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If my parents had sex to conceive me 3 hours earlier than they did, would I have then been born 3 hours earlier? | There's more of a chance of you not being you than anything else.No pregnancy is exactly 41 weeks long down to the hours and minutes. |
Can someone explain grade deflation/inflation? | The other post did a good job of explaining *what*, now the question is *why*. Some of this is simply like monetary inflation- grades creep up slowly over time as students, professors and administrators come to accept a "new normal." In some cases, a administration might pressure a professor to make his grading easier ... |
What is Guantanamo Bay, and why is it bad? | When people refer to Guantanamo Bay, they are referring to the Guantanamo Bay detention camp, located in Cuba, that is controlled by the United States. The camp is used to hold enemy combatants who are said to be a danger to the United States.A large number of people are angered by the existence of this camp as its det... |
How can companies in China or otherwise offer free shipping on purchases, yet it costs me over $30 to ship internationally? | China's shipping company China Post is highly subsidized by their government, and is not competed with. China Post and USPS have a deal with ebay that makes this even cheaper. For more insight check out [this Quora thread.] |
Why does global warming cause the sea levels to rise, if water takes up more space as ice anyway? | Two factors. One, ice on land is melting, and that water runs downhill into the ocean. Two, and more important, while ice takes up more space than an equivalent amount of water, warmer water takes up more space than cooler water. The contribution of ice in the ocean 'shrinking' as it becomes water, is far less than wha... |
What happens that causes the "shock" feeling when you eat something sweet after not eating for a while (assuming this happens to everyone)? | Not sure exactly what you're referring to--is the shock feeling kind of like a sudden sick feeling? This can happen due to lack of protein; it happens to my brother often when he has a lot of carbs for breakfast but no big source of protein. He's usually fine for a while, but the next time he eats, he starts feeling st... |
What's the difference between the ("th-uh") and the ("thee")? | There is no meaning difference. They are both the same word. It is just different pronunciations. Most of the time "thee" is going to be used before a vowel sound and "thuh" otherwise . People also use the "thee" pronunciation before non-vowel sounds to indicate emphasis on the fact that it is a definite article "Thuh"... |
Why do old people get disturbed by loud sounds when, in fact, they have much weaker hearing capacity? | When hearing loss due to old age starts it is usually high pitched receptors that fail first. So it is harder for them to hear normal speech but they can still hear lower frequencies. So a loud noise that has a deep resonance can still be irritating. Imagine listening to a top of the line surround sound system where al... |
Why is it when I have a cold or flu, I sometimes feel really cold and start shivering violently, even though when I feel my skin I'm warm? | This is a side effect of fever. Your body temperature is above normal, but your brain wants you running hot in order to help kill the infection, so encourages you to seek warmth. This is on top of the fact that because of your increased body temperature, surrounding air feels that much colder compared to your skin temp... |
How does Darcy Oake's do these (magical) illusions? | Sleight of hand and misdirection. He has you focus on the feather and the fire, while his other hand reaches into his jacket and pulls out a dove. He's got four doves, a little other bird, and an egg there. In his right sleeve, he has a collapsible wire cage that can expand quickly when you pull on the top of it. He ma... |
What is actually going on when you hit your funny bone? | You're hitting the ulnar nerve, which is a big honkin' nerve that runs down your arm. Most of the time, it is cushioned beneath lots of fat and muscles, but at the elbow joint, it is exposed and relatively close to the surface of your skin. As such, it is vulnerable to impact which makes your arm feel all tingly as the... |
. Why are moths attracted to light? | *Artificial light is a recent arrival on the night scene. Until recently, the only night-lights were the moon and the stars. Being at optical infinity, their rays are parallel, which makes them ideal compasses. Insects are known to use celestial objects to steer accurately in a straight line. The insect nervous system ... |
Why can you download entire YouTube videos by copying/paste the URL into a website but not do the same with Netflix? | Netflix has protections in place to prevent this, since its content is 100% copyrighted. YouTube, on the other hand, is not always such sensitive material and therefore doesn't have as much security against downloading its content. |
Why do tears come out while yawning when we are really tired? | When we open our mouths to yawn, the muscles around our eyes put pressure on our tear ducts; when the yawn is particularly wide, the pressure is great enough that our facial muscles literally 'squeeze' tears out of the ducts. |
