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in football whats the point of wasting the first two plays with a rush - up the middle - not regular rush plays i get those | Keep the defense honest, get a feel for the pass rush, open up the passing game. An offense that's too one dimensional will fail. And those rushes up the middle can be busted wide open sometimes for big yardage. |
Why are different tiers (regular < mid < premium) of gas' prices almost always 10 cents different? | As someone who uses quality Premium, I wish this was true.The difference is in how it burns though is what's critical for you as the end consumer. I drive a forced induction car, so air coming into my engine is compressed before it enters the cylinder where it's further compressed by the piston. The Regular, Mid, and Premium gas are rated by octane, which in the shortest definition is how well it resists ignition, meaning higher octane fuel won't ignite from high pressure or heat, until the spark plug fires. Now that being said, you can look at as a price gouge, as it's not too hard to make higher octane gas, but cars that need it are typically sports cars as their engines run hotter, higher compression, and forced induction. Tying it back into what I said in the beginning, since I drive a forced induction sports car I have to run premium, and gas stations/companies know people like me are going to shut up and pay the extra 30 cents a gallon to protect our engines from lower octane gas detonating in the engine.> Is this just an arbitrary convention that undermines arguments of a rational basis for gasoline prices? You already know the answer. |
How do we know all the money the government is getting from bank settlements is going back to the people? | I'm pretty confident most of it isn't going back to the people. That's how politics works. |
What are good and bad sides of manual and automatic drive gear? | Automatics weigh more, so that alone makes gas mileage worse. They are also more complicated, so that means reliability is going to be lower. It is easier to operate, which may free up your attention for focus on what is *outside* the car. Some people derive satisfaction from shifting, and flexibility in using the power curve. |
How do muscles grow? | I hope this answer qualifies as technical, yet simple enough , but the basic idea that I understand is that your muscles rip and tear on a microscopic level when you are working out, and the harder you push those muscles, the more they rip. Hence where the idea comes from that more reps and less weight equal more tone, but more weight and less reps equal more muscle growth. What happens is that following those tiny rips and tears, your muscle heals over itself and essentially stacks on top of itself, healing bigger and stronger than before. The more those muscles are used, kept active and challenged, the more they will continue to build and grow over time. Other factors go into the growth of muscle as well, such as your nutrition. Protein, fats, etc. also play a factor, as they cause your body to "feed" your body and muscles in different ways of varying effectiveness - but I think that's an ELI5 for another dayThe enlargement of muscles, known as hypertrophy, is essentially the tearing of muscle fibers being put back together by larger muscle fibers. |
What is the role of actual real-life actors in making animated characters? Like Liam Neeson playing Aslan in Narnia? | Could you elaborate your question? They are voice actors. They sit in a studio and record their lines. The animators then animate the characters to match the recordings. There are some cases where the voice actors also provides the motions of the character using motion capture technologyFor strictly voice-acting: To draw fans Motion-capture is another story though, such as Andy Serkis in all his roles and Benedict Cumberbatch as Smaug. |
Why does the water from my kitchen faucet taste different than the water from my bathroom faucet? Doesn't it come from the same place? | Yes, but the pipes going to one place could have a build up that's changing the taste or the composition of the pipes can be different, i.e. pvc pipes going to your kitchen, but copper pipes to your bathroom. |
If dark colours absorb more heat, why does light skin burn easier than dark skin? | Two things going on here. First, heat doesn't have anything to do with sunburn, it's all about UV rays. Encountering more UV rays = more sunburn. However, dark skin absorbs more UV rays than pale skin. And in fact that's exactly why it burns less. The pigmented layer absorbs more UV in the upper layers of the skin, shading the cells underneath from UV and preventing burns . Just like sitting outside under an opaque black umbrella would shade you more than sitting outside under a translucent white one. |
How the fuck does Facebook know about people I know?! | Your email contacts, your academic/work institutions info you've put, and the friends of your friends.Piggyback question : I had a fb acct that only had ~30 people on it. I just used it for work and didn't have any other fb accts. I didn't personally add any address info to that acct, I don't think I provided any info beyond what was required to activate the acct. We had a new apartment manager who called me one day from the leasing office land line and I received 1 email from her that was to an email address not associated with my fb acct. Very shortly after these 2 times she contacted me, she showed up on "people I may know." How the hell? I immediately deleted that account, which I didn't really use or want anyway. It creeped me the fuck out because I assumed it was due to some weird permission I granted when agreeing to the terms. I 've always been curious about what happened there. **Edit to add that she wasn't friends with anyone else on my page because she was a brand new apartment manager and this was strictly a work acct.Some speculation and good answers in a thread about this a few months ago. _URL_0_ Think of it this way. It isn't as much about FB knowing who you know, but Facebook already knowing who your friends know. Every data point you give them is another source for them to measure against how you fit into that web. |
Why is chickenpox worse as an adult? | It's mostly due to the difference in immune system between a child and an adult. A primary varicella zoster infection in adulthood is indeed associated with increased risk of complications. Most of these complications are due to the intense response by the adult immune system that comes into contact with the virus for the first time. Children have less active immune systems, but usually active enough to clear the virus - making them immune to it thereafter, and are therefore less likely to develop complications with this particular infection. The same goes to hepatitis A: adults develop jaundice, while children are asymptomatic. Note: a secondary varicella zoster infection during adulthood is called "shingles" and is generally less dangerous than a primary varicella during adulthood, due to the immunity that is already present at the time of the second infection. |
How do movies not get uploaded online in HD from movie theater employees before their DVD release? | The theater will be fined a massive amount of money for allowing a leak, the person leaking it will be fined a massive amount of money for uploading it, and they automatically lose their job. This is a combination of copyright law violation and contracts that you sign when taking the job. So the risk are so extremely high that most will not risk it. They also have security features such as login codes to open, proprietary file types that need special programs to play, and the rooms operating the projector system requiring special key access at times.The movies are shipped to the theaters in special hard drive enclosures that are tamper-proof and force every access to be logged. The film itself is encrypted in a way that's tied to specific projectors. It's not like you can just copy a file over - they've thought this shit through thoroughly and any theater that tries to break the security will get sued to hell and back **and** never get another movie again. |
Can defense attorneys 'throw' a case if they know their clients are guilty? | Yes, they could 'throw\' a case. However, that's a serious ethics violation which would almost certainly cause disbarment if found out, and not only that, the conviction could then be appealed based on ineffective assistance of counsel . If it makes it easier to wrap your head around, think of defense lawyers defending the integrity of the judicial system, not just their client. The idea being, the system must obey all of its own rules in proving that someone is guilty, or else it's a dishonest system and could easily "prove" that an innocent person is guilty next time. Defense lawyers are there to help ensure the system stays honestThat would be unethical. In our society, even the guilty are given competent representation. What they can do is seriously suggest that the person take a plea deal. Part of the process requires a good defense or the conviction can be overturned on appeal. |
why, when intoxicated, does it feel like everything is spinning when you close your eyes but stops spinning when you open them? | the fluid in your inner ear keeps you orientated and standing upwards, although when your drunk certain functions in your brain don't work as well or as they are meant to. So if you've had a bit too much to drink, your brain might not be able to tell which way is up and which way is down if your inner ears are miscommunicating with your brain. So that's why when you close your eyes it feels like you're falling off the face of the world. |
Why are some fish bones edible, and others are not? | They are small and soft so it does not matter if you swallow them, bigger and harder bones might get stuck in your throat and couse pain |
What's the meaning of the phrase "I've got a bone to pick with you." | If you have a bone to pick with someone, it means they 've annoyed or insulted you and you need to talk to them about it. According to the Oxford English Dictionary "a bone to pick" originally meant something that occupies or distracts you and somehow morphed into its modern meaningIt's similar to "I am upset with you about something and want to discuss it". Depending on the tone of the conversation it might indicate somebody is really really mad at you about something, or just that they have a minor problem they want to talk about, so context is important. |
