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Why do energy drinks come in metal cans instead of plastic bottles? | Ever seen a Rockstar or Monster in a clear container? they look really nasty. i always thought that's why they're in cans.I have only seen [NOS] sold in plastic bottlesto convince you to pay $3.99 for $0.05 worth of sugar water and caffeine.In my country they're sold in glass or plastic bottles almost as much as cans. |
If you buy a $999 computer online during Tax-Free Weekend, are you exempt from taxes? | Under Georgia law, you won't pay sales tax on a computer costing under $1000 during the tax holiday. So, you should be able to go in with $1000 in cash, buy a $999 computer and walk out with a dollar. |
Why does the iPhone make you delete so many pictures in order to take a new one? | 50 sounds like an awful lot but anyway, it's like this: when you take a picture the raw data is recorded from the sensor, this raw file is a shitload bigger than your standard jpeg. The phone processes the raw data, compresses it, saves it and then discards the raw file. Therefore you need a lot more memory space than ... |
Why is a lot of human effort directed towards space exploration and colonizing different planets while no serious attempts are made at ocean colonization? | It is harder to explore the bottom of the ocean than it is to explore space. It is far easier to protect from a vacuum than to protect from intense pressure. |
Why do people hunt rhinos for their horns? What do the horns have that you can't get elsewhere? | As in, what do they physically have that makes them desirable? Nothing. The horns don't contain any special chemicals that make them valuable. They look cool though, so they can be used for decoration . In east asian countries, there's also a belief that rhino horn has healing properties, especially for erectile dysfun... |
How do people find the most off the chart random glitches where you have to do a certain thing to do it in a video game? | Some of them are on purpose due to knowledge of the code. For example, Ghandi in Civilization. In short; in some game code, if you make a number go below zero, sometimes it will circle around to a very high number instead. _URL_0_ Some are done by trying over and over. Playtesters don't just play games to see if they'r... |
how is it that my cellphone gps can still show my live position on a map if I lose cell reception? | GPS does not have anything to do with your cell reception its a seperate radio that communicates with GPS satellites. Your phone talks to at least 3 of them to pinpoint itself and tell you where you are. This is how you can have signal and no GPS and vice versa. Your phone can also use tower triangulation to figure out... |
When you read news articles about global warming such as "The hottest year on record in 80 years!", why was it so hot 80 years ago? | This year being really hot isn't necessarily indicative of global warming, an article with that title is being sensationalist. If the running average temperature over the last 10 years was getting continuously warmer, that would be a better indication of a trend. Temperature is affected by a lot of different things so ... |
How is cape town in South Africa running out of water? | Desalinization is energy intensive, so it's quite expensive. You see it a lot in places that have little water but are on the ocean, and there's lost of money -- like the Arabian peninsula. The problem with Cape Town is that it's experiencing a drought, which is a *temporary* reduction in rainfall. Desalinization is a ... |
Why is there a risk of a deformed child when brother and sister perfom incest? | Basically, for some genetic defects, you need both parents to be carriers of that defect. If only one set of your genes has the allele for this defect, you'll be a carrier but not show symptoms. So if there's a small chance of being a carrier, even if you're a carrier you're spouse probably isn't, so your kid should at... |
Why do white things turn yellow if they stay in light? | It's not that they're white, it's that they're made of a type of plastic that, after prolong exposure to light, will degrade, becoming yellowed and brittle. UV is bad for that type of plastic, so the more time it spends in direct sunlight, the more it yellows.Either ultraviolet rays from sunlight, or just oxygen in the... |
When dreaming, Why do we sometimes forget we are in one? How does our brain make it realistic? | In some ways, you are living in an artificial simulation created by your brain at all times. Sometimes the simulation is based on information from your senses and sometimes it's not. Noticing that you are in a dream requires you to realize that the reality that you are experiencing does not make sense. Some people trai... |
If doctors prescribe medication, why do comercials for medication exist that are targeted toward patients? | That's all about encouraging patients to ask for the drug by name, rather than the generic version. Brand awareness 101.Just wanted to throw in that the U.S. and New Zealand are the only two western nations where these types of ads are legal.Because a patient asks for a specific medication increasing the rate the medic... |
why everyone fled/hated Digg once v4 was implemented? | Why I left, in a word, superusers. The way content was promoted was not even close to being democratic. This is a good read _URL_0_ > An ordinary user might post the most important story of the day on Tuesday and get three "Diggs." But if MrBabyMan noticed the story on Friday and posted a duplicate link, it would be on... |
