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Why can I Crack my knuckles multiple times a day but never multiple times in a row? | The "crack" you hear is caused when a bubble of vacuum is formed in the synovial fluid in the joint. Gasses which had formerly been dissolved in the synovial fluid rapidly fill the joint resulting in the sound . You can't crack it again until the gasses dissolve back into the surrounding fluid and a new vacuum pocket c... |
Why do we know so little about ancient Egypt? | Our troubles with understanding Egyptian culture and history are multifaceted. Part of it is that we don't necessarily understand the language quite so well as we understand Latin- there's been an unbroken scholarship of the Latin language since Latin was actually spoken thousands of years ago. We've never NOT known La... |
Why was the King of Thailand so revered by his people? | The recently-deceased king of Thailand is generally well-loved by the population. There are many reasons for that, but generally speaking, it is a combination of his long and quite successful reign , as well as a very good public image due to his general lack of conspicuous consumption and extravaganza , as well as bei... |
Why do salt lands have such reflective properties? Example: Salt Land in Bolivia looks like the world's greatest mirror | They're formed by dried up seabeds, so they are perfectly flat. When it does rain, the rain has nowhere to drain to, so it forms a perfectly flat reflective puddle. |
How do we know that we are "done" with a hug? | There are many subtle clues. One person will slightly loosen their grip, and the other person will take this as the cue to end the hug. There also tends to be a "normal" hug time, which you also subconsciously track. After the "normal" amount of time is up, you loosen up, and the other person gets the message that it's... |
How do people eat and drink in space? wouldn't the food just float around and not go straight to the stomach? | Swallowing does not rely on gravity. The muscles around your esophagus contract in series to squeeze food through you. This motion is called "peristalsis." As for getting the food in your mouth, that's just a matter of getting a food that clumps together pretty well, directing it to your mouth, "Here comes the airplane... |
Why can't/don't we use salt water in our toilets? | This would require running two separate water lines into your house, one containing salt water specifically for your toilets, and keeping that water separate from the rest. It would also require towns / cities / whatever to have two water reservoirs - one for salt water and one with fresh water for everything else. Thi... |
Why do job applications ask for my ethnicity when they are apparently not going to be used in my application for equality purposes? | Companies are required to ask and keep that information so that it can be reviewed if there were ever a complaint. The company isn't required to hire to maintain any ethnic balance, but they have to show that they are not discriminating in hiring because of ethnicity. If someone complains, and there's an investigation,... |
Why is Adele's Hello song & album, 25, released in 2015 nominated for the 2017 Grammys? | The Grammys don't use the calendar year for eligibility, instead they use October 1-September 30. Since *25* was released in November of 2015, it's part of the 2016 eligibility year . |
How do mom porcupines and hedgehogs give birth without the babies' spines causing any harm to the mother's insides? | A porcupine's quills are hair, not stiff rods. When they give birth, the quills are soft and wet. That is also why the quills can be replaced constantly. |
Why did we ever start counting things in 'Dozens'? Why not in tens, or something easier to work with? | Base 12 was used in ancient Egypt. You can count to twelve on one hand, using your thumb to move on each finger joint . Arguably, base 12 and base 60 make more "sense" than base 10, because you can count to 12 on the one hand and keep track of five groups of 12 with the other. Some have argued that this using 12 carrie... |
If most water is absorbed in the colon, then why does thirst resolve immediately after drinking? | Yes, but it's your brain and not your colon that makes the decision of whether you feel thirsty or not. There are whole lot of times there will be a disconnect. Consider the experiments with infinite soup bowls. People will eat more when offered bigger portions, regardless of hunger, and if you covertly keep filling up... |
Why are written and spoken English so different? | English is the result of a linguistic mishmash of Low German dialects, Norman French, Scandinavian languages, Church Latin and Scientific Greek, and loanwords from a hundred other languages from Italian to Arabic to Swahili to Cherokee to Hindi to Japanese. As a result, it has lots of different rubrics for how letters ... |
Why do undercooked potatoes taste disgusting, even though other root vegetables like carrots and parsnips are fine to eat raw? | Because of the starch content; potatoes basically store their energy as starch, whereas carrots store energy as sugar. |
Why is jupiter considered a planet when it is basically just a big ball of gas without surface? | Because "solid surface" isn't a requirement to be considered a planet. The current classification is as follows: A "planet"1 is a celestial body that: is in orbit around the Sun, has sufficient mass for its self-gravity to overcome rigid body forces so that it assumes a hydrostatic equilibrium shape, and has cleared th... |
