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What is a 'massive heart attack,' what are the chances of a recovery, and how do they differ from other types of heart attacks? | You have my sympathy, and I wish you all the strength in the world in managing this, whatever way the dice roll. The term 'massive heart attack\' is subjective and only loosely defined, but we can outline it in general terms. The heart is a hollow muscle that contracts and relaxes in a rhythmical fashion, pumping blood... |
Why is Mongolia still a country when it's completely surrounded by two superpowers? | Basically, they have very little to offer either country if they were to be conquered. Both countries like having Mongolia there as a sort of buffer between them. |
Why does video recorded at 60fps seem more realistic than 24 or 30fps? | > The human eye sees around 30fps That's false, where did you get that from? The human eye doesn't seen in fps, and we are capable of recognizing a difference in motion at framerates much higher than 30. |
Why do we address people as 'Mr.' or 'Mrs'? Aside from clarifying gender in writing, why is it considered polite to use these terms formally in conversation? | It's a term of respect. For the car salesman to refer to a customer who is a complete stranger as "Bob" or whatever would be rude and possibly drive away a customer. "Mr" evolved from "master" , while "Mrs" and "Miss" derived from "mistress". Obviously the literal meaning no longer applies but the use of it as a respec... |
Why does culture progress constantly, but are most religions so conservative? | Reconsider your notion of what “progress” is. What you consider progress, I may consider a moral regress. Your question appears framed by your biases, and as such has no place on this subreddit.This sounds like a a questions that has a false premise. Why do you think culture progresses constantly but religion doesn't? |
Why is Kylo Ren not 'dark enough' until he kills Han? | He wishes to be apart of the Dark Side, but is feeling a pull to the Light Side - particularly, because of his family ties. Deep down, he misses and still cares for them, and he wishes to excise this part of himself to fully embrace the Dark Side. His thought, then, is that if he kills his father, it will rid him of th... |
How are grass and plants able to stand on their own? | It’s called Turgor pressure. It’s the natural “hydraulics” of the plant world. That’s why plants wilt without water but once you water them they straighten up.Root systems! Aside from collecting water and nutrients from the soil, roots also act as an anchor holding the plant in place so it won't fall over. |
Is there any real difference between the fruit drawer and the vegetable drawer in my refrigerator? | The rule of thumb is to put things that rot in a drawer with low humidity . And to put things that wilt in a drawer with high humidity . The difference is the amount of air/moisture that can leave the drawers though gaps in the assembly. The fruit drawer will have bigger gaps than the veggie drawer.Depends on how nice ... |
Why we aren't Boltzmann brains | Wow that is a long article, and I'm not 100% convinced that what he is saying makes sense but anyway From what I gather, at the core of his argument is a simple test: * Assume that there is a 50% chance that we are Boltzmann brains created by accident in a universe where there is no arrow of time and entropy is random ... |
Why do many of the nations in SEA hold so much animosity towards each other? | Historical reasons and environmental ones. Singapore has a major beef with Indonesia for failing to curtail forest fires caused by illegal deforestation to clear land . This happens ever summer; expect to see news articles on it from about 5 months onwards because it seriously ruins Singaporean air quality. Cambodia ha... |
Why aren't cops required to wear video cameras while on duty? | The technology for them to do this has only been around a short period of time. Rarely does law keep up with tech. People often forget that 7 years ago, no one had an iPhone. Maybe one day soon, they will |
Why are bug bites hard compared to the surrounding skin? | Due to the host immune response. Basically your immune cells recognize antigens in the saliva of the bite. They release chemicals that recruit other white blood cells from your blood stream into the tissue of the invasion. To do this the blood vessel cells spread apart just enough to let white blood cells crawl out of ... |
[META] How to use the search bar to avoid redundant questions. | If a question is asked and it makes it to the front page, people want to see the answers and discussion that they may not have otherwise known and perhaps would never think to search for. Every complaint in any type of online forum about using the search feature is an exercise in futility and it makes little sense, to ... |
What, with definitive proof, has Mark Zuckerberg done, to warrant the dislike and hatred towards him on Reddit in relation to net neutrality and bringing free Internet to India and potentially other places? | This is ELI5, so the "full scope" isn't what you're likely to get here. Zuckerberg wants to give free internet to people. Sounds good, right? He only wants to give them certain websites, sites approved by himself/Facebook, a "filtered" version of the internet with content censored by the whim of a corporation. The whol... |
