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56nb2s | why is russian threatening war with the us? | Can someone please explain what the US has done to make Russia threaten nuclear war? Why are they putting their personnel/citizens through radiation preparedness training for possible imminent war? I understand it is related to the war in Syria, but I would appreciate more context. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/56nb2s/eli5_why_is_russian_threatening_war_with_the_us/ | {
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"At thsi stage Russian rhetoric is intended for internal consumption. They are trying to solve internal problems with external moves. Ukraine, Syria, threats to USA and Europe are all part of the same policy.",
"This does not happen in real life, only in your tabloids. Russia did not threaten nuclear war and does not put its personnel/citizens through radiation preparedness training for possible imminent war. Simple as that.",
"Its all about political grandstanding. Putin knows the US will back down if he pushes, which make him look powerful and improved his internal ratings. One of the few things the Russian people are happy with when it comes to their government is foreign policy. Putin knows this and plays it to the max.",
"Here is a summary of events up to now:\n\n-Ukraine's economy was collapsing and everyone knew. Ukraine had to join either Russia's economy or the Euro.\n\n-The EU have a shit deal (which would basically make all Ukrainians suffer for the next 20 years). Russia offered a nice deal. Ukrainians hate Russia (due to USSR and history).\n\n-No decision was made. Economy collapsed. Secret protestors/revolutionaries/freedom fighters/mercenaries were brought in to grab control (both by Russia and US).\n\n-Crimean Russians/KGB took over Crimea, declared independence, wanted to join Russia. Russia said yes. US said no.\n\n-US moved their mercenary forces (Rebels / ISIS, aka Alnusra / Kurdish fighters) into Syria (Russia's has their Naval base here). Russia was pissed.\n\n-US and Russia went into peace negotiations. ISIS, rebels, government forces pulled back. (When I discovered that ISIS was just another mercenary force)\n\n-Negotiations failed, fighting kept going. Several talks occurred, but nothing resulted.\n\n-Currently, Russia is winning Aleppo. USA feels weak. Russia senses this and doubled defences by bringing in their S300/400 missile defence system.\n\n-USA thinking of how to declare war on Russia without declaring war on Russia. Russia's economy decreasing a lot (due to oil price offensive by Saudis..USA's 2nd BFF). ",
"Russia is dealing with a collapsing, oil based economy and has massive social problems at home. Putin is distracting people from their domestic reality through adventurism. The US plays the natural role of the villain in the fantasy. "
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7dytgy | what is the feeling of semi-weakness people sometimes get when they are cold? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7dytgy/eli5_what_is_the_feeling_of_semiweakness_people/ | {
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"At cold temperatures, oxygen is more tightly bound to the hemoglobin in blood and does not release as easily. This slower rate of release leads to a lower amount of oxygen available to your muscles, making contraction more difficult.\n\nAlso when we are cold, blood is conserved around our vital organs to ensure our body continues to function, but this part may not be relevant."
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17gcvz | can someone please explain the uk academic structure to me? | I'm in the US. We have grade school, middle school, high school, and college/university. I don't understand "A-levels" and other UK school jargon. Thank you! | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/17gcvz/eli5_can_someone_please_explain_the_uk_academic/ | {
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"Right this is quite complicated:\n\nNote that the Years start on September 1st. So kids in reception will turn 5 between the September 1st and August 31st of the following year.\nAges 3 - 4: Nursery, like kindergarten (optional)\n\nAges 5 - 7: (Reception, Year 1 & 2) Infant School\n\nAges 8 - 11: (Year 3 - 6) Junior School\nJunior School and Infant Schools are often joined together in one big school called Primary Schools.\n\nAges 12 - 16: (Year 7 - 11) Secondary School.\nCurrently, compulsory education ends here. But the government is increasing the age you have to stay in school until 18. During the last two years of secondary school you do your GCSEs (General Certificate of Secondary Education). Currently, you can sit exams for the parts of the subject course during the two years but the government is changing it so you sit one big exam at the end of two years. \n\nAges 17 - 18: (Year 12 & 13) Sixth Form / College.\nThis is where you sit your A-Levels. A-levels are made up of two modules - the AS and the A2. You sit your AS exams at the end of Year 12 and your A2s at the end of Year 13s. They stick the marks of the AS and the A2 exams together to get your A-levels. In the UK, not many universities (other than oxbridge) have entrance exams. They decide entry by your A-level. Universities have requirements on what grades you need to get and they look at your personal statements and interview performance to pick who gets in.\n\nSixth Forms are often joined together with secondary schools so you stay at the same school. However, not all secondary schools have a sixth form. Colleges are NOT universities. They are like sixth forms but are not joined with a secondary school. They tend to be more independent and is a lot more like university in terms of work style compared to sixth form. \n\nAges 19+ : Uni\n\nEDIT: Grammar & formatting",
"The most important contrast between Us and UK schools is the method in which we progress through the Years. Students in public schools automatically progress through each Year, as opposed to holding end of year exams which determine whether you get to move on. Instead what we have are key sets of externally moderated exams during key years which determine which institution we progress to next.\n\n* In the UK, school begins in something called Reception (the equivalent of Kindergarten). \n\nAfter this we have Years (Grades):\n\n* 1 - 2, known as Infant School or KS1 ([Key Stage](_URL_0_) 1)\n* 3 - 6 known as Junior School or KS2 (KS2)\n\nWhilst there are schools which focus on these specific sets of years, you will generally find what is called a **Primary School** which incorporates ALL the aforementioned years.\n\nNow Year 6 is one of our KEY exam years where we have our [SATs](_URL_7_) (pronounced like cats NOT related to US S.A.Ts) \n\nNext, there is Secondary School which incorporates the years:\n\n* 7 -9 (KS3)\n\nTypically schools will give their students \"Options\" of subjects to study between Year 8 and 9 for their GCSEs\n\n* 10 - 11 (KS4)\n\nYear 11 holds the next set of independently moderated exams, [GCSEs](_URL_3_) on the subjects we chose as our options earlier in the school life.\n\nAfter this, all compulsory education used to end but as of 2013 it has expanded to include the next set of years.\n\nMost sixth forms or colleges choose their students based on their results in their GCSE's. Sixth Form / College holds the years:\n\n* 12 - 13 (KS5)\n\nHere is where we introduce the next set of independently moderated exams [A-levels](_URL_8_). Split into two sections, AS, typically studied in Year 12 and A2, typically studied in Year 13. \n\nUniversities will usually choose students based on their A-level grades and whether they are related or not.\n\nMain independent exam organisations include:\n\n* [AQA](_URL_2_)\n\n* [OCR](_URL_5_)\n\n* [Edexcel](_URL_4_)\n\n* [WJEC](_URL_6_)\n\nEdit 1: Left to find links on this and was beaten to it by [/u/Rhiokai](_URL_1_), oh well :) hope we both helped.\n\nEdit 2: Grammar"
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"http://www.edexcel.com/Pages/Home.aspx",
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b53hd7 | how does repeated exposure to "cancer causing" substances cause cancer? why doesn't the cancer begin immediately after cellular exposure? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/b53hd7/eli5_how_does_repeated_exposure_to_cancer_causing/ | {
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"Cancer is caused by cellular mutations, but not all mutations cause cancer. Some mutations have no effect. Others just kill the affected cell. Only some mutations cause the cell to divide uncontrollably, which is what cancer is.",
"Its all probability.\n\nSomething has a 90% chance of causing cancer, is still at 10% chance it doesnt.\n\nYes, you can go 10 years in an environment that has a 90% chance of causing cancer not get cancer, it's almost extremely unlikely unless all precautions are taken to reduce the risk, but possible.\n\n\nI guess as a metaphor, consider flipping a coin, heads or tails.\n\nThere is a 50% chance it will land on either. \nBut what if every time you flipped it, it landed on tails?\nThere's still a 50% chance it will land on heads, but until it does, you are cancer free.\n\n\n\nTheres a lot more going on, but i think that hits the basic.\n\n "
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8cql66 | the mindset of previous generations who thought slavery was right | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8cql66/eli5_the_mindset_of_previous_generations_who/ | {
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"A more interesting question is why we suddenly think it's wrong after *ten thousand years of it being normal*.\n\nWe're the weird ones who banned something that for the vast majority of human history was the norm. You went to war, and the losing side was killed, raped, pillaged and whatever was left was enslaved. Now we do live in more enlightened times, but slavery was a part of all human cultures for a very long time.\n\nSo really - why are you judging them for doing what their ancestors did, when you are the one bucking the trend? Doesn't make slavery right, but it sure does lend a lot of inertia to it.",
"Define slavery. If slavery is the use of people as means to the ends of other people, slavery is still going on. When you tax someone, say, 40% of their income as is the case for tons of wage-earning Americans, you're forcing them to spend 40% of their time working as means to the ends of other people. By definition, you're enslaving them. It's just a matter of degree, really. I, for one, don't think it's okay to enslave people to any extent whether it be 100% of their time or 40%. It's morally and ethically repulsive to commit people to forced labor",
"Let's make up a future in which everyone is vegetarian. Petri dish meat is the standard, every burger patty and steak has been grown in a lab. No animal is ever slaughtered and hasn't been for hundreds of years. What do you think those people in the year 2300 will think of us barbarians killing animals to eat them? \"Today we acknowledge that killing animals is horrible, just curious how an entire people could think it was ok to do so?\" will a future version of someone like you ask. The answer is easy: society tells us what is right and what is wrong. If you were born in the right time and place burning your neighbor for heresy would be the right thing to do. Other times owning a human being was ok. And now we do things future generations will look back as barbaric and horrible. That's how we work. ",
"From the Dred Scott ruling on the fugitive slave law:\n\n > They [black people] had for more than a century before been regarded as beings of an inferior order, and altogether unfit to associate with the white race either in social or political relations, and so far inferior that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect, and that the negro might justly and lawfully be reduced to slavery for his benefit. He was bought and sold, and treated as an ordinary article of merchandise and traffic whenever a profit could be made by it. This opinion was at that time fixed and universal in the civilized portion of the white race. It was regarded as an axiom in morals as well as in politics which no one thought of disputing or supposed to be open to dispute, and men in every grade and position in society daily and habitually acted upon it in their private pursuits, as well as in matters of public concern, without doubting for a moment the correctness of this opinion.\n\nThis points to several elements of the outlook that facilitated slavery:\n\n* Slavery was characterized as \"the natural order of things.\"\n\n* Black people were looked at as so different and inferior that they lacked basic humanity (and thus the rights that came with it)\n\n* Slavery was a benefit to black people \n\nThis latter point is also shown in a speech to the senate by then senator John C. Calhoun:\n\n > But I take higher ground. I hold that in the present state of civilization, where two races of different origin, and distinguished by color, and other physical differences, as well as intellectual, are brought together, the relation now existing in the slaveholding States between the two, is, instead of an evil, a good–a positive good. I feel myself called upon to speak freely upon the subject where the honor and interests of those I represent are involved. I hold then, that there never has yet existed a wealthy and civilized society in which one portion of the community did not, in point of fact, live on the labor of the other. Broad and general as is this assertion, it is fully borne out by history. This is not the proper occasion, but, if it were, it would not be difficult to trace the various devices by which the wealth of all civilized communities has been so unequally divided, and to show by what means so small a share has been allotted to those by whose labor it was produced, and so large a share given to the non-producing classes.\n\nThe abolitionist movement argued the obvious, that the above was a bunch of horseshit and that black people were not some inferior order and that slavery was morally untenable.",
"Back then, people believed that they were helping out those they enslaved. After all, the slaves they had got fed, had a roof over their head, had clothes, went to church, etc. Then, people started to think that slavery was immoral. Slaves worked for no money, except for those who had learned a skill like tailoring, but still earned close to 1 dollar a year."
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3045g7 | how are countries stockpiling oil when oil will go bad and expire in less than a year? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3045g7/eli5_how_are_countries_stockpiling_oil_when_oil/ | {
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"I think crude can be stored much longer than gasoline.",
"Unprocessed crude oil is already several million years old, another year isn't going to make it go bad. Refined products, such as gasoline can break down as lighter distillates evaporate.",
"If you expose crude oil to air it quickly oxidizes to tar. If you prevent it from contacting with oxygen it's just like if it was still underground I guess.\n"
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dhq3kh | how does "declaring war" work ? what good does it bring to the attacker ? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/dhq3kh/eli5_how_does_declaring_war_work_what_good_does/ | {
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"Typically declaring war is about allocating resources, from the funding to support the war to where troops are stationed to allocation of food, etc. \n\n & #x200B;\n\nIt can also help reinforce certain rules and conventions of warfare between the belligerent nations.",
"I tell my ambassador in your country to inform you that war will start at a certain time.\n\nIt gives you the respect of other countries. People may dislike you for launching a surprise invasion. Some other countries may get caught up by surprise, assume something different than what is happening, and think they need to get involved. Also it makes you look stronger. Declaring you will do something and then succeeding after giving the enemy time to prepare shows you really are better.",
"Declaring war helps delineate what nations you intend to attack and gives you a way to air your grievances clearly. This makes your intent clearer and helps neutral nations be less concerned about your aggression if it doesn't involve them. It lets them know that all those missiles you just launched aren't aimed at them. It can also serve as a last grasp at diplomacy.\n\nBeyond that, it gives both sides opportunity to evacuate civilians from embassies/military targets/etc. It's the \"civilized\" thing to do; not doing so can cost you sympathy among other nations. Much like the various conventions and other \"rules of war\" the main benefit is that if you follow them, it's more likely your opponents will as well, and there will be a large number of problems you don't have to deal with.",
"The country will issue a formal declaration of war, which is the first step to being declared a legal war by NATO. It also offers several benefits to both countries.\n\nFirst, it allows the defending country to surrender before hostilities ensue, which could save many lives.\n\nSecond, it allows both sides the time to set up defenses to protect their non-combatant citizens, because neither side generally wants to kill civilians.\n\nThird, it sets up very clear conditions for hostilities to cease, which means the defending country might be able to avoid bloodshed just by committing to that condition (IE: cease production of nuclear armaments).\n\nFourth, it is an open declaration that warns neighboring countries that a dangerous situation is about to break out, meaning they need to take care to close borders and provide assistance to refugees.\n\nFifth, it allows other countries to take sides, which could gain you allies.\n\nSixth, it allows other nations the opportunity to look at the grievances on both sides of the conflict, which can help to legitimize the war itself, and help it be declared a legal conflict which will prevent issues with NATO or UN forces, like; trade embargos, blockades, or military support to the defending nation.\n\nLast, an unprovoked surprise attack against another nation is a *casus belli*, an act that that justifies a declaration of war against the actor. It is also a war crime under the Geneva Convention, which further acts as a justification for retaliation by outside peacekeeping forces.\n\nI'm probably missing a lot of things, but that's the general gist of it. A seemingly unprovoked surprise attack will gain you a lot of enemies, cause a huge international incident with NATO/UN forces, and possibly lead to massive problems during and after the war, especially with the defending nation and her allies.",
"Today, it is about getting internal permission (when required by a country's government) to commit those resources, and the fact that surprise wars and invasions without a formal declaration (or causus belli) would be frowned upon by the global community and likely to warrant retaliatory action by other nations that would otherwise leave you alone.\n\nBut these are modern concerns. In ancient history, when nations were mostly autocratic and there really wasn't a global community, why then? Even though formal declarations of war were rare, they weren't unheard of, going as far back as Biblical times.\n\nFirstly, a formal declaration of war does give your enemy a chance to prepare, yes, but it also gives them a chance to surrender immediately. Regardless of your advantage, not having to fight someone is better than having to fight someone.\n\nSecondly, general codes of honor that applied to individuals also applied to countries. This is especially because they were autocratic: nations were basically considered extensions of their ruler. Just as, at an individual level, sucker punching someone is considered dishonorable, so would a surprise attack. Consider the \"gentlemanly\" days of challenging people to duels at a specific time and place. The same applied to wars. While we would consider this a stupid formality that only wastes a practical advantage (surprise), remember that back in the day people thought empires rose and fell because of the morality of their leaders.\n\nThirdly, you still had to worry about the opinions and disposition of your neighbors, even if there wasn't a cohesive global society. If your neighbors thought you were a warmonger, they might band together in defense or, worse, in offense and rid themselves of a potential threat.",
"The others do a very good job of explaining the international components. But there are also potentially internal components for some countries. \n\nIn the US for Example it gives the President more powers than he normally has. It expands his military budget, allows for the implementation of rationing of needed goods, allows for the government to take priority of the production of things shifting them to make military equipment instead of civilian, etc. It even allows the draft to be reinstated should it be needed."
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4wrws2 | what will happen if you talk to your infant/toddler exclusiey like an adult (i.e. not using baby-talk)? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4wrws2/eli5_what_will_happen_if_you_talk_to_your/ | {
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"You will find it harder to keep your baby's attention and on average your baby will develop language skills somewhat slower than its peers that are exposed to baby talk. \n\nBaby talk, interestingly enough, is *good* for infants. Baby talk holds the attention of infants better than regular speech. Because they are paying better attention, they will bond better with their parents and it also helps them develop language skills. \n\nThere is actually a lot of information to be found on this on the wikipedia article on baby talk, as well as a bunch of references. If you wanna know more, I would check there. ",
"Friend of mine did this. Mothers a deadbeat so he's raising his son.\n\nAlways talked to him like he's a real adult human being but with simplified explanations to account for his less complex comprehension.\n\nHe explains everything carefully & quite in depth. \n\nAlways answers his questions. Even through the \"why\" phase. Dude has the patience of a saint. \n\nKids one of the brightest children I've ever encountered. Based on this test group of 1 I say it's a good idea",
"Once a child has a grasp of language usually by 2 or 3 then I think it's okay. It's amazing how easier parenting can be if you simply explain the situation with out sugar coating or condescending to a child. A child needs to feel respected no matter their age. Additionally, using a broad vocabulary over time helps intelligence! It's amazing how 5 or 10 minutes of eye contact, active listening and parental patience of, how can we fix this, creates well adjusted adults!!",
"You should clarify if you mean vocabulary-wise or high pitched cutsie voice. ",
"Piggybacking off of /u/palcatraz here. I'm a developmental psych major and we've learned about this in a number of classes. It's actually considered a language called \"motherese\". It's really critical to talk to your babies with baby talk due to the intonation you use. Similarly, your facial expressions get more animated and emotive when you speak in motherese, and infants are primed to recognize facial cues. In fact, they experience extreme despair when a parent doesn't respond to them with emotive and expressive facial and vocal responses. The Still-Face Experiment is a really good display of this phenomenon. \n\n_URL_0_",
"The short answer is you get a more intelligent child. My wife and I also spoke different languages to our daughter.",
"I've always been like this with my daughter. Since day one I hadn't baby-talked her and she's pretty developed. She's three now and has known some sign language for over a year. I urged people not to talk to her like she was a baby as I've never coddled her. When she fell and wasn't visibly hurt, I told her to get up and keep walking so she never cries when she falls. She has always tried to talk like us and uses complex phrases and terminology. People here have offered evidence already, so here I am offering a personal testimony. If you give your child the means to step forward, they advance quicker. \n\n****It also helps when I reprimand her. You can yell or spank a child all you want, but she gets a lot out of being taken aside and talked to. I ask her questions and have her answer them, and give me direct responses, rather than just telling her not to do something. ",
"This is how my parents, mostly my mom, says I was raised from birth. No goo goo ga ga, just a stream of NPR and audio like that. I think they were tired of baby talk after their first kid so they just treated me like a peer. I talked early for a boy and have always been on the upper percentile for grammar, writing and reading comprehension, whatever that ACTUALLY translates to I'm not sure. I'm a writer and essentially my only pride in a skill I have is communication skills. Obviously I'm biased and it's a case study of one, but I think it works pretty well. It's how I plan on raising my kids if I have any. \n\nEdit: after reading more responses, wanted to clarify after asking. Still used high pitched tone and facial expressions when I was younger, but never held back on intense vocab or talked to me like a baby. They say they always talked to me like an adult from a young age.",
"Baby talk just doesn't come naturally to me so from a very early age (4 months or so) i would just talk constantly. Walking around the shops I'd just narrate what I was doing, 4 years later his speech is phenomenal and not to brag but hes one smart cookie.",
"I always have, and I have two very intelligent daughters, who each now \"talk\" to their very intelligent children. I can and have had great conversations with some 3 year olds (at different times of course). Maybe I'm prejudiced, but....",
"Every time I see my sisters' oldest son (7), I'm floored at how he looks me in the eye, follows cues that I don't even pick up on in day-to-day conversation, and has no problem inferring what a new word probably means. It's amazing. My sister has basically intimidated me into never having kids because I'll never raise someone as well as her. \nThis kid would be a savant, as he's more knowledgable about taxonomy and all fauna than I am...except he's got better social skills and confidence than I do. \n\nI think every parent should avoid baby talk. ",
"Applied Linguistics MA candidate here.\n\nI personally don't like using very cutesy or sugarcoated language with young children, but using exaggerated intonation, emotive expressions, simple language, and lots of repetition/rhythm (Child-Directed Speech/Motherese) is actually really good for babies. It helps teach facial/emotional cues, conveys meaning (babies can understand long before they can produce/respond), and can help prompt babies to experiment with sounds -- all the cooing, babbling, and repetitive sounds babies make are how they start to learn to put sounds together to make words. Their lips, tongues, and lungs are basically in tutorial mode. \n\nIn addition, responding to a baby's babbling with more babbling/repeating their babbling/very exaggerated child-directed speech is a way to teach babies how communication works; you'll notice in a lot of videos of pre-verbal babies on YouTube, they don't know how to form meaningful words or sentences yet, but understand how a conversation functions: you say something, stop, wait for the other person to say something in response, then respond to that. \n\nNow, not all cultures do this and their kids learn to talk just fine. But a lot of people will speak differently to children than they do to adults (and we often speak to pets the same way), and there is a developmental purpose for that. ",
"We did this. Son was reading at four. Daughter was reading at three.\n\nWhy fill their heads with a bunch of crap that they will have to unlearn?",
"Check out Magda Gerber and RIE. For me and my kid what felt right was to speak normally but simply, with a lot of encouragement, smiles, and physical interaction (cuddles, high fives). Up until she was about 1 she enjoyed exaggerated facial expressions and a higher tone. I try to keep corrective comments neutral and explain why I don't want her to do this or that. She comprehends a lot more than she can articulate, they all do. From when she was born I've always explained things and told her what's going on."
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38pjv6 | why doesn't the iphone turn on immediately when plugged in to charge? | Every other phone I've ever had could do that easily. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/38pjv6/eli5_why_doesnt_the_iphone_turn_on_immediately/ | {
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"iPhone has a setting that doesn't allow it to turn on until it has sufficient battery to get through startup process (typically 5%). Could cause data loss issues if phone shuts off during startup"
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2bdtug | . why do we say "1800's" and not "one thousand eight-hundred ? | This has been on my mind for quite some time and wanted to see the answers I get from the community of Reddit. Thanks !
EDIT:( first post sorry if I'm not doing this right.) | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2bdtug/eli5_why_do_we_say_1800s_and_not_one_thousand/ | {
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"It's way more convenient and less of a mouthful. Just like how we say \"nineteen hundreds\" instead of \"one thousand and nine hundred\".",
"It's easier to say. Simple.\n\n\"one thousand eight-hundred and eighty nine\" for example is just a damn mouthful."
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1pa2xl | the british/canadian/austrailian parliamentary system? | I've been following the politics of those countries for a while, but am not quite sure I completely understand the process and Wikipedia isn't always helpful. I'm FAR better than just about any American I know, but would still like to know more.
What are the constituencies? In the US, they're divided up either by state or population.
Who writes bills? Do they go immediately to committees, then to a floor vote?
What do your political parties support/stand for?
