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What happens to a country's Nuclear Weapons after its government falls?
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As far as I am aware the only time something like this happened was during the fall of the USSR. Ukraine, Belarus, and Kazakhstan all returned the war heads to Russia as far as I know.When the USSR collapsed, the former communist states handed over their nukes to the Russian Federation. An example would be Ukraine which handed over its nukes in 1991. Belarus and Kazakhstan also handed over their nukes. However there is disagreement among experts that all of USSR's weapons were secured. Some say that there are rogue nukes out there. There are rumors of a black market in nuclear material. A.Q. Khan was part of a black market in nuclear material. If the US were to factionalize we would probably do what the former Soviet states did and turn our weapons over to the strongest of the former American states, or we would all sign a pact among the former states to disarm all the nukes. Silos would be filled with concrete, submarines decommissioned, nuclear bombs dismantled. California and Montana would be the strongest nuclear powers in North America if the federal government fell. This is because of Minot AFB in MN and Vandenburg AFB in CA which both have IBCMs. However, CA and MN would not be able to use these weapons because the president would presumably still have the nuclear football which has the launch codes. But that is really fantasy. Most people are worried about the arsenals of only a few countries. Countries whose nuclear arsenals are a greater cause for concern than normal: Pakistan-due to the severe situation with the Taliban in countryNorth Korea-due to the paranoid and inexperienced leadershipIsrael-due to a policy of nuclear ambiguity
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Why do ghostwriters ghostwrite when they are clearly talented enough to make a name for themselves?
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Some ghostwriters are already famous authors, and write for a paycheck. Some might be modestly successful, but an "auto"biography from someone famous is likely to make a lot more. Also, some writers like their subjects and want to write those stories. People line up to write for Presidents and Politicians. There's also less risk to your reputation, and some writers like the opportunity to take some literary risks or break the mold they are known for. And, of course, others do it to get writing "credits" under their belt. Manuscripts from nobodies end up in the circular file. But the new book from the guy that ghostwrote the last Kardashian Sutra is going to get some curious glances.Because the *brand* of a famous celebrity is a strong selling point too. It's not just the quality of the work that makes sales.
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How one would go about training themselves to wake up LATER as opposed to earlier
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Keep your room absolutely pitch black until you want to wake up. Light is the main signaler of your body to be awake, so if you have a window, especially a window that faces East , more than likely the sunrise is waking you up. Get some blackout curtains, and keep your room dark. Put your bedside lamp on a timer and use that as an alarm clock . Stay up later. Use light as your advantage, and keep your room bright until you want to go to sleep. If you're trying to wake up at, say, ten instead of seven, that means you need to stay up until about 1:30-2AM. Keep your lights bright, especially blue lights, until about half an hour before you sleep. Shift your mealtimes so that you eat a larger meal later in the day. Hunger somewhat regulates your circadian rhythm, and is also somewhat regulated *by* your circadian rhythm. A late dinner will push your cycle back and keep you awake later. Be very consistent with your changes. Stay up late even if you're dead tired, even if you know it means you'll be more tired the next day. Eat dinner at around the same time every night. Get your body into that pattern and it will shape your circadian rhythm to match. Side note: this is weird, I'm so used to giving good sleep hygiene advice to fix wonky sleep schedules the other way. This is like all really bad sleep hygiene, but hey if you want to wake up later that's how you do it.
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What does it mean when the PM "forms a new government" in the UK political system?
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The US equivalent is the "new administration". Different officials are appointed to various positions in the \'new\' government to replace those who lost their positions . ETA: The reason that this is \'new\' is that they 've had to rope in the winning MPs from another party to make up their majority. So this will be a minority government comprised of two parties to make a majority. It's the old political chop/change job after an election. This time, with more shoehorned whack jobs!During the past several hundred years, power in the UK has slowly shifted from The Monarchy to Parliament. In olden times, if the Monarchy needed money to run they country, they borrowed it from wealthy businessmen in exchange for power. That's the reason for the slightly strange set up in The UK. The Queen is in charge, technically, but Parliament have power to overrule her on most important issues. The first point on forming a government is the number of seats won. There are 650 seats available, so a "majority government" needs to earn at least 326 seats. The winner, in what is pretty much just a symbolic gesture, must seek permission from the Queen to form a government. As /u/_Julep_ indicated, the process of actually "forming" the government is similiar to The US. The Leader of the winning party becomes Prime Minister and gets to choose the people who take important jobs like Home Secretary, Defense Secretary. These will always be in the same party. I can't draw a comparison to The US system but there is no way the losing party can oppose these positions. The winning party can choose whoever they like to make up "The Cabinet". Meanwhile, the losing party becomes "The Opposition". The Opposition also appoint people to these roles, but they are all "Shadow ministers" example "Shadow Foreign Secretary" or "Shadow Chancellor".
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How does Tilt-Shift photography work? What causes the change in the photos?
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It's created by literally tilting the lens so part of the picture, that normally would be in focus, is now out of focus. In photography, [depth of field] is the term that refers to how much of the scene is in focus. Close up pictures of small things will have a narrow depth of field and far away pictures of big things will have a wide depth of field. By tilting the lens and altering the depth of field unnaturally, your brain then processes the picture as if it is a close up of something small. So this is why a tilt-shift picture of a city looks like it's a small model city. edit: a word
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Why can't we drink seawater when we're dehyrdated?
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Seawater has about three times the salt content of urine. That means for every cup of seawater you drink, you body has to come up with 2 more cups of water to eliminate itThe amount of salt that is mixed in saltwater is very high, and upon drinking, your body will try and equalize the solute to solvent concentration in your blood, causing you to pee out water. So in the end, you will become even more dehydrated.
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Why do people get drunk quicker / easier in high altitudes? (Colorado, etc)
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[You don't]. > In a series of studies for the Federal Aviation Administration, scientists simulated the effects of altitude, performing blood alcohol tests on groups of subjects who drank under ground-level and high-altitude conditions. They found no difference.you just feel more drunk because you are "high" at the same time & #3232; _ & #3232; .. but in all seriousness, probably for the same reason you feel light-headed when you are at a higher altitude - thinner air = less oxygen going to the brain = light-headedness
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Why did we nuke Hiroshima and Nagasaki instead of hitting Japan's military bases?
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> I don't see why hundreds of thousands of people had to pay the price for the actions of their government. In a sense, that's why we did it. The Japanese were basically too stubborn to give up, and the bombings were to terrify them into submission. Ruining the shit out of civilian populations is a good way to do something like that. We weren't just trying to cripple them militarily, we wanted maximum psychological impact. _URL_0_
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Why does time of morning make it harder to get up?
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It's likely because of a process called circadian rhythm. The chemicals in your body, the temperature of your body, and the amount of light causes you to either feel sleepy or alert. It's probably an evolutionary response, so the first humans could have the energy to gather food and everything else they needed when there was daylight and go to sleep when it was dark . It's also notable that teenagers bodies work differently, which is why they tend to stay up late and have a hard time getting up early. Usually, the sun isn't up at 6:30 a.m., so that could be your problem, but it could also be that you're simply not used to getting up early. I know people who can't sleep past 7 a.m. because that's when they always get up and I assume their body has adjusted to that schedule.
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Wi-Fi - How is data loss not an issue?
