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Why did car design go from curvy (up to 1960s) to blocky (70s-90s) to sleek (modern)? | Another factor that became more obvious in the late 1950's was apparent/planned obsolescence. Car manufacturers realized that if a new car was visibly different from an old one, people would be more likely to follow the trends and buy new. Some of the earliest examples of this was when Cadillacs, known for their excess... |
[drawing] the concept of vanishing points and perspective | > What comes first on the page, the house or the VP? If I just drew a house, without respect to the VP's, how would I derive the VP's? First you need to do some rough sketches to 'find' the vanishing point. If you are going for perfect perspective, then you need to do a bit of trial and error to find the correct placem... |
How or why did we determine that a second should be the length that it is?(time) | Sorry, hope you don't mind if I piggy back off your post to ask my own question. Likewise to why a second is what it is, why do we use minutes and hours? Surely in a scientific era we should have a sort of standardised set of time that isn't relative to earths rotational period, something other than 1000micro,s=1ms to ... |
How does the stock market 'create' wealth? | The wealth isn't made by the stock market, but the investment makes generating the wealth more possible. A company wants to make or provide something and **they** will generate wealth by doing so. But they need some money to be able to start doing it or to do it better. By selling stock they get the cash to allow them ... |
why do people with one eye supposedly see in 2D? I can cover one eye and still see depth of field, why? | The eye can only capture a 2D image. The brain uses that image to conjure a 3 dimensional scene in your mind. With a second point of view, its just able to do it more accurately There are many ways we perceive depth, and a lot of them only need one frame of reference. For example, you can determine how far away a credi... |
Please tell my why do we still look for the "black box" on airplanes? Can't we send the data in real time to the ground? | It's something like $300M per airline to change how the black boxes work. 10 years ago, the technology was barely there. Until there's a legal or financial reason to do it, it won't happen. How often do airplanes simply disappear? Statistically never, so there's no reason to spend the money on it. |
How do doctors get prescription medication? Can they prescribe them to themselves or do they need to go to another doctor? | It is considered unethical for doctors to prescribed medicine for their own personal use. The can, however, obtain prescription medicine for their own professional use. An ER doctor might want to have a painkillers and other meds handy on a moment's notice, and get some from a pharmacy ahead of time. This makes it pret... |
Why are insurance copays a thing/why are they necessary? | The idea behind a co-pay is to get people to self-regulate when they run to the doctor the idea is that it's enough that you don't go for every minor thing and waste time and resources , but not so much you wouldn't be willing to go to the doctor and pay the co-pay if you were actually sick. |
How exactly does windchill work? | I want to add to this question: How do you measure wind chill? Obviously just sticking a thermometer outside won't give you the wind chill temp, just the outdoor temperature", 'Windchill is not about how it feels although that is many times how it is interpreted. Specifically, windchill is a calculation of heat loss: "... |
A Beginner's Guide to ELI5 | I liked the sub when it exploded in popularity originally, but I left when I got so sick of people trying to frame their questions like they were talking to a literal five year old, then complaining an answer wasn't stupid enough for a five year old to understand. I see you're making a point now of discouraging that st... |
How people (like Helen Keller) who are born deaf and blind can learn things | Well Son. I'm glad you asked that. And I'm sorry you had to see your aunt Gladis in the full body cast like that. Well, To answer your question. Humans have 5 senses. Even though the eyes ears may not be working. You know you can condition a dog to come when he smells dog food. Helen Keller used touch to form a basic b... |
Why do rainbows have red as the outside band and purple as the inside band? | Red has the longest wave length of the visible colours. Purple has the shortest. The rest of the colours are inbetween. This doesn't really answer your question, but it explains why the order of colours is always the same. |
Why are there so many marks on highway barriers and why are they almost always black? | Highway barriers are usually tapered with the largest edge on the bottom. This means the wheels will hit but not the body. The rubber leaves a black mark. If it's pretty high then maybe a semi did it, or the body plastic used on that car was black. |
Why is the Iraqi army losing to ISIS who have only a couple thousand fighters? | Iraqi army isn't really fighting. They just pulled out of the west, which allowed Isis to take over and recruit new fighters and gather equipment. If Iraq fought the invasion, Isis wouldn't have made it so deep |
