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Why do ship propellers create all those underwater bubbles, even when fully submerged? | Those bubbles from the propeller are called Cavitation actually. In water, cavitation occurs when water pressure is lowered below the water's vapour pressure, forming bubbles of vapour. That can happen when water is accelerated to high speeds as when turning a sharp corner around a moving piece of metal such as a ship's propeller or a pump's impeller. The greater the water depth at which the fluid acceleration occurs, the lesser the tendency for cavitation because of the greater difference between local pressure and vapour pressure. Once the flow slows down again, the water vapour will generally be reabsorbed into the liquid water. That can be a problem for ship propellers if cavitation bubbles implode on the surface of the propeller, each applying a small force that is concentrated in both location and time, causing damage. So basically you're seeing vapor escape from the water because of how fast the prop is moving :)_URL_1_ if you'd like to know more.All of these answers are great. Just to help you with more googling , marine racing teams and military propellers are backed by thousands of hours of research, trade secrets, and in the case of the latter example, very high security clearances. Cavitation = noise and loss of efficiency . |
Why do developers leave unused files in the final build of their games? | Games are big projects. Odds are that no one person knows what everything is. If somebody accidentally leaves something in there, other developers are unlikely to fuck with it because they'll assume it's there for a good reason. |
Why does our eyesight deteriorate when looking at screens, but not when doing other close-range tasks like writing? | Concentrating on reading or looking at something for long periods just makes the eye and face muscles tired, just like using any other muscle. From memory I don't think there's a proven link between eye strain and eye damage, but it's pretty easy to avoid eye strain by taking a break every now then so why risk it |
Why doesn't prostate cancer receive the amount of media attention and funding that breast cancer does? | To add on to /u/GFrohman 's comment, prostate cancer is an old man's disease. According to my [source] the average age of prostate cancer diagnosis is 66, with the disease relatively rare before the age of 40. From the same source, prostate cancer is not that deadly. Those two factors tend to decrease the media attention from this particular cancer. |
What does Verizon ending phone subsidies mean for their customers? | T-mobile stated doing this first and for Verizon and AT & T to follow suit really shows how much T-mobile is winning over their customers. The big two anyways puts profit before customers I'm glad T-mobile showed them to cater for the customers wants/needs. |
There is LOTS of fake paper money in circulation, but why are there no fake coins? Are vending/counting machines that sophisticated? | They're around, but it's less efficient to make say 20 lbs of coins vs 20lbs of bills.Coins are harder to make and the payoff is smaller. It takes a tremendous amount of resources to make $10,000 in fake quarters. And yes, the machines that accept coins are harder to fool than people. The wight has to be exactly right. |
A random organ from a random animal is generally edible. Most parts of most plants aren't or they're even poisonous. How comes? | Plants can't run. The ones that survive are the ones that things that animals can't / don't like to eat. So, most plants developed into stuff that's hard to eat. Animals move. Being tough, dense, and rigid like a tree would make moving around to get food hard and require lots of energy, so animals tend to be mostly squishy. If you can move, you can flee, hide, fight back, -- all quite a bit more effective than not being poisonous . As a result, animals tend to be able to run / hide / fight rather than be inedible. |
Why is there no hair growning in the joints in our elbows and knees like there are in our armpits? | Because there **are** hairs there. I have them , most males I know have them heck I even know women with hair there. |
If I had more brain cells, would I be smarter? | It's not the size it's the connections within the brain that's related to intelligence, that and the percentage of grey matter I think. Also brain cells can be grown from stem cells but I don't think pouring a cup of brain cells into your opened skull will help much Education makes people smart, *sometimes*.not the amount of neurons but the amount of supporting cells. The doctor that did the autopsy of Albert Einstein when he died, stole his brain. Yes, he cut out his brain during autopsy and hid it, only to release it later for research purposes. the brain slices under the microscope showed huge amount of supporting cells compared to an average men . theres a documentary in youtube The brain constantly produces new nerve cells in the hippocampus and other places. It can actually be the cause of serious illness if this production is inhibitedThere have been some [studies] done that suggest a correlation between brain size and intelligence. However, the link is a weak correlation at best. |
If the earliest humans only arrived 1-2 million years ago, and the last dinosaurs were 65 million years ago, then what exactly was walking the earth for all those millions of years in between? | Birds and mammals, with the latter eventually growing to dominate over the former. Of course that's not a holistic list, there were other animals as well. _URL_8_ |
Why do some countries accept it when the US or another country says „You are not allowed to build nuclear bombs“ while all those countries that demand it do it themselves? | A lot of international relations base themselves in fear of other countries' military power. If you are one of the large nations who can put up a fight against another, you can do whatever you want as long as you don't mind risking starting the next world war. On the other hand, if you are a smaller nation with little military strength, and a large nations asks you not to do something or risk getting flattened in a matter of seconds, you might choose to obey without question .They signed onto a treaty that provided certain benefits, such as assistance in nuclear powerplant design, in exchange for a non-proliferation agreement. |
Why is Snapchat so popular and what do people actually use it for? | People really like the filters. It began with the novelty of deleted and non-savable videos. While sexting was certainly a use of the service and still is, but most people began using it for silly and goofy messaging back and forth. As the use has progressed snap chat stories and the filters have become especially popular. It's like anything else. It's what you and your network make it. People have different reasons for using it as you'll see in other responses. |
One of the leading arguments in the US against total conversion to the dollar coin is "What about the strippers?". How has Canada dealt with this very serious issue? | Lived in Rochester NY many years. Made a few trips to Sundowners in Canada. Let me tell you, the answer is either nasty or expensive. If you were classy, you tipped with $5s. If you weren't, you put a dollar coin or 2 dollar coin in your MOUTH and laid on the platform for the stripper to snake her way down over the top of you to pick it up. |
Why can a phone generate graphics (for example iPhone 7) somewhat comparable to a modern PC, yet video cards are massive compared to phone sizes? | Computer Engineer here, The answer is simple, mobile graphics are simply not comparable to those of a PC. From a distance, the graphics on a phone look pretty reasonable, but up close the roughness and lack of detail starts to show. Modern phones have screen resolutions well in excess of 300 pixels per inch. Desktop displays are in the range of 100 pixels per inch. If the resolution is comparable, which it often is, it is much easier to distinguish per-pixel details on a desktop monitor than it is on a phone. As a result, mobile games do not need to employ complex scene geometry, high polygon models, detailed shading, anti-aliasing, filtering, etc Moreover, they completely forego computationally intensive features such as dynamic lighting, soft shadows, volumetric fog, light scattering, reflections, occlusion, and tesselation that are staple features of modern AAA PC games. Plug a phone or tablet into a TV and play a video game. Then, plug a PC into the same TV and play a similar game. I guarantee that you'll see the difference. |
