id stringlengths 5 6 | input stringlengths 3 301 | output list | meta null |
|---|---|---|---|
2ozyf0 | In what ways did culture of the time influence Buddhist beliefs and practices? | [
{
"answer": "Stephen Batchelor, a former monk in both the Tibetan and Zen traditions, wrote [Buddhism Without Beliefs](_URL_1_), an explicit attempt to separate the baby from the cultural bathwater in Buddhism. It's been ages since I read it, but if memory serves I believe Batchelor argues that Buddhism is a ma... | null |
1ndkfj | During World War II did merchant ships have insurance against being sunk by the enemy? Did the national governments offer compensation? | [
{
"answer": "They were insured against loss. The precise details likely varied from ship to ship. I'm not sure where you would find the precise details of the amount any given vessel was insured for off hand. Lloyds and the American Bureau of Shipping did issue annual registers of insured vessels though. You wo... | null |
8121vw | During WWII what was the average distance that tanks fought other tanks? | [
{
"answer": "Coox and Naisawald's 1954 study *Survey of Allied Tank Casualties in World War II* gives several statistics that attempt to determine this.\n\n > A study of 800 U.S., British, and Canadian tank casualties in Western Europe, the Mediterranean Theater, and North Africa disclosed that the average ran... | null |
3rhdfs | if the only way you can get an std, sti, and hiv is if you sleep with someone who's infected then how is it stds, sti's and hiv exist to begin with? | [
{
"answer": "There are other ways to get most STIs. HIV, for example, can be transmitted through an infected person's blood, often by sharing or reusing needles for drug injections.",
"provenance": null
},
{
"answer": "STIs are commonly transmitted sexually but can be trasmitted through other bodily... | null |
239xkh | why do bottles of antibiotics and vitamins smell bad? | [
{
"answer": "Not all antibiotics have that rotten egg smell, but those that do typically contain a Sulfur compound in the form of hydrogen sulfide that gives it that rancid smell.",
"provenance": null
},
{
"answer": "Not all vitamins smell bad. It's mostly just the B vitamins, which have a sort of e... | null |
9itdw9 | how do we know counting rings in a tree is a definitive "1 year"? | [
{
"answer": "In places with seasons, trees go through a predictable growth-dormant cycle that produces the distinctive ring pattern.\n\nSince most of these seasonal trees go dormant regardless of what the actual winter temperature was that year (they're timing the day lengths, not responding to unpredictable te... | null |
zz8hb | Whale sounds/songs can reach up to 190dB. Is this not dangerous for humans taking a swim nearby? | [
{
"answer": "Simply put, the gap between water and air is too difficult to cross for a number of reasons.\n\n\nFirst, the speed of pressure waves in water is much, much greater than the speed of pressure waves in air. This means that to someone near the water surface, it may not even become a recognizable sound... | null |
8kk4y4 | what exactly is a galaxy? | [
{
"answer": "A massive collection of stars, all orbiting a central point, usually a supermassive black hole. \n\nBasically,from what we can tell, they form much the same way individual star systems form. A cloud of gas (mainly hydrogen) condensed due to gravity, the center becomes a Star, and the eddys of the ... | null |
6x23o6 | what happens when a country 'condemns' something? | [
{
"answer": "That's pretty much it - just expressing disapproval. A lot of times there's not a good/politically palatable solution to problems, so all a politician can do is talk about it.",
"provenance": null
},
{
"answer": "It doesn't do much to solve the problem, but what's important is the act o... | null |
9dtty4 | as someone who doesnt follow sports and social trends or have a twitter or instagram, why are people burning their nike clothes? | [
{
"answer": "It's an extention of the kneeling during national anthem thing. The football player who started the kneeling protest did an ad with Nike. Now people who disliked the kneeling protest are burning thier Nike stuff to show they hate Nike now.",
"provenance": null
},
{
"answer": "Nike made ... | null |
aq2vix | asian flush syndrome | [
{
"answer": "Are you asking what causes it? It's caused by the buildup of a chemical called acetaldehyde, which is a natural product of the metabolism of alcohol. It's genetic, and fairly common among people of Asian decent. There are a couple of genes responsible. One gene is responsible for producing a chemic... | null |
7ljhve | why does white noise calm people down? | [
{
"answer": "It distracts us from our own internal dialogue, which can be a little overwhelming after a while",
"provenance": null
},
{
"answer": "As a new father, we use white noise to help put the baby to sleep. I'm told that the womb is actually a fairly loud place, with constant breathing & pu... | null |
2n8mjd | If coats are just good insulators, why can't we wear them in the summer to keep cool? | [
{
