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Given how selfies have become so popular, why aren't phone manufacturers making phones with front cameras as powerful as their back cameras?
To a certain extent they are making front-facing cameras more powerful:[The HTC One ] and the [Nokia Lumia 735] both came out with a 5MP FFC last year. The HTC's main camera was only 4MP, and the Lumia's FFC had quite a wide-angle lens. Naturally the main cameras had other features, but these phones are obviously a response to the popularity of selfies. Having said that, I think it's also fair to say that even those who take a lot of selfies end up using the main camera of their phones a lot too. Then there is the population of people who rarely take a selfie but still use the main camera.Plus, consider that space is really at a premium on the front of a phone: you just can't fit in the same size lens and flash assembly as you can on the rear of the phone. This limits the quality of the components that can physically make up the FFC.
How do trees in cities get water when the ground surrounding them is covered by concrete for miles around?
Concrete is porous. A puddle may sit on top of concrete but there's a lot more going on than you can see. Source: I am a decorative concrete finisher. Fun bonus: permeable concrete allow water to flow through it. There is also translucent concrete.
Why do companies allow piracy to varying degrees? Why do they tolerate being ripped off?
There's 2 ways to fight it. 1. Sue all the pirates, which is expensive. And even if you're legally right, the image of a corporation suing individuals, especially kids or their parents, can be bad PR. 2. Make your product hard to pirate. This is a little less expensive, but it can also make your product harder to use, and piss off your legitimate customers. It would be like a store trying to reduce shoplifting by putting airport style security screening with bag searches and pat-downs at the exits.
How does being poor cause failure in school?
I assume you mean in the US. 2 reasons 1. Kids growing up in poor homes don't have the same resources richer kids do. They can't get tutors, have worse school supplies, less time for school work because they probably have to have a job etc. 2. In the US public schools are funded by property taxes. So poorer areas with cheaper homes obviously have less revenue from income tax and so their schools get less funding than schools in affluent areas
Why do baby car seats expire after 5 years?
So you don't give it to a friend or relative later when your kid grows up. Planned obsolescence. Also a good way to avoid many legal troubles after accidents, if it was older than 5 years.
Why do so many things seem to be subject to the Iron Triangle ((Good, Fast, Cheap), pick two)?
There are but a few exceptions to this. Gold-plated anything is not necessarily better than its counterparts. It is just worth more. For example, a gold plated computer is not necessarily faster or more powerful than a home-built one, but it's still more expensive.
Why don't people use emojis on reddit?
Also, a lot of people think they look dumb or immature. In a lot of circles on the web, emojis or emoticons are frowned upon for being less serious. Personally, I use them sometimes, but they have no place in most discussions. They're an IM thing for me.
How is it that scientists were able to completely eradicate smallpox, but they cant do that with other diseases?
It's not just smallpox. Polio and malaria are well on their way to being eradicated, as well as a number of other less-well-known diseases. _URL_0_
Why is it that someone with depression can't just choose to "cheer up"?
Because a certain subset of people with depression has that due to physical differences in the brain. These people can't just choose to cheer up for the same reason you can't just choose not to have a broken leg. Which is not to say that therapy won't involve a process of learning to identify good thoughts and bad thoughts and learning how to accurately deal with those but some people are always going to need drugs to support this, just because their brain isn't acting like a regular brain would.Because one of the defining features of depression is the inability to just choose to "cheer up", instead being stuck in bad feelings and low motivation. As a hyperbole it's like "why isn't darkness bright
Explain the science behind how the victims of Pompeii were able to be preserved in a plaster instead of being completely disintegrated.
I think you are thinking that the lava made it all the way to them, the lava didn't really make it that far it was all the ash that buried them
why are a lot of the designs from 50s so good and considered timeless?
Baby Boomer nostalgia. This is the shit they grew up with & they're the ones *still* setting the standards for American popular culture.
How do people afford the lifestyle of an extreme adventure enthusiast?
I'm one of those travelers, the answer is be willing to live really really poor. I live in an attic crawlspace in a house of 8 people. i can't stand up and i have a window the size of a shoebox, but i can leave whenever and only pay rent when i am here. Finding a job that lets you leave is the hardest. it took me years. i do temp work, it pays minimum wage, it isn't stable or secure and i can go without work for a scary long while sometimes, but i can come and go as i please. it's pretty terrifying to quit your job, move out of your house and then try to figure it out when you get back and all the money is gone. It's helpful to have a network of other traveling friends who get it and lend you a couch while you are figuring it out. when i am in normal life mode I don't go to out to eat, i don't go to bars, i don't own an article of clothing without a hole or a stain on it. My weekly food budget is around $20, and i haven't gone to see a movie in years. i sleep in suburban parking lots to get the best deals on camping gear and more often than not figure out how i can make a redneck hack version of the thing i really need. but, i can save up two months worth of travel in about six months of living at home. I just got back from a month in new orleans just cause i wanted to go, and a trip home to pennsylvania via bicycle. The whole trip cost me about a grand. It was amazing, and a trip that i have daydreamed about for years now. anyone can do it, you just need to be so in love with what you are doing that you are willing to be pretty uncomfortable while you are working on getting it. also not have any security, at all, ever.
What's going on when i get the pins and needles feeling in my hands and/or feet?
If you don't find the answer you seek you might find what you are looking for in one of the other threads with a similar question: _URL_6_ _URL_0_ _URL_1_ _URL_3_ _URL_11_ _URL_6_ _URL_7_ _URL_4_ _URL_8_ _URL_2_ _URL_10_ _URL_5_ _URL_9_
While swimming in the ocean I noticed that when a wave comes, many people will raise their arms up so they don't get wet, even though they already are. Why is this?
I don't think it's as much getting wet as it is maintaining balance. As the wave hits, it pulls on anything in the water. So if your hands are in the water, they may be pulled along with the wave, offsetting the balance of your upper body.
Why do so many people think that evolution and God are mutually exclusive?
It depends which story line of god you are talking about. Some of them are in direct contradiction with evolution. For example, if you believe that the first human was Adam, and that he was created directly from the dust of the ground, and the first woman, Eve, was created directly from his rib, then you probably wouldn't believe in evolution, since that contradicts. Did you not know that there are at least thousands of different gods in history, each with varying story lines?
Why do girls/women scream so much in comparison to boys/men?
Because back in evolutionary time a female screaming might have actually helped, which a male screaming would have produced less help. So over time males evolved to scream less, because it didn't do any good, and females evolved a high-pitched screech because a male who wanted to mate might on the off chance help her against an aggressor .
Why do news stations not turn off candidates' microphones if they don't want them to talk over each other or go over time limits at debates?
