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when locusts destroy crops and cause famine, why couldn't the people just eat the locusts instead? | They do. A good example is in the Bible where the laws forbid eating insects, except notably grasshoppers and locusts. I'm on mobile so its a little difficult to include links, but IIRC there are cultures in Africa and Asia that frequently eat these insects. But remember that even with eating the locusts, that's not go... |
Why is there such a disconnect in terms of content offered between music streaming services and video streaming services? | Movie/tv rights cost much, much more. Netflix spends most of their revenue on these fees. Not a lot of companies feel that it's worth it because people won't switch over from Netflix to their service. |
What causes bipolar disorder? | The exact cause is unknown but there are a number of factors at play that can affect the brain; Chemical imbalance - The chemicals responsible for controlling the brain's functions are called neurotransmitters and include noradrenaline, serotonin and dopamine. Genetics - no single gene is held responsible instead it is... |
If the great wall of china was built to stop Mongals, how did it work if it took so long to build? | The thing that made the Mongols fearsome was their mobility. You gather a big army against them, they just ride off and attack somewhere else. But if you needed to protect just one place, like where the wall was currently being built, parking a big army there would do the trickFirstly, the wall existed as hundreds of s... |
What would happen if you got two black holes in orbit of each other and they gradually sped up pulling each other closer together until they collapsed into each other. | Given the short supply of theoretical astrophysicists on this site, I'll give you my best guesstimate. Two large black holes are simply two singularities. As they close in on each other, there will be a threshold of when the gravitational forces greatly overcome the angular momentum of the singularities, causing them t... |
what is the real difference between an alphabet and a syllabary? | we have 26 letters in our alphabet. they each represent a single sound. so you have 'ah' and 'N' and you get 'an' in a syllabary like i believe Linear B was 'an' would have its own symbol in the same way 'at' can be '@'. so all the base sylables in our language would have a symbol ing. tion. ous. cal. icle. which might... |
Proxies, VPNs, and APNs | here is a short explanation.Proxy servers serve as middleman for clients looking for information.VPNs serve to extend a private network to the public networkAPNs are the gateway between a 3 or 4g network and another computer network source:i am a network adminstrator |
Whats going on between Tumblr and 4Chan? | Tumblr is filled with SJWs . 4chan is filled with trolls. I dunno who fired the first shot, but the basic gist of it is that there are two communities of similar hateful personalities with polar opposite political and social beliefs going at itlel. alright I'll tell you what really happened. It's pretty simple. Tumblr ... |
Why are the majority of celebrities liberal? | Most elites are on the progressive side of the balance, particularly those that work in an industry focused on new stories, new visions, and new music. If you want to find conservatives, look in vested interests like banking, investing, and religionIn part because many of the fields that lead to celebrity include peopl... |
Why do the NYE balls DROP instead of rising to the top? | In the 19th Century, ships did not have accurate clocks, so they had to be synchronized with an accurate time source whenever they came into port. Many ports had time balls, large, highly visible balls on a pole, that would descend at a prearranged time. All the ships in port would be able to see the ball and set their... |
Brain creating vertigo while a person is seated in a moving vehicle looking down reading or texting. | This pretty much boils down to the discrepancy between what your brain "feels" and what it "sees" . Your brain knows that you're moving in all directions as the vehicle moves, but it's seeing a perfectly still image. If you weren't staring at a book or something similar, your eyes would pick up on that movement -- but ... |
Where do the seemingly infinite amount of bugs go after the sun rises? | They go into the seemingly infinite amount of nooks, crannies and crevices supplied by the seemingly infinite amount of trees, grass and buildings.There are two options: 1. The bugs you saw are of species that are only active at night. They're asleep. 2. The bugs you saw are of species that always fly towards the brigh... |
Why does water evaporate from lakes or other bodies of water without boiling? | Evaporation is a special type of vaporization where the water molecules are simply breaking free from the rest of the liquid, despite being below the boiling point temperature. The sun heats the surface layer of water molecules and the molecules may occasionally bounce out and escape the forces that attract them to eac... |
Why is Aspirin so much cheaper than other NSAIDs? | Aspirin is made in a single step from an esterification reaction of salicylic acid and acetic anhydride. This is a simple reaction, and both reagents are common, easy to get and cheap. In comparison, ibuprofen is made in three steps, and if you lose a little with every step the overall yield is lower. More work, and le... |