If Almonds contain all of the essential Amino Acids to form complete proteins, why are they considered incomplete protein sources? | Technically yes you could eat 1000 calories worth of almonds to reach your essential amino acid requirement across the board. However it is much more reasonable to combine almonds with a grain which is higher in methionine and leucine, this is called complementary protein intake. So when they are talking about a comple... |
ELI: Why are sales taxes only enforced when shopping stores and online? | You are. You are supposed to write the person a receipt, which they then show while registering the vehicle, and then pay the tax there in order to have ownership transferred to them. |
Is burning fecal waste beneficial in one way or another such as generating power to using the ashes as fertilizer? | One of best things about burning the waste is that you've reduced it's volume, so it's easier to transport and store, and it's probably safer than it was before burning. Regarding other benefits, if the waste is dry enough you can generate power from burning it and I'm not sure if the ashes are viable as a fertilizer a... |
If Flash Storage is so useful, why do we still use Hard Drives? | USB flash drives average $1 per gigabyte. Magnetic hard drives average 5.3 cents per gigabyte. Additionally, a magnetic hard drive is typically 2-4 times as fast as a USB flash drive, or even faster. USB flash drives also have write limitations; there are only so many times you can write to them. If we're talking *soli... |
EIL5: What's the real difference between AA, AAA, 9v, D, etc. batteries? And why did Dildos/Vibrators take only C's for so long? | AA, AAA, C, and D batteries are all 1.5 volts. But they differ considerably in the amount of current and time they can produce. A bigger battery can produce more power over time. A 9V battery is just that - 9 volts. But it has a lower current throughput. As for why a vibrator takes a C battery I can only conjecture tha... |
- what is the "nails on a chalkboard" sensation? | We don't exactly know, but there are some good ideas on it. The most prevalent theories say that the sounds which cause this reaction do so for reasons related to evolutionary biology. Specifically, the sound has strong similarities to some warning calls given by certain primates. It's possible that we still are unnerv... |
Why why when Russia invade a country all the people from america stand up shouting for violation of right of Sovereignty and why when the US do the same American people show a lot of support ? | Let me explain it to you: The US is the bestest most amazing country ever in the history of the universe. We were singled out by god to be mankind's only hope, a shining example of awesomeness that every other country on Earth envies and wishes they could be like. Therefore, anything we ever do is by definition perfect... |
Why it is more common for men to go bald | It's the male hormone testosterone that does that and since women don't have that much of it men goes bald and women don't. The less hair you've got the more testosterone you have in your body.Bald men usually have higher levels of testosterone than in women. |
the theory that cutting taxes on the rich increases overall tax revenue | Imagine if the govt taxed everyone's income at 100%. Although the rate is very high, the tax revenue they 'd get from it would be $0. This is because when people don't get to keep any of their earnings, they won't bother to work. So we can see that in this situation a "tax cut" would certainly increase tax revenue. Alt... |
How would you go about making metal tools from scratch? Assume you're stranded on an island and can only use what nature has given you. | you should watch this video, this guy decided he was going to make a toaster from scratch. _URL_0_', "Well first off if your stranded on most islands you are out of luck since most wont have the resources you need to start. You are not looking for anything in dirt you are looking for certain rocks that contain metal or... |
What’s bad about dystopia if everyone lives in the society truly think and feel they are happy? | If they are *truly* happy, I'm not sure it can be a dystopia. If it's enforced/artificial happiness, then you're encroaching on people's free feelings. |
Why can't we make cheese from human breast milk? | There’s no reason we can’t make human milk cheese in theory. A quick googling shows a bunch of stories about it and even a recipe. The main reasons we don’t encounter it normally are two fold. First is the hygiene angle. There are a number of diseases that can be passed in breast milk. The second is supply. A woman can... |
Why didn't evolution decide our teeth can only be maintained through dental chemicals and treatment? | During most of human history, we ate almost no sugars at all . It is carbohydrates and sugars that feed the bacteria that cases tooth decay , and stone age people rarely ate enough sugars for this to become a problem. What stone age societies actually have a problem with is constantly chewing tough meats and roots caus... |
Why can I switch between running programs instantly on quite old PCs whereas on smartphones, even the most modern ones, it always takes several seconds? | There's something wrong with your phone if going from an app to another takes multiple seconds. It is true however that mobile oses freeze the apps that are not active to save power. And phone apps are often fullscreen only because the screens are so small. If you actually need to multitask on the go, carry a laptop.De... |