What's the difference between androids and robots? | A robot is at it's simplest: an automated mechanical/electrical device that is made to operate with minimal or no human control and preform specific tasks. An Android is a robot, a robot made to be specifically human looking or human like. A Cyborg is a combination of mechanical/electronic parts with biologic parts to ... |
Why is it that when ice cream melts and refreezes it gets icy and its texture isn't how it's supposed to be | Part of the magic of making ice cream is that little tiny air bubbles get whipped into it, and tiny globules of fat are mixed throughout the ice crystals. When it melts and re-freezes, all those bubbles get released and the fats can separate a bit, so you're left with something closer to greasy ice. |
Why do we say "huh?" or "what?" when a person says something, even though we already heard it and answer the question before a person repeats themselves? | for me personally often times is because I was really suprised to hear the person talk. It came out of nowhere and I was kinda "unprepared" to listen, so I intuitively interrupt them with "huh what?" to give my brain some time to prepare. But most of the time I understood them anywaysyou are still trying to process it,... |
Why is there so much backlash against Iggy Azalea in the hip-hop community, but not against other white rappers? | Because she doesn't make good music, and she's made it to the mainstream music's Eye. |
The difference between the Common Law System that we use in the US/Britain and Civil Law System used in most countries around the world. | In Civil Law, everything is written down, if there isn't a law against, it isn't illegal. In Common Law, judges are given more latitude to interpret laws and derive legal principles from them. Those interpretations are recorded and serve as precedent, non-binding mini-laws that other judges will take into account. Comm... |
Is it possible to make paper out of the outermost peel of onions or shallots or garlic? | It is probably possible to make onion peels into paper. Handmade papers are just wood or rag pulp dried in a mold. But it would take a lot to be useful and nobody is going to peel onions all day just to make paper when they could just buy paper that’s thin and translucent—which is called onionskin! |
Does a drug that prevents the spread of HIV mean we could eradicate the disease? If so, how do we coordinate that kind of effort? | Supposing it was 100 percent effective, and we could get absolutely everyone to take it, and it could prevent transmission mother-to-child, then we could eradicate it in a generation. But the first two assumptions, at least, are false: the pill has 99 percent efficacy , and there's no way we could finance it for everyo... |
Why do people have pairs of chromosomes? What does that do? | You get one chromosome from each parent. It increases genetic diversity by giving you one from each parent, rather than just one chromosome from one parent. |
Why cant you see stars in pictures taken from the moon, but you can see stars in pictures taken from earth. | Because the Moon is too bright. If you just try to take a normal picture of the sky from Earth, you probably wouldn't see any stars either. The picture from Earth where you see stars are usually long exposure photos, captured in a very dark location. If you try to take a similar picture from the Moon, you'll also see s... |
If it is true that male humans have better sense of smell, how is this possible? | Do you have a source? Every resource I have ever read says the opposite - that women have a much better sense of smell than men. It is even suggested that during ovulation that women's sense of smell increases significantly. _URL_0_ |
Why are the states of matter quantized? i.e. there are 4 distinct states of matter that are not arbitrarily defined. | The difference between water boiling and hot water is where the energy goes. states of matter are defined by what kind of bonds break. Heat up water. Start a fire to add a quantity of heat to the water. Sometimes,that energy will raise the temperature of the water and sometimes it will go to turn the water into a gas. ... |
If gay marriage is made legal (which is a good thing) what arguments would one use to keep polygamy illegal? | It makes an absolute mess of family law. Right now, a marriage is between two people & a child has, at most, two parents. What happens to the children in a 3-marriage if A divorces B & C because B is abusive? Obviously, we would want to minimize B's custody rights but that would unfairly penalize C. What about a 4-marr... |
Why did the Japanese "let the emperor still be emperor" ? | I think it's kind of like how the Queen is still the Queen, but Parliament actually runs the country. |
What does alcohol consumption feels like? | It burns against your throat and down into your belly. Then it kinda fizzles into a warm happy feeling that spreads through your body. The effects on your brain can be completely unnoticed initially, but continued drinking exacerbates them. For me I smile more, talk more, and become more relaxed. If I get drunk I think... |
Why do people shit themselves with fear? | Most animals have a natural aversion to fecal matter. As such, it can be an effective escape/survival strategy to shit yourself and hope that a predator smells/sees it and leaves you alone. It can be hardwired into the "flight" part of fight/flight as it's a pretty good deterant/distractionWhen your "fight or flight" r... |