Why are unions seen as a problem, what do they do that is so wrong? | Unions intervene in the free market. In general, union workers demand higher wages than non-union workers, and somebody has to pay the cost. In addition, unions add to the bureaucracy since it is harder to disciple and terminate employees or modify terms of employment. Of course, besides higher wages, there are ways that unions benefit employees. For instance, a firefighter's union might assure that they have adequate safety equipment. |
How are oxygen levels maintained in winter while most of the trees have no leaves to perform photosynthesis? | If I'm not mistaken, a majority of our oxygen is actually made by algae and some special bacteria in the oceans. |
The difference between Streets, Avenues, Roads, Boulevards, Parkways, etc. | Roads run between two distant points — two towns, for example. In each of those towns, you'll find streets: paved roads lined with houses and other buildings. It used to be the paving and the buildings that made a street a street, but today you'll find many paved roads that have buildings on them. Modern sticklers for usage will tell you that what sets streets apart today is the street life that comes with them. On Main Street in a given town, you might find people walking their dogs, having lunch in a sidewalk cafe, waiting for a friend on the corner, or simply people watching. On the road connecting Town A to Town B, you're not likely to find any of this. In the real world, though, these textbook distinctions aren't always made. |
How are animals able to retain such muscle mass with a restricted diet yet humans need a constant amount of protein and nutrients to maintain much less muscle? | It's all down to the hormones and proteins in our body. We produce a protein called myostatin. This actively works to prevent the formation of muscle cells. We have a lot more of this than other animals that are considerably more muscular. In essence, our body biologically does not want to be muscular and tries to prevent it. We need to give it a strong need to be through a form of progressive overload coupled with the diet. So even if we had a gorilla's digestive ability and ate all the same food, we'd never naturally get as muscular because of our myostatin production.Herbivores are capable of digesting cellulose and so can extract protein from it. They can also extract other nutrients or synthesize them via gut bacteria or enzymes from plants. Carnivores are able to synthesis or extract all nutrients needed from meat. Being omnivores we have the advantage of being able to eat a wide variety of foods, but it is a trade off in not being able to get as much out of the foods due to not being specialized in extracting nutrients from them. We cannot synthesize as much from meats as carnivores, and we cannot digest cellulose at all unlike herbivores. We are less likely to run out of food due to being omnivores, but we may become deficient in something due to not being as efficient.Because human brains eat up such a huge % of our calories compared to other animals. A human brain is about 2% of the body's weight but uses 20% of the calories. Google turned up [this article] which includes this statement: > We do not expect BMR [basal metabolic rate] variability to explain a large amount of brain size variation, as there are other possibilities for maintaining an enlarged brain. Animals could reduce the size of other expensive tissues in the body , or reduce energy allocation to locomotion or reproduction . It's saying that to feed our big brains, we have to increase our calorie intake , *sacrifice other tissues *, be lazy to save calories, or some combination of the three. |
Despite having been developed so well technologically, why haven't we been able to drill down to the center of the Earth? | You'd have to find a way to dig through super heavy metals at some point. I'd imagine it's not worth the funds to attempt such a thing. |
How to find lumps in breast? Everything feels lumpy, I don't get it. | I think one of the best things to do is get them checked when you next go to the doc or get your pap smear. Once you've got the all clear from the doc, go home and jump in a hot shower and have a really good feel - there are lots of good charts around for techniques and tips. Then check regularly - once a week or something - in the shower, and because you have the benchmark of what they felt like when the doctor checked them, anything outside this 'normal' you go get checked. What is normal for one person to the next can differ, and depending on where you are in your cycle yours will have changes, but if a lump doesn't go away, gets hot, red, dimpled or you get discharge from the nipple it's better off getting checked out. Don't forget to check your armpit and down the side from there to in line with your boobs, too - there are lymphnodes there that can be affected. My grandmother found cancerous lumps just below her armpit and I get regularly tested and ultrasounds every year as a result - I get benign lumps down my sides where my underwire sits, which is annoying. But knowledge is key - the better you know your body the longer relationship you're likely to have with it. |
Why is the temperature in outer space not 0 Kelvin? | > Since the temperature is directly proportional to pressure First, that isn't how it works. Things which are extremely low pressure can still have extremely high temperatures, and things which are at very high pressure can have very low temperatures. Just because space is very low pressure doesn't mean it must necessarily be cold, although of course it is. Second, space isn't *completely* empty so even by that rule it shouldn't have absolutely zero temperature. It also has enormously powerful nuclear furnaces dotted all over the place blasting out enormous amounts of energy which brings things up a degree or two. |
I was at an event attended by 21000 people, who were given a complimentary usb flash drive preloaded with about 2gb of data. How was this done? On 21000 laptops in China? | It's not the duplication that's labor intensive, it's the interpreting all of your data that is now being transmitted to the Chinese government. |
Why do obese people's legs remain under developed? | Part of their obesity is due to lack of activity. You won't gain anything from sitting down with 300 lbs.I would assume that all weights of people have lower body skeletal muscle equivalent to the amount needed to carry their weight. Just the more obese you go the less you can see the leg muscle. Appearing "under developed". |
If you can't reliably live off minimum wage, why don't states set it much higher? | Because there is no reason why wages would be tied to the needs/desires of the worker. The connection is frivolous. Wages are based on contribution, the value added to the profit chain, and on the supply of workers to contribute that value. Hence, someone who can keep a computer secure from hackers can make $100/hr; someone who can use a broom can barely make anything. Raising the minimum wage just eliminates those jobs that aren't worth the arbitrary price that was chosen for MW. Maybe the employer only sweeps their floor twice per week instead of every day. Maybe the employer stays late and does it himself, leaving 1 person unemployed and another missing his family time.Because corporations constantly lobby politicians to make sure minimum wage is low so that they can maximize profit. |
Why can I hear the sound of the record playing on my turntable when my speakers/ receiver aren't on? | Because the speaker just operates like an amplifier . It's the needle moving back and forth across the grooves that makes the sound. [Think back to the very early turntables and the big horn]. The horn just amplifies the noise. |
If people are buying more electric and fuel efficient cars why are gas prices going up | The price of gas fluctuates with the supply/demand of crude oil around the globe. Americans are switching over to electric cars, but China is just starting to have cars, along with many developing nations using petroleum powered cars, leading to an overall increase in demand for just gas. Also electric cars aren't all that popular yet. While people *want* electric cars, there's still some problems with infrastructure. Looking at the parking lot of my office, where the culture is very pro-EV, I'd estimate that maybe 1/100 cars in the parking lot are electrics. Finally: people are driving more/planning road trips as the weather warms up, even within America, so the demand has gone up. |
