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Why do colors combine to make other colors? | Colors are a response your brain makes to picking up certain wavelengths of electromagnetic radiation striking receptor cells in your brain. When this happens, those cells send signals to your brain, and your brain creates the image. Certain combinations of stimulation on those cells cause your brain to generate different colors, to help further discriminate, because this is a beneficial evolutionary adaptation (harder for things to blend together). Color itself is not a property of light or anything. Rather, a product of your brain interpreting it. |
why is the Wilhelm scream so overused in movies? | It's an inside joke/running gag. Sound mixing is a very tedious job, so they like to have fun. Like how Pixar movies almost have "A113" in their movies. |
When dieting and losing weight, is there a universal right way? Also do cravings mean something? And other ? | The right way is to utilize more calories than you consume. All diets that succeed do this, all diets that fail, fail to do this. People may be more or less effective at eating less calories, or at burning more, but the equation is always the same. It is possible that combinations of foods make you feel better or worse and that these things enable you to stick with it more. It is certainly healthy to avoid HF corn syrup in general, but from a pure weight loss perspective it is not all that important. Cravings can certainly happen with sugar swings, but again...thats about your ability to sustain a pattern of reduced calorie intake and increased calorie burning. Eat the right number of calories. Then...eat a good balance of foods. Exercise. That's the recipe for both health and weight loss. |
Why "Gravity" Does Not Exist | Newton said gravity is a mysterious force that affects everything with mass. He didn't know what causes this force but he did create some useful equations. Then Einstein came up with General Relativity. He says that mass bends space-time and that's why things are attracted to each other. For Example, if you put 2 heavy balls on a trampoline, they warp the trampoline and move towards each other. This is just an analogy, but it helps give you the idea. This warping of space-time has some other side affects, which allows General Relativity to predict and explain thing that Newton's law doesn't (like small changes in the orbit of planets, light bending around stars, and clocks in GPS satellites running slower). |
Some genes, increase the likelihood of getting certain diseases (like cancer) why? | It's kind of misleading to think of the gene as being exclusively for cancer-causing purposes. Typically the "cancer genes" people talk about are variations on a gene that codes for sometime useful. Like when people say they have the BRCA1 gene (the gene most commonly associated with genetic breast cancers), they don't actually mean they have a genetic sequence in a place where everyone else has nothing. Everyone has a BRCA1 gene, it's just that normally it codes for tumor-suppressing proteins. In people with certain mutations in that region, however, the proteins that it codes for are not produced correctly and thus do not properly suppress the uncontrolled growth of cells. |
What determines a person's sense of humor? | Mostly psychological. When a person has good sense of humor, it generally means they are happy, socially confident and likely to have a healthy perspective on life. But this has exceptions because humor has a dark side. There are people who use self-defeating humor; also humor is used to criticize and manipulate others through teasing, sarcasm and ridicule. So being funny isn't necessarily an indicator of good social skills and well-being. It all depends on the kind of humor the person uses. |
- How Do Solid State Hard Drives Work? | Flash drives work by having individual cells that are left with an electrical charge by depositing extra electrons (and thus negative charge) that is maintained even after power is removed. It's almost like a tiny series of microscopic batteries that is either set positive/negative or negative/positive. From an answer about general storage: _URL_0_ |
Why do floppy disks and SD cards have a mechanical lock switch to block access, when anyone can just flip the switch and access the data inside? | The lock on floppies didn't deny access to the data. It locked out writing over it. It's more a a precaution to keep your data safe from yourself. |
What is the definition of life? | All known life has a few things in common, organisms (things that are alive) have these in common: they're composed of a cell or cells, undergo metabolism, maintain homeostasis, grow, respond to stimuli, and reproduce. There are a few things that seem to do a few but not all of these processes, like viruses, which is why they're classified as nonlife or as some kind of intermediate gray area between life and nonlife. We don't necessarily "know" nonlife mutated into life sometime in the past, but we view it as the most likely scenario because we do know that the Earth once had no life, and now, today, it does have life, and also because we know the processes it would have to undergo are theoretically possible. |
Weird password policies | Actually, your suggestion of a possible password might be safer. I vaguely remember some xkcd on this... |
Distillation as it pertains to alcoholic drinks | Once the liquid that they are making the liquor out of has been fermented, and has alcohol in it, then the alcohol needs to be concentrated. Alcohol has a slightly lower boiling point than water, so they heat the liquid (which is called a mash by the way) to just below the boiling point of water. The alcohol boils off while the majority of the water remains liquid, separating the two. The alcohol vapor is then cooled and condensed back into a more concentrated and higher proof liquid. Then they generally age it in a barrel. |
