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What is the sense of having "the right against self-incrimination"? | The whole premise of our legal system is that you're initially assumed to be innocent & the state must prove guilt. Ultimately, it's a protection against torture - if the authorities can force you to confess things, people will get hurt if they're giving the "wrong" answer.The 5th amendment just means you don't have to... |
With the huge amount of money required to make a movie, and the associated huge profits and risk, why do we still have "Bad" movies? | I think [Cracked] had a good hindsight look into some of the failures. It noted how The Lone Ranger spent $200 million making a movie in a genre which has never pulled in much more than half that. They somehow believed that Johnny Depp alone could more than make up the difference. #5 in the article later notes how prod... |
Why is it considered racist or taboo among some groups to say "All Lives Matter?" | It's a misunderstanding of Black Lives Matter. BLM was started as a response to police violence which was viewed to be disproportionately perpetrated against black people. It wasn't started to mean "Black Lives are the *only* lives which matter," it was meant to be "black lives matter, too!" and to remind people that t... |
What is a permalink and how does it differ from other links? | A permalink is a link guaranteed to point to a certain piece of content forever . This is generally used to distinguish from links to pages that change all the time, and may have a different piece of content on them in a couple days. For example, I can link you to the latest xkcd comic by linking you to the front page ... |
What exactly is a Boltzmann Brain | Particles are always moving and changing. By sheer random luck over a period of infinite time, particles could arrange themselves into a position that allows for thought/intelligence to occur. It’s like saying stirring a can of coke might cause the sugar, flavouring, water, colouring and everything else in it to separa... |
Why does beer dehydrate people if it is primarily water? | Because alcohol interferes with the proper functioning of your pituitary gland which control the water balance in your body. When you drink your pituitary glands send more signals to eliminate water than it should, so you can drink 32 ounces of liquid but pee out 34Alcohol interferes with an area of the brain concerned... |
Why is the letter zed pronounced zee in the United States? | Zed is older and it is based on the French word for the character which evolved from the Greek character zeta. The origins of zee seem to be a bit foggy, but in a period from the 18th to 19th centuries it seems to have become popular to bring the pronunciation of the character's name in line with other english characte... |
What's the math behind 1% Fruit Juice in drinks? | I've never heard of 1% fruit juice but if it's like what you say it is the definition is likely 1% of whatever the legal definition of fruit juice is and 99% water, sugar and external flavorants that do not come from the juice. 1% grape juice is basically 1% actual liquid grape and 99% purple sugar water. |
Why do we call some "late" or "the late ___" after they pass away? | Centuries ago "late" could also mean "until recently". For example, you 'd say "his late wife" meaning "she was his wife until recently, but she's not his wife now . It was a popular euphemism for a taboo subjectWe have all sorts of euphemisms for dead, "late" being one of them. We're kind of uncomfortable saying strai... |
As a follow-up to a front-page story, why does it seem like knives are treated more harshly than guns in cases of self-defense when the criminal ends up dead? | It takes more effort to kill someone with a knife than a gun. It incredible rare for someone to die from a single knife wound, and when there are multiple knife wounds people start to see it as less and less of self-defense. Or in simple terms, during self-defense people see firing one bullet and stabbing someone once ... |
why a shot is measured as 35.5ml ?? | 35.5ml is 1/16 of an imperial pint. As Obvious0ne pointed out, though, that's not the universal measurement of a shot. |
Why do we disassociate/depersonalize on shrooms/LSD? | I feel like that's a loaded question. I do shrooms often and I don't feel I disassociate on them. It's not delirium at all. It's clarity. I'm sure there's many that would disagree with me though. |
Why was OJs trial on TV? Will Cosbys be on as well? | The judge lifted reporting restrictions, if the judge does so in the Cosby case it probably will be as well, but due to the nature of the crime and the vulnerabilities of the victims it is highly unlikely that reporting restrictions will be lifted.It is up to the judge's discretion. Given the media fiasco the Simpson t... |
What is it about cancer that makes it so difficult to cure? | > What is it about cancer that makes it so difficult to cure? Cancer is a malfunction of your own cells. So a cure for cancer needs to be able to kill part of you, but not *all* of you, which is a pretty tricky proposition.Cancer isn't a singular disease, it's an umbrella term that encompasses a ton of diseases that wo... |
