Split (2)

train · 226k rows

question stringlengths 3 301	answer stringlengths 9 26.1k	context list
why do we sometimes get the urge to do violent things to cute things?	I think it's probably along the same lines of why we think about jumping off a cliff when we get too close to the edge. We are analyzing outcomes and consequences. It's a totally normal thing to do, it likely keeps us from actually doing these things because we examine the situation and outcomes instead of acting them ...	[ "Cute aggression is superficially aggressive behaviour caused by seeing something cute, such as a human baby or young animal. People experiencing cute aggression may grit their teeth, clench their fists, or feel the urge to pinch and squeeze something they consider cute, while not actually causing or intending to c...
Most of the wild west shows that aired in the '50's and '60's always shows everyone drinking whiskey all the time. How accurate is that portrayal?	This is a difficult question to answer because there were so many different people coming to and living in the West in the nineteenth century - and it was in itself an enormous place with "many Wests" as historians of the period and place like to say. Even the clichéd "Wild West" with a frontier town surrounded by open...	[ "The peak year for television Westerns was 1959, with 26 such shows airing during primetime. At least six of them were connected in some extent to Wyatt Earp: \"The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp\", \"Bat Masterson\", \"Tombstone Territory\", \"Broken Arrow\", \"Johnny Ringo\", and \"Gunsmoke\". Increasing costs of ...
why does it sometimes look like the numbers on my alarm clock are jumping up and down?	The numbers on a digital clock look like they're constant, but they're actually turning on and off very fast. In actuality, most digital clocks only display one "segment" of the number at a time. In a number like 8, which consists of 7 segments, the display rotates through lighting up each segment individually. If your...	[ "An alarm clock/radio featuring a light function. The light is a green zig-zag shaped tube running across the top of the clock. The alarm function can be set to radio or one of the pre-set alarm noises. The noises always begin with a rocket blast-off noise as someone says \"3...2...1... .\" The alarms available are...
splitting infinitives???	An infinitive is just the phrase "to verb". A split infinitive is when you put an adverb in between the parts of an infinitive. So in your example, the word "never" is in the middle of the infinitive "to grow up", so it's a split infinitive. Having a split infinitive doesn't mean the sentence doesn't change meanin...	[ "In the English language, a split infinitive or cleft infinitive is a grammatical construction in which a word or phrase comes between the \"to\" and the bare infinitive of the \"to\" form of the infinitive verb. Usually an adverb or adverbial phrase comes between them.\n", "It was not until the very end of the 1...
Brazil is widely known to be the last country in the Americas to abolish slavery. Why did it last so long in Brazil and what pressures caused it to finally end?	I'm Brazilian so I think I might help, though I'm a lawyer, not a historian. This is a topic that is really common knowledge in Brazil so I hope it's alright by the mods. One of the reasons Brazil took very long to abolish slavery was because its economy was heavily reliant on the production of sugar, coffee, tobacco ...	[ "In 1888 Brazil became the last country in the Americas to abolish slavery completely, although in 1871 it had ensured that eventual result with the gradualist method of freeing in the womb. See Abolition of slavery timeline for other dates.\n", "Brazil was the last country in the Western world to abolish slavery...
why does a body pillow feel between my legs make sleeping more comfortable?	My guess would be that it raises your leg which aligns your spine and reduces lower back tension.	[ "A pillow is a support of the body at rest for comfort, therapy, or decoration. Pillows are used by many species, including humans. Some types of pillows include throw pillows and decorative pillows. Pillows that aid sleeping are a form of bedding that supports the head and neck. Other types of pillows are designed...
what is happening at a biological level when someone mentions tequila and you can instantly taste it?	Not an expert, just a guy who reads a lot of science-y stuff. But it's been four hours and you don't seem to have any other responses. I've read that memory recall in our brains doesn't work like a computer. A computer creates some kind of physical structure to store information, then comes back and examines that stru...	[ "Alcohol is classified as a sedative hypnotic drug. Alcohol produces a sedative effect by acting on receptors of the inhibitory neurotransmitter GABA. GABA receptors contain a binding site for the chemical, GABA, a chloride ion channel, and an additional binding site for alcohol molecules.\n", "BULLET::::- Sheb W...
Were the United States of America set up for such power and success before the revolution or was their ascent to the top of the global hierarchy only possible because of what happened after the Revolution or the Revolution itself?	I work on the history of Anglo-American relations and this question (or at least a variation on it) interests me greatly. At what point was the United States' rise to power perceived to be inevitable? Firstly, it all depends on what you mean by "set up". On the one hand, you could argue that America's ability to compe...	[ "According to Panitch and Gindin, the institutional foundations for American-led global capitalism were laid during the Great Depression of the 1930s when the Roosevelt administration strengthened the U.S. Federal Reserve and the U.S. Treasury while establishing a wide range of economic and financial regulatory age...
Can someone explain "Bleeding Kansas"?	My only qualifications to explain this is I'm from Kansas and had to study this in history classes. Also, I brushed up using the wikipedia page _URL_0_ The Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 gave Kansans "popular sovereignty" which basically put up the issue of whether a state would be a "free-state" (no slaves) or a "slave-...	[ "The \"Bleeding Kansas\" episode has been dramatically rendered in countless works of American popular culture, including literature, theater, film, and television. Its many depictions and mentions include:\n", "Bleeding Kansas was demonstrative of the gravity of the era's most pressing social issues, from the ma...
how did humans create perfectly flat objects prior to the invention of advanced tools/machinery?	There are no perfectly flat objects being made today. Even the mirrors on giant telescopes have fluctuations on the surface. If one wanted to make a fairly flat stone surface with only stone tools available one could use water in a bucket and grind a disk (or whatever) so that the edges and surface are even with th...	[ "Forerunners of machine tools included bow drills and potter's wheels, which had existed in ancient Egypt prior to 2500 BC, and lathes, known to have existed in multiple regions of Europe since at least 1000 to 500 BC. But it was not until the later Middle Ages and the Age of Enlightenment that the modern concept o...
Are there valuable or highly useful resources which could potentially be harvested from mars?	Mars has the same elements Earth does. You could build a gold mine or a titanium mine or whatever. Actually moving it from Mars to Earth would be absurdly expensive and isn't going to happen without something making space travel much, much cheaper. But settlers would use it, since getting it from Earth would be even mo...	[ "Zubrin, in his 1996 book (revised 2011) \"The Case for Mars\", acknowledges any Martian colony will be partially Earth-dependent for centuries. However, Zubrin suggests Mars may be profitable for two reasons. First, it may contain concentrated supplies of metals equal to or of greater value than silver, which have...
american tv shows compared to the rest of the world.	The amount of American hate / bashing on Reddit is amazing.	[ "Over the course of its run, the series received widespread critical acclaim, with several publications naming it the best show on television. The American Film Institute listed \"The Americans\" as one of the top ten television series of 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016 and 2018.\n", "As a whole, the television networks t...
why are some sports teams historically more successful (ny yankees) than others (cleveland browns)?	It's a vicious circle. Teams that do well earn more money (because they have more fans, have higher attendance, sell more merchandise) and have higher prestige, so they can attract better talent.	[ "The New York Yankees are noted for having won more titles than any other US major professional sports franchise. The Yankees' chief rivals, the Boston Red Sox, also enjoy a huge following in Boston and throughout New England. The Philadelphia Phillies of the National League are the oldest continuous, one-name, one...