Why do we cover railway tracks with rocks ? Does it improve the stability when a train goes by ? (due to the vibrations) | Although it doesn't look it, the ballast is pretty solid. It distributes the load from the passing trains, keeps down unwanted vegetation (there aren't many plants than can grow on rocks) and enables water to drain away. This last one is very important. Where I live, there was some flooding back in May, and parts of the railway line were submerged. The water, having just washed down from the hillsides, was very muddy, and so the ballast is caked in mud. And so right now the line is closed for a couple of weeks while they clean the ballast. This is because the mud is preventing the water from draining away properly. In the winter, the wet mud would likely freeze, and water expands when it freezes: and so it might actually lift the tracks slightly. If we have a winter where the ballast freezes, unfreezes and freezes again a few times, that could loosen the tracks and make them dangerous. |
If I were to only rinse my body with water to clean myself, how clean would my body be? | Oils are not generally water soluble. Oils would be left on the skin after washing with just water, which would contribute to body odor and mangy hair. You would be cleaner than you went in, but soap is important. |
Why do new cars smell the way they do? | because of left over chemicals from the plastics and the leather or faux leather treatments are evaporating into a mostly sealed environment |
I tried to sign up for health insurance through _URL_0_ but I don't make enough money to get subsidized...what do I do? [from Florida] | If you do not make enough money to get subsidized, you may make little enough money to qualify for Medicaid. Unfortunately, due to Florida's decision not to expand the Medicaid program, there is a gap between the maximum income to qualify for Medicaid and the minimum income to qualify for subsidies. If you fall within this gap, you probably will not be able to get affordable insurance. (You'll be exempt from the individual mandate, though, so you mostly just aren't affected.) |
how come there is thunder/lightning during storms but during blizzards/snowstorms there is no thunder? | Actually, there is! [See this!](_URL_0_ snow) That said, the reason you don't usually hear thunder during snowstorms is because snow actually suppresses the sound! It basically absorbs it, since it's just fluff in the air, drastically reducing the distance it can be heard! While a regular thunderstorm can be heard for miles and miles, a thundersnow is limited to just 2-3 miles of sound. As for why it's so rare to see a storm like that? You need moisture in the air to produce a thunderstorm. In the summer this is easy, as warm air holds water better. Unfortunately, or fortunately, cold air holds less moisture, and as a result you need special conditions for thundersnow. A warm, wet front trailing or leasing a cold front can produce it. Places like the gulf of Mexico will see it more often, due to readily available warm moist air! |
Why do nuclear weapons create "better looking" mushroom clouds than other explosives? | Primarily scale. On a smaller explosive, the cloud will be, well, smaller. You'll be able to see all the little imperfections around its edges, and those imperfections will take up a larger proportionate area of the total structure. In a nuclear cloud, it's just so big that you don't notice the same-sized imperfection in the mushroom shape as much. |
Power button on a smart phone | I suggest that you read a few button tutorials for embedded systems like arduino or raspberry pi. The processor can read the state of the buttons at any time. So they do this in a loop. When they notice the button is pressed they start a timer and wait for the button to be released. By measuring the time it takes for you to release the button they can do different functions. To save on battery they might not do it in a loop but rather have an interrupt logic in place that will signal the CPU whenever the state of a button changes and make it run the button checking logic. There may also be additional logic on the circuit board that detects if the power button have been held down for some time without the CPU reacting and do certain functions like toggling the power. This can be useful if the CPU have crashed or if the device is out of power. |
How do our eyes coordinate to look at the same point and produce one image? | There are tiny muscles in the eye socket to control your eyes movement. Due to evolution and natural select of ability to control where we look and how much control we have over fast-twitch muscle fibers, we are able to have our eyes turn to the same focal point and our brain merge the images together to produce our visual stimuli. |
Can you really snap a neck like they do in the films? | "asking for a friend." Borrowing [this answer](_URL_0_), we learn: "You have seven vertebrae in your neck (cervical vertabrae). Breathing is controlled by nerves that come out above the third, fourth, and fifth vertebrae. Severing or severely injuring the spinal cord at this level will paralyze the diaphragm and keep you from breathing. It will also paralyze all other muscles below this level. Either the carotid or vertebral arteries supplying blood to the brain may also be damaged by the shear forces of the neck being snapped, referred to as dissection. This would cause ischemia to the areas of the brain supplied by those arteries. The most immediate cause of mortality in this situation would be respiratory arrest leading to cardiac arrest and death." So, not exactly. But you have to remember that, in movies, bad guys fall down dead instantly from long-range gunshots, but good guys can take repeated blows to the head and body with blunt, heavy instruments with no apparent ill-effects. |
