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What is it that makes water-boarding so psychologically and/or physically terrifying? | Water boarding is torture. I don't know that it is any more terrifying than other forms of torture. It's just terrifying to be tortured. |
how did Asians get their squinty eyes? (I'm Asian) | It seems we [aren't quite sure]. What I do know is the evolutionary drive behind the races is climate based. Though sexual selection can't be ignored.Gobi desert, wind. This is why Northern Chinese have more squinty eyes than Southern Chinese.because those are the genes of Ghengis Khan's grandfather? |
Why can hospitals charge $50 a pill for Tylenol, but I can buy a whole bottle at the store for $5? | My local hospital charged $25000 for the birth of my daughter, a three day affair. That's a lot, but my daughter was severely breached, and my wife needed an emergency c section. They'd both likely be dead if we didn't go to a hospital. So if the choice is ludicrous prices or death, what choice do you have? |
Why do we urinate even when we are dehydrated/thirsty? | Even when you're dehydrated or thirsty, your body still needs to get rid of waste. You can't avoid that. |
What's the difference between adopting, rescuing, and buying pets? Isn't any pet without a home in need of one? | It's to try and cut down the puppy mills. They churn out puppies for profit. Sure those puppies deserve a home, but many people disagree with the forced breeding of animals . If you adopt a rescue then it's a dog that was not bred in a mill or from a breeder. It's a stray or accidental pregnancy from another animal. |
Cricket... What the heck is going on? | > I just don't get how scores can get so high In test cricket , a team's innings lasts until all the players are out. That usually takes a couple of days. At the end of one day's play the game is effectively paused, and play resumes the next day. So given that it's a game where people can be playing for the best part of a working week, it's not that surprising to see teams get scores of 300 and above in test cricket. |
If your bladder is able to hold approximately 375ml, but you drink 1 liter of water - where does the other 625ml go, if it technically wouldn't fit in your bladder? | What you are asking about is called [Fluid Balance] and is an aspect of homeostasis in all living things. Urination is only one part of our osmoregulation, other factors include defecating, sweating, and salivating. At any given time your body maintains a healthy amount of water and excess is sent to the bladder. When the bladder is full you need to urinate. When the body is low on water you need to drink. The frequency and amount of both are dictated by a number of factors which result in the feelings 'thirsty' and 'gotta pee'. This transfer of water is handled by the blood stream which circulates through the various organs involved. |
Is there any benefit to having ice cream prepared on a marble slab? | Marble takes ages of compaction geologic formation. Basically, rock is preasurized under the earth under such conditions that it changes. The act of it compacting makes it denser, tougher, overall more resistant to damage and weathering. Rocks and minerals react under different temperatures. Typically you can note more durable minerals will take higher temperatures to melt down. Some minerals are no longer deposited from volcanoes because the Earth just doesn't run hot enough to melt them and let them enter a lava flow and be taken to the surface. Quartz is an example of an unstable mineral. If I remember right it melts at about 600 degrees Fahrenheit. The more unstable a mineral or rock is the easier it breaks down. So back to marble. It has undergone intense pressurization and heat to form. And this is more stable. This means it will not break easily if at all if you slam a metal scoop on it many times. Marble also retains cold temperatures well and heats up slowly, so you can keep cold things colder, easier on it than on say an aluminum tray. Durable, resistant to damage, holds cold temperatures well, looks pretty, and can't very easily chip away into your ice cream. Nobody wants marble flakes mix-ins. |
Why does metal feel cold at room temperature? | I think it's to do with the fact that delocalised electrons in metals are good conductors of heat. So when you touch a metal at room temperature, the delocalised electrons move through the metal and take the heat away from your hand and therefore makes the metal feel cold as the heat is being spread throughout the metal. Other objects like a wooden table do not have electrons that can move through its structure and therefore the heat is not taken away from your hand which makes it feel warmer. I think this is why, but I'm not completely sure. |
If muscle growth is them tearing and re-growing tissue, why can't we invent a machine or procedure that artificially replicates this tearing in order to build up muscle mass without actually working out? | For starters, we simply don't understand all the mechanisms behind muscle growth, and the one you've mentioned isn't even necessarily the most important. |
Eric Garner [OFFICIAL THREAD] | 1) Innocent people are being murdered by our own police, the police are suppose to protect us from bad things, not be the bad thing. 2) There is an underlying race issue in this country and with humanity in general. Let's fix number one, and then talk about number two. We can't do both at once, and PEOPLE BEING MURDERED BY THE POLICE is the NUMBER ONE PROBLEM HERE.Why did the guy filming the scene get punished? I thought it was our right to film on public property or something. Or did he do something else?', "How ridiculously obvious does it have to get until people remain a neutral bias towards the police and the citizen? If this was Eric Garner choking the officer, I'm sure people would be calling for him to be banged up. Just because some guy passed a test, got a uniform doesn't make not an asshole. These people were bullies. They were harassing this man and then they attacked him, rightly or wrongly and now he's dead. What blind faith in authority needs to be taken away until we realise that arguing over whether it was NYPD policy or not shouldn't be an issue. They guy killed another guy, not in self defence. I'm not saying 'send him down' but at least look into the obvious excessive force of the US police service towards all people and especially the more obvious trend towards black people. This 'holier than thou' attitude people have to the police and authority in general is terrifying. |
What is going on when a plane ride gets bumpy? | No reason to be that worried. Look how far you'd have to fall before you hit the ground! More than enough time for your life to flash before your eyes, all those old disappointments and failures playing back as you plummet But really, it's like this. Air isn't just one smooth mass sitting there. It's a roiling sea of movement! Some gets hot and moves up, some gets chilled and moves down. Winds blow crossways at anywhere from a slow pace to a whoosh. It's similar to the ocean, with currents and waves sploshing and bumping all over, and your plane is running right through that. Just like a boat on the waves, the plane gets jostled around, but it's meant to deal with that easily. Sure, it's scary, but not really dangerous. |
Why Mars, not Venus? | [PBS SpaceTime video on the subject] In short, Venus presents some great advantages; it is closer, so it would cost less to send people, hs a thick atmosphere that would offer better protection against radiation & meteorites, and higher gravity . So what's the issue with Venus ? We wouldn't be able to live on the surface. At over 400°C and 90 atm of pressure, even sending mere probes is a challenge. If you want to colonize Venus, you'd probably rather create floating cities in it's upper atmosphere, around 50km high. The temperature would still be high , but we currently have equipment which can protect humans from that kind of temperature, and the pressure is almost nominal, so you wouldn't need a space suit to go out; just an oxygen mask and protective equipment. Of course, building a floating city presents it's own challenges, compared to simply putting structures on the ground, but it probably would be possible, if enough resources were put into it. It may even be a better long-term plan for a colony; even if we assume we can terraform Mars to give it a breathable atmosphere and water, modifying it's gravity would be on a whole other level, and it is currently unknown how bad Mars's low gravity exactly is for the human body. |
