discontent and tried to suppress publication of it. Rumors of the new law quickly spread throughout the area and the colonists seemed on the brink of revolt. The governor of Coahuila y Tejas, Jose Maria Viesca, ... |
How different are brains in "normal" people, and their structure, genetics and other things? | This answer to that really depends on the scope that you're looking at. In terms of brain structures and regions (cerebellum, amygdala, etc.), you can safely bet that most healthy people have these structures, the way most healthy people have fingers and a nose. When you zoom in to the actual neural networks and pathwa... | [
"Genetic background determines such features as height, eye color, and potential to develop certain diseases like diabetes, but it also determines all the chemicals and structures that make up the brain, therefore playing a role in Epilepsia partialis continua. The chemicals and structures that make up the brain ha... |
Historical context of the film Lincoln (2012) | Don't consider this a full and proper answer, but it seems relevant to point out that the movie in question was largely based on a book about Lincoln's cabinet and political work during the Civil War, also touching on his election and position within the Republican Party. Check out Doris Kearns Goodwin's *Team of Rival... | [
"\"Lincoln\" is a 2012 American historical drama film directed and produced by Steven Spielberg, starring Daniel Day-Lewis as United States President Abraham Lincoln and Sally Field as Mary Todd Lincoln. The film is based in part on Doris Kearns Goodwin's biography of Lincoln, \"\", and covers the final four months... |
Isn't classical conditioning of animals basic "If this then that" reasoning? Doesn't this mean that cats/dogs could think? | Of course cats and dogs can think.
Classical conditioning is more of an association than logical If/Then reasoning, since it's very easy to create associations which 'break the logic' e.g. salivating when a bell is rung. | [
"Classical conditioning is when an animal eventually subconsciously anticipates a biological stimulus such as food when they experience a seemingly random stimulus, due to a repeated experience of their association. One significant example of classical conditioning is Ivan Pavlov's experiment in which dogs showed a... |
Were people in Europe honestly religiously motivated to go to war or were religious tensions used more similarly to what we would call a "casus belli", by ambitious rulers? | I would contend that there were elements of both sides of the argument in warfare in pre-modern Europe. On the one hand there was a level of belief extant in that period that is almost unimaginable to a modern person. This served as the basis for the mass appeal for events like the crusades and the wars of religion. Mo... | [
"According to Jeffrey Burton Russell, numerous cases of supposed acts of religious wars such as the Thirty Years' War, the French Wars of Religion, the Sri Lankan Civil War, 9/11 and other terrorist attacks, the Bosnian War, and the Rwandan Civil War were all primarily motivated by social, political, and economic i... |
what is happening to our brain when we go to speak and the start of the words get switched? | The basic idea is that your brain has to go through a bunch of steps to put together sounds and words into a sentence, and sometimes it messes up a step. Linguists call these slips of the tongue "speech errors." Linguists study them to figure out how our brains store and combine all the parts of a sentence.
We know th... | [
"When a person produces a word, they are essentially turning their thoughts into sounds, a process known as lexicalisation. In many psycholinguistic models this is considered to be at least a two-stage process. The first stage deals with semantics and syntax; the result of the first stage is an abstract notion of a... |
the tree of life | The Tree of Life is primarily about sublime experience more than it is about deep story.
