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Why it's expected for companies profits to grow for each year forever... | Most companies that you know of, like Microsoft or Samsung, are funded by selling parts of the company called shares. Each share shows ownership of a *tiny* part of the organization as a whole. So say company A sells 10,000 shares to raise money for their operations and I buy 100. I technically own 1% of the company. H... |
Disregarding microscopic life forms, why is it so difficult for us to find intelligent extraterrestrial life when so many planets, stars and universes exist? | In all the history of the Earth, it has only had intelligent life which could possibly talk to other planets for 50 years. Out of several billion years. How long will we remain capable of this? The chances of two different intelligent lifeforms existing around the same time and location to be able to communicate is sma... |
by the act of taking honey are we not killing the bees? I mean the reason why they make honey is to survive the periods of the year that flowers are not available. | * beekeepers raise bees in areas where they is an ample supply of food sometimes they plant flowers explicitly for the bees* honey bees are chosen for their ability to produce honey the varieties human use produce far more honey than they need* humans don't take all the honey, they leave plenty behind for the bees |
Why can my phone load and play 1080p videos seamlessly but when it comes to some .gif/.gifv it takes minutes to load/stutters like King George VI? | Also video is composed using a codec, most of which are more and more standardized. Some of these standardized codecs, like Mpeg2, Mpeg4, h264 and very recently h265 are being accelerated by the SoC . So even though it's more work, your phone has an offload engine for that work which makes it very easy. In some video p... |
it's 2015 why don't window wipers wipe the whole windshield? | Because you're going to have to make a system that goes vertical or horizontal. To do this for going to have to introduce a joint that is going to have to be manipulated adding more complexity, more parts, tight tolerances, more weight and use more electricity to the system. All of this for a system that is going to cl... |
If all of the gold in the federal reserve bank of NY disappeared, what would happen to the economy? | Not to stray off topic.. but your girlfriend isn't capable of explaining this to you? She's in school for economics and can't explain this basic, basic concept? I'd want my money back. |
What are the fundamental differences between a software engineer and a software developer? | systems architect" and a few other things. My job has always been pretty much the same shit. Writing software is writing software. In some places, being an "engineer" carries the connotation of being more structured & rigorous but in others, they just slap the title on every code monkey they have. If you're looking at ... |
How does soaking a piece of clothing in milk remove red wine stains? | Drycleaner/Fabricare Specialist here. The industry standard is a Tannin Stain Remover applied to the stain, with steam added to increase the action of spotting agent. In my experience, it is the best option. It doesn't work 100% of the time, but it's more reliable than anything else I know of. |
Why people say "African americans", It just isnt a thing in any country I'm aware of or any other race or ethnic group, I don't get it so why? | In the UK, the first generation of people that came over on the [Windrush] , called themselves 'Afro-Caribbean'. Their children also referred to themselves as such but their children refer to themselves as British. |
What's the point of the UN if the US can conduct strikes without the UN's support | If you're going to spit on someone, it's polite to ask them before you do it, even if you were going to do it anyways and the person you're spitting on can't stop you from spitting on them.The UN was made to prevent another catastrophic world war, but even the founders admitted its weakness and only saw it as a first s... |
Why do I feel tired all day but when I get into bed I'm wide awake? | Insomnia can be brought on by behavioral reinforcement. If you stay awake in bed, lying down not sleeping, you are encouraging for you to repeat that behavior in bed next time. Stimuli encourage behaviors; in this case, the bed is encouraging wakefulness because you're continually doing it. So if you're awake in bed fo... |
How a body detox works? | Detox is basically a scam, not based in proper scientific evidence. With so many things in life, you can't trust the people selling it, or the celebrities endorsing it. What you can trust tends to be peer-reviewed evidence based in clinical trials.The only real "detox" would be swallowing charcoal or saltwater to puke ... |
How come when im in complete darkness and look at something I cant see it very well, but when looking away I can clearly see it in my peripheral? | Because, the cells responsible for your peripheral vision are called rods, they are much more sensitive to that the other photoreceptor cells in you eyes called cones. Although you have both in all places in your eye, rods are more concentrated at the edge. This makes our peripheral vision much more light sensitive tha... |
When doctors/paramedics shine a torchlight into your eyes, what are they searching for? | Pupil dilation If your pupils don't dilate, you may have suffered head trauma/brain damage and need medical attention ASAP |