how can ebay sellers send something like 1$ phone cases with free delivery to the other side of the planet, when if i send a small letter to my neighbor it will cost 3$? do they still make profit?	Postal systems in other countries can pay a LOT less than what us westerners pay, ditto manufacturers. The companies that are selling those phone cases pay postage out of the price they receive for their merchandise, and just include it in their markup. So that three dollar phone case consists of 30 cents for postage (...	[ "In 2010, the third Free Shipping Day began at 12 a.m. EST on Friday, Dec. 17, and ended at 12 a.m. EST, Dec. 18. More than 1,700 merchants from all 50 states participated and the official site saw 317,000 unique visitors. Online shoppers spent $942 million to make Free Shipping Day the third highest spending day o...
why does basically no one speak latin anymore even though it is used in many popular countries?	It is a very slow language with very complex grammar that isn't very intuitive. The sheer amount of declensions, verb tenses, gender words, and verb forms are staggering, and makes for a very cumbersome, formal language. The trend for languages is to become less formal over time, which is probably one of the major re...	[ "Latin, French and English not only served or still serve as \"linguae francae\" (cf. below), but also influenced the vernacular/national languages due to their high prestige. Due to this prestige, there are not only “necessity loans”, but also “luxury loans” and pseudo-loans. Many loans from these three languages ...
What is the story behind Australia’s government shutdown in 1975 and subsequent elections?	Australia has two Houses of Parliament: the House of Representatives, with members elected by locality, which originates legislation. The other is the Senate, with each state having an equal quota of Senators, which 'reviews' legislation and has to approve it. This includes approving the Budget to ensure 'supply' (of m...	[ "The by-election occurred in the final days of the 1975 Australian constitutional crisis, which culminated with the dismissal of Prime Minister Gough Whitlam (an unpopular figure in Western Australia) on 11 November. Earlier in the year, there had also been political turmoil at state level, with the National Countr...
If the ISS was left abandoned now, will it still circle the planet in say a thousand years?	No, without monitoring and adjustment its orbit would decay and it would eventually re-enter the atmosphere. > Even though the space station orbits in what most people on Earth would consider to be the “vacuum of space,” there still are enough atmospheric molecules that contact the surfaces of its large solar array ...	[ "Humanity has exhausted their natural resources, and seven remote outposts are established in distant space to extract and synthesize useful materials from their neighboring planets, to send back to Earth. The crews of the space stations must survive independently off Earth for several decades. First Station 7 lose...
How does a car lose horsepower from the engine to the wheels?	Mechanical drag, and inefficiency with the driveline. Translating the rotational force produced by the engine and both gearing it down, and changing the direction of that force all consumes some of the engine's original power output.	[ "The size of the engine gave the car a centre of gravity that was not just rearward but higher than other cars, due to the height of the upper crankshaft above the ground and the need to have the entire engine raised slightly to make room for the lower set of exhausts which left the engine from underneath the car.\...
where does the earth (or any other planet) find the energy to continue spinning on itself forever?	Energy isn't required to continue spinning, or continue any sort of motion in fact. One of the laws of physics is that objects in motion stay in motion unless acted upon by something else. Since nothing is really stopping the earth from spinning, it spins.	[ "BULLET::::- Once spun up, objects in the vacuum of space—stars, black holes, planets, moons, spin-stabilized satellites, etc.—dissipate energy very slowly, allowing them to spin for long periods. Tides on Earth are dissipating the gravitational energy of the Moon/Earth system at an average rate of about 3.75 teraw...
if animals can distinguish us from our smells, how do they not get confused by the smells of our soaps/colognes/deodorants/etc?	Suppose I showed you an apple. It's red, it's shiny, it has an easily recognizable shape, and I've even taken the time to write "APPLE" across it in permanent marker. Now, further suppose that after showing you the apple, I went into another room and dipped it in wood varnish. This coating wouldn't be enough to obscur...	[ "Animals recognise a wide variety of chemicals using their senses of taste and smell. The nematode \"Caenorhabditis elegans\" has only 14 types of chemosensory neuron, yet is able to respond to dozens of chemicals because each neuron detects several stimuli. More than 40 highly divergent transmembrane proteins that...
Is it possible to find an effective infinity for all intents and purposes?	Assuming humanity ends at some point, then we can look at the collection of all numbers practically used and this will be a finite set, so there is some number bigger than all of these. Paradoxically, though, if we were to use this number as an "essential infinity", then it would have a practical use and therefore b...	[ "This is often called potential infinity; however, there are two ideas mixed up with this. One is that it is always possible to find a number of things that surpasses any given number, even if there are not actually such things. The other is that we may quantify over infinite sets without restriction. For example, ...
Is it true that concussions and even subconcussive impacts kill neurons?	You've probably gotten a lot of mixed info because there is a lot of mixed info out there. [This paper](_URL_0_) would be a good read if you want a detailed and relatively recent description of what we currently understand about concussions. But, in brief, after a (mild) concussion, the changes in brain function are...	[ "Included in the cascade of events unleashed in the brain by concussion is impaired neurotransmission, loss of regulation of ions, deregulation of energy use and cellular metabolism, and a reduction in cerebral blood flow. Excitatory neurotransmitters, chemicals such as glutamate that serve to stimulate nerve cells...
why do overweight people have higher basal metabolic rates than lean people?	> Most BMR calculators, even on reliable websites, make no distinction between muscle and fat Yes, this is why the calculation is an estimate and not 100% accurate. A bodybuilder is in a very different place metabolically than an obese person, and a simple calculation isn't going to reveal all. It can however be use...	[ "BULLET::::- There is no evidence that obesity is related to slower resting metabolism. Resting metabolic rate does not vary much between people. Weight gain and loss are directly attributable to diet and activity. Overweight people tend to underestimate the amount of food they eat, and underweight people tend to o...
Why is a fast reentry from space back to earth a better option than a slow decent?	Well, two issues, spacecraft in orbit are already moving at orbital speed, which is 7.8 KPS for LEO, and varies depending on the orbit. So, that speed has to be scrubbed in order for the spacecraft to intersect the surface at nearly zero velocity, otherwise, its a crash. The most efficient way to scrub that speed is by...	[ "Any spaceflight that returns to the surface, including sub-orbital ones, will undergo atmospheric reentry. The speed at the start of the reentry is basically the maximum speed of the flight. The aerodynamic heating caused will vary accordingly: it is much less for a flight with a maximum speed of only 1 km/s than ...