How will the closing of so many Wal Mart stores affect local economies? | Because the way WalMart moved in on those communities in the first place was to steamroll into town and undercut all local businesses, forcing them to go under. Pretty soon, WalMart becomes The Only Game in Town, and if it pulls out, all that's left is a big muddy hole. No local commerce, no local jobs, a huge hit to t... |
can someone please ELI5 the functions of independent, dependent, and standardized variables in the scientific method? | The independent variable is the variable that you control and change. The dependent variable is what you're measuring. It changes as a function of the independent variable. Or at least it does if your experiment is valid. A standard variable is basically a validation of your experiment. It has a known set of data assoc... |
Why does the back button on the browser work and other times does not? | When you 've been automatically redirected from one address to another, depending how that was implemented, the back button can take you to the place you were redirected from - at which point, you're immediately redirected again. Thus, you have to click it twice, fast enough that the second one comes before the redirec... |
What is at the center of Gas Giant planets and what holds them together? Why do they have an atmosphere? | What holds them together is gravity. As you go into a gas giant the atmosphere which is mostly hydrogen gets thicker. Eventually you get so much pressure that you get liquid hydrogen, and then at the very core you will have solid hydrogen/whatever heavier elements the planet has absorbed. |
Why are people so "stranger-phobic" nowadays? | Because the media shows so many awfull things happening, that no one actually trusts eachother anymore. That, and I have no idea what to say to strangers, I'm not really talkative and when I do say something in the nicest way, I mostly get a very rude response.Lots of people blame it on internet and videogames making p... |
How does genetic drift work? | Genetic drift is simply changes in the gene pool of a population due to chance. Let's say you have a population of 10 bugs. 5 of the bugs have Gene R which makes the Red in color. 5 of the bugs have Gene B which makes them Blue. Being red or blue is equally advantageous in hiding from their color blind predator, the Mo... |
How does public-key cryptography work? | Public encryption is best explained by [this picture]. Just take a second to digest each step and realize how both parties do indeed come to the same result and that if you were spying on them in public, it would be difficult to determine their private colors. Now replace the ideas with colors with keys and the act of ... |
How and why do does the WestBoro Baptist Church make money? | They did and iama recently. They all hold down regular jobs and some are lawyers, so they are not poor. In any case, what do they need money for? The only expenses they have are travel costs and it's not like they do it for the money. Useful info from the inside:_URL_1_ _URL_0_ |
Why is sign language different in different parts of the world? | if you learn sign language you will notice it's basically a sign for each word. if you learn a second language you will learn that each language has different rules for words, like the order of noun/verb might be flipped or one language will use a second word while another will change the ending of a word. so each spok... |
What is the difference between applied physics and engineering? | I'm actually majoring in physics. Theoretical physics to be honest, but we were forced to do some applied stuff too. But I've also worked as an intern in an engineering office which makes me feel like I can draw a comparison. Engineering focusses on problems on a higher level than applied physics does. Applied physics ... |
Why do we get drunk, when we drink alcohol? | Alcohol is a friendly guy. He loves to hug things, like your brain cells. When you drink a lot of alcohol your brain winds up being too busy hugging alcohol to work right. Alcohol is also a very thirsty guy. That's why you wake up dehydrated. |
How does electrical current "know" which path offers the least resistance? | They don't. Electrons follow the path of least resistance in the same way that water flows downhill. The electrons do not act collectively, each individual electron is driven away from other electrons, and driven toward positive charges. The collective result is well described by the statement that they follow the path... |
Why is air generally colder in the upper atmosphere, even though hot air rises, and it receives more direct sunlight? | Air pressure is equal to the weight of all the air above in the atmosphere, so it decreases with altitude. Therefore when hot air rises, its pressure decreases and it expands and gets colder. The reason why it cools down is hard to explain without using math, but it's the same as when you open a compressed air bottle f... |
How are we able to type fast without thinking about the key placement, yet probably wouldn't be able to recollect where the keys are without a keyboard | Muscle memory versus actual memorization. They are stored differently than regular learned memories. Therefore accessed differently. Which is why when you need a key you very seldom use you still look. |
