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How are police sketch artists able to draw people relatively accurately based on descriptions? | It's something of an open question whether they are all that accurate. Often they are accurate only in the gross details (hair colour, large nose, etc) and aren't otherwise recognisable. It's quite rare for a suspect to be identified purely on the basis of an accurate sketch, though. |
Why do most song lengths seem to fall between 2 and 4 minutes? | Much of the answer has to do with the length limitations of vinyl 7" 45 rpm singles, which for many years were the primary means of promoting a single song. You can only fit about 3 minutes of music onto a 45 rpm single. So historically, if you wanted to write a hit pop song, you had to keep it under that length. More ... |
What is that falling feeling you get in your stomach when you go down a hill in a car or rollercoaster | Did you ever jump into a cool swimming pool or river or something, and notice after five minutes or so that it's no longer cold? That's because your body 'gets used' to things after a bit. Your body is used to gravity (and in fact evolved to take advantage of gravity). So you don't even notice that your insides... and... |
Why is the sea made out of salt water? | Almost all natural water contains salts and other minerals including rivers and sweet water lakes just in different levels. Rivers flow constantly so the salt they pick up from the ground does not have time to build up to the point where it tastes salty. But oceans and lakes get all of this salt poured into them by the... |
What do investment bankers actually do? Goldman Sachs, etc. | treedick is speaking about regular banks that give loans..not investment bank. Let's take Goldman Sachs' Investment Banking division Basically, they underwrite securities. Facebook is going public, they go to an investment bank to help them raise capital. Investment banks are financial intermediaries. |
Why is it okay to say racist things about white people and sexist things about men but not the other way around? | If you want the actual explanation for why some people say this, it is the following: People *claim* that it isn't actually racism because racism = prejudice + power. So if you are a historically disadvantaged group (therefore less power), nothing you do can be racist. It can be bigoted, intolerant, or ignorant - but n... |
What is bad about universities like the University of Phoenix and DeVry? | They admit anyone who has (or can borrow) the money to pay them, regardless of whether they are ready or able to do the coursework. They provide subpar education at excessive cost. Their graduates tend to find themselves not particularly employable, and in a lot of debt. |
How do wireless speakers work? | Just like radio. There is a transmitter and a reciever. In the case of Bluetooth, the transmitter is something like a smartphone. Then the speaker recieves the signal, and amplifies it. |
how do people deep fry ice cream? Wouldn't it melt? | First of all the ice cream for this is frozen at extremely cold temps, then it is quickly battered and fried, so while the ice cream softens up a little....it is still plenty cold. |
Why does my nose get runny when I eat/drink something hot. | Spicy foods irritate the mucus membranes in your head and lungs. Your body reacts to this by making you create mucus, to coat and protect you from whatever may be causing the irritation. You also tear to protect your eyes, which drains into your nose, exacerbating your snot nose. You can also sweat because your body t... |
Someone dies before they get a chance to retire. What happens to all of their social security benefits? | Immediate family of the deceased are eligible to receive the deceased benefits under certain situations, in part or full. Kids get less than spouses. When an unmarried, no kids, divorced, or already widowed person died, the payment liability disappears. The gov doesn't have to pay anyone. |
Is Magneto (from X-Men) good or bad? | Think of Magneto (and Charles Xavier) as ideologies. X-Men has always been a metaphor for people who are different, marginalized, etc. Thinking back to the Civil Rights struggles of the 1960's (when X-Men was created), you had people advocating non-violent protest (Martin Luther King Jr.) and you had people who were, ... |
Why does Bayern Munchen/Munich have the 2 names, and which one is "correct"? | Bayern is English for Beieren. Beieren is a province located in the south of Germany. Munich is English for München. München is a city located in the province of Beieren. |
The controversy surrounding the 2000 election (George W. Bush vs Al Gore) | It was an extremely close race, the deciding state being Florida. 537 more Floridians voted for Bush than for Gore, but across the board, in the entire country, Gore got more of the popular vote. So the supreme court made the decision that since Bush won Florida, the deciding state, by a margin of 537 votes, that Bush ... |
