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How would I get a visa to permanently move to the USA. Currently living in the UK.
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Do not ask here. Call the US embassy. Look online. How would you earn a living? Remember, here there is no universal health care, no provision for your retirement unless you work at least ten years, then it is skimpy. Our taxes are high and benefits skimpy because we fund an expensive military.
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Why/How is abortion still is a huge issue in America at this time?
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Why would it not be? Anything that people have a fundamental disagreement on is going to be an issueAmerica is an extremely religious country with some powerfully fundamental Christian veins running through certain levels of power. As such, there is a fierce debate over the morality of abortionBecause some people, including myself, believe that it is a big deal that someone can legally kill a defenseless human being.I hate so much how each side of an issue believes they are correct and the other side should not have a standpoint. I don't believe abortion is fundamentally wrong, but I sure understand why other people would.
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Why do call-ins and phone interviews on radio and TV shows sound so much lower in quality than actual phone calls?
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In audio engineering, there is a saying that goes 'anything louder sounds better' - it's something a producer has to take into account when mixing a track. In this case, it is likely that when you talk to someone on the phone, your ears are right beside the source, which is why it sounds better than if you were to hear it from a further source such as your TV or car speakers. Bonus: Phone communication audio quality is really bad. It generally runs on 14.4kpbs using old compression technology. For comparison, Youtube videos generally run on 128-256kbps & using .AAC codec
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If the landscape was dominated by giant 20 foot tall mushrooms 350 million years ago, and mushrooms spread like wildfire if their caps are kicked off, where did they go?
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You appear to be talking about Prototaxites, giant fossilized columns discovered in late Silurian to late Devonian strata. First, not all fungi are mushrooms. These probably looked more like asparagus spears than capped mushrooms. Second, there is some debate whether Prototaxites are fungi at all. But putting both of those issues aside, the simple answer to your question is that the species went extinct. The environment changes over time. In 350 million years the environment has changed so dramatically that species that were alive back then couldn't survive today. Change drives evolution and extinction is a part of that. This species went extinct as the conditions that allowed it to thrive changed allowing different species more well adapted to the new conditions to take over.
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How do shows and movies get converted to higher resolution copies?
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Older movies are shot on film, which holds much more information than 1080p resolution is capable of displaying. 10 years ago, 1080p technology was new and expensive. There was barely a market for it and certainly no market for 4K. All older films were being scanned at 1080p for eventual blu-ray releases. These 1080p "masters" were used for re-releases on DVD and for the blu-rays themselves. Now that 1080p is the norm and there is a growing interest in 4K. All of the 1080p masters are essentially obsolete and the film is now being scanned at a 4K resolution to create new masters. Sony recently began a line of "mastered in 4K" blu-rays. Obviously existing blu-ray technology cannot display anything greater than 1080p. I have yet to view a "mastered in 4K" blu-ray so I can't really comment. There were two standard formats for film. 35mm and 70mm. Both could be matted to produce different aspect ratios. 35mm would peak at about 8K resolution, likewise 70mm would benefit from scans up to and possibly exceeding 16K. For reference, 1080p would be approximately 2K. Beyond that, the film grain would appear sharper with increased scanning resolution, but no new detail would emerge. One big problem was for the brief period when 1080p was considered the "be all and end all," in other words people thought that there would never be a need or desire for home video at a higher resolution than 1080p. A large number of films were shot digitally at 1080p and will remain 1080p forever . Unlike film, you cannot go back and "rescan" a digitally-shot movie. Most movies are still shot on film, as it is both cheaper and more futureproof than shooting digitally. Now, most digitally-shot movies are shot at 4K, but what happens when 4K becomes the standard and development begins on bringing 8K video to the masses. The digitally-shot 4K films will forever be stuck at that resolution as well.
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Why is it that in the ocean so many different species can live in such close proximity to each other but on land it seems like they live separately.
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Volume of room. On land you have one flat plain while in the ocean layers. It boils down to volume vs. Surface area.First, the ocean has way more nutrients per volume than anywhere else on earth. Almost every river in the world dumps water full of dissolved minerals into the ocean. So there is a lot of algae, plankton, phytoplankton growing in the top 60 feet of the ocean. That feeds everything from microscopic organisms to krill. Those in turn feed fish, and many marine mammals. The ocean is like an upside world. Food comes from the surface and comes down to the ocean floor each layer of the ocean feeds from what comes from the layer above it. Even that has exceptions. The oceans have the world's largest migrations, where creatures hide in the darkness and depths, come up to the surface to feed, and return back to the depths to hide.
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Why did George Lucas make the last 3 movies instead of beggining with the 3 first movies?
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When he made the first film , he didn't know it was going to be part of a 6-film franchise. He was just making a film. Sequels followed naturally, and I guess at some point he decided to do the prequels.Because he lied about the history of his own movies. The original "Star Wars" was released as just "Star Wars". It wasn't until the release of "Star Wars Episode V The Empire Strikes Back" that the original movie was retroactively renamed to "Star Wars Episode IV A New Hope". Over time many people forgot that the original was retroactively renamed and just believed in Lucas\' bullshit about it always being planned as 6 movies with the first 3 being the last 3. At one stage he claimed that there 'd be no eps 7 to 9 either. What are we getting, next year is it?Star Wars was an affectionate homage to early 20th century adventure serials like "Flash Gordon" which were shown in movie theatres in episodes, with a brief recap of the story at the start. The opening of Star Wars was designed to make you feel like you were watching an episode from the middle of the serial, as a nostalgic nod to the way those old series were shown. IMHO, all the "I always intended it to be a serial of films" is just marketing.
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Why do rabies cause an increase in aggression in animals?
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The rabies virus has evolved the ability to modify the behavior of its hosts - making them more aggressive to increase the likelihood that the host will spread the virus to another animal via biting. Rabies is [not the only pathogen] to have evolved this behavior-altering ability. As for how exactly it increases aggression, I'm not sure. Likely by mimicking the action of certain neurotransmitters associated with aggression or promoting their release in the brain.The exact mechanism that specifically causes agression due to rabies viral infection is still not fully understood by medicine. Viruses are weird. One of the leading explainations is that the rabies virus invades neurons in the brain that are resposible for proper cogitive functions. When these neurons stop functioning the amygdala takes over. The amygdala is the ancient, primal part of the brain that we share with reptiles and every other vertebrate. When cognitive functions in our brains cease because of the rabies virus, the only part to take over is the amygdala. The amygdala is insulated, but it keeps us alive. It is only concerned with self preservation, not higher demands such as social constructs or even "love". Only lashing out to protect one's space.
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If the government actually shuts down what does that mean for me.
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Probably the same thing it did when the government shut down 5 years ago. If you have to ask: probably nothing.Not much day to day change for average Americans who don't work for the government. Most essential services will remain in operation, but if you want to go to a national park or renew your passport, you might have a problem. If you do work for the government, you might get furloughed, where you sit at home without a paycheck until the government starts up again. Similarly, if you work for a business that depends on a government contract, they might have to lay you off.
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bubbles! How can they hold their shape? What characteristics must a liquid have to be able to make bubbles?
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The liquid must have strong cohesive properties. Cohesion means "sticking together", so the liquid molecules must have strong bonds to other molecules of the same liquid.
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What transforms otherwise normal people into "criminals"?
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Well the most direct answer is that you become a criminal when you commit a crime. But the deeper answer is it depends. Some are doing it out of desperation, others out of greed, others out of rage sadism or some other misplaced emotion. There isn't really a simple answer to the question "what pushes someone to commit a crime" as everyone has their own reasons.Money, desperation, boredom, hate. Different reasons for everyone. When you realize that it's actually pretty difficult to get caught most of the time, a lot of criminals realize as long as they don't hurt anyone else, they don't have moral issues with it.
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why does hydrogen peroxide works so well as a disinfectant? How does a substance necessary for life turns into another that easily becomes toxic?
