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Why is it that when I look to myself in the mirror I think “damn I’m hot” but when I see myself in pictures I seem to be comparatively uglier?
Most cameras have a narrow focal length and it can distort the way your face looks, like so…When you look in a mirror you’re seeing yourself as others see you, and not how a camera sees you.
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- stoopdapoop
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What processes happen in your body when you get knocked out?
Jaw Impact
A punch to the jaw causes the head to suddenly spin around. This quick motion of causes trauma to the brain that knocks the recipient out leaving him unconscious. Points on the jaw that are especially vulnerable to knockouts are the sides of the chin, and where the jaw is attaches to the skull.
Acceleration and Deceleration
When the jaw is punched, the head quickly accelerates around. After a fraction of a second, it quickly decelerates as muscles, tendons, and bones prevent the head from spinning any further. The brain inside the skull is floating in fluid. It accelerates slower than the rest of the head. This forces it to crash into the inside of the skull when the head stops.
*Brain Trauma * When the brain slams into the inside of the skull, it suffers trauma. It then bounces off the inside of the skull and slams into the opposite side. This causes even more trauma. Depending on the force of the punch, this can happen several times before the brain comes to rest inside the skull.
Nervous System Response
The trauma to the brain stimulates an overwhelming number of neurotransmitters to fire at the same time. This essentially overloads the nervous system sending it into a state of temporary paralysis. The person who is hit in the jaw loses consciousness and his muscles relax. The injured person falls to the ground with no memory of being hit.
Recovery
A person who is knocked out by a punch to the jaw suffers a severe concussion. It can take anywhere from several seconds to several minutes to regain consciousness. It all depends on the severity of the brain trauma. In mild cases, the person who is knocked out can shake off the punch with little more than a headache. In severe cases, brain trauma from a knockout punch to the jaw can cause cerebral bleeding and death.
Source: http://www.livestrong.com/article/25152-punch-jaw-cause-knockout/#ixzz2lliYRnYR
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Where do “black sounding” names come from?
There are different elements at work in what you refer to as “black sounding” names. The names that are popular for Black babies born today are not the same ones that were popular 10 years ago. As another contributor here mentioned, during the civil rights movement black people started to try to redefine their culture as one of pride, instead of oppression. One of the ways they did that was to reject the European and often classical names they’d been given up to that point. (Some of the most popular “slave names” for example, were from Greek and Roman history. A few were obscure Biblical names. Those were given to slaves by their masters to show how educated and worldly the masters were.) In the French speaking south, names with the prefixes “De-” and “La” because more popular as they were a way of connecting a child to their father. Those prefixes were simply added to European names. They connote “son of” or “daughter of” respectively. Once civil rights were enacted, there was an embracing of names that “sounded” African. The prefixes were still often attached, now more for their style than for any paternal link to the name.
Now, Black Americans are using a pretty diverse group of names. There are some names that are much more popular with Blacks than with Whites, including Neveah, Messiah, King, and others of that ilk. The “La” names have fallen far out of fashion.
- Nomakeme
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The TI-89 Calculator has been around since 1998, still costs $200, and has yet to have been replaced as the standard… why?
Blame CollegeBoard, the company that administers SAT and AP exams.
They only allow certain specified models of Casion, HP, Radio Shack, Sharp, TI, and a few others. They’re also very strict about NOT using app-based smartphones as a substitute in their tests.
Further, many college math classes require them, and have stuck with particular models, especially TI, as they or their teaching assistants can help with those, but not some random app you downloaded last week.
With students forced to buy these, and college stores stocking them as a result, TI has little incentive to innovate or bring the price down.
- gmsc
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How do apps like Instagram and Vine make money without ads? H ow does it sustain itself?
Some apps aren’t paid or display adds because their objective is to create a vast pool of users. Note that with no advertisement or fee, users have less inertia to adopt the service. When the number of users is vast and accepted as a “must have” app, the producer starts to study ways to generate income or intends to sell it.
Is a comum business model for app makers: make it, growth it, sell it.
These companies typically have investors who are willing to hold onto the company for a while until they can monetize it. Instagram was bought by Facebook and doesn’t have ads yet, and may not need to. If it drives enough traffic to Facebook or makes Facebook ads more profitable, then they might decide it is still more valuable without ads. We’ll see.
- MininiM89
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Why are humans unable to consume raw meat such as poultry and beef without becoming sick but many animals are able to?
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Humans can eat all food types raw – there is nothing “wrong” with our digestive system. You can eat veggies, meat, and fish raw but it carries the risk of you contracting a foodborne illness (e.g. bacteria, parasite, or fungal contamination of food). The issue isn’t the raw-ness per se, but rather the increased risk of getting a foodborne illness.
