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Why is japan so strict against muslims? | It's possible to move and live here, if you start a successful business, are here for study, marry a Japanese or get visa sponsorship, but it's very hard to do it as a refugee no matter what your religion or country is. Japan only takes a handful of refugees every year. Japan will eventually have to admit more immigrants as their population is dropping, however, it's not clear if they will ever begin taking more refugees. English is not an official language, so people would have to begin Japanese study and be very diligent about it in order to be able to assimilate here. |
How does a "dead man's switch" work? | There is a person, or an organization that is instructed to leak that information upon Edward Snowden being dead, or not heard of for X amount of time. Other types of dead man's switch are just holding a button pressed . If the person dies, they can't do that anymore and the train they are driving will automatically stop. |
What causes those random, insignificant pains we get throughout our body? | Like the kind that feel as though they're coming from within your bones? If so, I would also like to know. |
Why is it when I'm falling asleep / resting, I have body wide spasms and twitches? | There is a phenomenon called the Hypnic Jerk where your body spasms *just* as you begin to enter the next phase of sleep, but what you describe sounds a little bit more serious than that. If you're experiencing any sleep loss because of this, I would seek a professional. |
What's the process from pressing the gas pedal to your car moving? | Once air/fuel is inside, intake valves in the head let the mixture into the combustion chamber. That's where you will find your piston and spark plug. When the piston is at the top of its stroke a spark ignites the air/fuel mixture essentially pushing the piston and connecting rod back down. When the piston reaches the bottom of its stroke the exhaust valve opens in the head expelling the exhaust gases leave through your exhaust system. The piston and rod are connected to the crank. The crank is connected to the flywheel, the flywheel spins and is mated against the transmission. Transmissions spins a drive shaft or cv axles. Possibly thorough some sort of differential and your wheels turn. This might be more like explainlikeim10. But a fairly simple explanation. |
If wind turbines move to generate power, why aren't there smaller versions of them on things that are constantly moving, like trains or cars? | The energy created by the turbine would be less than the additional energy required by the car or trains engine to overcome the drag created by the turbine. Wind turbines don't require locomotion. The wind is moving around them. They're not being moved through the air to create wind, so there is no loss of energy. On a side note, large airplanes are equipped with deployable turbines. In the event of an engine failure, the planes can deploy the turbine and use the planes momentum to generate electricity to power the planes electrical systems. In this scenario, the increased drag is worth the tradeoff of maintaining power to the controls and instruments. |
How come my dog doesn't feel like he's suffocating when he sleeps under a blanket all night - but if I do, I feel like I can't breathe? | I think another reason might be that we tend to prefer cool air to breathe in. If it's warm, it feels suffocating. Dogs don't seem to be bothered by warm air, so burrowing under the covers comes naturally as long as they have access to oxygen . |
how "waist training" works | They negatively affect bone structure, and if you're fat, the pressure from the fat displaces some organs. |
Why people who received blood can't donate their blood anymore? | I think some of it has to do with the time in the 80s when there was contaminated blood. My mom can't donate blood because she had a transfusion in that time period. Other then that, I think you are more at risk for blood diseases you might not know about because you recieved blood. |
How do you get reliable witness testimony in cases that go to trial years or decades after the crime was committed? | It's harder, but there are ways of dealing with it. If people recorded what they saw soon after the crime, those notes can help them remember. Other evidence can also prompt memories. Which restaurant is labeled on your credit card statement for lunch might help you remember what you ate. |
If ginger hair started as a mutation, couldn't we purposefully 'mutate' genes to give 'natural' blue hair? | It might be possible. There are lots of animals with blue pigments in their skin and feathers so that suggests that there's some genes out there that could turn hair blue. We could try splicing one of those genes from an animal that carries it into a human and see what happens! It might just work or it might be incompatible with our other genes. Genes are so complexly interrelated that trying it out is the only way to be sure. Mutating our genes step-by-step to produce blue might be more difficult. It depends on whether there's a sequence of mutations that lead from our brownish pigments to blue without passing through mutations that are bad in some way and cause the cells to die, for example. Think of it like one of those puzzles where you're given the start word and the end word and you have to change one letter at a time to get from start to end but each intermediate step has to be a word too. There might be a path or there might not. |
Most fast food is unhealthy, but why does McDonald's get almost all the hate and negative reputation/publicity? | McDonald's is the most recognizable incarnation of the fast food beast. They have global brand presence, while someplace like Hardy's is more a regional thing. |
What all this talk of warp drives means? | I'll explain the 'buzz' part. b1ackcat covered the other parts. Theoretical physics lately has been kinda lost. The top minds have mostly been diverted into string theory, but that is starting to look like a giant dead end. A recent Nobel prize was given out for showing that the expansion of the universe is accelerating, even though a more recent and better study got a null result. A recent survey found no evidence for dark matter out to 13,000 light years, but the headlines all go crazy when some dark matter is 'found' between two distant galaxies. The Higgs Boson was 'found', even though the state of the theory is so poor that you could drive a planet though the error bars and they could really have found anything. It seems that the more lost they get, the more the hype machine turns up. Anything that can sound even remotely positive is spun up to eleven on the hype scale, and all negative results are simply not mentioned. I'm not proposing any sort of conspiracy, only pointing out that people tend to crack a bit when billions of dollars are being spent and careers are on the line. Scientists are people too, and politics comes in play whenever you have people interacting. My prediction is that nothing much will come of this, and you won't really hear much about it either. |
If the smell from something can reach your nose, does that mean that you are being exposed to bacteria from that thing? | It's not the bacteria you smell, as those are living things; but it's the smelly molecules, that might be secreted by bacteria, that are able to float up and into your nose. |