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Ok, first part Yes, data loss absolutely is an issue. You said it yourself, your connection speed goes down as you get further away from the access point. Why? It's because of [forward error correction], basically your device and the access point notice an increase in errors and so negotiate to use a certain amount of redundancy. 2/3 FEC for example, for every 3 bits that are transmitted 1 of them is a parity bit, a bit that doesn't contain any information per se, but lets the recipient know if there's an error in the message. If you have enough parity bits the recipient will be able to detect a certain amount of possible errors, it may even be able to use the information in the parity bits to figure out which bits are incorrect and will correct them itself, rather than request the packet be retransmitted. This is the reason your connection speed drops, there's a finite limit to the amount of bits per second you can send on a certain frequency using a certain modulation scheme, if you have a higher proportion of parity bits to data bits it means you have less data being sent per second. As for the second part, yeah, everyone on the network can see the packets that are being sent around the network. Get a program called WireShark, it lets you see all the packets being transmitted around your device. Things like encryption are done on a higher level than WiFi, stuff like SSL and SSH is what stops the people on your network from stealing your Facebook password.
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Why does a vacuum 'suck'?
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It's not actually that a vacuum sucks, but that any gas will spreed out as there is nothing to contain it. It's just something of higher pressure will move towards lower pressure to even it out.It's not really a "suck," it's a push. But, first, some background. We tend to think of most of the world as "empty." Think of the air around you. It seems almost non-existent, right? But, it turns out that there are trillions upon trillions upon trillions of molecules in a given volume of air. [There are only about a thousand times as many molecules in the same volume of diamond.] And, those particles are MOVING. Here's a simple calculation putting their speed at about [1100 mph]. So, when you have a vacuum---a space where there really are virtually no particles, it's no surprise that whatever is around them would try to fill the space very quickly. And that's what happens, creating the "suck."
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Why do TV shows sometimes have cast that are "featuring" or "with," and included as part of the main cast?
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In addition to /u/Teekno's great response, last billing is often used when an older, more established actor takes on a non-leading role. It is important for both the show and the actor to give the impression they are more than just an ordinary cast member. Rich and famous Danny DeVito working on a small project he finds interesting artistically is a good story. Broke and pathetic Danny DeVito schlepping for a paycheck on basic cable is a downer. Giving him special mention lets viewers know which one it is.It's called last billing. So, if you are a top actor, you want to be first in the credits. Credit order is a big deal for actors, and their billing is part of the negotiation with the studio But if you can't be first, you don't want to be second -- you want to be last. A last billing with a word like "featuring" or "and John Smith as Dr. Schmoo" is better than being lost in the middle of the credits.
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Why is it when oil prices were $110/barrel I paid $4/gallon at the pump, but now that they are $60/barrel I pay $3/gallon at the pump?
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That is only the price of crude oil, which still needs to be refined in order to be used in your car. The price of crude oil is not going to be exactly proportional to the price of gasoline because the costs to process the crude oil haven't necessarily gone down.In addition to the other answers about the fixed costs of refining, I will add that you pay a lot in taxes, and most of those taxes are a fixed amount per gallon, and not a percentage of the price.- The price of the oil is NOT the only factor, I would even bet that its not even the biggest part of it. The price actually are partly fixed costs the other part would be variable costs, higher or lower prices for the material would be one of them, and even here its only a fraction of it. To sum this point up: When you are running a bakery, having flour prices drop by 50% won't make your cake-prices drop by 50% - You need gasoline. They know you need gasoline, you will buy it, even if its more expensive.
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Why is the D.A.R.E program so ineffective?
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Having experienced it as a child, I would say the number one reason it is ineffective is it paints all drugs as equally bad and immediate life destroyers. So when one of your friends smokes pot and is totally fine the next day/week/month you do not take what you were told seriously.One of the main problems with programs like D.A.R.E is that they basically tell kids two main things 1. Drugs are bad, and people who take drugs are bad too. 2. Drugs are all equally dangerous. They have no positives qualities and they will kill you. The problem is that non of these things are strictly true. What happens is kids reach their late teens/college and they start to find this out for themselves. Your best friend Mike starts to smoke weed with his older brother. He keeps telling you that it's great. You know that Mike isn't a bad person, and he hasn't died yet so obviously the things DARE told you about drugs were bullshit. DARE makes drugs into more of a taboo. It's a proven fact that the less of a taboo drugs have, the less people will take them. Especially teenagers. When you tell someone they can't do something, and then they find out you were lying they are bound to be more curious.
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Please could you help me understand the causes (historically/socially/economically) of the current Police Brutality events in the USA.
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Most of the issues is widespread media saturation. Stuff like cop shootings boost ratings, not cops doing their jobs. Most cops are doing their jobs perfectly and doing their best to keep all people safe. That said, Yes there are some issues. Some cops take the power to their heads and abuse their powers. There are also cases where cops just act inadequately. I think a large portion of the problems stem from the issues with escalation of force. Many times cops are told that if they are in danger they can use lethal force. Occasionally they are justified, many times they are overreacting.No first-hand information, but I suspect its like every other human endeavor: 1% of humans are just shits. Always have been. Now that 99% of humans have small, portable, constantly-internet-connected video recorders, there's a collision. This is yet another situation where this technology revolution is changing how people behave. Things that would have never been known by someone else are now flashed around the world in milliseconds. Everything is much harder to hide now.
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Why do different people like different music?
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So I was just wandering around Google, looking up the whole "4 chord" theory -- which suggests that there are 4 main chords that morph into the most popular and "hit" songs. I read this really cool article a few years ago discussing the science behind manufacturing "hit music" in the pop genre. I'm going to keep searching for it and edit this post if I find it. But in the meantime -- I found [The Axis of Awesome's vid] where they sing little bits of a bunch of songs which all use the same chords. I also came across this interesting Cracked article labeled [5 Ways Your Taste in Music is Scientifically Programmed] . EDIT: [Found it!!] ', "lots of reasons. A song becomes super popular when it can be understood, on some level, by a lot of people. But no matter how good some songs are, there will always be cultural disconnects. Most people don't know what is so funny about not being able to beat Airman, since they don't even know what an airman is, but its still a really good song.
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Why is it that when I oversleep, it is harder to wake up naturally than say if I only get 4 or 5 hours of sleep?
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You are waking up in the middle of a sleep cycle.I think I remember that the average sleep cycle is 90 minutes. So if you wake up at the end of a cycle, you'll feel much more rested than if you slept 7 hours, because 7 hours would have you waking up in the middle of a cycle. They sell alarm apps on your phone that you can put on your bed, that senses your movement, and can tell when your sleep cycles start and end, and will trigger the alarm at the end of one.
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What causes traffic in bad weather?
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It's a combination of a lot of things - There are more cars, since less people take transportation that makes them wet. But this is only a small influence - The average speed is lower because people are afraid of slipping - People keep more distance, thus allowing less cars on the same stretch of road. - When you have an onramp, the people joinging traffic will fill the holes, causing more braking to keep that distance
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Why has Comcast/time Warner not been sued for a major class action lawsuit for owning a monopoly like Microsoft was?
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They are only a monopoly like the power and water companies are. it would also be so expensive for another company to build all the needed infrastructure that even if they took 80% of the customers it still wouldn't be worth it. A single Node cost upwards of 5,000USD for one and you need thousands of these for a large HFC network.
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I know this is a bit outdated, but can someone explain Obama's Public Option to me LI5?
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Right now all insurance is run by private companies, who earn a profit. Obama thought it would be beneficial if the goverment also provided health insurance as a public option so people could select between the two. This is common in many European countries. Edit: Below comments expand in a useful way.
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the difference between 100s and short cigarettes
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The 100s contain more filter, same amount of tobacco I believeThis appears to be summed up quite well at _URL_0_
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Why can the US have thousands of nuclear warheads but simultaneously coerce other nations into denuclearization?