Zika virus has been known about for 70 years, why is it only now a big issues? Has it always caused microcephaly, or is this new?	We don't know. Could be a recent mutation in ZV. Could be that there's always been a link to microcephaly, but that ZV didn't infect enough people for anyone to notice — there is some debate as to whether the sheer number of people infected with ZV is increased in the last few years. (Which could be due to ZV mutati...	[ "The Zika virus was first linked with newborn microcephaly during the Brazil Zika virus outbreak. In 2015, there were 2,782 suspected cases of microcephaly compared with 147 in 2014 and 167 in 2013. Confirmation of many of the recent cases is pending, and it is difficult to estimate how many cases went unreported b...
why is it so hard to get into medical school when there is so obviously a scarcity of doctors?	Being a doctor is hard. They don't want a bunch of sub par doctors	[ "Becoming a physician requires either several years of training beyond undergraduate education, or a professional undergraduate degree with a duration longer than that of a typical undergraduate degree. Consequently, physician supply is affected by the number of students eligible for medical training. Students that...
losing color perception when going from dark to light areas	At a basic level, your eyes use two different types of cells to see: cones and rods. You use cones primarily when you are in well lit areas. You use rods primarily when you are in poorly lit areas. Think of rods as what you use for 'night-vision'. However, only cones really see color (they're 3 types of cones, a red, ...	[ "This can be seen when the eyes are closed and looking at the back of the eyelids. In a bright room, a dark red can be seen, owing to a small amount of light penetrating the eyelids and taking on the color of the blood it has passed through. In a dark room, blackness can be seen or the object can be more colourful....
Did the Romans practice Syncretism with Judaism and Christianity?	There's quite a lot of Jewish and Christian influence in the so-called 'Greek Magical Papyri' - a modern collection of pagan magical spellbooks from Roman Egypt (mostly later than the 3rd century AD). These texts take inspiration from lots of different religious cultures - mostly Greek and Egyptian, but also Mesopotami...	[ "Romans were familiar with the concept of syncretism because from their earliest times they had experienced it with, among others, the Greeks. The Romans incorporated the originally Greek Apollo and Hercules into their religion. They did not look at the religious aspects that they adopted from other cultures to be ...
What is the evolutionary advantage of stress?	I'm a stress physiologist. We (stress researchers) take it as a given that in the short term, the stress response is helpful. (The stress response = sharp elevation of stress hormones - epinephrine, cortisol, and a few others - during a stressful event.) Those hormones redirect energy toward dealing with a short-term...	[ "Biotic stress is stress that occurs as a result of damage done to an organism by other living organisms, such as bacteria, viruses, fungi, parasites, beneficial and harmful insects, weeds, and cultivated or native plants. It is different from abiotic stress, which is the negative impact of non-living factors on th...
What do I have here?	Not a car battery, it's an ignition coil from a Ford model T (missing the wooden cover panel). Every model T has four of these - one per spark plug. They take the low-voltage electricity generated by the flywheel magneto and convert it into the high voltage needed to jump the gap in the spark plug and achieve combustio...	[ "In the United States, the term is frequently used to refer to a non-freestanding cabinet or tray for holding small personal items such as watches, cuff links, keys, or a cell phone. In this sense, it is a men's jewelry box.\n", "Storables is a specialty retail chain that carries a variety of products aimed at he...
What happens to liquids in a horizontal centrifuge?	I don't really know how milk centrifuges work or what your construction looks like, so I have no idea if it will work. I could however imagine a whole lot of things that could go wrong when it comes to a self built device that combines a fast spinning lathe, a somewhat large container and liquid. No offense, but do you...	[ "The inertial centrifugal force due to the bulk rotation of the liquid results in the development of an outward pressure gradient within the liquid, where the pressure is higher along the rim than in the middle. This manifests itself as the formation of a concave liquid-air interface. This pressure gradient provide...
Some of the diseases humans catch from animals have very serious symptoms. Do these symptoms present themselves in the animals too?	Pathogens are actually not very interested in giving their host a hard time. Why? The more dangerous it acts, the stronger and quicker the host's (or its immune system's) reaction is, or worst when killing the host the pathogen can't benefit in the long term. Evolutionarily speaking it is a more favorable trait for a p...	[ "Susceptible animals include cattle, water buffalo, sheep, goats, pigs, antelope, deer, and bison. It has also been known to infect hedgehogs and elephants; llamas and alpacas may develop mild symptoms, but are resistant to the disease and do not pass it on to others of the same species. In laboratory experiments, ...
why does chewing (gum) increase concentration/productivity?	The action of chewing involves the Temporalis muscle and the Masseter muscle. These cause blood to flow to your brain as you chew, bringing in more oxygen, which causes increased concentration.	[ "A review about the cognitive advantages of chewing gum by Onyper et al. (2011) found strong evidence of improvement for the following cognitive domains: working memory, episodic memory and speed of perception. However the improvements were only evident when chewing took place prior to cognitive testing. The precis...
The CIA is widely known to have used LSD and other drugs in experimental and research programmes on its own citizens (MK Ultra, Midnight Climax etc). Is there any evidence of them using these techniques in the field or on citizens of other countries?	To get this out of the way - unfortunately nearly all of the documentation concerning the US Government's research into the weaponization of pharmaceuticals was destroyed in 1973 when the various programs were officially shut down. What we now know about these programs comes from the report and declassified documents ...	[ "The CIA also created The Society for the Investigation of Human Ecology, which was a CIA funding front which provided grants to social scientists and medical researchers investigating questions of interest related to the MKULTRA program. Between 1960 and 1963, the CIA gave $856,782 worth of grants to different org...
Were Australian Aborigines in contact with the rest of the world before the arrival of European explorers?	Yes, to a limited extent. Traders from Macassar in Sulawesi are known to have visited the north west coast in praus (small sailing boats) in search of trepang (sea cucumbers, an Asian delicacy which was in demand in China). The northernmost parts of the Australian coast are only about 90 miles south of the southernmost...	[ "According to a 2013 German study by a team of researchers on Indigenous Australian DNA genes reveal that a wave of migrants from India arrived in Australia about 4,230 years ago. It shows that the Indian migrants settled in Australia before Captain James Cook's first recorded contact with the Australian coastline....
Is a bird's singing learned, is it genetically determined or a mix?	of course it's a mixture, birds learn their songs from their parents and other conspecifics - if you isolate chicks and start a new bird culture, their songs will start off very different from the wild type song; but after a few generations, the songs will have evolved back towards the wild type. so they aren't born wi...	[ "BULLET::::- A marsh wren can learn to sing over 150 bird songs, while the white-crowned sparrow can only learn a single song. Thus, the number of songs that can be sung varies between species of birds, due to relative limitations in their cognitive processing abilities.\n", "BULLET::::- As the above bullet point...
if water is always returned via the water cycle back to the earth, why are people getting concerned with "running out" of water?	Because that water is mixed up with gross stuff- the totality of H2O on the planet is unchanged, but the amount of fresh water is rapidly diminishing from pollution, irrigation, and divertment. The natural processes that scrub and clean water have been disrupted, leading to less and less usable water.	[ "Fresh water is a renewable and variable, but finite natural resource. Fresh water can only be replenished through the process of the water cycle,in which water from seas, lakes, forests, land, rivers, and reservoirs evaporates, forms clouds, and returns as precipitation. Locally, however, if more fresh water is co...
why does sleeping regenerate/refresh/recharge is, while laying in bed awake without moving us does not?	Because laying in bed awake is generally exactly the same as standing next to the bed awake, or sitting on the bus awake, or watching tv awake. Your brain needs you to actually be unconscious so it can have a moment of low activity to get its housecleaning done. It just can't do what it needs to do while you're still c...	[ "The human organism physically restores itself during sleep, healing itself and removing metabolic wastes which build up during periods of activity. This restoration takes place mostly during slow-wave sleep, during which body temperature, heart rate, and brain oxygen consumption decrease. The brain, especially, re...
