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Why do different races of people seem to have a unique smell to them? | Not sure if its just me, but I always found that I can differentiate races just by their aroma. Sure everybody has their own individual smell (which I'd imagine is a result of varying hygiene practices, laundry detergents, diets, etc), but it seems like theres something else that naturally stands out between races. Fo... | Most East asians (Korean, Japanese, Chinese) don't have as many aprocrine sweat glands so you'll rarely smell B.O. from them. Also, they don't need deodorant, so if you're visiting, Korea, Japan or China, bring enough deodorant, because you might have a hard time finding some. No-one wants to be the smelly foreigner!
... |
how Insurance work? | I never have fully grasped everything about it. | Insurance for what?
Basically you pay some fee regularly to the insurance people, and in return they'll cover any costs you might incur related to whatever you insured. If you insure your house and a tornado rips it apart you get paid. If it doesn't you get nothing. If you're a professional pianist you might insure yo... |
How can the feeling of nausea be a negative feeling even though it isn't similar to normal physical pain? | Nausea is a basic "negative feeling", just like intense heat and paper cuts produce fundamentally different "negative feelings" (heat and nerve severing, respectively).
Nausea is to food poisoning as painful heat is to fire. Nausea is rooted in the inner ear, which monitor's the body's balance. When the inner ear and ... | |
Why is paying bail an option for criminals who have been arrested? | Isn't it exactly the same as bribing authorities; they're both paying money to prevent incarceration. | They're not convicted yet so you can't really call them criminals. Bail is a way to make sure someone shows up in court later on. So it's based on the idea that if you put down an extravagant sum of money (to be given back to you if you show in court) you are less likely to run. So if you don't seem to be a danger to o... |
why aren't oil dipsticks white | All oil dipsticks I've ever seen are black plastic or dark metal. Why not make an white to contrast against the black oil? | Because it's in the engine compartment, it's going to get covered in oil and grime. So they are either black or orange or yellow. Also you read them on the stick, not the cap, and the stick is metal because it goes into the engine and gets very hot. A plastic colored stick wouldn't stand up to the conditions. |
How do psychology researchers obtain informed consent without tipping their subjects off on the subject of the study? | I know that subjects of research studies must give informed consent before they are allowed to participate. I also know that informing subjects of psychological experiments of the study's true purpose can influence the results. How are these two concerns reconciled? | You have to tell them what will happen to them during the study. You don't have to tell them why you are doing it or what conclusions you will draw, except in the vaguest of terms. "You will answer a series of timed questionnaires while being observed by our researchers, to increase our knowledge about how people mak... |
How do laptops tell what percentage of a battery is remaining and when a laptop (or any device) is going to run out of juice? | voltage decreases as power in the battery decreases | |
Why is it that when I am copying multiple folders in Windows and I do it all at the same time, it takes hours; but when I copy the folders one by one it only takes few minutes per folder | On Windows, files are not really arranged on the hard drive in the order that they are on the screen. They are often in completely different parts of the hard drive, a magnetic metal disk in the computer. The computer can only read one place on the hard drive at a time, and only at a certain speed. Thus, if you have... | |
How do genes work to give someone an intellectual advantage over another? | [deleted] | "Intelligence" as a single property is kind of a misnomer - I could be quick to pick up on new information and use it to my advantage, while someone else could have horrible observational skills but a knack for finding patterns in historical data, etc. It all depends on what kind of intelligence you're looking for.
W... |
New NBA schedule compared to the old schedule | Well, its a pretty vague question, but I'll do my best.
The main purpose of the changes to the NBA schedule is to provide more days off during the season and reduce the number of times a team would play back to backs (ie, a game Tuesday and then playing again on Wednesday) and 4 games in 5 nights (2 back to back separ... | |
how world seeds in minecraft and other games that use them work. | Computers cannot produce truly random numbers on their own. For this they would need an external entropy source such as atmospheric noise picked up by a radio receiver; that's how the site [_URL_0_](http://www._URL_0_/) can generate a truly random number. Those kind of devices are required if you run an online casino f... | |
Why do certain tastes last longer on our tongues than other tastes? | The two main factors of taste (gustation) at play are going to be: *initial concentration of agent* and *chemical properties of agent*.
