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How do they determine the longitude on another planet? | For a rocky planet like Venus, the prime meridian is chosen to cross through some arbitrarily chosen reference surface feature, like a crater. The direction of increasing longitude is then measured in a direction opposite to the rotation of the planet about its axis. So, for instance, if you look down at Venus's north ... | [
"Similar to latitude, the longitude of a place on Earth is the angular distance east or west of the prime meridian or Greenwich meridian. Longitude is usually expressed in degrees (marked with °) ranging from 0° at the Greenwich meridian to 180° east and west. Sydney, for example, has a longitude of about 151° east... |
why is the tea party republican? why aren't they their own party? | You and a bunch of your friends decide to vote on what to do this afternoon.
You want to play baseball.
Jimmy wants to play baseball.
Mike wants to play soccer.
Tommy wants to play soccer.
Jenny wants to play dolls.
Mary wants to play dolls.
Anne wants to play dolls.
3 people want to play dolls.
2 people want ... | [
"The Tea Party is generally associated with the Republican Party. Most politicians with the \"Tea Party brand\" have run as Republicans. In recent elections in the 2010s, Republican primaries have been the site of competitions between the more conservative, Tea Party wing of the party and the more moderate, establi... |
Did the Japanese ever repulse an island invasion by the US during WWII? | No. After the initial Japanese victories in the Pacific War, the United States won every major campaign and battle it entered. Even those cases where the Japanese scored tactical victories were strategic losses. Japan lacked the steel to make good its naval losses, and its cadres of experienced pilots were consumed in ... | [
"Japanese forces occupied the island in December 1941, days after the attack on Pearl Harbor, in order to protect their south-eastern flank from allied counterattacks, and isolate Australia, under the codename Operation FS. On 17–18 August 1942, in order to divert Japanese attention from the Solomon Islands and New... |
Bacteria can only live at certain temperatures, so when I eat cooked meat, am I eating a lot of dead bacteria? If not where do they go? | Yes you are. Or at least the chemical composition or chemical products of cooking that made them up.
Cooking kills bacteria by raising their internal temperature to the point where they die.
Depending on the process and the temperature, the cell walls of the bacteria can rupture, they can carbonize and effectively ... | [
"Bacteria are typically killed at temperatures of around . Most harmful bacteria live on the surface of pieces of meat which have not been ground or shredded before cooking. As a result, for unprocessed steaks or chops of red meat it is usually safe merely to bring the surface temperature of the meat to this temper... |
why is it that lead in paint is harmful, but the 40% lead in solder material isn't? | Lead in solder is harmful. There just aren't many alternatives. Lead free solder does exist, but it has a tendency to "whisker" which can create shorts that damage parts. | [
"Lead paint contains lead as pigment. Lead is also added to paint to speed drying, increase durability, retain a fresh appearance, and resist moisture that causes corrosion. Paint with significant lead content is still used in industry and by the military. For example, leaded paint is sometimes used to paint roadwa... |
what is the "cursive writing" thing i keep reading and what is the big deal about it? | Yes, that's cursive, in contrast to "print".
[Here are some examples](_URL_0_)
In the USA, kids usually learn cursive around ages 7-10, and print before that. | [
"Cursive is a style of penmanship in which the symbols of the language are written in a conjoined and/or \"flowing\" manner, generally for the purpose of making writing faster. This writing style is distinct from \"printscript\" using block letters, in which the letters of a word are unconnected and in Roman/Gothic... |
What were the geographical boundaries of the "Old West?" Would we see "cowboy culture" in Canada? Mexico? The Caribbean? | I can speak for Canada a bit, having grown up in a cattle town. We have plenty of cowboy culture, especially in my home province of Alberta.
For most of the our province's history, our main industries were agriculture and ranching, and even today, they are second only to oil and gas.
Although a lot of the cowboy cult... | [
"As settlers from the United States moved west, they brought cattle breeds developed on the east coast and in Europe along with them, and adapted their management to the drier lands of the west by borrowing key elements of the Spanish vaquero culture.\n",
"Cultures combine and collaborate in the Pacific Southwest... |
How did the Native American tribes in the western portion of the U.S. get firearms, and when did these tribes first come into contact with firearms? | With the exception of the unwieldy, unreliable early firearms that might have been brought to the Plains by the Coronado *entrada*'s [search for Quivira in 1540-1542](_URL_0_), the Plains nations would have started to regularly see firearms in the mid-seventeenth century. While horses flowed up from Mexico, or through ... | [
"The earliest known historical Native American occupants, the Tonkawa, were a flint-working, hunting people who followed the buffalo on foot and periodically set fire to the prairie to aid them in their hunts. During the 18th century, they made the transition to a horse culture and used firearms to a limited extent... |
why can we use controllers with pcs but not keyboard and mouse with consoles? | Consoles can use a mouse and keyboard. Almost any USB mouse/kb will plug in and function with modern consoles. You can type messages, browse the web, etc.
Some games do support kb/m on console: Counterstrike and War Thunder for example.
Many games don't just because it takes extra effort to program for, and the kb/m ... | [
"Virtually all personal computers use a keyboard and mouse for user input. Other common gaming peripherals are a headset for faster communication in online games, joysticks for flight simulators, steering wheels for driving games and gamepads for console-style games.\n",
"Unlike the PlayStation, which requires th... |
Why does there seem to be such a lack of emphasis on the Pacific Theater of WWII in American pop culture and History? | I would wager it has partially to do with the different racial components of the two theaters, and the subsequent disparity in the "goodness" of the war in each.
The fight against the Nazis has been continuously held up since the 1940s as the epitome of a "good war." American soldiers fought and died to liberate Weste... | [
"Part of the reason why \"South Pacific\" is considered a classic is its confrontation of racism. According to professor Philip Beidler, \"Rodgers and Hammerstein's attempt to use the Broadway theater to make a courageous statement against racial bigotry in general and institutional racism in the postwar United Sta... |
Can someone with a weakened immune system receive a vaccine? | It depends on the vaccine and illness.
Live vaccinations tend not to be given to persons with compromised immune systems (e.g. yellow fever vaccination), whereas some inactivated viral vaccinations may be given to those with weakened immune systems (depending on their clinical condition).
For example, it might be pref... | [
"Some people cannot be fully protected from vaccine-preventable diseases by direct vaccination. These are often people with weak immune systems, who are more likely to get seriously ill. Their risk of infection can be significantly reduced if those who are most likely to infect them get the appropriate vaccines.\n"... |
Could we in theory create Saturn style rings around the Earth, for shits and giggles. | Some people theorize that the Earth may have had a ring or two in it's past, and that they caused massive climate changes. Because of the Earth's significant tilt, a ring would cause winters to be far colder due to the increased shade. It is also thought that the Earth could not hold on to a ring for more than a millio... | [
"Rings of Saturn is an American deathcore band from the Bay Area, California. The band was formed in 2009 and was originally just a studio project. However, after gaining a wide popularity and signing to Unique Leader Records, the band formed a full line-up and became a full-time touring band. Rings of Saturn's mus... |
In the American Civil War, was the Union victory at Vicksburg of equal, lesser, or greater significance than Antietam and/or Gettysburg were to ending the war? | This is a good question and difficult to asses still nowadays.
