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What is the problem with a lot of consumer debt? | Those are two very good reasons, as well as those you suggest I would say at it's core, it is rarely necessary. It encourages over spending.Interest on finance acts as a tax on impatience. Reducing spending power of the individual. It can lead to artificially inflated prices. Poor management of the debt can lead to sev... |
Did fruits with seeds outside (like strawberries) evolve from fruits with seeds inside (like oranges), or was it the other way around? | Fruits of various types are actually formed from several different parts of the plant and it's flower, and other than the ovaries producing seeds fertilized from a flower, there have been multiple evolutionary paths leading to "fruit". A strawberry is a type of "aggregate fruit", each "seed" is actually an individual f... |
What is really happening when I get the "wind knocked out" of me? | A sudden blow to your solar plexus nerve bundle causes a spasm in your diaphragm, paralyzing it temporarily. Your diaphragm is the muscle that pulls your lungs open to draw air in. With the diaphragm in spasm it cannot move which makes it very difficult to inhale causing lack of oxygen, pain and often panic. |
Why is poop almost always brown? | Most of your feces is actually dead blood cells. These blood cells break down and release their hemoglobin, which catabolizes into a yellow-brown substance called bilirubinReading this makes me wonder how the blood cells are selected to be removed and where they enter the digestive tractDrink enough Guinness and your s... |
What you be the effect on the ecosystem if Mosquitos just disappeared. | A simple Google search found this _URL_0_ Apparently it would be rather good for us as humans if they were wiped off the Earth. Other organisms would fill their place as collateral. The only issue is that more than 50% of migratory birds in the tundra could die. Also, I think it said there would be a lack of cocoa/choc... |
Why are municipal employees so mean? Specially the ones that work in office buildings, such as Tax, Zoning and Construction offices. | Theyre the face of the heartless bureaucracy known as government. You might be nice to them but theres three angry people behind you and two in front of you. Those angry people will unload their bullshit onto someone with 0 power to really help them and the workers can do little to nothing to stop itStereotypically, th... |
Why is water reflective? | Pretty much everything is reflective. If it wasn't it would be pitch black. The smoother a surface is, the more perfectly it reflects light. Still water is pretty smooth. |
Why does female ejaculation sometimes look clear and sometimes look white? | The clear ejaculate is urine. The white creamy ejaculate is urine with a little bit prostate specific antigen, which is excreted from the Skene glands, and other substances from the female prostate. Prostate specific antigen helps sperm swim better to increase the chances of a woman getting pregnant. We aren't sure if ... |
What are the roles/duties of Queen Elizabeth II? Does she possess any real political power? Is her position mainly honorary in nature? | She gives Royal Assent to any laws passed by Parliament . No bill passed by Parliament actually becomes a law until she signs it. That said, her signature is basically guaranteed; she isn't likely to usurp the authority of Parliament. Her non-political position also gives her the opportunity to be an observer with long... |
How do your veins stay in place? | > everyone has veins in their hands but how do those veins stay in your hands as you grow olde? Blood vessels are embedded in tissue which keeps them in place. Each vessel has an outer layer called the "tunica externa" which anchors it to the surrounding tissue and organsThe outermost layer of your blood vessels is cal... |
how do games like 20Q determine your answer so accurately? What goes into the math or logic behind it? | Assume you have a set of 10 billion people, and assume each question you ask narrows it down by 50%. For instance, first question you could ask if the person was male or female, regardless of the answer, the remaining potential pool of people ends up at 5 billion. Do it again, the pool shrinks to 2.5 billion. Do this 2... |
How does dynamite work? | There is the old version which is gunpowder which consists like most other chemical explosion, of an oxidizer, fuel, and stabilizer. Developed somewhere around the mid 1800s was nitro glycerine. Rather than burning like everything else up to the time, this destabilises, violently when a physical shock is applied. Not~~... |
Why can't we just eradicate mosquitoes and stop all the diseases they spread. | We're working on it. Eradicating a species as invasive as the mosquito isn't exactly easy. Can't exactly just spray pesticide everywhere. |
Why do some mobile phones have a replaceable battery and some don't? | I suspect it's down to size. Adding clips and removable backs. Adding battery contacts etc are much harder than just a small snap on connection that never moves. It probably helps sell more phones as when your batteries dead your probably going to buy a new phone rather than try and get into an iPhone.There is a techni... |