Why when you pull a material suddenly it snaps where as if you applied the same force gradually it stretches. | Most basically put, it all depends on what is called strain rate. All materials have defects within the structure, as you move a material the defect moves as well. When the defect can no longer move, the material breaks. Slow movement of the material allows the defect to move within the structure, quick movement restri... |
Why can some chain smokers live much longer than others? | Heres another way of looking at it. Cancer is like winning a lottery. Every cigarette is an extra ticket in the draw. Of course non-smokers also get tickets by breathing the crap that we pollute our air with. But the more tickets you have the better your chances of winning the lottery. However having a lot of tickets d... |
How can art inspectors tell if a painting is an original or a really good copy? | It's a lot of things. There are some obvious things, if there is a clear mistake that makes it easy . The better the forgery the harder to tell, you can start looking at the brush strokes, exact shades used . Taking a microscopic chip of paint and testing that can tell you . You can check the age of the canvass as well... |
how can it snow when it is over 32f? | It's not about the temperature at ground level, it's about the temperature up at cloud level where snow is formed. You can have bands of cold air moving in and hitting warm, moist air, creating rain or snow in the process. |
How is the Universe expanding? Is it creating more matter in the process? | Not only is the Universe expanding, it is also accelerating. No one knows why yet. However no matter is being created. All the energy that exists in the Universe was created at the moment the Universe came into existence . Some of this energy condensed into matter to form planets and galaxies. Before the Big Bang theor... |
Why does one hour count 60 minutes instead of 100? And who decided it should be this way? | The Ancient Sumerian adopted a base 60 counting system for some unknown reason. The Babylonians copied them and used it for their astrological calculations. The Greeks copied the Babylonians. The modern world copied the Greeks. Historians suspect that the Sumerian adopted a base 60 system, because some people had base ... |
how exactly does milk get 'evaporated'? (Like for baking etc) shouldn't cans of evaporated milk be empty? | Evaporated milk has ~60% of the water removed, but everything else remains . It can be made at home by simmering down milk to around half its original volume. Evaporation of aqueous solutions doesn't result in their complete disappearance, only the water in the mixture actually evaporates. For example, evaporate salt w... |
How am I able to wake up regularly right before my alarm almost every single day? Is this a sign of a stress/coping mechanism in the brain at play or something else? | I just saw this on the front page and replied. Didnt know this wad explain like I'm five so it removed my comment , allow me to try again.I a strict sense, all organisms havr circadian rhythms. These are generated inside you. To be general , say by waking up you release a certain chemical. Your body gets used to releas... |
what is that feeling I get in my body when I sense something bad is going to happen? | that's you're fight or flight response acting up. Sorry I don't have a detailed explanation for you OP. |
Does it take more muscle to keep your eyes open or to keep them closed? | Neither. The resting position of the eyelids is what is experienced when you have your eyes open without blinking and without forcing bug eyes. That's why corpses eyes can shoot open for no reason |
Elon Musk said that nuking Mars is the quickest way to make it liveable, how? | Elon Musk has a very poor grasp of science, but a lot of people have convinced themselves that he's Tony Freaking Stark. The concept he was aiming at was to vaporize a lot of frozen water and CO2 at the poles, which would supposedly create a greenhouse effect that would make the place warmer. However, there is almost c... |
How has the Biltmore Estate remained the US's largest privately owned house for 120 years? | Automation for one. Dishwashers, clothes washers, dryers . Those alone eliminate a half dozen staff members of a large house like the Biltmore estate. Gas powered mowers and the like eliminate a half dozen more. With fewer staff you need fewer rooms for the staff and the staff's staff. There are also changing tastes, p... |
why do first-person, or POV, scenes in movies never look like what a person really sees? | You can't lock the image projected onto a 2D screen that of the viewer. If you tried to blur all but the small region of space a person actually focuses on at a time, the viewer can change focus to the blurry regions. Most people don't notice this with their own vision since as soon as you try to look at the blurry reg... |
Why does light pass through some thin solids? | Light passes through some thick solids, like glass. The arrangement of atoms makes a substance opaque or transparent. Each type of atom or molecule absorbs some frequencies and not others. The wood in your house absorbs light but not most radio frequencies . Thick or thin is only an issue with a substance that absorbs ... |
Why does semen taste salty if it is made out of some glucose? | Pretty much all of a human's bodily fluids are a base of salty water with other stuff added to it - blood, urine, interstitial fluid, intracellular fluid, and semen. |