How does our body know we are taking a nap instead of falling asleep for 8 hours? | You learned about touch, sight, smell, taste, and hearing in school, but we have many, many more senses than that. ~~Preconception~~ Proprioception, for example, which is how you can touch your nose with your eyes closed. Humans have internal circadian clocks that act like another sense. It's how you can have a rough idea of what time it is without looking at a clock. Obviously it is better with some people than others, just like sight, but it can help you take a nap as opposed to going completely to sleep. |
Why aren't motorcycles subject to the same noise emission restrictions as cars or other vehicles, and how do they pass inspection? | Texas inspector. You et your ass I'll fail a motorcycle with straight pipes. We aren't required to do a dB rest, but yeah all motorcycles have to have a non-bypassable noise reduction device on the exhaust. Want loud pipes? Cool, get a set. When you go full throttle with a vrod at 3 in the morning, yeah that's just a douche move", 'I know its a generalization but I live in New England and every single motorcycle is obscenely loud. There is a guy that lives up the street and his bike literally shakes the walls of my house.I know of whole towns that don't allow loud bikes and are always writing tickets for it. guess it depends on where you are |
Why is At & t's DirectTV Now being "zero rated" such a bad thing? | The idea is that Internet service providers should not try to influence what content you consume, and what content you don't. By itself getting DirecTV for no data charge is nice, but people fear that the corporation will take this principle too far -- charging less for services they agree with, and more for services they don't agree with. |
Why do cars only ever have DC outlets even though most electrical devices use AC plugs? | It's cheaper, as the car already provides a DC output somewhere around 12v . Many consumer electronics that are commonly used in cars run off 5v DC and cheap adapters can be made to provide such an output. Providing an AC output would be an expensive feature few people use. |
Why does proper APA / MLA citation matter so much? | it's a question of fairness to both the reader and the publisher, but weighted on the side of the reader. You want it to be relatively straightforward for the publisher to typeset, but more than that, you want to make it easy for the reader to parse the text without either the distraction of an ugly citation or of having to search for the cited reference in other places. there have been lots and lots of formats, and the conventions evolve over time. go to your local university and look at a thesis from 50 years ago. you will see that, although it is readable, the format is entirely different and not necessarily as efficient. also, for each field, the information required to follow a citation is different, thus different conventions.Hey, not sure if you knew this, but newer versions of Word have a pretty fabulous citation manager. |
Why countries around the world teach students multiple languages at a young age, and most American students don't have the option to learn a language in school until much later? | Aside from the issue of English being the lingua franca for a lot of countries, I think geography has a hand in a lot of the comparatively limited language education often found in the US. America is nearly 4 million square miles of a single primary language, and a very low percentage of citizens ever travel more than 500 miles from home in their lives. Because of this, language education isn't given a high priority. |
If singularity can potentially destroy mankind, why do scientists continue to develop AI? | Because we don't know for sure. Lots of research can have harmful consequences, but we go forward anyway because the benefits outweigh the risks. We're pretty far away from a singularity--AI is very good at specific tasks, like playing Go or navigating terrain, but they can't generalize. Meanwhile, work in AI is opening up all kinds of doors in terms of what we can do with large data sets, theoretical math, and many other areas. It's even blowing apart our understanding of learning and the mind. Until we figure that the risks outweigh the benefits, it's crucial for computer scientists to push on and try to find new insights and applications. A good analogy is CRISPR/Cas9, which can modify a living creature's genome. Clearly there are a lot of Bad Applications for this, which is why we regulate it, and test it in controlled settings. But, it's been used in all kinds of vital medical research as well. There's another reason. We are genre-savvy enough to be careful of a general AI with that kind of power. If we approach it, the scientists will have many failsafes surrounding it. If you're mucking around in the source code of a program, it's scary easy to break it. There's also the fact that no computer can cross over physical barriers. The AI would probably be in a sealed-off compound without networking capability. |
If congressional approval is at an all time low of 9%, how do they still have their jobs? | People like their party and their representative, the districts are gerrymandered to be largely non-competitive, and too many people don't vote in the primaries. Some of us elect Elizabeth Warren though. |
why we haven't been in the moon since 1972 ? | Mainly it's a waste of money, and there's not much there that's important to us. Perhaps if people could make a moon base and make it a staging area for a mission to mars, then we'd go on the moon again. |
The Joker card in a playing card deck | The joker has quite a history, cards in modern day playing decks originated from an older kind of playing card game called tarot. Tarot had cards split into two categories, the major arcana, and the minor arcana. Focusing on the 22 major arcana, the very first card in the 22 is numbered zero, this card is known as the fool. [Here] is a picture of the fool, notice how flippant and carefree the character seems to be, this was the building ground of the joker's modern day adaptation. So in other words, the joker is like a modern day fool arcana card, holding the value of zero, making it the wild card in standard playing decks.As I heard it: the joker was included as a courtesy in case a card got lost. If you were missing some card from the deck, have the joker stand in as a proxy, so that deck of cards is still playable. |
where does the heat come from when we burn firewood. | Heat is just little things jiggling around. Heating things more makes them jiggle more. The chemicals which the wood is made of are a bit like scrunched up springs with clips on them. The springs can get unclipped if they are jiggled around enough . When you put the cold wood on the fire and the little bits it is made of start jiggling enough, the springs on the outside of the wood start to unclip and go sproing! This makes everything jiggle around more, which is really just more heat. As long as there is more air to come in and more springs-with-clips which haven't gone 'sproing' yet, this whole thing keeps going. So the extra heat from a new log comes from all the scrunched up springs in the log. The springs got scrunched up in the first place by absorbing heat from the sunlight while the plant was growing. |