Why is, let's say 50 dollars written like $50 and not 50$? | I can't find anything concrete to confirm it, but I think it may be something that English borrowed from Latin and then stuck with. Certainly the symbols for pre-decimal British currency are derived from Roman currency. Some other languages put the currency symbol after the number.Then the question becomes, why don't we say "Dollars fifty"?Because the fact that the dollar sign means end of line in a regular expression, hence one regular expression for matching 50 dollars would be [0-9]+ $$ rather than $[0-9]+$ which is clearly and objectively more uglyI understood it to be written like that to provide a frame of reference for the number. I.e. $ 50 - so the currency is Dollar, and there are 50 of them. Otherwise, you are almost qualifying the number by its definition after the fact and I agree with the other comments, making it harder to add an extra number or two in front of the actual figureFun Fact: The dollar sign originally came about by superimposing a "U" on an "S" . People then got lazy and made it two vertical lines instead of a U, and got even lazier by putting only one vertical line. The more you knowTo add a bit of context, since a very specific question is asked, and the "big picture" topic is something called [internationalization]. Basically - each country has a different way of doing certain things - like where the currency is shown, the date format, and even writing direction . For your specific example - it's just a preference. French does the opposite, in order to maintain standards with metric Countries have different ways of displaying currency and it also can change if the are multiple official languages in a country. Here is a list of ways to display currencies per country / language _URL_1_', "A book keeper probably won't be adding anything extra to his ledger but the recipient of a check might. Therefore, personal checks will have the amount written in letter form and numerically. |
What were the factors in the U.S. that led to prohibition? | > America's entry into the World War I The influential Anti-Saloon League used propaganda to connect beer and brewing as backing Germany and treasonous. In 1917 Politicians sided with the movement - 18th amendment was ratified in 13 months, certified by 1919 and took effect 1920. |
If so, what's the difference between a Sith Lord and someone using the dark side of the force? | Force = a magical power, which can be fuelled by careful controlled serenity or by strong emotion . Jedi = an order of monk-like knights and diplomats who use the light side of the force to aid them in keeping the peace. Sith = originally a race of redskinned aliens, later gave its name to a very specific order of dark side force users who practice the dark side in pursuit of personal power. After a huge battle with the Jedi, they were almost wiped out, but continued in secret using a very strict system where there'd only ever be one Sith master who would take an apprentice and train them up as an eventual successor. Sith Lord is really just a title for a powerful Sith and is used quite informally. |
what made Shakespeare so special? | Shakespeare created a code for his actors using punctuation. Which means, Shakespeare can direct actors today . That's a slice of amazing. Also, he wrote to the sound of a human heartbeat. It's not the only meter he uses, but the meter he uses most frequently. A side note- he created some words we still use today. Words like bedroom, and eyeball. I performed with a traveling Shakespeare troop for 4 years. |
Why is Tesla given such a hard time to be able to sell their cars? | Here how I'd explain it to a 5 year old: Dealerships make money by selling cars.They give some of this money to the government to stop other people from selling cars. |
What are the while table-type objects on pizzas used for? | It prevents the lid of the box from compressing down during delivery. That way the cheese and toppings of the pizza don't stick to the top inside it.To keep the middle of the box from collapsing and ruining your pizza. Particularly if you have more than one box stackedIts actually a tiny hat for the person who eats the most pizza slices. Whoever collects the most tiny hats in a year does not have to pitch in to buy pizza for the next 6 months of the following year, but during this six months they are ineligible to win any more tiny hats.It keeps the top of the pizza box from pushing down on your Pizza. If the top of the box were pressed down without one, cheese would stick to the box. Also, it's called a 'Pizza tent'. |
Airplanes are large metal birds much higher in the sky than anything else. Why aren't there more reported cases of planes being struck by lightning? | Aircraft will often divert around storms rather than flying through them. The actual conditions to get lightning around a cruise altitude is actually very rare due to the height being above most layers of cloud. Finally when aircraft get hit it's nornally a non event, planes are designed to deal with lightning strikes so the pilots will report it to atc and then the ground crew but other than that nobody really need no. Passengers may not even notice anything other than the fact that they are flying through a storm. |
What happens to the nuclear waste that comes from nuclear power? | First you throw your spent fuel rods into the bottom of a what is essentially a giant swimming pool and leave it there for a couple of years. Why do you do this? Because if you just pile fuel rods without constant cooling, then they will catch on fire from their own waste heat generated by radioactive decay of the shorter-lived fission products. This would be bad. Incidentally, don't drain a waste containment pond. Once decay has run its course enough for it to no longer be a fire hazard, you can toss it in a giant steel can full of helium as a coolant and leave it in a parking lot. Forever. Other countries bury some of their waste, but the Yucca Mountain facility in the United States was canceled and was too small to store it all anyway. We also extract uranium-238 for use in bullets, armor plating, radiation shielding and anything else that needs to be inexpensive and denser than lead. U-235 is the fun stuff and contrary to what you may have heard, U-238 is mostly harmless. Unless you make it into an armor-piercing autocannon round. Some countries take the separated U-235 and other goodies to make either bombs or more fuel rods. |
How does CGI “age?” If something looked real “at the time” why does it look less real now? | Like others mentioned, your basis for comparison for CGI is previous CGI—not reality. Interestingly enough, this is why movies like Independence Day and Jurrasic Park have aged so well. The emphasis was on practical effects with CGI added as icing on the cake. Movies that rely primarily on CGI will always look dated at some point, because there will always be something better. I think the uncanny valley is part of this conversation, too, but that's a separate issue. |
What's the difference between private military contractors like Blackwater and mercenaries that are prohibited by the Geneva Convention? | You can't use mercenaries to fight your war but you can hire them to provide security for your personnel. Also the part of the definition of mercenaries is that they are not nationals of one of the nations involved. So if all your mercenaries are from your nation you get a pass. |
why Jehovah’s Witnesses have no online presence? So instead of going door to door they can get involved in people’s Facebook, Twitter, IG etc? | Jehovah's witnesses are not encouraged to seek a higher education. In fact their organizations approach to communications with their members discourages critical thinking of basically any kind. The members willing to go proselytize are very likely not able to use computers well enough to do what your suggesting. Also due to the internet being a source for open dialogue most Jehovah's witnesses would spend all their time defending one of their numerous irrational and unhealthy church policies like their aversion to blood transfusions and such which really are not defendable. In an open dialogue Jehovah's witnesses just won't fair well. But in ooerson where the doctrine doesn't Matt er much and where friendships do they can possibly succeed in their proselytizing But any group willing to hold to irrational and dangerous beliefs without good reason will be actively criticized online.Well with only "144,000" spots in heaven available - why would they voluntarily reduce their own chances?Strictly speaking the actual organisation does have an online presence, at _URL_4_. Potential converts met face to face in the real world are often directed there for further info. Individual JWs aren't encouraged to get involved in online discussions. The big difference with private online discourse is that there is no second group member present to police the other group member's reactions to any alternative ideas encountered, whereas in their real-world "Ministry" JWs almost always travel in pairs. This means that the information and communication within that particular environment is as controlled as it can be by the group. Sending individual members off into the realms of Facebook and Twitter unchaperoned would risk the group's milieu control failing, which in turn could lead to a drop in membership.Please don't give them that idea! I hardly ever use it because of MLM and stay at home moms trying to sell me stuff! |