Why are most holiday messages depersonalized? | It's so that the card won't be limited to being from a single person or a group. "Wishing you a happy holiday" can come from either your single brother or from both your grandparents. If it said "I wish you a happy holiday," groups and couples wouldn't buy that one, and vice-versa. So the company that makes the cards would have to make multiple versions of the card. That incurs additional expense-- and, simply due to chance and demographics, one version would outsell the others, so they would have to try and calculate how much that discrepancy would be, in order to not produce not enough or too many of each one. Much easier to just make them more generic, so they make sense coming from either individuals or groups. The people giving the card can add personal messages that make any vagueness clear, anyway. |
How are autonomous vehicles supposed to function in large cities (assumed to be where they'll be used most) when any normal gps system can't even function correctly with all the interference from the skyscrapers? | They don't use JUST GPS. They also use cameras, sensors, and built in maps (and math). They are programmed to read signs, recognize pedestrians, keep an updated version of where they are on a map based on speed and direction, etc, etc... |
Why does inbreeding increase the likelihood of birth defects? | Everybody has bad genes in them - I remember a scientist quipping that there are enough genetic defects in the human genome to kill a person several times over. However, all humans get two sets of genes, one from each parent. As a result, many of the 'defects' you might have in your genes are simply overridden by the working copy you got from your other parent. However, when you inbreed, you've got two people with very similar genetics, which means that its more likely that they'll both have identical copies of a defective gene (or gene set). That means the offspring is more likely to receive both copies of the defect from their parents, losing that protection that normally came from receiving two sets of chromosomes. Do not that inbreeding doesn't increase rates of mutations, just the likelihood of genetic defects that are already existing in the parents being expressed fully. Also, this question gets asked a lot. Use the search bar next time. |
Is at your own risk/we are not responsible for X Legal? If yes, to what degree? | Maybe, maybe not. My windshield was cracked from a spilled rock from a concrete mixer truck that had a sign that said "Stay back 100 feet not responsible for broken windshields." I contacted the company, explained in great detail which truck at what time on what street caused the damage and at the end of that 15 minute phone call they sent me to a glass company where they have an open account to have my windshield replaced at their cost. |
Where is all the water going? | The problem isn't that we're losing water, it's that we're just using clean freshwater faster than it's being replenished. You remember hearing in the cowboy stories about how great the Rio Grande was? [This is what it looks like today](_URL_0_) after it's been dammed up for irrigation & drinking water up north. |
The recently annonced exotic hadrons made of 4 quarks. | {Quarks carry color, antiquarks anticolor. These colors can be red, green or blue, RGB, and ofcourse also antired, antiblue, antigreen. Mesons are made of 2 quarks, a quark and its anti-quark, so that the resulting meson will be colorless (color + anticolor = colorless) Baryons are made of 3 quarks. (3 different colors, like RGB or aRaGaB are together colorless again) The exotic hadrons are made out of more than 3 quarks and that could be done like so: 4 quarks R, aR, B, aB (red + antired + blue + antiblue = colorless) 5 quarks RGB R aR (red green blue, red antired = colorless) So yeah normally the 4quark hadrons aren't more stable than two mesons of 2 quarks. so we call it exotic }-ish |
Why are Canadians considered to be one of the nicest people? Did anything special happened? Is Canada such a nice place to live in? | We help people all over the world. Many countries have been helped by our peacekeeping efforts. And we are generally polite. We even won many battles during the world wars and even hid the Dutch princesses in our country while the nazis invaded them. They send us 100,000 tulips every year in appreciation. _URL_0_ |
How I can tell if it's safe to click on a link here in Reddit w/o someone doing it purposefully to get my IP | Guy threatens suicide, someone tries to help, guy is mad. What? |
Why does our body seem like it's exhausted when we oversleep? | REM cycles. You oversleep, and your body's internal clock (regulates daily processes) gets screwed up so it rolls over to the next cycle and thinks you need to sleep. We need sleep to give our bodies time to repair without need for action, so they can do it freely and easily. Studies have shown that we can also solve problems we were thinking up the day before during sleep. It's basically a system repair daily to make sure we're good to go for tomorrow. |
Why is building a fence/wall at the U.S. border considered foolish? | Because the border is fucking HUGE. Seriously the border of the US and Mexico is almost 2,000 miles; for a comparison the entire border of France is ~1800 miles. Also it is just a fence and people can easily jump it like they do now where fences are in place. And it will cost a shit ton, not only to build but to maintain. |
Does the FBI really have a magical Google like in Criminal Minds? | No, that's ust to make TV interesting. Dozens on people sitting quietly in cubicles for days or weeks searching for the info doesn't make good television. |
How does the numbering on interstate exits work? | Varies by state In some states, the exit corresponds with what the mile marker is. So if the exit is at mile marker 25, it's exit 25. In case of multiple exits or new exits added at mile 25, then it's subdivided into exits 25a, 25b, 25c, etc. In other states, the exits go in numerical order for the duration of the highway. There's an ordering system which runs east-west or north-south from lowest to highest. So the first exit is exit 1, second exit is exit 2, and so on til the end. When new exits are added, that's where you see exit 2a, 2b, 2c, etc. |
