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9zd8td | what is happening when you’re anxious/suffering from anxiety, and what do anti-anxiety drugs (xanex etc) do to fight this? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9zd8td/eli5_what_is_happening_when_youre/ | {
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"Xanax and other benzodiazepines work on a part of the brain that releases an inhibitory chemical called GABA. The drugs stimulate GABA release which effectively shuts down/off other chemical receptor reactions. GABA is an extremely potent inhibitory chemical in the brain. I take advantage of this in anesthesia on a daily basis. That's the process that puts you under anesthesia, a massive rush of GABA.\n\nWhen you are anxious you have triggered a response for the fight or flight system in your body. This stimulates the sympathetic nervous system to prepare the body to survive. Eyes dilate, breathing increases (to build up oxygen), airways expand, muscles charge for activity, and anything not needed to stay alive shortly basically stops or gets slowed down. "
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7x5k2b | how does the nba draft system, trades, picks, and transfers work? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7x5k2b/eli5_how_does_the_nba_draft_system_trades_picks/ | {
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"Every year there is a draft where teams gets to pick from a pool of eligible young players. Every team is has two picks, one in round 1 and one in round 2. The order in which teams pick is determined roughly by how the standings finished the season prior, with the worst teams receiving the top picks. There is a bit of randomness thrown into this order by a lottery system, but for the most part, bad teams get top picks, good teams get later picks.\n\nAny young players in the draft pool who do not get picked after the two rounds are completed are free to sign with any team that offers them a contract.\n\nThe picks themselves can be traded between teams. For instance right now Team A could trade Player X + their 2021 first round pick for Player Y from Team B, assuming Player Y is deemed more valuable than Player X. When 2021 came around, Team B would have two first round picks and Team A would have none. First round picks can be highly valuable, second round picks not so much.\n\nTrading players basically means just moving the player's existing contract from one team to another. The players themselves do not have to consent for this to take place. You can trade player for player, player for pick(s), or multiple players and picks going both ways. As long as both teams can afford the players contracts under the salary cap, you can basically trade any combination. You can even have a three or four team trade, as long as all teams agree on what they are giving up and taking on."
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1u2gp9 | regarding american football: what is a 'salary cap penalty' | I'm a Redskins fan and for anyone that follows football, you probably know that this organization is a complete joke. I'm reading an article about the firing of head coach Mike Shanahan and this quote came up:
"...The salary-cap penalties that hamstrung the Redskins the last two years are over..."
What is a salary cap penalty. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1u2gp9/eli5_regarding_american_football_what_is_a_salary/ | {
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"First, you need to know what the salary cap is: For the 2013 season, the cap for each team is set at $123 million. This means that no team can spend more than that amount of money against the cap (although we will talk later about what counts against the cap and what doesn’t). Teams must be in compliance with the cap by no later than the first day of the league year.\n\nThere is also a minimum salary under the new CBA. The salary floor for each team is 89 percent of the cap. For 2013, this means that each team must be over $109.47 million.\n\nAlong with a team minimum salary, the league itself must spend 95 percent of the cap in 2013. This means that all teams combined must average 95 percent of the cap or higher. If the league fails to meet this mark, they must pay the remaining amount needed directly to players.\n\nNow, here is what the penalty is: If a team goes over the salary cap, it must forfeit a contract or restructure contracts to assure the player is under the salary cap. Also, they usually have to pay fines for going over the amount or forfeit draft picks. \n\n[Source](_URL_0_)",
"There isn't really an official thing called a \"salary cap penalty\". Well, there is, but to the best of my knowledge, it has never been applied to an NFL team.\n\nEach team is only allowed to spend a certain amount on player salaries. Teams that manage this well stay under the cap, and lots of money available to sign new players. Teams that manage this poorly pay too much more underperforming players, and don't have enough room under the cap to get the players they need to improve.\n\nThe Redskins are one of the teams that manages their cap poorly, and have had little room available under the cap the past two years. They've paid the \"penalty\" for that by not being able to acquire top players. But after this year, many of those salary obligations go away, and they will have greater spending flexibility."
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bctski | what would a photon "see" if it "looked" at a different photon traveling in the same direction? | We know that the speed of light is the same from all perspectives; however, let's say a photon could see and it looked at another photon traveling in the same direction. Would it see the other photon traveling at c or 0c? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/bctski/eli5_what_would_a_photon_see_if_it_looked_at_a/ | {
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"They wouldn't. When something is going the speed of light, time doesn't really exist for it. Distance doesn't either. From its perspective. it began to exist and ceased to exist at the exact same moment. Even if it is going through space for trillions of years, it does not experience it.\n\nSo the idea of examining another object moving at that speed is not a thing. It just doesn't work due to the nature of moving at that speed.",
"You actually can't do this! The way you'd do it would be to measure the velocity of the other photon from the rest frame of the first photon. However photons have no rest frames! So the answer unfortunately is undefined."
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682rid | why do all big cities have a highway or series of highways making a circle around the center? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/682rid/eli5_why_do_all_big_cities_have_a_highway_or/ | {
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"These are commonly called Ring Roads and they're simply an efficient way to move traffic around a city. The centers of these cities are generally dense and hard to build in. So, when developing a high speed road it's easier to build it outside the city instead of straight through the middle.",
"Cities historically developed along main transport routes (roads, rivers), especially at intersections between different routes. So when cities grow they often have two main roads crossing through the center. Like this, people going in and out of town have to share a road with those passing through, making all kinds of problems like traffic jams and air pollution worse. So with the rise of individual motorized travel, cities (not only the larger ones) would create a ring or several rings of highways around them to distribute traffic into the environs and especially to give transit the option to pass around town more quickly, rather than stuffing the city streets.",
"Bypass highways are to prevent traffic bottlenecking in the center of town... while clearly some people need to get to the center of town (ie. commuters) many are simply passing through on their way elsewhere. Rather than have them unnecessarily add to the traffic congestion, they can pass around the most crowded areas of town. They are also useful for people trying to get to various parts of the metro area from other parts, again without needing to go all the way downtown and back out, while not tying up surface streets.",
"Ring roads, also known as orbitals, loops, beltways, or other terms, allow traffic to get from one side of the city to the other without passing through the centre, which is busy with traffic that's actually going to the centre.\n\nWhy not just put a bigger highway straight through the centre? Well the city centre is usually the most desired location for business meaning the property and land is worth the most. Compensating all the companies who are getting their offices and shops demolished would be expensive, and probably unpopular too. Tunnels avoid the demolition but they're really expensive too. By building a ring road or bypass around the centre instead, it's built on less valuable land. Sometimes the ring road was originally built mostly in the countryside, although suburbs might have expanded since."
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b074gy | why do milk jugs in the us invariably leak from their cap, but not other liquids? | As an example, I buy a gallon of milk (no matter the cap type, it happens with all different ones) from the grocery store. I drive home and it tips over, there is always some spilled milk. But if I buy a 2 liter of soda, drop it down two flights of stairs on the way up to my apartment, it doesn't leak. Or a bottle of water, even if it seems of thin/cheap plastic and I squeeze it, nothing comes out.
I have started to become paranoid, and everytime I buy milk it has to be braced from all sides. I plan for it in advance and essentially build a fort in the trunk of my car protecting the milk jug!
