query stringlengths 8 249 | answer stringlengths 45 7.8k |
|---|---|
Why did we go to Mars before Venus? | It's much easier. On Venus, everything melts in several minutes in its horrible atmosphere. There were some Soviet probes on Venus, there are some pictures even. |
Are survivors of Ebola, like the recent American Doctor, now immune to it? | No one knows. No one has been stupid enough to be infected twice . Studies on monkeys show that it's possible, however extremely dependent on strain. |
Why is it whenever I decide to hydrate myself and drink a lot of water does it seem like 20 minutes later I'm just peeing it all out? Is my body even using it? | When you're pee is clear stop drinking water. When it still has a yellow tint, drink more water |
Why "universal basic income" as opposed to "universal basic provisions"? | Because freedom? What if I don't want x amount of clothing. What if I want x-3 amount of clothing and I want x+3 food instead? Money solves that. |
ELI: Why are fax machines still a thing? | I work for an insurance company that receives documents by fax all day, every day. Sure, from a technical perspective we could accept this stuff by email, but by accepting file attachments via email we're opening up our corporate network to every electronic creepy-crawly on the entire Internet, and it puts our network ... |
Why do we have such high voltages in our homes? | Electrical power is amps times volts. If you halve the voltage you have to double to amps. Power loss in the wiring is proportional to the square of the amps. In other words, if you halve the voltage you have to use four times as much copper in your wiring or your house will burn down. So, higher voltages are *much* be... |
How did they put cables undersea in 1854? And how would they do it now? | There's a book about how the first transatlantic cable was laid called [A Thread Across The Ocean]. There's also a very long article in Wired by Neal Stephenson called [Mother Earth Mother Board] about the laying of [FLAG], the Fiberoptic Link Around the Globe, which was at the time the longest undersea cable ever laid... |
why traditional Catholics are upset with Pope Francis. | This is a very small minority of Catholics called [Traditionalist Catholics]. This is different to a traditional Catholic which would be a much, much larger amount of Catholics. Tradionalist Catholics want to revert the Church to it's traditions from before 1965 including having Mass in Latin and lots of other confusin... |
How do alcoholics put up with all of the stomach aches? Do you eventually just get used to how bad your stomach feels and not notice? | Functioning Alcoholic here, you get used to it, a couple shots of whiskey in the morning and a glass of OJ, clears up the ache real quick, also a bottle of water right before passing out the night before seems to work.Some of these posts make a good point though, because alcoholics drink constantly, the hangover we get... |
Why is liver cancer a big problem, considering it can regenerate? Couldn't you just have the afflicted portion removed? | I need to find references for the statement I am about to make. The answer is quite nuanced, but I'll just give some simple points to research about. - Cancer, even if local, spreads. The cancer cells can begin in the liver as a tumor, but then spread throughout the body.- In the case of other liver diseases, outcomes ... |
Why people say "pardon my French" right before/after they swear | You only say pardon my french when you say fuck. The joke is that you meant the French word for seal. It's a poorly crafted joke", 'Well i am still not getting it Sorry for my ignorance Could anyone please explain with an example..I always found the phrase interesting, in that swear words in English are based off the G... |
If I'm trying to get the ace of spades, does picking 5 cards out of a fresh deck, have the same odds as picking 1 card 5 times - reshuffling in-between? | It might be easier to look at the complement -- not getting the ace of spades. If you pick 5 cards at once, the probability of no ace of spades is /, so the probability of getting the ace of spades is 1 minus this, or roughly .096. In the second case, the probability of no ace of spades is ^5. 1 minus this is approxima... |
why are all colors together considered white and absence of color considered black, and not the other way around? | You're thinking of the difference between light and pigment. Colors of light are *additive* , and colors of pigment are *subtractive* . |
Why is there a gazillion of distros? | Simple economics: When you lower the barrier to entry then more people will enter the market. There are so many distros because it's easy to make a distro. All it takes is time and knowledge. So, you end up with a lot of them. Whether having so many is a good or bad thing is irrelevant when asking why they exist. |
why can a 17 year old be tried as an adult if they're considered mature enough, but an 18 year old can't be tried as a child if they're immature enough? | The state assumes some parental power over juveniles . By this principle, the state can order treatments for juveniles on the basis of what the court deems to be in the juvenile's best interest. However, what this is effectually doing is waiving some of the civil rights that the juvenile would have as an adult. An adul... |