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Let's say we have a high-concentration agent (100x) and a low-concentration agent (10x). When tasting something that has a high concentration of an agent , it means that for eve... | |
How Does Foam Hand Soap Work? | For years I have always pondered the question, "how exactly does the soap inside that complex container come out as a foam?" I was always scared to find out if I truly wanted to know one of life's darkest secrets, but today I finally muster up the courage to seek this information that has been hidden from us for so lon... | If you look at the pump, it has a small chamber, and when you pump the soap, along with some air, is forced through small holes in that chamber, then up and out of the nozzle. The soap itself is also pretty thin and watery; if you took normal hand soap and put that in a foaming soap's container it wouldn't foam up. |
Why do hockey players say the same generic stuff during interviews? | There could be fistfights in the locker room if someone said to the camera interviewer at the end of the game "Bosco wasn't covering his end of the ice on his shifts. A pisspoor effort all the way around; I hope they trade the bastard before he drops our team to the basement." So teams and players try to avoid speaki... | |
How do helicopters with no tail helix work? | I understand that the tail helix is there to balance the main rotor's torque, but I couldn't understand wikipedia's explanation for helicopters with no tail helix, such as [this one].(_URL_0_). Thanks! | From Wikipedia,
> **NOTAR** is the name of a helicopter anti-torque system which replaces the use of a tail rotor. Developed by McDonnell Douglas Helicopter Systems (through their acquisition of Hughes Helicopters), the name is an acronym derived from the phrase no tail rotor. The system uses a fan inside the tailbo... |
Why do super markets like Wal-Mart use see through refrigerators while we the consumers don't? | like, it would solve the whole guessing what's on my fridge and no more will you have to open the fridge every minute.
discuss, please. | Are you trying to sell the food in your fridge? It's a lot less efficient energy and space-wise if you use a glass front for your fridge, so there's really no point unless you're trying to turn a profit in your kitchen. |
What's going on when my browser takes a long time to load, but loads instantly after hitting refresh? | It has [cached](_URL_0_) the content the first time, and when you refresh it is retrieved from the cache. | |
Why does every single call center rep ask for my phone number even though I just punched it into the automated system? | I mean the idea is for them to have my phone number and save everybody time, right? | Nope. entering the number in the automated system is for the automated system only. or if they have regional call centers that take calls from only certain regions it recognizes the number and routes to the correct call center...sometimes...in theory
and also the few call centers that have the intergrated tool. that a... |
How was NYC able to build and afford their entire subway system over the past 100+ years, but the 2nd Ave line keeps running into budget issues and delays? | I've tried to do research on the subject, but I can't figure out the financing and the timing of it all. There have been hundreds of miles of tracks and tunnels and hundreds of stations built over the past 100+ years, but the Second Ave. line has been moving at a snail's pace. Why? | I would say the construction costs have soared. Wages are high for construction workers compared to the past. An immigrant was willing to work for low wages. Now there are unions, OSHA, overtime rules, etc. |
Why do tendons take so long to regrow even though they are non complex and completely internal so no need to get rid of bacteria? | Usually the healing process involves blood flowing to the affected area, bringing with it platelets which release growth factors under certain conditions.
Tendons do not have a rich vascular supply, and to add to the issue - they're made up of thick strands of collagen which have to get repaired. It takes a few days ... | |
How do stores like Best Buy make money when they sell products like computers or phones without charging extra? | For example, I can order a MacBook for $1499 from apple, or from bestbuy for the same price. How does bestbuy make any money? | They get a small wholesale discount from Apple. Also, if you buy the computer from them, they have the opportunity to sell you all kinds of things - extended warranties, CD-Rs, headphones, cables, software... |
If ocean was forever stagnant, would the salt drop to the bottom? | I would assume that the ocean would be a giant pool for infectious diseases if this would happen. | No because most of the salts dissolved in the ocean are very water soluble. Their concentration in the ocean is well below the saturation point and so the salts have no reason to fall out of solution regardless of the amount of current. |
Why do I squirt saliva when I yawn? | why oh why | It's called gleeking, and it's because the saliva glands in your mouth get pulled and squeezed. |
How can a computer provide a truly random number/response if it's made up of coded instructions from a programmer? | How can structured coding result in a random output? Even for simple simulations such as flipping a coin, how can it fully replicate the randomness of such an event, instead of returning output responding to exactly the probability of each outcome? | It can't. "Random" numbers from a computer are more accurately called "pseudorandom." They usually are generated by a series of mathematical operations on some seed, such as the precise time tick when the function is called.
_URL_0_ |
Why so many people in the U.K. hated Margaret Thatcher. | [removed] | Because her, and her government's, approach to the economy and employment was that people should work hard and pay taxes and anyone who wasn't able to support themselves shouldn't get handouts from the state for loafing about doing nothing. So for me, a young a naive 20\-something who had just started work in 1983 it ... |
Why sometimes you flick a light switch and it takes a few seconds to turn on, but as soon as you turn the light off it is immediately turned off. | [deleted] | Some lights have to build up a small initial charge that is greater than the operating charge of the light.