Is it a fault in all of the different types of milk jug plastics in the US? Is there a magical property of milk I don't know about? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/b074gy/eli5_why_do_milk_jugs_in_the_us_invariably_leak/ | {
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"Not sure about the US but in the UK the bottles are cheap and leak in the way you described.\n\nI always assumed this was to keep the costs down, as its such a high volume product a little saving per bottle goes a long way.\n\nThere is also the fact that unlike the pop bottles there's not much brand loyalty with milk as far as I can tell so having a great bottle wouldn't give an advantage in the market. ",
"The plastic bottles in Canada leak too. It drives me insane and it's a major factor why i never get plastic milk jugs bagged. ",
"Milk jugs are weak because they aren't made to hold pressure. \n\nI don't know for sure, but it's possible that the milk jug producers made a decision that it was better for them to leak a bit than to have a really great seal and let the stuff build up pressure and explode later if it's left out."
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40unvf | gas prices have been on the decline for a while, but why have food prices not dropped, since they were originally raised (in part) due to high transportation costs? | I understand that it takes a while for the industries to adjust to fuel costs, but shouldn't we see some effect on consumer goods and consumables? Or are they just enjoying the extra margin? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/40unvf/eli5_gas_prices_have_been_on_the_decline_for_a/ | {
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"Probably the latter. Remember, in capitalism, goods generally cost whatever the market will bear (that being the largest amount of people are prepared to pay for that good) without losing money in production. By raising the cost to account to rising fuel, the market discovered people were willing to pay more for those goods- the only reason they'll drop is if one retailer or the other decides to start a price war. Check your local markets for cheaper foods as they tend to coordinate less on prices than supermarket chains- they just want to sell their stock.",
"Companies are always quick to pass on rising costs to their customers, but slow to pass on savings. This is especially true when there are multiple companies the product has to go through (farms, transportation companies, processing companies, supermarkets) before it gets to you. ",
"Diesel fuel prices have **not** been dropping, or at least not as quickly as they have been for unleaded gas. If diesel prices dropped more you could feasibly start to see a drop in prices for consumer goods, like food, but it probably won't be as dramatic as when prices increased. \n\nOther reasons you are unlikely to see prices drop are, while fuel prices are dropping, other costs for companies to do business are going up (healthcare, labor costs, regulatory burdens, taxes, etc.). Therefore, companies are using the savings in fuel costs to offset cost increases in other areas so they don't have to increase prices more to stay in business."
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5cntrs | why do meteors burn when they enter earth's atmosphere? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5cntrs/eli5why_do_meteors_burn_when_they_enter_earths/ | {
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"Gases get hotter when they are under higher pressure. When an object enters the atmosphere, it's generally going so fast that the air in front of it doesn't have time to flow around it, so it compresses. This puts it under greater pressure, and heats it up. It's usually hot enough to burn up whatever is entering the atmosphere, which is why space shuttles needs so much heat shielding to re-enter safely.",
"Meteors enter the atmosphere at crazy high speeds. Like 10s of thousand of miles per hour. When something moving that fast hits the air it causes the air to compress so fast it turns to plasma and becomes super hot",
"The answers here mentioning friction are incorrect. While friction plays a small role it's not responsible for the main heating. When a fast moving object enters the atmosphere the air in front of it is compressed rapidly and can't get out of the way quick enough. When gases are compressed they heat up, this massive pressure wave in front of the object is responsible for the vast majority of heating especially at higher points in the atmosphere. "
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bq3tmk | why is working the graveyard shift damaging to our health? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/bq3tmk/elif_why_is_working_the_graveyard_shift_damaging/ | {
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"I'm not that kind of a doctor, but some studies have linked light-level/ sleep cycle interruptions to hormone-related cancers as the endocrine system is the hub of hormones for sleep and for sex-hormones. When sleep hormones are interrupted, increased cortisol (\"stress hormone\") results and cortisol has been associated with increased abdominal fat, clogged arteries, anxiety, etc.",
"It only is if you don't sleep properly during the day! \nBlack out curtains and ear plugs are the way to go!",
"For most people, it's because they're not wired to sleep well during daylight hours and be awake all night. Lack of good sleep will destroy you, either quickly and obviously or slowly and grindingly over time. Sleep is the \"repair and clean up\" phase for the brain. Remember what a wreck your dorm room was around exam time in college? You had so little spare time to maintain things that your laundry mound grew to gargantuan proportions. When you don't get enough sleep, or your sleep is poor quality, that happens to your brain.\n\nThere are a few people who have conditions like delayed phase sleep disorder, or non-24 hour sleep-wake cycles who respond the same way to trying to keep a regular \"business hours\" schedule. I have DSPS. It's half past ten in the morning where I am as I'm posting this, and this is the earliest I can make my brain thinky-wordy-thing on a daily basis. I have tried keeping a \"normal\" schedule, and I kept ending up in a doctor's office (a couple of times, urgent care/ER) with the same complaints usually seen from third -shift workers.\n\nLack of sleep is so detrimental that if it goes on too long, it can actually kill you. Look up \"fatal familial insomnia\" for a terrifying description of what happens when your brain forgets how to sleep.",
"For starters, there's the physical aspects of not getting as much sunlight, and of trying to sleep when the sun is up and everybody and everything else is active.\n\nThen, there's the psychological aspect of not being able to participate in ordinary daytime activities with people. A graveyard shift schedule is like a sort of prison made with hours rather than concrete and bars."
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bfy33q | when elephants suck water with their trunks, how do they not accidentally drown? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/bfy33q/eli5_when_elephants_suck_water_with_their_trunks/ | {
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"Do you accidentally drown when you suck up water with your mouth, perhaps from a water fountain or a straw? It's not hard to do right.",
"Imagine having a straw in glass of water.\n\nNow imagine sucking water into the straw. Not drinking it. Not filling your mouth completely with it. Just sucking water into the straw.\n\nThat’s what elephants do. They suck it up that way and then squirt it back into their mouths to drink."
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5w2gla | why aren't there planets that orbit perpendicular to the orbital plane? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5w2gla/eli5_why_arent_there_planets_that_orbit/ | {
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"Because the planets (and the Sun) formed from a gigantic spinning disk of gas and particles. The center became the Sun. The rest of the disk became the planets and asteroids. ",
"[This is why.](_URL_0_)\n\nEverything starts out going all different directions, but just by chance there is a net angular momentum, and as everything collides that's going different directions, they all cancel out and fall into the center. You're left with only things that sum up to the net angular momentum of the system that are close to the average.",
"As others have mentioned, it's primarily because the gas and dust that made up the solar system was spinning and flattened out into a disk. The gravitational interaction between planetoids (baby planets) wasn't great enough to fling themselves very far away from the orbital plane.\n\nOK, with that being said, it's not impossible for a planet to orbit perpendicular to the orbital plane. We have many comets that do. What you would need is:\n\n* a small planet (Mercury to Earth sized) to interact with a huge planet (Jupiter or Saturn) very closely. The big planet could fling the small planet in such a way as to be almost perpendicular to the orbital plane. If some other interactions occurred, it may eventually settle down into a stable orbit.\n\n* a small planet could be captured by the solar system. Again, this would require interaction with a third body -- another small planet which could get flung out of the solar system or potentially a larger planet that could take some of the captured planet's energy.\n\nThe problem with these two possibilities is that they are very statistically rare, so it's no surprise we don't see them in our solar system. However, it's likely that this sort of thing has happened to some planetary system somewhere in our universe if not our galaxy."