Does FIFA not care about all the fake injuries in the sport? Why aren't players punished when videos show them trying to cheat? Aren't fans tired of it? | > Does FIFA not care about all the fake injuries in the sport? FIFA say they care, but don't actually do anything about it. According to the laws of the game "simulation" is unsportsmanlike behaviour and should be punished by booking that player. > Why aren't players punished when videos show them trying to cheat? Howe... |
How will new gun laws prevent mass shootings? | I'm not taking a side here, just trying to answer your question: Often, guns are purchased legally and then resold illegally. You can look to Chicago for a good example of this, as traffickers commonly purchase guns legally in Indiana and resell them in Chicago. [] So, theoretically, restricting the sale of guns would ... |
Do taller people have a slower reaction time than short or average height people due to longer nerves? | Yes, technically they do, but it is so small that it would not be remotely relevant to anything humans do. |
What is three phase power? | I've searched tha seven seas fer an answer. Yer not alone in askin', and kind strangers have explained: 1. [ELI5 how three-phase power works ] ^1. [ELI5: 3 Phase Power ] ^1. [ELI5: 3 phase power. ] ^1. [ELI5: What exactly are three-phase power systems? ] ^1. [Fuckin' three-phase electric power -- how does it work? ] ^1... |
What is a paradox in time travel? | As far as modern science knows, traveling into the past is not possible. The possibility of paradoxes is a big sticking point with time travel. Your example of being your own father is a great example of a paradox. You've created a situation, by traveling in time, that can't logically exist. Anyone writing a story abou... |
Why do people with tourettes sometimes curse and why is it always curse words and not normal words. aka house, lawn, random names, | The actual symptoms are called "tics" and can be both physical and verbal. Someone might have a twitch or they might clear their throat involuntarily, it isn't always swearing. The swearing is the most sensational so it gets the most attention by media covering the condition which might explain your misconceptionsNot a... |
The true difference between horsepower and torque, and towing capacity and such? | Torque is the measure of twisting force an engine produces. Power is defined as work per time unit, and automotive horsepower is calculated as hp=torque x rpm/5252. Race car engines make plenty of hp, but they do so at really high RPMs compared to tow vehicles. They just don't have much torque at lower RPMs. A semi eng... |
The mathematical concept of i | We got i by thinking "Well it sucks that there are no square roots of negative numbers because I can't solve these equations. How about we assume there actually is a square root of -1, call it i, and see what happens." It stands for "imaginary", because we unhelpfully call the square roots of negative numbers "imaginar... |
How are the odds in sports gambling set, and how do they change with incoming bets and new information? | The exact methods they use are pretty complicated, but bookies and sports books essentially don't care who wins or whether or not the odds actually represent the true odds of one team, athlete, racehorse, or whatever actually winning. They only care that bets are being made as evenly as possible, for example, that roug... |
How the hell can parrots mimic languages? | Parrots don't just mimic languages, they can understand associations with sound patterns. They mimic sounds. But just like dogs, they can understand a certain amount of words, but the ability to mimic sounds allows them to communicate. My grandparents used to have African Gray parrots and they would talk to them. Freak... |
With instability in the Middle East and Russia under heavy sanctions, why is the price of oil going down so quickly? | The arabs are taking a short term loss to drive the North American frackers out of business. The only reason fracking was ramped up is because it is only profitable when the price reaches these high levels. Drilling has already stopped.The sanctions are actually driving the price of Russia oil down. Their currency is t... |
Why don't EMPs affect humans? | Because the human brain doesn't have components like capacitors and resistors. The reason an EMP destroys electronic equipment is because it overloads the circuit. It produces a very sharp spike in electrical activity that overburdens the equipment - capacitors overload, resistors can't resist enough of the power, and ... |
Why is blue cheese mold edible while others are dangerous? | Blue cheese is made by the mold *Penicillium* which also produces the "wonder drug" penicillin. Mold itself is not iherrently harmful but rather is a group of related organisms. Like how house cats are related to tigers, one will snuggle with you, while the other will eat your innardsThe comments already here are corre... |
Why do animals feed other animals of a different species? | The duck in that gif is probably not feeding the fish on purpose. But it's a good question. It's not uncommon to see animals of different species interacting as if they were the same species. How can a [lion, a tiger, and a bear become best friends] when their species typically don't associate with each other? The answ... |
