Split (3)

train · 218k rows

question stringlengths 1 296	answers listlengths 1 279	ctxs listlengths 30 30
in football whats the point of wasting the first two plays with a rush - up the middle - not regular rush plays i get those	[ "Keep the defense honest, get a feel for the pass rush, open up the passing game. An offense that's too one dimensional will fail. And those rushes up the middle can be busted wide open sometimes for big yardage.", "If you throw the ball all the time, then the defense will adapt to always cover for a pass. By do...	[ "46 defense Description To stop a passing game, you can't stop it unless you put pressure on it. Now some people are good enough to put it on with a three-man rush; well, we're not. In fact, I don't know whether we're good enough to put it on with a four-man rush. If we have to send eight, we'll send eight, but we'...
Why are different tiers (regular < mid < premium) of gas' prices almost always 10 cents different?	[ "As someone who uses quality Premium, I wish this was true.", "The difference is in how it burns though is what's critical for you as the end consumer. I drive a forced induction car, so air coming into my engine is compressed before it enters the cylinder where it's further compressed by the piston. The Regular,...	[ "have traditionally been three to four times the price in the United States, with prices during 2000–2005 of €1.00/litre (about $1.42 per litre ($5.4/US gal) while the US had prices around $1.50 per US gallon ($0.40/l).\nAfter a large increase until the summer of 2008, the end of 2008 experienced a strong decline l...
Stars and Visibility	[ "It's a quirk of the human eye. At the center of the eye (the fovea) we mostly have colour-sensitive cone cells to see detail and colour of what we're focusing on. Around the fovea we mostly have rod cells that can't see colour but are more sensitive to variations in light intensity and movement. \nLooking slightl...	[ "of the intrinsic brightness of the sky, namely airglow, indirect scattering of sunlight, scattering of starlight, and artificial light pollution. Visual presentation Depending on local sky cloud cover, pollution, humidity, and light pollution levels, the stars visible to the unaided naked eye appear as hundreds, ...
How do we know all the money the government is getting from bank settlements is going back to the people?	[ "I'm pretty confident most of it isn't going back to the people. That's how politics works.", "It's not. Punitive damages are like parking tickets. It is a fine you pay to the government.", "> but I don't hear anything about where this money goes\n\nThe details of the various settlements differ. Some of it g...	[ "all future funds would be placed in selected state banks, and the government would draw on its remaining funds in the B.U.S. to cover operating expenses until those funds were exhausted. In case the B.U.S. retaliated, the administration decided to secretly equip a number of the state banks with transfer warrants, ...
What are good and bad sides of manual and automatic drive gear?	[ "Automatics weigh more, so that alone makes gas mileage worse. They are also more complicated, so that means reliability is going to be lower. It is easier to operate, which may free up your attention for focus on what is outside the car.\n\nSome people derive satisfaction from shifting, and flexibility in usin...	[ "amount of true manual control provided is highly variable: some systems will override the driver's selections under certain conditions, generally in the interest of preventing engine damage. Since these gearboxes also have a throttle kickdown switch, it is impossible to fully exploit the engine power at low to med...
the special and general theory of relativity	[ "We know that light moves at the speed c (roughly 300000km/s).\n\nSo here's a question for you (that Einstein asked himself): what would you see if you sat on a beam of light and looked into the mirror? Would your reflection disappear? Would it be normal?\n\nHe then thought: what's the speed of light relative to ...	[ "Relativity: The Special and the General Theory Relativity: The Special and the General Theory began as a short paper and was eventually published as a book written by Albert Einstein with the aim of giving:\n. . . an exact insight into the theory of relativity to those readers who, from a general scientific and ph...
How do muscles grow?	[ "I hope this answer qualifies as technical, yet simple enough (as I very rarely post here), but the basic idea that I understand is that your muscles rip and tear on a microscopic level when you are working out, and the harder you push those muscles, the more they rip. Hence where the idea comes from that more reps...	[ "Muscle Structure The anatomy of muscles includes gross anatomy, which comprises all the muscles of an organism, and microanatomy, which comprises the structures of a single muscle. Microanatomy Skeletal muscles are sheathed by a tough layer of connective tissue called the epimysium. The epimysium anchors muscle ti...
What is the role of actual real-life actors in making animated characters? Like Liam Neeson playing Aslan in Narnia?	[ "Could you elaborate your question?\n\nThey are voice actors. They sit in a studio and record their lines. The animators then animate the characters to match the recordings.\n\nThere are some cases (for example Andy Serkis as Gollum in the Lord of the Rings film series) where the voice actors also provides the moti...	[ "Emmy award for Outstanding Animated Program that year. It was the first feature-length animated film ever made for television. For its release on British television, many of the characters' voices were re-recorded by British actors and actresses (including Leo McKern, Arthur Lowe and Sheila Hancock), but Stephen T...
Why does the water from my kitchen faucet taste different than the water from my bathroom faucet? Doesn't it come from the same place?	[ "Yes, but the pipes going to one place could have a build up that's changing the taste or the composition of the pipes can be different, i.e. pvc pipes going to your kitchen, but copper pipes to your bathroom." ]	[ "hot water is rarely available from the tap, and sinks are perceived as dirty surfaces (essentially a convenient drain). Westerners usually prefer standing hot water. This is practical in environments where hot water is cheaply and easily available, and sinks are perceived as clean surfaces (essentially a bowl with...
Precipitation reactions	[ "Why the hell would you need to learn about precipitation rxns in second grade??? I was taught that in the seventh grade IIRC... Please tell me 2nd was a typo???\n\nThe principles are pretty advanced for second graders... \n\nHave you talked about elements and compounds, solutions, solubility?\n\nYou need to be abl...	[ "resulting complex can be predicted with the crystal field theory and ligand field theory. Complexation reactions also include ligand exchange, in which one or more ligands are replaced by another, and redox processes which change the oxidation state of the central metal atom. Precipitation Precipitation is the for...
If dark colours absorb more heat, why does light skin burn easier than dark skin?	[ "Two things going on here. First, heat doesn't have anything to do with sunburn, it's all about UV rays. Encountering more UV rays = more sunburn.\n\nHowever, dark skin absorbs more UV rays than pale skin. And in fact that's exactly why it burns less. The pigmented layer absorbs more UV in the upper layers of t...	[ "eumelanin in their skins. This makes their skins brown or black and protects them against high levels of exposure to the sun, which more frequently result in melanomas in lighter-skinned people.\nNot all the effects of pigmentation are advantageous. Pigmentation increases the heat load in hot climates, and black p...
How the fuck does Facebook know about people I know?!	[ "Your email contacts, your academic/work institutions info you've put, and the friends of your friends.", "Piggyback question (more an example): \n\nI had a fb acct that only had ~30 people on it. I just used it for work and didn't have any other fb accts. I didn't personally add any address info to that acct, I ...	[ "Facebook has the ability for people to view your personal life with you posting picture, videos and updating your status. As of today Facebook is one of the most popular social media websites for multiple types of communication. Generally Facebook is used for communication with relatives and friends along with peo...