Is there anything hindering the development of super long-lasting batteries?	Battery life has improved quite a lot. Ten years ago, you'd be happy if your laptop lasted two hours, now the best easily last six hours on a battery of similar volume. When it comes to phones, it seems there hasn't been much improvement, but that's because mobile phones have gone from relatively simple devices to m...	[ "All rechargeable batteries have a finite lifespan and will slowly lose storage capacity as they age due to secondary chemical reactions within the battery whether it is used or not. Some cells may fail sooner than others, but the effect is to reduce the voltage of the battery. Lithium-based batteries have one of t...
May sound stupid but here goes , when we are in the womb and are slowly growing where do those atoms come from that make us or do we make those atoms in the womb ?	They come from the food your mother eats while you're developing, as well as your mother herself. No new atoms are created, just rearranged cleverly from food and air and water.	[ "Democritus believed that atoms are too small for human senses to detect, they are infinitely many, they come in infinitely many varieties, and that they have always existed. They float in a vacuum, which Democritus called the \"void\", and they vary in form, order, and posture. Some atoms, he maintained, are conve...
When horses were the main form of transportation, how did cities deal with all the waste?	hi! you may be interested in these earlier posts * [why did medieval people put up with so much filth in their city streets? IF they didn't have the resources for modern plumbing, couldn't they at least hire armies of people to cart away waste?](_URL_3_) * [If I were to wake up in 1880 New York City, how bad would it...	[ "Replacing horses with cars and trucks eliminated enormous quantities of horse manure and urine from city streets, greatly reducing the labor for street cleaning and also improving sanitation and living conditions. Reducing the number of horses for transportation freed up between one- sixth and one-quarter of all f...
the atomic bomb	In chemistry, you about endo/exothermic reactions to make molecules. Normal explosives rely on chemical reactions that release large amounts of energy. All of this energy involves moving a few electrons around leaving your nuclei intact. When you get into atomic physics you're looking at far stronger forces involv...	[ "In July 1945, the first atomic explosive device, dubbed \"Trinity\", was detonated in the New Mexico desert. It was fueled by plutonium created at Hanford. In August 1945, two more atomic devices – \"Little Boy\", a uranium-235 bomb, and \"Fat Man\", a plutonium bomb – were used against the Japanese cities of Hiro...
Why do rockets use fuel with oxidises when taking off in the atmosphere instead of just using the oxygen in the air?	As you increase in altitude the oxygen density in the atmosphere drops dramatically. Over 10000 feet, people need supplemental oxygen to fight off hypoxia. At the rate a rocket burns fuel, there is nowhere near enough oxygen to maintain the burn. Basically the fire would fizzle and the rocket would fall.	[ "Propellant is conserved because the air-breathing carrier aircraft lifts the rocket to altitude much more efficiently. Airplane engines do not require on-board storage of an oxidizer and they can use the surrounding air to produce thrust, for example with a turbofan. This allows the launch system to conserve a sig...
why is english so broken?	English is a bit of a Frankenstein language, stitched together from bits of a couple Germanic languages, French, Celtic, Latin, and Greek. This leads to a hodgepodge of rules, spellings, and pronunciations borrowed from those languages.	[ "In literature, broken English is often used to depict the foreignness of a character, or that character's lack of intelligence or education. However, poets have also intentionally used broken English to create a desired artistic impression, or as a creative experiment writing somewhere between standard English and...
what is preventing toronto from acquiring an nfl franchise?	Football is the only major pro sport that has a viable and independent league in Canada. Toronto already has a CFL team. In order for Toronto to have an NFL franchise, they'd have to figure out how to convince the NFL that they could have two viable pro football teams. Toronto is big but it's not that big. They could...	[ "By this time Godfrey had switched his focus from an expansion team to the relocation of an existing team, saying \"I used to think an expansion franchise was the way to go but I'm quite certain now that our best chance would be to acquire an existing franchise. There are four or five franchises in the NFL that cou...
why don't we build a 'sturdy' camera and throw it into saturn, or jupiter, and transmit what it records back to a space station?	It costs way too much to make and launch something here and there really isn't that much to record.	[ "The camera is run by the JunoCam Digital Electronics Assembly (JDEA) also made by MSSS. The JunoCam is physically mounted to the body of the spacecraft, and moves with the spacecraft. The \"Voyager\" cameras (that also imaged Jupiter) were the only spacecraft cameras that were movable.\n", "The camera shutters m...
It is often thought that the "self", the individual, did not exist in pre-modern time. Religious officials who act as the spiritual intermediaries to the common person is one cited example. To me it sounds more like "middle age" than "pre-modern" though. How about in the antiquity?	I'm a bit confused by your question regarding "pre-modern time" and "middle age." However, Foucault explicitly addresses the self/individual (what he calls 'subjectivity') in ancient thought in his Lectures on the Will to Know as well as in Subjectivity and Truth (unpublished still in English), *The Hermeneutics of...	[ "In the pre-modern era, many people's sense of self and purpose was often expressed via a faith in some form of deity, be it that in a single God or in many gods. Pre-modern cultures have not been thought of creating a sense of distinct individuality, though. Religious officials, who often held positions of power, ...
when calculating digits of pi, why do we start at the beginning instead of calculating from the last known digit.	For one thing, calculating digits of pi is, at this point, just an academic exercise. It's not really good for anything, except maybe as a way to benchmark computing speeds. So doing things the efficient way isn't really advantageous.	[ "Until the 20th century, the number of digits of pi which mathematicians had the stamina to calculate by hand remained in the hundreds, so that memorization of \"all\" known digits at the time was possible. In 1949 a computer was used to calculate π to 2000 places, presenting one of the earliest opportunities for a...
When a human breaks their spine, why is it always said that they're paralyzed "below the waist"? Why does it always happen specifically at the waist?	The nervous system is severed at whatever spot they broke their spine. Since the nervous system is interconnected with the spine, it relies heavily on the spine's support. The brain sends signals through the nervous system from the top- > down. If the spine is severed, the nervous system is severed in turn, and the bra...	[ "Spinal cord injuries can be caused by trauma to the spinal column (stretching, bruising, applying pressure, severing, laceration, etc.). The vertebral bones or intervertebral disks can shatter, causing the spinal cord to be punctured by a sharp fragment of bone. Usually, victims of spinal cord injuries will suffer...
why is there a disconnect between what we're trying to say vs what actually comes out of our mouth. especially when public speaking	Only guessing, but i would say that we think about what we want so say and not how we say it. We dthink about the message, not the words...	[ "A talking point in discourse is a succinct statement designed to support persuasively one side taken on an issue. Such statements can either be free standing or created as retorts to the opposition's talking points and are frequently used in public relations, particularly in areas heavy in debate such as politics ...