Why is it easier to "see" things in your mind, rather than "touch" or "smell"? | Note: I'm not a neuroscientist. It is possible that the modern human brain has more dedicated visual processing over the other senses which my allow for "visual thought" to be predominant. I 've also heard it said that the sense of smell is a better trigger for memories than any of the other senses. Also, I may be talk... |
What is the advantage of spending more money to buy an unlocked phone? | The only advantages are that you can choose any provider and you can get a prepaid plan. If you text/ring a lot, it's better to not get an unlocked phone and just get a contract. |
How is it that you can have some or all of a brain hemisphere removed and maintain motor function on that side, yet a stroke can cause lifelong paralysis? | The short answer is that the brain is fucking weird. The long answer is that the muscles are controlled in clumps spread through the brain. But those clumps are mostly together. That's why a stroke will often hit only certain muscles, if it's a small one, the blood to certain bits of the brain was cut off long enough t... |
Why do teeth occasionally hurt when you eat something sweet? | I get the same thing. Dentist didn't really have an explanation, but said it wasn't cavities.I am in the dental field and this is common. I would say go for a routine check up that includes cavity detecting X-rays. This is to rule out if you do have cavities or not. Most insurance companies cover your cleanings, exam a... |
Waking up suddenly at 4:30AM feeling full of energy vs falling back asleep for another 30mins and waking up feeling like you could use another 6Hrs. | One possible reason is that we have sleep cycles that dictate how we feel when we wake up. If you wake up at the end of one, you feel good. Too early or too late while you’re in deep sleep, and you feel horrible. Going back to sleep after waking can slip you back into your cycle, and you end up in the middle of a new o... |
How difficult would it be to intentionally build an immunity to a lethal poison, a la The Princess Bride? | There isn't a blanket answer to this. Some poisons you simply cannot develop an immunity to, and they will end you no matter how hard you try. If you were curious, the practice itself is named Mithridatism. |
How do non-partisan entities maintain nonpartisanship? Don't presidents, chairs, board members, justices have internal biases? | Level headed people are able to see when they have a bias about something and view the opposing side and their own without their bias and determine a course of action based on that. It is similar to a woman saying she would not have an abortion but at the same time not wanting to make that choice for another woman by v... |
Why is writing a paper check totally free for both parties while any kind of electronic transfer has fees? | While I agree with the previous poster, as someone who works in Banking/Finance/Investments I can tell you the real reason is: Checks bounce. Bounced checks have huge fees which means money for banks Electronic transfers remove the potential for bounced checks I.e. Banks lose the revenue from bounced check fees To offs... |
How does a vending machine recognize a dollar as opposed to a dollar sized piece of paper? | They take a picture. Your piece of paper doesn't look like a dollar bill. They read the fine patterns. Your piece of paper that you tried to commit counterfeitting does have the fine patterns that a real dollar bill has, because your printer isn't capable of printing the fine lines. Take a magnifying glass to right sid... |
What is happening to someone physiologically when we get our "second wind" of energy? | Our bodied realize they are under undo stress so they release adrenalin. The release of adrenalin makes us feel better and more energeticYour body has a base level of energy. If you compare it to a battery, your body makes sure that you never go below, say, 60%. Then you get hungry and feel the need to "recharge". In s... |
Why are boobs attractive? | This is more of a shower thought that I had a few months ago, but everyone loves boobs. Gay, straight, male, female, so there has to be some basis in biology. My hypothesis is that everyone loves titties because they're babies primary biological food source and therefore breasts are associated with feeding time, cuddle... |
How did "ZZzZZzzz" come to represent sleep and how did it become so common? | Someone thought it was a good onomatopoeia for the sound of snoring and it stuckThe onomatapoeia theory is, as far as I'm aware, correct stemming from 1852. It's first published use was from Henry Thoreau who referenced the sound of sleeping locusts when he first wrote "…the dry-z-ing of the locusts is heard." It caugh... |
how does the military keep on getting hacked? | The kind of hacking that is being done is not the ordinary wire fraud hacking. The US military is being hacked by professionals in other countries who have a similar budget, both for cyberdefense and cyberwarfare. We hack into their systems as much as they do ours , but they don't publicly acknowledge it like the US do... |
What is the bends? | When you go underwater to a deep level, the increase in pressure forces nitrogen gas into your blood, just like increased pressure can force CO_2 into pop/soda. When you come up too quickly, the drop in pressure decreases the solubility of the nitrogen, and it comes out of solution and forms gas bubbles in the vascular... |