_URL_0_
Sublime is a philosophical concept about the sensation of being incapable of taking in the entire power and magnitude of something, especially something natural. Looking at the night sky and imagine all the stars, looking... | [
"The tree of life is a diagram used in various mystical traditions. It usually consists of 10 nodes symbolizing different archetypes and 22 lines connecting the nodes. The nodes are often arranged into three columns to represent that they belong to a common category.\n",
"The tree of life or universal tree of lif... |
When Book 10 of the Iliad was written? | The so-called Doloneia has been debated for some time, since antiquity in fact. There isn't really a consensus, though most scholars consider it an interpolation. The tradition that the Doloneia is an interpolation goes back to a Homeric scholiast in antiquity, who attributed the Doloneia to Pisistratus. More likely, i... | [
"The \"Iliad\" is paired with something of a sequel, the \"Odyssey\", also attributed to Homer. Along with the \"Odyssey\", the \"Iliad\" is among the oldest extant works of Western literature, and its written version is usually dated to around the 8th century BC. In the modern vulgate (the standard accepted versio... |
What do former-soviet nations teach about WWII? | When I was attending Soviet public school in the 80s, the Pacific theater wasn't mentioned beyond Soviet involvement. The Western Front was looked upon as 'too little too late' and Lend Lease wasn't mentioned all. Keep in mind that this is at the elementary/middle school level, and WW2 was a topic from kindergarten on.... | [
"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... |
Why was there such a gap between the earliest stone tools and the earliest metal tools? | "Having fire" and begin able to smelt metal are not at all the same thing. First off you have to recognize the ores that contain metal. You also have to get the fire pretty hot (hotter than a campfire will get if you want to smelt copper, so you probably need to have a knowledge of pottery so you could make a clay kiln... | [
"The earliest stone tools were irrelevant, being little more than a fractured rock. In the Acheulian era, beginning approximately 1.65 million years ago, methods of working these stone into specific shapes, such as hand axes emerged. This early Stone Age is described as the Lower Paleolithic.\n",
"Stone tools are... |
Zhuge Liang: Fact vs. Fiction | Pretty much everything about Zhuge Liang popularized in *Romance of the Three Kingdoms* is false. Some notable examples:
**Borrowing Arrows with Straw Boats:**
The *Sanguozhi* does not mention this at all, which means it is probably pure fiction. The SGZ does quote *Weilue* about a similar incident. During the Battle... | [
"Zhuge Liang is a Chinese television series based on the life of Zhuge Liang, a chancellor (or prime minister) of the state of Shu Han in the Three Kingdoms period. The plot is based on stories about Zhuge Liang in the 14th-century historical novel \"Romance of the Three Kingdoms\". The series starred Li Fazeng as ... |
why do we tear up when we rip out nose hair or rip off a inner nose scab? | Probably because there are lots of nerve endings in the mucosal lining. And it hurts like a bitch. The worst is when you get a zit in there. | [
"\"Cutting off the nose to spite the face\" is an expression to describe a needlessly self-destructive over-reaction to a problem: \"Don't cut off your nose to spite your face\" is a warning against acting out of pique, or against pursuing revenge in a way that would damage oneself more than the object of one's ang... |
So another earthquake hit the PH today. Just 1 day apart, but from different places. Is there a connection between the 2? Should we be worried here in the PH for another big one? | For reference, the first large event was this [one](_URL_4_) occurring on 4/22 in the northern part of the country. The more recent event occurring on 4/23 was this [one](_URL_2_) in the more central/southern portion of the country.
Local geologists / seismologists have indicated that these two earthquakes occurred on... | [
"On 22 July 2013, a series of earthquakes occurred in Dingxi, Gansu. The first quake struck at 07:45 China Standard Time with the epicenter located at the border of Min County and Zhang County. The magnitude of the initial earthquake was placed at M 6.6 by the China Earthquake Data Center with a focal depth of . It... |
why are vietnam veterans praised so much in america? | Mainly , and this is my opinion/take on it, because a majority (FC?) of the military was drafted and there were *lots* of protests against the Vietnam war and how we shouldn’t have been there. It was a horribly gruesome war, and the veterans of it deserve the praise because of what they were forced to endure meaningles... | [
"There are persistent stereotypes about Vietnam veterans as psychologically devastated, bitter, homeless, drug-addicted people, who had a hard time readjusting to society, primarily because of the uniquely divisive nature of the Vietnam War in the context of US history.\n",
"Mainstream veterans groups had tended ... |
how come peripheral vision is blurrier or less clear than whatever you're directly focusing on? | The brain can only handle so much information at once. In fact, only a tiny area of vision is ever clear, if you look at the middle of your phone keyboard the letters on the side already are not clear. But you know what's there because it's held in very short term memory.
Fun fact, your peripheral vision is also black... | [
"Peripheral vision is weak in humans, especially at distinguishing detail, color, and shape. This is because the density of receptor and ganglion cells in the retina is greater at the center and lowest at the edges, and, moreover, the representation in the visual cortex is much smaller than that of the fovea (see v... |
How often do cancer cells divide? | The doubling time of cancers cells depends on the characteristics of that cancer, like what it has mutated, deleted, ect. Below I have linked a website that lists different types of Lymphomas and blood cancers. The different Cell lines are on the left, and a simple google search looking for each of their doubling times... | [
"Cancer cells are cells that divide relentlessly, forming solid tumors or flooding the blood with abnormal cells. Cell division is a normal process used by the body for growth and repair. A parent cell divides to form two daughter cells, and these daughter cells are used to build new tissue, or to replace cells tha... |
Why haven't we sent any more probes to Uranus and Neptune since Voyager 2? | Part of the reason is the funding.