How come water expands when it freezes if the molecules become more tightly packed together when a liquid becomes a solid? | Water depends strongly on hydrogen bonding, a weak attraction between the polar hydrogens of one molecule and the polar oxygen molecules of two adjacent molecules. This is responsible for many of water's properties. In a liquid state, there is enough energy present to constantly break and reform these bonds, letting wa... |
Why is the EU freedom of movement policy so rejected by the British, but so pushed by other EU member states? | I've often wondered if it's something to do with the number of EU migrants coming to Britain to work vs the number of British migrants going to EU countries to work. Does anyone have figures for this? |
Why do I remember the lyrics to a song that I haven't heard since 1994, but I can't remember what I did a few days ago? | What you did five days ago didn't have a good beat, nor could you dance to it. |
How do SSRI's work? | Serotonin is released from one brain cell to the next, the current belief is that more serotonin equals happier outlook. After the serotonin is released it is absorbed back into the brain cell that released it to be used again. SSRI's stop the serotonin from being absorbed back, meaning the brain cell receiving keeps r... |
If the US believes in the separation of church and state, why does each political party reference 'God' so frequently? | political party isn't a government thing. You and your friends can start its own political party. There are many political parties. Just because there has been the same 2 largest ones for decades, does not mean others don't exist. |
Why does paralysis occur? Why don't nerve cells regenerate and reconnect like other cells? | The reason is that central nerve cells are longer than other cells in the body and would need to reconnect in precisely the same way that they connected before. When you are born, the central nervous system grows as an interconnected unit. Once severed, the body has no mechanism to identify the correct neural path to m... |
Why has France been targeted so often in terrorist attacks recently? | A large poorly integrated Muslim minority, many of whom live in Paris which is a badly run city in which the poor and immigrants are marginalised in the 'banlieu' suburbs. It's an environment that breeds resentment. |
If nearly all the countries are in debt or in a financial crisis, where is all the money going? | I'm not going to claim I'm a financial genius who understands how all of this works, but I think this link holds the answer somewhere:_URL_2_ |
How can tineye find a single picture amongst billions in a second but a 5000 row VLOOKUP in Excel takes much longer? | There are a million ways to index random objects. Lets say you have a million images as files, and as /u/kentnl says, you could convert each one to a unique number. So then you have your target picture, and you convert that to a number. Lets say for your target picture, the first digit of the hash number is 7. Well you... |
Why do vitamin pills smell so awful? | Because a lot of the compounds you're taking smell, or have to be stabilized or accompanied by compounds that smell. For instance, thiamine smells like sweat socks. Some multivitamins have hydrogen sulfide, which is a bit skunky or like a rotten egg. To contain the smells most multivitamins have a thin coating, but it'... |
Is there a reason most people always say they would save an animal over a person in an emergency situation? | I do not understand this behavior AT ALL. I would, in all circumstances, save the human and never the animal. But then again, I'm highly allergic to most animals and therefore have never formed a close bond with any pet mostly they are only going to poison me, so it's not difficult to choose the human even if they are ... |
Are there serious hurdles, specifically for Tech companies, that deter employers from facilitating Work From Home options? | Because your company had a 1980s vision of how their 21st century enterprise should function. The gains of WFH are tremendous. Increased quality of life from not commuting, annual fuel expense reduction, the comfort of being in one's home and not a staid office. I honestly believe that jobs requiring you to report to t... |
How come when you drive backwards, your car tends to feel like it swerves more when you turn the steering wheel then when you are driving forward? | The car feels more 'swervy' going backwards because you are behind the pivot point instead of in front of it. Also the inertia of rear steer is different on your body so you feel thrown around a bit too. |
Why do hamsters enjoy running in wheels while other rodents (like rats and ferrets) do not? | My hamster is so lazy She will run on her wheel maybe a few hours in total per week.. And when putting her in her exercise ball she explores for only a minute before finding my feet and then just sits in her wheel waiting to be cuddled She is a perfectly healthy and young hamster so medical is not the reason It's just ... |
How did World War 2 catalyze an economic surge in the US, but Afghanistan, Iraq and now possibly Syria put us further in debt? | The money spent and % of GDP was much higher in WWII. We're talking about $4 trillion in WWII spending compared to about $1 trillion. WWII spending counted for at least 35% of GDP* while post 9/11 wars amounted to just 1.2%, even if you include all of defense spending it is still only about 4-5%. So while the numbers t... |