Why are pay pal and ebay splitting ? what does this mean for me as a seller and buyer? | PayPal accounts for a majority of beats profits and revenue as such they're splitting as they're 'too big' to stay with eBay. Allowing both to proceed within their industries. As mentioned it allows eBay to make deals with other payment firms and PayPal to do likewise with retailers. Being held back by eBay is bad for PayPal with the growth of Google wallet and the Apple ipay service so by being a separate entity can now generate its own revenue and investment to fund growth, acquisitions and stuff. They'll stay closely linked as they both are, for now, reliant on each other for a majority of their revenues. I just did a uni piece on it, ebays last year financial statements have simple diagrams illustrating how much they gain from PayPal alone and the figure is a lot! |
How did America become the richest country in the world before it turned 100 and the most powerful country ever seen before it turned 200? | When are you starting the clock? If you are counting from the first European settlers, then it wasn't the richest country in the world before it turned 100. If you are counting from the signing of the constitution to get to an 1889 time, then the region had been developed for almost 300 years.Timing, and geography. The world was experiencing rapid growth and America was able to annex and control a very large area. This was much more efficient than the centuries-long boundary wars of Europe. They took advantage of their timing, and used the money on a very large and effective military.Slavery allowed for massive industrustries to be created and run very rapidly, very cheaply. America wouldn't be nearly so prosperous today without it. |
Why do we prefer drinks such as Coffee or Tea either hot or cold but not at room temperature? | I guess I'm the odd man out I prefer Pepsi at room temperature, rather than cold, and certainly not hot. I like to drink my coffee black which is easier to manage if it's not fresh off the brewer. I'm a middle of the road drinker. Not too hot and not too cold just right for Goldilocks. |
Why doesn't Reddit simply hire the guy who makes Reddit Enhancement Suite (RES) and make those features part of Reddit? | I'm not sure how this fits into the niche Q/A community of ELI5, it seems better fit for AskReddit or maybe a subreddit more focused on Reddit itself?", 'When a person makes something for free, it seems silly to pay them for doing what they already do.Not everyone wants those features. Some may, especially the hardcore reddit users, but perhaps the majority of people browsing reddit do not fall into that category. Its just like why doesn't Google incorporate all of the GO sms and GO launcher features in their Android operating system even tons of people use them |
Why do we have a space station when we could have a moon base? | The moon is significantly further away. The ISS is about 250 miles away from Earth. The moon is about 250,000 miles from Earth. Every planet in our solar system can fit between the Earth and moon. It's about 10 times the circumference of the Earth. |
Why do I sweat heavily and wake up feeling awful after a daytime nap but when I sleep at night this doesn't happen at all? | Not sure about the sweating, but the feel awful could be a result of [sleep inertia.] Basically when you sleep your body goes through cycles. If you wake up during deep, slow-wave sleep, you'll end up with more sleep inertia. Since during the day there's a lot more going on around you , it would be easier to accidentally be awoken at the deeper part of a cycle.Could be that this happens at night as well, but you may wake outside of a REM cycle during normal sleep, while in a nap you wake during the middle of a REM cycle, and may be having apneas or hypopneasIt has to do with the natural change in body temperature throughout the day. "Body temperature normally fluctuates over the day, with the lowest levels around 4 a.m. and the highest in the late afternoon, between 4:00 and 6:00 p.m." Your body is naturally warmer during the day, and when you sleep, your body is not used to this extra heat, resulting in sweating to reduce body temperature to the level it is usually at during the night. [Source Link] I also asked my friend who's a nurse, and she said this is the biggest contributing factor', "Not trying to sound an alarm, but are you diabetic? When my blood sugar is elevated I tend to want to take 'naps', and I wake up feeling like hell until I am able to get my sugar back down.I wake up anxious and depressed from daytime naps but not in the morning. Maybe diurnal hormone differences? |
What has changed that we frequently now throw away products instead of fixing them? | Plastics. If you take a look at a lot of older appliances, they were largely metal. And they were expensive. But it was thought that if you bought it, you pretty much bought it for life. You'd repair as needed, as the original large investment in the product meant it would be worth the cost of fixing it rather than buying a new one. Once plastics became widely used, products became cheaper. So cheap, in fact, that it made more sense to buy a new product rather than fix the old one, which would cost as much or more to repair than replace. |
After accomplishing something very challenging why do we sometimes feel empty and emotionless about it immediately after? | This reminds me of the last scene in Zero Dark Thirty If you've devoted a significant amount of time to something, once you complete it, your primary purpose is gone. It takes a bit of time to find a new goal. |
Why when I'm hungover do I not seem to want water/food even though I need it and will make me feel better? | This is why I drink water while I drink, and also if need be, I eat some bread before going to sleep. Haven't had a hangover in a long time.Just make sure to not listen to your body in that instance; food and water are a great cure for hangovers.Cuz you're a rookie. I devour food and chug liquids when I'm hungover.I once asked an older coworker of mine if he 'd found a cure for a hangover. His response: "Eat a Taylor-ham, egg, & cheese sandwich, wash it down with a Bloody Mary, take two Advil, get a BJ, and go the fuck back to sleep." Works the first time, every timeIt is an inflammation of the stomach lining called gastritis.maybe a bit off topic, but alcohol really sucks. even in resonably small amounts. If alcohol actually made me feel good, I'd probly drink it too but it doesnt, it makes me feel absolutly poisoned from just a few drinks and leaves me with a day long hangover I can't really handle anymore. |
What does the Vice President even do? | Not much. Officially, the Vice President is President of the Senate. That sounds like a big deal. But it's really not. All the VP really does in that capacity is cast the tie-breaking vote if the Senate ever ties on something 50-50 which rarely happens. Realistically, the Vice President has very little power and many people only do it to burnish their credentials so they can run for president in the future. Some have even been asked by a presidential nominee to be their vice presidential running mate and declined, because it's kindof a shitty job. |