Why do videos from the 80's-90's always look like someone smudged grease on the camera lens? | Video quality has improved since then. And so has playback quality.With an older video there is less information there. The older video has information for a smaller number of lines of pixels. So when you play it on a new screen, the screen can display many more pixels than it is getting information for. So your comput... |
what even is Ebola and what are it's effects? | Ebola virus disease , formerly known as Ebola haemorrhagic fever, is a severe, often fatal illness in humans.EVD outbreaks have a case fatality rate of up to 90%.EVD outbreaks occur primarily in remote villages in Central and West Africa, near tropical rainforests.The virus is transmitted to people from wild animals an... |
Why has there been a vinyl resurgence in the music industry? | You can get them cheap. They have a slightly different sound quality, and many people enjoy that difference. Album art is pretty great in and of itself. You can roll a joint on an album cover, but you can't on digital music. People like actually having physical items. They have a cool factor that dates back more than a... |
Why do we make that "hurr-durr" voice when mockingly impersonating someone? Why does that voice signify stupidity? | It sounds like someone with a mental disability, like Down's syndrome. They are seen as stupid, so its a natural voice to use to convey stupidness", 'That particular voice, usually accompanied with a contorted face and hand motions like you're ineffectively trying to stab yourself are stereotypical symptoms of mental r... |
How is this man able to hold on to this chopper for that long? | That's very little acceleration on top of 9.8 m/s^2 of Earth gravity. Downwash probably adds a little more effort. Still, it isn't much more physically demanding than holding on to a stationary bar. Mind that it's pretty easy to hang even from a single hand. With two hands it's a piece of cake. You don't have to pull y... |
Why do car wheels sometimes appear to be spinning very slow, or backwards? | Our eyes can only interpret and update what is going on at a certain speed. Wheels can be turning very fast. Imagine your eyes are capable of 'updating' to your brain what is going on every 1/20th of a second. Now imagine you are looking at a special clock where the big hand is at 12:00 exactly. If the hand rotates fro... |
What is the difference between a republic and a democracy? Which one is the U.S.? | A republic means a small group of people are chosen so that they can make the governing decisions of a country. A democracy means that the people vote on the governing decisions of the country. The United States is a democratic republic. The people vote to choose the small group that will make the governing decisionsTh... |
What does contemporary military jet fighting look like? | It mostly involves a lot of talking. The problem with locking on to enemies 30-40km away is that you can't see them. Therefore you have to be absolutely sure that whatever you're shooting at is really the enemy. This is especially true in modern guerilla/assymetrical/highly mobile war - if you are never sure where the ... |
How does calling an african-american "black" make you a racist? | I don't think it does at all. People call me 'white' and not an American. So why would it be racist to call someone 'black' instead of African American?", 'You have to understand what the culture of the whole society of the USA was like in the 1850s, the 1930s, the 1950s and the 1970s to understand why such a useful an... |
why Obama is criticized for going golfing? | It's part of the partisan bickering that comes with a two party system. If the President is a member of your party and takes a break, he's been working really hard and deserves it. If he's a member of the opposition, he's a lazy bum. |
what is epigenetics and how does it differ from evolution? | Epigenetics refers to heritable information that *not* encoded in the basepairs of your DNA . Epigenetics works through a few different mechanisms, not all of which are completely understood, but include DNA methylation, histone placement and modification, and, for some organisms, subnuclear localization of chromosomes... |
Why does anyone attend for-profit colleges like ITT Tech when anyone can attend community college? | People just plain get duped. The see the ads, and it all looks legit enough. You go into the sales meeting, and the representatives are trained to do literally whatever it takes to convince people to sign on for attending the schools. It's not until it's too late that they realize how worthless the degree is after they... |
How does "RNG"/Random work in Video games? | Pseudo-random number generators use an algorithm to generate a number. The algorithm starts with a "seed" value to create the number. Then it crunches through the algorithm . Since it is an algorithm, if the seed is the same, the result is the same. So systems will try to pick a seed value that is essentially random. F... |
Bandwidth. What exactly is it and how does it work? | Bandwidth originally is from transmission techniques that use bands of frequencies . Each station gets a range of frequencies to use and is allowed to fill up that band with their broadcast transmission. With clever technologies, you can send multiple different broadcasts within the band you were given. the size of the... |