In the vein of ELI5, the presidential debates are run as if the schoolyard bullies got together and decided on the rules in the classroom. The teacher has no authority. As some other have pointed out, these performances are not properly speaking a debate. A proper debate is one where a topic is posed to the candidates, they articulate a specific policy and they have the opportunity to cross examine each other about the viability of the plan. In a scored debate they would be judged on the merit of their proposals rather than their art of persuasion. In other words, just because they *believe something* won't make it truth or good policy. Of course very few politicians want to have a debate like this because they have spent a lifetime playing on the art of persuasion and dodging the real substance of policy discussion. They want the job more than they want to do the job. Shame on us for not demanding a real debate format to expose them, but people want to be entertained more than they want to be informed.These most recent "debates" more closely resemble daytime talk shows than anything elsePeople who talk over each other and deliberately go over time limits are the kind of self-centered assholes that make for ~~good~~ ~~entertaining~~ popular low-brow live television but are notoriously hard to manage, if you cut them off or make them realize the situation is not about them, they will walk.Because they aren't really debates, they are advertising slots for the candidates and the party, and valuable content for the network.
If penny's hold 1.7¢ of copper how come I don't hear about people melting and reselling the copper?
Defacing money is very illegal. It's not usually a big deal if you're a kid, or you burn a dollar or something, but collecting tons of pennies to melt is definitely going to get you busted. And it'd leave an obvious trail. Where are you going to get these pennies? Where are you going to sell them? How are you going to make a profit when you need to pay for transportation, fuel to melt them, etc etc. In short, the risk is high and the reward is very low.
ARM (RISC Architecture) vs. x86-64 (CISC Architecture)
While some might debate how much ARM processors live up to the RISC ideals, here is a brief RISC vs CISC understanding. For a computer to be able to perform any calculation, it must be able to perform a minimum number of actions such as 'read from this memory spaceadd these numbers together' and the like. If you have this small subset of functions you can compute anything that is computable, but there is no guarantee that it will be done fast. It is possible to build computer actions which can perform more complicated calculations much more quickly in hardware than you could perform them using software on a purely generalist device. The list of actions that a processor has built in is its 'instruction set'. Complex instruction set computing is the older of the two and the general idea is that anything people want to do a lot should have its own hardware optimization so it can be done faster. Reduced instruction set computing is a response to CISC which says that CISC has a problem. The more instructions available, the more time a processor has to spend sorting out which instruction it should be activating this time. If you reduce the number of instructions, you can reduce the overhead and the few things that people do all the time can happen two or three times faster. RISC really took off in the server world, where they need to do a lot of simple things very fast, or where the calculations being performed are obscure enough that nobody is going to fabricate a special instruction set for them, so they need the general functions to work as quickly as possible. CISC survived in the PC market because users were demanding functions like video decoding which can see a lot of improvement with special instructions.Just to clarify a couple of other answers. There are no pure RISC or CISC designs today. Both architectures have merit and modern processors use ideas from both. For example many complex x86 instructions are actually decoded to simpler, RISC like, instructions on the fly by the processor. On the ARM side many designs have CISC like instructions for features such as hardware accelerated video decoding.
Why do we not feel our eyeballs rubbing against our eyelids?
Even if we did, our mind would filter it anyway. Kinda like how your nose is constantly in your field of vision but you don't realize it because your mind filters it out.
Why is North Korea still allowed to exist and operate as it does? Why hasn't anyone done anything?!
Because deaths in North Korea are seen as better than deaths in North and South Korea as well as deaths of soldiers from other countries. It would have been resolved in 1952 had it not been for China's close alliance with North Korea. Today aggression toward North Korea could still be seen as aggression toward China, and a larger conflict with China is politically, economically, and militarily unpopular.
If I swat at a mosquito and miss, will it remember/fear me? Or does it just dodge on instinct and go back to its usual buzzing around/hunting?
It's worse. The ones you swat are the dumb, slow ones. You are eliminating them from the gene pool. That leaves only the smart, quick ones to go on to breed.
Why, after nearly 85 years of knowing it existed--approximately 35 of them with the technology to do so--do we have no good photos of Pluto?
Copy pasted: Imaging resolution is essentially solely concerned with apparent size. Other than that, it's just a question of how long you're willing to point your telescope at a single patch of sky. Two things determine the apparent size of an object: it's actual, physical size, and it's distance from us; see [here]. Mars' apparent size varies from around 4 to around 25 arc seconds . For scale, 25 arcseconds is less than 2% the apparent size of the moon. Pluto's angular diameter is no larger than a tenth of an arcsecond; 250 times less than Mars' maximum. Google helpfully tells me an arcsecond is about the size of a dime, viewed from 2.5 miles; Mars is about the size of a hand viewed from that distance, while Pluto is about the size of the head of a highlighter. But I digress. Angular diameter is inversely proportional to distance. Since there are physical limitations in the resolving power of telescopes when the apparent size begins to get down to the order of magnitude of the wavelength of light being observed, any planets outside the solar system are dramatically more difficult to image directly beyond confirming they are there. And even that isn't possible in most cases. There are ways around this; using arrays of telescopes with large distance between them can help solve this problem of the resolving limit, but imaging planets is essentially impossible for the next decade or so. And when it is first possible, it won't look like that picture of Mars; ten or a hundred pixels for a Jupiter or larger sized planet would be incredible resolving power. It's important to remember that when you're looking at crystal clear images from Hubble, what you're seeing is large portions of the sky that are too faint to view normally. The Andromeda galaxy, for example, is [wider across than the moon]. We humans don't have trouble viewing them for their size , but for their distance and dimness.
When getting multiple vaccines at once, why aren't they all combined into one syringe?
I am not a doctor, so I couldn't confidently tell you any medical reason why this is bad, but I can still think of others. First of all, if you combined vaccines, you would end up with a bunch of combinations. So, instead of mass producing the individual vaccines, they would have to mass produce all the possible combinations. This would cost a lot more money, and a lot of the vaccines would go to waste. Secondly, different vaccines have different methods of entry. Even if you get injected in the arm, the locations on the arm allow for different methods of entry. Some vaccines need to be injected in the muscle, and some right below the skin. So, you would not be able to combine those vaccines.
How come pictures of objects in space never include vibrant stars?
The earth is soo bright in this picture that the stars don't show. The filter just can't pick it up. Kind of like this image here:_URL_2_
How come 4chan (specifically) has that much effect on modern day internet?