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Most nations on the planet have signed the Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty. The NPT says that those non nuclear states will not pursue a nuclear weapons program. In exchange, they get access to nuclear power generation technology -- and , they know that their rivals/neighbors who have signed the NPT won't develop nukes either. That last part is key. The main reason any country ever had a nuclear program is because a rival or enemy had nukes or were developing nukes. As part of the treaty, the nuclear power signatories to the treaty are required to take action to prevent a country from developing nuclear weapons in violation of the treaty.
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why is turning something off and on again the solution to basically every problem ever encountered?
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It's not, but lets assume it is, and lets compare it to you giving someone directions to do something over the phone. If you screw up enough times and they screw up enough times, it's easier to start all over than it is to try and backtrack through your mistakes.Chess analogy. 50 steps into a game, what would be easier to revert everything back to the start? Trying to do every move backwards or just clearing the whole board and placing the pieces back.
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Why are there so many new medical breakthroughs in the news, but practically none of them ever become legitimate cures.
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Because a breakthrough towards a cure is just one brick in the road, but it's what gets highly touted by the media because it's easy to point out. A team of scientists working in lab conditions come up with something promising and release their findings. Someone in the media sees this paper and turns "Disease has possible vulnerability!" and turns it into "CURE IS IMMINENT!!!1!" What they don't say is that it will take another few years of research, plus another few years of study, then another few years to create a human-safe cure , and then a few more years to figure out how to produce it at profitable levels.Most science comes in small incremental growth, not sudden breakthroughs, but that doesn't make for eye-catching headlines. [How science reporting works.]
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How do Anonymous hack the systems of the government and big companies?
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Think of it as a house with a 1000 doors. And hackers as locksmiths. By default you just need to turn the knob to open the doors, then depending on the wirewall or antivirus, you can see a brand on the door and the locksmith will say. Oh WEISER! I know hiw to crack them. An other might be an other brand that this hacker can't open but an other will. In the end, annonymous is a bunch of these hackers going at every door to see which one they can crack so he can open other doors to his friends who can open the door to the basement, then a room and then a safe. So as IT managers try to better the locks, hackers will find the weakest to get through a wall then open other doors from the inside so they can get access to other doors.
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How did we have “accurate” maps before we had satellites?
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well, we used surveying tools to mark spots on the land, and we used protractors, and pencil compasses, and magnetic compassesTrigonometry mostly, by drawing enormous triangles. This is a decent explanation of how William Lambton and George Everest mapped the Indian subcontinent: _URL_0_
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How do generic or “store brands” get away with producing products, sometimes in the same factory as the name brand, that are identical to name brand products.
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It is called "private label" production, and it actually occurs to the best interests of both companies. It works based on the principle that "name brands" are more desirable, so they cost more and have a higher profit margin than "store brands". However, the store and the producer both realize there are many people who would rather save money and buy the store brand, so they enter into an agreement where the producer makes extra product with the store's label on it and sells it to the store for less than the same product with the name brand. This allows the name brand producer to use its extra manufacturing capacity to create more revenue, without damaging its own brand's "worth" or "image" by dropping prices.They do this because they want more money. Imagine you own a factory, you sell canned beans. You sell it under your premium name brand for 50% profit on each can, which is great. Then, you get an opportunity to sell the same thing with a store brand label for 10% profit, so you do, because you want more money. If you refuse to make the store brand beans, you won't sell any more name brand beans, because the grocery store will get someone else to make them. More generally, this economic strategy is called [Price Discrimination], as you can see from the link, economists think extremely hard about it. But, to put it simply, there are people with premium budgets and people with basic budgets, you ideally want to sell to both of them. Offering a similar product under a different name will reduce sales of the expensive version to some degree, but there are mathematical models to predict exactly what the results will be at different price points.
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Why do innocent people need lawyers?
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1. Everyone is innocent until proven guilty. So if we concluded that innocent people don't need lawyers, that basically tosses out the 6th Amendment. 2. Innocent people get falsely convicted. It is [estimated] that 4.1% of people on death row have been falsely convicted. There are about 3,000 people on death row in the US, meaning there is an estimated 120 innocent people we're going to kill. And that's with them having lawyers. Can you imagine what would happen if innocent people didn't have lawyers? 3. The law isn't about innocence and guilt. It's about knowing the law. Let's say you're wrongfully charged with a crime. Do *you* know enough about the legal process and the law to successfully defend yourself? Do you know what forms to file, how to fill them out, who to file them with and by what deadlines? Do you know all of the case law that pertains to your case? Do you know the kinds of objections you can raise and when to raise them? Do you know how to properly vet potential jurors or witnesses? Do you know enough about the law to call the prosecution on their BS when they try to pull a fast one? > And as a side question, why are there no lawyers for TV judges like Judge Judy? It's a TV show, not a real life court. She is hired as a mediator and the plaintiff/defendant have agreed to waive their right to a trial and lawyer by letting Judge Judy settle for them.
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. The electoral college, popular vote, swing states and why my vote actually matters?
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i feel like i post this like every week The importance of the electorial college The EC amplifies the minority opinion. The number of electoral votes each state gets is based on the number of representatives and the number of senators . This allows rural states like Wyoming, Alaska, Idaho to have some say whereas they might have been ignored for states like NY or Flordia. This has some benefits. It promotes unity. The president must have support over the entire states rather then just regions of high populace. Without it, a candidate would just cater to just high populace areas. A president now must try and unite the country under an ideology rather than exacerbate regional differences. With such a large country, this is vital. Most large countries have strong regional ties and distrust from those not within the region . Yes, there have been some cases where the popular minority was the winner an election , but proponents claim that a distribution of votes is more important than the popular vote. Moreover, it enhances minority vote. Since most states have an all or nothing approach to the electoral college, a small percentage of the populace can determine the swing of all the electoral votes. The EC establishes the states choice for president. It has both a popular segment in addition to an equal number of electoral votes . We value the equal representation as much, if not more than populace; the upper house is based on equal representation after all. This is the very bases of the 2 house system and our government. The same argument for removing the EC can be used to make a case for removing the senatePlease search. This is asked nearly every day.
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Why can stress make you sick?
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There are at least two reasons. 1. The parasympathetic nervous system helps build and maintain the body. The sympathetic system breaks down and harms the body . If you are stressed, your body never has a chance to activate the parasympathetic nervous system, which is needed to fix and repair your body. Plus the chronic activity of the sympathetic causes damage itself. 2. Sleep is necessary for recover, and activation of the sympathetic nervous system damages sleep quality and quantity. So there are at least two reasons. You screw up the repair and maintenance of the body with chronic stress via shutting down the parasympathetic system and because your sleep quality drops.
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How do credit card companies force a return?
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Sure, if they get a company that is giving them X too many returns they can say "You'll need to honour these otherwise we withdraw our service". In any on-line business that would be back-breaking and certainly a pain for off-line at the very least> Do they have some sort of leverage? By definition they are pretty much the ones who control whether money is being transferred or not. Yeah, I 'd say they have some leverage all right. The receiving bank, if it wants to be able to receive payment by credit card at all, is pretty much obligated to accept to "undo" any payment the credit card company made and requests undone within 90 days. No one asked the company who's client of the bank, whether it was okay with it's return policy, nor anything at all.
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What does CCleaner do to your PC?
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Basically CCleaner removes old and unnecessary files from your system to free some space. For example old log files created by windows or all sort of temporary files. Also you can tell CCleaner to clear parts of your browser or most of installed applications. This includes cache, history, old files, reports, saved forms and much more based on the selected application. This are just some examples of the cleaning module. Just take a look for it and you see it is a powerfull and high configurable tool. There are also modules for scanning and fixing registry entries, managing autostarting applications and uninstalling software from your computer. Pro-Tip: With [CCEnhancer] you can add add more than 1000 new program detection rules to CCleaner.