how come the rings of Saturn orbit on a flat plane around the planet, as opposed to evenly spread out? | Same reason why the planets are in a relatively horizontal plane around the sun. Angular momentum is conserved, so as orbiting materials collide, they eventually settle into a disk. What conservation of angular momentum means, is that the total sum of each particles momentum, must but equal to their ending momentum. So... |
How do people who went through transsexual procedures change their voice? | Basically it's hormones. Women who transition to men will notice a bigger change in their voice when they start taking male hormones. But, men who transition after they've gone through puberty won't be able to change as much because the physical changes the voice box goes through at that time are hard to undo. |
Why are college textbooks so expensive when other non-fiction authors - ie Noam Chomsky - release books on similar topics for substantially less? | The simple answer is, of course, because they can. Students are required to buy their books, so they can charge whatever they want for them. To elaborate on some other points: * Noam Chomsky's books probably don't have massive problem sets and accompanying solutions -- those take a *lot* of time to come up with.* Other... |
When cloning an animal (let's say a dog), how much of that cloned animal is exactly the same as the original animal? | Essentially, a clone of an animal is the same thing as an identical twin. 100% match genetically, but everything else is a wildcard. Anything that is directly genetically controlled will be the same, such eye or fur color. Anything that is affected by environment, habits, temperament, coat quality, size, health, etc Wi... |
Please explain this joke, I'm having a hard time | It sounds like an anti-joke. The standard setup is inverted and that is the cause of the humor. The bartender sees the joke coming and want's nooo trouble in his place. I don't think it's funny, but we've all got different tastes in that regard.I 've heard the punchline as, "What is this, some kind of joke?" The barten... |
What happens in a factory to cause chocolates such as Kitkats to be made without the Wafer inside? | Usually that would be some issue in timing, and given how fast the line moves for something mass market like candy, a little "off" timing can create some real problems. In the case of Kit Kat, it's probably usually an issue of the wafer bouncing out of, or missing the mould, which then just gets filled with chocolate. |
NES games could be up to 1MB in total size, but Final Fantasy II for Android is 170MB. What is the additional 169MB? | MIDI music resembling actual instruments as opposed to a simple chiptune and far more detailed graphics for the most part. It may not sound like much, but remember that 170 MB is but a small fraction of what a CD can hold; but a small drop in modern technology. |
Why do extremely big things seem to move slower and extremely small things seem to move faster?(Realtive to human hight etc.) | If something extremely big moved without it looking slow it'd have to have close to supernatural strength. Take a human that has 3 times our height, and everything in proportions. That'd mean it has about 27 times our mass. Not if he moves on the same rate as we do, it'd take 27 time as much energy as is, but to appear... |
Why do we need discipline? | Discipline is what keeps you going when you run out of motivation for a task. Imagine you're climbing a mountain. You have more motivation than people just sitting in front of the TV because you want to drive out and climb that mountain! You get to the base of the trail, get all your gear, and pump yourself up for the ... |
If you went back 10 years with an iphone 6 and handed it to a high-tech corporation to dissect. Could they use it to increase the rate of technology? | It would very likely be a mixture. The UI and design could be picked up on easily enough The actual manufacturing of the phone in large quantities would be difficult. Especially for things like the screen resolution. Even with the tech example the high res screen would costs tons if it were even possible to create it. ... |
How come some phones/cars can supercharge like 40% of the battery in minutes, but the remaining of the battery takes hours to fully charge? | Think of it like a balloon you are trying to blow up. You can start huffing and puffing with great abandon as the balloon isn't going to pop. but when it gets to certain size you start to worry, You want the balloon bigger but you worry it might go bang. So you have to slow your puffing down. |
What is the "revolving door" in politics? | When you work in government agencies, you build up contacts within those agencies. Then, when you leave, you get hired - for fairly substantial salaries - to lobby your former colleagues on behalf of people who have business with that agency. The questionable part about this arises because you *know* that's your career... |
Why does lemon juice "cook" fish when making ceviche? | It doesn't actually cook the fish. The acid just denatures the proteins in fish meat in a similar process to cooking. It won't, for instance, kill pathogens in the fish.Proteins are very long chains of a type of molecule called amino acid, hundreds or thousands of them. These chains tangle in a more or less random way ... |
Why were popular songs of the 50's so short (2 min) in comparison to popular songs of today (4-5 min)? | Up until the early 60s the most singles were distributed on 10" 78rpm records which could, at most, hold about 3 minutes of audio per side. |