How come there are multiple screw driver head styles? Wouldn't one universal one make sense? | They started with the slotted type. The double slotted came along, not to be confused with Phillips. Then Phillips was created. Then Robertson was next. After that came hex head. Then someone thought, I can do better and made Torx. There is also a combination Phillips Robertson but I think they suck. That's the major types but only a third of the total number of types. The thing is all of these have different challenges in manufacturing and therefore cost. Some of them are also covered by patents. A lot of times it comes down to what is good enough not what is best. |
Why does the NSA want to monitor us? | In theory the NSA doesn't want to monitor you . They only want to monitor those who are likely to commit serious crimes. The problem arises when overlap of those that won't and those that will cause harm. At the moment the NSA and the national security apparatus of the US is taking somewhat extreme measures to make sure they monitor those looking to cause harm even if it means accidentally monitoring those who don't intend to. |
Because interest rates exist everywhere, doesn't that mean that there will come a time when there is much more debt than actual currency in the world? | Wrong. 1 dollar of debt doesn't represent 1 dollar in the economy. Depending on what the bank reserves are, it can actually represent quite a bit more. Let me explain how. Bank A lends 100,000 dollars to an individual for a home. He buys the home. The seller puts 100,000 into bank B. Bank B takes 20% of that and keeps it in reserves, and lends out the other 80,000 dollars to a business owner needing to do home repairs. That business owner spends the money and the recipient puts it into Bank C. Bank C puts 20% into its reserves and lends out the remaining 64,000 to a college student taking out a student loan. The college puts the revenues into Bank D. At this point, the 100,000 doesn't represent 100,000. It represents 100,000 + 80,000 + 64,000 = 244,000. If this process went on for long enough, it'd get close to 500,000. This is all from the original 100,000. See how the value of the interest collected by the banks is actually a pittance compared to the amount of money that enters the economy.There's more debt than there are liquid assets in the world right now. The US government owes something on the order of $10-20t right now, but there's just about $10t in actual assets in the entire world in USD. We can "owe" more money than actually exists because debt does not necessitate the existence of money. Debt is the expectation that you will have money later, seeing as you obviously do not currently have itIf by "actual currency" you mean paper dollars then this has already happened long ago. Indeed there is unlikely to have ever been a time in history, since currency was invented, in where there wasn't more debt than currency. |
why does the body store unhealthy amounts of fat | Your body has no way to tell if the amount of fat it has is unhealthy. Fat is just our way of storing extra energy we don't need right now. We evolved to store it because some times food is hard to find. It is rare that we have access to so much food that we can eat every day to the point that storing so much would prevent us from breeding If we continue to have such unfettered access to food, and a significant portion of the population over-eat to an unhealthy degree, we could potentially evolve such a coping mechanism over time, but we haven't had enough time for that to occur. |
Why is a wooden skyscraper considered to more environmentally friendly than one made out of steel and concrete? | While cutting trees down seems bad for the environment, lumber is a renewable resource, and there are tree farms where wood can be acquired without clearcutting old-growth rainforests and the like. Those farms plant new saplings as they cut trees, so it's not that bad. Metal takes a lot of energy to forge and refine, and dumps a ton of CO2 into the atmosphere in the process. In a typical construction, you'll also see a bunch of other materials like plastic, concrete, insulation, etc. All of this stuff can release nasty chemicals during processing or mining. |
Why does a white noise, such as a ceiling fan, help me fall asleep, but random noises annoy me while trying to sleep? | True white noise comprises all frequencies of sound equally, though non-perfect white noise also works to varying degrees. True white noise actually doesn't exist for the same reason that there is no limit to numbers, though it's not necessary because our ears can only detect certain frequencies. Anyways. It's a property of sound that when you have 2 sources of the same frequency of sound which are a [half wave-length out of phase of each other,] the sounds cancel each other out. In practice, since white-noise is pretty much random, there are bound to be wavelenths in white noise which will cancel out other sudden or unique ambient sounds which might distract you and cause your brain to attempt to decipher them. A second reason that white noise aids in working to help you sleep is due to [persistent sensation adaptation]. All of our senses are largely based on detecting changes. Any constant stimuli will eventually be ignored by your brain and fade into the background so you don't really notice. This is why you don't really feel the cloths on your body unless you're actually thinking about it, or why you can't really smell if you're house stinks unless you leave for a couple hours then it hits you when you walk back through the front door. So when you're hearing a constant backdrop of white noise, it's both canceling out sudden sounds as well as fading into the background of your active awareness, which amounts to a great reduction in audio distractions when trying to sleep . |
Do cats and dogs catch colds? If so, why don't they ever seem to have the same kind of symptoms we do? | Dogs do catch something very similar to a human 'cold'. Its called [kennel cough] - Its highly contagious to other dogs and the symptoms include sneezing and coughing |
the meaning/significance of all the Nazi stuff in Pink Floyd's The Wall. | His father was killed at Anzio in WW2, so I'm sure that has a little bit to do with the Nazi imagery. |
why is making the bottom of a soda can a dome makes it use less metal? | The Engineer Guy did a great video on the engineering of pop cans and why they're designed the way they are. _URL_1_ |
If my ISP starts selling my browsing history, will everyone on our home wi-fi start getting porn click bait and cock ring advertisements? | If it's any consolation, if it does happen they don't have to know it was because you where on porn, plus, your dad watches porn so there's that |
What is the Third Wave Feminist movement? | What's the deal with pornography/prostitution?", and "what's the next move now that the second wave's goals have largely been achieved?". The answers to all these questions are still contested within the feminist movement, as one could expectTL;DR: It's not exactly just women's rights third-wave feminists fight for, it's eliminating social biases towards certain groups and, lately, dealing with LGBT rights issues, like gay marriage and the transgender bathroom controversy. Feminist here, reporting for duty. Note that what I say here will *not* reflect the views of everyone who identifies as a feminist out there - everyone's different, and in my opinion your friend is taking it too far. Third-wave feminism focuses more on eliminating social biases than it does rights, but for rights, LGBT+ rights are generally in focus. Have you heard about the controversy regarding transgender people using bathrooms that match their gender identity, and how people are assuming all transgender people are predators, when there have been zero cases of harassment in bathrooms by transgender people? That's considered a feminist issue. The patriarchy is mainly the fact that it's harder for women to do a lot of stuff. Granted, there are disadvantages men have caused by it but for now I'll focus on the ladies. Women are less likely to be hired because, oh, they'll just get pregnant, are generally paid less, they 've got beauty standards they're \'bossy\' when a dude is \'assertive,\' and young women especially are taught that being attractive to dudes is the be-all-end-all, because their worth is based mainly on how attractive they are. Of course, I'm not trying to claim to have perfect knowledge on the subject, and I'm likely missing things Hope this helped, and if not, please let me know! |