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Hydrogen peroxide is two oxygen atoms and two hydrogen atoms stuck together, but this is incredibly unstable. Oxygen *does not* like to be stuck to other oxygens, except for perhaps O2, but even that isn't particularly stable, hence why it will readily burn and become CO2 and H2O. Hydrogen peroxide would much rather be H2O, but that leaves the extra oxygen left out, and as much as oxygen doesn't like being attached to another oxygen, it *really* does not appreciate being alone. This has to do with the electron cloud around the oxygen atom. Atoms will attract electrons to fill the cloud to a full 8 in the outside shell. Oxygen has 6 electrons in the outer shell and would be more stable at 8, so it will immediately snatch them up from other atoms. This is called electronegativity. So the H2O2 immediately decomposes into H2O and free oxygen, and that free oxygen reacts to whatever atom happens to be close to it, even if that atom is, say, part of the DNA of a bacteria. That will tear the atom out of the DNA, potentially destroying the DNA and killing the bacteria. Or it could rip an atom out of any part of the bacteria.
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What is the sound that hurts my ears when there's only one window down in a car and where does it come from?
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It's basically the same thing that happens when you blow over the top of a bottle and it makes a sound. When you "push" on the air inside a container, it will compress and then push back out in a certain amount of time based on how much air is in the container. Basically, the air moving over the edge of the open window forms little vortices which "push" against the air in your car at a certain rate. At a certain speed, the frequency of these vortices matches the speed at which the air compresses and expands again inside your car - this is called a *resonant* frequency. Just like when you push someone on a swing at the right time and they go higher and higher, this causes the pressure in your car to begin to oscillate to a larger and larger magnitude until it gets to the point where it hurts your ears. Hope that was clear!
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Why did WWII bombers always fly in formation?
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Formation allows for each bomber's guns to support the others. If a fighter takes on a bomber one-on-one, it's probably likely that the bomber will go down, if the fighter knows what he's doing. If ten fighters approach ten bombers in formation, it's going to be a lot harder to destroy the bombers, because there's going to be so much defensive fire coming at the fighters at all times. Also, since saturation bombing was "in style" in WWII, having bombers in formation made it a lot simpler to manage bombing runs. Instead of "Bomber 1 aims for Target A, Bomber 2 aims for Target B, etc.," they can just order "When you to Waypoint A over the city, everyone start dropping bombs." The formation will help concentrate bombs on the target, and reduce the demands on the bomber crew to find specific targets. EDIT: Reduced bomb dispersal, not increasing it.Many reasons: 1) to concentrate the bombing zone of the target. Bombing can be inaccurate sometimes and hard when anti air is shooting at you. So unless it's dive bombing they need to concentrate as much bombing power in one spot as possible 2) friendly support: obviously when you're by others you can all defend eachother. And also this allowed for the bomber escorts to be able to watch and protect the bombers from above. 3) navigation: you're going to be traveling for a long time and you can easily get lost at night. I'm sure there are many more reasons as well
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why is some snow great for packing and fight with, while other snow just falls apart?
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The amount of moisture inbetween the snowflakes determines how well the snow packs. Wetter snow makes better snowballs -- drier snow does notThis is why the eskimos have like 100 different words for snow. Because snow is not always just snow, it has many different looks and feels.It needs to be dense and a tad moist to pack, so if it's not then it won't. If memory serves its the temperature at the elevation that it forms that initially determines, because if it freezes fast and low, then it freezes light and fluffy and won't pack. Not a scientist, shouldn't quote me on that last bit.
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How do people who aren't vacinated effect people who are?
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It creates a breeding ground for the disease thus making it able to evolve. If there are no susceptible hosts, the disease will go extinct.Firstly, it's because not everybody can get vaccinated due to reasons outside their control, such as an allergy to the stuff in the vaccine . Secondly, vaccines can lose their efficacy over time, and unless you get yourself tested, you can remain oblivious to this fact right up to the point where you get infected. Thirdly, young children who have yet to receive their vaccines are also potential targets.
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what is the purpose of having an RPM gauge on the dashboard?
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The tachometer is the sensor which measures the rate of revolution of the engine shaft. It is mostly useful for determining if you are in the correct gear given your speed and throttle. Combustion engines have peak power output in a rather narrow range of RPMs, which is why we have transmissions with multiple gears as they can allow the engine to generate power at its optimal speed and the wheels can be traveling at a different speed. The tachometer informs the driver when maximum power output is achieved during acceleration so that the gear can be changed; a dial display provides more information, in particular how quickly the current acceleration is reaching the optimal time for changing gears. Additionally, the tachometer can indicate when there is a problem with the vehicle. An experienced driver will expect RPMs to increase according to certain patterns. If it doesn't, then it is usually an indication that something about the driving situation has changed. If the engine's RPMs stay unusually low, the engine can stall and if they go unusually high, it can damage the engine or other powered parts of the vehicle. The tachometer can also be used to optimize fuel use, as cruising at low RPMs tends to reduce the amount of fuel used. People who are particularly keen to get the best fuel economy will use the tachometer to train themselves to accelerate as efficiently as possible. Many drivers will become accustomed to the sound of the vehicle, so the tachometer mostly only helps to train the driver to use auditory signals, although some luxury performance vehicles have sufficient sound-proofing that this is not feasible. Vehicles with automatic transmissions and sensors to detect malfunction have very little actual use for the tachometer and, if present, is usually decoration.
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The protective qualities of charcoal
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It is extremely porous and has a large capacity for adsorption, meaning substances can stick to its surface and be bound up. Its doesnt have as high a capacity as some other materials, but is cheap and can be made with varying pore sizes to suit the substance being targeted.
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Is there any particular reason beer bottles are brown? Or clear? Or green? Or is it purely aesthetic?
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Sunlight causes some beer to get "skunky". Amber and green bottles help protect the beer from light and allow it to be stored longer.
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- Why does Technetium not occur naturally?
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It does occur naturally. It's created in supernovas . But it's unstable, and even its most stable isotopes have a half-life of "only" 4.2 million years. Which means that, 4.2 million years after the creation of technetium in a supernova, only half will be left, and 4.2 million years later, only half of *that* will be left etc. So almost all of the technetium that originated in the supernova that created the matter that our solar system was formed from has long sense decayed into other elements.It does, but it's *unstable*. The only version of Technitium, T-99, that occurs naturally has a half-life* of only 221k years. Consider all of the heavy elements on earth came from a sun dieing several billion years ago, any technitium produced from that would have long since disappeared. * Half life is the time it takes half of a sample to decay.
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Why arent any saudi royals on the top billionaire lists? are they not filthy rich from oil?
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Those guys are also not particularly transparent. Since Saudi Arabia is an absolute monarchy, the country's budget and state investment funds are also the royal family's own wallet, whereas "conventional" billionaires own far more easily detectable corporate assetsThere are thousands of Saudi royals. Saudi Arabia is similar to Germany just after its formation where you have a lot of kingdoms and principalities. You even have outlying kingdoms that is not part of the empire. The "emperor" of Saudi Arabia does not have full control over all the kingdoms. There are different tax systems and different laws depending on where you are. Some have full Sharia and some are quite progressive. So the income from oil is distributed to all the royals in Saudi Arabia and there is no one super rich individual. In addition the top wealth lists are very open to speculation. When you are rich you might want to hide your real fortune or it might be locked up in less tangible assets that is hard to value. A Saudi prince might get a $2B loan from the bank based on his connections and future oil income but does that mean he have $2B even though that is all debt?', "Many of the billionaire lists specifically exclude heads of state from being eligible for inclusion on their list. If heads of state are included, it can become very hard to assign what is the head of state's personal property, is it the whole nation, some proportion of the nation, how do they treat the Queen of England .
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Why don't the media use another term for those extremists who hide behind the Quran?
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They are Muslim. When right wing militias do violence in the US they are labeled Christian fundamentalists. When Hindus attack mosques they are labeled Hindu militants. Problem is Islam seems to generate more terrorism than the other religions. Either way -- they are Muslim and killing for Allah.
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How come when a TV station plays reruns of a show they don't play them in order but instead play the same few that repeat every few weeks or so?
