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Why would Univision buy Gawker just to shut it down? | They didn't buy gawker, they bought gawkers offshoot sites which have not been shut down . The main gawker web site is going away but Gawker owned half a dozen or more extremely popular web sites that as far as we know are going to continue as is under Univision.They get the other 6 websites under the Gawker umbrella Deadspin , Gizmodo , Jalopnik , Jezebel , Lifehacker , Kotaku . All are strong players in their verticals. |
How do people escape from north korea. | > What routes do they take? A very common route is a very long one. Once in China, the North Korean refugees can stay in China but that can be quite precarious since there is always the fear of being sent back. The closest country which won't send back the refugees in Thailand. Once in Thailand, the refugees can go to the Republic of Korea embassy in Bangkok and they will be flown to the ROK. This route is quite dangerous, as they need to go through much of China and then pass over the Chinese-Laos border, then over the Laos-Thai border -- illegally.If you are still interested in this subject after reading these answers you should read a book called escape from camp 14. It is about a man named shin who was born in a north Korean prison camp and escapes then escapes north Korea through the Chinese border. |
Why do non-tame animals stop struggling when you hold them? | I think people are overthinking this one based on the answers. If an animal sees any possible chance of escape it will bolt. If you have a firm hold on the animal it will go limp. Evolution favors it because the animal that still struggles when caught will get killed/injured by the usually much bigger and overpowering predator wishing to neutralize it. Going limp and putting the predator at ease buys the prey time for a chance of several possibilities, which might give a window of opportunity for escape/survival. e.g - Predator wasn't hungry, loses interest. - Predator get's disturbed by other animals. |
What actually CAUSES inflation? Why not just keep all prices of everything the same? | There is a positive feedback response between prices and wages. Suppose the economy is in an upswing and people have more disposable income. They are richer, so they're willing to pay more for goods . In response, businesses will increase prices. When businesses increase prices, the value of money decreases . In response, workers will demand higher wages from employers because they notice that the value of their money has decreased. Notice that inflation does not necessarily mean people have to put in more labour in exchange for money. Yes, your grandparents paid a nickel for a handful of gum, but they also earned a lot less money at work. There are other factors as well, such as an increase in the money supply. More money in the economy will trigger price increases, which will devalue the currency. |
Why cable companies advertise their services to their own subscribers? | It's a chance to upsell more services like more channels or phone. It also helps to keep the brand to retain customers. It's much cheaper to retain customers than to replace customers. |
If we burn/cut off our fingertips, will our fingerprints look the same as before once healed? | It depends how deep you go. All of the superficial skin we see has grown up from a deeper layer called the basal layer, also called the stratum germinativum. This layer divides and makes new cells constantly, pushing the old ones towards the surface where they eventually slough off. Its a constant cycle. And it forms the template for your fingerprints. As long as this basal layer is there, it will repair/replace all the cells above it including your fingerprints. Without this basal layer, your body can't replace the normal skin cells, and instead has to resort to closing wounds with scar. So if you were to remove your skin all the way down past the basal layer, which would mean you had no skin left on your fingers, the template for you finger prints would be gone and would not return.Follow up ELI5: in the movies there is always a skilled assassin who burned off his fingertips to make him more elusive to the police. Is this a real thing that people can do?', "I burned my finger print on a baking sheet that was in the oven for something like 15 minutes or more at 350 degrees Fahrenheit. When the finger print came back, it was initially more sensitive but it's indistinguishable from the rest of my finger pad.If you have a deep cut or bad burn, fingerprint damage is permanent. Source: Self experience |
What did Bonzi Buddy do that was so evil, and how does it differ from the "legitimate" ad-serving, user tracking methods used today? | Bonzi buddy was pretty sketchy. Apparently one of the features was how it could open emails which looking into that reveals that the software has actual access into you personal emails, even if the company didn't do anything with that data the fact that it had that access so early on is pretty scary if you think about how long that kind of thing was available. |
Why does Godwins law not seem to apply in the majority of the comments sections in reddit? | Well, most threads in reddit have an ending time. If Godwin's law holds true, we don't know how long it should take to reach the Hitler Singularity. On most of the few thousand comment threads though, it eventually happens. It isn't a real law though, just FYI. It is more of a comment on how internet society works.Part of it is the nature of the threads on reddit, I think. On a typical forum, an argument can go for days; eventually, one of them will whip out a Hitler comparison, and then it gets Godwinned. On reddit, a thread may go for a day. Maybe two, at the outside. But the nature of the upvote/downvote/front page schema is that eventually, people will lose interest in the arguing. There's no karma in it for them, and there are just too many people on the site for personal attacks to really matter that much. "Oh no, user 1,037,895 hates me and thinks I'm Hitler."', "Godwin's Law was proposed back in the dark ages of the internet, when Usenet was the primary form of discussion. Threads were, well, more threaded, with a handful of people discussing a topic, sometimes for weeks. It was quite different from the one-and-done style of commenting you often see on reddit. As such, threads lived longer and probed deeper, giving Godwin's Law more of an opportunity to come into play. Also, there was very little in terms of content management, no upvoting, no weighted time base sorting. So if someone did mention Nazis, everyone say it. |
Why can't other companies make their own versions of the Winows or Mac OS under different names with different tools? What is patented, or any other reason, to prevent them? | Edit: A five year old would not understand my last explanation. Let's try again.\r\rIn order to make something work like Windows, it needs to understand the same instructions as Windows and perform them so that the result is the same as Windows, but uses different code. This requires figuring out how Microsoft made each instruction work, and making something similar - but different. This is called reverse engineering. It takes a lot of time, and you need to be careful that your new product isn't too much like Windows, or you could be sued. |
In 2015, US total Net Worth was $84,900,000,000,000 and there were 125,590,000 US households. Does this mean that if wealth were evenly distributed every household could 'have' $676,009? | If by 'have' you are accounting for houses and the cash value of pension plans then sure. The point of the discussion is of course how that wealth is distributed and transferred through generations. |
Why do people who work in an office who never leave the office and are never seen by anyone other than coworkers required to dress up? | Don't underestimate the value of dressing up for coworkers. You may all be working for customers, but the people in your office are the ones that give out the pay rises.Who do you know that never leaves the office? All workers have to travel to and from work, maybe to lunch or dinner, to meetings outside the office, etc. - all opportunities to be seen. You also see each other, and other business people, who will judge you based on your appearanceThat is old school east coast thinking. On the west coast it would be very unusual for people in a non customer facing office environment to "dress up". In fact, on the west coast no one assumes someone wearing a suit "must have a good job". It's the opposite in fact.I wondered the same thing when I used to work in an office with only employee interaction. Why couldn't we just wear a t-shirt with the company logo on it? wtf. |
Why is it uncommon for Americans to drive with manual gearbox and very common for Europeans? | There used to be significant economic advantages to driving a manual. However, with modern automatic transmission, the economy advantage is almost negligible for most drivers. The answer might seem a little cyclical, but most drivers education programs haven't taught driving a stick in a very long time . So, most drivers don't know how to drive a manual transmission, and therefore, most car dealers will stock mostly automatic transmissions for everyday road cars. You will see manual transmissions more commonly in pickup trucks, four wheel drive vehicles, and sports cars. But for an everyday road car, they're almost all automatics because that's what people were taught. |
When two different countries meet for the first time (for example, when Europeans first landed in America.) how do they end up understanding and translating one another's language? | I've always thought about this! Like how Columbus communicated with the Indians. I'm assuming a lot of hand gestures and drawings |
Why does scratching feel so good, to the point of breaking skin and delayed pain? | At least according to studies I've seen itching is a evolutionary reaction to insects. When insect injects venom or buries to your skin your body tells that your arm is itching and to scratch the venom or the insect away. Also applies to dead skin gells that block your skin. Why some other things not related to these itch. I don't know. Maybe the human skin isn't perfect at identifying insects. |