Why Is It Bad Too Cook Frozen Meat Without Thawing It Out? | When making Beef Carpaccio some people freeze it then sear the outside. This prevents the meat from actually cooking. It's then sliced while still frozen. This allows the chef to make super thin slices. |
With the rising cost of fossil fuels, why aren't we seeing adoption of nuclear-powered large cargo ships and tankers? | It's an intriguing idea, and would reduce the carbon footprint, but the prospect of nuclear contamination from an accident or terrorists has most everyone running the other way. Give us another few hundred years, and we might get there.Better tell the US navy. The have a lot vehicles that operate on nuclear power. I think user pucklermuskau is a kite salesman.It isn't cost effective. I can't do a better job explaining than this guy _URL_0_ |
How did our ancestors deal with deteriorating eyesight without glasses/contact lenses? | First off, not all myopia is detrimental. I have 20/25 vision and I don't need correction at all. In fact, my optometrist says that is beneficial with the amount of work I do on the computer. However, you're probably referring to myopia where correction would be beneficial, in not necessary. That severe of myopia was very uncommon before the last 100 years or so. In fact, it's so much more common today that it is considered a modern epidemic. [This video] does an excellent job of going through the evidence. Basically, it's not computer screens or time spent reading that causes nearsightedness. It's spending *too little* time outside. Your eyes need exposure to seeing long distances in the sun to counteract the time you spend viewing objects up close.There are accounts of chinese sleeping with small weighted bags on their eyelids to impart a temporary deformation of the eye and some correction, though imprecise. Anyone got any links?', "They died. It turns out that we're actually much more nearsighted than our ancestors. We've stopped dying out and myopia and the rate has exploded. It's hard to say why exactly but we do know that the rate of myopia is growing steadily and from accounts it wasn't that common. _URL_2_ _URL_2_ |
Why is Hillary Clinton using her personal email a big deal? | Go read the editorials from when Sarah Palin did this. While this will blow over there are serious concerns if government officials attempt to evade freedom of information requests. Not saying this is the case here, but it's nearly impossible to prove it wasn't. |
Why do filthy rich people still work? | Not rich myself, but I know some people that are, and from what I've heard from them its for 2 main reasons a. Work and investing is fun to do. b. To save more of the money for later and future generations. Since there is a good chance that most people in their family will be nearly as wealthy, you might as well get the most out of your occupation and oppurtunities. |
How does a computer know how long a second is? | it has a thing inside that works like a watch. it doesn't have hands, it emits pulses of electricity. the computer counts these pulses until it has enough of them to make a second. |
Shouldn't antibacterial soaps *reduce* the spread of resistant bacteria by reducing the likelihood that such a mutation will occur? | Imagine you have a rom of puppies that can multiply exponentially and asexually . Cute little things, can bite, but not too bad. If we leave them alone, chances are that in a week we'll have a ton of farily weak puppies to deal with. Now we go to the room and we set it on fire. of the puppies, 99% dies and we have 3 puppies left with very burned skin. They survived becasue they had a random mutation that made their skin thicker. A week goes by and we have about 200 thick skinned puppies. Now we decide to throw a grenade in there. well darn, those puppies are tough. we killed near 99% again but left 2 puppies who had randomly mutated. They had developed a much thicker skin, sort of like an armadillo. Well we leave the room for another week and come back to about 100 of these armoured puppies. We could go on but you see that the puppies who remain are now stronger than the ones we started with. We eliminated the weak ones and only allowed the strong to reproduce, leading to a stronger population. *^no ^puppies ^were ^harmed ^in ^this ^experiment^, ^^only ^^killed* |
How does evolution work? | Evolution has nothing to do with that individual horse. Most likely, if that horse didn't have the ability to eat leaves off of high branches, then it would either have to eat somewhere else or die. The idea behind evolution is that out of say 100,000 horses, one would have a random mutation that would cause it to have a longer neck. Then, that horse can reach the leaves on the trees. This horse is now able to survive much better than other horses because other horses have to compete in order to eat the best grass. The long necked horse has unlimited food because it can reach the leaves when other horses cannot. All of the long necked horse's descendants will also survive easier because they will also have this neck. Pretty soon you get a population of horses that have long necks and a population of horses with short necks. The horses with long necks and the population of horses with short necks stop breeding with one another and then become two different species. |
Why are some guys growers and some guys showers? | While I don't have an answer, I do wonder if the animal kingdom has the same concept or if it's unique to humans. |
Are fishes and other underwater creatures in danger when there are storms or is it still relatively safe for them beneath the surface? | A dozen meters of water is an excellent buffer against any storm disturbance. Water is much heavier than air, so what are very strong winds doesn't translate into very strong currents. |
Is it theoretically possible to predict the future using a super quantum computer? | To add on to other comments, which have the gist of it right. Perfect information about the universe would enable perfect predictions to be made. But this information is not only completely implausible to be able to have, it's also in many cases impossible. Thanks to things like the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, there are pairs of measurements where accuracy in one *requires* inaccuracy in the other. So for all practical purposes, while perfect information would allow perfect predictions, it's not possible to have the necessary information. |
