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How Did People Keep Record of Date Before We Knew That 1 Year = 365 Days? | The earliest calendars were lunar ones. This is the origin of the word month - the "mo" bit comes from moon. A lunar month was just over 29 and a half days. Each lunar month began as soon as you could first see the new moon in the west at sunset. The years can be fairly easily measured. Times like when the sun is direc... |
How do speed trackers on highways work? | There's a few kinds but the ones I think you are talking about are average speed zones. They work by having 2 cameras placed a known distance apart. The first camera captures your license place and the time, the second camera does the same. The computer is then able to calculate how long it took you to travel between t... |
How are allergy shots and homeopathy different? | Homeopathy is using *none* of *something that produces the same symptoms as your illness*. Seriously, the dilution ratios are so high that there are mathematically zero molecules of whatever the "active ingredient" is in a homeopathic treatment. The purported effect comes from the "memory" of water. And it's not inocul... |
Pangaea: Why was there just a single giant landmass in a global ocean? | Plate tectonics. The common misconception is that Pangaea was the first continent, but this is false there were others before it, other separate continents that merged to make Pangaea, and other supercontinents like Pangaea as well. So long as there is plate tectonics, it is forever shifting, and eventually someday, th... |
Are numbers and mathematics written and performed the same way in all languages and cultures? | These days mostly yes. But historically no. Chinese has its own number-writing system which is still used sometimes, and Japan independently created a lot of what we call geometry hundreds of years ago but with a totally different way of describing it. And arithmetic can be done several different ways and still get cor... |
Why not instead of going after illegal immigrants the U.S doesn't go after businesses and people illegally hiring them? | It 100% is a thing. It is crazy illegal to hire someone without proof of eligibility to work, but unless you show up at the business and vet every single employee, its hard to find out about it.They do. All businesses are required to check documentation and file paperwork on new hires. However, if someone shows up with... |
What actually is a headache? | TIL there are over 200 kinds of headache. _URL_0_ I went there to try and answer your question but wow. There's a lot of stuff there. I hope somebody here can answer your question. |
Is it possible to harvest the energy from atomic bombs? | Yes. You make them explode very, very slowly, and use the heat they produce to boil water to drive a steam turbine. The device that does this is called a nuclear power plant. |
Why is the skin on penises so dark, compared to other parts of the body, like torso and such. | Dermatologist here. There is more melanin in genital skin, in both men and women. Genital pigmentation increases in response to sex hormones. For example, newborn babies have particularly dark genital skin due to the influence of maternal hormones. This pigment gradually fades after birth before returning at puberty du... |
What happens when someone gets hit on the head so hard that they pass out? | Bad things. It is much harder to knock someone out that it appears in the movies, and generally if someone does get knocked out you need to get then to a hospital or they could die. If you get hit in the head enough to affect how think then that's a sign of a brain injury. The brain hits the side of the skull, or parts... |
What does OJ Simpsons knife being found mean for OJ Simpson? | The ~~firth~~ frith amendment of the united states constitution forbids being tried twice for the same crime. It doesn't matter how much evidence we find that he committed the murder, we could find a video of it or selfies he took during the murder, it wouldn't be constitutional to try him again because he has already ... |
Why are flames pointy? | A flame rises because it is warmer than the air around it. The cool air rushes in to push the hot air upwards. However, as the air rises it also cools down. It cools down from the outside inwards. A flame glows because it is hot enough to generate light. So as the flame cools down, the parts of it that are hot enough t... |
Where did all these different American accents come from and when did they start to form? | The way people speak in Britain has changed *a lot* since Britain started colonising America. So those original colonists didn't have "British accents" as they are now. [Here's a video about how Shakespeare would have sounded back then]. So Americans didn't lose their British accents as such. Their accents just diverge... |
Where does the weight go when burning calories? | It becomes CO2 and H2O. You get rid of CO2 through breathing and H2O through peeing or sweating. If you don't go to toilet and drink the amount of water you lost through perspiration you won't loose 1kg but you won't stay the same weight either. Because H2O stayed in your body but CO2 left. |
Do animals get periods and what purpose does it have? | Every mammal will in some way or another, not all bleed like humans but they have the same process. |
