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How did translations of the first languages go about? | Do you mean how do peoples who speak different languages learn each other's language? This can be done in much in the same way as the fundamentals of language are taught: lots of ad hoc sign language. You could start with the basics such as "My name is X. What is your name?" and progress to pointing at objects and givi... |
Why are some medications race-based? | There's sufficient genetic difference between various human races to create different reactions to certain drugs, or increase the possibility of certain reactions in certain races. An example of one such difference is a genetic switch in some Asians that floors them completely when they have one drink because their met... |
How does Publix (a grocery chain in the SE United States) make a profit when they offer so many buy one-get one (BOGO) deals? | The store doesn't fund those sales - the manufacturer does. The manufacturer then uses this marketing expense as a tax write-off. Source: used to work in the industry.There's no single reason. Sometimes the profit margin really is so high, they can do that and still make a profit. This is particularly true of junk food... |
Why do many large companies lease their office/retail space instead of owning it? | There are a couple of reasons I can think of.1. A lease is nearly a 100% write off as it is an expense. If a company gets a loan on the building only the interest would be a write off. 2. Buying a building with cash locks in a lot of capital to a single asset. Capital that could be used for other ways of increasing pro... |
If another Winter frost hits and kills all the newly sprung animals and flowers, would they simply procreate and bloom again when it gets warmer, or would everything be dead until next Spring? | They would continue procreating when the weather warmed up for good. One frost doesn't wipe out every organism out there. If one event was capable of destroying everything none of us would be here. Relax! Spring is coming for good, hopefully soon, and all the new plants and animals will come along with it. |
How can people function on only a few hours of sleep? | Polyphasic sleep is supposedly one way - I tried it a couple of times, but I suck at sleeping during the day, so it never worked out for me. Check out the various patterns at the Wikipedia page: _URL_0_ I would LOVE to get the Uberman pattern going, if it actually works - look at the remark about the Dymaxion pattern, ... |
How did calendars developed thousands of years ago such as the Julian calendar keep track of time so efficiently? | Actually, they didn't get it quite right, to the point where they had to eliminate about 10 days in the fall, about 500 years ago, to correct the accumulating error. Side note: I had an astronomy profession in college who also taught history. One of her favorite exam questions was, "What notable event occurred on Oct 1... |
Most of my money is a number in a bank database. What is there to stop a bank artificially inflating someone's number? | It is not just 1 number, it's the sum of a transaction history that is cross-referenced to the various accounts that put money in or took it out of your account. If you just made one number bigger, the whole thing wouldn't balance and that would be picked up by the auditors/accountants. |
How can people with Down's Syndrome donate blood | Red blood cells do not have a nucleus, and therefore no DNA. Assuming that there is not a separate mutation/issue that impacts RBC production, their red blood cells would be normal. Not sure about other blood productsRed blood cells do not have a nucleus therefore they do not have any chromosomes or DNA in them |
How does the Federal Government have jurisdiction on First Nation land? | Major Crimes Act : The Major Crimes Act provides for federal criminal jurisdiction over seven major crimes when committed by Indians in Indian country. Over time, the original seven offenses have been increased to sixteen offenses currently. Indian reservations are not their own countries and operate under the US Burea... |
Why is Morrissey so popular amongst Latinos? | Latino here, In my opinion Morrissey's style of singing is very similar to Mariachi style, including song lyrics and such. Having grown up with maricahi music, listening to Morrissey just feels very similar.Someone had the same question and made a documentary about it: _URL_1_ EDIT: This article sums it up nicely: _URL... |
What do physicists mean when they say space is curved? | Because spacetime behaves like it's curved by the presence of mass and energy. What does curvature mean? Let's say we have two points and we draw a straight line between them. Now let's say we want to increase the length of the line while keeping the endpoints fixed. How do we do that? We curve it so that it's no longe... |
Why did a law need to be passed telling federal employees that they couldn't participate in insider trading? | This is how I understand it. Can someone please fill in the details or correct me on this? Part of the reason is because, technically, a lot of what they were doing wasn't "insider" trading. Typically, insider trading happens when you work for a company or are someway involved in a company and you happen to know that y... |