Why does uploading slow down my connection so much versus downloading? | It's like two pipes, You have a large pipe coming in that carries everything you are downloading and a small pipe going out that takes everything you upload. So because the D/L pipe is larger it can carry more data before it gets blocked up. However that small pipe can't take as much of a load so gets blocked up easier... |
What's in it for the people who keep uploading movies and software to torrent sites | The New Yorker wrote an article about something similar, it's called [The Man Who Broke the Music Business] It's about the early days of MP3 sharing, but it still relates to your question. If you don't want to read a long New Yorker article, the first half basically says that they're in these 'release groups' who go th... |
Why don't women's pants have functional pockets? | And now I have this gigantic Samsung it's even more difficult to find jeans that fit my phone in. |
why is it we can we send a robot outside of our solar system, and exploring the surface of an entirely different planet, but the deepest oceans are unknown to us? | No one has ever sent a probe to a planet outside of our Solar System. They've only been looked at through telescopes. Probes have been sent to planets in our solar system. Things don't have to be that strong to withstand 1 less atmospheric pressure. They do have to be strong to withstand the absolute crushing pressure ... |
Why can't commercial airplanes deploy Parachutes for use in case of emergency landings where all other manoeuvres or options to save the plane have failed? | It's not economical. For the 99.999 percent of flights where it's not needed it would cost the airline money to be there since it would add drag and weight that could be used for passengers instead. It sucks but it's not an option. There will always be aviation accidents and the industry does what it can to reduce them... |
If we are counting years from the birth of Christ then why is birth of Christ(Christmas) every December 25th instead of last day of the month | The idea of counting years since the birth of christ didn't show up until around the 6th century, and it didn't change the days and months of the existing julian calendar, which had been in use for nearly 600 years at that point. |
The difference between polygons and voxels | Object made out of polygons is like a papercraft, basically hollow inside and made out of flat surfaces. In order for computer to calculate such an object, it just needs to know where points/corners of these surfaces are and how they are connected. A game character may have a couple thousands of these points. The coole... |
How are houses investments? It seems like they're just more expensive all around than renting. | It's worth noting that when studied properly, homes historically appreciated at [just 0.7%] per year, adjusted for inflation. When your grandparents bought a house in 1960 for $40,000 and it sold for $300,000 in 2000, a lot of that was just ordinary inflation $40,000 in 1960 had the spending power of $232,000 in 2000. ... |
Why is the windows task manager able to close programs almost instantly while right clicking to close a program on taskbar doesn't? | I like to go to Windows command line and execute TASKKILL. It's sort of like playing a DOS version of Assassin's Creed. |
Why are certain human senses more prone to annoyance than others? I.e. hearing the same thing over and over is annoying, while seeing the same thing over and over is not | Well I've got a test for you. Don't pay for Direct TV access on a three hour United flight and watch their promotion bullshit loop the whole time. I could turn the screen off directly in front of me, but nearly every other screen I could see was on the loop. It was maddening. And to be honest, since I didn't have headp... |
Solar Cell Electricity, where does it go when the battery is full. | Kind of disappointed nobody has mentioned a load dump device yet. It describes exactly what you're talking about. we don't see it so much on the solar end, but for wind power generation it sure does. Especially during long windy stretches and you're not using as much as you're generating. _URL_0_ I've heard of people u... |
How can Netflix instantly stream very high quality/HD content but other online video players require significant buffering and much longer load times? | Really what it boils down to is that Netflix has a much larger network of servers to accommodate for the traffic. Wherever you are located, when you begin to play a title it will pick the closest server to you that has the content stored on it, and you will download the data straight from that particular server. So let... |
Why do fountain drinks at different restaurants taste different? | Most restaurants rarely clean their syrup lines. I'm a refrigeration guy and many of the restaurants I've been in are frankly disgusting. |
How could it be that American schools are second-rate, but American higher education is the best in the world? | Professor here. Much of the discrepancy lay in two complementary factors. The first is obviously money. K-12 schools are taxpayer funded . This means that the funding is going to have a politically tolerable cap, determined primarily through what people are willing to pay in homeowners taxes . There is no competition f... |