Why is chickenpox worse as an adult?	[ "It's mostly due to the difference in immune system between a child and an adult. A primary varicella zoster infection (chickenpox) in adulthood is indeed associated with increased risk of complications. Most of these complications are due to the intense response by the adult immune system that comes into contact w...	[ "\"chickenpox parties\". Doctors counter that children are safer getting the vaccine, which is a weakened form of the virus, rather than getting the disease, which can be fatal. Repeated exposure to chickenpox may protect against zoster. Other animals Humans are the only known species that the disease affects natur...
How do movies not get uploaded online in HD from movie theater employees before their DVD release?	[ "The theater will be fined a massive amount of money for allowing a leak, the person leaking it will be fined a massive amount of money for uploading it, and they automatically lose their job. This is a combination of copyright law violation and contracts that you sign when taking the job. So the risk are so extrem...	[ "sale on sites such as EBay, these are legal \"backup\" copies made from VHS cassettes.\nIn 2016, the film was officially released in the U.S. for Digital HD and Video On Demand and is available from digital retailers like iTunes and Amazon.", "allows users to play the film from any location via iTunes or Windows...
Can defense attorneys 'throw' a case if they know their clients are guilty?	[ "Yes, they could 'throw' a case.\n\nHowever, that's a serious ethics violation which would almost certainly cause disbarment if found out, and not only that, the conviction could then be appealed based on ineffective assistance of counsel (embodied in the 6th amendment).\n\nIf it makes it easier to wrap your head a...	[ "serious, prosecutors often can still bluff defense attorneys and their clients into pleading guilty to a lesser offense.\nAs a result, people who might have been acquitted because of lack of evidence, but also who are in fact truly innocent, will often plead guilty to the charge. Why? In a word, fear. And the more...
why, when intoxicated, does it feel like everything is spinning when you close your eyes but stops spinning when you open them?	[ "the fluid in your inner ear keeps you orientated and standing upwards, although when your drunk certain functions in your brain don't work as well or as they are meant to. So if you've had a bit too much to drink, your brain might not be able to tell which way is up and which way is down if your inner ears are mis...	[ "Spins The spins (as in having \"the spins\") is an adverse reaction of intoxication that causes a state of vertigo and nausea, causing one to feel as if \"spinning out of control\", especially when lying down. It is most commonly associated with drunkenness or mixing alcohol with other psychoactive drugs such as c...
Why are some fish bones edible, and others are not?	[ "They are small and soft so it does not matter if you swallow them, bigger and harder bones might get stuck in your throat and couse pain" ]	[ "of bones—is said to taste like cod or described as tasting like a cross between scallops and crabmeat. They are low in mercury because they do not eat other fish. To make the fish more appealing to American consumers, the fish have been renamed silverfin or Kentucky tuna. Volunteer efforts to increase the populari...
What's the meaning of the phrase "I've got a bone to pick with you."	[ "If you have a bone to pick with someone, it means they've annoyed or insulted you and you need to talk to them about it.\n\nAccording to the Oxford English Dictionary (via a thread in /r/etymology) \"a bone to pick\" originally meant something that occupies or distracts you (as a dog is occupied by picking at a bo...	[ "You're with me, leather \"You're with me, leather\" or YWML as it is also known, is a phrase popular with sports website Deadspin, its readers and fellow sports bloggers, and has grown into an Internet phenomenon. The phrase gained widespread popularity after an anecdote was submitted to Deadspin on April 11, 2006...
What is different in the brain chemistry that distinguishes thinking about moving my arm and actually moving it?	[ "Thought and motor cortex are separate. So you can think without acting." ]	[ "task, Haggard and Eimer asked subjects to decide not only when to move their hands, but also to decide which hand to move. In this case, the felt intention correlated much more closely with the \"lateralized readiness potential\" (LRP), an event-related potential (ERP) component that measures the difference betwee...
Why can't we just taste candy or Sweets and then spit it out to avoid its unhealthy attributes? What makes us swallow it to get satisfaction?	[ "You absolutely could. \n\nBut the fact is that evolution shaped our tastes. That's why fatty foods and sweet foods are so appealing to out taste buds. It is our bodies way of saying \"That has lots of calories and will help us avoid starving.\"\n\nThe 'satisfaction' you feel on swallowing it is simply the body say...	[ "reversed by simply tasting (but not swallowing or consuming) sweet beverages, which can have rewarding properties. Others have suggested that the taste of sugar (but not artificial sweetener) has psycho-physiological signaling effects.\nAn experiment by Segertrom (2007) and Solberg Nes, has shown that HRV (heart r...
Why are the things that taste the best bad for us?	[ "Let's think about this from an evolutionary perspective. Way back in the day, (like way way way back) humans struggled for food just like every other animal. It was to our species evolutionary advantage to pursue food that would keep us full longer, or provide more energy than other food options. Fats, are 9 calor...	[ "nerves, etc.; temperature, detected by thermoreceptors; and \"coolness\" (such as of menthol) and \"hotness\" (pungency), through chemesthesis.\nAs taste senses both harmful and beneficial things, all basic tastes are classified as either aversive or appetitive, depending upon the effect the things they sense have...
Why do you see weird colors when you press your eyes?	[ "If I had to take a guess, no expert, just had anatomy and physiology through college, I'd imagine it'd have something to do with the rods and cones in your eyes and the optic nerve. When you push on your eyes, you probably disrupt the innervation action of the rods and cones and it's just trying to adjust back. Ju...	[ "eye strain from squinting in order to read, or itching in the eye, but there is normally little or no sensation of pain. It may cause luminous objects to appear as cylindrical pipes with the same intensity at all points.\nThe classic symptom of keratoconus is the perception of multiple \"ghost\" images, known as m...
If a movie production has $5,000,000 (estimated) Budget, must some of that money go to the actors? or only movie's production quality?	[ "It has to include equipment, pay for employees (all cast, crew, and extras), fees, food on larger productions, constryucting sets, making costume,s all of the makeup artists, set design, sound guy, camera guy, lighting guy, dozens of other specific jobs, and yes, the actors.", "If it's a Jennifer lopez movie, ...	[ "back for a price around 90% of the original cost. On a $100 million film, a producer could make $10 million, minus fees to lawyers and middlemen.\nThis tactic favors big-budget films as the profit on more modestly budgeted films would be consumed by the legal and administrative costs.\nDespite its frequent use in ...
What classifies an island as an island? Aren't all continents etc essentially large islands?	[ "While not universally true (especially in the case of Europe who gets to be called its own continent for purely cultural/political reasons) A continent is considered to be the primary landmass on its tectonic plate.\n\nIf you look at a map of tectonic plates: _URL_0_\n\nYou can clearly see that with a few notable ...	[ "exist on Earth.\nIslands are frequently grouped with a neighbouring continent to divide all the world's land into geopolitical regions. Under this scheme, most of the island countries and territories in the Pacific Ocean are grouped together with the continent of Australia to form a geopolitical region called Ocea...
why does wikipedia ask for donations almost every month? do they really need it to not disappear?	[ "Wikipedia's biggest issue is that their amazing service requires constant overhead. So donations keep it running. Have you ever been inside a server location. That shit is cold, and cold is expensive.", "Like PBS, it relies on donations for operations. No donations = no money to pay for operations.\n\nEven if ...	[ "that the reason it is able to give such a large percentage of monthly donations is because it relies on larger contributions from foundations, corporations, and major individual donors to support management and administrative costs. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Donna Karan, Time Warner Cable, and Maybellin...