How does cooking meat provide more energy? | The body breaks down the food we eat into its basic nutrients, such as breaking complex proteins down into simple amino acids. This process requires energy, which the body needs to supply if it's going to do this on its own. Cooking food helps break down the nutrients prior to us consuming them, which means the body wi... |
Why is the sound quality at a drive through so bad? | You mean like the speaker to talk to the guy taking the order? There isn't any incentive to make it good quality. it's not like your rocking out to some heavy metal through it. You're just talking to the guy. If you can understand the words the quality is fine enough.That speaker has to be electronics and be outside al... |
Why does whisky appear more oily when I add a bit of water to it? | Engineer here:The different densities of the whisky and the added water are the cause. Fluids of different densities have got a different refraction index and cause penetrating light to refract at a different angle at the boundary layers, where the fluids aren't mixed yet. This creates that "swirls", which are just an ... |
Why do humans unconsciously shake their leg when sitting yet other animals do not? | Its from being stressed. Restless leg syndrome is what it is called. When you try to relax or sit, your legs just move randomlyAnxiety. My dog licks his paws uncontrollably. Some birds pace. Some humans pace. There are nervous ticks everywhere. |
EU and the USA are pretty equal economically. Why do all USA major cities have massive skyscrapers while Europe has little to none. | The European are generally a lot older than the US and in most cases the local government works to protect the classic skyline rather than build massive skyscrapers that block the view. If you go outside of the central older parts of town you'll start seeing bigger buildings. For example Rome, that city is thousands of... |
How would the US nationalize oil/natural gas? What would happen to the companies who are producing oil on US soil/US waters? | > How would the US nationalize oil/natural gas? They'd pass a law requiring the owners of oil and gas firms in the US to sell or turn over their assets to the government. > What would happen to the companies who are producing oil on US soil/waters. They'd be owned by the government rather than their private owners/shar... |
why soldiers tap their magazines on their helmet before loading their rifle. | USMC infantry Marine here, we do it in real life, it's to ensure all the rounds are seated all the way back in the magazine. It helps properly feed the rounds into the chamber avoiding any jamming. Technically you shouldn't do it on your Kevlar, or helmet, but whatever works. |
What is Bandwidth? How can I make mine better? | Bandwidth is the width of a frequency band. For instance, your ears can hear about 20 Hz to 20kHz. Your ears have an audio bandwidth of about 20 kHz. To transfer audio over something like a wire or radio waves, you need at least that same bandwidth. So if a radio station is 1000 kHz what it really means is that there i... |
Why did blockbuster movies in the 60-70 era have better quality video than news broadcastings at that time? | Movies are filmed in conditions where the production crew have control over the environment. They can light it properly, use large-format cameras, they can process the film carefully and have dozens of goes at getting it right. Reportage is done with small format cameras by a small harassed crew operating under difficu... |
What is a typeface? And how is it different than a font? | **Typeface** – A set of fonts in the same style. Or, in other words, a font family. Ex: Times New Roman, Helvetica, or Arial. **Font** – A single kind of typeface. Ex: Times New Roman in 10 point size is a font, and Times New Roman in 14 point size is also a font. Times New Roman in Bold is also a font. |
Why are stores often in need of coins? Where do all the coins being made even go if they are not in circulation? | I don't typically carry coins. I would imagine I am not in the minority on this. I pay for something with cash, I get coins back as change. These end up being thrown in a jar in my house until I end up taking them to the bank and exchanging them for bills to repeat the process. Stores go and get rolls of coins based on... |
When you feel a (emotional) shiver in your body, what is actually happening? | Physical response due to a spike in a certain chemical in the brain probably causes the shivers in the spine. I wouldn't know what chemical this is though. |
Why are car speedometers inaccurate? | They are usually quite accurate. Smaller or underinflated tires will make it read high and larger tires will make it read low. Compare your tire size with the specified tires for your vehicle. That info is usually found inside the driver's door frame. GPS responds too slowly, and as you say, it doesn't always work. |
How do "modern rangefinding" reticles work? | I think the size decreasing as the decent in the top helps visually estimate range. If a target takes the full width of the line at a specific range it should take the full width of the smaller line at its designated distance. |
How are people making money by posting youtube videos? | Advertising. Those who qualify can become YouTube partners and receive a cut of the ad revenue their videos generate for YouTubehow do you qualify to become a youtube partner? |