What do the different knobs and sliders and buttons do on DJ mixers? | The mixer, the center console, controls the sounds from the two turntables. This one bears the crossfader, as well as the EQ knobs for each channel . The EQ knobs, will be sorted Gain-high-mid-low, most often. This lets you reduce or increase the volume, and varying pitches of sounds that make it from a turntable to th... |
Why do Captcha images always seem to have weird backgrounds or distorted figures in them? | Sometimes you get two words, and the second is not a test- you're helping digitise whole back catalogues of print media. I always find that pretty cool.To protect against a process called OCR. OCR is a way for computers to read text from pictures or video. This prevents from bots taking a screenshot of the screen, read... |
Why do we have a dominant eye? | One doesn't have a dominant eye but a dominant brain hemisphere so it naturally has a preference to take the other side's eye as reference while seeing. |
If AC current flow alternates between forward and backward, how does it reach the destination? | You have multiple questions here. 1. Do individual electrons exhibit net movement through the wires: No. That is a big advantage of AC current. You aren't creating static charge differences at the ends of the wire. 2. How does that transmit energy. As Koooj explains, electrons are moving back and forth past each point ... |
how do radio stations profit from text messages sent to them? | Advertisers. They get most of their money from advertisers, and they have to find out some way of knowing how many people listen to them. Notice how they always beg you to like them on facebook, to interact in contests, etc? The number of people participating in their stuff shows how much people listen to them, and tha... |
Why does it feel good to cry when we're sad? | I hadn't cried in years. Then my dog died. The flood gates opened and I let it out. And not only because i had lost a dog I had since I was 2, but just other things that upset me. The next day I felt like I had just been reborn. Crying is good for you. I'm leaving it at that.Basically its the emotional equivalent of ta... |
Why does a website with a recipe often include a long preface before you get to the actual recipe? | I would guess it's because these websites aren't cookbooks, they're blogs, which implies some degree of the author writing for themself. |
How does my $300 airplane ticket actually pay for a $285 million jet, fuel, salaries, maintenance, etc? | so, not every flight is going to be profitable. sometimes there aren't a lot of seats sold, or there's maintenance or additional fuel costs that weren't factored in to the tickets sold, and those flights do run at a loss. but you have to remember airlines are running hundreds of flights a day with thousands and thousan... |
Why if a fever is our bodies natural way of fighting sickness am I always told the moment I get a fever to take medicine to reduce it? | Fever is our body's response to an infection. We raise our body temperature because it is a mechanism through which specific immune response activate and it makes the body inhospitable for the pathogen. We are not trying to get rid of the fever, we are merely coping with it. We put ice packs use aspirin etc. because el... |
If biological men can play in women sport leagues, eventually won't biological women become a minority in these leagues? | In the USA, 700,000 people identified as trans-gendered . Now, that includes both male to female and female to male. For now, let's pretend they were all male to female. In total, that is .3% of the population. I don't think that a group that is less than 1% of the population will somehow usurp control of sports from a... |
Why can fine dusts cause an explosion? | It's a surface area thing. Imagine you set a book on fire. Now imagine you tear out each page, crumple it up into a fluffy ball, pile all of that up, and set that on fire. It is the same book, but the second fire will burn much faster and is much easier to light, because almost all of it's surface area is exposed to ai... |
Why can you see through frosted glass after putting scotch tape over it? | Here's my analogy: You have a surface that looks like this:_URL_1_ Now drop a rubber ball on that surface a million times. Sometimes it's going to bounce right back up, sometimes to the side, sometimes to the other side. The direction it will come back is highly random due to the shape of the ground. Now put a piece of... |
Why is suicidal ideation a common side effect of antidepressants? Given it is a common symptom of depression, should the antidepressants not suppress this symptom too? | from being on anti depression medication, it lowers your inhabitions. for instance, I was extremely anti social and cautious of others. Your self preservation is #1 even being in dark places. However alcohol and anti depressants take it from being #1 and derank it. After being on them for 4-5 months, I didn't notice si... |
how can corporations be considered people? | This is based off of a popular misreading and misunderstanding of the Citizen's United decision; corporations aren't people, but they are given rights afforded to people in some situations. The issue goes back to what a corporation actually *is*; a legal framework that allows for a group of individuals to organize them... |