How can a normal movie-goer differentiate an A-movie from a B-movie? Is there such thing as a C-movie? | There really isn't anything like an "A movie" or a "C movie". The concept of a B movie however is something that developed back in the early 20th century, and it originally meant the second part of a double feature, when theaters use to show two films back to back. The term has evolved since then to generally mean a mo... |
How do they get huge cranes off the top of tall buildings? | Above 200 feet, the cranes, called tower cranes, build themselves. A hydraulic unit is installed when the crane is first built and is pulled into position by the crane itself. The crane then lifts the next section of tower from the ground and onto the hydraulic unit. A team of workers unpins the crane sections and the ... |
what happens when matter stops moving or vibrating. | Heat is just a measure of how much the atoms of whatever it is you're measuring are jiggling. If they're not jiggling at all, they'll be at zero Kelvin. |
How people colorize black and white photos. | Half of it is context and shading, and the other half is guesswork. A picture of someone sitting down in a suit say. You can guess their skin colour by the shade of grey their skin is. If they're asian, white, black, you can then guess an appropriate skin colour. If a solider is wearing a uniform, you can look up what ... |
why do airplains not have enough parashoots for everyone in case of total failure and crash to avoid loss of life? | This is a repost of a question asked earlier today, but summarizing. Most incidents involving fatalities are close to takeoff or landing, in which case parachutes would be useless. Accidents involving high altitudes would involve jumping from a fast moving plane at high altitude. It's likely that passengers would pass ... |
How do apps like Instagram sharpen your photos using their own filters? | The filter looks for small changes in the image and increases them. For example imagine you have a string of color values: 1, 2, 2, 1, 1, 4, 5, 2, 1, 1, 2 The filter might set a threshold of 3 and below which it will ignore, but anything larger than that it will amplify by 5. So you end up with a string like this: 1, 2... |
Why does an IUD (Intra-Uterine Device) cost so much? | There's an old aesop about a man with a broken furnace who calls a repairman: the repairman comes, looks at the furnace, kicks it, and says "That'll be $100" and the man says "What?! No way in hell I'm paying you $100 just to kick my damn furnance!" and the repairman says "No sir, it's only $10 to kick the furnace, the... |
Why don't my positive behaviors in video games carry over to real life? | The video games likely trigger your reward mechanism every time you save money, or perform a task. In real life, it is much more difficult to trigger this reward center of your brain , so you rely on video games to stimulate it. At some point you will find a hobby, career, strategy for saving money, etc. that trigger y... |
Why can we not/do we not store and reuse as much expended energy in cars as possible? | First two ideas that spring to mind: 1 - added financial expense to the vehicle makes it less likely to sell compared with competition. 2 - added weight from all the didgeridoos mentioned, resulting in increased fuel consumption and therefore lower efficiency at best equal to the energy regained but probably notTurboch... |
Why the island of Britain is called 'Great Britain'? | "Larger Britain", from Medieval Latin Britannia Maior, first recorded by Geoffrey of Monmouth, who employed it to distinguish the island from Britannia Minor or Brittany in modern France. _URL_0_ |
why do we measure in half-life and not 'life'? | Because if you're dealing with something which decays away at a steady rate, halving each half-life, then you can't really ever say it's finished its full "life" - at least not easily. It wouldn't, for example, be twice as long as the half-life. Twice the half-life would leave a quarter of the original material still i... |
How does a dataflow enter a planes flight recorder (or black box)? Doesn't any connection going into the recorder form a weak spot in it's construction? | See this image: _URL_0_ The connector is designed to maintain the integrity, waterproofing, etc. of the box. These connectors are used on virtually every plug in an aircraft. The premise is that the connector is made of very strong metals and non metals and it just so happens that the pin arrangements line up with some... |
The differences between the C.E.O., C.O.O, the President and the owner of a company. | Ok, in the strict legal sense the only two of these terms that exist is the CEO and whoever owns the company. COO, CFO and the like all have roles, but these roles essentially come down to whatever the business wants them to be. The CEO is the highest ranking person responsible for the management of the company, and so... |
How do student loans affect getting a mortgage? | Your creditworthiness is a combination of how good you are at paying off debts, and your debt-to-credit ratio. Let's compare two people. Both want to buy a $200,000 house, and both make $50,000 per year at their job. One person has about $5,000 in credit card debt on credit cards that have a combined credit limit of $3... |
Why do certain smells like garlic stick to your fingers so well, even after washing, and some don't? | Not everything is soluble in water. Garlic, it seems can be removed by citric acid so washing your hands in lemon juice usually works. Similarly, the capsicum in chillies is also not soluble in water but it *is* soluble in fat so drinking milk with a hot Indian or Mexican meal is better than water or beer for soothing ... |