"answer": "Human comfort temperature range is a little below the temperature of the human body. We are exo-thermic, and remain comfortable so long as our body temp does not drop or rise by much. \n\nWearing a coat in winter keeps our heat loss rate within that comfort range - limiting exposure to temperatur... | null |
184tgj | Why is there a maximum speed for light? What is "braking" it? | [
{
"answer": "The speed of light is set by two fundamental constants known as the permeability and permittivity of free space. A classical analogy for these constants would be \"stiffness\", ie empty space has a stiffness and this leads to the speed of wave travel.\n\nThere are plenty of near light speed partic... | null |
1w1a45 | how can the quietest room in the world be -9 decibels? | [
{
"answer": "Decibels are a logarithmic scale. 0 isn't no sound, it's just the lower-limit of what a human can typically hear. So -9 isn't no sound at all, it's just quieter than the quietest sound a human can detect, by a factor about the same as the factor between 0 decibels and 10.",
"provenance": null
... | null |
b06yxr | does “burning in” brand new audio gears such as headphones and speakers actually work? | [
{
"answer": "First: The word 'gear' in this context is already plural. It's a group noun, like 'news' and 'furniture'. \n\nSecond: No. That idea comes from decades ago, when magnets were weaker and materials were worse. Even then, it had almost no impact on the sound. Only hard core audiophiles purported to hea... | null |
87j5ly | Is there any credible evidence for any kind of Giant humans existing? | [
{
"answer": "I wouldn't say it is propaganda (that's a strong word!), but these entities, common in many people's folklore, have no basis in fact. You can ask /r/Askanthropology about things like the \"giganthropus\" fossil evidence, but whatever that represents, it is hardly evidence of giants, and it would be... | null |
2vtr1t | how come no one has registered trademark using internet memes? are there any policies related to that? | [
{
"answer": "To register a phrase as trademark, you have to prove that people recognize your company's products because you use the phrase. That's never going to be true for an internet meme.",
"provenance": null
},
{
"answer": null,
"provenance": [
{
"wikipedia_id": "23623098",
... | null |
3lb0xa | "If there is no biological basis for race, how can forensic anthropologists distinguish the remains of a person of one race from those of another?" | [
{
"answer": "The concept of race exists in biology, but there is only one human race. There are genetic differences between human populations based on geography but they are gradual and increase slowly with distance, there is no abrupt change or non-overlapping of genetic make-up as would be required to define ... | null |
3dr2jg | the cable companies arguement to "data cap" my monthly internet usage is to prevent congestion of the system during peak hours. can it really be congested? | [
{
"answer": "Yes, it's true. Netflix's servers are sending you the video, but it still travels down your ISP's internet connection to get to you. There is a limited amount of bandwidth from your ISP out to the Internet for you and every other customer to share.\n\nWhat's different with cable TV is that the TV s... | null |
adnvnt | bandwidth vs ping vs latency | [
{
"answer": "Latency is a measure in milliseconds of how long it takes for another device to respond to your request for a response. \n\nPing is the most common tool for measuring latency. It sends a small packet out and measures how long it takes to get the reply.\n\nBandwidth is how much data you can send/r... | null |
1vnzze | Why does nature sometimes prefer right or left? Example: Lorentz force | [
{
"answer": "I see where you are coming from here:\n\nIf you have a vertical wire, with a current going up, then the magnetic field wraps around the wire according to a right-hand rule - counterclockwise when viewed from above. If I look at this wire in a mirror, the magnetic field is going in the other directi... | null |
1a88gb | What was the Nazi opinion on the Chinese? What was the Japanese opinion on the Jews? | [
{
"answer": "The Nazis didn't seem to have a problem with the Chinese, they had provided extensive military support to the KMT in the 20s and 30s. They even had their own man in China in [Wang Jingwei.](_URL_0_)",
"provenance": null
},
{
"answer": "The Japanese actually have a unique history of opin... | null |
1gakan | why the winter war happened | [
{
"answer": "Relations between Russia and Finland had been strained since WWI. \n\nRussia felt that Finland was weak, and that they would be able to easily seize a decent chunk of territory. Most of the rest of Europe was distracted by Germany gearing up to start WWII, and so the Russians felt that nobody else ... | null |
g105m3 | How does a vaccine with inactivated virus work? | [
{
"answer": "Imagine you're playing CTF and you're on the Red team, but you don't know what the enemy team looks like. Turns out they're Blue. You can learn this when they attack you, but that's bad because they have guns and will kill your dudes while you learn this piece of information and move to repel their... | null |