Why do I have to press shift to type a "?" It's on the same key as "/" which I use about once a month. | I can't answer your question, but I use the / key dozens of times a day, every day. The choice had to be made at some point, and that was what "they" choseIn the day when the choice was made, / was an incredibly common key to type, being used for directory navigation and many other things.TLDR : Early computer users di... |
Why do humans naturally like 4 bar music rhythms? | I read something a while back about people liking familiarity, which is why a lot of popular music Follow a similar structure. Each is different enough to not bore us however familiar in a way people find comfortable. Think about the number of songs with the same 4/4 4 chord progression structure. People eat that up!',... |
How Do Countries Go Into Debt? | A country will sell share-like things to individuals and other countries for say 100 and then the buyer will get 101 after 10 years so a country is in debt when it can't pay off all it's loans. |
why hockey refs fake a puck drop during a face off? | So that players who try to anticipate the drop and thus start their swing faster don't get an advantage. They are supposed to wait until the puck is dropped to start their swing. |
How come drugs are found in urine much longer than in blood, when urine is filtered out of blood? | Imagine you have a pool ful of warter and you throw a special kind of colouring in there which turned the water red. Suppose you have a filter which removes the colouring from the pool, and jettersons it out. At first the pool would be bright red so you could just look at it and see that someone threw the colouring in.... |
What is the 'Archer's Paradox'? | The paradox is you need a flexible arrow to be accurate, but you need a stiff arrow to be accurate. You need a stiff arrow in order for it to be accurate because the flex of the arrow in flight changes the flight path. But you also need a flexible arrow in order for the arrow to get around the bow itself. If the arrow ... |
Before we had things like modern medicine, how did we know what foods were poisonous or not | Trial and error. We've had tens of thousands of years to learn which foods are poisonous and we've passed this information on through the generations. |
Context and meaning behind the lyrics of the Cranberries song Zombie. | The song references Anglo-Irish conflict over Northern Ireland In particular Zombie appears to have been written in memory of the deaths of 2 children in Warrington as a result of Irish Republican Army ) bombings ). The line referencing "the same old theme since 1916" is a reference to the [Easter Rising]. |
Why are fish kept on ice vs being put in a fridge | Ice is cheap, and fish are fine with the concept of getting their outsides wet. You can't sell steaks on ice, because the outside of a steak is the insides of a cow and it's not supposed to get soaked in water. Fish live in water, so they are pre-made with water-friendly outsides. Refrigerators need doors, or lots of c... |
How are tariffs bad for the economy? | They raise the cost of the tariffed goods, which raises the cost of living. For most good that are imported import substitution is not a viable option. But even if a domestic company decided to make the good, it would still have a higher price, which is why it wasnt manufactured here in the first place. Raising the cos... |
Why do dead bodies float? | As a body decomposes, bacteria consume the internal organs and produce gases. After a while, there's enough trapped gas per kilo of solids to make the body less dense than water and thus buoyant. |
Keeping in mind all the things we have learned about sleep, what would you have to do to get a "perfect" night of sleep? | The problem here is that every person is different. My perfect night's sleep may not be the same as yours. Also, "perfect" isn't really an exact definition. But lets explore this. Sleep's function is to well, we don't really know 100% of this, really. But *some* of it's functions are to allow your body and brain to rec... |
How does a for profit software company prevent unauthorized code use on a software product that they have open sourced (e.g. Epic Games with Unreal Engine 4)? | Yes, source code has a signature. There are a small number of compilers and very few people have the time or money to modify them in any significant way. So I would say that for significantly large pieces of code, you would be able to show that a binary came from a certain piece of source code. If you took the Unreal c... |
why can't a salt water fish live in freshwater? And vice versa | First off: some species can tolerate the change. One of many examples are salmon, which migrate from the sea upstream to their spawning grounds. A lot of others, however, have adapted to the salt content of their environment. This adaptation is mostly necessary because blood and most other body fluids have tightly regu... |
The difference between the Irish Free State, the Irish Republic, and the Republic of Ireland | They were all different stages of the development of the modern RoI. Pre-partition, post partition, and post civil war. Other more accurate definitions are available. |
Why do some stores not label the price of their products? | So when you get to the register you feel like a broke douchebag for balking at the price and are more likely to pay for something rather than live with the stigma of not being able to afford it and having to say so in front of other shoppers. They also get that bitch from game of thrones to ring her bell and say "shame... |