- Levels of government. Detail in text here. | Your mayor or city council is elected by the members of your city. They are responsible for executing local laws. Your governor and other state-wide officials are elected by the members of your state. They are responsible for executing state-wide laws. Your president is is elected by the entire country via the Electoral College. He is responsible for executing federal laws. All of these people belong to the Executive Branch of the US Government. Your state Congressmen are elected by the people of your state. They are responsible for creating state-wide legislation, that is, laws for your state. Your state elects two Senators and a varying number of Representatives to serve in the U.S. Congress, which is the federal version of your state's legislature. All these people belong to the Legislative Branch of the US Government. TL;DR The US Government is divided between local, state, and federal levels and Executive, Legislative, and Judicial Branches .States run states and the federal government runs the country. Analogy -- President : United States :: Governor : State |
Why is it so hard to pirate videos, games etc? Why can't pirates just exactly copy the files from the disc and put it on anouter one? | Because console manufacturer's spend a lot of money developing technology that specifically disallows this. If it was that easy to copy games consoles would probably just stop being made entirely since most of their profit is from software. Each company and console has different ways of doing this but it generally just includes making discs in very unique ways that most consumer hardware cannot replicate. They also have a lot of checks done within the operating system and on the hardware so that if it notices that something is different, it won't run. And all this is very difficult to modify making it hard to disable and still have a working system. So, a hacked or modded system is one that has had its protections altered or disabled, allowing the hardware to run game copies that don't have those specific, unique markers which indicate a legit game. |
How can we receive Hi-Res photos from Pluto but i need a wifi repeater for my flat | Because NASA spent more than $79 for their communications equipment and you didn't, so they get better performance. |
What is "citizen arrest" and when is it okay to use it | Oddly enough, one of the blogs I follow just made an informative post on this very subject. [Check it out here.] |
why is the Netflix interface so unbelievably awful on consoles but not computers? | Try Amazon instant in thy computer, then try it on a console, you'll have a new appreciation for netflix's interface. |
Why do parts of a product cost more to repair than the whole thing? | Because they're not made to be easily repairable, which adds labor cost, and the parts are expensive because of low supply. Most companies only make extra parts for internal repair services, not contractors. Also because they sell more TVs. It's easier to sell a TV because the distribution platform exists, similar platforms do not exist for parts |
What is preventing unscrupulous women from ruining high - profile men with false allegations of sexual misconduct? | I think there are a couple things preventing this from happening. First, it takes some work to do it and make it believable. If you say that a high profile man sexually assaulted you and have no additional details, no one is going to believe you on word alone. You need a connection and a good story. If, for example, you say that a high profile man assaulted you at X hotel on Y day, and you have a believable story and a receipt showing that you were there, you might start to threaten someone's reputation. And second, there are repercussions. If it can be proven that you lied, you could go to jail for slander or at least be sued into oblivion. If it can't be proven that you lied but can't be verified either, you've still committed career suicide. No one is going to want to hire someone who makes sketchy sexual misconduct claims. And even if you somehow get away with it and actually frame a guy for assault, you're going to be in the middle of a media frenzy, which is not a good place to be. There will be death threats and people following you around and harassing you. All of that doesn't stop people from trying this sometimes, but I don't think it usually ends well for them.Now you know why these allegations rarely come to pass let alone come to be proven. This is always a matter of he said she said debate in absence of hard evidenceWhy does it have to be man v woman? Imagine a gay man coming out with info about a straight married man. That would be similarly devastating. |
Why does sticking a knife in the toaster electrocute me but sticking a knife on an electric stovetop element does not? | A toaster, or stove top produces heat by running electricity through metal wires. When you touch the wires with an electric conductor, like a metal fork or spoon, you become the shortest path to ground. On a stove top, the wire/filament is insulated, electricity can't pass through a strong insulator, so it keeps running through the wires instead. That's about as simple as I can make it. |
Why is Spotify able to provide almost every artist and album out, yet Netflix is only able to provide a fraction of films? | Licensing and contracts. Its cheaper for Netflix and thus us the consumers if they don't have their entire movie catalogue avail for streaming along with the DVDs. |
Why Does The Gender Wage Gap Exist? | Ok, I'm going to go against the grain here and say that wage gaps do exist for some jobs. Across all jobs, the wage gap is easily explained by factors other commentors have covered, but individual institutions and careers can and do have mysteriously unexplained gaps between men and women. The ones I'm most familiar with are [doctors] and researchers in academia. These have been extensively controlled for, and the disparities are of varying sizes. [Here's an article] from the journal Nature on the subject. The pay gap in science is generally thought to be due to [implicit biases]. In short, implicit biases are the tendency to associate two things more quickly, such as black people and weapons rather than tools. Everyone appears to have these. |
Why is Helvetica the most used typeface? | The font was designed to be universal, it doesn't scream a certain style or genre so it can be used in almost any situation. It's also a font with a lot of different variations in its font family, from super thin to extra bold. You can easily pick two weights of Helvetica and not have to spend any time trying to think of complimentary fonts for a design. The documentary is pretty interesting, I'd also recommend it.Very precisely kerned and a lot of time has been spent on making it a easy typeface to read. Personally I think univers is a better font overall Also it cost me nearly a thousand quid to buy it so I am going to bloody well use it!', "It's really well designed, so not only is it inoffensive to read as other people have pointed out, but the people who make design decisions like it. Sometimes it's not even Helvetica that you're reading, it's Microsoft's knockoff Arial. |
How can jocks be so good at physical exercise? | It's just what they do. They train for the sports they love, and getting the grades is a must if they want to stay on the teams. It's all about drive for their sport. |
Why are prime numbers so difficult to find? | Because they are defined by what they aren't, rather than what they are. Prime numbers are numbers which can not be factored. This means that there can not be a relation between them, because they are defined by standing apart, rather than being part of something. There is no sequence to them. The only way to find them is to rely on the fact that they don't form a pattern, and filter out everything that is part of the pattern. I think /u/backspace8908 's example is best: If I give you a huge puzzle, and throw in a few extra pieces that aren't part of that puzzle, the only way you can find the pieces that don't belong is to solve the puzzle, and what's left are the ones that don't belong. In the same way, the only way to find primes is to demonstrate that they don't have any factors: to solve the puzzle, and see what's left. |
