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What is a mortgage? A reverse mortgage? | A mortage is just a loan for a house or other piece of real estate. It is similar to a car loan except that it is usually for a much higher amount. They are generally for 15 or 30 years and have an interest rate between 3% and 6%. A reverse mortage is something that old people get when they run out of money or have no ... |
How were the laser effects done in the original Star Wars trilogy? | Rotoscoping is the correct answer. Rotoscoping is defined as any technique whereby animation is created on top of live footage, either with the intention to replace it entirely or to integrate it into the original shot. The technology we use to achieve this in modern day filmmaking is different from the techniques used... |
- Why are sporting events such as boxing matches on Pay Per View while events such as the NBA Finals and the Super Bowl widely televised? | Fans of a team in a team sport can watch it play dozens of times per season, but fans of a professional boxer can only see him fight a few times a year. So boxing has to make *all* its viewership money on a few big-ticket fights per year while team sports can have seasonal TV packages. Even the big fights don't attract... |
What is so golden about the golden ratio? | Not much, really. It is a number that crops up in nature a fair bit -- in the arrangement of leaves on a stalk, for example, or the shape of a snail's shell -- and perhaps because of that it is sometimes thought that things that are in golden ratio to each other are somehow more aesthetically pleasing -- "golden" in th... |
How private prisons make money. | They charge the government a set rate per inmate for the cost of running the prison, which includes a profit marginOn top of getting government money to run them above and beyond what it costs them to actually be run, they employ inmates at extremely low wage jobs like telemarketing ) for $0.20 to $1.00 an hour. Not ha... |
If I have an eyelash in my eye and blink and it's gone where does it go? Do I have a build up of junk behind my eyeballs? | Junk can't get behind your eyeballs barring trauma, there's a membrane preventing that. In general material is flushed from your eyes by tears and/or blinking action.Most small particles that get on your eye will be pushed to the lower eyelid when you blink, then make their way to the corners from thereIt goes into a d... |
Why big banks are considered evil. | Imagine your parents are saving up money to buy a house. The house is very expensive and your parents don't have all the money that is needed at the moment to pay for the house. The bank says, oh thats ok, you just pay us a little bit every month until you make the full payment and you can move in right now. You don't ... |
Why should I hate the 1%? | You shouldn't hate them, people who do are just jealous. I'm not saying they don't have unfair advantages; I'm just saying if you were given the choice you'd be rich too. |
What happens when system32 is deleted? | > what happens to the computer Nothing at all will happen to the computer, your installation of windows may stop working though and you'll need to either repair or reinstall it. |
How do insurance companies gain profit? | By giving away less money than they charge. It's as simple as that. They charge you for the risk you wish to cover, and it's reasonably certain that over a long period you will spend more on insurance than you will ever receive in payouts. Obviously some people will go the other way, but they'll be in the minority. It'... |
When hackers steal money, where do they send the money? | Different hackers will do different things, I'm sure, but the cases I hear about are more about credit card fraud than redirecting funds. Hackers will get credit card numbers with codes and use those to purchase things. The cases I know about involved buying sporting goods and gift cards, presumably because they are ea... |
If protests rarely work why do thousands of people protest? | The idea that "protests never work" is flawed. Hell, civil rights in America came largely from "protests". Sometimes it's the only option people have to fight entrenched systemsIn France it works every single time. Lst one was Uber strike. Suddenly thr lawmakers decided Uber was illegal |
Why does older furniture hold up so well when modern furniture seems to break in a few years? | The modern furniture you're seeing is cheap modern furniture. There's modern furniture that holds up well, but it costs a lot more. Why wasn't there cheap furniture years ago? There was. But you don't see it any more, because none of it survived to this day -- *because it was cheap*. |
Why do people ask for advice, yet get angry when it's given? | Many times the advice isn't what we want to hear, and humans have a strong bias in favor of information that agrees with what we already know. That's also why politics and religion can be so divisive. |
Why does China feel the need to censor the internet? | The CCP is ultra sensitive to criticism and the power of technology to cause disruption. They pragmatically understand that they need to keep a lid on dissent. The lesson they learned form Tiananmen Square was that free association and unfettered access to information would be bad for their regime - and in their view -... |