Why is a slam dunk more apreciated than a 3 points shot in basketball ? | Apart from being farther from the goal, there's nothing particularly fancy about a 3-point shot. It's a jump shot like 99% of all other shots. A slam dunk, however is more of a spectacle. It also usually involves one player drastically out-performing the defender. There is a mental or psychological component of getting... |
Why is the musilm holy site mecca instead of the cave Muhammad showed the Quran? | Theres a great documentary about this from the BBC. Essentially its to do with the politics of the time and the prophet Muhammad's actual teachings. One of the core concepts of the Koran is that people should NOT worship holy sites or holy people but should only obey the word of God himself, which is the Koran. This is... |
If Jupiter is a gaseous planet, then is it possible to land a rocket there? | It would take on a semi-fluid consistency as you entered it. The deeper you went towards the core the denser it would get and the harder it would be to move forward. Eventually the force of buoyancy pushing against the ship would be equivalent to the force of gravitational attraction the ship felt, and it would come to... |
How do resonance tones create geometric shapes? | Ever drop something into water? You create a wave on the surface, that goes untill it hits the edge of water, and then it bounces back, right? If your wave does not resonate, then the high point of an incoming wave will be a low point of the wave bouncing back from the edge. So, put together, they will mess eachother u... |
Is "squeaky clean" a legitimate way to find the cleanliness of something? What causes the squeak? | Greases and oils prevent squeakiness. Generally, an important part of cleaning something is removing greases and oils. So squeakiness indicates that they are gone and that the thing is clean in that way at least. EDIT: On hardwood floors, fine-grained dirt also prevents squeakiness by sliding around, so squeakiness als... |
Is there a reason parents tend to speak in the third person to their young children? | Children really do tend to have issues with things like pronouns. Because they're words that don't always mean the same thing. It takes time to learn that "I" and "you" and "he" and "she" are understand by context. Whereas "mommy" is just "mommy" like "cookie" is just "cookie." Its a skill we overlook because of how ba... |
Why can we stay in the 100C° sauna for a few minutes, but can't take the heat if your shower water is a little bit too hot? | Water conducts heat more efficiently than air. That's why when it's a "dry heat" 100 is easier to handle than when it's humid, and why 100 inside a sauna is that much hotter than just a humid day as there is that much more water in the air. By the time you get to just straight-up water spraying against you it's conduct... |
How do people become introverts or extroverts? Are they born that way? | Yes and no. You tend to be born that way but it can shift later in life. Being an introvert means you gain emotional energy by being alone, or nearly alone only interacting with a handful of close friends and family. They then spend emotional energy by interacting with groups and will have to go back to being alone to ... |
Why isn't Corporate Raiding Illegal? | Do you mean hostile take overs? Because the opposing party legally buys up a lot of stock to gain control. It's hostile in the sense that the CURRENT equity owners aren't really all that for it but if a third party becomes the biggest equity holder that picture changes. |
Why do meal combinations become "boring" and unpleasant over time? | Our bodies need a lot of different things in order to be healthy. Vitamins, minerals, etc. Different foods may have different toxins that the body has to deal with and expel, or it may have different vitamins that are absorbed differently and that enhance or inhibit absorption . Varying our diet means we're more likely... |
When a bank goes bankrupt where does all the money from people's accounts go? | I don't know if this is what you are looking for, but it's important to keep in mind that banks don't just hold onto your money after it's deposited. In some sense, what you're actually doing is loaning your money to the bank in return for some amount of interest. The bank then takes that money, and loans it to other p... |
why does toilet water lower when it's a windy day? | There's a vent system connected to your plumbing. Its purpose is to keep air pressure neutral in your plumbing, so that the bad stuff can go down freely, and to make sure it doesn't come back up into your fixtures . However, if it's a windy day, you can have air pressure changing across the vent, which in turn can trav... |
Why, especially when looking at the night sky, are objects sometimes more in focus in our periphery then if we look directly at them? | There are two kinds of receptor cells in your eyes, called rods and cones. The cones are for colour, but need more light, while the rods are for black and white and need less light. They're also not evenly distributed, you have more cones in the center of your vision and more rods at the periphery. So at night, your co... |
What does it take to put the "Based on a true story" label on a movie? | There's no organization that enforces this sort of thing. Fargo said it was based on a true story even though it was entirely fiction. |