Why is suicide illegal in some places? | If someone is about to commit suicide and it is illegal, then the police would be allowed to intervene and stop the act. I don't believe the punishment is a fine or jail sentence or anything it is more to support the 'suicide is bad' ideal, and rightly so. |
With the negative views around dlc and preordering, how do Kickstarter games make so much money in such a short amount of time? | Apart from what others have said, it's also important to note that most of the kickstarter games are NOT successful. Obviously you only hear of the wildly successful ones because they make the news, but for each one of them, there are 20 that didn't make it, and 20 more than barely made it. |
Why did Rock Band and Guitar Hero die? Could they ever make a comeback? | As a big Guitar Hero fan, I always thought that getting rights for all these songs must be very expensive, making hard to get profit out of it. They could make it at first, when labels probably asked for less money and they could get more sales, but as the label fees increased and sales decreased, it became unsustainable. It's just what I think, I don't have data to prove it.They flooded the market way too fast with way too many games and expensive peripherals to play them.There's only so many things you can do with plastic instruments. Online for both games somehow got worse in iteration rather than better . I'm pretty sure rock band green day was the tipping point. It just seems like a bad joke. The addition of adding the keyboard to rock band 3 made the soundtrack suffer IMO. The controllers were never the most sturdy, I had a closet full of broken toy guitars. Some of the guitar gameplay is rather odd as something simple on the real guitar could be a pain in guitar hero/rock band.It was too narrow of an idea. There is nothing innovative after the initial excitement. Will it come back? No, they already capitalized and there is nothing new to offer. New songs with the same gameplay is not something new. |
What is vision like for animals with eyes that face directly away from each other (i.e. fish, some birds)? | I'm pretty sure Chameleons brains process each picture of each eye independently, but I'm not too sure of that. |
Why meals ready to eat (MREs) take so long to leave the body or just cause incontinence? | A contributing factor to this may be that an MRE's aren't intended to be a 'three meals a day' thing. |
Why are cuban cigars illegal in the US? | Kennedy agreed to the embargo of Cuba as part of the Cuban missile crisis. Ironically, JFK was a connoisseur of Cubans and ordered his aides to buy out DC before the embargo went into effect. Long story short, come to canada and we'll hook you up", 'The trade embargo the US placed on Cuba. Supported with 6 statues, the first in 1917 and most recent in 1999.They're illegal because there's a trade embargo between the US and Cuba. |
How do SWAT teams sneak up on houses with outside dogs and other security measures without being detected? | It's not so much as not being detected but getting in before any countermeasures can be set up park your car in the drive way, get out and run through your open door and run to any room in your bedroom, add like 10 seconds to that for room clearing and there's your basic time table, what can someone do in that amount of time? So what if the alarm is blaring, you're in cuffs in less time than it takes to put pants and a shirt on not to mention the alarm usually has a delay before it goes off so you can disarm it when you get home so you're probably fucked before that even goes off. |
How can a drink have 0 Calories? Does that mean it gives no energy when you drink it? | They don't have exactly 0 calories, but close to it. And yes it is possible for a drink to have 0 calories, pure water for example. |
Does the weight of large cities like LA, or New York City cause any problems to the earth with the large amount of weight on a small location? | maybe not those cities. but Chicago is built on a swamp. and the city has been gradually sinking. but it has more to do with plate tectonics than the miniscule weight of the buildings. Earth is measured in billion-billions of tons. a couple millions of tons won't do anything significant. |
Why do so called "Neckbeard Redditors" spam YouTube videos that get posted on here? | I actually wanted to ask this same question but with a slight twist - Why don't I see those guys posting on fake profiles here like they do there? |
Official ELI5 thread: The Trial (and Acquittal) of George Zimmerman | I tried to find the answer to this but I couldn't anywhere. Since this is such a high-profile case many people know his full name and information. Now that he is not guilty, a lot of people say they are going to kill him, like on twitter and stuff. Does he get protection? Bodyguards? How does that work? |
after losing some blood, the body starts replacing that blood, how does it know that it has already finished replacing that lost blood so it could stop making more? | If you were to somehow trick the kidney's peritubular cells into thinking the oxygen level is too low all the time, would your body just keep making blood until you died from high blood pressure? |
Are Jurassic dinosaurs related to Triassic dinosaurs? There was a mass extinction between periods, did the Jurassic dinosaurs "start from scratch"? | A mass extinction has yet to cause all life to die off. While the extinction between the Triassic and Jurassic periods was still a mass extinction, it wasn't as bad as the mass extinction from the Permian to the Triassic period or the later Cretaceous to Tertiary Period. While a lot of species died in this transitional period, many also survived and continued to evolve. As basic evolution would imply, a creature like a dinosaur cannot just appear so all creatures in the Jurassic period are either direct descendants of Triassic creatures or evolutionary relatives of them. The reason many animals look different in the later period is that after a mass extinction, the Earth is a very different place. This leads to animals that previously were not the most well-suited to their environment, to now be very skilled at living in their environment. This is why the Triassic had many amphibians who did not survive in the Jurassic and why the Jurassic had more bird-like animals than the Triassic.Yes and no. Mass extinction does not mean complete extinction of all life on Earth. Small subsets of dinosaurs survived, and through them new species came into existence, likely through mutation and evolution over millions of years. |
As diseases like polio are eradicated why do we still need to vaccinate against them. | Many diseases that we vaccinate against are difficult to get rid of completely, because they can be carried by animals. Even if we vaccinate every human, the virus still could be kept alive in bat populations for example, and then passed back to humans if we stop vaccinating. Some viruses do only affect humans and are much easier to eradicate. Smallpox, for one. HPV for another, but a lot of people refuse that one because they can't stand the thought that their kids might have sex some day, so cervical cancer will linger far longer than it should even though we could conceivably eradicate it within a generation. |
If oxygen is flamable then why doesn't the whole sky catch on fire? | Actually oxygen isn't flammable, it's an oxidizer. In order for something to burn you need three things, heat, fuel and an oxidizer. So when you light a campfire for example, it burns because you have fuel, wood, and an oxidizer, the oxygen in the atmosphere. The reason why the atmosphere doesn't suddenly catch fire is that there is no fuel. The atmosphere is mostly nitrogen a non-flammable gas. |
How do crazy dictators like Kim Jong able to keep power? | Fear. If every one were to rise up against the dictator, he'd be removed. The problem is the first ones to do so, will suffer horribly for doing that. No one wants to be the martyr. |