The difference between republican and democrat and what they believe in. | Put very broadly, and recognizing that there are a lot of variations within the parties, Republicans are the "conservative" party and Democrats are the "liberal" or "progressive" party. In terms of actual policy positions, Republicans tend to be in favor of smaller government involvement in the economy, a larger and mo... |
Why do we shake our hands after we punch things? | I would like to venture a guess on this. I think it's a response to some pain or itching signals coming from the nerves in your hand, a very common after effect of punching something solid. The reason we scratch an itch is because it creates a small amount of pain , and pain signals get priority over the itching signal... |
How can such a huge company, like yahoo, afford to rebrand themselves after becoming so prominent under their current brand? | simple answer they cant afford not to. yahoo is not a sustainable business, as proven by years of losses and failed remedies. they need cash, and if selling the yahoo brand to verizon provides that cash, so be it. Just as sears recently sold craftsman to black and decker. chances are yahoo is positioning to turn out th... |
How did J. R. R. Tolkien invent his elvish language? | He was a linguist who was very talented and very imaginativesame way you make up any other language. you make it up. he just had a good sense to write it down and make it make sense .in an elvish wayFrom Wiki..He served as the Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon and Fellow of Pembroke College, Oxford, from ... |
If you flew a spacecraft into a gas planet, would you go straight through it or would you hit some form of ground? | That's pretty much why we've sent Juno up to Jupiter; I understand that it's going to be firing some kind of radar through the atmosphere to see what reflections come back. There are also theories that due to the extreme pressure, the core may contain phase 5 hydrogen, a state in which it forms into a metallic structur... |
Why are there different sockets on motherboard for CPUs? Why isn't there a universal socket to fit all CPUs? | Part of it forces you to upgrade your entire computer at a certain points and part of it is due to compatibility. As for the compatibility part, when a socket is designed it has certain features they are trying to support, DDR2, PCI-E 2.0, Sata 2.0, ect. In the future this same design may not work for newer features su... |
Why is it that after a full meal, when I can't eat any more, I somehow make more space for a dessert? | there are probably two parts to this: - there was a study that found that we want variety when we eat. We evolved in a way that our body needs several kinds of minerals and nutrients. In order to incentivize us to get them, the body tells us "this is enough" after eating a large portion of one food, but as soon as we s... |
Why is that computers connect to just one wifi connection and not multiple ones at the same time? | Wifi cards only have one tuner and transmitter, think of it like a standard radio. You cant tune to 2 stations at the same time, a transmitter can only transmit on one station at a time as wellIt only has one WiFi card. You should be able to connect to two networks if you have two cards. I think. |
why is it called lake michigan and not michigan sea? lake superior and not superior sea? | Geologically speaking, altitude. 200' above present sea level is, by definition, always a lake. Inland seas are low enough that at maximum sea level they are part of the ocean. But during an ice age , sea level falls enough that inland seas become independent bodies of water. Lake Superior is 600' above present sea lev... |
What goes on at a landfill aside from just burying the trash? | Depending on the kind of operation, you might get recycling/sorting operations, to divert metal and other non-degradables from the heap. There are trash burning operations, where it is used to fuel powerplants, but this is fairly uncommon. Otherwise, you don't really bury the trash, except under more trash, until the e... |
If lightning is very short, how does it create a long continuous sound as thunder? | In addition to what others have said, while the *event* of lightning can be very short, the actual bolt itself, can be several miles in length. While this distance is pretty insignificant in terms of the speed of light, it *is* significant in terms of the speed of sound. So not only do you have multiple reverberations,... |
Why does my air mattress always go flat after I use it? | You know when you lay on your arm too long and you get that 'pins and needles' feeling? That's not just a feeling. Your body hair really turns to pins and needles. Now, in a regular polyester-fill mattress, this is no problem. But in an air mattress, you compromise the integrity of the mattress over time. This is why w... |
What are the sparks for? Space Shuttle Launch | From NASA website: the sparks are used to burn up any hydrogen that may have been leaked from the engines/tanks. If they didn't do this, there was a chance that a pocket of leaked hydrogen would blow up when the engines started.The sparks are for ignition, but not for the engines. They ignite any hydrogen that comes ou... |
Does space go on forever or is there an end? | Current models suggest that space is infinite in extent, and that the universe essentially goes forever in any direction. The most popular model is called the [Friedmann–Lemaître–Robertson–Walker ] model, which suggests that the universe is infinite and flat, based largely upon the data that the universe appears isotro... |