How did Verizon develop a working cellphone with signal in MineCraft? | From what I've read it sounds like they made a mod in minecraft to connect back to a web service that can render several things in minecraft block form. For web browsing they use a headless browser to take screenshots of whatever site you are going to and then convert that nice screenshot into the blocks you see in the... |
how can someone swallow their tongue? | Well, first you'd have to slice it off so that it was no longer physically attached inside the skull. And then they'd have to make the effort to swallow it as per normal consumption. Although that'd be more difficult, since they don't have the use of their tongue now. |
Why do you become more reactive to poision ivy with each exposure? | You don't necessarily, but when you do it's a result of the immune system becoming more familiar with the antigens it wrongly believes represent a pathogen. In essence, it's just like any other allergic reaction, and some people develop increasingly bad reactions to substances which they have an allergy to, given more ... |
Why are aircraft carriers so important to a nation and its navy | Having somewhere to land when they're at war with a nation and can't use their airports/runways. Maybe I'm missing something but it seems to me that this would be common sense |
How does placebo effect work when healing a person? | This is more of a cognitive effect than a physical or mental one. Let's look at this way: You're bored, time goes SOOOO slowly.You're having so much fun! Where did the time go? These are cognitive in nature. To answer you revised question, the sensation of pain is entirely relative, and much of it depends on your menta... |
What's Martial Law? | No they're not going to shoot on site, I mean unless the rioters want to shoot at the soldiers. The military is called in and they guard important buildings, patrol the streets, they have ALOT more manpower and firepower than the police |
Why does alcohol in mouthwash not make you drunk through your palate? While you use a straw in alcoholic drinks so you get drunk faster because the alcoholic drink goes through your palate? | Alcohol is any compound which the hydroxyl functional group is bound to a carbon. This means there are hundreds of different alcohol compounds described, but only **one** won't kill you outright - ethanol. It's the only one you can drink, and it'll poison you slow enough that your liver can save your life. That said, t... |
Why does microwaving/cooking food which is out of date not kill the germs and make it edible? | Microwaves don't heat. They do, but they don't pass energy like passing heat from a source to another. A microwave disturbs and excites water molecules, nothing else. That's why microwaved food cools faster and it's dull. This not necessarily kills bacteria. |
why is it that our bodies are symmetrical on the outside, but not on the inside? | Think of animals as worms, just one long tube, at the front food goes in at the end shit comes out. Now evolution adds some arms and legs on the outside and the tube diversifies into a lot of different types of tube on the inside. The extremities are somewhat symmetrical because it had advantages for movement but on th... |
How would discovering that something can move faster than the speed of light be related to the feasibility of time travel? | **Disclaimer: Not a scientist** From what I seem to remember reading on the internet everything moves in time and space at the same time. Together the movement through space and time will always be equal to ***c***. So moving through space at, for example, 10 km/h means you're moving through time at ***c*** minus 10 km... |
In our dreams, how are the people we have never seen or interacted with before conjured up? | I remember reading that you can't fabricate faces in your dreams, so the faces you see are people you've seen even in passing. |
In music, what is the difference between a riff and a lick? | Smoke On The Water", or "Smells Like Teen Spirit". If the song is a hit, the riff becomes quotable, and anyone else who plays the riff is making an allusion to the original song. A lick is musical idea, too, but often it's incomplete. It might be a fragment of a solo or a portion of a riff. By itself, it doesn't usuall... |
Why is Russia such a threat to NATO (Europe+USA) when it has an economy the size of Italy? | It's not a massive threat, but it is a credible one. Russia has shown an expansionist mindset after annexing Crimea, which scares a lot of the Eastern European countries that used to be a part of the Soviet bloc. |
What causes stomachache when we consume food that's gone bad? Parasites living in the food attack our stomach mucosa? | Stomach aches is caused by swelling of your *small intestines*. Usually there is trapped gas or just too much stool backing up your rectum and large intestines. Fun fact: the pain you feel in your visceral organs are different than the pain you feel of your somatic organs . Any pain you feel in your visceral organs are... |
How are calories measured, and how accurate is it? | I'll tell you only what I'm pretty sure about. A calorie is simply a unit of energy, specifically how much you need to heat up one gram of water by one degree Celsius at a pressure of one atmosphere . A calorie for food purposes is 1,000 of the calories I described . There are a known amount of calories in each macronu... |