How does a water purifier jug work and could you put 3rd world ditch water through one and drink safely?	[ "The passive type of jug won't filter out bacteria and other things that can make you sick. There is a thing called [LifeStraw](_URL_0_) that can do this, but it forces water through a filter as you use it. Something like a reverse osmosis system can make water safe, but that also involves forcing water through a m...	[ "water system is a playground merry-go-round attached to a water pump. The spinning motion pumps underground water into a 2,500-liter tank raised seven meters above ground. The water in the tank is easily dispensed by a tap valve. According to the manufacturer the pump can raise up to 1400 liters of water per hour ...
Why people like getting drunk/sloshed/hammered/shit-faced ?	[ "Because only when you're passed out in a puddle of your own vomit can you silence the ennui and existential hum.\n\n\n Source: I'm Irish.", "For me it was because I didn't have much confidence at parties/it helped me socialize. I liked going to parties to meet people but didn't know how to meet people without...	[ "young girl crying with her makeup smeared as her sister looks at her from the doorway, and the caption, \"Who's following in your footsteps? Out of control drinking has consequences.\" The director of Rape Crisis Network Ireland said Diageo \"blames victims of sexual violence for the crimes that have been committe...
What happens when a "too-big-to-fail" bank goes bankrupt.	[ "> These assets wouldn't simply evaporate into the air\n\nThat's exactly what they'd do. That's what it means for a bank to fail—it means that they simply do not have the assets to cover all their liabilities. You can have a million dollars in your account according to a ledger book or a computer screen. But if the...	[ "bank panic is a financial crisis that occurs when many banks suffer runs at the same time, as people suddenly try to convert their threatened deposits into cash or try to get out of their domestic banking system altogether. A systemic banking crisis is one where all or almost all of the banking capital in a countr...
Why is the recent Apple vs. FBI encryption debate relevant years after the Snowden leaks (2013), passage of the PATRIOT Act (2001), and the ECHELON revelations (1988)?	[ "The Apple debate has nothing to do with the government's right to get the information. They had a warrant from a judge, who has way more certainty than probable cause to believe that the phone was used by someone who committed a crime. They also had permission from the owner of the phone (the guy's employer) to ac...	[ "leak stated that Apple had been a part of the government's surveillance program since 2012, however, Apple per their spokesman at the time, \"had never heard of it\".\nAccording to The New York Times, Apple developed new encryption methods for its iOS operating system, versions 8 and later, \"so deep that Apple co...
Why has the Mars Rover Opportunity's Lithium Ion Battery Lasted 11+ Years and the one in My Cell Phone/Laptop/Tablet Dies in Less Than 2?	[ "NASA requirements lean toward the 'overengineered' side (for good reason - if something goes wrong you can't replace it). The battery in your phone is more from the \"make it cheaper, they can always buy another battery\" school of engineering.\n\n(Just to clarify, I am not being cynical about phone/laptop batter...	[ "Once the batteries were depleted, it could only operate during the day. The batteries are lithium-thionyl chloride (LiSOCl2) and could provide 150 watt-hours. The batteries also allowed the health of the rover to be checked while enclosed in the cruise stage while en route to Mars.\n0.22 square meters of solar cel...
Why some bugs fly to lights.	[ "Navigating at night is hard. You can't really see anything, especially not distant landmarks.\n\nOnce upon a time, the most reliable \"landmark\" was the moon. Sure, the moon moves in the sky throughout the night, but if you just wanted to forage by covering a large area, following the moon (without moving higher ...	[ "and water boatmen. Occasionally diurnal species such as dragonflies, yellowjacket wasps, and hover flies will also visit.\nThe reason insects and especially particular families of insect (e.g. moths), are attracted to light is uncertain . The most accepted theory is that moth migrate using the moon and stars as na...
Why is sales tax in the US excluded from the list price?	[ "Because every state has a different tax rate on goods, so that would make putting tax into the price a little difficult", "It's a principle of transparency, letting the citizen know exactly what they are paying for the product and how much they are paying in taxes, which is something important as transparency go...	[ "of price and vice versa. In both cases, the consumers pay more for the good and while the sellers initially receive more money, after the tax is accounted for, they are left with less money than if there were no tax imposed. \nThe tax both raises the price the customers buy the good for and lowers the price the pr...
Why does a beer on tap almost always taste better than it does from a bottle?	[ "Probably because the keg has been better handled than the cases of beer have, and because bottles are not actually the best packages for beer. Light passes through the glass and can cause skunking, and oxygen can sneak in through the plastic seal in the crown, causing staling. Kegs are generally stored cold, and o...	[ "type of hops and even the time at which they are added are crucial factors in the taste of particular beers. Once all the wort is in the copper, boiling proceeds to extract the bitter flavours from the hops for an hour or so.\nThe spent hops are removed from the bitter liquor by decanting or 'casting' it into the ...
What is the significance of Jamaican Bobsled team qualifies for the Olympics?	[ "Let me tell you about a man...a great man...a man who helped the underdogs...a man who traveled by many forms...a man who loved his nieces and nephew. A man who left this world too early. \n\nThat mans name was John Candy.", "Kids these days...\n\nಠ_ಠ\n\nJamaica did bobsled in the Olympics before... despite mas...	[ "Jamaica national bobsleigh team Beginnings The team, consisting of Devon Harris, Dudley Stokes, Michael White, Freddy Powell, and last minute replacement Chris Stokes, debuted at the 1988 Winter Olympics in Calgary, Alberta. The team was coached by Howard Siler, an Olympic bobsledder for the United States in 1972...
Is it possible to build up an immunity to poisons both naturally occurring and man-made?	[ "Sort of. It's called [Mithridatism](_URL_0_), after a Roman-era king of Pontus (northern modern Turkey). But you can only do it with certain poisons; others just build up in your body until they kill you.", "No, not really.\n\n\"Immunity\" to toxins doesn't really happen. You can become more tolerant, but there ...	[ "effective as a poison, though moves to ban it over concerns about its toxicity have made it unavailable in some areas.\nTreatment for wild felids, however, is difficult for this parasite, as detection is the best way to find which individuals have the parasite. This can be difficult as infected species are hard t...
How do devices know the amount of charge left in a battery?	[ "I think the best way to explain this is through an analogy. Imagine you have two tanks of water. One has a lot of water and the other is empty. If you were to connect a pipe running from the bottom of one tank to the bottom of the other, water would flow through the pipe until both tanks have the same level of wat...	[ "Battery pack Calculating state of charge SOC, or state of charge, is the equivalent of a fuel gauge for a battery. SOC cannot be determined by a simple voltage measurement, because the terminal voltage of a battery may stay substantially constant until it is completely discharged. In some types of battery, elect...