Retro ELI5: How did those "pirate cards" work that unlocked all satellite TV channels during the late 90's - early 2000's? | The cards are smart cards . Hackers found you could change the information on these cards with some rather basic smart card read/writers after some bugs were found in how the cards work. The card held only a little bit of data , but the data it held said if the account was valid and what channels it was valid for. So h... |
In a country where suicide is illegal, how is the lawbreaker punished? | They aren't. A successful suicide isn't something where the offender can be punished. Attempted suicide is a crime in some places, though.Laws against suicide are increasingly rare, and when they do exist, they are rarely enforced. Often they are a legal maneuver to give law enforcement the power to intervene in a suic... |
Cellular Data, Roaming & APN's | Cellular data is accessing the internet through the cellular network of your cellular provider. Roaming is where you use a different cellular provider's network because the one that you subscribe to doesn't have service from the provider you subscribe to. An APN is a file stored on a phone that says where to route inte... |
how come kitchen sinks arent made out of porcelain, like bathroom sinks are? | If you drop a saucepan in a bathroom sink, you will find the sink will damage very quickly . To get the strength you could go for a belfast sink, or quartz/corian, but the cost will be very expensive in comparison edit: put bristol instead of belfast - oops", 'Ours is. Having had Astracast refuse to honour their "guara... |
Turing Machines and the Church-Turing Hypothesis | Turing said that "everything computable is computable by a Turing machine". Actually is a bit more complex but we can rephrase it as follow: if you can work out a simple procedure to solve a problem, then there's a Turing machine that can solve this problem. A "simple procedure" is a procedure that always gives a corre... |
Why are products made in China considered of lesser quality than other products, when everything is made there? | There are differences in products produced in China according to US or EU standards and products produced in China according to Chinese standards. EU and US forbid the usage of some chemicals and such, whereas many Chinese manufacturers produce the same goods for other markets without holding onto these standards. So t... |
Why do we pace when anxious/stressed? | Anxiety makes us want to take action . If we have no action to take, we just walk around to work off the extra action energy. |
Volkswagen used a "defeat device" to detect when their cars are being tested and reduce NOx emissions. Why not leave it running all the time? | Because the software re-tuned the engine to use far less fuel than it normally does which results in it producing far less power than advertised. If it was on all the time no one would buy the cars because they would be extremely expensive, under powered cars that while extremely efficient are not practical for every d... |
Who controls the internet, and can it be shutdown? | There are too many players involved now for it to be feasibly "shut down". The Internet is cross-connected all over the place. Particular companies could cut their connections, and cause a good deal of damage, but to stop the entire Internet would take a global agreement of many parties. The most disruptive thing that ... |
How does my cat know to wake me up exactly 25 minutes before my alarm goes off, regardless of what it is set for? | It could be that after [x] amount of time asleep, your body is preparing to wake up and your cat hears the change in breathing. Whether my husband works days or nights our cat starts nuzzling him, whether or not an alarm is set. |
Do any animals besides humans find enjoyment in listening to music? | I think it would be really hard to qualify "enjoyment" in many species but I would imagine you could see changes in behavior linked to the music- start playing it and seeing a head bob in a parrot for example. But even we can't really qualify how we enjoy or choose our musical tastes you know? I know there was a study ... |
Why dump truck companies aren't liable for damages caused by rocks and things that aren't properly secured in the back of their truck? | > Why dump truck companies aren't liable for damages caused by rocks and things that aren't properly secured in the back of their truck? They are. Any sign that says otherwise is bogus, and is merely at attempt to: 1. Get you to follow at a greater distance, thus reducing the chance of any damage. 2. Dissuade you from ... |
How exactly is the Muslim ban unconstitutional when things like the Chinese Exclusion Act were never deemed unconstitutional (yet repealed for other reasons)? | There has not yet been a court ruling on any of the actions taken so far. Its not unconstitutional, because no one has said it isn't. Something becomes unconstitutional when a court deems it so. The court has not yet heard this case, as such, they have made no decision", 'Thank you everyone for the answers, I love how ... |