Etc., etc. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1pa2xl/eli5_the_britishcanadianaustrailian_parliamentary/ | {
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"My answers will apply for Australia, as that is where i am. Perhaps someone else can answer for the others.\n\n1. Boundaries are drawn by a Redistribution Committee, and apportionment (districts) within a state is on the basis of the number of enrolled voters rather than total residents. Source: _URL_0_\n\n2. Any Senator or Member may introduce a proposed law (a bill), except for a money bill (a bill proposing an expenditure or levying a tax), which must be introduced in the House of Representatives. In practice, the great majority of bills are introduced by ministers. Bills introduced by other Members are called private members' bills. All bills must be passed by both Houses to become law. The Senate has the same legislative powers as the House, except that it may not amend money bills, only pass or reject them. Source: _URL_1_\n\n3. The 2 major parties are [The Coalition](_URL_2_), commonly called The Liberals as they form the majority, and [Labor](_URL_3_). For simplicities sake, The Coalition is equivalent to the Republicans and Labor is equivalent to the Democrats.\n\nAnother thing you might like to know are over here voting is compolsory; that is if you are enrolled to vote, you have to vote or be fined. You can however \"donkey vote\" in which you put in an illegitimate vote that is then not counted.\n\nHope that helped.",
"UK I can kind of help with. \n\nFirstly this - _URL_1_\n\nWe have several different systems for different votes/elections. (And I won't go into which voting system we use, though it's *really* interesting). \n\nAs you can see, we have (for me, for example), GLA (rep and Mayor) and Parliamentary votes. On top of this, I get to vote for a MEP (Member of the European Parliament) (voter fatigue, hells yes). \n\nTwo Houses of Parliament:\nOne Upper, Appointed (non-voted), ~750 strong House of Lords\nOne Lower, Voted in through constituency votes (1 MP/consti.), 650 strong House of Commons. \n\nThe party with the most votes in the House of Commons usually becomes the Government. The Leader of the winning party becomes the Prime Minister, her/his Deputy becomes Deputy Prime Minister. (This is all ignoring coalisions). The PM (having probably already sorted it out) choses members of his party to become Ministers - these are the Cabinet, who help with key decisions and are responsible for their areas; so Housing Minister, Minister for Education. They can also make or destroy these positions, so next time round we could have a Minister for Ripping You Off. It could happen. (See: DoSAC/The Thick Of It). \n\nThe second biggest party usually becomes the Official Opposition. They usually then have a 'Shadow Cabinet'; the exact opposite of the Government Cabinet, so there's always someone to argue with. \n\nThe Lords just sit there, really. There are Spiritual Lords (26) who are religious leaders and automatically get the position, and there are Temporal Lords which are all 'life peerages'. They're the ones appointed by a combo of the PM suggesting it to the Monarch, who has to sign off on it. They're in it forever. The Heritary peers we used to have (so you could inherit the position) are now mostly gone, they're sexist and pointless, and not really well regarded. \n\nSo - Acts of Parliament.\n\nThese start out as Papers, then go on to being Bills (not ratified) and then finally Acts (statues on the British entrenched, but uncodified constituition. [Thank you A2 Politics])\n\nStarts out in either House, as a Green Paper which is basically a feeler of opinion on a subject - 'XX is a problem. Should we do A, B or C?' Alternatively, it can be published as a White Paper, which is 'XX is a problem. We'd like to fix it with C'. \n\nSo then the Cabinet comes into play and (even though they're the ones who usually are behind them being released) a Ministry will take on responsibility to draft a Bill on this subject. The Bill is essentially a full blown write up of the Act, just not in Law yet. This goes through several stages (which I did have to look up the differences for) and then is handed over to the Lords, to go through the same process:\n\n1. 1st Reading - This is the Bill, look at my loverly Bill.\n2. 2nd Reading - Vote on my loverly Bill. Bill, why don't you like my loverly Bill?\n3. Committee - Loads of people sit around discussing the Bill and possible alterations, it's just a chance to chat about it and make amentments 'What don't you like, Bill?'. \n4. Report - Ideas and amendments are made now, so the Bill is in a new form. 'Look at my New Bill!'\n5. 3rd Reading - Last chance saloon, if you don't like it - speak up now. \n\nOver to other House, repeat the above. \n\nIf both Houses agree, there's a last scrutiny, but then there's Royal Assent (where we force the Queen to sign it) and then it's a Law. \n\nThen five years later, we vote another Party in as Government and they overturn it. \n\nQuestions? \n\nOh and Political Parties are difficult because some of them are also quite new. So:\n\nMain:\nConservatives - at worst a gang of toff old prats with too much money and power and very little going in the way of interests of the people. As the name suggests, they're conservative, and they believe that a person's money is theirs and theirs alone - they don't want people to take *their* money, but are quite happy to up the tax of the average person to prevent such a horrible act from happening. Bit racist in a 'ooh, we miss the war, way'. Used to be Anti-Europe, but now are realising that as the younger generation are more liberal and more European, going against that would be a Bad Idea. They are to us what your Republicans are to you - they are the GOP of the UK, but their politics are a little more right wing of the Democrats.\n\nLabour (New) - Are the Left Wing Main Party. Used to be very very working class up until the mid-90s when their leader died and Tony Blair turned their party into New Labour who were more centralised and appealled to a lot of people. Then they were in for 13 years, but the majority of their reign was the War on Terror, so they didn't get much done. Their first three years were great for human rights and race and gender equality though. \n\nLiberal Democrats - Probably won't ever be seen again in this form after the next election. Were further left than New Labour, very very pro Europe, bike-loving, eco-friendly, lefties (in the nicest way). Then this election, after having always been happily taking a big chunk of around 15-20% of the vote, they sided with the Tories and created a coalision to be in power. They didn't realise (naivety or stupidity) that the sheer size of the Tory party would overwhelm them. They've had to back down on every promise they made as a party before the election, and considering their polices are so close to Labour's in the left sense, will ultimately lose their position when the next election comes. They won't be anywhere near as strong as they were, which is a really sad pity. \n\nGreen: Smallest up and coming party. Does what it says on the tin - likes trees, bikes, healthy things, wants to tax cars and clean up the countryside and plant plants everywhere and keeps quiet about Europe (though is pro-it) just to keep their votes on the up. More of an honest party, starting out and building on a solid foundation of what they stand for. Bit of a worry for most people when it comes to finance though - they don't really stand for anything there, but we do worry it might have to do with Utopia and trading with rocks (I kid, but really there's no obvious association). \n\nGenerally my prediction for the next election isn't another Labour landslide unless they suddenly get a new, charasmatic leader in the next year or so (the election's in May 2015, and things are starting to get together now). I'm seeing strong Labour win, usual Conservative Opposition, though smaller than usual; Green and Liberals on equal footing, but Greens more than usual, big gains. \n\nThere are too many other parties to go through - go here for more info - or ask questions? \n_URL_0_\n",
"Speaking from a strictly British perspective here, and stand by as this could be long:\n\nConstituencies are best thought of as congressional districts - subject to change every so often via the boundaries commission. There is no set standard for size or population that I know of. Some are seen safe for a particular party, others as marginal. There was talk of standardising the population of each constituency, resulting in some being smaller but with a high density of population and vice versa. That seems to have been put on the back burner. \n\nMembers of Parliament (MP's) are elected in a first past the post system - whoever has the most votes wins. Same holds true for national elections - whoever has the most MP's forms the majority party and is invited by HM The Queen to form her next government. At the moment, the Conservative party have the majority. However, they do not have an absolute majority in the House of Commons; if all the other parties voted against them they would lose that vote. This is why they are in coalition with the Liberal Democrats. \n\nBills are primarily submitted by the Government, with a certain number of working days set aside for Opposition (second largest party) and Private Member's Bills (individuals from any party). They are given a first & amp; second reading to introduce them and say what they are all about, 'voted' on, and work through committees to iron out kinks before being submitted to further floor votes. Once both the House of Commons (Representatives - elected by Joe public) and House of Lords (unelected) are happy with it and it passes (again, first past the post, majority = win) then it is presented to the Queen for her approval and becomes law. She can veto it in principle, but this hasn't been done in over a century. \n\nPolitically, british parties are leftish, even the so called 'right' wing. The NHS is seen, quite rightly, as sacrosanct by all major political parties. As it stands, there are 3 major players:\n\nLabour Party = trade unions, left wing, pro-Europe. Not bad ideas in principle, but don't have the best track record. Currently languishing due to an ineffectual leader who stabbed his brother (who would have been a far superior leader) in the back and got in bed with the unions. Party of Blair & amp;amp; brown\n\nConservatives = privatisation, more right wing. Mainly wealthy, mostly filled with 'chaps' from Oxbridge who all have vast amounts of money and regard poorer people as the great unwashed. Currently responsible for continuing decline in living standards and poor ( but slighty improving) growth in the economy, depending on which newspapers you read. Party of thatcher, Cameron and Osborne\n\nLib Dems = waste of fucking space. Can't be trusted, constantly changing tack with a history of weak leadership. Did well at the last election as a protest vote, likely to get annihilated in 2015. \n\nI am, of course, generalising. Some of the MP's, regardless of party, are good eggs. Not all conservatives are toffs, not all labour are whinging lefties who idealise Marx and think socialism is the only way. \n\nTL;DR - it's pretty fucked up. PM me for further. ",
"Canada here. This is how it works up north...\n\n**Constituencies/Voting:**\n\n- \"Constituencies\" are broken in to Ridings, which roughly follow municipal (similar to county) lines but may subdivide highly populated municipalities or be made up of many sparsely populate ones. Here is a breakdown of ridings in Alberta to give you an idea of how they are spread out:\n\n_URL_0_\n\n- Each riding riding elects one provincial representative (MLA), and one federal representative (MP). MLAs sit in provincial legislagures, and MPs sit in parlaiment.\n\n- Voting uses a first past the post count just like the US.\n\n- When you vote in a federal election, you vote only for your local MP and their party. Which ever party wins the most MP seats forms the government and the leader of that party becomes Prime-Minister.\n\n- The Senate is a very different animal than the US Senate. Senators are appointed by the Prime-Minister sitting when the seat opens up and it is a lifetime appointment. As you might have guessed, this leads to all kinds of silly nonsense, but that's a whole other discussion.\n\n\n**Political Spectrum**\n\n- There is a Left to Right spectrum in Canada, but our version of \"right wing\" is pretty similar to US \"center-left\" ideology. This means that things like universal healthcare, marriage equality, and abortion rights aren't really up for debate. Anyone who tries to walk these things back will generally face severe backlash.\n\n**Largest Political Parties**\n\n- Conservatives: Currently hold a majority government. Tout supply side economic theory, responded to the recession by cutting taxes, cutting education and healthcare spending, and boosting spending on petrochemical/mining infrastructure. They are against legalization of marijuana and have passed legislation to increase sentences on non-violent drug offences.\n\n- Liberals: Canada's center-left party. Generally want to spend more/up taxes mildly. Oppose prohibition/tough-on-crime stances.\n\n- NDP (New Democratic Party): Canada's *far* left wing party. Their policy pushes many borderline socialist agendas. Very high tax, pro-union, pro social security expansion, etc.\n\n- Bloc Quebecois: This is where things get weird. The bloc only represents the interests of Quebec. Politically, they are similar to the NDP, they just don't give a fuck about anything except Quebec's best interests. \n\n\n**Bills/Legislative Process**\n\n_URL_1_",
"Those countries use what is called the Westminster system of government. It largely is not that dis-similar to the US system of government, except the Executive wholly consists of elected members of the House Of Commons, and sit in the house for Parliament and do business there as an MP as well as their cabinet duties, and can have what they do debated by the opposition. The opposition usually has a shadow cabinet, where their party members are assigned pay attention and debate that portfolio.\n\nThe upper house is also called a Senate, but in Canada and The UK is appointed. It is elected in Australia.\n\nThe final stop is the Governer General, which is appointed ( in Canada at least), and the representative of the ruling Monarch, currently Queen Elizabeth II, except in the UK where she figuratively heads that Parliament herself.\n\nConstituencies are an analog to the district a Representative in US congress gets elected to represent. Largely it is divided amongst population. At least in Canada, gerrymandering is not as rampant.\n\nThe system bills/laws go through is not much different than the US system.\n\nIn Canada, Conservative is akin to the US republican party, and may be nicknamed Tories. Liberal (nickname Grits) is close to the Democrats, NDP a lot more socialist/left than Liberal."
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5hq62f | why is it that with health insurance there exists a copay, but with auto insurance there is not? | Hospital and doctor visit costs are significantly reduced by the insurance company. However, vehicle maintenance comes entirely out of pocket. What is the difference between health insurance and auto insurance that causes this to happen?
*Edit:* Point of clarification. Health insurance applies from general physician visits, to prolonged hospital care. Auto insurance only applies when a collision occurs. Why is general maintenance for a vehicle not treated the same way as getting general checkups as a human? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5hq62f/eli5_why_is_it_that_with_health_insurance_there/ | {
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"Auto insurance deals with accidental damage caused to your vehicle. It's not interested in keeping your vehicle in tip top shape. And yes there is a \"co-pay\" with auto insurance, it's called a deductible.",
"Auto insurance is there to protect you and (more so) others from a financial loss resulting from an accident. Auto insurance has been a requirement to legally operate your car on public roads for a long time in most states. People generally only purchase auto insurance policies because they have to. This means there is a guaranteed customer base and only competition between various companies creates variety and choice for cost and coverage (above state required minimums) to customers. Additionally, prior to the internet, most people bought auto insurance from local agents and not all companies were represented in all areas. This limited competition over all and likely led to a system that served to offer few choices and a less customer oriented business model. \n\nHealth insurance exists to both protect from future issue from undetected or untreated illnesses as well as emergency medical needs. Until recently health insurance was not required in the USA. Most people want insurance and historically is was hard to afford in the states. Companies had to offer some benefit to get any customers and had to offer greater benefits or lower costs to compete with other providers.\n\nBoth gamble with you on the likelihood of paying a claim for major costs. This is in part why routine medical visits have a fixed copay while emergency care typically is subject to annual deductibles. They will pay a little more now in hopes of not paying a lot later. Auto insurance companies would prefer to never pay a claim, and while a safe vehicle is somewhat less likely to be involved in an accident, the human factor involved means accident are still overwhelmingly attributed to operator error.\n\nSince cars WILL break down or require routine repair, there isn't much chance of a company offering coverage for such events not paying out. However, you might never have a serious illness or require emergency care, and you stand greater chances of lower overall need for care with regular doctor visits, so a little maintenance and some good knowledge of the odds and risk factors let health insurance providers make a regular profit.\n\nDon't forget that, in the USA, until recently most health insurance companies wouldn't cover you if you were too high risk or already sick and they had lifetime limits on policies that prevented them ever loosing too much.",
"The main reason is because of distortion in the market caused by the tax code.\n\nInsurance for routine, predictable expenses makes no sense. It has to cost more than just paying for it. The point of insurance is to protect you from rare, unpredictable, expensive events (car accident, house burning down, cancer).\n\nSo why does health insurance have this nonsensical coverage for routine things? Because the government gives tax breaks to employers that are not available to individuals. Therefore, companies can compete by giving more and more expensive insurance. So insurance companies started throwing everything they can into policies.\n\nIf you buy insurance for yourself, it is with after-tax dollars, so it costs more. If you let your employer buy insurance, it is with pre-tax dollars. So your cost of insurance through your employer is something like 80 to 85 cents on the dollar. This leads to a race to more and more expensive insurance as a \"benefit\", and eventually, they start throwing in things that don't make sense to get insurance on.",
"In people, preventive care is relatively cheap. An insurance company would prefer to pay for 500 physicals, find high blood pressure in 1/500 people, and get it treated, rather than having that 1 person have a stroke and need tens of thousands of dollars in emergency treatment and long-term care costs. Because unless it's so bad you die before you get to the hospital, they have to pay for everything.\n\nCar insurance only pays if the mechanical problem causes an accident. If it doesn't, the most they'll have to pay for is a tow truck, if you pay extra for that coverage. Statistically, only around 10% of crashes are caused by mechanical failure. You're never going to get that to 0%, because some things do just fail without warning. So it's a question of how much they want to increase the premium price for something that may not reduce their claim costs. They'd have to bring on a ton of new employees to handle the thousands of claims from every oil change and tire rotation someone gets. \n\nEven if you make car insurance like health insurance where it covers all repairs, the gap between maintenance and the most expensive repairs will never be as high as with healthcare. Because for 99% of people, if your car needs $30,000 in repairs, you'll just buy a new car. "
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6e66ms | how are acyl chlorides more reactive than acid anhydrides? | The C in Acyl Chlorides is attached to one Oxygen and one Chlorine,
whereas, the C in Acid Anhydrides are attached to 2 Oxygens - and Oxygen is more electronegative than Chlorine, so shouldn't the C in acid anhydrides be more delta negative than the C in Acyl Chlorides, leaving Acid Anhydrides more open to nucleophiles and more reactive? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6e66ms/eli5how_are_acyl_chlorides_more_reactive_than/ | {
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"It's true that when compared to acyl chlorides, acid anhydrides have more electrophilic carbons and are thus more reactive with nucleophiles. However, nucleophilic attack is only the first step in the reaction of acyl chlorides and anhydrides with nucleophiles, forming a tetrahedral intermediate.\n\nThe second step involves the departure of the leaving group (Cl- in the case of acyl chlorides and RCOO- in the case of acid anhydrides).\nHere, chloride is a much better leaving group than carboxylate. (HCl is a much stronger acid than carboxylic acids, thus chloride is a weaker and therefore more stable conjugate base than carboxylates, which in turn means the formation of Cl- is more energetically favourable than RCOO-) Even though anhydrides form the tetrahedral intermediate more quickly than acyl chlorides, acyl chlorides would react much faster in the second step and thus faster overall.\n\nAnother factor could be that the C-O bond is somewhat stronger than a C-Cl bond (358kJ/mol vs 327kJ/mol), thus making Cl- a even better leaving group compared to RCOO-\n\nMore information:\n_URL_1_\n_URL_0_"
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70wis3 | how do people speed read, how do they comprehend it when their inner voice is talking at inhuman speeds? | I've tried in the past but I feel like my inner voice is speeding out of control so much that I can't even pay attention to what it's saying. Do speed readers just not have an inner monologue when they read? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/70wis3/eli5_how_do_people_speed_read_how_do_they/ | {
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"Lots of people can read quickly and understand without an inner voice playing in their head.",
"The inner voice is called subvocalization: _URL_0_\n\nSpeed-readers don't subvocalize and you can train yourself to \"skip\" it. I'm a fairly fast reader - I've never tested it but I can easily finish an average size novel in a few hours of uninterrupted reading - and don't \"hear\" words in my head when I read. I don't read each individual word in a sentence. ",
"The \"inner monologue\" is called subvocalization, and one of the primary tools speed readers use to increase their speed is by limiting or removing subvocalization altogether. The major problem with this, though, is that comprehension quickly drops as the level of complexity in the text rises, to the point where almost no comprehension occurs. \n\nThe other primary tool in speed reading is skimming. You train your eyes/brain to skip over junk words like \"a, of, to, is, be, etc\" and let your brain fill in the appropriate word through context. Some comprehension can get lost here, but not nearly as much as people assume. \n\nMost importantly, it takes a lot of concentration and effort to speed read, so much so that it almost isn't worth doing if you aren't intentionally picking apart a text for facts. It's great for going through a history textbook for that quiz you have in 20 minutes, but if you actually take the time study and research well, you'll end up with much better results.\n\nGive me a high-school level essay and I'll rip through it at 1500+ words a minute, but once it gets into college-level or higher, I drop down to around 550 or less to retain comprehension... and that's not much faster than the average person (200-400 words per minute). ",
"No reason you need to have an inner voice narrate it. It id a lot faster to either learn to just interpret text directly, or to use the visualizations that they convey."
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bshb1z | why does the japanese language have english loan words for things they already have words for? | Words like "relax" (rirakkusu) and "hose" (hosu) seem like something that would have existed before contact with English-speaking people. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/bshb1z/eli5_why_does_the_japanese_language_have_english/ | {
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"Because Japanese students learn limited English over the course of their education, it's easy for loan words to cross into the lexicon. You will see, sometimes, these loan words will become more common than the original Japanese, and sometimes they are only used in special situations like music.\n\nRelax, for example, can be リラックス (rirakkusu) or it can be 寛ぐ (kutsurogu), \"to feel at home\" or 寛げる (kutsurogeru), \"to loosen or ease\", or 憩う (Ikou) \"to rest\"\n\nHose can be ホース (hosu), or it can be 導管 (Dokan) meaning \"Conduit\"",
"This is true in a lot of languages and I think part of the reason is just the ever presence of English in media and music - words become familiar and comfortable to use in given situations, even if Japanese (or polish, or Hungarian or whatever) words already fulfill the lexical gap",
"The words often have slightly different connotations. For example, the English loan word *kyanseru* (cancel) is an informal, modern-sounding way to talk about canceling something. If you were talking about canceling a contract or other more formal arrangement, you would likely instead use the Chinese loan word *kaiyaku*. And if you wanted to talk about canceling in a more general or abstract sense, like taking back your words, you might instead use the native Japanese word *torikesi*.\n\nJapanese is not unique in this regard. English has many French and Latin loan words for terms that already had native semi-equivalents: pain/hurt, rage/anger, response/answer, prior/before, commence/begin, creed/belief, abdomen/belly, corpse/body, fraternal/brotherly, construct/build, etc.",
"While the other answers are also correct about there sometimes being subtle differences between English and Japanese words, there's also another major historical/cultural factor: English is \"cool\" (*kakoii*) in Japan.\n\nWhile other languages certainly borrow loan words, this is a uniquely Japanese phenomena related to the country's post-WWII relationship with America. Many people forget that while we did bomb the hell out of them in WWII, we also helped build the country back up afterwards (and secretly forced them to adopt modern rights for women and some other progressive stuff). This it led to a unique love of America in Japan: there's a reason why the only non-English loan word I can think of is bread or \"pan\" (it's use predates WWII).\n\nAs an example, here's a story my Japanese teacher told me. She was in Japan having dinner at a restaurant with an older Japanese woman, and the woman ordered *torii-niku* (chicken). The younger waitress \"corrected\" her and said \"you want to order the \"*tchi-ken*\"?'\n\nThe older woman corrected her back \"no, I don't want to order the *tchi-ken*, I want to order the *torii-niku*!\" Eventually the waitress gave up, but it highlighted the basic fact that in certain cases in Japanese the English versions of words are \"hip\", and what the cool young people use. It's also used heavily in advertisements, apparel (see _URL_0_) and (evidently) trendy restaurant menus. But it's not like the original Japanese words went away or anything, and (for instance) older people still use them exclusively.\n\nIf you watch anime or otherwise listen to Japanese pop music, you'll hear English words used this way frequently. It's not all English words though, because not all Japanese (young or otherwise) know English well enough to have a full vocabulary. It's just a certain subset of words that the \"cool kids\" use that everyone (or at least the younger generation) knows.",
"Definitely the same with Thais, especially the youth. We use a lot of english loanwords in conjunction with the Thai words that describe the same thing for no apparent reason. It's really apparent when ordering food. In Thailand, menus at chain restaurants usually have food items written in both English and Thai. Young Thais tend to order food using its English name in a Thai accent (so for example, 'grilled chicken' becomes 'griew chikaen') while most other people would just use the Thai words for 'grilled chicken' (Gai yaang). \n\nI think a factor is that speaking English was/is a sign of being 'educated,' so many Thais started substituting Thai words for English words. Now, our inferiority complex has reduced significantly, although these loanwords have become so pervasive in conversational speech that it's become a part of our vocabulary. I think this would ring true for Japan too."
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3lf9y7 | business people of reddit; how do you keep your shirt wrinkle free? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3lf9y7/eli5_business_people_of_reddit_how_do_you_keep/ | {
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"1) If your shirt is getting wrinkled even after ironing, you either aren't ironing right (remember to use plenty of steam) or need to buy a new shirt. \n\n2) I find chucking it in the dryer for 10 minutes works great; you don't get those perfect creases, but it does get out most of the really offensive wrinkles. ",
"I commute on a motorcycle to work. I iron my clothes, they get folded, placed in a plastic bag, then in a backpack. They come out the other side with a varying amount of additional creasing, though not so bad. The choice of material can make a big difference. As soon as you sit down you're going to get creases anyway so it really doesn't matter. You could starch it up and go all Kenny Cardboard :-) ",
"The fabric makes a great deal of difference- a reasonable amount of synthetics in the blend will help you a lot.",
"If it is a real cotton shirt there is nothing anyone can do to keep it from wrinkling. Heavy starch helps some but uggggghhh.\n\nI'd rather be wearing a wrinkly cotton or linen shirt than any synthetic fiber shirt, they may not wrinkle as much but they are crap in every other way :)"
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3txkwz | why does bottled beer taste better than canned beer ? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3txkwz/eli5_why_does_bottled_beer_taste_better_than/ | {
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"It's because, although the inside of the aluminum can is lined with a protective coating to not affect the taste, your lips and tongue touch the outside top part which doesn't have the coating. So you can taste the metallic part. Try this: pour the beer into a glass first. \n\nFurthermore, craft beer is turning towards canning instead of bottling because bottles allow light in. When beer is exposed to light it changes the taste. [Here](_URL_0_) is a link summarizing it. \n\nNote: the same can be said for sodapop as well\n\nEDIT: Link fixed. ",
"Maybe they taste different if you drink out of either the can or bottle because your mouth will get a metally taste of the can and not from the glass bottle. But if I gave you 2 glasses of beer, one which had from a glass bottle and one from a can, I doubt you would be able to taste the difference.",
"It's hard to explain this objectively because that is a matter of opinion. I find many (canned) craft beers to taste as good (if not better) than craft bottled beer. The only objective information I would share is that I've heard that canning is better for beer since it prevents potential light exposure that can occur in bottles. Light exposure can cause a beer to turn \"skunky\".\n\n_URL_0_",
"Craft beer, specifically extra hoppy beer, keeps fresh for much longer in a place where it was much more common and always thought that it tasted better from a can, but I never drink from the transport container usually does not let these acids aerosolize thus you do not smell them.",
"/u/KulpDontCare is right. Bottles are better to *drink* out of, but a can is a much better vessel for storing beer as it allows no light or air in (a bottle cap is not always airtight).\n\nIf you want the best taste, you should always pour into a glass so you can smell the beer while you drink it. ",
"Same beer properly chilled? canned, bottled. Id be spliting hairs If I said I find a significant difference in taste.",
"I think the simple answer is that, objectively speaking, it doesn't taste better out of a bottle. Light degrades the quality of beer by breaking down some of the compounds that are deliberately created to give the beer the desired flavor. Glass is not opaque to light like aluminum is, and therefore does an inferior job of preserving the product.\n\nWhile some may prefer the \"feel\" of drinking from a bottle as opposed to a can (I happen to prefer the opposite, but that's obviously subjective), I think it has little if anything to do with taste and is more likely an inherent bias at work, as many people think a bottle is somehow classier than a can. In my opinion, this point is pretty much moot, because if you've got a good beer, whether it's in a can or a bottle, you should probably be drinking it out of a glass. Cans and bottles both do an amazing job of allowing the beer to reach your taste buds while preventing its aroma from reaching your nose. This is a very bad thing, because the sense of taste and smell are closely linked, and I find that a beer's aroma (especially for very hoppy beers) is a really important part of the experience. \n\nSo - I think it's clear that cans are objectively superior to bottles as storage and transport vessels. They are light opaque, lighter in weight (when full AND empty) than bottles, more efficient to stack and transport (higher packing fraction), easier to recycle, and they don't pose the hazards that glass does, so you can take them to the beach or on river and hiking trips. Since they both make terrible vessels for consumption, I'm calling that a wash. So there you have it - this is why I wish all beer manufacturers would ditch bottles and switch to cans.\n\n",
"My brother-in-law swears the opposite. He swears that beer always tastes way better out of a can than a bottle. I think this is due to bottles letting light into the beer, changing the taste.",
"For some reason that's not true for Guinness though. Widget aside, I've always thought the bottled version was more acidic in taste.",
"I greatly prefer cans. I am very much *not* a Beer Snob (obviously).\n\nYou drink what you like and I'll drink what I like.\n\nCheers!",
"And why does free beer taste better than cheap beer???",
"I don't think it does unless you actually drink it from the can. If you're concerned about taste, pour that shiz into a glass.",
"Why does draft, or rather: out of a keg, taste better than both? ",
"I heard that beer actually tastes better from a can, because no light can get to it and mess with the flavour. we just think it's nicer from a bottle because we have been told it is",
"My theory is with a can, your nose is more likely to pick up unwanted odours from the container (and the person/people who's hands have been touching it). There's more to mess with your perception of the taste than there is with a narrow, glass bottle opening.",
"Cans of beer are completely sealed from all outside sources which will keep the beer in its purest form, while bottled beer lets light shine through affecting the flavor just a bit to give it a unique accent. For example, if you ever drink beer out of a green bottle like Heineken or rolling rock, you'll notice that it has a \"skunky\" taste to it. Im sure this doesn't answer your question but i just wanted to feel important. ",
"I think it's all personal preferrence. Some people like the can. Some of my favorite beers are canned only. Also, my wife doesn't like Coca-Cola^^TM in a glass bottle. Only cans.",
"There was interesting study showing the effects of different serving mechanisms on our perception of taste. It was found that different colored spoons affected the way testers tasted yogurt. Different materials have the same effect.",
"I have to say, this is subjective. I know a lot of people, and am personally with them, that think beer from a can tastes better. In fact there are several types of beer like Heady Topper that ask you to please drink it straight from the can for the flavor effect. I find a beer from a can usually tastes fresher and crisper, more like it's right off tap. To each their own, but this is not a really explainable fact, as it is simply an opinion.",
"They don't. That may be your perception, but it's an opinion that would be easy to find others that feel the opposite to be true.\n\n_URL_0_",
"Cans actually make beer taste better than bottles, BUT, you must pour the beer into a glass from the can. If you drink from the can, you get some of the can's metal taste when your lips touch the rim, pouring into a glass prevents this.\n\nCans are better than bottles (assuming you pour into a glass) because bottles allow light in, which ruins the beer and makes it taste worse from a bottle than it does from a can.",
"The biggest impact is perception, not taste. \n\nBottles are considered more pleasant to drink from and generally more high-class. They are also more expensive to make and ship, so they don't make sense for budget shitty beers.\n\nTherefore, there is a preponderance of really good beer that you generally see in bottles, and a preponderance of shitty beers that you see in cans. \n\nIn a blind taste test between the same beer from bottles and cans, I think you'd be unlikely to notice a difference; and in the event that you did, I doubt you'd consider one better than the other. In fact, as other comments have noted, the canned beer will probably taste more like the beer is intended to taste, because it will have been exposed to less light. ",
"Speaking from working at a brewery, my belief is that canned beer tastes better because it's better for the beer. \n\n-No light gets in.\n-Its a near perfect seal. \n-The can's typically get purged with Co2 before being filled all the way to the top to prevent minimal oxidation.\n-Golfing\n-Hiking\n-Boating\n-Camping\n\nI also think if you pour whatever beer you're drinking from a can into, say, a pint glass instead; It'll taste nearly identical to what you'd get off draft. \n\nCans=Miniature 12-16oz kegs.\n\nJust my two cents.",
"As far as I know, the opinion on canned vs. bottle beer is fairly split. I like some brands of beer better from a bottle and some better from a can. I've heard different people give different explanations, and I'm sure most of them have some validity. In the end, I think they're both good.",
"Ah, because it's subjective and that's your preference? ",
"A few things are in play:\n\n* Historically, it was only low-quality beers that were canned, because canning is overall cheaper than bottling. That's changing now though.\n* Glass is non-reactive, so the bottle doesn't absorb smells and flavors as much as aluminum cans do. Modern cans use a nonreactive coating inside, but not outside -- the outside of your beer can can absorb smells and flavors that are imparted to you when you drink the beer from them\n* Glass is a better insulator, so your beer will stay cold a bit longer than it does in a can.\n\nThe first is changing as technology has improved, and the other two can be fixed easily by pouring your beer into a glass.",
"Some beers do taste better out of cans. Guinness and PBR come to mind. Guinness pours better from a can, and PBR's taste is only improved when the aluminum is there to mask the real taste.",
"Sounds like an opinion. Wouldn't it be better to ask why it tastes different? I personally prefer the taste of things from cans. Just not a fan of most beer that comes in a can.",
"I have one! \n\nEli5: Why does beer on tap taste better and have a better buzz? \n\nFor me it also doesn't give me as many hangover symptoms (although I rarely have any to begin with). ",
"Not a huge beer drinker but I used to drink a lot of coca cola and the can tasted better than the plastic bottle.",
"Scientifically is is other way around. Canned beer is better. Because it prevent light to enter the beer packaging.\n",
"So, it has nothing to do with taste per se. It has to do with carbonation and mouth feel.\n\nAluminum cans are lined on the inside with a protective lining, so it's difficult for bubbles to form due to the lack of nucleation sites. As opposed to a glass bottle which has plenty of imperfections for bubbles to form. The increased effervescence and perception of carbonic acid makes the drinks taste VASTLY different.\n\nTo experiment, pour the canned soda/beer into your favorite glass vessel. Once the head settles, the drink will taste JUST like the one in the bottle.",
"It doesn't. This is all in your head. And has been proven a bunch\n\nSource: I'm a brewer at the second largest craft brewery in America, and the most state of the art brewery in America. Degree in food science, and another in brewing science and technology. ",
"Honestly, it doesn't - at best that statement/question is subjective. Not sure why in ELI5, OP asks a loaded question and everyone has to go along with it. Canning is in fact better for beer as it doesn't let in light which can spoil it faster. There are thousands of types of beer that come in cans or bottles and one does not consistently taste better than the other because of the way it's contained. You shouldn't drink any beer from it's container anyway - pour it into an appropriate drinking glass and make sure it's the proper temperature before enjoying. ",
"A lot of the taste sense is actually what you smell. So when you drink out of a can, your nose is pressed into the raw aluminum top of the can and you get the aluminum taste. ",
"I am the packaging manager at a craft brewery in Canada, been canning and bottling beer for a while now. I can tell you with 100% certainty, canning beer is not only the best way to package it, it also have zero affect on the taste. The only way you would get a \"metalic\" taste from a can is if you suck on the can as you are drinking. If you just sip ftom the can, no metal taste at all, it is just a mental thing.\n\nBut please for the love of god, pour your beer into a glass, your nose and tastebuds will thank you!",
"Objectively, it doesn't. The unlined cans of the past could negatively affect the taste, but they're not used anymore. Some of the best breweries in US (Surly, Bells, Cigar City, Oskar Blues, Ballast Point, etc.) now can their beers because, in part, they realize that bottled beers are more likely to have their taste negatively affected by light or air. If I see two identical beers on the store shelf--one canned and one bottled--I always opt for the canned one. ",
"It doesn't. Please stop drinking your beer out of the container it's sold in. \n\nBeer is meant to be enjoyed in proper glassware. \n\nCans are actually a fantastic method of shipping beer. Zero UV penetration means no skunking. ",
"It doesn't. Your taste emotions are deceiving you. Canned beer is superior because it does not permit light inside. What do you think kegs are? Nobody complains about being poured a beer from a keg.\n\nAlso, you may be reacting to the fact that canned beer usually is cheaper beer. Bud Light comes in a can. Anchor Steam comes in a bottle. A canning facility is incredibly expensive. That's why most labels come in bottles.",
"Maybe its the [BPA contained inside the lining of the can](_URL_0_)? ",
"You're 5, why are you drinking beer?!",
"That's an opinion, but if you pour the can into a glass, the can should taste better. One of the biggest enemies of beer is light, and cans are opaque. Additionally, cans are lighter and get cooler quicker. Also, you can accidentally knock over a can and NOT have it shatter.",
"I'm not sure how to answer this because I believe canned beer tastes better than bottled beer. No exposure to sunlight damage like you get in a bottle.",
"I used to work at a brewery and when the checked the level of oxygen packaged into the beer it was always higher in the cans. This causes it taste horrible over time. The reason it was higher in the cans were because the bottlecaps have a layer on the inside that absorbs oxygen.",
"Excellent questioned. I've always said I enjoy root beer from a glass bottle way more than plastic. \nStewart's root beer is the best beer ever! ",
"Watch this: _URL_1_\n\nAnd this: _URL_0_\n\nAnd then try and tell me that tinnies aren't the best.",
"Unless you're drinking from a taproom at the brewery the beer was made at, the can is going to be your freshest, best-tasting option.\n\nCans are essentially mini-kegs, except you drink it in one session. A keg in a bar is subject to a variety of factors that can distort the flavor and freshness of the beer. The can contains the beer exactly the way it was meant to be. The can does NOT impart a metallic flavor, but your lips on the outside of the metal can does, so if you're that worried about it then pour it in a glass.\n\nCan > Keg > Bottle "
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wut8q | this one should be tricky: aristotle's unmoved mover argument. | I think I understand the basic premise, but I still don't think I fully understand it. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/wut8q/this_one_should_be_tricky_aristotles_unmoved/ | {
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"it's fairly hard to explain, but I'll try my best. The basic Greek View was that everything the world was cause and effect. As a result, the universe is the effect of some cause. So, what was the cause? Nut what caused this cause? Following this train of logic you either have an infinite chain of cause and effect, or there was a starting point, an effect without cause.\n\nIf this is confusing, sorry, ask some questions and I'll try to answer it.\n"
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20eq7q | after running for a period of time, why does the back of my throat burn? | Not sure why this happens, but it happens more often than not when (if) I run. Is there any way to combat this? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/20eq7q/eli5_after_running_for_a_period_of_time_why_does/ | {
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"Basically you need a) more oxygen and b) to get rid of heat. So you have a whole bunch of warm air moving over wet tissue. You're also doing it at a 'sharp' curve. This means you have air bouncing, rather than curving, and this all draws moisture out. it's not really a burn, but a dry. You can do the same thing right now is you pant quick, short breaths.\n\nIf you mean burn as in vomit burn, that's reflux. Not really sure on the why, though. You probably want to just drink more water everyday and eat less junk food - dehydration and sugary/acidy foods will both increase this."