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How do gas stations determine their gas prices, while varying in cost anywhere from 10-45 cents per gallon? While being directly across the street from another?
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Same way as any other business, supply and demand. When you see to gas stations with different prices, the high priced one might have better quality fuel, be easier to get to, a better convenience store, more pumps, or a have loyalty program. Or maybe their supply raised prices faster, and they would rather sell less gas than sell at it a loss. Note this is true with most products. The main difference is unlike most businesses, you see the price of their primary product a half a block away, and can easily choose to go somewhere else. If you have already walked into a store, it is not worth the bother to make another stop to save 45 cents on your potato chips.
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What prevents a person from lying about a degree they have and how is the validity checked?
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> how can I be stopped? And how do you check to.see if someone really has a degree? Your employer can request that you have your university send them a transcript of your coursework. This is a physical copy of all the grades you earned for all the courses you took, and it's mailed/faxed to them directly from the university. If that can't be supplied, then it's obvious that you're lying.The normal way to check is to go back to the college, and ask them. Most colleges and universities keep records of who does and does not have a diploma from them.Faking a degree is more common than you might think. In my experience, the people who lie about it usually started a program and dropped out before they finished, but put down that they completed it on their resume. No one really checks diplomas for proof of a degree since they're so easy to fake. Instead, an employer or other interested party would call the school you claimed to have graduated from and request a degree check. Some schools charge for this, though. Since it takes time and possibly money to check, most employers just take your word for it. For institutions like a state's bar for lawyers you have to send a certified copy of your degree and grades from your school so it's harder to fake.
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Why is it socially acceptable to spend so much money on your wedding day even if you are not financially stable?
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Traditionally, the wife's family pays for the wedding as part of her dowry. It's part of why you needed a fathers permission to marry his daughter. With the breakdown of the traditional family, and changing social norms, it now rests on unprepared couples to handle it themselves.
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why is dimensional lumber not actually sold in the dimensions it is named (ie: a 2x4 is actually 1.5 x 3.5 inches)?
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Lumber is rough cut to the actual dimensions. It is then planed to be smooth and to make it more consistent. They take off 1/4" from all sides for the smaller stuff like 2x4's and more as it gets bigger . You can actually buy "full dimension" lumber which is very rough but can look nice for some outdoor applications.
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How does was taking long showers or leaving the tap running waste water?
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If we use freshwater from reserves faster than it is replenished, then we will eventually not have enough water to use. Not to mention the fact that cleaning wastewater takes energy.
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Is the spiciness of some vegetables (such as jalapenos and other peppers?) their method of self defense?
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What makes a pepper spicy is called capsaicin. Capsaicin is increased when the peppers are stressed. Not enough water, aging, and decreasing nitrogen in the soil for example will stress the peppers. Therefore they become hotter
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Why is the west aligned Shia Islam, but support Sunni Islam?
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Whether they are Sunni, Shia, or any other religious denomination is purely incidental. The US Government does not lend support based on compatibility with western value systems. Foreign relations is about geopolitical strategy, not ideals.> Can anyone explain why we are supposedly aligned against Shia Muslims, even though they are seemingly the better side of Islam. Yeah this is pretty damn offensive. Also, I don't think that most people in the US have any idea there is a difference. > 70% of the worlds terrorist attacks are perpetrated by Sunni Muslims Do you have a source for this? This is well within the Walter rule. And this will definitely be removed if your responses here are soapboxing, which you're definitely on the verge of.
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First CBS, now Fox channels. What does Dish Network have to gain from dropping channels? Isn't it only hurting its own business?
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Fox tells Dish "pay us more money". Dish says "no". Fox says "fine, then you can't show our channels". Then the two of them play a game of chicken- can Dish hold out long enough that Fox gives in and doesn't require them to pay a bunch more money for channels that no one wants?Dish has to pay CBS and Fox for redistribute their content. The figure: * the price those networks are asking is more than what they would lose* the networks are losing advertising money from this, and will eventually lower their asking price* public sentiment will pressure the networks into lowering their prices
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Why does every game i install on steam require the installation of that Microsoft DX thing?
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_URL_0_ > [ ]There are over 40 different versions of the D3DX library for D3D9 alone, and many more for D3D10 and 11 as well.Each game that uses the D3DX helper library is linked to a specific version.[ ] Microsoft's licensing terms prevent anyone from distributing the files directly, the only way to distribute them is to run the installer, that's also the only supported method from Microsoft to check that the correct version installed.
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How big do waves in the middle of the ocean actually get?
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5m height is quite common, but since there are many different sized waves traveling at different speeds, sometimes they come together and you get a brief but very large wave. These rogue waves" can reach 20-30m in height]. Some things like [high speed ferries make rogue waves more common] because they produce soliton waves .
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Why aren't humans able to stand completely motionless?
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Because standing requires motion. At the very least, you need to be alive, and your heart and lungs will be moving to do so. With more complexity, maintaining a standing posture requires constant adjustment to maintain balance in a system that's constantly changing - the computational power and motor coordination required to do so is immense, and isn't really useful for humans beyond staying roughly still, so there's no reason for us to have evolved such an "expensive" *perfect* balancing system.
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Why do the back of roller-coasters experience more 'whip' as compared to the front?
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"Whip" in kinematics is described as the rate of change of acceleration, also known as *jerk*. Since roller coasters are primarily gravity powered, the front starts going faster downhill while the back is still coming uphill. Which means the back changes from moving up, to moving down faster.
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Why is old technology often painted pastel green on the outside?
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If you are talking about household appliances from the 40s through 60s--that was the style. Like stainless steel is was the style from 2000 - 2010 or something. Don't ask me what the style is now. All my shit is old.
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Why can console games contain and directly portay extremely violent stuff that nobody would do irl, but be very subtle on sexual content which are perfectly legal
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Because for whatever reason, western society has become more accepting of depictions of violence than it has of depictions of sex. You see the same thing in films, TV, book, and other entertainment media.Touma_Kazusa : Well you just said it. We for the most part will never kill an human in real life but we will do it in video games. But we have sex in real life so we don't need sex scenes in video games. Video games lets you experience something you've never done and it's the beauty of it. Wanna know what it would be like to jump in a portal? There are games for that. Wanna be a nascar racer? Well you can do it, same for F1, motocross, ATV, boat, etc But sex, it's part of our life but I guess there could be interesting scenes in some games. Not too sure which. I think the witcher was more sexual right? Haven't played it.American church groups are afraid of people seeing sex but are generally OK with violence and they are the ones that make noise when sex or nudity is on TV or movies.
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why are emotions attributed to the heart instead of the brain?
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Your chest can actually start to feel painful during a really emotionally traumatizing moment. I believe this is actually caused by your breathing muscles which is also why your breathing becomes sporadic Hence why they call it heartbreak. Because it feels like its your heart. This could be where some ideas of emotions being attributed to the heart while all of it is actually mental.
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How do chemical attacks work? ie. The one that recently happened in Syria?
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Conventional weapons typically involve explosives as their payload. They explode, the pressure wave and shrapnel cause damage, but then it's done. Chemical weapons replace the explosive payload with one that spreads a specific chemical gas into the air. Once the chemical comes in contact with a person, it reacts in some way that causes pain and/or death. The specifics varies depending on what chemical is used. The news doesn't specify which chemical was used in today's attack in Syria, but it causes airways to close and leads to suffocation.Some type of chemical agent is loaded into a shell, and fired as an artillery projectile. [This] is a picture of a firing mechanism circa WW1, and [this] is a picture of the effects. Different gasses do different things. Some are automatically fatal, some can be fatal, some are strictly irritants.Apparently it wasn't a Chemical attack, it was an bombing run on an Islamic state stronghold that happened to contain chemical weapons.