Why are my muscles sore after jumping in cold water?	[ "From what I understand, our bodies defenses against hypothermia is to shiver. This involves involuntary muscle contractions to generate heat. These muscles contractions still can cause muscle soreness just like working out.", "Many athletes actually use a cold bath post workout to alleviate soreness. The idea ...	[ "intensity exercise while immersed or submersed. Exposure Cold shock response is the physiological response of organisms to sudden cold, especially cold water, and is a common cause of death from immersion in very cold water, such as by falling through thin ice. The immediate shock of the cold causes involuntary in...
why do we like watching the same TV show or movie over and over again?	[ "Our brains like familiar things. Something we already have seen is easier to get into than something brand new because it requires less attention and effort from our brain. It's also sometimes good watching a TV show knowing the ending (eg Black Mirror, Lost) as we can pick up on foreshadowing or minor details.", ...	[ "depend on well-established conventions may in the end exert a larger claim on our attention than their more pretentiously publicized rivals.... Convenient to turn on, easy to flick off, movies made for TV approximate the conditions under which all movies used to be chanced by audiences years ago...when at least ha...
why do the French have an abstain vote instead of people physically restraining from voting. [Other]	[ "It's like a protest vote. I live in Nevada where we are allowed to vote \"none of the above.\"\n\nIf \"none of the above\" wins, the candidate with the most votes still wins. It doesn't affect anything here.", "Abstain is a different thing from simply \"not voting.\"\n\nIf I don't vote, it could mean any numbe...	[ "responsibility to God and to the Government. Many Witnesses do not vote, while taking care to preserve neutrality and not compromise their faith. The law can also allow people to give a valid reason for why they did not vote.\nAnother argument against compulsory voting, prevalent among legal scholars in the Unite...
Why The Beatles broke up?	[ "It wasn't that they were mad at each other, although if you spend enough time with someone they can start to bother you, right? But you can still love someone who bothers you, right? So it wasn't really about that at all...\n\nRemember that toy you used to have when you were three, and how you got bigger and sma...	[ "I'm the Greatest Background and inspiration The Beatles broke up in April 1970, having achieved an unprecedented level of international fame for a musical act, and after helping to inspire many of the musical and cultural changes of the 1960s. In the eyes of the media and the public, the band members were divided ...
- Why do phones not require cooling vents but other small appliances do?	[ "Phones lack a cooling system because there's no room for that. It takes up way too much space for a pocket-size device. If that wasn't an issue, phones would've had vents.\n\nBesides, phones don't work as hard as other computers do. They are weaker, so they produce less heat. Still, they can get hot sometimes, esp...	[ "as in small form-factor PCs and laptops, or where no fan noise can be tolerated, as in audio production. Because of the efficiency of this method of cooling, many desktop CPUs and GPUs, as well as high end chipsets, use heat pipes in addition to active fan-based cooling to remain within safe operating temperature...
Why are oil prices so shockingly low?	[ "Someone feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, but my understanding is the Middle East put out so much supply to try and put US companies out of business which if successful they would then jack prices up and get money to themselves.", "It's all politics. What looks to be the main reason is that Saudi Arabia is l...	[ "Low oil prices could alleviate some of the negative effects associated with the resource curse, such as authoritarian rule and gender inequality. Lower oil prices could however also lead to domestic turmoil and diversionary war. The reduction in food prices that follows lower oil prices could have positive impacts...
If the inside of my microwave is made of metal, why is it bad to put metallic objects in it?	[ "The metal interior of the oven is grounded. It does pick up a charge from the microwaves, but the charge is dissipated to ground, and so does not arc. Your fork, or the foil on your plate, are not grounded, and thus the charge can build up until it is strong enough to arc to a grounded panel.", "Another thing to...	[ "added. The beryllium in such oxides is a serious chemical hazard if crushed then inhaled or ingested. In addition, beryllia is listed as a confirmed human carcinogen by the IARC; therefore, broken ceramic insulators or magnetrons should not be handled. This is a danger if the microwave oven becomes physically dama...
Why do we lack the instincts our ancestors had, e.g. telling you which foods are poisonous	[ "We still have them. Ever gone \"EW\" from spoiled food and decided not to eat it? Ever smelled something horrible and realized that it wasn't edible? \n\nThe issue is that we've realized that there's a lot more items out there can that kill us, and notice it. Our ancestors would have just died from eating it, and ...	[ "by congratulating them for being so lucky, because \"...after all, my ancestors used to eat their enemies.\"", "or holding poisons such as tubocurarine have been plainly found in their hunting weapons and tools, showing that early humans had discovered poisons of varying potency and applied them to their weapons...
Why do we wake up early when we don't have to but tend to wake up late when we need to be up?	[ "The simple answer is stress causes this.\n\nBy setting a schedule your body will fall into a rhythm. After a while you don't really need the alarm at all. However as we know our natural rythems get disturbed occasionally. When we must get up we are creating stress that is easiest to avoid by doing nothing and that...	[ "asked not to wake up an hour early but 3–4 hours early, while waking up \"normally\" may already be an unrecognized challenge imposed by the environment.\nThe bias toward early morning can also adversely affect adolescents in particular. Teenagers tend to require at least 9 full hours of sleep each night, and cha...
Why do tech/software companies stay in the US when they are demanded to include backdoors by the US government? Can't tech companies just develop and release their products overseas, out of reach of the US government's influence?	[ "The short answer is that it's not just the US government pushing to include \"backdoors.\" Tech companies could move to a country without these laws, but places like the US could restrict or prohibit them from selling their products in the US.\n\nThe better option is to follow Apple's example and refuse to build t...	[ "Bruce Schneier and Saranya Vijayakumar, Seidel co-authored a survey regarding the effectiveness of restrictions on the exports of encryption products from the United States on their availability in other countries, as well as laws requiring encryption software to be made with a backdoor that the government can acc...
with such an important vote like appointing a supreme court nomine, why is the senate floor so empty?	[ "Well, actually, that's not their one job. They also have to meet with people, work on legislation, and so on.\n\nMany of the Senators may be in their offices. When an important vote is called, they will come to the floor to vote. They can get from their offices to the floor in just a few minutes." ]	[ "States Senate, they are elected by their respective party conferences to serve as the chief Senate spokespeople for their parties and to manage and schedule the legislative and executive business of the Senate. By custom, the Presiding Officer gives the floor leaders priority in obtaining recognition to speak on t...
If you put tires on your car that are larger than the ones from the factory, would you actually be going slower than the reading on your speedometer?	[ "No, you'll actually be going faster. The speed is calculated based on the OEM tire size, whereas if you put a larger tire on, there is more circumference so the hub will spin slower, yet will be traveling the same speed.\n\nYou can have it recalibrated fairly cheaply.", "Example: Your car comes with factory-inst...	[ "of road dirt to avoid slipping or jamming. Error Most speedometers have tolerances of some ±10%, mainly due to variations in tire diameter. Sources of error due to tire diameter variations are wear, temperature, pressure, vehicle load, and nominal tire size. Vehicle manufacturers usually calibrate speedometers to ...
How does bugspray kills bugs?	[ "Bugspray is actually a chemical weapon. As in it shuts down biological functions bugs need to stay alive, like forgetting how to breathe for example. It can also cause military chemical weapons detection gear to register false positives." ]	[ "bugs are known for the \"edge effect\", in which they tend to infest crops 30–40 ft from the edge of the field. Farmers who suspect having stink bugs in their crops should contact their respective departments of agriculture for information on how to manage the infestation and possible ways to prevent future incide...