if fentanyl is so lethal, why are drug dealers selling it? Won't it kill off all their customers? | Fetanayl is cheaper and easier to acquire than heroin. You can sell lesser amounts for more money because it is more potent. Junkies like to buy fetanayl because it gets you super high. Dealers sell their drugs with the assumption that the users will be smart enough not to overdose. Many heroin addicts seek out fetanay... |
How do ground-only animals such as deer handle sudden dramatic snowfall, like the 7 or so feet of snow that fell in this last storm in Buffalo, NY? | I'm outside of Buffalo, we have 5' of snow. This morning I looked out our upstairs window and saw a fresh deer trail through the snow in our backyard. It's the same path we usually see deer running through. I was totally amazed to realize they're still moving around in all of this snow! |
How do the detectors at Walmart or other stores work? | great watch about this topic - magnetostriction _URL_0_ basically the little metal strips inside those white anti-theft tags are made to a precise size and thickness that slightly alters the magnetic 'signal' being sent out from the detectors. a lot of products nowadays that are worth a shit are actually built with tho... |
Why does having your back scratched feel so damn good? | Its a homologous that comes from our hominid ancestors. When you see primates picking bugs off each others backs, they're not always picking bugs. They do it because it feels good. Its another way to build social relationships. |
Why are polygraph tests carried out by police if it's not sufficient evidence in the court and are often inaccurate? | Cops can lie in interrogations. Hook someone they're pretty sure is guilty, ask them questions. The person says something, cop says the polygraph says they're lying. The person gets flustered and admits they were lying, and confesses. The polygraph isn't evidence, but the confession is. Or they admit to lying to the co... |
Why don't private jets fly faster than Mach 1? | Designing supersonic aircraft is hard, and the aerospace companies have determined that there isn't enough demand to justify the investment of designing one. There are regulations regarding flying supersonic aircraft over populated areas. If someone wanted to fly from Denver to London on their supersonic jet, they woul... |
Why are mice bodies viewed as analogous to human bodies in laboratory settings? | Mice are mammals, so they have a lot of similarities to humans. And they are cheap and easy to breed and breed in large numbers, so it's quite easy to get a number of sample groups for testing. Testing on primates would give more analogous results, but they are much more difficult to raise and keep compared to simple m... |
Why do massages feel better when someone else is doing them to us then when we do them to our selfs. | I believe there's also some social aspect to it. You enjoy the attention and caressing of the massage-giver, which may have its roots in primal group dynamics. |
What's actually happening after lifting weights that makes the muscles feel like they're trying to push their way out of the skin? | When you work out a muscle, fibres that make up that muscle tear, that's what causes muscles to hurt later. Immediately after the workout blood rushes to the area to try and fix the damaged caused, this temporarily makes the muscles feel bigger because they're expanded with blood. |
Why is a 50hz TV considered bad? | Because you can't easily and cleanly divide 24 into it at least with 60hz) Your 1080p24 bluray movies have to go back and forth showing some frames twice and others three times. With 120hz TVs they just show each frame 5 times it allows for a more cinema like feel without any of the judder produced by the 2:3 inverse p... |
When some gave devs make in game trailers, how finished is the game/product used? | Well, it depends on the game engine and the video editor. Sometimes, to make the trailer look awesome game devs shut down some portions of the engine in exhange for better graphics/performance. That is why in some trailers you can see particles effects at 1080p at 60fps and more than 30 NPCs at the same time but the re... |
What's the purpose of a credit score and why do they exist? | Companies that deal with lending have to factor in your likelihood of being a good customer. Remember: only you know your situation - lenders only know what you tell them. Because these companies have this vested interest, they will tell each other about bad customers, thus cooperating between themselves to help each o... |
Why did people look older at my age, in the past, compared to now? | Could be any number of things, really. Stress, diet, smoking, lack of sun block, environment. For the most part it could just be hard living. It's all about the mileage. |
Why do they sometimes put glass walls in front of drummers when a band plays live. | Honestly didn't know that. Always thought it was because the drummer had a tendency to rock out so hard their sticks would go flying. Now I know |