What's the difference between a flash drive and external hard drive? | An external hard disk is called as such because it utilizes a Hard Disk Drive (HDD). One of these drives has a metal platter with different magnetic sections, called sectors, that are read by a small magnetic sensor called a head on the end of an actuator arm. Many people are now moving over to flash storage, however, ... |
Why are colleges and universities so different from each other (Yale vs a local community college) but all of the information taught in school is the same for their respected fields ? | I studied physics at a reasonably high-ranked school, and I can tell you definitively that 90% of what I learned that actually stuck was from working with other students, not from lectures. The caliber of fellow students is hugely important in my opinion, and you simply get better students at better schools. I also con... |
How do various worms dig into people, and how do we not feel it? | they normally enter through food when they are very very small. alternately there are some parasites who can enter through cuts that already exist in the skin. |
why are transgender issues suddenly all over the place? | Causes are fashion for many people. And transgender issues are currently the most fashionable. I say this as someone who fully believes that trans people deserve equality and freedom from persecution, but also as someone who recognises that people clearly bandwagon. |
How can clams grow shells? | In a very similar manner to how humans grow bones and teeth. They capture the elements they need to form them from their environment, and react them together in such a way as to deposit a solid mineral in the places they need it. |
Black athletes with hyphenated names | No I meant why is it so prevalent in black athletes. I know about hyphenated names with divorced parents. I want to know why it seems to only occur in black athletes and not in other races IN SPORTS. |
I had a fruit fly wander into my microwave and I decided to nuke him for 3 minutes, for science of course, and in the end the little bugger flew out. How is this possible? | 1. The insect is too small to act as an efficient receiver of microwave energy. 2. There area areas within the machine that get far less energy, and (by moving from hot to not-hot areas) the fly can seek them out. |
what is "old man" strength? | Nobody's mentioned this, so I figured I'd give my $0.02. Old man strength is typically from those who have been performing some form of physical labor for a long time, and have such developed incredible grip strength. This is the part that /u/WOT_IF_UR_LEGS is talking about where it feels as if they can crush your hand... |
Why Do People Have Fetishes? | There's not really a 100% established answer for why, or what causes people to have fetishes. The more common explanations are a result of conditioning and psychological development. Conditioning is where a non-typical object, body part, or act is associated with sex by pairing it with typical erotic stimulation, eith... |
I've been without an internet connection since June 12th. What's going on in the world? | Most major stuff has already been covered but: *The largest Ebola outbreak ever is going on right now |
Why is a mouse more accurate than a joystick on a controller | Because with a computer mouse you move it exactly X distance on the table so the cursor moves Y distance. With a joystick, you essentially 'toggle' the cursors movement in any given direction, for a certain length of time, until the cursor reaches what you need. It's also less accurate because you're dealing with a fix... |
When was the last time in human history it would be more common to see someone walking barefoot than with shoes or sandals? | It was common up until the 1950s in the south for children to go without shoes. It is still somewhat common in regions with lots of creeks. |
Why do some drinks seem to pass right through you whereas plain water is retained? | The sugar and electrolytes in Gatorade and other sports drinks actually increase how much water you absorb into your blood stream. This can be perceived as too much fluid and your body will try to get rid of it if you aren't actually dehydrated. Normal water, on the other hand, lacks the sugar and electrolytes that pro... |
How does a disease make a comeback like Ebola or the Bubonic plague have recently? | Ebola has no cure, or even a real treatment. It never really went away. It's just that humans aren't commonly exposed to it (it probably normally lives in bats), and when they are it tends to kill quickly enough that it burns itself out. So you see a series of fairly quick and nasty outbreaks in the areas in which infe... |
How do they clean up the lead at gun ranges? | Nowadays that lead is worth good money as scrap. There are guys that come out with some attachment that fits on a tractor that kind of sifts the lead out of the dirt. The gun range makes big money for letting them come take the lead. |
why are some people are more prone to insect bites? | I don't know about other bugs but mosquitoes have a preference for type O blood. CO2 also attracts them, and pregnant women exhale more CO2. Also alcohol (as little as 12 ounces of beer) seems to increase their attraction to you; possibly because it raises your body temperature. |