First Antietam, I believe it was never considered a big victory like Vicksburg or Gettysburg. It was still considered a victory, and good enough for Lincoln to issue his Emancipation declaration, but for the public in general it was obscured by the fact it ... | [
"The Confederate and Union armies met at the Battle of Gettysburg on July 1. The battle, fought over three days, resulted in the highest number of casualties in the war. Along with the Union victory in the Siege of Vicksburg, the Battle of Gettysburg is often referred to as a turning point in the war. Though the ba... |
please explain utilitarianism to me like i'm 5. | There's this Cookie Monster, and he's obsessed with getting cookies. Whatever gets him the most cookies is what makes him the happiest. So if by taking a cookie from someone, the Cookie Monster can get two cookies, even though the person you took the cookie from is losing a cookie, there's still a net gain of one cooki... | [
"Utilitarianism (from the Latin utilis, useful) is a theory of ethics that prescribes the quantitative maximization of good consequences for a population. It is a form of consequentialism. This good to be maximized is usually happiness, pleasure, or preference satisfaction. Though some utilitarian theories might se... |
what do ionizers in airpurifiers do? | It introduces a mild charge to the small particles in the air, which makes them stick to things in the room rather than float around forever.
But on a practical level with consumer devices...i cant actually tell when they're on or off so i don't think they do much. I leave mine off for the most part. I wouldn't facto... | [
"Air ionisers are often used in places where work is done involving static-electricity-sensitive electronic components, to eliminate the build-up of static charges on non-conductors. As those elements are very sensitive to electricity, they cannot be grounded because the discharge will destroy them as well. Usually... |
how exactly are compounds named? | -ide is the suffix of any negatively charged anion, eg. the anion of chlorine (Cl) is called chloride (Cl^(-))
---
-ate and -ite are the suffixes of some polyatomic ions. That's a really messy topic to get in to and some of the naming isn't always logical.
Nitr**ate** is NO*_3_*^(-), nitr**ite** is NO*_2_*^-
Chlor*... | [
"The chemical names are the scientific names, based on the molecular structure of the drug. There are various systems of chemical nomenclature and thus various chemical names for any one substance. The most important is the IUPAC name. Chemical names are typically very long and too complex to be commonly used in re... |
I've read a little bit about the affects of THC on Cancer. Is any of this research substantial or is it just not known enough? | The research done in this paper was done to cell lines so it was not quite *in vivo*.
> One possible drawback could be that use of select CB2 agonists to kill tumor cells may also cause immunosuppression. Thus, further studies are necessary to address the relative sensitivity of normal and transformed immune cells to... | [
"While the mutagenic and genotoxic effects of TCDD are sometimes disputed and sometimes confirmed it does foster the development of cancer. Its main action in causing cancer is cancer promotion; it promotes the carcinogenicity initiated by other compounds. Very high doses may, in addition, cause cancer indirectly; ... |
why can dishwashers both wash and dry dishes, but clothes washers cannot wash and dry clothes? | Because clothes can't be tried as easily by just making them super hot like a dishwasher does. Since dishes don't absorb water, and they also don't burn.
Dual machines for clothes can and do exist, but they're more expensive, and more prone to failure. Since the two jobs are really quite different (and plenty of clo... | [
"Dishwashing or dish washing, also known as washing up, is the process of cleaning cooking utensils, dishes, cutlery and other items to prevent foodborne illness. This is either achieved by hand in a sink using dishwashing detergent or by using a dishwasher and may take place in a kitchen, utility room, scullery or... |
Are there waves of air on top of our atmosphere like waves of water on the surface of the ocean? | Well, sort of.
There's no real top to our atmosphere the way there is a surface of the ocean - it just sort of gradually thins out.
With that said, though, both experience the same kind of [gravity waves](_URL_0_). Note these are not at all the same as *gravitational* waves you'd see around a black hole - similar nam... | [
"Most people think of waves as a surface phenomenon, which acts between water (as in lakes or oceans) and the air. Where low density water overlies high density water in the ocean, internal waves propagate along the boundary. They are especially common over the continental shelf regions of the world oceans and wher... |
If computers/electronics short circuit due to water damage, and if pure water does not carry current, could an electronic technically run under pure water? | Yes it's technically possible, but the hazard that water poses extends beyond simply shorting circuits. Water can be corrosive to a lot of the different metals and chemical on a circuit board and it can especially react when exposed to metal containing flowing current. However, a circuit would most certainly be able to... | [
"Water has been shown not to be a very reliable substance to store electric charge long term, so more reliable materials are used for capacitors in industrial applications. However water has the advantage of being self healing after a breakdown, and if the water is steadily circulated through a de-ionizing resin an... |
Why do wireless electronics only use 2.4 and 5ghz bands? | The relevant regulation can be found [in this Wikipedia page for ISM Band](_URL_0_). Your short range consumer electronics are designed to operate in the ISM band because it does not require a license.
The Wikipedia page for [frequency allocation](_URL_1_) will also give you an idea of what the other bands are used fo... | [
"Because DECT specifications are different between countries, developers who use the same product across different countries have launched wireless headsets which use 2.4GHz RF as opposed to the 1.89 or 1.9 GHz in DECT. Almost all countries in the world have the 2.4 GHz band open for wireless communications, so hea... |
When was the last time a president was elected who was "filled in" during local ballots? | Just to clarify, as I think I understand what you're asking about, but I want to be sure, you're talking about a 'straight ticket' ballot [such as this one](_URL_0_)? | [
"The 1852 United States presidential election in Arkansas took place on November 2, 1852, as part of the 1852 United States presidential election. Voters chose four representatives, or electors to the Electoral College, who voted for president and vice president.\n",
"The 1856 United States presidential election ... |
does the music you listen to in your childhood affect your future personality? | I truly think it has a great affect. I grew up listening to a lot of 60s and 70s rock, I still listen to it and it's shaped a lot of who I am and how I see the world. I love the lyrics, sound, expressionism and aesthetic. And I don't think I couldve gotten through the dark periods of my life without the wisdom those so... | [
"Enculturation affects music memory in early childhood before a child's cognitive schemata for music is fully formed, perhaps beginning at as early as one year of age. Like adults, children are also better able to remember novel music from their native culture than from unfamiliar ones, although they are less capab... |
why is it impossible to fold a piece of paper in half more than eight times? | For a regular A4 at eight folds its 256 layers thick and since the paper is so small at that point the amount of space needed to make a fold in each of the 256 layers there isn't enough room.
However if you just get a bigger paper then you can, even though you are folding it by half each time.