The Watergate Scandal to a Non-American. | President of the United States found out that people working for his re-election, including highly placed members of the White House Staff, were involved in a break-in of the opposition political HQ. After learning about this break-in, the President authorized an attempt to cover it up. Wider issues: President abused t... |
Why is Fentanyl, an opioid, being cut with uppers like cocaine? | 1. Fentanyl is extremely concentrated. A lethal dose is a small fraction of a lethal dose of heroin, for example. [Link] So to keep from killing your customers, drug dealers probably put a relatively small amount of fentanyl in with other drugs. 2. If you cut your fentanyl, you are spreading it out. More money for the ... |
Does lightning come from the cloud itself? | Simply, yes. It comes from the movement within the cloud: particles moving fast enough within the cloud crash into each other create the energy that becomes lightening. |
How do all of these antique shops manage to stay in business? | A lot of them the owner also owns the building, and there is little to no overhead with a family owned business. Also online sales are good for some of the rare antiquesThere is always a market for it. They make up in price what they lack in traffic. Same as a jewelry store. I never see people in jewelry stores. |
How do medications 'target' areas of your body? | It doesn't. In ELI5: The medication targets your brain, and stops most of the pain signals from reaching your brain. Tylenol treats pain anywhere in the body, no matter what the source is. |
Why is it not possible for the world to have just one currency? | 1. When monetary and fiscal policies don't correspond to each other shit happens, the left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing or knows but don't give a shit. Look at European Union, for example. When all countries try to play cooperatively they benefit from it, but one country can benefit more if it acts eg... |
I always hear on Reddit that Americans don't have universal healthcare so explain me what's the government-run healthcare programs called Medicare and Medicaid in America? | Medicare is for people 65 and older, so the elderly and retired people can have healthcare even if they can't afford it. Basically anyone over 65 can get it. Medicaid is just healthcare for poor families who can't afford to pay for health insurance. It's ridiculously hard to get, and lots of people who can't afford hea... |
What are the effects of the decline of the Ruble? | I don't think we will see any effect in the US. We don't buy anything useful from them and while they buy some things from us, its not a huge amount and if they need it they will pay for it. Some eastern European countries have very close ties, and they will have economic issues. I think this is one reason Cuba is bein... |
Why are so many US veterans homeless? Why are they in this position or how did they get to this point (generally speaking) | There are problems with PTSD and substance abuse that result from being in active war zones. There's the problem that military certifications aren't always transferrable to non-military jobs. So an army paramedic can't just become an ambulance driver. They have to go through redundant training to be "qualified" to do t... |
When spelling a word wrong and going "That doesn't look right", is that us using a different part of our brain to see pictures instead of sounding out letters? | You don't read by reading individual letters as that would be grossly inefficient. Instead you read word shapes more logographically and your mind kind of fills in the gaps. We read in a series of jumps along and between the lines, stopping and fixating on a group of letters . In about 1/4 of a second, you will read st... |
Being attracted to someone's scent | The process itself is extraordinarily complicated, but the idea behind it is simple enough to understand. Everyone's body secretes chemicals that are designed to attract a potential mate through smell. And, much like fingerprints, everyone's smell is just a tiny bit different so some people will smell good to you, and ... |
Why are there so many different places (not to mention things) with the word "Guinea" in the name and what is the origin of this word/placename? | It is simply the name of an area in Africa that played a significant role in trade with Western Europe. _URL_0_ _URL_1_ |
Are there any POSITIVE effects of global warming? | Sure. Some areas that are too cold now will become great farming locations. Some land that useless now will become valuable coastline. Some species of small animals and insects that thrive on hot locations will have a bigger habitat. The oceans may expand a bit, turning land into nice sea-life habitat for fish and such... |
Why are the bottoms of your feet so much more sensitive in the mornings? | Information filtering. If you're off your feet for 8 hours sleeping, the first things you touch will seem stronger. After time, the influx of sensations is dampened in your brain so it can focus on more important things. It's the same as you feel your clothes when you first put th em on, but not after a minute or so. O... |
Why doesn’t it thunder during heavy snow? | The premise of your question is flawed. While it isn't nearly as common as thunderstorms in the summer, [thundersnow] is absolutely something that happens. |