Why are timeshares considered a scam? | You basically "Own" a part of a property and you only get to use it a few weeks a year, yet you pay property taxes, upkeep costs and "Association Dues" year round. Most people don't want to spend all their vacations at the same place every year, but if you have a time-share, you're wasting money if you don't use it. |
or[5] Electronic Tablets/E-books. | Sounds like you should look at the [Nexus 7.](_URL_1_) Good size for portability, amazing price and three different storage capacities (8GB, 16GB, 32GB), lots of free apps, and it starts at $199. There are plans for an even cheaper $100 8GB version in the future, but that is unconfirmed for now. If that's too small, ma... |
How does an electron microscope work and can it be used on living tissue? | An electron microscope works by passing electrons across the object that it's scanning. Basically, the object is coated with a heavy metal, and the electrons that bounce off get recorded, and it gets put into a computerized image that gets manually colored for effect. Electron microscopes require the object to be place... |
What's so bad about Detroit? | Poverty Jobs left the city at an ever accelerating pace over the past few years and this has led to lower and lower incomes and, consequently, higher crime and lower property values. As it gets worse fewer companies would think of moving in and bringing back jobs and the situation worsens and worsens. Their economy wa... |
Why can't multi-billion dollar companies have less profit and pay their employees more without wrecking the economy. | they could. but what would be the benefit to the owners of the company by having less profit? what would be the benefit to shareholders who are looking for the company to maximize profits? |
Why do animals eyes light up in certain colours when shone at with a torch/light? | Many especialy night active animals have a layer of reflective tissue behind the light sensing cells at the back of the eye. That allows them to caputer more light in their light sensing cells. Additionaly that makes the eyes act as a retroreflector (meaning they will reflect light back paralell to the incomming light)... |
How come we can land probes on comets and send satellites around the galaxy, but we can't put a high resolution color camera on these devices? | We could now. But this probe was launched 10 years ago, and was designed and built mostly during the 90s. |
Why some credit card transactions require a billing address and some only require a zipcode? | CVV codes are not mandatory, it is up to the person/company as to whether or not they want to require it or not. In some cases their Merchant provider will offer cheaper rates on transaction when CVV is used, as it leads to less fraud however some retailers choose not to do that. Many merchants still refuse to include ... |
How do gradients work in tatoos | Hi there i tattoo and its exactly how they said. The needles dont need to penetrate too deep and the more times you go over it the darker it becomes you want to go from lightest to dark. You cant take dark back. We water down the black in different amounts or whatever colors and just like water color painting we blend ... |
How did the russian revolution start? | The Russian Revolution is actually two revolutions, the February revolution and the October revolution (Stalin, btw, was involved in neither). During World War 1, in February 1917, a bunch of workers in Russia started a strike, and basically everybody ended up joining it, including the army and eventually some key figu... |
How do the water intake on this nuclear plant work? And how this guy managed to go from the inlet to the outlet without a scratch? | Nuclear engineer here. He was sucked from he ocean to the intake bay. At the far end of the intake bay is where the pumps push water through the plant. The intake bay water level is at a slightly lower elevation than the ocean, which created the pressure that sucked him through. He didn't pass through any pumps or the... |
How do the mammals of the ocean hydrate themselves. | They have awesome kidneys. The kidneys are able to filter the water to hydrate the body and remove the salt. Human kidneys are not so awesome. |
"PTSD is a cultural product" what does that mean? | If I understand this correctly, what its saying is that PTSD only exists as a recognised disorder because of the ability we have to study it. It never used to be recognised. In wars, for example, people would get it and be labelled as cowards, because it wasn't understood what the sufferers were going through. I think ... |
Why can most things in the body be transplanted, except the eyes? | Whole eyes are really tricky to transplant for a few reasons: 1. The retina dies in only 2-4 hours without a blood supply. The donor and recipient would have to be right by each other. 2. The retina is part of the brain, so if a donor is brain dead, the eye would be dead too. You have to harvest the eye right after the... |