How come male chicks (Roosters) are just sent to their deaths and not eaten like the females? | There are two major types of chickens. One type is bred to produce maximum eggs, and nearly all the males are killed. Often by throwing them alive into a grinder. The other type is bred for maximum meat and males and females are both usedDepends, in Vietnam people like roosters better. I personally think that although ... |
How does an assortment of numbers and letters get programmed and become the video games and applications that I know and love? | Think of the computer like your really smart but indecisive friend. He can do almost anything you ask of him number related, remember wast amount of information, process things really quickly .but you have to tell him what and how he should do everything. he can't really think for himself. Programming is the field of t... |
How do we understand languages? | May I ask how you understand "how we understand physical objects like apes"? That's a pretty tough question in some ways even harder to understand than concepts. Just so I can get a better idea of where you are coming from and what level I should reply at. |
How people can take a photo of the milky way in the night sky | The milky way galaxy is basically a fried-egg shape and we're out in the white somewhere. Also, it's almost completely empty space. Imagine being in a cloud of fireflies: you can see pretty much all of them because of the space between them. Same thing with stars in the galaxy. Talking about the specific photo you've l... |
Why do fighters fly in Chinese fight movies? | Because they can. that is the true answer. Because they canUsually, they don't. They jump really high and have unreasonable control over their trajectory. I don't think there's really a better answer than "it's a genre thing". In wuxia, martial artists have extremely unrealistic abilities, including exaggerated strengt... |
How do doctors know when to stop cutting your skull so they don't damage the brain? | med student here- they use a pneumatic drill. Designed to cut-off when there is a sudden change in pressure. You'd have to really not know what you're doing, or be intent on killing someone to screw up. |
What will be the fate of rich Arab and Gulf countries when their oil reserves will become almost empty? | It's hard to know for sure, but a lot of them have thought about this problem. The key is diversification, and you accomplish that by investing in other sectors. Saudi has car manufacturing for example, some of the smaller places are tourist or financial hubs or whatever. The problem with trying to diversify is that it... |
If the function of life is to grow, reproduce, and continue indefinitely, how does that explain diseases that kill the host (and hence themselves)? | Successful viruses and parasites don't kill their hosts before they're able to multiply and find another host. A lot of parasites weaken the host, but not so much that the host can't continue living. And some parasites will make their hosts do bizarre things in order to facilitate the parasite's reproduction . Similarl... |
what causes a wet object to remain stuck to another after it has dried out? | Adhesion. Water is actually adhesive. It is also cohesive so when there is a lot of it it can stick to itself and form a film. With paper or leaves, water can dissolve polysaccharides which leech into the liquid and as the water dries out forms a polymer just like plastic that is sticky like dried soda. |
Why do humans need vitamin D to survive, but nocturnal animals do not? Do they find Vitamin D somewhere else? | Even when we are talking about mammals - we still have very different metabolism and some mammals can produce biological stuff that other mammals can't. Take cats for example: they are incapable of producing taurine while most mammals can. |
How is it that the top post in /r/funny has almost 40 thousand link karma, but the guy who posted it has under 5 thousand? | _URL_0_ > Karma also does not share a 1:1 ratio with upvotes. It is common for link karma to be lower than the total number of upvotes you receive on your links. This also applies to comment karma.In addition to /u/Schutzel's answer, that particular user has many posts below 50% upvotes, so he has a lot of negative poi... |
How can every finger on your hand can be lifted easily except for the ring finger? | basically the tendons that control you middle finger and ring finger are tied together, with the dominance being given to the middle finger. because of this, if you middle finger is held down, the position of the tendon that pulls your ring finger up, cannot be moved in that way. of the two your middle finger is given ... |
Why does tempering make a blade so brittle? How does heat treating make it less brittle? | Tempering causes the outside to cool quicker than the middle. When the middle cools it shrinks, since the outside is already hard it pulls tension. Causing it to be very hard but brittle and ready to break. Example [Smarter Everyday Prince Rupert Drop] Heat treating does the opposite it releases stress. If the outside ... |
The rising anti-semitism in France and Europe in general. | This doesn't come up in the news nearly as often as it happens, so people often don't know what's going on, but being a Jew in Europe is becoming increasingly unsafe. Now, the anti-Semitism in this region has been growing for a while but the recent Operation Defensive Edge in Israel has really pushed it over the edge. ... |