Why can't we just taste candy or Sweets and then spit it out to avoid its unhealthy attributes? What makes us swallow it to get satisfaction? | You absolutely could. But the fact is that evolution shaped our tastes. That's why fatty foods and sweet foods are so appealing to out taste buds. It is our bodies way of saying "That has lots of calories and will help us avoid starving." The 'satisfaction\' you feel on swallowing it is simply the body saying "Good job. Remember that tastes good so we will eat it again if we find it again." Rewarding you for fueling it. You can see why this system that evolved when we were hunter gatherers to keep us from starving and helping us learn whats best to eat leads to obesity now that we have food options everywhere anytime we want. Fun fact: Most people mistake the bodies thirst craving for being hungry. More often than not if you drink a glass of water when you feel the urge to snack it will go away. Thus helping you lose weight by reducing total calorie intake. |
Why are the things that taste the best bad for us? | Let's think about this from an evolutionary perspective. Way back in the day, humans struggled for food just like every other animal. It was to our species evolutionary advantage to pursue food that would keep us full longer, or provide more energy than other food options. Fats, are 9 calories per gram compared to proteins and carbs that are 4 calories. Humans that preferred fats and craved them, had a higher chance of survival and passing on the fat craving trait. Fast forward to present day where food is plentiful. We are still programmed to eat high calorie foods just in case we won't find food for a week! |
Why do you see weird colors when you press your eyes? | If I had to take a guess, no expert, just had anatomy and physiology through college, I'd imagine it'd have something to do with the rods and cones in your eyes and the optic nerve. When you push on your eyes, you probably disrupt the innervation action of the rods and cones and it's just trying to adjust back. Just my guess!", 'The mechanism by which your brain sees things is from the electrical signals sent from your eye. When you touch your eye in certain ways it also results in electrical signals being sent to your brain, and to a place that interprets the electrical signals it receives as what you call "sight". |
What classifies an island as an island? Aren't all continents etc essentially large islands? | While not universally true A continent is considered to be the primary landmass on its tectonic plate. If you look at a map of tectonic plates: _URL_0_ You can clearly see that with a few notable exceptions such as Europe and India. In general continents occupy their own tectonic plate. So then if you are a landmass that is part of a continent's tectonic plate but is not connected by land to that continent, than you would be an island. Although even this is a fairly tenuous definition. |
why does wikipedia ask for donations almost every month? do they really need it to not disappear? | Wikipedia's biggest issue is that their amazing service requires constant overhead. So donations keep it running. Have you ever been inside a server location. That shit is cold, and cold is expensive.Like PBS, it relies on donations for operations. No donations = no money to pay for operations. Even if you manage to get $1mil in your coffers, does that mean you can stop asking for donations? No. Servers and IT support still costs thousands per month. Staff personnel still costs tens of thousands a monthYes, servers and network connections cost a lot of money and Wikipedia is not funded by ads. Part of the price you pay when you use a common service is paying for it. You can not give money, and then everything is Facebook - funded by people who want to control your opinions. |
How does a water purifier jug work and could you put 3rd world ditch water through one and drink safely? | The passive type of jug won't filter out bacteria and other things that can make you sick. There is a thing called [LifeStraw] that can do this, but it forces water through a filter as you use it. Something like a reverse osmosis system can make water safe, but that also involves forcing water through a membrane. These things can't be done with just gravity. |
Why people like getting drunk/sloshed/hammered/shit-faced ? | Because only when you're passed out in a puddle of your own vomit can you silence the ennui and existential hum. Source: I'm Irish. |
Why is the recent Apple vs. FBI encryption debate relevant years after the Snowden leaks (2013), passage of the PATRIOT Act (2001), and the ECHELON revelations (1988)? | The Apple debate has nothing to do with the government's right to get the information. They had a warrant from a judge, who has way more certainty than probable cause to believe that the phone was used by someone who committed a crime. They also had permission from the owner of the phone to access it. It's about as clear as it can be that the government has a right to that phone. What's also clear is that if Apple had a way to get into the phone, they would have to provide that to the FBI. Since Apple didn't have a way to get in, they didn't have anything to give to the FBI. They also did not want to make a tool to bypass their own security measures . The FBI wanted to force them to make such a thing. And whether or not the FBI could force that was being debated. The most relevant law concerning this- the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act says that the FBI can't force Apple to do this. So the FBI tried to interpret a very old law, passed by the first Congress, as "we can force anyone to do anything as long as we get a judge to sign off on it". Apple, along with every other company in the country, was rather frightened of the idea that judges could make any one do any thing with just a signature and without a hearing. So they refused to comply. |
Why has the Mars Rover Opportunity's Lithium Ion Battery Lasted 11+ Years and the one in My Cell Phone/Laptop/Tablet Dies in Less Than 2? | NASA requirements lean toward the \'overengineered\' side . The battery in your phone is more from the "make it cheaper, they can always buy another battery" school of engineering. ', "The battery in your phone was primarily designed to be cheap, small, and as long lasting as possible likely in that order. This R & D was likely performed by some underpaid engineers in a corporate structure. Opportunity's battery is much larger and was designed to last as long as possible in space by a team of government funded engineers that could be considered among the brightest on the planet. |
Why some bugs fly to lights. | Navigating at night is hard. You can't really see anything, especially not distant landmarks. Once upon a time, the most reliable "landmark" was the moon. Sure, the moon moves in the sky throughout the night, but if you just wanted to forage by covering a large area, following the moon is a good rule of thumb. But now we have artificial lights. Insects think they are the moon, and fly towards them. |
Why is sales tax in the US excluded from the list price? | Because every state has a different tax rate on goods, so that would make putting tax into the price a little difficult', "It's a principle of transparency, letting the citizen know exactly what they are paying for the product and how much they are paying in taxes, which is something important as transparency goes for the government. Here in Brazil everything is pretaxed, so when you pay R$ 3,09 for a liter of gas, you have no idea how much of that is in taxes. Lately people have spun a great movement for commerce to at least display separately the amount due in taxes in the price tags. And I believe that's important because more than 50% of that R$ 3,09 is taxes, so when you get shitty services from the government, you know exactly how much they are stealing from you. |
Why does a beer on tap almost always taste better than it does from a bottle? | Probably because the keg has been better handled than the cases of beer have, and because bottles are not actually the best packages for beer. Light passes through the glass and can cause skunking, and oxygen can sneak in through the plastic seal in the crown, causing staling. Kegs are generally stored cold, and of course are completely opaque and are much more resistant to oxygen ingressBottled beer is generally pasteurized while draught beer from a keg has not. The heat can change the flavor slightly. Also, since most of taste is smell, drinking from an open glass rather than a bottle gives you a bigger experience of the flavor. |
What is the significance of Jamaican Bobsled team qualifies for the Olympics? | Let me tell you about a man a great man a man who helped the underdogs a man who traveled by many forms a man who loved his nieces and nephew. A man who left this world too early. That mans name was John CandyKids these days ಠ_ಠ Jamaica did bobsled in the Olympics before despite massive opposition they came in last |
How do devices know the amount of charge left in a battery? | I think the best way to explain this is through an analogy. Imagine you have two tanks of water. One has a lot of water and the other is empty. If you were to connect a pipe running from the bottom of one tank to the bottom of the other, water would flow through the pipe until both tanks have the same level of water. If you were to put a water wheel in the path of the water flowing through the pipe, you could use the flow of the water to do work. Batteries work the same way. They create a "potential difference" between the terminals. This is a fancy way of saying one terminal has a lot more electrons than the other, just like the tank with more water. If you were to connect the terminals with a "pipe" that would allow electrons to flow to the terminal with little electrons, they would. We can also use that flow of electrons to do work for us as they go from one terminal to another, such as power a screen. We can estimate how much energy is left in a battery the same way we can estimate how much more water is left in the full tank. As the amount of water-difference between the tanks decreases, so will the speed at which the water flows through the pipe and consequently the speed at which the water wheel spins. Similarly, as the amount of potential-difference between the terminals of a battery decreases, so does the current of electrons and consequently, the amount of work that current can do. Devices can measure that decrease in work and use that to estimate the amount of potential difference left in the battery', "The Voltage of a battery depends on the charge. A five voltage battery may start with 5.1 Volt and slowly go down. When you're at 4.9 volt you'll know the battery is rather empty. I'm not sure if that is the case for all modern Rechargeable batteries. They might have special measuring and charging chips included. |