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7zpo4e | why can't files (documents, pictures, presentations etc.) open in some program be moved to a new folder while they're open? | If I remember correctly, which I may not, this is true of Windows and Mac. I can't speak for the other OS's, but I assume there's something intrinsic to how they're designed that makes it this way. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7zpo4e/eli5_why_cant_files_documents_pictures/ | {
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"That depends on the program. The operating system provides the ability for a program to lock the file when open, not all programs do this. A program will do this if it's going to flush content to the file, like if your document editor has an auto-save feature, for example.",
"It's to maintain version control. Let's say there are 3 people in my department at work who are required to keep a specific file updated. I start making changes at 12:05, but I haven't saved the file. The person next to me makes changes at 12:06 and then saves the file. I then save the file I have open. Well, all the changes the person next to me made are now gone because I've saved the file with the version I was working on.\n\nThe easiest way to do this is to lock files. \n\nGranted, this isn't a great system because this situation would be better handled with a database, and not something like an excel file. A database records transactions (changes) as they happen in order.\n\nThat said file locking is important for all operating systems so that important OS files that are in use aren't changed while in use, or the machine would crash. ",
"Goes per program. Some programs that allow for file editing may copy the file somewhere temporarily and work with it, without touching the source file, and then overwriting it on \"save\".\n\nBut generally only 1 read/write session is allowed per file. If you think of \"moving a file\" as a program (it is) that rewrites the source file bit-by-bit to a different location, it would make sense that this operation would require another read/write session. Since one is initiated already, the \"move\" operation is not permitted.\n\nIt is not permitted for protection purposes, but you can still do it. It would require some manual commands in the terminal, and it would definitely break the program the file is opened in, but you will in fact move it to a different place.",
"Because the way most programs handle opening files is to lock them so they can write and make changes to them.\n\nThis is supposed to prevent some other program from messing with the file why the first program is working with it.\n\nThere isn't really a system built into the OS that will tell the program currently working on a file when some other program tries to move that file. The way it works is to just not let anyone do something like that.",
"There's no good reason.\n\n > If I remember correctly, which I may not, this is true of Windows and Mac.\n\nIt's true of Windows, but it is not true of Mac. On a Mac you can freely move (and rename) documents while they're open. It works perfectly fine. You can do it on Linux OSes as well. There's no reason Windows *can't* allow this too.",
"Imagine software as a puppet show. Specific parts (files) are stored in specific places so the puppet master knows where to get stuff to get the show going.\n\nNow this is fine if the puppet master has all the available parts already, and some software allows dynamic addressing.\n\nBut if there are parts being stored away for future portions and you swap it now the puppet master doesnt have his piece and the show stops (crashes). To prevent this, the puppet master prevents you from interfering with his act until it is finished. "
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dk4dx2 | why is it that when we touch a very hot surface, we have the same sentation as touching a cold surface before the pain kicks in ? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/dk4dx2/eli5_why_is_it_that_when_we_touch_a_very_hot/ | {
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"I don't know if you have the experience of touching a cold surface. I think it's just that it takes a fraction of a second for the signal to travel to your brain, go \"Oh shit, it's hot!\" and pull your hand back.\n\nIt's just lag.",
"i dont think the body knows what it is. when u retract your hand from a hot or cold surface it is a nerve impulse and, if my HS bio class has not failed me, it doesnt reach the brain before u take your hand off it and when the impulse reaches your elbow(?) one signels is sent bak to your hand to retract it and another is sent to your brain. the sensation is problly when its cold or hot and that signal is the one being sent bak to your hand untill your brain is like o thats hot or cold.",
"I had a high school biology teacher explain that we have receptors under the skin for warm and cold, but not for hot. He had us do an experiment at a sink with separate hot and cold faucets. We connected rubber hoses to each and twisted them together. One tap was turned on warm (not hot, just warm) and the other was cold. Then we twisted the hoses together. When the warm and cold water hit our hands, it gave the illusion of being burned.",
"Pain doesn’t go to your brain right away, it goes to your spine. Since hot and cold are both temperature related pains, they feel the same in your spine, since it’s only important for your nervous system to tell you “PULL AWAY”. That’s why your first response to that pain is to jerk yourself away from it. Then it goes to your brain to figure out what just happened",
"Nerves don’t measure temperature, they measure the temperature gradient. That is to say, ELY5, If your fingers are cold and what you touch is cold, you won’t feel any temperature. If your fingers are hot and what you touch is hot, you won’t feel any temperature. If you are the same temperature as the surface of the sun, you won’t be thinking “hoo, toasty!” It’ll just feel normal.\n\nThe interesting thing is that something extremely cold and extremely hot feel the same, at first anyway. Your temperature sensors scream “big difference detected!!” , you can’t necessarily tell if something is hot or cold right away.\n\nYour brain takes other cues to figure out temperature - how the air feels around it, sounds, if your skin is burning or freezing, etc - you have sensors for that!\n\nMany people have an interesting subconscious superpower you didn’t know about - you can tell the difference between a hot water faucet being on, and a cold water faucet. There is a subtle sound difference in the way the water interacts.\n\nThis predisposes your brain to “feel” the right temperature through environmental cues.\n\nYou are faster at detecting heat if you are in a volcano because of visual cues, too.",
"reminded me of this old punisher movie:\n\nhe was torturing someone to get information. well, \"torture\". he showed the torturee a flame grill thing, told him that the temperature can go up to 2000 degree celcius or something, and told him that when this was applied on his back, he would smell burned fat, but he will not feel the heat. instead, he would have the cold sensation.\n\npunisher just used the flame thing on a piece of fat and used a popsicle on his back."