The FairTax plan	[ "The fair tax is regressive but it offers up citizens a prebate to offset their costs. \n\nBenefits \n\n* You are taxing consumption instead of production so it's seen as a more just system. \n* The stress on working household would be lessened since exemptions can be made for food or necessities. \n\nDisadvantages...	[ "Plan X Plan X is a Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) program, which seeks to develop a defensive platform for the Department of Defense to plan for, conduct, and assess cyberwarfare in a manner similar to kinetic warfare. Towards this end, the program will bridge cyber communities of interest from ...
What is slowing down our internet speeds?	[ "ISP backbones tend to oversell their bandwidth, because not everyone is using their maximum allocation all the time, so there would be unused potential that isn't generating profits. This is how your neighbors can slow you down. Much of your connection is just you and your wire until you get to some shared trunk.\...	[ "provided quantitative evidence of the impact of Internet speed on online video users. Their research studied the patience level of millions of Internet video users who waited for a slow-loading video to start playing. Users with faster Internet connectivity, such as fiber-to-the-home, demonstrated less patience an...
If a computer has a GPU, why would reducing GUI effects impact performance?	[ "The program has to be written to take advantage of that hardware. The Windows GUI, for example, being your desktop - that rendering code was written before hardware acceleration was ubiquitous. All of your windows, button, and icons are all rendered \"in software\", aka on your CPU. And your CPU isn't designed spe...	[ "more direct methods of accessing the hardware are perhaps its scaling capabilities and its abstract representation of target devices. Using GDI, it is very easy to draw on multiple devices, such as a screen and a printer, and expect proper reproduction in each case. This capability is at the center of most What ...
What happens if you don't pay your US Federal income tax?	[ "I'm no expert on Constitutional Law, but where did you hear that the US income tax has no basis in law and is unconstitutional? The entire purpose of the [16th amendment](_URL_0_) was to make the income tax permanent. It was ratified almost a century ago.\n\nPeople aren't tricked into paying it for no reason, you ...	[ "concluded that the income tax laws could not constitutionally require him to pay a tax.\nThe Court continued:\nWe do not believe that Congress contemplated that such a taxpayer, without risking criminal prosecution, could ignore the duties imposed upon him by the Internal Revenue Code and refuse to utilize the mec...
Why does my employer require a voided personal check in order to setup direct deposit?	[ "Your banks routing number and your account number as well as your name exactly as it is written on your account are all printed on the check. That is the information they need to set up direct deposit. With the check they can be sure there are no mistakes." ]	[ "check deception statute states that it is a defense if the person issuing the check \"pays the payee or holder the amount due, together with protest fees and any service fee or charge, ... within ten (10) days after the date of mailing by the payee or holder of notice to the person that the check, draft, or order ...
Why are the insides of Ovens Dark and Not Metallic or Mirror Like?	[ "How often do you polish the inside of your oven? I suspect a big reason would be just to keep the interior from quickly looking horrible.", "The inside walls of an oven are at the same temperature as the interior of the oven (usually hotter, actually). So any heat they do absorb is just going to be re-emitted b...	[ "surface mirror such as a household mirror is often actual silver the \"silvering\" on precision optical instruments such as telescopes is usually aluminum. Even though silver has the best initial front-surface reflectivity in the visible spectrum it is unsuitable for optical mirrors because it quickly oxidizes and...
Why does metal react so violently when microwaved?	[ "The way microwaves work is through jiggling charged/polar particles in your food (the water primarily). This jiggling increases their temperature and that heats up the rest of your food. That's why you can't heat oil as easily as you can water.\n\nHowever, metals like iron are great conductors of electrons. What...	[ "inherent to any form of cooking, the rapid cooking and unattended nature of the use of microwave ovens results in additional hazard. Metal objects Any metal or conductive object placed into the microwave will act as an antenna to some degree, resulting in an electric current. This causes the object to act as a hea...
Derivatives (in financial markets) and how people make money off of them	[ "Derivatives are kind of what they sound like, products derived from the value of other things.\n\nA very common type of Derivative is the Future.\n\nA Wheat Farmer is growing 50 tons of wheat, but it won't be harvested until 3 months from now, but he wants to lock in the price he's going to get for it now. \nSo he...	[ "Fund derivative Example For example, the purchaser may be attracted by a fund's star manager, performance history or strategy, whilst improving their counter-party risk and getting leverage, currency hedging or a capital guarantee via the derivative. Features The structured product may be investible by retail clie...
How did the American accent come about?	[ "It's not so much that Americans developed a distinct accent, but rather that speech on both sides of the Atlantic changed significantly, with both sides diverging quite a bit from what they had sounded like earlier on. This process is still happening, with accents on the Canadian and US sides of the great lakes u...	[ "while other accents, like of New York City and Boston, have remained stable in that same time-frame. However, a General American sound system also has some debated degree of influence nationwide, for example, gradually beginning to oust the regional accent in urban areas of the South and at least some in the Inlan...
Why do The Miranda Rights state that anything you say can "and will" be used against you. If something's not incriminating why would it be used against you? Why would cops be forced to admit this up front?	[ "Its just to put emphasis on the fact that they will use any and all evidence against you that they can, including anything you say or do.", "The rights are telling you, anything you say , whether you think it is incriminating or not, can be used against you by someone following the letter of the law. This is t...	[ "might look with hostility on congressional attempts to rein in the scope of the Miranda rule, the Supreme Court itself is willing to interpret narrowly the protections that Miranda affords criminal defendants. And it is willing to reach relatively far to do so.\" \nOther legal responses included Stanford Universit...
Why is it when you rewind VHS tapes they lose their quality over time?	[ "Since rewinding needs to be done for each playback, what makes you think it is the rewinding which causes quality loss? Tapes lose quality over time whether you play them or not due to breakdown of the binder and dry lubricant. Rewinding is no more damaging than playback if the VCR is functioning correctly. \n\nTh...	[ "stored indefinitely without deterioration, some digital formats (like MiniDV) place tracks only about 10 micrometers apart (compared with 19–58 μm for VHS). A digital recording is more vulnerable to wrinkles or stretches in the tape which could erase data, but tracking and error-correction code on the tape compens...
When a new library is built, where do they get their books? I understand many can be bought brand new from publishers. But, what about the old books, or the vast volumes of dated encyclopedias, dated periodicals, etc...	[ "Librarian here.\n\nA lot of that stuff comes from stores and reserves from other libraries in the system. My library authority has been around since 1890 and has accumulated decades of stuff that due to archiving policies /librarian OCD hoarding we never throw out, For example we have 23 libraries in our group w...	[ "The Last Bookstore History The store was founded in 2005 by Josh Spencer. The first incarnation was a downtown Los Angeles loft. They sold books and other things online only, then focused on books, opened a small bookstore in December 2009 on 4th and Main streets. They moved to the current incarnation in the Sprin...
What was the Beat Generation about? Were Beatniks a stereotype or a factual reflection of this philosophy?	[ "Basically, in the 1950s things were very ... basic. Conservative values reigned, the biggest fashion was \"normal\". Some today still think of this as our golden age (unless you're a minority or a woman), but everything was very inside-the-box type thinking. Buy a house with a white picket fence, get a job at the ...	[ "embraced the beatniks, or at least found the parodies humorous (Ginsberg, for example, appreciated the parody in the comic strip Pogo) others criticized the beatniks as inauthentic poseurs. Jack Kerouac feared that the spiritual aspect of his message had been lost and that many were using the Beat Generation as an...