why do waves breaking on the coastline appear frozen from high altitudes? | I think it is more so to do with the "resolution" of your eyes. From high up, you can't see the individual waves breaking, but you can see the general area where the whites of the crests are. Your brain fills in the rest of the information, making it look like the crests are moving very slowly because your eyes only re... |
Does eating sweet food (or other food) while playing computer games or watching videos count as a reward and promotes your brain to keep doing these activities? | I don’t think that would strongly reinforce the behavior. If the food were something more addictive than sweets it could work that way if watching the video would lead to you getting the addictive award. Fun fact: Oreos are shown to be about as addictive as cocaine to mice. A friend told me about a a study where mice w... |
Why are some people ticklish? And why does this only happen to some people? | People are ticklish for two reasons; 1. the itchy tickle from a light touch, this let's us know when a bug is crawling on us, 2. The stomach aching near uncontrollable body movement feeling caused by a harder touch, this one is generally a reaction to someone "attacking" our vulnerable areas such as ribs, atm pits etc ... |
How come there are no mini moons? | There are, but they are much, much smaller. There are also claimed moons, which are basically celestial bodies that appear to have an orbital resonance with Earth but aren't really orbiting it. _URL_0_ |
When US authorities seized tens of millions of dollars from FIFA, where did that money go? | The account was frozen so no deposits/withdrawals allowed. Money is still there and some party is trying to get it unfrozen to pay a bill according to something I read in the press earlier todayWhen the money is seized it generally goes into a neutral account or just frozen in place and cannot be used by anyone for the... |
Who are the Rothschild's and why do people think they rule the world? | They're a Jewish family that established themselves as bankers in the 1700s in Germany, and over the next few decades proceeded to establish themselves in other cities around Europe. Collectively, they're still among the wealthiest families in the world although after 300 years, the wealth is spread out among so many d... |
Why isn't inpatient, rehab-style treatment for obesity more common? | One thing that is a major difference is that a drug addict is trained in rehab to avoid drugs, people who do drugs, things of that nature. Obese people, though, they still have to eat, and can't escape junk food because they're always going to run into it. One reason why people on The Biggest Loser always gain the weig... |
What is prohibited friendship content? | "Friendship" is a classification of website according to iBoss. I can't pull up their site right now but it probably means the same as social media. iBoss can filter out "Friendship" sites, such as Imgur. Then they become Prohibited Friendship Content. I'm not sure why they classify Imgur as friendship and not reddit, ... |
Why do powdered stuff seem to dissolve better in hot water? | Heat is the vibration of molecules. The water molecules are moving around more quickly so the powder can find space more quickly and easilyAlso, surface area is greatly increased on the powders surface as opposed to large chunks. Higher surface area allows increased contact with the water, meaning it will dissolve quic... |
Why in Islamic culture is it ok to name your children after Muhammad but you can't draw a picture of him? | Not going in-depth with the religion, but the idea behind the picture of Muhammad is that it would be an idol, and the religion prohibits worshipping idols. Naming your child Muhammad isn't creating an idol.Islam was born into an Arabian Peninsula that was fiercely tribal and polytheistic. Tribes often worshiped their ... |
Follow up to my blackhole question. Where does light and anything else thats been sucked into a black hole go? | We don't really know for sure. We know that the mass of anything being sucked into the black hole adds to the mass of the hole, and therefore can assume that anything that goes there stays there. However, we don't really know what happens to it, and we probably won't any time soon", 'It goes into the gravity well of th... |
The tension between the US and Iran | Back 30 or so years ago, Iran had a ruthless dictator who oppressed his people. The US supported this dictator because he sold his country's resources to us at a very cheap rate. The Iranian people revolted and started killing/destroying the people/institutions put in place by the dictator. The US did what it could to ... |
Does immunity mean you can't get in trouble no matter what? Are there any exceptions? | Yes, although only for past acts, not for future ones. And, because you don't want to let someone off the hook for things you might not know about, prosecutors will often be very careful when making an immunity deal, clarifying what it covers and what it doesn't. |
What is it about Q tips that make them so bad for your ears? | It's not so much that the product itself is bad for you, it's that human error has created a HUGE liability issue for the company. It's easy for it to get shoved it in too far and damage or rupture the eardrum, which did happen to my husband when he was a kid . If the company doesn't explicitly tell you NOT to use it l... |