Turning off a light requires no power because it is the absences of power that turns the light off. |
How do Web Browsers work? | . | When you request _URL_0_, the server sends back a bunch of textual data. Plain text is boring to look at, so a simple markup language was created named html. The browsers job is to parse through the html and display it nicely. Some browsers display things differently than others (that's why many people hate internet... |
Do relatives have similar fingerprint patters, as is the case with DNA? And if not, why? | I have never heard an example of forensics or science using a fingerprint to connect relatives or eliminate suspects like they do with DNA, at least on CSI. It seems like siblings would have several consistencies between finger & hand prints, and the parents would also have matches as they passed on the traits that ... | _URL_1_
"Our fingerprints are totally unique, not even identical twins share the same fingerprints! How they form is very interesting and you are spot on, fingerprints develop in the embryo before a baby is born. A person's fingerprints are formed when they are a tiny developing baby in their mother's womb. Pressure on... |
Is smoked salmon cooked or raw? And does putting fish in an acid (i.e tuna in lime) cook the fish, or is it still raw despite the change in appearance? | I am always confused by this. People smoked salmon doesn't look cooked, yet some people say it is, and tuna changes colour after being in lime so it looks cooked and it's confusing. | > **Is smoked salmon cooked or raw?**
According to [Wikipedia](_URL_0_):
> Cold smoking does not cook the flesh, coagulate the proteins, inactivate food spoilage enzymes, or eliminate the food pathogens, and hence refrigerated storage is necessary until consumption.
However, it then goes on to say:
> traditio... |
why does education generally make people more tolerant and less violent? | Because people fear the unknown. So knowing more also makes your more understanding to others position. It's harder to see issues as black and white when you understand there are nuances to the situation. | |
Why are musical notes the pitches that they are? Why not smaller or bigger increments in frequencies? And who decided this? | Just started learning piano and my curious mind can't stop thinking about it:
For example, why not 16 notes in a standard scale,with the difference in pitch cut in half, instead of 8?
Why does a standard major scale go in steps of whole-whole-half-whole whole-whole-half? And why does this sound normal as opposed to ... | Let's start with what sound is. Sound waves are compression waves, which means that energy gets transferred from one chunk of matter (air, for our ears) to the neighboring matter in the form of pushing the particles slightly closer together (*compressing* them). If you do this process at certain frequencies, you get so... |
What are the little black dots you see when you close your eyes lids with light in the background? | They move around too which makes no sense to me. | Those are called [phosphenes.](_URL_0_) They're caused by the cells in your eyes being stimulated as if you were looking at something, even when they're not looking at anything. |
Why do reddit servers go down so often compared to other major websites? | [deleted] | First, compared to something like Amazon, Reddit going down for an hour costs very little revenue. Linked to this, if Amazon or Google goes down, you'd go to another retailer, or Bing. If Reddit goes down, what you going to do about it?
Second, speed and load. Reddit really doesn't need speed. You load a page, read so... |
Why is February the month with 28 days, and not April, November or any other one? | There was a time when the year began in the month containing the beginning of Spring, namely March. This meant that February was the last month of the year, and it originally had 30 days.
July and August were renamed for Caesars of Rome and at the time those months were only 30 days. To honor the greatness of the Caes... | |
How did we come to use $ as a symbol for Dollars? | There is a column in the [Straight Dope](_URL_0_) that discusses several of the theories already discussed, and concludes it came from the peso abbreviation 'ps' being written over each other. Relevant quote below:
> So much for the tomfoolery; now to get serious. Professor Cajori contends that the dollar sign is an... | |
If a car is rear ended, the force should push the driver backwards? which laws of motion apply? | the collision force should throw the driver backwards? i.e. why whiplash is common. how do would this be explained with laws of motion? | The driver driver is not pushed backwards, the driver remains where he is while the car is jolted forward. This makes it *appear* like the driver goes back relative to the car. |
Why and how does lightning vary in color? | There have been several thunder storms where I live, and I've noticed that the color of lightning varies every time. From almost white, through purple/blue, even to yellowish tones. Why does this happen? | Depends on the voltage and current released in the lightning strike. The light comes from ionization of the air and excited electrons in the plasma. Depending on the energy the electrons absorbe, differrnt wavelengths (colors) of light will stand out. For instance, blue lightning is more energetic than yellowish/red. |
if we know more about space than we do our oceans, why don't we spend more time exploring what we already have here? | We can use a telescope to look into space. A lot of what we know about space is by confirmation of equations. Scientists believe that x should be y because of z. They take some measurements over a few years and then publish the results.