Why do we see spots in our eyes after looking into a bright light? | It's called an [afterimage](_URL_0_). Your eyes get all tired out looking at the same thing for so long, so your receptors need to take a break. It's kind of like how your body gets used to the feeling of clothing on it all the time. |
Why do African Americans dominate athletics in the U.S.? | ...and, as a follow-up, why is hockey nearly devoid of blacks? |
Why is it so common for kids to dislike vegetables | Maybe it depends how it's prepared, I'm from europe and my entire family could make delicious vegetables, I always wondered why on earth in American tv shows/films/sitcoms kids hate vegetables 99% people I know love, exception is Brussels sprout, it's abomination and should be banned |
how do Wii remotes work? You point them at a small black bar and you can move the cursor anywhere on the screen. | Actually, you can replace the sensor bar with two candles. The sensor bar is simply a device that emits infrared radiation, the Wii remote has an infrared sensor inside hs detects where the IR is coming from. Using that, it then uses Bluetooth to send that info to the Wii where it is displayed on the screen. Candles emit enough IR as well. |
Is it possible to thrive on a 100% fungus based diet? | Mushrooms are, indeed, awesome, but they don't have all the nutrients you need. They're very, very low in fat, for one (and yes, you do need some) and carbohydrates (and yes you need those too). Mushrooms can definitely be good for you (especially if you eat a good variety if interesting ones and not "plain" white mushrooms), but you can't live just on them, I'm afraid. |
The most recent physics noble prize | It won for discovering strong evidence of gravitational waves. Usually things that cause fluctuations in gravity move too slowly to tell, but large, violent events cause waves: fluctuations in the gravitational field. These were predicted a century ago but it took these guys and a clever experiment to finally observe one. Classic Newtonian understanding of gravity was that it would propagate infinitely: if you could instantly remove an object, the lack of gravity from it would be immediately felt. This experiment shows that it propagates at the speed of light, and radiates out like light or other forces. |
What is the difference between Netflix's New Releases and Recently Added? | Recently Added means that the content has only been added to Netflix's library recently but may have aired/been released on other platforms at any time before. New Release means the content has only been released on other platforms recently. For example, if Netflix added a tv show from the '60s yesterday, it would appear on Recently Added but if they added a season of a tv show that aired earlier this year, it would be new releases. |
What is the difference between sutures and stitches? | Same thing. Medical people usually call them sutures, and general public calls them stitches. The word "stitches" has a connotation of being on or of the skin, but same thing. |
How do blind people know they are gay? | They know they are gay because they feel attracted to members of the same gender as themselves. |
If a cold is a viral infection, then why did paracetamol make my throat less sore? | Paracetamol doesn't do anything to any disease (except worsen liver diseases - check your doses kids). Basically all over the counter drugs are just there to mask symptoms. Sometimes treating symptoms is very important, like reducing a fever if it is too high, but they don't cure the illness. |
How/Why does cracking a glow stick "activate" it? | The ELI5 is this: A glowstick works by mixing two liquids which undergo a chemical reaction that produces light. The two parts are kept separate by a thin, fragile division inside the stick. Bending the flexible outer part of the stick cracks the inner division, allowing the two fluids to mix and start producing light. |
How is Noise Pollution dangerous? | Beyond the reality is that long term exposure to loud noises leads to deafness. There is a sense of social propriety as well. Just like you shouldn't walk down the street naked, and not let the smell of your shit disturb your housemates, you should show respect to others with regards to sound as well. |
How is the wind capable of making 20 m high waves? | The wind blows consistently over a very long distance of ocean. It isn't one single strong gust which blows a wave up, but a sustained force that puts lots of energy into the wave. |
how come things that are blurry due to motion in rel life can look clear in mirrors? | Our eyes are simply better at tracking motion that is further away. From the perspective of your brain, the fan in the mirror is twice as far away from you. |
The plot of Animorphs | Bump because I never finished the series and would like to know as well. |
Why are 3d models used for games, in a T-Pose when not in use or before an animation ? | It's the best way to model or sculpt it. it's also more or less a standard, so you can easily take a skeleton from another model and place it on your working model. It allows for easier deformation modelling too. You can also model a character with their arms down, but then when you want to animate those arms upwards the deformation becomes a lot harder to get right. |
Why do we read Shakespeare? Isn't the point of a theatrical play to watch it? | Well that's where imagination comes into play, you can basically watch the play in your head while reading - in fact a lot of 'plays' are specifically written to be read as 'armchair theatre' |
How did it come to be that baseball would be played during the spring and summer, football during the fall, and basketball and hockey during the winter? | * Baseball - outdoor sport, needs good, dry weather * Football - originally a collegiate sport, played during the fall semester * Basketball - developed as an indoor sport to be played when the weather was bad * Hockey - outdoor sport that required frozen surfaces |
What is stopping 911 dispatch centers from adopting texting capabilities? | Phone calls are live data stream. Its transferred in real time. Text messages are not. They're queued and sent whenever the network wants.. When the network is busy, like after a disaster, text msgs are delayed minutes or hours later |