Why is it not possible to reach light speed via rotation? | The energy needed to continue to accelerate the disk would approach infinity, and realistically, you'd be having a lot of issues with centrifugal force, [which would destroy your disk] |
Why can it be normal for girls to dress like boys but boys can't dress like girls? | It's because women and girls have organised and fought for the right to wear men's clothes. They have protested, they have tried to educate, they have disobeyed social conventions, school/workplace rules and laws to not crossdress. The battle is still ongoing, it is not 'perfectly fine' to be a tomboy in any country. M... |
How are banned cartoons that are never seen found and uploaded? | Why do you say > It was released on Laserdisc in 1991, but that doesn't help. I have a Laserdisc player. I can digitize the TV signal it puts out and upload the result to YouTube with an A to D converter. OK, I didn't do it, but there are lots of folks who could. They sold over 15M Laserdisc players. |
What is smartness/braininess/IQ? Is how smart a person is genetic? | going to try and actually eli5 by equating practical intelligence to a race with no finish line. In this race you simply are born, you run, and stop running the race when you die. The goal is to get as far as possible in that period of time. Now since this race takes a lifetime, you aren't always running all out, 100% ... |
How would deflating a NFL football (ala The Patriots) give you an advantage? | I doubt there is any tangible weight difference.. it would make the ball easier to grip however, as the ball will deform more freely, and so you'd be able to get better purchase on it", 'Someone should ELI5 how the pats blew the colts out with a deflated ballWhat more people should look into is this _URL_0_Umm pullquot... |
If I drank exactly to my body's requirements would I stop needing to pee? | No. Many people are dehydrated without ever really knowing it. Which is to say they are below the body's required fluid intake, but still have to unrinate. Urination is the body's way of flushing out toxins and waste, so even if you are taking in less fluid than you should be your body will still want to flush that was... |
Why are Africans (specifically Kenyans & Ethiopians) so much faster than everyone else? | For some of them it's their training. Right over the boarder of kenya is Mt. kilimanjaro. It's a popular place for them to train. Go to the high altitudes and then run a marathon every couple of days for a few months. Your body compensates for lower oxygen by making more red blood cells. They then go strait from there ... |
Why can't Helicopters deposit large oxygen bottles strategically on Mt. Everest or pick up people in trouble by harness? | Seriously though, why don't they end this madness and build an escalator to the top already?", 'They cannot fly that high. The air is too thin to support the helicopter. There are some ultralights that can go that high, but not one capable of carrying an airtank yet alone picking up passengers.Who exactly is going to p... |
How are expiration/use by dates on food calculated | best by", etc. dates on products, with the exception of infant formula, which is pretty strictly regulated. So now, how do companies choose those dates? Well, they want to maintain a standard of quality of course, so that customers are happy with them, and they follow the loose principle that foods must be [wholesome a... |
What would happen if a container was opened and closed in space... then brought back to Earth? What would be inside? | So you'd get back to earth and there would be a cat inside the box. The cat would be alive. And also dead.On earth, although we cannot see the air, it is in fact made up of an inconceivable amount of atoms. Atoms like oxygen, carbon dioxide, hydrogen, etc Everything is made of different types of atoms densely packed to... |
Could the events of Red Dawn actually happen? | Setting aside the top comment which is a bomb ass one. Let's remember that there's about 100-150 million gun owners in the U.S. Most of them in the west, south and south-west. Most of these gun owners have very similar hardware to our military in their collection. Let's pretend that our 2 million service members can't ... |
Why is seawater so hard to convert into drinkable water? | It's really not. It takes power to do it on a large scale, but you could just float some solar stills and get enough for one or two people that way. |
Is artificial intelligence really ever possible? | > From my understanding, at the moment, a computer can only make decisions based on what it's already been programmed to do, they're completely incapable of making any real decisions. [Here] is Alan Turing seminal 1950 paper on the subject. Skip ahead to section 6, he discusses and dismantles all the common objections ... |
When, if ever, I should use the parking brake on a car that has an automatic transmission. | There is a conclusion you can draw from your google search: using the parking break when parking is never a bad idea. If you want to reduce the wear to an absolute minimum you could follow Big_Daddy_PDX' advise. The sensible and practical approach would be to make sure that when the car is parked, it is in park and the... |