What is the deal with fetishes? | Our brains are pattern-seeking organs which create and strengthen associations between things. Consider Pavlov's dogs; they were trained to associate the sound of a bell with getting fed, and their brain commanded salivation even though it was outside their conscious control. Training is just intentional manipulation o... |
What would happen if the president divorced the first lady? | The First Lady is not a legally-defined position, so it would in theory be just like any other divorce. Under the law as it currently stands, she would not be automatically entitled to Secret Service protection though the President could and probably would request it for her just as a security measure. In terms of alim... |
Abductive, Inductive and Deductive Reasoning? | **Deductive reasoning** is where you draw specific conclusions from a set of general principles. If I know that all dogs have tails, and my friend has a dog, I can deduce that my friend's dog has a tail. **Inductive reasoning** is sort of the opposite, where you come to a general conclusion based on a set of facts in f... |
IXPs like the Verizon building in NYC, and how it applies to transcontinental fiber, "backbone of internet" concept, etc. | If you're an Internet Service Provider you need to be able to get your clients\' traffic out to anywhere on the internet, so you have two options - either you carry it yourself to somewhere you can hand it off to the ISP of the place it needs to go, or you pay a bigger provider to take it there for you. ISPs are concep... |
Why is it that we laugh more when we watch a movie with others than we do when we watch the movie alone? | Laughing is primarily a social signal that is used to indicate solidarity with others. If we are laughing along with other people, it indicates to them that we are similar to them . Robert Provines is a psychologist who has studied laughter and found that people are far more likely to smile or talk when alone than they... |
What does "quartz" mean when it comes to watches? | Modern quartz watches use a tiny tuning fork made of quartz which is tuned to vibrate at a very specific frequency, which is counted to keep time. Quartz is used because it is piezoelectric which means it can be made to vibrate with a tiny electric current. |
What is "scientific whaling" | The big data point collected has to do with whale feeding habits, and whale ecology in general. By sampling the population, Japanese researchers have collected a large amount of data about whale feeding, and more broadly about the availability of krill and where the line is between underpopulation and overpopulation. T... |
What is 'credit' and why is it so necessary in today's society? | Credit is borrowing from a rich person to pay for something expensive that you don't have the cash for right now. The rich person gives you the large amount of money, and in turn you pay a fee to the person for using their money to buy the expensive item. Credit is necessary because the majority of us don't have 200,00... |
What are people referring to when they say "The Church" | It is the Christian religion, normally referencing either the dominant philosophies held by most denominations or "all" of christianity, or they are referencing the specific doctrine of the church being talked about in the conversation or the dominant denomination of the region they life in. Context of the conversation... |
What would happen if someone dies in space without a suit? | It depends where you are. If you're in the solar system, you're body would swell from radiation, and you 'd freeze a very long time from when you die. People often think you freeze instantly. This is false as there is nothing in space to "steal" your body heat, like air on EarthTheyd just slowly suffocate due to lack o... |
Why does the cuban government tolerate guantanamo on their territory? Especially if one considers their bad relations in the past. | Cuba had been trying to get independence from Spain for most of the late 19th Century. As part of the Spanish-American War, the US encouraged them to rebel. After the war, the US controlled Cuba and considered annexing it, but instead installed a government and constitution friendly to the US. One of the early agreemen... |
how do we know the taste of highly poisonous substances? Or do we have no idea about it? | "Highly poisonous" is a broad category. If it's so poisonous that once you taste it, even if you spit it out, you're dead, then the taste wouldn't matter to help prevent you from dying. On the other hand, if it's deadly only if swallowed, but you won't die if you taste it and spit it out, then standard evolution proces... |
The Occupy Wall Street protests. | Have you tried searching before posting this? This has been asked a dozen times, and some of those answers might be helpful. |
Why are we more likely to have a heat stroke if we've had one before? | In a nutshell, it has to do with heat tolerance. In Construction we learn about it as acclimation. Your body needs time to adapt to a hot environment, and so the general rule of thumb is small doses of exposure to excessive heat and then gradually your body can tolerate more. Every season reacclimation is needed but no... |
