Split (2)

train · 226k rows

question stringlengths 3 301	answer stringlengths 9 26.1k	context list
What did other periods in the history of the British isles think of stone henge?	Some parts of your question were covered in [this earlier answer,](_URL_1_) which points out that the earliest certain written record of Stonehenge only dates from the late Norman period (c.1130). And even after that, it wasn't until the first stirrings of antiquarianism in the mid-17th century that we get any sort of ...	[ "In fact, early Stonehenge may have been barely different from the other Neolithic timber circles of the British Isles which had varying numbers of postholes and orientations and could therefore not have been used for in island-wide eclipse predicting. The interpretation of such timber circles is unclear, although ...
what the meaning is of the different "alarm" fires. for example, a major fire is known as a "5 alarm"	It's a system to describe how many resources are being devoted to a fire. More alarms means more trucks and firefighters are responding. _URL_0_	[ "One-alarm, two-alarm, three-alarm fires, etc., are categories of fires indicating the level of response by local authorities. The term multiple-alarm is a quick way of indicating that a fire is severe and is difficult to contain. This system of classification is common in the United States and in Canada among both...
antibodies and antigens.	Immunology is one of those topics that can get extremely tedious and complicated. So, since I don't know how much detail you're looking for exactly, I'll just start with the basics and you can ask questions from there if you like! * Antigen ("against life") = anything that is harmful to you and triggers an immune reac...	[ "Antigen-antibody interaction, or antigen-antibody reaction, is a specific chemical interaction between antibodies produced by B cells of the white blood cells and antigens during immune reaction. It is the fundamental reaction in the body by which the body is protected from complex foreign molecules, such as patho...
In many medieval movies such as Braveheart there are often scenes with military commanders shouting motivational speeches to entire armies on the battlefield without using voice amplification of any sorts. In real life, were they really able to hold speeches like that and is this how it was done?	The answers are further back in time than you're asking about here, but while you're waiting this thread might interest you: [*Do the speeches we often see before a battle in most literature and visual performances have any historical basis. Did the kings and generals leading an army ever give a speech to rally the tr...	[ "Lazar's speech, like other speeches delivered by princes to their armies before battles, represents evidence of oral literary language that was formed by the traditions of oratory. Danilo III brought to life the spoken word of the protagonists and gave vocal and emotional charge to a scene that has great heroic an...
the concept of english "tea".	In Ireland, "tea time" or "having your tea" is actually a colloquial term for the evening meal, as well as the actual drink. And to make it even more confusing, many refer to lunch as "dinner", and the dinner as "tea". But pasically, praesartus is correct. People routinely drink tea throughout the day in both the UK a...	[ "More remotely, cognate terms from different languages can be borrowed, such as \"sauce\" (Old French) and \"salsa\" (Spanish), both ultimately from Latin, or \"tea\" (Dutch \"\") and \"chai\" (Hindi), both ultimately from Chinese. This last pair reflects the history of how tea has entered English via different tra...
what makes cloud black?	Sunlight comes from above, and it can only go through so much moisture before it's all blocked. Therefore the gray areas are just the thickest areas of cloud coverage. The clouds themselves are actually white throughout, just varying levels of sunlight.	[ "The Black Cloud is a science fiction novel by British astrophysicist Fred Hoyle. Published in 1957, the book details the arrival of an enormous cloud of gas that enters the solar system and appears about to destroy most of the life on Earth by blocking the Sun's radiation.\n", "The color of a cloud, as seen fro...
What's a piece of knowledge from your area of historical study that you enjoy telling people about, and why?	Going through Victorian newspapers, I've come across a lot of strange and transient cultural phenomena that never made it into the history books. For example: monkey parachuting. No, seriously. The case I came across was in 1851. A hot-air balloon went up from a park in London, and a monkey was tossed out with a parac...	[ "\"For the first time in history, we know now how to store virtually all humanity's most important information and make it available, almost instantly, in almost any form, to almost anyone on earth. We also know how to do that in great new ways so that people can interact with it, and learn from it.\"\n", "What k...
is cryogenic sleep possible?	Not yet. When ice forms, it forms tiny crystals. These tiny crystals tend to pierce the cell walls of animal cells. As you can imagine, having all of your cell walls shredded is fatal. There are a few exceptions. Some species of frog, by modulating the solute concentrations (amount of dissolved stuff, like sugar) ...	[ "The term “cryotank” refers to storage of super-cold fuels, such as liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen. Cryotanks and cryogenics can be seen in many sci-fi movies, but they are still currently undeveloped. All that needs to be done is for a human to be loaded into the tank and then they can be frozen until a time co...
Is our solar system considered normal? What other variations are there? Stars with rings? Stars as planets? Special orbits?	Our detection methods don't work well for systems that look like our solar system. We don't know yet. What we know for sure: There are many systems that look completely different. Planets much closer to the star, much more distant, inner gas planets and outer rocky planets, planets in double star systems, planets as ho...	[ "The most prominent and most famous planetary rings in the Solar System are those around Saturn, but the other three giant planets (Jupiter, Uranus, and Neptune) also have ring systems. Recent evidence suggests that ring systems may also be found around other types of astronomical objects, including minor planets, ...
we have so much water continually running-- streams, rivers, lakes-- where does it all come from and how?	Well, you have this thing called watersheds. Watersheds are basically an area of land in which we can safely predict that a healthy amount of the water available in this land will flow into a specific body of water, like lakes or rivers. So although you don't see rainfall specifically landing in the river, it will make...	[ "Rivers are part of the hydrological cycle; water generally collects in a river from precipitation through a drainage basin from surface runoff and other sources such as groundwater recharge, springs, and the release of stored water in natural ice and snowpacks (e.g., from glaciers). Potamology is the scientific st...
how are certain roads "aircraft patrolled" for speeding?	This is one of those stupid things I think about every time I drive past one of those signs, and never think to research when I'm home. Next stop, Google.	[ "Road speed limit enforcement in Australia constitutes the actions taken by the authorities to force road users to comply with the speed limits in force on Australia's roads. Speed limit enforcement equipment such as speed cameras and other technologies such as radar and LIDAR are widely used by the authorities. In...
how can a bunch of 0s and 1s create everything digital?	The whole subject is a bit too complicated and a bit too deep for a short ELI5, but I'll give a stab at the gist of it. The reason why computers work (at least in the vein of your question) is very similar to the reason why we have language -- written, spoken, etc. What you're reading right at this very moment is a...	[ "In political, business, trade, industry and media discourses, \"digitization\" is defined as the 'technical process' of \"\"converting\" analog information into digital form\" (i.e. numeric, binary format, as zeros and ones). In electrical engineering, the older term \"digitalization\" still occurs in this sense, ...