Another big reason is that the Voyager crafts had gravitational assists; basically, the planets' orbits were aligned in such a way that their gravity "slingshotted" the Voyager crafts forward. This meant that they didn't need as much fuel as a direct fuel-powered mission. Without any... | [
"After the fly-by of Saturn, the camera platform of \"Voyager 2\" locked up briefly, putting plans to officially extend the mission to Uranus and Neptune in jeopardy. The mission's engineers were able to fix the problem (caused by an overuse that temporarily depleted its lubricant), and the \"Voyager 2\" probe was ... |
what causes a car's head gasket to blow and why do certain car brands seem to have a bigger issue with this than other brands? | For manufacturing reasons, the cylinder head is fabricated as a separate piece of metal than the cylinder body. These two pieces of metal are bolted together, to enable maintenance, at a point where there are very high combustion gas pressures. These high pressures are essential to generate power with the engine, so ... | [
"BULLET::::- The cylinder head was prone to warping, especially when the car was driven frequently. This problem was more pronounced in the later fuel injected models, due to increased engine temperatures and greater stress on that component.\n",
"While the oil shock certainly affected sales, many far more profli... |
the accounting equation (assets = liabilities + equity) | Things in your possession - Things that you borrowed = Things that belong to you.
The "Things in your possession" are your assets. They are the things you can use to do fun stuff.
The "Things that you borrowed" are your liabilities. You can use them to do fun stuff, but they need to be returned eventually. Further... | [
"In financial accounting, owner's equity consists of the net assets of an entity. Net assets is the difference between the total assets and total liabilities. Equity appears on the balance sheet (also known as the statement of financial position), one of the four primary financial statements.\n",
"BULLET::::3. Eq... |
How did the natives of Indonesia and the Pacific Islands treat punctures, scraps, infections, and other injuries that might occur while hunting or foraging? | Speaking of cuts, and of Pacific Islands off the coast of British Columbia, apparently through cleaning, and regularly applying of spruce pitch to the wound, and replacing it regularly. I'm curious about practices in further south though. | [
"Japanese savages fighting the Australians in New Guinea committed cannibalism. Japanese forces were sent to New Guinea in 1942 but without sufficient preparation – they were simply abandoned. In late 1943, forbidden to surrender and cut off from their supplies, they began to starve – some resorted to cannibalism o... |
how do guitar pickups get the strings sound? | Inside the pickups are magnets wrapped in coils of wire with an electric charge running through them. Those magnets are what "pickup" the vibrations | [
"The guitar is a fretted musical instrument that usually has six strings. It is typically played with both hands by strumming or plucking the strings with either a guitar pick or the finger(s)/fingernails of one hand, while simultaneously fretting (pressing the strings against the frets) with the fingers of the oth... |
Could all of earth's life survive if the atmosphere was only oxygen and carbon dioxide? | No, nitrogen has an important role to play in the ecosystem, too. There are soil bacteria that convert N2 into ammonia that is taken up by pretty much everything that lives in the soil and anything that is further down the food chain. The ultimate source of virtually every atom of nitrogen in your body is the air. | [
"The presence of oxygen alone, however, is not conclusive evidence for life. Jupiter's moon Europa, for example, has a tenuous oxygen atmosphere thought to be produced by radiolysis of water molecules. Numerical simulations have shown that under proper conditions it is possible to build up an oxygen atmosphere via ... |
bayes' theorem in probability | To understand Baye's theorem, we must first understand the concepts of conditional probabilities and probabilities. A probability is the chance of an event happening, often denoted P(A), where A is the event, i.e. P(A)=1/6 where A is rolling 1 on a six-sided die. A conditional probability is the chance of an event occu... | [
"Bayes' theorem says that to find the conditional probability distribution of \"p\" given the data \"X\", \"i\" = 1, ..., \"n\", one multiplies the \"prior\" (i.e., marginal) probability measure assigned to \"p\" by the likelihood function\n",
"Bayes' theorem calculates the renormalized pointwise product of the p... |
When did Europeans start bathing with soap rather than oil and a scraper? | The differences between soap and olive oil is actually smaller than you think.