_URL_0_ | [
"The maximum number of times an incompressible material can be folded has been derived. With each fold a certain amount of paper is lost to potential folding. The loss function for folding paper in half in a single direction was given to be formula_4, where \"L\" is the minimum length of the paper (or other materia... |
if lockpicking guides and tools are available widely, why are so few houses lockpicked into? | Its far easier and more efficient to break a window or kick in a door. | [
"Posession of lockpicking tools, such as a bump key, are highly regulated by criminal law in four states in the United States, and are considered prima facie evidence of a crime in another four states in the United States. They are generally legal in the remaining states within the U.S.\n",
"In some countries, su... |
Does light accelerate to the speed of light, or is it instantly the speed of light as soon as it is released from an electron? | They don't start off at zero, and there's no acceleration. They start off at c and always travel at c. This is because, due to special relativity, any massless particle can only ever move at c, any other speed isn't allowed physically. Source: [adamsolomon](_URL_0_) | [
"According to Einstein's theory of special relativity, as an electron's speed approaches the speed of light, from an observer's point of view its relativistic mass increases, thereby making it more and more difficult to accelerate it from within the observer's frame of reference. The speed of an electron can approa... |
when i'm hungover why do i always crave greasy foods like pizza rather than foods that are better for me? | Your body is depleted of various electrolytes and calories since alcohol zaps your blood sugar levels, and dehydrates you, fatty salty food is an efficient albeit unhealthy way to replenish those stores. | [
"Everyone relieves his weary limbs by partaking of dinner, but not to excess - for being filled to excess, even with bread on its own, gives rise to dissipation - rather, everyone receives a meal according to the varying condition of their bodies or their age. They do not serve dishes of different flavours, nor ric... |
why does this camera distortion happen? | That is buffeting. Something is shaking the back of a digital video camera. You're seeing the effect of that vibration beat frequency interacting with the camera's 50-60Hz frame rate. | [
"BULLET::::- Distortion is an aberration that causes straight lines to curve. It can be troublesome for architectural photography and metrology (photographic applications involving measurement). Distortion tends to be noticeable in low cost cameras, including cell phones, and low cost DSLR lenses. It is usually ver... |
what do car fog lights *actually* do? | Fog lights produce a short but wide beam spread which illuminates the road close to the front of the vehicle. The driver can then see the edges of the road and slightly ahead without the blinding glare primary headlights would create during a heavy fog.
My guess is only those who have been in a very thick fog or sno... | [
"The respective purposes of front fog lamps and driving lamps are often confused, due in part to the misconception that fog lamps are necessarily selective yellow, while any auxiliary lamp that makes white light is a driving lamp. Automakers and aftermarket parts and accessories suppliers frequently refer interchan... |
is it true that consuming your own species' flesh can cause madness? | I think you’re thinking of Kuru. Here’s the definition:
Kuru is a very rare disease. It is caused by an infectious protein (prion) found in contaminated human brain tissue. Kuru is found among people from New Guinea who practiced a form of cannibalism in which they ate the brains of dead people as part of a funeral ri... | [
"Although the dynamic of violent fantasy in lust murders is understood, an individual's violence fantasy alone is not enough to determine if an individual has or has not engaged in lust murder. Moreover, to conclude that an individual is a violent psychopath because they have drawn multitudes of violent images is o... |
does a person who has unprotected sex for 15 seconds have the same exposure to sti's that a person who has unprotected sex for 15 minutes? | No, person B has much more exposure to the STI. However, depending on the STI and whether the other person is actively showing symptoms, 15 seconds and 15 minutes might not make much of a difference in terms of whether or not the person gets infected. | [
"Lloyd Kolbe, director of the Center for Disease Control's Adolescent and School Health program, called the STI problem \"a serious epidemic.\" The younger an adolescent is when they first have any type of sexual relations, including oral sex, the more likely they are to get an STI.\n",
"Recent analysis suggests ... |
nyquist theorem perfect signal reproduction | The key element you are missing is the Nyquist limit. For perfect reconstruction the signal must have all frequencies at less than half the sampling rate. This limiting of the frequencies guarantees that only one continuous wave could have produced those samples. In the case you mentioned of sampling a sine wave at the... | [
"A Nyquist plot is a parametric plot of a frequency response used in automatic control and signal processing. The most common use of Nyquist plots is for assessing the stability of a system with feedback. In Cartesian coordinates, the real part of the transfer function is plotted on the X axis. The imaginary part i... |
Steven Hawking's, in In To The Universe, just claimed that 10 minutes after the big bang the cosmos was already thousands of light-years in diameter; how can this be possible? | Expansion isn't measured in speed. The distances between two galaxies may increase due to expansion at such a rate that from Galaxy A's perspective, Galaxy B recedes at a "velocity" greater than the speed of light, but the key here is that it's not a real velocity. Nothing is actually moving. It's just the distance bet... | [
"In 2010, Penrose reported possible evidence, based on concentric circles found in WMAP data of the CMB sky, of an earlier universe existing before the Big Bang of our own present universe. He mentions this evidence in the epilogue of his 2010 book \"Cycles of Time\", a book in which he presents his reasons, to do ... |
why are ahmadiyya muslims, who appear in the news when they are either helping a community or being murdered, hated by the muslim community? | Because Ahmadiyya represents a threat to the status quo and to the powers of the mullahs and politicians who use their false interpretations of islam for personal gain. Ahmadis are utterly peaceful and are only shown violence and oppression by the rest of the muslim world. Right away any rational person can see who wou... | [
"Both Muslims and Jews have been targets for assault, discriminatory treatment, hate speech, and vandalism. Muslim organization leaders have asserted that many members of their community do not bother reporting anti-Muslim incidents because they do not believe that the police would address them seriously.\n",
"In... |
when did blue became the standard color for ball pens? | It really isn't the standard, but there's many reasons why it could be preferred by companies that manufacture pens. Here are some explanations.
For one, blue ink is distinguishable. If you're printing out a paper in greyscale, blue ink will stick out on the paper. This is especially important for official documentati... | [
"The use of blue as the second kit color dates from the 1930s, but it became the permanent second choice accidentally in the 1958 World Cup Final. Brazil's opponents were Sweden, who also wear yellow, and a draw gave the home team, Sweden, the right to play in yellow. Brazil, who travelled with no second kit, hurri... |
how do we know anything about the unobservable universe? | Strictly speaking we know NOTHING about the unobservable universe but we have no reason to think it's any different from what is observable.
Also an interesting fact about the rapid expansion of the universe billions of years means that the part of the universe that is observable is constantly increasing (and will con... | [
"The observable universe is one \"causal patch\" of a much larger unobservable universe; other parts of the Universe cannot communicate with Earth yet. These parts of the Universe are outside our current cosmological horizon. In the standard hot big bang model, without inflation, the cosmological horizon moves out,... |
how do ventilators help people breathe and are they complicated to manufacture? | They work by forcing air in and out of the lungs. Ventilation can be made using a machine or manually using a bag-valve-mask (BVM) device.