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ALL foods carry the risk of contracting a foodborne illness if eaten raw. Same thing goes for untreated water, in which case you carry the risk of contracting a waterborne illness like giardia.
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Modern food distribution and water treatment systems make it harder for these foodborne/waterborne illnesses to get to you. However, we still have foodborne illness outbreaks on raw food because our system is not 100% safe. For example, when recalls are made for E. coli or salmonella outbreaks on tomatoes, lettuces, etc. Always try to prepare your food before eating it, this can save your life or at the very least save you from a very unpleasant couple of days.
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Preparing food (e.g. cooking, boiling, washing, peeling, freezing, smoking) all help reduce the risk of contracting a foodborne illness. Cooking specifically also has the added benefit of being easier to digest and enables us to extract more calories from cooked food. A double win.
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Wild animals and domestic animals can also and often do contract foodborne and waterborne illnessess. You shouldn’t let your dog drink from an untreated stream because they can get giardia just like you. Any wildlife biologist, parasitologist, or veterinarian will tell you that wild animals and domestic animals (if left untreated or in unsanitary/crowded conditions) are/can be rife with parasites, foodborne, or waterborne illnesses. My point is animals are also susceptible to the same, and sometimes different, foodborne illness that we are.
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The only animals that have a much stronger (but not perfect) digestive system are carrion eaters like buzzards or vultures. They have very strong digestive systems that make it hard for foodborne illnesses to take hold.
- PopcornMouse
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How did Scientology evolve from Sci-Fi into an organized religion with literal believers?
Like all things, Scientology was created in steps. A common misconception is that Scientology arose directly from his science-fiction writings. It did not do this. The two were written separately by the same person.
It began in the 1950’s when Hubbard published a self-help series under the name “Dianetics.” Dianetics, while slightly odd, is not religious or spiritual in itself. Instead, it is a form of Psychoanalysis or Introspection akin to seeing a regular therapist (But much less effective, mind you!) Because of this, Dianetics can actually have a positive influence on a person’s life, as it really just uses a modified form of standard, effective practices.
Dianetics became popular due to the “do-it-yourself” nature, and because of the limited effectiveness of it. People looked to future writings by Hubbard.
About 2 years later, Hubbard published his first writing on Scientology, in a book entitled Scientology, a religious philosophy. At the same time, Hubbard registered several churches under various names relating to Scientology. It was here that his self-help Psychology took the form of a religion. The book expanded Dianetic’s importance to that of the soul, however, it was still not the quackery that we know today. For many “public” Scientologists, the knowledge of their religious texts stops roughly here, and they are unaware of the Space Opera of later texts.
So the steps to the initial founding were simple enough, and varying opinions on religions aside, nothing was too crazy yet. There was simply one caveat: These books, and “professional” dianetics sessions (Auditing) were not free. People invested a lot of money into this.
As a followup, how did it get into the state that it is now?
Hubbard built up a large circle of supporters. These people had been helped in some way by the low-level teachings of Scientology, and (though its importance was probably mostly sub-concious) invested a great deal of time and money into it. This inner circle focused more on following Hubbard than following his teachings. It was to this circle that Hubbard began to present the strange tenants and space opera aspects of Scientology. In fact, the “crazy” we know was not developed until the mid-sixties, more than ten years after the initial founding of Scientology. By this point, people had become so invested in the religion that they followed it with unwavering faith. Of course, many would have left upon seeing it, but for every person who did so there was someone who believed Hubbard.
- Triddy
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Historically, why have Jews been so mistreated, blamed, and oppressed?
1) Jews were outsiders.
They (pretty much) originated as a nomadic people. They kept wandering around to places that other people already called home, places like Egypt and Babylon. We’ll call these non-nomadic people “landed people.” Every time Jews showed up to a new town, village, or city, everyone already there saw them as outsiders that wanted to profit from what the “hard-working” landed people had made. “The Jews wanted to take their jobs,” as the landed people saw it.
2) Jews kept to themselves and kept their own traditions, even when living inside of landed peoples’ cities.
From their beginning, people of the Jewish faith were a “devoutly insular group.” They did not typically marry “outsiders,” nor did they stay anywhere for too long, and they commonly didn’t invite any outsiders in to participate in their “Jewish games” and other fun times. This made landed people feel like the Jews thought they (the Jews) were better than them (whichever landed people were currently getting pissed off at them, be it the Egyptians, the Babylonians, etc). So, during a time when a lot of areas were becoming more ethnically diverse (from wars, political maneuvering, etc.), Jews remained mostly ethnically insular. You can find this with the first few generations of almost any immigrant population in the world. The Jews kept it going strong for about 2,500 years though.