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Why is it both my reading speed and absorption rate are a lot higher when reading stories as opposed other forms of writing?
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Think of all the knowledge in the world as a building and rooms contain things that you know or don't know. Every time you learn something new, your brain has to find the hallway or staircase that connects that room to all the other related rooms. The ease with which you can do this depends on the proximity of the new room to all the old rooms. Textbooks are written at a much higher lexical level than most stories. Textbooks represent a very concise arrangement of rooms within a field, but they don't necessarily share any proximity with the other open rooms in your brain. That's a lot of work to make those connections. Stories on the other hand are not information-dense. A few key details will get you a long way. The story is basically walking you from room to room.
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Why do some planes leave trails in the sky but not others?
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It's not the plane, it's the air the plane is travelling through. The more humid the air, the more trails you get. Dry air means fewer contrails. If you see two planes, one leaving a trail and the other not, they are probably travelling at different altitudes with different humidities.
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How is it that our bodies don't leak the smells of our innards?
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Your esophagus is closed by a the esophageal sphincter.Your other end is sealed by the anus muscle, sphincter. Of course you can smell it if your body lets it vent. It's called a burp and fart. Apparently, the seal is tight enough to hold in gas. EDIT: correction", 'Our intestinal tract is separated by muscle, fat, skin from the outside world. The openings at our anus and esophagus have muscles which close them Looks like the whole sphincter thing is answered. A smell is a molecule in the air. Hollow organs where there is air consist of multiple layers of cells, tissues, and organic molecules that only allow for the passage of *dissolved* molecules, forming a barrier. Skin does has a role in smell. It consists of multiple glands located in the dermal layer that carry a secretion to the surface via ducts. these secretions then evaporate from the surface, and we smell them.
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Why does my mouth taste gross when I'm sick?
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One aspect is the body's own immune responses. We have learned that some physiological changes experienced during illness are themselves autoimmune responses rather than directly being caused by the illness. That said, the illness can do such things as: Emit toxins , and cause damage to organ walls which must be repaired and in so doing cause abnormal operation of the human machine, in part causing gunk. A specific mouth feel can also occur as part of the body's immune response so as to discourage eating.
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In British politics, what are the politicians with 'Shadow' in their title e.g Shadow chancellor, shadow foreign secretary. What is their purpose?
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They are the official opposition, so the government will have a health minister, the opposition will have someone who "shadows" that minister and in debates etc. asks questions and generally holds that minister to account for decisions that they makeIn a roughly two party system, one party gets the most MPs and forms the Government, with a number of them appointed as Ministers to head the various departments. The minority party is in opposition, whose primary purpose is to hold the Goverment to account for it's actions. One way of doing that is to have a "shadow" for each minister who has a particular job to keep an eye on that department's actions. When a Minister introduces a proposed law bill to Parliament, the Shadow Minister will lead the "against" side of the debateI am 5 and I have been explained, thanks guys', "Britain has traditionally a two party system. Either Tories or Labour form the government. The other party builds the opposition. The oppositon party also has a kind of ''government''. Like in the real government they have ministers for all the different offices, called shadow cabinet. If after elections, the party who governs changes, often the memebers of the shadow cabinet will become part of the new government. _URL_0_
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what does a physics engine do? Are directx, frostbite, and source all physics engines, and what is the difference between them? And how would make a physics engine?
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DirectX is a graphics interface, not a physics engine. Frostbite and Source are game engines that include physics engines. Basically, the physics engine is the part of a virtual environment that simulates the physical interactions between objects in that environment. A basic example of this would be gravity. One simple rule-of-thumb in gravity is that objects in freefall will accelerate constantly. So, your gravity simulation might look like this: if object.isInFreeFall : object.Velocity = object.Velocity + 9.81 * dt; object.Location = object.Location + object.Velocity * dt; t = t + dt; Here, the `object.isInFreeFall` function tells you whether an object is in free fall. If it is, you increase its velocity by 9.81 multiplied by the amount of time represented by a single ingame tick . Then, you change its location by a factor of its velocity multiplied by the ingame tick duration. Lastly, you update the time by incrementing it by `dt`.
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How come electrical plugs aren't hot when then come out the outlet?
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Keeping it fairly ELI5: The heat generated by electricity is due to resistance. Copper has very low resistance. The law of conservation of energy essentially means that energy cannot be created nor destroyed. Only transferred/converted. By resisting the electrical flow, that energy must go somewhere. It is expressed as heat. Low resistance means more energy flows as electrical energy, leaving less to be expressed as heat energy.If the connectors are in good condition, they won't heat up. Even though there may be a lot of current, the resistance is low, so there's no power dissipated as heat. If a plug *is* hot when it comes out, the plug might be damaged and might be a fire hazard.
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Why do we crave certain foods?
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Not a expert but I think it's just because your body knows what food has what a lot of fat/protein/carbs/calories etc. so you have a big craving for them. For example, let's say you have a pretty bad flu bug, you are sore, tired, coughing etc. Your body wants to recoup what it lost. So you want to eat a lot of fatty foods to keep it at normal levels. Your body likes stay at a "normal" weight, %bodyfat, calorie intake/perday etc. So it is just trying to get back to equilibrium.Our bodies are very good at telling us what we need, but they don't always do it as you'd expect. Long story short, it's because we do need that grilled cheese. At the same time, that need might also be educated, meaning it asks for something even though it doesn't really need it, similar to how my body is telling me now that three eclairs would go down very smoothly!
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[US] What could happen if the executive branch just ignored the judicial branch?
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> What would happen if Obama did the same thing today? Congress would impeach him. In record time. That's how the checks and balances works, if the president gets too out of line, congress can boot him.
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Is dangerously high volume of music as dangerous for people that has impaired hearing?
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The perception of sound isn't what is dangerous, it is the impact of the associated pressure wave on the delicate apparatus of the ear. If the ear is structurally intact, then that impact can damage it whether you are able to perceive sound or not. In other words, whether you can hear or not, you can still blow out your eardrum.
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Why is Mars' core not molten anymore?
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Because it is small. It did have a molten core, even a magnetosphere but because it's small it lost heat faster. Small things have a larger surface area in relation to their mass than big things, hence when they cool down quicker.
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Why Does Water Soak Upwards, Appearing to Ignore Gravity?
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So you understand that gravity is pulling it down. The 'problem' is that it isn't obvious what exactly is pulling the water up! Your answer is the capillary effect. In a very broad sense, water molecules have a negative end and a positive end. Opposite attract, so all those water molecules want to line themselves up so their positive end is next to another water molecule's negative end. This desire to rearrange molecules to have the neg-pos-neg-pos pattern is actually a little stronger than gravity sometimes! The molecules desire to have that arrangement pulls them up against even gravity.
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Why is there a dispute over labeling products from the West Bank and Golan Heights areas? They can't be labeled "Made in Israel" anymore.
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Under international law, Israeli settlements are considered illegal and not part of Israel. Israel's government has repeatedly been urged to destroy all settlements and return political and judiciary control of disputed areas back to its rightful owners. The EU voted to ban imports of products from outside Israel's internationally recognised borders, if they are labelled as "Product of Israel". Imports are not banned outright, but they cannot be called "Israeli" products if they're from the settlements. This, and other policies, have been labelled as anti-Semite by the ultra-orthodox establishment in Israel which has a large influence on Israel's foreign policy. Resulting in the PM basically not giving a fuck about the illegality of the settlementsFound an article that starts to answer it. Additionally: how concerned are the public in the EU about this. _URL_0_
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How do geologists determine how much water falls from a water fall?