Why all the hate for Joss Whedon's handling of Black Widow in Avengers: Age of Ultron? | She got captured and put in a cage by a male villain. Partly because ScarJo got pregnant during filming and they had to write her out of some action scenes, but when the only woman on the team is the one who gets kidnapped and needs a man to rescue her, it seems off. That, combined with the addition of a romantic subplot annoyed people who liked that for once, a female lead in a film didn't need a love story to be cool. Oh, and the line about being sterilized got interpreted by some fans to mean "Because I can't have kids, I am a monster." Instead of as "I can't have kids, because of the horrible things they did to me, which resulted in my being a monster." Which offended women who thought this meant Whedon was treating women as baby-factories who have no worth unless they are pumping out children. So this, combined with the internet amplifying people's anger and rage, lead to so many angry tweets. |
How is Russia able to afford its current modernization program? | The available resource right in mainland and doesnt have to import, Russia with its vast land is very resource rich, so it's more cost-effective to self supplying some of the industries, making the product costs lower comparing to other countries. Furthermore, the cost living in Russia is lower than other western countries, although their social welfare isnt as good, but still acceptable in their own standard. And finally, being a somewhat "dictator ship", they can easily cut the money at some departments and transfer it to their higher priority one. It's the same with NKorea, where 60% people in starving thread, and still can launch rocket, although quality is questionable. Russia is way more bigger than NK, and has more experience in dealing with trouble from WW2. In motherland everything can happen. |
Why are people of Nordic origin taller than most humans? | Somebody has to be the tallest. That area of the world happened to get mutation for height. |
If cellphones are replacing landlines, why aren't there versions of white pages for cellphones? How are landlines any different? | Problem Is there are multiple cell phone companies, so if each had their own book it would be incomplete and inconvenient to have to look through 5 books to find a person. Land lines used to be one company in an area generally. It was a weird deal because they were a company, but a utility and basically a monopoly. Even after it was deregulated it still stayed much the same. And even if someone does somehow arrange to get one combined cell list, it's still going to be very incomplete because people could choose to be unlisted and a large percentage would. I know I would. |
Is "dream Deja Vu" a thing? | One of the prevailing theories on Déjà Vu is that sometimes our wires get crossed (metaphorically) and the sensory input goes through the region of our brains for memory formation and recall before going to conscious thought. I mind tags information based off of where it came from, so it sees that some of the stimuli came from our senses, but the similar stimuli came from our memory. It makes us feel like we've seen this exact before, when it's all coming from the same input. |
what is the theory behind juries? Why can't judges just make all the decisions? | The idea behind juries is that you don't want to turn judges into an elite ruling class that has total power over people. That kind of power is easy to abuse. Plus, laws are supposed to be a reflection of society itself determining what rules it wants to follow, so having "society itself", in the form of a jury of the accused's peers, determine whether or not the law was broken seems only fitting. |
Why did the Earth form with just a single continent? | It didn't.... I'm guessing that you're referring to Pangaea which is usually the starting point when teaching about Continental Drift, however the continents were separate before they formed the supercontinent Pangaea. In fact, Pangaea is actually thought to have been the seventh or eighth [supercontinent](_URL_0_). |
How is it possible to know precise details about planets that are many lightyears away, but not to know the exact size of pluto? | One is a precise measurement based on brand new data on an object that is almost perfectly dark and is extremely small. The other is a broad, sweeping guess based on a humongous object that is glowing almost as bright as the sun. I don't see the problem here. |
How (or why) is the US Federal Reserve not an actual part of the government? | The Federal Reserve is essentially a government agency that is operated privately. It was created by the government, it's leaders are appointed by the government, but it is independent. This is often referred to as being "independent within the government." By making it independent and quasi-private, the Federal Reserve can run monetary policy more efficiently, without every single thing being politicized and subject to constant interference and squabbling from politicians. This isn't to say that there's no oversight, just that it's less silly. |
Why hats used to be so popular in the 1920's and 30's | Hats have been popular articles of men's attire from ancient times until 1960. Most men throughout history wore a cap or hat whenever they went outside. In 1960, President-Elect Kennedy attended his inaguration hatless and thereafter fashion changed rapidly to dispense with headgear except as environmental conditions required. From about 1920 to 1960 men found it increasingly hard to use hats as an article of fashion due to the headroom in cars. As the headroom got smaller, hats got harder to wear. First the large tophat style hats vanished, then even smaller fedoras. About the only place men still feel comfortable wearing headgear in transport is in the cab of large trucks. |