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nhls0 | graphene | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/nhls0/eli5_graphene/ | {
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"Graphene is a network of carbon atoms that looks like a honeycomb. One really cool thing about (single layer) graphene is that it's one atom thick. This means that it's pretty much a 2-dimensional material.\n\nWhy is graphene special? Well, lots and lots of reasons. Here's a few.\n\n* If you write down the equation that tells you how its electrons behave, you can make it look like the electrons are massless. Now, we know that massless things move at the speed of light, c. The thing is, these \"massless electrons\" move at about c/300. This is cool because it makes the physics of quantum electrodynamics, which governs small, fast, charged things, show up without a particle accelerator.\n\n* These \"massless electrons\" can move really easily and really quickly through graphene because they're \"massless.\" This means that you can make your electrons respond really quickly to things you do to them, and it means that the electrons don't get bumped out of the way when you try to push them somewhere. This is useful for things like radio frequency transistors, where you're trying to get electrons to respond to billions of individual changes per second.\n\n* It has no band gap, which for graphene means that by messing with the electronics of what it's sitting on, I can make the thing carrying current go from electrons to \"holes\" (basically empty spots for electrons, ask if you want more info) without a jump.\n\n* If I want a band gap (it's really important for transistors, for example), cutting the graphene into a thin ribbon makes a band gap appear. Boom, transistor.\n\n* It's extremely thin, so you can make ridiculously thin electronics out of it.\n\n* The fact that it's 2D means a bunch of cool physics shows up, like both the integer and fractional quantum Hall effects (I can explain those if you like).\n\nGraphene also has a lot of really awesome thermal and mechanical properties, but I don't know much about them because I study graphene's electronic properties.\n\nEdited for style and corrections.",
"Graphene is a network of carbon atoms that looks like a honeycomb. One really cool thing about (single layer) graphene is that it's one atom thick. This means that it's pretty much a 2-dimensional material.\n\nWhy is graphene special? Well, lots and lots of reasons. Here's a few.\n\n* If you write down the equation that tells you how its electrons behave, you can make it look like the electrons are massless. Now, we know that massless things move at the speed of light, c. The thing is, these \"massless electrons\" move at about c/300. This is cool because it makes the physics of quantum electrodynamics, which governs small, fast, charged things, show up without a particle accelerator.\n\n* These \"massless electrons\" can move really easily and really quickly through graphene because they're \"massless.\" This means that you can make your electrons respond really quickly to things you do to them, and it means that the electrons don't get bumped out of the way when you try to push them somewhere. This is useful for things like radio frequency transistors, where you're trying to get electrons to respond to billions of individual changes per second.\n\n* It has no band gap, which for graphene means that by messing with the electronics of what it's sitting on, I can make the thing carrying current go from electrons to \"holes\" (basically empty spots for electrons, ask if you want more info) without a jump.\n\n* If I want a band gap (it's really important for transistors, for example), cutting the graphene into a thin ribbon makes a band gap appear. Boom, transistor.\n\n* It's extremely thin, so you can make ridiculously thin electronics out of it.\n\n* The fact that it's 2D means a bunch of cool physics shows up, like both the integer and fractional quantum Hall effects (I can explain those if you like).\n\nGraphene also has a lot of really awesome thermal and mechanical properties, but I don't know much about them because I study graphene's electronic properties.\n\nEdited for style and corrections."
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1m3a5r | transcendental idealism | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1m3a5r/eli5_transcendental_idealism/ | {
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"First off, I laughed pretty hard when I saw this. We've all been there. I don't know what /u/deludedude is on about, but transcendental idealism isn't explicitly about morality, but rather a statement about space and time. Specifically, that space and time are not themselves objects, but are something that pertains to us - their seat is in our sensibility. Essentially it makes two claims: \na. Non-spatiality/temporality of things in themselves \nb. Subjectivity of space and time (i.e., they are contained in the subject) \n\nIf space is an object, then it must be \n1. a substance \n2. an accident of a substance (from Newton - it would be a property by which God relates to objects), or \n3. a relation (from Leibnitz - space is nothing in itself, but is an ordering or arranging of existing things). Kant takes this to be an exhaustive list of possibilities if space is an object, and goes on to rules these out as follows: \n1. Can't be a substance, because it would have to be a composite substance, and in order for composite substances to be real they must consist of fundamental parts. But space can be divided infinitely, so we can't get to its fundamental parts. \n2 & 3. Can't be an accident or relation, as we wouldn't have an a priori grasp of space. But we we do, so it can't be these. \n\nFrom this, Kant concludes that space can't relate to objects, and the only alternative left is that it relates to the subject (us). So objects in space and time depend on subjects, these things are known as appearances, and are known in virtue of the fact that we represent them in space and time."
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etyn7j | in philosophy, what is the difference between real definition, and nominal definition? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/etyn7j/eli5_in_philosophy_what_is_the_difference_between/ | {
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"I assume this is about realism and nominalism?\n\nRealism is the belief that concepts such as \"beauty\", \"love\", \"honor\", \"good\", \"evil\" ... exist independently from our world. They are real whether we believe in them or not. Founder of realism was Plato, who believed that definitions or ideas of objects existed seperately from objects.\n\nNominalism is the opposite of realism. Nominalism believes that those concepts or things are just definitions, names which come from the mind.\n\nFor example, you have the definition of \"love\", according to a realist \"love\" is a real thing that exists outside our minds and our world. Our mind just perceives, remembers the real thing and tries to scale everything.\n\nNominalists deny this and just say it's a definition of the mind, it's just a name we give to a concept. Love doesn't exist anywhere outside our perception (and our mind).\n\nSo the difference between realism and nominalism is that realists believe that such concepts exist somewhere outside our world, our minds, and nominalists believe it's just a name we give to an concept, nothing more; it doesn't exist anywhere outside us."
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7cg4h0 | why does fm stations starts at 86 to 110 rather than other numbers? (atleast where im from, sea) | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7cg4h0/eli5_why_does_fm_stations_starts_at_86_to_110/ | {
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"Because those are the frequencies the local government(s) have assigned for commercial radio stations. Other frequencies are used for other things, and in other parts of the world commercial radio uses different ranges, too. ",
"The numbers represent the frequency, in megahertz (MHz) at which the radio station transmits. The reason that they're always odd (88.9, 89.1, 89.3, etc.) is because each station is allocated a 200 kilohertz (KHz) bandwidth. So those stations actually have a range of 88.8-89.0, 89.0-89.2 and so on. You're tuning the radio the center frequency. \n\nThese frequencies are the result of science and regulations. Those frequencies allow the signal to travel far enough to be useful but not so far as to interfere with neighboring cities' stations on the same frequency. FM radio goes about 50-ish miles (AM goes much further in the right atmospheric conditions. \n\nAt the same time, the FCC in the United States controls the radio frequency spectrum to prevent interference. TV, satellite, cell phones, air traffic control, CB, Wi-Fi, anything that transmits wirelessly takes up a spot on the spectrum and shit goes wrong when those interfere. ",
"In the early days of radio, it was the wild west, anyone could broadcast anything on any frequency. This was a real problem, especially when it came to government communication, like keeping touch with ships at sea. By 1930, most developed countries decided the government \"owed\" the broadcast spectrum, and started to regulate it.\n\nIn the US the FM band originally was 42 MHz to 50 Mhz These stations were affected by tropospheric skip that allowed the signal to bounce off the atmosphere and allegedly interfere with other distant stations. RCA, heavily invested in AM, championed the move to disrupt the rival FM band, so it is unclear to what extent this was a problem. In the late 1940s, the band was moved to 88 MHz through 108 MHz, a range less prone to skipping, where it remains today.\n\n[Here](_URL_0_) is the current allocation spectrum the US uses.",
"Eli5, why do most US radio markets have similar programming in various frequency ranges? Ie, 86-90 religious, 90-29 NPR, etc? Are lower frequency stations cheaper to operate? ",
"Fun fact: if the stations call letters start with a W then the station is east of the Mississippi River. If it starts with a K it’s west of the Mississippi. \n\nEdit: ok is a fun almost fact. ",
"Also different countries use different settings... we import a lot of cars from Japan and you can't use any station but 88.5.",