Could quantum entanglement be used for long distant instant communications/High bandwidth data transfer? | > From what I understand, once you entangle two quantum bits a change in one bit's state will immediately affect the state of the other. This is the main reason most people misunderstand the entanglement. Changes to one particle does not affect the other once they are split up. Entangled particles are more like a sheet... |
Histogram on my camera screen | A histogram is simply a graph of the amount of colour in the image. So for example if your lens cap is on, the graph will have one side with a very high rating and the rest with a low rating. If your shooting the sun the opposite will be true as the sun will over power the camera making the whole picture white and the ... |
Does a YouTube video with a static image use the same amount of data as a normal YouTube video? | No. A static image will be compressed a lot more by the video editing software. There are fewer keyframes for the software to deal with and make pixels for, so it's a lot "simpler" for the software to shrink the video down. To see this for yourself, you can use a youtube video downloader and download a music video for ... |
How do we know so much about the different stages of a star's life if they last for such a long time? | We can examine the life stages of a human without having to watch one in particular for its entire life. Similarly with stars, we see them at all different stages of their lives. We see the transitional states so we know in what order they occur. |
Difference between "buffering" and "loading" | Just technicalities. Buffering is partially loading something for streaming. Loading is loading the entire thing', "Buffering is really just pre-loading.. It's basically just loading something before someone is actually going to see the information. As a picture loads, you see the picture start to appear on your screen... |
Since the US president is the commander in chief of the armed forced, how does the US constitution prevent him from planning a coup and ordering the military to do something potentially unconstitutional? | The Oath taken by all military personnel is to support and defend the Constitution. Training is given reminding servicemembers that they should not obey an unlawful or unconstitutional orderA military officer is not required to follow an illegal order. For instance, an officer can refuse to act if he is ordered to shoo... |
The universe is expanding, but where is the center of the expansion? is that the point in which the big bang happened? And where are we relatively to it? | Every point is expanding away from every other point. There's no "center of the expansion". Imagine an infinitely large rubber sheet, with a 1" grid drawn on it. Now stretch out the rubber sheet so that the grid lines are 2" apart instead, everywhere. Is there a "center" to this stretching? Every point is moving away f... |
Isn't the CBC reporting on Jian Ghomeshi a conflict of interest? | It is a conflict of interest. News organizations have conflicts of interest all the time, but that doesn't mean they stop reporting news. Journalism ethics says so long as you disclose the conflict, so people can judge if you are being biased, you are covered. |
How would acquiring (for lack of a better word) temperatures below absolute zero be used to provide obscenely large amounts of energy? | In a normal system , adding energy results in an increase in "entropy" - the tiny bits and pieces that make up the system move around more. In a system with [negative temperature], the bits and pieces that make up the system already have as much entropy as they possibly can - their entropy level is saturated. Heating t... |
Where do files go once they're deleted? I just don't accept that they disappear... | Imagine your hard drive as a giant wall, like the Great Wall of China. Now imagine that your files are painted on this wall . When you delete a file, your computer finds the spot on the wall where that file was painted, and marks that section of the wall as "free". It doesn't scrub off the painting, but the next time y... |
How we can say the earth is tilted on it's axis, when it's a sphere? | The tilt is the angle between earths rotational axis and the orbital axis . [Like this]What is meant by "tilted" is that the earth's axis of rotation is not perpendicular to the plane of its rotation around the sun. |
how the hell did line dancing to "aches breaky heart" become a Mexican party tradition? | I have no idea but you should repost this to /r/TIL as > TIL line dancing to "achey breaky heart" is a Mexican party tradition.They think it's fun to dance to. It's super simple and anyone can get into it I've seen kids rock out along. Also, you have to understand they don't dance to achey breaky heart, they dance to [... |
Why does everyone hate comic sans? | This should explain it both entertainingly and fiveyearoldishly. _URL_0_I think it probably stems from the fact it looks like something a five year old would use, unprofessional and such. Beyond that I think it's just something that's "cool" to hate, like Nickleback.The typical answer is that Comic Sans is used in inap... |