How does the internet work and is it can it be replicated and scaled for individual use and distribution? | The internet is a huge system of connected computers. Note that the net represents the physical connectivity, and the web is the link between all the content. The net uses cables and IP addresses, the web uses hyperlinks and URLs. The web is built on the net. Making your own internet would be possible, but mostly point... |
What is a housing bubble? And is such a bubble occurring in London? | A bubble is when housing prices rise very quickly for no good reason. This happened in the US from about 2004-2007, especially in California, Arizona, and Florida. Normal suburban houses in average neighborhoods were increasing in price by 2-3 times just in a few years. It turned out that a lot of that was just fraud. ... |
What is "sharpness"? When and object is sharp, what is it that makes it sharp? | Sharpness is a measure of how easily an object, or really an edge - and by extension the object it is attached to - will cut another object. This is a function of mostly two properties: 1) Hardness. Hardness determines what can cut what. The cutting material needs to be as hard as, or ideally harder than, the material ... |
What breakthrough in technology allowed 2016 to be the year where virtual reality became a legitimate consumer product? | Almost invariably breakthroughs in technology and legitimate consumer products are not directly related. The modern industrial manufacturing breakthrough is the most likely candidate for what made VR a legitimate consumer product. As u/Axelnite suggested the breakthrough in VR was the Oculus. The consumer demand for th... |
Why the Fibonacci Sequence is important/ related to nature (and everything else) | [This link offers a bit of insight as to why the Fibonacci Sequence isn't all it's hyped up to be.] |
Why should I not eat pre-made raw cookie dough from a store, but I can eat cookie dough in icecream? Would the icecream cookie dough make bad cookies? | Don't be a chicken, eat the real cookie dough. Raw eggs actually have a pretty low chance of giving you salmonella, and unless your old or have a bad immune system, it is very unlikely to kill you even if you do get it. Its worth the risk. |
How does an aimbot work? | Trying this the ELI5 way. It works like a movement detector. There is basically a camera, that checks movement or something similar, like color, and makes pointer go on top of it and gives command to shoot. That's practically it. |
What happened with the fiscal cliff? | I'm five and what is this. Please explain it as though I were young and didn't know what was going on =( Because I seriously have no clue. |
Why do websites load just as slowly today, with high speed internet and extremely powerful computers, as they did in the 90s, on dialup and slower machines? | The earliest web sites had each page self-contained in a single file, and then with pictures on the same server. The browser would only have to look up the web site once in DNS, and if it was the least bit smart, it would use the same one or few connections to the server to fetch all the data. Modern web sites build th... |
What exactly does SAP (software) do for a company? | SAP is an Enterprise Resource Planning package, which means it does all of the boring business stuff that all companies have to deal with - accounting, personnel, inventory, sales and so forth. Purely from software development point of view, ERP software itself isn't that tricky . There's a number of completely free so... |
Why do people duck when leaving a helicopter even though the blades are much higher than their heads? | My mother used to be in Avation , but never flew helicopters so I'm not entirely sure how truthful this info is, but she once told me that those blades can flex and dip down several feet under the right conditions , and that you duck as a safety precaution.Student Helicopter Pilot here, The number one reason people duc... |
When McDonald's has Happy Meal toys from a popular movie, is McDonald's paying the movie studio for the toys or is the studio paying McDonald's to advertise the movie? | McDonald's has to be paying for the rights to license the toys for use in their happy meals, and they may end up co-paying for the ad budget, with the Studios likely paying a small percentage of the display unit dedicated to the movie or fixed amount that's within the overall film's allocated budget to special promotio... |
Why so many prisoners serving high sentences can get paroled after only a few years for things as simple as overcrowding? | Sentencing itself is often a complicated process and can be controlled by rules or guidelines that may not equate to a very fair sentence in any given circumstance. Parole boards have to make judgments on whether someone's release would be reasonable based on many factors, including other possible uses of the scarce pr... |
How Do Singers Sing Without Sneezing/Coughing/etc? | Singing from your diaphragm is really important. It puts less strain on your throat so you won't need to cough and it also helps you avoid some really nasty stuff like vocal nodes down the line. There's also something to be said for performing in front of a crowd. The adrenaline can really help you power through any dr... |
Why can we plug in our phones 1 second before they die and be just fine, but if we plug them in 1 second after they die we have to wait a few minutes? | When a phone dies, all the ongoing processes are terminated, so it has to go through the whole sequence of booting up again. If you catch it before it does then it never turned off so it doesn't have to start back up again.It takes more energy to start up a phone than it does to just keep it running, similar to a car o... |