Why is it better to have more but smaller cylinders in an engine, rather than fewer larger ones? | The stroke limits the effective rotation speed of the engine: The rate at which air flows into the cylinder depends on the crossection of the valves. If you increase the stroke length, you increase the size of the cylinder, and with it the amount of air that needs to flow in it - but since you can't just increase valve... |
Isn't lobbying just a legalized form of corruption? | Lobbying is trying to convince elected officials to change the laws in a way that is beneficial to your interests. Not only is that not corruption, but the right to petition for a redress of grievances is so important that it's right there in the First Amendment, along with freedom of the press and religion. If you've ... |
How come mosquitoes are useless to the ecosystem as a whole? | No, eliminating anything could have potential impact. What has been found with mosquitos so far is that we don't know of any serious impact on any ecosystem that wouldn't be filled by other species. That doesn't mean there isn't one, just that we don't know of one. As far as other parasites go, some very peacefully coe... |
How does oil lubricate an engine without combusting or contaminating the fuel? | The fuel is sprayed into the cylinders, where it mixes with air, is compressed, combusted and then evacuated out. Engine oil is not put directly into the cylinders. It gets pumped and directed to just about all of the other internal components though. What separates the inside of the cylinder from the rest of the insid... |
Why are Neanderthals always drawn with huge noses? | Because the size of the nasal opening is large, so it is inferred that the nose itself would be large as well. |
Why doesn't everybody come together and vote third party? | People are afraid of wasting their vote on a candidate who won't get many votes, and thus cannot win. It's one of those situations where everyone stands in a circle and says "I'll vote 3rd party if you do", and the other person says "I promise I will. Together we can make a difference!" Then everyone secretly decides t... |
Why do Americans feel the need to remake British TV shows? | The same reason British television tries to adapt American tv shows. For example: In With The Flynn's, Brighton Belle's, Love By You, Nobody's Perfect, Upper Hand, Days like These, Married for Life and so on. It's cheaper and you have an already successful model to build on. |
Why are chemicals in glowsticks considered harmful, but the ones in a glow in the dark wristband are not? | To say it in one breath: Glow-in-the-dark items react against previous exposure to light, whereas glow sticks rely on the chemical reaction of mixing two prepackaged chemicals. That's why you have to "break" glow sticks in order to mix the two otherwise separately stored chemicals. |
Why do hydrogen atoms possess radioactive capabilities in space? | It isn't that they take on radioactive capabilities. It is that when something is traveling really fast, the kinetic energy increases. So, when it hits something, it can cause a lot of energy release. In this case, the basic equation is something like KE = 1/2mvv . where 'v' is velocity. Well thanks to relativity, when... |
How can some criminals show their face on television, and then still come back for a second season? | I believe it's because you cannot prove that what they're doing is actually creating illegal products. It's similar to how you see videos of famous musicians or artists smoking marijuana but they never get prosecuted for doing it. It's also similar to when you watch true life on MTV and those people do harder drugs. |
Why do different colors evoke certain emotions in people? (e.g. red and anger, yellow and hunger) | They don't, by-and-large. It's a cultural myth that colors alter moods or cognitive function in any meaningful way outside of the placebo effect. Red is "anger and hate" in the USA , "joy and luck" in China, "love and passion" in Russia , "purity and spirituality" in India, or "death" in some African nations. How can o... |
Why does hot water soothe a bug bite? | It seems to be linked to the nervous response. There are a number of different ideas out there. One claims that it's a process of denaturing proteins that would cause the itch. But that explanation wouldn't portray very good proteins. We would have proteins failing every time we take a shower. Another claims that it so... |
How do cities that offer free wi-fi not run the internet providers out of business? And if they do, how do they get away with it? | Free wifi is generally fast enough to do email and shop online, but not good enough to stream movies, play games, or download large files in a timely manner. Many people are willing to pay extra for better speeds. |
How do stomach acids & enzymes break down foods exactly enough to be useful nutrients and amino acids, but not enough to break *those* down into unusable molecules and elements? | Because although acid is necessary for the reactions to take place efficiently, food digestion is actually driven by enzymes, catalysts that facilitate specific reactions and not others. Digestive enzymes facilitate the breakdown of proteins to amino acids and complex carbohydrates to sugars, but they do not facilitate... |