What was the reasoning for the Pancho Villa Expedition? How was Pancho Villa able to evade U.S. capture for so long despite the large force sent to stop him?	Villa's motives for the Columbus raid seem to have been various. He wanted to take revenge on the American arms dealer who had taken money for supplies and neither given him the arms or returned the money. He was increasingly angry at the way the US professed to be neutral in the Revolution, but actually aided Carranz...	[ "The Pancho Villa Expedition—now known officially in the United States as the Mexican Expedition, but originally referred to as the \"Punitive Expedition, U.S. Army\"—was an unsuccessful military operation conducted by the United States Army against the paramilitary forces of Mexican revolutionary Francisco \"Panch...
(In)Accuracies in Asbury's "The Gangs of New York"?	I'm not going to answer your question directly, and I apologize since this will be a top level post, but I don't know that you will get any replies again. You're asking the people here to do your homework for you in a way. But I'll give you my thoughts as someone interested in the period. [*The New York City Draft R...	[ "BULLET::::- \"Gangs of New York\" (2002) is an historical film set in the mid-19th century, in the Five Points district of New York City. The film, directed by Martin Scorsese and written by Jay Cocks, Steven Zaillian, and Kenneth Lonergan, was inspired by Herbert Asbury's nonfiction book, \"The Gangs of New York\...
Is medieval French as incomprehensible to modern French speakers as Medieval English is to modern English speakers?	Might be worth a cross post to /r/linguistics ?	[ "Another proposal concerns the use of Norman French in medieval England; as the English dialect of the 11th century had no qs, one must watch their usage in court or discourse with the French Norman conquerors. \n", "Though the great mass of ordinary people spoke Middle English, French, because of its prestigious...
the 9 pieces of 8 in pirates of the caribbean	Each of the nine Pirate Lords agreed to hold a piece of eight to be presented during a meeting of the Brethren Court, though the term came to apply to a variety of items and trinkets as the pirates found themselves short on money, simply keeping the original term as it sounded more 'piratey'. Each piece of eight reflec...	[ "BULLET::::- 2007 - Four different \"Pirates of the Caribbean PocketModels \" tins featuring one of four Special Edition \"Megacard\" Krakens eight \"masted\" monsters), 10 ships, three terrain cards, five or more crew or treasure cards, two dice, complete game rules. Each of the four distinct tins features cover a...
Colonization of Venus	As I recall, the theory was to use balloons of some sort to keep one aloft amongst the clouds. The big problem was corrosion, something that I have yet to read a solution for. I'm actually curious about what one would do for food, colonial expansion, the initial costs to doing this, and harvesting resources from Venus ...	[ "The colonization of Venus has been a subject of many works of science fiction since before the dawn of spaceflight, and is still discussed from both a fictional and a scientific standpoint. However, with the discovery of Venus's extremely hostile surface environment, attention has largely shifted towards the colon...
Is atmospheric noise truly random?	Atmospheric fluctuations are not truly random, they're just extremely chaotic and unpredictable. Radioactivity is different. As far as we can tell, it really is random when a radioactive particle will decay.	[ "Random noise is often a large component of the noise in data. Random noise in a signal is measured as the Signal-to-Noise Ratio. Random noise contains almost equal amounts of a wide range of frequencies, and is also called \"white noise\" (as colors of light combine to make \"white\"). Random noise is an unavoidab...
how do scientific research articles get published? how do we know their results aren't faked? what exactly are scientific journals and how do researchers get revenue from publishing their research work?	When an article gets submitted they have a lot of people look at it and similar data in order to publish it. It generally takes months. And a lot of research is funded either at a government or private level.	[ "In many countries, governments fund some science research. Scientists often publish the results of their research by writing articles and donating them to be published in scholarly journals, which frequently are commercial. Public entities such as universities and libraries subscribe to these journals. Michael Eis...
What is the most inaccurate and accurate movie regarding your field of study?	"20,000 Leagues Under the Sea" 20,000 Leagues = 111,120 km Diameter of the Earth = 12,769 km	[ "David McCandless's visual blog Information is Beautiful\" deduced that, while taking creative licence into account, the film was 91.4% accurate when compared to real-life events, calling it a \"shockingly truthful film\" with \"very little dramatization or fakery\".\n", "The visual blog \"Information is Beautifu...
Why is facial hair such an important thing in the Abrahamic religions, and does it have importance in any Eastern religions?	Hi, long-time lurker. But I think I can actually contribute a bit to this! ___________________________________________________________________ Banned Beards I actually don't know too much about the Jehovah's Witnesses, so I won't try and touch on their beliefs and practices. Mormons (LDS), however, I do know a ...	[ "Many religious male figures are recorded to have had facial hair; for example, numerous prophets mentioned in the Abrahamic religions (Judaism, Christianity and Islam) were known to grow beards. Other religions, such as Sikhism, mandate growing beards. Amish men grow beards after marriage, but continue to shave th...
Was there ever any movement to have the United States switch to driving on the left side of the road?	Also, was/is there any movement to have the UK switch to driving on the right side of the road? I know that some countries have made a switch, so the UK possibly could too.	[ "The concept of an overland route from one tip of the Americas to the other was originally proposed at the First Pan-American Conference in 1889 as a railroad; however, this proposal was never realized. The idea of building a highway emerged at the Fifth International Conference of American States in 1923. The firs...
What could happen to East Germans whose family escaped to the West?	It was illegal to leave the GDR without a special permit, which also stated how and when you had to return. If you failed to do so, you risked criminal prosecution according to § 213 StGB-DDR, up to 5 years in prison (extended to 8 years in 1977). This includes attempts to flee, thus she could face anything from a fine...	[ "Between 1961 and 1989 several thousand East German citizens emigrated by obtaining temporary exit visas and subsequently failing to return, or by engaging in dangerous attempts to cross the Berlin Wall, the Inner German border, or the borders of other Eastern Bloc countries. Those who fled across the fortified bor...
Some economists consider Social Mobility to be more important than inequality in a society's health. Apart from the United States, is there any civilization is considered to have more Social Mobility than any others? Why do theorists/historians think this is so?	Sorry, we don't allow [throughout history questions](_URL_0_). These tend to produce threads which are collections of trivia, not the in-depth discussions about a particular topic we're looking for. If you have a specific question about a historical event or period or person, please feel free to re-compose your quest...	[ "Explanations for the relatively low level of social mobility in the US include the better access of affluent children to superior schools and preparation for schools so important in an economy where pay is tilted toward educated workers; high levels of immigration of unskilled laborers and low rate of unionization...
Is it theoretically possible to surround the sun with solar panels and “harness” the sun?	There's a thought experiment, called a [Dyson Sphere](_URL_0_) (after physicist Freeman Dyson who popularized the thought experiment), that does this. The engineering required to achieve this is far beyond our current capabilities, making it a highly theoretical concept.	[ "To maximise the intensity of incoming direct radiation, solar panels should be orientated normal to the sun's rays. To achieve this, arrays can be designed using two-axis trackers, capable of tracking the sun in its daily orbit across the sky, and as its elevation changes throughout the year.\n", "When applied t...