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Those episode have the highest ratings and attract most viewers, meaning the station can pull in more advertising revenue
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Why do artist still release singles? Especially now that with streaming services, you can buy/listen to individual songs.
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Publicity mainly. Big singles generate buzz for artists in the run up to an album release and can pump up salesPublicity, plus the music business hasn’t really caught up to the technology that’s available now, minus the embarassing attempt to make everyone with an apple device own a U2 album.Singles are solely used to promote the artist's actual projects like albums, EP's and stuff. They also can be used to keep an artist's work alive if they haven't been active for a while. Basically the entire purpose of singles is to hype the listeners up for an artist's future and upcoming work, or to promote him in other words. Edit: spelling mistake.They still need songs to play on the radio. Usually, radio stations can only play singles released by the artistTo add to the other answers, some artists nowadays just release everything as singles precisely for this reason.
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Why do I experience a drop in volume when I yawn?
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In most basic terms - yawning blocks the amount of sound vibrations that are required for the transmission of sound. [This] does a better job of breaking it all down.
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If health care plans were canceled because they did not meet new standards of the ACA law (Obamacare), how can the president say that plans can be kept without changing the law?
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By fiat accompli, Congress would "own" the problem if they challenge him on not enforcing the law and they 'd prefer not to do that.
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Why do some exclamations/outcries mention religious places and people?
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When Swearing first became a widely used thing, the world was, generally, much more religious than it is now. Swearing was and still is used to demonstrate an emotional state that is unusual or more extreme than the usual. Therefore, when these two things combine, you get phrases that use the terms associated with religion becoming exclamations for an extreme emotional state. Additionally, in Christianity at least, "taking the Lord's name in vain" is a sin, so saying "Jesus Christ" or "Oh my God" would be technically blaspheming, and therefore used to describe an extreme emotion. Source: I swear a lot
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Why is India's garbage/river pollution situation so bad?
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Actual indian here Our pollution is so bad, because the people in power don't care, and the people who do care can't ever get to power. The indian government is a carefully balanced pile of bribery and corruption built over a foundation of pure apathy and greed. While sure, there are some diligent workers at the grassroots lever, and some naive men and women higher up, noone with both the power and the means to actually do any good cares enough. Politicians here just aim to stuff as much of the tax rupees into their own private coffers before the are elected out of office. Further, the common man isn't much better. We just vote for the same greedy pigs over and over again because we cant be arsed to make an educated decision for the good of our own country. The garbage and pollution are just the tips of the massive trash iceberg just out of sight in the sewage clogged depths. Corruption, money laundering, and just plain ineptitude are so ingrained into the Indian life, that we 've begun just taking it as par for the course. If you want anything done from an official stand point at all, you better be prepared to bribe liberally. And if you think it could get better with a hard reset, think again. Leave alone following meta rules about accepting bribes and ruling fairly, indians won't even follow the basic rule of "don't overtake a vehicle from the passenger's side". Though I suppose I ought to be praising my country, pride in ones own and all that, fuck it. My country sucks, and if trashing it online is the best I can do, well Imma trash as best I can.
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Why are the letters on a QWERTY keyboard placed where they are?
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It is related to how typewriters used to work. As I understand it, when some keys are pressed too soon after eachother, the typewriter gets stuck, and QWERTY was developed in order to minimise the cases where this would happen[Google exists.] The keys were placed in that order to prevent jams on typewriters from commonly put together words "hitting" each other.
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How does Intel physically link together billions of transistor's to work on computer chips?
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As others have said, light and chemicals are used to "flash" the transistor pattern onto the silicon using light and chemicals, but do not think this is necessarily a foolproof process. This is why Intel has several different types of chips for each generation of iX. For example, when manufacturing an i7, something screws up and messes up one of the cores. Intel will take it, disable 2 cores, and call it an i3. If the connections are somewhat sketchy, for example they are manufacturing an i5, but the connections are too poor of quality to have a high clock speed for let's say a 6600K, they will down clock it, remove overclocking, and call it a 6500The process is similar to film photography. You take a pattern and shine light through it and use lenses to make the image very tiny. Then the light is projected on a surface that is sensitive to light which causes chemical reactions to happen in the shape of the pattern. Only the molecules that are hit with enough light will go through the wanted reaction. Then you do further chemical processing exchanging the photosensitive molecules that have undergone the reaction or not with different conductive, simi-conductive or non-conductive materials. Then you start again with the next layer building up the chip layer by layer.
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What led to the rise and fall of Ringtone Rap?
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Maybe let's start with: what is ring tone rap?", 'Probably because it's terrible, immature music and nobody wants to listen to it anymore. That type of music was really just a gimmick, it became somewhat popular for a while, but then it went out of "style". Which is usually the reason for why any music genre dies out Nobody will make it if nobody wants to listen to itBecause prominent ringtone rapper "Soulja boy" could not keep up with the changing rap scene.
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Why do people typically open their mouths when experiencing shock or disbelief?
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To take in more information. Mouth gapes open, body hairs stand on end , eyes widen all of which help us gather a ton of information really quickly when we see something incredible.
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What do fraternities and sororities actually do?
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They do many things. 1) Set up a structured way for people with similar interests to become friends. 2) Provide student housing. 3) Network with Alumni giving professional contact points for after you graduate. 4) On most campuses they provide community outreach with various volunteer activities such as habitat for humanity, working soup kitchens, etcThe entire point of a fraternity or sorority is to develop friendships that will hopefully be long lasting. By virtue of that and the idea of looking out for each other you can often share professional support when you get out of school for professional contacts and references. Greeks generally have to be approved by the university in order to be active and gain access to university resources. And in return the universities generally force them to do community service or charity work to remain active on campus to justify their existence.Sororities are big into academics and community service. Lost so sororities have a national charity they are associated with, and then each local chapter is also usually associated with local charities. Throughout the year there will be many events involved with those charities. With such a large group of women, you are bound to overlap in your classes with sorority sisters so it's a great resource for study groups and tutoring. Our sorority actually had a test bank, so we could go review our professor's old exams. At my univiersity the average sorority GPA was actually higher than the all women's average. I can't speak for fraternities since I don't have much experience with them, but sororities are a really great organization to get involved in as far as academics, leadership, networking, and giving back to the community goes.
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Why is the 40-yard dash the magical number for gauging a football player's speed (as opposed to some other metric)?
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While coaching Ohio State University Buckeyes football team in 1941, Paul Brown emphasized team quickness. One way to calculate this was for him to time his players covering a punt. At the time, the average punt went about 40 yards from the line of scrimmage and had a hang time of about 4.5 seconds. He would then time his players to see if they would be able to cover an average punt, or run a 40 yard dash in 4.5 seconds. He continued with this strategy after becoming the head coach of the Cleveland Browns. The practice gained popularity from others as years went on and is the standard today.Mostly just because that's the number that everyone agreed to use. It's a good, middling distance. If the distance is too long, it becomes mostly about top speed and not acceleration; if it's too short, it's all about acceleration instead of speed. 40 yards is enough in the middle that both are important. It's also important to note that there are other drills that football players measure things more specifically: the 100yd dash to measure top speed, various cone drills to measure agility and acceleration, etc. It's not *all* about the 40-yard.
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Why do black people and white people have distinctly different voices?
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The great majority of differences between how people speak is cultural. Grow up without access to a culture and you aren't going to develop that culture's speech patterns. A smaller factor is that the structure of the organs which produce our speech does vary a bit between people with different recent ancestry . Even then, the differences within these groups is usually greater than the differences between them.
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How is a fan able to keep a ball floating above it with the ball flying away?