Microchips, how do they work? | Well, a CPU is mainly a collection of billions of tiny parts known as transistors, all interconnected with wires to form logic circuits. A transistor can be described as an electronic switch. It operates like a normal switch does, it has an input, output, and switch, but the difference here is that the switch is an ele... |
Why do we get bored of things that were fun ?(eg: video games, sports) | This is one of the mechanisms that influences humans to seek out novelty. Your brain cannot afford to only reward one behavior forever, or you would waste away in front of your computer. Getting bored is a way to keep you from getting stuck in that kind of loop. I can't find any information on the physiological mechani... |
ELI5: Why do certain noises/textures (e.g. a fork scraping on a plate, the feeling of velvet) provide such an unpleasant sensation? | For me it’s certain cloth and towels.. dry friction makes a squeaking noise and I lose it. The thought of biting down on a towel makes me hair stand up on end. For my mother, it’s certain wood textures.. Cutting boards, wooden spoons, etc. I don’t know the accurate answer but it probably has to do with sensory overload... |
How a country "Annex" a portion of another country without it's permission? | It's illegal in every domestic and international definition. But what do you do? Start a war with Russia? |
How did brand names(such as Band-Aid or Chapstick) become the unofficial name of that product? | It's usually because a particular brand achieves a very high level of market penetration and becomes synonymous with a product. |
What happens to deceased soldiers that are left behind after a battle? | For Marines we are trained to leave no man behind and many Marines have gone back and drug the bodies of the fallen into friendly territory. Also there is some respect paid to the dead and allowing retirval from both side, not always the case and some never return. This is what the POW/MIA is about. Since there is no b... |
Why are there faces carved into Mount Rushmore? Who are these figures and what must they have achieved in order to be put on there? | Washington - first president Jefferson - drafted the Declaration of Independence Roosevelt - major reformist, set up national parks and other big deals Lincoln - freed the slaves All four were very significant presidents. *edit-* Theodore Roosevelt also set up the country to come out of the great depression with The Ne... |
What is P2P network? I know it has already been answered here but I still don't get some basic things. Details below. | What you're asking for is called [IP routing] and is one of the fundamental structure of the internet as we know it today. The basics of it is everything with an ethernet or WiFi adapter keeps a routing table which tells them if I want to access X address, send the packet to Y because he know how to get to X. In case t... |
How is The Pirate Bay still up and running when all the founders are in prison? | To answer the latter part of your question: a little while back TPB moved to a highly distributed cloud architecture. You can't confiscate a server that doesn't physically exist, and thanks to the way they designed the system nobody knows which cloud providers are actually hosting the servers . |
What is the purpose of pre-cum? | It also "cleans the tubes" before sex, adjusts the PH for the little swimmers, and keeps them from gumming things up on the way_URL_0_ > Pre-ejaculate is believed to function as a lubricant and an acid neutralizer. and > Acidic environments are hostile to sperm. Pre-ejaculate neutralizes residual acidity in the urethra... |
Why can't Greece just say 'screw it' and go back to using the Drachma? | Because being part of the EuroZone has all sorts of trade benefits. If Greece switched to the Drachma, the Drachma's value would obviously be a tiny fraction of the Euro. For the Greeks themselves, if they switched it would be expensive for them to import goods since the Drachma would hold much less value than the Euro... |
How do baseball players catch an inbounded ball with their ungloved hand without breaking their hand? | I don't know anything about baseball, but I can answer in terms of cricket, where the ball is slightly heavier, harder and fielders don't have any gloves. Essentially when you catch the ball, you're not stopping the ball dead, you allow the momentum to carry your hand back slightly, or you already have your hands movin... |
The difference between mass and weight | Your mass is a given quantity regardless of where you are. Its how much "stuff" you are made of. Weight is how gravity acts on your mass so you weigh less on the moon because there is less gravity but your mass is the same anywhere you go in the universe.In space, you can let go of a brick and it'll not drop painfully ... |
Does anyone actually work "9 to 5"? If so, why doesn't the company require the employee to put in 40 hours of work each week? | Paid lunches are a real thing you know9-5 are the traditional hours businesses are open, also known as first shift or day shift. So 9-5 means an employee covers those hours while the business is open. They may come in a little early or stay a little late to perform tasks while the business is closed, but they primary r... |
What is wifi and how does it magically give my device access to the internet? | Electronic waves. According to the frequency your computer interprets it as an open or closed signal . From then on it's just binary programming. |