why do jeep drivers and motorcycle drivers always wave at each other? What are some other vehicles that cause this random sense of community? | I own a [Series III Landrover] and will be waved at by and wave to: * Series I, II and III LandRovers* Land Rover 90, 110 and Defenders * But not by other models in the Land Rover range which are a much more common sight in my country. I also own an [MK1 MX-5 ] and have started to notice more people waving as, I imagine, this model of car becomes a less common sight. I'm also occasionally waved to whilst driving my [Smart Car] but this is much less frequent. I think what all of these cars have got in common is that they are comparatively unusual, to varying degrees they represent iconic examples of their type or class and I suppose some people who own them like to think these cars represent a fraternity, or a shared outlook on the world. I am often approached by people when in my Land Rover to talk to me about it, about half of them have or had one but about half of them just think it's cool.Looks like most people explained the "why" Another vehicle group that throws waves and peace signs at each other are Subaru drivers. More specifically WRX and STI drivers. Didn't believe my WRX owning friend at first until I saw it happen on multiple different occasionsBoats! When you are in a boat on a lake, you should always wave to the other boat. Yes, its a sense of community, but also it makes them know that you saw them :)Caravaners towing a caravan or driving a motor home is like a big ad for being on holidays and they share their common sense of joy! |
Why are the males weaker than the females in the insect world? | It is not always a weaker vs stronger argument but more a what is required by that individual and species. For many colony insects the male comes from an unfertilized egg/embryo which would mean that it only carries one copy of the genetic material. The main purpose for these male insects is to introduce randomization of genetic material to a different colony. That is not a big role. In this instance male is used because they produce sperm. Many 'females' in the colony are sterile and because they have a complement set of chromosomes, like the queen, are considered as female. For many other animals it has to do with the role of nuturing the next generation. In most instances this role is given to the female to take care of and so is larger, to provide nutrients during the initial development and some form of protection. Even if the species does not take care of the young it would still need to provide the initial nutrients for egg and embryo development. For other organisms that share parenting roles in some way the size differences are less noticeable unless specifically one gender provides more to the group for protection and can be more aggressive. The last point is to state that sexual dimorphism and physical competition in some species will exaggerate certain traits based on what is desirable by their mate or helps them to sire offspring. Large horns, large size, colourful markings, etc. This can cause greater differences in male and females within a species. |
UBER and all the controversy surrounding it | It's a modern day taxi service that's great. The controversy is that it's a lot better than the taxi companies that have a cabal in most cities, and they are losing tons of business so they end up trying to lobby uber away, instead of updating their business model for a modern world. In Miami, for example, the taxi companies are trying to get uber banned. They are losing business because the taxis here don't take credit cards and are notoriously unreliable . Über is reliable and more convenient. |
How does your social security number contain so much information about you? | Technically the number itself has no value, but your continued use of it allow for a fairly accurate database to be generated surrounding it. Just imagine it's like a phone number that never changes. Fun fact, it's technically legal for up to 5 people to be issued the same SSN. And sometimes, your SS# itself, holds some info as to where/when you were born and to your family blood lines. |
The concept of "parents kick their children out when they turned 18" in the US. | It's not that common in the US. At 18, you're legally an adult and your parents are no longer legally required to support you. Some people's families force them to start supporting themselves at that age but it's not the standard - most people would consider it *bad parenting* to do so.its not everyone by any stretch, I dont have any statistics, but theres a mentality among some parents and kids that moving out is a right of passage |
why do viruses and other harmful micro organisms want to kill us? | They don't want to kill us. They just ~~want~~ have drives to survive and thrive. It's simply an unfortunate happenstance that bacteria, viral pathogens, parasites, and associated waste products often have a deleterious effect on the health of host organisms. |
I have $5000. I want to start investing. Where do I start? | Put it in a broad market, ETF and forget about it. It has low costs, it'll grow with the market and it won't turn into zero. Only a _very very very_ few people reliably beat the market. |
How has Germany developed an extremely successful economy on manufacturing while maintaining first world wages for its blue collar workers? | The main reason Germany is successful at supporting their people is that their culture values their people. Big business in the U.S. just wants to suck up as much cash as possible and making sure their people are supported is not important to them. Germans are less psychotic when it comes to money. As far as competition goes, Germans are a tough act to follow. They have the best technology, the most up to date factories. They aren't immune to problems. The banks have funded real estate speculation across the entire developed world and consequently, have inflated the cost of rents. In many ways people have less money now than they did in the 1970's. People on the bottom are losing and this includes Germany.Both manufacturing output and compensation in the US have been steadily increasing , despite decades of media hype to the contrary. Manufacturing employment has fallen because manufacturing productivity has been rising faster than demand for manufactured goods. Source: google |
Is it better to leave my desktop running all the time or to turn it off every night? | Some answers in here already. My 2 cents is I'm an IT guy and my computers both at work and home are never turned off. The hard disks can go to sleep when idle but otherwise I never shut it down. Only thing this ever wears out for me is fans, which are cheap. |
Why can't I 'unsend' an email? | Your email is basically data. When you send it your sending the data from your computer, to a sever, that send that data to another server, eventually going to a mail server where it is held until the person reads it. There is nothing stopping someone from writing a unsend mail function into a mail server but it's unlikely to be implemented because it would allow people to delete mail from other people's mail server. This could be exploited by hackers.Your message is essentially copied from your email app to the recipient's email app, so you can't destroy the recipients copy. Gmail "undo send" is just a countdown timer that delays the actual sending giving you a chance to cancel before sending. |