Looking into the ocean has limits. We can only look so deep. We can only scan so ... | |
Why must it be the U.S. to "degrade and destroy" the Islamic State? Why can't the surrounding countries do it? | Surely there is enough military might in the surrounding Middle Eastern countries to deal with Islamic State and prevent their advance? Surely these countries have a vested interest in doing so? | Foreign Policy ELI5:
It's a warm Summer's eve and you are sitting comfortably in the park eating a delicious ice cream. As a drop of melted vanilla fudge rolls down your fingers, your eye catches the glimmer of a struggle in the sandbox. You turn to witness a bully beating up the other kids and stealing their ice crea... |
Why is Jimi Hendrix largely considered the greatest guitarist ever? | Jimi was ambidextrous with the guitar playing it either way. Predominately playing a right handed guitar left handed. He could also play with his toes, teeth and behind his back. He was a pioneer into the effects of the electric guitar bringing distortion and wash wah pedals into mainstream. Aside from all of that he w... | |
How do ticket scalpers buy all the tickets to a show only seconds after they go on sale? | Every one of Brand New's tour dates sold out under a minute and hundreds of tickets immediately show up on stub hub for twice as much. So many fans are complaining that they couldn't get tickets even though they were refreshing the page the second they went on sale.
How is it that possible? | Because most of them never go on sale to the public.
_URL_0_
This is also a good read:
_URL_1_ |
If the universe is infinite and expanding, what it is expanding inside of? Something more infinite? | I mean the universe is supposed to be infinite right? So how can it expand first, and then what it is expanding into? Something "infiniter"? | Suppose there's an infinitely large piece of paper. You've drawn something on it. Every day, you add a little to the drawing, making it bigger or more detailed (or both).
As time progresses, you start using more and more paper. Is the currently unused paper part of the drawing? No. That's just empty space. It contai... |
How would the EU effectively retaliate against anything, should they be against what the United States has implemented? If things took a turn for the worse on the Paris Agreement, what would a hard stance against the US look like? | The most effective tool the EU would have would be sanctions against US companies that they decided were not meeting environmental standards.
They could drastically raise tariffs on those companies, or forbid them from doing business in the EU altogether.
More generally, they could back out of trade agreements with ... | |
Even if a self-declared socialist politician such as Bernie Sanders won the presidency of the United States how much could he really do and change with a conservative Congress? How effective would be his political powers and freedom to realize his goals in such a scenario? | Presidents vary in their ability to manipulate Congress.
Some are terrible at it, like Obama and Carter. Some are average like Reagan, Clinton and Bush. A few are masters like LBJ.
The difference is understanding on a specific, person-by-person basis what it takes to get votes, and the willingness to do whatever ... | |
Everyone in the world raises their arms/fists to represent success and victory. Why is that? | Every culture (to my knowledge), every country, and every civilization that all developed independently of eachother, and yet everyone raises their fists or arms up in the air to proclaim 'yes!' or 'victory!'.
Why is that? | It is just a human reaction. Recently, saw a video on TEd talks about body language. It said there was a study done and when someone who was blind and has always been blind won a challenge they raised thier hands up in the air, in victory. Even people who have never seen that done, react that way. |
The Australian equivalent of the American education system. Junior, middle, high school, college, GPA etc. | If someone could please break it down to an Australian style equivalent so I could finally understand. | Aussie here. I'll do my best, but keep in mind that my understanding of the US school system is based on my recall of the Babysitter's Club.
Elementary School more or less equals Primary School.
Middle School and High School are often combined in Australia into a High School or Secondary College, although a number ... |
What is the phenomena known as "Summer Reddit"? | High schoolers are out for the summer, so they're able to be active on the site during the day. Some redditors feel that this leads to a lower quality experience. | |
Why does the price of precious metals not go down as global supply increases when they are discovered, mined and processed into the world economy? | daughter asked, I couldn't answer, ELI5 | supply + demand = price
So while some is found, some is used, more is needed for new innovations etc.
You can't focus on half the equation |
Why is it that when I sleep less, I feel more energized than if I were to sleep a full eight hours? | When I say, "sleep less", I mean around 4 hours of sleep. | I just watched a video about sleep that talked about this.
In each sleep cycle (about 90 minutes) we go from REM to Stage 2, 3, 4, then up to 3, 2, and REM again. We typically experience 4 to 5 cycles like this each night.