Why do problems and stresses that don't seem like a big deal during the day suddenly seem life threatening and world ending when you wake up at 2:30 AM? | I'm not sure what 'stresses' you are taking about, but I'm going to take a guess at what you mean and work from there. You are at your most vulnerable when you are asleep. You are effectively unconscious and many of your senses are non-responsive or at least sort of 'muted' as it were. This means that when you wake up ... |
Why do we just "click" with some people? | Because our personalities relate in some manner. I figured this out by looking into it and wondering my friends were my friends. It really just came down to being weird, funny, spontaneous, talkitive and stuff like that. My brain just likes these people and gets a 'high' off of them. Sorta like a drug |
How are mathematicians and astronomers able to predict solar and lunar eclipses thousands of years in advance? | Because it's simply a math problem involving physics equations. Consider a math problem from your school text book where there are a pair of train tracks leading from Chicago to St. Louis which is 250 miles away. A train leave Chicago at noon going at 50 mph while at the same time a train leaves St. Louis traveling at ... |
Why do people's voices get super deep/groggy in the mornings? | I looked this up because I was curious. Basically it's gunk that builds up in your throat overnight from your horizontal position, then goes away once you're upright. |
Why do we crave the cold side of the pillow? | I can only speak from my experiences, but I'm much more comfy when my ears are cold. A warm pillow makes my ears too warm. So I flip the pillow and it feels more pleasant against my ears and keeps them cool. |
What is actually going on inside your body when you "get the wind knocked out of you"? | Your solar plexus is a bundle of nerves. If you are hit there, the nerves are shocked for a while, and cause your diaphragm to be paralyzed. This keeps you from breathingAfter being "winded" many times, I 've developed a method to recover quickly. Now this might be an actual thing that is well known about. And feel fre... |
What if any economic impact will the Large Hadron Collider have on mankind? | It's impossible to know, but you might be surprised. Some quick examples: 1. The Internet as we know it today was the result of the work of Tim Berners-Lee, an employee of CERN, the operator of the LHC. He coupled the Internet, the largest node of which was then at CERN, with the concept of HyperText . CERN was later t... |
Why are Jews so made fun of? | [Here is a "Simple to Remember" explanation of the six main reasons why], written by folks who have a lot of experience with this questionThey have a distinct religion/culture from the rest of the people around them. People make fun of people that are different. |
Why don't they package soda and beer the same? Like why do we have 30 racks of beer and not soda? | There *ARE* 30 packs of soda. Walmart sells them. [Here's a link for 30 cans of Diet Mt Dew] If you want to see other examples you can google 30 pack of soda, thats how I found that link.Do you mean something like this _URL_1_ . In short the do package beer and soda the same, minus the 2 liter bottle, they just market ... |
Why is it so hard for smokers to stop smoking? | There is a lot of ritual involved in smoking and a lot of nostolgia for most people that goes beyond the physical addiction. Many people have their work tied in mentally to cigarette breaks. The stress is the stress of that ritual being disrupted. For a smoker the smoke break is like waiting for Christmas and Christmas... |
Why is it that I visit websites and Facebook/Google automatically know that and give me targeted ads? | When you visit websites that link to pages of interest, they send your pseudo identity and your interest profile to central ad servers. When you visit another page that has an ad spot for a remarketing ad, they pull your identity and interest profile and select those ads that are best matched to you. Your pseudoidentit... |
Was there ever a "wood age"?What do we know about wooden(and other perishable) tools? | No, there was never a point in human history where we could use wooden tools but not stone tools. The "stone age" is just a term used to describe when we used tools that were naturally occurring. We used fire hardened spears and flint knapped with stone. Edit- Flint knapping not flint mapping.For those interested, ther... |
The ongoing mental imagery debate. | here we go i will post what i think and say it is true, and then someone will post why what i post is wrong and then you will have the correct answer :) one side says we use the same pathways in the brain when imagining something as we do when we actually see it. the other side says no that is not true, we use the memo... |
Why are death row inmates housed separately? | People care less about obeying rules when they are about to die. At this point what do they have to lose? Did Jerry over in cell D12 make a rude comment about your mother? Maybe Jerry should get stabbed 12 times with a sharpened tooth brush. What are the guards going to do about it? Kill you? lol!It is custom. There al... |
Why do cable companies give such wide and inconvenient timeslots for doing housecalls? | lets say that the tech has 8 trips to make. they don't know how long each appt will take. some could take 10 min. others could take an hour. so they give you a range. but 8-5 is rather unreasonable. i usually see 8-12 or 1-5. you can ask them to call you before they get there. some will, some won't |