Part of it is that it's larger than you'd expect. Lotta people posting regularly or semi-regularly. Enough that a subculture starts to form, with its own in-jokes, references and terminology. Sooner or later that bleeds out into the rest of the net.
why are we so careful to not spread earth microbes in space? Would it be so bad to plant life?
To add to what rodariskol said, one of the most fascinating things about alien life is that, well, literally every single thing on the entire planet is related. If you go back 4 billion years, we're all descended from the same basic single celled life forms. But that's not true of life on another planet. Any life, even microbial life, has evolved completely, absolutely 100% independently of life on earth. There is nothing on earth that shares this property and for that reason alone, we need to be so careful of alien life because if we contaminate it, we ruin that chance to see evolution from an outside perspective.
If church attendence is declining so fast why are there still churches everywhere?
From what I understand, Churches are closing at a rapid rate. Tons of churches nationwide are closing their doors due to lack of funds, lack of interest, or both. That's what I have been told though.
Why is there such a bias for introverts?
Many introverts are also shy and the bias is against shy people, not introverted people . Maybe they are shy because they are unsure about something about conversation. Contrary to popular belief, sociability and charisma is something that can be learned, not necessarily something that you have to be born with. There isn't as much of a bias as there was before, and it has kind of gotten popular: it is hip to be introverted, and since the current popular trend is victimhood, you will see people claiming that they are persecuted for being introverted .
Wouldn't it be very easy for someone working at one of those restaurants inside airport terminals to hand a passenger a sharp knife to bring on a plane? What is there to prevent it?
Of course they could. And really, this illustrates the utter stupidity of our current situation. I am not saying we should take no precautions at all, but what I am saying is that the best way of combating terror is to not be terrified. You're never going to be safe, anywhere. We read millions of emails, tap cellphones, search bags, with little to no effect. People still die daily from violence. So at some point, you must conclude that the cost of making yourself safer has exceeded what you're willing to pay, and I crossed that point a long time ago.My worry is, I can bring a piece of glass on board which I can make into a crude knife by smashing . What?
Why do hotels put a Bible in every room?
I'm from the UK. I've travelled all over the UK, Europe, and east Asia and I've never seen a bible in a hotel room. Is it an american thing?", 'Ok I have heard of the Gideons and this whole story about why bibles are in hotel rooms. I don't understand the statement "the hotels don't place them. They are placed there by the Gideons." Ok. So then why do all these hotels allow them to do do? Not saying anything against it, but the question is not answered by that statement.
Why can't Hospitals simply tell us the prices of things, like a construction contractor could?
Because it's hard to see what's ultimately going to be required. If your contractor gives you a bid for a new bathroom, but after they open up he walls they discover your also have rotten floor joists, that's going to raise the cost. Humans are more complex inside than bathrooms, so more can go wrong, and doctors have to do more to fix them. The hospital could give you a number, and be right 20% of the time, but then you'd be complaining about how it cost more than they predicted - which is a major complaint about construction contractors by the way.
Is there any consequence to the increasing number of Illegal Immigrants (Primarily and Specifically, Hispanic) in the United States?
Illegal immigrants are counted towards the state's population. This also affects electoral votes and members in congress. For example, California gets 5 more electoral votes and US representatives because of its illegal population. So if more are increased, they are likely to settle in places near the border , and those states get more representation in congress and more say in who gets to be president.A massive cultural and by proxy political shift. The reduction of educational standards to accommodate non English speaking children, the reemergence of previously eradicated diseases and a colossal burden on roads, schools, and other municipal services. For starters
Why aren't things in orbit constantly accelerating?
The answers here are all correct, I feel like it can be made a little bit more intuitive though: Imagine you're shooting a cannonball from a hill. This ball will curve downwards due to gravity and eventuall hit the ground. However what happens if you shoot the cannonball with so much speed, that the earth essentially curves away under the ball just as the ball is curving down towards the ground? Ignoring friction from the air you would have a ball that will always curve towards the ground but the ground curves away from the ball at the same time - > the Ball is in an orbit around earth. That's essentially what happens to all the orbits. So the objects are always accelerating towards earth but they are so fast that the earth curves away under them. EDIT:no idea what got me the downvote as this is essentially what happens. The acceleration always goes towards the center of the sphere and bends your velocity vector at just the same rate that the curvature of the earth changes below you.
Why is the human gestation period so long compared to other animals? Will it ever be shortened?
The human gestation period is significantly *shorter* than some animals. A cow's gestation period can be 9-11 months . An elephant can be 22 months. Rhinos can be 12-16 months. Manatees can be 13 months. Camels, giraffes and walruses are also well over a year. We don't know what evolution will do, so whether it'll shorten or not is unknown. Also unlikely in the foreseeable future. Heck, we're still dealing with our heads getting too big.
I live in the UK and see nothing but complaints about the company Comcast. So why do people keep using their services?
Because we're only free until money is involved? Capitalistic monopolies take away our ability to choose the best company or service. Political greed runs the country, and small companies can't afford to line their pockets, so they don't get the opportunity to even try most of the time.
What’s the point of hiccups? Does it serve a purpose for humans to have them.
So hiccups fall under a type a movement disorder called myoclonus, which is a sudden, brief, uncontrolled muscle contraction. It's basically the same thing as a muscle spasm cause your arm to jerk, but in this case it's your diaphragm. Pretty much everyone at some point experiences these, but, as already mentioned, continuous recurrent muscle jerks or hiccups could indicate some sort of metabolic abnormality from liver and kidney failure.
In Monopoly why does it feel like people hit certain places more than others?
Certain places are more likely to get visited. The best strategy is to buy all the properties between jail and free parking because there's a lot more occurances to be sent to jail, meaning you're more likely to land on a property between jail and free parking. On the opposite, it actually better to shy away from the final row between go to jail and Go. Those properties have bank breaking rent but the odds of landing on them are lower. [Here's a video detailing great general strategies to use]
Nelson Mandela, former President of South Africa, dies. ELI5 discussion about Apartheid, South African politics past and present.
Someone will do a better explanation soon, but I'll just put the gist of it until then. Nelson Mandela fought against Apartheid, a system of government implemented first in South Africa that segregates living quarters amongst other things for blacks, heavily favouring the whites in South Africa. In a way it was like Jim Crow laws, worse even, and I believe that blacks became disenfranchised at one point even. There were violent uprisings with violent repercussions. Mandela served 27 years in prison for being the face of Anti-apartheid. That's my understanding anyway. He wrote a book in prison and there was a large effort to have him released. He was released in 1990 and continued his efforts to disband apartheid, In 1993 He even won the Nobel Peace prize. He was elected president of South Africa in 1994 and spent his term getting rid of the remnants of this despicably racist form of government. Generally loved by most, though he denied to run for a second term. Edit: RIP
How, while in heavy traffic, the left lane can be at a dead stop while the middle and right lanes are steadily moving.
people feel more comfortable passing/cutting towards the left lane, since they can judge distances better idk, im just guessing. Would be interesting to find out if that's true, and if the the same applies for right-side driving
When I sleep on my deluxe mattress wrong I get a stiff neck. How did cavemen (and humans before us) sleep on the ground without problems?