Why do we experience dry-heaving when we smell very bad smells? | Hi! Medieval Doctor here, seeing a lot of phony medicine. The demons that make you sick are actually carried by foul smells. So when you gag after smellin something, you're just getting sick off the terrible scent of evil and disease! Remember to get yearly blood lettings! |
Why does eating shortly after waking up make me feel sick? | When you sleep, the majority of your metabolic processes slow, and almost stop. Like a car going down a highway at 5mph. When you wake up, you eat and expect your digestive tract to work like it does when you're awake and active. But it hasn't gotten up to speed yet, thus cramps, etc. when you eat very early. |
why aren't people allowed the freedom to suicide? | On a national level, I'd say it's mainly due to the nature of compromise, and that very few ever advocate for suicide to be legal, so it makes sense to the government to maintain it's illegality. On a personal level, a lot of people's personal philosophies won't allow for such an action. It may be 'wrongsinful', or 'selfish' to them, and to these people life is seen as invaluable, something that can never be relinquished. My personal belief on the subject is that suicide can be a rational action in many cases, and although I wouldn't suggest people go and kill themselves, I find it far more abhorrent that people would rather encourage suffering, especially in cases where all they're doing to trying to force their worldview upon others.Because the majority of suicides that are prevented/failed are almost instantly regretted by the person after trying to commit it. And the vast majority long term as well after the person has received treatment brought on by their actions.If it's not illegal, police can't get involved. Police have saved many people who were not in their right minds; had the act been legal, the cops would have their hands tied.Christianity is against it. Religion underlies a lot of our laws.one concern is that if voluntary euthanasia is legalised, then that will open the door to co-ercing certain people to off themselves . Granny getting a bit doddery? Can't afford the bills for a care home? Tell her the suicide booth is a payphone and she needs to make a call. |
Is maths invented or discovered? | I'd say discovered, in that all the mathematical equations and connections etc have always existed, we are only just now extrapolating them. |
Why don't we build a 'sturdy' camera and throw it into Saturn, or Jupiter, and transmit what it records back to a space station? | There have been a few probes dropped into gas giants to explore their atmospheres. They generally don't carry cameras though because there's only a limited amount of time and bandwidth available for the probe to transmit data back out before it gets destroyed by the heat/pressure/etc. Photos and video footage use up a relatively high amount of data compared to their scientific value, so the probes tend to transmit other types of data that the people who designed the probe felt would be more useful.All space probes are destined to be junk sooner or later and they are very expensive. So when they are being sent out they better deliver some worthwhile information! The opinion in the community seems to be that we know too much to justify dropping a few million dollars into Jubiter and besides, there seem to be more pressing missions to undertake.The Galileo mission sent a [small probe] into Jupiter's atmosphere. I don't think it had a camera though, it was mainly focused on gathering information about what the atmosphere was made of. A camera wouldn't do much either; you would see the same color you can see from the surface. |
Do higher end cars really NEED premium gas over regular unleaded? | Higher end cars usually have more powerful engines and higher compression ratios which need the higher octane fuel or detonation could result which isn't good for your engine. |
why is Uruguay so much more liberal than any other South American countries? | Uruguay doesn't have a similar history with its neighbors. Here is what makes Uruguay different: - About 88% of the population is white - It's a very small country - Very low population - It's biggest industries are agriculture and tourism - Uruguay has been a progressive country for a long time starting in the beginning of the XX century with the presidency of [Jose Batlle y Ordoñez] divorce laws were established, the state approved free high school education and banned crucifixes in hospitals by 1906, and eliminated references to God and the Gospel in public oaths **tl;dr** Uruguay has a very different history with its neighbors", 'Uruguay, like Argentinia, views itself as a quasi-European country. These two countries are trying to "out-Europe" each other. Fortunately, this translates to liberalization of laws governing social behavior.I lived there for 2 months. I about shit when I was with someone who lit up a joint like it was no big deal. I thought we were going to get arrested. I was also close friends with a gay guy down there and no one blinked an eye at his sexual orientation. Such a laid back country. There were a fair amount of American's down there but that was back in 2010- I'm sure there are many more now. Oh an for the person asking about crime- I never experienced an hostility from anyone, but all of the houses down there have bars on them because of that reason. |
How did Russians manage to quadruple their gold medal count and double their overall medal count compared to the last winter Olympics? | Canada did a similar thing in Vancouver, the funding was increased drastically in a program called 'Own the Podium; for 4-8 years before the Olympics. Resulted in 14 Gold medals and our highest medal count to date", 'Mostly due to increased funding/facilities in the home nation. Nobody wants to get totally hosed on their home turf and most host nations go nuts training their athletes many years before after they secure hosting. Also noteworthy is that the home players will be generally better adjusted to that specific altitude/climate and even in some cases the facilities. A notable example of this effect would be [the South Korean football team] which put up massive results in 2002 while hosting, beating both Italy and Spain. Not having to deal with extensive travel or being in a strange country can have a strong mental effect on athletesNot only that, short track medalist, Victor Ahn from South Korea was given a Russian citizenship to skate for Russia. I think that gave Russia their first gold medals in short track due to Victor AhnThe athletes were given a "talking to" by Vladimir |
What does someone like George Zimmerman do after their trial? | He'll probably live the rest of his life depressed. I'm pretty sure he didn't want to kill Trayvon. But anyways, his life is ruined.casey anthony still hangs out in Florida. people forgetHe could change his name to Hans and maybe get a few gigs doing film scores? |
Why don't subway stations put up barriers to make it impossible for people to jump in front of the trains? | There are glass walls and doors in some places. The glass doors align with the train doors when the train stops. They're very effective. _URL_2_", 'Korea has the best subway system in the world, in my opinion. The tracks are barred off with curved plexiglass. When the train arrives, the doors open up, you step in and click off, as everyone takes out their devices and gets lost in the electronic glowEVERY question that starts with "Why doesn't the city just " the answer is *always* $$$$$$', "It would be easy to add it to the design for a station under construction, but in order toa dd such a feature to existing stations, you would need to shut down the station while it was being constructed. In manually driven systems, you would also need to consider the possibility of driver error in lining up the doors. Mostly I'm thinking of an article I read last month on the New York train system, in which it was described how the trains are manually driven and technically no one knows where any given train is at any given time, and how attempts to upgrade a single line that did not share tracks with any other lines went half a year over schedule due to the difficulty of scheduling maintenance time to work on the upgrades. The article in question: _URL_3_ |
How is our economy going to remain sustainable with many jobs at a high risk of automation in the near future? | A lot of people here are only focused on the US job market. The main victim of automation is actually predicted to be the global agriculture sector. It's predicted to destabilize the WORLD economy not just the US. Billions of uneducated farmers and the like are set to be replaced by automation. Many of the same people do not have the money or access to even a basic education now and are hardly prepared to step into any sort of technical jobs. Also I'd like to point out that many people are underestimating how quickly technology is adopted in the modern age. One example of this is the cell phone in your pocket. |
How are write-in names and absentee ballots counted given that election results are announced that same night? | Because there is no practical or likely case where a write-in candidate would ever matter. The only time would be if said candidate got a majority of the electoral votes, which would be obvious because the reported number of votes would be drastically lower than the actual number of votes, in which case they would have to review all those votes manually and see that there was some write-in candidate getting all of those votes. It is highly improbable that a write-in candidate would be so popular as to get so many votes but not be an actual candidate . Even if they got enough votes to rob other candidates of a majority all that would do would trigger an election by the Houses of congresss, so it wouldn't even matter who they really were. |