why Verizon workers are going on strike? | The Verizon employees who are on strike have not had a contract since August of 2015. Negotiations with the company have not produced the results they felt were appropriate and they have elected to strike based on that. Some of the issues they have raised are wages, pension freezes, Verizon working to make it easier to dismiss staff and move jobs overseas, among other things. |
Why do omelets and scrambled eggs taste differently even though I put the same ingredients into them? | First, texture has a lot to do with food. The sensations of chewing, moving food around in your mouth, and taking a bite-sized solid piece of omelet versus a fluffy bit of scrambled egg with a lot of air in it will add to a difference in flavor. Next, your omelet usually has a big chunk of "other stuff" in its middle whereas the scrambled egg approach would have little bits of other things all throughout them (assuming you are making them with more than just cheese). This changes the way those additional bits cook and exchange tastes with each other, changes their moisture content, and changes the distribution of flavours that you get in each mouthful. Finally, scrambled eggs are mixed around and they're cooked very uniformly without a "browned" exterior, but omelets usually have a little more deep-cooking in their exterior surface, and its different more-burned chemicals can result in a different flavor profile. |
Why aren't independent votes counted in the presidential primary? | Right now the parties are voting to pick who they want to run for president, as private entities. They may want to exclude non-party members, for instance to avoid letting 'guerilla voters' bump up a cataclysmically bad candidate so that the party will nominate him/her, and then lose in the general election. You aren't currently voting *for president.* When that time comes, you can vote for whoever you'd like. |
Why does cereal need to be in a bag in a box when dry pasta doesn’t need a bag before being put into a box? | We want cereal to stay crisp, because we don't intend to cook it before eating it. And because it has loads of rough surface area, it absorbs humidity fast. |
Can Chinese writing be "sounded out?" How would someone read a word that they've never seen before. | No, mandarin and cantonese are not phonetic. If you can't figure out the word, you have to look it up or use context. |
Why do charities build new homes for the homeless/under-privileged when we already have a ridiculous amount of vacant homes in the US that could be fixed/don't need fixing? | You can't really ask the government to just let you take existing but currently uninhabited homes like that, it'd basically amount to stealing from the owner. Some places have laws about letting property be considered properly 'abandoned' in which case any supposed owner that fails to maintain the property can lose it to someone that does, but that's not universal or necessarily easy. Ignoring that, though, where are these empty houses? A lot of them are somewhere pretty useless for a homeless person. Having a home doesn't mean much if you can't get a job in the area to hold down the home. Just giving homes to homeless people and calling it a day won't really work - you have to address the fact that most homeless people are facing issues of which being homeless is more of a symptom than a direct problem. Mental health issues, disability, inability to get work, etc. |
Why do relatively small similarities between songs or books result in lawsuits worth millions, but knock-off food items can have identical ingredients, similar packaging, and even reference the name brand being ripped off with "compare to < brand name > "? | Songs are protected by copyright which protects the song from people copying it. Food on the other hand is a product that is composed of ingredients that are most likely not under patent protection. Also many of the generic brands you mention are actually made by the same company they are trying to imitate. The company just makes a lesser quality version of the name brand for stores to sell as a cheaper version. |
What does the "real" in real estate mean? | It means "actual" in the sense that the thing is a permanent part of the world, as opposed to "personal estate" or "personal property" which comes an goes. _URL_0_ Yes that's not how we use the word "real" usually today, but it was a long time ago. |
Why is anal sex called anal sex and not rectal sex? (NSFW) | For the same reason oral sex is not called throat sex. |
Why does it hurt so much to get kicked in the balls? | Evolutionarily, our whole purpose in life is to live long enough to raise children, our genes don’t really care what happens after that. Our entire pain/reward system has been tweaked to this purpose. You ate? Good job, here is some dopamine. You skinned your knee? Bad job, that could get infected and kill you have some pain. Based on this logic, pretty much the worst thing you could do is damage your ability to reproduce, so your balls are absolutely packed with nerve endings that will send intense pain signals to your brain if they sense injury, because losing your reproductive ability is equally as bad as death. |
What happens to medicines beyond their expiry date that they turn unsafe for consumption? | Most everything has chemical reactions as they age. Some medications get weaker so the medicine simply stops working correctly. Some become more powerful so you risk overdose. And some completely change and can either lose their effect or become toxic. |
How exactly is a file deleted from your computer? | The computer (the operating system) keeps a list (index) of the files, the name and the location on the disk. When you "delete" the file, the computer marks that entry as no-longer-needed. It doesn't delete the entry, nor does it alter the actual file at all. Next time it needs to store something on the disk, it looks for available space; if it find an entry that says "deleted", it will overwrite the entry and overwrite as much of the file space as it needs. The recycle bin is simply another "list" that points back to all the files that say "deleted" in the real file list. When you "empty" the recycle bin, you're deleting this extra list, but not changing anything in the real list. For bonus complexity: disk space is assigned in "clusters". A file that takes only 100 bytes will actually take (perhaps) 4,000 bytes on the disk. But the computer will only actually write the first 100 bytes - the other 3900 byes will still be the original, deleted, file. |