Why does a $1 app seem more expensive than a $1 Arizona Iced Tea? | You'll probably never find a free iced tea. But free apps are everywhere. It seems like a huge burden when you're used to getting free apps and all of a sudden you have to pay for one, even if it's really cheap like $1. On the other hand, you're not used to getting free tea, you almost always have to pay. In that way $1 is kindof a good deal.We humans tend to view items and their prices into categories. While we look at the tea in the "beverage" categories along with coffees , $1 is pretty cheap compared to our average expectations. For apps we can have many good ones for free, thus we don't compare them to other $1 but to other apps. My mother, for example, is new to the app thing and is very open in buying tons of apps since she doesn't compare them as we do. She compares them to old expensive software on CDs and to her they seem cheap in price. Similar example - I can spend $16 on sushi in an instant but I feel reluctant to pay $10 for a indie game which I will probably play at least 40-50 hours. Edit: More in-depth - this behaviour is investigated by Dan Ariely - _URL_0_', "Because you value the Arizona Iced Tea more highly. If there were no price and you were asked cent by cent how much you'd pay until you wouldn't , I'd venture to guess you'd go much higher on the Arizona than you would on the app. This is the base of it, most of the explanations are about *why* you value the Arizona more |
What would happen if the moon was destroyed? | If it just ctl-alt-del'ed? We'd have much calmer seas, and animals that use the moon for navigation would be fucked. If it got blown up? We'd have a lot-lot of death/destruction from chunks falling to earth, and that which didn't fall to earth would make a cloud of debris that would eventually become ring-like due to gravitational forces, and would likely fuck with satellites.There still would be solar tides which would be much smaller. There might be internal changes in the Earth which we would not know about for a long time. As well as the tides the moon has slowly mixed molten rock inside the Earth. Animal species would lose a synchronizing signal which some use for breeding. Even women have monthly cycles remarkably similar.Lots of bad stuff for life. The moon creates the tides which was highly benificial to evolution. It also stabilizes the Earth. If we didn't have such a large close moon the Earth would wobble on its axis creating huge changes during the seasons that would make Earth inhospitable for early life. It would be much darker at night with out the moon reflect ting the sun.Check out a documentary on youtube called "The Day The Moon Disappeared." It's a NatGeo docu I believe, maybe Discovery. In any event, it's really well done and explains very well what would happen if the Moon disappeared.Let's say it just stopped existing, with no negative effects from the method of destruction. For a while it would be mostly ok. Some species would go extinct as their cycles where fucked over, and there would be no tides. Probably some strange weather from the latter. GPS satellites would all need re-alining Longer term we would get hit with meteors slightly more. Very long term, it would render earth uninhabitable. With no moon we would very slowly tilt over on our axis, like Neptune. For habitable tempretures, that's the worst possible orientation this distance from the sun. We expect this to happen when the moon finally brakes free of earth orbit. .I kind of have another question. What could destroy the moon? |
Why is it common for developed western countries to hold snap elections but the US doesn't. | Because the Constitution doesn't have a means by which to hold a snap election. I guess you could technically have the equivalent if a boatload of senators and congressmen just resigned their posts all of a sudden, but that get's a little weird as they have to resign *before* the election can really occur. |
Why is it that sometimes an action becomes so deeply associated with something (a memory or imagined experience) that on the surface has no connection to it? | The two events are somehow related, no matter how far apart. Like it's a line, you think of start line and of that marathon. Or you may think about honey, go to bees, then The Bee Movie, then another unrelated movie. It all happens in your brain during that milisecond you thought about honey so you don't realize it |
How can we see the milky way in the sky if we're actually located inside it? | _URL_0_ If you look at this diagram you can see that the far side is missing. We actually can't see the far side of the milky way as it's blocked by the stuff in the middle. |
Why some front page posts get the upwards of 8000 up votes (like the Thanksgiving donut cop post) and hours later votes drop down to 2000-3000 votes? | Semi related, I notice a post of mine had 721 points, I got sub 550 karma for it however. What's up with that?", 'In addition, something that is not mentioned in the faq: On popular posts, a lot of those votes will "decay" or just fade away. The percentage won't change, but when many votes come in bery quickly, reddit throws lots of them out, but not til after a bit of time has passed. I was talking to an admin about this recently in IRC, and that is how they explained it to me. I bet you could find it in [Reddit's code]I was starting to think I was crazy, because it had over 7,000 when I first saw it, then it was down in the 2,000s when I was showing it to someone later. |
Was fighting in Ice Hockey allowed since the beginning of this sport, or was it introduced later - and if so how that happened. | Fighting in most sports will get you ejected from the game. It will only get you a penalty in some hockey leagues, the NHL being the most famous. Many other hockey leagues won't allow any sort of fighting. The origins vary since people fight for all sorts of reasons. If you see a hockey fight today it might be because one team is playing too recklessly and so a fight breaks out to show the opposing team you aren't going to take it lying down even if the referees aren't calling other penalties. And many in the audience like the fights. Hockey already suffers in being an underrated sport and if people go to games because of the prospect of a fight then why get rid of it?", 'I read a book on this once and it talked about how the fights could extend up into the crowd like in Slap Shot. I have no idea what the name of the book was since this was decades ago. Wikipedia has a decent primer on how it evolved in the rules and some theories as to why. |
Can someone explain the saying, "If the product is free, you're the product." | Usually this refers to something you get online or on the Internet. An Web application for example may offer a service for free, but the company makes money off of you through selling your information to advertising companies. It's usually on the fine print of the terms and conditions. Facebook for example is free for all users, but it collects a ridiculous amount of user data. You practically tell Facebook all about yourself and that data is invaluable for advertising. In that way, advertisers are the ones who are paying, and keeping the product free for you to use. The advertisers are not exactly buying you as a product, but buying your personal and habitual information. |
Why do you get super exhausted after a day in the sun? | I worked outside for like 15 years. You get used to the weather, the cold is pretty bad but nothing's worse than wind. A day out in the wind just wears you out so bad. Working outside is horrible and awful. You have nowhere to piss and you're standing around all day. I don't miss it at all.Seems there also may be a relationship to dehydration and the energy it takes sweat to evaporate? |
Why are eggs in America white shelled with a yellow yolk but in my country they have a peach colored shell and an orange yolk? | I'm in the US - I have a friend who keeps chickens, and we buy eggs from her. I've gotten eggs with shells in white, brown, peach, pink, green, blue and bluish-green . The yolks have varied from yellow to a deep sunset orange, depending on what they've been eating. |