322i0q | Western Intensification: Why are currents much stronger on the western than eastern side of ocean basins? | [
{
"answer": "Ok, this is both a fundamental tenant of oceanography but also very difficult to explain in a short space. The classic paper is Henry Stommel's 1948 [*The Westward Intensification of Wind-Driven Ocean Currents* (PDF)](_URL_0_). In this paper Stommel works through a simple mathematical model of wi... | null |
12vtt9 | Does anybody know if there were any drugs developed or important medical discoveries made within the Soviet Union? | [
{
"answer": "[Phage Therapy](_URL_1_) is the what immediately springs to mind. While not technically \"invented\" in the USSR (British and French scientists independently discovered bacteriophagic viruses in early 20th century and), the Soviet Union was where the technique was refined, expanded, and put into br... | null |
10mg6g | When did Europe begin its shift away from religion? Why? | [
{
"answer": "During the Middle Ages, religion played a hugely important role in life, since the Church was one of the few institutions that spread across the variety of feudal boundaries in Europe. As Europe transitioned out of feudalism and towards states (lead by monarchs), the Church in Rome lost power, but ... | null |
45pktn | How did Luxembourg survive? | [
{
"answer": " > annexed by the Netherlands because of its political ties?\n\nActually, Luxembourg has been absorbed into other countries through history, and the current Luxembourg is nowhere near as large as the historical Duchy of Luxembourg. See [this map](_URL_0_). \n\nIt came into the possession of Philip ... | null |
2x5moq | why did we, as a species, develop a taste for art? | [
{
"answer": "There will never be any one, completely satisfying answer to question like this. But, as far as we can tell, most of the higher-level mental attributes of humans are simply byproducts of having large, advanced brains. That is to say, we *didn't* evolve to appreciate art, we appreciate art because o... | null |
2f9dde | if our blood contains iron, why is it not orange or rust colored? | [
{
"answer": "Because we have a very small amount of it in our bodies. We have around 4 grams of iron in our bodies. This is about the weight of a penny.",
"provenance": null
},
{
"answer": "Our intuitive sense is that adding elements to a compound should be like mixing paint. \"Rust is orange, and... | null |
27lvim | why can extreme stress cause a psychotic episode? | [
{
"answer": "Everyone will break, it's a matter of time and level of perceived stress and bodily fatigue they are going through at the time.\n\nMy first 48 hour shift at the hospital did something similar to me.\n\nAfter finally going home I fell asleep only to wake up in a cold shower, and having my parents (w... | null |
1usu2p | What was so special about the Paris commune uprising that it seems to hold the imagination of communists greater than that of say the French revolution? | [
{
"answer": "It feels silly to say that the reason the Commume is more idealized is because it's Communistic. While I cannoy speak much on the Paris Commune, something I aim to fix someday, I would argue that the reason is due to the types of governments that were set up.\n\nThe French Revolution and the First ... | null |
t1f7s | Why do healthy young athletes die suddenly from cardiac arrest? | [
{
"answer": "There is no way to answer this question precisely, as each case of sudden cardiac arrest is unique. However, in general, healthy athletes who die of cardiac issues often have a congenital (present since birth) structural heart defect.",
"provenance": null
},
{
"answer": "When young ath... | null |
6e42wy | how do phones send texts? | [
{
"answer": "In much the same way as they send voice to the tower when you talk on the phone. They have circuitry to create a signal, and send one that is the style the tower recognizes as text. They've decided certain bit patterns mean certain characters, and send a combination of address information and the t... | null |
315t3e | how this battery train experiment works? | [
{
"answer": "[This](_URL_1_) should help you out...people on a physics forum explaining it pretty simply\n\nEDIT: Aww hell, I guess I'll copy/paste the answer here...\n\n > If you run a current through a coil; it generates an magnetic field inside the coil [like this](_URL_0_)\n\n > If the field lines are exa... | null |
tswhk | Can 'one' photon technically be divided into anything? | [
{
"answer": "Read up on [spontaneous parametric down-conversion](_URL_0_).\n\n_URL_1_\n\n_URL_2_\n\n",
"provenance": null
},
{
"answer": "Within the framework of Quantum Electrodynamics, the only thing one photon can do is pair produce - split into an electron and positron. An electron can lose some... | null |
93nb2p | what is wikileaks? what is the current situation with them? | [
{
"answer": "Wikileaks is a website that originated by civil libertarians who intended to promote transparency by publishing leaks of sensitive information about governments and large corporations, given to them in secret by whistleblowers. They rose to fame in 2010 with the publication of a huge number of mili... | null |