how does uber lose so much money annually?	Uber loses money because they are investing in scaling their business... They are spending a ton of money on litigation and lobbying to be allowed to operate, since most urban areas had strict regulations on taxi services. They are fighting law suits, they are hiring lobbyist to pitch legislation changes to allow them...	[ "In May 2017, after the New York Taxi Workers Alliance (NYTWA) filed a class action lawsuit in federal court in New York, Uber admitted to underpaying New York City drivers tens of millions of dollars over 2.5 years by calculating driver commissions on a net amount. Uber agreed to pay the amounts owed plus interest...
why are flames pointy?	A flame rises because it is warmer than the air around it. The cool air rushes in to push the hot air upwards. However, as the air rises it also cools down. It cools down from the outside inwards. A flame glows because it is hot enough to generate light. So as the flame cools down, the parts of it that are hot e...	[ "A flame (from Latin \"flamma\") is the visible, gaseous part of a fire. It is caused by a highly exothermic reaction taking place in a thin zone. Very hot flames are hot enough to have ionized gaseous components of sufficient density to be considered plasma.\n", "Fire is hot because the conversion of the weak do...
why can you only use your thumb/ finger on the iphone's screen? as opposed to your nails or a more traditional stylus?	iPhones and all modern smartphones use Capacitive touch screens. Rather then detect touch by pressure they use electricity, there is an electric field on the screen of your phone and when you touch it the electricity runs up your hand, through your body, and back down. The phone can detect this and determine the locat...	[ "A thumb keyboard, or a thumb board, is a type of keyboard commonly found on PDAs, mobile phones, and PDA phones which has a familiar layout to an ordinary keyboard, such as QWERTY. The inputting surface is usually relatively small, and is intended for typing using the available thumbs, while holding the device.\n"...
Why does adiabatic processes change the temperature of a gas?	Adiabatic processes are those where the entropy doesn't change. Remember that and it makes sense. The entropy in that gas can be thought of qualitatively as this: make a list of all of the positions of all the particles in your system (the gas molecules, here). Wait some short time. Recheck your list against a new...	[ "In thermodynamics, adiabatic changes are those that do not increase the entropy. They occur slowly in comparison to the other characteristic timescales of the system of interest, and allow heat flow only between objects at the same temperature. For isolated systems, an adiabatic change allows no heat to flow in or...
Have there been experiments of keeping [wood frogs](_URL_0_) frozen for longer periods of time? How long can they stay frozen and then successfully thawed?	Regarding length of freeze: Layne et al investigated this and found that anywhere from 3 to 9 days was generally fine, but that mortality rose to 50% as you approached the 28 day mark (all at -1.5C). They then loaded some of the frogs with additional glucose (the cryoprotectant) and saw "excellent" survival rates ...	[ "For the wood frog (\"Rana sylvatica\"), in the winter, as much as 45% of its body may freeze and turn to ice. \"Ice crystals form beneath the skin and become interspersed among the body's skeletal muscles. During the freeze, the frog's breathing, blood flow, and heartbeat cease. Freezing is made possible by specia...
what are bonds, and what is the difference between stocks and bonds?	Bonds : Local bakery has a great idea for muffin tops. They need 500 for the special muffin top slicing machine and non stick pans. The local bank won't give them a loan because the idea is so new and they haven't been in business for long. But everyone in the neighbourhood is super excited. So the bakery prints out ...	[ "Bonds and stocks are both securities, but the major difference between the two is that (capital) stockholders have an equity stake in a company (that is, they are owners), whereas bondholders have a creditor stake in the company (that is, they are lenders). Being a creditor, bondholders have priority over stockhol...
Is it possible to represent imaginary numbers on a plane?	[Yes, it's called the complex plane and it's amazing.](_URL_0_)	[ "Geometrically, imaginary numbers are found on the vertical axis of the complex number plane, allowing them to be presented perpendicular to the real axis. One way of viewing imaginary numbers is to consider a standard number line, positively increasing in magnitude to the right, and negatively increasing in magnit...
Washing one's hands with soap kills viruses because pulling apart their lipid bi-layer membranes, right? Why doesn't soap dissolve our flesh? Our own cells have membranes are made of lipid bi-layers.	It actually does in a very minute way. We grow extra skin all the time and are constantly flaking it off. That's why we wash our hands. And it's why we shower. That skin is most of what the dust in your house is made of.	[ "A comprehensive analysis in 2007 from the University of Michigan School of Public Health indicated that plain soaps are just as effective as consumer-grade antibacterial soaps with triclosan in preventing illness and removing bacteria from the hands.\n", "Solid soap, because of its reusable nature, may hold bact...
Is it actually possible for an opera singer to shatter a glass with their voice?	Yes. It's not about their "power" or more precisely, their amplitude.... It's about the frequency. A lot of solid materials have a sonic frequency at which the atoms no longer hold together. Glass breaks apart when vibrated at this frequency. I don't remember all the fancy words for explaining it but this should be en...	[ "Adam and Jamie investigate whether a human voice could shatter glass, as perpetuated in stories of opera singers and demonstrated by Ella Fitzgerald in a commercial for Memorex and Jim Gillette in the music video for Nitro's Freight Train.\n", "World-famous Italian tenor opera singer, Giorgio Fini, is in Boston ...
how do "multiple year" copyrights work?	However, publishers of frequently-updated works, such as software, apparently desire to convey the idea that different versions of their works appear over time, and each is subject to copyright protection. So they provide a copyright notice with multiple years, the first year being the year of first publication. Such ...	[ "Essentially, the 1988 Act and amendment establishes that copyright in most works lasts until 70 years after the death of the creator if known, otherwise 70 years after the work was created or published (50 years for computer-generated works).\n", "Typically, the public law duration of a copyright expires 50 to 1...
why don't above-18s (adults) in usa have the right to determine their choice on alcohol consumption?	Well, it wasn't always so. I first began legally drinking at age 18, a million years ago (it seems). As I recall, there was a law that was passed after a bunch of studies which said that drunk driving age 18-21 auto fatalities were more than all other auto fatalities combined. (I could be totally wrong there, its' jus...	[ "In 2007, the drinking age debate in the United States was renewed when Choose Responsibility began promoting the lowering of the drinking age coupled with education and rules to persuade people to drink responsibly before they are of legal age. Before one is eligible to buy, possess and consume alcohol, an alcohol...
Why are coronaviruses coronaviruses?	The organization of their surface envelope proteins forms a ring which looks like a crown. Viruses from different families look wildly different, some have lipid envelopes like corona, some do not like polio. HIV has fewer number of envelope proteins on it’s surface and they are irregularly spaced, as compared to say ...	[ "Coronaviruses are enveloped viruses with a positive-sense RNA genome and with a nucleocapsid of helical symmetry. They infect the upper respiratory and gastrointestinal tract of mammals and birds. They are the cause of a wide range of diseases in cats, dog, pigs, rodents, cattle and humans. Transmission is by the ...