The main idea is to keep a good flow of air in and out and to ensure that a sufficient amount of the lungs is actually in use to allow the transfer of oxygen and carbon dioxide be... | [
"A medical ventilator (or simply ventilator in context) is a machine designed to provide mechanical ventilation by moving breathable air into and out of the lungs, to deliver breaths to a patient who is physically unable to breathe, or breathing insufficiently.\n",
"Ventilators come in many different styles and m... |
If heat and sound are both vibrations of molecules, what's the thing separating them? | There isn't really a clear dividing line, but heat energy is more random and represents energy that has spread out among all possible vibration modes, while a traveling sound wave will be more organized and concentrated in specific vibration modes. As sound dissipates into heat the energy spreads out into other modes o... | [
"Since sound waves are produced by a vibrating body, the vibrating object moves in one direction and compresses the air directly in front of it. As the vibrating object moves in the opposite direction, the pressure on the air is lessened so that an expansion, or rarefaction, of air molecules occurs. One compression... |
common themes in latin american colonialism | The comparison between the late 20th century and the early 16th century is quite difficult to make. For earlier periods, there are individual cases (such as William Walker in Nicaragua in the 1850s) where so-called "filibusters" behaved almost exactly like conquistadors. They came from abroad with a small but well equi... | [
"Latin America experienced independence revolutions in the early 19th century that separated the colonies from Spain and Portugal, creating new nations. These movements were generally led by the ethnically Spanish but locally born Creole class; these were often wealthy citizens that held high positions of power but... |
why do dogs have random patches of differently colored fur? | The hair color is determine by two different genes and when the genes are differenr both of the genes get expressed fully (e.g. black and white spots vs gray) | [
"During evolution of the dog from their wild wolf ancestors, coat colors in dogs were probably the inadvertent outcome of some other selective process (i.e., selection for tameness), and were not likely initially selected for intentionally by humans. Research has found that tameness brings associated physical chang... |
Did the U.S. have any election irregularities in its early days? | The Broad Seal War comes to mind. In the election of 1838, there was a difficulty with the election results from New Jersey. At the time, elections for New Jersey congressional representatives were determined by vote taken from the entire state. NJ had no congressional districts and no electors. The election results th... | [
"In the 1876 election, disputes regarding 20 electoral votes in four states, along with multiple allegations of vote fraud, sparked an intense political battle and effectively invalidated the election. This constitutional crisis was resolved only two days before the scheduled inauguration through the Compromise of ... |
the period between donating blood | Based on averages and to be safe.
The cost, time and effort to take exactly the maximum safe amount of blood at the soonest possible time would be inefficient. | [
"The campaign has clarified that donating blood is a permitted and, in fact, a recommended act in Islam. Some eminent religious scholars have issued information regarding the donating of blood and shown support for the campaign.\n",
"A blood donation occurs when a person voluntarily has blood drawn and used for t... |
why doesnt black absorb all light? | Black obsorbs all colours equally, but not 100% of everything. "blacker" black obsorbs more.
Also a surface can have texture that changes how it reflect light, compare a shiny black glass vs a slightly rippled textured black keyboard vs really matte black paint. | [
"Absorption of light is contrasted by transmission, reflection and diffusion, where the light is only redirected, causing objects to appear transparent, reflective or white respectively. A material is said to be black if most incoming light is absorbed equally in the material. Light (electromagnetic radiation in th... |
how does a turtle’s shell grow while the turtle grows? what is it made of? | The shell is made up of panel-like things called scutes. With most types of turtles, these scutes shed periodically to allow bigger scutes to form. They are made out of keratin - same as human hair & nails.
Source: I’m a turtle fan. | [
"The turtle shell is a highly complicated shield for the ventral and dorsal parts of turtles, tortoises and terrapins (all classified as \"turtles\" by zoologists), completely enclosing all the vital organs of the turtle and in some cases even the head. It is constructed of modified bony elements such as the ribs, ... |
Can there be incomplete annihilation? | Protons and neutrons contain more than just 3 quarks. There are gluons holding them together, gluons interacting with other gluons, and gluons can spontaneously form temporary quark-antiquark pairs (called "sea quarks").
The 3 permanent quarks are called valence quarks. They give the particle its properties.
This is ... | [
"In particle physics, annihilation is the process that occurs when a subatomic particle collides with its respective antiparticle to produce other particles, such as an electron colliding with a positron to produce two photons. The total energy and momentum of the initial pair are conserved in the process and distr... |
the difference between adverbs and adverbials. | An adverb is a word, an adverbial is a group of words, phrase or clause which acts as an adverb. | [
"In English, adverbials most commonly take the form of adverbs, adverb phrases, temporal noun phrases or prepositional phrases. Many types of adverbials (for instance: reason and condition) are often expressed by clauses.\n",
"In grammar, an adverbial (abbreviated ) is a word (an adverb) or a group of words (an a... |
difference between marxism and cultural marxism? | **Marxism** - The ELI5 version is that economics dominates and explains human society. Specifically, by looking at how capital is distributed you can explain and predict how society will be organized. It also predicts, based on history and a particular view on how technology will develop, that one day the world will ... | [
"Marxism is a method of socioeconomic analysis that frames capitalism through a paradigm of exploitation, analyzes class relations and social conflict using a materialist interpretation of historical development and takes a dialectical view of social transformation. While it originates from the works of 19th centur... |
why do cities and towns "stagger" stoplights so that no matter your timing you'll always be caught at a light? | Background: Served on Transportation and Infrastructure Committee for a major Canadian city. Involved in design/implementation of roadworks, including intelligent stoplight systems.
Some background on stoplights:
There are multiple kinds of stoplights, the most basic just running on a simple timer-based system. Ever... | [
"A modest steady light at the intersection of two roads is an aid to navigation because it helps a driver see the location of a side road as they come closer to it and they can adjust their braking and know exactly where to turn if they intend to leave the main road or see vehicles or pedestrians. A beacon light's ... |
how does “night mode” work for iphone pictures? | It keeps the shutter open a little longer to allow more light in. It mixes that with some digital brightening that makes some noise, so depending on the situation, it takes 2 or a few photos and combines them and it puts those photos on top of each other and the artificial intelligence does its thing to best reduce noi... | [
"The iPhone 3GS's camera app features a slider which allows users to switch between capturing photos and recording videos, a tap-to-focus feature which allows users to tap on an area of the camera image to auto-focus on, 5x digital zoom (iOS 4 or later), auto focus and auto exposure lock when holding an area down (... |
Why are so many organic molecules yellow or orangish? | In my limited experience (Chemistry undergrad, BioPhysics grad school work), the smaller ring structures and smaller conjugated bond paths absorb larger amounts of energy (the blue, purple, green, etc), which means that the energy that passes through the solution is what's left, (the orange, red, yellow, etc).
I can't... | [
"Melanophores contain eumelanin, a type of melanin, that appears black or dark-brown because of its light absorbing qualities. It is packaged in vesicles called melanosomes and distributed throughout the cell. Eumelanin is generated from tyrosine in a series of catalysed chemical reactions. It is a complex chemical... |
Were stone carvings in ancient, medieval, or renaissance sculptures painted or colored? | Frequently, yes.