When somebody loses weight, how does the fat leave the body? | You breathe and urinate it out. Fat is a complex molecule made up of carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen atoms. Your body breaks these down into carbon dioxide and water . |
Businesses with double entry doors, why do you always keep one locked? | Because they unlock using different methods. One door is locked in place with latches at the top and bottom of the frame while the other has a key lock which slots into the other door. Opening the regular door is easy and necessary to enter at all but the other might require a screwdriver, tool, or just flipping recess... |
in the past couple years why have there been so many problems with performing the death penalty? Are the drugs used that hard to come across? | There are some issues and concerns with cruelty surrounding "Lethal Injection". It is know to cause severe pain, and there has been a lot of pushback from humanitarians on whether or not it is considered a cruel and unusual punishment. _URL_0_ Please check out this NBC article for more information. It is slightly bias ... |
How are there so many distinct British accents despite the relatively small size of the UK? | Firstly, we've had a lot longer to develop dialects than the US. We have been using the language since before the US was colonised. Also you must remember that our population is made up of indigenous people and invaders. Scottish, Welsh and Irish dialects and slang have been influenced by the original language of those... |
the flu and cold defeat vaccination by mutating into different strains, but major diseases like polio, whooping cough and measles can be eradicated by vaccines | Viruses differ by a lot of things:-genetic code-use and level of reliance on host proteins-fidelity of polymerase enzymes-other reasons In general, RNA viruses, which has only RNA for the genetic code, are inherently more prone to errors and mutations as they are transcribed. There is an extra step needed, where the RN... |
When you listen to your favourite song for so long you start to hate it, what is going on in the brain? | It's the musical version of [ semantic satiation] *" ..a psychological phenomenon in which repetition causes a word or phrase to temporarily lose meaning for the listener, who then perceives the speech as repeated meaningless sounds."* The human brain is always craving fresh input, so subjecting it to the same stimuli ... |
Why are things more expensive in Australia compared to the US and Europe? | This was asked a lot recently when there was a thread on the price of video games in Australia, so I recommend you search ELI5 for an in-depth answer. It effectively comes down to wages are much higher and distribution costs more |
How did we decide in PEMDAS as the proper order of operations? | Parenthesis go first because you need a way to specify an order when the default order is incorrect . From there it's entirely convention, but the convention isn't without reason. One thing that winds up showing up a lot in mathematics is a polynomial, such as x^2 - 4x + 3. Ideally you want to be able to write this wit... |
RE: Reporters / paparazzi who follow people around despite their clearly expressed wishes not to. Is that legal? | From what I know of US law, celebrities and public officials lose some level of privacy simply by being in the public eye. So yeah, people can just follow them around. But those people aren't allowed to break any laws, like burglarize the celebrity's home or whatever, and a celebrity's bodyguard might deter some people... |
Why would my plate be "extremely hot" when my servers hands me it? | Plates can be extremely hot when they're fresh out of an industrial dishwasher. In some cases, certain dishes are plated prior to being placed under a broiler. But usually, it's because they've been sitting in the window under the heating element for a few minutes while waiting for the rest of your table's order to be ... |
How does social media create targeted ads so quickly? What does the process look like? | The media company pre-defines thousands of categories of users that you can mix and match as you please. In addition, you can create a new category such as "people who clicked on my last ad" or "people *similar to* those who clicked on my last ad." |
What's up in Burma? | The biggest reason that military dictatorships would give up power is to ensure security. In 2011, the Burmese governments and many others saw power slip from 'unstoppable' dictators in the Middle East. Fearing backlash in their own countries, non-democratic nations adjusted their internal policy in different ways. Bur... |
How do master keys, 'bump' keys and lockpicking work? | A master key system is more about the locks than the keys. The locks pins have two breaks in the tumbler pins. One break lines up with the room key is used, and the other lines up when the master key is used. A bump key is a blank key with most of the key removed, leaving only small lumps left. When the key is inserted... |
What is the Vatican Bank? What does it exist for? what does it do? | The Vatican Bank is a common name for the [Institute for the Works of Religion] . It is a [private bank]. It is located only in the Vatican. It was founded on 27 June 1942 by Pope Pius XII. The purpose of the IOR is "to provide for the safekeeping and administration of movable and immovable property transferred or entr... |