Why is CPU development slowed to a crawl? What is the next "hurdle" in CPU innovation that needs to be overcome? | Physics. Both processor speed and transistor size are edging towards physical limits - transistors are so small that there are too few atoms in them for them to work correctly, and clock speeds are so high that signals - at speeds close to the speed of light - can't move far enough before the next clock cycles hits. We... |
How do drug addicts stop being drug addicts? Why can some people do it and others can't? | well not everyone who uses drugs is an addict. in fact i smoke poke and i enjoy it when it snows. but, I can totally stop whenever I want. It's all about self control. Someone who eat McDonald's every 3 days while not working out is some how the good guy. Yet, I'm lifting everyday, eating a kale salad and enjoying some... |
What is happening when we feel someone/something staring at us? | Confirmation bias. You forget all the times you look and no one is staring because that isn't interesting, but turning and seeing someone stare is a 'big event' to you once you think you 'feel someone looking at you' so your brain likes it more. Also as you turn your head if there was anyone looking in your general dir... |
Why doesn't the one dollar US bill have no details to help determine if it's a counterfeit? | The time and effort that goes into counterfeiting $1 bills make it incredibly unprofitable to do so. You'd be better off counterfeiting higher denominations or committing another type of monetary fraud.Well it does. It is on rag paper, uses special ink, and does have printed security patterns on it. |
What is 'octane' in fuel and how does it make your vehicle preform better or worse? | ELI5: This is one of the few areas in which you can use the word retard and be politically correct. Higher octane fuel has a higher resistance to detonation meaning you can jam pack the combustion chamber full of fuel and oxygen - it doesn't want to explode. You can take advantage of this by retarding the timing of the... |
can your hair really turn grey from stress? and how? | When I was 22 I lost my 3 year old son, and a gray patch appeared within 10 days. Still got the skunk patch to this day. I'm 34 now. |
why I'm not bald despite the fact that I lose about twenty strands of hair in the shower a day? | In the last year I've gone almost completely bald due to alopecia. Trust me, if your hair was falling out in a serious way it would be in gobs . At the peak of my hair loss I could clean out the drain twice per shower, and remove as much hair as I might normally remove in a month. |
Why strong, muscular animals such as gorillas don't need to lift weights to build a ton of muscle mass but humans do? | It's partly due to genetics, the fact that gorillas are as big as they are requires them to have a lot of muscle just to move themselves, and so their body's homeostasis will work to maintain that muscle mass to an extent. But it is also lifestyle, being an animal in the wild is tough, and you have to work for every bi... |
Is the sound of wind caused by the wind hitting things? Or the wind hitting its own particles? Or something else entirely? | It is friction my friend. Air is very good at making sounds through friction, take your mouth for example: most of the sounds you make when you speak are through friction between air and a part of your mouth. The sound 'th' as in 'thought' is called a voiceless dental fricative as it is made because of the friction bet... |
Why do Third World Countries have problems with possessing water, when the earth is 79% of it and we have the technology to purify water? | Water treatment is very expensive in the modern world , and the sheer scale of the problem is astronomical, with much higher populations than say 150 years ago when much of the developed world's treatment systems started. If you are thinking specifically about South Africa right now, there are some specific factors are... |
Why don't I stutter when I'm alone? | I've read that children learning to read have an easier time reading when they practice in front of their dogs or cats. I'd be interested to know if a similar principal could apply with you? Maybe you can try speaking in front of a dog and then graduate to 1 person followed by a group of people . have you thought of th... |
Why do numbers to the power of 0 always become 1? | An additional way to see the same thing Speaking casually, the exponent in, say, 5^4 tells us how many times we're multiplying 5, right? OK, then 5^1 ought to be what we get if we multiply exactly one 5. But multiplication is what's called a binary operation , so multiply that single 5 by **what**? Well, by the thing *... |
Why are the latest phones upwards of $700-$800, while the latest tablets are only around $200-$300 | I think you are overgeneralizing a bit, there are definitely tablets out there that can cost just as much as a phone. It all depends on what features each product has. An iphone with hundreds of gigs of storage it definitely going to cost more than some off-brand tablet with only 32 gb of storage. Likewise you can also... |
Why are there so few engineers and scientists in politics? | I work in politics, my two best friends are mechanical engineers. My friends are both extremely intelligent, but their type of intelligence doesn't translate well into things that aren't black and white. The know that the table needs to hold x amount of weight, so they know that the legs should be y strength. Politics ... |