Does the entropy of a system sometimes randomly decrease if its macrostate deviates from equilibrium?	> Does this mean it is possible (however unlikely) that if you waited around long enough a system would randomly appreciably deviate from equilibrium and briefly lower its own entropy? Yes. The probability is much higher that the entropy will increase (or at least stay the same), but it can fluctuate downwards t...	[ "Suppose we start from an equilibrium situation and we suddenly remove a constraint on a variable. Then right after we do this, there are a number formula_58 of accessible microstates, but equilibrium has not yet been reached, so the actual probabilities of the system being in some accessible state are not yet equa...
why is it considered moral to put a dog down when it gets rabies or becomes too vicious and endangers others, but immoral when we do the same to a vicious person whose existence endangers others?	the issue for humans is where to draw that line of "to be killed". some people would put that line at drug use, some people not even for mass murderers. Along with that, how do you make sure the process is completely unbaised and 100% right? there have been many cases of the death penalty being used on a person that wa...	[ "Life-threatening signs usually include those due to the degeneration of the nervous system. Dogs that have been infected with distemper tend to suffer a progressive deterioration of mental abilities and motor skills. With time, the dog can develop more severe seizures, paralysis, reduction in sight, and incoordina...
If you looked at the earth from 1000 lightyears away through some kind of ultra magnifying glass, would you see events that happened 1000 years ago?	Yes, you are right. The way we see the stars, we see them how and where they existed long ago. If you're observing the sun from the Earth, and witness a coronal mass ejection, that ejection actually occurred about 8 minutes ago, and the light from it is just now reaching us.	[ "Just hours before Clarke's death a major gamma-ray burst (GRB) reached Earth. Known as GRB 080319B, the burst set a new record as the farthest object that could be seen from Earth with the naked eye. It occurred about 7.5 billion years ago, taking the light that long to reach Earth. Larry Sessions, a science write...
What role (if any) did the United States play in China's Taiping Rebellion?	If we set aside the missionaries, the answer is not much of one. Remember that the Taiping Civil War was largely concurrent with the Arrow War in addition to the US Civil War. You had various individual Americans such as Frederick Ward who were there as independent soldiers of fortune (see [this post from earlier today...	[ "Through the mediating influence of the United States a military truce was arranged in January 1946, but battles between the Kuomintang and Communists soon resumed. Public opinion of the administrative incompetence of the Republic of China government was escalated and incited by the Communists in the nationwide stu...
why hasn't life been replicated in the lab yet?	I got 2 answers; 1) the ethical ramifications. 2) there's always the possibility that someone has done it, and just not come forward because (see 1)	[ "In 2011, New York University scientists have developed artificial structures that can self-replicate, a process that has the potential to yield new types of materials. They have demonstrated that it is possible to replicate not just molecules like cellular DNA or RNA, but discrete structures that could in principl...
During the 18th and 19th centuries, most armies had a standardised coat colour - red for Britain, green for Russia, white for Austria. How were the colours determined and was consideration given to not using the same as a likely opponent?	So, generally during this time period, the color of the uniform would vary. While Britain became famous for their red coats, up until the Napoleonic era and afterward, the regimental uniforms would be up to the decision of the regimental officer, and the same for foreign regiments in the French service (such as the Swi...	[ "The epithet \"redcoats\" is familiar throughout much of the former British Empire, even though this colour was by no means exclusive to the British Army. The entire Danish Army wore red coats up to 1848 and particular units in the German, French, Austro-Hungarian, Russian, Bulgarian and Romanian armies retained re...
Can anyone recommend any good books on the reign of Henry VIII?	It depends; how academic/dry/scholarly are you willing to go? Geoffrey Elton wrote some excellent stuff about the constitutional, administrative, and political changes of the Tudor period, significant enough in his view to warrant being called a 'revolution.' His work is, however, pretty short on 'juicy' or biographi...	[ "Donnelly returned to historical fiction with \"Fatal Throne\", a book about Henry VIII and his six wives published by Random House/Schwartz & Wade in May 2018. For this project, Donnelly joined six other authors (Candace Fleming, M.T. Anderson, Stephanie Hemphill, Deborah Hopkinson, Linda Sue Park, and Lisa Ann Sa...
bush v. gore. why did the supreme court stop the recount?	The Court cited the Equal Protection Clause because each county's methods and standards for determining "the voter's intent" could vary. Two identical inconclusive ballots could be counted in two different ways if one was in Miami-Dade County and the other was in Broward County, so they ruled that each person's vote co...	[ "BULLET::::- \"Bush v. Gore\" (2000): In a controversial per curiam decision in which four justices dissented, the Supreme Court overruled the Florida Supreme Court and halted a manual recount of the 2000 presidential election ballots cast in Florida. The court ruled that the recount violated the Equal Protection C...
how can the 35-year-old hp-12c calculator still be in production and selling for over $50?	Basic math hasn't changed much in a few hundred years, so the calculator probably wouldn't either.	[ "The HP-12C is HP's longest and best-selling product, in continual production since its introduction in 1981. Due to its simple operation for key financial calculations, the calculator long ago became the \"de facto\" standard among financial professionals. Its popularity has endured despite the fact that even a re...
What are the main differences between Ancient British Cultures (Picts, Celts, Gauls etc)?	OK, so this is a complicated question because with Britain we have an incredible level of archaeological detail. I'll give a very simplified version and am happy to expand on anything you would like. OK, so broadly speaking "Celtic" is a language group which incorporates the modern languages of Welsh, Irish, Cornish...	[ "The cultural syncretism of Roman and Germanic traditions overlaid the earlier syncretism of Roman culture with the Celtic culture of the respective imperial provinces, Gallo-Roman culture in Gaul and Romano-British culture in Britain. This results in a triple fusion of Celtic-Roman-Germanic culture for France and ...
how does formalin preserve dead organs?	It stops decomposition. There are a lot of microbes and bacteria that would love to eat up those organs (destroying them in the process). There are plenty of other chemicals that could do that (like bleach). But bleach would also rip apart the cells and, as you might imagine, bleach the pigment out of the organ. A ...	[ "Tissue preparation or \"fixation\" is essential for the preservation of cell morphology and tissue architecture. Inappropriate or prolonged fixation may significantly diminish the antibody binding capability. Many antigens can be successfully demonstrated in formalin-fixed paraffin-embedded tissue sections. Howeve...
I have this theory that a lot of "traditional British food" became popular due to rationing in WW2. I am thinking of foods like Baked Beanz and tinned tomatoes. How accurate is this, and how big is the lasting impact of WW2 rationing on British cuisine?	Rationing didn't have much of a long-term impact on British cuisine, "traditional British" dishes tend to either pre-date the 20th century (fish & chips, various pies, stews, hotpots, roasts, puddings etc.) or post-date rationing (when "traditional" becomes more problematic, e.g. chicken tikka masala). Rationing rest...	[ "During the World Wars of the 20th century difficulties of food supply were countered by official measures, which included rationing. The problem was worse in WWII, and the Ministry of Food was established to address the problems (see Rationing in the United Kingdom). Due to the economic problems following the war,...
why are sperm count in men decreasing?	From _URL_0_: > The analysis did not explore reasons for the decline, but researchers said falling sperm counts have previously been linked to various factors such as exposure to certain chemicals and pesticides, smoking, stress and obesity. > In contrast, no significant decline was seen in South America, Asia an...	[ "There has been speculation that falling sperm counts in males may be due to increased estrogen exposure in utero. Sharpe in a 2005 review indicated that external estrogenic substances are too weak in their cumulative effects to alter male reproductive functioning, but indicates that the situation appears to be mor...
why can't the human heart "get used to" having to work harder in an individual with restricted arteries, causing it to get stronger under the increased work load like normal muscles?	You are really talking about two different things here, without realizing it. First of all, the heart does "get used to" having to work harder. If it is pumping against a higher blood pressure (because the patient has hypertension and it isn't being treated), then over time it was develop hypertrophy. This sounds gr...	[ "Because vital tissues such as the brain or heart muscle are vulnerable to ischaemia, arteries often form anastomoses to provide alternative supplies of fresh blood. End arteries can exist when no anastomosis exists or when an anastomosis exists but is incapable of providing a sufficient supply of blood, thus the t...
