What the heck are tectonic plates and what they do?

The crust of the Earth is, more or less, just where it is so cold that the molten rock has gotten a chance to freeze over. This crust of frozen rock (as in it is now solid again instead of flowing around like it does further down) helps insulate the interior of the Earth.

Thin layer of solid rock up on top where it is cold. A lot of hot molten stuff below. The further down you go, the hotter it gets.

Hot things tend to expand and become less dense than when they are cold. This means that molten rock near the core of the Earth gets really hot and floats up towards the solid rock crust. There it cools off again and, eventually, drops.

This means there is a current. Much like the ocean. Except these currents move really slowly. Rock is a lot denser than water and it takes a lot longer for the flow to happen.

All this movement just below the crust causes it to fracture. In some places the hot stuff even pushing its way out. This is where we get volcanoes. But, let's get back to the crust being broken apart.

The crust, that is the solid part near the surface, is being pulled and pushed in different directions as this hot current moves underneath it and tries to drag the solid part along with it. This means that the crust of the Earth is separated into several huge plates and they are bumping into each other.

But it is taking place incredibly slowly.

Now let's move away from ice and talk about cars. Two cars hit each other with a head on collision. Their bumpers aren't the same height. What happens? When they hit the car with the higher bumper tends to go up. The one with the lower bumper tends to go down.

Okay. Now two cars with the bumper in the same place hit. What happens? Depends on how they hit, really. Sometimes it creates a push upwards and the front of both cars lift. Sometimes it causes a push downwards and both cars bend towards the road.

Similar things happen when plates collide. But it is much, much, much slower. How slow? Slow enough that the impact doesn't cause the rocks to shatter. Instead the rock faces of the plates keep pushing at each other until the rock actually bends.

Yes, solid rock will bend. It just takes a lot of constant force taking place over a long, long time.

When two plates collide into each other they don't always hit evenly. Sometimes one gets shoved under the other. Sometimes both sides go up. Sometimes both sides go down. It depends on how they collide, at what angle, and how the plates are matched.

When the force is directed upwards the rock is bent up to become mountains. When it is bent downwards it can form valleys or trenches.

Because the places between the plates offer a natural connection to the hot magma below, most volcanoes occur along the plate boundaries. Earthquakes happen along the plate boundaries (fault lines) and that is due to the fact that these rocks that are moving past one another aren't that well lubricated. Even though the movement is slow, there is still a lot of energy needed to move something the size of a continent. If you press the palms of your hands together tightly and slide them across one another you'll notice a lot of slipping. It will move, the bumps on your hands will catch one another causing it to stop, and then the steady pressure causes you to push past this and it moves faster all at once as the energy is released. Same idea. The movement gets stuck or slowed down by something. Once it gets past this obstacle a lot of energy is released all at once and there is a lot of movement right there along the fault line. Something that was moving at an inch a year suddenly moved a foot or so. That releases a lot of energy at once and earthquakes are the shock waves from this.

Rock goes from liquid to solid because its too cold where we are for rock to stay a liquid. Still, there is a lot of movement down below at it causes the crust to break up a bit and twist, turn, and crash together in places.

If water damage is so bad, how come houses can be doused by rain during construction?

Mold doesn't grow IN wood. It grows in warm, damp and, importantly, dark places. Having water leak into your climate-controlled house, in between the walls or in crawl spaces is how you get mold infestations.

It's also important to note that just splashing some water on your wall will not cause mold to grow. If you soak the timber making up the frame of the house, but then you put the roof on, and the sheathing on the walls, the house dries up pretty quick, which makes it unsuitable for mold growth. As long as the spaces between the walls stays reasonably dry, even if mold spores ended up there at one time, they will die off.

To recap, in order to get mold in your house:

• Relatively warm
• Regularly damp
• Reasonably dark

How do celebrities keep their cell numbers and personal emails so locked down?

Aliases. This is a big part of their lives. They use aliases whenever they travel or go to a restaurant. They usually stick with the same one, but some have three or four they use in rotation.

Account holders. A lot of celebrities, especially the wealthier ones, don't have many accounts in their actual names. Some things might be registered to a corporation or LLC. Some items might be addressed to lawyers, agents or accountants, depending on the situation.