Why do we feel safe under the covers? | I believe this was asked a few months ago or came up during a sleep question. One answer was that it reproduced the feeling of being in the womb |
Is it possible to see a comparison of what wages jobs get in different countries? For example, what an average taxi driver or waiter makes in Sweden vs Russia vs Nigeria | Honestly, it's fairly simple. As you said, first you adjust for the currency exchange rate. Then divide each nominal income by their respective purchasing power index Swedish Primary school teachers, on average make 25,700 /month Russian Primary school teachers, on average make 5,478 /month the rouble/SKE conversion ra... |
Why does it take the FDA many years to approve a new medicine? | Basically, because before a drug gets approved, we have to be sure it's safe, and this takes years. The checks are done in Phases, first in 'modelling' on animals, which takes years in itself, then if there doesn't seem to be any adverse effects, it's tested on very small numbers of human volunteers to see what happens... |
How do people get caught for illegal downloads and prosecuted? | The overwhelming majority of people do not get caught. Piracy is treated in a similar manner to drug dealing. They let the little guys operate and go after the boss, i.e. they let you, the downloader, pirate and go after the guy who uploaded it instead. There was a story about a guy who uploaded the new Fast & furious ... |
why do many television shows (Breaking Bad and Game of Thrones come to mind) have different directors each episode? Why is that better than having the same one each episode? | Because with a television series, you can have episodes in various stages of production and have different episodes being worked on at the same time. So if you only had one director, you would have to wait for him to finish one episode before starting the next, which would be a major waste of time and money.The directo... |
Why are rape victims so much more affected than, say, one time physical assault victims? | You touch people everyday. Strangers are allowed to tap you on the shoulder. We also expect that people will get into fights. Rape is much more socially unexpected. Strangers cannot touch you sexually. Most rapists were trusted by their victims. Being raped in an alley by strangers is the minority. So its like throwing... |
Value Added Tax (VAT) or Goods and Service Tax (GST) | Australian here. I can't tell you what VAT is because we don't use it but I can explain GST: GST was introduced in 2000 by then prime minister John Howard which replaced the Wholesale sales tax. This tax was literally randomly assigned to products and was either 11%, 22% or 33%. For example, chocolate milk might have a... |
why do carbonated drinks & boiling water bubble from the bottom rather than the surface? | The bubbles are produced from what are called Nucleation Points. They are tiny scratches in the glass or surface where tiny seed bubbles are produced. Eventually they escape and produce a gas bubble. In soda the gas is CO2. This also why, if you are going to boil water in a microwave, stick a wooden skewer in the conta... |
Why I can memorize complicated formulas, but I struggle with knowing what letter comes next in the alphabet without singing it? | The alphabet is stored inside your memory in a way similar to how you store complicated formulas. Have you ever tried to write down a formula backwards from memory without recalling the formula? Or have you tried rewriting the formula solving for one variable without writing out the original formula first? We've learne... |
What would happen to the global health market if America suddenly adopted a universal healthcare program like Canada did? | Hmm. Most likely effect would be a long term reduction in healthcare holidays - where someone travels to a foreign country knowing they are sick, seeking care they can't afford at home. It will relieve the stress on emergency rooms because that's where uninsured people go. It'll also likely rescue the impact of some ty... |
How do book authors know for sure that the story for the book they're writing hasn't already been written? | They don't. Typically, a particular writer's idea for a story is going to be unique simply because of all of the variables involved and that writer's own imagination. There are many stories that share similar themes, plots, or character names, but not usually all of those things at once, and even if they are surprising... |
Why am I so tired after a full night of sleep after drinking? | Alcohol changes your brain chemistry temporarily which also changes your sleep cycles. You need to go through certain sleep cycles for certain amounts of time to feel fully refreshed. Alcohol and sleeping pills make you stay in certain cycles too long and because of that, you miss out on quality time with more importan... |
How does you cellphone know certain cell signals are for it and most others aren't? | This is really tough to ELI5. It is based on orthogonal waveforms. Basically orthogonal means if you multiply one waveform by an orthogonal waveform, you get zero. So your phone has a code. When that code is multiplied by every other signal out there, it results in zero. When that code is multiplied by your encoded sig... |