How does Viagra actually work..? | Without getting really technical, Viagra is a type of drug called a Vasodilator. Vasodilators relax the muscles and arteries so more blood can flow through them. Think of a Vasodilator as a hose. If you have a hose that has a 1 Inch Diameter, only so much water can flow through it at full blast. A Vasodilator would tur... |
What is an Eligibility List? | It's generally a list of people who are eligible for something. You'll have to be more specific about what context you're seeing the term in to get a more specific answer. |
Did the North Korean Government really tell their country that they won the Football World Cup? And why would they bother creating such a false fact? | The government did not report this to their people. Someone made a news report-like video announcing NK as the winners of the World Cup, but it was merely a parody of NK's media distortion and was never aired on North Korean TV. The dialects used in the video are not North Korean. |
If aliens were to come to Earth, which US Government agency would be the most likely to deal with it.... and why? | Oh the arrogance of Americans What makes you assume it would have to be a US agency?I think you mean if aliens came to The United States. Why would the US government deal with aliens in Japan for example?Probably a combination of a few of them, most likely though Homeland Security would be all over it. |
why do I sleep so well when it's raining? | Rain pattering on your window acts as white noise. When you have a constant sensation for a while, like white noise, your brain filters it out, but the rain is loud enough to drown out other tiny noises like creaks in your house. Those other noises would wake you up because they are irregular and your brain doesn't fil... |
why are eggs (and milk for that matter) so crucial for almost all baking? | As I'm sure you've heard before - oil and water don't mix. This can be bad news for baking because you might have water based ingredients and oil based ingredients and want them to mix together. In order for oil and water to mix, you need something called an emulsifier . An emulsifier has one end that is water loving a... |
Regarding AI, why is the paperclip factory idea a threat but grey goo isn't? | Grey goo is looking at the effects of nanotechnology/self-replication rather than AI. In grey goo, self-replicating robots consume matter and replicate themselves. If this is allowed to continue unchecked, the robots will rapidly multiply and theoretically consume all available matter to do so, until there are only rob... |
What does it mean when a video game is in pre-alpha/alpha/beta? | It means that the game is not done. Imagine you are building a house. You start with the foundation that might be called pre-alpha. You ave an idea of the shape of the house but it's not realy a house yet. Then frame in the walls. Then you insulate it and put siding up. At this point it might be called an "alpha" house... |
Why does my voice get deeper late at night or when im tired? | Almost exactly for the same reason a guitar string goes lower if it's more relaxed or longer! The pitch depends on the number of vibrations over a unit of time - 200 vibrations a second sounds low, 400 sounds higher. Things that are strong and "tight" tend to vibrate really fast - a silver coin, a diamond, a wine glass... |
How are Ghibli movies animated? | Just many animators: good ones do the key frames, average to bad to the inbetweens. Usually, they are drawn on transparent sheets and combined with backdrops. Yes, it is enormous amout of work. Sometimes, you can notice reuses that reduce workload in cheaper productions But older state of the animated movie like Ghibli... |
Why is eggnog, and other Christmas associated foods...Christmas only foods? | Eggnog is a wintery drink as it warms you up. Candy canes were originally given to kids so they quiet down during the mass. Advent calendar came from the Christian time of [Advent] to build up anticipation for Christmas. Ingredients used to make fruitcakes were once expensive and families could only afford it for speci... |
Why do I only get goosebumps up half of my body at a time? | Goosebumps are caused when the muscles attached to your hair follicles, called arrector pili, are stimulated by your nervous system. The nerves responsible belong to the sympathetic nervous system, which controls your involuntary "fight or flight" responses like raising your heart rate, giving you an adrenaline rush an... |
Why does a sounded (voiced) yawn makes you feel better and more relieved than a silent yawn? | The voiced one results in a more rapid outflow of air, which makes the subsequent breath a bit deeper. I won't comment on any social side of it, since I think that's all conjecture. |
Why don't people make non-educational films designed to be shown in planetariums? | They are sometimes used for laser light shows. Laser Floyd comes to mind. There just isn't a lot of ways to use a movie theater with the screen on the ceiling. |
Why do our stomachs "turn" when we're in fear, or see something nasty? Do our stomachs actually "turn" in any way? | Blood vessels restricting in your stomach as a result of the fight or flight response. This results in more blood flow to your extremities for when you choose a response. |
to minimize damage from second hand smoke breathe rapidly or hold your breath. | Neither. The total volume of air you take into your lungs has to be the same no matter how you do it. You could potentially take a large breath prior to entering the room and then not breathe again until you left the room. But if you're actually breathing within the room itself, you rapidly reach the point where any st... |