I slept on the floor, using only a small pile of blankets as padding for a number of years without any problems. I only stopped when my fiance moved in. Your body gets used to sleeping on firm surfaces & figures out how to put itself 'right'. If there's too much pressure on your hipbone, for example, you just need to roll a bit to put the weight on a meatier piece. When you're sleeping on soft, squishy surfaces, you can fall into weird holes where there's a big soft spot you can't easily roll out of - moving off your hip would require moving your whole body out of the divot.
Why can't Iran build a nuclear bomb yet?
Because its Iran. Anything they do, you better believe that someone is watching or listening. I mean look at N.Korea, every nation is watching that place. Sure, NK built a nuclear weapon, but that's all because they are borders with china. On the other hand, Iran is surrounded by countries where The US armed forces are base. They can't easily get Resources and the right manpower to do the job
Why do smokers get special treatment at work?
If people are taking smoke breaks, you take a smoke break. Doesn't mean you have to smoke, but fair is fair.
Why isn't dental and vision just a part of health insurance?
ITT: Americans who seem to think it normal that these things aren't heavily covered. In Australia, dental and optical are covered by medicare .. but not only that, if you *do* have private health insurance then they tend to give extremely good dental and optical cover. For instance I get all of my preventative dental work done for free and most other dental work is heavily subsidised. Last month I needed $3500 of work done.. it cost me $600 and *that* was my own damn fault for not going for so long. If I go along every 6 months for a clean and polish/other minor stuff and the occasional hole needing to be drilled I'll pay almost nothing. Now optical? Getting your eyes checked and a pair of glasses is covered by medicare, but obviously not the nice glasses. If you have health insurance they tend to cover a couple pairs of glasses a year and a fair chunk of contact costs. Surgeries and such are very well covered. Sadly very few cover LASIK but hey, we aren't perfect. My point is, basically, that like everything else about your health care system: it's fucked. There are lots of reasonable sounding answers to questions in this thread but the truth is you don't have dental and optical because the health system in your country is **fucked** and needs to be fixed so that it actually benefits you guys instead of a bunch of CEOs.
Why do all women in Bollywood movies/music videos have (what seems like) the same singing voice?
Trust me when I'm saying this: they aren't singing. They are in fact, lip-syncing. I don't know for Hollywood, but it is a fact for Bollywood.
Is there actually any link between being funny and being at increased likelihood to be depressed.
Apparently, I have read that people who are funny are almost always more intelligent than the average person. So I would be more inclined to believe that intelligence could be the determining factor as to whom suffers from some type of depression.Basically, the smarter you are, the more aware you will be towards the events that surround your life, so you inevitably have an increased likelihood of being depressed. Have you ever seen a moron or a yokel depressed? Didn't think so.
Why don't counterfeiters just print smaller bills?
It's risk vs reward. It is just as hard to counterfeit a $20 as it is to fake a $5 -- but you'll need to work four times harder to make a much money with the fiver.I sat here for 5 minuets wondering why they would want to print monopoly sized money. Then I realized you were talking about the value of the bills. I am an idiotOften they do. All the fake bills I have found at work are 10s or 5s. Never even a 20.Had a fake 5 roll through work a few months ago. It's rare but it does happen.
Why do we feel satisfaction when things fit perfectly into places?
Just a guess, but we are recognizers of patterns. It's why we see faces in Mars and in [electrical outlets]. I think we feel satisfaction that a pattern has become recognizable when that piece slides perfectly into place.
An atomic bomb can fit in a briefcase,yet diplomatic pouches are flown into countries without check.What then is nuclear deterrence about?
Nuclear deterrence is precisely why briefcase bombs exist. The major strategy of deterrence involves having so many weapons in so many places that even if you launched and detonated all your bombs, I will have enough bombs launching and detonating inside your country that we both die. So no one tries to kill the other because they know they'll die too. The briefcase bomb itself wouldn't be for sneaking into embassies. It's just a term for how big it is. More likely these sorts of weapons would be snuck in by special forces and placed around important stuff. A small bomb like that fits nicely in a truck, a donkey or on some unfortunate soldiers back.
I've never seen banana seeds. Where do new bananas come from?
It's complicated. There are some banana trees with seeds but they are not comestible and are only kept by biologists and gardeners. I'm not a specialist but I've heard that there is something in the genome of the bananas that explain that they have no seed. There is two types of banana trees or something like that. They could spread just like bamboo, with their roots, just by spreading their material away.Bananas have been selectively bred for generations to essentially eliminate seeds. The tiny black specks in modern fruits are what remain. Cultivated bananas rely on human intervention to propagate. Typically, offshoots are used to grow a new plant.
What is the appeal of The Simpsons?
1) Remember, it was *very* innovative at the time. It appealed to everyone, and the whole semi-disfunctional family thing was new to sitcoms at the time. 2) Lots of reasons. It's really hard to keep a show 'fresh' that long in general. A really obvious reason is the writers - during the generally agreed upon prime of the show, they had a rather all star cast that included writers like Conan O'Brien and eventually some of them left to do their own thing. There's also the rise of other comedies like Family Guy & South Park popping up at the same time as some turnover in writing in the Simpsons. The comparison of a couple so-so seasons of the Simpsons to the best seasons of those two is a lot of it, if you ask me. There's pure nostalgia too. Some of the classic Simpsons episodes are just so firmly cemented as classics that it sets a pretty impossible bar for the new episodes. Honestly, I thought there were a few pretty shitty Simpsons seasons in there in the mid/late teens but some of the newer episodes have been genuinely funny.
LI5 | Why do you sometimes wake up with an erection?
Its an evolutionary response to keep you from urinating in your sleep. Do you wake up with a boner and really have to pee but have to wait for it to go away? That's why
If my mother is 5'3, and my father is 5'10, then how am I 6'0?
Genetics is really complicated. It boils down to recessive/dominant genes. Whatever genes you can see in your parents may not be the ones expressed in you. Offspring aren't a direct blend of both parents. It's whichever ones show in them vs what shows in you.
Why do so many of us hate the sound of our own voice in recordings?