Why are my muscles sore after jumping in cold water? | From what I understand, our bodies defenses against hypothermia is to shiver. This involves involuntary muscle contractions to generate heat. These muscles contractions still can cause muscle soreness just like working out.Many athletes actually use a cold bath post workout to *alleviate* soreness. The idea is that the cold constricts blood vessels and reduces swelling, then afterwards the blood can flow back and speed recovery. This is especially popular amongst competitive cyclists. If your muscles are sore after cold exposure, maybe they're just stiff and lacking blood flow. I've noticed it's hard to pedal after a dip in a cool lake midway through a ride. As the muscles rewarm, they regain their mobility.You probably just contract all your muscles as you hit the water, same as being hit by a car and feeling sore. Source: am hit by car once |
why do we like watching the same TV show or movie over and over again? | Our brains like familiar things. Something we already have seen is easier to get into than something brand new because it requires less attention and effort from our brain. It's also sometimes good watching a TV show knowing the ending as we can pick up on foreshadowing or minor details.to relive the emotions felt the first viewing. sometimes a person feels sad but cannot cry so watches a sad movie to bring it on. likewise, you need a good laugh to bring you out of a funk.It's a matter of taste. Not everybody does like watching the same thing over and over again. I don't. I can't stand watching the same film twice because I already know what's going to happen. Some people do. We like what we like. |
why do the French have an abstain vote instead of people physically restraining from voting. [Other] | It's like a protest vote. I live in Nevada where we are allowed to vote "none of the above." If "none of the above" wins, the candidate with the most votes still wins. It doesn't affect anything hereAbstain is a different thing from simply "not voting." If I don't vote, it could mean any number of things. Maybe I don't care enough about the election, maybe I was busy and didn't make it to the polls, maybe I forgot which day it was. "Abstain" means "I don't like any of these options enough to vote for one." So it sends a clearer message than simply not voting - the person is clearly interested enough to vote and is choosing not to. |
- Why do phones not require cooling vents but other small appliances do? | Phones lack a cooling system because there's no room for that. It takes up way too much space for a pocket-size device. If that wasn't an issue, phones would've had vents. Besides, phones don't work as hard as other computers do. They are weaker, so they produce less heat. Still, they can get hot sometimes, especially during charging, and there is nothing we can do about it. Phones cool by radiating heat away and through conduction - passing heat into the surrounding air/skin.Phones are very specifically engineered to be both low heat and to have passive cooling systems to dissipate that heat. It take a lot of engineering to do this properly, but it is necessary for a device that is meant to be carried and hand held. Other appliances _could_ have systems like this, but there is no real need for them. They can be large enough to have larger and more active cooling systems, which are less difficult to engineer and less costly to implement. Since there is no real benefit to making these other appliances smaller, they use the easier/cheaper cooling techHow much additional cooling a given component needs depends on how much heat it releases during use, on what temperature it can tolerate internally before it gets damaged, and on what equilibrium temperature the surrounding environment reaches during use. In a phone, if a part is getting too hot, you only really have a couple options: modify the design or operating conditions so it makes less heat Improve thermal conductivity between the part and the outside of the phone. Phones are typically underclocked to reduce power consumption and heat generation. And they start with low power parts to begin with. Heat is removed just by letting it passively radiate from the phone. |
Why are oil prices so shockingly low? | Someone feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, but my understanding is the Middle East put out so much supply to try and put US companies out of business which if successful they would then jack prices up and get money to themselves. |
If the inside of my microwave is made of metal, why is it bad to put metallic objects in it? | The metal interior of the oven is grounded. It does pick up a charge from the microwaves, but the charge is dissipated to ground, and so does not arc. Your fork, or the foil on your plate, are not grounded, and thus the charge can build up until it is strong enough to arc to a grounded panelAnother thing to note is that not all metalic objects will spark. its only pointy things like forks, tin foil and knifes . Spoons are usually fine in a microwave as they are rounded. Thats also why those chef boyarde microwavable things can have [metal lips on them] . |
Why do we lack the instincts our ancestors had, e.g. telling you which foods are poisonous | We still have them. Ever gone "EW" from spoiled food and decided not to eat it? Ever smelled something horrible and realized that it wasn't edible? The issue is that we 've realized that there's a lot more items out there can that kill us, and notice it. Our ancestors would have just died from eating it, and then warned the surviving descendants to stay away from it.We don't lack it. It's not like they had some magical ability to tell if something was poisonous by looking at it. Our bodies almost make us vomit if we smell rotten meat - that's the ability! |
Why do we wake up early when we don't have to but tend to wake up late when we need to be up? | The simple answer is stress causes this. By setting a schedule your body will fall into a rhythm. After a while you don't really need the alarm at all. However as we know our natural rythems get disturbed occasionally. When we must get up we are creating stress that is easiest to avoid by doing nothing and that is what we want to do . On the weekend you don't have stress to avoid and your body is doing its thing. A sign of depression is oversleeping. Your mind allowing your body to avoid the stress of life every chance you get. Feel good that you feel awake when you don't have to. Your life is manageable to you.I know the true answer. we are in the computer. you are people born and living in the computer. just some program, like a demon, bother you.I was actually wondering the same thing not too long ago when I was on holiday. We have just been on a cruise with endless activities and I found myself waking up at around 5am every morning. I wasn't actually able to do anything but watch tv until 8am but I think it is just the fact of waking up to something you really enjoy. After coming back, I have had a boat load of university assignments to finish, and I find myself waking up 9-10am. I usually get up at around 8am, but knowing that I am going to be sitting by a computer all day doing work, I find my bed just all that more comfortable. |
with such an important vote like appointing a supreme court nomine, why is the senate floor so empty? | Well, actually, that's not their one job. They also have to meet with people, work on legislation, and so on. Many of the Senators may be in their offices. When an important vote is called, they will come to the floor to vote. They can get from their offices to the floor in just a few minutes. |
If you put tires on your car that are larger than the ones from the factory, would you actually be going slower than the reading on your speedometer? | No, you'll actually be going faster. The speed is calculated based on the OEM tire size, whereas if you put a larger tire on, there is more circumference so the hub will spin slower, yet will be traveling the same speed. You can have it recalibrated fairly cheaply.Example: Your car comes with factory-installed tires that are 21.8 inches in diameter. That means the circumference of each tire is 68.5 inches. Now let’s say you want to replace the stock tires with new tires that are 24.6 inches in diameter. Each new tire has a circumference of 77.3 inches, which means it travels almost 10 inches farther with each complete revolution. This has a tremendous affect on your speedometer, which will now indicate a speed that is too slow by almost 13 percent. When your speedometer reads 60 miles per hour, your car will actually be traveling 67.7 miles per hour! [source ] |
How does bugspray kills bugs? | Bugspray is actually a chemical weapon. As in it shuts down biological functions bugs need to stay alive, like forgetting how to breathe for example. It can also cause military chemical weapons detection gear to register false positives. |