Deep sleep (stages 3 & 4) is what our bodies benefit from the most, but we only experience ... |
What is even happening in our brains that we get so happy that we cry? | Crying is sort of a way to dampen emotions. Crying obviously can happen whenever we experience something intense; eg pain, sadness, happiness, etc. Crying is a way to make those emotions less intense/allow us to handle them and avoid overstimulation (which generally is harmful to the body). That's my very rudimentary u... | |
The science behind a classroom of commotion randomly going silent at the same time. | Really curious about this one. | Mathematically this is bound to happen. No one person is talking constantly but the noise level stays up because voices are constantly overlapping. All that needs to happen for a weird silence to occur would be for all the breaks in conversation to happen simultaneously. We can estimate some values to see how often thi... |
How do Ben & Jerry's/Haagen-Dazs etc keep cookie dough/Oreos so soft? | Shouldn't they be rock hard if put in the freezer? They're even softer than regular cookies and Oreo's | the same thing that keeps shelf cookies that aren't made fresh from becoming "stale", that is, brittle and not soft: trans fats.
trans fats are a type of fat you can use in baked goods that doesn't go bad or rancid very fast, in fact it can last for ages and you see hostess pies made with it that are literally stored ... |
If lightning is hotter than the sun, how do people survive getting hit by lightning? | Only a very small amount of air (or flesh) is heated to that extreme temperature, and only for a fraction of a moment. That heat dissipates pretty quickly since there's so much surrounding material to soak it up.
However, getting hit by lightning can still absolutely kill a person, and usually causes severe burns and ... | |
Why does crying affect breathing so much? | When a person's physical or emotional state changes, breathing changes right along with it. And interestingly enough, a change in breathing patterns also affects your emotions. | |
What exactly is shadow banking? | Shadow banking is the collective term for organizations that offer bank like services, but aren't regulated as banks.
Because banks take deposits from the public, they allow multiple people to have a claim on the same money. This is a very important role banks play in the modern economy, and because of this role, t... | |
Why are their expiration dates on medical oxygen tanks. Does the oxygen actually "expire"? | My impression is that the oxygen does *not* actually expire. But are there other factors, such as the integrity of the tank and nozzle, or contamination of the oxygen from the metal casing? Some coworkers were talking about how dumb it is that oxygen tanks expire and it got me wondering about whether there is a good re... | You answered your own question.
The tanks are certified to hold the amount of oxygen they say they are holding without malfunctions for a certain amount of time. In theory, it's possible for an oxygen tank that has been stored and maintained perfectly to last much longer - maybe even forever - but in practice the man... |
Why is clothing often times ripped off of the victim's bodies during deadly plane crashes? | We saw it in gruesome pictures from Malaysia flight 17 that crashed in Ukraine. Now I'm seeing the same in images from Air Asia 8501...Why are recovered bodies often times found naked? What happens during the crash that causes clothing to be ripped from the bodies? | "If the clothes are missing, usually that means that [the passenger] was probably either ejected from the plane or exposed to extreme wind blast going hundreds of miles an hour, falling out of the sky,"
"The effect of very high speed wind, or the slipstream, hitting the bodies can easily literally rip the clothing r... |
What happens during spring that causes allergies? | [removed] | What happens in spring? **Pollen!** It's literally plant sperm getting up in your face and setting off our immune system. Your immune system is then over-reacting, treating harmless pollen like a dangerous invader, leading to swelling and other effects. |
Why are toilets and other bathroom fixtures often made of ceramics and porcelain? | Hard surface that is easily cleaned and is non porous. Stainless steel would be the next logical material but is still a bit more expensive. | |
Evolution. | I'm taking AP Biology this year and the books Survival of the Sickest by Dr. Sharon Molem and Your Inner Fish by Neil Shubin was our required reading. Now, I'm more curious to learn more about evolution. Is someone able to explain it to me like I'm five? | Evolution simply means "change over time".
What we see in nature is evolution by natural selection, which is *how* species change over time.
Think about what you know about domesticated animals. Dog breeds, for instance. These have been "artificially selected" to look and act the way the breeder wants. That is, a hu... |
Why is the number "6" is the upside down version of "9" or vice versa? | I realise it is a dumb question but I really want to know. | Coincidence. They evolved from an old writing system used by the Hindus (we call them "Arabic" numerals, but this is inaccurate) over many centuries, and started off looking very different.