How does a 100% satisfaction guarantee work? | The specific details will depend on the individual business, but when I have worked in grocery stores with such a guarantee, I'd do whatever I could to make sure the customer was satisfied. If you bought, I dunno, a box of cake mix and ended up not caring for it, I'd give you another box of the same cake mix, a box of ... |
Why when I sleep in I don't get hungry for a couple hours after waking up, but when I wake up early for work I'm starving when I wake up? | I have the opposite effect. When I wake up early I'm so UN hungry that it borders on nausea. I can eat right away if I sleep in though.Without scientific mumbo-jumbo, I think the easiest way to think about it is this: if you go long enough without eating, you lose your appetite. If you sleep through your hunger, you wa... |
Sometimes there are 0 seeds for a torrent, yet it still downloads, usually at very low speed. Where does this data come from? | There are websites that track the number of seeders/leechers and your client gets the data from them. Quite often the websites don't update very often or miss seeders completely. |
why do websites care how secure my password is? | The main reason is because it's extremely bad publicity. If you have two website that provide the same service, one gets hacked a lot, and the other doesn't, which site will you use? |
Could we really build Star Wars sized space ships? | If built in space. Our rocket tech wouldn't be able to accelerate fast enough to put strain on anything, I don't think. |
how did the pokemon rescue team team games on the gameboy work with the rescue feature and no internet? | Can't say for sure, never played the games. But there was the link cable, as well as a built in Ir sensor for multiplayer capabilities |
Ahmed Mohamed. Why does reddit hate him to death now? What information changed about the clock incident? | He was a fraud, but he probably didn't have malicious intent. I think he was the product of wanting to please his family, mainly his dad, by getting all this political publicity and therefore helping his dad's political cause. I mean, the dad ran for president of Sudan, twice. Sudan is a dictatorship! The whole thing i... |
Why is cryopreservation thought to be unethical? | Mostly because it gives false hope to people and dupes them out of their or their relative's money. The $40-50k per person which go toward cryopreservation can be spend on a lot myriad of other things which are within the scientific realm including preventing and curing diseases. |
Why do our noses clog up with snot/bogies when they are an essential airway? | It's our immune response. Our nose is also a big open hole for outside things to get in. So when there's something dangerous perceived by the immune system, the body makes more snot to trap the bad things before they can get inside and kill you |
Why can a nicotine (and possibly other substances) addicted brain sleep without having to get a 'fix'? During the day it's a lot harder to 'stay clean' for 10 hours. | All that has been commented is true, it alters your sleeping patterns but your body also starts to crave for nicotine during sleep, that's why the time between the user waking up and his first cigarrette is so important in determining the severity of his dependence to nicotine. Source: _URL_0_ |
This Common Core 2nd grade math problem | I'm mathematics teacher, and I have no idea why that answer is not correct. I feel genuinely sorry for your daughter for having such a teacher. As a general rule, your questions should be self-standing. If student answers your question properly as it stands, that answer is right. If the answer was not the one you were ... |
Why were there so many recorded serial killers in the 60s, 70s and 80s as opposed to the present day? | It probably has to do with the overall decline in violent crime since the 90s, but I can't say with 100% certainty. |
I left a cup of water and plants out for a few days, when I came back it had tiny fish in it. How did that happen? | I have to second the notion that it's highly likely they weren't fish; instead, they were probably larvae or tadpoles . more likely mosquito larvae.Similarly, if you leave a sack of grain in a dark cellar, it will spawn rats. |
Why are there no comedic conservative pundits? | There's some, but there is a much smaller audience for it. Fox has tried the late night comedy stuff, but never caught on and wasn't particularly funny. The target Demographic for that sort of thing is young male which tends to be overwhelmingly liberal. If you look on the internet there's some conservative comedy like... |
How do people running for presidential office keep up with their current political office while spending a seemingly full-time job campaigning? | They don't. Which is one of the criticisms of letting campaign seasons get longer and longer. Rubio got hit hard by this when he got called out on not voting on anything. |
If bending with my knees is supposedly more healthy for my bones, why is bending with my back so much easier and natural? | It feels natural because you sit in chairs most of the day. If you look at small children That is our natural squat. In most countries that is a normal way to squat down. Read this if you have some time. I am doing this to restore my squat. I can't do anything near that but am working on it. _URL_0_", 'Bending your kne... |