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You're referring to Bernoulli's ball. There's not really an ELI5 explanation for it, but I'll give it shot. Bernoullis principle says that if you have two streams of air, which ever stream is moving faster will have a lower pressure. In the case of the fan blowing on the ball, you can think of the air divided into two parts. Theres the part of the air stream that's coming up directly beneath the ball and another part that runs by the side of the ball. The magic here is that because the part coming up from beneath the ball gets pushed around the ball, it ends up moving faster than the other part, even though they were both the same speed when they left the fan. It may sound counter intuitive, but you'll have to take my word for it since explaining why is probably more like eli15. Anyway now that the air being pushed around the ball is moving faster, it creates a low pressure pocket around the ball . When the ball moves to either side of the pocket, the high pressure on the outside of the pocket pushes it back in. **Edit:** If you want to read up on the ELI15 part, it's called the continuity equation .
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Why do lightning strikes leave a branching pattern on whatever they strike?
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In the air, lightning initially [branches out all over the place] searching for a path to the ground. Air is normally a bad conductor of electricity, but once the electricity starts flowing the air becomes a plasma that conducts quite well. So all the lightning follows the first path that made a connection. Once it strikes, say, a tree however, the opposite happens: Normally, a tree is a better conductor of electricity than the air. But once electricity starts flowing, it burns the wood, increasing it's resistance. So path of least resistance keeps changing as the electricity flows through it, [creating a branching pattern].
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Why, in virtually every picture of the Earth taken from space, is North shown as being at the top of the picture?
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Just by convention. That's what most people are used to seeing. Same reason why when you take a picture, you hold your camera so the top is on top. Nothing's stopping you from holding your camera upside down when you take the picture, or from showing people your upside-down pictures. It's just that by convention, we orient our pictures so that "up" is at the topProbably because all of the nations taking these pictures are in the northern hemisphere.also because our maps and globes are eu/na centric[South-up maps] certainly exist,but not nearly enough people take them seriously enough to make them a competitor to North-up maps. Pretty much every south-up map I 've seen is either a gag or a "think outside the box" novelty item. The [Wikipedia article] claims that [the famous Blue Marble photo of Earth from Apollo 17] was actually taken south-up, but it's nearly always rotated to "fix" thisThey change it so north is up, the one taken in apollo 17, for example, was taken with the northern hemisphere on the bottom. So they flipped it.Edit:typos
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Can you explain second and third sounds?
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Second sound isn't sound at all. When helium is super cooled , heat is transfered in a wave-like motion rather than the more usual methods. It's called the Second Sound becauase the heat is transfered in a wave-like motion, similar to houw sound propogates through air. Third sound isn't a sound either . It's another wierd quantum effect of super-chilled fluids, where waves propogate in a thin film that can creep up the walls of a vessel. [Second Sound.] [Third Sound.] **TL;DR:** They're not sound, but rather names given to strange quantum mechanical wave-like effects noticed in super-chilled fluids.
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When an artist/band's "Greatest Hits" or "Best Of" album is released, how does the process take shape?
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A Greatest Hits album is common in any record deal. After so many releases, the artist and the label will get together to assemble the track listing and many times, the artist will be required to produce a number of exclusive tracks for the release. All of this will depend on the artist and their dealMy sister works for a small label and they made one not long ago when their big band went to a different label. Because they had the rights to most of the songs that were written while the band was managed by them, they decided to put a "greatest hits" out so that they can still have a revenue stream from them. It can be done for many reasons, but mostly it is for money.There are no rules for this. If you have the rights to the songs and think you can make money off it, then you can do it. Most bands will have rights to their songs and will therefore have to sign off on it. Bands and artists don't *need* to produce these things, they just do it to get cash.
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Why are multi-billion dollar companies able to file for bankrupcy and why does the government bail them out?
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Some companies may be considered 'too big to fail' because so many hundreds of thousands of people fully depend on these companies operating that it would arguably do more harm than good to the greater society to let the company fail as opposed to provide bail-outs to get them back on track. In other words, letting some of these companies fail may be seen as more disastrous and disruptive to the economy than the expense of providing financial assistance to prevent the company from failing.
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why do your ears ring after loud noise and have been damaged?
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The cochlea in each of your ears is a spiralling organ that contains a bunch of tiny little "hairs." When sound is transmitted from the air into your cochlea, it travels through the cochlea and depresses hairs corresponding to different frequencies. [The hairs further and further in the spiral] correspond to lower-pitched sounds. The hairs right at the entrance correspond to high pitches, and are the most vulnerable as they take the bulk of the "impact." When something super loud hits your cochlea, those hairs are depressed, and they stay that way for a bit. This means that your brain constantly hears a high-pitched ringing noise until the hairs stand back up. When something is loud enough to permanently damage your hearing, those hairs corresponding to high pitches never fully recover and constantly send the signal to your brain that you're hearing a ringing sound. They persist indefinitely in the "on" position.
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If weed is a depressant, why does my heart start to beat faster whenever I smoke?
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> If weed is a depressant That's just it. It's not a depressant. At the high level it's a psychoactive compound - it can cross the blood brain barrier and can act on parts of the brain. Depressants, stimulants, and hallucinogens are all psychoactive. Weed is basically in a category of it's own since it doesn't fit into any of those categories perfectly but rather can have effects from all three in varying combinations.
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How do they blur moving things for TV shows, do they have to do it frame-by-frame?
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Yes, or some software let you put a marker on the image. Let's say, a finger. Well, a finger is going to be a bunch of beige pixels. So when it moves, the computer only has to track a bunch of beige pixels around, it knows where to censor. It's a bit harder when you have to track something small, or something that changes color and shape. But even then, it helps, because instead of doing painfully slow frame by frame, you only have to click where to track every few seconds.
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Why does a battery decrease without being used?
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All batteries slowly lose charge over time. This is because all batteries use a chemical reaction to store energy. Over time this reaction breaks down inside the battery. Without getting too deep into the chemistry the reactions in batteries are non-spontaneous, meaning they won't just happen in the world on their own. They require energy to happen. When this energy is not there it will try and get back to the way it was before the energy was there. Each battery has a different self discharge rate different depending on the type. Here are a few in "normal" temperature range. The higher the temperature the greater the rate. Primary lithium-metal10% in 5 years Alkaline2–3% per year Lead-acid5% per month Nickel-based10–15% in 24 hours, then 10-15% per month Lithium-ion5% in 24hours, then 1–2% per month Batteries do self-discharge. Different types of batteries do this at different rates. Batteries have active chemicals in them. When discharging, the chemicals react in a way that shifts electrons across from the positive terminal to the negative one. When no electrons are flowing through the circuit, from the negative terminal back to the positive one again, this reaction is stopped by the voltage that builds up. But reactions can still happen in other ways - randomly, or through contamination in the battery. Or current can leak back through the battery. This slowly consumes the chemical, slowly flattening the battery.
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Would the predator on to Catch a Predator still get arrested if they never ended up showing up?
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Likely not since you can't prove they were ever actually going to show up at all. You can't arrest someone for thinking about committing a crime.Yes, because a lot of them send pornography/nude pictures to what they believe to be a minor, which is a felony and a federal offense. They also break the law by engaging in very explicit conversations with these "kids", which is considered to be something like "harmful communication with a minor", if I remember correctly. if you go on Perverted Justice's website, they post the full chat transcripts of every person they 've busted. If you read through them, you'll see that they weren't being "entrapped", at all, and that these men were going WAY over the line. If someone tells you that they're 12, you simply don't send them pornography and ask them explicit questions about their bodies, and sex. *That's* why those guys got arrested.
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Why do we still take test and learn the same as how people did in the whole of history when technology has advanced so far?
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Learning has advanced a great deal since formal education began. There are some things that have become redundant, and some things may seem useless. For instance, why bother learning that there are 4 quarts in a gallon when I can just look it up? But many people, myself included, would argue that a fundamental understanding of the simple elements is necessary for an understanding of the complex. Albert Einstein wouldn't have been able to come up with the things he had if he hadn't been good at math . Facts tend to rest on other facts in our minds, and rote memorization doesn't lead to understanding; a book can contain all the facts in the world, but it doesn't come up with new ideas.
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why do we lose our appetite when we see/hear something unpleasant?