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1uj68r | liberation theology and who came up with it? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1uj68r/eli5_liberation_theology_and_who_came_up_with_it/ | {
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"Liberation Theology is a strand of Catholicism that interprets Christ's mission to the poor, sick and disadvantaged in society as the most important part of Christian teaching and most controversially places special focus on systemic inequality (people stuck in perpetual cycles of poverty, capitalism etc.) It was formed and flourished in the Latin America of the 1970s and 80s. This is likely a result of the combination of the prominence of both the Catholic Church and extreme poverty in these areas.\n\nThe man who came up with the term ''Liberation theology'' to describe this ''church of the poor'' motivated by liberating those in poverty from their circumstances was Peruvian priest Gustavo Gutiérrez.\n\nPriests preaching Liberation theology in Latin America have often come under fire, both figurative and literal, by the more conservative elements of the church and right wing political regimes alike who believe that the school of thought is too ''Marxist''. Notably Óscar Romero, bishop in El Salvador, was gunned down by a right-wing death squad.\n"
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6l3ntk | why do tv stations repeat the same content right after itself? | [deleted] | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6l3ntk/eli5_why_do_tv_stations_repeat_the_same_content/ | {
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"Yes, a decade ago when I stopped watching TV, channels had different shows on at different times.\n\nNow, I just started watching cable again (part of my community fees), and it's the same show over and over and over on each channel."
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5cre9q | why are people's names translated like how ivan = john? | Joan of Arc is also called Ivana. Why are the names changed? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5cre9q/eli5_why_are_peoples_names_translated_like_how/ | {
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"There's two reasons for it: either it's because the name comes from the same place and the pronunciation changed over time, or it's because a name is difficult for one particular group to pronounce so they make it something similar that's easier to say.\n\nFor example, a lot of languages don't have the English \"j\" sound. The name \"Joseph\" in English, for example, comes from the biblical name that would have been pronounced \"Yosseph\" in the original, which became Yussef in Arabic. \n\nJohn/Ivan is a bit more complicated. That name also comes from biblical Hebrew, but besides the Y- > J thing, there's a sound in the middle of the word (often written as \"ch\") that isn't used in English or Russian. When the word was pronounced by western Europeans, they softened it to an \"h\" (\"Johan\", which became \"John\" and \"Juan\", among others), while many Eastern Europeans turned it into a \"v\". Add in a few thousand years of pronunciations drifting from people not talking to each other and you have all the differences you see today.",
"Ah, this gets complicated. But mainly, until recently, it was normal to \"translate\" foreign names into a form that was easier to say in your own native language.\n\nThe name \"John\" comes from the Hebrew \"Yohanan\". Hebrew had its own alphabet, and when \"Yohanan\" was written in the Greek alphabet, the nearest writers could get to was \"Ἰωάννης\", which, when written in the Latin alphabet, comes out as \"Ioannes\" (although some people wrote it as \"Iohannes\", preserving the Hebrew \"h\").\n\nThe \"-es\" is basically a grammatical ending, so when the name was adopted into other languages, they usually dropped it, leaving \"Iohann\" or \"Ioann\". The \"I\" is the way Latin-speakers represented the \"y\" sound; later on, people started writing \"J\" to distinguish that sound from the usual vowel sound, and this already gives us the German names \"Johann\" and \"Johannes\" (both with the \"J\" pronounced like our \"Y\").\n\nThe Slavic \"Ivan\" came about from \"Ioann\". In this case, people started pronouncing the initial \"I\" as a full vowel, an \"ee\" sound. This had a knock-on effect: it made the \"O\" sound more like our \"W\", so \"ee-wan\". But then, when people pronounced the \"W\" sound, they started putting their bottom lip against their upper teeth, making a \"v\" sound -- and so we get \"Ivan\" (pronounced \"ee-van\").\n\nMeanwhile, in western Europe, people speaking the language that eventually became French started changing the way they said the \"Y\" sound in \"Johann\". They slightly changed the position of the tongue, allowing it to touch the roof of the mouth, and this eventually made it sound like the \"S\" in our word \"measure\". Also, they stopped pronouncing the \"H\", and ran the two vowels together. This eventually gives us the modern French pronunciation of \"Jean\". English went one step further: the \"S in measure\" sound evolved into the modern sound of our \"J\". We still write the \"H\", but it's now silent and the second vowel has disappeared completely: \"John\".\n\nAs for \"Joan\", that's the feminine version of \"John\". Another version is \"Joanna\" -- you can very clearly see the connection with \"Ioann\" here. In French, they simply put a feminine ending on \"Jean\" to give \"Jeanne\"; and in the Slavic languages the same thing happened: \"Ivan\" with a feminine ending is \"Ivana\".\n\nThese days, we do our best to pronounce people's names as they are in their native languages, but that's a relatively new thing."
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ar97z8 | is there any difference from iron in your body and foods to iron in the ground? could you theoretically make an ingot of spinach iron? could you dilute and absorb raw iron? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/ar97z8/eli5_is_there_any_difference_from_iron_in_your/ | {
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"Iron is an periodic table element, Iron in your food might be a different isotope but it is still the same element.\n\nYes, it is theoretically possible to make an ingot out of iron from spinach, how to extract only iron from spinach is a question for another time.\n\nThe dosis overtime matters, iron in food is there in a very low dosis. Consuming pure iron is toxic, since the dosis is very soon way too high.\n\n(Same with medicines, too much and it becomes toxic, too little and it doesn't work)\n\n\nEdit: grammar mistakes",
"Iron is iron, but it makes lots of compounds. Your body contains about 4g of it, mostly in hemoglobin but also ferritin and a few other compounds. You can metabolize many compounds (like ferrous sulfate or iron fumarate) into those things. The measure of how easily/if an organism can use an element or compound is called bioavailability.\n\nSpinach does not have massive amounts of iron in it. The myth that it does is usually thought to be because of a misprint in the assays done by von Wolfe in 1870. It's really attributable to bad methods, as the containers and the charcoal used in the assays (by SEVERAL scientists) returned the same high results at the time.\n\nIron from spinach is also not as bioavailable as iron from animals. You're going to poop out more iron from spinach than you would from a steak, because our bodies aren't very good at absorbing iron oxalate, and other compounds in the plant inhibit absorption.\n\nAnd yes, you can absolutely dilute and absorb raw iron. In lots of impoverished areas, getting enough dietary iron into people is a public health challenge. One solution is the [lucky iron fish](_URL_0_), a chunk of iron you toss into your food as you cook it to fortify your meals.\n\nIf you want to make an ingot of spinach iron, you'll need to decompose the iron oxalate into iron oxides, then reduce them to get iron metal. And you'll need a LOT of spinach, since a literal TON of spinach will yield less than an ounce of metallic iron."
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4lnbjq | how are giant billboards printed? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4lnbjq/eli5_how_are_giant_billboards_printed/ | {
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"I think they are normally printed in (fairly large) sections but in essence, your hypothesis is correct. There are [very large printers](_URL_0_) for this. ",
"Also the further you are from seams or gaps the less noticeable issues like this are. Think about LED billboards. The pixels are 10 mm apart. This means that you this means that until you are 32 feet away you can make out the individual colored dots of the image but over 32 feet and its unnoticeable. Same thing with seems if they are small and even you don't see them until you are closer."
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1yp6c9 | why are salary differences so high? | As someone who has spent their young life in two completely different countries, and looking to go into the field of economics, could someone please explain how can some people afford to live in huge 2-3 story houses (in the US) and afford new cars when the typical salary in the US is around $40,000? I mean, I understand that that´s not the median salary, and that some people drag it up and some drag it down, but it just baffles the mind how one person can just spend millions of dollars on a car, and then store it somewhere and buy another one without any sort of need to continue paying for the first car because he has the funds to fully pay for it on day one.
So, why is a first-world country, like the United States, so vastly inequal regarding economy? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1yp6c9/eli5_why_are_salary_differences_so_high/ | {
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"Well... at a small scale, I think it is pretty intuitive. I am a janitor and you are a programmer, let's say. Now, there are a lot of people who can do my job, and the training for it often takes like an hour, depending on the specifics. But there are a lot fewer people who can do your job, because it takes skills that have to be built up over time and with schooling, etc.\n\nLet's suppose that, as a business owner, the goal is in general to pay everyone as little as possible while still getting good staff. That then puts you in a bidding war, in essence, with other companies trying to hire the same sort of position. Janitor candidates are plentiful and easily replaced, so they get paid next to nothing. Programmers are not as plentiful, and are bloody expensive to replace in some cases, so not only do they get a higher starting wage, but they also get bonuses and raises and such to incentivize them to stay with the company.\n\nOkay, fine. That's an over-simplified explanation of basic ruthless capitalism from the employment side. Supply and demand, sure, but with a bit of a bidding war aspect.\n\nNow! This brings us to CEOs of large companies. Some wind up with excellent success, and make their investors lots of money. Yay them! Others do not. But how much of the success was the uniqueness of the CEO, versus the circumstances and staff he or she was handed? That's hard to quantify. Unfortunately, we have a bit of magical thinking in this country, where we imagine that the right leaders have some sort of superpowers. And it is true that leaders are very important... but we still overvalue hem in large companies.\n\nSo that brings us back to the bidding war aspect of hiring. Investors in a company still want to pay CEOs as little as possible. Hard as that may be to believe, it is true. The less the CEO makes, the more the investor makes. With these mega-corporations, though, the huge salary of the CEO is not that high compared to the total earnings of the company -- from an investor standpoint. So they wind up getting into these bidding wars over CEOs, and paying way more than they should, but it's still small change compared to what they expect to gain in stock price rise from the hire. Worse yet, they are often RIGHT about the stock price rise, in the short term, because the magical thinking about leaders is pervasive, so you get this cycle that reinforces itself. Once a CEO is on staff, if things are going well, there is a huge desire to keep things going well, and fear that if someone else tempts the CEO away, that things will get worse or even collapse at this company. So bonuses and perks stack up. That then becomes expected, leading to a cycle where the starting perks a CEO can demand in the bidding wars is what used to be a special bonus.\n\nSo let's talk about sports. There they have drafts for new players, all of whom really do have specialized talents, and sports are very big business. So the bidding war there goes nuts, and all the same general comments from CEOs apply here as well. The cycle of perks, etc.\n\nOther entertainers are much the same. There it is partly about talent, and partly about attractiveness or popularity. But you wind up with the same idea of a limited pool of people the public is fixated on, and those people get to be the subject of bidding wars for further projects. If you don't believe that companies want to pay actors as little as possible, just look at the story of the guy who played Sam in LoTR.\n\nSo then we let come to people who make it on their own, somehow. They invent something, usually. A new idea, a new app, whatever. These are the only people with that specific invention, and so if people wind up valuing that invention, then a lot of money gets made. Because of how the press likes to cover things that people are interested in (this increasing readership), once something starts to be popular, it can snowball because of that cycle. Word of mouth as well. So you wind up with things like Angry Birds or Minecraft.\n\nSo that's how we get there. Taxes and all that stuff on the other end -- estates, trust funds, etc -- are about hanging on to that money. Since we all imagine \"we could be next,\" the thought of making it big and then losing half of it to taxes bothers all of us. So we give breaks to people in that position, since we imagine we someday might be there ourselves, and this yet another cycle perpetuates.\n\nIn short, I think that a lot of this is the perfectly natural result of a mostly-deregulated free market. Good thing or bad? It has its plusses and minuses, honestly, but the massive income disparity is certainly an issue.\n\nApologies for any typos, was writing from my phone.",
"Well, there are several questions you are touching upon. \n\nHow can Americans (in general) afford new cars and huge houses when the median household income is somewhere around 50,000 USD? Easy credit - > new cars, low population density - > cheap housing(on average compared to Europe or Asia).\n\nWhy is America so inequal, even compared to other first world economies? I would make an educated guess that it is a combination of public policy and diversity. The OECD nations with the lowest gini coefficients (Scandinavia + Eastern Europe) tend to have homogeneous populations and strong investments in education. The nations with the highest (Chile, Turkey, Mexico, and the US) have more diverse populations coming from a variety of socioeconomic backgrounds and structural inequities combined with weaker public school systems. ",
"I don't know about the big picture, but I will share this one thing I learned about CEO salaries.\n\nSome decades ago, lawmakers decide to oblige corporations to disclose how much money their bosses were earning. They believed this would encourage fairness (as if the CEOs were somehow swindling the company). It had the opposite effect. CEOs across America started comparing their salaries to each other and began demanding higher salaries to match the boss at the company next door."
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1jp60i | is morse code still useful? is it worth learning in this day and age? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1jp60i/eli5_is_morse_code_still_useful_is_it_worth/ | {
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"I use it every day at work.\n\nPilots navigate using radio beacons on the ground. We tune the radios in our aircraft to receive the signals from the beacons on the ground. We must then listen to a morse code identifier that's transmitted by the beacon - this ensures that we haven't mis-tuned the beacon's frequency, and that it is working correctly.\n\nHowever, more and more navigation is being done using GPS and similar \"area navigation\" technologies that don't need tuning and identifying. And modern computerised cockpit displays are capable of listening to the morse code, decoding it, and displaying the decoded identifier to the pilot without us having to listen to the morse code at all."
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7d9b3p | why our eyes create pink visual stains after we look at strong light? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7d9b3p/eli5_why_our_eyes_create_pink_visual_stains_after/ | {
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"There are multiple ways that our eyes adapt to different light conditions. One of the ways this automatically occurs is due to the way the light receptors in the back of the eye work.\n\nIn each light receptor cells are molecules called retinal (with an A, not retinol), which are the ones that react with light and eventually cause a signal to be sent to your brain. The act of being hit with a photon of light and activating the signal makes the retinal molecule inactive, and it needs to be reactivated by an enzyme before it can work again.\n\nIn intense light, all the retinal molecules quickly become inactivated, and very few are available to pick up new light signals. When you return to dark conditions, it takes a while for the retinal molecules to become reactivated, which is why you are somewhat blind for a while until your eyes adjust.\n\n\nThe second reason you see stains is because of the way your brain processes visual signals. It quickly adjusts to different light conditions as the new \"normal\" and picks up contrasting signals as if there is something there, even though it's just the absence of light. When you look at a strong light, then away, it looks like there is a dark spot of the same shape until your brain figures out the new \"normal\"."
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40klwz | will we ever lose signal from voyager 1 once it eventually gets too far out in space? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/40klwz/eli5_will_we_ever_lose_signal_from_voyager_1_once/ | {
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"Yes. Even if you assume NASA immediately begins a crash program to build bigger dishes and more sensitive receivers, Voyager's RTG produces less and less power every day and at some point there will not be enough to run the transmitter at all.",
"We will, but before that happens, its nuclear battery will run down the point it is no longer able to transmit a signal.",
"Is it the voyager that's getting too far out in space or is it us that gets too far out from the voyager? Check your gravitational privilege bro ",
"Won't Vger start seeking the Creator?",
"What if our technology of space travel allowed us to catch up and eventually pass it, would we do an \"in space\" restoration with OEM parts just for the nostalgia of it all? So that children of that time would know at one time we didn't know what was out past our own solar system. ",
"How far will voyager actually get from our solar system? Were they really able to make it leave the SOI of the sun or will it just orbit really far out? "
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1uey86 | why does a secret court even exist when it simply approves any secret agenda, even in contrary to other federal courts? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1uey86/eli5_why_does_a_secret_court_even_exist_when_it/ | {
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"To provide the appearance of legitimacy between agencies. "
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4mehpj | why is it so hard to look up proper health/exercise facts? | It's nigh impossible to teach myself how to eat properly, how to exercise properly to stave off belly fat, how to gain muscle mass, etc.
Everyone says it's common sense to just eat healthier, and use your muscles, but that's such a vague and useless bit of advice - but I can't learn any facts. Everything on the internet is baseless conjecture, anecdotal evidence, and health blogs that mix correlation with causation.
Bodily health is literally the most important thing in life, and yet I can't learn anything about it on my own. Meanwhile, I can learn every fact and technique there is to know about woodworking, programming, or playing a video game. Why? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4mehpj/eli5_why_is_it_so_hard_to_look_up_proper/ | {
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"Hard science on the issue leads to few universally applicable solutions beyond the obvious and there is an enormous market for baseless conjecture.",
"Well, there are caveats. Not everyone's metabolic needs are the same. We have different sizes, different diets, different activity cycles, and these impact what is important for us as individuals. \n\nAdditionally, there's a lot of noise. We have many people suggesting various fads that aren't really supported by any science, but which aren't strictly regulated. You've got your paleo diets and your toxin cleanses, and so on. Mostly bupkus. \n\nAdditionally, there's a lot of variation in concepts like 'build muscle mass.' For instance, there's stamina building, and mass increase, and you can pursue different tactics to achieve either goal. \n\nWith staving off belly fat, I'd say the widest accepted and evidenced path is calories in vs calories out. Keep track of how many calories you eat in a day, and how many you burn. A food diary is useful for this, because people are *really bad* at estimating. Bear in mind that you burn calories even doing nothing, and also bear in mind that you can easily eat more calories with junk food etc than can be practical to remove with any amount of exercise. It's much easier to not eat those calories than to burn them off.\n\n",
"While there are studies out there attempting to help determine the facts the following problems exist. \n\nNo two bodies are alike. This means, those scientific studies limit factors. For example they will study the effects of sugar, on say patients 20-30 years old, no history of diabetes. However they may not have controlled the patients diets. So the data they gather is very limited. We don't necessarily know in complete detail what the sugar did, because the diets weren't controlled. This happens a lot in studies.\n\nNow try to put that information together with all the various aspects of trying to be healthy. Calorie intake, calorie burn (activity/exercise), food intake, type of food intake, and a long list of other complexities. The picture becomes cloudy.\n\nThis mixed in with all the nonsense out there, you can start to see why it's difficult to find reliable evidence based facts that is intended for the general population. ",
"The difference is that with programming, woodworking and all, there generally is a single way to do something (or at least, a limited amount of ways), so it becomes easy to look up and learn. Additionally, it is also very easy to test which way works best. If you want to build a table, and aren't certain whether you need to use method A or B, well, you can always just try both methods out with very little consequences (beyond a little extra cost and possibly a bit of hurt pride from not getting it right the first time)\n\nNutrition and exercise is not that simple though. There is not a single diet that is the most healthier for humans. We evolved as omnivores and can do well on a wide variety of diets, which often also depends on what sort of personal requirements you have. (A nursing mother might have different nutritional needs than a 75 year old senior, who has different needs from a growing 3 year old)\n\nAdditionally what makes thing hard is that nutrition is something that is hard to test in an ethical way. You cannot lock up groups of people in a completely controlled environment and have the only different variable be a different diet. It is often very hard to prove specific relationships because things don't happen in a vacuum. You are never gonna find a situation where the only difference between two groups of random people is that one group drank diet soda and the other normal soda. There will always be various differences, which makes it hard to pin-point something down to one specific thing. \n\n[This] (_URL_0_) is a good article on why Nutrition is a very hard to study subject and thus why you have all these conflicting thoughts on what is and isn't good for people. "
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2f5ylx | why must businesses constantly grow? why can't they just self-sustain? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2f5ylx/eli5_why_must_businesses_constantly_grow_why_cant/ | {
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"They don't really **have** to grow. But mostly it happens anyway if a business is successful enough.\n\nIt's very difficult to keep a business in exactly the same place. It has a natural tendency either to diminish or grow. Stagnation is usually a sign of a failing business.\n\nAlso most people strive for their business to grow so they earn more money. Pretty basic desire right there...",
"Growth is an indicator for success and the potential to make more money. \n\nFor limited companies, shareholders want to see the largest possible return on their investment, growth will also increase the shares worth if they are constantly making money.",
"As a business owner, it's also the mindset of the owners. The status quo is never good enough. We always strive for better. It's the exact trait that makes our businesses the 10% that make it past the first year. ",
"No answer, just a comment (sorry). This is a great question that I ponder sometimes. Like when a company like Coca Cola or, I dont know, a movie studio... in any case a very established, lucrative business has to constantly dominate and acquire smaller businesses. Are they really that much of a threat? ",
"TOP EDIT: I am using this definition for company growth. Note that it does not imply that a firm must increase its physical number of stores.\n\n_URL_0_\n\n\n\nIn business, being dynamic/adaptable is the key. No market or technology is going to stay the same forever. \n\nThe items/services that you customers want can change on a whim. The things that your competition is offering will change. Sometimes disruptive technology will come along and completely alter your business model. When digital photography became the norm, the companies that were producing film had to either change everything, or go broke.\n\nWhen planning a businesses high level strategy, you always want to be proactive, never reactive. Let's say that we are the people in charge of Kodak in the '90s and the '00s. We see that digital cameras are just hitting the market. Because of our expertise in the photography industry, we believe that film is going to become obsolete in the near future. Its time for us to make a change. \n\nIf we've always been the same size, it means that there is no extra money in our budget. In order to start researching and developing our own digital cameras, we are going to have to shrink down other departments to have extra money. Maybe we cut back on manufacturing, or marketing, or customer support. No matter what we do, we are going to have to lose some people, or some market share, or some quality. \n\nOn the other hand, if we've been growing for the past few years, we have options. We can funnel that extra money into R & D. We can acquire another company that is already researching digital photography if our growth has been substantial. We can borrow money, knowing that future growth will outpace the interest on our loans.\n\nOverall, companies grow for the same reasons that people grow their careers. They want more stuff/profit, they want to be better suited for emergencies, and they want to have money on hand to take advantage of opportunities when they arrive.\n\nEDIT 1: I can no longer keep up with the volume of replies I am getting. I was on my mobile when I started all of this, and in the time it takes me to reply to one comment, 10 more appear in my inbox. Please keep your comments coming, and I'll be back later with more caffeine and a PC to answer them all.\n",
"The board of directors and executive officers of a company are theoretically answerable to the shareholders (and are usually shareholders themselves).\n\nShareholders like to see the value of a company go up so that their shares are worth more, and any dividend payment based on those shares is also larger.\n",
"Interesting question. Businesses must grow because the cost of business is never static. The cost of labor, equipment, materials, rent, travel, taxes and fees, all seem to grow. \nA business must run to stay in the same spot. This is especially true for small businesses. ",
"If you are investing in a business (buying stock), you expect to get a return for your investment. That return is either a dividend or a growth in the stock price. Over the long haul, stock prices don't go up unless the business grows. So a business that wants to attract stock purchasers must either grow or offer a large dividend. ",
"Depending on the business model, if you are not growing you are yielding market share to competitors or substitutes that will replace your business any time, so growth is a necessity. \nAlso, some business models are built on future growth, or else don't work, so must keep matching this expectation or die. Happens with businesses that rely heavily on R & D.",
"The adage of \"stagnation is death\" in business is very important because your competition will grow. With a fixed pie, when anyone else grows their market share, you lose market share (zero-sum game) and you will go out of business. Mature markets, such as auto manufacturing, power generation / supply, wine sale, tend to have a nearly fixed pie. \n\nEven in a growing market (the pie getting bigger), if you grow less than your competition (attempt to self-sustain), then your market share will fall and you will go out of business. \n\nThen your response might be: \"Why can't all businesses just self-sustain?\" Well that leads to a prisoners' dilemma: the first person who defects from the equilibrium and acts in his self-interest benefits the most. That incentive will lead one of the players (in the game) to defect and act in his own self-interest. Then again, stagnation leads to death. \n\n----\n\nThere are also productive and allocative efficiency implications (that is, there is a reason why price and marketshare fixing activities are illegal for private firms to do it - the government can do it [minimum wage, PPACA, USPS, etc] but private firms may not). The reason why those bans are good is because a fixed market reduces productive and allocative efficiency. \n\nProductive and allocative efficiency are when the producers are able to get an optimal supply of capital (investment money) and capital goods (goods used in trade) and when the produce from those producers is optimally distributed to consumers. Fixing the pie reduces the efficiency of both sides of that equation and thus harms the consumers. ",
"You can't keep selling the same thing to the same people. You have to reach new people and/or make new products. Either way you have to grow. Unless you have a perfect product that will always be needed you have to grow. If you do have a perfect product, the world will change and your product will no longer be perfect.",
"What I've learned reading this is that it's greed. :-P ",
"Harvard MBA checking in. \n\nThe answer depends on many factors. Except for scale, most don't make business sense.\n\nPublic Companies: share price is a function of current cash flows, risk, and expected growth. Executive compensation is often tied to share price; thus, management strives to meet growth expectations. This, of course, doesn't make sense unless the growth is profitable, and often it's not.\n\nSize: for many businesses, scale creates efficiency. You spread your overhead costs (management, real estate, etc.) over more units of output, so your margin increases. In highly competitive markets, this cost spreading is necessary because your competitors will use this lower cost per unit to drop price and steal your market share.\n\nStrategic direction: Often, this is code for bad management. Managers will grow their business because sustaining a business is boring. Other times, managers will diversify their business to reduce risk. If you're a private company, this makes sense. As a public company, this makes no sense. If you are selling waffles but are worried about the Atkins diet, a non-saavy owner might diversify into eggs; but as an investor, I would rather you stick to waffles and do it well --- I can put 50 percent of my money in your waffle company, and the other 50 percent in an egg company and see the same risk diversification, but still have management focused on what they're good at.\n\nAlso, to comment on previous posts, adaptation is not the same as growth.\n\n",
"A lot of businesses DO just self sustain. We're talking small-medium businesses here, the ones that supply business to business. They supply the big companies you've heard of with everything they need they keep running. They make a tidy profit and the owner, rather than investing it back into the business, pockets the change and keeps going with business as usual. You just don't hear about these kinds of businesses unless you're....in the business. ",
"Publicly traded businesses need to grow to satisfy their stockholder aspirations. Other businesses can just make money and not bother with the speculators.",
"All things constant, a healthy business should grow for two reasons:\n\n1) Inflation- Everything costs more as time goes on. Think back to how much a soda costs for your grandparents. If a business can't keep pace with inflation- it's actually shrinking.\n\n2) Investors/owners- biggest reason why business must grow. If you front $20 to a friend to sell widgets, you'll probably want to get that $20 back and a little extra for taking that risk of giving your friend money. Only way your friend can do that is if he grows the business.",
"Sad thing is that unchecked growth is what is wrong with modern economic theory and it should not be a goal of business.\n\nIndefinite growth is unsustainable in a closed ecosystem. That's why we have global warming and resource mismanagement overfishing, etc etc",
"They don't have to grow, in fact many (the majority?) don't.\n\nPublic companies (listed on stock exchanges) are under pressure to grow because stockholders want to see the stock price increase, and stock price generally increases in proportion to earnings. E.g. Apple. \n\nThis is also true of private companies which have investors looking to make a return (through sale of the company/it's stock or through dividends). E.g. Snapchat.\n\nThe majority of companies are small 'lifestyle' companies, they simply exist to pay an income to the owners. These don't need to grow. E.g. Local mom-and-pop stores. ",
"Trpf. Tendency of the rate of profit to fall",
"It really is ridiculous that a company that would reach a sustainably profitable size and then say \"that's it, we are going to do what works and not look to increase our size\" would be looked at as not being successful. It's the definition of success as being a drive to consume more that keeps companies from being ok with staying small and profitable. In some sectors there is a need for constant innovation to stay relevant but it's also always tied to a \"need\" for more production and more consumers or it's viewed as being unsuccessful.",
"To fight inflation, because of debt created by governments, money devaluates in value, so you have to fight this every year by extra growth for your shareholders who are trying to fight inflation. ",
"Because of the one trait that defines our entire species.\nGreed.",
"I'm assuming by \"self-sustain\" you mean that business revenue and profits are steady and do not increase, if this isn't the case then my explanation might be off.\n\nOne reason businesses have to constantly grow is because many markets are constantly growing over time (due to births, immigration etc...). A business that \"self-sustains\" in an expanding market opens the door for new competitors to enter the market and/or allows current competitors to obtain more market share. While a loss in market share it self doesn't necessarily mean that the business isn't self-sustaining, it does allow competitors to lower their costs through economies of scale as they acquire more customers which in turn enables them to undercut the self-sustaining business. A business that doesn't expand with the market is shrinking relative to its competitors. \n\nIt is possible for a \"self-sustaining\" business will remain viable without growing with the market; however, customers are fickle and will migrate to lower cost suppliers if their quality/service is on par with your offerings.",
"Not true for ALL businesses, for example a small single proprietorship or partnership real estate management business could be maintained by not expanding beyond a certain point.",
"They do not, but most will.\n\nA company is owned by its shareholders.\n\nThe people who run the company have the job of doing what is best for the owners (the shareholders).\n\nThere are three options now:\n\n1) Grow\n2) Shrink\n3) Be stable\n\nIn terms of growth, you commonly see it because if it works, it will usually provide the greatest shareholder returns.\n\nIn terms of shrinking, (the simple answer) if a division or group is not competing up the standards of the rest of the corporation then it may be sold or shut down. They will close down their operations and either use the regained capital to later grow or return it to shareholders.\n\nIn terms of being stable, this happens when a company knows it cannot realistically grow (they have to diversify into a new industry where they do not have experience). These companies will take the majority of their profits and return them to shareholders through dividends. It should be noted that if a company is known for doing this, then financial savvy people will invest in them for such.",
"Lol. Greed. Really? Some people really do not have any grasp of economics or business at all. Not to say greed does not have any role at all in it, but to say that is the only reason why businesses need to grow is completely preposterous.",
"Businesses don't have to constantly \"grow\" or rather expansion does not always occur at the same rate. Many small businesses and startups fail because they grow too fast.",
"You want to look into steady state economies. Most of the answers you're going to get are going to be biased towards the current system because people live in it and that's their only perspective. So, do some of your own reading. Here's a good place to start:\n\n_URL_0_",
"To become more valuable as insurance against inflation.",