Weird vibrating eye "trick" | it's called nystagmus. It can appear as a problem for some people, in which it is uncontrolled, but some people are able to do it voluntarily. Other than the obvious vision problems for people who have involuntary nystagmus and can't 'switch it off', I'm not aware of it being a cause of any sort of damage. |
Why are highway and street signs usually white text on green (at least in the US)? | You're correct that white and black would provide the greatest contrast, but the primary issue isn't contrast. Highway signs are "retroreflective," meaning that at night, when you shine your headlights on them, the light not only illuminates the sign, but the sign also directly reflects a good amount of that light back... |
Japanese vs American automobiles | American cars used to be the hallmark of reliability. I think a variety of reasons contributed to the decline of quality in American cars. From an econ/financial perspective it just became too expensive to build quality cars. Labor costs for automotive companies kept going up because unions kept wanting more benefits a... |
Why do vehicles that carry a lot of people not require seatbelts? | I asked a school-bus driver once about this, and he replied that kids would use the seat belts as weapons. I, for one, could definitely see my teenage self smacking my seatmate with a seatbelt. |
I always hear about spacetime, but what proof do we have that it exists and that all theories based on it are accurate? | There have been [a number of experiments](_URL_0_) that have shown general relativity to be a more accurate theory of gravity than the classic Newtonian model. For example, our GPS satellites have to correct for relativistic effects. The fact that your GPS works is proof positive that general relativity is a thing. |
Canadians: What's the political situation with Quebec? What's with the whole "revolution" thing? | Think of a teenager screaming at parents and siblings saying nobody understands me, I'm moving out. Then stays home sulking when they find out they would have to do their own laundry and cooking, and pay for their own groceries. Then says they are staying, but only if they get their own apartment above the garage. Then... |
Are product restocking fees BS or is there some legitimacy to them? | How do you define BS? It costs the business money to have employees around to put the item back into inventory, makes their logistics less efficient, etc. The entire area of return policies is a strange one. Businesses are under no obligation to accept returns for any reason. Anything they do is strictly for marketing... |
Why do you have to get your oil changed after 3 months if you haven't driven 3,000 miles? | And you're told this by people who sell oil. Maybe that should give you a clue. Certainly in modern cars, that should be unnecessary. Edit: Spelling |
Computer Graphics Cards | Numbering is just a nice way of differentiating the new cards from the old cards. Occasionally it switches. For instances, years ago, NVidia was making cards with thousand series (4XXX up to 9XXX). Then for some reason, they decided not to do 10XXX and started with hundred series (2XX up to currently 6XX). As for specs... |
Why is it the iphone (and other smartphones) requires a separate file type for a ringtone instead of being able to use mp3's already on it? | Because that's how they are set up, ringtones are a separate purchase, so they don't want to lose money buy allowing you to natively create a ringtone from song files on your device. There are of course super simple ways to manually make them into ringtones. It's just that when you pay for the song, you are paying fo... |
The difference between DVD-R and DVD+R, CD-R and CD+R? | DVD-R and DVD+R are two DVD formats. This means that the way the data is stored on the discs themselves is slightly different. From a user's perspective they both function the same and have almost the same capacity (-R has 7MB more). DVD-R came first and is the "old" format. DVD+R is newer and has some advantages. For ... |
How can peristaltic movements transport liquids? | Peristalsis works like this: _URL_0_ Stick a drinking straw in a cup full of water, place your thumb over the end of the straw, and lift it out of the water so that the straw is full of water but no longer in cup. Pinch the straw flat with the thumb and forefinger of your other hand up near where your thumb is covering... |
How does the ISS maintain it's altitude without crashing into the planet? | So you know when your throw a ball it follows a curved path down back to the ground? Well the ISS is moving so fast and is so high up that it's curved path equals the curvature of the earth, so it approaches the earth just as fast the earth curves away from it, so the distance between the earth and the station remain, ... |
what's the difference between an "escort" and prostitute? | Looks price and class. That's it. When you pay for an escort you're paying for "the girlfriend experience" you talk to them eat with them you know go on a "real" date but at the end you know your getting lucky. With a whore your getting some drug addicted pimp abused woman who only wants to get you off as fast as she c... |