What happens in court if there is conflict between parents over homeschooling their child? | Are the parents still married? In which case, do they want to get a divorce? Because this is how you get a divorce. A married person doesn't sue his spouse if he doesn't get his way. It's impossible to say how it would go down. It really depends on a lot of circumstances: there will probably be a psychological evaluati... |
What causes the earth's surface to spontaneously drop into sinkholes? | It's caused by the surface collapsing into holes beneath the surface. It can be hard to determine the exact geology underlaying a site, and it's possible to simply not know about underground weak points that can eventually collapse into a sink hole. Florida and some other parts of the South are really known for them; t... |
If downloading packets is random, how come videos stream in a sequence? | Downloading packets only has a random latency, and probably a smaller random loss rate. The actual packets and their order isn't often randomized. The packets contain serial numbers, so they can be put back in order. Video streams aren't real-time, the player buffers up enough packets before the video starts to keep th... |
What did Google "invent" that made their search engine so much better than earlier search engines like Yahoo? | [Page Rank] which was a good process to decide which pages were important. Prior to that it was easy for a computer to find a lot of pages that had some keyword, but hard for them to tell which were useful . In simple terms, page rank borrows information from humans to determine which pages are more useful than othersW... |
How can water/liquids in pipes and hoses go straight up and defy gravity. | You defy gravity every time you lift your arm. Your muscles can apply enough force to overcome gravity and make your arm lift. Defying gravity is really easy. As for how the water in your pipes can do it, it's because of water towers. They pump a large amount of water into the air and let it gravity feed back down into... |
How is the Brexit divorce bill being calculated? | The figure the EU came up with is the cost of the Uk's membership up to 2020 plus any funding or financial agreements already pledged by the UK , around £100 billion. The EU then took any rebates owed to the UK into account to come to around £50 billion. |
Why does a humidifier (water vapor) keep my skin from getting dry while simply splashing water on my skin does not? | Your skin gets dry because it loses water to the air. Unless you keep your skin constantly wet, it will lose water to the dry air. A humidifier makes the air more moist, which makes it harder for your skin to lose water to it. |
why if you try to sleep when not very tired, you stay awake way longer than if you waited until you were more tired | Pressure/stress and lack of routine. Here there are a myriad of things working against you. The first could be lack of routine. If you get in a habit of doing specific things before you go to bed, that allow you to relax, it signals the body "time to sleep now". Secondly, pressure/stress. These go together. You have to... |
why can't heat be converted to electricity in a closed system? | Because in any closed system, entropy always increases. Assume a uniformly warm room. Turning some of the heat to electricity would now give you a warm area and a cold area, thus *decreasing* entropy . However, if your room includes a warm zone and a cold zone, you *certainly can* convert that difference into an electr... |
What is the point of showing the 'tropic' lines on a globe or world map? | These lines represent the northern- and southern-most points of the sun's "travel" in the skies. The sun would be overhead during one of the solstice's were you to stand on each line--the northern one in June, the southern one in December. In between these lines and the sun may appear overhead some months, north of the... |
What is going on with the US Secret Service | It's likely mismanagement that is causing all of the commotion combined with the Internet putting everything in front of your face every single day. I'm sure there's always been some bad eggs in any organization. Previous management may have had a better grip on keeping issues in house. Having said that, any new secret... |
Why does our perception of time disappear when we go to sleep? | Our brains stop taking in external information when we sleep. Sleep also messes with memory, so we simply don't remember much of what happened. How much we take in and remember depends on the stage of sleep. If you're sleeping well and hitting REM/deep sleep, you won't remember much. If the quality of your sleep is poo... |
Game Show questions for TV watchers | The most likely reason is that if they didn't have a question, it would be considered gambling, and they'd need a gambling license. By having a question, it's not gambling, it's a competition. I have no idea about the law in Germany, but that's true in many countries. |
Why is Hunter S. Thompson cool? | Writing talent. Sociopolitical insight. Humor. Sports knowledge. The ability to make friends with almost anyone. The drug tolerance of an african elephant.He's a unique character. He has always been a counter-cultural figure, but also has a number of conservative values. He's an avid and enthusiastic user of hallucinog... |