How come blood pools in your head when you hang upside down but it doesnt pool in your feet when you stand up? | because your blood has pressure/gravity receptors which detect changes in blood pressure. when you're stand up blood goes down to your legs which blood pressure increases in the blood vessels in your lower body - this causes a reflex in your brain to tell your vessels to constrict to reduce the blood flow. this process is a autonomic process regulated by your brainstem which also regulates breathing, heart, gag reflex and a whole host of other things. |
How come the US wasn't hit with sanctions for developing weapons such as the Cobalt bomb? | Another point albeit minor: the USA is on the UN Security Council and so could veto any UNSC backed sanctions. Countries like North Korea and Iran don't have that sort of power. |
How does knocking a person out work? | I'll add the force, be it fist, club, kick, whatever, has to be done in such a way to move to the center of the brain. So again, regardless the angle of the impact, it's force moves in a straight line to brain center.Your brain moves in a way it should never move. |
why do I remember people looking older than their age when I was younger | I noticed that same thing the other day. And it's kind of weird when you look a lot younger than you are, and you look at an 18-year-old and he looks like a baby, yet everyone thinks you look 18. Kind of a mind-fuck. |
How is Orange Juice economically viable when it takes me juicing about 10 oranges to have enough for a single glass of Orange Juice? | A lot of folks are pointing out that the oranges themselves are different, and that fancy equipment can get more juice out of the oranges. All that is true, but it doesn't explain how OJ is economically viable. If one orange tree can produce X bottles of juice, and maintaining the tree + harvesting + land + all the other costs ends up being Y dollars per tree, then all you have to do is do a little math to figure out how much you can sell bottles for and come out ahead. I think what you're really asking is how can orange juice be so cheap compared to the cost of the oranges it would take you to produce the same amount. Here you have to remember that orange growers aren't charging for oranges based on their expenses but based on *how much you'll pay for them.* If you'll pay 50 cents for an orange then they charge that. You might not want to pay a dollar. They're going to sell an amount of oranges that maximizes value. Better 1,000 oranges at 50 cents than 200 oranges at a dollar. If we assume that selling oranges in their natural form is the most profitable way for growers to sell them, then they would sell all of them this way if possible. If they flood the market with oranges though the price will go down. At a certain point it would become cost-prohibitive. If oranges were selling for a penny a piece then everyone would go out of business . So if orange growers only sell 10% of their oranges this way before it becomes inefficient, they can use the other 90% to make juice. Making juice might only yield a profit of 1 penny per orange, while selling oranges straight up yields a nickel per orange. But it's better to make that 1 penny than flood the market with oranges and go out of business. TL;DR it's all about meeting demand at efficient levels for each portion of the market. Gotta do something with all them oranges. |
Why do we perceive time going by quicker as we get older? | It comes down to synaptic connectivity, neurons, and the myelin coating them. When you are a child your brain is primarily focused on building hubs of information and laying down cheap roads everywhere and seeing what sticks. Continued use upgrades dirt roads to asphalt. As you age/repeatedly experience something you upgrade the roads you've travel through and in effect, send that information more quickly. As a child you have more opportunities to develop roads more efficiently. If you have information more closely related then small tidbits or gaps in understanding are more easily filled in. Ideally, development is supposed to get easier . Anything from sensory processing, pleasure association, emotional responses, thoughts on trees or the sky are going to get hammered out over time freeing up the brain and making time appear to go on faster. Hormonal response to various activities can accelerate or retard the 'feeling' of 'time', but that is correlative with the hormones effected and the processing being done. Obviously traumatic experiences and enjoyable experiences are going to effect your brain differently. If you were to throw a sufficiently motivated adult in front of math they didn't understand time would slow to a halt for them the same way a car ride does a child. tl;dr - Any other ELI5 here. |
Why, after what seems like a couple decades, does a TI-83 Calculator still costs $130 when other technologies get cheaper after a few years? | Because people are apparently still willing to pay that much for them. There aren't any serious, well known competitors, so if someone needs a graphing calculator they pick up a TI-8x. |
How does two-factor authentication (Duo Mobile) work without internet access? | I don't know the math behind this, but an autetication dongle or software will be shipped to you with a pre-installed algorithm that use a secret key to generate a random range of numbers every X seconds. When that specific dongle/software is linked to your own account, a software on the server side pairs your account to that secret key, and it too star generating random numbers every X seconds. Since they use the same secret key, they will generate the same random numbers at the same time. When you type those numbers in a web page, they just check that they are the same to grant you access. p.s. I may have got wrong some details, but this is the idea behind a two-facto autentication. |
Why does blacking out a person's eyes make it difficult to recognize them? | Others have medical opinions, but I'll tell you one thing I know to be true for me: healthy eyes don't change much over the life of a human being. They don't change size, and you can identify a person from their eyes even if much of their face has weathered or changed over many years. |
Isn't it pointless to wash hands if we do not sanitize wallets, phones, door handles, steering wheels, bottoms of our pants, etc? | Multiple reasons. Primary one is that bacteria actually can't survive for long in many of these places. Steering wheels dry out and aren't touched most of the day and in summer they will be bombarded with UV which will do the trick. Certain metals, especially brass, copper and silver are known to kill most/all bacteria over time. The other reason is the makeup of the bacteria. The stuff that does live on your phone generally isn't particularly dangerous. The ones that just came out of your ass are virtually guaranteed to make you sick. So, washing your hands after going to the toilet keeps germs off your hands. Assuming you do that the other things you handle should be relatively germ free too. Then there is the other side - the non-germ reason to wash your hands. Copper coins may be sterile by their nature, but after handling hundreds of them your hands will be filthy and anything you eat is going to taste of copper. |
why in movies they tell the soldiers not to fire until they get closer | In addition to the comments about accuracy that others have brought up, remember that reloading took a long time back in those days. If they were charging you wouldn't get a second shot, so you'd have to make your first shot count.Actually, the phrase "don't shoot until you see the whites of their eyes" originated in the days of smooth-bore muskets. The smooth-bores only had an accuracy range of around 50 yards so soldiers were instructed to wait until the enemy got pretty close. That had less relevancy when rifled weapons became common but old-school military still stuck to it. A lot of soldiers died in the Civil War because the officers weren't able to adjust to the range of the new weapons and insisted on sticking to the "white of their eyes" edict. |