What goes on inside a person's body that forces them to be in a coma? What's preventing them from simply waking up? | Though a coma outwardly resembles sleep, it’s actually extremely different. Coma is when the general state of the brain is submerged into a severe depression level of consciousness. Sleeping has highly organized and complex electrical brain activity. A coma has slow electrical brain activity. Unlike sleep which can eas... |
What would be the next most profitable planet/celestial body to colonize next after Mars, and why? | Mars is the only one that remotely makes sense. Surface temperatures on Mercury swing from -270F to 800F over the course of a day and you're constantly bombarded with solar radiation. Venus is right out because the *average* surface temperatures is 864F due to the greenhouse effect. Surviving on either planet's virtual... |
How do we know that little children need glasses? | There are signs that a child is having vision problems, such as squinting or holding objects very close to the face, that the child should go for an eye test. If they can't read or answer questions, a device called an autorefractor that shines light into the eye and looks for the clarity of the image on the back of the... |
How is wind generated? / Where does wind come from? | Air moves from areas of high pressure to areas of low pressure. Sunlight heats the ground in an area, and the ground heats up the air above it. The hot air moves upwards , and the air in the surrounding areas moves in to take its place. Horizontal air movement is wind. The Earth rotates, and the solid ground rotates wi... |
What is the fundamental reason the American economy is considered "shaky"? | It's not 'shaky' in any mathematical sense. There is a sense that the current gains may be temporary. If they are not, then raising the interest rate is a good idea. Lowering the rate always gives a short term boost to the economy, so raising them now lets us stock up for a future crisis. If things are only barely succ... |
why is the word colonel pronounced kernal | 2 Variants of the word entered the English language from middle-French in the 16th century.Colonel was 1, coronel was the other. Both meaning the same thing.As you might know, British pronunciation of words is different to American. Where an 'r' is not followed by a vowel, the 'r' is not really pronounced. Like in hard... |
What's the Opponent process theory of color vision? | Human eye has three kind of cone cells that are sensitive to different kind of light. The three cones are sensitive to short wavelengths , medium wavelengths and long wavelengths . So light enters eye. This light exites the different cone cells differently and then the cones send signal towards brain. But there is an e... |
Why do so many veterans commit suicide? | Because its very difficult to live with PTSD and also seeing a bunch of people that are almost like family on the battlefield dying in front of you. |
What is the process for getting a job with MI5/MI6/Secret Service? | For the US Secret Service, candidates must be U.S. citizens and must submit to urinalysis screening for illegal drug use prior to appointment. All Secret Service positions require a Top Secret security clearance. All applicants must undergo a full, Secret Service-specific, Top Secret clearance process regardless of cur... |
Why do seeing or even hearing someone puke, makes me want to puke as well? | I'm completely phobic of vomiting, I think they call that 'emetophobia' - even talking about it makes me shake. I'm utterly repulsed by it, to the point where if I see someone who looks like they're about to be sick I either run away, start crying or am filled with rage and horror that someone could do something so fou... |
How does the moon affect waves/tides? | The gravity from the moon actually pulls the water, making it bulge out in one part of the world . Because there's just a single ocean, this makes the water move away from the shore in other areas. The sun has no meaningful effect on the ocean because its just too far away, so the local effects of the moons gravity com... |
Why are computer science degrees so in demand right now? | Because a lot of industries out there need people that can write code and there's no real end of job availability in sight. CS majors go on to write code for: * Websites * Phone apps * Desktop programs * Video games * Proprietary software -- e.g. Point of sale software used in retail stores. And so much more. And the a... |
What is it about T.V. shows in 1080 that makes them look like homemade videos? | It's called the [Soap Opera Effect]. Basically, newer TVs have so much processing power that they are able render frames more cleanly and reducing motion blur, but it produces an unnatural look. The link above shows how you can disable it.There were/are three main frame rate standards in the TV and digital cinema busin... |
How can music producers "decide" which speaker/headphone certain sounds come out of? | I'm not sure if this will answer your question but here it goes. I recently graduated with an audio engineering degree and here is how I do it. Whenever you record something, you record it on a "track". Some songs have a hundred tracks, and some have three or less. When I use ProTools, my audio editing software of choi... |
Why we can't cure viruses (like herpes) | Other parasites can be killed through either poison, suffocation, or destroying their cells. Viruses are not complete cells nor do they breath or eat like other organisms, they are just DNA or RNA invading someone else's cells, therefore killing them is very difficult without damaging the patient. Probably the most eff... |