Are there parts of the brain that can be physically damaged without immediate catastrophic effect?	Yes, there are many areas of the brain that can be damaged without causing death/unconsciousness. The bizarre effects that have resulted from some such brain injuries has actually provided a huge amount of information about the brain. The most famous case is [Phineas Gage](_URL_0_)	[ "Brain injuries are very hard to predict in outcome. Many tests and specialists are needed to determine the likelihood of the prognosis. People with minor brain damage can have debilitating side effects; not just severe brain damage has debilitating effects. The side- effects of a brain injury depend on location an...
Why does adding water to whiskey open up the flavor?	Adding water to whiskey affects two things. 1. Cuts down on the alcohol content, so you're burned less by the alcohol and can taste more of the other flavors. 2. It releases more of the aromatics in the whiskey that are not water soluble. Smell has a huge impact on taste, so getting a bigger whiff of the aromatics he...	[ "Consumers often add water to cask strength whiskies in order to reduce the \"heat\" – the \"burn\" sensation that goes with the drinking experience – and bring out different whisky flavors. Diluting the whisky with varying amounts of water will modify the flavor profile, and some consumers like to have control ove...
How much variation tends to exist between fingerprints, assuming no two fingerprints are the same?	So at first level detail you have four basic ‘shapes’ within fingerprints - arches, tented arches, loops and whorls. You can have just a single one of these on each finger or occasionally you will get combinations such as two interlocked loops etc... Each person will have one of these on each finger. These shapes are ...	[ "In a Royal Institution paper in 1888 and three books (\"Finger Prints\", 1892; \"Decipherment of Blurred Finger Prints\", 1893; and \"Fingerprint Directories\", 1895), Galton estimated the probability of two persons having the same fingerprint and studied the heritability and racial differences in fingerprints. He...
how are online games (say wow or guild wars, etc) synchronized over all the players' individual games?	1. They're not synchronized over all players' games. The players are distributed across different "realms" or "worlds", that are actually different physical servers, and your game is (usually, barring specific cross-server interactions) never updated about players on other server. 2. The server only sends you data ...	[ "Games where the map and starting position is different every time you play it, in for example strategy games with a random map generator, also tend to have long-lasting appeal. The community-developed mods for many games also contribute to increased replayability and long life for many games. Due to the limits of ...
why do humans feel the need to do things that are bad for us?	Because unfortunately our lifestyles have evolved faster than our genes. If you look at humans as animals that went through natural selection just like any other, a lot of our "destructive" behaviors made sense in the context of nature and survival, but things became so much more convenient and we haven't yet evolved t...	[ "Everything we do or do not do, wish or do not wish, and have or do not have has an explicit or an implicit relevance to how good or not good we perceive our lives to be. Because the preference for a good life over a bad life underlies all facets of our lives, understanding what constitutes and influences a good li...
why are so many people struggling with basic grammar - you're/your, it's/its, there/they're, etc.	So, before an answer can be attempted, a few misconceptions are going to have to be addressed: 1. What you think of as the things that determine whether a text is grammatically correct aren't actually, linguistically speaking (that is to say, according to the scientific model of language), the things that determine gr...	[ "Critics have objected that people-first language is awkward, repetitive and makes for tiresome writing and reading. C. Edwin Vaughan, a sociologist and longtime activist for the blind, argues that since \"in common usage positive pronouns usually precede nouns\", \"the awkwardness of the preferred language focuses...
How many nukes would it take to end the world?	That could depend entirely on your intent, you could potentially do tremendous damage by targeting something specifically in order to damage the environment instead of humans. There have also been hypothetical "doomsday devices" that could kill most life on Earth with a single weapon by polluting the atmosphere with ra...	[ "The Global Zero plan for the phased, verified elimination of all nuclear weapons is a four-phased strategy to reach a global zero accord over 14 years (2010–2023) and to complete the dismantlement of all remaining nuclear warheads over the following seven years (2024–2030).\n", "These nuclear weapons are being f...
water vapor vs. steam vs. mist vs. fog vs. cloud	In a sense, they do just describe water in air, but they also provide you an idea of what that water is like. Basically, different connotations Vapor: gaseous and dispersed Steam: high pressure/temperature, maybe more tightly packed (Vapor you might not see, steam you would see) Mist: ambient (it's from the natural ...	[ "Mist is a phenomenon caused by small droplets of water suspended in air. Physically, it is an example of a dispersion. It is most commonly seen where warm, moist air meets sudden cooling, such as in exhaled air in the winter, or when throwing water onto the hot stove of a sauna. It can be created artificially with...
say i have a bad cold with an impossibly stuffed up nose. no way to breathe through my nostrils. now say i get kidnapped, and they put duct tape over my mouth. would my body react to un-stuff my nose so i could breathe to live?	I wouldn't worry about it. Next time you have duct tape (and preferably no facial hair) take a strip and put it over your mouth and try to get it off without your hands. It's absolutely trivial. The whole "I have duct tape over my mouth so now I can't talk" thing is just for the movies. Honestly it's one of their s...	[ "BULLET::::- The \"Lowry Technique\". A combination of Valsalva and Toynbee: pinching the nose to close the nostrils, and blow and swallow at the same time. The nose can be closed without using a hand, using the compressor naris muscles; it can be described as \"wrinkling the nose as if there was a bad smell\". A h...
would it be possible to divert the nile to irrigate the sahara?	Yes. But then the rest of lower Egypt would have to go without the Nile which would make it a desert.	[ "The team toured the area from February 11 to March 25, 1903. The report signed by Kessler and the other members concluded that the project depended on water supply and, therefore, that the Egyptian government should give permission to divert some water from the Nile. The Egyptian government, calculating that the p...
when countries like north korea spend money on war supplies like missiles, nukes, guns, planes etc. who sells it to them?	The North Koreans have purchased weapons largely from the Soviets/Russians and Chinese over the decades as well as having left overs going back as far as WWII from American and Western manufacturers. They have their own arms manufacturing industry which produces two Main Battle Tanks based on Russian/Chinese designs as...	[ "North Korea supported Iran during the Iran–Iraq War for oil and foreign exchange by selling both domestically produced arms to Iran and serving as an intermediary for deniable sales by the Soviet Union, Soviet satellites, and China. Sales began with a delivery of Soviet artillery ammunition in October 1980 after t...