What is slowing down our internet speeds? | ISP backbones tend to oversell their bandwidth, because not everyone is using their maximum allocation all the time, so there would be unused potential that isn't generating profits. This is how your neighbors can slow you down. Much of your connection is just you and your wire until you get to some shared trunk. Second, cheap home equipment can be a significant slowdown; I 'd say even the equipment you're renting from your ISP can be crap that can't deliver. Buying something good will require research beyond the scope of this post. Third, there are slow downs caused by the routing protocols as well as a fundamental design flaw in our network infrastructure. I mean, it takes time to process a packet at each hop, but this shouldn't be terribly significant. But the fundamental flaw is buffer bloat. Look it up, it was identified just a couple years ago. Basically, our routing protocols control data rates and latency by responding to dropped packets; if you're sending more than the receiving end can handle, you slow down. Well, routing equipment these days have a lot of ram, so if they can't send as fast as they're receiving your data, they're just going to buffer your data packets at full speed until the buffer maxes out, then they drop packets. You respond by slowing down, the buffer clears out just a bit, and you start sending at full speed again, until the buffer maxes out. It's dip, after dip, after dip, after dip And this KILLS performance. The current best way to fix it is to reduce the RAM in the equipment, but no manufacturer is going to sell their newest HyperFast Router, "Now with LESS RAM!!!" Our routing protocols were designed this way because the early internet didn't have massive buffers, hardware was expensive and so it was out of necessity. We now need new protocols that can take this buffering into account, and they're working on it. |
What happens if you don't pay your US Federal income tax? | I'm no expert on Constitutional Law, but where did you hear that the US income tax has no basis in law and is unconstitutional? The entire purpose of the [16th amendment] was to make the income tax permanent. It was ratified almost a century ago. People aren't tricked into paying it for no reason, you can go to jail for tax evasion. Your income tax is not necessarily deducted from your paycheck, it depends on your withholding allowance.The "don't have to pay taxes" thing is a myth, perpetuated by people who want to sell you a book on how not to pay your taxes. People who follow their advice, and often the authors themselves, can face serious consequences, including jail time.The wiki article _URL_1_ describes all the wacky ideas people get that taxes aren't legal. Summary of article: your taxes are legal, and courts take a dim view of you trying to avoid them. If you don't pay your taxes, the IRS levies a fine against you and starts charging you interest on the tax you haven't paid, just like if you don't pay your credit card. The difference is if you don't pay enough for your credit card, it can get cancelled, but if you don't pay your taxes, you can go to jail. Income tax can be and frequently is deducted from your paycheck per the data on your W-4, but it doesn't have to be - you can set it up so you pay quarterly yourself instead, but that's a pain to keep track of.It is not illegal to not pay taxes. It is illegal not to file. Having said that the IRS will get their money if you owe it unless you live underground. |
Why does my employer require a voided personal check in order to setup direct deposit? | Your banks routing number and your account number as well as your name exactly as it is written on your account are all printed on the check. That is the information they need to set up direct deposit. With the check they can be sure there are no mistakes. |
Why are the insides of Ovens Dark and Not Metallic or Mirror Like? | How often do you polish the inside of your oven? I suspect a big reason would be just to keep the interior from quickly looking horribleThe inside walls of an oven are at the same temperature as the interior of the oven . So any heat they do absorb is just going to be re-emitted back into the oven, even if they are not shiny. Much of the heat to the interior actually comes from the inside walls in the first place. Most ovens have the heating element heat the floor of the oven . The floor conducts that heat to the walls, and then the floor and walls radiate that heat into the interior cavity. If the walls where shiny, they would not radiate as well. That is one of the symmetries in physics. If you reflect a wavelength when it hits your surface rather than absorbing it, then you also "internally reflect" that wavelength rather than emitting it. You could probably come up with a coating that is shiny in the visible range, but "black" in the IR range. But 1) why bother? and 2) the insides of ovens are dirty, why would you want to make that more obvious than it already is?', "Modern ovens heat via convection aided via a small fan somewhere in the oven. Radiation from the walls and heating elements and reflection from the walls. But a oven also has to be designed to withstand normal use, and it's heating cycles. Protect the surrounding cabinetry from the heat and any cleaning chemicals that may be used. There might be materials that do one or two jobs better at a certain price point. This would be a good question for a materials engineer |
Why does metal react so violently when microwaved? | The way microwaves work is through jiggling charged/polar particles in your food . This jiggling increases their temperature and that heats up the rest of your food. That's why you can't heat oil as easily as you can water. However, metals like iron are *great* conductors of electrons. What makes them good conductors is a little complicated but basically, the reason is that they have a soup of electrons moving from atom to atom with almost 0 energy needed to move an electron from one atom to another. Thus when the microwave jiggles these electrons, rather than giving energy to the atom, it gives it to the electron which zips around in the soup. The amount of energy given to the soup can get high enough to bypass the natural insulation of the air and cause electrons to jump from the metal and rip through the air. This is called a spark and is basically what happens during a lightning strike. |
How did the American accent come about? | It's not so much that Americans developed a distinct accent, but rather that speech on both sides of the Atlantic changed significantly, with both sides diverging quite a bit from what they had sounded like earlier on. This process is still happening, with accents on the Canadian and US sides of the great lakes undergoing vowel shifts at this very moment, and in opposite directions; Canadian and US accents are actually becoming less similar, even among people in the niagara region who live a few km apart. Why? We don't really understand this process at all well. The key thing relevant to your question though is that accents change a lot, that distance and separation make this process easier and more likely, and that neither English nor an American speakers sound much like their 16th century forebears. |
Why is it when you rewind VHS tapes they lose their quality over time? | Since rewinding needs to be done for each playback, what makes you think it is the rewinding which causes quality loss? Tapes lose quality over time whether you play them or not due to breakdown of the binder and dry lubricant. Rewinding is no more damaging than playback if the VCR is functioning correctly. There is a phenomenon called [print-through] which transfers signal from one layer to the next. Professional audio engineers often store reel to reel tapes "tails out". That means without rewinding. It doesn't stop print-through, but it does make it happen later rather than earlier, so on playback it will be heard after a track rather than before. Source: 40 years experience in broadcast VTR/VCR maintenanceVHS tapes are a magnetic tape wrapped over two spindles. Your VCR scans the tape as it goes from one spindle to the other, and you see the information. Moving the tape back and forth between the spindles and through the read/record head stresses the tape, and damages it over time. Damage on the tape results in lower quality picture and soundTapes store the video or audio information on a magnetic "tape", and basically what happens is, as it gets used over several years, the magnetic tape loses its magnetism a little bit, so you get "lowered quality" in the data. |
If the ozone layer is made up of O3, why are we not producing some of it ourselves and pumping more of them into the atmosphere to fix the problem faster? | > Ozone is a powerful oxidizing agent, far stronger than O2. It is also **unstable at high concentrations**, decaying to ordinary diatomic oxygen. [ ] In a sealed chamber, with fan moving the gas, ozone has a **half-life of approximately a day at room temperature**. _URL_0_ TL;DR: It is very unstable. It will decay fairly quickly; half of the ozone you make today will be gone tomorrow, turned into regular oxygen gas. |
Is it possible to be a 'man without a country'? | It is entirely possible to be such a person, it's called statelessness. At one point, Einstein was stateless. However, renouncing your citizenship means you have no protection by any state. This is very bad, as we are as a species very largely reliant on our respective corporate states of the world. I personally identify as a citizen of no country, if you wish to go stateless, I suggest you study the subject further and figure out how to survive without a state. |
How do the grooves on a record/LP actually recreate the sound of a full orchestra? | Think of every single instrument making their vibrations - some loud, some soft, some brash, some smooth, some at one pitch, others at another. Every one of those vibrations add up together and bounce against your eardrum in beautiful chaos. The specific way your eardrum vibrates as a result of all that is what your brain is able to process as all those sounds at once! Now, if you were able to draw the way your eardrum vibrates back and forth like a earthquake seismograph, now you have a line that makes the shape of the whole orchestra! Now just make a groove in that same exact shape, hook it up to a microphone, and now you have those sounds again, just like the instruments were there. |
In the English language, how are contractions prioritized when a word can belong to two different contractions? | It's a matter of emphasis. "We aren't going" could be simply spoken, or the "we" could be emphasized . Similarly "We're not going" could be used to emphasize the "not" part. Beyond that it's preference. The stylistic choices of language are everywhere, and it's one of the main reasons that most sentences of reasonable length have never been written beforeSome phrasings are more regional/taught through environment as opposed to what would be most appropriate. Sometimes the different contractions can indicate a mood or assertiveness, but it's not absolute. "We're not going" sounds resolute, has some finality to it. "We aren't going" sounds more casual, to me. "We are not going" sounds like somebody trying to convince me or guilt trip somebody. Assuming it's not a conscious decision, I'm gonna go with it just being habit. |