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It's an evolutionary thing. What if every time you saw a piece of poop, it made you hungry? You would be much more likely to eat poop. And people who eat poop tend to get diseases and die. So we're programmed to be disgusted by it. It's the same reason why people like unhealthy food. We're biologically programmed to go for the more calorically dense food because it would keep us alive.
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why does everyone want 60 FPS for games?
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You probably know that TV and film usually sit around 24/25/29.97/30 fps. But it's well-known that games need to run at 60 fps in order to achieve the same smoothness. Why is that? Well, when we film something, the video camera exposes the film to light for a certain amount of time. It's probably in the micro- or millisecond range, I don't know. While the film is exposed, it is picking up light from *moving objects*. So once that frame or bitmap is recorded, if you were to look at it as a still, it would be blurred. When we then play the whole clip back at 24-ish fps, the blur helps to smooth out the video to create the illusion of movement. 3D games, on the other hand, don't pick up blur on each frame because there is no blur to pick up; the frames are rendered, one by one, each like a little diorama on its own, and if you look at it just like that, there's no blurring to suggest that the entities in the frame were moving before or after. So if 3D games don't fake the blur effect, they must provide a higher number of frames per second for our eyes to be truly fooled into seeing motion.
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Why do we enjoy watching televisions shows that involve drugs/killing/relationship drama/anything else that we would never want to happen to us in real life?
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The same reason we have nightmares. It's emotionally healthy to explore dangerous and upsetting situations in a healthy and safe setting.
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Why can't you remember when you were a baby?
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If you don't have storage space, where do you put stuff? The neural structures that store memories and things literally don't exist in a newborn's head. They've got no storage space. They literally don't possess a conscious memory yet.
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Why do we have to eat and urinate throughout the day, but can make it through 8+ hours of sleep just fine?
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During sleep, your metabolism slows. Your digestive and renal systems shift into a slow mode so they produce less waste.1. You are not drinking or eating2. Your metabolism slows down so your body can use that energy to repair damages you've done to your body during your time awake. _URL_0_", 'Because during that sleep you are sleeping, and not eating or drinking normally throughout the night as us humans do during the day. And there are times when people have a strong urge to use the restroom during the morning meaning they had to go during the night.
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What wars are being fought today and why?
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1. Ukraine - Oil and gas infrastructure, naval bases, ethnic tensions 2. Syria - Extraordinarily cruel regime inevitably led to a complex civil war, which has spilled over into Iraq 3. Nigeria - History of tension between Muslim north and Christian south, plus the difficulty of maintaining control over a huge country, with remote borders. 4. Congo - This is a doozy of a war which can't be explained to a five year-old. 5. Afganistan - No one has united Afghanistan in forty years. Heavily mountainous, difficult to control, lots of ethnic grievances. 6. India and Pakistan - still technically at war 60 years after independence. The partition both caused a great deal of hardship and resentment and also led to conflicts over border provinces. Both sides still claim Jammu/Kashmir. 7. Korea - still technically at war. North Korea invaded the South, intending to unify the peninsula, but failed, and the final battlelines have been a heavily guarded demilitarized zone ever since.
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Why do even videos from the 2000's appear to be very old/low quality when we remember viewing them in higher resolution.
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You said it, higher resolution. They'd look just fine if you were viewing them in 800x600 or 1024x768, but you're not. You're viewing them in 1920x1080 or higher, stretching the video onto an area several times bigger than intended.
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Why don't we experiment with colonizing new worlds by building on the Moon first before going to Mars?
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That was exactly the plan with the [Constellation Program] but then the financial crisis hit and suddenly no-more moon money.The Moon and Mars are two different environments that face different technical challenges. You wouldn't build a house in the desert and expect it to work in the Arctic, and likewise you can't necessarily transport a Moon-prepped architecture to the Martian terrain. This is on top of the enormous budgetary and logistics issues involved in getting anything off-Earth. Bare in mind that the ISS has cost about $150 billion so far, and it's only 250miles up - the Moon is 1000 times as far away.
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What is the difference between watts, volts and amps? Amp hours?
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Watts is power. It's how much work you can do in a given amount of time. Work is energy, usually expressed in Joules. Amps is current. It's how much charge is going through in a given amount of time. Voltage is potential. It's how much energy can be released per unit charge. Volts * amps = watts. Amp hours is current * time. It's how much charge it can provide before going flat. Multiplying by voltage will get you energy, but voltage doesn't stay constant so it's a little more complicated. To use the good old water analogy, voltage is pressure, amperage is how much water is flowing. amp hours is the volume of the water tower.Amps measure the current: how many electrons are flowing through the wire per second . Volts measure the voltage: how much energy those electrons are carrying with them. Watts is the amount of energy per second the wire is transmitting. By multiplying the voltage by the current , we get the watts .Watts is a measure of power. Volts is a measure of voltage. Amps is a measure of current. I'm not sure what amp hours are though, because I've never heard of them.
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Why do cats like sitting/laying in cardboard boxes so much?
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Paper is a remarkably good insulator. In the second world war poor families would literally rap up their children in newspaper to keep them warm. Cats enjoy having warmth on their stomach and lying on paper provides thisI think they like the closed confined feeling they get from being in the box. Makes them feel warm and/or secure.
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Why do we sound different to ourselves on camera or audio recording?
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Sound reverberates around inside our head through numerous large sinuses before we "hear" it. This distorts what our voices actually sound like. Assuming proper recording tools, what you hear on an audio recording is exactly what you sound like to other people.
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Why do we have to go through US customs in Canada, but not the Canadian customs in the US?
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It used to be that you went though US customs in the US, and Canadian customs in Canada. Some smaller airports continue to work this way. But then the US introduced customs pre-clearing, so instead of checking after you've arrived in the USA, the check everything before you get there.
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Why do trees have rings?
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Trees grow slower in winter and faster in summer. In winter the wood that is grown slowly is denser and has a darker tintThe tree rings themselves are vascular tissue which transport nutrients and water and such to the plant through xylem and phloem, the two types of plant vascular tissue. these are produced by cambium cells, which is what you are seeming when you look at the rings. hence, the longer it lives, the more rings.
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What causes the blacked out eyesight when people stand up to fast?
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[Orthostatic hypotension]. The blood literally drains out of your brain as you stand up, before your heart can adjust to your new posture and up the pressure enough to keep you functioning normally. As a result, you go a bit woozy, see stars, and sometimes even pass out.I assume you're referring to head rush, which can sometimes lead to temporary vision loss. Head rush is actually a phenomenon called orthostatic hypotension. When you are sitting down, your legs are closer to your heart, which means your heart doesn't have to work as hard to pump blood to your legs. When you stand up, suddenly your legs are further away from your heart and the blood is pulled down into your legs since it now has a larger distance to travel. This causes a short, temporary drop in blood pressure, which causes less blood to be supplied to your brain and you become lightheaded, and if it is severe enough, you can have temporary vision loss. However, there are special cells that sense your blood pressure that will tell your heart to pump harder, which will make your blood pressure go back up and everything will go back to normal.
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Why are some sports teams historically more successful (NY Yankees) than others (Cleveland Browns)?
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It's a vicious circle. Teams that do well earn more money and have higher prestige, so they can attract better talent.
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What causes the jumping feeling in your stomach when you go down a quick hill while driving?
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Your innards/gut is used to gravity. It doesn't have the normal sensory nerves that your skin has. Upon traversing a sudden drop/hill, for microseconds you experience a "less than 1g" environment. Your body reacts but bones and muscle react differently than inner squishy, liquidy guts. They probably rise a bit and rather quickly. The "sensation" is how your body interprets this sudden loss of weight and shifting that occurs in the gut soft tissue. If you ask men, they also feel it in their testicles and its a much more, um, exhilarating? feeling. :D
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What happend to Apple patent for Multi-finger gestures?