How these type of walls stay intact when sea levels react the top. | The pressure of a liquid at a given depth depends *only* on that depth, not the total volume of liquid. Which means that whether it's holding back a swimming pool or an ocean, a wall holding back a liquid at rest only has to be designed to handle the pressure at a given depth. A ten-foot wall only has to be built to ho... |
Why is it so hard for tinkerers to use parts of consumer electronics (smartphone cameras, etc) for their projects? | Even if they aren't using fragile SMDs, the process of removing components can damage them if you aren't careful. The heat can damage semiconductors in particular. Passive components like resistors and capacitors not so much, but these components are so cheap anyway that it's not a priority.We live in an age where buil... |
How do we know for sure that cancer and other deceases aren't caused by being constantly exposed to small radiations from electronic devices and 3G, 4G, WiFi, LTE, Bluetooth-signals? | A danish study over 20 years, found absolutely no correlation between cellphone usage and cancer rates. Other long-term studies came to the same conclusion, and even cellphone network towers have never been seriously linked to cancer rates. Here's a few results from long term studies: _URL_0_ Which concurs which what o... |
Why most Canadians seem to dislike French Canadians | 1. Biligualism can be a pain, especially in western Canada where there aren't many French speakers2. They have a double standard when it comes to bilingualism they want the rest of Canada to speak both French and English, but try to have as little English as possible in Quebec3. French Canadians often appear to act as ... |
Why do Men and Women have different size numbers for the same size article of clothing? Why not let them be the same? | IDK about clothing but for shoes, women's feet are narrower relative to the length compared to men's feet |
How can somebody like Tom Cruise be so successful in life and yet simultaneously come across as a complete nut? | Acting is not a profession in which you need to be sane to achieve success. In fact, you don't even need to be intelligent, or good at it. Just look at the Kardashians. Or Shia LaBeouf. |
/ What is color? | The atom is the smallest part of matter that still retains its physical properties . So yeah, if you get any fixed amount of gold atoms only, it will always be golden; the same golden. Since most objects are not made of single kinds of atoms, but substances, we have to think about the color of the molecule that compose... |
As a Non-American, why the hate for Obama and what he's done? | The last time I checked the president's current approval rating is 44%. This is low when compared to other presidents at this point in their administration but it also means that those who disapprove only make up 56%. Not that big of a gap. The reason he is perceived as being so hated is largely based on human nature. ... |
Nutritional Supplements, what should i be ingesting and what is purely hype? | Creatine. It actually works. You'll notice you'll get a bit more out of your workouts and it'll help w/ recovery as well. It's also relatively harmless as long as you stay hydrated. The only real noticeable 'downside' in my experience is putting on extra water weight. Not really a big deal unless you're trying to make ... |
Ancient Warfare - why did we regress? | I think economics is a big factor as well. Standing professional armies are very expensive to train and supply. As Rome declines and disappears, the new rulers of Europe find it becomes too expensive to pay for the training and equipment of a standing army that requires wages paid to it and a constant stream of food an... |
Is there a technical reason why in America tax is added to the final price as oppose to being included in the final amount? | A few reasons. * Some customers may waive the taxes, e.g. another business purchasing for resale. They'll pay the sticker price, no tax added.* It's marketing, just like gas stations that price gasoline to a fraction of a penny. Nobody wants to be the first to show a higher price than they have to.* Convenience of pric... |
I have multiple pairs of Levi's 513s, 33W 30L. Why are every single one of them completely different? | As others have said, it's just poor quality control. They could make them more uniform, but they would cost more money. |
How come the Europeans advanced faster technologically than the Native Americans/ Africans? | One thing that is being ignored here is that Native Americans actually had their own technologies developed independent of Europeans. For example, there is evidence that Native Americans modified the landscape on a massive scale. [Here] is an article containing some of that evidence. Charles C. Mann's *1491* goes into ... |
Why does water feel much colder/warmer at the same temperatures as air? | Water has a high specific heat . this means that it requires a large of amount of energy to raise the temperature of water, but something like gasoline requires very little energy to raise the temperature. so if you have a bathtub full of hot water it will be hotter for longer than a bathtub of hot gasoline. if you had... |