How do cover songs work? | I've only taken one course on copyrights but to my understanding if an artist wants to do a cover the owner of the original song is legally obligated to allow it. They charge money, yes, but it's a relatively small amount. |
Before 9/11 or any infamous "Islamic extremist" terrorist attacks, was there any prejudice on Muslims? | Sure. People have been prejudiced against different people since the beginning of recorded history. The exact difference doesn't really matter. 9/11 was really the beginning of bigots being *afraid* of Muslims rather than just disliking and distrusting them.Yes. Throughout the course of human history, people have formed groups and hated and been prejudiced against those of other groups. The Christian kingdoms of Europe and the Muslim kingdoms of the near East and north Africa waged many wars. |
How come when we are sick we cough while awake, but we don't cough in our sleep? | we cough in our sleep sick, or not. We just aren't aware of it mainly because its not life threatening or we're in deep deep sleep. For example, people with sleep apnea snore crazy loud and suffocate in there sleep but don't wake up consciously. |
Why are USA mass shootings persistent and at a higher rate than other countries? | I say it's our fault, as US citizens, that things like this keep happening. We're obsessed with tragic events and refuse to shut up about them. Both the suspect and victim are talked about for years on end, so some people see commiting some sort of atrocity as taking their own little spot in history. |
Why is it so hard to count with peripheral vision | There are rods outside your retina and you do have color vision outside the foveal field of view it's just poor. Rods have much higher convergence on ganglion cells giving them more sensitivity while rods have less convergence giving them better acuity For counting! |
How do you outgrow food allergies? I out grew my lifelong dairy allergy at 21. | I have read somewhere that there are actually clinical treatments for food allergies. They start off by giving the patient something non-allergic then mix some of the allergy-inducing food into it. * Example, you are allergic to peanuts. For the first treatment, they will give you cereal with NO PEANUTS . After a set period, they will now INTRODUCE YOU TO THE ALLERGEN; after 1 week of eating cereals with no peanuts, they will now give you cereal with 0.01g of peanut for 1 week. * If you don't show any allergic reactions, they will now INCREASE THE PEANUT CONTENT , and continue from there until you can fully tolerate the allergen.I am not an expert at all, but the theory regarding allergies that so far made the most sense to me is that roughly every seven years or so your body changes and that can also cause to more or less suddenly have new allergies, as well as lose existing ones. |
Why do the windows on airplanes not line up with the seats? | I think this has been asked before, but it's because the seats are installed later, and can be altered for space. |
How have North Korean Leaders managed to brainwash their population? | Media it's not only North Korea that gets brainwashed. We also get brainwashed by media wether you believe it or not. Also, he controls the influences they get from outside the country. People however believe what they want to believe, not everyone believes every word the North Korean leaders tell them, same like we here believe just what we want to believe from the media.I guess you could say they did it by the book ;) 1984 of course', "Remember when you were taught as a kid that different parts of your tongue taste different tastes and you believed it until your adulthood when you read it somewhere on the internet? What would've happened if you'd never read it on the internet? You'd have thought that it was a 'fact' all your life. Kids believe everything they're told. The North Korean schools do not give the North Koreans real education. They are part of a propaganda campaign and instead make the children recite all the amazing things that their glorious leader has accomplished. Since they got no other source that will discredit these 'facts', they will go on to believe it their entire life. When you're brought up to believe that your glorious leader was born according to a prophecy and a rainbow formed at the place where he was born and such bullshit, and grow up believing it, I guess you'd grow up to be a pretty suggestible individual.They start "training" the population at a very young age [almost from the cradle]. When you are told/taught a set of values from a very young age, and there is no counter, you'll believe your leaders before believing anyone else. The government controls almost all aspects of education, media and foreign access to its people. Kim Jong Il announces they won the world cup? Must be true as we don't/can't hear anything different. |
Why are our brains designed to enjoy what feels good as opposed to what IS good for us? | When we evolved those responses they made sense. We crave salt, sugar, fat, because these are critical to survival but *were* a rare resource. We haven't had enough time to lose instincts and responses. Overload of sugar, salt, and fat is extremely recent in our history and our bodies have not caught up with modern convenience. |
What scientifically stops us from creating life? | We are trying, but it is *fucking hard*. It's not like we can precisely manipulate individual atoms and molecules as if they were Lego bricks. |
Why can Google search the internet faster than my OS can search my harddrive? | ELI5 version of all these Indexing answers: Your computer has to search through the book for what you want. Google has already read the book and it's simply telling you what page are you looking for. |
How come some people don't get fatter as fast as others do? | The people who eat whatever/whenever and stay skinny are using more energy or gaining less from the food. Perhaps they exercise, have tapeworms, eat irregularly, have digestive problems etc. Many underweight people eat inconsistently. Sure, you may see them devouring two burgers for lunch, but if that's their only meal of the day it's still not much.Always wondered this. I had a friend in Highschool that did nothing but smoke weed & play video games but the dude was the skinniest guy I knew. Always thought it was weirdReally it boils down to simple calorie counting. I'm one of those "sits around does nothing eats crap but still skinny" people. But if you actually followed me around all week, you 'd see that I'm actually barely hitting my caloric requirement. |
Time Travel and the Theory of Relativity | Here, just to f*ck further w/ your sense of time. [Cracked: 7 Theories on Time That Would Make Doc Brown's Head Explode] |
Why do people with high IQ tend to take more drugs and alcohol? | Because you stop trusting warnings from other people when you realize you don't value their judgement or share their motives. It's hard to value judgement calls from people who think or believe things that seem ridiculous to you because you know them to be false or using poor logic. |
Why are medical doctors susceptible to sales pitches by pharmaceutical salesmen/women? Isn't it a doctor's responsibility to know more than a sales rep? | Not sure if you're asking from the USA, which has its own peculiarities when it comes to health care, but here's an Australian perspective. 1. New treatments are becoming available all the time and keeping up to date is a constant challenge. Drug company reps know this; if they can provide the information, the brand name of their medication will stick in the doctors memory and the doctor is likely to continue prescribing that specific brand of drug long after other generic versions of the medication are available. 2. Evidence sells. all doctors prescribe what's shown to work. If a particular medication has had a big scientific study supporting its use come out, you can bet the reps will be out bringing attention to that research. 3. Direct inducements are no longer used in most 1st-world countries. Even the notorious pens, golf umbrellas, and coffee cups are no longer given out the way they were. However, the drug companies can raise their profile by sponsoring educational events; this will give the rep a platform to build a relationship with the doctor, and again to increase the profile of their brand-name medicine over the same drug sold under a different name. 4. Some doctors prefer to prescribe a particular brand of a medication to reward the company that put in the research dollars and the risk to develop it, to encourage the development of new medicines. I agree that doctors need to be aware of marketing and sales tactics . However, this concept that prescribing practices are all driven by pharmaceutical reps is a little simplistic - in my experience they work hard on relationships and use this to build brand awareness, rather than pushing the use of a particular product. I'm sure this varies from place to place - some countries even allow direct advertising of pharmaceuticals to consumers - but that's my perspective. |