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The same way you measure volume of water that flows down a river. You go to where you can easily determine the cross sectional shape of the river. Then you measure how fast the water is moving. Do some math involving multiplication and perhaps integration over time and there you goThat's actually hydrology not geology, which is the study of rocks and minerals. But I can answer it for you, because I'm a hydrologist. Basically, a waterfall is just a river meeting a sudden cliff. So we can measure the flow either just before, or just after the waterfall. The way that we measure the flow depends on how much there is. There are two main methods - one is called the velocity-area method, and the other one is called the dilution method. In velocity-area, you run a measuring tape across the width of the river at a point where the flow is pretty smooth, and at regular intervals you record the depth of the flow and the speed of flow. Multiplying average depth and average speed by the width of the section gives you the volume per second flowing past your section. In the dilution method, you place a sensor in the river that can measure concentration of a known substance Then you dump a known volume of that substance into the river, and you can calculate based on the "wave" of dye what the flow rate was . Most of the big rivers we deal with have some sort of permanent installation constantly recording the water level. We do occasional measurements of the flow rate, and then we build a relationship between water level and flow rate. That way, we can just go out and look at what the water level is, and calculate the flow rate.
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Where does the average human height (say 170cm) fit on the cosmic scale from the smallest known piece of matter to the largest known distance?
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Planck length is roughly 10^-35, distances smaller than this are not described usefully by modern physics. The diameter of the observable universe is roughly 10^26. However this value is constantly changing so it's less fundamental than the planck length. Still, your height is about 26 orders of magnitude smaller than the largest distance, and 35 orders of magnitude larger than the smallest distance.The halfway point is about a grain of sand. So closer to the larger one, but not by a whole lot.
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How do my reflexes close my eyes before I can process what happened?
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You're made aware of it *after* you've processed it. The bit of you that you're aware of, the bit you think is *you*, your conscious mind.. is actually the last link in the chain. You're brain registers what's happening, takes action *then* tells you what's just happened. This is a great clip from a BBC documentary about free will that explains it quite well ; _URL_0_ The presenter sits in an MRI scanner with a button in either hand. He's told to decide left or right and *immediately* press the corresponding button. To him it is instant, he's thought of a side and pressed it.. no delay. However analysing his brain activity shows you can predict which side he'd pick up to **6 seconds** before he's even aware that's what he'll choose.
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Why does a GPS unit require signal from at least 4 satellites in order to determine its position?
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So the way GPS works is that each satellite broadcasts its ID, and the timestamp of its internal clock. Your GPS receiver knows where each satellite is supposed to be, and it can look at the delay in time between the timestamps it sees from multiple satellites to determine its own position . Let's imagine a 2D example. Say that you're on the ocean in a ship at night, and a heavy fog has rolled in. There are several bell-towers that you know the location of, and you also know that they're perfectly synchronized, but each one tolls a different pitch. So you wait for them to strike the hour. Now, if there are only two bell towers, then when you hear them, you can use the delay between the two bells to know how far away you are from each of them. Let's say that you figure out that you're 5 miles from bell tower A, and 10 miles from B. If you were to draw that on a map, you'd put a circle with a 10-mile radius around tower A, and a circle with a 5-mile radius around B. Those circles will intersect at *two points*, so now you know that you're in one of those two locations. You'd need *three* bell towers to find your actual position. But with GPS, you're also concerned about altitude. So now imagine it in 3D space: Knowing your distance from one satellite gives you a sphere of a certain radius, and you could be anywhere on the surface of that sphere. Two satellites gives you two intersecting spheres, which forms a circle . Three satellites gives you three intersecting spheres, which gives you two points . And four satellites narrows that down to a single point in 3D space. So you need signals from at least four satellites to get a 3D location .
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I've seen crabs living under water and also living out of water in the sand on the beach .How can they breath in both environments?
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"Crabs" is a huge category with many species. Aquatic crabs live permanently in water and have gills like fish. They can go out of water but only for short periods, but then again so can some fish. There are also terrestrial crabs that have lungs and live on land. These guys can swim around and actually hold a bubble of air in front of their face, but again they can only go under for a short time. Intertidal crabs have gills, and then also have cuticles on their legs that help them breathe on land. They have to stay moist though and can't live away from water, but they can breathe in air or water fairly well.Most fish would actually be able to breathe air if it weren't for the fact that their gills collapse when not supported by water. The gills of some crab species are much more stiff and thus can retain their surface area outside water, allowing them to breathe air.
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Why do flies and other insects repetitively go into dangerous situations, such as the exact same spot after being swatted at, are they incapable of learning?
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In short, yes, their brains are just far too simple to be capable of learning like this. A fly has very simple sense - > action pathways. While it's possible for certain pathways to be reinforced, this isn't going to happen just from a couple of swats. It's not even clear that the fly's internal map would cover a large enough area to record where they were swatted in relation to where they are now. As compensation, they have a relatively short generational period, so evolution can "do the learning" for the species as a whole. For example reinforcing that they should fly towards concentrations of diaminobutane and away from diethyltoluamide.While insects are capable of learning, they don't understand why something is swatting at them. They avoid being swatted, but they see no reason why this sort of thing would continue and don't avoid the situation.
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Why do we wake up after falling down in a dream?
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Dreams where you fall and die or similar deaths will trigger a response from your Brain sending signals to your body as a panic response. Think of those as "HEY WAKE UP WE CAN\'T BE DEAD". Same thing happens when you're falling asleep and sometimes you get that reaction. Your body falls asleep faster than the brain and the brain panics and sends a wake up signal to verify that you're indeed still alive. TL;DR: Your brain panics thinking you died and sends wake up signals everywhereWhen your in a dream inside of a dream the only way you can wake up is with a kick which is when you fall back words. It would be best to ask Leonardo dicapprio', "There's a part of your brain whose only function is to prevent you from losing your balance. It is automatic. It is also easily fooled by imaginary stimulus.These jerks you're talking about usually occur before you enter the deeper stages of sleep and are completely normal. Doctors and scientists aren't really sure why they happen, but they have a few theories. One theory is that your brain misunderstands the sensation of your muscles relaxing as you drift off to sleep. It's normal for the muscles to relax, but the brain gets confused, and, for a minute, thinks you're falling. In response, the brain causes your muscles to tense up so you "catch yourself" before you fall down. FUN FACT!: Back in the days people thought it was something that happened to people that almost slept into their own death but then luckily your body reacts and wakes you up.
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Why do the Japanese like the USA even though 71 years ago they got nuked twice by the USA?
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Because we then helped rebuild their country and became a significant trading partner for the next half century In general though, the speed with which the beligerants of WWII became allies is pretty historically impressive. The unification against the USSR certainly helped.
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Why is it easier to look at the Sun with one eye than it is with two?
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the total amount of light your brain says is safe to take in is averaged across both eyes. closing one reduces the perceived light intake to ~1/2 and said brain says, "it's cool fam you can look and not damage your retina." but your poor retina still gets the same amount of light and damage anyway. if you do look at the sun your retina will be like, "dude, you just burned me and now I won't work as good. you're a dumb ass."
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Why is it harder to open a refrigerator door the second time after closing the door to the refrigerator before hand?
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The warm air that just flowed in when the door was open cools off quickly. That makes it shrink, creating a slight vacuum. Since the fridge is not totally air-tight, additional air is sucked in and the vacuum goes away after a few seconds.
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If you are flying in an airplane and it is storming, can you get struck by lightning if you are flying above the clouds?