I have recently been able to smell what I ate in my urine. Is there something wrong with me or did I gain a superpower? | Rum - If I've had a night of it, all the next day, my whizz just smells like rum smells quite pleasant actually.If you reeeeally want a sure fire experiment, have some lucky charmsI love beer. My piss smells like soggy wheat flake cerealIf you are smelling what you eat when you are urinating, you probably are smelling ... |
The religion of the flying spaghetti monster | It's meant to ridicule/criticize mainstream religion. Basically, pastafarians are taking the piss out of other religions by being an absurd, over-the-top caricature of other religions, and yet still acting at least some of the time as though they're taking it seriously. It's sort of like how when you want to mock someo... |
why do old pictures not have people with acne in them as opposed to today where it seems a lot of people have acne? | I spent my teenage in a country where junk and processed food is rare to get or I would say more expensive. I hardly saw acne on anyone's face during my high school years. As soon as I came to U.S. I started getting zits in myself few month afterwards. I highly suspect the food and diet that we consume here is a major ... |
Why are so many non-Catholics going crazy over Pope Francis when John Paul II was literally a saint? | Pope Francis speaks more to liberals than he does to actual Catholics, and Reddit is a pretty liberal place. John Paul and Benedict probably wouldn't have gotten nearly as much positive attention, and you probably would have heard more about how the US is hosting a pedophile ring leader. |
Why isn't our sun and solar system slowly being sucked in to the black hole at the center of the Milky Way? | Let's imagine that the sun's total mass was suddenly converted into a black hole. So, the entire solar system, all the planets and asteroids, are going to be sucked in to our black hole correct? No, all the planets and asteroids are going to keep the same orbits as before. The mass of this black hole is the same as the... |
What exactly causes a plane to stall when it's climbing? | There's two kinds of stall, although to a pilot it doesn't really matter because the effect and solution are the same. The first type is generally when the airspeed drops too low, and the aircraft falls because it can no longer produce it's weight in lift. This is because the lift generated by a wing increases as speed... |
If hot things have lots of energy... | In nature, the hot transfers to the cold naturally, the opposite is impossible. You have to understand how a fridge works to understand what i am talking about. Like i said, hot goes to the cold, cold never goes to the hot. So, how you make things colder? Well, it's pretty simple. You have to create a temperature diffe... |
Is there any evidence that suggests covering your webcam is anything other than an act of paranoia? Can a webcam transmit video without the indicator light being on? | For what it's worth, it was recently pointed out that [Mark Zuckerberg puts tape over his webcam and mic jack]. So, the man that runs one of the biggest tech businesses in the world is a little paranoid about this. If I were an internet billionaire, I guess I'd be more concerned about spying too.The webcam indicator li... |
Why do the extremist groups in the Middle East despise America and Americans? | They are called 'extremists.' I was thinking about this before I went to sleep. It feels similar to irrational people that hated the German people during the holocaust. Not that we're currently doing anything of such proportions, but we're being lumped in with the shitty things our military and government are.Read lega... |
There were more than 13 British colonies in North America at the time of the American Revolution. Why didn't Nova Scotia, Quebec and the rest of Canada join the Union? | It has not been mentioned that Canada was invited into the USA through the Articles of Confederation in 1777. The war of 1812, I'm sure, wore out the invitation.They were, but it was different. At the time of the revolution "canada" was Quebec and the Maritimes. The Maritimes were much smaller than the US colonies at t... |
Why isn't Google Fiber expanding faster? Is it not performing? Are people not switching service as fast as they anticipated? | First of all, it's prohibitively expensive to lay down new fiber. That's why you don't see other companies jumping at the opportunity. Even for the legacy cable providers it's more cost effective to raise prices on existing infrastructure than to improve it. It takes some deep pockets and a large investment to roll out... |
As a shy person, how come it's easy to socialize with little kids but with people my age I feel uncomfortable and shy. | I feel this way too but with people who are older than me. Always got along better with my parents' friends rather than their kids.Socializing might be difficult for individuals due to a sense of inferiority to others, confidence is important. You have fears of regret, exposing yourself, being vulnerable by opening up ... |