When you speak it causes bones in your ear to vibrate which make you voice sound deeper than it actually is. When you hear a recording you hear your voice as other people hear it, but different to how you've always thought it sounded . It sounds higher pitched than we think it does and so we don't like it.
what is a credit union an how does it differ from a bank
The explanation that I like to use is this: If a bank is like a grocery store, then the credit union is a co-op. If the bank is an insurance company, the credit union is a mutual. To a bank, you are a customer, a revenue stream. To a credit union, you are a member, part of a club. From a mechanical perspective there is not much difference, but a credit union is more likely to listen to you, since you have a vote if you want to use it . You will get better interest rates, because the CU is going to be non-profit, and basically just needs to cover its costs. Your exact mileage may vary, but I have generally gotten better rates, lower fees, etc. at a CU than at a bank. The one exception has been on car loans, where the banks have been pretty competitive with the CU.
how I can be dead tired the entire 8 hours I'm at work, but the second I punch out, I'm wide awake?
You hate doing what you do. It's boring, it shuts your brain down.Because your brain knows that sleeping makes time to by faster , so since your brain is sick of your job, it wants to sleep. As soon as you're off work, your brain says "oh hey now we can do stuff we both like doing" so it decides to wake up. Want to not be so tired at work? Find a new job, or do something differently. You are stuck in a rut, and your brain knows it. So it tries to take the easy way out by trying to make you sleep. Why? Cuz brain don't give a shootIt may be biorhythm / response to dawn: Are you seeing sunlight before bed?If you are pretty sedentary at work, your body responds to that by slowing down, and you feel lethargic. When you stand up and move your body, get your things together, walk to the car, breathe the fresh air, your body responds to this by ramping up and becoming more alert. If you feel tired during the day you may feel like you need a nap, but, though it may be counter-intuitive, a brisk walk or other exercise may leave you with more energy"People that don't believe the dead can come back to life haven't been at my job around quitting time"', "I like to think it's a lot like always having room for dessert even when you're full from dinner. Only with work being dinner and dessert being fun/not work. ELI5-compliant.
Why are glass cutting boards a thing?
Glass boards are for people who don't understand how a knife works.Of my last 20 housemates there were a few I trusted to use my knives, and that's on a wooden board. Only one of them managed to avoid blunting them though.
MH370 Why would someone commit suicide by crashing a plane and killing 200+ people?
No idea, but it's *nearly* happened before. There was a [FedEx pilot who attempted suicide by DC-10] several years ago. Granted, that's boxes, not people, but he did attempt to murder the Captain, First Officer, and Flight Engineer of the aircraft in order to fly the plane into its smoking hole. He nearly succeeded but for the [truly heroic effort] mounted by the flight crew to overcome him. Two of the crew members continued to fight their assailant after sustaining skull fractures from hammer blows, one severing the flight engineer's temporal artery. Those guys had more balls that anyone you know that day. The NTSB found the incident to be the result of criminal activity, and so the resulting case file is [here] under the actual court filing relevant to the case. edit: /u/BadEgg1951 has an additional incident that was likely an example of a successful suicide by airline.
How do deaf people learn speech?
Sorry if this isn't the right place to put this OP, but I have a similar question for this. If born deaf and blind, with what language does a person think in? What goes on in their mind? Images or symbols?
How did women deal with their period in the Middles Ages?
interesting note: in the movie Braveheart, the piece of cloth that his wife gives him is her tampon rag. he's always all smelling it and holding it up to his face. so romantic.
What would happen to the world population if Bill Gates succeeded in wiping out TB, Malaria, and polio?
On the world population? Not much really. There were about 3 million deaths in 2012 related to these three diseases. . That's less than .04% of the total world population . Plus, the population growth rate of Sub Saharan Africa is 2.5%, so if all the Malaria cases survived the overall effect on global population growth would be minimal.I believe the biggest impact would be eliminating malaria because malaria also affects cattle and, therefore, limits the spread of the Bantu. Eliminating malaria would lead to additional deforestation, impacting also animals and older, non-herding/farming peoples in the areas that malaria has protected from Bantu incursionsHe would replace augustus caesar as my favourite person to have ever livedIt would go up for a short time. But people not dying of diseases tend to be more stable and productive, leading to more developed and industrialized economies, which in turn lead to reduced and better controlled birth rates.
How do women leave pee on Toilet seats? And why do they always criticize guys for doing it when they do it too?
If you lean back too much while sitting the pee hits the side of the bowl and splatters back up onto the toilet seat. Also hovering over the seat. Or if you really really have to pee and can't hold it in long enough and it slips before you sit", 'Walmart always has the nastiest restrooms in my area, at least the ladies rooms are. Gross.
how can I picture something so vividly, but be unable to draw it in such detail?
Part of the problem is the fact that the brain lies to you about how much detail you remember about something. For some reason its advantageous to be confident about our perceptions of the world so the brain goes out of its way to convince us that we are imagining things in perfect detail. There have been a bunch of experiments done to do with this, i suppose appropriately i can't remember many of them. There are two that come to mind:one to do with drawing a bike. Everyone knows what a bike looks like,we see them pretty much every day and a lot of people use them regularly. You can picture a perfect bike in your mind. Most people, however, can't draw a functional bike. It was something like only 1/8 people can. The other was to do with witnesses of a crime, where everyone is sure of certain details but were mostly wrong. Stuff like clothing types/colours, physical descriptions of people involved, the actual chain of events etc. Like i said most people were convinced they remembered correctly, even though they hadn't. This doesn't apply to stuff you've purely created in your mind and your inability to draw it, is more do with the last part of your post. I'd try and find sources but Im on my phone in bed! Would also account for any formatting errors.
Girlfriend says she walks slower than I do by her having shorter legs than I do. Is this correct or an excuse?
She's right. Shorter legs lead to slower walking. If you look at humans who run fast, they tend to have long legs. The longer your legs, the more distance you cover with each step.
why does the IRS make it so difficult to understand how to file personal taxes?
You're free to go learn all thee 75,000 pages of the tax code, because the government doesn't know which parts apply to your business. Spomeomne might be able to figure it out like an accountant
Why hasn't the U.S. lowered the drinking age to 18 and what would it take?
To add onto everything that's been covered regarding road funding, I'd also like to include the fact most brains aren't fully developed by 18. The prefrontal cortex, the area of the brain that is in charge of rational decision making, takes the longest to develop. For some, it can take as long as 25 years. Alcohol + underdeveloped brain = shitty decisions, hence the reduction of teenage related drunk driving incidents since the raise to 21.
Why aren't there stricter physical requirements for police officers? They have to be prepared to chase down and/or apprehend criminals daily, but few seem like they're in good shape.