How does hydroplaning work? How can a dirtbike ride on a lake? | Liquids acts like a solid the first millisecond you touch it. That's why you can slap the surface of a container of water. |
Why do humans like white noise like rain so much? | The brain likes to use its senses. In dead silence the brain goes as far as making up noises for itself to process. White noise is less crazy person, more natural feeling. Edit to add: This also tricks your mind out of *super sense* mode. A uniform noise throughout the night is predictable, easy for the brain to write ... |
When you visit a fancy restaurant, why are the pepper shakers so large? What does the length add? | * they are pepper grinders, not shakers they grind up whole peppercorns to give you tasty fresh pepper* the bigger they are, the more peppercorns they can hold* the longer they are, the more easily they can reach across a table', "I'm guessing you're referring to those huge foot-long pepper grinders . Something like [t... |
Why aren't meteorite fragments more valuable and treasured than diamonds and other rare earth minerals? | They're ugly, they're almost impossible to distinguish from regular rocks, and they're far too rare to collect enough to sell regularly. |
Why is crispbread stored in paper and not plastic? | Plastic seals in moisture, so as water evaporates out of the bread, it gets trapped and eventually reabsorbed by the crust. This makes it not crisp, so it would just be bread, and not crispbread. Paper absorbs the moisture as it evaporates, so that the crust stays crisp. |
The lighter your skin, the more prone you are to getting sunburn... considering that light colors reflect more light, and dark colors absorb more light? | Because sunburn isn't about heat: it's about UV light causing the same kind of damage that heat does to our skin. Melanin is a protein human bodies produce that protects against UV light; and is dark in color: basically, it absorbs UV and some visible light . So while dark-skinned people heat up faster in sunlight, the... |
How do social networks like Facebook defend themselves against DDoS attacks? | They are really really big. DDoS is all about overwhelming a server. When your servers are capable of handing a few billion pings a second, a couple extra hundred million doesn't make a noticeable impact. Few people have the resources to compete against Facebook's servers. Additionally, they have spent considerable mon... |
Why are car designs today so mundane opposed to car designs of the past (1930s-1990s)? | From 1930 to 1990 ish oil especially in America was very cheap so they made all kind of designs and now oil is more expensive so cars have to have aerodynamic designs to save oil. |
Why are drug stores selling products that have a disclaimer saying "No Approved Therapeutic Claim"? | They are believed to have beneficial effects but haven't gone through the testing needed to prove it, or haven't conclusively showed any benefits during testing. It can also mean that the company selling the product just doesn't have permission to say it does have approved therapeutic properties. As for why stores are ... |
How did we determine the composition of the Earth's core? | We haven't actually "detected" the presence of iron/nickel in the core, or even measured its actual temperature. Seismology allows for measuring the core's density, as well as the inner/outer core boundary because the outer core is liquid. Assuming that the core is made of iron/nickel is basically a very safe guess bas... |
Why do we "jump" a bit when we are scared sometimes? | It's called the startle response. It's not just humans. Birds do it. Bees do it. Even educated fleas do it. It's a hardwired reflex that your brain stem initiates in order to protect extremely vital areas of your body . This usually comes from a sudden unexpected sound, something that's unnatural or simply sudden. Your... |
How and why did mead lose it's popularity? | Beer and wine from fruits can be produced in higher quantities than meads. Honey production is much more limited in volume than the crops used to make other beverages. |
Diffference between DPI and sensitivity? | Dpi is how many discrete points per inch your sensor will resolve. Sensitivity is how far the mouse will move per discrete point. In some sense they do the same but if turn up your Dpi to extreme levels small mouse twitches and noise from unhomogenous surfaces will be amplified. Many mouse are also advertised with extr... |
How/where are heavy elements created? | Stars can produce atoms up to iron, although they produce these elements very late in the life cycle. Any atoms heavier than that are produced in supernovas.Stars go through cycles. As one fuel runs out they start to burn out which causes them to start compressing due to gravity which then raises the pressure and tempe... |
What is this thing on the bottom of all airplane windows? (Pics) | It's a hole. There are two panes of plastic separating you from the outside, creating an air pocket. With the pressure change varying so much with altitude, if the air pocket were sealed in, it would more than likely explode. The reason the pocket exists in the first place is to create an insulating cushion to minimize... |
what's the fascination that people have watching videos of maggot removal, zit popping, ear dirt extraction, etc. ? | Talking completely out of my ass here, maybe it has to do with some instinctive grooming drive that we inherited from our ancestors. If you go to the zoo or watch a documentary, you can see that apes/etc. instinctively groom each other; so some people probably get a sense of pleasure from seeing such things because the... |