As a kid, tv shows showed treasure chests to be large. In reality, how big was a traditional 1600-1700's treasure chest? | The facts are that there is no such thing as a "treasure chest" and various valuable goods were stored in all manner of containers. A strongbox designed to hold gold coins or bullion for example would be no larger than shoe box sized, because a shoe box full of gold is around 100lbs of gold Edit: A 12" x 6" x 6" box fu... |
What is the logical argument behind the Bill allowing ISP'S to sell customer data? | The arguments that I see are several, obviously your mileage will vary: 1.) Everyone on the internet sells browsing data, from Google to Amazon. Many if not most internet companies sell information---including sites visited. Why not ISPs? If they could make money this way, they could offer more services at lower cost, ... |
Interpolation (the one used in lag compensation for games) | Interpolation is a trick a game engine uses to make the game run smoothly despite possible lag spikes and packet loss. Essentially it causes the game to "lag" a certain amount of time behind the server updates. This way if network issues do happen, there's still time for the invalid packets to be sent again and you don... |
Why are old scrapped planes worth up to hundreds of thousands of dollars, and retired ones millions? | A 747 weighs about 400,000 pounds. I don't know how much just the airframe weighs, but let's say half, for 200,000 pounds. Aluminum is about 0.75/lb, so just based on raw materials that's $150,000. And the airframe is probably made out of more expensive alloys, not "vanilla" aluminum , plus steel and titanium.A multipl... |
Pouring molten aluminium mishap, what exactly happens here? | There was some amount of moisture still in the mold. The water got super heated and the escaping steam caused the molten aluminum to pop. |
Why do animals have different running styles? | Well all animals have different body types and their bone structures vary and that means that their joints will vary. For example. A dog is not nearly as muscular as a Cheetah and it's legs aren't as long either and that means that their run is going to look different. Their stride length is shorter and slower |
Why do senators need to investigate comcast for datacaps/creating monopolies when all the information seems to be publicly available and common knowledge? | You need someone to compile and analyze the data from different sources, determine which are accurate, compare it to other businesses, and determine how this relates to the law. Things can look a bit sketchy and still be legal, or look benign on first glance but turn out to be illegal on closer investigation. |
Is secondary vote compulsory in Australian voting system? | Then their vote doesn't get counted. When you give a first choice and no second choice, you're saying that you don't care who wins if your first choice loses. The alternate vote that Australia uses is also called "Instant Runoff". Not putting in a second choice is equivalent to voting in the first election, and then de... |
How do anti-fog mirrors work? | Generally they are mirrors with a heater attached. This keeps the mirror slightly warm so mist will not form on it. Sometimes this heater is a thin layer of conductive material on the front of the glass. |
How come goldfish do not die from being isolated in the confinements of an average sized fishbowl? | A bowl is a horrible place for any fish. A proper aquarium needs filtration and ample surface area for oxygen exchange. Fish in bowls usually don't live out more than 2 years. A goldfish especially needs at least 10-15gallon sized aquarium. Goldfish are more demanding than other similar sized fish. An adult goldfish ca... |
why ice in a beverage stays in the same position when the glass is turned. | Newton's First Law of Motion states that an object at rest tends to stay at rest unless acted upon by an outside force, and an object in motion tends to stay in motion unless acted upon an outside force. So you have ice floating in a liquid in a glass. Ice has a low coefficient of friction, meaning it's slippery. So wh... |
What is the difference between a "nautical mile" and just a mile? | They are different amounts of distance. A nautical mile is one minute of latitude , which by coincidence is similar to a mile, hence the name. It's actually about 1.15 miles.A nautical mile measures distance around the earth as a curved surface . So a mile along a curve is different to a mile as a straight line In more... |
Why do predominately Muslim neighbourhoods not have different levels of conservativeness/orthodoxy, like Jewish and Christian neighbourhoods do? | That's a matter of perception. Do British folks make an effort to go learn about those communities and socialize with the people? Probably not. That would lead to misconceptions. |
How do scientists determine whether or not animals see in colour or black and white? | In the backs of your eyes there are things called cones and rods. They are responsible for you being able to see colors. The more rods and cones you have, the more color you see. The same for the opposite. Scientists can check other animals eyes to see how many they have, and thats how they can tellThe have dissected t... |