How do refrigerants like HFCs and HFOs work? | Think of it like a cup of steaming hot water in an insulated cup. As long as the lid is on, the heat is contained, it stays in the cup. Not harming anything. But take the lid off and now the heat is escaping into the air. It's the same concept, the heat gets absorbed, then it wants to be released again, except these gasses have more capacity and conductivity than just water.Note their big issue and CFCs even more wasnt their greenhouse gas property. Its that when in the upper atmosphere they degrade into smaller components. The Chlorine atoms break off as free radicals from these compounds. They then act as a catalyst in the degradation of ozone. Rather than get consumed though because they are a catalyst they just break down the ozone but stay for many many years |
How do trains make turns if their wheels spin at the same speed on both sides? | Here's a [gif] showing how. Basically the wheels are conical and the contact point with the rails change during a turn. |
Obamacare passed with only Democrat support. If Democrats by themselves passed it and they didn't need Republicans why didn't they go for Universal Healthcare. | Most of the Democrats don't want universal healthcare. Congress is corrupt to its core and they stand to make far more money off of this alternative than they would with Universal Healthcare. |
How come bottled water is such a hot commodity while other animals can still drink water from unfiltered lakes and rivers? | Marketing. No really, tap water is perfectly fine. Although don't try the lake thing if you are unsure.Some tap water got contaminated in Europe in the 1970s. Ever since then, the Europeans have primarily drank bottled water. In the throes of the revolution that swept across New York City high society in the 1980s, restaurants began serving bottled water. Wall Street financiers were flush from the roaring bull market, and could afford to pay for bottled water that evoked European sophistication . This caché, I assume, trickled down into the American mainstream.[this] if you've ever had it you'll do everything you can to prevent it. Drinking untreated lake water is a good way to catch it. |
why Americans still have as much apprehension towards Russians? Isn't the cold war over? | It is difficult to justify spending more on our military than the rest of the world combined without having a bogey man out there to justify it. The MIC is big business as it the indirect input to GDP from the direct input of 4% that Congress set as a target. In my former state of South Carolina, the local paper did a study that about 20% of the state's economy depended on military spending. Self interest has funny ways of making people justify things and its easy to rehash obsolete threats since people live a relatively long time. |
After child labor was largely banned in the USA, how did the families of those formerly employed children survive with the diminished income? | actually, the social security really helped propel things forward because you didn't need to rely on your children to support you when you were no longer able to work. Other things, like minimum wage and guaranteed/mandatory largely secular education helped things too. |
How do good actors end up in flop movies? | First and foremost, if the movie has the budget to hire the actor, a lot of times the actor will take it. Being in a bad movie doesn't really ruin an actor's career because nobody will see it. That said, actors don't really know which movies are going to be flops. Movie studios have a much greater interest in a movie not flopping because they are investing a lot of money into it, and yet they make mistakes quite a bit. An actor will consider the script, the director, the costars, etc before committing, but nothing's a sure thing. Even great directors make flops some times. Take Disney, add Johnny Depp, and one of the most successful directors of all time, and you might get Pirates of the Caribbean or you might get Lone Ranger.In addition to reasons others have mentioned, actors will contract with studios for a certain number of movies. For example, they might say, "We'll let you star in this artsy Oscar-bait movie, but in return we want you to also star in our stupid action movie."', "I've always wondered that too. I guess I just thought maybe they were broke as shit when they got the offer to do that movie |
I leased a new model of my vehicle that now has a safety feature backup camera and it RAISED my insurance rates. How does increased safety raise my insurance rate? | Getting rear-ended costs the insurer more if they have additional items to replace. Cameras are nice to have, but they ain't cheap. Insurers are in it for the revenue, not your goodwill. |
Why haven't we gone back to the moon in 40+ years? | Have you seen Apollo 18? It said that's why we didn't go back, so it's gotta be real right?", '"Most people understood going to the Moon as a great adventure. And how many times are they going to pay for it when the plot's the same every time?" --James Burke, *Connections*It's expensive, and there's nothing that we "need" to do at the moment besides prepare for colonies . We're busy looking further into space with telescopes, where we are learning more about our universe. Probes and satellites are completing tasks cheaper and more efficiently than sending astronauts to the surface.Still can't believe there are actually semi intelligent people who believe it was faked", 'As other people have said, money. You might think that as technology improves space travel becomes cheaper and I suppose it does a little bit, but at nowhere near the same rate as say electronics. The amount of exotic metals and other crazy materials required for space vessels is crazy. That stuff doesnt get cheaper over time, if anything it gets more expensive! Even when it comes to cheaper things associated with space travel, standards must be kept higher than pretty much any other project on earth. Design, Manufacturing, Training, Insurance, etc. One bad O-ring, and its all over .You can bet after all the testing and safety that goes into an O-ring Nasa uses now, it effectively costs probably 10s or 100s of times more money than the O-rings in your car. Now imagine that attention to detail is applied to EVERY SINGLE THING in a freaking spaceship! Now imagine its all being funded by taxpayers.We've been there before and have a huge selection of moon rocks. We know more about the moon then our oceans.Maybe if we would stop getting involved in unnecessary wars, there could be a budget hmmm |
What is the problem with police having military weapons? | The problem isn't so much that they have them, it's that they use them too readily. SWAT needs to exist, because sometimes criminals have serious weapons like machine guns or explosives and you need a response team that can effectively neutralize those threats. This means major police departments need full body armor, machine guns, sniper rifles, riot gear, etc. The problem is that they are often used when it is unnecessary. As to why they overuse them, perhaps it's to justify the budget or because they truly believe that they need to be a more militarized police force, but the reality of the situation is that police use them far too often. For example, there are many instances of simple drug busts becoming no-knock raids out of fear of people inside flushing the evidence. In addition, they try to shoot for times when the suspects are asleep, so it's usually early AM. When you use a ram to bust the door of someone's home open, it's terrifying, especially when they're disoriented from being asleep or high. Their first instinct is survival and self-defense which means using the nearest weapon to defend their home. Because of this, it's necessary for cops to be in full SWAT gear to protect themselves. The problem is that this is a catch-22 in that they wouldn't need mil-spec gear if they simply served the warrant in the open during daytime. While some busts require SWAT gear, too many raids don't. And during protest crowd control, showing up in riot gear should be a last resort, but it is often a first response. It leads to alienating the crowd and making them anxious, which often leads to situations blowing up. Officers in normal garb working within the crowd to keep the peace often has a calming orderly effect. A wall of riot shields does not. |
The significance of the new Star Wars film being shot on film as opposed to digitally. | First of all, it's not uncommon. American Hustle, 12 Years a Slave, Star Trek, Captain Phillips, Inside Llewyn Davis, and Wolf of Wall Street are all among many big movies that came out this year that were primarily shot on film. Now, it can easily be argued that film has superior image quality in regards to dynamic range and resolution. However, the most important advantages of shooting on film are it's archivability and adaptability. I speak from experience, as I'm a preservationist. Modern film can theoretically last thousands of years with little to no maintenance. This means it's incredibly cheap and effective to archive. So films shot on film will simply last longer and will be much cheaper to archive. In addition, it's incredibly adaptable to future formats because it's human readable . In other words, it can be scanned into whatever format is needed, in whatever resolution is needed, and using any future methods that we can devise. A simple example: Films like *Her* and *Gravity*, both Oscar nominated films, will never have a true release in 4K, 8K, or anything beyond. However, all of the films I mentioned to begin with will have a 4K release, will have an 8K release, and will even have releases beyond this. This is because 35mm simply contains enough detail and nuance to benefit from these resolutions, while *Her* and *Gravity* are locked into 2K forever. So you know how the original Star Wars has lasted this long? This next Star Wars film will last even longer because they are shooting on modern 35mm stocks. |