Eating things from other planets or moons. | There is a big piece to this question which is not intuitive: chirality. Basically, the food we eat is useful to our bodies because the molecules can be used to build or repair our cells or can be turned into energy. Either way, our cells make use of chemicals called enzymes that are basically molecule sized tools. Enzymes literally fit around the molecules they are designed to attach to, so the shape is very important. Ok, you go to Europa , and find a fish that looks particularly tasty. On inspection, it seems like it is made of similar stuff to life on earth: carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, etc. You eat the fish for a while And starve to death. Turns out that because the fish evolved on a different planet, it's molecules, while similar to ours, are like mirror images of ours. They don't fit into our enzymes, and so our bodies can't digest them. Chirality appears on earth, too. The chemical that makes spearmint taste minty is a mirror image of the flavor of caraway seeds . Interestingly, all life on earth shares the same chirality, evidence of a common tree of life. |
The Cuban Missle Crisis and Americas enormous beef with Cuba, what happened there? | The beef wasn't with Cuba, the beef was with the USSR. The Soviets were trying to use their communist ally in The West as a beachhead for terror. . By placing ICBMs in Cuba they wanted to cast a cloak of fear over the U.S. Cold War tactics at its finest.US enmity with Cuba started because after the US backed/imposed dictatorship of Batista beginning in 1952, there was an ultimately successful Communist insurrection led by Fidel Castro. Castro's government ultimately turned out to also be authoritarian/dictatorial and resulted in the seizure of property formerly held by relatively wealthy Cubans , many of whom took up a later "offer" to freely emigrate from the Island, ultimately winding up in the electorally crucial swing-state of Florida. *That* revolution and its aftermath was what originally got Cuba on the US shit list; The Cuban Missile crisis was the USSR shipping nuclear weapons to Cuba, which the US really didn't like. |
How do you build a Nanorobot..? | Weeeeellllllllllll the title \'nanorobot\' is a bit misleading in this case, they actually genetically engineered some salmonella bacteria to seek out cancer cells. They also filled the bacteria with cancer killing drugs and programmed it to explode on contact with a cancerous cell, providing targeted medication which means they can use more powerful drugs without causing the collateral damage normally associated with eg. chemotherapy . While this is very cool and definitely the way forward for medicine, it falls more under the category of Genetic Modification than Nanorobotics. These do have a lot of overlap as a lot of nanorobot production is done using genetically modified cells because.. cells are good at that kind of thing, however there are a load of stigma and negative connotations attached to GM stuff, so most medical development uses Nanorobotics as a descriptor because it makes it more likely to receive positive press coverage and funding. And use, patient confidence is important, which sounds better "we would like to fill you full of genetically engineered super-bacteria-suicide-bombers blow up your cancer" or "we would like to introduce an army of nanorobots to annihilate the cancerous cells". Actually on second thought those both sound pretty cool to me. |
Why doesn't it rain salt water? | When water evaporates, it gets heated to an extent that the water particles move faster and spread apart, which causes them to become "lighter" than the air around them, turning into water vapor, a gas. Due to this, they rise up into the atmosphere. Then, they start to cool down, and become liquid again. When they become cool enough that they're heavier than the air, it rains back down. This is the basic water cycle. The salt which makes it salt water requires a much higher temperature to turn into gas, one which doesn't normally happen during this cycle. Because of this, it does not follow the water, and thus, it doesn't rain salt waterThe rise in temperature that is required to evaporate the water is less than that is needed to evaporate salt water, as a result, the water is evaporated and the salt gets left behind. You can see this sometimes if you wear a black hat on a hot sunny day. The sweat on your cap evaporates leaving behind a salty residue on your cap. |
Why can't we use a centrifuge to de-salinate ocean water? | A centrifuge is typically used to separate a heterogeneous mixture of solid and liquid by spinning it. Salt water is a solution, so if it is even possible, I am sure the energy, time and expense are enormous. |
Why do most viral videos now have licensing info in the description box? | I'm not sure whether you mean licensing info for the video itself or for 3rd part content in the video, but if it's the former then people angling to create viral videos will want to exert their creative rights over it in case it really does take off, because viral things like Grumpy Cat and Nyan Cat can end up being worth a lot of money. And if it's licensing info for 3rd party content, some content is free to use so long as you attribute it under certain conditions, and one of those conditions is often linking to the license. |
What is a MAC Address? | It's a unique device address given to each piece of network connected hardware. It's different from an IP address because it's permanent: every device has one and only one MAC address, but it is given a new IP address every time it connects. Edit: You can think of the MAC address as a device's permanent name, and the IP address as an instruction for other devices to find it. Your device *is* MAC number X, and it *can be found at* IP address Y. |
Why drill instructor in the army never stop screaming at recruit in the army? | > What's the point of screaming at people like that? It is intended to rattle the recruits mentally, making them feel like they are incapable and useless. The idea is to break their self-esteem and then the group will be given tasks where the support of the entire unit is necessary to succeed. To drive the point home they will often employ collective punishment so every recruit has an interest in making sure their peers succeed. All this has the goal of making the resulting soldiers psychologically dependent upon the military and their comrades. By creating this bond through surviving abuse it puts the soldiers in a better position to be confident in the support of their peers during combat, and for those peers to run into danger in the support of their comrades. Such a technique makes great soldiers. It also arguably seriously messes people up when they get out of the military because in essence they have been psychologically abused to foster a bond with the military culture. Ex-military basically have a version of battered woman syndrome and need to relearn individuality and self-confidence outside of the military. |
if i ground up a piece of pure iron and ate it, would my body abosorb it the same way as iron from food? if not, how do they make iron supplements absorb-able? | You eat shaved iron every time you have breakfast cereal. If you take total cereal, crush it up, add a little milk to make a broth consistancy, and stir it with a strong magnet, you will see actual iron shavings sticking to your magnet. _URL_0_If you ground it up enough, your body would be able to absorb it. However, the recommended daily intake of iron is only 18mg, so you would need a very small piece of iron or you would run the risk of iron overdose. However, iron supplments are usually provided as part of a compound, such as iron fumarate, iron sulphite, or iron gylcinate, which are absorbed more readily by the bodyA fun fact along side other peoples post: One of the benefits to cooking with a cast-iron skillet is that it increases the iron level in the food because little bits of the iron stick into the food itself. |
Whats is the actual cause of the common itch. and why is scratching it the cure? | 1: dead skin 2: your body's reaction to get rid of it. Bonus: a lot of dust in your house is said dead skin. |
When popcorn is popping, what is actually happening to the kernel inside? | As the kernel is heated, the moisture and oils are being heated inside. Since the outer shell of popping corn is strong and mostly impenetrable, there is no place for the heat and pressure to go and the insides are superheated. The starches inside, which are normally hard, begin to soften in a process called gelatinization. Interior pressure continues to rise until the kernel's shell ruptures. Steam rapidly expands causing the innards to expand in a foamy substance, which afterwards quickly cools into a crispy puff. |
What happens to your brain when you space out? | There are two kinds of spacing out. There is background processing - thinking about stuff that isn't apparent to you consciously, and basically resting your mind. For most of evolutionary history, energy was the limiting factor for most species. Sleeping is not only helpful for repairing your body, but also for reducing your calorie burden. Spacing out is a kind of low energy state that is more alert than sleeping but less energy consuming than active thinking. |
What is the point of a Kroger's Shopper card? | The general idea is that by offering a discount card, you will shop more frequently at that specific chain than others . They may also collect your email to send you regular marketing ads, in hopes of bringing you in. If the extra profit generated from you buying items at that store vs another store exceeds the discounts given on that trip, then the store benefits. |
What is a floating neutral and why is it damaging to appliances? | Coming into your house you have two phases which are both 120VAC *relative to neutral* but are of inverse phase so they're 240VAC relative to each other. A floating neutral is when your neutral connection opens for some reason, a wire might break. When this happens, it means that the electricity can't flow in its normal path. If an outlet was powered by a straight pull from the breaker box and has hot come from the breaker, go to the outlet, then neutral runs straight back, then losing neutral means that power stops flowing and nothing exciting happens If your outlet is wired so the top and bottom plugs are different circuits then one is going to be Phase A and the other Phase B. This means that when the shared neutral breaks, any devices plugged in will go from seeing 120VAC to seeing 240VAC which will destroy many devices quickly. |