"The strangest thing is that I can't find the real answer on here.\n\nCapitalism is why.\n\nIt's one of the flaws of it as an economics model. Not saying it's bad, but that they all have flaws.\n\nCapitalism demands something like 3% growth out of any system to prevent tumbling. We know that because any time the economy grows at a rate less than that, it tanks and falls apart.\n\n\"Why\" is a much bigger question; is growth needed to repair losses or money borrowed that will never be returned otherwise? Is it that the stock market runs at any sign of slowing returns? (DEFINITELY applicable to America, but capitalism as a system in any area, whether with a \"stock market\" or not, still demands growth.)\n\nIt's a big question and I really don't have a good answer. I hope someone else does.\n\n\n[Also this.](_URL_0_)",
"Growing *is* sustaining. In order to account for periods of downtime, I need to intentionally take on more work than I \"need\" in order to keep the lights on. Once I am confident that I can maintain that amount of work, that becomes \"normal\". Turning down work from established contacts (who you want to continue working with), is never a great idea, so in order to maintain that level of work, you hire more people, work longer hours, etc.\n\nNow you've got the extra liability of employees. Even if you hire them as contractors, you don't want to be able to consistently pay the same people, otherwise they may not be available the next time you need them (and will charge higher rates, if they don't know that you will be able to give them a steady stream of work). So in order to make sure you can maintain the new level, you take on slightly more work than you \"need\", with the expectation that some of will evaporate on its own, and that any excess can be made up through hard work and paying overtime.\n\nAnd the cycle repeats.",
"Sorry but I think the top responses do not address the ELI5 question. they do not say why business HAVE to keep growing, only why it is desired. Forget the tired old Kodak anecdotes (yawn), not every business changes (over some meaningful timeframe) and not every change will mean a business grows.\n\nBut indeed growth is desired for a business: Investors in the firm want as much return as possible but **the market has already priced in the firms currently expected future profits etc.** So in order to attract new investment/monetize ownership, the firm must aim for **greater** than the \"priced in\" future profits so that the investors see potential gains. If the firm did not grow, then the investor's upside would only what is already priced in, and their downside is that the business could fail - this is negatively convex investment (a bad thing.)\n\n(edited for typos)",
"A Private company doesn't \"need\" to grow. It only needs to do what the owners want. That could be sustain or grow. Or even go into the red on purpose to funnel money to another corporation. (See: Hollywood Accounting and how they specifically set up single-movie corporations to run on deficits by sending all of the revenues over to the parent studio corporation.)\n\nA Public company has to answer to shareholders. Shareholder, by and large, care about the making money on buying and selling stocks. To make money in that way the shareholders need to buy low and sell high. Thus, shareholders want the value of their shares to increase so they can sell them at a higher price than what they bought them at. Things like growth, market dominance, and other factors can increase a share's value.",
"I think generalizing all companies by discussing large ones is a mistake. Lots of little companies including the one I personally run are happy to make good money for minimal risk once established. Our product line has changed over 15 years as we are an IT services company but we make a great income as owners and don't risk that by growing. We do grow organically thru referred business but don't market aggressively or make large investments. Thus revenue grows but slowly. ",
"The simple answer is this.\n\nWhen a company goes public and puts itself on the stock market, that company now has shareholders that now own part of the company. \n\nThese new shareholders are now expecting a return on their investment so now this company has to have a plan to make continuous and expanding profits and one way is to expand the business. \n\nIf the shareholder(s) feel they aren't getting a good return, the shareholder(s) say \"fuck this shit, I'm outta here\" and they sell their shares and move on.\n\nA Private company who isn't on any stock market doesn't have to appease any shareholders so they do what they want.\n\nIn N Out hamburgers is a private company. Their expansion is a snails pace compared to McDonalds and its because they don't have any shareholders and the profits they currently make satisfies the owners.\n\n",
"It is possible for a single business to flatline and survive, but the majority must grow for the economy to survive.\n\nEvery economy is built on debt, debt always grows due to interest, all economies must grow to pay the ever increasing debt.\n\nIf an economy was to flatline (sustain), it would eventually be swallowed by debt. \n\nDue to the way money is created, there is more debt in the world than there is money. If the planet sold every asset and put every penny into repaying debt, we'd still be in debt. No economy can avoid debt, which gets bigger every second.\n\nIt's an exponential system in a finite world, it doesn't end well. (Elephant in the room)",
"An analogy:\n\n\nThere is a grove of trees growing higher so their leaves have access to sunlight. One tree decides not to grow and simply self sustain.",
"What makes you think they can't self-sustain? My business has made roughly the same amount every year for 15 years. I am an insurance investigator.",
"I think what you're thinking of when you say \"constantly grow\" is public companies. Their main priority is to satisfy shareholders, who are always looking for an increase in value in the company. This generally leads to short term decisions on part of the company to increase earnings every quarter, which gives off the impression that companies are constantly trying to grow.\n\nThis is why companies sometimes go private (Dell) so they can just self sustain or grow in their own way long term.",
"It is a symptom of a larger problem. Tying the worlds economy (and the well being of billions of people) to an infinite growth paradigm on a planet with finite resources is a bad idea. We are beginning to feel the effects of this problem now. We have set up our societies to consume endlessly and so it shall consume itself finally. Pure insanity.",
"Because if the business is not growing, then its competitor that IS growing will gain competitive advantages like more customers, economies of scale from selling higher volumes, more money to spend in R & D, so on and on. \n\nEventually the non growing business becomes a shrinking business because people are moving away from them and switching to their competitor for the better services and/or prices.., and then eventually it goes bankrupt.",
"With 75 million people showing up on the planet every year, I think as resources grow scarcer businesses will start to experience a zero sum game where the growth of a business will come more or less at the expense of another business. If such a scenario were to occur then businesses would more or less be self-sustaining and not growing as an aggregate.",
"Because if you don't, your competition is... And they are gobbling up marketshare . Therefore, yours is shrinking. \"If your not growing, your dying\" \nI'm going to disagree with greed as the superficial easy answer as a business owner. The better my business does, the more people I can hire, AND the more I can help other people when they are in need. ",
"Because being a bigger company means you have more resilience and don't need to fear being eaten up by a much bigger, richer company.\n\nIf you have a great product and a success story to go with it, and you don't try to expand, then another company could just try to make a similar product and outperform you. They can sell it for cheaper because they have the money. They basically can steal your idea more easily because they have more money to spend on cheap tricks to slowly make your company irrelevant. So by constantly expanding you have a higher profit margin to be able to defend from those type of attacks.",
"Bro do you even greed?",
"Time preference, risk and that capital has to be replenished.\n\n**Why capital has to be replenished:**\n\nImagine that you start a business, an industry for instance. You pay money for capital, the capital being things like the machinery, the land, and other things that increase the output of labor. Maybe you spend some money on educating employees so they properly know how to use the machinery.\n\nYears go buy and you are pretty successful. Your business self-sustains, buying input goods, paying wages, paying the electricity bill. However, the machines are able to produce less and less each year due to wear and tear. After 10 years they are in such a bad shape that they produce nothing at all. The roof of the building has collapsed and the staff has gradually been replaced with new people who didn't attend the introductory training. In order to just keep the same output as from the start, you need to replace or replenish your capital.\n\nBut how will you be able to afford it? The business only made enough to cover it costs and didn't cover the initial investment. All your money went into the first launch of the factory.\n\n**Time preference**\n\nOkay, what if it made enough to replace the capital at the same rate as it detoriates, but not any more than that?\n\nThen you would still have the problem of time preference. Before you started you factory, you had multiple choices of what you could do with your money. You could spend it. You could do nothing at all with it. You could buy a factory that you could sell X years from now for the same price as you bought it. Why would you buy a factory at those terms?\n\nAll your money would be tied into a business at no benefit to you at all. If some good deal for say, a cheap house comes up, you will be unable to hop on to it because it's all in your business. This is the time preference aspect, it's better to have 100 bucks in your pocket today than just a promise of getting paid in the future. It's better to get your salary at the end of the month than at the end of the century.\n\n**Risks**\n\nEven *if* the business made enough profit to replenish its capital, and *if* you didn't care about having less money at hand for years or decades, the success of the factory is not guaranteed. It might fail. You might buy the wrong kind of machinery. People might stop buying the nylon stockings you were making and instead buying the new, fashionable rainbow stockings. Survival rate among small businesses is ridiculously small. Why would I put my money into something that has a 90% risk of failure and a 0% risk of profit?\n\n**Global capital**\n\nOkay, suppose were willing to take a chance at it anyway, even if you didn't make a profit, even if it has a 90% risk of failure. You just want some excitement in your life, or you want to create jobs. Then wouldn't it be beneficial to invest in the factory anyway?\n\nNo, due to the societal need for capital. If money is spent on something that fails, it robs society of the access to all the good things that it could have been invested in. The hours spend on the factory could have been spent making something else that your customers actually wanted. But now, that time and energy is wasted and we have all less goods in the store to choose from as a result.",
"I always wondered why the business couldn't adapt naturally. Like a forest that grows so large that it's ecosystem adapts to the point that a big change like a forest fire merely thins and refines the already sturdy structure. \n\nI don't believe in that \"gotta grow fast\" idea. That's the higher CEO profit/wage incentive disguised as \"ah you see, the only way a company can survive is by aggressive expansion\" trope.\n\nI'm sure there's a few companies we never think of that grow too big, fall back on their existing saved revenue, then keep going up and up again. ",
"One reason businesses are rewarded for growth is that the financial valuation of the company is tied to its stream of future income. A business that is earning $1 million (or $1 billion) per year with no growth is, all else equal, worth A LOT less than a business earning the same amount but growing profits at 20% per year. In this simplified example, it will only take a few years for the second business to have twice the profit of the first business, and a few more years to double again if the growth rate sustains. \n\nEven small changes in expected future growth rates can result in dramatic changes in total valuation (just as a modestly higher return on investment in your retirement account can have dramatic consequences over many years). That's the magic of compound interest.\n\nThose differences in valuation will drive differences in share price, which matters greatly to investors as well as managers with compensation tied to valuation such as stock options or stock grants. As others have pointed out, a growing business can also give you headroom to invest and adapt to changing conditions.\n\nBut there's no reason a company *must* grow. Really it just must be profitable. Some small businesses provide a very nice lifestyle for their owners even if they are no longer growing, and that's perfectly fine. It matters more when a company is larger and publicly traded, since the rewards for many people are tied to share prices, which are themselves heavily contingent on a firm's expected future profits.",
"This is hardly an honest question but I'll play along for those following who are actually interested in a discussion. They cannot just self sustain because of competition and innovation and inflation. \n\nIf a company isn't growing, it is dying. Other companies are always innovating and seeking efficiencies. This is not just capitalism but human nature. These incentives lead to better products and lower costs. These innovations will put those companies who are just self-sustaining out of business. \n\nThe second reason is that inflation is constantly eating away at the value of dollar. The future value of a dollar one year from now is about 98 cents. This constant draining away of value forces companies to either grow sales or lower costs. Why? Because businesses are loathe to raise prices. They must do it sometimes but regular increases are very unfavorable with customers. A business can put off raising prices if they can grow more efficient by increasing sales (this dilutes a companies fixed costs - rent, depreciation, some wages) or by innovating. Innovating is great because it either makes some earlier process cheaper (quicker or energy efficient machines used in manufacturing) or adds value by adding features for which customers will no mind paying higher prices. \n\nThe only entities which can self-sustain are those outside of regular market factors - government entities (DMV, Veteran's Affairs, Defense), private entities with shielding from the government (Fannie Mae, cable TV companies, inefficient renewable energy needing subsidies, and monopolies (Bell Telephone of the 80s, Post Office, taxies). ",
"How this entire thread has 500+ comments and no one has mentioned the [Red Queen Hypothesis](_URL_0_) is beyond me. \n\nBasically, so long as any one of your competitors is advancing, you must also advance, or you will be left behind (which in biology, means your genetic code won't move on, and in business, means you will be bought or have small enough revenue as to be unable to compete). \n\nVery small businesses don't have that concern, so there will always be, say, the occasional mom and pop store, but they become more and more rare because big business (previously malls, now mostly WalMart and big box stores) force them out of the market by underselling. ",
"Business owner here.\n\nThere are several good macro-level answers already.\n\nI wanted to give a micro-economic one, i.e., why my small firm must grow.\n\nI have several employees. Next year I'll have a few more. For me, that's 20-30% growth.\n\nI focus on [smart] growth because:\n\n* My income is a combination of a set salary and distributions. Growth results in larger distributions for me and my family.\n* I am either earning a profit or sinking. The concept of \"breaking even\" does not work in business for more than one or two periods as I can't cover any downturns down the road.\n* As my firm grows, my team grows and we gain more depth. The team gets more efficient, and my gross profit% improves.\n* As my firm grows, my client portfolio grows larger, and any single client becomes less of a financial risk to me.\n\nSo that's why I grow my company.\n\nThere are of course risk that come from growth, e.g., cash flow. So it has to be a calculated decision.",
"It does not. There are several forms of business that just self sustain very well (farms, shops, restaurants, clubs, associations, etc.). It depends on the owner(s). My advice is, if the quality of the product, the service, the employees or the image of your business is important to you, don't go public.",
"If you're not growing, someone else is, and soon you'll be shrinking.\n\nThe pressure for constant growth is really only on public companies with competitors. The private small scale business or the big monopoly can coast on flat growth and solid profit without issue for years and be just fine.",
"Because competitive pressures are considerable. I work for a company of 450. When I joined 8 years ago we were 150. Pressure from competitors forced us to grow - If we had stayed at 150 the company would have been crushed.",
"Stockholders. That's why. More. More. More. Which isn't necessarily bad, but greed can blind wisdom.",
"Why don't you\n\n (•_•)\n\nAsk Jeeves?\n\n ( •_•) > ⌐■-■ (⌐■_■)",
"I ran a small company for the past fourteen years. Our revenue grew significantly for the first four years and then leveled off. That was fine for a few years.\n\nThen the cost of travel (our biggest expense) shot up with gas prices, the competition grew and started taking market share a little bit at a time. Then the recession hit. One bank stopped their line of credit product (for all clients, not just me) so I needed to adjust my cash flow process.\n\nIt finally got to the point where I needed to grow the business to maintain my cash flow, or I needed to shut down.\n\nThere is no need to start small and aim to be google...but you need to grow your revenues to keep your bottom line cash flow value over time consistent.\n\nGreed actually had little to do with it. I was making enough money, but my costs were going up and more small businesses were nibbling at my edges.",
"For publicly traded companies the value must grow or shareholders will (wisely) sell their stake in the company and invest in companies that will grow their wealth. \n\nWhen investors start selling off the stock the value decreases and the company eventually dies when liquidating the company's assets is worth more than continuing business. \n\nIn the world of publicly traded stocks it's a choice between growth or failure. There is no such thing as maintenance. \n\nHell, when a company fails to make as much profit as expected, but still profits, its stock value drops and they lose value. ",
"I believe it was Mr. Big Tom Callihan of Callihan Automotive that said, \"If you ain't growing, you're dying. There ain't no third direction.\"",
"It takes all the running in the world to stay in the same place.",
"The answer is simple.\n\n**They don't have to.** \nPeople *choose* to.\n\nWhy? More money, more safety from a bad period of trade, a challenge, etc, etc.",
"Think of the top 5 football teams in your league. Each one of them likely aimed to be number 1. Only one of them got to number 1. \n\nSame in business. You need to aim to be profitable - if you aimed to simply break even, any unexpected fluctuation in market conditions could see you lose substantial amounts of money - and that would mean you couldn't afford your employees' wages and would have to cut jobs...",
"Capitalism is the reason. I'm not bashing it and I'm not saying it's a bad, evil thing. But, by definition Capitalism will fail without growth. Globalism, glocalism, and grobalism are terms used to describe the capitalist world and how it has to constantly grow in order to maintain profits. Look up Kloby and grobalism. He defines it way better than I can. ",
"Businesses don't constantly need to grow to survive. \n\nLarge publicly traded companies have to grow, however, because of shareholder pressure to provide profits. It's not needed, it's just the way we have created our economy. Publicly traded companies have to do whatever possible to provide shareholders profits, and this invariably leads to constant growth.",
"Is all about the profit. The businesses that are self-sustainable are fine. Its normally when Owners/Shareholders expect more profits or dividends. So essentially greed is what drives expansion. In rare cases though businesses will grow to satisfy needs of customers. ",
"Companies that grow attract more investors. Companies with more investors can use that capital to make new products, more their current products more efficient, etc.\n\nFor publicly traded companies, the shareholders will usually vote in CEO's that bring in growth (in market cap) so that their shares are worth more.",
"Publicly held companies are obligated to \"create value\" their shareholders. Private companies are also beholden to investors which for all incentive purposes are the same as public shareholders. Ultimately it's the shareholders who define how much a company must grow (\"grow\" is just another way to say create value) . A company creates value by selling more stuff and/or by using their assets (machines, inventory, buildings etc.) more efficiently. In most cases, these two processes require a company to grow. In very simplified terms the company is required to make more with less. Competition is another force that requires companies grow. This process is a bit more complicated but the ELI5 answer is that companies rely on money from investors. Investors want the biggest return on their investment. Companies that grow are rewarded with more money. Companies competing in the same industry are therefore forced to chase investor money by growing and being equally efficient with their assets. ",
"To achieve a spatial fix. ",
"So basically the top comments are there because the OP didn't structure his question well enough. Well done Reddit.",
"There is no such thing as standing still. If you are not moving then other people are moving relative to you and you are still moving relative to them. \n\nIf you are stagnant as a business you are falling.",
"Because capitalism encourages businesses to grow and consume. To merge and expand. Just like cancer!",
"Depends on the company.\n\nLet's take Tesla as an example, if you look at the cash that the business actually generates versus the stock price it doesn't really make sense. The only factor that reconciles this is that investors expect a very high growth rate of the business in the future. Tesla has to grow a certain % just to justify it's stock price today, and if it wants to increase it's stock price it needs to grow even faster. \n\nThe opposite of Tesla there are very large and mature companies where the growth rate is very low. There stocks typically tend to trade much closer to the intrinsic value of the cash that they generate. Investors \"know what they're getting\" if they put their money here, lower returns but also more stable and don't expect much growth\n\n",
"Because growing means your're doing something right. In business there is no such thing as self-sustaining. The reason for this is your customers will talk. You will either gain or lose customers based on how happy they are. At the point where it is time to expand (because of happy customers) and you don't, then your happy customers will become unhappy and you will start shrinking. \nLets look at an example of a small business. Keeping in mind of course that a business is in business to meet the needs of it's customers. \nYou are owner of business FakeBusiness. You're good owner who has done a good job figuring out what your customers need. The people you service are pleased and tell other people. Those people are pleased and tell more people etc etc. You, as owner of FakeBusiness, have no desire to expand your business. At some point down the road, as happy customers tell other people about FakeBusiness and they in turn spread the word your ability to meet everyone's needs hits max capacity. You might be running out of places to store your products or you just can't handle all the orders or something. You don't seek to fix this problem of max capacity because you don't want to expand. So you begin to get unhappy customers who go somewhere else to have their needs met. Those unhappy customers spread the word about how unhappy they are and your customer base begins to slowly shrink. This is fine with you as you don't want to expand. Then I enter the picture. I saw what you were doing to meet the customers needs and that some where unhappy and I want to grow and expand. So I do the same thing you're doing, but when I hit max capacity I grow and change. This make my customers (the ones who were unhappy with you) happy. They begin to tell people about my business and how it is a little better than yours. I have more stock or handle bigger orders and can even do what you do. I take more of your customer base. But that's ok, you didn't want to expand and your still in business. However you don't have as high profit margins and you're seeing fewer and fewer new customers. Eventually you really only have a new customer every once in a while and you only service your old loyal following. Your business is slowly shrinking in size. At some point you are no longer able to sustain the business as overhead is to high and you have so few customers. You go out of business. I expand as far as I can go and sell out to someone who can expand farther or I innovate and expand all the time.\nI want to get better at explaining things so if anyone of this was unclear let me know.\nedit* you're",
"I think you should replace \"business\" with \"economy\" and you will have yourself a better question. ",
"From a business news point of view, growth companies are sexy compared to cash cow businesses that are still highly profitable, because they represent unknowable (and potentially limitless) potential - and that makes them hard to value. Nudging the projected growth rate on financial models will give you widely varying valuations (and future returns) and have a tendency to take investors on wild rides up and down, making and breaking fortunes, while \"boring companies\" are very much a known quantity that buy and sell within a narrow range. \n\nThat being said, most businesses (eventually) are expected to stop growing or at least slow and investors expect to \"harvest\" the wealth that has been created through dividends or stock buybacks, etc. ",
"I'll take a different perspective on the question: **[Churn](_URL_0_) and [Inflation](_URL_1_)**\n\nMost sources of revenue for a business have a quantifiable decrease over a period of time. In general, no revenue is 100% recurring, meaning that you can't passively sustain a business. Because of this, businesses must continue to grow new sources of revenue to compensate for the inevitable decline in recurring revenue from churn. If new revenue exceeds churn, then the business grows.\n\nHowever, even if a business sustains its revenue every year, it can decrease in value due to inflation. Basically money becomes worth less and less every year, so the business needs to constantly grow to afford its costs such as employee salaries. ",
"When a business gets too large it gets harder to control. A smaller business most times make more money bottom line than a larger business.",
"I think you are referring to publicly traded companies that are constantly pressured to grow and gain market share. These companies are pressured to grow by the stock holders since growth in market share and profits makes the stock price go up. If the company simply maintains profits(even very healthy profits) this is usually not enough to push the stock price up, and the public stock holders usually are ultimately focused on one thing which is the stock price.\n\nConversely, privately held companies have the 'luxury' of not having to cater to constant pressure for higher profits and greater market share from shareholders since privately held companies usually have a much smaller number of shareholders than publicly traded companies. These private owners are usually content to allow a company to steadily produce good profits without always pushing for greater growth because they are more likely to be concerned about the Long Term health of the company and less likely to be obsessed with only short term results at the cost of longer term consequences.\n\nThe public markets are unmatched for raising capital but can be a curse in the long term with an endless demand for growth.",
"The simple answer to this is that it is because markets grow, which in turn does due to population increase or market being more accessible, also in what part of the [diffusion of innovation](_URL_0_) the market actually is. In a nutshell, markets grow. And because markets grow, there's a constant need for business expansion for the simple reason that if it's not you, it's gonna be someone else who is going to take that share.\n\nIn addition, one of the key functions of a business is to bring wealth back to its shareholders. Thus, diversifying your product offering to new markets allow more money to come to the shareholders pockets.",
"It could, but population grows, which causes demand to increase.",
"Patagonia is an example of a company that has purposely decided on an optimal size. Here is some of their backstory about how they came to this decision:\n_URL_0_",
"the business that does not innovate dies",
"The answer is basically that if one business doesn't grow, another will grow and it will advance past it's competitor. People like Adam Smith argued that an 'invisible hand' of the market would destroy businesses if they were not competitive because another, that is willing to grow, would take its place. Satisfaction(ie accepting a self-sustaining business without attempting to grow) is the enemy of competition.\n\nThat's the theory anyway. I'm not sure I buy it.",
"because competition forces every business to grow. if a business didn't grow it would be overtaken by its competitors and runs the risk of failing.",
"More success to the business means more money for the owner and sometimes the employees. More success could also facilitate production. ",
"It isn't about business. It is about life. People grow, we change, we birth new life, we die. We do not self-sustain. Why should businesses act differently?\n\n",
"Look at Nokia as an example. They were the king in the mobile phone business. everyone and their mother had a Nokia phone. When Apple introduced the first iPhone, Nokia did nothing and continued making classic button phones. The consumers slowly adapted to the touch screen smartphone market over the years. Nokia finally realized the competition but was too late, company bankrupted and was sold to Microsoft. ",
"**Most** businesses do self-sustain, or even operate at a loss. You're judging this solely by looking at large, publicly traded companies, but they're a tiny minority of all the companies that exist.\n\nIf you have a small, closely held company, you may very well be happy being self-sustained. If your company is running well, that means that you're getting a good bit of money out of the company at the end of each year. That's excellent.\n\nThe \"problem\" with a traded company is just that - you don't have a static set of owners, and status quo isn't going to cut it.\n\nIf you buy shares in Acme Corp. at $100 a share, you're looking at that as an investment. Therefor, you want that share to be worth $110 next year, you want it to be worth $125 in two years, and so on.\n\nSo to keep the company attractive to investors, the company \"must\" have continuous growth.\n\n(There *are* publicly traded companies that are based more on annual earnings than growth as well, just for the record)",
"I own 1/6th of a growing company at the moment. We crossed the big million a year in profit a few years ago. Crossed 2 million 1 year ago, and are now well on our way to 3 million. \n\nWhat have we done with this cash? We've expanded infrastructure. Gained a fuck tonne of new clients that trust us, increases wages and bonuses for all of our hard working employees. Increased worker perks. Gotten new offices. Hired lots of new staff. The list is pretty much endless. \n\nWe went from a business operating in a friends bedroom, so a multi-million sterling company in about 7 years or so. You'd think we were a success story, but it's not quite that simple. For example. \n\nWe are currently going through a period of of really, really rapid expansion, because we stepped into territory we didn't understand. As a result, our staff is currently tripling in size. So we have what you might call 'growing pains'\n\nThis is problematic, as we used to treat staff like family. Give them shit loads of bonuses and high wages, because at the end of the day, the greatest prize is paying your workers and making them happy. We cannot do that any more. With everything that is going on, we've recently taken to referring to the new employees as non-core employees. They're on a bog standard wage. Not particularly high, but high enough. With little bonuses and little perks. It's not nice to do at all, but they are essentially keyboard monkeys in a lot of the other board members eyes. They're data enterers. Stuff we all used to do begrudgingly in the early days. \n\nWe were national favorites in Britain for customer service in our fields. An absolute amazing honour for a company as small as ours. We had top of the line support, and created industry defining software. But best of all, we sold it all for peanuts. (For example, a year long contract with us was back in the day about £40,000. Our nearest competitor was charging £160,000, and their service was shit, and their software was shit. Nobody could compete) We were pretty fucking popular all throughout the country, and we were smart as well. Only going for smaller clients, never more than we could chew (most of the time anyway, there are a few exceptions.) But, as a flip side of that, everyone wanted in.\nAs a result, our sales team (Which is a team of 2) went absolutely crazy pitching our software to potential clients. Driving all the way around the country. It is absolutely exhausting. And that isn't even the half of it. With new customers, they require us to jump through certain hoops, security wise. We need to host them on our OWN servers, which isn't cheap, we need to manage those servers, support software, and develop new features. All with a team of about 6 people. And once we had won the contract, we had to sign off documents that could reach up to 12,000 pages of nothing but legal bullshit. And we had to understand it, and i mean REALLLYYY understand it. Or we were going to be in a load of legal bumfuckery. \n\nAs a reward for being so good at what we do, we got well over 100 clients, each paying a fair price for an excellent bit of software. But thats the problem, we no longer care for our customers. We need to treat each one equally as cold. Hundreds of calls come in a day with them reporting problems or asking for help, and we can't get all chummy with them anymore, as the newer clients call up pissed. Always pissed. \n\nWe also have to deal with a lot of slander. Some of our clients use other companies to act on their behalf, and we really... REALLY don't get on with them. These companies are big, big companies, and as such they have a division which competes with us. We are sucking business away from them, so they give us a shitting hard time. We need to play politics with every word we say and every email we send, otherwise they will pick up on it, and feed it out to the relevant people. It's hard. Really hard. \n\nSo why do we grow? We want all of our core employees (even low level starters) to be on 75k a year. The only way of doing that is expanding. We want to help people live their lives. We provide a service. We enjoy our jobs. And in our eyes the absolute bullshit red tape, and fuckery we deal with is absolutely worth it. Making a company spin out of control because of rapid growth is easy. But its safer than self-sustaining. If the economy takes a downturn, what will you do then? You can't self-sustain things you don't have control over. If you're constantly growing, you will take a hit, or flatline. It ensures you keep yourself afloat. "
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"http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diffusion_of_innovations"
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"http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303513404577352221465986612"
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8q8qin | what exactly, excepted human greed, makes it impossible for the world to just "erase" all debts and start economy anew? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8q8qin/eli5_what_exactly_excepted_human_greed_makes_it/ | {
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"Erasing debts would mean erasing the savings of people who have saved money for their retirement. When a bank loans someone money, to buy a home, they don't print that money. They loan out money that other people have deposited. Erasing debt means erasing savings, and that would make borrowers rich (they would have a home they didn't pay for) and savers poor. It's not \"greed\" to expect a little old lady's retirement savings to be preserved.",
"Precedent.\n\nIf you make erasing all debt an option, politicians will use it to get elected, lobbyists will use it to become rich (by taking out giant loans just before a debt wipe), and anyone who has money (banks and such) will stop spending it on loans (or start enforcing repayment separate from the law). \n\nAll of the above was done in ancient Rome. ",
"Probly the fact that if you owe me 50 bucks I'm not gonna wanna say \"hey you don't have to give me that fifty bucks you owe me\" because I want my fifty fucking bucks. Honestly dude it's common sense that's not even greed",
"Someone would be left holding the bag, no matter how you slice it.\n\nWhen one person lends someone else money, it's great for the one receiving the money to forget the debt but the lender has lost resources because they could have spent that money somewhere else. \n\nThere will, inevitably be a group who have lost resources through no fault of their own. ",
"Erasing debts means nobody will trust that they'll get their money back when they give out a loan. So imagine a world with no loans.\n\nImagine trying to go to school without student loans.\n\nImagine trying to buy a house with no mortgage loans (pay the whole sum on purchase).\n\nImagine trying to buy a car without financing (again, pay the whole sum on purchase).\n\nImagine no [Medicaid](_URL_0_). Imagine no \"payment plans\" for high-cost but absolutely needed medical expenses."