Why are ebooks generally just as expensive as their print counterparts when publishers don't have to account for ink, paper, and binding costs? | Another post alluded to it, but a large part of it is that most of the cost to make a book is not in the per-unit costs; its in the writing, editing, and marketing of the book. Publishers need to pay writers , they need to pay editors, they need to pay marketers, etc. And its not like distribution *goes away* magically when things are digital; stores like Amazon or Kobo still take a cut, and people need to specifically format the e-book version to make sure it works on your Kobo, Nook, or what have you. On top of this, there's very little reason for the publishers to undercut their own product by making the digital version of a release significantly cheaper; the publishers would largely be cannibalizing their own sales. |
How does corn survive the digestive system? | It doesn't. Only the shells of the kernels survive, because they are made of cellulose, a material that we can't digest - it is strong enough to survive our stomach acids, small enough to survive the motions of the intestines, and we don't have enzymes that can break it down. The inner, fleshy part of the corn kernels does get digested.Reminds me to an idiom used by the inhabitants of Sumba island in Indonesia for this exact phenomenon: Pataiwatar. Literally means corn shit :) used as a curse word, obviously. Like others\u200b has said, because cellulose. |
EIL5: What was the conflict between Edison and Tesla about? | Tesla's patent package was for a 3-phase AC power grid which operates clean, almost silent brushless AC motors shaped like compact cylinders. Edison's motors were tall horseshoe-shapes with carbon brushes which spewed black grime and needed frequent replacing. His big industrial motors had a shape we don't see anymore since Tesla won: enormous towering field magnets designed because of an 1880s widespread incorrect belief that longer iron circuits were better than short compact ones. _URL_5_ _URL_5_ _URL_5_ _URL_5_ Compare the above motors with the ones from the Westinghouse factory: _URL_5_ Besides everything else mentioned below, this also was a fight between the pristine sterile laboratory versus the grimy dirt-floor workshop. If Edison had won, then everything in modern factories would probably be coated with greasy black powder from the big motors' carbon brushes. |
How can we reverse the effects of Global Warming? | Do we want to? We live in an ice age, and the melt at the start of this interglacial allowed us to develop agriculture and dominate every continent. For a bunch of African apes, a warm planet is a lot more habitable than one full of glaciers and tundra. A little warmer, and all that Russian and Canadian tundra becomes breadbasket. Ice ages are not the mean state of affairs as Earth's history goes. Because warmer temperatures allow for greater primary production at the bottom of the food chain, a warmer world is generally better for life in general.The best way to combat global warming would be for everyone to turn their air conditioners on and open all windows and doors in their house. This would allow the cool air to escape your house and cool the atmosphere. |
When cars beep for not wearing seatbelts, how does it know it's a person in the seat instead of a heavy package? | It doesn't. Have you never put a heavy package in your front seat and get mad annoyed at being told to put on your seat belt the whole time? |
Why do the most space missions seem to launch from the Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan? | Context for why I'm asking in the first place: Europe and Russia have launched a joint mission to the Red Planet.The satellite, called the ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter , lifted off from [Baikonur in Kazakhstan at 09:31 GMT.] |
What happens if we're isolated for a long time? | Loneliness, it's also proven that isolation leads to depression. People who find themselves isolated are more likely to commit suicide, and strangely enough also more likely to commit murder", 'That does seem kind of stereotypical but I would say most monks are more spiritually at peace with themselves whereas most people who commit there life to isolation are trying to hide from something or escape normal life. Most likely this is caused by an unhappiness in their own life. |
Why do teachers need a background check, yet people who work with children in religious institutions don't? | It depends which country you are in some countries require the same checks others don't. The difference is normally down to how much influence the religious groups have with those in political power, a lot of influence buys you a lot of leeway to get up to all kinds of mischief.My son went to a religious preschool and even to volunteer a background check was required. They was also required to submit paperwork and was audited yearly by the state public health/dhs just like the public schools in our state are.Because a religious institution is attended by choice. It's up to you to decide if it's right for you. Public education is mandatory unless you provide proof that you are attending an alternative. |
Why do employees feel obligated to give 2 weeks notice when quitting, yet employers are generally "at will" and can terminate on a whim with no notice? | I don't feel obligated. I am required. Otherwise I lose my vacation/sick leave payout and I would not be eligible for rehire. There are many jobs where it's not required and people do not put in any notice. |
How does a Super Nintendo or Sega Genesis game get from cartridge to being emulated on my phone? | These old game consoles had very simple pinouts on the cartridges. For example, there might be 16 pins for the 16-bit address of each byte, 8 pins for the return byte, and 1 pin to dictate when we want a byte. So reading it would go like 1: Set the 16 bit address2: Wait a few nanoseconds3: Set the read pin high4: Wait a few nanoseconds5: Gather the data in the 8 bit result and save it somewhere6: Repeat step 1 by incrementing the address by one until we've reached the maximum address |
Stephen Hawking's major contributions to science. | Not to undermine what he's done, but his major contribution has been getting more people interested in science in general. Someone talking about black holes? Neat-o, I might give it a listen if I'm in the market for black hole information someday. Someone who's stuck in a wheelchair the rest of his life but has dedicated a huge amount of time to writing books with the limited about of communication he has, speaks through a computer voice simulator so that he sounds like a bionic man from the future, AND these books he wrote are about something as interesting as the physics of black holes? Now you're talking. Just about anyone would give THAT at least a few minutes of their time, and in doing so create more interest in the subject and science in general. And yes, much of this interest was generated from pop-culture, i remember seeing him on the Simpsons and Dexter's laboratory when i was younger and being instantly interested. So basically, hes the next level of Bill Nye, getting more people interested who normally wouldn't be AND he has done some really amazing research and wrote some truly well written books to continue to make it interesting. kick ass. |