How does acid dissolve things? | Basically, aacids are really attractive to other molecules/atoms, to the point where they will leave their current bonds to combine with the acid. As parts of the material break off to bound with the acid, it dissolvesThe acid molecules are proton donors are thus release H+ ions into solution, depending on their PH lev... |
The pins and needles feelings in your legs | It's called local ischemia due to lack of blood flow. When you lay on your arm or something similar with your legs, you pinch the arteries off and blood flow drops. This lack of blood, and consequently oxygen in the blood, makes the muscles ischemic . The pins and needles feeling is just the body's way of telling you t... |
Why are the units of currency (such as $ or €) always placed before the number as opposed to other units? | This is mostly an English thing . This practice comes from Merchant practices and English accounting laws/practices. The purpose is to differentiate money numbers from product numbers. It also makes altering the books harder. By writing $100.00 it is much harder for a subordinate to go in and alter it to $1000 or $10. ... |
What is all this hoopla about Go Lang? | All languages are just some syntax and other minor differences differentiating themselves from others. If that was all that mattered, we'd still be programming in Fortran because there's nothing you can do in Python or C# or C++ that can't also be done in Fortran. What Go provides is a language that is safer than C, bu... |
How does Mastercard know my clothing size? | The article is about a patent that MasterCard filed. Patents are used to protect original and non-obvious ideas -- they give the owner of the patent exclusive rights to the idea for a fixed period of time. This is so you can't come up with a great idea and as soon as you put it in the market, 100 other people put out t... |
Why did the war in Iraq start under Bush? | President George W. Bush was a war hawk that overreacted to perceived threats after 9/11. The popular conservative sentiment after September 11th was that we had ignored the region too long and it bit us, and the solution was nation building in the area with force if necessary. The grounds for war with Iraq were *extre... |
Why does water (in lakes or seas) look green up close but blue at a distance? | Depends what the water contains, it can be green if there is a strong presense of certain algae. However, if there are no waves, the water acts as a mirror. So if there is a blue sky, thats what you will see in the reflectionWhen you are far away from the water you see the blue sky reflected off the surface of the wate... |
How can the human body suffer from lo/high blood pressure if the cardiovascular system is a closed circuit? | The size of the cardiovascular system can change as blood vessels can expand or contract, and the blood volume can change as fluid can be added or removed from the blood. So as you see being a closed system doesn't prevent pressure change. |
Why there's still no decent online database related to books (such as IMDB)? | Probably not a good financial model. Amazon and BN have proprietary catalogs with ratings. Publishers also limit how much info they share, but often have controlled info related to their own work. Libraries spend tons of cash on proprietary software to sort and track book catalogs. since everyone involved so far has mo... |
Why does the propensity for motion sickness increase as you get older; e.g., riding roller coasters or other rides at amusement parks? | Balance is controlled by a group of small organs in the ears, called the vestibular system. These organs detect two different kinds of motion: rotation and movement in a straight line. The way straight line movement is detected is that there are tiny little bones shaped like bits of stone that sit in a kind of sac that... |
Why does the microwave tray spin in different directions? | The tray is driven by a single-phase synchronous motor: > In the latter instance, applying AC power creates chaotic jumping movement back and forth; such a motor will always start, but lacking the anti-reversal mechanism, the direction it runs is unpredictable. _URL_0_ The direction of rotation of motors usually matter... |
Why do we snap our fingers or tap our foot when we're trying to remember something? | I don't do this. Should I? Do you find this helps you remember? Maybe I should start doing this |
How do we picture things in our mind? And where are we 'seeing' them? | I'm a PhD candidate in computational and molecular neurobiology. The best we have are theoretical answers but there is a lot of data to support the following simplified answer. The path from the receptors in your eyes to the visual cortex to higher visual processing centers is very well understood compared to other per... |
Wouldn't console companies make more money on cross platform titles vs exclusives, when they supposedly take a loss in profit in manufacturing the systems? e.g. Microsoft & Halo | Using Microsoft as an example: Halo drives adoption of their system. Yes, they lose money on consoles, but think of what you are buying into. You get an xb1 you're also likely to buy other games . You might buy some movies or subscribe to their music service. Maybe you'll be convinced to use one drive, maybe get a Wind... |