If you lose one of your five senses, do the others actually grow stronger, and if they do how is that possible? | It's not that the senses get stronger in an absolute sense. Someone who is blind doesn't gain the ability to hear sounds that would be too soft for a sighted person. It's a matter of attention and processing in the brain. A blind person may notice the soft sound that a sighted person would ignore because of how soft it... |
when comedians have their own tv shows, why do they need writers? | If its a weekly show, even if its only half an hour, there's an amazing amount of work that needs to happen each and every week. The writing for each episode can only happen in 1-2 days - since the writing will dictate if there's any special props, sets, wardrobe, extras etc. that are required, special music, licensing... |
How does carbon and isotopic dating work? | Carbon dating works for things that were once alive, but then died. There is a special kind of carbon called Carbon-14 that is short lived but gets constantly created in our atmosphere. Basically as long as something is alive and breathing it keeps a constant level of this carbon-14. Once it dies, the carbon-14 begins ... |
What is the Bilderberg? | It's a group of some of the most infuental people in the world that pretty much nothing is known about publicly. It supposedly works like a club, with occasional meetings with discussions covering various crucial economical and sociological issues. The lack of media coverage for the group resulted in a shitload of cons... |
How do animals avoid inbreeding in the wild? | Exact way varies by species. For example lions, elephants, and others often drive away the males from the family group. Then during breeding time, generally only the dominant male in the area has the opportunity to breed with the group. This reduces the odds of inbreeding. More importantly, it reduces the odds of inbre... |
When it smells like rain, what am I actually smelling? | Most likely [petrichor], the smell of rain on dry soil. If it's a thunderstorm, it could also be ozone, which forms when the lightning essentially fuses oxygen together. |
How cloud storage systems (email, Google drive, Onedrive) don't run out of storage | The very simple answer is that they can always add mode storage as usage grows. Same way you can add storage to your home systemCloud providers run specialized storage software that allows for any amount of data to be served by clusters of many, many harddrives. The software automatically keeps several copies of the da... |
If planets like Neptune emit light, why do they have a "dark side" facing away from the Sun? | The amount of light they emit is incredibly small, compared to what comes in from the sun. It's also primarily in the infra-red part of the spectrum, so human eyes can't detect it.[Like Jupiter and Saturn, Uranus emits more heat than it recieves from the Sun, but just barely---about the same as that emitted by the Eart... |
What does "Installing" on a computer actually do? | 1. It copies the files to the correct location. Sometimes, different files for the same program have to be in different locations. 2. It checks if all of the shared components it needs are installed, copies the files over if they aren't, and registers the ones it copied over with the operating system so it knows in the... |
Why do we have to get a commercial driver license to drive a bus or semi, but not motor homes, which are almost just as large? | 1. You don't have paying customers on a motor home .2. It's the "almost" part that makes it legal. There has to be some size limit, and so they build right up to that limit, which I believe is something like 40ft in length, and 26,000 GVWR. I moved from western NYS to Denver, CO a few years ago, and those were the limi... |
How do so many airlines stay afloat in America? | The country is very large, with the cities so far apart that train service is too slow. So people want to fly a lot. The country is immensely wealthy, with a GDP per person of well over $50,000 per year, and hundreds of million of people. So a lot of people can afford to fly. |
What causes your nose to be runny instead of stuffy when you have a cold? | A reason I could give is that the common cold is not one virus; it's a bunch of different viruses with similar symptoms. This is also why some colds are worse than others. Because of this, certain viruses give off different symptoms but they are also classified under a cold, meaning that, for example, although you have... |
Why does my immune system fight so intelligently against most malignant illness, but go full retard with benign allergens? | Mast cells line much of your body's inner skin lining. When confronted with a puncture or other allergen, they release histamine that causes the inflammation reaction along with blood vessel dilation and bronchial constriction.Sometimes the antibodies that normal immune cells use to identify antigens accidentally get l... |
When I use my debit card at McDonald's, I don't need to enter my pin or sign. Why do I sometimes have to enter my pin and sometimes have to sign? | If they run your debit card as if it were a credit card transaction, they don't need you to enter your pin. And often, for smaller transactions, stores feel that the time spent on getting the customer's signature on a credit card transaction isn't worth it, since while the customer could protest the charge and go throu... |