Are there any animals who stay strictly in the air?	The closest there is to an animal that spends their entire life in the air is probably the Alpine Swift. They have recently been found to spend upwards of 200 days in a row airborne and only land at their breeding ground. They eat, sleep, and drink all while airborne. Nature Paper: _URL_0_ But probably easier to re...	[ "Laws and regulations that allow service animals to be taken into business or onto aircraft may give the service provider discretion to deny admission to unusual service animals. For example, under the Air Carrier Access Act, airlines are never required to accommodate unusual animals such as snakes and other reptil...
Question about Saladin and King Richard's relationship during the Third Crusade.	To my knowledge, none of the letters supposedly exchanged between Saladin and Richard I survive to this day. However, one of our best sources for the Third Crusade is chronicle evidence, supplied from both the Latin and Arabic traditions. Some of these have been (mercifully) translated into English through the Crusade ...	[ "Although largely a footnote among the greater events that unfolded during the Crusades, the battle was a decisive encounter, in that it forced Saladin to negotiate an end to the immediate hostilities. The battle illustrated the determined spirit of Saladin and the courage and tactical skill of Richard. It was the ...
how do printers work so accurately and fast?	I don’t know what exactly you are looking for as an answer... They work accurately because the motor that controls the printing head works in very small increments (typically 96 positions per inch) and the ink injectors can inject extremely small quantities of ink. They work fast because the motor is fast.	[ "Computer printers are slow. On the S/34, computer programs could write data to the printer much faster than the printer can print and there can be more than one program writing to a printer at the same time.\n", "Line printers are the fastest of all impact printers and are used for bulk printing in large compute...
all the types of steaks, such as sirloin, prime rib, filet, ribeye etc. what should i consider when choosing which one to order in a restaurant?	Personally, i think ribeye is the best all around for flavor, tenderness, texture and reasonable pricing. Of course, some of that depends on where you buy it, and how you have it cooked.	[ "A rib steak is a beef steak sliced from the rib primal of a beef animal, with rib bone attached. In the United States, the term rib eye steak or Spencer steak is used for a rib steak with the bone removed; however in some areas, and outside the U.S., the terms are often used interchangeably. The rib eye or \"ribey...
If there are only 5 white rhinos left is there enough diversity in the gene pool to breed them back to non borderline extinction levels?	It's hard to say, since inbreeding problems are quite specific to each species and context. For example, pretty much all the golden hamsters in captivity are descended from one batch of siblings captured in the 30's, and they seem to be doing ok. But other species don't do so well in similar situations.	[ "Wild-caught southern whites will readily breed in captivity given appropriate amounts of space and food, as well as the presence of other female rhinos of breeding age. However, for reasons that are not currently understood, the rate of reproduction is extremely low among captive-born southern white females.\n", ...
how do genders like genderqueer, genderfluid, etc work? do any scientists believe in them or are they just teens online trying to be special?	Sex is what you have between your legs. True hermaphrodites are so rare that they basically don't exist; a fetus can go down the male track or the female track or split the difference and wind up [intersex](_URL_1_). So, male, female, none or intersex. Gender is what's in your head, and is something you'd ask an anthr...	[ "Gender-associated information is predominantly transmuted through society by way of schemata, or networks of information that allow for some information to be more easily assimilated than others. Bem argues that there are individual differences in the degree to which people hold these gender schemata. These differ...
why does breathing on glasses before wiping them clean off fingerprints so much better than wiping alone?	Breath contains small amounts of water vapour, so when you breathe on the glass you moisturise the glass before whipping it to off. It's like using water to clean glass, but in very small amounts	[ "To prevent a mask from fogging up due to condensation on the glass many divers spit into the dry mask before use, spread the saliva around the inside of the plate and rinse it out with a little water. The saliva residue allows condensation to wet the glass and form a continuous film, rather than form droplets. The...
how does [family member] once, twice, (etc) removed worked?	[Here's a good visual.](_URL_0_) So your sibling shares the same parents as you. Your first cousins share the same grandparents as you. Your second cousins share the same GREAT grandparents as you. Your cousin-once-removed is the parent of your second cousins. So their GRANDPARENTS are your GREAT grandparents. Th...	[ "The immediate family is a defined group of relations, used in rules or laws to determine which members of a person's family are affected by those rules. It normally includes a person's parents, siblings, spouses, children, or an individual related by blood whose close association is an equivalent of a family relat...
can some explain the differences in handgun ammunition calibers?	[This is a decent article on ammo type](_URL_0_). Basically the grain count is referring to the amount in weight of gun powder in each round. A grain being 0.002 ounces (or just under 65 mg). The higher grain count, the bigger the boom (and subsequently more recoil experienced by the user). As far as which type of rou...	[ "It is generally agreed that most intermediate handgun calibers will perform similarly, since their wounding principles are the same. A list of many handgun calibers can be found at List of handgun cartridges.\n", "There are automatic, revolver, and single-shot .50 caliber handgun designs. Handguns of this calibe...
Why don't I feel a shock when touching both ends of a household battery? Or even a car battery?	Humans are not that good of a conductor. They are better conductors than plastic but not better than for instance metal. When you measure the resistance between your left and right hand you might find something like 1MOhm. With a car battery of 12 volt there will only flow 12 microampere(12x10^-6) between your fingers....	[ "In power transmission systems, one side of the circuit, known as the neutral, is grounded to dissipate static electricity and to reduce hazardous voltages caused by insulation failure and other electrical faults. It is possible to get a shock by only touching the \"hot\" wire, due to the person's body being capaci...
Book recommendation for history of the U.S. 14th Armored Division in the Second World War	So, of a fairly minor note- your great-uncle’s discharge papers list him as a member of Able Company, 14th Armored Infantry [Battalion], which is a subordinate unit of the 1st Armored Division- which fought in Africa and Italy. Are you sure that he fought as a member of the 14th AD during his time in Europe? If so, the...	[ "At the end of World War II, two 6th Armored Division G3 officers, Majors Paul L. Bogen and Clyde J. Burke along with Aide-de-Camp Captain Cyrus R. Shockey, compiled a \"Combat Record of the Sixth Armored Division in the European Theatre of Operations 18 July 1944-8 May 1945\". The official history by George F. Hof...
why do cellphone companies pay x dollars for the trade in of y phones when buying a new phone? marketshare?	A lot of companies probably get loads of phones at various prices, then mass sell them for their gold inside them, Get more bang for ya buck that way	[ "From 1993 to 2010, Chinese companies have been involved as either an acquiror or acquired company in 25,284 mergers and acquisitions with a total known value of US$969 billion. The number and value of deals hit a new record in 2010. The number of deals that happened in 2010 has been 3,640, which is an increase of ...
When did humans first figure out that other planets existed and weren't just stars? What was the reaction to this idea when it was proposed?	hi! fyi, one or more of these threads may be relevant * [What is the earliest record of a person theorizing that stars are suns and planets?](_URL_2_) * [When did scientists recognize the planets in our solar system as (relatively) nearby planets, and not as other stars. How did they know that these celestial bodies ...	[ "Throughout antiquity, there have been many Classical Planets, once \"wandering stars\", not all of which are now considered planets. With the advent of the telescope, the moons initially discovered around Jupiter and Saturn, were also considered planets by some. The development of more powerful telescopes resulted...

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