Why do some urinals need urinal cakes while others do not? | Urinal cakes sanitize and de-stinkify the urinal. Technically they're not *needed*, but a urinal without a cake will quickly start to smell. |
What determines the volume of a sound? | Sound is energy waves traveling through a medium. How loud the waves are is their amplitude. This is how much air they move. Waves on the ocean are similar. Waves that would be 'loud' would be very high. Waves that would be quiet would be more like a ripple. So volume in sound is the force applied to compress the air. ... |
Why are Hiroshima and Nagasaki thriving metropolises and not contaminated wastelands like Pripyat? | Nuclear blasts don't release nearly as much radiation as they are shown to in media. Each of the bombs contained a small ball of moderately radioactive material, and about 1% of that material turned to energy, and the rest was blown apart. A nuclear meltdown is a whole other business. You've got a whole pile of materia... |
Is it possible for a prime number to exist that both immediately follows and is immediately followed by another prime number? | 2 and 3 are the ONLY cases. The reason is that all consecutive whole numbers are in an even/odd repeating sequence. All even numbers above two itself are divisible by two and some other non-one number , so they can't be prime. So you can't have two consecutive prime numbers beyond 2 and 3 because every other consecutiv... |
Why do people sometimes throw up at extreme emotions? | I'll try to explain this. I know the answer but having trouble wording it. It's a function of the Sympathetic nervous system. This is the part of your autonomic nervous system that responds to things like stress. If you've ever had a panic attack, or heard of the fight-or-flight response, it's the same system. It helps... |
How do TV stations know I tuned in to their show? | In the modern age it is possible for your tuner box to simply log every channel you watch and send the data to the cable company. That can then be distributed to the networks. Most still use the Nelson box though which is a separate tracker in some old TVs that could communicate what channel you watch. They would take ... |
why do a lot of people tilt their heads when writing? | If you're right handed you might be inclined to tip your head to the left, so you can see what you're doing around your hand. Since we write from left to right, your right hand is constantly obstructing your view as you go along. If you're left handed you just drag your whole hand through everything you write and end u... |
Why is our time system based on minutes of 60 seconds and not 100? | Because the Baylonians had a real hard-on for the number 60, possibly because it factors so well. Thousands of years later, we're still on their time.As an addendum, one theory about why they use a base 60 numbering system is that they would count on their fingers differently than we would. Instead of counting whole fi... |
How does a rainbow stay in one single arc instead of refracting everywhere? | The rainbow's position is with respect to you, the observer. If you move, the rainbow appears to move with you. It's not an actual location, it is everywhere where there's water to refract sunlight, just as you implied. [Here] is a video of a rainbow from a plane. As you can see, the plane isn't getting any closer to t... |
Why do automakers continue to produce vehicles for many years without making any major updates (e.g. Nissan Xterra, Jeep Patriot, Ford Expedition)? | Building a new model is REALLY expensive and hard, even if you're already in the car-making business. Millions of work-hours by engineers and designers to get the design safe, practical, and desirable. Arranging a global supply chain to deliver thousands of parts, many custom-made for the model. Taking a factory offlin... |
Why can't someone with a criminal record vote yet people with criminal records are able to run for and be elected for office? | Your question is based on a faulty assumption, in that it isn't true that "people with criminal records" can't vote -- nor is it necessarily true that they can hold public office. In the United States we leave it up to the individual states to decide who may be elected to state offices, and to regulate and organize vot... |
Why do men grow beards and women do not? | Beards evolved as a secondary sexual trait to signal men are grown up and able to mate. It also displays that the male actually does produce testosterone, the male sex hormone. It is also speculated that the more prominent jawline created by beards increases how strong and healthy men are viewed. Women generally find m... |
Why am I sitting in a plane right now listening to the pilot telling us we have to wait on a gate when I can see 4 empty ones out of my window? | Those gates are allocated to other planes and/or airlines. It's not first come, first-served, unfortunately. There's a schedule, and you have to fit in a slot.Well its a plane not a car so you cant just park it anywhere in the lot, these things are all planned out well in advance. |
The creation of earth and man from an Islamic perspective | Are you looking for details of some kind separating it from other religions?The Islamic religion spawned, like Christianity, from Judaism. The Qur'an has a little more detail in some areas, but it is essentially the same including Adam and Eve being expelled from the Garden of Eden etc.Interestingly is that belief in J... |