How can someone create a public library? | If you have the resources, I don't think there's anything stopping you from just renting a space, putting a bunch of books in it, and lending them out to whomever you want. I don't think that's even terribly rare: in my city, which has a good public library system, there are also a handful of tiny private libraries: often just one person's large collection on a specific topic, which they've decided to turn into a reading room or library. > Alternatively, if I wanted to convince a small town to create one, what would I need to do? A [huge number of libraries] across the US are due to Andrew Carnegie doing exactly this. He started out operating privately-owned-but-free-to-the-public libraries in a few cities, but ended up founding libraries in basically any town that would provide the land and demonstrate they could fund its ongoing operation. I think that was kinda what brought about the idea that any decent sized American town would have a free library for its residents in the first place, actually. You're not as rich or as influential as Carnegie; you'd presumably need to do a lot of fundraising to start the library, and either get the county or city to fund its ongoing operation or rely on ongoing fundraising . On the other hand, if you get one started on your own, maybe that would demonstrate the need/feasibility to other people. And finally… for the lowest-stakes version of starting a library, you could do something along the lines of the [Little Free Library]. There are a handful of those around my town in peoples' front yards, they do seem to get some use. |
How can fish survive at such incredible depths? | I'm pretty sure not all fish survive at certain depths. At more extreme depths I am pretty sure only certain kinds of sealife can survive/live.Pressure only hurts you when internal pressure is less than external pressure. They equalize their pressures. |
Why do colleges in the United States have such a huge cost but colleges in Europe don't? | A college education doesn't actually have to cost that much, and most European countries are totally comfortable paying higher taxes in order to fund things they believe are important, like universal education and health care.More public money is put into universities in Europe. So your answer is yes, more taxes for education. |
Why does Windows have to reboot after almost every update, but Linux doesn't? | If the program that is loaded in RAM gets changed on disk by update, linux asks you to restart, despite this being potentially fixable simply by restarting the process. Like, if you update Firefox with firefox running, you'll be asked to restart. No idea why Windows asks for restarts more often though. |
. Why are some automatic sliding doors at stores 'enter only' ? | Typically it is based on the layout of the store.One like Walmart or my best buy has enter and exit doors because of the location of the checkout. If the checkout is on the left side of the store it makes sense to have all of the traffic coming from that side of the store to go out those doors this also aids in security because anybody not coming through the door from the checkout didn't purchase anything and is looked at more closely.In my area, at least, the exits are only accessible by going through or behind the checkout stations. I assume that in addition to managing traffic flow, that there is a security thought to this as well. The entrances drop you on a wide path/aisle that goes through the middle of the store with smaller side-paths into specific areas. Convenience stores in my area rarely have the separated doors like you mention, most are just large enough to have one door and no more. |
Why is it illegal to not wear a seat belt if I'm only endangering myself? | Because it causes preventable injuries. If you're in a collision and not wearing your seat belt, emergency services might have to spend time treating you instead of another person who's injuries might not have been avoidable. I'm all for personable responsibility and liberty, but the more effort someone puts into protecting themselves, the less time would need to be spent with them in the event of an accident. This includes Bike Helmets and leathers. |
How do heat sinks like the ones on CPUs work ? | A heatsink is designed to increase the surface area of the object that needs to be cooled. Metal and water are great thermal conductors, but air isn't. So you create an object to spread the heat load more evenly and make contact with as much air as possible. You can do this with a big metal plate, which is what a lot of low power mobile devices use. For more serious cooling though, you use fins. Thin metal fins are allow you to create a lot of surface area without drastically increasing size of the heat sink. We then attach a fan so hot air is pushed out and a continuous stream of cool air is run past the fins. The copper tubes attached to some heatsinks are heat pipes. They contain a small amount of liquid. When this liquid hits the hot conductive metal plate on top of the CPU, it vapourizes, and naturally gravitates to the cooler end of the pipe, where the cooling fins are. It then condenses back into a liquid and repeats the cycle. This is somewhat similar to how a refrigerator works, except this process is entirely passive. You can also kick it up a notch to liquid cooling, which uses flowing water as the heat transfer medium. Neither traditional finned heatsinks or water cooling can cool a chip lower than the ambient air temperature though. For that you have to go to exotic cooling methods like phase change , dry ice, or liquid nitrogen. None of which are really practical. The paste is thermally conductive ceramic compound. Sometimes mixed in with a small amount of metal that's exceptionally conductive, like silver. It fills in imperfections on the CPU and heatsink, to make the best contact and eliminate hot spots. These hot spots can damage the chip, so processor heat sink should never been installed without it. |
Why does it require energy to hold something heavy in a stationary position? | Human muscles have to contract and release, they can't lock rigid. If your body could lock the skeleton together into a rigid, stable structure, then it wouldn't cost any energy to hold a stationary weight. As it is, your muscles are constantly firing, generating heat, to keep the weight steady and keep our bodies balanced. Our bodies just aren't optimized to hold something perfectly still, but rather to dynamically move and balance. |
What would happen to the Global Economy if several asteroids of solid gold crashed into earth effectively increasing the available gold by 100X? | The world uses fiat currencies. That's money backed up by the government and doesn't have intrinsic value of its own. It's no longer backed up by gold. |
Why is music in movies/tv often disproportionately louder than the dialouge? | Poor mixing. I've seen a similar question asked here, where another poster replied that the club scene in The Social Network is an award-winning example of how to do it right: the music is super loud but the dialogue is mixed to be audible on top. _URL_0_ Edit: now that I watch that scene again, it's not as good as I remember it before. Maybe the previous poster had another link that was remixed or something. |
Why not giving medication to treat something like the flu is the best way to go | Antibiotics are medicines used to treat illnesses, but they don't work if you're sick from the flu or a cold. Those are caused by viruses, and antibiotics only work on bacterial infections like pneumonia. Also, you heard right about cough medicines. You should only really take cough medicines if you're coughing enough that it severely disrupts your day. Otherwise you should just let the cough bring up what it can, to clear out your lungs and throat. |