Basic finance that adults are expected to know | visit /r/PersonalFinance, the wiki/FAQ on the right hand side should have all you need. Some reading and research will help. Credit cards: you borrow money from the issuer to pay for things. At the end of the month, they bill you for what you spent. If you pay in-full and on time, that's that. If you pay partially, an interest charge is levied on the balance equal to the APR percentage divided by 12 . Credit Score: you can check yours for free once a year from each of the 3 agencies: trans union, equifax, experian. They monitor what you do with bills/loans/etc and make a report. A company called FICO uses some math to turn this report into a score. Higher score, safer borrower, so you get higher limits and lower interest rates. Mortgage: A loan issued to buy a house, secured by the home itself. What that means is, if you don't pay, the bank gets the house . |
Why are so many creatures in places like South America and Australia venomous and dangerous, as opposed to the UK or europe? | Besides the climate difference, which promotes ectotherms like snakes. Europe had been 'civilised' for a very long time. In England all the dangerous animals like wolves, bears or boars were hunted to extinction for game and to protect livestock. So its not so much that these places didn't have dangerous animals, it is just due to having a large population for such a long time means that the animals had to move or be killed resulting in little to no dangerous animals. In Australia we have a different mindset, or at least most of us do. We are a young country and there is only 22 million people in a country larger than all of Europe. We have the space, so unless we are being directly harmed by an animal most of us are pretty happy to let the little fucker just chill and let it do its business. I mean I had a redback chilling in my pool for months.Could it be that Europe and other areas that were traditionally densely populated with humans killed off harmful animals? Example: wolvesI took ecology with a reptile expert in college. He said it had to do with the amount of energy available year round because of the high temperatures. Venom is biologically expensive to produce so organisms need a steady source of food. Also these poisonous species are poikilothermic meaning they can not regulate their body temperatures. |
How does the Speaker Option in phones not cause echo to the other person? Do phones explicitly handle this? | I have a related question sorta why is it you don't hear your voice when you talk on the phone but when you blow air into it you can hear that? |
Developing grey hair at a young age | I'm 35 now and my 80% of my hair is white , just plain white! Started turning white when I was 16 or 17. I have a crew cut so it's also a pain to dye black because the colour sticks to my scalp if im not careful :D . I reckon I got this from my mother who said that her hair started turning white at an early age. |
How does Google Maps know about current traffic congestions and jams? | They're snooping on the people who have the app installed. *Maybe* they only check when it's running, but maybe they check all the time. When they see a bunch of people slow down, they know there is traffic. |
The fear of Muslims and the religion of Islam (In the U.S. and Europe) | Watch [this video] and all you need is the first minute and a half. Western cultures, especially over the last few decades, **really** don't take kindly to religion provoked violence threats. |
Why in visual depictions of Native Americans, the native men are always cleanly shaved. | You are looking at this from a European viewpoint. Native Americans were racially closer to Asians, who don't grow such a heavy beard.Br his is why the old Asians let their beard grow long. It was a sign of masculinity and age which conveys status. |
How did STD's begin? | If you have time, check out this podcast from Radiolab called Patient Zero. They talk about the first AIDS victim, Ebola, and Typhoid Mary. _URL_0_ This was one of the first podcasts I listed to last year and since then, I've been hooked! |
How is Vitamin D, something that we receive from the Sun turned into something consumable like a tablet? | It's not like the vitamin D is flying out of the sun and coming to earth than going into our skin. Our skin just uses sunlight to manufacture vitamin D. |
Why is being "transgender" not considered a mental illness? | OP, I'm guessing you're male based on your username, if not then switch the words to make sense for you.. Now how do you know you're male? Is it because you look down and see a penis, or because your parents said you are a boy, or do you just 'know'? Now imagine that your entire life, you feel like your body is wrong or doesn't match, that everything people see or perceive of you is wrong, that you're NOT what others have been trying to convince you your whole life. That's not mental illness or a delusion. THAT is being transgender: your brain 'knows' its own gender even if the body's sex is different. Studies have shown that the brain chemistry of many transgendered individuals more closely matches their identified gender than their assigned sex. |
how will self driving cars deal with inaccurate GPS maps or area is under construction? | Self driving cars come in many shapes and sizes in terms of how they navigate. GPS is just one of many inputs the car can use to determine it's position. Much the same way that a human driver doesn't just stare at the GPS and try to keep the arrow between the lines, an autonamous car wouldn't either. The GPS would be to get where it's going, which roads to take etc, but actually driving would be done visually and with the assistance of built in markers in the road, radar, lidar, ultrasonics, and other sensors. There are also methods called inertial navigation where in an autonomous vehicle keeps track of it's position using highly accurate gyroscopes, load sensors, g sensors, and knowing how fast it's going and in what direction. So if one particular input stops working, like a GPS dead spot, or a sudden downpour that renders visible light cameras useless, there are still multiple fallback methods to determine that car is still on the road, still in it's lane, and there are no obstructions. If enough things should go wrong all at the same time, the car would signal a warning and come to a safe stop. What is really going to make automated cars work well though is going to be small area networks that allow the cars to communicate amongst themselves, forming a kind of moving mesh network so that if one car encounteres an obstruction, all cars around it know instantly and can take evasive maneuvers. If one car needs to stop, the cars behind it are already moving out of the way before the brake lights even come on, etc. Think of a swarm of fish all swimming together in a school. If an individual vehicle were to suffer a problem, it could get telemetry from all the vehicles around it and because it would be peer to peer networking, there isn't a need for infrastructure or smart roads since all the network topology is built into the cars themselves and they form a web/mesh network listening to signals around them and re-broadcasting them. |
Why haven't the native americans revolted in canada/usa like native populations in other countries? | And the Sioux have been suing the U.S. gov for the past 40 years and it went to the supreme court they were offered 186 million dollars but they didn't take it, because they just want their land back. And the fed won't give it. |