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Lighting hits planes all the time as most of the time it just passes thru the planebut some times it can make the plane explode.[the plane explode ]
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Can we please try to keep questions in this subreddit limited to those that actually require simplified answers?
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That's not an appropriate question for askReddit, which is ostensibly for more thought-provoking questions. It would be better for something like r/answers.
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Why does English no longer have a strong culture of poetry?
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Perhaps the definition of "poetry" is too narrow? I find the song lyrics of many bands and artists, and some of the dialogue of the greatest movies and TV shows, to have all of the same literary qualities as great poetry. Just because the "poem" as a standalone expression of art is not as popular, does not mean that poetry itself is not alive and well.
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What happens to our bodies after we're buried?
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It depends on the climate where the body is buried. In extremely dry places there have been almost perfectly preserved bodies found after thousands of years. In wetter climates, in a strong wooden coffin, it's more like 10-50 years depending on the type of coffin.
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when doing deep breathing exercises, why do we breath in through the nose and out through the mouth?
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A guy asked my football couch back in high school why he always yelled "in through the nose out the mouth" when we ran during the start of practice. He told us one day to reverse it, half the team passed out before the first mile was done.For me when running in the winter it helps warm the air before it hits the lungs. I doubt that's why you were told but it may be another reason.
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What's happening when my muscle visually twitches?
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If you mean like a spasm then it's an electrical signal sent to your muscle. Which leads to why was it sent. That is the real mystery.
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Why is it harder to swallow nothing in quick succession compared to swallowing liquid/food?
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The muscles in your throat have to contract more when there is no food to push against, meaning each swallow involves more muscle work/movement and takes longer to complete.swallowing works by creating a space in a tube of muscles in which is the food you're swallowing. the muscles then move this created space down the tube. Now if you try to swallow nothing, you would be asking the muscles in your throat to create a local vacuum. which they obviously don't have the strength to do. before you ask, they will never fill the space with air to avoid the vacuum problem because air in your digestion system is problematic so your brain has learnt not do let air in.
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Why is it called an emergency brake if most people only use it for parking?
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In the UK it's called a handbrake. Although in some cars it isn't hand operated. With an auto transmission most have a transmission lock when in park so the car is unlikely to move. The foot operate brake pedal is usually hydraulic. The parking or "emergency" brake is cable operated. If the hydraulic brake servo fails, i.e because the engine has stalled, you can use the hand operated brake to stop the vehicle.I don't think any owner's manuals actually call it an emergency brake, it's just a colloquial term. They only time you would use it not for parking is if your brake fluid got so low that your brakes barely worked.
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How do certain items like game consoles and apple products, have a fixed price which does not differ between retailers.
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The authorization to sell a product is done via contract. Part of that contract can be that you cannot discount below MSRP, or can dictate the ways in which you can, how much you can etc. So..if you want to sell Apple products, you have to live by their distribution agreements and policies. This isn't a limit on competition for the price of the product . If apple were to collude with samsung to fix prices, that would be a limit on competition.No, there is very little markup on Apple products. I worked in a RadioShack for 2 years, ipods for example cost us 159.99 and we sold them at 169.99.
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Why isn't it possible to reuse candles with the used wax?
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You could take any leftover wax and reform it around a new wick if you wanted to. But most of the wax is gone because that is what actually burns. The wick is just a tool for keeping the fire close to the wax and for bringing the wax up to the flame like a straw.There shouldn't be any wax left, what kind of candles are you using? Candles burn the wax away over time.
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Guy Debord's concept of the 'spectacle'
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It's like when someone is getting their picture taken just for facebook. The person does not act naturally but rather how he wants to appear to be. This translates into other aspects of life as well. The relationships to things have become represented by images in our heads -they were put their by advertising and film etc. It's like when you go camping and you feel like your in a beer commercial, or when you try to be a character you like at a party. The real is destroyed and is replaced by a representational image. You should also look into Jean Baudrillard. His famous line "The Image has murdered reality" goes well with Debord. He likens our world to a story where a map is made that is so life size that it replaces the real thing underneath. Only it is not as real -it is rather more like a commercial or Disneyland. While we live on this representational map, the real world underneath begins to die. Or rather our connection to reality is cheapened and cliched and stereotyped. Edit:Horrible grammar
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What causes "pins and needles" in feet and why?
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It's pain from return of circulation to the nerves. If you sit or lie in certain positions you can occlude the blood supply to a limb, or just to its nerves. Once circulation is returned they send out signals of distress to indicate a potential problem. When the blood has had time to oxygenate the tissues and remove toxins they go away. Flexing the area improves circulation and solves this quickly.There are a few different things that can cause pins and needles, but they all relate to the nervous system. Lets say you are sitting in a position where you are sitting on your leg, or lying on your arm. The blood flow to your hands or feet decreases because there is less blood, and your cells need blood to deliver nutrients, and oxygen. This creates numbness, but removing the pressure and returning blood flow will slowly return the nerves to normal, but until they are fully supplied again, you will feel the tingling . Also, you can have a condition called peripheral neuropathy, where there is damage or inflammation to a nerve. All of parts of your body that nerve is responsible for will be affected. Numbness or pins and needles is a common complaint. This is irreversible if there is enough permanent damage to the nerve.
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Why is it so difficult to have automatic translations?
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> I know it has something to do with context and the different meanings of words This is pretty much it. When you use the word "crown", how do I know if you mean a "fake tooth
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How does YouTube's auto-generated subtitles work?
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Google took hundreds of hours of accurately subtitled video and fed it to a machine learning program that linked sound snippets to written words statistically. Then they had it run through YouTube matching sounds in videos to words, creating subtitles. They then flagged incorrect subtitles and fed that information back into the program. They continue to do this, refining and improving the program over time. I didn't actually look any of this up. But I'm familiar with the technology, and it's kind of what Google does.
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How do corporations let themselves get to the point where they need to close 10s-100s of stores and lay off 1000s? Shouldn't they scale back slowly/over time?
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For large corporations 100 stores is a little at a time. Closing stores actually costs money, it is more efficient to cut off 100 property costs at onceIn many cases, the corporations used debt to fuel the growth and the growth was not sustainable as the corporation scaled its operation. Once you have millions in debt, you sometimes need to raise a lot of money to stay out of default.
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Why do certain vibrant colours make your eyes hurt when looking at them?
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Ever since the blue LED x-mas lights came out I have called them "hurtyoureyes" blue. I wouldn't even mind a ELI25 as to why they are so vibrantI am slightly colour "blind" in the red-green and even i find red lights very intense. How do people with normal colour vision stand seeing such bright colours? I pity them. *tea pot test _URL_0_
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Why are there different grammar/spelling rules for "It's" and "what's"?
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"*It's*" actually means "*it is*" even though lots of people use "*it's*" to indicate possession. For example, the sentence "*the dog grabbed it's ball*" is grammatically incorrect because what you are actually saying is "*the dog grabbed it is ball*" which obviously does not make grammatical sense. Instead the sentence should be "*the dog grabbed its ball*" - which is the correct way to indicate possessiveness in this case. In the case of "*what's*", it can only mean one thing . It can't be confused with a possessive *s* because *what* is not a pronoun. Therefore, if you type something like "*whats*" instead of "*what's*", that's considered more like a spelling error / typo than a grammatical mistake. It's not that you're completely changing the grammatical meaning of the sentence, you're just not typing the word in correctly. Some programs may also expect you to write "*what is*" as two words instead of "*what's*" because the latter may be considered too casual/informalWell, "whats" isn't exactly a common word , so you're probably being corrected from "whats" to "what's", which means "what is". "It's" vs. "its" is a matter of grammar since both are words, but the choice to use one or the other depends on how they're being used in a sentence.