How does the National Security Council differ from other federal agencies? | The NSC is just a group of people, with other government jobs, to whom the President turns for national security advice and recommendations. They read the analysis written by experts and help the President evaluate public opinion and political factors . |
Why do we capitalise all words except conjunctions and some prepositions in titles? | Convention, at heart. It used to be that writers capitalized all letters. Then, some time passed, and they capitalized only nouns and beginnings of sentences. Then, more time passed, and they started capitalizing only proper nouns. It's gotten to the point that we only capitalize more meaningful words in general and in... |
Why does toothpaste clean headlights so well? | Toothpaste is an abrasive. If you imagine starting with a plank of rough wood, and wanted it to be really smooth, you'd start with really rough sandpaper. That would scrape out lots of deep grooves in the wood. You'd now have something with a rough finish, and would repeat that with finer and finer grades of sandpaper.... |
in World War 2, to go home did you have to become disabled and would you get paid straight away? | There were a number of qualifications needed to be sent home from the front during World War II as a discharged serviceman or woman - 1.) Contracting an illness that required long term recovery2.) Amputations3.) Wounds that interfered with stamina, agility, dexterity4.) Loss of sight in at least one eye5.) Capture and ... |
Why are crickets so hard to find? | It’s hard to pinpoint in on sounds that are loud enough to create an echo. Things like a smoke detector that beep, leave you clueless because it echos and the sound bounces all over and also it’s short. The beep only goes on for a few moments and then it stops. Sounds that are constant like for example a hissing sound ... |
Why does my dog choose so carefully where he pees? | Dogs actually communicate by peeing certain ways or places. If he pees on a place which had already been peed on, he is kinda respondibg the message by the previous dog. Also they can mark their terrotories or leave a message for other dogs. |
why do news channels consider Twitter a reliable, relevant, and serious source for different things? | Newspaper reporter here. Proof: _URL_0_ Journalists use Twitter as a place for information the same way we talk to people as sources. There are a lot of people on Twitter who do and say newsworthy things. Barack Obama, Pope Francis, tons of politicians, scientists and business people all have Twitter accounts. Sometime... |
Why are mice associated with cheese? | Most mice prefer to feed on grains and nuts rather than cheese, but when they're hungry, they'll eat whatever they can find that is edible. Cheese tends to smell very strongly, especially when not refrigerated, and that makes it easier to find by mice, so when they're hungry, they'll go for whatever's easiest to find, ... |
How do speakers of tonal languages convey different degrees of emotion? | From experience .Before we start, let me try to explain a small bit about how the language works, since it's quite different from English. What most people call words in Mandarin, those single syllabic things with tones, apart from some very commonly used ones, are almost never used alone. They are almost used as part ... |
Why is self-plagiarism an issue in academics? | SOURCE: I am a college professor and published academic. Several people have already said "you're not doing the work" to which OP is responding, "I did the work earlier and isn't the point just to be competent anyway?" Well, yes and no. The fact is, if you asked ten educators the purpose of education, you 'd probably g... |
How do football pools work | In the simplest form, you have a 10x10 grid of squares. Along one axis, you have a team name & each column gets the numbers 0-9. Along the other you have the other team's name & the rows are labeled 0-9. When you buy into a pool, you buy a square and put your name in it. If your square wins, you get all the money. Each... |
How are things sticky? | Adhesives and other sticky substances contain protein molecules that bond with the molecules of the surface they are spread upon by entering the pores and spaces of the material. Therefore, smooth surfaces such as glass are hard to attach to because there aren't any pores for molecules to enter. |
How does honey never expire? | Its acidity, the lack of water, and the presence of hydrogen peroxide are the factors that cause honey to be so incredibly shelf-stable for pretty much eternity. Here's some reading on it: _URL_0_", 'Perfect! I just watched this video a couple weeks ago and now I get to pass on information! [HONEY VIDEO!!] Ninja edit: ... |
What physically determines the way your voice sounds? | The allele pairs in your genes which influence the way your body is formed including vocal cords and throat shape size etc. Unfortunately I do not have scientific proof to back anything up someone else will have a more professional answer but here is what I found. _URL_0_ |
What happens to people who are insomniacs, and why do they struggle so much to fall asleep? | For one thing, there might be an underlying medical condition going on -- imagine trying to sleep well with chronic pain that's always happening. Or if you have an anxiety problem. Those things don't go away when you're trying to sleep. People might also have poor sleep hygiene. This means keeping some good, consistent... |