"The low end of the FM spectrum butts up against the old analog VHF spectrum for TV. All the major stations have gone digital but low power stations were granted an exemption for analog.\n\nWhat does this mean? In some places you used to be able to pick up TV audio on the lowest couple frequencies of the FM band. To this day, there's a low power station in Chicago, WRME that is legally a low power analog TV station but they market themselves as a radio station. ",
"The main thing here guys is that yes you can listen in and just listen to both the airplanes and tower but for the love of god don't try to talk to them. As an air traffic controller its just makes our day harder. Plus, not really sure about it but it may also be illegal. ",
"This is the actual frequency of the signal. By comparison, things with numbered channels, like TV or Wi-Fi or CB have a table somewhere matching the channel number to the frequency.\n\nAs a side note, in the US, the channels for FM radio do have numbers but only the regulators use them. The lowest is channel 200 (87.9) and they go to 300 (107.9).\n\nThe space immediately below 88 is used for TV and the space immediately above is for aircraft use. 87.9 actually overlaps a TV channel and can't be used except where the TV channel is not. ",
"Because other frequencies are used for other things by law. I learned this when I was in the army and we used our military radio to listen to a rock station. Had we talked on that frequency people in their cars nearby would have heard us. (Training so no crypto loaded)",
"Here is a cool map showing the uses of the frequencies and by whom\n\n_URL_0_",
"A neat infographic showing the allocation of radio frequencies _URL_0_ \n\nRelevant",
"(BTW \"SEA\" can also mean Seattle USA, but I determined you're talking about South East Asia.)\n\nThe number is the radio frequency.\n\nThe US government allowed commercial FM radio broadcasts to happen in the range 87.9 megahertz to 107.9 megahertz.\n\nWhen radio stations get broadcast licenses from the government, they are assigned a frequency within that range, usually one that isn't the same as, or right next to, one used by another station that's nearby.\n\nMost of the time the stations just use the first part of the frequency in their name, unless theirs ends in a .5. Usually when it ends in .9 they round up. All those \"KISS 108\" and what not aren't really at 108, but at 107.9.\n\nMost countries, especially those based on either US, European, or US/European-based systems, allow similar radio broadcasts on similar ranges. In the Philippines it's likewise 87.9-107.9.\n\nSo why isn't there more space? Because there are a *really really really large amount* of radio transmissions besides commercial broadcasting. Police radio, fire radio, ambulance radio, air traffic control, remote controls, science telemetry, military, satellite, GPS, ham radio, CB radio, and lots of other things that need their own frequencies. Commercial broadcasting is just a small piece.\n\nHere's the [Philippines' document](_URL_0_) listing what all the various frequency ranges are used for. FM Radio is on page 30.\n",
"It seems everyone is overlooking the part where you identify your location in South East Asia. The FCC of the United States doesn't have jurisdiction in places beyond its borders as far as I know. Allocation and management for the use of the radio spectrum is coordinated at the international level by the International Telecommunication Union, which works under the United Nation."
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1c7jf3 | how does a copying machine work? | I mean, how do get a picture from it?
| explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1c7jf3/how_does_a_copying_machine_work/ | {
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"Many newer photocopiers today are a combination of a scanner and a laser printer. Let's just deal with a black and white copy first.\n\nThe machine needs to scan the page, so it has a digital copy of it in its memory where the image of the page is represented by a bunch of pixels. The machine scans the page by moving a bar across it that contains a bright light and photo sensors. As the light moves across the page, the lighter parts of the page reflect the light into the photo sensors, and the darker parts do not, so the scanner can tell what parts have ink and which parts are blank.\n\nNow the machine has a digital copy of the image, and it's ready to print it. A laser printer basically works by using a special \"drum\" (a cylinder) that's coated with a special photosensitive material. It \"shoots\" the pattern of the image's pixels into the drum with a laser. Everywhere the laser hits the drum, the surface of the drum becomes electrically charged. So the machine basically shoots the image onto the drum, but instead of spots of ink, it's shooting it as a bunch of electrically charged spots. \n\nThe drum surface then passes over the toner (laser printer version of ink, it comes as a very fine powder). The toner is electrically charged with the opposite charge of the drum, so when the drum surface passes over it, all of the parts of the drum that have been shot with the laser attract toner to it. So now the drum has a bunch of powdered toner on it in the shape of the image. \n\nThen the drum rotates around over a piece of blank paper that's being fed through the machine. As the paper moves under the drum, the machine removes the electrical charge from the drum (which was holding the toner to it), and so the toner falls off the drum and onto the paper. Because this is done with very precise timing, the toner falls on the the page in the exact same pattern that it was on the drum. \n\nThen the page passes under a heating element, which melts the toner onto the paper, and you've got your finished copy!\n\nA color copier works pretty much the same way, except that the scanner breaks the image down into multiple colors, and then the printer uses multiple drums/toner supplies, each with a different color, and those colors combine to make a bunch of colors."
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21k950 | what the program is doing when it is changing the format of a file? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/21k950/eli5_what_the_program_is_doing_when_it_is/ | {
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"There are many different ways to represent, say, a sound, or a picture, or a movie, as computer data. We call these ways-to-represent-things formats.\n\nWhen you change the format of something, you are taking a picture, movie, sound etc. represented in computer data one way, and representing it in a different way.",
"It really depends on the program and the file format(s). In general, though, a file is a series of numbers that represent some data. Certain types of data can be encoded in multiple ways.\n\nI'll try a simple example: a text file containing the word \"FRANK\".\n\nThe string \"FRANK\" is a series of characters, 'F', 'R', 'A', 'N', 'K', each of which can be represented by a number.\n\nIn ASCII encoding, each of those characters is one byte of data (8 bits, where each bit is a 1 or 0). Like so:\n\n F 01000110\n R 01010010\n A 01000001 \n N 01001110\n K 01001011\n\nOr, in [hexadecimal](_URL_0_), `0x4652414E4B`.\n\nIn UTF-16 encoding, each character is usually represented by two bytes (16 bits), and might look a little bit like this:\n\n F 00000000 01000110\n R 00000000 01010010\n A 00000000 01000001\n N 00000000 01001110\n K 00000000 01001011\n\nOr, in hexadecimal, `0x004600520041004E004B`.\n\nThe numbers are slightly different, but they represent the same data. UTF-16 uses more bits to store the data because it has more features.\n\nFor other examples, you might consider various ways of *structuring* data, such as [JSON](_URL_3_), [XML](_URL_1_), [YAML](_URL_2_), and so on. Each of these formats has a particular structure. By studying two of them for a bit, you might recognize ways you could manually rewrite one file in another format; in many cases, a programmer could code instructions to do the same automatically.",
"The software plays the file to some kind of internal storage or stream, and records the result into the new format."
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8cmho9 | how does hollywood cast for roles with a specific physical requirement (e.g. the person is extremely obese/unattractive/weasel faced)? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8cmho9/eli5how_does_hollywood_cast_for_roles_with_a/ | {
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"They make a casting call on reddit?\n\nThere aren't so many roles like that to begin with, and there are character actors of all shapes and sizes.\n\n",
"I was always under the impression that they would cast the actor that played the role the best, and then ask them to adapt their body to the requirements. For example, Renee Zellweger was on a 4000 calorie diet for Bridget Jones and Bradley Cooper put on 40 pounds of muscle mass for American Sniper. 50 Cent lost 50 pounds for the film Things Fall Apart.\nI suppose with ugliness (since most celebrities are attractive) makeup/prosthetics would come into action.",
"There actually is a model/casting agency in the UK called, I think, Ugly Models, or something like that. I follow them on instagram. The models aren't hideous or anything though, just interesting looking.\n\nEdit for link: _URL_0_",
"They make a call to a talent agency and tell them what they are looking for.\n\nThere is a class of actors, usually called character actors, who can make a decent living by not looking like a leading actor. The traditional leads usually fit into a narrow concept of attractiveness, and the supporting roles should not outshine them. You have people who look like Brad Pitt and Scarlet Johanssen, and people who look like Paul Giamatti and Kathy Bates.\n\nAnd don't feel bad for them, they don't take it personally. An actor's body is their instrument and for many character actors having what are considered unattractive features is the product they are selling. A good character actor might not get the fame and fortune of a lead, but there are more support roles out there than lead roles. They find steadier and often easier work and have longer careers, as they don't have to worry as much about staying pretty or crafting an image for the tabloids. For example, Kathy Bates is about the same age as Farrah Fawcett."