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The mobile telecommunications industry is a web of patent holders all licensing each other's patents. Pretty much every software and hardware manufacturer holds a couple patents that are absolutely essential to the experience. Basic stuff, like the concept of nested menus . Essentially everybody in the game has to cross-license with everyone else, because if they choose to silo their innovations, all the competitors will freeze them out of all the other patents they need access to.The other companies either pay Apple or they make sure not to infringe upon it. For instance, part of the patent is that an upward diagonal swipe can be registered as a regular upwards vertical swipe in applications such as browsers, so if you can do that on an Android, they most likely had to pay Apple.
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Why doesn't our vomit contain the strong acids in our stomach and react (burn/melt) with things once it leaves our body.
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It does. But the acid in our stomach is dilute, it is not like some kind of super acid you see in movies. If you vomit on some metal and leave it there/keep vomiting on it, you will see that it erodes. This is also why people who have bulimia damage their esophagus and teeth. The acid from their vomit is constantly eroding themA weird yet useful thing I happened upon was to drink sprite before puking. The sweetness of sprite coats your throat and you feel little to no burn when puking. This was extremely helpful because I got car sick really often.Well,it does.It happens very slowly though. If you puke on a table,for example,it will not disintegrate in seconds. If the vomited acids stay on a surface for an extended period of time,however,it may have effects. Source: When some friends an me were 17 and we started drinking alcohol one of my mates puked on another friend's car but nobody noticed it,until the next day when we saw that the paint had come off of his car excactly where the puke was.
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Why do grocery stores have paper bags for mushrooms and plastic bags for everything else?
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Moisture. Moisture ruins mushrooms. Plastic bags hold the moisture in, while paper bags will absorb the moisture and keep the mushrooms looking fresh.
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What made Ronald Reagan such an amazing president according to the Republicans?
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ELI5:We sonny, the gipper came to DC and gave those useless government bureaucrats the old California one two! He broke up unions, slashed taxes on the rich , took a fire ax to business regulations. He ignored those silly gays and their AIDS, he said damn the diplomacy and butted heads with the soviets. He wasn't afraid to kick a tiny Caribbean island's ass . Also he liked jelly beans. Long version: Republicans up until Reagan had been pretty liberal by today's standards. Eisenhower funded the largest government project ever and Nixon created the EPA. Don't get me wrong, they where conservatives, but they didn't challenge the \'New Deal\' framework that started in the depression: that the government could be a tool to fix societies problems. They didn't fight this \'framework\' but where conservative on individuality issues. Reagan was loudly and proudly anti-government, saying that "Government isn't the solution, government is the problem." He challenged the New Deal framework and slashed the government in ways prior republicans never did. Reagan wasn't the first to say this , but Reagan was the first president like this. Conservative like him because he was the man who turned conservative from a dirty word into a proud one. Also since it was so long ago and he's dead, people tend to remember the good things, and forget the bad things. Who wants to keep dredging up Iran Contra, when talking about the "morning in America" add is so much simpler and nicer. But trust me, there are still plenty of people who hate him, its all about where your political preferences now lie. Republicans remember the good and forget the bad, and vice versa for dems, its all selective memory.
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1000 years frozen in Futurama
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If\xa0you're wondering how he eats and breathes, and other science facts, just repeat to yourself "It's just a show, I should really just relax."The cryogenic computers took care of all those calculations. Idk why they set it for a few hours less than 1000 years. Maybe the person who was supposed to use the tube requested it that way.Well the moon would have slowed the passage of days, leap seconds and leap years would have had an affect. Not to mention that no clock is perfect. The internal clock of the cryotube was probably *slightly* off which accumulated to hours over the course of 1000 years which would be impressively accurate. I think the most important thing though is the fact that it's a TV show! It is susceptible to the writers whims rather than the laws of physics and/or time.It's possible the guy who just yells "WELCOME TO THE WORLD OF TOMORROW" along with the rest of the employees didn't want to be there to welcome Fry directly at midnight. Rather they 'd make it move faster. I believe in other episodes it shows that the "timer" on the cryotube is just an egg timer. So they probably just moved it a bit more forward.
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What led game designers away from Mac as a viable platform for their content?
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The most likely reason is market share. If you have a set amount of resources, do you design for the 95% or the 5%.I think the market share answer people are giving is only half the answer. DirectX is a graphics/sound/etc. library Microsoft developed for Windows, and were able to optimize better than OpenGL. Game developers chose to use DirectX for the better performance, at the expense of portability. It wasn't that hard of a decision in the 90s when 95% of people had Windows PCs. If developers used OpenGL, which is supported on Windows, Mac and Linux, porting to those other OSes would have been a lot easier. It's also worth noting that Apple didn't place much importance on optimizing the performance of their graphics drivers until recently, however I'm not sure if that's a contributing factor towards game developers moving away from Apple, or if it's the other way around and Apple adopted that attitude because gaming wasn't much of a thing on Macs.
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Why does the right hand rule exist? Why don't the laws of the universe result in a left hand rule instead?
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The right hand rule could totally have been the left hand rule. You just need to use different fingers with a different gestures if you think about it. The right hand rule does not define the laws of nature. It is just a way people come up with to visualize the relations of all of those forces and directions of movement. It is purely a product of convention. As to why the relation between all the elements that compose the right hand rule is this way, that really is a similar question to why the earth goes around the sun, and why birds can fly.
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Why are most corporations considered evil?
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Most corporations aren't evil and just do useful things like make your bread for your breakfast toast or make wires for your house. Of those that are evil often their evilness can be often put down to either to outright corruption in management ranks, which is just the human condition. And secondarily companies often do evil things because traditionally directors can be sued personally by the shareholders of that company if they don't act in such a way to make the most possible money. This leads them to make unethical decisions just to make larger profit. Because if they don't. They could potentially be sued by the shareholders for running the business improperly. Some countries have passed laws to try and allow the directors more leeway in how they run the company. I believe in the UK directors of companies are now protected from shareholders sueing the director if the director acted in a fashion that was intended to benefit society or the environment. A lot of other countries are passing similar laws
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I know this is bad but what is karma? (On reddit)
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Basically what karma is, is a form of virtual pat on the back or scolding. You post a witty, funny or factual comment or post and users can give you karma if they like it. If you don't add to the discussion, or troll or say something they don't agree with they downvote you. From my experience in reddit, don't expect a lot of upvotes unless you can make a really funny comment or post.
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why did Japan attack Pearl Harbor if America was minding its own business
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The US wasn't really minding it's own business, and it inevitably was going to start minding its business less. It was supplying arms and finance to the enemy if Japan's allies, it was helping embargo fuel against Japan, and it was unlikely to go very long without entering. Japan actually was able to temporarily cripple the fleet . They just underestimated how quickly we could devote our resources to rebuilding.America wasn't "minding its own business" as much as it was just not in open war with Japan. The biggest reason was an oil embargo, blocking the sale of oil to Japan. This was causing serious problems for the Japanese military forcesThe U.S. caused economic damages by cutting of access to oil and steel. We also aided China in their fight against Japan. Japan figured that these things clearly meant the U.S. was sooner or later going to go to war to stop them. So they decided to try to knock out the US Pacific fleet to buy them time while they secured the Dutch East Indies and make it a fait accompli.
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What are the key differences between endangered native New Zealand birds and birds from basically every other country that makes them so vulnerable to mammalian predators?
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That evolution is exactly what's screwing them over. Not only were there no mammals but a few bats, there are also no snakes, very few poisonous spiders, no lizards that could eat a bird no natural predators whatsoever. Correct me if I'm wrong, folks from other countries, but that's a pretty unique position for birds to find themselves in. As a result, a huge proportion of birds here either can't fly for shit or can't fly at all, and either can't defend themselves for shit or can't defend themselves at all, because they never really needed to do either. Also, many resorted to living on the ground, which is obviously very hazardous now. The only predator the birds had to worry about was a gigantimongous fucking eagle called the Haast's Eagle, and the best defence most birds could come up with against it was to become nocturnal. Which doesn't help them against rats/stoats/cats today, especially when they live on the ground.Some environments are more competitive than others. The Asia/European/African landmass are the majors. When man came to NZ they brought a few of the most ass kicking mammals with them.The kakapo is flightless, ground dwelling and ground-nesting, unlike all other parrots. Ground welling/nesting, flightless birds are very vulnerable, especially to introduced predators. eg dodo. They are also nocturnal, which is unusual for parrots, but I don't think that'd make them more vulnerable. Kakapos are super smart, tho,
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Why is 12:00 the beginning of the 12-hour cycle, instead of 1:00?