Why is it generally assumed that any extra terrestrial species we contact will be vastly more advanced than us? | Its not so much the assumption alien life must be more advanced, but any alien life we come into *contact* with will be more advanced Because we're pretty sure that there's no life nearby, and so if its a passive contact that probably means they started to send signals out before us, since it'd take so long for the signals to get here, or they have a form of communication way more advanced than we do that can reach us faster than our understanding of physics would allow. If they visit then obviously they're more advanced since they got here and we couldn't do the same. As to overall assuming that alien life is more advanced, no there's no real reason to believe so. The most common life forms on earth are simple, and since that's all we have to go off of plus making sense, you can expect the average alien species to be the equivalent of a bacterium, with advanced lifeforms being rare. The only argument i've seen that argues for advanced life forms is that other planets reached life supporting stages long before Earth did, meaning they've had life with thousands and even millions of more years to advance. |
How do certain countries end up having names so different from their native language in other languages | To expand on the question, it's not only the name of the country - often city names have different names too. As Germany is your example: - Braunschweig - Brunswick- München - Munich- Köln - Cologne- Nürnberg - Nuremberg |
If our normal body temperature is ~98.6 F, why does 98F temperature outdoors (regardless of humidity) feel like Hell's anus? Shouldn't it feel "perfect?" | Your body produces A LOT of heat through all the various processes like cellular respiration and digestion. You're comfortable at ~70 degrees because that's the temperature at which base metabolism will naturally keep your body at 98.6 |
Why is Chocolate so Dangerous to dogs? | Chocolate contains theobromine. They can't digest it. Side note: this is the 4th time in the last 3 days I've seen this question. -_- |
Why do other people's excrement's smell worse than my own? | Wasn't there an explanation that said because the act of shitting is accompanied by feeling better, so you've been conditioned that the smell is associated with your body feeling better, so it doesn't smell as bad? That's why when leaving the room, and then coming back later it smells bad because the physiological connection was lost? |
What is so different about their pathways that causes aspirin to be useful in anti-platelet therapy and Ibuprofen to be a detrimental factor regarding heart disease? | I once had inflammation of my throat and since eating hurt too much without pain killers I decided to eat later when I'd arrived at school. I took 2x 400mg of Ibuprofen on an empty stomach and washed them down with a can of Redbull. 10-15 minutes later it felt like I'd taken speed. Did the Ibuprofen enhance the caffeine/taurine in the Redbull or what happened? Anyone know?", 'As far as I remember, aspirin is weakly COX-1 selective at low doses. COX-1 promotes platelet aggregation, while COX-2 inhibits it. The irreversible binding to COX-1 inhibits platelet aggregation, and since platelets lack nuclei no new COX can be produced. Ibuprofen and most other NSAIDs are not COX-1 selective and bind reversibly, as some other commenter mentioned. |
- Why do some people's faces turn red after drinking certain alcohol beverages? | The skin condition rosacea can also cause redness in the cheeks and nose after drinking alcohol, caffeine, or spicy foods. it's common in 30+ year old people with fair skin. |
why millions of dollars is donated to third world countries yet they are still so poor? | Because poverty aid doesn't fix poverty, actual investments do. And with most poor countries there isn't much to actually invest in. |
Why hasn't the current administration been able to appoint the 9th supreme court justice? | The relevant passage of the Constitution says > He [the President] shall nominate, and with the advice and the consent of the senate, shall appoint Judges of the supreme court. This means that the president appoints someone, and then the senate judiciary committee holds hearings to determine whether or not the nominee should be a supreme court justice. If the judiciary committee decides it's okay, the entire senate votes. If they confirm the nominee, the nominee gets their appointment and becomes a justice. The president nominated Merrick Garland, currently the chief judge of the United States Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. The Senate, however, refused even to hold hearings on Garland's confirmation, because they don't want to until the next president is elected. So there will be no confirmation, and there will be no ninth supreme court justice. This is the first time this kind of impasse has happened for the supreme court, but it's gotten pretty routine for lower courts. Most of the lower courts have vacancies, and sometimes wait years for vacancies to be filled. |
Why don't establishments which serve alachol all have breathalyzers so intoxicated patrons know they legally can't drive. | liability. if they provided a way to know if someone is too intoxicated to drive, there's some responsibility for them to prevent them from driving. |
How do asian countries type their language on a keyboard? | Korean only has 40 basic characters that are combined in a certain structure , so all of them can be assigned their own key . Here's a picture of the one I use at work. The button to the right of the space bar switches the languages._URL_2_ |
FAFSA/ Financial aid / Federal Student aid: Is it a loan? | FAFSA is an application to get a government loan. Financial Aid is the combination of loans, scholarships and grants you receive. In most cases if you have no money and your parents aren't helping, the bulk of the cost of college is going to be funded by taking out loans and you'll likely be in serious debt after you graduate.Filing the FAFSA opens all forms of federal student aid, including gift aid and loan aid . The FAFSA is also used by many schools to determine their own aid packages, which will generally consist of gift aid and work studies but could also consist of loans. |
How do people get birthmarks? | One type of birthmark is a [Stork Bite or Strawberry Mark]. It's a type of vascular birthmark that's often associated with brain and spinal conditions like spinal bifida and other conditions like [Ehlers Danlos Syndrome]. I have [Chiari Malformation] and Ehlers Danlos Syndrome. Like many others with Chiari and EDS, I have a stork bite on my neck. Its caused by stretching of the blood vessels while the fetus is developing, and can keep growing past the birth date. Unfortunately, they're not sure exactly why or how the correlation exists, but I think it's an interesting subject. White birthmarks are due to a lack of melanin, in the spot where the mark is visible. I have two white birthmarks that do not tan like the rest of my body. So if I've been in the sun, they're more noticeable because of the contrast of tanned and white skin. |
Why are we attracted to a pretty face in terms of mate selection? Physical features of the body show traits that are important to survival/reproduction but what do facial features show? | I think it's more related to health than anything else. I've seen some women who where strange in the face and still found them to be beautiful because of their health. If the symmetry is too far off, it's generally because of an accident of some sort or poor health. There are genetic occasions that are unattractive for sure, but I don't think it's that common. Life choices make you good looking or not, for the most part", 'Symmetry for genetic quality, avoiding the monstrous effect and finally, for males and females the right sexual charecteristics. Testosterone especially in early childhood causes jaw widening, lower body fat, and in general a more manly appearance that the opposite sex finds attractive. . Similarly for eostrogen halting development and creating more child-like featuresA pretty face is associated with higher survival of self and offspring because it’s associated with a higher social status. Ties in with the idea that our standards of beauty change throughout history, and receive major influences from the highest social classes It’s pretty simple. Symmetrical faces are prettier and symmetry is a sign of healthy genes.> Why are we attracted to a pretty face in terms of mate selection? The thing is you have your cause and effect here the wrong way around. We aren't attracted to pretty faces, our definition of pretty faces is built based on the features that we are attracted to. If acne, facial scarring and pattern baldness and being crosseyed were considered strong indicators of reproductive success. Our definition of beauty would be defined by those elements. Now the question of why do we find those features attractive is another level that I can't help you with. --- But we aren't attracted to a pretty face due to mate selection. Our definition of pretty is based on what we are attracted to due to mate selection. |
Does a large college library even matter anymore? | I think you're underestimating how much of the libraries have been digitized. Yeah you can buy the latest James Patterson novel or Reece Bio textbook online, but most of a large university library only exists in print. Or, it exists behind a paywall. All those various journal issues the library has in print are essentially open to the general public to use as they need, for free, as long as they don't do something that would get them kicked out. That's kind of a nice service for a university to provide, I think. |