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1mn5ga | how does the fuzzing of up- and downvotes protect against (spam)bots on reddit? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1mn5ga/eli5_how_does_the_fuzzing_of_up_and_downvotes/ | {
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"By obscuring the true vote counts, a bot (or really any user) doesn't know if they've been banned or not. Reddit has a type of ban (called a shadow ban) where your account is banned from voting, but you're still able to login, view content, etc. They use this type on detected bots because it stops the bot from knowing it's banned. \n\nIf you detect a bot and ban the account, the bot can see this and automatically create a new account and keep going. By fuzzing the votes, a bot has no way of knowing if it's banned or not, so it can't tell if it's votes are actually counting or not.\n",
"What is the purpose of a bot on reddit anyway?",
"It doesn't actually. It's to make content rise easier to replace whats there. The reason is that all most all the votes are UP and rarely anyone downvotes so they add them themselves so the older posts disappear after certain time.\n",
"They really should redirect such questions to /r/meta or something like that. ELI5 went down badly after the changes.",
"I always assumed it was an eventually consistent caching issue. TIL",
"b1akcat, Frostiken, christineeh, loreisabore, neverreadnames, anoneko, sittingaround, XCrazedxPyroX",
"It makes it impossible to test a bot network and get accurate results. Your bot network may end up getting a post to the front page, or suppressing another post, but you don't have enough information to say why the move was successful.\n\nTinkering with your bots to test different voting outcomes helps reddit to shadowban the entire bot network.",
"....and this old fart leaves this thread even more confused than when he entered, expecting total.clarity. sigh.",
"Nice try, spam bot software development team.",
"by fuzzing the votes, I think the karma \"system\" becomes complete shit, and a misrepresentation of what is really popular on reddit.",
"it allegedly protects against bots (which is probably a false claim)\n\nmore likely fuzzing is used to artificically increase the number of total votes so reddit can sell their ad space for higher prices and increases their overall perceived user activity\n\nbecause if the vote count is totally made up anyway, why display it? to cheat investors of course"
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fx7k76 | is it true the snipers take into consideration that the rotation of the earth would eventually move their targets off their trajectory before shooting long targets? if a target's location is the same location relative to the geocentre, then wouldn't the trajectory be the same? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/fx7k76/eli5_is_it_true_the_snipers_take_into/ | {
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"If the target is to the north or south of you and far away then the difference in rotation speeds of the earth (the Coriolis effect) will be enough to have an impact, at 1,000 yards it would be enough to change the trajectory of a bullet by about 3 inches. \n\nNot a huge impact and small compared to other effects but enough to be important.",
"The locations are't actually the same. Think about how fast the earth is spinning around at the equator versus at the poles. At the poles, you aren't actually moving east/west, you're just in one spot turning around. At the equator, you have to go the entire way around once every day, so you're moving pretty fast. The question now is, how noticeable is that movement. Let's take a practical example.\n\nLet's say you're in New York City, shooting from one end of Central Park to the other. (This is about 1.3 times the longest confirmed kill, but it's a good distance for sense of scale). The shot is about 4km.\n\nAt ~1000m/s shot, that's 4 seconds for the shot to go from one end of the park to the other.\n\nBut let's think about what happens with the rotation of the earth in that time. I'm going to pretend that the park is straight north/south for simplicity.\n\nIf you're at the south end of the park, over the 4 seconds that you wait for the bullet, the target is going to be moving east with the rotation of the earth. You will also be moving east, but at a slightly different rate because the earth is just a little bit bulgier where you are. \n\nCalculator: _URL_0_\n\nThe latitude of the southwest corner of the park is 40.76805. At that latitude, you're moving east at 35224.8699616 cm/s.\n\nThe latitude of the norheast corner of the park is 40.796933. At that latitude, you're moving east at 35209.5543712 cm/s.\n\nThose are pretty large numbers, but the important thing to see here is that there is, in fact, a 15cm/s difference. Over those 4 seconds your bullet is traveling, it will appear to bend 60 centimeters east.",
"For some really long distance shots (1km+) yes you need to consider rotation. In real life it is hard, very hard to hit anything at those distances due random processes such as wind. even your heartbeat can make you miss the shot at shorter distances. The adjustment due earth rotation can be a few minutes of angle (MOA, angular measurement 1/60 of a degree). Remember the bullet will stay in flight for a few seconds, only interacting with a fluid. \n\nShooting east or west causes shots to \"move up\" or \"move down\". Earth is rotating. If you could fixate your view of the sky you will see east moving down, west moving up. You will shoot high or low.\n\nShooting north/south from the equator. The bullet leaves the barrel and continues traveling with the same inertia it had when it was on the barrel. But the more north or south you move the smaller is the angular movement of earth in that location. The bullet will appear to move to the sides since it conserves inertia from the previous location.",
"Yes, this is a thing. You’ve gotten some great explanations already so I won’t add mine, I will just note that although this is something that snipers should know in theory, it is very rarely put into practice because sniper shots are rarely far enough to really have to take this factor into account. Police snipers rarely engage over two or 300 yards. Military snipers, while they have made some incredibly long shots in recent history, typically only engage out to distances of 1200 yards or less. Believe me, there are plenty of other factors to keep them busy scratching their heads without having to worry about the Coriolis effect! Sniping is a science.\n\nIf you want something else to ponder consider this: if you fired a bullet from a dead level rifle over a completely level plane, and dropped the same weight bullet from the same height as the barrel at the same moment, they would both hit the ground at the same time. One right at your feet, the other about 1000 feet away."
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3p0w4a | what causes a radioactive element to be more radioactive than others? is it their size? | I searched for radiation in ELI5 and read a lot of the explanations about what radiation is and how it kills you, but I didn't find anything about what makes elements like Uranium more radioactive than, say, Lead. I was wondering if it was because of their large size that they had more energy. Do we know how this works? Does it have to do with the conception/birth of that element (such as, maybe the star that died and created the element was particularly high in energy, and that energy is still holding on to the atoms it produced)?
Edit: I found the answer thanks to Lollersauce914! Antiprotons on Youtube has the perfect video to explain it [here](_URL_0_)!! | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3p0w4a/eli5_what_causes_a_radioactive_element_to_be_more/ | {
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"Just as some molecules are more stable than others, and the least stable spontaneously fall apart, some atoms are more stable than others, and the least stable spontaneously fall apart. These atoms tend to be larger ones, but there are plenty of unstable isotopes of light elements (e.g. carbon 14). It all has to do with the complicated workings of the nuclear forces that hold atomic nuclei together. Certain arrangements are so stable they basically don't fall apart at an observable rate, and others are so unstable that they fall apart in fractions of a second."