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Think in military time. There are 24 hours in a day. In military time midnight/12am is 0000 time. then from 0 it goes to 1. so in the 12 hour am/pm system the 12 acts as our 0 and is a placemarker telling if we are in the am or pm section of the day. 12:00 AM is the beginning of the first half - am half of the day. 12pm is the beginning of the second half - pm half of the day.
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if you tell me your name, I forget immediately yet I remember every lyric to 1000 songs on my Ipod?
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You have heard those songs 100's of times and the music helps you remember plus the singer is filling in the blanks helping you remember too. Where as a name is just one word with nothing for you to connect it to, to help you remember it.
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What are the differences between strategy and tactics?
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Tactics are low level small tasks, and strategy or higher level planning. So in war tactics would be how to maneuver your forces to take possession of a hill, where strategy would be that a specific hill is important to winning the battle/war.Short-term vs. long-term. Tactics are used to overcome an immediate problem, my tactic for getting a raise is to threaten to quit if I don't. Strategy is about putting yourself in a position to use tactics to their best advantage. My strategy for getting a raise is to become so indispensable the business will suffer if I leave. Note there is often no clear delineation about when tactics stop and strategy begins. Also, strategy is often used loosely to cover both cases, I might say my strategy for getting a raise is threatening to quit, and that would not be incorrect. Strategy takes on its more specific meaning when being used in contrast to tactics.Strategy are the choices made to reach an overall goal, while tactics are the best ways to achieve a specific goal. Strategy is usually what you need to do, while tactics is how to do it.Strategy is your overall plan. Tactics are how you deal with each individual step of your plan. Or, if you prefer, strategy is what you're going to do, and tactics are how you do it. My **strategy** for the day is to drop the kids off at school, go grocery shopping, then get some laundry done. On the way to the supermarket, there's an accident and the road is closed - I need to make a **tactical** decision to either find a different way to the grocery store, or go to a different grocery store, or go home and do laundry then go back out for groceries later.
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if atoms don't actually ever touch one another - how can we feel things?
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We never 'touch' anything because electrons in the outer shells of atoms repel each other at 10^-8 metres. What you feel when the surface of your finger touches another surface is a repulsion force between the electrons from the atoms that make up your skin and the electrons from the atoms that make up the surface you're 'touching'. Your perception of touch stems from your brain attributing a sensation to that repulsion force, whereby every time you feel that repulsion, a signal is sent to the brain which you perceive as a feeling/touch.
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Why do humans, even from an extremely young age, have the predilection to dance?
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Hearing music and rhythm moves about the fluid responsible for balance in our ear, and even thinking about a beat can induce the same feeling. We bob our heads and dance naturally because moving the head in the opposite direction of the disturbance to equalize our balance gives us a pleasurable feeling and a dopamine releaseIt could be rehearsal for later in life . So the question might be why dancing in adults? A lot of speculation - group bonding, mate attraction etc.
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How does rendering a video game at a resolution higher than what my monitor can show make things prettier?
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Imagine that you're just drawing something black and white, like text. At low resolution a particular pixel at the edge of the letter is black. But at 4x that resolution, it's a 2x2 square, of which 3 pixels are black, and one is white. These pixels are then averaged to a dark gray, which is what's displayed at the lower res. The result is a softer, more natural edge Edit: corrected typo
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what makes hybrid animals like the mule sterile, and is there anyway to make a hybrid animal that can reproduce?
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Mule is not able to make sperms or eggs on its own, so it is sterile. This is because of difference in number of chromosomes in horse 32 and donkey 31, as they are not of same species. If you crossbreed within species, like in different type of dogs,they would be fertile. Because of the cross between horse and donkey, mule carries copy of chromosomes from horse and another copy from mule with different count .As a result it can not go through meosis, a cellular process that is required to form egg and sperm, hence making them sterile. As far as I know, there are currently no way we can make interspecies hybrid fertile. With advanvlcement in technology, it may not be that far though.
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What is the Trillion Dollar Coin?
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The US Treasury has an account with the Fed. When the Treasury writes a check , that check is cashed with the Fed. The Fed will cash more checks than is in the bank, based on the amount of credit that the government is allowed to carry. We're coming up on that limit shortly, so at some point the Fed will have to tell people "Sorry, I can't cash your US Government check, the US Government is at its debt ceiling based on the amount of money/gold/silver they have in the vault". This is where it gets clever: There are US laws about how much paper money, gold, silver, and copper currency can exist, but nothing about how much platinum currency can exist. If the US Mint prints a $1,000,000,000,000 platinum coin, and they walk it over to the Federal Reserve, then the Fed can cash any check that comes in, because suddenly they have the money on deposit to fulfill that request. Now, we all know it's fake money, it's a massive sign to other foreign governments that we don't take the USD very seriously if we're willing to create $1,000,000,000,000 out of thin air, but it's fundamentally the same as printing money now with bonds - we're backing it with our word, not the value of the platinum ore.
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Why do we randomly recall part of a dream, weeks or even months after it happened?
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I can't provide a full answer but when I was taking a cognitive psychology course we covered state-dependent memory. _URL_1_ The idea is that memory works best when you are in a similar state to when the memory was stored. This is part of the reason why people can become intoxicated, have very few memories of what they did while sober, but can remember it again while intoxicated again. It is also, incidentally, part of the reason why students who cram for an exam by chugging caffeine can find they draw a blank at exam time. So, if you store a memory while very drowsy you are more likely to be able to reconstruct that memory when you are drowsy again. I also used the word "reconstruct" because it is more accurate to how memory works. We don't really retrieve and play back memories so much as try to rebuild the events in our minds. _URL_0_ So the memory snippet that comes back may not even be that accurate but rather an imperfect attempt to sort out some jumbled stimuli floating around in your brain. Short answer: Later on, by chance, you may be in a similar physical and/or emotional state to how you were when you experienced the dream and something prods you to try to try to recall it. But even then you can't trust it to be terribly accurate.
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Why do some mobile apps require so many seemingly unnecessary or invasive special permissions?
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they arent actually invasive, it is the basic requirements for the function of the app. if you have a small free game then it will often say 'there are no special requirements' but an app like tinder where you are connecting to facebook, using the wifi or data connection and also sending and recieving pictures and using the camera then the app needs to have permission for all those aspects in order to function. if you download a free game and it says it wants your location and camera then it might be a little iffy .but it simply means you can use the camera within the app and not that the app is going to be taking photos while you are sleeping
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How does a towel get dirty if we're clean when dry ourselves with it.
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Even though we have removed dirt from our bodies, bacteria can still reside on our skin, and when we wipe off the water we are also wiping off the existing bacteria onto the towel. There is also airborne bacteria that can get on the towel, and since the towel is wet and sometimes warm, it allows bacteria to grow much faster than usual, making a towel "dirty" after a few uses.When we dry ourselves we make the perfect condition for bacteria growth, moist , warmth and food
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How do people that sell instagram/twitter followers and likes create that many accounts?
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Many are accounts that post requests for likes and shares. Then, those posts are deleted and the accounts are sold. It's best to report them for spam.
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Why are the biggest burger chains promoting fish sandwiches right now?
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During Lent the only meat Catholics will eat on Friday is fish. Thus up until Easter they will all promote fishIt is Lent. Between now and Easter, many Christians, notably Roman Catholics, do not eat meat on Fridays. So, fish is very popular this time of yearI mean, reasonably, the only explanation is that promoting them is more profitable than not promoting or promoting something else.
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How can Google offer such superior service with Google Fiber?