If the ozone layer is made up of O3, why are we not producing some of it ourselves and pumping more of them into the atmosphere to fix the problem faster?	[ "> Ozone is a powerful oxidizing agent, far stronger than O2. It is also unstable at high concentrations, decaying to ordinary diatomic oxygen. [...] In a sealed chamber, with fan moving the gas, ozone has a half-life of approximately a day at room temperature.\n\n_URL_0_\n\nTL;DR: It is very unstable. It w...	[ "because there are no by-products. When its job is done, ozone gas quickly degrades into oxygen. Ozone is more effective than chlorine in destroying viruses and bacteria.\nIn 1990, the Organic Foods Production Act (OFPA) identified aqueous ozone as a substance that is allowed for use in organic crop and livestock p...
What is Gene therapy?	[ "Say you have a recipe for a chocolate cake. Except instead of saying 1 cup of sugar, the recipe says 1 cup of salt. Every time someone makes a cake using that recipe, it's going to taste like crap.\n\nModern medicine is like trying to fix the cake once it's already made. You can add sugar to the top of the cake af...	[ "of the disorders in an attempt to improve patient quality of life.\nGene therapy refers to a form of treatment where a healthy gene is introduced to a patient. This should alleviate the defect caused by a faulty gene or slow the progression of disease. A major obstacle has been the delivery of genes to the appropr...
Is it possible to be a 'man without a country'?	[ "It is entirely possible to be such a person, it's called statelessness.\n\nAt one point, Einstein was stateless. However, renouncing your citizenship means you have no protection by any state. This is very bad, as we are as a species very largely reliant on our respective corporate states of the world.\n\nI person...	[ "their own country, and dare not return. And in many cases the crime that they have committed is, I suspect, the unpardonable crime of poverty. Women who have held some kind of social position in their own country, and become impoverished, develop the not unreasonable idea that they can live more cheaply, and with ...
How do the grooves on a record/LP actually recreate the sound of a full orchestra?	[ "Think of every single instrument making their vibrations - some loud, some soft, some brash, some smooth, some at one pitch, others at another.\n\nEvery one of those vibrations add up together and bounce against your eardrum in beautiful chaos. The specific way your eardrum vibrates as a result of all that is wha...	[ "recorded locked groove at the end, it is possible to record sound into the lead-in groove. King Crimson's USA (mentioned above) has this feature. George Harrison's Wonderwall Music and the Dead Kennedys' Plastic Surgery Disasters also start in the lead-in groove. Parallel grooves Also known as concentric grooves, ...
In the English language, how are contractions prioritized when a word can belong to two different contractions?	[ "It's a matter of emphasis. \"We aren't going\" could be simply spoken, or the \"we\" could be emphasized (an emphasis that is lost in simple text). Similarly \"We're not going\" could be used to emphasize the \"not\" part. Beyond that it's preference. The stylistic choices of language are everywhere, and it's one ...	[ "English auxiliaries and contractions Contractions Contractions are a common feature of English, used frequently in ordinary speech. In written English, contractions are used in some formal writing and mostly in informal writing. They usually involve the elision of a vowel – an apostrophe being inserted in its plac...
Eating things from other planets or moons.	[ "There is a big piece to this question which is not intuitive: chirality. Basically, the food we eat is useful to our bodies because the molecules can be used to build or repair our cells or can be turned into energy. Either way, our cells make use of chemicals called enzymes that are basically molecule sized tools...	[ "the creatures began to eat greedily, and due to the huge amount of the mud substance they could feed on it for a very long time.\nAs they ate and ate, their luminous body began to be coated by the mud substance, formed a coarser body, then suddenly, the sun and moon were seen, so were the stars, and also Night and...
The Cuban Missle Crisis and Americas enormous beef with Cuba, what happened there?	[ "The beef wasn't with Cuba, the beef was with the USSR. The Soviets were trying to use their communist ally in The West as a beachhead for terror. (Not the modern definition of terror, the old-fashioned one). By placing ICBMs in Cuba (aimed at the United States) they wanted to cast a cloak of fear over the U.S. ...	[ "the Cuban-American community of Miami were all involved. The climactic stage of this prolonged battle was the April 22, 2000, seizure of Elián by federal agents, which drew the criticism of many in the Cuban-American community. During the controversy, Alex Penelas, the mayor of Miami-Dade County at the time, vowed...
How do you build a Nanorobot..?	[ "Weeeeellllllllllll... the title 'nanorobot' is a bit misleading in this case, they actually genetically engineered some salmonella bacteria (non harmful versions of it at least) to seek out cancer cells. They also filled the bacteria with cancer killing drugs and programmed it to explode on contact with a cancerou...	[ "practical nanorobots should be integrated as nanoelectronics devices, which will allow tele-operation and advanced capabilities for medical instrumentation. Nubots A nucleic acid robot (nubot) is an organic molecular machine at the nanoscale. DNA structure can provide means to assemble 2D and 3D nanomechanical dev...
Why doesn't it rain salt water?	[ "When water evaporates, it gets heated to an extent that the water particles move faster and spread apart, which causes them to become \"lighter\" than the air around them, turning into water vapor, a gas. Due to this, they rise up into the atmosphere. Then, they start to cool down, and become liquid again. When th...	[ "environmental flows. There is no water allocation for the purpose of salt export to the sea. When rain water comes in contact with the soil, it picks up some salts in dissolved form from the soil. The total amount of dissolved salts contained in the river water has to reach sea without accumulating in the river ba...
Why can't we use a centrifuge to de-salinate ocean water?	[ "A centrifuge is typically used to separate a heterogeneous mixture of solid and liquid by spinning it. Salt water is a solution, so if it is even possible, I am sure the energy, time and expense are enormous." ]	[ "to control the nozzle. During sludging, the water is injected to open the nozzle and drained to close it. Oil and gas industry Conical plate centrifuge can be used to remove water, salts and solids to condition fuels for gas turbine. It also removes some heavy phase liquid and fine solids to obtain high purity liq...
Why do most viral videos now have licensing info in the description box?	[ "I'm not sure whether you mean licensing info for the video itself or for 3rd part content in the video, but if it's the former then people angling to create viral videos will want to exert their creative rights over it in case it really does take off, because viral things like Grumpy Cat and Nyan Cat can end up be...	[ "which can be difficult to obtain when broadcasters and agencies insist on full ownership of the footage. The other difficulty can be trying to find distribution beyond established contacts. Increasingly, online companies are giving VJs the opportunity to keep ownership of their stories and find global distribution...
What is a MAC Address?	[ "It's a unique device address given to each piece of network connected hardware. It's different from an IP address because it's permanent: every device has one and only one MAC address, but it is given a new IP address every time it connects. \n\nEdit: You can think of the MAC address as a device's permanent name, ...	[ "MAC address A media access control address (MAC address) of a device is a unique identifier assigned to a network interface controller (NIC). For communications within a network segment, it is used as a network address for most IEEE 802 network technologies, including Ethernet, Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth. Within the Ope...