the problem with Monsanto and its rise to becoming such a prominent monopoly. | Ok, so no one here is answering the question of *why* Monsanto is a monopoly . I'm going to try. The problem, perhaps ironically, is that genetically modified foods are *over-regulated*. Essentially, the costs associated with all the red tape around GM products, even in the US, are astronomical . There are great profits to be had , but the costs create *massive* barriers to entry in the industry. Essentially what this means is that, right now, the only viable business model in agricultural GM is to be a giant corporation. What few GM startups there are just can't make inroads to the market because of the prohibitive costs of regulation. This problem might go away on it's own, because the individual component parts of the research and engineering that go in to creating GM plants *are* becoming cheaper with time, so it's hopeful that more people will be able get in on it eventually. But the immediately effective way to increase competition would be to deregulate somewhat. TLDR: Very strict regulation prevents smaller companies from competing with the likes of Monsanto. knowledge of this subject comes mostly from a close family member who is a molecular biologist working in agriculture, and I remember the same sentiments being expressed in [this AMA by a UF Horticultural science professor]) Actually, for answers to a lot of good questions relating to GMOs and their use in agriculture, check out [this AMA] from a professor at the University of Florida. |
Why do fingers/toes hurt so much more when they are cold? | I think he's asking why does the cold amplify the pain of doing normal things or getting injured. Like when you try to open something with really cold hands or stub a really cold toe. |
Do pets get a sore neck from always having to look up to us? | Do you get a sore neck looking at street signs and traffic lights? me neither. Most animals are moving around or laying on their back when they look at us, very rarely do you see a dog craning its neck to get a good look at something. Yeah they can strain muscles but most animals are not dumb like people. A person will lean over the edge of something while trying to screw in a light and end up wrenching a half dozen muscles. People will hurt themselves to get something done because they can weigh the consequences. If a dog is bending at some funny angle and it starts to hurt, the dog stops. Animals won't knowingly endanger themselves unlike us. |
How does the LHC not melt when it produces temperatures of 5,500,000,000,000C? | A spark generated by rubbing your feet on the carpet and touching a doorknob is pretty darned hot. The temperature that will ionize air is several thousand degrees. But the amount of energy stored in it is really small. What causes a burn's damage is the amount of energy delivered to the material, not so much the temperature. So in the LHC, the amount of energy delivered in collision between protons is going to be 13 trillion electron volts in 2015. That sounds like a lot but an electron volt is an itty bitty unit of energy, so it amounts to 20 ergs. An erg is the amount of energy a mosquito needs to take off. Secondly, this happens in an isolated volume, well away from any solid materials and surrounded by vacuum. So there's no contact with any material to conduct the heat. Finally, the products of the collision all go flying in separate directions, spaced far apart before they ever deposit any of their energy. So that temperature gets dissipated in a few tens of nanoseconds. |
would the screen rotation function work in space? | There are a lot of small effects that your smartphone could pick up on and potentially rotate the screen. However, if the effect isn't strong enough the phone will ignore it. For example, if I hold my phone vertically, set it down on a flat table, and then slowly pick it back up along the horizontal side, at some point it will change orientation, but not right away. For me at about 10 degrees off the table it decides the signal is strong enough and rotates the screen. The gyroscopes will still detect the rotation just fine, and if the phone is programmed to primarily use the gyros, it may rotate the screen when you rotate the phone quickly. However, once again, if the signal isn't strong enough it will be ignored. If you rotate then phone slowly it may ignore the signal and fail to rotate the screen. For this reason, I personally think it is very unlikely that the screen rotation function would work consistently in space. |
How come the United States has the "opt-in" system to be an organ donor? What are the possible advantages? | There are people who, for any number of reasons, want to be buried with their organs. For some, it can be religious, as some religions require the body to be buried whole, or at least as completely as is possible. Others simply don't like the idea of their organs being harvested after death. Regardless of the reason, it was decided that to be an opt-in, rather than opt-out, system, so that people who wanted to donate could choose to, without making those who didn't wish to donate have to complete any extra steps. |
Why is it racist to say "I'm not attracted to X ethnicity"? | It isn't but sjws are so quick to be offended for disadvantaged people that it's very easy to cry racism and walk away feeling better about themselves not realizing that they aren't doing anything other than stroking their own egos. Not one of them would try and do anything to actually address a problem. |
how are these millions of refugee migrants are coming up with the money to smuggle themselves out of the Middle East into Europe? | The people who are refugees now weren't *always* refugees - before their country got shelled and bombed back to the stone age they had jobs, cars, houses, and money in the bank. What they don't have any more is a sane country to live in, so they're using all the resources they can get their hands on to try to get themselves and their families somewhere safe. |
Why are humans the only species that needs to cook (most kinds of) meat to eat it? | We don't need to cook meat to eat it. This should be obvious what with all the sushi restaurants. Cocking food makes the nutrients more available for our digestion and clears out many parasites so it became the norm. It is not required though.Cooking food has allowed us humans to take on more calories in a shorter amount of time. Cooked food, e.g vegetables, are easier to consume, digest and absorbed into the body. Hence, unlike cows and other animals that has to spend the entire day grazing on the fields to meet their daily calorie intake, humans just need a short period of time to have sufficient energy. On top of that, cooked food reduces the odds of getting food poisoning.We don't when we have a fresh kill. The issue is that we do not eat meat within minutes of killing the animal, we kill it days or even weeks before we consume them and ship them about the world and buy them in grocery stores. That allows bacteria to grow and that bacterial growth is what will make us ill. |
Why do we suddenly have to pee in times of great stress? | I don't know, but it must be similar to the reason why my dog has to pee the first time he sees me every day |
Why I should pay off my student loans rather than wait 20 years for the government to absorb them? | Because it's what a fucking responsible person does. You took out the loans to go to college. Yes, being in debt sucks, but you chose to pay for college via loans. Now pay them back over time just like everyone else. This question doesn't belong in r/explainlikeimfive. It belongs in r/askreddit, maybe even r/firstworldproblems. EDIT: and you question is moot. My understanding is that only NEW loans after the law goes into action will be eligible for the new regulations. |
how does a company like Google make all it's money from advertising that nobody clicks on? | I actually click them fairly often. Whenever I find I need to look up a company like walmart or something else which I hate their business practices, but I want to check a product spec, or something, I'll click the ad link rather then the actual search result. That way they get charged a little. It's small and petty, but I take a tiny bit of pleasure from intentionally makng them pay. |
If our bodies have no use for organs like the appendix or wisdom teeth, why haven't they disappeared by now? | Because there's currently no reason having them would lower one's chances at reproducing. Situations where these organs threaten an individual's life before they've reached reproductive age is rare, and modern medicine has increased this rarity. Even if a mutation caused a lack of wisdom teeth, that mutation doesn't grant an individual an advantage for procreation. |
Why can some birds, which do not even have lips, perfectly mimic human language, while chimpanzees, which have mouths and lips much more similar to humans, cannot? | _URL_6_ This is a great video that explains *how* songbirds make sounds. WATCH IT, I promise it's cool I like birds |
In space which way is up? | I'm also interested 🙋, also how could you determine it. if you were floating freely in space? |
Why are smart people more likely to be depressed than others? | My mom is never in a sad mood for long, she doesn't care about world issues, doesn't know what the world map look likes, thinks our state is the entire country, you try to argue against religious beliefs and she will not be open minded and tries to block it. How can you be depressed when you got a mind like that? Smart people think too much therefore sees the negativity in life. |