What is stopping us from just replacing our natural adult teeth with synthetic ones? | Mostly Price. Where I live it costs around £1000-£1500 for 1 dental implant. |
Since whales are mammals, and need water to live like we do, how do they get it if they live in salt water, which is bad to drink? | They get it from the food that they eat. Whales, and dolphins, can't starve to death, they die of dehydration first. They do get a little bit from sea water but their kidneys can't remove much salt so if they accidentally drink too much sea water when they eat that could kill them. |
How are outside noises able to be incorporated into your dream? | Brains are complex things. While dreaming you are thought to be basically consolidating the memories you want to keep and not keep, and you create scenes in your mind involving things that were important to you recently (consciously or unconsciously). So while your brain is doing all of that, your ears, eyes, nose, and... |
How does a boat motor work, and how does a small propeller move such a large object? | The small propeller moves a small stream of water, just as wide as the propeller, at a speed that's much faster than the boat moves. This stream of water has more mass than you'd think, because water is quite heavy, and it has a momentum (m • v). All this momentum goes into the boat, because momentum is conserved (the ... |
What is being 'calculated' by supercomputers? | I work at a research university, and system administration of our supercomputers falls under my team's responsibilities. What ours supercomputer do is simulation. They simulate things like chemicals interactions, nuclear reactions, electronic systems, and many other things. In many areas of research, it is a lot cheape... |
How does Italy regard it's history in terms of their involvement in WW2 different from their "ally" Germany? | Because at one point during the war (1943) the Italian King had Mussolini arrested and at this point Italy was not part of the Axis (Germany, Italy and Japan) anymore. Germany, from an ally became an invading force of Italy. Also, the anti-Jewish laws were repealed by the new Badoglio government while the war was still... |
The Operation Teapot video is one of the craziest things I've seen. What exactly am I seeing? | > but what are the "eruptions" coming from it? Was it detonated in the air? It was detonated on the top of a tall tower. The "eruptions" are the guy-wires that stabilized the tower being boiled into gas and plasma from the light of the explosion before the blast wave proper reaches them. |
How does bioluminescence work? | Chemical reactions but instead of releasing (like most of them) heat as energy, or even electricity they release photons aka light |
I read on reddit to get rid of a persons hicups ask them when are they going to pay you back for money they owe you when they really dont owe you. I tried it and it worked why? | I once had someone cure my hiccups by asking me "Hey, what color is eggplant? Do you see anything eggplant colored in this room?" I looked around intently and couldn't find anything, and I told him no. He then asked me if they were gone, and sure enough, totally cured. I think something about the act of suddenly focusi... |
How can they clone living animals? | Well, most people use the word "clone" to mean something other than it actually is. I blame the popular sci-fi use of cloning to refer to creating an exact duplicate of a person, along with their memories and personality and such. In real life, cloning means to take the DNA of an animal, and create a new baby animal wi... |
the difference between shampoo, conditioner, body soap, 2-in-1 and 3-in-1. | Shampoo is a type of soap designed for your hair. It gets grease out of your hair. You should only shampoo your head. Don't put shampoo on the ends of your hair if you're a girl, it's too harsh and will damage your hair. Conditioner puts the life back in hair after being shampooed. It moisturizes it. Body soap is a so... |
how does your brain decide you like/dislike a certain song? What influences that? And why do we all like different songs? | Basically, it comes down to sensing versus perceiving. Generally everyone senses the same things the same way, from vision to taste, excluding those with sensory deprivations (colorblindness, deafness, etc.). Perceiving is a different story. It's all in your head. We attach meaning to different sensations. Like when y... |
How do LED thermometers work? | Op are you talking about Laser Temperature Guns/thermometers?? (That tell the temp after pointing the device and laser at an object) If you are: the laser doesn't have anything to do with the temp, it just aligns the sensor that is located right next to the laser on the front of the device. |
How is the 3D effect created in movies? | You need a second camera that is filming from a slightly different perspective, just like humans can see in three dimensions because they have two eyes set slightly apart. (In computer animation you can arbitrarily create a second perspective on a scene, so it's easier but it still requires extra rendering to produce t... |