American TV shows compared to The rest of the world. | The amount of American hate / bashing on Reddit is amazing.Don't act like we Americans don't notice this shit, too.They make it into a drama type show to get more people interested. Most Americans wouldn't watch it if it was like the British version because it's not "interesting" enough for themOh sorry, I thought this was r/ELI5, not /r/thinlyveiledwhiningmasqueradingasaquestion.This issue here is money. In America, there is a big difference between Network television and Cable television: *Network television is broadcast over the airwaves, and can be picked up for free by any television with an antenna. Therefore, the only way that the large television networks make money is through commercials. *Cable television is only available by subscription and people have to pay to view the channel's content. Since Networks are entirely dependent on commercials for revenue and they can charge more for commercials based on their ratings, Networks are obsessed with attracting the largest possible audience. There is a certain amount of moron viewers who want to be told what to think/feel. It's not necessarily that they are not able to do it on their own, but it is more enjoyable for them if they do not have to think or analyze what is happening. Even if this is 1% of the audience, the network cannot afford to leave them behind. Therefore, Network show strive to be as attractive and easily digested as possible to appeal to the least common denominator. There are plenty of American tv shows that do not use cheezy dramatic cues/devices These shows are wildly popular in America, but are almost always on premium cable channels. Much like cable television in America, the BBC receives some of its funding independent from commercials. Since these content providers do not have to play down to the idiots of the population and are able to retain more artistic integrity as their revenue stream is more stable. tl;dr - Networks in America have to make content as easy to understand as possible to attract as many viewers as possible, including morons. |
How do people add colour so accurately to black and white photos? | It's basically painting a transparent picture on top of the black-and-white, and the B/W image provides much of the shading. In the days before photoshop, you had actual transparent inks with limited tints to choose from, and that's why old hand-colorized photos often look more cartoony. Now, you can pick from a vast range of colors until it more or less matches what you would expect: a white person with fair hair will probably have skin in X color range, unpainted wood furniture is going to be a shade of brown, jeans are almost certainly blue, a military uniform from that era is going to be this particular color, etc. Plus if you have experience with B/W photography you might have a sense for how some colors will translate to film; they often have a particular range of grey due to the characteristics of a given film. So accurate colorizing mostly comes down to digital painting skill and having a sense for how things would look.What makes you think they do an accurate job?', "I'd also like to know why every *single* person has blue eyes when they DO colorize it. |
How do service animals help autistic children? | Multiple ways, and by the way it's not just autistic *children* who can benefit from service animals. Among other things: * service animals can detect the early signs of a meltdown or shutdown, which are things often triggered by sensory overstimulation, and can provide a prompt to leave the situation causing that overstim* they can provide active stimulation to aid with grounding* they can help reinforce ritual, which is frequently important for autistic people", 'One of the major issues that autistic people have is that they cannot process new information quickly, have problems with crowds of people, and have difficulty controlling their panic response in new situations. So having something like a pet that can help to keep them calm and focus their attention slightly when in such a situation will help them have the time to process without panicking. |
Why do books downloaded from the library need to be "returned" after a given amount of time? | > This makes no sense because downloads are not limited like physical copies of books are. Downloads are limited in the sense that the library has to pay for every copy of a book that they own, including digital copies. So they pay the publisher $X for permission to lend some fixed number of digital copies. And the reader software is set up to that the borrower isn't able to retain possess of that copy forever. If that weren't the case, then book sales would drop essentially to nothing, since everyone could just get a free copy of any book whenever they wanted for as long as they wanted.Publishers want them to be limited though. Otherwise, people could just borrow as many books as they wanted and it 'd be no different than buying them. They work out licenses with library on how many digital copies can be "loaned" out at a time. I'm not sure if it's the library or the publisher that sets limits on how long they can be borrowed though. |
How does Stephen Hawking's speech computer work? | He has a small sensor in his mouth and uses his cheek muscle to type with it. His computer also has the ability to predict and correct words for him. |
why does spicy food make me sweat? | "The answer hinges on the fact that spicy foods excite the receptors in the skin that normally respond to heat. Those receptors are pain fibers, technically known as polymodal nociceptors. They respond to temperature extremes and to intense mechanical stimulation, such as pinching and cutting; they also respond to certain chemical influences. The central nervous system can be confused or fooled when these pain fibers are stimulated by a chemical, like that in chile peppers, which triggers an ambiguous neural response." Source: _URL_0_ |
If there are no size regulations regarding goalies in the NHL, why doesn't a team just throw some really obese person out there to block the whole net? | An NHL goal is 6 feet wide by 4 feet wide. I doubt there's many people actually large enough to block that entire area. And if there is someone that big, I doubt they'd be able to stand up and skate their way out to the net.Also take into consideration that the NHL does have restrictions on pad size. Lets say you put a big sumo wrestler in goal, he would have a lot of exposed area. Would you want to repeatedly take 100 MPH slap shots to unprotected part of your body?', "Assuming you did find someone large enough to block the entire opening , they'd still have to stand. They are not allowed to lay down in front of the net for the entire game. |
How can a computer come up with a "random" number? | Generally yes, anything generated by an algorithm can be reproduced if you know the "initial" settings. Numbers generated this way are referred to as "psuedorandom". There do, however, exist various dedicated hardware solutions that allow computers to pick truly random numbers. They work by basically installing in the computer some sort of sensor that can detect random properties of nature. An example might be some sort of detector that picks up low levels of radiation. While we can make statistical predictions of radioactive decay over time, the actual decay of individual particles is truly random, and cannot be predicted with perfect accuracy. A sensor designed to measure those tiny random variations and feed them to a computer could generate truly random numbers. |
Why are scars near impossible to get rid of? | Scar tissue is different to normal skin. It contains more collagen than regular tissue, and doesn't structure the same as regular skin, which is why it looks so different. It's also less flexible. The benefits to having scar tissue is the body can recover from wounds exceptionally quickly - many animals can't create scar tissue, and so wounds can remain open longer and are more susceptible to infection and other problems. Conversely, other animals can regenerate entire limbs whereas we can't. Interestingly, the collagen in your scar tissue is constantly replaced. If your body stops producing collagen , your scars' wounds can actually reopen. The scar is difficult to get rid of because the tissue has been created in a less structured/ordered form than your regular skin , but some medical procedures exist to reduce that effect.Scars are a normal and natural part of the healing process. When the body heals, collagen protein which is found in normal and healthy tissue in a randomish pattern, forms in a more organized way. This allows for healing but because it is different than the normal skin - it stands out. Over time some scars will almost disappear and sometimes corrective cosmetic surgery can be done to further minimize their appearance. A general rule of thumb is: if the full thickness of skin have been disrupted - there will be a scar. If the wound is managed well, it will scar less.Scars are part of your normal skin, and while they are remodeled over time, this is a very slow process. The bigger the scar, the longer it takes to be remodeled. That's why major scars will usually never heal back to normal. |
How does a linear induction motor work? | Alright, the only word in there you gotta worry about is 'induction'. 'Motor' just means it moves stuff, and 'linear' just means it moves stuff in a straight line . As for 'induction': When you've got electricity moving, it can create a magnetic field . That magnetic field can move stuff like you could with a magnet if you work the electric current just right. How do you work it just right? Well you basically line up a row of electromagnets ~~and turn them on/off as they move along the iron stator so that the magnets are always getting pulled forward.~~ This kind of motor has two main advantages. One is that since nothing needs to be touching, you reduce friction, so things can go faster. The other is that the motor doesn't need much in the way of moving parts since it's all electricity, so things don't wear out as fast. Does that help? EDIT: See later post. Read a few things wrong in my first read of the pdf.Look at a row of movie marqee "chase" lights.It is fundamentally the same thing, except instead of light bulbs it uses electro magnets, and the "lit" one draws the magnet to it, and as it "chases", the next one activates, drawing the magnet. |