Why if I workout regularly and I miss a couple days i'm suddenly unfit as hell? | so many variables can affect your performance. Sleep, diet, stress, etc. Depending on the type of routine you are doing you might not be giving your body enough recovery time working out every dayMy first guess would be that it has something to do with your diet. You may not be getting enough protein/nutrients for you ... |
How do Europeans' governments work? | Almost all European countries are democratic. The most obvious exceptions are Vatican City and Belarus. Some might also count Putin's Russia as non-democratic, but that's iffier. All the E.U. countries are democratic since being a democracy is a requirement for joining the E.U. The actual structure of government varies... |
The NDAA signed into law on 2012, 2013, and 2014 allows for the indefinite detention of US citizens in certain cases. How is this not nullified by Article 1 of the Constitution? | [Article 1], section 9 of the Constitution: > The privilege of the writ of habeas corpus shall not be suspended, **unless when in cases of rebellion or invasion the public safety may require it.** Since the NDAA requires someone be declared an enemy combatant to be detained , that falls under the case of rebellion . Th... |
Why do games on PC/phone crash sometimes but they almost never do that on a PS or an XBOX? | They defintelty do crash on console, but it's less likely. It's the same as apps for Windows/Android vs macOS/iOS, optimization. Console game makers know exactly what machine will be running their games. For Windows/Android, there are countless configurations, so it is virtually impossible to optimize the game for all ... |
How do speakers create different noises at the same time? | It's done by adding the sound waves together. Adding waves sounds strange, but it happens all the time. This is exactly what happens when you talk to me at the same time as I'm listening to music. You can see in [this image] how three different sound waves are added together. It creates a much more complex wave which i... |
Why do we wave our hands when we say goodbye? | Explanation through argumentation: Describe to me a better way to communicate a message from a distance with as low a chance of misinterpretation. The evolution of a wave as the best way to catch attention from a distance to a method of communicating awareness of the existence of the other follows. If you had no techno... |
How was the internet made? Like how did they discover coding, etc? | Computers predate the internet by several decades, but the origins of the internet can be traced back to a US Military project in the 1960's called Arpanet. They wanted to see if they could get computers to communicate with each other. The first data packet was sent from a computer at UCLA to one at Stanford in 1969. T... |
What happened to cloning, stem-cell research etc.? | Stem cell research has, for the most part, stopped using embryonic cells, which was the whole reason for the controversy as it was all tied up in abortion and stuff. We're now much better at finding and growing stem cells from totally morally unobjectionable places, so the embryonic cells just aren't needed. It also fr... |
how I could make some electricity if I got stuck on a desert island. | if a solar cell washed up, sure. Heat is an easy thing to come by, be it through rubbing two sticks together or combining chemicals in a first aid kit. Electricity not so much, as it is the movement of electrons across metallic surfaces. If you have some powerful rod-shaped magnets you could set them in a coil of coppe... |
Why do most of remote-controlled helicopters have 2 rotors for more stability, while real ones often only have one? | Real helicopters have a tail-rotor for stability. It takes skill to fly a real helicopter. Every little change that you make will affect the amount of work the tail-rotor has to do. Helicopter pilots are constantly making tiny little changes to the tail-rotor using their feet on the pedals. Having two main rotors is mu... |
Why is the sum of an infinite geometric series where r > 1 not infinity? | Because the definition of a convergent infinite series is that its sequence of partial sums goes to a *finite* limit. Infinity is, of course, not finite. Keep in mind that it's not a number either. This is similar to the notion that 1/0 does not equal infinity, but is undefined. Edit: made statement more accurate |
If obesity is medically proven to cause negative health effects, how are parents not charged with child abuse/child endangerment? | Because it's a terrible idea and no politician who wanted to ever be re-elected would push for the Destory Families Because Your Kid Is Fat Act. I'm all for doing things to promote less fat kids , but what do you think is going to do more damage to a kid: being overweight, or being forcibly removed from their home and ... |
When I eat late at night, I wake up hungry. When I don't eat late at night, I wake up not that hungry. Why is this? | It's more of what you eat. If you eat something healthy or full of protein you likely won't be hungry when you awake. If you eat something high in sugar or carbs that can spike your blood sugar and crash it, then yeah you'll wake up hungry for some good ole nutrition. Edit: after further research it seems that we don't... |