24rteq | how are the us still allowed to use drone strikes when the civilian casualty rate is so high? | [
{
"answer": "Who is going to stop us.",
"provenance": null
},
{
"answer": "The United States government believes they are effective enough to justify the high civilian casualty rate. ",
"provenance": null
},
{
"answer": "\"Allowed\" is an interesting term, isn't it? Any other weapon with... | null |
b9maav | Why dose the Ussr anthem mention Russia | [
{
"answer": "Here's the lyrics for the Anthem of the SSSR that were used from from 44-56 - the first stanza is the relevant one:\n\n > Союз нерушимый республик свободных\nСплотила навеки Великая Русь.\nДа здравствует созданный волей народов\nЕдиный, могучий Советский Союз!\n\nRoughly this translates as follows ... | null |
28hlli | Was the American Western Frontier as deadly as media portrays it? With gun battles, shootings, tons of diseases, etc.? If not, how did we get this impression? | [
{
"answer": "Disease was certainly a problem, especially for Native Americans who didn't have the same heritable immunities as people of European descent. But the violence of the American West has been dramatized quite a lot. \n\nYou're statistically more likely to be shot Chicago today than you were to get sho... | null |
7z5xu1 | is it possible to move an object in circular motion using magnets? | [
{
"answer": "Absolutely, this is how most electric motors work. They have a coil of wire around the magnet, and adding a current makes the magnet attract or repel other magnets on a part that spins freely. (unless i misunderstood your question!)",
"provenance": null
},
{
"answer": "It's not really ... | null |
35a7ej | how do doctors perform 20+ hour surgeries? don't they get mentally and physically exhausted? | [
{
"answer": "Yes, if it's going to take that long they work in shifts. Even during a more mundane procedure, the surgeon will often have a resident come in to do certain parts.",
"provenance": null
},
{
"answer": "Most surgeries (when things go to plan) take around 30 min-2 hours. Some major surgeri... | null |
1jb8ri | in special relativity, how is it determined which reference point will have time slowed down? | [
{
"answer": " > Person B gets in a super space ship that launches up and then accelerates to 0.75 times the speed of light and travels for 1 year, then turns around, comes back, and lands on Earth.\nIs time slower for one than the other?\n\nActually, once the traveler lands, he and the person that stayed on ear... | null |
cfgphn | what is asmr exactly and how is it supposedly pleasant to the ears? | [
{
"answer": "This is the best answer I've ever found.\n_URL_0_\n\nPlus it comes from a great comic to read.",
"provenance": null
},
{
"answer": "ASMR is an actual physical sensation, it’s not just a metaphor. It’s hard to explain if you’ve never felt it, kinda like trying to explain colour to a blin... | null |
6b0by2 | How quickly did prejudice towards Japanese-Americans by the general American population end after WW2? | [
{
"answer": "There's a great book about this topic called \"America's Geisha Ally: Reimagining the Japense Enemy\" by Naoko Shibusawa. It goes into great detail about the United States government entering into the \"reverse course\" following WWII. What this basically means is that during and directly after the... | null |
31r47t | When and why did the US stop allowing (literal) boatloads of immigrants to just show up at a port and begin living in the US? | [
{
"answer": "It wasn't just one single law but rather a series of laws. The first was the Page Act of 1875 that primarily targeted Asians, particularly Chinese people, that were immigrating to the western United States to work menial jobs like railroads. Just like we see in the debates today about Hispanic peop... | null |
23bkik | Does quantum mechanics apply to energy? | [
{
"answer": "That's not really what quantum mechanics is about. Energy is conserved in quantum systems unless there is an external reason for it not to be.",
"provenance": null
},
{
"answer": " > If the universe continues to exist forever, does the most improbable things have to happen eventually?\... | null |
6nvu4e | What terms did people use to describe rotation before clocks were common? | [
{
"answer": "In Northern Europe, people would refer to the direction of the sun - indicating a direction was either \"sunwise\" or \"against the sun\": In the north, if one faces south to watch the path the sun takes, it moves in an arc that moves from the left to the right - \"sunwise\" or in today's term \"cl... | null |
4bb9z0 | how do we know cold is the absence of heat and not the other way around? | [
{
"answer": "Temperature is a measurement of energy, specifically kinetic energy on a molecular scale with warmer things having more of this energy than colder things.\nBecause we warm something up by adding energy we define warm/hot as the presence of this energy. Since there is nothing that we can \"add\" to ... | null |
8ksc43 | what does being turing complete means? | [
{
"answer": "In colloquial usage, the terms \"Turing complete\" or \"Turing equivalent\" are used to mean that any real-world general-purpose computer or computer language can approximately simulate the computational aspects of any other real-world general-purpose computer or computer language.",