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v66xq | el15: socialism/communism | Could someone explain Socialism and Communism and explain their differences?
Thanks. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/v66xq/el15_socialismcommunism/ | {
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"\"Communism\" is a hypothetical way to run a country invented by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels in the 19th century. They imagined a utopia in which all property would be shared, workers and farmers would own the means of production and profits would be divided by the principle of \"from each according to their capabilities, to each according to their needs\", and everyone would be more or less equal in terms of wealth. This has never been achieved in reality. There has never been a \"communist\" country.\n\nA \"socialist\" government is what happens in real life when a country tries to rule itself according to those principles. It means a lot of government involvement in industry and economy in general, strict laws regulating workers' rights such as minimal wage, maximal workhours etc. Many socialist countries also have/had government programs to provide free secondary and even university-level education to citizens. Other examples of socialist policies would be free public healthcare, or government programs to provide apartments to people. Importantly, socialist countries need to have much higher taxes than non-socialist countries to pay for all that.\n\nSource: I lived in an eastern bloc country and had to learn and regurgitate this shit in elementary school."
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1rwp61 | how are rape and physical abuse cold cases (20/30 years old) proven in a court of law? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1rwp61/how_are_rape_and_physical_abuse_cold_cases_2030/ | {
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"Sometimes they're able to get new evidence from the evidence collected at the time. They might be able to get DNA evidence that they just weren't able to obtain at the time. At the time they may have been only able to get test for blood type, for example, but it wasn't enough to narrow down the suspects or wasn't seen as enough to go to court with.",
"I am a Criminal Defense Lawyer and former prosecutor in Canada. We have no limitations on charges for historic sexual assaults. Despite what shows like CSI might tell you, most sex assaults are proven by the testimony of the witnesses and not forensic evidence. Historic sexual assaults are difficult to prove because like every other case, it relies on the memory of the witness. Some factors that can influence a successful prosecution are a witness, similar fact evidence from another victim, a kept diary from the time period in question, observations of the victim after meetings with the accused etc... At least a few of these would have to be there as there is likely no forensic evidence available and a he said / she said very rarely leads to a successful prosecution. "
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8qy4ea | in a room with no windows, why does having the air vent shut cause the door to resist being closed, but with the vent open it pulls itself closed? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8qy4ea/eli5_in_a_room_with_no_windows_why_does_having/ | {
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"When you attempt to close the door, you're pushing and compressing air into the room. With nowhere for that air to go, it tries the only possible escape route - out the door that you're trying to close."
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antlgi | why can hypoxia occur in a few seconds on a plane but we can hold our breath longer without problems? | Same thing with useful consciousness: why is the time so slow compared to holding your breath? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/antlgi/eli5_why_can_hypoxia_occur_in_a_few_seconds_on_a/ | {
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"One of the biggest reasons is that when we hold our breath we take a full breath with much denser air so we have more oxygen in our lungs but at 30k feet the air is so thin that we can get enough oxygen to support basic life functions",
"I think you’re wondering why, in the event of an explosive decompression, I don’t just hold my breath? If that’s the case then here’s the answer: your breath would be ripped out of you whether you like it or not. I suppose you could try pinching your nose and clamping your mouth shut with your other hand but I doubt it would work. \n\nAs soon as your lungs are open to the reduced atmosphere your O2 will be sucked out of your bloodstream in literally seconds. "
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2c3q1m | why do i need complete silence while reading, in order to comprehend anything? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2c3q1m/eli5_why_do_i_need_complete_silence_while_reading/ | {
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"My wife reads the newspaper while having the \"Today\" show on TV. I can't do it, I find myself reading the same paragraph over and over and over. I need to leave the room to read the paper in quiet."
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42wnj5 | why do humans have so much tooth problems and animals not? what did we used for dental care in more primitive days? | Why do humans have so many tooth problems although arguably we take good care of our teeth but animals don't have as many if any of these problems? Also what did we do to take care of our teeth before "Modern" dental care solutions like toothbrushes, floss, and mouthwash?
Edit:
Title - *so many tooth problems | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/42wnj5/eli5_why_do_humans_have_so_much_tooth_problems/ | {
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"The problem is the amount of sweet food we eat - far more than is found in nature. If we didn't eat so much sweet food, we'd mostly be fine without toothpaste.\n\nAdditionally, modern medicine means we live much longer than we did before, therefore we need to ensure our teeth also survive for a similar amount of time.",
"Actually wild animals *can* have dental problems. The difference between humans and animals is often the *type* of problem that is likely to occur. While cavities are relatively rare among most wild animals, dental wear is actually relatively common among a number of species, and can lead to what we call \"dental senescence.\" This is when the tooth loses ability to functionally process food items, which can have some pretty severe impacts on health and nutritional status. Extremely high rates of wear and subsequent tooth loss are often thought to reflect an ecological mismatch between dental form and diet -- basically the animal is consuming foods to which it's teeth were not \"designed\" to process. Likewise, the inclusion of things like phytoliths and exogenous silica in the diet can cause significant tooth wear (as is commonly observed in a number of artiodactyl / perissodactyl species). \n\nMy research actually focuses on dental wear and tooth loss in wild ring-tailed lemurs. While caries are relatively uncommon in the population I work with, extreme wear-related tooth loss is common (with some individuals demonstrating up to 81% of their teeth missing). This appears to be due to the consumption of a large, hard and tough fruit called tamarind (think the stuff that is used to flavor those little Jarritos Tamarindo drinks). What is interesting though, is that while there are some health and nutritional effects, the animals where I work appear to survive and reproduce for extended periods despite dental impairment -- often by compensating behaviorally by doing things like processing foods differently or eating different types of foods than others without extreme dental wear. We also have relatively high rates of abscessing (e.g., a infection of the tooth's \"core\" pulp cavity and surrounding tissue). This can be pretty nasty to see IRL, and appears to relate to dental fracturing related to tamarind consumption... "
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806uok | why can't we use a universal style of power plugs and volts? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/806uok/eli5_why_cant_we_use_a_universal_style_of_power/ | {
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"The costs outweigh the benefits. There are already well-established industries providing products that fit the various types, and converting to a single type would mean a complete infrastructure overhaul is a major portion of the world."
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36a381 | why is same sex marriage something that has to be legalized? why can't they just get married? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/36a381/eli5_why_is_same_sex_marriage_something_that_has/ | {
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"A marriage license must be issued so that two people can legally be married and receive the benefits a wed couple has (social security, tax, healthcare-there are thousands). You can have a *wedding*, but it would not fall under the governmental definition of a marriage. ",
"Because the legal definitions of marriage have always said 'man and woman' instead of just 'two people'. Whether it was *deliberately* worded that way to exclude same-sex marriage, or just an accident borne out of innocent assumptions, that's how the laws were drawn up so that's how marriage was legally defined.",
"I can only speak about the US. In the US, its because of the 10th amendment of the Constitution, which moves all powers to the states that aren't specifically mentioned elsewhere in the constitution as belonging to the federal government.\n\nMarriage is one of these. The US federal government has never dealt in marriage laws, so all states have their own laws regarding marriage. To date historically, states (and citizens) have viewed marriage as between a man and a woman. Legally, marriage is a religious institution that is recognized by the states as a contracted privilege which people apply for (through applying for and receiving a marriage license) and not a right. Benefits given to married couples by governments are due to the fact that them having children is beneficial to the state.\n\nThe religious origins of marriage have become irrelevant. But since heretofore marriage has legally been a contract between a man and a woman for all states of the US, individual states now must willingly change their legal definitions of marriage in order to apply to same-sex couples as well. ",
" > Why can't they just get married?\n\nBecause they can't get a marriage license.\n\nThey can certainly have a wedding ceremony, but from a legal standpoint, that is meaningless. All that matters to the government is whether or not you filled out and filed a marriage license. In jurisdictions where same-sex marriage is not legal, the state will refuse to issue them a marriage license, so they cannot be married in a legal sense."
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40mp1n | how do restaurants manage to keep sliced avocados green for hours, but 5 minutes after i cut mine at home, it starts to turn brown? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/40mp1n/eli5_how_do_restaurants_manage_to_keep_sliced/ | {
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"You coat them with something acidic to prevent the oxidation that causes the brown color. This can be lemon/lime juice (like you use in guacamole) or ascorbic acid (vitamin C) or other acidic food items. You also restrict the oxygen from getting to it by covering it with plastic wrap.",
"I work at a reateraunt. We only cut a couple at a time and seal it up but I'm sure there's other ways",
"1. Make a bowl with diluted citric acid or some lemon water\n\n2.dip sliced avocado in the liquid \n\n3.place in a sealed plastic box or something similar. ",
"They usually dunk them in water with some added lemon juice. The color change is due to reaction with oxygen in the air. The ascorbic acid (vitamin C) and citric acid in the citrus juice are \"anti-oxidants\" and the practical up-shot is that you can prevent the oxidation reaction by dipping it in the anti-oxidants.\n\nIt works for other foods that discolor as a result of oxidation too (like apples).",
"At Chipotle, when I worked there, we would cover the guacamole containers in plastic wrap, and aim to use them all very soon. Plus, when there is a little bit of brown, it's harmless oxidation and you can stir the avocados to get that green again.\n\nThen again, this is Chipotle we're talking about.",
"Browning is from Polyphenol Oxidase. This also causes browning in most other common fruits. \n\nYou need to destroy or stop the enzyme action - typically via acid (or heat if used correctly). \n\nThe whole \"pits stops browning\" doesn't really work - it just gives some physical protection and reduces the amount of o2 space. "
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53uze2 | why do some scripted tv comedies still use laugh tracks and live studio audiences nowadays? i dont know anyone who doesnt find them insulting to their intelligence. | [deleted] | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/53uze2/eli5_why_do_some_scripted_tv_comedies_still_use/ | {
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"Many multicamera shows like live audiences, as it adds to the performance -- immediate feedback if something works or doesn't.\n\nThe thing about a live audience is that it locks you into using a laugh track, because the crowd won't be laughing as much on the third take as they do on the first, and when the show is aired, you need to have a consistent laughter volume.",
"I don't feel my intelligence is insulted.\n\nLaughter is actually a group activity. Studies have backed this up: on being told a joke, you're much more likely to laugh if you're with other people than if you're on your own.\n\nMovies don't need laugh tracks, because they're designed to be watched in an auditorium with a large group of people -- so the live audience is there with you.\n\nBut TV shows are often watched by people on their own, or in groups of two or three. Audiences are, in that situation, much less likely to laugh, even though they do \"get\" all the jokes. So a laugh track is there to simulate the experience of being in a larger group, making laughter more likely.",
"Honestly, I rarely notice the laugh track unless someone points it out to me. But on shows that don't include it, I always notice. Kinda weird.",
"They are not pretending or trying to make you think that this is a spontaneous reaction. It just goes well with the format.",
"Vocabulary time!\n\n**Laugh track** - an audio track of principally laughter picked up from mics pointed at the audience.\n\n**\"Canned laughter\" aka \"Laff box\"** - pre-recorded audio of laughter that is inserted to similate live laughter. \n\n**Sweetening** - adding canned laughter to a laugh track to mask other audience noise or make up for a joke that failed in the room.\n\nWhy do scripted tv comedies use \"canned laughter?\" \n\nGenerally, they don't. Sweetening does happen a lot, but typically it is the live audience responding. And shows without a live audience almost never add canned laughter these days.\n\nWhy have an audience?\n\nTV shows are noisy products. Getting some people to attend a free show is cheaper than paying to score music for a dramedy. Silencing the laugh track (to keep out coughs, for example) is done when a show has reached a serious tone. M*A*S*H famously didn't use it in the operating room scenes, even when they were joking around.\n\nShows like \"The Office\" would have had canned laughter in the 70s, but don't today. Because they don't have laugh/applause breaks, they have to rely on actor reactions or pedalling in \"awkward\" comedy to fill time.\n\nIf you find your intelligence is insulted, you shouldn't be watching television anyway. There's little there for the intelect. If you just want to chuckle at something while you're doing dishes, [Big Bang Theory](_URL_0_).",
"That's weird. The only people I know who find them insulting to their intelligence are pretentious and/or overrate their intelligence."
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66stc5 | roman architecture is so revered for being one of the strongest and best engineered. yet, so few of their important buildings remain. what happened? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/66stc5/eli5_roman_architecture_is_so_revered_for_being/ | {
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"A lot of the important structures of Rome remained, such as the colloseum, Vatican, pantheon, forum (partially destroyed in ww2) baths of caracalla, catacombs etc..",
"Not an expert but I do know of that locals sometimes would demo parts of buildings/works for building material.",
"The ones that remain ARE the amazing thing. Our skyscrapers and our modern engineering is going to be decomissioned and demolished in 100-200 years because it will begin to crumble, all of the bridges in the US are falling apart and must be rebuilt, etc. Roman buildings have been around for 2000.",
"You realize that they build over 2000 years ago?",
"Apart from pyramids (and a pile of stone blocks doesn't really have a way it could collapse), Greek and Roman buildings are among the oldest buildings still around. Modern buildings won't last 2000 years. Many won't even last 200.",
"We recently learned Roman concrete was so good because they incorporated volcanic ash, which worked as a *really* good binder.\n\n\"Lets just use that ourselves!\". \nOur demand for concrete is many orders of magnitude larger than the amount of volcanic ash we could collect. But since we know it works, we now know how to design better artificial binders in the future.\n\nAs for you exact question; Not all wear and tear is weathering; A lot of destroyed buildings would be due to human causes.",
"A couple factors: **Age**, **Location**, **history** \n \n* **Age**: Rome was founded almost 3000 years ago. The colosseum was built almost 2000 years ago. In that time materials physically fail (wood rots, concrete erodes). People also broke roman structures down for materials from time to time \n* **Location**: Rome is still a city, and most of the Roman cities are now major metropolitan areas. In that time demands for land forced people to destroy the old to make room for the new. This is why we see miles of Hadrian's Wall, a 1900 year old structure, still standing today. \n* **history**: We have the human factor too. These cities were sacked in wars, and sometimes razed to demoralize the citizens. There were also accidents: fires that destroyed sectors of towns, earthquakes, and mudslides. \n \nTL;DR So much can go wrong with time that it's amazing anything they made is standing",
"A great deal of damage was done by locals over the centuries. Consider how much easier it is to get a pre-cut stone from the old ruined city over there than to quarry it yourself, and perhaps from a distant location. As an example, my tour guide in Pergamon said much of the damage was from locals who pillaged the limestone/marble to make into whitewash for their trees.\n\nWe've been taught to appreciate and treasure our cultural heritage. Many of our ancestors weren't, or were even taught to hate and destroy things made by past civilizations. Also some people today are being taught that... see the recent destruction of Palmyra."
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1wdy50 | why isn't childhood obesity grounds for abuse like under feeding a child is? | Aren't they just opposite ends of the same realm of abuse? I personally feel that anyone who allows a small child to become morbidly obese should have their kids taken away by child protective services. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1wdy50/eli5why_isnt_childhood_obesity_grounds_for_abuse/ | {
"a_id": [
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"There can be a variety of factors that may lead to childhood obesity that aren't linked to overeating. \n\nFor example, hypothyroidism. Medicinal side-effects. Asthma may even doom a kid to inactivity. \n\nLastly, you need to consider *who* gets obese. You're far more likely to get obese if you are poor. This is because unhealthy foods tend to be the cheapest. Should we ban poor people from having kids? That's highly unethical."
]
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[]
] |
|
967ite | if plastic bottles have a date of expiry how come you can continuously recycle it? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/967ite/eli5_if_plastic_bottles_have_a_date_of_expiry_how/ | {
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"* the expiration date usually reflect the time it takes for the contents of the bottle to go bad, sometimes due to the breakdown of the plastic\n* recycling plastics aren't always suitable for their original purposes, plastic in bottles is often used to make synthetic fibers..."
]
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||
6qfe6i | why and how do people fall out of love? | I mean from people whom they actually loved and had good compatibility with. Does "falling out of love" automatically mean it wasnt love in the first place, does it mean the person simply chose to stop loving, or does it means feelings that were once there just disappeared? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6qfe6i/eli5_why_and_how_do_people_fall_out_of_love/ | {
"a_id": [
"dkwvldg"
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"score": [
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" > Does \"falling out of love\" automatically mean it wasnt love in the first place,\n\nWhat most people don't understand is that love takes work. It isn't something that will come effortlessly at all times, you won't always be in agreement or even appreciate each other's company.\n\nTo \"fall out of love\" basically means the person decided the effort of making the relationship work was too much to justify the benefits."
]
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[]
] |
|
87jfro | what happens to light after it is absorbed, like how black "absorbs" ~99% of light? | I assume some of the light is converted to heat, but is that all? I don't imagine whatever object it is that is black now has some kind of energy repository. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/87jfro/eli5_what_happens_to_light_after_it_is_absorbed/ | {
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" > some kind of energy repository.\n\nIt doesn't get to store the energy indefinitely. That energy in turn is exchanged with the environment, which is why the black object feels hot to the touch. If you remove the light source, the black object will reach equilibrium with its surroundings.",
"Yes, when an item absorbs light, it is converting it to heat, as the energy from the light excites the molecules of the item. The black item does, from a certain point of view, act as an energy repository as you say. It stores the light energy as heat energy, but then that heat energy is slowly dissipated into the surrounding medium. As the item heats up, the heat escapes more quickly until an equilibrium is reached between light being converted to heat and heat escaping.\n\nTL;DR black shirt left in the sun gets hot"
]
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[],
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aaott4 | how come fruit like pears/plums/peaches etc go from hard to juicy. where was the juice all that time? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/aaott4/eli5_how_come_fruit_like_pearsplumspeaches_etc_go/ | {
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"The juice is always there, however the cells that make up the fruit are “turgid” which means they have the liquid absorbed inside them and become like a balloon filled up with air(makes fruit “hard”).\n As more of the cells die(when the fruit gets older and left out) they cannot hold the liquid as well so it leaks and the fruit becomes juicy with cells becoming “softer” (like a ballon with less air in it) as the juice moves in between cells and does not stay inside the cells.\nBasically the reason is that there is always water in between the cells, which evaporates, cells die, and as the juice wants to equal out between the cells and outside the cells(but still in the fruit), fruit gets more juicy. This is why when you bite into a hard fruit, the juice releases, but a soft fruit already has most of the juice in between the cells.\n Edit added ballon analogy."
]
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[]
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||
6pkf0h | why when you prevent yourself from falling, do you not feel the fear surge through your body until after you have re-stabilized? | I was going up the escalator at work today, and almost fell backwards. As I got a hold of the railing and stood up straight, that familiar terrifying feeling shot through my body. Why do you not feel that as you're falling, instead of after the fear has passed. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6pkf0h/eli5_why_when_you_prevent_yourself_from_falling/ | {
"a_id": [
"dkq1vlh"
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"score": [
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"text": [
"A lot of people go through shock, where the adrenaline rush takes over and it kind of blocks that feeling, until after when you have time to think about and assess what happened"
]
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[]
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|
txjkh | peak oil and the future of hydrocarbon energy | I keep hearing about it, and am genuinely worried. I keep hearing that there are no viable alternatives to hydrocarbon energy, and that society cannot sustain this and will collapse. Can anyone shed some decent light on this and human future? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/txjkh/eli5_peak_oil_and_the_future_of_hydrocarbon_energy/ | {
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"It's based on a bit of a false premise.\n\nFor anyone that doesn't know, the idea is that there is a finite amount of oil in the world, and the amount of oil we use keeps going up, and so at some point we will run out of oil, and very quickly society will come to an end as none of us can get gas for our cars, oil for our power plants, plastics for our groceries, etc. Dogs and cats living together, the Thunderdome, all that.\n\nTurns out this prediction has come up before: Malthus was afraid the same thing would happen with food production and we'd all starve to death. Other people worried that we were cutting down too many trees and eventually nobody would have wood for cooking fires. There are a lot of examples.\n\nWell, we didn't all starve to death and we can still cook dinner, so what happened? The problem that Malthus and Hubbert (the peak oil guy) have with their theories is assuming that, despite millennia of change, when something gets scarce that humanity will stop changing. Obviously, this is untrue. \n\nMalthus was wrong because he didn't think about improved agriculture increasing crop yields. The wood fire guys didn't think about gas or electric stoves. And the peak oil guys aren't thinking about how, once \"easy to get\" crude oil starts getting scarce, we'll move on to shale oil, or oil sands, or biofuel, or hydrogen cars, or solar/wind/wave/geothermal power. \n\nNow, CAN societies collapse if they use up a resource and don't change? Yes, this is basically what happened to the society living on Easter Island. But does this happen in general? Not really - societies move on to different energy sources, technology opens up new avenues, and progress moves on. This isn't to say that the future will be the same - it almost certainly will not. But the idea that a total collapse will occur is very unlikely.",
"I work in the oil and gas industry in Oklahoma. I wanted to add something that I didnt see. We used to be the oil and gas capital of the world. Then we thought we drilled most of it out. But like others said technology changes. We now have horizontal drilling to hit more pockets and the ability to go deeper. Oklahoma is going through another boom with this and the E & P companies have been drilling like crazy. \n\nAlso, we can convert to natural gas if need be. We have some natural gas fueling stations in Oklahoma but only a few companies have vehicles that run on it. We are actually almost at full storage capacity of natural gas in the US right now. Alot of producers are shutting in wells and the price was tanking for a while. It has been picking up recently due to warmer weather though."
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9e0lze | can you jerk off in space? if so, how does the body react to it in sub-zero gravity? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9e0lze/eli5_can_you_jerk_off_in_space_if_so_how_does_the/ | {
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"Wait would ejaculation push you back?",
" > If one were aboard the ISS (or other near zero gravity environment), could one reach climax?\n\nIt would not be as fun as doing it on Earth, and it would be difficult given that you would be floating away from each other with every thrust but there is nothing mechanically preventing it. A quick read around google says there are a lot of issues that will affect quality of the encounter and comfort/pleasure but nothing that outright makes it impossible.\n\n[If you want to read more](_URL_0_)\n\n",
"According to accounts from astronauts (yes, they discuss things like this) it's *exceedingly difficult* to maintain an erection. The human body evolved under gravity and relies on gravity to help with some things like blood flow. Without it, blood doesn't quite flow correctly - most notably pooling in the head more so in the words of astronaut Chris Hadfield:\n\n > Stay on your head for two or three hours. ... And while you're upside down standing on your head, then pick up the guitar with no strap and play.\n\nAnother unfortunate result of this is that blood doesn't flow correctly to maintain an erection. Recall that humans do not have an actual bone for their boners. Instead, we keep our penises erect by pumping blood into the penis and close off the outgoing veins so it builds pressure. Without gravity, there simply isn't enough pressure.\n\nThat doesn't make it impossible, but practically speaking it might as well be.\n\n > Wait would ejaculation push you back?\n\nEqual and opposite reaction...yes. But given the very low mass of your ejaculate and relatively low speed, compared to your relatively much large mass...not by much."
]
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qf8ey | why are dark interior cars hotter than light interior cars? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/qf8ey/eli5_why_are_dark_interior_cars_hotter_than_light/ | {
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"dark colors absorb more energy (heat) from radiation (sunlight) than lighter colors.",
"You know that sunlight is warm. Light things are light because they reflect light. Dark things are dark because they absorb light. Absorbing the warm light makes them get warm."
]
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1nygm6 | what is the purpose for redesigned currency? | I understand that paper money gets new security features added to make it more difficult to counterfeit, but why do older versions of those bills still get accepted? If someone was able to perfectly counterfeit the older $100 bill, then it kinda defeats the purpose of newer bills. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1nygm6/eli5_what_is_the_purpose_for_redesigned_currency/ | {
"a_id": [
"ccn7y3t"
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"It actually makes it easier to track down and stops counterfeits oddly enough. As soon as the redesign hits circulation the country usually starts pulling the old design from circulation, as those older bills get pulled the chances of the design coming up becomes less and less so counterfeiters who show up and try passing off a ton of the old designs get caught easier, so the counterfeiters have a choice, stop doing their counterfeits and update the design, which requires work, or take a chance and get caught."
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a52vt8 | why we get sweaty palms in situations that you may need exactly the opposite? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/a52vt8/eli5_why_we_get_sweaty_palms_in_situations_that/ | {
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"The fight-flight response your body makes when it is under stress makes you sweat so that you can keep your body temperature from rising too much."
]
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2oq5pv | why is everyone getting 'error loading' pages? what's the deal with reddit? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2oq5pv/eli5why_is_everyone_getting_error_loading_pages/ | {
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"Short \"kid friendly\" answer: Because too many people are asking Reddit something. It's kinda like if a couple of people started asking you stuff in real life. Now imagine a couple hundred at the same time you would just breakdown the same thing is happening to Reddit at peak traffic hours."