Ancient sculptures were almost always painted. Here's an article about how traces of this paint can be detected scientifically: _URL_3_
Here's a reconstruction of what classical sculptures might have looked like originally, when painted: _URL_4_
And here's an older article with some history about th... | [
"Ivory carvings, often for book covers, drew on the diptychs of Late Antiquity. For example, the front and back covers of the Lorsch Gospels are of a 6th-century Imperial triumph, adapted to the triumph of Christ and the Virgin. However they also drew on the Insular tradition, especially for decorative detail, whil... |
Would it be possible to build a predictive model of chemistry? | Density functional theory (DFT) does this quite well by solving the quantum mechanical calculations for molecules or materials. Often it is predictive, but not perfect in most cases.
_URL_0_ has a huge database of material compautations, and works towards predicting performance in batteries, Thermoelectrics, and photo... | [
"Second, semi-empirical models solve rate equations that are calibrated using experimental data. Semi-empirical models reduce computational costs primarily by simplifying the chemistry in soot formation and oxidation. Semi-empirical models reduce the size of chemical mechanisms and use simpler molecules, such as ac... |
how are you supposed to know if a self diagnosed mental illness isn't just the placebo effect? | Its easy...a self diagnosed mental illness isnt the placebo effect. It cant be. The Placebo Effectis a beneficial effect, produced by a placebo drug or treatment, that cannot be attributed to the properties of the placebo itself, and must therefore be due to the patient's belief in that treatment.
Now you could mea... | [
"The presence of self-disorders may have predictive power for whether those with an at risk mental state will develop psychosis; the risk of suicidal ideation and suicide by people with schizophrenia, though depression would also be an important factor; predicting initial social dysfunction in people with either sc... |
how do people die from strangulation but wake up from being choked / knocked out? | Because when you choke someone out in a martial arts setting, or knock them unconscious, you immediately cease the attack and allow them to recover. I promise, if you continued your choke for even a fairly short period of time after they pass out, you are likely going to kill them or severely injure them at the least. | [
"In a \"short drop\", the victim may die from strangulation, in which the death may result from a lack of oxygen to the brain. The victim is likely to experience hypoxia, skin tingling, dizziness, vision narrowing, convulsions, shock, and acute respiratory acidosis. One or both carotid arteries and/or the jugular v... |
What is located in the area that would otherwise be a uterus if a man were a woman? | The base of the penis is where the vagina would be, the prostate is roughly where the cervix would be and the bladder is where the body of the uterus would be (the male bladder is larger).
The non pregnant uterus is not that big, about the size of a clenched fist. | [
"The uterus (from Latin \"uterus\", plural \"uteri\") or womb is a major female hormone-responsive secondary sex organ of the reproductive system in humans and most other mammals. In the human, the lower end of the uterus, the cervix, opens into the vagina, while the upper end, the fundus, is connected to the fallo... |
why do modern ultraportable laptops only have a 32/64gb ssd, when netbooks, which were even smaller, commonly had 120gb hard drives? | Those larger hard drives were mechanical drives which compared to SSD's, are very slow and more prone to damage since it's getting bumped around all the time.
SSD's of the same size (or higher) go up significantly in price.
It's a mix between improving speed and keeping costs low. | [
"Most laptops can contain a single 2.5-inch drive, but a small number of laptops with a screen wider than 15 inches can house two drives. Some laptops support a hybrid mode, combining a 2.5-inch drive, typically a spacious HDD for data, with an mSATA or M.2 SDD drive, typically having less capacity, but a significa... |
since it's illegal for children to purchase cigarettes, why isn't forcing 2nd hand smoke on them also illegal? | It's not illegal for children to buy cigarettes. It's illegal for shops to sell cigarettes to children. In other words, you can't make money off of children consuming tobacco.The difference there kind of defeats the parallel you were drawing. | [
"BULLET::::- Even though all sales of tobacco products are prohibited to minors since 1 September 2007 the sale of smoking accessories such as bongs, hookahs, cigarette papers, lighters, pipes or herb grinders is not regulated, and thus sale is permitted to minors. However, in Bavaria the sale of lighters is prohib... |
what makes guitars that expensive? | Guitars are actually among the cheapest, most mass-produced instruments. Beginner flutes *start* at around $500. Beginner tubas... oh my god please don't let my child get interested in the tuba. Guitars are much more affordable as they are a very popular instrument, and competition is fierce among guitar manufacture... | [
"Their guitars are often perceived as expensive. Some of their well-known models having expensive options, e.g., one review lists the Don Edwards signature model \"Cowboy Singer\" at (approx. as of March 2012). Other models are priced similar to equivalently featured instruments from other makers.\n",
"The compan... |
g-force - what is it and how does it injure/kill? | G-Force is just a shorthand way of referring to a force using the force of gravity as a reference.
& #x200B;
So 1G is the same as the force we feel due to gravity. This feels like almost no force at all because we feel it act on us all the time. 2Gs would be twice the normal force of gravity and 3Gs would be 3 tim... | [
"G-force induced loss of consciousness (abbreviated as G-LOC, pronounced 'JEE-lock') is a term generally used in aerospace physiology to describe a loss of consciousness occurring from excessive and sustained g-forces draining blood away from the brain causing cerebral hypoxia. The condition is most likely to affec... |
Why does Turner's syndrome have any effects at all? | Even though one X chromosome is transformed into a Barr body, some of its genes are still expressed. They're called the [pseudoautosomal regions](_URL_0_), of which there are two. The article linked contains a section on Turner syndrome and its probable pathology. | [
"Turner syndrome is caused by the absence of one complete or partial copy of the X chromosome in some or all the cells. The abnormal cells may have only one X (monosomy) (45,X) or they may be affected by one of several types of partial monosomy like a deletion of the short p arm of one X chromosome (46,X,del(Xp)) o... |
How is this possible!? | In the past there have been people who have been revived after a hour underwater. Some time ago I was watching a lifeguard show, and they claimed that once an hour pasts of a person missing in water it becomes a search and recover, not search and rescue. All I could find on the subject was this [article on a 2 year old... | [
"Create Something from Nothing: A strategy to make an audience believe of something’s existence, when it in fact does not exist. On the flip side, it can be used to convince others that nothing exists, when something does exist. (Ch. 36)\n",
"Anything Is Possible is a 2017 novel of related stories by Elizabeth St... |
why does the usa still have an embargo against cuba? | The older Cuban-American generation is vehemently anti-communist and, therefore, very pro-Republican. They're adamantly opposed to lifting the embargo. They're a powerful constituency group within the Republican Party, and they happen to be centralized in a major battleground state.