Booker T. Washington's views made widespread changes to education for African-Americans, but did his views affect education for white people today?	One possible thread to investigate is the relationship between Washington and contemporaries like John Dewey and Ella Flagg Young. There are some interesting primary sources that speak to the time the two men were in the same place at the same time and how those interactions lead to changes across the system.	[ "After Reconstruction, the two prevailing schools of thought regarding education and labor of the black American were those espoused by W. E. B. Du Bois and Booker T. Washington. These two scholars had opposing ideas on how the African American should fight for equality. Washington believed in an industrial educati...
Can you get vitamin D from the moon/moonlight?	Based on values obtained from the Wikipedia for Moonlight and Sunlight, the light of the sun can vary between 120,000 lux and 400-200 lux depending on atmospheric conditions. The average lux value of moonlight is around 0.1. With that in mind while it may be theoretically possible to utilise moonlight to produce vitami...	[ "Vitamin D comes in two forms. Cholecalciferol (vitamin D) is synthesized in the skin after exposure to the sun or consumed from food, usually from animal sources. Ergocalciferol (vitamin D) is derived from ergosterol from UV-exposed mushrooms or yeast and is suitable for vegans. When produced industrially as suppl...
What does marinating a meat (chicken, fish, steak) in lemon/lime/orange juice do to the meat?	An acidic environment will denature proteins - like heat does. That's the reason you begin to see white in chicken like if it's cooked. It's the principle behind [ceviche](_URL_0_).	[ "Typically meat (usually fatty cuts of pork, but can also be chicken or beef) is marinated overnight in a sweet sauce made with pineapple juice, brown sugar, soy sauce, and various spices. It is then pan-fried until the meat is browned. The meat is then simmered in stock and the marinade with added pineapple chunks...
how do government officials justify trading 5 terrorists for bowe bergdahl, who's now facing charges, but not making trades for all the aid workers that have been killed?	The government has a responsibility to recover American soldiers. The government does not have an equivalent responsibility to secure the release of people who voluntarily entered a combat zone.	[ "On January 26, 2007, the government announced a compensation worth $11.5 million to Syrian-Canadian Maher Arar due to an error from the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. The RCMP was blamed for giving misleading information to U.S. officials and suspected him as a possible terrorist threat and a member of the Islamic...
How can the gravitational field of an object slow another object if it cannot expend energy?	The asteroid loses kinetic energy and gains potential energy.	[ "For example, if two objects are attracting each other in space through their gravitational field, the attraction force accelerates the objects, increasing their velocity, which converts their potential energy (gravity) into kinetic energy. When the particles either pass through each other without interaction or el...
steubenville rapists	This ~~[Blog](_URL_1_)~~ gives a pretty good run down of all the controversy. *Edit for summary: Although two students were convicted, evidence was uncovered that there were many more people involved in the rape and subsequent cover up. From other students who tweeted jokes about the girl while she was being dragged ...	[ "Kevin Coe (born Frederick Harlan Coe on February 2, 1947) is an American convicted rapist from Spokane, Washington, often referred to in the news media as the South Hill Rapist. As of May 2008, Coe is still a suspect in dozens of rapes, the number of which is unusually large; his convictions received an unusual am...
why does alprazolam stay in your system for 1-6 weeks when the half-life is always the same?	There are going to be three main reasons for this. First, the half-life of the drug is the time for half the material to break down, meaning there is rare chances for some of the material to last longer than usual. It's an estimate, not a guarantee. Second, and more important, is the fact that drugs like Alprazolam br...	[ "BULLET::::- Intermediate-acting compounds have a median half-life of 12–40 hours. They may have some residual effects in the first half of the day if used as a hypnotic. Rebound insomnia, however, is more common upon discontinuation of intermediate-acting benzodiazepines than longer-acting benzodiazepines. Example...
i'm sitting at a stoplight and there are several cars in front of me. they all have there blinkers going at different intervals, except for a short period of time when they completely coincide. what is happening??	If car A's turn signal is blinking every 1.3 seconds, and car B's signal is going every 1.4, they won't match up. However, since one car's signal is faster than the other's, it will eventually 'catch up'. While they won't be perfectly in sync, they'll appear to blink together for a second or two before the gap between ...	[ "The changes included daytime running lights/DRL at the bottom and the blinker (turn signal indicator) is on the daytime light, advising the pedestrian or other road user to which direction it is moving.\n", "In some areas, a \"prepare to stop\" sign with two alternately flashing yellow lights is installed in loc...
why tv shows and movies can get the rights to show certain video games, but never the actual sounds/ music.	A lot of music, especially, is licensed from someone else for the game. So if they're showing Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2, they have permission to show the video game. If they want to play the music ("When Worlds Collide" - Powerman 5000), then they have to get permission from Powerman 5000 or their agent/record label to ...	[ "Because video games are (usually) screen-based media, there are strong links between the study of game music and the study of music in other screen-based media (like film and television). Concepts such as diegesis and acousmatics, which originate in film and film audio studies, are broadly applicable to video game...
Was it possible in 1943-45 Nazi Germany for a fit, early 20's man to NOT be in the military? What one would have had to do to avoid service?	Sort of a tongue-in-cheek follow-up question. Could you be fit early 20s Jewish man and serve in the military and is there any difference in the service required? I'm thinking analogous to African Americans serving in WWII.	[ "From June 1935 onward, men aged between 18 and 25 may have served six months before their military service. During World War II compulsory service also included young women and the RAD developed to an auxiliary formation which provided support for the Wehrmacht armed forces.\n", "As World War II progressed, Germ...
Strange black rock/mineral or meteor(?) I found, can someone identify it?	Notice the piece is flat and unrounded. I believe it is a vein, broken free from it's gangue. The mineral is probably an iron carbonate (siderite?), possibly psudomorphic after limonite - crushed powder is probably ruddy brown and it would fizz in 10% HCl. These guys often form in hydrothermal settings around intrusion...	[ "The rock was initially identified as unusual in that it showed, from the analysis with the Mini-TES spectrometer, an infrared spectrum that appeared unusually similar to a reflection of the sky. In-situ measurements of its composition were then made using the APXS, showing the composition to be 93% Iron, 7% nickel...
How "thick" would a gamma ray burst be?	Gamma Ray Bursts have a usual duration of some seconds to some minutes; the avarage of "normal" gamma rays is a bit more than half a minute. Some of them however had a lifespan of some minutes to hours, with a record of some weeks. Those are very rare, however. Asking for a planet killer, there is no difference to o...	[ "A gamma-ray burst is an extremely luminous event flash of gamma rays that occurs as the result of an explosion, and is thought to be associated with the formation of a black hole. The burst itself typically only lasts for a few seconds, but gamma-ray bursts frequently produce an \"afterglow\" at longer wavelengths...
why do drift cars turn their wheels in the opposite dirrection they need to go?	The front wheels are not pointing in the "opposite" direction from where they need to go. They are pointing exactly in the direction they need to go. If you examine a video closely, you'll find that the front wheels don't slip - they're following right around the curve. It is the back wheels that are swung outward...	[ "However, this system causes \"wind up\" in the transmission (inter-component stress) as all the wheels are forced to rotate at the same speed, which during cornering is impossible. This led to rapid wear and breakage of the bevel gear boxes if the vehicle was used on firm surfaces, such as tarmac or concrete – in ...