Why do people say reading in the dark(or dim lighting) will hurt my eyes? | No, that won't happen, the least it can do for you is make you a bit sleep deprived the next day and eye strain, so read away!SOURCE:_URL_0_", 'Kind of.Low light can force your iris closed narrowing your depth of field that makes your eyes work harder to keep the page in focus and is tiring for them. There may be other... |
Why is a tomato considered a vegetable when in reality it is a fruit? | Botanically speaking, a fruit is a seed-bearing structure that develops from the ovary of a flowering plant, whereas vegetables are all other plant parts, such as roots, leaves and stems. By those standards, seedy outgrowths such as apples, squash and, yes, tomatoes are all fruits, while roots such as beets, potatoes a... |
why is it that New York City, USA and London, England, UK are the only cities considered Alpha++? | Since you're using the term Alpha++, I assume you're already very familiar with this ranking put out by Global and World Cities Research Network. For those who aren't, here's the 6 levels a city can be at: * Alpha++ cities are London and New York City, which are vastly more integrated with the global economy than all o... |
How does anti-venom render venom useless so quickly? | Venom is like a bunch of evil LEGO pieces that are designed to fit into critical spots on your cells . Antivenin is a collection of antibodies, which physically attach to the venom molecules like sticking more LEGO to them. The result is that the venom can no longer fit into the spots in your cells it must to have its ... |
What color is a mirror if it's always reflecting when we look at it? | An argument can be made that a mirror is more green than anything, considering that the wavelength for the color green takes the longest to filter out. Try putting a mirror up to a mirror to create the infinity effect. You'll notice a green twinge the farther into infinity you look. Or you could just call it silver and... |
why and when clothes went from being used for warmth and protection, to it being socially unnaceptable not to wear them in public? | Well for starters that's not the case in all human cultures. For those where it is, the answer almost certainly predates written history, but if i can speculate a little; when humans expanded into cooler regions , wearing clothes became the rule rather then the exception. Not wearing clothes, would carry increased risk... |
How would an alien specie somewhere in the galaxy detect us? | Their best bet would be to pick up some of the signals we've been sending out into space via radio and other technologies that rely on using light to transmit a signal. However, they'd have to be pretty close to Earth to be able to make anything intelligible out of them, since most of these signals spread out and degra... |
What does "Starting from....xx amount" mean when you're purchasing something like a new cell phone? | "Starting at $X" means that the lowest possible price would be $X, but there are options that are more expensive. For example, a plan might say "Plans available starting from $15/mo!" and when you investigate the possible plans, you could have no free minutes and no long distance, 100 texts per month, 100 MB of data, f... |
Why are cars acceleration most often measured with 0-60 why 60 | It is actually 62.14 mph which is equivalent to 100 km/h. That is a common max highway speed and a point at which drag starts to get prominent. It is also a speed that most cars can get to without too many gear changes. So it is a measure of the pure acceleration of the car without testing its overall configuration.The... |
does easter come from the word east? | Kind of. Easter and East both come from the same root word, which meant "toward the sunrise". From the [Online Etymology Dictionary]: > Easter > Old English *Easterdæg*, from *Eastre* , from Proto-Germanic **austron*-, "dawn," also the name of a goddess of fertility and spring, perhaps originally of sunrise, whose feas... |
Why does the Double Jeopardy Clause exist? | It is to ensure that they can't be retried over and over in the same court until they finally give up and give a guilty/not guilty verdict. You can appeal and send it up the chain of command if new evidence comes to light and you think it would win you the case, but that's a totally different courtroom.To avoid vicious... |
How can a low-cost airline pays for everything by selling tickets at really low prices? | Flying in and out of smaller airports, cutting service to the bare minimum, and doing things like charging for in-flight meals.One item that hasn't been mentioned: their strategies for keeping aircraft maintenance costs to a bare minimum. First, they only buy brand new aircraft. They pay more up front, but the long-ter... |
Why is a physical standard still needed for the kilogram? | we can't cross check. it doesn't work that way. we need to have one standard, or one equation describing what kilogram is. we need to find a way, maybe by ideal sphere of atoms and then counting them, or by something different. and AFAIK it's not losing mass.Say we used a cross-check system, what would we use to cross ... |
For the Canadians out there, how do Tax Free Savings Accounts work and why are they a good thing? | Lucky day, worked for the CRA before. Basically its an account that you can put money into that you don't have to pay any taxes on the interest earned. The amount you can have in an account is based on your age or date. If you turn 18 this year, your contribution limit is $5,000. If you turned 18 prior to this year, yo... |