If cigarettes contain things like arsenic, butane, cadmium, ammonia, and formaldehyde, how can people smoke then everyday for years without dying within the first few weeks? | There is no such thing as lethal or safe substances. There are only lethal and safe doses. Water can be toxic if you drink enough of it"The dose makes the poison" - Paracelsus This is condensed from - "All things are poison and nothing is without poison; only the dose makes a thing not a poison."', "Because they are no... |
How exactly radiation affect human body? | Energetic neutrons, and gamma rays and x-rays , go blasting off and strike molecules in your cells. This has the effect of physically breaking them apart, a la the neutron, or breaking covalent bonds as the rays do. Enough of this can just kill your cell outright. But if you just get the occasional strike against a DNA... |
Why is flossing considered more important than brushing? | I'm not a dentist, but from what I've been told by my dentist, flossing reduces bleeding gums more than brushing. Bleeding gums are actually quite a problem, aside from being gross, because they add stress to the heart. So bleeding gums can actually contribute negatively, and sometimes severely, to the health of your c... |
- Why taking long showers or brushing your teeth with the faucet open waste water? | The source of your clean water and the location where your wastewater ends up are rarely the same. Water treatment plants can recapture SOME wastewater, but the rest is lost, dumped into the sea or downstream for the very reason that we don't want sewage in our water supply. It depends greatly on where you live, but co... |
How are KFC's 11 secret herbs and spices still a secret? | It's not worth it. At this point, KFC could probably publish the exact recipe on the walls of their restaurants and it wouldn't make a difference. No one is going to create a chain restaurant to make the exact same thing that another chain restaurant does with no changes at all. If someone wanted to make money selling ... |
How come educational channels like history and discovery do not show educational things anymore? | Educational shows no longer draw enough viewers to pay the bills for the upkeep of the channelBecause so many people learn about history from Reddit instead. |
How CDs/DVDs Store and Read Data, and Why a Scratch Can Ruin Everything | CDs and DVDs are types of *optical discs*. The CD/DVD is covered with a large number of little holes, called pits. A tightly focused laser shines onto the surface of the CD, and depending on whether it hits a pit or a flat part, the intensity changes. A sensor reads that intensity change, and translates it into a 1 or ... |
what did ancient humans do with umbilical cords during birth? | The umbilical cord is connected to the placenta, the interface between the fetal and maternal bloodstreams, which is given the folksy name 'afterbirth' -- because the woman ejects it shortly after the birth, within the hour. Thing weighs about a pound too. Isn't giving birth beautiful? Once that's out, the baby is enti... |
Why do we use fresh water for our sewage? | It's easier and cheaper to have a single delivery system to all buildings than it is to develop and install a second identical system for non-potable water delivery. You're also avoiding the inevitable mishaps when people confuse the two.Because when indoor plumbing was first developed, we thought there was plenty of f... |
Why do many email services charge per email address/account, while most Instant Messengers let you have unlimited users? | You want to charge a company as much as that company is willing to pay for a certain service, and this is usually directly proportional to how big that company is, and a great way to measure corporate size is how employee count, and a company usually has one email account per employee plus a few extra emails for depart... |
What happens after someone escapes prision | The person who escaped tends to spend most of the time trying to get further from the prison while the police try and find them and then put them back in.The escapee is going to be on foot for at least a while, and they're probably in their prison uniform. Usually, the escape is discovered pretty quickly, and it doesn'... |
Why can't we build a giant heat proof bulldozer to put out forest fires? | The bulldozer would run into tress and quickly be unable to move. Certainly they can mow down small trees but large trees are very hard to topple . |
Why can't I become the President of the United States (I was born in Canada)? | The founders were nervous that a foreign power would attempt to control the country by getting one of their own elected president. Hamilton wrote in the Federalist Papers: > Nothing was more to be desired than that every practicable obstacle should be opposed to cabal, intrigue, and corruption. These most deadly advers... |
How do tempered glass screen protectors stop phone glass from breaking (cracking)? | It's kinda like how sidewalks and asphalt work. You've got this outside barrier that breaks first, which provides enough resistance to stop a deeper or more severe break from happening.Most breaks are spiderweb fractures, a small part of the screen is damaged and it just keeps getting worse. Well, by using a screen pro... |