Hypothetically if everyone on earth was quarantined individually for 1 month could we irradicate most airborne illnesses? | No. Humans aren't the only people who have diseases. Animals and plants get them too. Every so often, bacteria or viruses will "cross" from animal to human, infecting humans for the first time and starting the disease. This is what is believed to have happened with Ebola and HIV , and why things like bird flu are conce... |
How does one country make threats to another country? | Who says they don't just call the other country and threaten them? What do you think diplomats do behind closed doors?", '1. Through formal channels. President A orders his ambassador to country B to officially deliver the message "i'm gonna toss your salad" 2. Through indirect channels. Country A doesn't speak to coun... |
How can any style be considered "modern" (like modern architecture)? Wouldn't any style be considered modern during its time? | There is "modern" meaning contemporary and then "[Modernism]" with a capital M referring to a specific artistic movement in the early to mid 1900s |
What causes me to wake up minutes before my alarm goes off, even when I've barely slept? | There is something in our body called a biological clock. If your body is used to doing some things at a certain time, be it waking up or maybe using the restroom. You will generally do these things at those times even when its pointless to do so otherwise. Since you work your body does this to help you not oversleep w... |
Why do rockets level off horizontally rather than maintaining a vertical path? | All the other commenters are correct, but no one has linked [this classic xkcd what if] that explains and illustrates the concept very well.Orbit is not a function of altitude, it's all about velocity. Obviously reaching orbital velocity at ground level is tough. Lots of air to push through, lots of trees in the way. S... |
How does a lawyer defend his client, if there is concrete evidence that they actually committed the crime? | When there's concrete evidence that they did it, the lawyer will work for a lower punishment. They'll find whatever excuse they can to get a shorter jail time, avoid death penalty, whatever the case may be. |
Am I really saving gas by turning off my car's engine at red lights? | I believe 10 seconds off will make up for the gas to start it up. However if you stop your car at every light you will wreak havoc on your starterForget the original question for a moment. When I learned to drive fifty years ago, my dad made the point that there are idiots on the road and you have to be ready at ANY MO... |
How do people figure out what colors to use when coloring an old black and white photo? | "Black" and "white" are actually a ton of different shades of grey. If you know the method the picture was taken with and how it converts visible light into something that can be put onto film in greyscale, you can tell with a pretty high degree of accuracy which shade of grey corresponds to which visible light colorHi... |
How does my car radio display the station's call letters? | Via [RDS]. There's another signal tucked away inside the FM broadcast that can carry information like text. The station chooses what to send. This is also how radios can identify the type of music playing like 'Rock' or 'Jazz'. |
From a technical standpoint, how are hackers able to "crack" online passwords? | On most sites user names are very easy to find. For example I can see yours right on this page, SonicPavement. For every way a website tries to block hackers, those hackers will come up with some clever way to get around it. For example, they could use a botnet to get around password attempt limits. Longer/more complex... |
Do special forces count as "boots on ground" or do they have their own separate rules? | "Boots on the ground" isn't a really helpful term since it basically means whatever the speaker wants it to mean. That said, it doesn't typically apply to special forces or "advisers" or the like. Assuming the figures in [this article] are correct, the US has/had 1,000 advisers in Iraq while insisting that there weren'... |
how did we as humans collectively decide on the location of the international date line? | It didn't. The date line is the opposite side of the globe to the Prime Meridian . There were multiple Prime Meridians throughout history, typlically countries with large a large navy or merchant shipping fleet would have their own. Eventually they all lost out to the current PM. |
How do self-driving cars reduce accidents | > Can a self-driving car keep tabs of all the pedestrians around it too? Yes. A self-driving car also has a 360 degree field of vision, and has a reaction time that exceeds human reactions by an order of magnitude. A computer can begin stopping the car before you've even *noticed* the child in the road. |
Is the heart like a ticking time bomb, or are we harming it over the years before death? | Usually not. It's usually a gradual process. There are many different things that can go wrong with your heart, the most well known is a heart attack, in which some of the muscle tissue actually dies. But there are many other things that can cause problems in your heart. However, usually when something does go wrong, i... |