Why are football shoulder pads so much smaller today than they were in the 80s and 90s? | With new technology they can make smaller shoulder pads. This is better for running backs because it's easier for them to avoid tackles and getting caught. Our coach would always give our linemen the wider ones so they could block easier. Source: Played football in highschool. |
Why is braille a bunch of dots instead of the actual letters? | It is just a whole lot easier for your finger to distinguish a bunch of dots than to distinguish a B from a P from a D from an E.The 'tactile resolution' of your finger is rather poor. At most you can discriminate between patterns comprising a few dots. It would simply be too difficult to accurately discriminate betwee... |
If it is legal to have up to 1oz of weed, how do drug dealers keep from getting arrested since they obviously have more? | I assume you are not talking about places like colorado where weed is entirely legal but regulated. FWIW, they usually DO get arrested. In most places were weed less than one once is decriminalized SELLING weed is usually still entirely illegal, regardless of the amountThis is really a ask a legal question, not a conce... |
Why does the LOTR movies get special long directors cuts but yet none of the Star Wars movies have any? | One difference is that the LOTR movies were based on very popular books that many people have read. They had to cut out parts of the story to keep the movie to the target length, but the director's cut includes a lot more details from the books that they wanted to include but couldn't. The Star Wars movies weren't base... |
Why is Puerto Rico not a US State? | To become a State a region of the world must vote among themselves to become a State. Then they must formally present the US Congress with the request to become a State, proof that they voted to become a State, and any other information that Congress may ask for at the time. Congress then examines that information and ... |
What is Washington D.C, and why is it the capital if it is not even a state. | The national capital is intentionally not a state, because any state which was also the national capital would have undue influence in national politics. So they took land from several states sort of near the middle of the states, and made a little district to have the capital city inWashington D.C. is the national cap... |
Why is it so hard to see snow features in low light? | It's a matter of contrast. In low light, your eyes aren't as good as distinguishing/seeing different colours. So, because your ability to see different colours is 'worse', it means that the difference in shade of the flat snow and any features on it are too similar to be told apart, and so your brain assumes they must ... |
Why do we have morals? | You kinda got the point. I think it's in the evolution better to say in brain. So that certain paths of thinking are more likely to be gone through. Because threats to the human existance are just less likely to populate because if people see that you are a bad person they dont want to have sex with you . So if you are... |
What decides How Vocals Shall be Pronounced? | If you go with regular words and not acronyms, some languages have language regulators, like the Russian Language Institute for Russian or the Council for German Orthography for German. They are organizations that regulate the language and they decide things like pronunciation, meaning, and spelling of words in their l... |
Military numbering, regarding squadrons/wings/battalions etc. | It varies from military to military but generally speaking if you see something like the 111th Air Wing, it doesn't necessarily mean that there are 111 Air Wings. What tends to happen is that during large expansions of a military , new units will be created. These get numbered in a fairly logical sort and things make s... |
Why lawyers always give a disclaimer that they are not offering legal advice (even when it seems that they are offering some kind of advice that concerns legal matters). | Because they don't want to be your lawyer. If you stated in court that he has adviced you, they might somehow make him your designated lawyer or something like that, which they don't like at all. I explain it a bit badly, but it was somewhere in reddit once explained by one. edit: also, they want to make sure you don't... |
- When people rack up insane amounts of debt (~$500k) in medical bills, what happens? What if they end up dying anyway? | Bankruptcy would be likely. Medical expenses are the leading cause of bankruptcy. If you owed less, you could probably negotiate a payment plan with the provider. It could take years, even decades to pay off. > What if they end up dying anyway? Your estate would still owe that money. Your creditors would liquidate your... |
why is nationalism/patriotism seen as a good thing in the USA, but is seen as a bad thing in Europe? | The U.S. has yet to experience for itself consequences of nationalism gone too far. Europe has had two devastating wars as a result of nationalism . In contrast, the World Wars didn't damage the American homeland. |
Does inbreeding lead to a higher likelihood of mutations? If so, why? If not, why do people think so? | Not sure what Johnny Knoxville's article states, but there has been scientific studies conducted upon human subjects and there is a significant increase in the manifestation of congenital defects as a result of inbreeding. It's because all of our genomes have some harmful genes in them, but we don't feel the effects be... |