Why do we have so little control over our bodies? | You evolved from creatures that developed random solutions to problems that may or may not have actually been good solutions. All that mattered for the solution to become prevalent was wether or not it made the creature more likely to reproduce. You will notice that cancer is very rare among individuals who are younger... |
Why is restoring a painting acceptable/preferred? | There's still some debate over what is and isn't preferred when restoring something. With some antiques people insists that the patina of dirt is important. With some art people insist that any parts replaced should be done so that they give the impression of the original while clearly being different. But in some case... |
why listening to classical music is the most beneficial compared to other genres of music | Contrary to popular belief it doesn't make babies into geniuses, however [music in general effects brain chemistry and can be beneficial to you.] |
How can an object get partially into something and then not be able to get back out? e.g. getting stuck between railings | shape and compression. a cone or arrow shape could compress a bit and be pushed through but it would present a hard edge and would be difficult or impossible to pull through. Think of [these things] you can push them in but you can't pull them out without manually compressing them due to their shape. |
If staring at screens for long periods of time doesn't cause nearsightedness (myopia), why has myopia increased from 10% to 41% of the US population in the last 30 years? | It’s not staring at screens that causes it, but a lack of exposure to sunlight and of staring into the mid-distance. So if you spend a lot of your time staring at a screen but still get/look outside for an hour or two every day, your eyes get the full spectrum exposure and exercise they need. Not much different than ph... |
; Why did Blackberries stop being popular? | Blackberry was focused on the business market. Originally it was only a business that could justify the expense of a smart phone so the apps were focused on the concerns of businesses. Apple came along and decided that hardware prices have come down enough that justified a consumer level smart phone. Apple focused on t... |
Why doesnt Harry destroy the third deathly hallow, the invisibility cloak? | He destroyed the stone because it drove people crazy, he destroyed the wand because it was used for harming others. The invisibility cloak didn't really cause any harms, and so he didn't see any reason to destroy it. That being said, in the books he didn't destroy the elder wand, he placed it in Dumbledore's tomb, and ... |
Why drug dealers would agree to be on those VICE shows | Journalistic integrity has existed throughout the centuries, protecting sources to get to the truth. Vice is offering anonymity to get the story. Ego is what likely keeps the dealers willing to tell their story in disguise just to be on television. I imagine it appeals to the rush of the drug dealer lifestyle some peop... |
Why do small flies congregate in small swarms in the same place night after night during spring/summer? | They are banging. That is pretty much it. Flies swarm in order to mate, so you are basically running through a night club where everyone is DTF. |
Why is travel so exhausting? | Travel in a vehicle is mentally stimulating. You are surrounded by noises and by other people. And it is slightly stressful because you have fairly little control over what is happening -- either because you're a passenger or because you're in traffic. Also, often you were in a hurry just before boarding the vehicle, s... |
the expression "Clocks don't really measure time, they measure themselves." | Time exists and always has^ish and always will^mostly. It is not a construct of man but rather a universal condition. Before the clock was invented we had the sundial, which measured the movement of the sun accross the sky, not really time. When clocks were invented the attempted to keep pace with time but had to be re... |
What are birthmarks? What causes them? | It depends on the type of birthmark. Something like a port wine stain: _URL_0_ is actually an overgrowth of blood vessels that grow too much, and too close to the surface of the skin where they shouldn't be. Something like a congenital nevus/giant mole: _URL_1_ is an overgrowth of melanocytes, which are the cells in yo... |
How come when you involuntarily blink you never notice, but when you realize and start blinking intentionally it's all you notice | Well because you're thinking about it. Same thing with the nose, it's always there but your brain ignores it. Once you realize this then it is noticeable. |
Is it normal for a person to regularly fantasize about killing people? What causes it? | I'm not sure "fantasise" is the right word here, but many people randomly daydream about doing bad things and about bad things happening so that your mind subconciously checks that it is bad and should be avoided. There was a recent ELI5 about it which I will link if I find. If you do mean "fantasise" as in killing peo... |
Why are people saying that the Ebola Virus is not as transmittable as suggested? | ~~A lot of diseases can survive in the air or on surfaces for long periods of time.~~ ~~Ebola can't. Unless you directly get some of an infected person's bodily fluids inside you, you're extremely unlikely to contract it.~~ ~~So while Ebola is super deadly, it's not really all that contagious, when compared to most oth... |