I heard that the world is $217 trillion in debt. Who are we in debt to? | Let's say I'm a government, and I have great credit because I haven't defaulted in 250+ years. I can sell 30-year bonds at 3% interest and people will actually buy it! This counts as debt, because I have to pay those bonds back with the interest I promised. But by using that loan to invest in myself, I can make 5% on i... |
What was America Online (AOL), and how was it different from the Internet. | The governments attempt at trying to keep our social connectivity under close supervision. They were afraid and also are control freaks and want to rule the world.It was 50 billion free CDs that ended up in the lanfills. |
Given that the universe does not have a center, and all positions are relative, what's wrong with saying Earth is the centre and that the Sun revolves around it? | Both the earth and the sun influence each other through gravity, and the center of the orbit is not center of the sun. However, the sun's gravitational pull is so much more powerful, the center of the orbit is inside the sun. So, we're in the Sun's gravity well; the sun isn't in ours. And when referencing every other c... |
If prostitution is so common and active on Craigslist, why doesn't the police just arrest them all? | It's not illegal to say you are a prostitute, also it's rare someone is going to put an add up with 'Prostitute for hire, if you give me money I will have sex with you'. If it's something vague hinting at 'meeting' and getting 'rewarded' for it then the police would have to organise a sting where they had no chance of ... |
how come that low cost airlines are cheaper than the train? | Low-cost airlines are usually run by clever bargain-hunting managers who operate cheaply by: - Only serving certain cities- Buying used or discounted airplanes- Using secondary, less-popular airports- Taking advantage of tax breaks or subsidies, where available, from governments that want to attract their business- Sel... |
Why do people get flu in the winter when bacteria slows down in the cold? | The flu is caused by a virus. I don't think temperature affects them as much as it does bacteria since viruses aren't exactly alive.Additionally, during colder weather, the activity of the immune system slows down, making you more vulnerable. |
Why do neurons have a synaptic gap between them? | Because if they didn't, there'd be no option of transmitting a signal or not. Crudely, the synapse is a switch, conditional on other things it can allow or block a nerve impulse. If it didn't, there's be no choice, no option, no conditionality. |
How is boxing such a big-money sport, when it seems to be relatively unpopular outside of big events once every 5-10 years? | Because it really isn't a big money making sport outside of a few guys. Guys like Canelo Alverez, GGG, Anthony Joshua might make a pretty good deal of money but it pales in comparison to those guys. Guys lower on the card don't make much at all.There is a lot of money in PPV fees, and most of the money goes to the boxe... |
How (why) does cancer cause pain? | Medical degree. Most types of cancers are actually painless. Since cancer is just an uncontrolled growth of cells most type of cancers are painless. This changes with malignancy . So when a cancer turns malignant the body starts making new blood vessels and nerves to the area thinking it needs blood. This lets the cell... |
How are news stories often copied and repeated across all forms of media with no reference to the original reporter. Isn't this some sort of theft or plagiarism? | These are called wire stories, stories that come down from services like AP and Reuters. You can use them for a fee. They usually aren't fully written articles, but just a short synopsis of what happened. |
what are the pros and cons of unions in the US? Why do people disagree on whether or not they're good for society? | I'm mostly a layman on the subject but I try to remain unbiased. Unions are good in industries where there isn't sufficient government regulation. Where compensation, work environment, and safety aren't covered, the employees can pressure the industry to meet standards negotiated between the employees and the administr... |
Why can't scientists replicate the telomere DNA of Turritopsis dohrnii (immortal jellyfish) and inject stem cells of its DNA into humans to create biologically immortal humans? | There are a lot of misconceptions I am sensing from the post. The most obvious one is this: > **inject stem cells of its DNA** into humans Humans have human stem cells, and jellyfish have jellyfish stem cells. You cannot simply transplant stem cells to and from different species. Let's say that scientists were able to ... |
What stops water from continually sinking through the ground (Primary school science question) | Effectively it does as much as it can. It saturates the ground and forms aquifers but the ground is only so thirsty, at some point it can't take any more and you get a lake.Basically, what makes "normal soil" water-permeable is that is has lots of channels and cracks in it and is a rather rough material. There is also ... |