TL/DR: Older Cuban-Americans are... | [
"During the 1990s the ongoing United States embargo against Cuba caused problems due to restrictions on the export of medicines from the US to Cuba. In 1992 the US embargo was made more stringent with the passage of the Cuban Democracy Act resulting in all U.S. subsidiary trade, including trade in food and medicine... |
if you are short-sighted, is it better for your eyes/eyesight to wear your glasses in front of a computer screen? | Um, wut? I'd have to be 3 inches or less from the screen to read it. This is not a thing for me. | [
"Reading glasses provide a separate set of glasses for focusing on close-by objects. Reading glasses are available without prescription from drugstores, and offer a cheap, practical solution, though these have a pair of simple lenses of equal power, so will not correct refraction problems like astigmatism or refrac... |
How do cold blooded animals cope in colder climates? Do they feel such things such as brain freeze? Is there any examples any cold blooded creatures living in the cold? | Cold blooded animals are actually newly classified as endothermic organisms, such that they need to take in external energy in the form of heat in order to survive. Their blood is not cold, as the original classification would suggest. Therefore, in an absence of heat, they can not support metabolic processes and their... | [
"Some animals living in cold environments maintain their body temperature by preventing heat loss. Their fur grows more densely to increase the amount of insulation. Some animals are regionally heterothermic and are able to allow their less insulated extremities to cool to temperatures much lower than their core te... |
Did the Norse colonies of Greenland make contact with any Inuit tribes? If so were there any records of interaction? Conflict? Trade? | Yes, the Norse called them *Skraelings*. The relationship between the Norse and the skraelings appears to have been mostly belligerent until the abandonment of the Greenland colonies. | [
"Although Greenland seems to have been uninhabited at the time of initial Norse settlement, the Thule people migrated south and finally came into contact with the Norse in the 12th century. There are limited sources showing the two cultures interacting; however, scholars know that the Norse referred to the Inuit (a... |
why do video games ship with unused files and portions of code? | Back when memory was a hot commodity, yes, it did take away and would've caused issues.
Today, it's easy enough to fit a whole game onto a disc (or if you're downloading it, the size only matters insofar as how much space your client has).
A lot of game companies work with pretty tight deadlines as it is, and in man... | [
"“ as it is impossible to reproduce the storage of the game code from the RAM of the PlayStation console unless the console is modified with additional, reverse-engineered hardware, it is not possible for the code to be reproduced until that modification occurs. Thus, the definition of “material form” is not satisf... |
Why do some animals produce more offspring than other animals? | Animals are grouped according to their reproductive strategy by r/K selection theory. r types tend to produce a lot of offspring, hoping that a few will survive. These animals tend to be smaller, lower on the food chain, or less complex organisms. Insects, fish, and rodents are good exampes of this strategy.
By con... | [
"Animals frequently display grouping behavior in herds, swarms, flocks, or colonies, and these multiple births derive similar advantages. A litter offers some protection from predation, not particularly to the individual young but to the parents' investment in breeding. With multiple young, predators could eat seve... |
why is pirating more socially accepted than other copyright infringement crimes? | This is just a guess, but I think there's a perception amongst most folks that certain products are way overpriced, and the pirating of them is either an act of defiance or an act of desperation.
Back in the day before interney piracy was "mainstream," there were tons of people who still pirated copies of software lik... | [
"Assigning criminal liability to copyright violations is troubling in light of the general justifications of criminal sanction to punish harms to individuals or national policies, or to foster moral behavior that implicates societal interests. In many cases what counts as criminal infringement or “theft” under the ... |
why is it that most people can hold their breath for at least one minute, but if you’re ‘choked out’, you can go unconscious from lack of oxygen in roughly 10 seconds? | a headlock restricts blood flow to your brain by blocking your artery. that has a far more immediate effect than holding your breath. | [
"If not enough oxygen is added, the concentration of oxygen in the loop may be too low to support life. In humans, the urge to breathe is normally caused by a build-up of carbon dioxide in the blood, rather than lack of oxygen. Hypoxia can cause blackout with little or no warning, followed by death.\n",
"Voluntar... |
- why a government would 'peg' a currency to, say, the us dollar, and why a less-valuable currency is better for foreign trade. | Let's say I owed you $100, and instead of cash, I try to pay you back with $100 of McDonald's gift certificates. After all, $100 is $100, right?
You probably won't like that. You could only spend that $100 at McDonald's, and if they decided to raise their prices, that $100 wouldn't get you as much as it would at Bur... | [
"Another, less used means of maintaining a fixed exchange rate is by simply making it illegal to trade currency at any other rate. This is difficult to enforce and often leads to a black market in foreign currency. Nonetheless, some countries are highly successful at using this method due to government monopolies o... |
regarding ice (frozen water not the drug), why is there a white centre and a clear shell? | As it freezes, air bubbles form and cause the cloudy appearance you're talking about. The bubbles come from gases dissolved in the water in its liquid state which are forced out as the water crystallizes.
It's possible to freeze ice in a clear form by boiling it first, which liberates the dissolved gases. | [
"The easiest way to envision this scenario, i.e. the advantage of using these chemistries without a MFC) is to fill two cylindrical glass containers, one with hexanes (a high vapor pressure liquid) and one with dry ice (solid carbon dioxide). As the hexane vaporizes the liquid surface is flat and the total exposed ... |
cancer cure that scientists recently claimed to be one year away | The treatment which the biotech company calls MuTaTo (multi-target toxin) is based on SoAP technology, which belongs to the phage display group of technologies.
CEO of the biotech company Dr Ilan Morad said they started with identifying why other cancer-related drugs and treatment are not working and then they looked ... | [
"BULLET::::- Scientists achieve a breakthrough in finding a general cure for cancer by attaching malaria proteins to cancer cells, which appears effective on 90% of cancer types. Human trials are expected to begin within four years.\n",
"A \"Fact Sheet\" issued by the IDPH accompanying the study released on March... |
In calculating standard deviation, why do you square the variances instead of taking the absolute value of the variances? | The distance between the coordinates (a,b) and (c,d) is
* sqrt((a-c)^(2)+(b-d)^(2))
This extrapolates to any dimension really well. For example, in n dimensions, the distance between the points (a*_1_*,a*_2_*,...,a*_n_*) and (b*_1_*,b*_2_*,...,b*_n_*) is
* sqrt((a*_1_*-b*_1_*)^(2) + (a*_2_*-b*_2_*)^(2) + ... + (a*_... | [
"Squared deviations from the mean (SDM) are involved in various calculations. In probability theory and statistics, the definition of \"variance\" is either the expected value of the SDM (when considering a theoretical distribution) or its average value (for actual experimental data). Computations for \"analysis of... |
how is it possible to get doom to run on so many devices that are not even purpose built as home computers, like the gps console on someone's car for instance? | Doom is an old game. It was designed to run on the very limited hardware of the time. Even a very limited computer by today's standards can be powerful enough to run Doom.
Source code for Doom was made public in 1999, which made it possible for people to port the game to other platforms. People try to port it to unusu... | [
"BULLET::::- Can it run Doom? - A common joke question with any hardware that has a CPU. It has even gotten to the point where people are developing source ports of the game to unconventional hardware such as a Canon printer, the Commodore VIC-20, the Smart Bar on the 2016 MacBook Pro, a smart fridge, an ATM, and t... |
why are monotremes considered mammals? | Mammals are not defined by live birth though. If they were then several species of snakes, several species of sharks, and a few amphibians would be mammals.