What would happen to an object travelling at a great speed(ie: Hyperloop) in a vacuum if it were to suddenly enter the atmosphere? | You don't really need to wonder . This is basically what happens to meteors and re-entering spacecraft. Massive heat and the violent destruction of the object .Well you are luck, there are plenty of videos of very fast moving objects colliding with the earths atmosphere. Just do a quick youtube search for meteorites or... |
Why do americans love pickup trucks so much ? | Part of it, is that the US doesn't pay as much for fuel as many European/Scandinavian countries. On average, we pay about half of what you do for fuel. Therefore, having a utility vehicle that gets poor gas mileage is not as big of a luxury as you might think. Trucks are useful. Many of my relatives are tradesmen and u... |
Why do reflections still have 'depth' so that our eyes have to focus on objects near and far, even though the reflective surface is flat? | Reflection is caused by light bouncing off of a surface. So you're not focusing on the surface itself, but on the things being reflected off that surface, which can be varying distances away. |
Why are some foods "acquired tastes" and how do people eventually like them? | For one thing, both our [sense of smell] and our [taste buds change] as we age. You are basically a lot more sensitive to strong tastes when you are young. So kids have 30,000 taste buds and often hate strong flavors like garlic. By the time you're an adult you have about a third that number and flavors like garlic are... |
Claiming tips from deliveries at work. | You have to claim ALL income, regardless of source for tax purposes. You should try to claim as little as possible so that you are not taxed on that additional income, its technically illegal to do so, but its standard practice to claim little tips as income in many service jobs. |
Why do broken noses bleed so much? | Our noses serve to humidify the air we breathe before it reaches our lower airways. In order to do this, structures called turbinates project from the side walls of the nasal cavity to increase the surface area for which the air will come into contact. The walls of the cavity are extremely vascular in order to transfer... |
Why is abortion so heavily regulated by the government? | Many people believe that abortion is morally equivalent to murder, or at least a form of murder. As a result, they advocate policies that they believe will reduce the number of these acts or punish the people who conduct them. The reason it seems like there is so much government involvement is because a large number of... |
How do they accurately measure the movement of a mountain? Everest moved 3cm. after the earthquake. Relative to what? | With topographical maps, GPS positioning, and satellite imagery; you can easily compare and contrast what the data says today with what it said with previous bits of data years ago.Primarily through sattelites and distancing. Remember Geometry in school? We start there. You have three sattelites. They always attempt to... |
Lets say the President tries to push his big red button, what happens next? | If anything in your question happened, it would create a constitutional crisis, so there's now way to predict how it would shake out, but here's what we do know. The president is the only person authorized to use nuclear weapons, and do so any any time for any reason, but this order must be seconded by the Secretary of... |
Both entropy and inertia (in physics). | Entropy: Your mom tells you to clean your room every day. She had to go on a business trip so you stopped cleaning your room this week. It starts getting messy and messier and finally looks like a storm blew through it. You stopped putting energy into cleaning your room so it became a mess. Entropy states that without ... |
Why is the task of investigating fraud/counterfeiting given to the Secret Service? | Because that was mainly why the were created in the beginning, see the [history of the Secret Service] > 1865 - The Secret Service Division was created on July 5, 1865 in Washington, D.C., to suppress counterfeit currency. Chief William P. Wood was sworn in by Secretary of the Treasury Hugh McCulloch. > 1867 - Secret S... |
why are people always under an illusion that they are wasting their life ? | Humanity's ability to get itself to a position where all it's physical needs are satisfied and still want more is, imo, what made us the dominant species of the planet. That dissatisfaction keeps us reaching. It's sitting in a dry cave with a bellyful of meat and saying "okay but now what"I just feel like I could be do... |
How does an X-Ray machine work? | It works like a camera. An X-ray "light" shines on the object and onto a digital sensor that reacts to X-rays just like a digital camera reacts to light. X-rays go through most things so you put the object between the X-Ray source and the sensorOne part of the machine super heats a metal filament, causing its electrons... |
Why is it when you see pictures of fashion models on the runway, they're wearing something nobody in there right mind would wear? | Think of it more as a walking art installation. Instead of a crazy ass sculpture or a painting, it's a person walking around all decorated and shit. |