How are adept music players able to just start playing along to anything that someone else plays and have it sound good?	[ "i’m a drummer so i’m not speaking for guitarists/bassists here.\n\nin drums there’s basically three things to improvisation - the time signature, the tempo and confidence (in my experience). \n\nthe time signature is pretty easy to find out - you only need to listen to one bar to figure it out really. \ntime signa...	[ "Playing by ear Method Learning music by ear is done by repeatedly listening to other musicians, either their live shows or sound recordings of their songs, and then attempting to recreate what one hears. Audiation involves hearing sounds mentally, although on a different level than just \"hearing a song in one's ...
Why drill instructor in the army never stop screaming at recruit in the army?	[ "> What's the point of screaming at people like that?\n\nIt is intended to rattle the recruits mentally, making them feel like they are incapable and useless. The idea is to break their self-esteem and then the group will be given tasks where the support of the entire unit is necessary to succeed. To drive the poi...	[ "commands respect throughout the Army. Currently, soldiers of appropriate rank (usually Staff Sergeants and Sergeants First Class ) may volunteer or be centrally selected by U.S. Army Human Resources Command to attend Drill Sergeant School. Those centrally selected are known as \"DA Selected\" meaning Department ...
if i ground up a piece of pure iron and ate it, would my body abosorb it the same way as iron from food? if not, how do they make iron supplements absorb-able?	[ "You eat shaved iron every time you have breakfast cereal. If you take total cereal, crush it up, add a little milk to make a broth consistancy, and stir it with a strong magnet, you will see actual iron shavings sticking to your magnet.\n\n_URL_0_", "If you ground it up enough, your body would be able to absorb ...	[ "iron. Although a lower percentage of non-heme iron is absorbed by the body, greater total amounts of non-heme iron are concentrated in many non-meat sources of iron, and therefore breakfast cereals, eggs, nuts, seeds, and legumes (including soy foods, peas, beans, chickpeas, and lentils) are significant sources of...
Whats is the actual cause of the common itch. and why is scratching it the cure?	[ "1: dead skin\n\n2: your body's reaction to get rid of it.\n\nBonus: a lot of dust in your house is said dead skin." ]	[ "relative to the condition, a common view suggests that the initial cause of the itch may have passed, and that the illness is in fact prolonged by what is known as an itch-scratch-itch cycle. It states that scratching the itch encourages the release of inflammatory chemicals, which worsen redness, intensifies itch...
When popcorn is popping, what is actually happening to the kernel inside?	[ "As the kernel is heated, the moisture and oils are being heated inside. Since the outer shell of popping corn is strong and mostly impenetrable, there is no place for the heat and pressure to go and the insides are superheated. The starches inside, which are normally hard, begin to soften in a process called gelat...	[ "popped corn. While the kernels may come in a variety of colors, the popped corn is always off-yellow or white as it is only the hull (or pericarp) that is colored. \"Rice\" type popcorn have a long kernel pointed at both ends; \"pearl\" type kernels are rounded at the top. Commercial popcorn production has moved m...
What happens to your brain when you space out?	[ "There are two kinds of spacing out. There is background processing - thinking about stuff that isn't apparent to you consciously, and basically resting your mind. \n\nFor most of evolutionary history, energy was the limiting factor for most species. Sleeping is not only helpful for repairing your body, but also fo...	[ "the position and structure of the brain have been found in astronauts who have taken trips in space, based on MRI studies. Astronauts who took longer space trips were associated with greater brain changes.\nBeing in space can be physiologically deconditioning on the body. It can affect the otolith organs and adapt...
What is the point of a Kroger's Shopper card?	[ "The general idea is that by offering a discount card, you will shop more frequently at that specific chain than others (although in reality, this isn't often the case). They may also collect your email to send you regular marketing ads, in hopes of bringing you in.\n\nIf the extra profit generated from you buying...	[ "Cashier as a service Cashier as a service (CaaS) refers to using a third party service as payment. When a shopper buys merchandise online, oftentimes, the shopper does not pay the merchant directly, but rather through a third party – the cashier. The cashier is trusted by both the shopper and the merchant and is e...
What is a floating neutral and why is it damaging to appliances?	[ "Coming into your house you have two phases which are both 120VAC relative to neutral but are of inverse phase so they're 240VAC relative to each other.\n\nA floating neutral is when your neutral connection opens for some reason, a wire might break. When this happens, it means that the electricity can't flow in ...	[ "Floating ground Most electrical circuits have a ground which is electrically connected to the Earth, hence the name \"ground\". The ground is said to be floating when this connection does not exist.\nConductors are also described as having a floating voltage if they are not connected electrically to another non-fl...
Why haven't our bodies changed to make childbirth less painful?	[ "So the only way that the process of childbirth would change is through evolution of some kind. The only way evolution happens is if the genetically superior reproduce and those who aren’t die. Theoretically if there was a woman who could go through childbirth totally painlessly and she passed that trait on to her ...	[ "example, using a birthing ball), hot and cold therapy (for example, using hot compresses and/or cold packs), and receiving one-on-one labor support like that provided by a midwife or doula. However, natural childbirth proponents maintain that pain is a natural and necessary part of the labor process, and should no...
American TV shows compared to The rest of the world.	[ "The amount of American hate / bashing on Reddit is amazing.", "Don't act like we Americans don't notice this shit, too.", "They make it into a drama type show to get more people interested. Most Americans wouldn't watch it if it was like the British version because it's not \"interesting\" enough for them.", ...	[ "in more recent years include The Apprentice and Deal or No Deal. Popular American television shows that are currently popular in the United Kingdom include The Big Bang Theory, CSI: Crime Scene Investigation series, Family Guy, Friends, Modern Family, Scrubs, The Simpsons, and South Park.\nThe BBC airs two network...
How do people add colour so accurately to black and white photos?	[ "It's basically painting a transparent picture on top of the black-and-white, and the B/W image provides much of the shading. \n\nIn the days before photoshop, you had actual transparent inks with limited tints to choose from, and that's why old hand-colorized photos often look more cartoony.\n\nNow, you can pick f...	[ "photographs such as a background shot (rocks and a waterfall) one or more human figures, and more often than not a product shot (a cigarette pack) to produce a \"strip in\". Using the same dyes for photographically printing the images and for retouching meant that colour matching by eye would not show up different...
How do service animals help autistic children?	[ "Multiple ways, and by the way it's not just autistic children who can benefit from service animals.\n\nAmong other things:\n\n* service animals can detect the early signs of a meltdown or shutdown, which are things often (but not exclusively) triggered by sensory overstimulation, and can provide a prompt to leav...	[ "Additionally, children with autism demonstrated increased verbal abilities and social interaction during therapy sessions when animals were present compared to traditional therapy sessions without them. The Difference Between Service and Therapy Dogs Service dogs are trained to assist patients in their day to day ...
Why do books downloaded from the library need to be "returned" after a given amount of time?	[ "> This makes no sense because downloads are not limited like physical copies of books are.\n\nDownloads are limited in the sense that the library has to pay for every copy of a book that they own, including digital copies. So they pay the publisher $X for permission to lend some fixed number of digital copies. A...	[ "books intended for the rigors of library use and are largely serials and paperback publications. Though many publishers have started to provide \"library binding\" editions, many libraries elect to purchase paperbacks and have them rebound in hard covers for longer life. Conservation and restoration Conservation a...