Mammals normally have live birth, but what defines them as being mammals is the production of milk to feed their young. | [
"Monotremes (from Greek μονός, \"monos\" (\"single\") and τρῆμα, \"trema\" (\"hole\"), referring to the cloaca) are one of the three main groups of living mammals, along with placentals (Eutheria) and marsupials (Metatheria). The monotremes are typified by structural differences in their brains, jaws, digestive tra... |
how people sell movie scripts and who decides if it's a big budget movie? | Most studios will not accept unsolicited scripts because it exposes them to high risk litigation (e.g. accusations that they stole a story). Studios will usually only take material from literary agents with whom they have an established relationship - so if you want to get your scripts made by studios you will have to... | [
"Screenwriters on the other hand were generally paid less than the top actors or directors, usually under $1 million per film. However, the single largest factor driving rising costs was special effects. By 1999 the average cost of a blockbuster film was $60 million before marketing and promotion, which cost anothe... |
Why does smoke from incense or cigarettes not (usually) set off smoke alarms? | Fire Alarm / Smoke Detector Manufacturer here.
Household smoke detectors (excluding Heat and CO) fall into two catagories, Ionisation and Photoelectric.
Ionisation smoke detectors (the detectors with the radioactive symbol on their label) are designed to detect sub-micron particals of combustion (different to thick s... | [
"False alarms are also common with smoke detectors and building fire alarm systems. They occur when smoke detectors are triggered by smoke that is not a result of a dangerous fire. Smoking cigarettes, cooking at high temperatures, burning baked goods, blowing out large numbers of birthday candles, fireplaces and wo... |
Why does plaque always come out a yellowish-white color, regardless of the color of food you've eaten? | [Dental plaque](_URL_1_) is a complex structure formed when bacteria grow on the surface of your teeth. In fact, there's a lot of plaque in your mouth that you can't see as well. What we commonly refer to as "plaque" is more formally known as supragingival (above the gumline) plaque to distinguish it from the other maj... | [
"Extrinsic staining, is largely due to environmental factors including smoking, pigments in beverages and foods, antibiotics, and metals such as iron or copper. Coloured compounds from these sources are adsorbed into acquired dental pellicle or directly onto the surface of the tooth causing a stain to appear.\n",
... |
For Scandinavians' and Germanics' mythology: | I can't really help with your questions, but I can definitely give you some recommendations: you'll want both the Edda and the Poetic Edda for Norse/Scandinavian mythology as well as historical epics like Beowulf and *The Saga of the Volsungs* translated by Jesse L. Byock. The prose Edda is on Project Gutenberg, though... | [
"Norse mythology is the body of myths of the North Germanic peoples, stemming from Norse paganism and continuing after the Christianization of Scandinavia, and into the Scandinavian folklore of the modern period. The northernmost extension of Germanic mythology, Norse mythology consists of tales of various deities,... |
just saw a video where a snowmobile accelerates really quickly in a drag race setting. a commenter said part of the reason is it's cvt transmission . what is that? | Continuously Variable Transmission. Polaris has been using them for ages:
_URL_0_ | [
"They are also commonly used in snowmobile and all-terrain vehicle (ATV) continuously variable transmissions (CVT), both to engage/disengage vehicle motion and to vary the transmission's pulley diameter ratio in relation to the engine revolutions per minute.\n",
"The Snow Trac is made up largely of \"off the shel... |
why do we still not have bold, italics and underlined keyboard options for typing on mobile devices? | There is no standardized method to send font styles via SMS. Apple, could for example, enable it on all their devices, but then what would happen if the user sends a bold message to an Android phone? Android wont know what to do with the extra information and it will just display it as plain text.
Emoji's on the other... | [
"It is commonly used in conjunction with text-messaging services. Some portable telecommunications devices (such as the BlackBerry) have bypassed the need for this by incorporating a mini-keyboard for users to type on. As of 2012, most mobile phones with fewer keys than alphabet letters offer a predictive text inpu... |
why does the world need money? | Because without money, trading usually hits a dead end. Like in this example.
> "Hey Roof Guy, my roof is broken. Can I trade you two chickens to fix my roof?"
> "Sure thing, Chicken Dude."
**Two weeks later**
> "Hey Chicken Dude, I'm really hungry. Can I have some more chickens?"
> "I don't have anyth... | [
"BULLET::::- To quote monochrom's press statement: \"Money is frozen desire. Thus it governs the world. Money is used for all forms of trade, from daily shopping at the supermarket to trafficking in human beings and drugs. In the course of all these transactions, our money wears out quickly, especially the smaller ... |
Does the temperature of the earths core contribute at all to sustaining normal/livable temperatures on the surface. If so, why or why not? | On the *surface*—well, no. Sunlight + atmosphere + surface composition = *weather*, and this is what defines temperature, humidity, winds, etc. Contribution from inside of the Earth is just too small to be measurable in the global scale.
However, if you dig a mine deep enough, you will actually feel the warmth of Eart... | [
"Temperature within the Earth increases with depth. Highly viscous or partially molten rock at temperatures between are found at the margins of tectonic plates, increasing the geothermal gradient in the vicinity, but only the outer core is postulated to exist in a molten or fluid state, and the temperature at the E... |
why does food taste worse when you eat a lot of it at one time? | It is because of your brains reward system. If you eat the same thing over and over again then the pleasure you feel from the taste diminishes making you switch to another food source. | [
"As 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 on our bodies. Sweetness helps to identify energy-rich foods, while bitterness serves as a warning sign of poisons.\n",
"As taste senses both ... |
How do we know Proxima Centauri is the closest star? | For very close stars, we can examine their paralax due to the Earth's orbit as seen [here](_URL_0_).
We measure where on the sky a star is and then measure where it is again 6 months later. Because the Earth is now on the opposite side of the Sun, the star will appear to have moved. We can use the angle it moved by to... | [
"to the Union Observatory, which Innes used in the discovery of Proxima Centauri. In 1915, he found a faint star fairly close to and sharing the same large proper motion with Alpha Centauri, which until then was believed to be the closest star system to the Sun. Innes believed, on rather slim evidence, that it was ... |
How acceptable was it to support the IRA in America around 1981? | Thanks to the strong tradition of free speech in the US, of course one *could* express any number of opinions. But I get the sense you are asking what the range of expressed opinions was.