Why is it sometimes when we drive we zone out, and not remember anything, but still manage to drive normal. | because YOU WERE driving normally; your brain just doesn't bother remembering the mundane, so it only seemed like you were half-awake. it doesn't take a lot of awareness to stay between the white lines and make sure no one swerves into you, so your brain wanders to things it finds more stimulating, like daydreaming about being rich so you could hire a driver to chauffeur you around. |
How come sneezes usually come in twos? | Because they don't? I would have to see some source saying this is the case. I usually sneeze once. I have had friends who always sneeze five times, or ones that sneeze in threes. You may usually sneeze twice, but that doesn't make it the norm, in any way. |
If organs harvestes illegally have to be sold on the black market, how are they put into patients needing them? | There are plenty of countries with very skilled doctors who don't make a lot of money and have minimal medical oversight. A couple thousand dollars handed to the right doctor at the right hospital, and they can implant anything in you that you want.An organ black market is not a like meat market where you shop around. All it really means is that there is a network of "fixers" or "arrangers" that cultivate and maintain a Rolodex of donors , recipients, and unscrupulous surgeons. It's almost like legitimate surgery except the donor is being paid, which is pretty unethical, but people will do it if they are desperateIf you can afford an organ on the black market, you can afford to pay for medical staff and facilities. |
Why do children want to watch the same movie or cartoon over and over again? | I'm 28 and I can't watch the same movie more than once. I live in the moment. If I know what to expect, the movie disinterests me. I have always felt kids get hooked on the way a movie makes them feel. They expect to feel the same way when they watch it again. It's the same reason people visit places and do things for nostalgia's sake. |
Why do humans feel the need to identify so strongly with groups? | Humans and nearly all animals abhor ambiguity. Evolution has made us feel weak and exposed as individuals. We crave safety in numbers for security. To enable that instinct we like the comfort of having our ideas confirmed by others, so much so that we'll sometimes do unconscious mental acrobatics to square the ideas of others' with our own. That instinct makes us quick to ally ourselves with others for sometimes obscure or trivial reasons. |
Why do they close the american schools due to snow? | In the us, I'm in Ohio so we get really really bad lake effect snow. We usually never have snow days to the plans and equipment we have, BUT, when it snows 2 feet over the course of an hour when the buses are warming up, the snow plows simply can't keep up. Resulting in unsafe conditions. |
Why is the price of Oil has fallen 51% from 30 months ago, yet the price of Gasoline is only down 15% (Canada) & 36% (US) | The cost of oil is but one cost of producing gas. The price you pay for gas also covers labor, electricity, distribution, transportation, real estate, marketing, taxes, etc. Even though the cost of oil is a significant portion of the price of gas, it's not the only expense. A percentage reduction in the cost of oil will not produce an equal percentage reduction in the price of gas.There are three mostly fixed costs with regard to gasoline: * refining, about 60 cents a gallon* marketing and distribution, about 20 cents a gallon* taxes, up to 50 cents a gallon in the US That gives you floor of about $1.30 a gallon. That means when the price at the pump falls from $3 to $2, the part depending on oil prices is falling from $1.70 to $0.70 in the states with the highest tax rates, more than a 50% reduction.A gallon of gas is cheaper than a gallon of water in Saudi Arabia. Always thought that was an interesting God bit. It's a nickel for a gallon of water |
If Mount Everest is the tallest mountain on earth, how is the summit of the Ecuadorian volcano Chimborazo the furthest point from the earth's center? | To build on what other people have said, Mount Everest is the mountain that's peak is highest above sea level. Along with the earth's bulge at the equator, sea level at the equator is also further from the center of the planet than sea level at Everest's latitude. |
Why is Feminism called Feminism and not Equalism? | It's called feminism because that's the specific group targeting change - females. If it were called equalism it would relate to any and every diversity group - race, age, social status, sexual preference, religion, etc and not just gender. |
is there a legitimate performance advantage to own an Apple vs. A powerful self - built pc? Or is it all really just trendy hype? | With Apple, you're only buying the brand. If you like their culture, if you like to look trendy, maybe it's a good fit. Functionally, they're just more expensive versions of the the same stuff you can get from non-Apple brands. |
If you were arrested for marijuana possession or sale before it was made legal, do you get released? | Generally no, with the idea being that at the time you were caught, the act was illegal, therefore its current status isn't relevant. You could try to appeal, but a lawyer would need to chime in to say how likely your success would be. |
Deep Web and Dark Web | Both of the are similar but can't be used interchangeably as they both refer to different things The deepweb refers nearly 80-90% of websites on the internet most of which cannot be accessed by search engines or browsers like Chrome or Google. The Dark Web then is classified as a small portion of the Deep Web that has been intentionally hidden and is inaccessible through standard web browsers. The Tor browser allows you to do that", 'This question has been asked before. You may find good explanations in [previous posts]. |
How do poor people pay for childbirth in the US? | It doesn't really matter what you do. My wife is a nurse and gave birth at the very hospital she works at. We have her insurance provided through work and we still had to pay $5000. What's the point of having insurance? We figured it out, it would have been cheaper to just have a savings account and put into the account what you pay in premiums, then use that as your insurance. |
how is it that a domestic battery conviction does not kill a celeb's career? | Okay I'm going to sound the unpopular opinion here and say that people forgive and forget. Especially about people that they have never met nor ever will meet. Not everyone cares about celebrities: move on. Some are even cynical enough to think that all celebrity related news is fake/self-generated. If you live in the first world you use products on the daily that have questionable sources. Bloody mines in Africa for rare earth metals used in every electronic device, sweatshop conditions to make clothing and shoes, and suicide nets to save workers in factories that make smartphones. Beauty, hair products, medicine, you name it: all tested on animals for YEARS before introducing to people. Your food is factory farmed, raised like trash, and pumped full of hormones and antibiotics to make them grow to term in a fraction of the time. We continue to ruin our environment, pollute the planet, ignore climate change, and we're supporting these disastrous things one way or another every day by buying some really well marketed product. Hell, we continue to buy EA games. Does it really matter to you, if you don't care or even know who Chris Brown is, that the guy singing on the radio has anger problems? Is this going to be anywhere near the top of the list when it comes time to count how many fucks you have to give? tl;dr Not everyone has the time and energy to care. edit: Would also like to point out that hip-hop/rap culture is dominated by people who have done things a lot A LOT worse than domestic violence, but nobody bats a fucking eye. |