Why is it not possible to control your heart the way you do your lungs or any other muscle? | Two points here: 1) Your body is programmed not to die, so for example it's extremely difficult to hold your breath until you die or even until you pass out. Your autonomous nervous system keeps necessary functions going regardless of what the conscious passenger in your body thinks it wants. 2) I understand you can in... |
Why did Sarkozy call Netanyahu a liar? What did he do? | Palestine and Israel are pretty much enemies today, though they would like to share the same land. So, a lot of other countries want peace to appear there. Sarkozy probably had some verbal agreement with Netanyahu. Sarkozy put some weight on the discussions between Israel and the EU. He also helped Israel being a membe... |
Why was Princess Leia on a diplomatic mission to Alderaan if she was *FROM* Alderaan? | The Galactic Senate wasn't on Alderaan, she could have presumably been heading home between legislative sessions. Of course nobody in the galaxy bought that story either way, since Tatooine isn't close to either.I think it's unusual, but makes sense. Let's think of it this way: **It's 4am at Schipol Airport, near Amste... |
How can a 64gb SD card hold more data than a 32gb SD card if they are the same physical size? | We're talking about storing information, not an actual physical substance. If we're talking about something physical, like water, it would make sense that two buckets the exact same size would hold the same amount of water. However, we are talking about information, and information can be represented smaller and smalle... |
Why can I watch Netflix or porn online seamlessly but when I watch a video on _URL_0_ it's choppy as fuck? | ESPN has horrible video technology. They use an in house video player that hasn't been updated in some time. On the other hand, Netflix and Youtube's whole business model relies on having good video service. They spend a lot of money making sure they have a great video player.Bandwidth and just expertise. Youtube has v... |
Would you die if you injected water into your bloodstream? | Depends on how much water you injected. A small amount probably won't kill you. A larger amount would cause your blood cells to rupture because the concentration of water inside and outside the cell would be different. Water would rush inside the cell and blow up the cell membrane. If you kept injecting water eventuall... |
Why do industries stay close together geographically | A lot of it is because that's where the good employees are, because that's where the jobs in that industry are. That's kind of a chicken and the egg thing, but it's there now, so it perpetuates. There are businesses that do that there, so the colleges start having curriculum around that industry, and it snowballs. Why ... |
How do skulls and, specifically, brain cavities grow in humans? | The skull does not start out as one solid chunk of bone. At birth, it consists of multiple plates connected by cartilage. Infants have a soft spot, aka a fontanelle, where you can feel that bone has not fully formed and even see the baby's pulse. The plates grow larger and the cartilage is replaced by bone, which event... |
.. How can H & R Block afford to give away 1000$ everyday for a year? | H & R Block is valued at [over 8 billion dollars]. $365,000 is basically nothing on that scale. |
why does South Park have all of its episodes to stream, for free, on the internet? | If you're talking about the southparkstudios website, they show ads during the episode streams, and since they've been doing it for a long time, they probably make enough money from those ads that the website turns a profit. |
How do people who make song mashups isolate the vocal tracks to songs? | Vocal-only tracks for many songs can be found publicly. For many songs for which vocal-only tracks aren't publicly available, producers of those mash-ups may have connections to labels/artists and can get the vocal-only audio for a track privately. I 've done music composition/DJing/remixes for 20 years , and have foun... |
Why did Obama Care raise the cost of private health insurance for many middle and upper class Americans? | Insurance is pooled risk. Everyone puts in a dollar in case they need 10. The company collects 100 knowing that they will only need to pay out 3 lots of 10. Everyone is still paying a dollar so all is well. However the company knows that some people are at a higher risk than others, to protect its profits it either mak... |
In movies and TV shows, why are streets at night always wet, like it just rained? | Because it looks better on camera. Lights reflect in the surface and it just gives it a better look on screen. The movie crews generally wet down the street before rollingBecause it looks cooler. TV and Film are a visual medium, and the realism of "how could it always have been raining?" is ignored over "Man, this make... |
How do power-washers only take the dirt and grime away and not the underlying paint on a car or house? | Dirt and grime are only physically stuck to the paint. Paint actually undergoes a chemical reaction and becomes chemically bonded to the underlying surface. You could remove it with a pressure washer set to high enough pressure or pointed at it for enough time just as you could sand it off. but the dirt and grime are m... |