How does evolutionary science follow the scientific method? | There have been thousands of predictions made in terms of transitional fossils. i.e.: where a species if found in a specific area, an earlier ancestor is likely to be found and will be found in older rock, but not younger rock. More than that, Darwin was able to predict the existence of an undiscovered species. Who knows how many times fruit fly populations have been shaped by favoring certain traits under experimental circumstances. These are repeatable results and what's more, if you apply the principles of evolution, you can make accurate predictions. Accurate predictions are one of the hallmarks of good science.You can study evolution in bacteria via antibiotic resistance following the scientific method. At my University in our Biology lab they taught us evolution by showing how over time, a lack of exposure to antibiotic causes cells populations to loss antibiotic resistance as the resistance mechanism was metabolically costly for the bacteria cells We first hypothesized that this would happen and then observed it in experiment. |
Why is it impossible to stop thinking? | It isn't. The only problem is, you cant catch yourself not thinking.Would you even know if you stopped thinking? |
What are there multiple ways to write in some East Asian languages. | As a Chinese person, I can only speak for the Traditional and Simplified characters. The usage of Traditional and Simplified Chinese depends on where you come from. Simplified Chinese is just a more easier way to write Chinese characters, which was created to promote literacy in Mainland China. Simplified Chinese was introduced in the latter half of the 20th century and it's only used in Mainland China. Traditional Chinese is the more historic form and is found in more classical poems, building inscriptions, statues, etc. Traditional Chinese is also used in places outside of Mainland China, such as Taiwan and Hong Kong, places that were not subject to the government of China when Simplified Chinese was introduced. Of course, the meanings of the characters are still the same, but just look different. |
Maryland is the richest state in America. So why is Baltimore ranked one of America's poorest cities? | Baltimore lost a lot of its manufacturing base. Combine that with White Flight where anyone with money immediately moves to the suburbs and you have a situation where Baltimore ends up in a hole that it can't get out of. Meanwhile, the wealth for the state at large is concentrated in the counties close to DC. Montgomery County is a big hub for government and scientific research. And they plus other suburban DC counties benefit from the same white flight that happened in Washington DC. But Washington has been able to recover more quickly than Baltimore because Washington never depended on manufacturing. |
Why do foods like rice, pasta, or beans take minutes to soak up water when it's hot, but hours upon hours if the water is cold? | The mentioned food all contain one compound: starch. Since its 'outer layer' is quite hard, it will take a while for the cold water to get through this tough barrier. Heat breaks down some starch compounds which allows the 'outer layer' to become something like a porous membrane. This allows the grain to absorb water faster. Source: I'm a chemical engineering studentEdit: Clarified that starch is a compound.Is this the same phenomenon as with something like tea? Tried to make tea at work the other day but with cold water, I was pretty whelmedIf you like food facts, especially when related to home cooking. You should watch "good eats" its a bit older now, was hosted by Alton Brown, the current host for iron chef america. Good eats, however, is incredibly informative about food. There is a cooking portion of the show, which visually demonstrates the lesson for the day. I watch the entire series on YouTube, some dude called "Rabe Shimpa" has every single episode on his channel.Good lord I can't believe nobody has posted the real answer: _URL_1_. Competent chefs use this property. It why some soups thicken and gelatenise when cooled.One thing to note. Beans and chickpeas are very difrerent from rice or any other grain. With beans and chickpeas and lentils, the water has to penetrate the tough outer skin. Often, even with hot water, chickpeas and beans do not cook through . A common technique used when cooking chickpeas is to add baking soda which makes the water more alkaline and helps the moisture go through. Often, tea leaves or tea bags are added which being mildly acidic counteracts the alkilinity of baking soda and the food still ends up tasting good . See this video recipe explaining this technique: _URL_2_Are you saying I could put pasta in water abs a couple of days later it would be done? |
why do you get that feeling in your stomach when you go over a little hill in a car? | Lemme explain this from a physics/medical standpoint. Your limbs, back all contain bones. These bones keep you whole and prevent you from collapsing. The insides, on the other hand, are semi-fluid. Organs can slightly move, bend, even displace If enough trauma is inflicted. So this is what happens in your car. Your body is pushed upwards but comes down immediately because there is direct contact with your seat. But your organs start and end moving with a slight delay, and even retain some up/downward movement after your body already moved, because of inertia. Your body has inertia too, but this is dampened by being 'pushed' against your seat. Organs are soft and push into anything more easilly So they keep pushing longer Have fun thinking about that |
Sometimes I see a tiny dog being a bully/ aggressive to a huge dog. Does it not realize that the other dog is much bigger and could kill it if it wanted to? | If the owners weren't always so close, this kind of behavior might have been worked out of a the smaller breeds. As it is now, it seems like people actually encourage this behavior. At least, it's a behavior I see too many times hanging around the dog park. I'm a big supporter of cute & fuzzies of all sizes and shapes. However, one really shouldn't yap so much when one can be kicked for yardage. |
How do military snipers "confirm" a kill? Can they confirm it from the site of the shot or do they need to examine the target? | When the situation permits it, a BDA assessment is conducted. After whatever situation has been handled, if the tactical situation is safe enough for the troops to walk the ground, search bodies, collect intelligence, and assess the overall situation for an After Action Report . This would allow for an opportunity to confirm kills. Also- having confirmed kills or not is kind of a Hollywood mentality. We don't generally care about how many people we've killed - talking from experience up in the great white north. ", 'The process of confirming a kill is quite important to a recon soldier. Snipers are usually a part of or attached to recon units. Confirming a kill is not about the actual confirmation of death. The main purpose is to actually gather intelligence on units operating within that area of operations and can help with METT-TC in further mission planing. A kill confirmation is done in order to ensure the person you are gathering intel on, will not jump up and stab you in the neck while you are examining his equipment and state of health, this is usually done by thumping the eyelid, a knee to the groin, or by pulling the pinky and ring fingers, and index and middle finger apart, splitting the hand. These factors allow you to make assumptions about what units are currently in your area of operations, was this soldier a regular ? A rebel ? Were they well equipped? How many days have they been in the field? . What is the fighting condition of these men? . Source: I was Special Operations Airborne Long Range Surveillance, Fort Bragg. OIF 04-05 and 09-10 Edit for grammar.Every sniper has a spotter, the man with the eyes. I can't confirm it, but they might go by the spotters word on it. |
Why do the Japanese exchange 'r' and 'l' sounds so often and sometimes even in their own language? | Because in Japanese they are not distinct sounds; there is *one* sound , which is really a flap - that is the tongue touches the *alveolar ridge* for a short moment. If that moment is drawn out a little, you hear an 'l', but Japanese speakers don't hear any contrast - it's just the same sound held a bit longer. Think about the vowels in *fast* and *slant* - if you're a native English speaker, they probably sound more or less the same to you: it's just a long 'a'. If you're Portuguese though, you'll hear two different vowels; an 'a' and a nasal 'a'. Portuguese contrasts sounds that sound more or less the same to us; we contrast sounds that sound the same to Japanese. |
Why are Gawker sites "bad?" | Two reasons for me: 1. site design - tons of problems. the headline fades in? I can't read the top line. and embedded videos never work, I have to google the subject and find the video myself if i really want to see it. Also sometimes I can't scroll down on the page. 2. snarky, negative tone - most of the time, 100% fine. funny and appropriate. but occasionally they write a nasty, negative gossipy article on something cool, which is annoying and makes me a little angry. This is especially true on the main gawker site, which just seems to be a bunch of internet trolls looking for something new to hate on every day. Not a big deal but when there are a million other sites doing it better, why bother? For PC tech news, maximum PC is better, for gaming Rock Paper Shotgun is better, for general tech news _URL_4_ is better. I don't read blogs about women's rights or cars or show business so i'm pretty much fine without gawker.They shrugged off their massive security breach since it effected, "[just the peasants.]" Even besides things like that and their horrible site layout, they're just bad journalists. They routinely steal content, report on unfounded rumors, and on occasion have **used 4chan as a source of information** for said unfounded rumors.They basically dared 4chan to go after them. Then didn't have any kind of security on their user accounts. As result THOUSANDS of people got their info leaked. Mine included. Fuck them.They redid their website about a year ago. It went to shit and they lost 75% of their traffic.Don't forget the lame writer who trolled ama |