Here's how the number 6 evolved: _URL_1_
Here's how the number 9 evolved: _URL_0_ |
What is the difference between grammar and syntax? | Syntax is about how you arrange words into sentences. Grammar includes syntax but also *morphology*, or how words themselves change depending on their role in a sentence. So 'I go to the store yesterday' is a morphological error because *go* doesn't need to move around in the sentence, only change into *went* so that i... | |
Does light reflect off of gravity | Like surely for us to see black holes some light is reflected back? Or am I misunderstanding? | Gravity can bend light, but not reflect it. We don't see black holes quite like you're imagining. We see the way their gravity bends light around the black hole, or we see their gravitational pull on nearby objects. |
Quantised Inertia | "Quantised Inertia" is a theory used by Mike McCulloch to explain the rotation of galaxies (without the use of dark matter) and the apparent propulsion produced by the "EMdrive". But wtf is it? | Mike McCulloch is a crackpot who doesn't really know any physics. His idea of "quantized inertia" is pure nonsense, and it's been debunked many times over.
As you can see from [his website](_URL_0_), he's not a physicist, but rather he's an oceanographer. So he really has no place trying to rewrite fundamental physics... |
whats a sinkhole? and how do they get so big to the point they swallow buildings? | I worry WAY too much about anything weather or natural disaster related, (we had a funnel cloud where i live once and i had nightmares for weeks) and today, a sinkhole opened up in my city which absolutely TERRIFIES ME.. Its only small, but of course I worry its gonna get huge and like destroy the whole city.. So I was... | The ground you see has layers of different materials. *Some parts of some of these layers can be washed away by water flow if there is any*, or even [corroded by the slight acidity of rain](_URL_1_), leaving natural cavities behind.
Where these cavities are near the surface there can be a collapse creating a sink hole... |
When people talk about "rendering" a video for x amount of time, what is the process that is taking place? | Do they leave the computer turned on until the video renders? What about a video that takes weeks, or even years? | Basically the computer program needs to calculate what exactly will appear on each point of the screen, for each frame. It needs to take into consideration the objects that are in the scene, their location and appearance (colors, textures etc.) and especially the lighting.
> Do they leave the computer turned on unti... |
How come there is a 50% chance that two people out of 23 randomly selected people share the same birthday? (And 99% for two of 75 people) | [removed] | If I am standing in a room with 22 other people there is a 22/365 chance one of them has the same birthday as me. The next person has already been calculated with me so he has a 21/365 day chance of sharing a birthday. And so on and so on.
But the problem isn't that someone shares a birthday with me specifically it is... |
What exactly does a Business Analyst do? | I've tried searching on google but I keep getting complicated definitions of a Business Analyst. Can anyone please take some time to explain like I'm 5 lol? | Writing as an IT analyst:
*Keep* *asking* *the* *questions* that Kipling wrote about in Six [Honest Serving Men](_URL_0_)
"What and Why and When
And How and Where and Who"
A business user might make an apparently trivial request for an new field in a system, to store another phone number. So I ask:
"What length o... |
How do companies that provide “free credit reports” make money? | [removed] | The big one that I know of is credit karma. Lots of people on here have recommended it. Thy say right on their website that they make money through the advertisers that pop up on the page, most of them are financial products that may be of use to you, and if you use one of those services, like a credit card applicati... |
The difference between disposable contact lenses and the ones you can use for 6months to a year. | Are the disposable lenses made of material that encourages bacteria growth? How come you can't clean them the same way as regular lenses and keep them just as long? Or can you?
Thanks in advance | I unfortunately don't know the answer to this question, but I thought I should respond to the "I wear my '2-week' lenses for months!" vibe here. DON'T DO THAT! F'real. I'm a microbiologist, and while I don't study this stuff myself I've seen some talks and papers about wearing old disposable lenses. Bacteria love being... |
Compound Interest | This seems like the sort of thing I will be facing in the future, (mortages, insurance benefits, et al) and I want to make sure I have a good grasp on it. A basic example and some explination of your math would be a great help. | Let's say that you want to borrow $100 from me. I say that it's fine but each week you don't pay me back, you owe an extra 10%. It seems fair to you and you agree. After the first week, you've made no payments to me so 10% of $100 means you owe me an extra $10. Now you owe me $110. Another week goes by and you still ha... |
why do Bitcoin atms require a photo id, palm print and government issued id if Bitcoin is supposed to be anonymous? | The draw to Bitcoin is anonymity but these "public atms" want more personal info than the DMV..
TLDR: bitcoin is not anonymous, US law requires collecting info for anti-money laundering reasons. | In the USA, anti money laundering mechanisms are in place for Bitcoin ATMs. This means each transaction must be traceable. There's nothing stopping you though from using other sources to purchase bitcoins using cash.