Why are cork caps still used in wines when they only pose a risk for the wine to taste like cork? | The short answer from what I can find is that it's more tradition, and a wine-drinking populace that is unwilling to accept that a screw cap could treat their wine better than a cork when cork has been used for ~~millennia~~ several centuries to keep wine sealed and aging well. |
Why is that when I drink water or soda, I feel full after a while, while with beer, there's no stopping me? | By the time you have drank enough to feel full [for me it is 3 glasses of water] you have had enough alcohol for the fun to start. Lack of inhibition is enough at that point to make you want to drink more. On top of that the ethanol being metabolized in your liver causes a sudden blood sugar drop. Drops in blood sugar ... |
Why are Junior, the II, the III etc. only used for males? Is there a female equivalent? & if there is, why isn't it used as often? | I 'd think it's because 99% of sons keep the same first and last name their whole lives. Then you can have Bill Jones, Bill Jones Jr, Bill Jones the Third, from birth onward and the name sticks. Whereas women are much more likely to change their names. Mary Smith's daughter is Mary Jenkins, her daughter is Mary Frankli... |
Why doesn't the strength of the strong interaction (of the fundamental interactions) diminish with distance? | There is no fundamental law that forbids forces from exhibiting "weird" and non-trivial behaviors, and the strong force is an excellent example of a very, very non-trivial force. Between quarks, the building blocks of protons and neutrons, it doesn't fall off with distance, but rather grows stronger. This actually mean... |
The supposed manifestations of 'Qi' ("Chi") | Parlor tricks. The tips of the "spears" are rounded. Line them up carefully with a meaty part of your leg and they'll hold you up with enough "comfort" and cushion to not cut into you. Line up the third with a relatively cozy spot between your chest while holding yourself up with your arms and you do the "magic". I pro... |
I've read that the simulation hypothesis is extremely unlikely because of something called Lorentz Invariance, but I don't know enough about physics to understand why. | LmOver isn't quite right. You 've got it right, though! Lorentz invariance is a symmetry of spacetime that can be easily understood as rotations . If the universe was a simulation, then the most practical way to compute anything in it would be to have a grid defining every point in space. However, the moment you have a... |
why do houses tend to go up in value? | It's not so much the house as it is the property that the house sits on. Land is expensive and continues to grow in value because we can't make more land. |
Why is wine only served in 5 oz (150 ml) portions, while other alcohol may be portioned out differently? | It's not, really. It's just that 5 oz of wine is a good measure to use to compare to a 1.5 oz shot of liquor, or 12 ounces of beer in terms of alcohol content. Of course, it's not perfect as beer and wine can vary in the amount of alcohol they have per ounce. Liquor, on the other hand, is almost always the same amount ... |
Why bugs come towards you when you spray them with Raid. | If it looked something like [this] they are called basement / cave / camel crickets. They will jump after you if they feel threatened to scare you away. It is their only defense mechanism for large predators and it works like a charm! These have sent me running on several occasions. We had a large group of them in our ... |
How does the army work? How does one get a promotion and such? | Military promotions are not nearly as sexy as they appear on TV. If you're enlisted, you earn rank by passing formal tests, doing your job well, and earning time in rank/service. If you're an officer, you earn rank by earning time in rank/service, meeting educational goals , and doing your job well. You then get to be ... |
Why doesnt your soda get "shaken up" when it falls out of the vending machine? | Two reasons that both contribute: 1) The vending machine acts as a fridge, and at a colder temperature the CO2 gas requires more force to seperate from the liquid But more importantly: 2) The "drop" you see in these machines isn't as dramatic as you may think. There are [columns] of each different type of drink and the... |
Why do dogs have to sniff about before going for a dump? | It's an instinct from when they were hunters in the forest. If they poop near a game trail, the deer will be scared from that trail because they can sense that a predator was nearby recently, and then the wolf will lose a food source. By making sure they always poop far from game trails, they increase the likelihood th... |
How is it possible to program a random number generator? Wouldn't it need an algorithm | The programmer provides the seed number, often choosing the time in milliseconds . Encryption software uses stronger methods of randomness like asking you to move the mouse for a few seconds and pulling random data from that. |
How can someone with type AB blood be the universal recipient for blood donations, and only eligible to donate blood to other type AB patients, yet is the universal donor for plasma? | [This image kinda sums it up]. The important thing in blood donation is that the plasma can't have antibodies against the antigens on the red blood cells. You either have A-antigens on your red blood cells or anti-A antibodies in your plasma. B-antigens and anti-B antibodies are the same way. So because someone of type... |