How does Stephen Hawking's speech computer work?	[ "He has a small sensor in his mouth and uses his cheek muscle to type with it. His computer also has the ability to predict and correct words for him." ]	[ "Hawking had to write all his lines on his computer, while the staff recorded them by placing a microphone in front of the computer's speaker. \"It's easy to do a fake Stephen Hawking in your comedy TV show\", Selman said in the DVD commentary for the episode. \"Any computer can sound just like his computer, but ev...
If a self-driving car detects multiple courses of action (all of which will likely result in human injury) how will it determine which course to take?	[ "It will do whatever it is programed to do in that situation. Self driving cars are not true conscious A.I - they are just really, really complex \"if...then\" programs. If it gets into a situation where an accident is unavoidable, it will do what its programing tells it to do in that situation.\n\nAs far as liab...	[ "vehicle systems included tools to automatically adjust vehicle speed using headway sensor data, to alert the driver if a sensor detects an object with high probability of collision, to alert the driver when the car is not centered on its lane, and tools monitoring fuel usage. The study showed a decrease of safety ...
why does spicy food make me sweat?	[ "\"The answer hinges on the fact that spicy foods excite the receptors in the skin that normally respond to heat. Those receptors are pain fibers, technically known as polymodal nociceptors. They respond to temperature extremes and to intense mechanical stimulation, such as pinching and cutting; they also respond t...	[ "spiciness or hotness) Substances such as ethanol and capsaicin cause a burning sensation by inducing a trigeminal nerve reaction together with normal taste reception. The sensation of heat is caused by the food's activating nerves that express TRPV1 and TRPA1 receptors. Some such plant-derived compounds that provi...
If there are no size regulations regarding goalies in the NHL, why doesn't a team just throw some really obese person out there to block the whole net?	[ "An NHL goal is 6 feet wide by 4 feet wide. I doubt there's many people actually large enough to block that entire area. And if there is someone that big, I doubt they'd be able to stand up and skate their way out to the net.", "Also take into consideration that the NHL does have restrictions on pad size. Lets sa...	[ "the NHL, a team always has at least three skaters on the ice. Thus, ten-minute misconduct penalties are served in full by the penalized player, but his team may immediately substitute another player on the ice unless a minor or major penalty is assessed in conjunction with the misconduct (a two-and-ten or five-and...
If animals aren't aware that they are going to die, why would they try so hard to survive?	[ "Because they are genetically programmed to. It's evolution. Individuals that do not try to survive are not able to live long enough to reproduce - or in some species' cases, to care for their young either (imagine a mother dying and leaving her babies helpless).\n\nTrying to survive doesn't mean you need any speci...	[ "amount of threats and need approximately the same amount of protection (at the relative timescale of the animals) as large animals with fewer natural enemies that grow more slowly (e.g. that many small carnivores that could not eat even a very young human child could easily eat multiple very young blind meerkats)....
How can a computer come up with a "random" number?	[ "Generally yes, anything generated by an algorithm can be reproduced if you know the \"initial\" settings. Numbers generated this way are referred to as \"psuedorandom\". \n\nThere do, however, exist various dedicated hardware solutions that allow computers to pick truly random numbers. They work by basically insta...	[ "Pseudorandomness History The generation of random numbers has many uses (mostly in statistics, for random sampling, and simulation). Before modern computing, researchers requiring random numbers would either generate them through various means (dice, cards, roulette wheels, etc.) or use existing random number tab...
Why are scars near impossible to get rid of?	[ "Scar tissue is different to normal skin. It contains more collagen than regular tissue, and doesn't structure the same as regular skin, which is why it looks so different. It's also less flexible.\n\nThe benefits to having scar tissue is the body can recover from wounds exceptionally quickly - many animals can't...	[ "Scar free healing Scar versus scar free healing Scarring takes place in response to damaged or missing tissue following injury due to biological processes or wounding: it is a process that occurs in order to replace the lost tissue. The process of scarring is complex, it involves the inflammatory response and remo...
Why don't developed countries make their own clothing without child labour?	[ "Because it's cheaper to have it made in other countries.", "Its not the technology; remember, much of that technology was invented here in the US. Plain and simple, a shirt (and just about anything) from Mexico, Thailand, or Bangladesh is $2-3 cheaper wholesale than American made (in general. Source: former scre...	[ "children are in the employment of which 170 million of them are engaged in textiles and garments industry in developing countries. In hopes of earning a living, many girls in these countries, such as Bangladesh and India, are willing to work at low wages for long working hours, said Sofie Ovaa, an officer of Stop ...
Two spaceships are travelling towards each other at speed of light..	[ "First thing's first, neither ship can travel at the speed of light. As long as they have mass, it just can't happen. This isn't some silly nitpicky thing, it's fundamental to the theories of relativity, and it really honestly doesn't make sense to talk about massive things travelling at the speed of light.\n\nBut ...	[ "appear different in the two frames. Planetary reference frame From the planetary frame of reference, the ship's speed will appear to be limited by the speed of light—it can approach the speed of light, but never reach it. If a ship is using 1 g constant acceleration, it will appear to get near the speed of light i...
Why can we eat sushi raw but not other meats?	[ "The short answer is: If it's clean, you can.\n\nWeather we can eat a food raw or not depends on if it carries things that might make us sick, or might have picked up something that would make us sick. \n\nIn particular, with Sushi, fish is processed in methods that separate the \"dirty\" bits quickly, and complet...	[ "and products made from raw milk, and raw eggs.\nStudies have associated raw food dieting with loss of body weight and low bone mass.\nOne review stated that \"Many raw foods are toxic and only become safe after they have been cooked. Some raw foods contain substances that destroy vitamins, interfere with digestiv...
Why is it when oil prices go up gas prices immediately go up but when oil prices come down the price of gas never comes down as fast as when the price of oil increases?	[ "On TV, when the price of gas goes up, they say they have no choice but to sell it higher in gas stations too.\n\nBut when the price goes down, they say that they had already bought a lot of gas when it was higher so they cannot lower the prices immediately or they'd lose money on it.\n\nThere is probably a good ex...	[ "not caused significant changes in oil prices and that fundamental supply and demand factors provide the best explanation for the crude oil price increases. The report found that the primary reason for the price increases was that the world economy had expanded at its fastest pace in decades, resulting in substanti...
How does a linear induction motor work?	[ "Alright, the only word in there you gotta worry about is 'induction'. 'Motor' just means it moves stuff, and 'linear' just means it moves stuff in a straight line (or close to it). \nAs for 'induction': When you've got electricity moving, it can create a magnetic field (i.e. what magnets make). That magnetic fiel...	[ "element ( the \"field winding\") which may be connected by brushes or slip rings to an external source of electric current. In an induction motor, the \"field\" winding of the rotor is energized by the slow relative motion between the rotating winding and the rotating magnetic field produced by the stator winding,...
Does time ever end, or is the future infinite?	[ "That's a really good question, as if deals with the metaphysical in a physical context; basically, the universe will end before time ends, so we have no real way of knowing. However, one could argue that time will end when physical existence ends; in that case, the end of time will come with the end of the Univers...	[ "no point will the actual measure of the line become infinite. Likewise, time itself, whether measured by minutes or millennia, cannot comprise an actual infinity. Therefore, the temporal world cannot have existed forever.\nIn a follow up article, \"Talking About God\", Goldblatt teases out the ramifications of his...

Subsets and Splits

No community queries yet

The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.