Cologne, After shave, deodorant? ? | Cologne is how perfume is marketed for men. Aftershave is for preventing infections after shaving. It may have ingredients that numb skin a bit and almost all have some fragrance. Deodorant is for killing body odour caused by bacteria that eats sweat. Antiperspirant is a type of deodorant, that clogs sweat glands. So b... |
Why have humans evolved to need omega fats from fish if not all previous civilizations had access to fish? | Omega fats are not derived just from fish. While fish definitely has a lot of omega fats, they're also found in other foods. _URL_0_ |
how does the new internet bill that Reddit hates so much work? Will I actually be able to call and request any person's web history? How will companies take advantage of this? | No, definitely not. Basically, companies can collect data on you either to sell or for their own use. Other companies can buy this data. It helps them get insight in trends for their users. While good for the business, that means your personal life is being used for monetary gain. That's what happens with grocery store... |
I know China suffers from overpopulation. So what is better about new two-child policy than old one-child policy? | China is more concerned about an aging population, where there are too many elderly and too little people in the working force to support them. Also, the one child policy has largely been a failure, and has been revised a couple times to allow for more children . For example, if both parents are a single child, they co... |
How is it large herbivores such as cattle, moose and deer can grow so large on a diet of only grass? | Hervibores have a specialized digestive system that helps them acquire much more nutrients from those food sources that would just pass through our own digestive tract untouched. Also, all they do while they're awake is either eat or look for stuff to eat.Humans aren't able to break-down cellulose, the "walls" of plant... |
What raw materials/ingredients are used to make antidepressants. | The process of synthesizing a medication starts with some commercially available reagent which is acted on in various ways to create the desired molecule. What that initial reagent depends entirely on the drug in question. For example, citalopram, a widely used antidepressant, can be synthesized out of 5-bromopthalide,... |
Why DON'T we kill off mosquitos? | Here's an idea. When we remove an organism from an ecosystem, we don't know what will show up to fill that niche. What if it's something worse than mosquitoes? |
What is Bio Chemistry, and what do Bio Chemists do? | Biochemistry is, simply put, the study of the chemical reactions that underlie biological systems. Think of the way proteins are formed, or how glucose is broken down into ATP. Besides academic study and aid of related fields like pharmacology, biochemistry has a lot of industrial applications nowadays, such as the dev... |
How do they recover deleted data from a HDD? | Usually when you delete a file on a HDD the data isn't actually deleted. Instead, the drive is just told that the area where the data is stored isn't important anymore and it can be written over. If you keep using the HDD, it will eventually overwrite the old data, but the data will remain on the drive until then. Your... |
ELI 5 the plot of Inception | Explained in 1 minute using [folders]. HD for best resultsI could explain it to you, but I have the perfect comic to do it for me. [Here]Congratulations! This is the **fifth** time this is asked! You win 5 Internets and a cookie. |
How exactly could the Mexican Supreme Court ruling over marijuana help fight the cartels? | Cartels make their money, and thereby get power, by selling illegal drugs. If the drugs become legal, then anyone can sell them, draining money from the cartels. Further, the legal sales can be taxed, bringing money back to the government, improving their situation. Further, if things like the growing and selling of we... |
why is the search for life on other planets based on the things life on earth needs to exist? | It has been considered, but Earth is the only planet we know of with life, so when we search for life on other planets, our best guess is to look for planets like Earth. Imagine if you moved to a new town, and you wanted to buy your favorite snack. Now, your old Town had a Food Lion, and it had your favorite snack. The... |
How do Steam-Powered Locomotives Work? | Its easier to show you than explain in words. There is a very nice animation [HERE] that explains very well how a steam engine works. |
why do phones need to be charged more frequent over time? | Batteries wear out after being charged again and again and again over years. If you noticed that devices using disposable batteries don't have this problem it's because it's getting a fresh battery with all its charge each time. All rechargeable devices, including laptops and handheld gaming devices, will have their ba... |