What would happen if light moved at twice the speed? | Speed of light is not dependent on light itself like you might think. Our universe is just built so that the maximum speed limit for information is _c_, which massless particles invariably travel at. Changing _c_ would fundamentally change how everything in our universe works. There's no telling what it would imply, wh... |
why don't toddlers like sleep? | Imagine everything you experience in your world is brand new. New people, new places, new things, new ideas, new words, new sounds, new tastes, new smells, new feelings. And it all comes at you non-stop. Would you want to shut it off?', "Didn't you ever try to stay up late or even sneak out when you were younger? Same ... |
Why are Cowboys called Cowboys and not Horsemen? | They have many duties involving tending to cows while not on horseback, such as branding, help with calving , etcMany "cowboys" aka cattle punchers, didn't own their own horses. They worked as hired hands and rode horses that the rancher owned if they needed to ride at all. Their main job - the reason they were hired -... |
Approximately how much is one minute of economic productivity worth in the American economy? | The US GDP for 2016 was $18.56 trillion. There are 525,600 minutes in a year, so it would be $35,312,024.35 per minute. Of course that assumes all minutes are of equal worth which isn't the case. |
Why does squeezing my head tightly relieve headaches? | All of these people are wrong. Horribly wrong. It's several reasons: Some headaches are caused by blocked sinus passages - putting pressure on your face/nose/brow/side of your head can help drain your sinuses or relieve pressure from inflamed/infected areas of your sinuses. Some headaches, called tension headaches, are... |
Why does a watermelon get sweeter as you near the center? | Nearly everything about the modern watermelon is the result of intensive selective breeding by humans. Watermelons are sweet because people wanted them that way. That said; fruit is a bribe offered to animals by plants. "Here eat this tasty stuff and go poop my seeds far away so my species can spread and flourish." Sur... |
- Why are human voices so vastly different when the sounds other animals make are all so easily identifiable/differentiated | For starters, the anatomy of our neck and tongues allow for a wide range of sounds. One of humanity's earlier ancestors is believed to have been out-competed by another purely because the shape of their neck/throat didn't allow for complex communication. Birds have solid pitch control via their throats, but don't have ... |
Does the U.S. Constitution allow for citizens
to vote directly on a bill, rather than Congress
voting on it? | No. We have a representative democracy at the federal level. Some cities and states allow for referendums, but not the federal government. Congress has the power "To make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers, and all other Powers vested by this Constitution in th... |
Why does the Railgun in this video appears to have a muzzleflash? | When there is electric current through a conductor , there is something called resistive heating. Now, when a current passes through say the rail of the railgun, especially the MASSIVE amounts of current that a railgun uses, it will cause scorching amounts of heat because it makes the molecules in the rails excited, li... |
If I eat 1 and half tea spoon of instant coffee granules, would it have the same effect on me as drinking same amount of coffee granules with water/milk? | Pretty much, yes. It will get diluted in your stomach, the caffeine won't be instantly absorbed. If you want to get your caffeine hardcore, you could try a coffee enema, or learn from the writer Balzac's [experience] : > Finally, I have discovered a horrible, rather brutal method that I recommend only to men of excessi... |
I am not ugly, but in 95% of photographs I look absolutely terrible. Why does this happen? | One thing that might be happening is that the only version of you that you're used to seeing is a mirrored version. We're all pretty much symmetrical, but the asymmetries are significant enough to change something from looking good and normal to just looking *wrong*. When you take a selfie the phone is likely mirroring... |
How are things like steel cables and wires possible when steel normally bends permanently? | So there are a few different things in play. Yes, steel can bend, but it does not bend permanently. You can bend it back, but it will not have the same structural integrity as before. With steel cables you take lots of small wires and twist them around one another, just like ropes, until you are evenly distributing the... |
What makes a smart person smart? | A smart person takes in information and use it. Remembering a lot doesn't make a person smart, that's only a person with a good memory. A smart person can utilize what he/she have learned and come up with new ways to use the information, even create new information for others to learn from. I use to say that the differ... |
How did the term "Latin" become associated the culture of Spanish descendants if the Latins were a central Italian hill tribe? | The term Latin America was first used in the XIX century to describe the part of the Americas that spoke either Spanish, Portuguese or French. You may argue that Hispanic America or Iberian America would be better terms, but none of these terms refer to Spanish, Portuguese and French at the same time. More importantly,... |