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[]
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4jua69 | can someone explain how the tsa is ineffective? every time i go through airport security, from what i see, it'd be certainly difficult to get *anything* illegal onboard. what am i not seeing? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4jua69/eli5can_someone_explain_how_the_tsa_is/ | {
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"A year or two ago the DHS did undercover tests and they failed 67 out of 70 tests. They managed to get explosives and handguns through the checkpoints without any issues. The TSA is completely useless and pointless.\n\n_URL_0_",
"Well, if by \"difficult\" you mean they miss 95% of guns smuggled on board, I guess so :/ They literally couldn't be more inept if they tried. You tax dollars hard at work....missing 95% of the items they're meant to stop.\n\n_URL_1_\n\n_URL_0_\n\n_URL_2_ ",
"You're seeing the tools, and thinking that those are good tools, obviously nothing can get past them. You have to take off your shoes, and put your luggage through an X-ray scanner, and all that.\n\nLet's look at what happens when I put my luggage through an x-ray scanner. They get a 2d picture of everything in my suitcase. There's a bright thin line at one end. Is that a knife blade seen edge-on? A pen? An iPod seen edge-on? There's a grayish block with some wires around it. Is that a bomb? Or is it a book and a cell phone charger?\n\nNow, that's an easy problem to solve. If there's something potentially dangerous, pull them aside for extra checks. But there are a lot of people going through an airport of any real size, and they all have somewhere to be, and more than 99.9% of them are no threat. In the wake of those numbers, it's hard to press for the budget for more people to get people through faster. The airlines want planes to leave on time, filled with happy people who will want to fly again.\n\nThis all assumes that the TSA agents are vigilant and well-trained, and that the equipment is in good repair. The job looks about as mind-numbing as cashiering at Walmart, and with even less customer satisfaction. It's hard to keep up the good work like that. I don't know what the condition of the equipment is, but I've got a general idea of the budget government agencies set aside for maintenance, and it doesn't paint a pretty picture.",
"That is why it's called security theater. A lot of show and no substance. Everything you are forced to do such as removing shoes or disposing of liquids over 8 oz doesn't actually help in any way but it makes people feel better because you are doing something which is better than doing nothing. Flawed logic.",
"Think about this: Bob is angry, he wants to hurt as many people as possible. He grabs his bag, he drives to the airport, he sees the three hundred people in line at the security checkpoint, he walks to the back of the line and detonates the bomb in his backpack 45 minutes before he would have gone through the scanner.\n\nThe very presence of the security checkpoint creates a target rich opportunity.",
"If someone *really* wanted to smuggle something on board, it could be done easily enough, especially if you had some conspirators.\n\nDisguising dangerous items as common ones is not easy, but it can be done with a small machine shop, some imagination, and a few trips to your local thrift and pawn stores. Well, and the acquisition of the weapon/item/etc you needed to smuggle.\n\nA medical note explaining so and so requires equipment x would go a long ways as well, if such a note could be acquired.\n\nTSA does catch a lot of stuff, but the nature of the threat is such that even a small handful of misses could result in trouble. The securing of cockpits, the security check theater, and uncertainty of success is a big deterrent; as well as the increased likelihood today that passengers will actively fight bad guys are at least as much (if not more) deterrent than the actual capacity of the TSA to stop a threat. Until 9-11 the idea was mostly \"cooperate, let the crazy guy do his part, then we go home\" largely vanished with flight 93 (the one that crashed in Pennsylvania).",
"Government officials did tests bring bombs and weapons through TSA checkpoints and 95% of the time they didn't notice them. Also they have never caught a single terrorist."
]
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"http://www.cnn.com/2015/06/01/politics/tsa-failed-undercover-airport-screening-tests/"
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"https://foundonweb.wordpress.com/2016/01/26/tsa-cant-do-math-either/",
"http://www.guns.com/2015/06/02/tsa-misses-95-percent-of-weapons-smuggled-through-security/",
"http://www.nbcnews.com/id/21795699/ns/travel-news/t/screeners-failed-catch-bomb-components/"
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||
b7r58t | why are almost all "list" websites made in form of "click to see next", when it would be much more comfortable to view them on one page? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/b7r58t/eli5_why_are_almost_all_list_websites_made_in/ | {
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"Because every page has ads on it. Each one a person visits is more money for the person that runs the website. They don't care about your comfort, they care about their wallet. ",
"It has everything to do with inflating the number of ads shown as you mentioned.\n\nFor example. Instead of a list of 10 items with 5 ads, it becomes a list of 10 items, one per page, with 5 ads per page for a total of 50 ads. "
]
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[],
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||
4zigr1 | how come depictions of earlier humans always have dark skin? when did white people enter the picture? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4zigr1/eli5_how_come_depictions_of_earlier_humans_always/ | {
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"White skin is really only practical in very far north locations. The pale skin is an evolutionary adaptation to increase the ability of humans to make vitamin D. Closer to the equator, dark skin protects against sun burn and vitamin D production is fine as is. Far north, sun burn is less of an issue and vitamin D production is lower due to less sunlight. So, pale skin helps with the process. \n\nSo, when human first got into northern areas (40,000 years ago?) is when this adaptation would have become an advantage.",
"8,000 years ago. That's it! We know this from comparing modern DNA with DNA from ancient human remains from Europe. Before then, early humans found in Spain, Hungary, and Luxembourg had dark skin. Shortly after that, about 7,700 years ago, ancient humans in Sweden were a mix of light and dark skinned individuals. By about 5,800 years ago, light skin was very common throughout Europe. For reference to human civilization, the Great Pyramid of Giza is about 4,600 years old.\n\nWhite skin probably helped humans thrive in Europe because our bodies need some UV exposure to produce vitamin D, and Europe is less sunny than the African environments humans came from. The lighter your skin, the more UV you absorb and the more vitamin D you produce, so lighter skin helped Europeans get enough vitamin D in their new, darker climate. Of course, there are downsides to absorbing UV, which is why light skin is rarer in sunnier parts of the world.\n\nInterestingly, one other major difference between Europeans and many other populations is lactose tolerance. Milk also contains a lot of vitamin D, so being able to drink it as adults would have helped early Europeans survive, too.\n\nSource: _URL_0_"
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5a177m | why do companies like duracell, energizer, etc. not make car batteries? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5a177m/eli5_why_do_companies_like_duracell_energizer_etc/ | {
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"Car batteries are a very different technology from household batteries. \n\nCar batteries are based on lead acid chemistry, and were called *wet cells* because they contained liquid acid. Back in the Good Old Days they weren't sealed, and at times you'd have to add distilled water to maintain their level. \n\nHousehold batteries, on the other hand, used carbon-zinc technology involving an electrolyte paste, and thus were called *dry cells*. So the entire manufacturing process was different, and little if any could be shared. \n\nThrow in that the markets were very different. Many people could afford flashlights but weren't close to affording cars. So there was no market advantage to having the same brand, and if anything, a disadvantage. Who'd want to buy a car battery from a company that made disposable flashlight batteries?\n\nOver time, the household battery manufacturers had to update their technology, because newer technologies were competing in the same markets. (Ni-cad, NiMH, and now lithium.). They were also able to expand to different small shapes, such as watch and camera batteries. While it's arguable that they may have some marketing power that would allow them into the auto battery business, it's unclear that it's worth it. There's still not much in the way of shared technology or manufacturing processes. ",
"Energizer Holdings does make automotive batteries, through a subsidiary company: [Energizer Automotive Batteries] (_URL_0_). "
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1aosuy | the doomsday rule | _URL_0_
I followed the wiki article, but I feel like I'm missing something important.