why is it a chargeable offense to blind someone with car high-beams, when nowadays LED headlights offer the same intensity on "Low Beam" setting; it's just as blinding. | The Low Beam setting will often point the high-beams onto the road as opposed to straight in front of the car, and it is rare that the Low Beams would blind an oncoming driver. The high-beams, on the other hand, are meant to provide visibility in extremely dark conditions so that the driver can see the road in front of... |
How do chemical sunscreens work? | Most chemical sunscreen work the same way, but they selectively block UV light. Zinc oxide blocks all light, so people can see you are wearing it. A more attractive sunscreen might look black under UV light but wouldn't be opaque in visible wavelengths. |
Why aren't avocados grown (more widely?) in Europe? | It could be a simple answer of the market not wanting them as much as other fruits, or that they think avocados may not yield enough profit. Some interesting facts: The types we see in stores/the ones we eat, has no natural animal that spreads the huge seeds from the mother tree. It is thought that giant ground sloths ... |
Why is Brazil zo big compared to other SA countries? | Brazil was actually even bigger than it is today. Portugal and Spain got into a huge fight over it, and since they were both Catholic countries, they went to the Pope to settle it. At the Treaty of Tordesillas in 1494, they agreed to split the territory in half. Unfortunately for the Spanish, they were unable to popula... |
What does H.R.158 do and how does it impact Iranian-Americans? | Basically the law says that risk of terrorism is now going to be factor for deciding if someone is eligible for a visa waiver. Pretty much if you are of Middle Eastern descent, or if you've gone to a Middle Eastern country, then you can just about forget getting a waiver, you're gonna need a visa to enter the US. Under... |
Why is the coefficient of dynamic friction lower than the coefficient of static friction? | We think of friction as some force that just exists between two objects. But it has a reason behind it. Friction is actually a lot of little forces. Some important examples are the force to break little bonds that form between the molecules of one thing and molecules of the other thing, or the force to break off little... |
NASA's new Microwave Propulsion System that requires zero fuel. | The idea is that quantum vacuum fluctuations can provide a craft with thrust, but in order to utilize those fluctuations a fuel is still required. In other words, it's propellant-less propulsion, not fuel-less propulsion. There's more about it [here]. |
Why do electrons, photons, and radio signals travel in Waves? | You get mechanical waves and electromagnetic waves Most of your examples are EM and as the name implies they have electrical and magnetic components which are at right angles to each other. What this means is that the magnetic component pushes the electrical one which in turn pushes the magnetic one which propagates th... |
There are two-legged mammals and four-legged ones. Why no three, five or six? | Well, for one, you're wrong. There are not two-legged and four-legged mammals, all large vertebrates follow the same body pattern: four limbs. The distinction between two and four legs is a cultural one, in many other languages, people would look at you funny for saying that, because "a dog doesn't have four legs, he h... |
The reason behind why many people are saying George Bush and Tony Blair should be in prison for their actions involving Iraq. | They prosecuted a war claiming it was due to intelligence which they're believed to know didn't exist/was wrong , with aims which were not approved by the UN security council. As such, the conflict has been described as illegal, including by former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, and from the Despatch Box in the House... |
What is the catch with those auction sites that claim to sell iPads and high end laptops for $20? | You have to pay for each bid, and you can only improve the previous bid by a small increment each time. So as an example. Lets say an IPad costs $500. Each bid costs you $1. You can bid it up by .01 each time. So in aggregate people need to spend $2000 to win the right to buy the item for $20. And once people start bid... |
Is it dangerous to cock your eyes? | What the hell is "cocking your eyes?" If your parents were "cocking your eyes," then you probably should have called social services. |
How do stabilizers / gimbal mounts for cameras know when to counteract a motion, and when the cameraman actually wants the camera to turn/tilt? | We use PID loops. These can be adjusted according to a users preferences. You have 3 axis solid state gyros which can tell when the camera is tilted in any direction and using the PID settings they will attempt to counter act this motion up to a point. The basic settings will correct for small fast movements. When you ... |
Why do the armed forces generally require men to wear a short haircut but allow the women to have a long haircut? | It used to be common for men and women to wear their hair long. The main exception to this was that soldiers would wear their hair short for hygiene reasons. In the 1910s, and again in the 1940s, we fought two major wars, where entire generations of men would go to the army and have their hair short. Around this time H... |