What causes someone to look pale or lose their color when sick? | A lot of blood which is normally distributed equally throughout the body is being sent to your vital organs. For example, if someone is experiencing stomach pains and become pale and weak, their blood is being sent to the stomach organs to help heal the illness. |
When looking at stars at night, why am I able to see very faint stars better when I don't look directly at them? | Your eyes have two types of cell, rods and cones. Cones see color, are concentrated in the center of your eye, and see relatively bright light. Rods do not see color, are concentrated around the periphery of your eye, and see dimmer light. You're setting it up so that the dim light of the star falls on your rods. |
Why do we feel the need to fold our arms or cross our legs? | I like to think it's a basic measure of support for relaxing our muscles or otherwise providing comfort.In a book called "what everybody is saying" by Joe navarro an ex FBI agent he explains, from what I can remember. That it's pretty much like humans have 2 brains. Body language says a lot more about what people are t... |
Why is it so hard to put socks on after a shower or getting out of a swimming pool, even though you dried the feet? | The pores of your feet open when exposed to water for long periods of time. This causes water to continuously come out of your pores, which is why you'd usually have to towel yourself a couple times after showering. Once the moisture is expended from your opened pores and they begin to close, your skin overall becomes ... |
How did Google, or any search engine for that matter, get started? | Google is a special case, in that we know exactly how it started because it was spun out of a PhD research project at Stanford. You can still read [their original paper online] . But essentially you start small and work up. Nobody tries to index the entire web in one go -- it's completely impossible. But once you 've i... |
why is what i learned about tastebuds/the tounge in school incorrect? | In school, many of us learned that the different areas of the tongue responded to the different tastes The back tastes bitter, back and to the sides is sour, forward and to the sides tastes salt and the tip tastes sweetness. This is incorrect, as everywhere on the tongue tastes everything relatively equally. It's most ... |
Why do hairs grow longer/darker out of moles or freckles? | A mole is basically a benigh growth of pigmented skin cells aka melanocytes. Scientifically known as a melanocytic neavus. So any hair that outcrops from these regions are darker, thicker and coarse due to the increased presence of melanin. |
Why do people/animals shake when they're afraid? | It's adrenaline surging through your system as part of the body's "fight or flight" response. It's done to heat up the muscles in preparation for combat or flat out sprinting to safety. |
What is quantitave easing? | It isn't different, other than no physical money gets printed. The Federal Reserve Bank invents more US currency on a computer database. They then use that currency to purchase US Treasury debt . In theory, when the government pays it back, with interest, the Fed can then destroy the extra money. However, since that mo... |
Is there a difference between a brand and the images you associate with the brand? | I’m going to share a funny experiment in business class last week. I want you to think of the logo of this brand: Kodak. What colour is it? Most people would reply red and yellow. And they are RIGHT. That is so surprising since they haven’t bought a Kodak camera/film/product in decades, there has been zero advertisemen... |
How can some people be fully functioning on 4 hours of sleep? | You get used to it. Technically you can be fully functional with 2 hours of sleep a day. Look up polyphasic sleep and Buckminster Fuller who reportedly took 4 thirty minute naps a day for two years. Anyway, it really sucks when you start, but you can adjust your sleep schedule to require less hours, basically by going ... |
How does quicksand form? | when sand becomes saturated with too much water. it happens anywhere there is a lot of water and a lot of sand think of quicksand as a water-sand mixture thats too liquidy to stand on but too syrupy to move your feet out of |
when the sun will become a red giant and what will happen to earth. | We're talking billions of years into the future here which makes this borderline-hypothetical, but all things being equal, the Earth would be engulfed and swallowed by the sun. It'll be burned to a crisp before that, though. |
why my bank is so desperate to give me a credit card | Unless you are much more disciplined than the average credit card user, you will carry a balance with every purchase you make on your card. This means that you will owe more money to the bank than you spent at the store. Additionally, every time you swipe your credit card, the bank gets a cut of the transaction. This i... |
How can someone get falsely convicted of a crime if you’re innocent until proven guilty (how can they prove you’re guilty)? | Because the measurement is 'beyond a reasonable doubt'. A group of 12 people can look at a thing and still make a mistake about it. Heck a group of 12 million people can look at a thing and still make a mistake about it. You can't really PROVE someone is guilty but you can show that they are probably guilty beyond a re... |
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