Why dont people put a bunch of mirrors around their solar panels to increase the energy they convert? | You run into overheating issues fairly quickly. If you have ever lit things on fire with a magnifying glass, you know how much heat concentrated sunlight can make. Also, solar panels can use sunlight that has been scattered through clouds or haze, but your mirror array won't be able to focus it on the panels. |
What are stocks? Is it worth investing in them? What should i know before Investing? | Two main rules about stocks: the quickest way to lose money is to be forced to sell when the price is low. And buying a variety of different stocks will improve your chances of making money. It's hard to stay invested in a big downturn. Stomaching a 75% loss and not selling is harder than you think. And it's doubly hard if it's all in the one stock, and you're watching other stocks rise in value. Index funds, which are stocks that own pieces of hundreds or thousands of pieces of other stocks, are generally the best way to get into share ownership. My advice is buy something from vanguard, invest little bits regularly , and don't buy so much that you can be forced into selling. |
How do prosthetic limbs stay in? | There are a few ways this can be done. Currently, almost everyone uses a socket that is custom shaped to the amputee's remaining limb. Some people, especially in Europe where this is becoming more common, use osseointegration. This means there is a piece of metal, usually titanium, surgically implanted into the amputated end of your bone and comes out through the skin. The piece outside of your skin allows a prosthetic arm to attach/detach. For sockets, some people here have mentioned straps, and this is common, especially if your amputation is above elbow. Some simply use a tight fit between their socket and remaining limb. This is more common for below elbow and leg amputations. Some sockets have a corresponding sleeve the amputee wears to avoid too much rubbing of the socket with the skin, which can be irritating. The sleeve can also be used to create a vacuum seal, which further secures the socket onto the limb. The sleeve can also have a pin pointing out the end that is used to lock the socket in place. While sockets are the most common prosthetic attachment method, they are not well-liked by amputees. They are hot, uncomfortable, and need frequent tuning. That is why osseointegration is gaining traction. You will see more osseointegration in the future, but some problems need to be worked out. The surgical procedure has a high infection risk and skin regrowth around the area where it exits the skin can be problematic. Edits: typos |
Why can you not smell an odour that your body is producing anywhere near as strong as other people can? | I find the reverse to be true. I can smell something on myself, but others are unable to. Maybe something is wrong with me. I don't really smell other people unless they have a very strong odor be it perfume or a food smell. Except my husband. I can smell him as soon as he walks in the door no matter where I am. I can also track his movements through a store just by following his scent like a bloodhound. |
where does left/right handedness come from, and what evolutionary imperative made most people right handed? | I don't think many of these answers have anything to do with the 'why' of hand orientation. A lot of it seems like bad science. I'm no expert but I can tell you that it has almost little or nothing to do with fighting. Citing Radio Lab from WNYC, the leading theory is as follows: Left hemisphere of the brain controls the right hand, while the right hemisphere controls the left hand. It takes a lot of coordination to communicate messages to and from other people. Since the vast majority of communication is non-verbal, there is a lot of muscular involvement. The areas of communication are both located in the left hemisphere of the brain. The brain essentially integrates high-quality coordination with the right side of the body. Now.. There's an obvious missing piece here and from my understanding it needs more research. My studies in school are on the biological basis of crime. So what I *do* know, is that the brain is very complex. It's complex in the sense that certain areas tend to make connections to other areas in very unconventional and sometimes *unobservable* ways. *Please* correct me if I'm wrong. I always enjoy seeing someone with credentials show the answer. |
If the Half-Life series is so popular and apparently a staple in the Valve catalogue, why did production halt on Half-Life 3? | Valve had good reason to pause development because something even more lucrative came up: Steam as a distribution platform. This makes them truckloads of money and investment into that could hardly be diverted into HL3. At this point HL3 has the problem of being *too highly* anticipated. There is nothing that Valve could do to make HL3 not be a dissapointment, even if they cloned Mila Kunis and sent one to every customer for a complimentary blowjob. Holding off is probably better for PR purposes and it isn't' like they need the money, or would get a better return compared to other projects. So HL3 is probably in development hell until they use it to launch VR as a platform or something. |
How do people decipher ancient writing systems? | First: English is not my first language. You have been warned. Second: I know that this is already marked as answered, but I wanted to share my knowledge from this [book] which is awesome btw :) > Rosetta Stone This example is also great to elaborate the difficulties with deciphering ancient languages: Just because you know the translation, you cannot read the unknown text. Scientists thought for a century that hieroglyphics are [ideograms] though later research showed that they are mainly [phonograms] mixed with few ideograms. Deciphering ancient languages can be seen as a type of [cryptoanalysis] as in 'I have a bunch of symbols and I want to know their meaning'. As /u/Neo63 stated frequency analysis is a major part of decryption. Since ancient languages are luckily most of the time not encrypted scientists can use symbols or chains of symbols which occur frequently in many texts to try to decipher its meaning. This was a major part in the deciphering of [Linear B], which was Greek in another alphabet, where [Micheal Ventris] translated often ocurring symbol chains as the names of cities. Of course this was only possible because he could assume that the stone plates held trading information . This leads to another important part of deciphering ancient languages: Knowing the *context*. Trade information on a stone plate? There are certainly names of cities somewhere in the text. Of course you cannot just search for symbol chains with the same length as 'Knossos' because you do not know if the symbols represent letters or syllables or words. In case of Linear B on part of its deciphering was the detection of cases which lead to the deciphering of the syllables . |
The Pirate Bay, and How It's Currently Operating. | They run their company in Switzerland. I think you do whatever the fuck you want when you're Swiss. |
The General Rules of Soccer | Whole topic overviews are probably going to get removed but main things: 1. 11 players on the field including a goalie, whatever combinations you want but its usually better to stack your defense 2. only the goalie can use their hands, and no one else can 3. an offside is when an attacking player is passed a ball while standing further down field of the last defender, if the ball is already past the last defender then the attacker can go for it for whichever team didn't touch it last. If it goes out on the ends then its either a corner , or a goal kick if the attacking team hit it out. 5. ball starts in the middle and first pass is free . 6. Tackling rules may depend on your league but if slide tackling is allowed then it is not allowed from behind . 7. for tackling basically if you hit the ball before the player then anything goes so long as you don't raise your arms. You can body check someone so long as you don't raise your arms and you hit the ball first . If you miss the ball then its a foul. 8. free kicks can be taken from anywhere a foul or handball happens, if it happens within the penalty box then it is a penalty . There are a lot of rules, maybe just watch a bunch of games, and have kids practice passing while running. |
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