]
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3cs6o0 | when someone asks a question on reddit, why do they get tons of replies of the same answer? | [this thread.](_URL_0_)
it's quite obvious that the question has already been answered correctly; why does everyone feel the need to say the same thing? are they trying to reap that karma or what?
edit:
& #3232;_ & #3232; | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3cs6o0/eli5_when_someone_asks_a_question_on_reddit_why/ | {
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"They probably all posted about the same time so didn't realise other people had already said the same thing.",
"They probably all posted about the same time so didn't realise other people had already said the same thing.",
"They probably all posted about the same time so didn't realise other people had already said the same thing.\n\n",
"They probably all posted about the same time so didn't realise other people had already said the same ting.",
"They probably all posted about the same time so didn't realise other people had already said the same thing.",
"They probably all posted about the same time so didn't realise other people had already said the same thing.",
"They probably all posted about the same time so didn't realise other people had already said the same thing.\n\n\nalso taking someone else's answer and making it slightly more reddit friendly/augmented is a much easier way to whore for karma. ",
"They probably all posted about the same time so didn't realise other people had already said the same thing.",
"They probably all posted about the same time so didn't realise other people had already said the same thing.",
"They probably all posted about the same time so didn't realise other people had already said the same thing.",
"They probably all posted about the same time so didn't realise other people had already said the same thing.",
"They probably all posted about the same time so didn't realise other people had already said the same thing.",
"They probably all posted about the same time so didn't realise other people had already said the same thing.",
"\nThey probably all posted about the same time so didn't realise other people had already said the same thing.\n",
"They probably all posted about the same time so didn't realise other people had already said the same thing.",
"\nThey probably all posted about the same time so didn't realise other people had already said the same thing.\n",
"They probably all posted about the same time so didn't realise other people had already said the same thing.\n",
"They probably all posted about the same time so didn't realise other people had already said the same thing.",
"They probably all posted about the same time so didn't realise other people had already said the same thing.",
"Serious answer: They are probably using mobile. I use Reddit Now on android, and even with my comment threshold set to show all comments, it won't for some reason. I've went back (on pc) and looked where I've commented before and seen 5 other people say the same as me, but didn't show up on mobile.\n\n\nAlso, They probably all posted about the same time so didn't realise other people had already said the same thing.",
"\nThey probably all posted about the same time as they didn't realise other people had already said the same thing.\n\nThat or they didn't read the other replies.",
"They probably all posted about the same time that Bush did 9/11 so didn't realise other people had already said the same thing.",
"There are various factors that contribute to it.\n\nPart of it is people posting all at the same time.\n\nPart of it is people not bothering to read other peoples answers.\n\nPart of it is people thinking that -their- explanation is better than other peoples.\n\nPart of it is people wanting to get points."
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1q6opt | how does the cable tv system work? | How does the Cable TV System Work? How does your cable provider limit what channels your receive based on how much are you willing to pay?
For example if channel x is only provided to users with the highest cost service, whats the benefit for that channel? Don't they have less potential viewers and therefore will make less money from commercials? Do these channels receive any of the money that the provider gets from the user?
It makes sense for channels/services like HBO who I'm sure get 7 of the 10 dollars that each user pays a month specifically for that service. But for channels that just come in the standard packages, whats the point of exclusivity? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1q6opt/eli5_how_does_the_cable_tv_system_work/ | {
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"First a quick primer on the industry. Your cable bill largely goes to pay for content. [Here's a list of guesses at fees](_URL_1_) the list is old, and they're probably a good 20-30% higher than that today. Carriage fees are negotiated and vary between operators. Any package that includes one of these channels will result in that much being sent from the cable company to the channel's owner each month. These carriage fees are negotiated (generally for a multi-year period) between cable channels and cable networks. When the negotiations break down and an existing contract expires you get black outs (where channels are replaced with a message to call the channel/cable company to complain. \n\nAt a very basic level: \n\n* Cable network operators (the people who own the cable and everyone pays their bill to) create bundles they believe will allow them to get the most subscribers at the highest price. \n\n* Cable channels try to create content that they believe consumers will demand. \n\nThis simple world is complicated by most channels being owned in groups (Discovery Communications owns a [whole slug](_URL_0_.) of channels, Disney owns many as well). The big channel operators are Liberty/Discovery, TimeWarner, Disney (ABC), Fox, and NBC/Universal (Comcast). \n\nGroup ownership means owners of popular channels have more negotiating power to get their newer channels included in bigger tiers. For example, Disney could threaten to pull ESPN in order to get ABC Family included in the basic Tier or Discovery could do the same offering a break on the price of Discovery Channel to get OWN or Destination America in bigger tiers). Further complicating this, cable operators have been buying channels of their own (Comcast owns NBC/Universal), or many cable networks started their own regional sports channels. \n\nGenerally higher tier channels aren't seen as being a \"good\" deal by cable operators so they're priced extra (essentially the cable operators are saying this isn't a good enough deal to cause us to get more cable subscribers, so we'll put it in a tier that's sold at a premium, if people want it, they can pay extra for it (both the cable operator and networks would share the extra fees). \n\nMany people lobby to get cable sold unbundled or ala carte, but it's likely that most channels would either fold or operate under an HBO like pricing scheme in that scenario. "
]
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"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discovery_Communications#Discovery_Networks_U.S",
"http://www.uproxx.com/tv/2012/03/how-much-do-you-pay-for-each-of-those-cable-channels-you-dont-watch/"
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69sb1q | how do seeds know which way is up? | So I was doing some gardening with my 9yo daughter and we moved on to planting some seeds. She was studying them carefully before dropping them into the holes in the compost. I asked her why and she said that she was trying to make sure she planted them the right way up, otherwise they wouldn't grow upwards and flower.
As cute as it is, this got me thinking... How does a seed know which way is the right way to grow? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/69sb1q/eli5_how_do_seeds_know_which_way_is_up/ | {
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"ELI5: Plants have cells that can tell which way is down. The roots know which way is down. The leaves/stems decide which way is up by sensing the light.\n\nIn the most simple of terms, plants have cells called stratocytes in the tips of roots that respond to gravity. They give a signal that releases a plant hormone that directs the growth of new cells.\n\nIn the shoots and stems, a similar process occurs which directs growth upward. Mature plants don't really have this ability anymore and thus use the angle of the light to \"decide\" where to grow. This is called phototropism.\n\nA seed in utter darkness will know to grow roots downward, but a plant in utter darkness will not know which way to grow upward because there is no light for it to chase after.\n\n",
"Simplest Explaintion I coud find - \n \nAll plants can sense the direction of the gravitational field and orientate themselves accordingly. This is called geotaxis. In mature plants, phototaxis (growing towards the light source) overrides the gravitational impulse for the stalk and leaves, but the roots - and the seed while it is underground - rely on gravity for orientation. \n \nThe mechanism is thought to be based on either the protoplasm (the living substance inside a cell) exerting a greater pressure on the cell walls at the bottom, or starch grains within the cells settling at the bottom. One or both of these cues influence the production of plant growth hormones that cause the plant to 'steer' as it grows.\n \n[Source](_URL_0_)\n \n*Details for nerd 5 years old*\n \nA bunch of other commenters have mentioned that plants can sense gravity, but nobody's explained how! The answer is that they have starchy components (amyloplasts) in some of their cells that are heavier than the cytoplasm, making them sediment at the bottom of the cell. A hormonal growth signal then emanates in the direction of the part of the cell where the amyloplasts accumulate (i.e. down).\n \nYou can see this for yourself by tipping over a fast-growing potted plant. The side of the stem facing down will grow faster, causing the shoot to gradually bend upright again. Plants use the same mechanism - uneven distribution of growth hormones in response to sensory input - when they grow toward light, etc.\n \n[Source](_URL_1_)",
"[Geotropism](_URL_0_) \nIts the effect from gravity and they know to \"shoot\" in the opposite direction. Then roots I'm the same direction as gravity is acting on them. \n\nPretty cool :) ",
"Some of these are right with some and wrong with others. A plant that is healthy knows which way is up and down regardless of whether there is light or not. There are hormones that promote plant growth, IAA, that respond to light as well as other sensory responses. In roots, there are starches that settle to the \"bottom\" of the cells that tell the cell which way to grow (elongate) and divide. This is how the plant knows up and down. As for when light is absent, the sensory system previously mentioned still works, it's just that the addition of light makes the plant produce IAA on the other side of the plant so those cells divide, turning the plant away from the production of hormones and toward the light.\n\nI used to work in a lab and we grew our samples in complete darkness and they always grew against gravity (the shoot) there have been studies that show that indole acetic acid makes the shoot grow away from application. The top of the plant was cut off and then on half of the now exposed vascular system was treated with IAA and the plant bent away from the side it was applied to. ",
"Part of the reason is geotropism (response to gravity) and the other part is phototropism (response to light)\n\nGeotropism occurs mostly in the root, and it is thought that the settling of starch granules at the bottom of cells causes elongation in that direction (towards gravity, i.e. downwards)\n\nPhototropism occurs mostly in the shoot, where a chemical called auxin is released on the side opposite the light, causing cells on that side to elongate, and the plant grows towards the light",
"“The root just went straight down and the shoot went straight up. ... How did it know? It turns out that inside the seed there are specialized cells called statocytes that are mini plant snow-globes. Inside each one there are specialized starch grains that are more dense than the rest of the cell, and they settle toward the bottom of the cells [due to gravity.] Protein networks can sense where they are, and so the seed, and later the plant, knows which way is up. Next time you plant a seed, turn it over and think about the mini snow-globe inside, and then plant it whichever way up you like, because the plant can solve the puzzle.”\n\n⁃Storm in a Teacup, the Physics of Everyday Life, by Helen Czerski \n",
"Ok, then how do seeds orient themselves in experiments in space?",
"Basically, they can feel or detect the gravity. You can put a pot sideways for example, and the plant will still grow facing up although part of the stem might be bending to the side. There are other things it can feel/detect such as light and the plant will grow and adapt based on that. Gravitropism and Phototropism .",
"Gravity\n\nAs a kid maybe on Mr. Wizard he grew some plants on a spinning record player. \n\nAll the roots went down and out and the shoots grew up towards the center",
"Should you be interested in an experiment to show the fact that root growth is affected by gravity, check this out! It's a experiment from NASA, probably too big for you to do at home, but could be a good suggestion for your daughters class. It is meant for kids in grades 4-6.\n\n\n_URL_0_",
"5yo: The same way you know which way is down. Have you even got out of bed on your head instead of your feet?\n\n10yo: the seed can feel which way is down cause that's the way gravity pulls on it.",
"Plants use gravity. The best way we know this is when they tried to grow plants in space due to the lack of the gravity intensity we have on earth, the plants grew everyway not knowing what to do.\n\nHowever once they put lights about them the plants started growing upwards towards the light, so sunlight also has to do with it.",
"If I told you a flower bloomed in a dark room would you trust it? ",
"There is something known as a tropism, which is a response to a stimulus. A geotropism is the response for a plant to grow roots towards the centre of the earth and clearly evident in the way trees grow on a hillside; they will grow vertically on a 45 degree hillside. A phototropism evidences a plant will always grow in the direction where it can get more direct sunlight for photosynthesis. A hydrotropism evidences plants will always grow directly towards a water source for nutrients; Creek bed, riverbed or Lakeside. FYI\n",
"How do you know which way is up?",
"Why has no one used the word Gravitropism? ",
"In short, seeds don't know which way is *up*, but they do know which way is down (thanks to gravity).",
"They grow in the opposite direction of gravity.\n\nI performed an experiment to prove this as my sixth grade science project. I planted beans in small pots and placed them on a record player and started it up, which put the seeds under centrifugal force. My hypothesis was that they would not grow straight up, but curved toward the center of the record player. I was right.",
"From my experience planting weed, they don't. They sprout randomly until they find light. Some seeds never make it out of the ground because they went the wrong way. Lots of people here saying plants can feel gravity, could be but that don't stop a bunch of seeds from going the wrong way. ",
"Get a bowl of water and drop some stones. Then ask your daughter which way is up. And ask how does she know that.",
"The force of gravity affects everything on earth and so naturally plant seeds develop roots that will go along with this force (downwards) in order to provide anchorage for the plant whilst the actual body of the plant will grow against the force of gravity (upwards) towards the sun, which is a source of energy.",
"I once saw mister wizard do an experiment where he grew some plants in a turntable and they were confused",
"What would happen if you planted a seed in a cup of soil that was upside down? (If in theory the soil didn't fall out). Would the plant attempt to grow until it found the bottom of the cup in which the stem could exit? Or would it just ... die/give up/keep attempting to grow upwards with no exit? \n\nTfl:dr Can plants/seeds seek alternatives roots to grow and find light? ",
"Probably gonna get buried but it's on my exam in a month or so so I'll answer anyways. \n\n\nPlants produce a certain chemical called IAA (indoleacetic acid) which is a type of Auxin. IAA can either inhibit growth of cells in a plant (which it does so in the root) or stimulate the growth of a plant (which it does so in the shoot). \n\n\nIAA is produced in the tip of the shoot where it diffuses (moves down) all the way to the bottom. IAA responds to light I.e. It moves away from light so it's concentration is always higher on the shaded side. \n\nNow in the shoot, IAA stimulates the growth of plant cells. You have to visually interpret this next bit I'm your mind; since IAA is at a higher concentration in the shaded part of the shoot, it stimulates growth in this area causing the plant to physically bend/grow toward the light. This mechanism is called positive phototropism as the plant responds positively to light. \n\n\nDown in the root, IAA is again on the shaded side and also closest to where the Earth is due to gravity. The difference here is that IAA inhibits growth of plant cells in the root unlike in the shoot. As a result, the root grows toward the shaded side/against gravity. This mechanism is an example of negative Geotropism and Negative Phototropism. \n\nThe survival value for this is pretty self explanatory; the shoot grows toward light so it can draw light energy for the light dependant reactions of photosynthesis whereas the root grows into the ground so it can uptake ions, water etc. \n\nIf I made a mistake someone please correct me. As I said this is on an exam in a month or so. ",
"Auxins (plant growth hormones) are produced in the tip of the plant, these cause the plant to grow towards the light/ causes cell elongation to the light (positive phototropism).\n\nDifferent auxins are also produced in the roots of the plant. They cause the hair root cells to grow towards both gravity (positive geotropism) and water (positive hydrotropism). This allows them to get a firm hold on the ground and effectively draw essential minerals which have dissolved from the soil into the water which the plants can use. "
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3v0rw8 | why is the word "handicapped" considered more offensive than "disabled"? | "Handicapped" seems like an accurate word to describe people with physical disadvantages. But for some reason, the politically correct term is "Disabled". Why is that?
"Handicapped" implies a person is still very much able, but faces more difficulty in accomplishing certain tasks. It's an accurate term, and I don't see how it is offensive in any way. It's certainly less offensive than "Disabled" or even "People with Disabilities".
"Disabled" literally means not able, and therefore implies helplessness. That is actually pretty offensive... not to mention inaccurate. Most "disabled" people are still very much able. Wheelchair bound people can still move around. Legally blind people can still see. People with back problems are still able to work. These people are not as helpless as the word "disabled" would imply.
I'm not looking into a discussion on the merits of political correctness. I just want to know the thought process that made people think "Disabled" is somehow less offensive than "Handicapped". | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3v0rw8/eli5_why_is_the_word_handicapped_considered_more/ | {
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"As someone who works with people with disabilities I've often wondered this. So, I did a search and found an article that sums it up pretty well.\n\n _URL_0_",
"It is a phenomenon called the creeping euphamism:\n\n1. term is used to describe some segment of the population (crippled, retarded, midget)\n2. term starts to be used to derisively in a broader sense\n3. the segment of the population objects, and invents new term to describe themselves (handicapped, developmentally disabled, little person)\n4. people who use the old term are labeled as insensitive or intolerant\n5. people start using the new term derisively\n6. lather, rinse, repeat"
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a95wod | why don’t we fall out of bed more frequently? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/a95wod/eli5_why_dont_we_fall_out_of_bed_more_frequently/ | {
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"Because most of the time you are asleep the brain shuts down most of your voluntary muscle system. When you can’t move, you can’t fall out of bed.",
"For most people, the body subconsciously knows where it is, and that it needs to stay in basically the same position to avoid rolling off the bed, onto someone, etc.",
"When you fall asleep the brain secretes chemicals to paralyze you in order to stop you from acting out your dreams, sleep walking is caused when there is not enough of this chemical",
"The reason you don’t act your dreams out when you’re sleeping is due to something called “muscle atonia”. Essentially your brain releases chemicals into your body that paralyze you when you’re sleeping. This stops the body from incurring preventable injuries whilst unconscious. \n\nWhat’s creepy is that, sometimes you can be awake while all your muscles are paralyzed in a state called “sleep paralysis”. Generally in this state people experience abject terror(terror that is far greater than most people experience in their lives)- and hallucinate malevolent beings “looming” over them. \n\nThere are also individuals that can act out their dreams because there is something wrong with their brains ability to paralyze the body. A mild form of this is sleepwalking. But some people freak the fuck out in bed completely asleep. ",
"But then why did I fall out of bed so much as a kid?",
"I remember when I was a kid, I kept falling of my bed unto a matress below, and I didn’t wake up. My mom came in to lift me back up unto the bed, and then I woke up! Went back to sleep, exact same thing happened again, and.. again. I just kept rolling off of the bed, until I just ended up sleeping on the mattress on the floor instead",
"I was living on a tall ship for several months recently, and we all had bunks that we lived/slept in in the main hold. It was just a room below decks with 12 bunks lining the walls.\nI had a top bunk.\nI fell out and landed right on my damn head a couple of times. In the middle of the night. Woke people up and they were all very concerned. Mostly because one time, I just started laughing very loudly when I hit. *3 AM* *THUNK* \"Bahahahahaha!\"\n\nIn retrospect, it may have had something to do with my heavy drinking after stand down every night. \n\nI eventually moved into a corner bunk, which had a bit of a wall. It helped. ",
"I’m freaking out. When I couldn’t fall asleep last night, this is EXACTLY what I was thinking about, and wanted to ask about it on ELI5! ",
"Many others have already explained that the brain puts the body in temporary paralysis specifically when you dream, so that you don't start acting out in your sleep. But an interesting fact is that this is also why you often feel so weak in your dreams. Like when you try to run and just move on the spot, or you try to punch someone and nothing happens. The body feedback if not doing anything seems to return to the brain for processing, and the brain isn't quite able to interpret this inactivity correctly.\n\nNow, I did a lot of martial arts when I was younger and I developed a pretty mean right kick. For some reason, this move seems to be so deeply ingrained in my muscle memory that it overrides this paralysis. Only the right leg though. I tend to have a vivid dream life and not seldom there is violence. I've kicked with full force into my concrete bedroom wall several times and it hurts like all hell. I'm lucky I haven't broken any bones in my right foot yet. Probably because I have nothing to push back against so I basically just kick myself out of bed. ",
"Because I sleep in a loft bed with rails on the sides.\n\nWhen I was in dorms and had to sleep in a normal bed, I fell off quite frequently. Very rude awakening.",
"It's not completely because of sleep paralysis. It is because we have positional awareness, even in our sleep. Babies and young kids don't have this skill down yet. This is also why you may sleep much lighter than normal in an unfamiliar environment. \n\nTL;DR You know where you are in your own bed. ",
"I fell off the top bunk of my bed in Air Force Tech school on my first night. Unfortunately my room mate on the bottom bunk decided to sleep on the floor directly under me where I landed. All I remember is waking up midair confused and after the thump hearing my roommate say “uuuuuugggggghhhhh.” ",
"Maybe it's because we were originally treepeople and through the wonderful process of natural selection the ones that fell out of the trees fucken died. Now we are better tree people?",
"All of these answers misinterpret the question and give answers about why we don't act out our dreams. We are constantly moving back and forth while asleep into different positions, which isn't affected by \"sleep paralysis\", so it's a legitimate question as to why our rolling around doesn't roll us right onto the ground. "
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e0ir9t | how is a root canal actually done? | I had it done yesterday, saw the dentist using a bunch of different colored small metal things, and they had something on their finger.
What was happening? What was the dentist doing with those things? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/e0ir9t/eli5_how_is_a_root_canal_actually_done/ | {
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"I ask my dentist to walk me through what he's doing while he's doing it. Otherwise I get super bored. He's always accommodating. \nBut I can't remember anything shortly after.",
"They drill a hole down to get to the root structure. Then they take those instruments [they are little files] to clear and open the root canals up to be able to fill them.",
"The ring they wear on their finger usually has a sponge to hold the different files, as well as a ruler to measure the file length. An apex locator can be used to measure the actual length of the root canal, and the files have a little rubber stopper that can be set to the desired length on that ruler. Progressively larger files are used to scrape the inside walls of the root, cleaning and shaping them. EDTA may be used to help remove organic tissues, then the canals are chemically cleaned, usually with sodium hypochlorite, chlorhexidine, or both. The canal is then dried and sealed with a cement and rubber points called gutta percha.\n\nEdit: sorry, didn't see what sub this was. They scrape the inside of the tooth roots with a file, bleach it clean, then stuff golf ball filler into it",
"I found [this](_URL_1_) and [this](_URL_0_) to help illustrate things for you."
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te7ko | why launch into space from the ground as opposed to something like a high-altitude aeroplane? | It's not obvious to me why you should carry all of that extra fuel weight (and danger) to get into orbit (eg. the space shuttle launch) by launching from the ground when certain aircraft can fly to the near edge of space using much less fuel and energy from which you could launch to orbit from there.
Why choose the heavier / more dangerous approach? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/te7ko/eli5_why_launch_into_space_from_the_ground_as/ | {
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"I am also curious. I guess it comes down to a comparison of a plane's lift vs. a rocket's thrust, at some level?\n\nTaking the space shuttle and it's 747 carrier, it would be interesting to know if it is technically plausible to alter that design such that the carrier plane takes off from a runway and goes to 45,000 feet, releases a shuttle-like spaceplane which then rockets to orbital speed and LEO?",
"A rocket system is generally able to get a much larger payload into orbit. With a plane/piggyback system, you are really limited in how heavy/big the spacecraft can be just based on how much the plane can carry. If you make the plane WAY huge with gigantic jet engines in order to haul a big payload....you've basically just built a giant rocket with wings.\n\nhowever, what you are suggesting is actually being developed by private company spacecraft as it actually IS more efficient. (less energy to go up a ramp than stairs and all that). But those companies aren't really in the business of hauling a ton of shit into orbit. Mostly just people and supplies. So they can get away with that.",
"Hopefully I'm not too late for this. It's not quite an ELI5 answer, but hopefully it's simple enough to understand. I'm a Current aerospace engineering student (admittedly not a great one) so hopefully I'm remembering all my coursework correctly.\n\nFirst misconception I read: Rockets take off vertically. While initially true, that is only just to clear the launch pad. In actuality, rockets take off vertically and then perform an aerial maneuver so that they are travelling horizontally relative to the Earth's surface. In order to achieve orbit, an object has to be moving fast enough horizontally around the earth so that it \"falls\" around the horizon. [See this link from Wikipedia to understand what I'm talking about.](_URL_0_) If you launched a rocket straight up, it would just fall straight back down to Earth. If you strapped a rocket to an airplane and then launched from cruising altitude, what you would need to do is light your rocket from on top of or underneath your plane and then have it travel horizontally away from the plane. Not nearly as complicated as was postulated earlier in the comments (vertical launch from the airplane).\n\nSecond misconception: it doesn't take the same amount of energy for a rocket to get to the same altitude as an airplane. Actually, it takes the same amount of energy, but a rocket engine is much less efficient than a jet engine. So, the jet wastes less energy on its way up than the rocket does and thus requires less fuel.\n\nNow, as to why you wouldn't want to launch from a plane. The reason is that planes don't fly high enough to make it worth while to reach orbit. The ISS orbits at a relatively low orbit of about 400 km above the surface of the Earth. [In comparison, a Boeing 747 cruises at 11 km.](_URL_1_) This is nowhere near high enough to make launching from a plane to orbit worthwhile.\n\nAdditionally, the max takeoff weight of a 747 is 975,000 lb. [In comparison, the external tank of the shuttle, not including the shuttle itself, weighs 1,680,000 lb at takeoff.](_URL_2_) It doesn't make sense to try and modify or design a plane to lift enough weight to carry a rocket that is designed to make it to orbit.\n\nFinal note, while this concept doesn't make sense for launching rockets to orbit, there are commercial planes designed to launch suborbital vehicles. These vehicles are designed for short trips to the edge of space so tourists can see the curvature of the Earth. [See SpaceShipTwo and its carrier vehicle, WhiteKnightTwo.](_URL_3_)"
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"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_ship_two"
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60cn9k | how is fruit healthier than sugary cereal? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/60cn9k/eli5_how_is_fruit_healthier_than_sugary_cereal/ | {
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"The short answer is, it's not actually any healthier. The idea of natural food being inherently healthier is just part of the culture. We also have an idea of vitamins being good for you, and sugar being bad. The truth is, we have a metabolic budget that requires both. You don't want to forego either, or overdo either.\n\nWhatever has the most of what your body actually needs, without have excess of what your body doesn't, is actually healthiest for you.\n\nThis is a gross simplification, but it's the essence of the true situation, without the marketing spin from either side.",
"I don't know what cereal you're buying, but the 10 g in 100g only applies to corn flakes. The other cereals have more, some types 50 g in 100g. \n\n100 g of an apple also have 10 g of sugar. But it's a different sugar. It's called \"fructose\". How the body processes this sugar is different than refined sugars, that are immediately metabolised and send your Insuline to the roof. Fructose takes longer and therefore it provides energy during longer times, while your digest the rest of the apple and end up feeling full. \n\nSugar is not evil. Once it's processed, or doesn't matter where it came from. It's necessary for a correct functioning of the body. "
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3h7efu | how do new isp's start? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3h7efu/eli5_how_do_new_isps_start/ | {
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"First, they have to get Internet connectivity. That's as easy as calling one of the major providers and paying for their connection.\n\nNext, they have to build whatever infrastructure they need to get that connectivity from their office to the customers. If it's wireline, they need to run cables all over the area, close to every home they want to serve. If it's wireless, they need to deploy transmitters on towers. All of this is the big ticket item. For a small wireless ISP, it could be just a few hundred thousand dollars. For a larger wireline ISP, it's going to be tens of millions of dollars.\n\nThen, they have to market to their potential customers. They've got to reach them and convince them (most of which already have an ISP) that they're worth the hassle of leaving their current provider. There will always be some that hate their provider and are looking for an alternative, but these people tend to be in the minority.\n\nAfter all of this, they hope that they can draw enough customers away from the established ISPs to break even eventually."
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6hi3fa | why do rabies cause an increase in aggression in animals? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6hi3fa/eli5_why_do_rabies_cause_an_increase_in/ | {
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"The rabies virus has evolved the ability to modify the behavior of its hosts - making them more aggressive to increase the likelihood that the host will spread the virus to another animal via biting. Rabies is [not the only pathogen](_URL_0_) to have evolved this behavior-altering ability.\n\nAs for how exactly it increases aggression, I'm not sure. Likely by mimicking the action of certain neurotransmitters associated with aggression or promoting their release in the brain.",
"The exact mechanism that specifically causes agression due to rabies viral infection is still not fully understood by medicine. Viruses are weird.\n\nOne of the leading explainations is that the rabies virus invades neurons in the brain that are resposible for proper cogitive functions. When these neurons stop functioning the amygdala takes over. The amygdala is the ancient, primal part of the brain that we share with reptiles and every other vertebrate.\n\nWhen cognitive functions in our brains cease because of the rabies virus, the only part to take over is the amygdala. The amygdala is insulated, but it keeps us alive. It is only concerned with self preservation, not higher demands such as social constructs or even \"love\". Only lashing out to protect one's space."
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6y95ug | why did tvs skip 2560x1440 and went straight for 4k? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6y95ug/eli5why_did_tvs_skip_2560x1440_and_went_straight/ | {
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"Most of the content shown on TVs is delivered by cable companies. Cable companies only broadcast a handful of video standards so most content created for TV networks uses one of those standards. \n\nIt takes a *long time* to retool those systems for a new standard. Switching from SD to HD720 and then HD1080 took many many years.\n\nSo for that reason TV makers are only going to consider upgrades that make a noticeable impact. And evens till when sitting at the typical distance one views a TV from, the difference between 1080p and 4K isn't very noticeable. ",
"4k is a direct scale of 1080p, you are now using a four pixel square to display information that used to come from a single pixel.\n\n1080p does not directly scale to 2560x1440, meaning it would have had more scaling/pixel redistribution to do on 1080p content.",
"1. Because they could.\n2. Most content is 1080p, which scales perfectly onto a 4k display.\n3. Most high budget movies are shot in 4k.\n"
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382w5q | is my ear bone connected to my cough bone? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/382w5q/eli5_is_my_ear_bone_connected_to_my_cough_bone/ | {
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"It's the [vagus nerve.](_URL_0_) Depending on the anatomy of your ear, it can be located more or less close under the skin of your auditory canal. When you apply pressure with a q-tip, the nerve gets stimulated and makes you cough. "
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cn8l1b | why bmi is not an accurate measure of a healthy body | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/cn8l1b/eli5_why_bmi_is_not_an_accurate_measure_of_a/ | {
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"It only measures your height and Weight, it doesn't take into account of muscles mass and bone density among other things. \n\nExample: You can be overweight according to your BMI when you in reality have a low percentage of fat and are just muscular etc.",
"It takes too little variables into account. No fat percentage, no fitness level, no bone density, only hight and weight. A bodybuilder is basically obese by BMI.\nIt's like if you said a semi-truck is equal to a supersports car because they both have 8 cylinders and 700hp.",
"It's pretty good for a summary of your health in the form of a two-digit number that you can calculate with only two measurements. It's just that human health is more complicated than any two numbers.",
"It is. Outliers like body builders and The Rock are just that, outliers. Most people who weigh 400lbs at 5'9 are not bodybuilders.",
"One of the positives of it is that it can be used by everybody and values are the same for men as well as women. But for men, the cutoff for healthy weight (25) is pretty low. Any guy with a BMI of 25 will be quite skinny and non muscular. Forget about outliers like The Rock—it is skewed for even your average guy. By the same token, a woman who has a BMI of 25 will generally look a bit chunky. \n\nAlso, it’s not even right about what is a healthy weight—BMI of 25 isn’t a magic cutoff point beyond which people are unhealthy. A higher BMI might be healthier: _URL_0_\n\nAlso, BMI was developed using data from\nThe mid-19th century in Belgium. But now it’s used to apply to people all over the world despite many changes and varieties of people. It doesn’t work well sometimes. Like they’ve found that Asians have a higher diabetes risk at a lower BMI than the obese range, either because of specific genetic differences or because they tend to have a more gracile build. So it’s not that accurate in such cases in assessing risk.",
"It's designed to look at a population, and for a large group its findings or health claims are valid. \n\nBut things which apply to a group don't necessarily apply to each member of that group. Examples already given include body builders & differential risks related to ethnicity."