3) Jews only had one God, whereas a lot of people had many.
People hate it when you don’t believe the dumb shit they believe.
4) Roman authorities told Christians that Jews were to blame for Jesus’ death.
After the Roman Catholic Church came to power under the Roman Emperor Constantine, they attempted to solidify power among their ruled. Their ruled being Christians (which “all” the Romans were supposed to be now). Other religions were seen as a threat to their power. Since Jesus was actually Jewish himself, these usurpers quickly needed to find a way to dissuade converts to Christianity from being sympathetic to Jewish people and their faith. “I know! Let’s write them in as the people that killed Jesus. Somehow. Even though it doesn’t really make a lot of sense.”
5) Jews could loan out money and charge interest. Christians couldn’t.
During the rise of Christianity in Rome and then throughout almost the entirety of Europe during the Middle Ages, it was forbidden for Christians to practice “usury.” Meaning, a Christian was forbidden to “loan” money to others, and then charge them interest on the loan. You know, that thing that every single bank, credit card company, and Wall Street businessperson does all the time now.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usury
However, Jews were NOT required to obey this mandate. So, a lot of Jewish people ended up getting VERY wealthy by cornering the market on banking. Even to this day, a lot people believe there is some kind of global conspiracy that the Jews are out to steal everyone’s money.
So, there you have it. Jews were outsiders that kept to themselves that people in power used as scapegoats because they were the ancient world’s equivalent of zombies. It was ethically okay to hate them because they had only one god that they totally believed was better than all of your gods and could beat them up in a fight. And then, because of a loophole in the dominate religion’s fiscal doctrine, Jews got really wealthy while simultaneously making others in debt to them.
People fucking hate being in debt to others.
- laioren
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How does Google search the whole internet for something in a matter of seconds or even less?
Google spends all day every day searching the web with bots. Websites and their data are catalogued in a database and when you search, it is the database that is being looked through. It’s also not the whole Internet. Lots of sites have code that prevents them from showing up in the search engine.
- Hayleyk
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Why is internet in America so expensive?
There are two big reasons: Infrastructure and Monopolies/greed.
America is huge. Really huge. I hear it’s hard for some Europeans to even comprehend its size, considering there’s a couple STATES that all of England could fit into. From tip of Maine to coast of California is almost a week of driving 14+ hours/day, if not more. This means in order for a company to build up a strong network across the country takes a lot of time, manpower, and money. So it’s hard for any new companies to form, because forming new infrastructure is a MASSIVE investment which takes a really long time to recover from.
Why not just upgrade the existing infrastructure then? Well, that’s where point two comes in. Because the infrastructure is so expensive, there’s only so much of it to go around, and only a handful of companies big enough to manage it all. Comcast, AT&T, Verizon, to name a few, own the vast majority of the cables that make up the internet in America. The onus is on them to perform these upgrades. In fact, the government even gave them money to do just that. Instead of delivering on the promise of “We’ll take this money and build infrastructure”, they used some legal trickery to end up pocketing most of it, while not upgrading the networks nearly as much as they should have.
So you’ve got these companies that own existing infrastructure that refuse to upgrade it. The market should dictate that someone willing to come in and perform those upgrades could compete, right? Well, turns out the cable companies have agreements in place where they won’t compete in certain regions. In cases where they don’t, they even get local governments to sign agreements saying they won’t let their competitors come in and build new infrastructure to compete with them (usually in exchange for a few years of cheap rates for their community). So now you have existing, mediocre infrastructure with no way to compete against it without building an entirely new network. You can see how this monopoly would be hard to break.
There’s also a whole lot of politics involved. The FCC is in charge of managing communications networks in America, and they tend to be very hit or miss. I don’t have a lot of details handy, but there’s plenty of information out there if you’re interested in how these companies are getting away with what they’re doing.
Pretty much our only hope of salvation at this point is Google. They’re (slowly) building a fiber optic network, with speeds that far and away surpass even the most expensive consumer level plans at the other ISPs. It’s not really clear at this point if their goal is to truly build a stronger internet for the whole country, or if they’re just trying to scare ISPs into actually upgrading to speeds that are acceptable. In Googles eyes, I don’t think they care, as long as the network improves, because a lot of their services (youtube, their data processing, etc) require high bandwidth that the current infrastructure can’t really support. Personally, I hope to hell that they expand their fiber network across the country and we finally have real, true competition to shop from.
- b1ackcat
The post 10 Answers To Questions You Always Wondered About appeared first on Caveman Circus.
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