Why are judges allowed to be biased toward topics/rulings? | First, we don't really know what unbiased looks like. The law has enough ambiguities that honest judges can have different opinions. Also, when listening to testimony, a judge has to make a subjective judgement call as to whether that testimony is credible, and weigh the facts provided by that testimony accordingly. Finally, different judges have different priorities. One might feel getting through 10 cases well is better than 5 cases perfectly, and make rulings accordingly. Another might want to make their cases appeal proof and rule more conservatively. There are different ways to run a courtroom, and not of them necessarily wrong. |
How does my cat not get electrocuted when she chews completely through my phone charger, laptop charger, lamp cords, etc...? | I had a pet rabbit when I was 8 'gizmo' who lived in the house one Christmas he chewed through the Christmas tree lights and blew himself across the room. This kills the gizmo. :( |
There's 21% oxygen in air. When we breathe out, there's still 16% oxygen in the exhaled air. Why's our lung so inefficient? | Oxygen binds to the iron in our blood cells. Most people have 98% of their blood cells saturated with oxygen already. The efficiency is not how much we breath in/out, it's how efficient our body cells use the oxygen that has binded to our blood. |
Why is 60's and 70's style rock and roll, for the most part, dead? | To be fair, it is 40 to 50 yrs later. That's HUGE in musical terms. 50 years before Sabbath and Zeppelin was big band swing, ragtime and jazz. That's miles apart musically. It's true, Hard Rock is pretty dead right now (As far as radio play and popularity goes, but it'll be back. There are lots of bands doing that 70's rock sound, Monster Truck, Wolfmother, Jack White etc But it's pretty much considered a retro sound now. Like I said, It's 50 yrs later.There are other factors too.Back then artists were chosen on their music and sound, while today you also have to look good as well. And musicianship and talent too. With all the digital effects and whatnot, you can make any half-assed singer or musician sound good. |
movie scenes in busy places like Times Square | Depends on what's required for the shot, they may close nothing and use the crowds as part of the shot, they may close just a portion of sidewalk, or yes they might just close the whole thing. They usually try to find a way to avoid closing large public areas, but if they have to they do it at a time that minimizes the impact and for areas with major thoroughfares they will let people through every once in a while if it will be an extended period. |
If voting is anonymous, how do people "buy" votes? If I pay someone to vote for me, can't that person take my money then vote for someone else? | An actual explanation of the process: You are given goods/services as a bribe, along with a voting paper that already has the candidate rounded. You go vote and give them back the blank voting sheet you are given at the place of voting. So when one voting paper is stolen it's a huge deal because it allows for a lot of votes to be bought. |
How does law enforcement match a bullet to a specific gun? | It really isn't as precise as you might think. A gun with unique rifling or barrel damage might help. The other thing you are forgetting is that the cases also have markings. The firing pin leaves an impression in the primer which could help match to a gun type, or if it has a defect a specific gun. Also, semi-auto pistols will leave extractor marks. |
Why does it take so long to learn how to be a sushi chef? | Great sushi chefs are not defined by *just* making good tasting sushi. They are defined by their craftsmanship. They do amazing things with knives, their presentation is phenomenal, and they are also good at only selecting the finest ingredients. Good sushi is not just food. It's art. And it takes time and skill to be a good artist. |
Why do PC's need to be upgraded for newer games while consoles can handle newer games just fine? | You're all missing a key point here: Consoles do not have the levels of AA and high resolutions that PCs have. These two settings at higher levels will HEAVILY drain on your video card/FPS. My point: It looks better on PC because you have higher quality/settings and this requries more processing power. |
Why does it take so long to charge something? | > Couldn't Apple or any company make a charger that instantly charges a phone or battery? If you could find a way to do that, you could be rich beyond your wildest dreams. That problem is one of the Big Issues with battery technology today. People are working on it, but the simple fact is that charging batteries makes them heat up. A little bit is OK; more degrades the batteries over time; a lot causes fires and explosions. better to go slow but safe than to burn people's houses down, if you can help it. |
Why do large piles of corn cobs spontaneously combust? | It's what the people talking about organic matter decaying are saying. Places that have massive piles of compost are always ready to put out huge fires. Decomposing organic material releases heat as a result of the process of decomposition. When it's all piled up in gigantic mounds, the heat is retained and eventually can combust. It's all actually pretty interesting. Did a science fair project on this. |
It takes only a few seconds for the first popcorn kernel to pop but a lot longer for the rest of the kernels to. How come they don't all pop at the same time? | And not all the kernels pop by the end unless you continually mix it and cook it even longer. It's just a bell curve distribution. Some pop early, some don't pop, most pop within the given cooking time frame. |
Do countries which use U.S. dollars other than the 'States, such as Ecuador and El Salvador, import all their currency? If so are there big barges crammed with dollars floating around the ocean? | Why is no one talking about narcos and drug trade? Would they be a significant portion of the physical cash moving around or is it going to be mostly banks ordering money? What I'm saying is that even though the drug trade isn't most of the economy, it could account for a lot of the physical cash in circulation, because drug cartels disproportionately use cash to move money.Do these countries just buy the coins and notes from the federal bank? How much do they have to pay for them? There is also countries that use the euro as their currency without being in the eurozone, Kosovo is one example. |
How do Women's menstrual cycles synchronise? | Consider the mathematical aspect of it first. Think of a menstrual cycle like any other regularly-occurring event, such as a pendulum swinging. Here's a device in which balls of the same weight are hanging at different heights: _URL_1_ Think of each ball as a woman, and the length of that woman's menstrual cycle is represented by the length of the string. Notice, in that video, that even though the strings don't interact with each other, the balls sync up in numerous patterns, and then fall out of sync again, and so on. That video is a good visual metaphor. Next, also consider the biological side. A menstrual cycle is not a perfectly regulated system. Different thing can affect its regularity, such as stress, hormones, diet, exercise, and so on, so beyond just the basic mathematical syncing, there's also the effect of irregularity of cycles to consider. As you've read, there's not much in the basis for any biological connection, but there's more than enough explanation for the apparent synchronicity that many women experience. |
Why is it illegal to pass off unused days on Disney World tickets to someone else, even though you had paid for X days? | Just because Disney says you can't doesn't make it illegal. They may not honor it but i doubt you've broken any laws |
Why is there an initiative to split California into six different states? | It's basically gerrymandering at the state level. California is a very large state - and it votes Democratic consistently, even though it has a very large Republican population. By splitting it up into 6 states, 2 of them would have -heavy- Democratic majorities and the other 4 would be moderately Republican leaning. Somebody wants to get an extra 8 Republican Senators, and only 2 more Democratic Senators. We -really- need to get rid of the electoral college.For the record, a lot of people think of California as very liberal, but dividing California in this way would create quite a few republican strongholds. Particularly in the southern part of California and the eastern partMore senators and more electoral college votes giving it influence in Washington more commensurate with its population. |