Why can little kids squat on their haunches, but most adults cant? | Practice. Adults who regularly do it can still do it well into their older years. In fact, squatting on the haunches is a pretty common sitting style around the world. Wear and tear does eventually take its toll, but for most people it's atrophy and loss of flexibility due to inactivity that's playing the larger role. |
When boiling a pot of water for cooking, why should you start with cold water instead of hot? | Cold water is less likely to contain lead from pipes and legionella bacteria from your hot water heater. Hot water boils faster, though |
why does guacamole last longer when you keep the avocado seed in the guacamole? | I've never heard of that, but it sounds like a folk tale, and not fact. Do you have some link which indicates that this is true, and not just something you've heard before? _URL_0_ > So how does leaving the pits in the bowl mitigate this process? It is not because the pits exude an ineffable, protective aura that remin... |
How can we still see thumbnails for images that are no longer available? | Say you want to view 1 reddit page with 10 thumbnails from imgur on it. To create the thumbnails, you need to load the images from imgur first, then resize/crop accordingly. Reddit can go to imgur every time someone accesses that 1 page. Wait for the 10 imgur links to load, do the cropping process and then show them to... |
Why do things take "4-6 weeks" to ship? | This is not always the case, but especially with infomercial trinkets, it's not uncommon for the products you're buying not to even be manufactured yet. By allowing long lead times, the seller can gauge response and manufacture just enough to meet demand.There are a couple reasons for the lead times being so long: 1) L... |
how are people able to track hackers ie: where they are, who they are, etc | This is part of digital forensics and is kind of like asking 'how do you know that this person murdered this other person without actually witnessing it?'. You can narrow hacking down to 1) Physical access - someone having access to the machine in order to clone the data to another device or crack it at the location 2)... |
Why can programs on my computer be completely unresponsive but pressing control+alt+delete is always instant? | This is because the program is stuck in some sort of loop, so sending commands to the program does not work. Ctrl+alt+del sends an interrupt, which means that it tells windows to drop everything it's doing. Next windows will show the ctrl alt del menu. This will not stop the program from being in the loop but it stops ... |
How did recording on wax cylinders in the early Phonograph days work? | Recording on wax cylinders required a two needle machine, not the single needle player that most people had at home. The recording mechanism had a clockwork system to move the stylus along the cylinder in a long spiral. This could be played or used to make a master. To make a master, gold vapor was plated into the grov... |
How come you can "feel" when someone is watching you? | You can't actually tell other than by looking at where other people are looking. Humans are social animals and we look around quite a bit to check where others are looking without really noticing. Only when we detect someone looking our way do we take note, sometimes thinking we somehow knew we were being observed. But... |
What makes great paintings great? | To me, a great work of art is more than just something I perceive with my eyes. It is often thought provoking, and has the personality and psychology of the artist captured within it. These popular paintings are "simply" milestones for their eras. Such as Ansel Adams and the f/64 group or Diane Airbus with their work i... |
What determines how much spicy food someone can handle? Is it genetic? | You can build up a tolerance. Also helps if you were raised on it. I imagine genetics plays a part, too. Plants evolved capsaicin because they needed their seeds spread far. Small mammals, lime mice, can't stand the spice and avoid it. However, birds don't feel the capsaicin and can eat and spread the seeds far away. T... |
If there was a pill that contained all the nutrients, vitamins, energy etc., would you still need to eat? | Yes. Because the calories you would need cannot be consumed in something as small as a pill. |
Do heat-seeking missiles ever accidentally lock onto the sun? | Usually, a heat-seeking missile has been programmed to change its trajectory based on various things, and so it can usually tell if it's detecting the sun or if it's detecting its actual intended target. Compared to a person or a vehicle, the sun outputs a very obvious signal in infrared, since it's pretty much always ... |
What is the technology behind 3d printers? | Yes, it works layer by layer. The printer consists of a printing head that can squirt molten plastic and can move freely through the printer. The software turns a 3D model into tiny little horizontal slices, and the printer then squirts the plastic into that shape, layer by layer. Each layer is built upon the one below... |
What happens if you don't agree to the new data policies the social networks keep telling you about in Europe? | If you don't agree, then according to their terms of service, you won't be allowed to continue using the service. But that clause is probably not enforceable in most jurisdictions. However, after May 25th at the latest, social media websites with a presence inside the EU will, *by law*, be required to collect and proce... |
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