None of these answers seem to give an answer so I'll explain. To Institute a fitness requirement the agency by law needs to furnish a means to maintain that standard. That means building an area and then buying gym equipment and maintain that equipment. It also means paying overtime for every officer to come and work out, or they could furnish a gym membership to every officer. Both of these options are very very expensive and generally won't fit into an already stretched budget.
Why is Mouth Breathing bad, and the best soloution to fixing it?
Rewording a comment so it's in line with the rules: Speech therapists can help with mouth breathing, as well as any irregularities in eating . They may or may not be able to help with this situation, given the jaw issue, but that's one avenue to explore.
Why does the hormonal IUD cause menstruation to stop?
The hormonal IUD, and some pill forms of birth control make the body think that it's already pregnant, which stops the queue for menstruation.
I see snails appear when raining, but where do they come from, and where do they disappear to when it gets sunny?
Salt works on both snails and slugs but don't do it. It kills them in a horrifying and disgusting and what I can only assume is an extremely painful way. There's enough suffering in the world already.I always find them clinging to the underside of pots and leaves or the sheltered edges of the garden beds. Sometimes they even climb the wall on the shady side of the house.At least for me, they get picked up by rats and consumed on my patio grill. It's so, so, so disgusting to open that up for a cookout and see all the little crunched spiral shells and rat turds on my grilling surface. 20 mins of super high heat and a good wire brush scrubbing hopefully burns away the vestiges of contaminant.Under rocks and logs etc. Anything that they can squeeze under. They then come out very early in the morning while humidity is high, and as it warms up they go back to those damp dark squishy places. *edit* Err those are slugs, snails will go back to bodies of waterLook inside any flax bush or other palm tree type plant and you will see lots of them nestled into the damp dark crevices"tactic"? Are you sieging a war against snails?', "My grandmother had a large crack between the bricks and plaster of her house for many years Anyway, she eventually got the cracked plaster removed and there were hundreds of snails sheltering behind there. When they removed the soil on her flower beds to replaster .there were hundreds fossils in her flower beds, I mean real fossils, not snails, but white and grey hard as stone fossils like shit dinosaur finds, but to us kids it was like magic!
Why are people scared to invest in penny stocks?
1) As far as I know pump and dump schemes are illegal and a lot of regulations have been enacted to stop fraud with penny stocks. 2) If you bought 100 shares at $0.02/share you would be spending $2.00 plus broker fees . Then you have to spend the same amount in broker fees to sell it. Using a $10 broker fee you would have to expect those shares to reach $0.22/share to come out even. 3) Penny stocks don't trade at high volume so the price doesn't change frequently. 4) No, if you bought into a bunch of penny stocks then one of them is not bound to go up. They are penny stocks for a reason. Penny stocks are purely a blind gamble.Because of commissions and overhead, it is rarely worth buying less than about $1000 of stock. When you buy penny stocks, you're usually buying 10,000 or 100,000 shares instead of 5 or 10. There are decent OTC investments to be had but there is much less regulation and much less information available so it is a safe bet that the "tip" you got is part of a scam. Even if you want to speculate , you are better off limiting yourself to listed companies as they are intrinsically less risky . Finally you seem to have the pump-and-dump scam backwards. You would buy the shares for $2-$3 and then they would quickly drop back to their previous price so in your example, you would lose $198 + commissionsThe reality is that most, if not all, companies that are selling penny stocks will not go very far. It is rare for a company that started with penny stock to do well enough to get listed on any exchange.Because if they weren't crap companies they wouldn't be penny stocks.
Does birth hurt for other animals as much as it does for humans?
Human babies typically have a head that is too big for the birth canal, while most animals don't. Humans have large brains at birth, yet cannot walk. Most mammals have smaller brains at birth, but are fully functional. Our birth canals can't grow to be big enough for a baby because then bipedal motion isn't possible. I also read somewhere that proportionately, humans give birth to larger babies than elephants. A human baby is 5% of the mother's mass and a baby elephant is 2.5% of the mother's mass. I couldn't find as source for that, but the article below says when body size is taken into account, humans pregnancy is much longer than it is in apes, meaning that our babies grow the biggest proportionate to our body size. In fact, the reason humans give birth when they do is because the baby is so large that the female body can no longer sustain the fetus. _URL_1_
Are there enough resources on earth to get ALL population out of poverty and hunger?
Solid question, as a doctorate student working on this exact domain I'll gladly answer your question; - Hypothetical situation; let's say we redivide all resources on the planet evenly amongst all the inhabitants. Everyone would get the same wage and the same food. We also disregard wars and political situations to simplify the hypothesis. Now, would everyone be well fed? The answer is yes, provided you can supply the third world countries with good storage facilities. At this point in time we produce 1.8 times the calories which we require to adequately feed the world population. A lot gets thrown away, goes spoiled, or goes to the obese though. Everyone would also be out of poverty. The poverty line today is a daily wage of 1.25 dollars, which would be reached easily after redivision. Now, is it sustainable to get everyone a middle class life? The answer is no. We can't seem to find trustworthy renewable energies. We won't be able to keep producing this amount of food when the chemical fertilizers run out. We won't have resources to keep supplying an entire world population with middle class goods. Unfortunately, at this point in time, we're using up about 2.4 more earths than we have. Or, in other words, we need 3.4 earths to replenish the resources we deplete on our earth each year. Getting everyone access and using up even more of our earths resources is simply not an option.
When launching a rocket into space, why is leaving the atmosphere at an angle more convenient than going straight up the entire way?
The reason they turn is to achieve orbit. See, in order to maintain a steady orbit you don't just need to be pretty high off the ground, you need to be moving horizontally really really really *really* fast. In fact, you need to be moving so fast horizontally that the Earth curves away from you faster than you fall. They go straight up initially to get to where the atmosphere is less dense which makes their horizontal acceleration more fuel efficient.
renting, owning, leasing, apartments and houses
While buying a house can build equity and you'll have some tax benefits. It's also more expensive than renting. Higher utility bills because of the bigger space , higher upkeep because you pay for all the maintenance & repairs instead of your landlord, HOA fees, you're paying interest on a 5 digit number for 10+yrs, etc. Also, a owning a house is less flexible. It's hard to sell and you'll have to deal with foreclosure risks.
What did Hillary Clinton have to do with the Benghazi attack?
According to a dozen or so Republican-led congressional hearings, she was not responsible for any wrongdoing at all about Benghazi . Any troop movements that occurred around the globe were due to budget cuts, and not actionable intelligence.
What happens to urine and fecal matter after we flush the toilet?