How does the rule of 3 work? | [You're going to have to be more specific.]", 'The comedy rule of three is paraphrased as follows: In any given list, the first two items are ordinary, and the third is \'wacky.\' Take [Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking.] Arson and Murder follow a pattern, but Jaywalking breaks that pattern. The first two items serve to cr... |
Was there any form of birth control used at brothels in pre-moderrn times? How did women prevent getting pregnant? | There have been known herbs that can be used to induce abortions - such as Pennyroyal, that would be mixed with wine / teaiirc Roman prostitutes used sponges drenched in vinegar. Put it in before intercourse and it kills off the sperm.There's an [/r/AskHistorians post] with some excellent in-depth answers to this quest... |
Does the shape of the Pentagon actually help the U.S. military? | The design of it was to maximize office space while minimizing travel time on foot from one side to the other. The theory was for better reaction times and message delivery.The Primary feature of the Pentagon is that no two points in the building are more than 7 minutes apart on foot. When it was built this was a signi... |
If I'm thinking in english, what were thoughts like before we developed language? | Here is a quote from Hellen Keller recalling what her thought processes were like before she was introduced to language. Sure, it's not *exactly* what you're looking for, but I think it provides some insight. [*The World I Live In* by Hellen Keller, Page 37] > Before my teacher came to me, I did not know that I am. I l... |
What is the Eastern philosophical concept of Wu? | The short version is that it's the concept of everything being interconnected and interdependent. This, in turn, is supposed to help people be more aware of how their actions affect others, because other people's actions affect them as well. A similar concept is the "butterfly effect", where a tiny change leads to bigg... |
How are instincts inherited to the following generation and is it possible to modificate and/ or create them? | As far as I know, no one truly understands how instincts work. It is one thing to have a reflex, but there are complex behaviors are much tougher to explain. There was a recent neuroscience paper that came out that may help. Basically, they fear conditioned some male animals to a certain smell . They then had these mal... |
Why was 911 selected as the number to dial in case of emergency? | They wanted a short, easy to remember number, but also one that was not as likely to be accidentally dialed. It also needed to be fast to dial during the era of rotary phones when the system was first designed. So a 3 digit number starting with 9 and then using the fastest to dial numbers of 1 was chosen. |
How do selective hiring companies not get sued? | Because their business model is built around having females. It's like how Hooters can hire only attractive women because they're technically hiring models who just happen to waitress, and being attractive is a job qualification for being a model. Or how a man can't claim discrimination that a strip club won't hire him... |
why does the quick-E-mart on the corner sell copper scrubbers with the drug paraphernalia? | Copper scrubbers are an essential part of a homemade crack pipe. You buy one of those little roses in a glass tube, take the ends off, toss the rose, shove a little copper scrubber in, insert crack, and lightYou take the scrubber and cut a piece and put t in the little glass rose so you can put the rock in the end to s... |
Why do we get shakey? | Electrolytes. Salt, magnesium, and the such Like an engine will shudder on Empty with no fuel. |
How do they manage to find precise recordings to make those composite/mash-up videos, of hundreds of clips of a person speaking certain words, to make them sing a song, etc? | I've actually also wondered the same thing and I think I have an answer. I don't know this for certain but I imagine that what the people do is find several speeches by the figure they are using and then find the transcripts of the speeches. This is not normally very difficult particularly for public figures such as th... |
Why are we more attracted to a person when they're tan? | Are we? This seems much more like a personal preference than a universal truth. I searched for your question and found an answer [here]. |
Why can blank CD's hold the same length of music at different bitrates? | > why can a CD that can hold 80 minutes of 320 kbps not otherwise hold 200 minutes of 128 kbps? Because CD audio doesn't have a bitrate the way MP3s do. It's raw, uncompressed audio . So both the 128 kbps mp3 and the 320 kbps mp3 will be uncompressed and converted to wav format before being written to the CD, at which ... |
Why is the presence of complex organic molecules discovered on Comet 67P and other objects not enough evidence to definitively say that life exists beyond Earth? | Complex organic molecules can form and exist without life. By complex, we are talking simple amino acids, nitrogenous bases, super-simple polycarbons. These are not the same as the long polymers you would get from carbon-based life.Complex organic molecules are a precursor to life, but not life in themselves. It just m... |