Whats a "shadow" minister? I'm from the US and don't understand. | The "Shadow Cabinet" is basically the leadership of the second biggest party/coalition in Parliament, and that consists of "shadow ministers". For example at the moment the Conservative party is in power in the UK. They have ministers who are in charge of various different departments. E.g. Minister of health, minister... |
In terms of "getting stuff done", how will Bernie Sanders differ from Barack Obama? | In all likelihood, he won't. While the President has authority to make many changes under his role as leader of the executive branch, there are also many things that he cannot change without the approval of Congress. Or perhaps I should say, there are many things that only Congress can change, and the President merely ... |
The Patriot Act expired. What does that mean for the American Population and the non-American Population? | It didn't. Only three provisions of it expired. The majority of it is still in effect. > The biggest and most controversial is the government's sweeping powers under Section 215 that allow the NSA to collect telephone metadata on millions of Americans and store that data for five years. That is, for the time being, gon... |
Why do so many people unintentionally make the noises 'erm' and 'uhm' when making speeches or presentations? | It comes from two conflicting things within a persons mind. The belief that silence is a bad thing at a time when people should be talking, and the fact that the mind takes time to think. Thus when someone is thinking about what they want to say next, instead of having silence they fill that thinking time with noise. T... |
How does a microwave work? And why is metal bad for it? | A microwave works by zapping food with microwaves. The microwaves interact with water molecules in the food, causing them to gain kinetic energy/heat. The do this because electromagnetic radiation is an oscillating electric and magnetic field. Water molecules are polar, which means that one side is more positively char... |
Why does cellphone audio still sound like crap while data rates have gone up into the megabits per second? | Your phone actually has 2 antennas. One for data, and one for voice. And the antenna for voice uses the same system, at its core, that cell phones used 5-10-15 years ago. Alsot the voice data is compressed and cut as much as possible to allow the most possible number of connections out of a single connection tower. Pri... |
Why are switchblades illegal, and spring assists not? | That depends on the country. In Russia litrlerally all weapons are illegal unless you have a hunter's ID, and getting that is more trouble than its worth. Well, pneumatic guns are still okay because you can't kill anything with them. |
What does it mean that food is hard or easy to digest? | Mostly it's taking shorter or longer to break down. Your body breaks food down chemically with acids and absorbs the useful materials once they've separated from each other and the junk we don't use. All of this happens over time, with the breaking up mostly happening before the intestines, and the absorption mostly ha... |
How do chess games determine the best move | You're correct that computers simply brute force every possible move, but beyond that, every possible sequence of turns for x number of turns into the future. Every program has an algorithm for the value of a particular move, general based on the value of capturing specific pieces vs. pieces lose. More sophisticated pr... |
How do we make sure the International Space Station has oxygen at all times? (from an actual eleven-year-old!) | Most of the oxygen is generated by a life support system which splits water into oxygen and hydrogen gas as well as removes carbon dioxide. The machine which does this is called the Elektron. It uses around 1 liter of water a day for each crew member. They also use many back up systems in case this one fails such as fu... |
How does a clicky top pen prevent the point from drying up? Isn't it still exposed to just as much air? | The ink doesn't dry, because the little ball at the tip of the pen provides pretty much an airtight seal. The holes in pen caps are there in case you choked on it - to let air through. |
How is it that people look so different from eachother despite the fact that our faces have the same components, with only millimetres in difference of the placement of said things? | Objectively, many human faces are quite similar. But our brains are incredibly attuned to small differences in faces, because the ability to recognize different humans is crucial to humans' operating as a social species. |
If the entire universe is the size of the Earth, how much land would our galaxy take up? Our solar system? Our sun? | Reposting because apparently people feel /u/LondonPilot is being dismissive for giving an accurate answer : As far as we know, the "entire universe" is infinite in size, so with all these things being of finite size they would be infinitesimal. If you're comparing to the *observable* universe , though, you can actually... |
Why aren't pro-lifers anti-death penalty? | Many of them are. The Roman Catholic church is quite famously anti-abortion and anti-death penalty.It's not really a fair comparison. People who are pro-life believe that the fetus is a living human being. So, in their minds, you're essentially asking why it's okay to execute a murderer, but not okay to execute someone... |
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