What made marijuana illegal in the first place? | Paper, cotton, and tobacco owners lobbied to the government to make it illegal. They did this because marijuana/hemp single handedly is better than all of the other three combined. And the owners of those businesses wanted to remain rich and powerfulPost-prohibition cops keeping their jobs. It got really bad though whe... |
Why, after I masturbate or have sex, do I get an extremely uncomfortable feeling in my groin that seems to last about 10-20 minutes? | Yep. Know what you mean. Only seemed to happen the most after drinking. No idea what was or why it did it. 1 out of every 4 to 8 times it would happen and I had the same tube switching thought as well. Felt kinda like passing a tiny warm stone starting at the base? Sucked.This sound a lot like prostatitis but I can't t... |
Why is it that when I'm suddenly tired my eyes begin to cross? | For the same reason you're more likely to begin feeling cold, too. You're body is basically trying to force you to find a warm, comfortable spot and close your eyes so it can fall asleep. |
How were the point amounts determined for the NFL? | As far as to why extra points exist: Football and Rugby evolved from an earlier game in which what is now the "extra point" was the only actual point-scoring play. The team was required to touch the ball to the ground inside the end zone in order to try for the point . Those games tended to be very low-scoring, obvious... |
Why does the jolly fat man dressed who delivers presents at Christmas get referred to as 'Santa Claus' by some, and 'Saint Nick' and 'Father Christmas' etc. by others? | The Santa Claus character is based on Saint Nicholas, who was a real person. He was known for delivering gifts to less fortunate children. The name Santa Claus is derived from translations of Saint Nicholas' name in different languages. Sinterklaas and Sankt Nikolaus show some similarity. |
Modern methods of attacking cryptographic systems | The idea is that if we can't break the encryption, we can try to break the system instead. **Man in the Middle attack**: Lets say Alice and Bob wish to communicate securely. Alice contacts Bob. They set up an encryption key using a key exchange protocol such as the [Diffie-Hellman], and from that point on they encrypt ... |
Why do some countries call 911 while others call 999, 000, etc? | Back when rotary phones were a thing, higher numbers took longer to dial. 999 was chosen as an emergency numbwr, but could easily be misdialed during stressful situations. When it was adopted here 911 was decided as easier number to dial. All largely irrelevant now that those phones barely exist outside of museums. |
if being frozen causes cell walls to burst, why does my grass not die when my lawn gets a frost? | Just because there is frost on the grass doesn't necessarily mean that the cells themselves have suffered temperatures low enough to freeze. But, low temperatures can indeed cause the death of grass. Some grasses, however produce their own "anti-freeze" in the form of proteins that inhibit the growth of ice crystals. |
Why do american high schools teach advanced calculus and complex numbers, but still manage to be behind countries like germany in PISA or similar tests? | Because the majority of students never take those classes. Simple as that Theyre options, but fewer and fewer students are getting there. A big part of it isnt even ability, we're pretty laid back in terms of academics and its made a lot of students kinda lazy. Its not hard to tell the difference, I've seen folks have ... |
When did drinking warm milk to help sleep become popular, and why if it doesn't work? | Ask any newborn if drinking warm milk help them to sleep :) They won't answer because they can't talk *but if they could* they'd probably say that it does. The oldest mention of this practice that I am aware of is in the old testament in the story of [Jael]. I'm sure there are probably even older references than that b... |
What are the actual sizes of pen point sizes in NA? | The easy answer is that there is no uniform "standard" for pen point sizes, although many of the big manufacturers pretty much agree on a few points . And even then, there is notable variation between brands and types of pens. Put simply, the culture of the US doesn't care much about the writing implements used, where ... |
How are "celebrity nudes" leaked? | Remote storage in the "cloud" is inherently susceptible to exploitation. Also, the media in question may not be in possession of the celebrity . Additionally, leaked nudes or porn are a great way to drum up press. Think about it, if Kim Kardashian or Paris Hilton hadn't gotten plowed on camera would we care about them?... |
why does our Brain get attached to people, things, places etc, and why do we have a strong need to find the one we love | Probably all to do with our survival instincts. We can get attached to places as a way to demonstrate that it's "our area", and to produce offspring we adore the person that is deemed by our brain as the best mate, for healthier and stronger children. This is my biased idea, so take it for what it isLike other great ap... |
If lottery money goes to 'education' then why are school so bad? | Not all lottery money goes to education, lotteries by themselves don't cover all the costs of schools, and the major problems with school systems have little to do with funding. |
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