In video editing, what's the difference between Drop-Frame timecode, and Non-Drop-Frame timecode? | In non-drop-frame, there are exactly 30 frames in every second of footage, i.e., the timecode endings for every second go :00, :01, :02, :29. You should only use non-drop-frame timecodes if your footage is 30.000 frames per second. In drop-frame, the first second of every minute not divisible by ten misses the first tw... |
Why is there is demand for high frames per second in video games, but it's ok for movies to stick to 24 fps? Is there a visible difference between the two mediums? | Movie motion isn't designed to feel completely real, it has a bigger than life dreamlike feel that comes from the motion blur that occurs at 24 frames per second. Most games on the other hand are trying to be immersive and give you the feeling of being there and that requires the motion to be smoother. While not a dire... |
How fast are things moving in the human body? | it varies depending on what part of "everything" you're talking about. The main things, though, are the impulses fired from the brain down through the nervous system, which take some fraction of a millisecond, and the time it takes for your muscles to move your hand, which depends on the strength of your muscles, mass ... |
Can ship execute swift maneuvers in space if it has a lot of power? Or will it always move slowly? | More power can easily translate to faster maneuverability. Modern spaceships use small thrusters placed around the exterior of the ship to turn. When a thruster is facing anywhere other than directly towards or away from the center of mass, activating it will change the direction that the object is facing. You might co... |
Considering various backgrounds and experience differentiation, how would an Equal Wages - Gender Wage Gap law work? | The wages of every employee is publicly posted in the workplace. Everyone knows what everyone else makes. The rest will sort itself out. |
Why and when exactly was the death penalty reinstated in the US after being abolished in 1972? Is it really because "murder rates soared" following its abolition, as some claim? | The death penalty wasn't abolished in 1972. Instead, the Supreme Court ruled that certain *specific inconsistent applications* of the death penalty violated the "cruel and unusual punishment" portion of the constitution. So the states voluntarily suspended the death penalty while they worked to bring their policy in li... |
What happens if I use a top loader washing detergent in a front loader machine? | I did this by accident once a year or two ago and a giant meteor crashed into RussiaPlease do not try this, it could have devastating effects on us alldetergent is detergent, it's like saying "i drink water in a bowl intead of a glass !"Use a little less and do an extra rinse if needed. |
How do scientists know there are x unknown animal species if they weren't discovered yet? | If I recall from ecology, basically what happens is that you can chart how many new species have been found each year , and the resulting graph shows a gentle curve and leveling off over time - indicating a point in the future where it's flat . So, the space between where we are and where that graph ends up going flat ... |
How do we remember tastes? | Our sense of taste is closely related with the sense of smell, so much in fact, that if you have stuffed nose, things will start tasting bland. Haven't heard about link with memory. Do you mean this [article]? If so, it explains that we have preference for things from our childhood because they didn't kill us. There is... |
How come on the show "Drugs Inc." they can interview a drug dealer without him getting arrested (when he clearly admits to his crimes) | Saying you've committed a crime at some point isn't enough evidence to convict you of a crime. He could just say in court that he was saying it for entertainment, or fun, or was joking, or any of a million things.A confession is evidence, but not proof a crime was committed. A sworn statement to the police is very stro... |
How did they send people into space in the early days of space exploration without computers and GPS technology? | Well, there were computers, though they were far more primitive. Often, this meant trajectories had to be calculated by hand. Navigation was another matter. Though GPS didn't exist, ground stations could locate space probes based on radio signals, similar to Gps. Otherwise astronauts had to use a sextant to navigate by... |
How people make a living off investing | 1. They don't make steady income off investments it's an irregular earning pattern. They may have a great day and make thousands or they may have a bad day and lose thousands. 2. Options are contracts to buy or sell stock at a certain price on a certain day in the future. They go up and down in value depending on the v... |
Why does counting sheep help you go to sleep? | It is more a cliche about counting sheep being boring and tiring than actually being an effective sleep aid. |
If diet coke has 0 calories and 0 sugar, why is it still unhealthy? | Because the citric acid in soft drinks deteriorates your teeth, and messes up your bodies natural acidity. As well as the sugar replacement Aspertame, which tricks not only your taste buds but your body into thinking it's real sugar, causing unnecessary insulin to be produced. Research is still inconclusive on how bad ... |
Are there cultures where marriage doesn't exist? | I'm hoping somebody will name one for you but my money is on "no" — see e.g. _URL_1_ — mainly because marriage can appear in [so many different forms]. |