How a Continuously Variable Transmission (CVT) works. | Have you ever ridden a bicycle with multiple front and rear gears? The difference between the size of the gears, or ratio, helps balance how much work you do with how fast you go. On a 10-speed bike, you have only 2 gears in the front and 5 in the back with a chain connecting them. With a CVT, you have two cones with a... |
What causes "asparagus pee" and how does it happen so fast after eating it? | Short answer is that asparagus contains a natural chemical aptly named asparagusic acid. This acid is broken down by the body into sulfur-containing compounds. Those sulfur compounds smell. This is the same reason rotten eggs smell. And once made, the breakdown products end up in your urine. Because they are highly vol... |
When someone is given the death penalty, why are they on death row for so long? | There's an appeals process that has to be followed, and that can take years because the courts are really very busy. Then there's the fact that issuing stays of execution is a very easy, low-cost way for governors to earn brownie points with more liberal constituencies who understand how many innocent men have danced t... |
Why do some injuries hurt when partially submerged and then feel better fully submerged in water? | If the injury is to a weight-bearing part of your body, the extra weightlessness of being in water can relieve it. It’s also why older people do a lot of exercise in pools, it’s less impact on your body |
how many more satellites can we launch into space before we run out of room and are there any viable methods for clearing out space to fit more? | Others here are right, space is infinite. Except that there's only one geostationary orbit, and there's only room for ~3600 active satellites there , otherwise their radios might interfere with each other.One complication the answers so far have missed: The Kessler Syndrome. As we launch more and more satellites into L... |
Why is 1 meter 1 meter? | There have been a few basis for the definition of the meter. One of the earlier methods was tying the definition as a fraction of the lenght of the line between the north pole, passing through Paris, to the equator. Another method that came about was the lenght of a "prototype meter", a physical artifact that represent... |
how the University of Phoenix works. | My friend's cousin who I met a couple times was doing an MBA at the University of Phoenix. She didn't think her grades were reflective of her effort; she would work hard and be surprised by how low the mark was, and sometimes hand in crap and be surprised by how high the mark was. Then she handed in a blank paper and g... |
Force Touch on the new iPhone and other phones that have it. What are the real benefits or features? | Force Touch on the MacBooks acts like a right click. 3D Touch on the new iPhones adds a 3^rd option, users can now tap, tap+hold, and deep press. So for app icons, a deep press will bring up shortcuts; so for camera, instead of opening the app and switching to video, you just deep press the icon and slide your finger d... |
how do Dan Aykroyd and Eddy Murphy make Mortimer and Randolph go broke at the end of Trading Places.. how did they get rich? | Short selling. At the beginning of the trading day, the Dukes have a fake, unreleased forecast report saying that there will be a shortage of oranges, and therefore the price of frozen concentrated orange juice will go up. The Dukes\' goal is to buy as much FCOJ as they can before the report is released and take advant... |
Are Black LED's a thing, and if so how do they work? | No - there is no light source capable of producing "black light" as black is defined as the absence of light. |
Why is quantum physics so often mentioned in philosophy and so-called "enlightenment" texts? | One of the main points of overlap between philosophy and quantum physics concerns whether or not there is true randomness-not just events that are beyond our current predictive ability but things that just truly cannot be pinned down or explained beyond "random." If those truly random events exist, that's a huge blow t... |
the concept of financial aid and student loans for university students? | Or do you want the rationale? Here, you'd have to go into an explanation of progressivism in politics. The general idea behind subsidizing education like this seems to be that in the long run-- not in individual cases, but in a much longer time frame-- this will make the country stronger, more economically productive, ... |
Why is it so much easier for the brain to be depressed than positive? | It is personal, not everyone is that way. Those of us who are just have to learn to live with it . The ELI5 story is that your brain handles certain chemicals that work in the brain in ways that prevent you from feeling 'normal' |
What is RedPill and BluePill philosophy and what's their main differences? (No bias please) | In the movie "The Matrix" the protagonist is offered two pills. If he takes the red pill he will wake up from the computer simulation he has unknowingly been living in while if he takes the blue pill he will forget he was ever told it was a simulation. So, a group of people take the red pill as symbol for their ideolog... |
Why does rock music and classical music fit together so well? | All western music is based on the same music theory of melodies and harmonies created from the major and minor scales and the different modes of them. But rock, has closer ties with classical than, say, R & B because some of the more unusual modes and scales are shared by both. Rock guitarists learn a lot of classical ... |
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