Why is sleep so comfortable shortly upon waking(especially when you have work/school/etc)? | When you wake up in the morning, you get something called sleep inertia. It's the groggyness you feel up to two hours (usually half an hour) after you have woken up. It's a "false" kind of sleepy, which makes you want to stay in bed. This combined with how comfortable your warm, soft bed is, makes it so darn hard to g... |
What would happen if an asteroid the size of the moon hit the earth? | The asteroid that may have been responsible for the extinction of the dinosaurs had a diameter of about ~~170~~ 10-15 km. The moon has a diameter of about 3,500 kilometers. I'm not a scientist so I won't pretend to tell you exactly what will happen, but I think that it goes without saying this would be a catastrophe un... |
My grandparents live in a small town, where all of the older residents have a land line number that begins with the same three numbers. Why is it the same? | Jesus christ, are you trying to make us feel old, OP? That's how ALL land line phone numbers used to work. If there was less than 10000 lines, they all belonged to the same exchange. You'd get 555-0000, next person got 555-0001, next person got 555-0002. You kids and your cell phones and skype and hoola hoops and pacma... |
Why Nuking a asteroid that is headed for Earth is not a good strategy. | Nuking an asteroid would be like taping an M80 to a boulder. Some postgraduate students from Leicester University did the math on the asteroid used in Armageddon (awful movie) it would take 800,000,000,000,000 terajoules of energy to blow up that chunk of rock. The largest nuke mankind ever set off only put out 418,000... |
Why are Canada Geese called such instead of Canadian Geese? | Because it's their name, not their nationality. If I live in New York, and my name is Bob France, you wouldn't call me French. |
With fight or flight, is there an effective way to overcome the freeze response? | Training. Specifically, what is known as "stress inoculation." This is why new recruits in the military have to complete tasks while being yelled at and generally messed with by their instructors- a crude imitation of the stress of combat. It's why high quality police training involves responding to crises amidst all ... |
Did Rob Ford actually help the city of Toronto? | [Here's a good article that goes over the positive outcome for Toronto](_URL_0_) tl;dr: While Ford's campaign was based on "stopping the gravy train", he never found one. Gravy leaked out of small cracks in municipal government. Ford saved $100,000 here and there by combining depts, etc. Didn't see it mentioned in the ... |
Why do basements/cellars tend to attract mold and mildew so much? | A cellar is usually colder then the outside as it is kept dark and surrounded by cold dirt. Humidity is based on not only the amount of water in the air but also the temperature of the air. So when air gets down into the basement and gets cooled down its humidity increases. All life needs water to thrive. Basements wit... |
Is it possible to have more than one type of flu (bacterial or viral) running in your body at the same time? | Just to clarify a little more... "Flu" does not just mean illness. It is specifically illness caused by *Influenza* viruses. In fact 'flu' is short for 'influenza'. The term "bacterial flu" is misleading because it means a bacterial infection occurring because your immune system has been weakened by the flu virus. So y... |
What is the difference between "Partly Cloudy" and "Partly Sunny" forecasts? | Partly Cloudy means blue skies with some clouds Partly Sunny means a cloudy sky with some occasional sun |
When people go outside to take a breath of fresh air, why does that help calm them down? | Going outside firstly removes the trigger and stimulus that's causing the stress - and so they can get out of an emotionally charged situation. Fresh air may also be a change in temperature, so they have a different physical response too, and that may help them breathe deeper, giving the stress hormones a chance to dis... |
I just read the Brian Banks story; Why are women who falsley accuse men of rape hardly ever if at all sent to prison? | If they were proved, in a court of law, beyond a reasonable doubt, to have knowingly and falsely accused someone, they do get sent to prison. |
What does the term "too big to fail" mean? | It's a commonly used phrase to mean "this company is so big and does so much business that if it were to fail and go under, it would have massive negative effects on the economy as a whole." For example: We have a lot of banks in the US, but we have some *really really big* ones, too. When those banks started to fail, ... |
If your voice sounds higher than what it sounds like to you, how can you sing the correct pitch? | Practice listening to yourself and *actually* hearing your own voice. Singing in a small, acoustically live room (like a bathroom) can help. I recommend purchasing some pvc pipe and making a small phone shape so that you can sing into one end and have it projected directly into your ear. I can almost certainly assure y... |