What is a blind and a double blind experiment in science? | Blind: The participants in the study don't know whether or not they're receiving the treatment being tested. Double-blind: Neither the participants nor the researchers know which participants received the treatment being tested .Think of it this way: suppose you were testing a new cancer treatment. In order to determin... |
why movies with good screenplays only have one or two writers, while the typical (and bad) blockbuster scripts often have up to three to four writers? | Because with more writers some movies tend to get written and rewritten, to the point that the story makes no sense anymore. An example would be [Prometheus], which was passed repeatedly between two writers. Obviously a screenplay with one or two writers would be more "focused". Of course that does not always apply, bu... |
Why is it that some food items, when we taste them once, we continue having more and more, even if our appetite is full already? | Because things like fat, sugar, and salt are rare in nature. You are biologicaly driven to consume them in excess to create reserves. The food industry takes full advantage of these innate addictive properties. |
Why can non-American actors so commonly mimic a perfect American accent, but rarely can an American actor accurately mimic a foreign accent? | In part there's a survivor bias. If you can't do an American accent, you won't land a role playing an American. So we don't get to see actors with poor American accents. |
- Do bees know they are going to die if they sting you? If so how? | No. Bee stings are supposed to work against other insects, so they shred the carapaces with their barbed stings. But humans have soft and spongy skin, so the barbs get stuck inside, instead of shredding anything, and the bee accidentally rips out half it's organs trying to fly away. A single dead bee is not really that... |
Is Everest growing or getting smaller? | Mount Everest is subject to erosion, such as wind BUT the Indian and Eurasian tectonic plates are still colliding, pushing the Himalayas upwards. The latter is more significant than the former, so Mount Everast is actually increasing size/height. |
Why can't the prison system agree on a "painless" execution method, when any veterinarian in the country can painlessly put down a dog? | Part of it is, it's getting increasingly more difficult for states to get the drugs necessary. Some drug companies will not sell the drugs to states if they know it will be used in executions. If the states could get all the drugs they need for an execution, instead of having to alter the process, or use off-label drug... |
How do programs like Tor help to provide anonymity on the Internet, and are the methods they use effective? | Tor creates a mesh of connections. A simple way of people figuring out who you are is based on your IP address. For example, your home connection has the IP address of 123.123.123.123. When you connect to a website, say _URL_2_, reddit's servers will see a connection originating from 123.123.123.123, thus partially bei... |
how can my cat crawl under a mountain of blankets on my bed and sleep comfortably for hours but I feel like I'm suffocating after just a few minutes? | The amount of oxygen a mammal needs is directly proportional to its mass, ergo your cat is way smaller than you are and needs a lot less air than you do. Basically it's just pure math, a cat that is 1/100th your size will need 1/100th the air. |
Why aren't electrical outlets universal? | The infrastructure was created independently, and once it made sense to standardize it was just too expensive.The different international organizations that control the power grid set different standards for the amplitude and frequency of AC power that comes through a wall socket. When each organization developed these... |
How is our sense of taste and smell connected? | > How is our sense of taste and smell connected? Most of what you think of as "taste" is actually smell. For instance, an apple and a raw potato taste almost exactly the same. If you hold your nose , you can't tell if what you're biting into is a raw potato or an apple . The only things you can actually taste are: salt... |
Why do my computer speakers occasionally pick up radio or (phone?) conversations? | A piece of wire can be used as a radio antenna, as a conductive material can pick up the electromagnetic radiation that makes up radio waves. Your car radio, for example, has an antenna that picks up electromagnetic waves, and the tuner in the radio isolates which frequency to isolate. From there, the received signal i... |
How can a camera take a clear picture underwater, yet when I open my eyes everything is blurry? | Light bends when it changes the stuff that it is going through. Lens bend light in a special way to help cameras and eyes see. How much the lens works depends on what the light is moving from before it enters the lens. The lens in your eyes work when light moves from the air into them. When you put your eye in water, t... |
How does smell transmit? Does it radiate like sound or 'float' like gas? | Odor is carried by molecules. When you smell lemon, for example, little molecules from the lemon are making their way through the air to your nose. Now think about what happens when you smell shit ', "Think of smell as water. If I poured water on a surface, it naturally spreads out right? Just the same with Smells. The... |
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