How can some people get addicted to exercise, yet no matter how hard I try it feels like torture to me? | No idea if this changes things over what others experience, but growing up I did a lot of heavy farm work and other physical labor. It's really good exercise too, I was probably in the best shape of my life back then. Now though, exercise is nothing but a chore and I hate it. There is no good feeling or anything associated with it. Just like then I had to haul heavy stuff around all day, it is all work and no reward. I just can't understand how some people get something out of it. |
How did they solve trigonometric equations before calculators? | Basically, you memorized as many as you could and then they had books that listed all you needed to know 9or they might have been a few important ones listed on your sliderule) Source: My grandpa got an engineering degree in the 60's and when he retired I got his slide rule and old textbooks. _URL_0_ |
Why do ads on YouTube, no matter how long, stream so quickly but video does not? | The answer is two fold. Two different networks serve two different services. The reason is bandwidth costs. It costs Google money every time someone plays a video. They need to pay for it somehow. 1) ads are Google's revenue on YouTube and search, so they assure the content is loaded quickly and efficiently by using Content Delivery Networks operated by 3rd parties with very low latency networks with huge content caching server farms. They prioritize the traffic that is going to be a possible return on investment. Aka, getting that money. 2) Google uses fancy math to store videos that have a higher number of views to to be cached at more nodes than videos that are watched less. I'm sure there are more factors at play. Like how many hamsters are spinning their cages at any given moment. I'm sure Al Gore knows. |
the difference between regular, high-mileage, and synthetic motor oils. | The purpose of oil is to keep the engine parts that move slippery so they don't get stuck. Imagine a bucket full of balls being dumped on the ground. If the balls are all different sizes, basketballs, footballs, tennis balls, golf balls, then they will all roll at different speeds. If the balls are all the same size and weight, they will all roll evenly and at the same speed. Regular oil is like the bucket full of different size balls; the molecules are different sizes and act the same way as the balls would. Synthetic oil is like the bucket full of same size balls, and since the molecules are similar size, they will do a better job at keeping the engine parts slippery. High-mileage is similar to synthetic oil, with added molecules that help engines that are older and have more miles on them. Source: I worked at Sears Auto and Honda for a while. This is the metaphor I would use to up-sell oil changes into synthetic or high-mileage. It worked 95% of the time. |
Why are cars shaped aerodynamically, but busses just flat without taking the shape into consideration? | There are more [aerodynamic buses]. However, as /u/armorsmith42 mentioned, buses aren't affected by air drag since they don't reach higher speeds. Once you hit about 75MPH+ drag's affects grow exponentially, which is why sedans and hatchbacks favor roominess over aerodynamics . |
What is the purpose of a hiccup? | So: both your lungs and stomach are connected to your throat. The epiglottis is a little flap that covers your windpipe when you swallow so you don't inhale food. The sound of a 'hiccup' is caused by the epiglottis slamming shut when you involuntarily take sharp breaths. A lot of hiccup triggers involve eating or stress . It makes sense for stress to be closely involved with breathing, but I suppose it also means the wrong stimulus can cause a weird spasm. And it makes sense that eating like you're about to choke yourself could cause your lung-vs-stomach-control-center to spasm. Everything involved in a hiccup serves an important purpose, but hiccuping itself is probably just a side effect |
How does Google Maps account for size distortion due to the Mercator projection? | People seem to be missing one part of the explanation - the Mercator projection only matters if you're looking at the whole planet. Once you zoom in, it uses smaller bits of data, and so the distortion is much less. It's the same reason that a city map doesn't skew the north end of the city - once you zoom in on any part of the sphere, the errors become less substantial. |
How come the dialogue on Netflix streaming is so quiet, but the music and effects are so loud? | That's probably because the distributor gave them a theater mix, which is amateuristic, to say the least. When audio for film is mixed, they first mix it for theater . Because a film theater is usually completely silent and very large, you have a great dynamic range for your audio. This means: the mixer can use both very loud and very soft sounds thus making the sounds more dynamic and interesting. Then they always makes mixes for dvd, laptops, tv in 2.0 with very low dynamic range, because people are generally listening in a small room with background noise and on laptop speakers or a small audio set. It seems like the distributor gave the wronf mix to Netflix. You get the same problim with torrented movies; they often are ripped from theater copies. To add to this: in sourround mixing, dialogue is generally only played over the center speaker. When converted automaticallly from say 5.1 to 2.0 there is just less total volume of dialogue left in the 2.0 mix compared to music and effects being mixed over left and right and sometimes the rear speakers. Not exactly ELI5 perhaps, but hopefully made something clear! TL;DR: the distributor gave them the audio track for movie theaters unsuitable for Netflix. Source: i'm a film producer |
Why do. American cities lack the tram and subway systems that are prevalent in Europe? | Many cities did. It was systematically killed off and purchased by companies like General Motors to sell cars. There's a good documentary on it on YouTube. _URL_1_ |
How many times would I have to listen to an artists album on Spotify for them to make the same amount of money they would have if I bought the physical album? | The question asks: > for them to make the same amount of money they would have if I bought the physical album. I'm certain the artist doesn't see anywhere near 100% of the $12 you're paying for an album. All of the answers saying 1000 plays = $12 = the cost of an album are missing the point. |
If laser light can blind you, how come no one ever has their eyes injured in dance clubs? | I'd say its a combination of the fact that the lasers in clubs are generally quite weak, they are constantly moving and rarely aim directly at your eyes and the fact that you don't go out of your way to stare at them. Even when they do hit your eyes it's usually for a very short period of time due to the constant movement of both the lasers and presumably yourself.Not all lasers are the same - there are lasers of different _powers_. Damage to your eyes is a function of both _power_ and _duration_. A laser intended for dance clubs or light shows is designed to both scan the audience very quickly, and also to be low enough power such that there is minimal chance of damage. |
How come today IS Saturday? Is today's name determined by consensus? | Op, are you asking why we're at a given day in the order? Like when the first week began? When was the first Monday and who declared it so? Because I have no clue, but would also like to know. |
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