"provenanc... | null |
1n5ja2 | If the Great Depression didn't truly end until the start of WWII, how come the US economy didn't dip in the post war years? | [
{
"answer": "There was a recession in 1945. GDP fell by 12.7% in that recession. By comparison, the recession of 2007 lowered GDP by 4.3%.\n\n",
"provenance": null
},
{
"answer": null,
"provenance": [
{
"wikipedia_id": "588829",
"title": "Employment Act of 1946",
"s... | null |
3kfpvq | What "generation" star is our Sun? | [
{
"answer": "The Sun is a Population I star, meaning it contains metals from previous generations of stars. By measuring the spectral characteristics of stars, we can observe the ratios of metals to hydrogen or helium, and from this, we can determine how many generations of \"ancestors\" the star has had.\n\n >... | null |
3nepjr | why do we have sports commentators on television that talk non stop during the games? | [
{
"answer": "Probably carry over from before people could watch games on their television. The commentators would give a play by play to those listening on the radio. And now it is tradition. Though they're supposed to be \"analyzing\" the game as well. Or telling people things they might have missed ",
"pr... | null |
2xvglf | How do we perceive things through light bouncing off of the objects we see and entering our eyes? | [
{
"answer": "The secret to the eye being able to resolve things is the fact that the pupil is really small. [Look at this image](_URL_0_) of how a pinhole camera works. Your eye is much the same- replacing the pinhole with pupil. \n\nImagine a red light up above you, and a blue light down below. The red light s... | null |
1o87z3 | What is e in regards to natural logarithms? | [
{
"answer": "Oh this is such a fun question!\n\nThe number's importance starts with one key observation. \n\nLet a > 0 be a real number, we can define a function f(x)=a^x \n\nWhat is the derivative of this function?\n\nIf we look at the limit definition of the derivative we get\n\nf'(x) = lim h- > 0 ( a^(x+h) ... | null |
23awmx | How did most Medieval kings die? | [
{
"answer": "Edited to remove typos.\n\nYour question is far too broad for anyone to answer (at least to the standard expected). I'm sorry. To explain: 1) the death of major figures is not always clear cut. 2) this means a respondant requires exhaustive contextual knowledge of a thousand years of history across... | null |
19t45f | Is the Mandate of Heaven directly responsible for the technological and philosophical advances in the early history of dynastic China? | [
{
"answer": "I think you have elevated the mandate to a height that it doesn't deserve. Innovations in China did not depend at all on unification. Some examples: \nThe great advances in military tactics, poetry, and paper all occurred in the six dynasties period, that which lies between the Han and sui/tang. ... | null |
8dab6t | Is there an increased risk of lung cancer by just being in a room that smells like cigarette smoke with no one actually smoking in it? | [
{
"answer": "Yes it appears so;\n\n\" \n\nResearchers now know that residual tobacco smoke, dubbed thirdhand smoke, combines with indoor pollutants such as ozone and nitrous acid to create new compounds. Thirdhand smoke mixes and settles with dust, drifts down to carpeting and furniture surfaces, and makes its ... | null |
395eaq | how did children from completely different parts of the world come up with the exact-same schoolyard games? | [
{
"answer": "Think you are underestimating both the time these games have been around for and the extent to which families move around.",
"provenance": null
},
{
"answer": "Kids talk to other kids and go to summer camp. Stuff like that packed with games their parents tell them really.",
"provena... | null |
ql8ry | Why are there only 4 "letters" of DNA? | [
{
"answer": "Only 4 different nitrogenous bases might seem like too few to encode the diverse complexity of life, but your computer is coded completely in binary (1s and 0s). ",
"provenance": null
},
{
"answer": " The interesting thing is that the Adenosine, Thymine (Uracil for RNA), Cytosine and G... | null |
1yo5jl | If you were placed in a room with 30% oxygen and 70% helium, would you be able to breathe normally? | [
{
"answer": "Yes; you can breathe this just fine. Deep sea divers utilize HeliOx to avoid nitrogen narcosis. You would take funny, but could breathe it just fine at least short term.\n\nThis assumes that you're breathing this at a normal pressure. If you were actually diving or in a compression chamber, you hav... | null |
6v8wpr | What parts of WW2 fighter aircraft were armored? | [
{
"answer": "For the most part there was very little armor included in fighter aircraft of WWII. The Japanese Ki-43-II only had a single 13mm steel plate behind the pilot. Even planes renowned for their ruggedness such as the P-47 had only minor armor. The P-47D had a 10mm plate behind the pilot and a small pla... | null |
1o2w1a | Why is a lump of coal black, but a diamond is clear? | [
{