How do you learn to keep a beat? | Further to the suggestion of foot tapping: I have found that muscle memory can almost completely automate it. When I was learning piano, I was told never to tap my foot - piano is a percussion instrument after all so it was my hands playing the rhythm that should keep the beat. However, when learning guitar I would tap my left foot, a habit that carried over to drums. I realized recently that it wasn't that I was keeping the beat in my head and tapping my foot to it, rather that my foot was keeping the beat, and I would play in time with that. So, like others have said, practice, preferably with foot tapping and eventually your foot will keep the beat. I'm still amazed by how well the body can adapt to things like this, but it is quite specific - a 'habit' like foot tapping, doesn't necessarily spill over to make you better at something similar, like dancing which is almost whole-body co-ordination. But I suspect like themeatbridge said, dancing may help because it involves moving different parts of the body to the beat. |
How are pre amps for microphones or guitar amps programmed into digital plug-ins to accurately recreate the tone you'd receive from the actual device? | /u/Holy_City explains part of this in another top level post, but I thought I'd give a slightly different explanation. Physical devices have physical limits. Three of the big ones are non-linearity, frequency specific responses, and memory. Non-linearity is basically where if you gave an amp A in you get A *X out. You expect that giving an amp in you'd get *X out, but you don't. See /u/Holy_City's post for more details. Frequency specific responses are where the signal is amplified more or less depending on its frequency. A digital amp is flat. You put A in, and you get A *X out. Real amps give you different outs depending on what A is. This is one reason why tube amps sound warm. Here's a random [chart] showing what I'm talking about. This is really a special case of non-linearity, but I felt it deserved it's own separate section. The third case is memory. Memory is when current outputs are affected by past inputs. Reverb and delay on an effects processor are good examples of memory. In electronics, signals don't instantly change, so everything analog has memory. Now in a properly designed transistor amp, that memory is going to be so small it's pracitally non-existant However, when you're talking about electron distribution in a vacuum, like when using a tube amp, it can have a, minor but possibly, noticeable effect. This is also frequency dependent. |
Why would injecting an air bubble into your vein be lethal and would it be a painful death? | There are two possible problems. One, if a sufficiently large air bubble in a vein reaches the heart, it breaks the suction that is pulling the blood along your blood vessels. No circulation, no life. Two, if it's in the artery, it can block blood delivery to wherever the blood vessel is going. This is called an infarction and leads to muscle death. More info: _URL_0_ |
Why do winners of American sports leagues call themselves World Champions? | They usually don't. If they have a world championships, like in baseball, there are foreign teams, mainly Japan. |
Why isn't the Supreme Court chief justice chosen from existing Supreme Court justices? | When the Chief Justice of the United States dies or resigns, the President may select any person to replace him. If the President picks someone on the Court, he's choosing the best option out of only eight people, perhaps none of which he really agrees with. If he picks a judge outside the Court, he's got hundreds of options and can get the perfect choice for his own goals/beliefs about the Court. |
Could we find pi as a rational number if we had a different number system? | No. The properties of pi aren't dependant upon using decimals or base 10. Some comments are saying if you used base pi then pi would be rational. This is not the case. You could google for 'proof that pi is irrational' and see that the proofs don't rely on the base you're using. The proofs are a bit complicated for ELI5. Perhaps better to look at the proof that sqrt is irrational instead. It's easier to understand and, it's a fact that the same thing that makes sqrt irrational makes it always irrational too. The proof has nothing to do with the number of decimal places or anything like that. _URL_6_ |
How were governments able to get away with testing nuclear weapons before Hiroshima and Nagasaki? | > Wouldn't the fallout have been a huge screaming issue? What happened to all that radiation? Wouldn't people have noticed the bombs going off? No. Nothing, it was in the middle of a desert testing range. No. Even since Hiroshima and Nagasaki there have been literally hundreds of nuclear weapons tests above ground . The US, in the 50's and 60's didn't quite appreciate the radiation issues and invited people to watch from a distance. But most people are completely unaware of the tests - they're in remote places for a reason. The US have some very remote basically huge uninhabited deserts, and then there are some south pacific islands and lagoons that aren't even remotely near living people. Testing in secret isn't so hard when everyone agrees secrets need to be kept, even when they don't know the secret they're keeping. Also, fallout from bombs of this size and type is not a huge issue .The fallout for early nuclear weapons wasn\' tmuch of an issue because the falout would generally get into the upper atmophere and spread out over the whole planet, diluting it to a very small concentration. The early nuclear weapons were also very small compared to later ones, wherein fallout became more of an issue. It's also important to remember that most nuclear apocalypse stories involve "Cobalt Bombs" where Cobalt is deliberately added to nuclear bombs to make the fallout much more deadly, these have been theorised, but I don't think any have been built Nuclear bombs in the 40s and 50s were orders of magnitude smaller than the ones in existence today. Lots of testing was carried out underground, which made the fallout and radiation less of an issue. People were often told that there had been a minor earthquake or mining accident. |
How do mountain climbers keep themselves clean on large expeditions (ie: Mount Everest) | Climbing say Everest, is a mammoth task. If you ever find yourself at base camp, you'll be more concerned with altitude and the effect it is having, possible life threatening situations, pulmonary embolism for example is common. Personal hygeine is just not a priority.Baby wipes, poop tube, and different priorities, makes sense thanks for the answers guys :) |
Why do we still use landfills? Aren't there better options than throwing it in a big pile and burying it? | Even a waste-to-energy plant has slug or ash as byproduct that has to be taken to a landfill. In communities like the one I was a common councilman for, we have a trash bin, a recycling bin and a separate pickup for yard waste and furniture etc. Our system is a public garbage pickup system. The trash is taken to a city owned compacting processing station where the garbage trunk dumps it's load onto the floor and a staff sifts through the garbage before a small front loader pushes it into shoots that go to trailers on a lower level that compress the garbage and take it to the regionally public owned waste-to-energy station in a nearby town. They are sifting to remove things to improve the quality of the waste in the waste-to-energy transfer process and remove anything they can add to the recycling that would reduce the volume of waste and anything that does not burn well, is toxic or risk explosion. Based on the truck load content will determine whether the waste is taken to the waste-to-energy plant or directly to the landfill. The savings in the reduced material transport costs and additional revenues from the sifted recyclables covers most the cost of the sifting and reduces the amount of the resulting waste-to-energy slug that has to be transported to the landfill. Thus sifting the garbage pays off big time when we can extend the life of the land fill, minimize the air pollution associated with the waste-to-energy process and reduce our fossil fuel consumption by reducing the volume of truck loads of waste that need to be transported. On the other hand some of those supposedly honorable alternatives result in some kid in China, India or Africa burning computers in some unregulated landfill or factory to acquire the gold in them and in the process killing the kid from the toxicity. |
The United States involves itself in many worldly conflicts like Ukraine, but why doesn't it intervene in the bad conditions in Africa? | Were there jsoc has operated in over 30 countries in counterterrorism operations.just because you dont see or hear it doesn't mean it isn't happening.some countries are just not ready yet,if we take one party out,another steps in and just starts all over,it would be like taking out the nazis and then jews start committing genocide against others .intervention in Africa is just shuffling the decks |
Why is it quieter when it snows? | Think of sound energy as a tennis ball. If you drop it on a hard flooring it almost bounces back with same energy. Now if you drop the same ball on a sand pit , it hardly bounces. This happens because in a hard flooring the particles are tightly packed. They don't move . So all the energy that the ball carries transferred back to the ball and makes it move in the other direction. On the sand the particles are loosely packed so the get to move . So a lot of energy is expended in moving sand particles and very little is transferred to the ball. Something similar happens to the sound. When it snows the snowflakes are not tightly packed. So they can absorb more ambient noise compared to before snowfall. So it relatively feels quieter.While snow has some effect as a sound absorber, the fact that its snowing limits outdoor activities that adds to the affect. But once the storm is over, that loud and annoying sound of spinning tires and snow plows scrapping the pavement does not seem be hindered by the sound absorbing snow covered surroundings. |