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Actually Google is not dumping insane amount of money in the project. The cities selected for the fiber project provides Google subsidizes pricing on permits and somewhat pre-existing fiber capabilities.In Kansas City, an Internet-only package costs $70 a month. A TV and Internet package goes for $120 per month. Google also offers a free Internet package at "today's basic speeds" for customers willing to pay a one-time construction fee of $300.So Google is making money. Also, Google can gather more personalized information on preference of TV shows and internet searches that it could provide more targeted advertisement which is core of its business at the end of the dayThis article provides some info but I am not sure about the whole verizon fios stuff _URL_0_', "Google doesn't care if their fiber makes any money. The benefit of their fiber circuits is to keep pressure on the other ISPs to improve their services. They also have the benefit of being contained to a few select markets. If they expanded nationally, it would cost considerably more. It's pretty easy for a company like Google to provide gig/e when they don't give a shit about profit.
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In Games, why are the team colours facing off against each other usually red vs blue?
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Because you need two bright, primary colours that can be easily distinguished both against each other and against the environment. In Video games you're unlikely to come across large sections of bright and flat red or bright/deep blues, whereas you will come across a lot of greens and yellows. Red and Blue are highly distinct from eachother, so they fit this niche nicely. That's my guess anyway.
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Why are some people photogenic?
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Cameras have only one lens, this is like looking at an object with only one eye, you will lose a lot of depth perception. Photogenic people have faces that are a lot more "3D" so their faces are not flattened by the camera's lack of depth perception. Back when photos and movies were black and white, it was even more important to select actors and models with angular face since color helped depth perception whereas black and white will lose more of it. Also it is very possible to find which angle looks good for camera and always pose with those angles. A model friend told me to touch the tip of my tongue to the roof of my mouth when the shutter goes off so you have a more angular chin and larger eyes.
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Why are new technological leaps so expensive? For instance, it can't seriously cost so much more to produce DDR4 memory than it does to produce DDR3.
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It's a couple reasons. One is research. New technology requires millions and sometimes billions of dollars of research and development. For the first years of a technology's release, its price is higher to repay these costs, as well as the costs of failed designs that came before it. Another is scale. It takes time to build factories and whatever else to make a new type of technology, sometimes the machine that makes it has to be created from scratch as well. It takes time for the businesses that make the technology to devote the money and resources to make it, especially if there isn't proof that it will be a very popular technology.
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How does the sand river in Iraq actually work?
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It is blocks of ice floating over water down the slope. Sand on top of the ice might make it look like sand, but it isn't sand all the way through.
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What is pi and why does it work?
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Pi is the ratio between the circumference of a circle and its diameter. It works because it's a geometric law - if you draw a circle, c/d = pi.Imagine a circle. This circle has a circumference, which is the length of the actual circle and a diameter, which is the length of a straight line from one side of the circle to the other which goes through the center. No matter which circle you measure, if you divide the circumference by the diameter, the result you get is pi. Since this applies to all circles, to describe everything you need to know about a circle, all you need to know is where the center is located and how far from the center the circle is located. Pi is just a constant which tells you everything you need to know about this circle. Circles show up quite a lot in calculations, particularly when talking about angles, so pi will show up as well.The youtube channel Numberphile has a whole series of videos on Pi , and are quiet good viewing. Here's [one] and there's a few more.
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How do some digital clocks still know the time after being powered off.
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It has a small battery inside of it that keeps the clock running. Your computer, phone, etc. maintain time when powered off in the same wayIt has a little battery inside it that runs something called RTC, or real time clock, which basically keeps tracking the time when the device is not powered from the outlet. When you power it on again, the RTC says to the device "hey, here's how much time passed since you went off, so you can sync back and take it from here"What everyone here says is accurate, most electronics that have clocks will have a small battery to keep track of time when off. Some digital clocks can get updated time from external sources like the internet or satellites, but I think you would know if your clock had that functionalityIt has a small cell battery to keep the clock going even when powered off. Desktop computers have a small cell battery so the computer bios clock can still run, even when the computer is completely unplugged.There is a battery somewhere. This battery keeps the clock running, it just doesn't display if it isn't plugged in.
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why do people call Buffalo Wild Wings "BW3" when there are only two W's in the name?
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it used to be Buffalo Wild Wings and Weck. Roast Beef on Weck is another traditional Buffalo NY food. But the Weck didn't catch on outside of the Buffalo area, so they stopped serving it and took it out of the name. It is really good though, and if you are ever in Western NY state you should try it. I recommend Charlie the Butcher.I 've never seen or heard it referred to as BW3. Around here everyone calls it "B-dubs" or types it as BWW. I have no idea why anyone would call it BW3
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Why can't pilots see when a laser hits them?
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Lasers spread out the farther they travel. That "tiny dot of light" isn't so tiny after it travels 1000 feet through the air. If it hits the plexiglas cockpit window, it diffuses out even more. The result looks [something like this]. You're right that it only flashes for a split second, but that's all it takes. When people say that it blinds pilots, it doesn't mean that the laser is burning out their retina and causing permanent blindness. They're talking about *flash blindness*, the temporary dazzling effect you get when a bright light flashes in your eye. Like when someone uses a camera flash in a dark room, and you have to blink away the aftereffect for a few seconds? Imagine trying to land a plane during thatI’ve been lasered a few times, with varying degrees of shittiness. A couple times a minor nuisance. One time in particular it did temporarily blind us. The laser hits the window and lights up everything. Can be disorienting as well as temporarily blinding.First, they don't blind pilots thousands of feet in the air, and if they do, it usually isn't a big deal once you are up that high an airplane flies itself. The danger is with pilots much closer to the ground, particularly during night landings. Due to refraction, a laser can light up an entire plexiglass cabin window, which isn't only distracting, but it interferes with the pilot's night vision, which can take minutes to reset.It is a focused beam of energy that can potentially damage the retina. Ever have a bright light suddenly shine into your eyes, temporarily blinding you as you try to blink away the bright afterimage? That short period of temporarily blindness *could* mean a plane crashing into something.
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Why do fiscal years start in April (usually)? Why don't companies just pick Jan like the calendar year?
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Depends on where you are. UK fiscal years are based on the old Julian calendar, where the new year started on what is now ~April 5th-6th. Changing it now would mean everyone would have to balance the books over Christmas, which I don't imagine would go over very well. Other countries like Germany and China do line up with the calendar year. There's a nice list here: _URL_0_
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why do you go light headed and queasy when seeing a bad cut
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This is caused by what is known as the vasovagal response. It's a reaction by the body to certain triggers that causes the heart rate and blood pressure to drop, which in result causes you to feel lightheaded and queasy because the brain doesn't get enough blood. One of the thoughts is that it is an evolutionary mechanism to prevent blood loss when the body is considered in danger, as a lower heart rate and blood pressure slows down blood loss. The strength and triggers of this reaction differs in different people, where for some people the mere sight of blood causes the reaction.
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Why didn't America start off using the metric system?
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It was actually introduced after the USA was founded. France introduced the whole system in 1799, America was founded in 1776. Parts of it have been around for much longer, but the system as whole was not introduced until after we were founded.Side note: It's slightly incorrect to say that the U.S.A. does not use the metric system. It's very common for people in technical fields and in science to use the metric system in the U.S.A.. I say slightly because the general public does use the imperial system almost exclusively but there are notable exceptions .It was not invented yet. The US was an independent country almost 25 years before the metric system was first established in France, and it did not spread to the rest of Europe until after Napoleon conquered much of itThere are two types of countries, those that have been to the moon, and those that use the metric system!
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How would I find the most downvoted stuff on reddit?
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A quick search turned up [this] gem: Karmanaut removing Bad Luck Brian's AMA since it conflicted with the stated rules of the subreddit . There's also the classic [Geraffes are so dumb], but that got an order of magnitude fewer downvotes. Karmanaut's post dethroned [Fucking faggot] as the long standing champion of downvotiness. You might have some fun with /r/worstof. One thread I'm trying to find but can't with a quick Google is one where someone pointed out that the "z" key allows downvotes. *Every* comment was at several hundred downvotes. Not quite the vile post that you're probably looking for, but I found it amusing.
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