_URL_0_
On March 18, 2013, for instance, the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), a body wi... |
Why can't bones grow back? | They grow when a child is growing to adulthood right? Well why can't they regenerate? Seems like it would be a nifty advantage. | They do? That's why broken bones heal. If you mean why do severed and seperated bones not grow back, that's because of our genome. We don't have the "programming" to grow it back. Bone cells are too specialized to create the proteins necessary to grow back like that. Children's bones grow from their growth plates. The ... |
If Mars' atmosphere was lost when its core cooled and lost a magnetic field, why are we trying to terraform Mars to bring back an atmosphere? | Won't this one also be blown away by solar wind? | We're talking geological timescales. Supposing we had the technology to get an Earth-like atmosphere on Mars, maintaining it against the relatively minor loss due to solar wind would be simple compared to that. Mars lost its atmosphere over millions of years, it just wouldn't be a concern for a civilisation advanced en... |
Religion vs Cults | Its contentious, there are a number of different definitions of the term:
Theological = A cult is anything that differs from the religion as conventionally accepted
Sociological= a cult is anything that deliberately opposes mainsteam culture
Psychological = a cult is defined by a set of specific psychological techni... | |
When watching shows set in earlier centuries, the "Lords" or "Estate owners" always seem to be lounging all day or attending balls. Where was their wealth coming from that they didn't have to work at all? | I'm binge watching The Tudors and can't understand why nobody has a real job, but are still wealthy. | First off, don't trust TV. As far as the income of nobles in those days it came from 2 sources. 1)They owned a lot of land and got the profits of the production of that land. 2) They were the government back then, and taxes were paid to them.
As far as what they did all day generally they held court where they heard ... |
Why are most knock-offs of products made in China? | Because most regular products are made in China: the resources and facilities are already there, the only difference is quality control and who gets paid. All they have to do is take the LEGO molds, pour their own plastic for it, and make their own boxes, and you get stuff like [these](_URL_2_) ["Brick"](_URL_0_) [prod... | |
Does wearing jade as jewelry actually make it a "greener" green and if so, why? | No, there is no indication that wearing jade will change its color. This is a common myth championed by those trying to associate it with mysticism such as "energy" or "vibrations". | |
How doe home owner associations have any power? | I can't understand how arbitrary rules and regulations help anybody. How do they enforce these "codes", and what happen if somebody says, "I bought this house so fuck off". I got this idea from reading that recent thread on /r/AskReddit | Most people who are under HOA rules got that way when they bought the house and agreed to the rules of the HOA. You sign a contract and so they can enforce that contract. You also agree that if you sell the house you will require the buyer to sign that contract in order to buy the house. |
why do bugs lay on their back when they die? | Just swept up a roach, and had this thought. | When a bug is ailing, either from pesticides or dehydration or starvation, they lost coordination in their legs. Their legs tend to bend or curl. This is either because the legs relax naturally and curl or because blood stops flowing to the legs and as a result, they curl. They also tend to struggle against this and... |
Why do roses have prickles? | [removed] | As in thorns? They're for protection from predators, plus they help the plant to retain water by catching it as it drops down, and resist wind activity by providing more surface area for the wind to hit, spreading the force out. |
If Ebola is so difficult to transmit (direct contact with bodily fluids), how do trained medical professionals with modern safety equipment contract the disease? | They're in contact with bodily fluids far more often than you or I would be. They take precautions, sure, but when you deal with something that frequently unlikely things can happen.
EDIT - I should have also mentioned something about fatigue and how it can cause individual lapses in safety protocols. This probably ... | |
Why does burping a sealed container (e.g. Tupperware) help food stay more fresh? | By reducing the amount of air in the container, you reduce the chance of oxidation and bacteria growth, but the main reason is that by lowering the air pressure inside the container, it stays closed - outside air pushing harder on the lid than the air inside.
As long as it is sealed, no new pathogens can contaminate w... | |
are reality-style game shows (survivor, big brother, the challenge) obligated to be "fair" | Explained further... Can producers legally skew a game to benefit certain players? Could they "rig" a competition in the interest of ratings? | They are only regulated by the audience. If an audience found out of a show with any sort of foul play, especially if the show advertised otherwise, then the show would lose views and therefore profitability. So its in the interest of the producer to regulate fair play, but he doesn't have any legal obligation to. |
The security implications Microsoft's "golden key" backdoor, present in all copies of Windows since Windows 8. | Lucky for you I wrote something up for another comment thread. I'll copy it here verbatim so ignore the stuff about OP's title ;).