How do we measure time in circuitry?	There's a great [engineer guy video on quartz clocks](_URL_0_) that's worth watching. Basically there are two sides to the system. First, you create a very small "tuning fork" of quartz, which has a very precise resonance frequency (typically 32,768 Hz, for reasons that will be explained). Quartz is piezo-electric, wh...	[ "Note that the resolution of an implementation's measurement of time does not imply the same precision of such measurements. For example, a system might return the current time as a value measured in microseconds, but actually be capable of discerning individual clock ticks with a frequency of only 100 Hz (10 ms).\...
Why do certain things that shock/scare us give us the jitters/shock which basically makes us useless and other things give us super strength(hysterical strength)?	This happened to me on my motorcycle during an near miss crash with another vehicle. I had the jitters and couldn't immediately lift my bike, it's like my mind was so all over the place I couldn't focus my mind enough to continuously drive my muscles to lift my bike. Strange feeling, the best comparison I can make is i...	[ "Shock is the state of not enough blood flow to the tissues of the body as a result of problems with the circulatory system. Initial symptoms may include weakness, fast heart rate, fast breathing, sweating, anxiety, and increased thirst. This may be followed by confusion, unconsciousness, or cardiac arrest as compl...
can weather or storms actually be controlled or man made? if so, to what extent and how?	Short answer: yes to a very limited extent Longer answer: not in any realistic, safe, or controllable way. Weather is super complicated and often pretty hard to predict. Imagine if you had a big bowl of water and you kept sloshing it around, meteorology is guessing/analyzing where individual waves will form. You can...	[ "The law outlines general rules of conduct for masters of both sail and steam vessels, to assist them in steering the vessels away from the center and right front (in the Northern Hemisphere and left front in the Southern Hemisphere) quadrants of hurricanes or any other rotating disturbances at sea. Prior to radio,...
How does one computer share its private key with another computer?	The idea of public-key cryptography is that the first computer shares the public key, and keeps the private key to itself. The second computer encrypts data (typically, a randomly generated session key for symmetric cryptography, which is much faster than public-key cryptography) with the first computer's public key an...	[ "Under the identity-based cryptographic setting, the public key of the user can be an arbitrary string of bits provided that the string can uniquely identify the user in the system. The unique string, for example, can be an email address, a phone number, and a staff ID (if used only internally within an organizatio...
why don't companies like nintendo and sony put their retro games on steam?	Companies like Nintendo and Sony already have their own game distribution platforms and they're generally very wary of using other distribution channels. If they distribute games through Steam, they ultimately would have to give up lots of control over the distribution and pricing of the games. Furthermore, Steam wil...	[ "Nintendo had stated that the Wii Shop Channel would not be used exclusively for retro games, and WiiWare games have appeared in North America as of May 12, 2008. These original games are made available through the WiiWare part of the Wii Shop Channel, as opposed to through the Virtual Console.\n", "As of August ...
What specifically is stopping people from finding an analytical solution to the Navier-Stokes equations under turbulent conditions?	It's not my field, so I can't say too much so I will just paraphrase a couple points that Terry Tao made in a [Post](_URL_0_) about why it is hard. (If I say anything horridly wrong, please correct me.) He says that there are three general strategies to solving these kinds of nonlinear PDEs. * Find explicit solution. ...	[ "The numerical solution of the Navier–Stokes equations for turbulent flow is extremely difficult, and due to the significantly different mixing-length scales that are involved in turbulent flow, the stable solution of this requires such a fine mesh resolution that the computational time becomes significantly infeas...
What distinguishes alpha, beta, and gamma radiation from other types of ionizing radiation? Why doesn't neutron radiation fall into the same category?	The "α, β, γ" classification of radiation was made by Rutherford and Villard back around the turn-of-the-century. It was basically empirical (on the basis of how far they penetrated through matter), and they didn't really know what these things were. I.e. they didn't know that gamma rays were actually the same thing as...	[ "Alpha particles, also called alpha ray or alpha radiation, consist of two protons and two neutrons bound together into a particle identical to a helium-4 nucleus. They are generally produced in the process of alpha decay, but may also be produced in other ways. Alpha particles are named after the first letter in t...
how was code invented before code?	you programmed in binary by flipping toggle switches. after that came punch cards.	[ "Codes and information by machines were first conceptualized by Charles Babbage in the early 1800s. Babbage imagined that these codes would give him instructions for his Motor of Difference and Analytical Engine, machines that Babbage had designed to solve the problem of error in calculations.\n", "The history of...
if you lose your genitals will you lose your sex drive too?	No. Your sex organs are not the only "source" for your sex drive. It affect it in some ways, although there is no consensus about how much. In losing them, you'd fail to act upon these desires, but your capacity to feel them would not disappear completely.	[ "Physical factors that can lead to sexual dysfunctions include the use of drugs, such as alcohol, nicotine, narcotics, stimulants, antihypertensives, antihistamines, and some psychotherapeutic drugs. For women, almost any physiological change that affects the reproductive system—premenstrual syndrome, pregnancy and...
What would it take to make a virus like Ebola or HIV airborne?	I think there already is at least one strain of ebola that is airborne, but is harmless to humans. Ebola Reston or something. Thank you Hotzone.	[ "One possible application is to genetically modify mosquitoes and other disease vectors so that they cannot transmit diseases such as malaria and dengue fever. Researchers claimed that by applying the technique to 1% of the wild population of mosquitoes, they could eradicate malaria within a year.\n", "Even after...
What is the full chemical process when tea is brewed with tea leaves, a pot and a kettle?	It's mostly just dissolving solid mateirals into the hot water. Then, they diffuse. So, chemically, it's pretty much the same as mixing sugar, salt, whatever into water. The compounds become solvated and form hydrogen bonds, then can diffuse through the water.	[ "Boiling tea leaves in water extracts the tannins, theobromine, and caffeine out of the leaves and into the water. Solid-liquid extractions at laboratory scales can use Soxhlet extractors (such as oil from olive cake see at right).\n", "The first tea course starts with baking the tea leaves in a clay pot over a s...
could someone explain why astronomers use julian dates?	Astronomers like Julian dates because they make math simpler for events that don't have anything to do with the Earth year. If a variable star has a period of 270 days, it is a lot easier to add subtract 270 than it is to count through all the months to figure the exact date. Why 4713 BC? It is pretty arbitrary, but...	[ "The term \"Julian date\" may also refer, outside of astronomy, to the day-of-year number (more properly, the ordinal date) in the Gregorian calendar, especially in computer programming, the military and the food industry, or it may refer to dates in the Julian calendar. For example, if a given \"Julian date\" is \...
placebo side-effects - i think i understand the placebo effect but how can your body create a side effect?	Basically if you believe hard enough, your body will try and make it true. Obviously it can’t do as much as a drug for testing can do, but the placebo effect is quite a powerful thing.	[ "It has been shown that, due to the nocebo effect, warning patients about side effects of drugs can contribute to the causation of such effects, whether the drug is real or not. This effect has been observed in clinical trials: according to a 2013 review, the dropout rate among placebo-treated patients in a meta-an...