how are people in many societies expected to find love and marry by their early 20s? | Basically, when everyone is aware they must be married by 21, people compromise and settle quickly. Some of the prettiest or most socially dominant people in highschool (or equivalent age) would have first pick, then their friends would feel the need to catch up, and so on, until very nearly everyone had someone just because it's not fashionable not to. Imagine if you could only ever sleep with your highschool prom date ever again, and if you didn't have one, that was it, you would have to go become a monk. You would imagine that a lot of people would make do with a decent prom date, and that sometimes people would marry only out of fear of being alone. |
Why is Ellen Pao hated? | Since the subreddit ban wave (Fatpeople hate ect.) reddit decided she was satan, and never really came back from that. Some people believe she's commercializing reddit and steering it away from its roots. Personally I don't think we have the information to read her character one way or the other. |
Grafite and diamond are made of the same thing. Why one is transparent and other not? | In a diamond, the carbon atoms are all neatly lined up in a crystaline structure. Photons entering the lattice work from the right angles will pass right through it virtually unimpeded. In graphite and other forms of carbon, the lattice work isn't there, and the atoms are in what you'd call a pile. So photons encounter resistance no matter where they hit it. |
How can you identify musical meter? | Other repetitive patterns, such as loudness of notes, in pop music, bass and snare drum hits are closely synced to the meter. Listen for arpeggios on bass, guitars or pianos that are multiples of the meter. If music is less rhythmic, like just long slow legato notes on violins or synth pads, it will be harder to recognize. There is a less emphasized "downbeat" for you to find |
How do bees make such perfect hexagons? | That is just what happens when you cram a bunch of circles together. Bees make circular/cylindrical containers for their honey and eggs, since those have the most volume to wall material ratio. When these are all smushed together you get hexagons. |
Why have I never heard of someone getting heart cancer? | It's just a very, very rare form of cancer so it's not heavily talked about. _URL_0_ Apparently the drummer of Kiss died from it, though. |
Where does the energy go to when you have a fully charged device and it is still plugged into the wall? | This is how I've been told to think about it: it's not that the power plug is PUSHING power out to the device, it's that the device battery is PULLING power from the plug. When the battery is 'full', it stops PULLING thereby eliminating any further flow of electrons. Can anyone confirm? |
What causes a mob mentality? | It is herd mentality. I nature it goes like "everyone else is terrified and running away so I should also be terrified and running away". There for in an angry mob everyone around you is angry, shouting and swearing ect so subconsciously you also feel you should be doing just this. Such mentality, as you called it, causes angry crowds to do things that individuals wouldn't and riots emerge. |
Why Mexico did not become a powerful nation just like Canada or the US? | As a Canadian, I think the word you're looking for is *affluent,* not powerful. |
What do the reduced salt signs on highways and roads mean? | Highways are sprayed with a salt solution in winter to prevent the formation of ice. Certain sections of highway are near water supplies and protected wilderness areas however. These sections are salted less in order not to contaminate the surrounding ecosystems. They put the signs up to warn you that because there's less salt, there will likely be more ice. |
solving differential equations | Hey brohan, solving Differentials is just like integrating derivatives. Cake. So first, just look at my name. It is a differential equation by itself, dy/dx = e^x. 1st step you need to do is make sure all the y is one 1 side and all the x is on the other side. So my equation turns to dy = e^x dx. Now you can integrate to get rid of the dx, and you will get: y = e^x That's it. Now, there might be more complicated problems, but basically, just try to simply everything so that you can easily integrate, and make sure you group the terms on different sides. |
Why does travel in a bus/train make me feel tired? | I believe it's from the constant adjustments your body has to make from being bumped around. You never get the opportunity to sit still like you would on a couch. |
If women's cycles sync up when they spend some time together, wouldn't every women be theoretically on the same monthly cycle? | I think they would have to spend a lot more time together than you imagine, like maybe live together and spend a lot of time outside work/college with each other also. |
Why can't they make space elevators with propellers on them to reduce tension forces? | That would only work in the atmosphere, where the propellers have something to push: air. But the cable will experience the same amount of tension above the atmosphere, where there is no air for the propellers to push. The only real solution is to find a way to manufacture, in large quantity at reasonable cost, a material with the necessary tensile strength. |