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2ja7f3 | what's the difference between the cdc and the nih? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2ja7f3/eli5_whats_the_difference_between_the_cdc_and_the/ | {
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"The nih deals with all diseases and their mechanism. They give out grants for things like cancer and heart failure.\n\nThe cdc studies the epidemiology of communicable diseases and how to treat and prevent them."
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juykr | what the hell is a good redditor? how can me be one | everybody is making comments about how good redditors. People make genius jokes that are relevant to the context. I dont think this is real. I think this is some how staged up. Why aren't the mods doing anything about this | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/juykr/eli5_what_the_hell_is_a_good_redditor_how_can_me/ | {
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"I have only been a redditor for 2 months but I feel a good redditor is someone who provides insight on something or is just funny. It is pretty much just participating and commenting and just having a good time.",
"Bringing something to the community, be it discussion, content or lulz.",
"I have only been a redditor for 2 months but I feel a good redditor is someone who provides insight on something or is just funny. It is pretty much just participating and commenting and just having a good time.",
"Bringing something to the community, be it discussion, content or lulz."
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204tss | why do television networks premier their best new shows on the same day at the same hour? | Wouldn't it make more sense to premier a show like "Cosmos" on a night when not much is going on? I've never understood this. I've seen potentially great TV shows tank because they were schedueld against a ratings giant like Cosby in its heyday. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/204tss/eli5_why_do_television_networks_premier_their/ | {
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"Because they are competing for viewers.\n\nWhat's the point of premiering a show when nobody watches it? You are forgetting that at different times different amounts of people are watching TV.\n\nIf these 'potentially' great new shows tanked, then they weren't great to begin with. Your 'potentially' is worth zero."
]
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3o2nwi | how does overtone singing work? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3o2nwi/eli5_how_does_overtone_singing_work/ | {
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"All sound is a combination of different tones (called harmonics). When you play a C on a guitar it sounds different to when you play the same C on a piano because of these harmonics. The particular harmonics generated by an instrument depend on its shape and the method it uses to produce sound. Another example is the different sounds your voice can make. When you sing a note on the vowel \"eee\" it sounds different to singing the same note on the vowel \"ahhh\" because you change the shape of the \"instrument\" and thus the particular harmonics.\n\nNormally harmonics are a whole lot of different notes far quieter than the fundamental (which is the note we \"hear\" a musician producing). Overtone singing works by manipulating the shape of the mouth and/or throat to produce a very strong secondary or \"overtone\" harmonic.\n\nIt's not all that hard to do yourself. If you have a fan in your bathroom this can be a great place to try it out (bathroom is always great for singing because of the acoustics of a small tiled room). Sing the same note your fan produces then slowly change the shape of your mouth. Somewhere between \"eee\" and \"rrr\" you will hopefully start hearing a high pitch that should switch between a few notes related to the note you're singing.",
"Manipulating the shape and contours of the mouth, tongue, and throat essentially creates a resonance chamber for the vocal sound. By messing with the shapes of the parts of the mouth, you alter the way the sound travels through it. Overtones are created when you achieve a shape that effectively \"filters\" the sound and amplifies the harmonics that are already present int he vocal tone. \n\nIf you picture air moving from the throat and moving around the tongue with the tip pressed against the roof of the mouth, the air will go around either side of the tongue and converge again on the other side, where it is forced back into a single \"column\" of air. The sound waves moving through that air bounce around the tongue and are pushed back together when they pass the lips, amplifying certain frequencies and dampening others. The high, almost whistling notes you hear from throat singers are not proper whistles, but are amplified natural vocal harmonics. \n\nThe same way you can make \"ah, ay, ee, oh, ooh\" sounds while keeping your lips in one shape, you can manipulate the harmonic qualities of the voice. You move your tongue and soft palette around to change the way the sound resonates in your mouth. By changing the shape of the lips, throat, tongue, and even jaw position, you effect the sonic qualities of an even vocal sound. Throat singing is basically about finding the \"sweet spot\" of mouth shape and vocal tone that resonates well. \n\nSource: can throat sing in several styles (though not very well) "
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b7pv89 | why the gothic architecture have so high and sharp spires? is there any architectural advantages to it like wind resistance, lightening rod etc? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/b7pv89/eli5_why_the_gothic_architecture_have_so_high_and/ | {
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"As far as steep roofs go in general it is significantly harder for a steep roof to leak even if it is in poor condition. The water rolls off too quick and it can’t get inside. So this is definitely one advantage to the steep roofs all around but certainly not the only reason. "
]
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||
7gfnl5 | why does bit mining rely so heavily on your gpu and not the rest of your pc? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7gfnl5/eli5_why_does_bit_mining_rely_so_heavily_on_your/ | {
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"Bitcoin mining is, essentially, doing the same thing as using a computer to \"brute force\" a password: making *lots* of guesses at the right answer *really fast* and checking to see if it's right.\n\nThese aren't *complex* algorithms that require a whole lot of complex math; it's just a *lot* of iterations of a *simple* activity.\n\nGPUs are like really simple CPUs that are optimized to do very simple actions (draw a line on the screen from here to here) very rapidly, and so they're pretty well-suited for re-purposing to mine cryptocurrency (or crack passwords, if you're into infosec)."
]
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svc1j | why do i get significantly more hungover now than i did 5 years ago? | Sucks, man | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/svc1j/eli5_why_do_i_get_significantly_more_hungover_now/ | {
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"You're out of practice, it seems.",
"As far as I know, there's no settled agreement on what actually causes hangovers, or if it is a mixture of factors. So it might be difficult to say for certain why they get worse with age. My guess would be that it is due to an overall slowdown of metabolism. \n \nIf you find a way to fix this, let me know. I don't drink much at all now due to the vicious hangovers I get.",
"Your liver and your kidneys are five years older than they used to be. If you think it sucks now, stick around another five years and try it again.",
"Factors that play into hangover intensity:\n\n- Type of alcohol (clearer alcohols are less likely to give you hangovers than darker alcohols)\n\n- Nutritional status of the imbiber (It requires nutrients such as proteins to metabolize the alcohol, so if you're low on nutrients, the hangover will be worse)\n\n- Hydration status (A lot of the pain that comes from hangovers, specifically headaches, is due to dehydration)\n\nSo just from this information, I speculate that you're possibly not as healthy as you used to be, you might be drinking different alcohols and you might not be drinking enough water, both during drinking and the morning after.\n\nProtip: Eggs are the go-to food for hangover cures because they contain proteins that are depleted by the liver in the alcohol metabolization process whose absence greatly worsens hangover symptoms and whose replenishment will expedite the hangover process.",
"Late 30's, early 40's, prepare yourself for feelings of dread and doom to accompany the usual misery.",
"I have to laugh at this question. Asked in explain like I'm five why you get more hungover now than you did five years ago.\n\n*Hello there little alcoholic five year old. I don't know what could be causing these worsening hangovers that have gotten worse since you were an alcoholic fetus.*",
"Think of one of those big rubber balls full of air that you bounce in the schoolyard. When you first get it, it'll bounce super high. But after you've bounced it a whole lot, it doesn't bounce as high anymore. That's because it's losing its air. Now you really have to throw it down hard to make it bounce at all. That'll make your arms tired, won't it?\n\nWhen you're younger, your liver is more capable of dealing with alcohol intake, and you bounce back a little better. But, as your tolerance for alcohol increases, you have to drink even more to get buzzed, which takes a greater toll on a liver that has already seen better days. Thus, you feel like doo-doo in the early morn."
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35ajz3 | what compels me to remain stopped for police? | Yielding for an emergency service vehicle is plain common curtisy, I'd hope you'd move to the side if I was in need of an ambulance, but I'm curious [[[what is stopping me from driving away]]] legally once the emergency service vehicle announcing an emergency has come to a rest? I'm talking about police cars specifically and why I shouldn't just drive off once they come to a stop.
Points of interest: Lacking announcement of officers legal status (could be impersonator/suspended/rogue). Lacking indication of probable cause for detainment/search/seizure. Lacking lawful declaration of warrant issued by a elected judged of the people. Upon exiting the emergency vehicle, individual is clearly lethally armed insighting fear for life/limb/safety.
[Disclaimer: The topic in question is not intended to be inflammatory, I'm genuinely curious although still in avid disagreement with modern generalized policing practices]
EDIT: Adding Scenario for context: Assume "Driver" is innocently traveling, Reason for stop is arbitrary (but could be license plate light out or other fix-it-ticket) or non emergency, The method of driving away again, proceeds within the context of legal activity. Escalation is entirely on the part of enforcement. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/35ajz3/eli5_what_compels_me_to_remain_stopped_for_police/ | {
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"You didn't say what country you are talking about.\n\nIn the UK, [the police can stop a vehicle for any reason. If they ask you to stop, you should always pull over. You’re breaking the law if you don’t.](_URL_0_). None of the reasons you've given allow you to break the law, and the law says you must stop.\n\nAs for whether the law *ought* to say you must stop, that's a different matter entirely - but this sub-reddit isn't for debates, it's for explanations. And, in the UK at least, that's the explanation.",
"If you are pulled over by the police, what compels you to remain stopped is the law.\n\n > Lacking announcement of officers legal status\n\nYou can (and should) ask to see a badge. If in doubt, you can call 911.\n\n > Lacking indication of probable cause for detainment/search/seizure\n\nYou are not qualified to make that determination. That's what we have judges for. If the officer is in error, and there was no probable cause, then your remedy is in court, not in the shoulder of the road.\n\n > Lacking lawful declaration of warrant issued by a elected judged of the people.\n\nHe doesn't need a warrant to pull you over. Anyone who tells you otherwise is an idiot.\n\n > Upon exiting the emergency vehicle, individual is clearly lethally armed insighting fear for life/limb/safety\n\nWell, yes, of course he is. The fear is your problem to conquer.\n",
"Generally, if you are being stopped by a police officer, its for some reason akin to speeding, reckless driving or some other reason.\n\nIn that case, you pull over, the officer speaks to you, and if its a misunderstanding, he lets you on your way.\n\nOtherwise, if you are being pulled over because he is going to issue you a ticket, and you take off racing away its called Evading police and Evading arrest, obstruction of justice, and can easily escalate to reckless and dangerous driving, further speeding charges, assault, battery, assault with a motor vehicle, and so on...\n\nWhen you are pulled over, just sit there and behave. You are on the road because you agreed to the terms and conditions of having a drivers license. **Dont like it? Then dont drive.** Thats the goverments logic on the situation.",
"The law of your jurisdiction, almost certainly. Choosing one at random, in Ohio, for instance, you'd be running afoul of section 2921.331. By signaling with lights, the police officer is directing you, with a visual signal, to stop. By driving away, you are fleeing.\n\n_URL_0_"
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2f41wt | how is the code for non-open source software hidden? | How can the source code of software be hidden? I would have thought it wouldn't be too different to a browsers "view source" capability? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2f41wt/eli5_how_is_the_code_for_nonopen_source_software/ | {
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"When someone sells you closed-source software they only give you the pre-compiled binary - the actual 1's and 0's that your computer actually understands. Technically you could try to reverse engineer it but it's an absolute pain in the ass. \n\nWhen someone releases open-source software they usually give you the pre-compiled binaries AND a copy of the source code (ie, the code that the programmers actually typed out in some form of programming language). ",
"Oh Lord no. Desktop software is completely different to web software. Web apps are *interpreted*, meaning your browser reads the source and converts it into computer instructions. Languages like C, on the other hand, are *compiled*, meaning the developer converts the human-readable source into machine instructions and only sends you those. Machine instructions will make zero sense even to 95% of programmers.",
"Think of source code as a recipe for the program. Yes, you can look at the end result, but that doesn't mean you can replicate the recipe.",
"You have to be careful here. By non-open source software you mean something like microsoft word which you install on your machine. That is a compiled version of the source and while you can sort of reverse engineer it back to something looking like source code, it's not really useful.\n\nOpen/Closed source refers to it's legal status, not whether you can read it.\n\nWith websites though you're using a *service*. Whatever is running on the server is invisible to you. It could be open source, but you can't tell. Some of the code is in the form of Javascript which runs in your browser, but that doesn't make it open source, it just makes it readable (though it might be obfuscated).",
"As others said, programs are compiled to machine code and no longer human-readable.\n\nThere are decompilers, but the output stays quite cryptic. The variables will not have descriptive names and all comments are lost.",
" > How can the source code of software be hidden? \n\nBy not publishing it, and making those who come in contact with it sign an NDA.\n\n > I would have thought it wouldn't be too different to a browsers \"view source\" capability?\n\nCPUs only directly understand machine language. Back when CPUs and computers were a lot simpler, it was common to for programmers to program in machine language directly.\n\nEach \"command\" (or opcode) in machine language is very simple. A program that does something simple may consist of thousands of machine language instructions. It's like building a house with toothpicks - possible, but it will take you forever.\n\nPretty much there has always been a desire to have the ability to program a computer in more English-like statements. These need to be converted into the machine language equivalent - CPUs cannot understand any human or human-like language (called *high-level* languages) on their own. The program that does is called a *compiler*. One of the first high-level languages that was created was (FORTRAN)[_URL_0_].\n\nModern compilers under Windows, Linux etc. will take source code (which can consist of many, many files - the Linux kernel source literally consisting of tens of thousands of files) and spit out an executable.\n\nThe machine-language instructions that make up the executable aren't hidden, and can't be - because your computer needs to run them.\n\nYou can *try* to \"reverse engineer\" this executable and recreate the source code from it, but it's very difficult. It's not impossible, especially if the developers left debugging symbols and such in the code - it gives you something to work with. \n\nIt's not as simple as \"view source code\" because there's no way for the computer itself to know what everything in an executable is supposed to do without running it. Compilers also optimize code, so there is never a 1:1 mapping of specific machine language code to a specific high level statement. Things like variable names and stuff aren't needed by the machine language code, so it's likely not included in the final executable (unless for debugging purposes).\n\nHowever, there are obfuscation utilities that can intentionally throw a wrench in the plans of anyone trying this, making it even more difficult. These exist for Javascript and I imagine for any platform."
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6ygkv3 | why do fighter jets refuel other fighter jets instead of using a tanker or bringing another external fuel tank? | I've seen some videos of F/A-18 Super Hornets refueling other Hornets. I don't understand why they're doing this. Couldn't they all bring another external fuel tank with them?
Or are these hornets meeting up with another hornets at some waypoint where once re-fueled they can all reach the destination together? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6ygkv3/eli5why_do_fighter_jets_refuel_other_fighter_jets/ | {
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"These jets are multi-purpose. Some fighters do have an exterior extra fuel tank below the belly, or under the wings That said, only so much can still be brought along, and these tanks are added weight. A tanker of the same aircraft type makes it easier to maneuver and match speed, and takes up less space at an airbase than a specialized strato-tanker. The Hornets that are giving fuel are likely converted to be tanker aircraft, with little to no weapons payload. The weapons payload will be switched with external fuel tanks, and the aircraft is used to refuel others in-flight.",
"1) Using a Tanker. The Super Hornets are used by the US Navy. They mostly need a platform to refuel their plane from an aircraft carrier and most tanker plane are just too huge to operate from an carrier. The role of the tanker used to be done by the S-3B Sea Viking, which was an anti-submarine plane. But when the Viking was replace by the SH-60 as the anti-submarine platform, so the Navy didn't want a dedicated tanker plane because of the limited amount of plane a carrier can bring. \n\n2) External fuel tank. Some might bring external fuel tank depending on their role, but if you want your fighter to be able to reach their top speed and manoeuvrability then you want them to have as little weight as possible on them. If you have a fighter patrolling around your carrier with all it's weapons, having external fuel tank will slow it down. The more weight you put on the fighter, the more stress it will put on both the plane of the launch system/arresting gear. The fighter used as tanker usually have minimum amount of weapons to carry extra fuel, while they refuel more heavily armed fighter.\n\nFighter with external fuel tank might still need refuelling, just less frequent refuelling. ",
"Even with added fuel reserves they'd still have to land and refuel at some point. The simplest answer here is just to understand that fighter jets refuel in the air so they don't have to land in the middle of their mission. Which is inconvenient during training, but impossible/unthinkable during an actual combat sortie. \n\nMid-air refueling allows jets to remain in the air essentially for an indefinite amount of time, all other things being equal. \n\nThere are many other factors (aircraft weight, maneuverability, time constraints, etc) but you get the idea. These jets are constantly burning fuel while airborne, and fuel states are constantly checked at least every 10 minutes if not much more frequently to be precise on what is needed for each individual sortie to complete their evolution. Likewise, if a jet comes back with more fuel than predicted then they will set up in a holding pattern and dump thousands of pounds of fuel so they won't be too heavy to land safely. \n\nSource: I'm a navy air traffic controller who worked the tankers (departure control) on multiple aircraft carriers",
"It's known as a buddy store and allows carrier based fighters to extend their range while carrying more munitions.\n\n_URL_0_",
"Because you can launch them from an aircraft carrier. Launch a handful of F-18s, two of which are loaded with external tanks whose only mission is to top off the others and turn around. This extends the range of the other ones by quite a bit. Since they're also fighter aircraft, they're also not very vulnerable to attack on the way home. ",
"So fighter jets refueling other fighter jets is mainly a US Navy thing. You'll note that with the Air Force and other nations, most tankers are converted from airliners like the KC-135, KC-10, and KC-46.\n\nThese big tankers can't be launched from an aircraft carrier, so the Navy utilizes carrier-capable aircraft to be tankers.\n\nIn the past, it was the A-3, A-6, and S-3 that would do the tanker job. Today, with all those aircraft retired, it is the F/A-18E/F Super Hornet that does it for the carrier air wing.\n\nWhy can't planes just carry another fuel tank? Because we don't have unlimited external pylons. On the Super Hornet, I have 11 weapons stations, including wingtips. I don't have the plumbing to put fuel tanks just anywhere.\n\nFuel tanks are also heavy and add drag. Simply adding more fuel tanks not only reduces your weapons load out, but hurts your performance.\n\nTanker aircaft add a lot of range for us. We burn more fuel on takeoff than anywhere else in the flight, sans in air to air combat. It's how we can have a carrier off the coast of Pakistan launch aircraft that can fly into Afghanistan and stay on station (tanking off Air Force assets once in country) then return to the boat once our mission is complete.\n\nSource: pilot in the Navy\n"
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6l1r5a | what are raids (redundant array of independent disks) and how do they work? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6l1r5a/eli5_what_are_raids_redundant_array_of/ | {
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"RAID means you distribute your data over more than one disk. You tell the type of RAID with a number (RAID level).\n\nRAID 0: Called stripping, no redundancy. You basically write to two (or more) discs parallel, each part of a file goes on a different disk this means you can write (in theory) twice as fast with two disks. If one disk fails your data is of course gone (half a file or a third of a file is basically useless). In theory you can do a RAID 0 over ten disks and hope for \"awesome results\". \n\nRAID 1: Mirroring. You write the same data on two disks, you gain no speed advantage, but if one drive fails you have the same file on the other (or more disks if you mirror on more).\n\nAnother common level:\n\nRAID 5: You have a parity drive. Imagine you write on five drives: four drives get part of the file, while the fifth saves some checksums you can use to restore missing information if one of the other drives fails. You get an advantage of speed (like in stripping minus some overhead for the parity) and you can afford to lose up to one drive with the data being still intact - if you lose the parity-drive it does not matter for the file, if you lose another drive you can restore the information from the parity-drive. If you lose a second drive before a new one is put in and all the data is re-calculated, you lose all data. RAID 5 writes bitwise (each drive a bit + a parity-bit on the last one).\n\nRAID 10: A combination of RAID 0 and 1. Imagine you have four drives, and you strip two and mirror them to the other pair of drives. You basically get the speed of stripping and the security of mirroring. You can afford to lose one or even two drives (one from each pair). \n\nThere are more complex, uncommon or outdated RAID levels, i.e. RAID 6 which works similar to RAID 5 just with two parity-disks, RAID 4 which works like RAID 5 (which works bitwise, RAID 4 writes larger blocks out to the parity-disk). \n\nRegarding combinations: You could also have a RAID 01 (meaning stripping and mirroring is exchanged) or a RAID 51, where you first build a RAID 5 and then completely mirror (RAID 1) that or you set up a RAID 50... or... whatever makes sense for your (servers) usecase.\n\n---\n\nPlease note that RAID is not considered a dedicated backup. It protects against one (or more) drives failing and might give speed advantages but a dedicated backup is still required (i.e. if the server has some electrical damage, is stolen, burns, more than one drive fails, an ransomware encrypts it all, human mishandling...)",
"It's a way to add redundancy (most of the time) so you can have hard drive failures without data loss. Each configuration is given a number. They work by having a RAID controller which splits up your data to write on all disks.\n\nRaid 0 means you add up the drives' capacities (I'll use 1 TB drives in the examples)\n\n2 drives in Raid 0 = 2 TB of usable disk space. There's no security here. You lose a drive, you lose your data. It's just a way to use all 100% of your space with one drive letter/filesystem.\n\n2 drives in Raid 1 = 1 TB of usable disk space. They are mirrored, so you can lose a drive without losing data. This is good if you only have 2 drives, but you are losing 50% of your total space to get this security.\n\n3 drives in raid 5 = 2 TB of usable disk space. In raid 5, each block of data gets carved up onto 2 of the 3 disks, and the 3rd disk has \"parity\" information. Here you can lose a drive and you've only given up 33% of your total space instead of 50% in raid 1.\n\nexample of layout: Let's say parity = disk 1 + disk 2. I have a piece of data. When it gets carved up to fit on 2 disks, it looks like a 5 on disk 1 and a 6 on disk 2. The piece on disk 3 will now read 11 (adding disk 1 and disk 2, this isn't how it's really done, but it illustrates parity). If I were to lose disk 2, and I slap in a new drive in the array, it sees the 5 on disk 1, and the 11 on disk 3, and the array knows it's disk 1 + disk 2, so it does the math and writes a 6 on disk 2. My data is still good (and while the disk is bad, and I haven't replaced it yet, it does the math while I'm still using the disks to present the 6 should my system ask for it).\n\nThere are more raid levels that look a lot like raid 5, and combinations of raid 0,1, and 5, where the goal is to be able to lose hard drives without losing data and trying to keep the amount of \"lost\" space (due to the parity data) to a minimum."
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21ijkn | why is earth's moon so much bigger in comparison to it's planet than other planets and moons? | I couldn't find an answer to this question, or at least nothing I could understand. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/21ijkn/eli5_why_is_earths_moon_so_much_bigger_in/ | {
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"In a nutshell, Earth's moon is the result of a collision between Earth and another object. The moon is a massive chunk of Earth that was ejected into space. Moons like Deimos and Phobos (both around Mars) are believed to be captured asteroids. The gas giants generally have more moons because of their huge gravity enabling them to capture objects that might have been small planets in their own right without the gas giant to capture them. If you look waaay out, Pluto and Charon and much closer in relative size than Terra and Luna, to the point where Pluto and Charon orbit each other at a point between the two."
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272wov | why do some "believers" pass out when being preached / "cured" by evangelist preachers? | Are they actors faking a collapse for drama? Is there a genuine medical explanation that is well understood for this phenomenon?
Note: I am an atheist | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/272wov/eli5_why_do_some_believers_pass_out_when_being/ | {
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"Have you read Elmer Gantry by Sinclair Lewis? Solid gold and it's about an evangelical preacher/conman. Lewis mentions a few tricks used to make the revival experience more \"authentic\" but I can't remember any off the top of my head except the hired actors. I also believe part of it is just people wanting to believe so badly in a cure or whatnot that literally they will their body into doing something a la a pseudo-placebo effect. Psychogenic shock, which is fainting caused solely by the brain, is fairly common (I pass out when I get shots because of this) and could account for some of the reactions, I suppose. I don't know if there are any defined medical terms for faith healing and that kind of general religious phenomena just because so many people believe they're bullshit ( & this is coming from a Christian). Also: I minored in psychology so this is just pop-psyc speculation. Hopefully no one reams me for being a sceptic. \n\ntl;dr - some of them are frauds and the brain is craaaaazy. ",
"Hyperventilation. These churches encourage their members to cry and sob, which means they're going to be taking rapid, shallow breaths. Pair that up with repeating short phrases in between gulps of air and you've got someone who will probably hyperventilate until they faint - particularly if it's been suggested to them, whether by word or example, that they might. "
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353rw7 | why do older television sets emit a brief flash of white light when being turned off? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/353rw7/eli5why_do_older_television_sets_emit_a_brief/ | {
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"The older CRT (Cathode Ray Tube) TV's and monitors work by using an electron gun to shoot differently charged electrons at a phosphorescent material, which is then screened to make pixels. Depending on the charge of the electron, it makes either a red, green or blue pixel, or any combination of the three. This beam of electrons is controlled by a strong magnetic field, which \"scans\" the beam across the surface of the screen in horizontal lines. When you turn the TV on, the magnetic field is created immediately, but the ray gun takes a few seconds to warm up and start firing, hence the slow buildup. When the set is then turned off, the magnetic field collapses instantly, but the ray gun still emits particles for about a second. Without the magnetic field to guide them, they all hit in one focused beam instead of diffused lines, causing all the phosphorescent material to fire at once, hence the white flash.",
"When you combine red green and blue light it creates white light. When you turn off the TV the pixel gun stops caring about accuracy and you get all 3 colors mashed together.",
"A basic black and white TV has one cathode ray tube (CRT) which is a glass tube with a heater at one end. The heater heats up the cathode which starts emitting electrons. The other side of the tube is the picture side that we see from the outside. The picture side has a screen that is charged postively to attract the negative charged electrons. Because it is a screen, there are holes and the electrons pass through the holes and hits the far side of the glass. Painted on the inside of this glass is a phosphorous coating that emits light when an electron beam strikes it. \n\nThe old CRTs didn't turn on and off fast like modern day transistors. They took a while to turn on and to turn off. Some parts turned off faster like the magnetic field coils that move the beam back and forth across the screen. The CRT turns off slowly due to the slow discharge of the power supply. So what you see is the last bit of charge being shot forward on to the center of the screen as the power supplies slowly shut off. \n\nIn the late 60s, they found that if they use a neon bulb in series with the power supply to the CRT, it would shut off the beam. A neon bulb is a bulb with two leads encased in neon gas. When a voltage was large enough, the neon would excite and emit light like the old neon signs. Most neon bulbs would \"fire\" turn on and off around 70 volts if I remember correctly. \n\nSo when the TV's power supply would drop below 70 volts or so, the neon bulb would stop conducting and shut off the power to the CRT. \n\nColor TVs as others have said, have 3 CRTs built into one glass tube. One for each of the primary colors of red, blue, green. They are aimed at holes in the screen where they hit their corresponding colored phosphor. The CRT beams are not colored but the phosphor is. ",
"Not an answer, but thanks for reminding me of this. It brings back memories of my sister and me playing with the old black and white TV to watch the \"fireworks.\" We'd turn on the TV, and then turn it off, to see the white flash and slow fade out."