"answer": "Coal is a sedimentary rock composed of many minerals. Diamond is a mineral composed of a carbon-based crystal structure. If impurities are present in that structure, the clarity of diamond (or any mineral) can be altered. That is why we see varying colors of diamonds.\n\nA better question would ask... | null |
5ms8zb | Why was the SA and SS allowed/accepted in Germany before Hitler ultimately took power in 1933? | [
{
"answer": "The Republic did have the legal power to ban both of these organizations as early as 1922. The *Republikschutzgesetz* (Law for the Protection of the Republic) gave both the *Land* and central governments broad authority to suppress organizations deemed a threat to the Republic. These laws allowed f... | null |
364r80 | credit score lookup. why does it impede your credit score? seems like a basic, no hassle thing to find like checking your bank account. | [
{
"answer": "There's two types of credit checks. \"Soft\" checks are done when you want to look at your score or somebody's doing a background check on you. \"Hard\" checks are done when somebody's checking your score for the sake of lending you money.\n\nThe logic is that if somebody has suddenly started app... | null |
816efp | How , and how often, did American GIs clean their rifles in WWII? | [
{
"answer": "You might be best served by posting this in r/guns. ",
"provenance": null
},
{
"answer": "As with today, the [field manuals](_URL_1_) outline the expected care for issued rifles and equipment. \n\nAs an example: \nFM 23-6 covers the M1917 .30 Enfield \nFM 23-7 covers the M1 \nFM 23-3... | null |
7aa9nz | how are car batteries able to be charged up with a jump start, if car batteries use chemicals for energy? | [
{
"answer": "In a battery, you have electrons moving from one of these chemicals to the other (it's a one-way road), and that motion is the \"electricity\" we use.\n\nThink of the chemicals as workers : when they run out of energy (let's say they ran out of food), you do not need to get new workers, but could g... | null |
254vv3 | Are there any organisms that live their entire existence in the air? | [
{
"answer": "There are living bacteria in clouds. I don't think any are native to clouds, but I wouldn't be surprised if a fair number spend an entire generation (the duration of a bacteria's \"life\" is a bit hard to define) suspended in the air.",
"provenance": null
},
{
"answer": null,
"prove... | null |
5ihjqb | lightspeed | [
{
"answer": "The absolute speed limit of the universe, very close to 300,000,000 meters per secend. It is the most accurately known physical constant.",
"provenance": null
},
{
"answer": null,
"provenance": [
{
"wikipedia_id": "6642115",
"title": "Litespeed",
"secti... | null |
fgetr | Where does (more) space come from? | [
{
"answer": "Its more like the space we have is stretching than more space is being added. ",
"provenance": null
},
{
"answer": null,
"provenance": [
{
"wikipedia_id": "7108658",
"title": "Jain cosmology",
"section": "Section::::Six eternal substances.\n",
"... | null |
792y84 | I mostly know the "Magic Bullet" theory of the JFK assassination from the Seinfeld parody. What is the conspiracy theorists' claim, and why is it wrong? | [
{
"answer": "Follow-up: when did this theory rise to prominence? Is it just with the film JFK? Or had it been in the public consciousness for a while?",
"provenance": null
},
{
"answer": "The magic bullet theory is, indeed, the claim that the trajectory of the bullet was impossible, requiring severa... | null |
4mw0jf | renouncing citizenship | [
{
"answer": "1. It sometimes has benefits. Some countries don't allow for dual citizenship, so you must renounce your old one to get a new one. In some cases having a foreign citizenship can bar you from certain jobs, especially dealing with secret government information.\n\n2. Usually yes. Most countries won't... | null |
22p4yv | i was recently diagnosed with coeliac (gluten allergy) and of course need to change my diet. how does this come about when for the last 30 years or so i was fine? | [
{
"answer": "ELur5? Honestly, we don't know. The genetic markers for Celiac are fairly common, but most people with those genes never develop an immune problem. \n\nThere seems to be a correlation between heavy antibiotic use and developing Celiac Disease, so one hypothesis is that the antibiotics kill off s... | null |
4vb95b | What would the world be like if the Planck Constant were large enough to experience "quantum weirdness" at a macroscopic scale? | [
{
"answer": "Two points:\n\nIt may sound pendantic, but you cannot imagine changing fundamental dimensionful constants, like hbar or c. Their value is meaningless, being just a property of your system of units. All speeds in the universe are proportional to c, and all quantities with units of angular momentum a... | null |
2v2hhh | Does the sun get uniformly dense as we get closer to the core? | [
{
"answer": "The main effect is that it has to achieve balance between outward pressure and inward pointing gravity. If you go through the math, you get that it will be most dense at the center. If you want an image, NASA has a nice one [here](_URL_0_). Note that this model involves more than what I just said a... | null |