Why are there no Grape flavored Yogurts? | Chobani made a grape yogurt, but I don't think it sold very well. Grape and yogurt doesn't really mix in a way that is large scale marketable to consumers. Yogurt can be kind of sour, mixing that with grape is not a flavor many people can get behind. |
Why is tinfoil (aluminum foil) so heat resistant? | Heat resistent in what way? If you refer to "Why doesn't it melt", simply because it's melting point is incredibly high, much higher than your grill can produce ((660.32 °C, 1220.58 °F). If you are instead refering to "Why doesn't it get super hot to the touch" then you're building on a wrong premise: it isn't heat r... |
How exactly does alcohol get you "drunk" | Alcohol is a chemical that affects almost every organ in the human body, but in particular it interferes with the brains' cells abilities to communicate with each other. If you drink alcohol faster than your liver and kidneys can process it, it begins to build up in the bloodstream and hence gets carried to your brain,... |
How do nuclear launch codes work exactly, and can just about anyone use it? | This was covered in part by This American Life recently. _URL_0_ "So, here's the thing about the codes that people don't realize. It's not like he has a piece of paper in his pocket. It's like, here are the nuclear codes. It doesn't work that way. How it works is, there's a military officer that walks around with what... |
Why do I always wake up early after a night of hard drinking? | It also messes with your sleep cycle. I'm afraid I can't remember exactly how it goes about doing this, but I saw a documentary where the person who the sleep-scientists gave several large glasses of red wine ended up staying in REM and light sleep relatively longer, and only attaining deep sleep for a short time befor... |
Why are porn sites more likely to infect the user's computer with viruses than other sites? | Impulse clicking. People are more likely to ignore warnings to see a naked chick than to read an insurance quote. The are also more likely to be embarrassed about what they were doing and not report it. Scammers know this, are are much more likely to use porn sites to deliver malware. |
Why do loud noises seem to physically hurt? Is it all in our brain signals? Do deaf people feel pain from them? | Pain is how our body signals to our brain that we're in a situation that's potentially causing us harm, so we're motivated to try to get out of that situation. Loud enough noises can physical damage your ear, and as a result, we've evolved so that somewhere before the threshold of damage to our delicate ear parts, a l... |
How do GBA ROMS actually work? How do people recode entire games from Game Boys and DS' to work on the computer? | This is actually very straightforward. The ROMs are basically the software that's usually on the cartridge (or whatever medium). They don't get recoded to run on a PC (or android, or whatever). People use emulators that pretend to be a Gameboy or DS or whatever, and the ROM thinks it's running natively. And you can ... |
How do carnivores like Tigers and Lions get enough nutrient balance by only eating meat? | One, By eating things like blood, skin, organs, bones, etc. Obviously that animal they ate *contains all vitamins and minerals required for that prey animal to live* so consuming all, or most, of a prey animal will include a wider variety of vitamins and nutrients. Humans can do this too, for example fish liver oil, w... |
Why does some food get freezer-burned while others don't? | Packaging. I wrap my stuff in plastic wrap, then foil, then a ziplock baggie and I never get it. |
Pay-to-play politics | It refers to how big donors get more access to politicians. If the average person contacts a national-level politician, they'll probably get a form letter reply from an intern. If someone who donated $20,000 contacts them, they'll get a call from the politician. High-level appointed positions are often given to big don... |
when I want to type an apostrophe, I would hit the key next to the enter key on my keyboard and get this character ' but why does this alternate character ’ show up in text that I have copied off the web? Are they meant to be used interchangeably? | The prevailing wisdom is ' should be used for feet or minutes, while the curlier ’ should be used as a quote or apostrophe. |
Nowadays most money is digital, what prevents a bank to edit its computer records with another trillion $? | Digital money isn't just a number in a spreadsheet, it's an accounting of where the money came from. If there's no log showing that money was debited from one account and credited to another, it's not really there. Banks are regulated, audited, and taxed. Sure, a banker with enough seniority could probably create some ... |
How and why did the body associate tears with sadness? | Without getting too technical, the short version is: When you are sad, your body released hormones(ACTH and Leu-enkephalin) through tears that can help you feel better(reduce stress and painkillers). |
Subsets and Splits
Random Sampled Questions
Selects 1000 random questions from the dataset that end with a question mark, providing a basic sample for review.