Why are bugs so creepy to us? Genetics or something we learn? | It's definitely a social construct. Why it exists is hard to say but insects have killed ore than 50 percent of all humans so it make sense to be afraid of such things. |
Does pressing the "close door" button on an elevator actually do anything? | Sometimes. Sometimes not. It basically depends on whether they hook it up to something that triggers the door to close or not, and they don't always. |
If ice gets bigger when it freezes, the why is the sea levels rising when the ice caps melt? | The problem is not sea ice, like that at the North Pole - you're right that it displaces the same amount of water in either solid or liquid forms. The problem is all the ice that is on land. All of Greenland, all the Antarctic continental ice, all the glaciers around the world, etc., etc. |
Why are there so many MtF transgenders, but not many FtM transgenders? | There's not, at least according to [this study]. The media tends to portray MtF transgender people much more than FtM transgender people, so perhaps this explains why this seems to be the case. |
Why do so many languages, even when some use a completely different alphabet from English, use the same punctuation at the end of their sentences? | Western influence. Some languages have independently invented their own versions of various punctuation. For example, there are several different variations of the period. However, Western influence is causing some cultures to forego their traditional full-stop mark for the period as we know it in English. For some oth... |
Why do smoke detectors emit the same noise regardless wether they are out of battery or there is an actual fire? | It would cost more to produce a smoke alarm which emitted two different signals. The goal is an alarm which works for a low cost. So it is cheaper to produce one with one alarm sound. If it goes off, look around for a fire. If no fire, change the batteryWhere i live the annoying thing is that it beeps once every 30 ? m... |
What is the best method for washing/drying clothes | * Read the tags on clothing for temperature and dryer/no dryer specifics.* Jeans should be turned inside out to slow the leaching of dyes. It will happen eventually anyway, but I 've been told many times that this will slow it down.* Use cold or warm water for everything except whites. Cold water will keep colors from ... |
How do Olympic athletes who play a sport that doesn't have professional leagues (fencing, rhythmic gymnastics, etc) practice and train year round? | To correct you on the misconception, all the sports in the Olympics have leagues but its not televised like what most Americans are use to . These leagues are funded through 4 main sources: * Industry advertisement/sponsorship. * The association of the sport pays for some of it * Competitors paying entrance fees* Audie... |
Why is calculus so important? | Because it would have been incredibly difficult to study dynamic, changing systems and describe them mathematically. Newton more or less invented calculus as a tool to understand systems to which older mathematical toolsets couldn't be applied. Just like a major breakthrough in any other field, calculus was and is impo... |
Why we can't describe colours | because linguistically there's no reason to do so. we can do it scientifically though, like your gun example. colour is a defining trait of things caused by the variation of possible light, caused by reflections, refractions or emissions of specific wavelengths of light.We can explain color as a particular wavelength o... |
How some animals like eels are able to send electric discharges | electric eels arnt really eels, but knifefish. electric fish have a specialized organ similar to muscle or nervous tissue, and builds/releases charge the same way your nervous system relays signals- moving charged ions across cell membranes, mainly sodium. a nervous signal to these cells triggers a rapid change in char... |
What will happen to the world-wide economy if America were isolated from the rest of the world? | Imagine your school allows the sale of candy between students. This rich kid absolutely LOVES candy and the parents are all too happy to give the kid money because they have a ton of it. He literally is buying up 15-20% of the candy by himself. With all this money, more and more students get into selling candy because ... |
If the universe is expanding, how come we stay the same? | We are expanding with the universe. The expansion is just *incredibly* tiny on the scale of humans and planets and solar systems and even galaxies, so the forces holding everything together are more than sufficient to counter itImagine that the raisins are solid matter and the bread is empty space. I think it should be... |
The East-Coast West-Coast Rap Artist War/Fued | It started at the Source Awards back in the early 90's when Suge Knight dissed NY and Puff Daddy, twas his name at the time, while in NY. Snoop echoed his insults and Puff rebutted when he was on stage. That incident seemed to have sparked, or rather reignited, a rivalry between the two coasts and as Biggie's fame grew... |