How a human can physically eat 62 hotdogs in 10 minutes | From what I've read, they eat separately the bread, which is soft, and the sausage, which is harder, because the chewing would be different.In addition, some pour water on the bread so that they don't need to drink water during the time, which can get more time to eat more hotdogs and so on Plus I think some experience isn't useless |
Why does the United States tolerate human rights violations and terrorism links in Saudi Arabia but not in Syria? | There's always an element of hypocrisy in politics. Sadly it is fairly inevitable. We need Saudi's oil, so we don't officially notice their poor human rights record. I am pretty sure that it is brought up from time to time. |
This quote by Neil deGrasse Tyson: "If you fall into a black hole, you'll see the entire future of the universe unfold in front of you in a matter of moments." | He also said we'd died the most horrifying death.There are more grains of sand on the sun than universes in the solar system.It isn't true: _URL_0_does a good job of explaining the misconception here. An external observer never sees you fall through the event horizon but it happens in a finite proper time for you.So this means if I could get rid of gravity in my bedroom, I could sleep in each morning for an extra 30 minutes?', "Follow up questions, then why do things still fall into a Black Hole? Why aren't they just building up at the event horizon? Wouldn't the Universe end before we get sucked in?", 'Keep in mind that science communicators like to simplify things and may also make bold statements to get the everyday person interested. Also you would gravitational forces would kill you far before anything like that happens.You would die much much sooner. You don't get as far as event horizon, sorry.Im not sure if Id be horrified or fascinated by falling into a black holeWhy have we not experimentally sent somebody into a black hole yet?', "It's because time slows down because of the infinite mass of the black hole. So everything around you will seem to speed up when it is really you that has stopped in time. Because time is directly related to mass. So a minute for you inside a black hole would be a lot longer of a time to people outside of the black holes event horizon", 'Every time I read something like this I am left with the same questions:1. If it takes forever to fall into a black hole, how does the black hole grow? 2. Does that mean that everything the black hole will ever consume exists in the accretion disk and event horizon?', "No one mentions the fact that you would be incinerated long before reaching the event horizon ? Seems funny that the Neil deGrasse Tyson wouldn't have thought of that before saying the above quote. |
Why can't a website tell wether if its the password or username that is incorrect when I enter it wrong? | A lot of people think it's for security but actually it's not. Sometimes it just can't tell and other times it's for performance reasons. Imagine a database with a couple million user names in it. The user names User and User1 are probably both taken. If you try to log in as User with the password PASSWORD and that's not your password you'd think oh obviously the password is wrong. But what if User1 just happens to actually use the password PASSWORD for their password even though you don't? How is the script to supposed to know? Maybe you meant to use User1 as your name and just mistyped the 1? It can't really tell if you're actually User1 and mistyped your name or you're really just User and mistyped your password? Now sometimes it can tell. Maybe there is no User and only a User1 so it knows in this specific case the user name is wrong. But then you have to write extra code to make it work like that which would be fine except for the cases where like I said before it won't work so you're left to decide if you should write code that sometimes just doesn't work? Most coders choose not to do so and just stick with the simpler code that just always works which is something doesn't match, I don't know which it is, but it's one of them. |
Beginner Music Theory - Chords | Thanks for the help everyone. Actually has aided my understanding a lot more. Yes, I get hung up on the theory sometimes, but I truly believe that it's always beneficial to learn why you're doing something before you do it. But don't worry, I'm going to spend the next few days learning as many chords as I can and switch between them and just generally have fun with it all. |
What will happen when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object? | Neither of those can exist. If the could, they would both be basically the same concept When they meet, since they can't affect each other, they will simply pass through each other. |
Why does Reddit hate Michael Moore? | He often fails to address intelligent criticisms by the opposition, and fall back on stories and emotional appeals. In a gun debate on TV, he dismissed the idea of a home invader by asking what color the 'imaginary invaders' skin was. He did not address the very tangible threat of home invaders, the difference between an invaded home having guns or not having guns, and the face that a very disproportionate number of home invaders are black. Once someone asked him how he could be so critical of Capitalism if he made such a good living with his movies. Moore responded by saying that his wealth arose from his movies being very popular and people voluntarily paying to see them He also just pulls asshole moves, like harassing Charlston Heston with a picture of a dead girl, and returning bullets from the Columbine massacre to Kmart. |
If calories in/calories out [CICO] is true, how can cows can extra plump from hormones? | > Couldn't this also happen in humans? Did this article specifically said that the cows eat the same amount of calories before and during the administration of the drug? If we don't know that, this whole conversation has no meaning. |
Why are there so many mass college/school shootings in the US? | Because in the US, gun ownership is legal there, so its easy to go get a gun and do a mass shooting. They go for schools because children don't carry guns and can't defend themselves, also if they are fucked up enough to even cause a shooting, then it is not too far fetched that they would want to kill children . |
Why don't we just use Faraday Cages for deep space travel? To save explorers from radiation? | A Faraday cage doesn't offer any protection from gamma radiation the most damaging and prevalent radiation in deep space. If the cage was made of gold and a solid sphere then it would offer some protection but would too costly and weighty for space travel. |
Why is it that smiling, in human body language, is a sign of happiness and acceptance, while in chimpanzee body language, it is a sign of fear and anxiety? | If I'm not mistaken it actually isn't. It depends on the culture you grew up in. In some countries such as America, Australia, or Brazil it's a happy/good thing. I remember reading that this was not the case in countries such as Russia or Pakistan. Apparently in those countries it's a sign that someone is a con artist or dishonest if I remember correctly? [Not the article I was looking for, but an interesting read.] I'll keep looking for the article I wanted on it. |
What does it mean in layman's terms for the birth control Nexplanon to be 99.9% effective? | If means that 0.1% of the people on Nexplanon became pregnant. It's not necessarily a 1 in 1,000 chance it will fail; there could be physiological factors, or interactions with other medications, that reduce the effectiveness for some people. |
Why can we use WINRAR for free even though it constantly requests us to purchase a license? | Simple they hope we will but don't bother to secure their product. They have huge brand awareness at no cost. This link should explain it in greater detail. _URL_0_ |
Why buying lottery tickets is considered dumb, when someone HAS to win. | No one has to win in many lotteries. Similarly, even if someone were obligated to win, it's *still* very, very, VERY unlikely to be you, so the chances that you won't just lose money are very small.It really depends on why you're buying lottery tickets in the first place. If you're buying a ticket every now and then for pure entertainment purposes, then that's fine. If you're buying dozens of tickets every week in an attempt to be a millionaire, then you're essentially throwing money away. Think of it as being a slot machine. If you go to a casino and spend a few bucks on slots for fun, good for you. If you drop $5000 into the slot machine over the course of a weekend because you're going to win the jackpot "any minute now", you should probably reevaluate the situation.Firstly, someone doesn't HAVE to win - if no one matches all the numbers, nobody wins the jackpot and this is added to the jackpot of the next draw. This is called a [Rollover].As for it being considered dumb, this is probably because the odds of winning, [1 in about 14 million in the UK], are very low - much lower than [the odds of being struck by lightning]! I even read somewhere that you have more chance of dying on your way to get a lottery ticket from the shop than you do of actually winning! Many people will choose not to buy a ticket as they feel they are wasting their money and will not win. |