How do medications know where to go? | The way drugs interact with your cells is generally through things called receptors. Imagine space station docking ports on the outside of all of your cells, allowing molecules and messages in and out.All of these docking ports are of different shapes and size each allowing a different, **specific** message or molecule... |
How one element in a group can be toxic while the others are not. | Imagine a lock. A completely different key won't fit, so it can't do much damage. But a key that almost fits, it can get past the keyhole and get jammed. Biological pathways work in much the same way. A reaction site that accepts phosphorus will likely accept arsenic as well but it is going to gum up the works. |
As a Canadian on reddit, how do regular Americans survive with 100+ k medical bills, 100+ k tuition costs, and virtually no social safety net? | You just don't pay it. The consequence is a terrible credit score. You won't be able to get anything on credit. This includes things like cell phones, cars, and renting an apartment. You get these things by having a family member or significant other buy them for you. For the medical bills, you eventually get a judgeme... |
How can firearms put up with so much abuse but still fire properly? | Because they're designed for it. Once you satisfy the basic mechanics of being able to fire a round without blowing up, reliability is THE criteria for almost all firearms. Even a combat weapon spends a really tiny part of its life actually firing but, when it comes time to fire, you absolutely positively want it to wo... |
Are the other photo saving types becoming redundant? Like JPEG, BITMAP etc | bitmap is what a png would be if it wasn't compressed. They're huge in comparison, especially for simple graphics. Same quality. jpeg is a png that isn't compressed perfectly. It could be smaller than a png, or not. It won't be as high quality as a png. Most cameras produce .jpegs due to how easy they are to create. |
Please explain Death by Exhaustion. | In short; hydration. You work you sweat. You work in the sun, you sweat more. You need water to replenish the fluid you lost through sweat . Water is around 50% of your blood. You lose enough of it, your blood becomes more viscous , it won't move through, you're tissues and organs won't have enough blood to replenish t... |
Why don't we plant more trees to lower CO2 levels? | Be aware that trees die and then mostly burn or rot away, releasing pretty much all of their carbon back into the atmosphere again. Planting trees helps, but you have to keep planting trees faster than they're dying to keep removing CO2 from the atmosphere. |
Why is it recommended to not sleep for a while when diagnosed with a concussion. | For a long time people attributed death to people's going to sleep, due to diminished consciousness that happened after severe brain injuries. This isn't a relevant factor, because passing out is a symptom and not a contributing factor; but in current medicine it's a pretty good idea to stay awake and seek medical atte... |
How do vector graphics work so that they can be scaled to any size? | A raster graphic stores information about each individual pixel in the image. Scaling up makes everything look blocky and horrible. Vector graphics store information about the lines and shapes in the image, and doesn't concern itself with individual pixels until it's time to actually render those shapes and lines. |
why does heat distort things behind it? | the heat affects the air in between you and the thing you're observing . The heat-source will heat up the air in front of you and as a result change the density of the air gas in between you and the object being distorted. Light is an electromagnetic wave and travels best in a complete vacuum . When light encounters a ... |
As of recent I've noticed headlines read 'suspected terror attack' and similar lines, what makes it suspected and not straight up terror attack? | What makes something a terrorist attack is the intent of the attacker. If i blow up a waffle house because I'm an asshole that isn't a terrorist attack. If i blow up a waffle house because I'm tired of old people, i want old people to know their days are numbered, and i want to drive old people out of my town then that... |
Why do dogs love sticks? | Biologist here: Dogs likes sticks because they are a coarse and rough substance, great for chewing. This helps keeps their mouth and teeth clean, additionally the extra bits of wood can provide roughage, you know, like when you see them eating grass. Helps with bowel movements. So it helps with oral hygiene and bowel m... |
What does the supreme court ruling on gay marriage mean and how does this affect state laws in states that have not legalized gay marriage? | Could someone ELI5 what Justice John Roberts's comment on the constitution meant? Does it mean that he doesn't think that this was a constitutional matter? If you are among the many Americans -- of whatever sexual orientation -- who favor expanding same-sex marriage, by all means celebrate today's decision. Celebrate t... |
Why is it that, after World War II, Japan could only have a "Self-Defense-Force", while Germany could have an actual military? | Having a defence force doesn't mean you don't have a military. During WW2 the Germans had the Wehrmacht. That translates as Defence Force. |
Why do I forget whether or not I locked the door every morning? | Probably because it's such a routine that your brain is on autopilot when you do it, so you don't create a specific memory for it every day. |