Why do humans develop so much slower than other animals? | A bunch of people here have the basic answer correct. I just want to add on a little more detail to flesh out these good answers. Humans don't actually develop much more slowly than other animals; we're just born way too early. We have to be because of the size of our heads. Human gestation period is 21 months. Prior t... |
Why do we believe that aliens are smarter than us? | It's not that *all* aliens will be smarter than us, it's that any we'd be able to detect would have to be more advanced than us. Any alien species that is able to travel to the Earth would have objectively more advanced technology than we do. Our current level of technology is barely enough to visit other planets in ou... |
What's the difference between the alcohol we drink vs. the alcohol we use as mouthwash? | My SO is a chemistry major and could answer this for you quite well if she wasn't asleep but just in case no one replies I'll answer with what little I do know: Alcohol is a general term and there are several different types. The alcohol you drink is ethanol. The same ethanol is in mouthwash, but in very low quantities... |
Why are beauty pageants for little girls even legal and accepted by society? | I honestly think the only answer that would provide insight would have to come from someone who actually believes pageants are acceptable. The TLC show Toddlers & Tiaras shows how much commitment and money parents sink into those pageants so they obviously believe they're getting something beneficial out of them. They ... |
How can Banksy manage to stay completely anonymous all of these years? | I'm just awaiting the day when he lets himself be caught and people realize it was Nicholas Cage all along. |
How could Mt. Gox lose $478 million dollars in bitcoins, almost everything they had, and not realize it? | They were founded as a Magic The Gathering Online Exchange before they decided to be a Bitcoin exchange. Which is how they got the name MtGox. Bitcoin blew up and they weren't experts in security. They had no business handling the large amounts of money they had. Easy target for hackers. _URL_1_", 'Each bitcoin transac... |
How more CPU cores improve performance | More cores can help improve performance because work can be done in parallel instead of a linear fashion that said you wont always see an increased performances for two reasons. One not all things can be worked on in a parallel nature some things just have to be done in a linear fashion and two some programs aren't des... |
Regular vs Premium vs Ultimate gasoline | **Short version: read the manual for your car. It will have a recommended grade. Use that.** Anything higher and you're wasting your money unless you have a high-performance turbocharged car that can advance spark anything lower and you're wasting your money by either wearing the car out prematurely or reducing fuel ec... |
If a country such as North Korea were to launch a nuke at South Korea, Japan, or the US, is there anyway for it to be stopped before detonation? | Yup, basically the country detects it and sends it's own missles out to blow it up in air Isreal's doing it as we speak in the isreal/gaza conflict: _URL_1_ |
How is it possible to have unknown elements on the periodic table where the atomic number is known but not the actual element? | Chemistry is, essentially, complicated physics. The rules that determine the properties of the elements chemically are true regardless of the element, which makes them somewhat predictable. We know that elements with such and such full electron shells will bond in this way and elements with more atomic mass will behave... |
Is the electricity from the lighter in my car essentially free? | As long as you can get someone else to pay for the gas in your car, then sure, it's free. |
In India, what happens if lower caste person becomes suddenly rich? | [There are plenty of stories about this.] Many younger Indians don't really believe in the caste system, but plenty of people still treat a rich dalit as a dalit despite his wealth. |
Why did pirates get scurvy but Eskimos don't | Eskimo's also got so much Vitamin D from seal meat they didn't have to develop the pale skin of other other people so far north.Narwhals. Their blubber is the best source of vitamin C in the arctic. Pound for pound comparable to orangesYou only need 6-10mg a day of vitamin c to prevent scurvy. Various animals and organ... |
Why do unions protect bad workers? | The main reason is that the union doesn't want management to have free rein deciding which workers are bad. Otherwise, they could fire people for not performance related reasons wrong race, wrong religion, about to vest a pension, pointed out safety issues, filed a labor grievance, or just because a manager didn't like... |
What the hell is going on in India right now? | Someone turned the cameras onto the day-to-day travesties. It's fun to tut-tut at other people's mistakes, so these cases are making our news. The frequency of reported rape cases to the U.N. is 27/100k in the U.S. versus 2/100k in India. But people prefer news that stops at a certain level of truth, and that line is u... |