Why aren't there hedge funds for middle class / poor people? | Hedge funds can only accept a certain number of customers by law, so they will generally only take wealthy people. A lot of them have minimum buy insBecause clients require time and effort. Each client requires a certain amount of personal attention - at the least, a phone call once in a while. An investor with $10 mil... |
. In the big picture what will raising the age to buy a gun from 18 to 21 really accomplish? | To be perfectly honest, young people are dumb, impulsive & have a poor understanding of the consequences of their actions. The general principle behind gun control is to make it harder for impulsive people to get their hands on guns - if something is illegal to purchase and now costs 3x what it did when it was legal, y... |
Why do Kenyans consistently outperform other nationalities in long distance running? | One thing to keep in mind is that the Kenyans who are winning are doing just a few minutes better than the top runners from other countries - it's not as though Kenyans are significantly faster. But there are a lot of reasons they're good at marathons . For one, Kenya is a relatively poor country. This means a lot of t... |
How are naked four-legged mountain goats successfully able to traverse mountainous cliffs, while two-legged humans require climbing gear? | Well, they're not naked and they've got four feet instead of two which is a help, not a hindrance. They also have uniquely designed hooves to help them balance and climb over rough terrain, and they're far more dexterous than we are. They're also acclimated to the habitat. |
Why aren't we able to mark SMS's as unread? | That would actually be very easy. All you need is a button that does the opposite of the function that marks the message as read. I could try seeing if I can modify an open source messenger to mark the messages as unread. One thing you have to think about though is how the unread property is stored: a developer could e... |
ELI5: Why are internet entrepreneurs like Jeff Bezos of Amazon or Evan Spiegel so much richer than major real estate developers? | One of the key things to remember is to exclude this bias for "internet entrepreneurs" and think of the businesses behind it. Bezos operates a world wide insanely effective and complicated logistics company, perhaps the best in the world! They get tons of stuff from A to B, everywhere in the world, easy, cheaply, and f... |
How do laser guided missiles work? | The laser illuminates the target with a frequency of light not typically abundant in ambient light. The missile has sensors to detect this frequency and thus can look for the bright spot, adjusting its fins to aim for it.The missile has a camera in the front and a computer inside. The computers instruction is: Land on ... |
How does lost money affect our economy? | The power of the dollar will increase, in what is essentially deflation. The quantity of goods and services produced hasn't changed, but the number of dollars circulating to purchase those goods and services has decreased. This means that each dollar will get you a greater quantity of goods and services. While deflatio... |
how does scraping scissors/blade along a ribbon make it curl? | When you run a blade along a ribbon, you are using force to stretch the polymers beyond their elastic limit causing permanent deformation. This causes one side of the ribbon to be longer than the other. The shorter side appears to be "contracted" while the longer side appears to be "expanded" this causes a spiral, whic... |
What does it mean when someone "jailbreaks" a phone? | Jailbreaking is just gaining "root" access to the phone, giving you control over ALL files. Once you have that, you can do a bunch of things. You can remove programs like the Blockbuster app, or you can go further by replacing the entire interface with another one, like CyanogenMod or whatever you happen to like. It is... |
how is music and movies digitally remastered? | Older movies were almost all on 35mm. 35mm when scanned has a max resolution around that of 4K. Plus, they also use Photoshop like programs to correct scratches and other imperfections, as well as the color, they might remaster the audio as well. [Here is how they did it with Jaws.]The original film master may be re-sc... |
How long after birth do eyeballs grow, if at all? | > The vertical measure, generally less than the horizontal distance, is about 24 mm among adults, at birth about 16–17 millimeters . The eyeball grows rapidly, increasing to 22.5–23 mm by three years of age. By age 13, the eye attains its full size. The typical adult eye has an anterior to posterior diameter of 24 mill... |
Why did silent films exist? Don't microphones pre-date the video camera? | Films were recorded on - you guessed it - *film*, which predates modern microphones. While the technology to record and replay sounds did predate film, you weren't able to record them from multiple sources and on editable media. The most you could do was record music and play it on a record player along with the film. |
How do painkillers know which part of my body is in pain? | They don't - they inhibit pain receptors everywhere. You only feel the pain relief in places where the pain receptors were firing, i.e. places that had pain. |
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