Auntie Mabel answered this on 'Come Outside' When Pippin the dog did a poo in the house, Auntie Mabel flushed it down the toilet then explained the poos magical journey _URL_7_ And heres a more modern explanation of poo for Children _URL_6_", 'The Japanese are light years ahead of everyone in find a better solution to the waste [problem] . The turd burger.In Chicago it all goes here! _URL_9_ I visit that site from time to time for work. walking around the Sludge thickening areas is fun From what I've seen the solids end up as this black dried up ash that's loaded into rail cars and gets shipped off to become fertilizers.True story: When I was 5, my dad told me that it went to Pizza Hut. I still believe him.I'm pretty sure it gets sent to Brazil for porn fetishists.
On what do our eyes focus in pitch dark?
They just relax. Where the focus is will be different depending on how tired you're eyes are and if you're a little near or day sighted
Why are phone companies allowed to take back unused mobile phone credit at the end of each month?
A better question is why are there still phone carriers?Why don't we just pay for an internet connection and use a device to Skype or what have you?
What does Depression feel like?
Depression is like the weight of the world is on your shoulders, your constantly sad for no particular reason, and everybody else seems so happy. No matter what others do or say, it can't change the way you feel. You no longer enjoy things you once loved doing, you just can't be bothered with them or anything anymore, what's the point? Then you find yourself happiest when you are about to sleep and wish you could sleep forever. Your favorite time of the day is those few seconds after you wake up, before you realise your still alive and have to live another day feeling like this", 'You want to have fun but it feels like a chore.You want to exercise but you never have enough energy.You sleep more, and prefer your dreams to real life.Nothing excites you, nothing offends or surprises you.Food tastes bland. Movies are boring. Music is annoying.
How can the ocean become low on oxygen when water is one part oxygen?
That oxygen isn't available for use, because it is bound up in the water. The oxygen in question is dissolved oxygen saturating the water. Not the oxygen the water is actually partially made of.The oxygen that is part of a water molecule is not usable for respiration. Undersea lifeforms get their oxygen from gas dissolved in the water.
How do illegal immigrants stay in a country for decades without getting caught?
My friends dad is illegal. His mom isn't. He doesn't drive and world at a place that pays all cash. And every bill is under his wifes name.I was here for work, and already had drivers license, mortgage on house, social security, was paying taxes etc. I was here on a work transfer visa, legally for 3 years. Then the work downsized me. Now I was illegal. But I still had all the needed cards, bank accounts, social connections etc. So I started my own business and just carried on as an illegal for a couple years. Then married a citizen and had some anchor babies. Now I am legal.You probably commit crimes too and don't go to jail. Ever pirated music? Ever drive to fast? Ever jaywalked? Why aren't you in jail? Some people will tell you that illegal immigration is the biggest possible crime but it basically isn't. And is largely enforced to the level of seriousness of a crime that it is
Why does the "no smoking" light exist in planes?
I'm not that old but I still remember a time where it was legal. If the plane is a bit old you might even still find ashtrays. Moreover, you have private plane where smoking could be allowed ", 'There are also still ashtrays in the bathrooms because they would rather you use the ashtray than the bin full of paper towels.To constantly remind people of the fact, there are people who haven't flown since it was legal to smoke on aeroplanes and they might not know the rules.
The Iowa Caucus and why it is or isn't important?
It is generally used as an eliminator. In a standard year, it is said that there are only 3 tickets out of Iowa. Generally, candidates who do poorly in Iowa drop out of the race. This year, however, it will likely only eliminate one candidate . It will be an indicator of many different things. * There are a lot of people who will vote not-Romney in the primaries. This is evidenced by Santorum's rise. * Romney is having a lot of difficulty gaining any support.* Paul has a solid core of supporters and many independents/Democrats. However, there are few supporters of other candidates that will switch to him unless something changes.
How to gain weight with a fast/high metabolism?
I've struggled with gaining weight my whole life. I've always been so skinny and no matter how much I work out, it's impossible for me to gain any muscle. I always thought it was because of my fast metabolism, but I'm realizing it's because I'm just not as hungry as most people. I feel like I eat enough in a day, but when I added up how many calories I eat on an average day, it was like barely half of the amount I'm supposed to have. I need to figure out which foods have a lot of calories and eat those I guess, because I always find I just can't make myself eat enough. I get too full.
What is 4chan and why is it being banned in so many places? Isn't 4chan just like reddit?
4chan is reddit without the karma filter. If you could post anything you wanted and not have to worry about being downvoted, you'd end up being way more honest. That's the draw of 4chan to a lot of people.
Why did some ancient civilizations, f.e. the Egyptians, seem to use the same distinct art style for centuries or even millennia?
Egypt was a very top down society. The Pharaoh, as a god, pretty much set the agenda. His word was law. He employed many of the nation's artists to do his bidding in creating tomb art and propaganda for his government. Thus the ability of artists to devise radical new art styles was relatively muted. The Egyptians, with a few notable exceptions, were relatively safe from invasion. They were an island in a sea of desert sand. Unlike, say, the British Isles, they were not continually invaded. There were few invading armies, with all the culture and art that goes along with that, to alter their art. The Egyptians found a form and style of government which really worked for them. It didn't *need* to change to adapt to a transforming world. It worked pretty well, and there was little room to question it.
Are food cravings random or does my body know that it needs something that is contained within the food that I crave?
Psychology major here at the University of British Columbia. Part of my degree was behavioural neuroscience. Some of the answers here don't have enough uncertainty built in to really be correct As I understand it: Hunger is actually still a fairly poorly understood phenomenon. We still don't even know exactly what causes hunger and thirst in general, let alone cravings. But it's being worked on . So far, there are still just working hypotheses. They all seem to have some evidence in favour and some against. My profs didn't even point to one as being most likely true. There is evidence that *some* cravings can be associated with a need for a particular type of food, such as salt, but there is also evidence against this for many other types of cravings. Some may simply be based on activation of the dopamine system , causing a response that is simply due to conditioning - we might crave sugar at some point because it is tasty and rewarding, not because we need it. In short we don't know. Sorry. Since I know that's anticlimactic, I'll give you a fun fact! Food aversion is the only type of classical conditioning that can happen even when there's a long gap between the stimulus and the reward/punishment ! Most classical conditioning only works when the reward/punishment happens almost instantly after the stimulus. But when we eat something, and feel sick hours later, we are classically conditioned to have an aversion to that food ! This has sometimes lead to a mistake where people eat something, then feel sick for some other reason hours later, but still develop an aversion to that food. Neato!
Why is ALL of the climate change so bad? Is there really no part of the world that is likely to benefit?