Why is a telescope not called a macroscope if its the opposite of a microscope?	If you look at the etymology, 'tele' is Ancient Greek for 'far away'. So a 'telescope' is something used to look at things 'far away'. If it was a 'macroscope', it'd be used to look at big things.	[ "A regular microscope uses a lens or set of lenses to enlarge an object through angular magnification alone, giving the viewer an erect enlarged virtual image. The use of a single convex lens or groups of lenses are found in simple magnification devices such as the magnifying glass, loupes, and eyepieces for telesc...
could someone eli5 why java is so insecure?	Because Java is everywhere! The more popular something is the more it will be exploited.	[ "A basic philosophy of Java is that it is inherently safe from the standpoint that no user program can crash the host machine or otherwise interfere inappropriately with other operations on the host machine, and that it is possible to protect certain methods and data structures belonging to trusted code from access...
4-dimensional space and hypercubes?	Let's first get a grasp of what a "dimension" is in geometry. "Dimension" sounds like a big word and is sometimes used to mean something like "world" or "universe" when people talk about "alternate dimensions" and so on, but it's actually a fairly simple concept in geometry and mathematics in general. Let's have a lo...	[ "In geometry, a hypercube is an \"n\"-dimensional analogue of a square () and a cube (). It is a closed, compact, convex figure whose 1-skeleton consists of groups of opposite parallel line segments aligned in each of the space's dimensions, perpendicular to each other and of the same length. A unit hypercube's lon...
when you ignite your propane barbecue, why does the flame not travel down the hose and into the tank?	The propane needs oxygen to be able to burn (burning is just chemically combining with an oxidizer), and there's no oxygen in the hose. As long as the pressure is such that the propane is constantly pushed out, then oxygen can't get in, and the propane in the hose can't burn.	[ "Butane and propane are very flammable petroleum products; they are used as fuels for gas barbecue grills, disposable lighters, etc. Like gasoline, to which it chemically is closely related, propane has a tendency to explode if mixed with oxygen and ignited in an enclosed container.\n", "Propane is a popular choi...
What are the possible evolutionary causes of missing baculum (penis bone) and penile spines in humans?	Sorry you're incorrect, pearly penile papules are not a "condition" they are 100% normal, and are considered a simple anatomical variation. Please do not mistake these as any kind of STD or a vestigial form of a penis spines as they are histologically very different (keratinized epithelial vs vascularized connective t...	[ "In the primate line, a regulatory DNA sequence associated with the formation of small keratinized penile spines was lost. This simplification of penis anatomy may be associated with the sexual habits of humans. In some species which retain the full expression of penile spines, penile spines contribute to increased...
Has there ever been a society where 2 very different languages coexisted together?	This is extremely common. Quechua and Spanish in Peru Guarani and Spanish in Paraguay English is a lingua franca through most of south eastern Papua New Guinea, where Oceanic languages are spoken. Hindi/English/local languages in India etc.	[ "In their declensional and conjugational endings, the two languages innovated in divergent ways, with neither clearly simpler than the other. For example, both languages show significant innovations in the present active indicative endings but in radically different ways, so that only the second-person singular end...
why do headlights at night seem to blind me while headlights in the day do not if their intensity stays the same?	Your pupils are larger at night as there's less ambient light. Bright headlights in that situation let in more light than you can handle.	[ "Night driving is difficult and dangerous due to the blinding glare of headlights from oncoming traffic. Headlamps that satisfactorily illuminate the road ahead without causing glare have long been sought. The first solutions involved resistance-type dimming circuits, which decreased the intensity of the headlamps....
how do supermarket trolleys get "stuck" to escalators and then suddenly work again once they've moved off?	Magnets is exactly right. The magnet holds the trolley to the escalator, and the grooves just help to keep the trolley centered so it can be pushed off at the end.	[ "The push trolleys are a potential safety hazard as they occupy track (albeit temporarily) and, if the trolley is not removed from track in time, it can collide with a train and cause an accident. Therefore, on sections having gradients or poor visibility, the push trolleys are not allowed without traffic blocks. '...
how can shows such as house of cards have differing writers and directors every few episodes, yet still remain consistent in tone and feel?	The producer for the series hires people with a similar sensibility and gives guidance so that they maintain a consistent tone.	[ "The show format is different compared to previous seasons: each of the fifteen episodes focuses on one individual character—with every episode happening at the same time within the show's universe—showing the character's activities since the conclusion of the third season. According to Jason Bateman, \"If I'm driv...
Have there been studies documenting the effects of hallucinogens on people with blindness or other sensory deprivation? What did they find?	This is really complex. If I were you, I'd check out the book "Hallucinations" by Oliver Sacks, as he talks about this extensively. In short, people who become blind can have hallucinations after - this disease is called Charles Bonnet Syndrome. It generally believed that when the brain is deprived of visual stimuli an...	[ "The cited resemblance of the imagery to LSD- and psilocybin-induced hallucinations is suggestive of a functional resemblance between artificial neural networks and particular layers of the visual cortex.\n", "Hallucinations of strange creatures had been reported by Szara in the \"Journal of Mental Science\" (now...
why can’t you donate menstural blood?	Well more or less because its basically uterus wallpaper not exactly just blood like you would find in your veins.	[ "In patients prone to iron overload, blood donation prevents the accumulation of toxic quantities. Donating blood may reduce the risk of heart disease for men, but the link has not been firmly established and may be from selection bias because donors are screened for health problems.\n", "Individuals seeking to d...
how do superchargers make cars go faster? or why?	Put simplistically, the power from an engine is made from the combustion of fuel and air. A supercharger compresses the incoming air, allowing more to enter the engine. More fuel is added to the engine via the fuel injectors, and the two combined combust to create more power than would have otherwise been made.	[ "One disadvantage of supercharging is that compressing the air increases its temperature. When a supercharger is used on an internal combustion engine, the temperature of the fuel/air charge becomes a major limiting factor in engine performance. Extreme temperatures will cause detonation of the fuel-air mixture (sp...
how do television ratings translate into monetary benefit for the stars of the show?	That's basically it. The amount actors are paid is based on the previous season's ratings/advertising. So usually the during the first season of the show, the actors aren't paid very much. The exception would be for actors who themselves carry aadvertising value and are assumed to bring more viewers to the show. ...	[ "Ratings for the series were low, due in part to the sudden explosion of reality programming and ABC's decision to dedicate much of its primetime schedule to the then-popular \"Who Wants to Be a Millionaire\".\n", "Once a television series passed this criteria, they were ranked on a ten-point scale by either one ...