Rancid olive oil contains lots of free fatty acids, which have emulsive properties similiar to soap.
Furthermore, traditional soap is made from olive oil, and/or other triacylglycerides. If a base is added to olive oil it transforms in... | [
"Contrary to popular belief and although the Early Christian leaders, such as Boniface I, condemned bathing as unspiritual, bathing and sanitation were not lost in Europe with the collapse of the Roman Empire. Soapmaking first became an established trade during the so-called \"Dark Ages\". The Romans used scented o... |
Do any animals besides mammals and bees make food for their young? | Bees don't actually make honey for their young, they make it for adult bee consumption during the winter. They do produce substances to feed to larvae, including royal jelly, in glands inside their heads.
Otherwise, good question! Some birds perform premastication, chewing up food and regurgitating it for babies. N... | [
"When young, its diet consists mainly of insects. As an adult, it mostly eats invertebrates (notably insects and snails), but regularly take fruits and can function as a seed dispersers. They may also take small vertebrates prey such as small birds and reptiles (including other anoles), but studies indicate that th... |
Does anyone have primary sources on the Seleucid government? | You're having a hard time finding any because Seleucid administration is actually not so easy to study.
We have lots of information about the Seleucid Kings/Emperors, we know they utilised a satrapal system like Persia, and we know the results of some of their actions. But in terms of civil service, administrative pra... | [
"In Herodotus (book 1, chapters 95–130), Deioces is introduced as the founder of a centralised Median state. He had been known to the Median people as \"a just and incorruptible man\" and when asked by the Median people to solve their possible disputes he agreed and put forward the condition that they make him \"ki... |
Why was the latin word for left-hand "sinister"? Did they prefer the right hand over the left and for what reasons? | [It meant left before it meant evil.](_URL_2_)
It might have originally meant the slower or weaker hand, but it also could be a euphemism meaning the more favorable hand. If the latter was the case, it would mean that the left hand already had a negative connotation (else why have a euphemism?)
The word took on sens... | [
"Moreover, apart from inconvenience, left-handed people have historically been considered unlucky or even malicious for their difference by the right-handed majority. In many European languages, including English, the word for the direction \"right\" also means \"correct\" or \"proper\". Throughout history, being l... |
Why do scholars always imagine recorded troop sizes to be larger than reality? | More input is always welcome; for the meantime, you'll be greatly interested in these two answers from previous threads:
* On the matter of Herodotos versus numbers, in this thread u/Iphikrates [breaks down just how Herodotos got his numbers](_URL_0_).
* As for how modern scholars can be confident in lower numbers tha... | [
"The discrepancy in army size estimates is mainly due to uncertainty about the size of \"limitanei\" regiments, as can be seen by the wide range of estimates in the table below. Jones suggests \"limitanei\" regiments had a similar size to Principate auxilia regiments, averaging 500 men each. More recent work, which... |
European colonists often referred to Native Americans by grouping them into categories like "Cherokee" or "Choctaw" on an ethnolinguistic basis. How relevant were such distinctions to the indigenous groups themselves? | One of the most difficult things that students of prehistoric and protohistoric cultures in the western portions of North America have to confront is the relationship of political entities to linguistic or other classifications. In most of California, and all of the NW coast south of the Tlingit and Haida areas, there ... | [
"The historic peoples encountered by the Europeans did not make up unified tribes in the modern sense, as they were highly decentralized, operating in bands of a size adapted to their semi-nomadic cultures. From the 16th to the 19th centuries, the European explorers, missionaries, traders and settlers referred to t... |
What would happen if two tidal waves hit one another in the middle of an ocean? | You get a super position of waves. The waves would add up. Where the 2 peaks align, you would get a wave twice as high (assuming equal waves), where a peak meets a trough, you would get no wave. As they parted, you the waves would look unchanged.
This can lead to some freak waves, where a large number of tiny waves su... | [
"\"Tidal resonance\" occurs in the Bay of Fundy since the time it takes for a large wave to travel from the mouth of the bay to the opposite end, then reflect and travel back to the mouth of the bay coincides with the tidal rhythm producing the world's highest tides.\n",
"Tidal flows of seawater are resisted by t... |
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