Good or bad are value judgements. For example, say the melting of the permafrost on the tundras of north America. Maybe that's good for animals that graze on the grasses that grow there. Maybe it's good for the people that live out there. But maybe it's bad for some other animals. Rising sea levels might be good for fish, shellfish and other things that live along the shoreline, they get access to more shorelines. But maybe it's bad for mangrove forests, bad for people who live low lying areas along the coast, etc.
Why is there a specific order for solving maths and how did it come to be that way?
If you didn't have an order, not everyone would do things the same. Anything involving mathematics would suffer because of that. You don't want 3 engineers coming up with different results because each one does the math differently.
Why do kids seem to have infinite energy and amazing fitness, yet as we get older this deteriorates?
Because adults have responsibilities, they have to manage their energy, and focus it on their job. Kids don't have any responsibilities, playing is actually their job. Ask a kid to train like an elite MMA fighter, let's see who has more energy
Why wasn't Gay Marriage legal when homosexuals were given rights?
Overall gay rights has been a three steps forward, two steps back process. A lot of advances happened in the 70s, but anti-discrimination laws were usually city or state laws. There isn't a national law that forbids discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity. One such law that will focus on employment discrimination, ENDA, is still something gay activists are trying to get through congress. Getting marriage equality through the courts has frequently been based on that state having a law opposed to discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation . However, one twist was the case where the Hawaii State Supreme Court ruled in favor of marriage equality -- instead of declaring the policy a matter of discrimination based on sexual orientation, they said it was discrimination on the basis on gender, because the state was saying 'If your partner were a different gender you could get married' and not 'You can't get married because you're gay'
Why does alcohol affect people in different ways, when other drugs are fairly consistent?
All drug reactions can be mapped onto a bell curve. Most people react very similarly within certain constraints, while there are always outliers for any chemical we consume.Some people are allergic to penicillin, but most aren't. Xanax, for instance, gives a very consistent reaction because it is concentrated in pill form and reacts on very specific receptors. Alcoholic drinks are designed around the flavor profiles of the various ingredients, and as such, may skew the reactions of individuals. Then there's the cultural behaviors associated with alcohol. Most people who drink act just like someone else in their family when that person is drunk. The research hasn't definitively answered why this is the case, but most likely environmental stimulus, has a greater impact on behaviors for drinking than prescription drugs because of the social acceptance of alcohol compared to Oxycontin, for example. Social acceptance allows the drunk experience to be shaped by other peoples' reactions. That's my theory, at least. Interesting question.You're looking at the resulting behaviors, rather than what alcohol's actually doing. Alcohol has a tendency to reduce inhibitions. It reduces one's ability to control emotions or display of emotions, and temper decision-making. If you would be angry, when drunk you'll rage. If you're sad, you'll be more maudlin while drunk. If you're already horny, well, you're just going to be more overt with it all. You also have to consider that while alcohol could be consistent, the reasons why people drink aren't consistent. Some people get drunk when they're upset. Others drink when they want to have fun. So you might flip the question around and think "why does Bob drink when he's angry" rather than "why does Bob get angry when he drinks?"
Did the German citizens who continued to live within Germany during WWII really not know about the genocide that was taking place within and around their borders?
As others have said, one's own survival came first. Also, bear in mind that WWII shaped our current understanding of things like genocide and empire. Fifty years before, European powers killed off millions of Africans during the rush to colonize. It wasn't seen as a problem because it happened way over there where we didn't have to see it, and because the soldiers could romanticize it with stories of conquering the savages. Even if a German civilian knew that people were being killed, he probably didn't know how big the operation was or how awful the conditions were in the camp. When the Soviets took the Lublin camp in July 1944, it was mostly destroyed, but we began to see first-hand what they'd been doing. As we found more camps, more prisoners' belongings, and more survivors, the scale of the killings became apparent.When I visited dachau a few months ago I learned that the local residents were aware of the concentration camp, but not of the brutal detail of the killings that went on right at their doorstep. When the American army arrived, they were so horrified at what they saw that they brought in locals from the surrounding area, who were forced to help the clean up and disposal of the bodies. There are photos on the wall of the crematorium that capture the shock and angst of these people as they witness what had happened.
why does the "quietest room in the world" drive people crazy?
We have one of these at my university. My experience was that you can't hear anything due to the fact there's absolutely no echo/reverberation, if someone talks you have you face your ear towards them or else it seems like they're talking from 20m away. It's like when you get that feeling from dropping altitude in a plane or coming out of a tunnel, and you need to decompress your ears because you can't hear anything, except in this case it's just perpetually like that and you can't do anything. It's definitely disorienting
On Spotify, who gets the money from dead artists?
Their property rights are passed down through their estate. A copyright is good for 70 *years after the artist's death and then becomes public domain.
It seems like "everyone" is getting cancer. Has is always been this way, like since the dawn of time, or is this something new, or...?
Cancer rates aren't actually rising though. _URL_0_ Detection rates are VASTLY better than decades or a century ago. 2) When smallpox was an issue, cancer made up only 1/20 of deaths. Now smallpox is gone, that same 1/20 is more like 1/3 thus making it seem a greater issue than it really is/was.. the same number of people have it, but there are less diseases to compare it to, as Science has eradicated them. EDIT: Cant be bothered finding exact source, but I read it in Freakonomics.
Why can't I drink the water when I go abroad?
some countries have lower water-purification standards than the US. you could get sick if you drink their water. natives have either developed a tolerance to the unclean water OR they're just used to it.
How small does something have to be for the laws of quantum mechanics to affect it, rather than classical mechanics?
It all comes down to the precision that you need. If you want to calculate the movement of a blue whale with the precision that you'd normally only employ for atoms, then you will also have to opt for quantum physics. It's just that you usually need a higher precision for smaller objects, as it is a bigger relative difference.
The math problem we see Matt Damon's character solving in the scene on university's hallway chalkboard in Good Will Hunting.
He is making homeomorphic, irreducible trees with ten nodes. It's actually not a particularly difficult problem. Here is the simple explanation. These are trees. A tree is made of nodes connected together with something called 'edges', but I will call them lines. Trees have the property that they can't link back on them selves to make a loop, so triangles, squares, etc are all out. It has to only branch, although these 'trees' can branch from any direction. These trees need to be irreducible, which is a fancy way of saying that no node can be connected with exactly two lines. They also need to be homeomorphic, which fairly simply means that the direction and length of the lines doesn't really matter, so if you just flip one around, it isn't a brand new tree, it is just a different way of drawing the same tree. The problem which took them 'two years to solve' was to find all of the possible configurations which follow these rules with ten nodes. By the way, there happen to be ten solutions.