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# Important
There seems to be a mix of people using "key" in the cryptographic sense, and "key" in a more layman's sense. This difference is pretty important. In cryptography, a k... | |
If regular soap and water kills germs, why doesn't it lead to stronger strains of bacteria (like we're warned antibacterial handsoap could)? | [deleted] | Soap and water works more by washing germs off than actively killing them. So the bacteria are under less evolutionary pressure to adapt. |
Why is our sky blue at noon but at sunrise and sunset it's red/orange? | It's due to something called [Rayleigh scattering](_URL_0_). Basically, light interacts with the air and scatters. However unlike normal scattering (like you would have with a light in a room), this scattering is proportional to the *wavelength* of the light. Hence higher frequency light (like blue light) is scattered ... | |
In commercials, why do they never reference "the leading brand" by name? | Name recognition. They don't want to mention anything in their ad by name that will distract you from their product. | |
Why do you always have to go to the bathroom really bad, when you have coffee with a cigarette in the morning? | [removed] | Coffee is a diuretic, meaning is basically helps push substances through your body quickly. It almost has a flushing effect, id you will. Nicotine (from the cigarette) stimulates and heightens your metabolism, partly why peoole that quit gain weight. Combine the two and thats the experience you'll find. |
How is access to the internet not yet considered a utility, and what would it take for it to become one? | [deleted] | The standard utilities - water and power primarily - are fundamentally services. As a result, they are much easier to regulate at a state/local level. Over time, this meant that they developed organically into public utilities.
In contrast, telecommunications services are non-local almost by definition. So they dev... |
What are Recurrent Neural Networks and how do they work? | Let's back up a bit and talk about decision problems in general. Let's say you want to make an AI that can look at a person's medical records and their current symptoms and determine what disease they have. First, you get a bunch of existing data (patients, with their full medical data plus their correct diagnosis) a... | |
why can't we just throw trash balls into the sun? | Or into space? There's a lot more room out there... So, why not? | Because getting stuff off earth into space is incredibly, astoundingly, stupidly expensive and will generate way more trash in the process than ends up in space.
The laws of physics are not in our favour; typically 85%-90% of a rocket has to be propellant, ejected back towards earth to push the rocket into space.
Na... |
The reason diesel fuel is more expensive than regular gasoline. | [removed] | It's more expensive than gasoline in the U.S. and vice versa in European countries because it is taxed higher in the U.S.
Reagan signed the Deficit Reduction Act in 1984 which raised the tax on diesel higher than gasoline. |
Why do our brains favor memorization via images instead of memorization via words? | [removed] | I reckon it has to do with us seeing things with our eyes (and learning/interpreting from that information) for far longer as a species than we have learning or interpreting things through language.
In fact, IIRC, language was only developed far later in the existence of the human species. So think of it as our brains... |
why does the air in potato chip bags not make the chips stale, but if I leave the bag open later, the chips get stale very quickly? | It's packed with nitrogen which will prevent the spoilage. If it was just regular air, then they would have gone stale. | |
When old pieces of footage for example WW2 are given the HD treatment, how is this done exactly? If the original footage is so poor how do they manage to make it HD? | The original footage isnt poor. Original physical film actually has a very very high quality. Giving it an HD treatment just means scanning the original reel with a really nice scanner. Then they usually go in and repair frames in Photoshop etc that have issues. | |
How does a hacker actually begin hacking? | [removed] | The first thing you do, after you decide who you're going to hack, is ***Footprinting.***
This is gathering all the information you can about your target. Internet WHOIS, DNS information, nslookup data, key personnel, etc.
Next, you need to figure out what IP addresses are actually there and listening. You do this by... |
What causes someone's eyes to turn red or not to turn red after smoking marijuana | Marijuana lowers blood pressure by dilating blood vessels causing them to be visible in the eye hence the redness. | |
Cinco de Mayo became popular when Civil Rights leaders want to spread Mexican culture. Why do people think it's wrong for white Americans to join in the celebration? | [Wiki article](_URL_0_).
My Facebook is full of people saying how it's wrong to drink tonight, but nobody's been able to explain why.
Tons of non-Bavarian people celebrate Oktoberfest; everyone's Irish on Saint Paddy's Day. Both of them have been exploited by massive beer companies. What's the difference? | Because most people are unaware of why Cinco de Mayo was spread and thus see it as appropriation. Facebook is not the best place to get well informed information.
> Tons of non-Bavarian people celebrate Oktoberfest; everyone's Irish on Saint Paddy's Day. Both of them have been exploited by massive beer companies. Wh... |
How do actors cry on demand--visible tears and all? | Are most that can do this actually just that into their role in the moment? Is that a skill people can practice? | Acting school teaches many different techniques, but some people still can't do it, so those actors often avoid those shots, or they do a trick to make it happen (sprays in between takes).
Some people can think of a loved one who has passed, some can think of a certain song. Some can strain their eyes without blinkin... |
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