Why do most people start to enjoy the taste of beer as they get older? | B.A. in psychology with a study in neuroscience Here is an official scientific explanation, keeping it simple: The taste of beer is not the only taste that becomes more enjoyable with growth. First of all, the gustatory cells that make up the tongue regenerate at a noticeably reduced rate in comparison to superficial d... |
Why can I remember lyrics to hundreds of songs but not a conversation with a friend from the week before? | I wonder whether it has to do with [spaced repetition] ). You hear the songs on many occasions over a given period of time, so you eventually find it easier and easier to recall the lyrics, even though you haven't heard it for a long time. In contrast, you only ever have that conversation with your friend one time, so ... |
How does water extinguish fire? | This is a commonly posted topic here. Please see [these previous posts.] If they don't entirely answer your question, you might create a new post witha more specific question. Try our handy Search function sometime. :-)For best results in most cases, use 2 or 3 general, common wordsthat refer to the key concepts in you... |
If Apple is a significantly more valuable company than Microsoft, why did Bill Gates seemingly have a lot higher of a net worth than Steve jobs ever did? | It has less to do with the market cap of the company and more to do with how much of the company an individual owns. Apple may have had a bigger market cap than MS, but Gates had far more of a share of it than Jobs did apparently. Looks like Jobs had 5.5 Million shares when he died . Bill Gates used to have way more an... |
Why does the US have to spend more than the other top 9 military spenders combined? | U.S. invests heavily in R & D, plain and simple. Also, government contracts are inflated in cost because the U.S. government is a bureaucracy and usually doesn't exercise oversight when it comes to efficiency, inflated costs for components, etc.We just had 2 wars and have the second biggest military force in the world ... |
What is the European Union and what is its relationship to European countries? Is it comparable to the relationship between the United States Federal government and the states? | The EU is unique in the world. It's not like the US and it's states. The US is a country on its own. The EU isn't. Members of the EU are their ow countries, with their own armies ect. Basically, those countries work together to form closer relationships. So the countries give some of their power to the group, and make ... |
What exactly does it mean to respect the office of the presidency? | It means you don't stop respecting the position even if you don't personally care for the person in it at the moment. The position represents far more than the individual occupying it any one time. |
Why human immune systems cannot adapt to diseases like cancer, AIDs, etc. but can adapt/evolve to other illnesses that would've otherwise killed us centuries ago? | I can't speak to cancer, but for AIDS, one large factor is time. If AIDS had hit centuries ago, firstly it would stay localized, and the population it afflicted would likely either developed resistance through a mutation, or slowly die out. This has actually happened in Northern Europe, by accident. A small percentage ... |
How come when I leave a cup of water out overnight, the next day it tastes stale? | All of these answers are wrong. Its because your cat sneaks in your room at night and dips his nasty cat paws in it. You're welcome. |
Explain radiation, radioactive material, and isotopes to me. Literally like I'm 5. | An atom has a core that consists of protons and neutrons, the number of protons determines which element it is on the periodic table . The number of neutrons and protons combined dictate how heavy this atom is. Some combinations of neutrons and protons are stable, whilst others aren't. This is where isotopes come in, i... |
What causes someone to be a, "morning person" or a "night person"? | My problem is I like being up really late but also like getting up early, I wish I just didn't need to sleep |
Why are human teeth so fragile and require constant cleaning and attention when other animals don't or do it automatically. | Other animals have simpler diets. We eat a lot of shit in quantities we shouldn't which contributes to degrading our teeth Most other animals don't live as long as us, therefore tooth issues have less time to develop. You don't see the animals that do have tooth issues because if they're bad enough to affect them, the ... |
Why does unplugging and plugging back in a device work so well with troubleshooting? | With many devices that have a computer chip inside, unplugging them clears out the memory cache, which is often clogged up with some error. So when you plug it back in, the memory cache is free to operate as normal again. With laptops and smart phones, it's often some poorly coded program or website that's eating up a ... |
How do railroads (that deal with freight) work? | A freight train keeps track of where cargo is bound. As far as the train itself is concerned the final destination of all cargo is going to be some depot on the rail lines, but often that depot will then forward the cargo by truck or whatever other means to its next destination. The people setting up the trains keep re... |
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