With regard to the hunger strike itself, there was support for the hunger strikers at a relatively high level of US politics. The ... | [
"The IRA was the most significant initiative of John Collier, who was President Franklin D. Roosevelt's Commissioner of the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) from 1933 to 1945. He had long studied Indian issues and worked for change since the 1920s, particularly with the American Indian Defense Association. He intende... |
why do we continue drinking alcohol, when it continually causes problems for everyone? | Prohibition caused even more problems so they had to give the booze back. Meanwhile, special interests have been pressuring the government to control alternative intoxicants to protect their various interests for about a century which has led to so many other prohibitions. A lot of these other substances have smaller... | [
"Alcoholism is a chronic problem. However, if managed properly, damage to the brain can be stopped and to some extent reversed. In addition to problem drinking, the disease is characterized by symptoms including an impaired control over alcohol, compulsive thoughts about alcohol, and distorted thinking. Alcoholism... |
- how doomed are we in america with the sequestration thing? | $85,000,000,000 of $3,800,000,000,000
Take 9 zeros from both sides, it's like you've got $3800 to spend and someone steals $85, and the thief promises not to steal money for food or rent. It might inconvenience you, but it probably won't kill you.
| [
"The Great Stagnation: How America Ate All the Low-Hanging Fruit of Modern History, Got Sick, and Will (Eventually) Feel Better is a pamphlet by Tyler Cowen published in 2011. It argues that the American economy has reached a historical technological plateau and the factors which drove economic growth for most of A... |
why some foods completely unrelated to animals contain fat (olives, nuts, avocado), please. | Fat is used by plant to store energy. Nuts have fat so the plant inside has energy to grow a stem and leafs. Once the plant has leafs it can produce it's own energy. | [
"Nuts are an important source of nutrients for both humans and wildlife. Because nuts generally have a high oil content, they are a highly prized food and energy source. A large number of seeds are edible by humans and used in cooking, eaten raw, sprouted, or roasted as a snack food, or pressed for oil that is used... |
what are some scientific explanations for well known cases of 'supernatural' phenomena? | **Physical**
* [Carbon monoxide poisoning](_URL_5_) can cause feelings of dread, auditory and visual hallucinations and illness
* Expansion and contraction of materials in a house as it heats up and cools down throughout the day can cause noises such as creaks, groans, clicks and bangs, and can cause doors to appear t... | [
"In the twentieth century, supernatural fiction became associated with psychological fiction. The result is that the supernatural is only one possible explanation for what has been described. A classic example of this would be \"The Turn of the Screw\" by Henry James, which offers both a supernatural and a psycholo... |
why current religious freedom laws are considered so objectionable. | The issue isn't about writing a message on a cake or some other sort of service where it's the *service itself* that the person finds objectionable. It's about doing the same thing for every customer and treating them equally.
For example, let's say that I wanted to buy a cake that said "I love Nazis" on it. A bak... | [
"The State Constitution provides for freedom of religion; however, respect for religious freedom declined due to selective legal enforcement and indifference of some government officials, which allowed societal violence and the threat of violence to restrict the ability to worship of adherents of religious groups i... |
how do sprints change your body versus jogging? | Sprinting builds cardio and explosion in a shorter amount of time, it also burns fat for longer. Whereas, long distance cardio can improve cardio but not explosiveness it also takes longer. So you can get better results, running harder sprints than longer distance. | [
"Sprinting involves a quick acceleration phase followed by a velocity maintenance phase. During the initial stage of sprinting, the runners have their upper body tilted forward in order to direct ground reaction forces more horizontally. As they reach their maximum velocity, the torso straightens out into an uprigh... |
how is it ok for the usa to try to force other nations to denuclearize even though we maintain a nuclear arsenal that is capable of destroying the world. | Nobody wants anyone to have nukes, they're bad news *but* once you get some, you can't really give them up as long as somebody else has them - it's sort of a "Mexican Standoff" where safety & peace is assured by the fact that nobody with nukes will fire them first because they know everyone else that has them will f... | [
"It is a very far reaching control which would eliminate the rivalry between nations in this field, which would prevent the surreptitious arming of one nation against another, which would provide some cushion of time before atomic attack, and presumably therefore before any attack with weapons of mass destruction, ... |
what on earth is wwe wrestling about | Hey... uh... you know all those movies and TV shows you watch? They're not real either. You still watch those despite knowing it's acting, don't you? | [
"Legends of Wrestling is a series of professional wrestling video games based on the best wrestlers of all time, from WWF/WWE, NWA, WCW, ECW, TNA and various independent promotions. It was developed and produced by Acclaim. It was released in 2001 for the PlayStation 2, then in 2002 for the GameCube and Xbox. In 20... |
Why did 4 year liberal arts educations become popular in the United States? | Your question actually needs to be flipped around: when did other countries *stop* insisting upon a liberal arts foundation.
The modern university system was born in the Latin (European) Middle Ages, in Paris and Bologna. The medieval curriculum was founded on the liberal arts: the *trivium* of grammar, rhetoric, logi... | [
"The liberal arts college model took root in the United States in the 19th century, as institutions spread that followed the model of early schools like Harvard, Yale, and Dartmouth, although none of these early American schools are regarded as liberal arts colleges today. These colleges served as a means of spread... |
why can't i goto a doctor 2x a year and just get screened for every disease and eliminate the risk of cancer/etc? | Most tests for diseases are not 100% accurate. These tests normally don't detect the actual presence of a certain virus or bacteria, but test for certain enzymes or hormones that end up in your blood as a result of the infection. However there's always a chance these are in your bloodstream because of unrelated reasons... | [
"The United States Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) recommended against PSA screening in healthy men finding that the potential risks outweigh the potential benefits. Guidelines from the American Urological Association, and the American Cancer Society recommend that men be informed of the risks and benefits ... |
why do you get really thirsty after eating chocolate/sweets? | Your body uses tons of water to regulate blood sugar. This is also why a night of binging on candy will make you «hung over» the next morning, you are really dehydrated | [
"The explorer Francisco Hernández wrote that chocolate drinks helped treat fever and liver disease. Another explorer, Santiago de Valverde Turices, believed that large amounts of hot chocolate were helpful in treating chest ailments and that smaller amounts could help stomach disorders. When chocolate was introduce... |
As an enthusiast of astrophysics, and one who is out of the loop, I would love to know about quantum fluctuations. | How do you know you have a "true" vacuum? You measure the energy of a region. But uncertainty in energy measurement forms a Heisenberg pair with uncertainty in time measurement. So if you want, you can kind of think about quantum fluctuations as imprecision in knowledge of energy over very small time scales. You can't ... | [
"\"Quantum Night\" has received positive reviews. \"Publishers Weekly\" called it a \"fast-moving, mind-stretching exploration of the nature of personality and consciousness.\" \"Winnipeg Free Press\" described the book \"a breath of fresh air and a return to classic Sawyer: big ideas, relatable people and a Canadi... |
If you were locked up and only had access to 1 litre of water, how should you comsume it in order to survive the longest? | Before drinking any of it, store your urine if it's dilute. You're probably pretty hydrated already, so you'll be losing a lot of water through there. When your urine starts to get darker(Probably only after 1 piss), stop, and start drinking small amounts of water. Concentrated urine will be very bad for you, and is co... | [
"How by means of a certain machine many people may stay some time under water. How and why I do not describe my method of remaining under water, or how long I can stay without eating; and I do not publish nor divulge these by reason of the evil nature of men who would use them as means of destruction at the bottom ... |
a bill was passed to remove internet privacy regulations today , what does that mean really ? | Basically, now American ISPs can sell the data they collect from you to advertisers without your permission. | [
"This case established the right to privacy of internet users and guaranteed the protection of basic rights while on the internet. It was established that the government does not have oversight or authority over the internet and thus cannot necessarily make mandates for it.\n",
"The Electronic Communications Priv... |
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