Are there any organic materials that harden over time or when exposed to the air?	An insect's exoskeleton is made of chitin, which hardens upon contact with the air. It doesn't continuously harden, it gets to a certain toughness then proceeds no farther. The problem with something continuously hardening over time is that as it hardens it will become brittle. Most organic materials require a certa...	[ "There are two main groups of substances that biomagnify. Both are lipophilic and not easily degraded. Novel organic substances are not easily degraded because organisms lack previous exposure and have thus not evolved specific detoxification and excretion mechanisms, as there has been no selection pressure from th...
Do astronauts shave in space or do they wait till they get back? Mostly they look clean shaven - so I guess yes. However, with everything in space about 16 times more complicated than back on the planet...I just wondered	Here is a [description from the Canadian Space Agency](_URL_0_).	[ "BULLET::::- Apollo 10 returned to Earth, after a successful 8-day test of all the components needed for the upcoming first manned Moon landing. The aircraft carrier \"USS Princeton\" was within three miles of the splashdown target in the South Pacific and recovered the capsule. The three astronauts— Cernan, Staffo...
Why did the Romans build on top of things?	The phenomenon you are noticing is called "stratigraphy", which is the idea that things are built on top of older things, and you can tell which things are older by figuring out the order in which each part was laid down. It's one of the most basic and essential parts of archaeology. Now, why did people build on top ...	[ "The Romans were the first builders in Europe, perhaps the first in the world, to fully appreciate the advantages of the arch, the vault and the dome. Throughout the Roman empire, their engineers erected arch structures such as bridges, aqueducts, and gates. They also introduced the triumphal arch as a military mon...
why can you bring extremely fire hazardous items as hand luggage on an airplane?	Fires are a threat that aircrews are trained to deal with and lie within their response capabilities. Anti-terrorism forces worry about things that could take down an airplane (fuselage penetrating explosives) or allow a plane to be highjacked and used for terrorism. Fires are neither.	[ "Some incidents have been the result of travelers carrying either weapons or items that could be used as weapons on board aircraft so that they can hijack the plane. Travelers are screened by metal detectors and/or millimeter wave scanners. Explosive detection machines used include X-ray machines and explosives tra...
Why does a small crack make a "strong" material so much weaker?	This happens because [stress concentration](_URL_0_) occurs around the crack. Even though the average stress throughout the material sample is only slightly higher, the localized stresses at the end(s) of the crack are much higher. The maximum stress around a crack is proportional to (a/b)^(1/2), where a is the len...	[ "In a low yield strength material, crack tip can be blunted easily and larger crack tip radius is formed. Thus, in a given metal glass, toughness in a low-strength metal is usually higher than higher-strength metals because less plasticity is available for toughening. Therefore, some safety-critical structural part...
How do we define irrational exponents?	* _URL_0_ You can also use the sub search function: * _URL_1_	[ "Since any irrational number can be expressed as the limit of a sequence of rational numbers, exponentiation of a positive real number \"b\" with an arbitrary real exponent \"x\" can be defined by continuity with the rule\n", "By a similar argument, any constant created by concatenating \"0.\" with all primes in ...
Is the ANY evidence at all of Native Americans travelling to Europe before Columbus?	There's always room for discussion, but perhaps the section [Travel and contact across the Atlantic before Columbus](_URL_0_) in our FAQ will answer your inquiry.	[ "Even in Columbus' time there was much speculation that other Europeans had made the trip in ancient or contemporary times; Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo y Valdés records accounts of these in his \"General y natural historia de las Indias\" of 1526, which includes biographical information on Columbus. Aboriginal firs...
what are the reasons behind the various sizes of books?	It depends on who the book is targeted at. Harry Potter for example, wide pages, big letters, lots of spacing, easy for a child to read. Then Game of Thrones, short pages, smaller font, closely spaced. Made to be read by adults. Also, the length of the book. HP books are wide but not a lot of pages. GoT has a lot of pa...	[ "The size of a book is generally measured by the height against the width of a leaf, or sometimes the height and width of its cover. A series of terms is commonly used by libraries and publishers for the general sizes of modern books, ranging from \"folio\" (the largest), to \"quarto\" (smaller) and \"octavo\" (sti...
how do cereal makers decide which vitamins and minerals to fortify a certain cereal with?	The reason I'm asking is because I was looking at the back of random cereal boxes at the store, and thought it was weird how much of a huge spectrum of vitamins and minerals there are. They have very different choices in different cereals, even by the same makers! It even just varies greatly with kid cereals from the...	[ "Breakfast cereals therefore often are fortified with minerals and vitamins and these additives may be regulated. For example, if breakfast cereal in Canada is fortified, they must contain the following specific amounts per 100 grams of cereal: Thiamine (2.0 mg), Niacin (4.8 mg), Vitamin B6 (0.6 mg), Folic Acid (0....
How the South and North of Italy in 1861 were? Some say if it weren't for the south of Italy, the north would be still third world today. How much is it true?	The "Southern Question" is indeed one of the longstanding dilemmas of Italian Economic History. Research into this topic is not as florid as you might initially think: for much of Italy's unitary history the "Southern Question" was perceived as a principally political topic, and it's only in last ten or so years that ...	[ "Under Augustus, the peoples of today's Aosta Valley and of the western and northern Alps were subjugated (so the western border of Roman Italy was moved to the Varus river), and the Italian eastern border was brought to the Arsia in Istria. Lastly, in the late 3rd century, Italy came to include the island of Sicil...
Why would space planes not be a suitable method of interplanetary travel in comparison to typical rocket designs?	Our main problem in space exploration is the cost of launching into orbit. It's in the order of several thousand US$ per kg. So, first of all, consider how much fuel you need to achieve orbit. [Here's a picture of a Space Shuttle on the launch pad](_URL_0_). Note how the huge fuel tank is larger than the spaceplane it...	[ "The general approach to how space travel is engineered is highly accurate; in particular, the design of the ships was based on actual engineering considerations rather than attempts to look aesthetically \"futuristic\". Many other science-fiction films give spacecraft an aerodynamic shape, which is superfluous in ...
John Adams wrote that the US constitution was, "made for a moral and religious people," and that it is, "wholly inadequate to the government of any other." What elements of the constitution did he believe were suited for a religious society but not an irreligious one?	It is interesting how many sites quote these particular lines, but provide no context, or even bother to cite the origin. Most of them do so with the obvious intent of saying that the US is a religious country, and has to be a religious country because John Adams said it had to be religious country. It's useful to look...	[ "Historians have frequently interpreted Federalist No. 10 to imply that the Founding Fathers of the United States intended the government to be nonpartisan. James Madison defined a faction as \"a number of citizens, whether amounting to a minority or majority of the whole, who are united and actuated by some common...