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Negative gearing and the Australian real estate market
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Rich investors bought property via bank loans and rented them out. If rent income is more than the interest expense on the bank loan, they generate a net income and so pay tax on it. However, when rent is less than the bank loan cost, the investor makes a loss. When then computing their tax for the year, they can net off that loss against other income , reducing the tax they pay. People get annoyed at this because of social reasons - rich investors can buy all the houses and this hurts first time home owners and in part, fuels the housing bubble/irrational pricing of houses. Its further annoying that the investors are able to decrease the tax bill on other income they earn, from these property based losses. Finally, it is kind of annoying because it is these particular interest based loans which leads to these kinds of earnings/tax manipulations. tl;dr rich get richer. this time very much at the expense of the 99%There was a recent episode of Four Corners that discusses negative gearing. It can be viewed on ABC iview here: _URL_0_
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How did the first being(creature/species) came into existence?
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There is a lot of debate on the subject. And it very strongly depends on what you define as a creature. Evolution from microbes and proteins in the ocean is the answer to where larger creatures come from. Where the proteins came from is up for debateWe don't know. We have a theory, or perhaps set of hypothesies, called abiogenesis which involve the natural origination of life. An important experiment in this is known as Miller-Urey, which attempted to simulate early Earth conditions. It found that from basic inorganic origins, complex amino acids, a sort of building block for life, would arise under conditions suspected to exist at the time experimentally. That being said, these compounds themselves aren't "alive" so it isn't a conclusive proof, and there is disagreement that the experiment properly represents the conditions of early earth. However, we 've observed amino acids even on non-earth environments, arising naturally, and so most hypotheses center around the idea that environmental conditions can result in a complex chemical structure capable of self-replication. Basically, a continuous chemical process of sorts, which is self-sustaining. This may result in further complexity, as avenues which continue to self-replicate 'survive\' and failures die out, which the increasingly complex chemical processes essentially becoming the \'idea\' we call life, itself a sort of loosely defined set of criteria.
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Why do tuna & salmon have such a distinct taste?
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I think you're a bit wrong about white fishes : some white fishes have very distinctive taste and/or texture, like ray or flounder, for instance. I think the reason we find some white fishes indistinguishable is because of the way we eat them : boiled with a lot of sauce , or as breaded fish. Eating them raw, for instance, would probably foster our taste in a more refined way. Salmon is a special fish, which lives both in sea and river, has pink greasy flesh. You say it's easy to recognize, but would you be able to differentiate salmon and trout, or salmon trout ? They may taste the same to you, because they're of the same family. Same with tuna. The reason you distinguish tuna from salmon from "white fishes", is probably because they're of different fish families. , but not so many pink /red fishes are as available as white fishes. Should you be offered the same variety in pink and red fishes, they would probably taste the same to you as well.
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Why does Amazon allow users to write reviews for products they have never purchased?
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If I'm not mistaken you can see if the reviewer has purchased the item or not so you can take the review itself with a grain of salt. They allow people to do this because they realize people can purchase items outside and Amazon, they want to give these people a voice as well, whether it is to warn someone or praise a product.This is a big reason why they instituted the "verified purchase" part of reviews, to confirm that they actually bought it. People may have bought it outside of Amazon and still want to leave reviews, which is why it's allowed at allSome of the fake reviews that go viral probably act as decent marketing', "You don't have to purchase an item to evaluate it. You could use a friend's or otherwise borrow it. Or you could buy the product from one store and place a review on Amazon simply because the Amazon review will get more eyes on it.
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How do surgeons prevent major blood loss during coronary artery bypasses?
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It is clamped. The heart is then stopped with a potassium solution . The sewing of another vessel is performed, then the heart is eventually started once againBlood flow is diverted to a heart-lung machine during surgery, which allows the heart to be stopped and operated on.
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What happens in the brain when you're desensitized?
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Basically, anything in your brain happens because some stimulus is fed to neurons and if the stimulus is above a certain threshold, the neurons fire and cause your response. If you - for example - take cocaine, your brain releases lots of dopamin which makes you feel good. However, you body "knows" that this isn't normal and tries to normalize the "feel good equilibrium" again. One way to do that, is to react less to dopamine. Which means, to get the same high you need to take more cocaine next time.
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Why were Milkmen once a thing in America, and why did they stop being a thing?
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Milkmen have been a thing since long before refrigeration existed. You can even see it in things like "Fiddler on the Roof" which is set in the early 1900s and it was a well established job for a long time before that point. The local dairy would deliver milk every day to people who could not raise their own cows and they would also sell things like butter to them. After refrigeration was developed the job still remained a fixture for a few decades because stores were not built to have large refrigerated and freezer sections. But after enough time passed new Stores were designed to have a lot of refrigerated stuff and people started to buy their milk from stores and the home delivery model became too expensive for the dairy to use as it used too many workers* more families had cars, had two cars, and had homemakers who could drive* refrigeration meant that milk could last for a week or two, rather than just a few days* cars and refrigeration lead to supermarkets and a culture of buying a lot of food all at once rather than a little food every day or two buying and selling in bulk made getting milk there a cheaper alternative There are still plenty of dairies that deliver, but it is considered more of a premium product that you have to pay a good deal extra forThe Milkman was a thing prior to the widespread availability of residential refrigeration. Prior to having refrigerators, homes were lucky if they had an icebox. Warm milk spoils quickly, hence the regular deliveries from the milk man.
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Why do our bones crack?
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Do you mean like when people 'crack' their knuckles? If so, they're not actually cracking. It's the space in the joint expanding and synovial fluid rushing into that space. That creates the feeling and 'popping' noise.
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How do cats always land on their feet
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They do it by simultaneously manipulating the moment of inertia of their front and back haves. SmarterEveryDay has an excellent video with slow-motion explaining this [Cat Physics]Black magicks and a very good sense of balance. They instinctively known how to twist their body so that their feet will be facing down during a fall, and have fast enough reflexes to do this even during a fairly short fallCats have very fine muscle control and they will rotate themselves in mid air to land on their feet.
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What will AMD's GPUOpen allow developers to do?
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Right now, drivers and applications for video cards is like the Dorothy and the Wizard in the Wizard of Oz. When you compile or use an application, you are speaking to a giant head that only tells you things it thinks you want to know or access. The difference from the metaphor is that you KNOW there is a man behind the curtain, but you can't pull back the curtain to see HOW he is doing things or tell him to DO things he doesn't want you to do. GPUOpen is giving developers the ability to DIRECTLY access a lot more on the card than before. Dorthy beelines to the curtain, whips it back, and starts pointing to specifics dials and knobs for the wizard to pull or turn. There will have to be some functions that has to be hidden to stop people from just nuking their GPU remotely but if AMD comes through on this, we could see a lot of improvements in GPU heavy applications like video encoding, folding@home, bitcoin , and of course games.
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Why do we feel nauseous when we watch someone else vomiting?
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In the social environment in which humans developed if one member ate something poisonous then likely the others did as well. It would then be helpful to also vomit to avoid being sickened too.I remember seeing on a show once that It's like a natural survivor built in skill, body reacts in turn to seeing someone sick and vomiting thinks poisoning or something wrong introduced into system and then your one brain reaction is to do the same so you don't get sickness as well.
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The concept of women "syncing up" their periods.
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They don't, it's a myth. Considering cycles range from 25-30 days and can last from 3-9 days in duration, they don't actually sync up, they just gradually overlap for a time and then they go back to being at different times. Think of it like being in the left hand turn lane. You watch all the blinkers and for a few seconds they seem to be in sync, but before long they go back to blinking at different times due to duration.
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