56g3ta | Does a massless particle traveling through a medium experience the passage of time? | [
{
"answer": "Photons don't exist outside of time! They don't have a reference frame, which is more an artifact of the way we define reference frames against c. It's sort of a vacuous statement anyway-- one moment is like any other for a photon, a fluctuation of the electric and magnetic fields that continues fr... | null |
3zkze8 | Are there other historical instances of the "model minority" phenomenon? | [
{
"answer": "Oddly enough, Armenians in the Ottoman Empire were considered the model Christian minority prior to the emergence of the Armenian Question in the late 19th century. They even earned the epithet of *millet-i sadıka*, \"the loyal millet\", millet here is an ottoman term used to denote an ethnic and r... | null |
3604id | During the fall of Germany, was there a population flight from places likely to be taken by the Red Army to places likely to be taken by the Anglo-Americans? | [
{
"answer": "After the death of Hitler the new Reichspraesident Doentiz, actively moved soldiers from the Eastern Front to the Western Front so that they could surrender to the Western Allies. However, civilians were largely left to fend for themselves. Doentiz kept the war going with holding actions to allow... | null |
94sbao | how does self-disappearing ink work? | [
{
"answer": "Disappearing ink is usually reacting to carbon dioxide in the air around us, creating carbonic acid through an interaction with an agent in the ink, which causes it to \"disappear\" as sodium carbonate. Sometimes, the ink is photosensitive instead, which will cause it to disappear due to exposure t... | null |
29uto4 | competitive eating. how can people eat so much in one sitting? what happens to their stomachs and bodies after eating so much? and why does it seem that so many competitive eaters are very skinny? | [
{
"answer": "a lot of competitive eaters stay active outside of the eating events",
"provenance": null
},
{
"answer": "They are able to eat so much because they prepare. They stretch their stomachs, they practice techniques for speed, etc. \n\nAfter a competition, it's not unlike how you feel after ... | null |
4cbelj | abortion as a costitutional right | [
{
"answer": "Supreme court opinions walk through the logic of how a principle outlined in the constitution applies to a specific case. Roe v. Wade's opinions are [here](_URL_0_).\n\nThe path they take is as follows:\n\nThe constitution contains no explicit right to privacy, but it does contain enough restricti... | null |
3f94wq | if i didn't know something was illegal, how could i get in trouble for it? | [
{
"answer": "Not knowing the law is not, in itself, a defense. This is a pretty important legal principle, important enough to [have its own Latin phrase](_URL_0_). I'm not quite sure what you're asking, since there's no particular reason you *wouldn't* get in trouble for it.",
"provenance": null
},
{
... | null |
521a27 | how much of the currency in films and tv shows is real? | [
{
"answer": "Very little, probably. Maybe a few bucks changes hands in this scene or that, but when you see a briefcase full of money it's prop currency that's been specially created not to run afoul of counterfeiting laws.",
"provenance": null
},
{
"answer": null,
"provenance": [
{
... | null |
49t2vh | What was the extent of Persian influence on the Deccan Sultanates? | [
{
"answer": "Persian as in the culture? If so it was huge, not only was it the court language and culture, it was also the language of the arts and sciences, thanks in part to a massive influx of Persian immigrants (brain drain?) that migrated there 1500s.\n\n\n\n\nIf you meant Persian, as in the Safavids, then... | null |
35tfl6 | How common would water-borne diseases such as Cholera have been in cities that used aqueducts such as Rome? Would the drinking water have been that much safer compared to other cities? | [
{
"answer": "History enthusiast here.\n\nOther cities as in other Roman cities?\n\nTo answer your question, considering that the aqueducts were fed by springs quite far away from Rome itself, the possibility of a waterborne illness is quite unlikely. To entertain the possibility would call for some infected bod... | null |
2qm8ml | Many facets of American social culture appear to have gotten less "formal" over the course of the last 100 years (male/female dress, reverence for elders etc). Are there any noticeable examples of American society becoming more formal over this time period? | [
{
"answer": "I'm curious about whether this is a trend that occurs in other countries or past cultures as well. Could it be a result of the Internet and other increased forms of communication? Maybe accessibility breeds familiarity. \n\nPlease don't delete or ban if I'm breaking rules here. ",
"provenance"... | null |
3hqute | why don't we put msg in everything? | [
{
"answer": "People are stupid and still think it is bad for you. A lot of store bought soups and stocks will still label their product as msg free, even though there is no need to be msg free.\n\nPersonally I do put it on everything. You can get a huge thing from amazon for like 15 bucks",