What effect does the curvature of the Earth have on really large buildings, roads and other infrastructure? | Earth's curvature changes its height, on average, 11cm per km. This is far, far less than natural local variations in terrain. Therefore it has no effect on people making buildings.For some structures you have to take this into account. If something is both very high and very long, it becomes a factor. Suspension bridg... |
What happens when a state passes a law that contradicts with the Constitution in the United States? | I think the key thing to understand is that someone must claim damages and file a suit. The states can make any law they want to no matter how unconstitutional. But if they do, someone will file a lawsuit claiming damages which if nesc can be taken all the way up to the supreme court who decides on the constitutionalit... |
How do programs that are not for commercial use detect that they are in fact being used for commercial purposes? | It depends on the program. Some programs impose arbitrary limits that would be unlikely to effect personal use , but would with commercial use others use watermarking to 'spoil' the files on non commercial/student versions A lot though, simply rely on honesty, or only offering differing levels of support and access to ... |
Why are there "Morning People" and "Night People?" What makes somebody operate better in the morning as opposed to in the evening? | I'm going to assume it's something to do with daily routines and sleep patterns.Read somewhere that genetics may play a part in this. |
Bernie Sanders wants to 'break up' the big 6 corporations on Wall Street.... What does this actually mean? | Specifically he wants to break up the 6 biggest banks in the United States. While there a a lot of good arguments on both sides of the discussion, Sanders' drive is to avoid future 'too big to fail' situations like the ones that occurred in 2008/2009. |
How was bread stored throughout most of history without it going bad? Was stale bread just the norm? | First, the crust is pretty much designed to keep the bread fresh. It seals in the moisture. You'd get a bunch of small loaves and those would keep for a bit without going *too* stale. You'd generally finish eating a loaf fairly quickly. And if it went stale, you ate stale bread. |
Why are minorities likely to see the majority(read: white people) attractive but no so much the other way around? | In the magazines and on TV, the goddesses we're presented with as these fountains of beauty are virtually all white. Racism and exclusion pervades mass culture. This tendency to find whites more attractive is taught. |
The act of cutting a piece of paper or any other material. How does it work on the microscopic/atomic level? | The simplest explanation I can come up with is that your cutting tool comes in between intermolecular forces holding the material intact. In your example, your scissors force an edge in between hydrogen bonds, causing the bonds move farther apart, which after some distance reduces the probability of their affecting eac... |
If I have an electrical circuit, run a current through it, and then suddenly interrupt the circuit, what happens to the electricity still within the circuit? | If you are talking about a simple circuit, the simple answer is nothing happens to it, it just stops flowing. Electricity is the flow of electrons. Voltage is how hard the electrons are being pushed. When you apply voltage to an electron it moves. This movement is what is referred to as electricity. When you interrupt ... |
Feelings/ urges experienced during menstrual period | It just sucks, really. Every woman has a different experience but I know for me and my friends the PMS that occurs the week before is the worse. The hunger is extreme, no matter what I eat, I'm still hungry and I am completely not in control of my emotions and feel fat and ugly. This usually only lasts a day, but it is... |
Could you, in theory, build a giant artillery gun with the range of an ICBM? | Yes, in theory. [Gerald Bull] was a researcher and engineer who tried to develop Nazi Germany's [V-3 cannon] into a full-fledged satellite launch system. He was best known for his work on the US/Canadian Project HARP and for Iraq's Project Babylon. |
Why do plastic milk jugs always have gross little dried flakes of milk crust around the edge of the cap? No other containers of liquid (including milk-based ones) seem to have this problem. | the jug design matters. kwik trip used to use nicer, higher quality design that minimized the milk that got 'stuck' to the top that causes the stinky dried milk. but they changed to a cheaper design, similar to that used by most other dairies, a few years ago. |
why is it that long distance shooters tend to use bolt action rifles? Can a magazine fed semi-auto not do the same job? | The long and short of it is that semi automatics use bullet energy to re-cock and expend the spent casing, they have more moving parts, and this makes it more difficult to have the same tolerances as well as changing consistency from shot to shot. Bolt action is simpler, easier to make with precision, and very consiste... |
Why is it said that Florida, Arizona, and Nevada could only grow with air conditioning when many of history's great cities flourished in similar climates long before the invention of A/C? | While Singapore largely developed in it's early days because of its strategic location as a trading hub for SE Asia it is interesting to note that its former President - Lee Kuan Yew hailed the Air-Conditioner as one of mankind's great inventions and credits it with helping to propel GDP growth from the 1960's when it ... |