Was there ever a black American mafia as structured as the Italian and Irish?	Absolutely, in many major (and minor) American cities, there were wings of what we would call the "Black Mafia." Typically unrelated but very powerful crime syndicates in the African-American parts of town. Phildelphia, Chicago, New York and Detroit each had their own families, syndicates, brothels, and gangs. I'll out...	[ "As Italian immigration grew in the early 20th century many joined ethnic gangs, including Al Capone, who got his start in crime with the Five Points Gang. The Mafia (also known as \"Cosa Nostra\") first developed in the mid-19th century in Sicily and spread to the East Coast of the United States during the late 19...
What did the Egyptian and Syrian governments believe about Israel's nuclear weapons capabilities in the run up to the Yom Kippur War?	Oh, this is such a good question, I can't believe I let it languish for 25 days! Sorry for not procrastinating on my other work earlier so I could answer this; I mean that sincerely, I love this question :). From the first, I think it's important to mention that Egypt at the very least was aware that Israel had nuclea...	[ "Israel responded to the Arab Yom Kippur War attack on 6 October 1973 by assembling 13 nuclear weapons in a tunnel under the Negev desert when Syrian tanks were sweeping in across the Golan Heights. On 8 October 1973, Israeli Prime Minister Mrs Golda Meir authorized Defense Minister Moshe Dayan to activate the 13 I...
About innovations and disruptions in the past 100 years I feel that there was a true peak of innovations in the early 20th century (1900- 1930). Is there any proof in academic literature of this as well as explanations why there have been so many innovations during that time? Or am I just biased?	The innovations pioneered around that period were arguably more broadly and popularly impactful than other periods, but that doesn't mean they were more numerous. The changes in that era were profound - a way of life that had continued fairly unchanged for many centuries was fundamentally altered in developed nations...	[ "Until the 1980s, it was universally believed by academic historians that technological innovation was the heart of the Industrial Revolution and the key enabling technology was the invention and improvement of the steam engine. However, recent research into the Marketing Era has challenged the traditional, supply-...
How do companies like Jack Daniels that make a product that needs to be aged for years predict how much product they will need in the future?	Whiskey sells on such a large scale, and the market changes so little. A large chunk of big name liquors get sold directly to bars, whose annual usage has very distinct trends. This cuts a huge chunk of unknown out of their sales figures. And while more and more people are turning 21, people in their early 20s are not ...	[ "To accurately determine the success of a new product it is important to understand the detriment its sales are having to older products in a company’s line up. The danger is the new products are taking from old products made by the business instead of increasing market share by taking consumers from competing prod...
How far can a raindrop travel horizontally begore hitting the ground?	I don't see anything besides wind speeds and the altitude of the cloud coming into play. Best bet would probably be to look up the most windy hurricane and find out how far away from the edge of its clouds people felt the rain.	[ "In \"splash erosion\", the impact of a falling raindrop creates a small crater in the soil, ejecting soil particles. The distance these soil particles travel can be as much as 0.6 m (two feet) vertically and 1.5 m (five feet) horizontally on level ground.\n", "In \"splash erosion\", the impact of a falling raind...
What would an observer in the farthest galaxy see?	The universe is believed to be infinite and isotropic. Thus there is no "leading edge" of the big bang. The big bang occurred simultaneously at every point in the universe, and was an expansion of space, not an explosion in space. Given all that, someone at the farthest galaxy that we can see would see the same t...	[ "VISTA can also stare far beyond our galaxy. In the example on the left (below the image of the Orion Nebula) the telescope took a family photograph of a cluster of galaxies in the constellation of Fornax (the Chemical Furnace). The wide field allows many galaxies to be captured in a single image including the stri...
Why is mercury-vapor used instead of non-harmful noble gases in lamps?	Short answer: mercury just happens to have atomic characteristics that make it useful for producing visible light at high efficiency, and it is superior to other elements to the point that we use it despite the possible dangers. More details: in a [gas discharge lamp](_URL_2_), you pass electrical current th...	[ "In the EU the use of low efficiency mercury vapor lamps for lighting purposes was banned in 2015. It does not affect the use of mercury in compact fluorescent lamp, nor the use of mercury lamps for purposes other than lighting. \n", "Mercury lamps are the most common source of UV radiation due to their high effi...
Exactly where was FDR when he found out about Pearl Harbor?	At about 2pm ET the President was in the Yellow Oval Room on the second floor of the White House with friend and aide Harry Hopkins when Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox called and first told him if the reports from Pearl. He was called again a few minutes later by Admiral Stark the Chief of Naval Operations to confirm...	[ "In 1982 Stinnett read \"At Dawn We Slept, The Untold Story Of Pearl Harbor\" by World War II veteran and historian Professor Gordon Prange. Stinnett went to Pearl Harbor to investigate and write a news story. His research continued for 17 years and culminated in \"Day of Deceit\", which challenges the orthodox his...
What happens if I get hit by a gamma ray?	You are getting hit by gamma rays all the time.	[ "A gamma-ray burst is an extremely luminous event flash of gamma rays that occurs as the result of an explosion, and is thought to be associated with the formation of a black hole. The burst itself typically only lasts for a few seconds, but gamma-ray bursts frequently produce an \"afterglow\" at longer wavelengths...
Say I am an author around the 1850's in the USA, and I just wrote a book, and I want it published. How would I go about that? Were there any distinguished publishing companies? Do I just make a lot of copies and distribute them in book stores?	There was a fairly flourishing US publishing industry by the 1850s. For example, Melville published with Harper and Brothers (which is is extant as HarperCollins), Poe with Putnam (also still extant as an imprint of Penguin), Hawthorne and Thoreau with Ticknor and Fields, Emerson with Philips, Samson. Source: William ...	[ "The American Book Company (ABC) was an educational book publisher in the United States that specialized in elementary school, secondary school and collegiate-level textbooks. It is best known for publishing the McGuffey Readers, which sold 120 million copies between 1836 and 1960.\n", "Door-to-door book peddlers...
Do bacteria exhibit a noticeable daily cycle in how they act and react?	Yes even bacteria can exhibit [circadian rhythms](_URL_0_) [Here](_URL_1_) is an example that is especially intriguing. The Viking Mars lander of 1976 tested labeled elements on Mars soils samples. They found the soil "consumed" the elements and detection of exactly the same (labeled) elements in the exhaust gas...	[ "Most bacteria do not go through a well-defined cell cycle but instead continuously copy their DNA; during rapid growth, this can result in the concurrent occurrence of multiple rounds of replication. In \"E. coli\", the best-characterized bacteria, DNA replication is regulated through several mechanisms, including...
how can dust damage electrical components?	[dust corrosion](_URL_0_) Dust contains all kinds of different elements, including some salts. The accumulation of these minerals over time paired with humidity, creates a salty solution, which then does what a salty solution does and eats into the material. I knew about this immediately because I work with structu...	[ "Dust emitted from processing equipment that may not contain typical soil components is also considered fugitive dust. In this context, fugitive dust is dust that has \"escaped\" during any mechanical process and entered the atmosphere. Fugitive dust emissions within a structure can not only cause respiratory probl...