Does time ever end, or is the future infinite? | That's a really good question, as if deals with the metaphysical in a physical context; basically, the universe will end before time ends, so we have no real way of knowing. However, one could argue that time will end when physical existence ends; in that case, the end of time will come with the end of the Universe.It’s hard to say. Time isn’t steady, it’s fluid and changes depending on things like where you are and how fast you’re going. If you go the speed of light, time doesn’t exist. If you go close to a super massive black hole, time can be infinitely slow. As for if time will ever end, it depends on if/how the universe ends. If the universe keeps expanding, it will get to the point where it expands so fast nothing will be able to touch anymore, at which time, time will be irrelevantWell time itself is a human-made construct, so “time” will exist as long as humans choose to use it. As for the future in general, there’s no evidence of every type of matter ever ceasing to exist all at once, meaning it will be infinite. |
Why does charge build up in a cloud? | Bits of dust stick to the water or float through the air. The dust and water rubs against each other and every time they do, some electrons get passed from one to the other. Then the particles wander off again before the electrons get passed back. This goes on enough, and *tons* of electrons get thrown around until it builds up a very very large negative charge. The result is lightning: the charge gets explosively released. Sometimes this means from one section of cloud to another, or into the ground. |
the hypothetical turtle on an island in the sun question? | I *think* what you are taking about is a test from the book "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep" on which the film "Blade Runner" was based. If so, the test aims to distinguish humans from androids through their emotional response to questions requiring empathy. _URL_0_', "I've met a few turtles and they all looooooved beaches and sun. So the answer is yes.Let me tell you something about my mother ', "Is this a question to test if I'm a replicant, or a lesbian, Mr. BoffyJ? |
how does a home equity loan work? | A home equity loan is a loan that is based off the difference between the value of the house and the current balance of the primary mortage. If you paid $50,000 for a house that's worth $75,000, you can get $25,000 in equity loans. Subsequently, if your house was worth $75K when you bought it and it's now worth $135K because reasons, you can now get that much more in your equity loan. In theory, you don't have to wait at all to get a loan. If you sign on the dotted line for the $75K house for a $50K mortgage, you could turn right around that day and get a $25K equity loan. you just have to have the equity in the house to get the loan. |
In English, what is the rule for the use of “An” or “A” | An is used for words that start with a vowel sound. Examples, An owl, an hour, an eight, an apple, an onion. A is used for all others.It has nothing to do with meaning. It has to do with how the word sounds. If a word starts with a vowel sound, you use 'an', otherwise, you use 'a'. Note this is how the word sounds, not how it's spelled. 'Unicorn' starts with a y sound, so you say 'a unicorn'. The h in 'honor' is silent, so you say 'an honor'. |
Why do we have two small nostrils and not one larger nostril? | It's usually not noticeable unless you sniff harshly, but one nostril is usually more open and free-flowing than the other. The nostril that's closed usually swaps back and forth after several hours throughout the day. When a nostril is more closed, it's swollen, because the blood vessels inside the nose are swollen. During that time, your immune system attacks all the nasty stuff that came into your nose. It's harder to breathe when that happens. But your other nostril is wide open and maximum air comes in. This combination of having one closed nostril and one open nostril is a super efficient way for your body to both clean the nasties and breathe full air at the same time. If it was all just 1 nostril, then every few hours you would have difficulty breathing. Air breathed through the nostrils are combined in the back and flow into both longs. One nostril does not lead into one lung.It is assumed that it has something to do with the Nasal Cycle. Having two Nostrils allows more efficiency for your Immune system. Excluding when you have colds, at least one nostril is always open for airflow. Although not as noticeable unless you have a cold, your Immune system has the ability to "Clean" up the Nose's air filter while still having the ability to breathe through one nostril. Perhaps it may also be related to the sense of smell, we have two of our major sensory organs such as eyes and our ears. Having two may better detect/locate smells. |
Why do car rims appear to be rotating backwards after a car accelerates? | /r/flooey is partially correct. That is the reason wheels appear to move backwards on film. This effect can be leveraged with a stroboscope [for an odd illusion] even in real life, by imitating the film effect and only allowing your eyes to see individual 'frames' in time. However, as you probably noticed , this happens in real life as well, under continuous lighting. Excitingly, we don't really know why this happens! There are [two competing theories] at the moment. One is basically that visual perception actually does act like a camera, and only processes small snapshots at a time. However, later experiments found that this explanation fails in several circumstances. The hypothesis proposed by those researchers is that this effect is instead to do not with snapshotting of the entire visual system, but a kind of ersatz snapshotting to do with propagation delays in the particular subsystem that does motion detection in the brain . |
How the heck do authorities determine who started a massive fire in the middle of the woods somewhere? | The first arriving units will most often be at the fire before it gets large, so they can relay to the investigators where the fire was and how big it was when they arrived on scene. Fires will also leave lots of clues as to how fast and hot it burned but also the direction that it came from. There are origin indicators like needle freeze , charring on trees can tell you a lot depending on how intense the fire was when it burned the tree. Grass can fall back towards the origin in a low intensity fire. There could be no soot on a large rock on the opposite side of where the fire came from. Those are just a few examples. As to finding how the fire started they have to look at the origin of the fire which is why you look for that before you start looking for how. Once at the origin, depending on how the fire was started it could be hard easy or impossible to determine. A hot start, where someone just holds a lighter or similar flaming material to the fuel and then takes the lighter and flees is hard to prove. But often times fires don't durn so hot when they first start, depending on many factors, and there could be evidence left behind as to an ignition source. Most accidental fires you can find out who did it either because they confessed or they weren't trying to get away with it so there are witnesses and more evidence. Also most arsonists don't just start ONE fire, they start many. And once there is a known arsonist working an area reports become more general so you can charge him with more fires knowing that you have some that are definitely him and some probably aren't but can't rule him out for it. And for big, expensive, deadly or suspected arsonist fires there will be multiple expert investigators. Source: I'm a fireman that took a couple week long classes on origin and cause determination. Wild land fires aren't really my thing but I'm just relaying what was taught to me. Edit: spelling and a parenthesis |
How do film/tv productions handle deaths of actors? Examples? | Usually it leaves them scrambling. I know when John Ritter died they actually had to write that death into "8 Simple Rules".It depends on the situation, how much the actor has already shot, if it's an ongoing series etc. Ledger hadn't shot many scenes of Dr. Parnassus if I remember right so they put in what he had done then got other actors to do the other bits as a tribute. When John Ritter died he had already taped 3 episodes of the next season of the show he was on, *8 Simple Rules*. They were shown, then on the 4th the writers had his character die and the show became about the remaining characters dealing with his death. |
Does the Sound Increase in Real Life when Someone on Television Increases the Sound? | The volume control on your laptop or speakers essentially controls the loudest volume you can get - anything that tries to be louder can be distorted. But anything quieter than that is possible. So what might be happening in the movie is that the radio might start at a quarter of the maximum volume level. When they show him turning the dial, they also increase the sound of the radio to half, or three quarters, or full. So it is getting louder, although it can only get up to a certain point. It wouldn't be possible to get your earbuds to be as loud as a rock concert, for example. |
What would happen if all the countries wiped all the debt incurred by and owed to each other? | Not an expert in the topic but I have some knowledge Debt isn't necessarily a bad thing as it represents a flow of money. This is why the average lifestyle in America is comfortably more lavish than those of in China. This is made possible because Americans are in better position to take out large loans and pay them back in the future. If all the debt were to be wiped out then that would mean banks would lose a very high percentage of income. Heres where my knowledge stops as my train of thought has been limited to what I know. |