Different contact information. Some celebrities have a work email or work cell, which they don't often use but they give out when they need to. This is typically handled on a day-to-day basis by an assistant, and is the most common way to get a hold of a celebrity. If you want to call them, you have to go through an assistant who will then forward you to a private line-- and you'll never know that number. They also might have personal email or cell that they only give to very select individuals-- truly close friends and family.

Premium accounts. A lot of services offer VIP accounts for celebrities. This helps give them preferential treatment and services that limit access from the general public.

All this requires a lot of juggling. And, yes, it gets compromised… all the time. That means abandoning old emails or cell phone numbers with great frequency. That means getting calls from strangers or fans in the middle of the night. That means losing important email in a flood of fan spam when you have to throw away an account over the weekend.

It means getting hacked and having your personal information stolen by a concerted effort or brute force attack. Having you privacy invaded, and your personal photos distributed across the internet. Then later getting blamed by the general online community because you didn't do enough to protect yourself.

Then trying to protect yourself, but realizing no matter what you do, someone-- maybe a fan, maybe some blackhat pervert, maybe a stalker with a very dark ulterior motive-- is actively trying to gain access to your life and will at some point succeed.

Why does breast cancer awareness receive more marketing and fund than prostate cancer?

Only 12% of women (~1 in 8) will develop invasive breast cancer.

Compare that to men (65+ years): 6 in 10 will develop prostate cancer (60%).

• Prostate cancer is generally only in older men (I was kind of off the end of most charts at the age of 40), whereas breast cancer strikes women at earlier ages on average, often when they still have young families at home.
• Prostate cancer is a slow killer. Most men who have prostate cancer do not die of prostate cancer. That is not so for breast cancer.
• Men do not like talking about having prostate cancer, principally because even the treatment options attack masculinity. There is a high chance that the treatment will leave you impotent or incontinent or both. Since they don't talk about it, they don't engage as much in support groups or awareness movements, compared to women with breast cancer.
• Before the 1980s, people didn't talk a lot about breast cancer, and likely for similar reasons (it's personal, it's dealing with our naughty bits, it makes people feel like less of a man/woman), but there was a women's health movement during the 1980s and '90s that really helped create awareness around breast cancer. No one has done the same for prostate cancer. OP is asking "why is X given more attention to Y," and part of the answer is "because someone went to the effort to create awareness for X, and if someone wanted to, they could do the same for Y." It didn't happen overnight. It was a long campaign that took a lot of time and effort, and we haven't seen many men becoming advocates for prostate cancer in the same way that women were willing to be advocates for breast cancer.

Where does the weight go when burning calories?

Body fat becomes CO2 and H2O. You get rid of CO2 through breathing and H2O through peeing or sweating. If you don't go to toilet and drink the amount of water you lost through perspiration you won't loose 1kg but you won't stay the same weight either. Because H2O stayed in your body but CO2 left.

Does sending more data to my phone actually cost my carrier more money?

They did spend more energy, although that's a very small cost.  What you did is consume a greater share of the bandwidth. Building bandwidth capacity is very expensive. In order to keep up with increases in average data usage by all customers, they have to spend tons of money.

When a multi-billion dollar transaction occurs between two companies, how are the funds transferred/managed?

Typically by Wire Transfer.  Wire Transfers, unlike checks or regular electronic bank payments (known as ACH transactions in the US), are irrevocable once final -- even in the case of fraud. (That is, if someone authorized to make a wire transfer makes one, even if defrauded or illegally embezzling funds, the accountholder are still liable for the payment. If someone at the bank who isn't authorized to make a wire transfer illegally makes one, the accountholder is not liable.)

The idea is that businesses need finality when they receive payments, they can't just have money disappear from their accounts like if a "chargeback" or "stop payment" is done. If a wire transfer is made and you need your money back, you have to sue the recipient -- you can't just ask the bank to reverse the charge. For transactions between businesses, it's assumed that the need for finality outweighs the fraud protections that checks and nonwire electronic payments provide. (In the US, wire transfers are rarely used by consumers. Also why scamsters try to get you to wire money to them - people wrongly assume that wire transfers have the same protections as consumer payment systems.)

Source: The Uniform Commercial Code Article 4A.