How are doctors able to determine roughly how much longer someone has to live? | It's usually an educated guess based on experience from past similar cases. They're not always correct though. My diagnosis was 6 months at best. That was 19 years ago. I'm not complaining. |
Why do they tell critical trauma victims to fight the urge to sleep? Can sleep actually kill them in their current condition ? | It's not that sleeping is bad, it's that an unconscious person can't talk to the medical staff. A conscious person can be asked questions about their physical & mental state that aren't immediately visible to an outsider, they can be asked if pieces move & how much things hurt. Being able to answer questions helps the ... |
why do you only wake up from certain nightmares? | I think waking up from dreams has more to do with your mind realizing it's impossible; *or* simply physically waking yourself up. I don't have nightmares much, but I have experienced cases where I wake up because the dream got too silly. I once saw my grandmother , which made me actively realize this must be a dream. S... |
How snow accumulates on salt flats; especially since we put salt on sidewalks to melt snow. | Salt lowers the melting point of water, meaning that it remains liquid past 0 degrees C . However, this effect can only go so far. If it is cold enough, water will still freeze and remain frozen as snow, even in high salt concentrations.I believe it doesn't get rid of the snow, just lowers the specific temperature need... |
How does Social Security work? | A government, or the people in charge, gathers a percentage of a worker's wage, and in turn, redistributes that money to support those who cannot support themselves, specifically the disabled and the elderly. Let's say that your class president wanted to do this in your primary school class. You'd ask the students to j... |
How exactly does a spoiler help with a car's aerodynamics? | A spoiler creates downward force on the rear end which gives the tires better grip allowing for better handling and tractionThe main function of a rear spoiler on a car is to produce down force to produce more traction for the rear tires. They basically work like an upside down airplane wing creating downward pressure ... |
Why are the numbers at the bottom of a check written in such a ridiculous font? | It's magnetic ink, and the varying fat vs. skinny parts of each digit help the relatively primitive scanning machines identify it more easily. It's not an optical scanner like we'd use today, it senses the amount and position of ink on the check and translates it to the routing number, account number, and check number ... |
Why do people get itchy? | It's your body's way of telling you there's something on your skin that shouldn't be there. The same way pain makes us jerk away from danger, an ichy sensation gives us a reflex to scratch and remove possible irritants. |
Why Do Republicans Hate President Obama? | It's not like Obama is the first president to be hated by the rival party. The Republicans would hate any Democratic president, just as the Democrats would hate any Republican president. |
Why are humans the only animal to actively clean their teeth? | Human teeth should last a lifetime without care on a normal diet. Our diet isn't normal though. It's filled with starch, which promotes bacterial growth. A high starch diet is characteristic of modern civilizations and not of traditional humans. More importantly sugar. Tooth decay only became a massive problem with the... |
What are Parole Board Members suppose to be looking when assessing whether an inmate should be Paroled or not? | There are 8 criminogenic risk factors that can be used to predict the likelyhood someone will recidivate. Of those factors, 5 are directly linked to criminal behavior and 3 are supporting, but not directly linked. Factors include criminal history, education/employment, financial situation, housing, family/marital situa... |
How are sounds on a football field like tackles, big hits, and even quarterback cadence amplified? How do the microphones avoid picking up all of the ambient noise from noisy fans? | Directional microphones on the sidelines. You can usually see them during games, they're about 2-3 feet across, half-circle shaped, and made of clear plastic. |
What's the strife between British and Welsh people? | I wouldn't say there's really any "strife", and there hasn't been for a long time. England conquered Wales back in the middle ages, and brought it under English law in the 16th Century. For a long time Welsh language and culture was suppressed by the English which obviously caused resentment. But that doesn't happen no... |
If I have two TVs on to the same channel, why is one several seconds ahead of the other? | If the TVs have different sources, it's possible. Networks send their feeds to the cable/satellite company/local network, who then send the signal out to the receiver/antenna. If one is connected via antenna and one is connected via cable, it's entirely possible for one to be a few seconds behind another.One is taking ... |
How does "firmware" work? | Firmware occupies the space between software and hardware. Software is made to be distant from the hardware, it's written with high level concepts in mind. Hardware is designed on low level concepts to build a large, complex system out of many smaller ones. Firmware is this sweet spot where the engineer writes code, bu... |