Why is outsourcing a good thing? | As someone who works for a union, I can make a strong case for why it's bad for working people. To summarize: 1. Often companies outsource labor that they have little experience in managing well. For example, If a nursing home is run by an administration filled with ex-nurses who have no idea how to tell a cook or a housekeeper they are doing a good or bad job, they will contract out the workforce, even though they work in the same building which obviously means people doing the work lose money because they will be replaced by temporary or agency workers who are more precarious and are forced to work harder/more for less. 2. What I see a lot of is companies that outsource in order to avoid having the responsibility of managing a job class that is generally unionized in that industry or there may be regional standards for a group of workers that allow for the value of a worker's labor to be higher. This often also leads to offshoring + outsourcing. Obviously bad for workers that want a contract with benefits and better pay, because it becomes more complicated for workers who want to form a union. 3. Companies will outsource as an excuse to get rid of seniority. Say you own a truck company, you have a crew of 100 loaders who have worked there for 10 years, and all get paid $15/HR because of the raises over the years. They may lay everyone off and pay an agency $10/HR to hire day laborers at $8/HR. Also, since temp workers are more precarious, they work harder for less, so the agency only staffs it with 75 loaders. Bam! Your company just saved a cool mil and a half every year. Workers suffer. |
Why is is when I'm put on hold with customer support, the music sounds like it's being played through a damaged speaker? | Phone systems can't play high quality audio. On a CD, your music is probably sampled at 44kHz, 16-bit, stereo. In order to load that into a phone switch, you have to first convert it to 8kHz, 16-bit , mono. |
How different animals perceive time? | Without being able to get too deep into it - animals do have a built-in clock. I don't know if it's universal but many animals will adopt an approximately 24 hour wake/sleep cycle even in the absence of light. The circadian rhythm is driven by the brain. You can extend or shorten it to a degree by artificially controlling light exposure but only by a certain amount. Fun fact: while humans' circadian rhythm is reset by light entering our eyes, ducks also have light sensitive neurons *in their brain* related to circadian rhythm. That means that a blind duck would still adopt a day/night cycle aligned with the rising and setting of the sun because enough light passes through their skull to activate those cells. It's pretty hard to say how animals actually perceive time, though. I'm curious - what exactly do you mean by that? What kinds of descriptions are you expecting to see? |
Why do law enforcement officials (on TV at least) wear bulletproof vests but no head protection? | I've never thought about this before but now it strikes me as funny that until very very recently, the only protective gear you would see a British policeman wear would be a helmet. I suppose that's because they would be more likely to get coshed or something though or hit in the head in the course of an arrest because if a suspect resisted the officer would have to physically incapacitate them rather than just shoot or spray or taser them. Even now they wear stabvests rather than bulletproof because, well, they really don't tend to get shot at all that often. |
Why Open Source Software is so unique phenomenon? | I think what's unique about OSS is that it's given away for free full well knowing other people might use it to make money. That's where I find the biggest difference between it and anything else. When someone helps you out with your house - you may reap the benefits of that help when you sell, or you may benefit personally in some sort of 2nd-string related way. Additionally, the relationship is almost always very personal between you and the helper. With OSS, someone is building a piece of software, giving it to *strangers* and, depending on the license, potentially allowing anyone to profit of it.It's not unique. In fact you don't even need to look outside of reddit to find counter examples. There are many subs where highly skilled professionals give away their time for free for no other reason than than to spread knowledge. See for example /r/AskHistorians The Internet is also filled with sites where people give away things they created for free, in a fashion very similar to OSS. Music, photos, novels, etc. It's all out there. Have a look at Creative Commons for how "open source" can work for other types of work', "It's not unique. SAMPE, the Society for the Advancement of Materials and Process Engineering, was founded to share information across aerospace companies. Engineering societies of all kinds all share information openly. Machinists of old shared information through journals and books. Software is just the latest incarnation of this practice. Why? Because sharing benefits everyone more than not sharing protects an individual. |
What causes major ISP's (Brighthouse, comcast, etc) have frequent service outages? | The ISPs in America are super greedy. Their profit margins are huge , and they take most of those profits and give them to shareholders, CEOS, etc, rather than reinvesting in their companies equipment, infrastructure, etc. Since they don't reinvest, which is what any company concerned about competition does, their system rots, and occasionally goes down. |
Why is it easy for me to make eye contact with most people, but difficult with people I don't like or don't respect? | Eye contact is intimidating. It is easy to make eye contact with people you know really well and are bonded with, but holding eye contact with a complete stranger is difficult. This isn't unique to humans. It is not a good idea to try and hold eye contact with a dog you don't know. If you try to hold eye contact with a dog the dog might become intimidated, show signs of aggression, or just show signs of discomfort like us. |
Why has no law been created to enforce News/media outlets to fact-check their news before release? | Most importantly the first amendment protects free speach and freedom of the press. Any law passed along these lines would likely be rejected by the supreme court for violating the first amendment. Laws restrict freedoms. A law like this would restrict peoples and business' rights. The other major problem is that there's a lot of subjectivity involved in determining the truth. Two observers could both tell their truth and have completely different stories that are both true to the speakers. If you were to require a news outlet to report the facts, you have to determine what the official facts are. At this point there's more subjectivity in deciding what the facts are and what the important facts are. A restriction like this would require a large agency devoted to it and that agency would have power to ruin a news outlet. Another issue is determining what the mode of control would be. Will there be punishments for violations? Will all news need to be prescreened? If facts are unknown at the time will news outlets be allowed to speculate or discuss possible explanations? In the end all a law like this would do is restrict freedoms and cost money. The problem then leads to a scenario like 1984 where the government controls the flow of information and has the ability to decide what people are allowed to talk about. Tldr: the first amendment and the possibility of a corrupt system controlling information |
Why are people who handle pizza allowed to use their bare hands? | > every other place where food is handled, the employees are wearing gloves. That's not true everywhere. [In Illinois,] only ready-to-eat food can't be handled with bare hands, like ice cream cones, sandwiches, and pastries. Anything that will be cooked can be prepared with CLEAN bare hands. In my experience, most cooks/food service workers/bartenders are diligent about washing their hands often. I once had to fire a guy from an ice cream shop after repeatedly telling him his nails were disgusting and customers could see that -- we even had a nail brush by the hand sink. |
Why are Human brain transplants nearly impossibe? | There's a lot of reasons. One, brains are really, really fragile. You can pull out a heart, shove it on ice, and heat it up and sew it in comfortably, because the heart is a tough peice of muscle. Brain tissue is extremely sensitive to lack of oxygen, and also has a lot of constantly running processes that shouldn't be stopped. Two, nerve wiring is a big issue. In order to perform the transplant, assuming that you can keep the brain alive, and trick it into not shutting down, you then need to reattach it to the spinal column. In a new body, with different wiring. Even if you manage to reattach all the nerves, they won't necessarily go to the same places. You'd probably go mad as you tried ordering your body to do something, and seeing a different response, and getting physical feedback for a different response as well. |
How does a sniper rifle shoot where the scope points even if its mounted above the rifle. | Most gun scopes are angled so that there's a slight intersect. But in the case of sniper rifles, you actually almost NEVER have the target in your scope when you make the actual shot. Because at the kind of ranges where snipers are used, by the time the bullet gets there it's veered off course due to wind, rotation, all kinds of other factors. Sometimes even the Coriolis effect comes into play. |
I got stabbed by a pencil in first grade. That piece of "lead" is still in my palm. Why? | I had a thorn stuck in the palm of my hand for like 10 years. Got stuck in there playing manhunt when I was younger. Skin healed over before I was able to get it out. I was in the bath one night and I noticed that spot had sort of popped up a little bit, so I bent my fingers back and the thing shot right out. Moral of the story, your body doesn't want it in there and won't break it down. You want it out you'll have to cut it out or wait for it to naturally reject. Either way you'll have to break the skin. |
Why do I shake my leg when I'm anxious, and why does it feel so good? | Leg shaking, or constant moving, has been associated with ADHD/ADD. Also meaning that the constant moving is a way to slow down brain activity when your mind is 'racing.' It's like a distraction. To people with ADHD/ADD it's soothing and I can't really do it intentionally, it just happens. |
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