How did people decide on seconds/minutes/hours? How the heck do we even know how long a 'second' is? | 1 second used to be defined as 1/86400th of a day -all of these numbers have a relatively high number of factors and are easily divisible into segments, or periods of time. If I remember correctly I think the French were looking at using a decimal system for time a couple of hundred years ago. I believe a day of 10 hou... |
Why does it cost upwards of $50 to ship from USA to Australia, yet I can get the same thing from Amazon with $10 shipping. | I make and ship things to Australia regularly. The cost hike for smaller guys like me is due to the fact that we are covering the cost of the discounts that bigger shippers like Amazon are enjoying. It's also a lack of consumer oversight and protection. Even the price of shipping supplies in the US is ridiculous. There... |
Why Can't We Clone Dinosaurs? | It's tricky to get DNA of an extinct specie before the DNA catalogues. Let's use Dodo bird as an example. Even with the best preserved Dodo-bird , the DNA is still unusable. If we can get pass the degraded DNA issues, there are still a major problem with finding a compatible surrogate mother. |
How can medical studies with very small sample sizes be deemed as credible? | It depends on the question you are asking and the rigor of your controls. A very rigorously controlled study can get pretty good results IF you ask the right question. I've worked in drug and device research, and Small studies are usually enough to get an idea of a safe drug dose, look at whether it seems to work well ... |
How/why there is a difference between 4/4 time and 2/2 time in music | Hey guys, I've struggled with time signatures for years, I just don't understand them. It's like some weird mental barrier keeping me from understanding. So explanations that are *literally* aimed at a five year old would be great for me. Edit: thanks for the explanations guys. I'm reading them all but am now too drunk... |
how come that one asteroid killed all the dinosaurs all over the planet? and how didn't it destroy the earth with it? | _URL_2_ The wiki page is pretty good. The basic answer is that it killed lots of things, not just non-avian dinosaurs, mostly through secondary effects of the impact . it wasn't nearly big enough to destroy the planet itself, but it made the planet inhospitable for a few years, enough to all but wipe out the largest di... |
Why do Brits use mix between imperial and metric systems, and not just stick to one? | Metric is great for scientists. It's all power-of-tens and the measurements dovetail into each other well So, it's easy to use, and easy to convert. But, for the rest of us non-scientists, it's more convenient to have a measurement system based on 'real-world' things. Even if they are somewhat approximate. Like the len... |
Why is going to the cinema considered a social experience? You're expected to sit in silence until it ends. | I don't think it is. I go to the movies by myself all the time. I arrive right before the movie starts, usually right when the lights go down. It's incredibly easy to find a single seat, and no one even knows you're there by yourself, they're already watching the screen. When the movie's over most people head straight ... |
how/why imgur became the defacto image hosting service for reddit. | Alright then guys, I know why Imgur became popular for reddit, why isn't it popular elsewhere?", 'Because _URL_1_ went to shit with their uploading system and how they restricted uses.> I'm pretty new to reddit Redditor for two years.Damn. Every single answer here is missing one of the KEY reasons. Front page links/pic... |
How has the Student Loan bubble not popped? | Mainly because student loans stick with you forever, you can't use bankruptcy to get out of them. They will always be there . |
Why does the NRA wield so much power? | They don't. Jimmy Kimmel is lying and has politicized a tragedy before the blood's dried. Imagine that. |
How can hospitals charge as much as they do? | In addition to the high costs issue and the captive market issue, another issue is actually the reliance on health insurance. Hospitals can't charge ordinary people hundreds of thousands of dollars for surgeries; people simply don't have that cash. But large insurance companies do. By going through the middle man , it ... |
Why do people key cars? | Well, it's a beautiful, expensive car. There are a lot of people who spite those who can afford the luxuries in life that they themselves can't. So, they key your car because of that. |
Why are some people so prone to cavities? | Oh, I have personal experience here! There are a number of reasons that one can be prone. In my case, my jaw is small and compacted. It's really hard to get everything out and my teether are together tightly enough that I can shear most floss through normal usage. Grinding teeth in your sleep can also be a problem. I h... |
Does America Ever Have to Pay off Its Debt? | > what if America never pays off its debt. The American dollar is strong because we always pay off our debt. If we suddenly started to default there is a good chance the world economy would take a hit. > can the U.S keep acquiring debt. As long as we can bring in enough money to pay it off when payment is due. Long ter... |
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