Why does the visible light spectrum appear cyclic to the human eye if the spectrum is based on specific linear wavelengths of light? | Just to add something extra to the excellent explanation already provided... Our color vision is usually a matter of our vision system interpolating between the colors detected by our three flavours of cones in our retina. Think of it like a triangle, with red, green and blue in the corners and all the other colors somewhere in the middle. But then consider that a small percentage of human females are "tetrachromats". For them, there are 4 types of color receptors in their retina. For them, the perceived color is interpolated between 4 different points. You have to imagine this in 3d now, like a 3 sided pyramid with 4 point of detected color, and some interpreted color point somewhere in the 3d space of the pyramid. Tetrachromats may be able to distinguish 100 million colors ... _URL_0_ |
How did gold, silver, and bronze specifically become the iconic symbols of 1st, 2nd, and 3rd in competitions. | Being both common and given value. Bronze is a mix of copper and... On mobile, but I want to say iron. Looks nice, but isnt all that valuable. Silver is more valuable, but tarnishes. Gold is a symbol of wealth and purity, and is the most valuable of the three. Other materials are not as common, harder to work with, or either too valuable to give up, or too cheap to mean anything. |
Why does clips of American news seem such poor quality on UK TV? | The UK and the US have two different systems for broadcast TV signals. The US uses a system called NTSC, and the UK uses a system called PAL. PAL is slightly better than NTSC to start with, but converting an NTSC signal to PAL degrades it even further. All the major US networks now broadcast an HDTV signal as well. That should be directly compatible with an HDTV broadcast in the UK and the quality should be indistinguishable. But I have no idea what the agreements are between the US news outlets and the British news outlets to exchange video clips so it may be that whatever source you're using for news is limited to NTSC clips. |
Why can't we flush toilets with saltwater? | That would necessitate two different water sources coming to your house and an additional plumbing system to keep your toilet separate from your sinks, showers, etc. |
Why does GPU drivers update, if the GPU is the same? What will that hcange? | The hardware and software have to work together. The hardware never changes, but the software can change and evolve over time to offer better performance, more features, or in some cases even to fix minor errors in the hardware manufacturing process. Almost ever time there are new drivers released they increase performance. Sometimes the drivers include specific alterations to make a specific set of games run better, sometimes they just generally make all programs run better. |
How did we get metal to think? How does it know what the 1's and 0's are? Is it at it's core mechanical? | > How did we get metal to think? By: * building an electrical component (transistor) where a voltage on one line can act as a very fast switch on a different line. * finding a super-miniuaturized production process for these components. * wiring them together in increasingly complex systems to store numbers, do calculations on those numbers and come up with calculations we can interpret as "thinking". > How does it know what the 1's and 0's are? It doesn't. Even the 0 and 1 are human interpretation of electrical charges and voltages. > Is it at it's core mechanical? No, it is at its core electrical. |
Why is soda a soothing chaser for alcohol? | The carbonation helps to disperse remaining alcohol from the palate and tongue. Plus, it has a sugary taste. |
What is "development hell"? | > "Development hell or development limbo is media industry jargon for a state during which a film or other project remains in development without progressing to production. A film, video game, television program, screenplay, computer program, concept, or idea stranded in development hell." TL;DR When a game/film is not making any progress/being scrapped and restarting, Example: completely starting from scratch over and over Source: Google/Being a developer. |
How did herbivorous dinosaurs get so large while have so little protein in their diet? | Part of what allows Herbivores to grow as large as they do is that the Digestive Systems in Herbivores are optimized for extracting every bit of protein available from the food they eat. Their digestive tracts can also make some proteins from food that lack proteins. A good example is a a cow's Digestive Tract: It has four stomachs, all for getting the most nutrient possible out of every bite. Also, plants aren't necessarily devoid of protein. Plants have Keratin, which most predators, and humans, can't digest. Herbivores however, usually can digest it. This greater diversity to what a Herbivore can eat allows them to have access to a surprising amount of protein and nutrients. |
How do bytes take up "space"? | Your hard drive is a round plate, kind of like an old record. It's divided into thousands and thousands of "sectors", tiny little spots. Each one of those tiny spots is a byte... When you save a byte on your hard drive, the drive head makes a change in the magnetic charge in that spot. The computer turns these positive and negative magnetic charges into ones and zeroes. |
Why the Winter War happened | Relations between Russia and Finland had been strained since WWI. Russia 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 would really do much to help Finland if they invaded. |
How does light transfer data in optical fibers? | When data is transmitted over a wire, the wire is turned on and off very quickly. Thousands of times per second, it checks if the wire is currently on. If the signal is off, that is interpreted as a 0. If it's on, that's a 1. Light travels through fiber optic cables. It's basically done the same way, but instead of electricity it uses flashes of light. |
Can anyone launch a satellite? Or are there laws claiming space territory? | Per the [Outer Space Treaty](_URL_0_) of 1967, governments cannot stake a claim to territory in space—so yes, space is indeed borderless. However, to get to outer space, Spacex's rockets first have to pass through the airspace directly above the US, which the Federal Aviation Administration *does* have jurisdiction over, thus requiring their approval. |