why sedans are the choice of the average person in the US, whereas in the U.K. it's hatchbacks? | I can tell you that the rest of Europe also mainly uses hatchbacks. You simply can't fit any sedan with a cargo space larger than a suitcase on some of the smaller roads. Most people that I know just consider sedans to be an inefficient use of space. |
How do tabloids like the National Enquirer get away with publishing dubious and sometimes slanderous stories without being sued by those they're writing about? | Because usually it's more trouble than it's worth -- the suit will cause the fake story to be carried as part of the larger news story in legitimate outlets about the suit itself. This is called the Streisand Effect. So, most celebrities don't mess with it. That said Carol Burnett. |
Why, in Islam, are depictions of the prophet considered blasphemous, but naming your child after him isn't? | Any physical depiction of Muhammed is classified as idolatry in much of Islam . The fear is that the image could lead to people worshiping the prophet instead of God. This practice isn't unique to Islam, though, and actually is present in some forms of Christianity as well . |
How does a vending machine differentiate between different types of bills and coins? | Inside the bill acceptor is a small digital scanner that looks for specific things to tell the denomination. This is why you have to put in in a specific way because the scanner actually only looks at a very small portion of the bill to determine it's value. It's much easier in other countries that have different sized bills as a secondary check, but in the good old US, it can only scan specifics bits of them to figure it all out. |
Gymnastics Question. How come men don't compete on the Balance Beam and uneven bars and women don't compete on the still rings, parallel bars and high bar? | I'd assume that the rings require & emphasize the type of upper body strength that men are built for. |
It was once believed the soul weighed 21 grams due to the measured loss of mass after death. Where did this loss really come from? | It's also worth noting that at the hospital that MacDougall conducted these experiments, he was often being sabotaged by the nurses, who viewed his work as an affront to God. Therefor, this whole experiment is void.Experimental error. The original 1901 experiment was flawed, and out of the 6 patients measured, 5 had "technical errors", so he threw those results out, and only reported on the one that supported his conclusion. |
Why is the cause of so much unrest in this world due to religious conflict? | the bully at the other end of the bar wants to start a fight with you because you have a hot girlfriend. he wants your girlfriend. picking religion as a reason to punch you is a good excuse. if you happen to believe in X, but he believes in Y, then he doesn't have to feel so guilty about punching you because he can say he was just trying to convert you to Y. but truth is, he just wanted your girlfriend. |
Why do I get dizzy when I stand up suddenly after sitting or laying down for long periods of time? | I get this a lot. Most often when I stand up in the bathtub and try to open the window. I read books in the bathtub, and when I stand up to open the window, I get a head rush and the next thing I know, I'm sitting in the tub, with a sore leg, and my book is soaking wet. So far this has happened twice. |
Why has Africa remained poor despite it's abundant resources and huge manpower? | Here's something I found: _URL_0_ Basically, it doesn't have the infrastructure to use its resources and the governments haven't progressed much since the colonial days. Since then, War, Conflict, and Corruption have kept Africa stagnant. |
Why does the U.S. still have a trade embargo on Cuba? | Because they're cry-babies. Cuba used to be one of their banana republics. They lost it, and when they tried to get it back, they failed horribly. So now if they grew up and let bygones be bygones, it would look like they were admitting they were wrong. And they can't do that. Because they are children.Mostly out of spite, and the USA's "no tolerance" stand on communism . Our gov't totally never lies to us. |
Why do so many people, especially Americans, bash Democratic Socialism? | Overall Socialism is a good idea, it really is ; however like most things on paper, it only looks good there. In reality America could only implement this social structure with very few applications such as employment. With American society giving birth to the most billionaires and millionaires per capita, as well as giving birth to the world's greatest economy the world has ever seen within the last century based upon our free trade principles, socialism just has an overall negative influence to how America works. Realistically in America we like our money because as we are taught you work for yourself and are rewarded as such. However, with all of this considered no right minded American would want to give up their standard of living to outright help those who generally won't help themselves . |
Why do I get advertisements for Sonic(the restaurant) when I live in Alaska, where there are none? | Cuz' you gotta go fast to get there. I kid i kid, they probably have a deal with you'r cable company, and it just so happens that the company covers an area with no restaurants. |
How is it that reported assault rates between Poland and Scotland go from 2, to 1487 per 100 000 people? | Poland and Ukraine's bid was chosen by UEFA's Executive Committee in 2007. They hosted the Euro cup in 2012. I bet if you looked Ukraine would report a similar drop. They had to show progress that they were a safe country to host the tournament and so you can imagine that there was pressure to reduce assault stats. _URL_0_ |
Why can't Netflix have the same content streamed in every country in the world? | Because, plain and simple, copyright laws suck. Copyright laws can give a company a monopoly over a created work's monetary gains, but it also gives them a monopoly over a created work's distribution. This means that they can tell companies like iTunes and Netflix that distribute things digitally they are only allowed to distribute within certain political reigns.Licencing and commercial agreements are different in different regions We get shit choice in Australia compared to American Netflix because local cable TV has the rights for a lot of the shows here |
- How doomed are we in America with the sequestration thing? | Well its almost certainty happening. However the country isn't doomed. Most of the effects wont be felt for another month and the places that do feel them will be very specific. |
What does Putin have against Gay people? Is it a religious thing or is he just a dick? | For most of his country, at least, it's a religious thing. Russia is overwhelmingly Eastern Orthodox Christian. But considering Putin's incredibly pragmatic view of the world, my guess is he's pushing that stance because it's an easy way to get brownie points from his people. |
How does clicking a pen to the "closed" position prevent it from drying out? | As people have mentioned, ball point pens don't dry out . Pens that are effected like gel, have a lid. Markers also have a lid, but are basically a sponge in ink |
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