Why do we just throw away aluminum foil? It seems odd we produces massive amounts of metal and just use it in a disposable manner. How is this economical? | Aluminum in its elemental form used to be extremely rare. Hundreds of years ago aluminum would be more valuable than gold and silver. The Bayer and Hall processes were key in making it accessible to everyday life by refining it from ore. This is a very energy intensive process and it is estimated that it takes up betwe... |
How severe are "Lashes" as a punishment, like the ones given out in Saudi Arabia? | I saw videos of amateur Saudi lashing: A well-dressed young punk struck a garbage collector who was brought to tears by it, partially I think due to pain but also frustration. On the other hand, a kid tried it on a different garbage collector and this guy fought back. A third story is some kid threw a brick and paralyz... |
Why can we not make an electric vehicle that recharges itself indefinitely as it rolls, like with alternators in each wheel? | Heat loss mainly. Friction. Gravity. BS for the bot: the energy produced by the alternator will be less than the energy that caused the wheel to turn in the first place, thus you're in a continual energy deficit. Unless the car only went downhill. But the answer is really the one-liner. |
Why is it not okay for actors/actresses to portray someone of a different race, but it is okay for them to portray someone with a disability? | Who said it's not okay for an actor to portray someone of a different race? Jake Gylenhall was definitely not Persian but he still played the Prince of Persia. |
Why do some plants have defense mechanisms like poison ivy and gympie gympie (called the suicide plant because it's so painful) and others don't? | Because of evolution. They don't choose what their defense system is. Random mutations happen to the plant and if the plant lives that mutation lives on. The poison ivy plant had it's mutation and it helped it live over other plants that didn't get the mutation. Grass on the other hand had mutations to reproduce quicke... |
Why Doesn't Gravity Have an Opposite, Like the Other Fundamental Forces? | Gravity is proportional to a thing's energy and the way we've defined energy is that it's not possible to be negative. The gist is that the more energy, the less space there is around the object so it seems like objects get pulled closer. Other answers tackle the nitty gritty of why it's going on pretty well. But the r... |
Scientists claim it is more hygienic to lick the toilet seat than bite your nails. Is this true? | I'm not sure about your fact as presented, but here is the thought process. Your fingernails are next to your skin , and are a porous material, with lots of little groves and holes. Your skin is even worse. As a bonus, your fingernails are hard to wash, so unlike your hands , bacteria which get under your fingernails a... |
How does spinning help exchange heat? | It basically just allows you to increase the surface area of the can that's exposed. So if you have a warm can and drop in an ice bath, the can will gradually warm up the water around it. Eventually that warmer layer of water creates like a layer of insulation, so the can cools slower. But if you shake it around and mi... |
Why can't I harm anyone in dreams? | I dunno. I've killed thousands of people in my dreams.The trick to harming people in dreams is to sleep in a bed with someone else. The other night I was fighting ninjas and, next thing I know, I'm awake in my bed and my girlfriend's all like *"You punched me in the face, asshole!"*', "Sounds to me like you've got a na... |
How hard would it be to purposely forget your native language? | If you're a kid who grows up in a country or family that uses a different language other that your native language, extremely easy. There is an entire generation of kids last named Sanchez and Martinez in the US who don't know a lick of Spanish. |
Why people find beer delicious and refreshing. | Everyone has a different palate. I love beer, but I don't like cheese. People talk about how much they love cheese, but I just don't get it. Same goes with cilantro, I can't stand the stuff. To each their own. My advice to you would be to find a drink that you do like and enjoy it. |
How come NFL has basically no following outside the US? | Your claim that nobody outside of the US is the least bit interested in the NFL just isn't true. While it's true the NFL is most popular in the US, a recent poll by the Independent suggests a non-US NFL fandom in the tens of millions. Well over 20 million Mexicans described themselves as NFL fans, with Brazil coming in... |
Why our voices go up in pitch when asking a question | As people have said, this is a culturally specific cue that signals the question without verbal markers. However I'm pretty sure it isn't just english that uses it. It's the same in Italian, therefore probably more languages as well. |
whatever happened to Esperanto? | Yeah, it was never really big. It had a decent-sized following -- almost a cult-following kind of thing, but it never really took off. The thing is, it wasn't really needed. There were already languages that are immensely popular and understood in vast portions of the world. When not, there are interpreters. What's mor... |
Subsets and Splits
No community queries yet
The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.