- Calculations of position of objects in space. | * Usually we use parallax of the other inner planets. If you can tell that Venus orbits an average of X kilometers from the sun, and Venus is Y kilometers away from you when the Earth and Venus are are their closest approach, the X + Y = distance from Earth to sun. [Wiki] has an ELI20 explanation. * The earth's rotatio... |
What are Cherry MX Switch Keyboards? | Mechanical keybords contain individual mechanism for each key. The keyboard most are familiar with are membrane keybords, which have a plastic /silicone membrane all the keys push into to than touch the circuit board or button board below it to function. The benefits of a mechanical setup is that different key types of... |
why haven't government regulators simply applied the measure they want for firearms to the ammo instead? Things like registries, liscencing, insurance even? Is this covered by the 2nd amendment? | The right to keep and bear arms includes the right to own the basic ammunition necessary for the operation of those weapons. In American law , the text of statutes is not usually read as being strictly literal and exhaustive. |
What is Exergy in terms of Thermodynamics? | Exergy is the energy that an object could transfer to its surroundings. Imagine a warm object in a room. That object has thermomechanical exergy because it is warmer than room temperature. When the object cools, heat transfers from the object into the room until the object is room temperature. Now the object has no exe... |
How hydropower doesn't violate the law of conservation of energy. | The hydropower waterfall's water will hit the ground with less force , so you might have different kinds of river formations from the hydropower waterfall. I have no idea what a slower river looks like vs a faster one, but that would be the answer.If you put a wheel at the top of the waterfall, water will lose kinetic ... |
If any kind of data can be represented by a string of numbers (or, effectively, by one long number), how can anyone own a number? | It's the same as books. There are only 26 letters in the alphabet, but it takes time and effort to arrange the letters into something more meaningful than "as´kbvmepmvk". And people who to that have a copyright over their meaningful words.That isn't owning a number. It is owning information that can be represented as a... |
encoders, decoders and transcoders | Encoder - changes data into a certain format or "code". Usually it's to conform to certain standards for displaying the information, such as ASCII being the standard for displaying letters and symbols on computers and other devices, or .mp3 being a common format for audio data. Decoder - changes the encoded data back i... |
How do the m & m's not melt when they're baked into cookies? | They have a thin candy shell. [I'm surprised you didn't know that.] Seriously though, sugar doesn't melt consistently, [it decomposes.] |
Do we see at the speed of light? | We are not seeing it in real time. If you're looking into a mirror the light has to bounce off of you, into the mirror, back to you eyes and then your brain has to interpret the signals. You are not seeing in real time, you are seeing into the past , similar to when you look at a star and you see it as it was when the ... |
If Kareem Abdul Jabbar's skyhook was so unstoppable, how come more big men in the NBA haven't implemented it into their games to the extent that he did? | /u/qweti has a point, and it's a popular answer. But it's kind of like asking, "If Stephen Curry's shooting from 26 feet is so unstoppable, why haven't more players implemented that shot into their games too?" Because it's **hard** to get good enough at the most difficult shots to make them into reliable weapons. |
How do motion-sensor toilets work? How can I prevent them from prematurely flushing? | Motion sensor toilets basically shine a little infrared light out and see how long it takes to get back. If the time changes quickly the toilet knows that some motion just happened in front of it. You can stop a toilet from flushing prematurely by draping a little toilet paper over the sensor so that it only sees the p... |
EL15: The Laffer Curve (Economics) | Image if people were taxed at 100%. Then there would be no motivation to produce anything since all the profit would go to tax. Tax revenue would be zero. If the tax rate was 0%, on the other hand, tax revenue would also be zero. Somewhere between 0% and 100% is the tax rate that produces the most tax revenue. |
What effect would FTL travel have on the occupants of the spaceship? | We do not know. Any form of FTL travel would require physics that we can barely start to imagine. |
How can China carry out massive hacking campaigns on the United States without any significant retaliation? | Countries regularly have low level engagements. Spies, hackers, diplomatic shenanigans. So far no one is willing to start a war over these thingsBecause we are doing it right back at them. And everyone else. Its just another branch of intelligence at this point. For whatever reason though China makes headlines when the... |