"provenance": nu... | null |
88eqlm | The nearest star is a little over 4 light years away. Do we know of any solar systems with neighbors that are very close to each other (relative to our proximity with Proxima Centauri)? | [
{
"answer": "Okay, I whipped up a little program using [this data set](_URL_2_) that has the positions of stars in our solar neighbourhood.\n\nAssuming the data is correct, the closest stars in our neighbourhood (excluding any binaries, etc.) are [Procyon](_URL_0_) and [Luyten's Star](_URL_1_), which are a mere... | null |
bkrihp | why do athletes look so much faster on tv compared to live (in-person)? | [
{
"answer": "Most likely because of the camera movement.\n\n & #x200B;\n\non TV the camera focuses on the player and the rest moves around them. in person, you are already far and you point of view is the whole stadium.",
"provenance": null
},
{
"answer": null,
"provenance": [
{
"w... | null |
3vs02p | what is the largest known individual object in the universe and how you can understand it's true scale? | [
{
"answer": "YV Canis Majoris is the largest known star we have observed.\n\nIt's as wide as our solar system.",
"provenance": null
},
{
"answer": "_URL_0_\n\nHere's a good gif to understand scale. Thank me later",
"provenance": null
},
{
"answer": "The Hercules-Corona Borealis Great Wal... | null |
2tzyf5 | why are motorcycle engines capable of running at such higher rpm than car engines? | [
{
"answer": "They are smaller and don't have as much metal to sling around. Since they have less mass in order to create the forces required to move it has to have higher RPM's. When you get up to the larger high speed diesel engines 1300RPM - 1500RPM is usually a max rating. Then the even larger medium speeds ... | null |
5x2pha | how exactly was russia allegedly involved with the presidential election and what did they do? | [
{
"answer": "There is supposedly evidence that Russia was involved in hacking the DNC. They released as much damning information from the DNC as they could to try and push Trump into office, as he could potentially be financially compromised by the Russian government. They could then influence Trump through coe... | null |
2de1xn | Why can some people flex certain muscles and others can't? | [
{
"answer": "Training builds and strengthens neuromuscular connections. If you workout your chest consistently then you should be able to move your pecs.",
"provenance": null
},
{
"answer": null,
"provenance": [
{
"wikipedia_id": "18447032",
"title": "Muscle contracture",
... | null |
43ymuf | How much autonomy did each State in the Holy Roman Empire have with respect to the military? | [
{
"answer": "As for your first question, it depends on the era you're talking about. Prior to the Thirty Years War, most states did not have a standing army, but rather formed/hired an army as needed. However, this was not particularly unique within the HRE, given that standing armies were very expensive, and m... | null |
a2k2zz | What exactly happened when you got the letter that you were drafted in WWII? | [
{
"answer": "I answered a question similar to this [here](_URL_0_), but I'll repost it below.",
"provenance": null
},
{
"answer": null,
"provenance": [
{
"wikipedia_id": "305948",
"title": "David Dellinger",
"section": "Section::::Sources.\n",
"start_paragra... | null |
1pmma4 | why do some communities trick-or-treat on the day before halloween? | [
{
"answer": "For safety mostly. If you get a lot of people to Trick-or-Treat the day before you end splitting the number of people up over two days instead of everyone trying to do it all at once.\n\nAlso, it allows parent's to take really young kids out without having to worry about asshole teenagers because ... | null |
95xgi1 | the mechanisms of voting in the us and the controversy about requiring government id in order to vote | [
{
"answer": "You have to register to vote a month or 2 before the actual election is to take place. You then get a voter ID card but your name goes on a list. Your local voting station gets a list that contains your name (and others who registered). You then tell the voting station your name, they cross you off... | null |
6vd07i | why do we have a more intense "falling feeling" in amusement park rides than we do when we are actually free falling like in skydiving or high dives? | [
{
"answer": "When you are freefalling you are not falling freely for long until you pick up enough speed for air resistance to matter and stop the feeling of freefall. In fact you have more freefall time by jumping on a trampoline then if you are skydiving since on the trampoline you are experiencing freefallin... | null |
1g1qho | Is the smell of cooking food appetizing to babies too young to eat solids? | [
{
"answer": "Babies can determine the difference between breast milk and baby formula by smell. They can actually find their way to a nipple to feed on even when they're at a small distance because of the smell. I know this isn't exactly the answer you are looking for but it's still interesting.\n\n[There are... | null |
Subsets and Splits
No community queries yet
The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.