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1u7st6 | why is it that religion and politics always seem to get entangled? | The political move in the Roman empire to adopt christianity, to sharia law to separation of church and state; what makes them want to intertwine so much? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1u7st6/why_is_it_that_religion_and_politics_always_seem/ | {
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"Religions tend to dictate how people should live their lives. Governments tend to do the same thing. So if you're already in a power position in a government, and you want to make up some rules, you're probably going to impose your religious views through the rules you make. Think being gay is a sin? Gay is now illegal. Working on Saturdays? Yep, that's now illegal too. I'm sorry, you want to eat pork? Jail for you, buddy.",
"Each person is both political and religious (to varying degrees, including zero). You can separate the institutions of churches and states, but you can't separate a person from their politics or religion.\n\nMany people have religious beliefs, but have no direct affiliation with any particular churches, temples, mosques or shrines.\n\nThough of course, most people's political and religious views are strongly influenced or directed by religious or political institutions.",
"Democracy: for the people, by the people\n\nif the people as a majority subscribe to a certain belief that says something is bad, they can make laws against it.\n\nsay everyone in Jacobsville thinks killing and eating the wild birds and squirrels around town is wrong. They can vote to create a law that keeps people from doing that.\n\nDifferent religious groups obviously have many of these such beliefs that they take as laws in their own lives, and if they, as the majority of the democratic populous, say that something is bad, they can vote to make it illegal. \n"
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akftgd | what makes something good at absorbing water (e.g. paper towels, regular towels, microfiber cloths)? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/akftgd/eli5_what_makes_something_good_at_absorbing_water/ | {
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"There are two main properties you are looking at when talking about absorption. Capacity, how much it can hold, and rate, how fast it absorbs. For paper, capacity is largely affected by the empty space in the towel. Water can occupy the empty space so the more of it that's there the more the sheet can hold. Absorption rate tends to be affected by the surface area of the towel, the more the towel is in contact with the water the faster it can absorb. This is done by rubbing the fibers to give them a rough surface and so more surface area.\n\nTo expand on the capacity part further, you can see the difference between towels you use at business versus at home. Towels in restrooms are usually made on machines that press the paper as they are faster and older equipment. Newer equipment doesn't press the paper making it softer and more absorbent because the empty space is kept intact."
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1m7vxl | what/how can the medical examiner in the zimmerman case sue for? | The Medical examiner is now suing the state for 100M. The article doesn't explain WHAT he is suing for.
_URL_0_ | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1m7vxl/eli5_whathow_can_the_medical_examiner_in_the/ | {
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"He's suing because he thinks he's got a case for unlawful termination.",
"You are citing newsone. That's a biased joke of a website. Don't be surprised if you come from there confused.\n\nHe's suing for wrongful termination. Making these accusations is either a revelation of some terrible actions by the government, or a way to try and get the public on his side for his wrongful termination suit."
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2471xs | what exactly does the first lady do? does she have certain political obligations? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2471xs/eli5_what_exactly_does_the_first_lady_do_does_she/ | {
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"The First Lady doesn't have any official obligations. Legally, she's just some woman married to the President.\n\nHowever, unofficially she can do a lot. She's got the President's ear, and her high profile nature means that she can be very effective at pushing programs. Even in this case though, she's basically just a spokesman or lobbyist. ",
"First Lady doesn't have any specific responsibilities and doesn't even get a paycheck but they typically are involved in some kind of social activism. Michelle Obama, for example, started the whole \"healthy eating for kids\" thing. Barbara Bush went after illiteracy and so on. They also can get involved in certain political situations but obviously nothing that would normally be the responsibility of the President. "
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211mnp | why do some young men wear their pants sagging off their ass? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/211mnp/eli5why_do_some_young_men_wear_their_pants/ | {
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"I doubt we had any influence on wider trends, but when I was in the 8th grade (mid 50's) it was the fashion for guys to wear their pants low (although not as low as what this is about). The disadvantage was that someone else might \"pants\" you, coming up from behind you in the school yard and pull them down (a major \"burn\" but before the term had that meaning).\n\nAs with most fashions, it disappeared soon after.",
"When I was a kid it was called \"no place to hang your onions\" because when you had to hop on the ferry to Morganville, which is what we called Shelbyville at the time, you had to pay with a nickle, and in those days nickels had pictures of bumblebees on 'em. \"Give me five bees for a quarter,\" you'd say. \n\nNow where were we? Oh yeah: the important thing was I had an onion on my belt, which was the style at the time."
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2jdn61 | how can cars legally drive off dealerships with no license plates, without discrediting the entire license plate law? | Isn't the whole point of requiring license plates is so that all cars can be easily identified? Yeah sure crooks will use stolen plates but that's illegal and you can do anything if you don't care about the law. But now with cars driving around legally without plates (like _URL_0_), law enforcement will no longer stop cars who are missing plates right? I live in California, by the way. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2jdn61/eli5_how_can_cars_legally_drive_off_dealerships/ | {
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"You have a grace period where the license and registration _filing_ is sufficient. You receive a flimsy paper version of this. You're required to display this in your windshield and you aren't allowed off the lot without it.",
"California has allowed people to drive new cars for up to six months without a plate for quite a while now.\n\nThis fact was made famous by Steve Jobs who had an arrangement to have a new Mercedes Benz Coupé delivered to him every six months. They set the seats up for him and set the radio presets the way he liked them. He didn't use license plates for years. \n\nPeople thought he was participating in a secret program to test RFID or something that would eliminate the need for license plates. He was just feeding his personality disorder. "
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2qzpcu | how virtual surround sound works on headphones. | I understand they make the sound seem to the left or right but how do they simulate the sound source being in front, behind, above, or below? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2qzpcu/eli5_how_virtual_surround_sound_works_on/ | {
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"They are usually recorded with a dummy head to mimic exactly what your ears would hear. Dummy head quite literally a thing that looks like a person's head with two microphones where the eardrums would be.\n\nYour brain places sound by two factors. Delays between sound getting to one ear or the other; and high-frequency loss as the sound has to travel through your head and the pinna (cartilage part of the outer ear). ",
"You should rather be asking how you can identify the origin of a sound with only two ears! This is because the shape of your outer ear (as well as the rest of your body, to a lesser extent) colors the sound. Quite obviously, sound coming from behind is more muffled because it can't travel directly into your ear. Your brain recognizes this and infers that the sound must have been produced behind you. This is the basic principle.\n\nThere's more. Your outer ear has this complex shape to produce even more 'colors' depending on the direction of the sound. It accentuates and diminishes certain frequencies and has slightly varying delays. This is known as the [head-related transfer function](_URL_0_), or HRTF.\n\nThis system isn't perfect. It's hard to locate mosquitoes, for instance, which is probably no accident! And if you can produce any sound of your liking, as with headphones, you can artificially color sound to fool yourself all the way."
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myzeb | why does the major scales sound right? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/myzeb/why_does_the_major_scales_sound_right/ | {
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"LY8: Western music divides the space between octaves evenly into 12 notes. The major and minor scales have 7 of these 12 notes. Major scales sound a particular way because of how they are contrasted with other chords and scales in a piece of music.\n\nBy itself, a major scale still sounds 'nice' because the difference of steps between the notes is: 2-2-1-2-2-2-1 where 2 is a whole step and 1 is a half step. In contrast minor ~~chords~~ scales are 2-1-2-2-1-2-2.\n\nWhen chords are used from this arrangement, the major chords tend to have less dissonance than the minor chords (w/respect to the 'tonic' note or the first note in the scale. See the EDIT). **Dissonance** occurs when notes are closer together in an interval.\n\nWhile there may be a natural reason (ly12: evolutionary) to prefer consonance to dissonance, remember that a lot of this cultural. Major and Minor are only 2 modes of about a dozen (Aeolian, Phrygian, etc) that were used prior to the Baroque period. During the Baroque and Classical times, musicians had to follow certain rules about form and resolving dissonance. The Romantic era saw a break from this, while Impressionist, Expressionist, Modern, and Jazz music were more dramatic breaks.\n\nInterestingly, early Rock and Roll was inspired by the Blues and was very simple from a technical standpoint. The cultural implications of Rock and Roll were revolutionary, however.\n\nEDIT: For a bit more technical stuff LY16, C major scale is identical to A minor in key signature. Their tonic notes (the 1 note out of 7) are different - C and A respectively. Strictly speaking there's no real difference between the major and minor scales in terms of consonance - just the order the intervals come in. However, the chords that are derived from the scale make all the difference.\n\nCM is C E G. Cm is C Eb G. Both of these chords have a minor 3rd and a Major 3rd interval. The only difference is which is on top vs. which is on the bottom. Obviously they both have equal amounts of consonance and dissonance, but differ in position to the TONIC note - C in this case.",
"[What is up with noises?](_URL_0_)",
"LY8: Western music divides the space between octaves evenly into 12 notes. The major and minor scales have 7 of these 12 notes. Major scales sound a particular way because of how they are contrasted with other chords and scales in a piece of music.\n\nBy itself, a major scale still sounds 'nice' because the difference of steps between the notes is: 2-2-1-2-2-2-1 where 2 is a whole step and 1 is a half step. In contrast minor ~~chords~~ scales are 2-1-2-2-1-2-2.\n\nWhen chords are used from this arrangement, the major chords tend to have less dissonance than the minor chords (w/respect to the 'tonic' note or the first note in the scale. See the EDIT). **Dissonance** occurs when notes are closer together in an interval.\n\nWhile there may be a natural reason (ly12: evolutionary) to prefer consonance to dissonance, remember that a lot of this cultural. Major and Minor are only 2 modes of about a dozen (Aeolian, Phrygian, etc) that were used prior to the Baroque period. During the Baroque and Classical times, musicians had to follow certain rules about form and resolving dissonance. The Romantic era saw a break from this, while Impressionist, Expressionist, Modern, and Jazz music were more dramatic breaks.\n\nInterestingly, early Rock and Roll was inspired by the Blues and was very simple from a technical standpoint. The cultural implications of Rock and Roll were revolutionary, however.\n\nEDIT: For a bit more technical stuff LY16, C major scale is identical to A minor in key signature. Their tonic notes (the 1 note out of 7) are different - C and A respectively. Strictly speaking there's no real difference between the major and minor scales in terms of consonance - just the order the intervals come in. However, the chords that are derived from the scale make all the difference.\n\nCM is C E G. Cm is C Eb G. Both of these chords have a minor 3rd and a Major 3rd interval. The only difference is which is on top vs. which is on the bottom. Obviously they both have equal amounts of consonance and dissonance, but differ in position to the TONIC note - C in this case.",
"[What is up with noises?](_URL_0_)"
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eu26mz | why hacking is a recurrent problem on games like cs:go and pubg, while other games, such as rocket league, have basically no hacks at all? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/eu26mz/eli5_why_hacking_is_a_recurrent_problem_on_games/ | {
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"Because how could a program help you play rocket league? Help you come up with strategies of where to go and what to do?\nYou can’t hack a game where the computer can’t play as well as humans.",
"All of it comes down to the framework of the games, both how the game is made and how cheaters are detected/punished. Not sure the specifics with the games mentioned, but there will definitely be differences in how easy it is to do, as well how easy it is to avoid detection. If things are handled more on the server side, clients can't change much to their advantage."
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10x9np | servers/the internet in general | Why do people suggest that a site buy more servers to remedy slow speeds? Does buying a server make you your own ISP? Does it give you a bigger pipe to the internet (so to speak...)? If I buy a server, will that make my internet faster? Basically, if someone could explain the relationship between servers and internet that would just be great. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/10x9np/serversthe_internet_in_general/ | {
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"Imagine you're running a bar, and you've got only one bartender. Customers have to walk up between the tables, order their drink, wait for their drink, then walk back between the tables to get back to their seat. The tables are kind of close together, so people sometimes have to wait for someone else to finish walking through in one direction before they can walk through in the other direction. Plus, only having one bartender means only one drink is being made at a time.\n\nThe bar is a website. The drinks are individual pages on the site. The bartender is a server. The space between the tables is network bandwidth. The customers are web surfers.\n\nSo, your customers start complaining that your bar takes too long to serve drinks. So, you've got a few options. You could try to widen the space between the tables (pay your ISP for more bandwidth), but there's a limit to how wide you can get them. Or you could hire a new bartender (add another server). Another bartender means you can be making multiple drinks at once (more servers can respond to more requests at once).\n\nBut you've also got to consider that those two bartenders are sharing the same set of bottles, the same behind the bar space, and the same set of tables that are too close together. Eventually, adding more bartenders isn't going to be good enough. At that point, you might consider opening another bar entirely (setting up another set of servers in a different location entirely). That has the advantage of letting people drive to whichever bar is closer (less lag time for computers closer to the new servers), but adds new challenges of making sure both bars have the same menu, same drinks, and same level of quality service (sharing content across servers, database replication, etc.).\n",
"I don't feel like writing down a whole slab of text but if you want to chat (anyone really) you can add me on skype: **weebl.evilution** \n\nI'm a network engineer as a profession and manage servers and connections at enterprise level... and I'm kind of bored at the moment. :P\n\n"
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2kqwj2 | if my average temperature is lower than 98.6, does a fever occur at a lower degree as well? | I've been curious about this for some time! My average temperature is usually around 96.8 degrees. If my body IS fevered at the average 101 degrees, does my body do extra work to catch up? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2kqwj2/eli5_if_my_average_temperature_is_lower_than_986/ | {
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"Well the general rule of thumb is that it's \"normal\" for your body temperature to fluctuate 1-2 degree during the day. That's why almost any doctor you see won't consider it a fever to be of concern until 100.4 which is getting very close to the end of that spectrum. \n\nIf your resting normal body temp is really 96 then if you had a 99-100 fever I might worry about it more than the average person but remember that no matter what your normal state is as you get closer and closer to 104 you are at greater risk. 104 or higher can lead to serious damage and even death. But regardless of your set point the range for \"normal\" is pretty wide haha, I think Wikipedia has it somewhere if you're curious. \n\nHere I pulled this from Wikipedia for you :\nThe range for normal human body temperatures, taken orally, is36.8±0.5 °C (98.2±0.9 °F).[9] This means that any oral temperature between 36.3 and37.3 °C (97.3 and 99.1 °F) is likely to be normal.\n\nYour body's set point depends on a lot of factors like where you live, your age, sex, lifestyle, medical conditions, etc. \n\nIf you're willing to do a little experiment I'd try taking your temperature every couple hours throughout the day and chart your natural changes. You might be surprised how much it goes up and down. I hang out between 97.6 to 98.2 or so... I rarely hit the standard 98.6...\n\nEdit: I saw you're feverish now? Well my experiment may not be useful until you feel yourself again haha but you get the idea."
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1xt7cf | the venezuela protests? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1xt7cf/eli5_the_venezuela_protests/ | {
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"Came here to post the same thing. I don't know a whole lot about Venezuela, but it seems strange to go from student protest to full on bloody riots.",
"Quote from /u/migvello, a fellow Venezuelan redditor who summed it up pretty well: \n\n > Venezuelan here. Mind you I was on today's protest on the anti-government side, this means I'm biased. You may not know, but Venezuela is spiraling into debt. With Chavez death and the rule of President Nicolás Maduro, we had two bid devaluations. The Dollar went from 4,30 Bs (Bolivares \"Fuertes\") to 11,36 approx. on one year. We can't find basic food elements like milk, flour, cooking oil, and even toilet paper on our marts and markets, this scarcity is beyond patience: _URL_7_\nInsecurity is rampant. We are now one of the most violent countries on the world. We had even one of our Miss Venezuela killed, it wasn't because she was famous, not because she had money, it wasn't a hitman. She died with same modus operandi every Venezuelan gets killed. The government is secretly working with a lot of \"collectives\" (mafias, armed groups, violent gangs) as means of intimidation and is turning a blind eye to violence.\nHere is a video of the police and government enforcers shooting and kicking people: _URL_6_ _URL_5_\nHere are some videos of these armed collectives shooting protesters: _URL_9_ _URL_1_ you can see one protester shot death and the police not doing anything.\nPolice brutality against protesters (not today, not in Caracas but in Mérida) _URL_8_\nArmed collectives shooting and robbing. These are the Tupamaros, considered a legal political party: _URL_0_ _URL_2_\nYou won't find this on the news except on CNN. Our TV media is buyed by the goverment. It was funny and infuriating watching TV today and finding soup operas an bullshit shows while everybody was marching and the tension was boiling.\nPardon my writing. I can't write well due to anger. There is so much more about this but I can't think straight, I'm too damn angry right now, so I think this info is kinda limited. I hope someone complement this.\nEdit: Some pics: _URL_4_ \nEdit 2: Thanks /u/faxon and some some others user I can't find the name right now, for the gold! Thanks brothers!\nEdit 3: Another protester dead, apparently by the government sponsored armed collectives I mentioned about. _URL_3_ Official numbers: 3 deaths, 26 injured.\nThere is a obligatory country wide public announcement by the government (We call it cadenas, I don't know the English translation, they are very common). A civic-military parade with people smiling, music and happiness all around commemorating El Día de la Juventud while the tensions are still up in the streets. Tomorrow is going to be a long day...\nEdit 4: It Official: \"Maduro forbids spontaneous protests on the country \"quien quiera protestar o marchar en cualquier lugar del país debe tener permiso y si no es así, serán detenidos.\" - \"Those who wants to protest or rally up anywhere on the country must have permission, otherwise, they will be detained.\nAs if the President would give permissions to protests against him...\nEdit 5: Oh! I forgot to say this. Our Exchange-rate regime is too severe. The now official figure is 1$ = 11,36 Bs. approx., but the black market figure is 84 Bs. as of today. Our economy is so fucked up that the official rate is not as used as the black market rates on commercial establishments because the government has barely any money left. ",
"I live there. They want to get Maduro out of power by essentially marching in the streets. Many people believe there will be a strike against the government."
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"https://twitter.com/jennyoro1/status/433771586227683330/photo/1",
"http://imgur.com/a/hvw4J#JH1ue46",
"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PsjIb62_PoM",
"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jrpihh6mewQ",
"http://www.theguardian.com/global-development/poverty-matters/2013/sep/26/venezuela-food-shortages-rich-country-cia",
"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=15xj1Tf3sU0",
"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4mb97ZcOd8g"
],
[]
] |
||
2i6e31 | how does so much money(electronic) exist if there isn't enough physical currency in the world somewhere to back it? | Basically i'm getting really confused as to how there isn't enough physical currency in the world. So what would happen if everybody in the world tried to withdraw their money from the banks.
please help me! | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2i6e31/eli5_how_does_so_much_moneyelectronic_exist_if/ | {
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"Money is not a real thing. It is a reflection of the value of something - how much someone is willing to pay for it. This can also be the value of something that doesn't exist either, like a service or a concept.\n\nPhysical currency is just a chit - a token to show an item of money.\n\nIf everyone tried to withdraw their money at once, the bank would collapse. A bank makes its money by investing your money that it's looking after - for example by loaning it to people who need mortgages, and charging interest. It keeps enough back so that, if you ask for some of your money, it can give it to you. But if everyone asked for their money at once, a 'run' on the bank happens. This means the bank would suddenly not have enough money to pay everyone. \n\nThis is what happens in Mary Poppins and why the Dad gets fired.",
"\n1) Money is just an IOU from an official party. If you give someone a note that says that you'll give the owner if this note 2h of your labor (e.g if you know how to build websites, then doing that for 2h), and the other guy **trust** that you will do what to note says, then that's an IOU. \n\n2)now, of you are willing him to transfer this note to a third party, and that third party also **trusts** you to hold on to your word, then this note can be used to trade for other stuff. Thus your note is a form of money. State authorized IOUs are what people call \"money\". We all **trust** that other people will trust this IOU, so we are willing to trade with it for goods. you see how trust is a major thing here...\n\n\n\nnow to the answer: \n---------------------\n\n1) As most of our dealing are done from bank to bank, there is no need to issue a real life paper IOUs. you can just balance the books between accounts and between banks. In fact, the bank does not print new IOUs, it just makes accounting calculations, to allow for more trade to be carried out. **So, most of the money made is never printed into circulation of real paper IOUs.** \n\n2) The second thing that increases the amount of traded debt is that we are willing to accept IOUs from people for **future work of goods produced**. that is, we assume that this guy will be working 20y more, and we have **his promise** that he will pay all the debt he takes on himself, then we are willing to give him money (IOUs) to use now, knowing he will pay back. we are using **future** wealth!\n\n3) Now this **future wealth**, in the form of new IOUs given to the guy that made a promise to pay it up, is used by this guy in the market, thus entering into the total money available for all of us to use. \n\nfinal note:\n > Keep this in mind: Every time you take a lone, you are creating fake future money now. Let's all hope you keep your promise of working off that debt with some yoga teaching or chemical engineering or whatever you do. ",
"These articles basically explain how there's more *money* than *physical currency* and how the hell that we arrive at this situation: \n_URL_1_ \n_URL_0_"
]
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[],
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"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Money_multiplier",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fractional_reserve_banking"
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|
2jshex | how does every flight always seems to be filled? | Does *everyone* happen to be flying to the same random city at the same time on the same day every day? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2jshex/eli5_how_does_every_flight_always_seems_to_be/ | {
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"Flying a plane is expensive. If it's not full, the airline is losing money. They schedule flights far enough apart that the planes will be more likely to be full when flying. They will also put you on connecting flights, meaning the larger, fuller planes going to bigger, more major airports, are often taking people to a connection, not to that city. They will get on a smaller plane, (also full) going to another destination. The planes get smaller as the destinations get more remote, making it more cost-effective to fly with fewer paying passengers. ",
"Flight scheduling/routing is the subject of *very* close study in the airline industry. Planes have to be pretty damn full before the flight becomes profitable, so airlines have to be very picky about when and where they fly. So they look at available data to determine how many customers they need to service, and provide no more service than they absolutely need to. If Delta sees that there are approximately 400 people flying from Atlanta to Oklahoma City every Friday, then they might commit two 205-seat planes to the task.\n\nThis is a dramatic oversimplification, but it should serve for ELI5 purposes.",
"Everything /u/Roflmoo said is correct, but he didn't get to the other part, which is over-booking.\n\nAirlines will sell more seats on a flight than actually exist on the airplane. This allows them to keep a plane full when no-shows fail to arrive.\n\nThat's why it's important to check in as early as you can and, if your flight allows it, select your seats.",
"As others already explained. Companies as Delta, AA, Lufthansa have expensive systems to determine the optimal occupation and to achieve a 100% occupation with maximized revenue.\nIf you read about Yield Management, you will see that there is a lot of work before the flight taking off.\n\nWhen you say random city, be aware that companies just fly between that two cities because they have studied and made \"business plans\" to that route, they are flying it because they know they would have passengers.\n\nDepending on the route, Saturdays and Mondays are usually the most full flights. Tuesdays are the weakest day of the week, with lower fares.\n\nAdditionally, during the check-in the system has a module that attributes the seats. The seating map is done in a way that the weight will be distributed by the plane.\n\nFor example, if a flight is 50% occupied, the check-in system will give the seats to the passengers distributing them by the plane, in order to have their weight equally distributed in both sides of the plane. This will also avoid the idea that the plane has lots of available seats, since you will be seeing passengers heads, everywhere.",
"I can answer this one! **I worked for the world's largest airline.** There's two parts to this question.\n\n**First Part:** Most airlines use what they call a hub and spoke system - take American Airlines for example. Let's say your journey is from Tucson, AZ to Boise, ID. Your route would look something like TUS -- > PHX -- > BOI. The \"spoke\" airports are TUS and BOI while the \"hub\" airport is PHX. Think of airports like a bicycle wheel where all of the spokes come together at one point (hub). In order to go from city to city, you need to pass through the hub to change planes. People on the Tucson to Phoenix flight might not all have a final destination of Phoenix, but rather to get off their plane in Phoenix to board a plane going to another city. People flying from Phoenix to Boise all have a final destination of Boise. \n\n**Second Part:** Now, in order to address why planes are so full. There are two types of people to fly on a plane. In aviation terms, positive space or non-rev customers. Positive space customers are like you - people who pay for an airplane ticket. Non-rev customers are people who work for the airlines that fly for free, but can only board a plane if there is space available (Non-rev = non-revenue). Next time you are boarding a plane, when boarding starts you'll usually hear the gate agent come over the PA and make a message directed towards stand-by passengers (generally these are the non-revs trying to see if there is enough seats on the flight for them to fit). \n\n**My plug: The aviation industry is absolutely fascinating. If y'all have more specific questions on how airports/airlines work, feel free to PM me.**\n",
"Not always. I was once on a plane with only 18 people onboard.",
"2 reasons:\n\nThe first is over booking. Airlines over-sell tickets by some percentage in anticipation of missed flights and plans changing. Whatever is left goes to the 2nd reason: Non-Revenue passengers. Basically, this is airline personnel and others who are able to acquire standby and buddy passes. If there are seats left, there are undoubtedly people trying to find room on these flights to get wherever they need to get. Those 2 things combined leads to full flights almost all the time.",
"Without disputing any of the discussion of overbooking, stand-bys, etc., there is another reason.\n\nConsider 2 flights, one has 1 passenger, 99 empty seats. One has 99 passengers, 1 empty seat. On average, planes are half full, right? However, 99% of the people experience a 99% full plane, and 1% of the people experience a 1% full plane. Expected experience becomes .99 * 99 + .01 * .01 = .9802, or 98% full.\n\nGeneralized, what the the airlines see as planes that are 85% full, on average, is going to feel to most people as 100% full.\n\nTL;DR: Planes feel fuller than they are because odds are you on a plane that is fuller than average.",
"It didn't use to be like that. When fuel prices were lower, airlines competed based upon availability. This chart shows the change in load factor in the last 23 years. Its gone from 60% to about 82%. _URL_0_ \n\nMore flights at a lower load factor were more convenient for passengers. As fuel prices increased, the importance of the load factor has increased to maximize efficiency. The need to maximize passengers becomes important because the fuel costs are the largest variable costs associated with adding extra passengers. But the ticket price is substantially larger than the variable costs, so you get a pretty large marginal profit from filling the last few seats on a plane. \n \n\n",
"Through a thorough analysis of historical flying data, computer algorithms and other internal/external factors, a software program out there adjusts flight costs up and down in such a fashion to generate a purchasing trend that, by the day of the flight, gets that flight as full as possible. I'm sure it's a trade secret horded by each airline or airline software provider.",
"The first time I ever flew it was when I was 21 years old going from Birmingham to Chicago for a job interview. (I hadn't flown as a kid because my mom refuses to, so no family vacations in the air). The flight arrangements were made by someone at the NW Indiana company I was going to interview for, not myself. I got on a regular sized plane in Birmingham and flew to Cincinnati to get a connecting flight to Chicago. When I got to the plane in Cincinnati, there were about 5 of us on a small connection flight. As I boarded I was asked my weight and then told where to sit to balance out the weight of the plane on either side of the wings. I was kinda freaked out by that."
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"http://www.theicct.org/sites/default/files/airline_fuel-efficiency_1990-2012_575px.png"
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|
ejkvye | why does pixelating a picture of the same dimensions make the file size smaller? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/ejkvye/eli5_why_does_pixelating_a_picture_of_the_same/ | {
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"Think of pixels like the thread count of a sheet. If you have a really high thread count, the sheet will be heavier than a lower thread count sheet.\n\nThe same thing is true for pixels - the higher resolution something is, the more pixels there are and the larger the file will be.",
"I don't know anything about computer science. But when you pixelate, you essentially merge neighboring pixels, right? So instead of having to code for different colors for each pixel, you now Code one color for many. Less information = less size. I may be wrong though",
"If you're using a non-bitmap image format, pixellating it makes the image easier to compress. Big blocks of solid color are far simpler to compress than whatever you had before.",
"It lets the image get compressed more easily because there's less detail. Storing the information \"one pixel of color A, one pixel of color B, one pixel of color C, one pixel of color D\" takes up a lot more space than the information \"a 10x10 pixel block of color A\"."
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||
jmvyf | what/who the tea partiers are | not the ones from way back in the day. the present ones | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/jmvyf/eli5_whatwho_the_tea_partiers_are/ | {
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"[Tea Party](_URL_1_)\n\nTop comments [here](_URL_2_) and [here](_URL_0_) are good",
"[Tea Party](_URL_1_)\n\nTop comments [here](_URL_2_) and [here](_URL_0_) are good"
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"http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/j3pre/please_explain_the_tea_party_movement_and_their/",
"http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/search?q=tea+party&restrict_sr=on&sort=relevance",
"http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/jfusi/eli_5_can_someone_explain_the_tea_party_and_how/"
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"http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/j3pre/please_explain_the_tea_party_movement_and_their/",
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"http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/jfusi/eli_5_can_someone_explain_the_tea_party_and_how/"
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|
5bfho3 | if we don't use much oxygen up from the air whilst breathing, why can't we hold our breaths much longer? | About [18% of what we breathe out](_URL_0_) is oxygen.
About [21% of normal air - what we breathe in](_URL_1_) is oxygen.
That means that 85% of the oxygen that was breathed in is not absorbed into the bloodstream through the lungs. When we hold our breath, why can't we just absorb the remaining 85% oxygen, and hold our breaths much longer? Sorry if I'm missing some obvious fact here. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5bfho3/eli5_if_we_dont_use_much_oxygen_up_from_the_air/ | {
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"The urge to breath out when holding breath isn't from lack of oxygen. It is from build up of CO2. The body really wants you to breathe that out!",
"The body needs you to get rid of CO2.\n\nAlso when you breath in, the air 'swirls' and moves around so more oxygen atoms collide with the walls of the lungs.\n\nOnce you've fully breathed in, the air tends to settle down and you end up with oxygen just sitting there on it's own away from the tissue.\n",
"Our body does not even have a built in O2 sensor: we only measure CO2 and it's the only value accounted for when we need to breath. The CO2 \"sensors\" are located in the aortic and carotic bodies, structures deeply irrorated with blood and very sensitive to minute variations. "
]
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"http://oureverydaylife.com/chemical-composition-exhaled-air-human-lungs-39363.html",
"http://chemistry.about.com/od/chemistryfaqs/f/aircomposition.htm"
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[],
[],
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|
3zse7d | what the fuck is happening in r/me_irl right now? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3zse7d/eli5_what_the_fuck_is_happening_in_rme_irl_right/ | {
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"text": [
"Not an ELI5 answer, but you will have better luck /r/outoftheloop. "
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
Subsets and Splits