- can someone explain to me the physics behind what normally keeps huge cranes from tipping over and what could go wrong to cause a crash like the one in Manhattan this week? | Long story short, Counterweights. [Take a look at this], notice how the backside of the crane arm extends a little further than the "root". The backside is equipped with heavy counterweights that equalize the gravitational pull on both sides. However, there is of course more to it, as a mechanism like this only holds t... |
Why is it that when a skunk sprays a space the smells disperses quickly, but when an animal or human is hit, the stink takes a long time to go away? | The earth is a wonderful, self cleaning machine. Basic logic wants to say the smell was put there and should still be there, but try that with anything else and it begins to make less and less sense. "Why isn't that dead animal still there? I threw an apple back here and now it's gone. That autumn leaf seems to have si... |
Why can't we just "cut off" excess fat from morbidly/super morbidly obese people? | There is liposuction. This is where they insert a tube inside the skin and suck out fat. The problem is that while it removes the fat it doesn't remove the person's reason for being fat so it's likely they'll still continue eating unhealthy and get fat again before too long. |
How come when you have a sore throat it gets significantly worse if you sleep with the fan on? | Your throat relies on staying moist. But the moving air from the fan tends to remove moisture from you, so your throat dries out more. That makes it feel even worse than it did. The effect doesn't happen much if you point the fan at your legs instead of your head. |
Why do planes still need black boxes? | Because bandwidth is very expensive, especially in flight. The flight data is needed only in a very small fraction of cases. So, it makes a lot more sense to use an extremely durable flight data recorder that can be reused. Also, I am quite certain that a satellite data link is far more likely to fail in an emergency t... |
Why does it seems that we are more sensitive to the volume as we get older. | I guess your tolerance for loud sounds decreases? Biologically, as you grow older, your ears get *less* sensitive to sound, so its probably a psychological factor. |
How does a tree grow? Does it add more mass to the top of the tree or just "get longer"? | Yes, but very slowly. There are photos of bikes that were left leaning on a tree 50 years ago which are now inside the trunk and 5 feet in the air.This is an interesting question which can be explained by the Center of Mass concept of bodies. In the absence of a external force, the center of mass of a body remains in s... |
What's going on when we have a bad headache/migraine? Is the brain telling itself that it feels pain or is the brain itself actually in pain? | It's never your brain. The brain doesn't have pain receptors and can't actually feel pain. The membrane around your brain can feel pain, but the brain itself cannot. The pain you feel is not your brain - it's usually blood vessels being either dilated or constricted in your head. |
Why do traffic lights flash red after a power outage? | The system is signaled to return to an "emergency state". So that the light is still working and functioning in the capacity of highest safety. If the traffic grid goes out, while it will interrupt traffic more, the safest thing to do is go to an all Stop system, so all intersections are treated as "all stops". that wa... |
(A Very Mature 5)Link inside. How is it possible to be shot through the eye and still have a chance to survive? | A lot of the more critical stuff is at the back and bottom of the brain. Your ability to move is mostly handled by the cerebellum at the lower back of the brain, memory is in the weird middle of the brain, and the two hemispheres on top handle stuff like thought, language, patterns, vision, hearing. This guy has a lot ... |
Why is it so uncommon for diseases to become zoonotic, and how can they have such wide ranging effects on different species? | for it to cross species it basically needs to be a genetic freak. something horribly went wrong with the little disease's genetics when it multiplied and somehow that genetic mess up allowed it to attack another species while also overcoming the astronomical event of somehow being able to survive. as we see in humans w... |
Why is it that usually only one of my nose is clogged while the other side is fine? | Believe it or not you spend most of the time breathing out of only one nostril at a time. Your body automatically does this. Approximately every 2.5 hours your body switches to the other side. This is known as the **nasal cycle**. Your body partially *congests* one side while *decongesting* the other side. This automat... |
Why Do Developers Lock Features If The Hardware is Capable of Achieving Higher Standards? | 1. Production: It's a lot cheaper to reuse same hardware manufacturing line. Making batch of "cheaper" cameras would be more expensive than using good ones. 2. Marketing: Better comparative features of high end models make them more attractive. Again, cheaper models are modified to not compete with more expensive ones ... |
how can the world's rice production be so abundant when rice fields look so sparse? | You're looking at newly planted seedlings. The people in the picuture are actually planting at that moment. It looks [a lot more abundant after it grows in.] |
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