At what point would an outside observer have begun to make a distinction between Judaism and Christianity?	Not to put off any further answers or follow-up questions, but [this healthy discussion](_URL_0_) may be of help to you.	[ "For centuries, the traditional understanding has been that Judaism came before Christianity and that Christianity separated from Judaism some time after the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE. Starting in the latter half of the 20th century, some scholars have begun to argue that the historical picture is q...
asian men wearing a western suit is acceptable, but why is it weird for a white guy to wear a kimono?	Because you are more used to seeing an Asian guy wearing a suit then a white guy wearing a kimono.	[ "In the modern era, the principal distinctions between men's kimono are in the fabric. The typical men's kimono is a subdued, dark color; black, dark blues, greens, and browns are common. Fabrics are usually matte. Some have a subtle pattern, and textured fabrics are common in more casual kimono. More casual kimono...
Why did the Dutch golden age end?	It's no really a case of decline but more a case of being surpassed in economic growth. This had a number of reasons: - Mercantilism/Colbertisme (other country's protecting their own trade) Example: Act of Navigation (1651) Banned foreign ships from trading in English ports. - high wages/ low productivity - Cos...	[ "The Dutch Golden Age ( ) was a period in the history of the Netherlands, roughly spanning the 17th century, in which Dutch trade, science, military, and art were among the most acclaimed in the world. The first section is characterized by the Eighty Years' War, which ended in 1648. The Golden Age continued in peac...
why do avoiding left hand turns save gas?	If you have thousands of trucks, avoiding the time spent waiting to make left turns across traffic can add up, especially if your planning routes with dozens of stupid. In your personal life, where you only have two or three destinations, your never notice the difference or even travel further.	[ "In Singapore, it is illegal to turn left (into the nearest lane, due to the left-hand driving) during a red light. This rule, however, does not apply if a \"Left Turn on Red\" sign is present at the junction, allowing left turning motorists to turn left, provided they stop before the stop line and give way to pede...
how likely is it to survive a headshot?	There are notable cases of people surviving a bullet that actually enters the skull and penetrates the brain. Malala Yousafzai, Gabrielle Giffords, and although it's not a bullet, you have to remember Phineas Gage, who survive a steel bar through the head. So yes, it's survivable, although the degree of deficits you ha...	[ "BULLET::::- Medic - Takes the damage from the other headcase heads onto itself until its reached near 0 hit points, this effect grows more efficient with later medic type heads(taking more damage quickly while sustaining slower damage to self)\n", "BULLET::::- On June 7, 2012, 16-year-old Yasser Lopez made natio...
How dangerous was it for World Leaders to meet during WW1 & 2?	So the most spectacular example of this going terribly comes in June of 1916. Field Marshall the Lord Kitchener of Khartoum, who was serving as Secretary State for War was traveling to Russia in order to participate in negotiations and planning in person with the distressed Czar's government. He planned to take a RN c...	[ "In 1914, a political assassination in Sarajevo set off a chain of events that led to the outbreak of World War I. As more and more young men were sent down into the trenches, influential voices in the United States and Britain began calling for the establishment of a permanent international body to maintain peace ...
how many appliances can i plug into a single socket (using series of extension chords) without 'something going wrong'?	> I have a single socket in my room, and I use a series of extension chords to run a few ~~high~~low-power appliances such as a laptop, monitor, PS3, lampshades, speakers, LEDs etc. Fixed that for you Everything you listed consumes 200W or less. The laptop is probably around 30W while the monitors may be closer to 5...	[ "Plug adaptors permit two or more plugs to share one socket-outlet, or allow the use of a plug of different type. There are several common types, including double- and triple-socket blocks, shaver adaptors, and multi-socket strips. Adaptors which allow the use of non-BS 1363 plugs, or more than two BS 1363 plugs, m...
why is it that when driving in cruise control, going uphill feels like the car is going much faster when in reality it’s maintaining speed?	When the car is in cruise control it is monitoring and attempting, as you said, to maintain the speed it was set to. When you go up hill the car faces more resistance as it has to work against gravity more, so when in cruise control this causes the car to slow down, the car notices this and then attempts to accelerate,...	[ "A primitive way to implement cruise control is simply to lock the throttle position when the driver engages cruise control. However, if the cruise control is engaged on a stretch of flat road, then the car will travel slower going uphill and faster when going downhill. This type of controller is called an \"open-l...
Why is Carbon and Water so fundamentally necessary for life? Couldn't an extraterrestrial lifeform be based on, let's say, silicium?	Water is important because it is a potent solvent and is liquid in a temperature range that is conducive to organic chemical reactions. Carbon is important because it is fairly inert once in molecules so you can form many long complex molecules off the same more or less inert back bone. this has to do with the electro...	[ "In addition to carbon compounds, all currently known terrestrial life also requires water as a solvent. This has led to discussions about whether water is the only liquid capable of filling that role. The idea that an extraterrestrial life-form might be based on a solvent other than water has been taken seriously ...
When the slaves (in America) were set free, did they take the name of their master?	According to Eric Arnesen in The Black Worker: Race, Labor, and Civil Rights since Emancipation and Richard Valelly in The Two Reconstructions: the Struggle for Black Enfranchisement, slaves so despised their masters that one of the first things they did as freemen was change given names. Instead, they adopted name...	[ "Freeing a slave was called \"manumissio\", which literally means \"sending out from the hand\". The freeing of the slave was a public ceremony, performed before some sort of public official, usually a judge. The owner touched the slave on the head with a staff and he was free to go. Simpler methods were sometimes ...
why do car batteries only need to be charged when fully dead?	They are actually charged every time you drive. This happens with a machine called an alternator. When your car engine is running, it also turns a little electrical generator that helps keep the car battery charged.	[ "Motor vehicles, such as boats, RVs, ATVs, motorcycles, cars, trucks, etc have used lead–acid batteries. These batteries employ a sulfuric acid electrolyte and can generally be charged and discharged without exhibiting memory effect, though sulfation (a chemical reaction in the battery which deposits a layer of sul...
is there truly any way to get over non-seasonal allergies?	Immunotherapy is the process of getting micro doses of what causes allergies in the form of shots. Slowly over time your body builds up antibodies and you no longer have reactions to the allergens. At the clinic near me the process takes about 3 years.	[ "Recent research has suggested that humans might develop allergies as a defense to fight off parasites. According to Yale University Immunologist Dr Ruslan Medzhitov, protease allergens cleave the same sensor proteins that evolved to detect proteases produced by the parasitic worms. Additionally, a new report on se...

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