What was the difference between the Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese Army (NVA)? | View cong were "irregular" guerilla fighters that recruited from the south Vietnamese population. They were not officially part of any government and weren't all that concerned with things like uniforms and formal rank. The NVA was a "regular" military force under the direct control of the north Vietnamese government, ... |
If humans are considered so intelligent, why does it take them so long to walk(even crawl) compared to other animals? | The trade off for great inteligence is a slow growing brain. A womans birth canal could nevr pass a head with an adult size brain so we are born with incomplete brains. With the exceptions of preditors most animals are born knowing almost everything they need to know and theire brain need little further growth. If you ... |
How did black pepper become the most ubiquitous spice? | The Romans liked it, and our whole civilization is about trying to be like the Romans, but more so.'Twas oft asked here. Ye may enjoy these: 1. [ELI5- Why is it that salt and pepper are the only two prevalent spices to be found on the dinner table? ]1. [ELI5 just why salt and pepper are added to so many recipes. ]1. [E... |
What causes the monsoon season in India+Nepal? | Wind is air that moves from a place with higher pressure to a place with lower pressure. During summer months, sunlight heats up both the sea and land. But since land absorbs heat better, land get heated up to a higher temperature than sea. So the air above land is at a higher temperature, thus the air expands more and... |
What is a word? | It is a morpheme or a combination of morphemes that has meaning when standing alone. A morpheme is the smallest unit of language that has meaning. So, "est" is a morpheme that implies "most" but is not a word. "Finest" is a combination of the morphemes "fin" and "est" which means most fine. The former is not a word, bu... |
Why does nobody like nickleback? | Too catchy to ignore, too generic to like.I'm going to remove this, as it's not really an ELI5 question. > ELI5 is for requests for easy-to-follow explanations of complex concepts and subjects. That means no questions that are just looking for straightforward answers, that are subjective, a request for a guide/walkthro... |
Why do Banks ask if anyone in my family holds an important/influential political position in another country? | It's federal law, we have to ask the question. shadow776 has it correct, it's part of the the Patriot Act. To quote the relevant part of the law : "The final rule requires the application of enhanced scrutiny to private banking accounts maintained for senior foreign political figures. Enhanced scrutiny must include pro... |
What effect does catnip have on a cat and which drug(s) would a human have to take to experience the same reaction? | Catnip operates through smell. Unlike insufflated drugs for human recreation the smell of nepetelactone triggers a psychoactive response simply from perception. The effects vary between kitties, from drowsiness to paranoia and aggression. Many cats are not susceptible, sensitivity is hereditary. The exact mechanism of ... |
What is the difference between self-esteem and self worth? | A lack of self-esteem means you have no confidence. To lack a sense of self worth is to be humble. You can be humble and confident, just as you can be shy and arrogant. How you feel about yourself vs how valuable you see yourself? |
The difference between a crime/misdemeanor/felony etc. | Basically a misdemeanor is considered a less serious offense, and a felony is more serious. Specifically a felony is usually considered a crime that is punishable by 1 or more years in prison, while a misdemeanor is punishable by less than a year. In addition, being convicted of a felony brings with it some additional ... |
How come that the minimum age to have a dating profile is 18, when age of consent is 16? | Apart from consent issues and facilitating child sex trafficking under the federal statutes , you have to be 18 to be able to validly execute a legally-binding contract. So, most websites offering a service are going to require someone to be 18 in order to legally bind them to the terms of service.The age of consent va... |
How do they program the games which play chess and why isn't it considered as AI? | It's not considered AI because as someone said, it's not learning and altering its behaviour based on your moves. It's checking the current board state of the game every turn, and based on that situation it chooses the best position to place a piece. All it's doing is it's pre-turn checks and finding the best fit. If i... |
Why are cigarette companies and pharmaceutical companies against drug legality? Wouldn't legal drugs open up new markets for them, providing a chance for monetary growth? | You talking about weed? Probably because almost everybody has the know how to grow weed and it's not patented. |
I found these notes on a spay at the animal shelter I work at. Can someone explain them? | Surgery: cut open the middle of the belly. Took the right ovary out of the body, clamped and tied it off, then cut the tissue that connects it. Repeat on right side; grabbed the part where the uterus meets the fallopian tubes and lifted it so I could see the main part of the uterus. Clamped and tied off the uterus and ... |
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