What is fake meat made of and how do they get the texture to be so similar to real meat? | Soy burgers = soy protein. . Texture is naturally kinda 'meaty'. Myco burgers = mycelium. That's what mushrooms are grown from. They can't call em mushroom burgers, because mushrooms are the fruit the mycelium would produce. The mycelium is just a really fast reproducing cell that grows readily on MANY MANY substrates, usually best at a certain temp and humidity. -We will literally NEVER run out of a cheap protein source because of this invention . Finding a good mycelium was they key for this to be useful. So, basically, after a lot of trials, they finally found a mycelium which had a texture very similar to a hamburger. . I used to be interested in solving the worlds food problems, until I found out the problem isn't lack of food but rather infrastructure and bureaucracy. Fake shrimp and such is referred to as surimi- basically ground up other fish and stuff.. I've seen some made from vegetable pastes and flavored. Usually not so good.. ;) |
Why is it sometimes hard to find something that is right in front of our eyes. | Human eyes are way better at detecting moving objects than resting ones. Plus, a change in perspective may present the object in a better contrast/less obscured by other objects.I literally hadn't eaten toast or anything that required a toaster since moving into my home just under 2yrs ago. Recently SO and I were craving toast with butter. We both looked through the entire kitchen, same day, different days, and multiple times. Finally unable to find it he got a new toaster. A month later I was taking my blender out to make a smoothie as I do 5-7 times a week and BAM! The toaster is there, in the same cupboard, dead centre, and not blocked by anything. I literally have looked at it 500-600 times since putting it there and actively looked for it but couldn't find it. |
Why doesn't the body produce oil like the face does? | Actually your entire body produces the oil, but since your face is usually dryer those glands work harder, not to mention think of how much you touch your face throughout the day, transferring more oil. Sometimes, certain foods etc will kick the sebaceous glands into overdrive, that's how acne happens. And acne can indeed happen anywhere - ever seen back acne? |
Dash cameras in Asia? | Yeah, a lot of cars have dash cams which record the last 5 minutes, continually recording and saving whilst deleting anything older than 5 minutes old. When an accident occurs, the camera can either automatically detect something has gone wrong and continue recording beyond the 5 minute limit, or can be manually told to do so. This makes it a lot easier if the accident gets into court and it isn't immediately obvious whose "fault" the accident was. |
Why do some people get brain freeze? | As long as it doesn't touch the roof of your mouth, you won't get brain freeze. |
Why is second day chili better? | The acids in tomatoes, peppers, and onions take time to break down carbohydrates and proteins . So overnight the beans and meat absorb more of the delicious spicy flavorThe water in the chili is a *solvent,* dissolving various tasty molecules from within the other ingredients, mixing them around, and making them available to your taste buds. This process takes time. |
How does the _URL_0_ door knocking audio clip do such a good job of making it sound like the audio doesn't come from your headphones? | Ha, had the speakers on when I played that audio clip and the cat **freaked** out. Apparently that knock knock fools animals into thinking someone's at the front door too. Your brain determines the location of a sound's source by a few different factors. Namely, distortion differences between each ear, and delay in which ear hears the sound first. Technology has gotten good enough that with proper equipment it can re-create those effects and trick your brain. We usually use the term "binaural" as in "Two ear" to describe the effect. One of the most famous examples of binaurual audio is the "Virtual haircut" clip _URL_1_ where they demo a technology designed to create the effect. Lots of ASMR artists and other people do it too, one popular device these days is [a 3Dio twin mic setup such as this]. With two microphones and extremely accurate recreation of the human ear shape , you can recreate a whole room's soundscape effectively. |
Why do people think Yellowstone will explode and destroy the earth, but not worry about Hawaii's volcano eruption? | Imagine you're filling water balloons. One of them has a hole that lets out the water about as fast as you are filling it. You could stand there all day and be fine. That's how Kilauea erupts. The other one is huge. It is also intact. Eventually, it will burst and soak you. That would be a Yellowstone eruption. Obligatory edit:Thanks /u/arcmokuro for my first gilding. I didn't expect the classic water balloon analogy to blow up like this. |
How does cutting down trees to plant other vegetation for the purpose of cultivation (such as avocado farming) contribute to global warming? | When you cut down highly developed forests to replace them with cultivated land you're seriously lowering the amount of CO2 that can be absorbed. A big tree that is several decades old will take in WAY more CO2 than several seedlings that are planted to replace it. Additionally, all of the undergrowth that is in forests absorbs CO2 but that is all removed for farming. Further, a lot of the time what's done is called "slash and burn" which means that the forests are chopped down and the debris is cleared away via a controlled fire, once again adding CO2 to the atmosphere. Also, removing well established plants will significantly increase soil erosion and while that may not directly contribute to global warming, it certainly is detrimental to the environment.Ever see an avocado farm? _URL_1_ Ordered, tight, clean. Compare that to rainforest: _URL_0_ You literally can't see the ground, there's so much vegetation. Doesn't matter how big the farm you plant is, its oxygen production levels will always be way worse than the rainforest that you destroyed to make it. |
What happens to Lactose when ingested by Lactose-Intolerants? | So, from what I've understood in the past, people who are lactose-intolerant aren't able to break down lactose. Their body doesn't produce enough lactase, which is an enzyme that breaks down lactose. So, depending on how much lactose is taken in, it usually is broken down by bacteria instead in the gut. This causes a bunch of side effects like, nausea, bloating, gas, and stomach cramps. |
If Helicopters need tail rotors to stabilize themselves from spinning, how can turboprop airplanes have only one rotor and not spin in circles? | On a helicopter the main rotor blades are the wings, a plane has fixed wings that use the air to resist the torque of the prop that's trying to make the plane roll |
What is the difference between an air-conditioner and a "marine" air conditioner (commonly used on boats)? | Caveat - I mess with boats but I'm not expert or pro. In general marine equipment is made with more corrosion resistant materials,such as stainless steel. The A/C on my boat exchanges the heat in the cabin air into water that flows through the other side of the heat pump, so this is an air/water heat pump where most home units are air/air heat pumps.Also some or most marine units are 12 Volt DC power, possibly also 24 volt. I think some few are powered directly off the engine via a 'fan belt'. The reefer on my boat is three way power - 120 VAC, 12 VDC, and propane. I suppose this would be possible in A/C but I've ever heard of this. |
Why do people bother keeping savings in banks/currencies which are potentially unstable? | I see two reasons: 1. In most European countries you need a residence permit to open a bank account. In other words, you must live in the country where you want the bank account. Some countries, like Switzerland, allow foreigners to open bank accounts without a permit. However, the banking fees are high for such customers . Unless people have substantial amounts of money the fees will erase their savings. As it happens, many people in Ukraine are not very wealthy. 2. It is difficult. You need to go abroad, speak a foreign language, spend significant amount of time and money. Most don't bother.People put money in banks for mainly 2 reasons; - Safety; cash is turned into a number on some computer . This is generally better protected than say your own sockdrawer. - Interest; having money in a savings account generally compensates inflation of that money on the account. To put money on a bank abroad prevents you from making large cash withdrawals as you need to be there in person . What annoys me more is that people withdraw their money from banks when they do poorly. All they do, is cause them to go down faster. Sure you may save some of your money, but you are also insured by the bank to regain X% amount of the money on it if they go under Think of all the things that may happen to your money if you keep it under the mattress. *Fire *Wear and tear *Accidental theft/theft with prior knowledge of you having money stashed *Your safety being compromised because so much money is next to you *Loss Risk of keeping your money under a mattress is far greater during stable macro financial times. With benefits of interest rates, send your money overseas, and types of insurance that you cant have that covers your mattress. |
how they catch digital pirates who use hotspots or do they? | Normally, They don't. If they actually want to track down someone who is using a proxy, they will be able to; but for something as harmless as pirating it is not worth their time and money just to find out who you are. Torrents from a hotspot are also not easy to trace back to the user, unless they have a way of identifying you. A lot of hotspot providers would attempt to prevent people from torrenting on their networks, otherwise, they do run the risk of being accused of illegal downloads. I'm not too sure of exactly how the copyright law side of things work though. Off the top of my head, i can remember atleast one case where a guy using mcdonald's internet was arrested for spreading computer viruses, based of the fact that he used his credit card at the store and they had somehow managed to find out exactly which computer was responsible, however, for pirating purposes, its not worth the trouble.I'm surprised no one has mentioned the identifier on your personal device and the ability to change or "spoof" it to something else temporarily. |
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