What's the difference between the house and senate in United States? | When the US federal government was forming there was a difference of opinion as to how it should work. Some thought that as a Federation it was the States that should be represented and every State should have an equal vote. Others thought that it should be population based and that every State should get a different n... |
why is there still such restrictive DVD/BD copy protection | Your ripping CDs to MP3 is illegal, at least, in the opinion of the lawyers paid by the record industry. The recording industry has been careful to keep that question out of the courts, who would probably side with the rest of the planet, and sanity, making an exception to copyright law - even though a strict reading o... |
How do cellphone towers work | They’ve got radios in them that send and receive from your handset. They also have phone circuits that connect to a central switch so you can send and receive phone calls. |
Why are there two different texture sides to bath towels? | It is how it is made. The yarn is looped and pulled back up through the weave. Then it is trimmed to cut the loops and fluff the yarn. The other side is still a loop. |
Why do we need to close our eyes in order to sleep? How is sleeping for blind people? People with no eyes? | We don't need to close our eyes when we sleep, it just helps block out distractions, which in turn helps us fall asleep faster. |
Why did I lose 5.6 lbs of water after I went to the bathroom? | Over five pounds seems very excessive for urine. The male bladder can normally hold about 2 cups of fluid. This would not nearly be 5 pounds. Are you sure there was nothing else that changed between the two weights? Did you remove your shoes, or a jacket? Did you poop? The only other thing I can think of is what is dis... |
Why does it seem like kids are getting shorter while previous generations were taller? | It's just you getting older. When I started high school the seniors looked *so old*, they were like adults compared to me. When I was a senior I didn't see an adult when I looked in the mirror and my classmates didn't look old either. Now when I drive past my old school and the students are walking home they all look l... |
why do we get paid (weekly, bi-weekly, etc)? | It costs time and money to process paychecks, so it's not economical to do so daily. I worked for a smallish business during the financial meltdown, and going from weekly to bi-weekly pay periods saved the company thousands a year. The owner, who'd grown up poor/blue collar prided himself on looking out for the hourly ... |
how is digital sound created? | > If stuff isn't interacting with something to create a sound how are sounds created from nothing? They aren't "created from nothing". The speaker contains a vibrating membrane that is controlled by an electromagnet that turns on/off based on a signal from the computer. The vibrating membrane causes the air around it t... |
how is it that I can know I've forgotten something but not know what it is I've forgotten? | Your brain works off of context piled upon context. Context is like a string you tie on one thing to relate it to another . What can happen is the string can be cut or what it is tied to can be hidden. From your conscious point of view you're holding a string, but you can't find what it's attached to on the other end. ... |
Libertarianism (U.S. Politics) | Before we look at Libertarianism, let's establish there's two major types of policies a political group can support or enact. There is fiscal policy and social policy . Taxation is a fiscal issue and abortion is a social issue, for example. Democrats are both fiscally and socially liberal. They are in favor of more gov... |
Why do insurance companies in the UK exclude Northern Ireland, Channel Islands and Isle of Man. | Two reasons. Firstly because of the legal differences. There are three different legal systems in use in the UK -- the English legal system , the Scottish one, and the Northern Irish one. Many insurance companies presumably don't consider it worth their while to employ lawyers with specific NI training, so for a compar... |
How did last names come about and why? I'm from Maine and my last name is the name of a City in the Mid-West....how? | > How did last names come about and why? When you have lots of people with the same name, you need a way to distinguish which one you're talking about. Last names naturally arose from things like professions, place names, and the names of parents. * John the smith eventually became John Smith. * Robert the son of Paul ... |
How is it possible that reddit is such a huge website but I keep seeing same users in totally different subreddits multiple times a day? | Several possible reasons: * They are one of the "reddit celebrities", such as vargas, aWildSketchAppears, Poem_for_your_Sprog, etc. These people generally have comments with plenty of entertainment value, so they get upvoted all over the place* They are a bot* They repost successful posts from the past. The user Trappe... |
How are roads selected for repair? (America/NY) | Some roads of federal and state responsibility. I'm not as clear on that process. On a local level cities have an engineer who evaluates and rates all of the roads in the city. He provides a report that is used to allocate funding. Cities can only spend money they have so that means some roads may be put off and only s... |
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