Thanks for any help! | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1aosuy/eli5_the_doomsday_rule/ | {
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"There was a post about this in this sub literally this morning...\n\n_URL_0_",
"Also the wikipedia page on it does a great job explaining it.\n\nBasically what it boils down to is if you know a certain day of the year is a Friday you can know that several other days are also a Friday. Each year has its own 'doomsday' that you know several other days are.\n\nThis year is Thursday. So I know \nApril 4th is a Thursday \nJune 6th \nAugust 8th \n\n4/4 6/6 8/8 10/10 and 12/12 are all thursdays this year\n\n9/5 and 5/9 also 7/11 and 11/7 \"I work 9 to 5 at 7-11\" is how to memorize that\n\nHalloween, 4th of July\n\nx-mas is the day before, so a Wednesday this year\n\nTo figure out the year's doomsday look at [this post I made this morning](_URL_0_)"
]
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"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doomsday_rule"
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7m1uru | how can tesla's grid battery solution can make sense when it can power 30k homes for only one hour? (south australia) | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7m1uru/eli5_how_can_teslas_grid_battery_solution_can/ | {
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"You’re definitely right, the battery system won’t stop a full blackout. Instead its purpose is to help buffer out periods of very high load until the power stations can respond. ",
"Batteries in a grid help to smooth out the difference between \"real\" power production and demand. Power production from coal plants, natural gas, wind, hydro, or solar. And demand from your house. \n\nTraditional power production plants take a VERY LONG TIME to turn on and off. And demand can go up and down in an instant. So what happens when everyone turns on their AC over summer? Well the grid says shit there is too much demand, let me turn parts of the grid off to reduce demand and we get blackouts. The battery comes in to play here, and becomes instantly another power source until more power generators can be turned on. Lets say the reverse happens and there isn't enough demand, in a normal grid we just burn that energy because we can't store electricity. If you are into bitcoins you just mine bitcoins. With a battery you dump electricity into the battery for use later.\n\nTLDR: You are not suppose to run on the battery all the time, it acts like a temporary solution.",
"The batteries are meant to be a backup system, not a permanent solution, and will so end up being a decent testbed of battery-to-grid technology. In addition they serve as a method of smoothing out the power grid (which normally varies throughout the day as people change how much power they consume).\n\nIt's also a way for Musk to prop up SolarCity.",
"Power stations take a long time to respond and change their output, so sudden spikes can cause issues - if lots of people suddenly turn on their kettle (like during the and break for a popular show), or there is an issue with one of the generators, the traditional stations cannot adapt quickly to respond.\n\nThe battery system cannot power the grid long term, but it can power it nearly instantly - so when a big surge or issue occurs the battery can kick in on the short term, and cover sudden spikes or allow time for the bigger systems to get up to speed."
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8ackeb | why does one's heart rate increase more while running than while cycling at the same perceived effort level? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8ackeb/eli5why_does_ones_heart_rate_increase_more_while/ | {
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"It's easier to conserve momentum on a bike than it is while running. \n\nBecause of inertia, a rolling bike wants to stay rolling. That's why if you ride on a perfectly flat road, you can keep shifting up to keep your cadence around the same rate, but continually increase your speed, without too much extra effort (at least until you reach a speed where friction and drag take too much force to overcome)\n\nAlso on a bike you can occasionally slack off, even for a second or two, without losing much or any speed.\n\nWhen you're running, there's very little inertia/momentum at play. You have to constantly run. If you \"slack off for a second\" you're either walking, or standing still.",
"You use many more muscles while running. Your arms, neck, back, butt, and more leg muscles including calfs. While cycling uses more of the leg muscles than any other muscles",
"IDK about your perception, but cyclists need to shift gears. If you set the gear ratio too low, the effort needed to move the pedals is low but you don't get much work done. If you set the gear ratio too high, the effort needed to move the pedals is high. On a steep hill in high gear, you won't be able to move at all (unless you use toe clips). Standing on the pedals in a high gear is a lot of apparent effort, but less work is being done. The pedaling rate is called cadence. It is optimized for ease of pedaling per watt of work done. \n\n[ > Cyclists choose cadence to minimise muscular fatigue, and not metabolic demand, since oxygen consumption is lower at cadences 60-70 rpm. When cycling at 260 W, a pedal force was the lowest at 90 rpm, lower than at 60, 75, 105 or 120 rpm. ](_URL_0_)",
"Running takes way more effort than cycling plain and simple. A cycle is a device that is specifically designed to require minimal effort to travel further distances. Not that it can't be decent cardio but the whole point is to be a lot more efficient than running. "
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3x8hfn | why do you get that weird feeling when you're going down the stairs, and you expect another step but hit the floor? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3x8hfn/eli5_why_do_you_get_that_weird_feeling_when_youre/ | {
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"I'd like to know this too! Also, Lemony Snicket compares that feeling to the shock of someone close to you dying. “It is a curious thing, the death of a loved one. We all know that our time in this world is limited, and that eventually all of us will end up underneath some sheet, never to wake up. And yet it is always a surprise when it happens to someone we know. It is like walking up the stairs to your bedroom in the dark, and thinking there is one more stair than there is. Your foot falls down, through the air, and there is a sickly moment of dark surprise as you try and readjust the way you thought of things.”",
"Close your eyes and touch your nose. You can do that because your brain keeps a mental map of the parts of your body and the things around you. The weird feeling when your feet hit the floor is nothing more than you becoming abruptly aware that your brain's internal map was wrong\n"
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f0fn6c | basic politics of hitler and the nazis | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/f0fn6c/eli5_basic_politics_of_hitler_and_the_nazis/ | {
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"If Trump were to change the name of the Republican party to the Socialist Republican party, it would not be a left wing party. Names don't mean what they say. The Democratic People's Republic of Korea is not a democracy where parties compete to govern.",
"Think of it this way: the Democratic People's Republic of Korea is none of those things (well, it's Korea but other than that...)\n\nPolitical groups can pick whatever name they want to sound good. \n\nAs I understand it, the National Socialists used that title and initially took anti-capitalist stances to draw supporters away from communist parties but then basically just went full fascist after they had the support.",
"The Nazis were socialist in name only. Much in the same way the Democratic people's Republic of Korea (aka North Korea) isn't democratic.",
"Calling the Nazi's socialist is about as accurate as Kim Jong Un calling his dictatorship the DPRK \"Democratic People's Republic of Korea\"\n\nThe Nazi's were ultra-nationalist, socially conservative, anti-egalitarian and fascist and us such were ultra right-wing.\n\nPre-WW2 Germany was mired with political unrest and various small niche political parties rose up during this time, including a Soviet supported Communist party. The concept of socialism was on the rise as the Germany people were suffering from poor economic conditions resulting from the sanctions imposed by the Treaty of Versailles \n\nHitler took over an existing niche political party (the Nazi's) and warped it to follow his own political ideals of nationalism and racism. Keeping the term socialist in the title was nothing more than a propaganda move, an attempt to convince Socialist voters to vote for him.\n\nHitler considered the Soviet Union and its Communist ideals the anti-thesis of his political beliefs and the arch-enemy of the 3rd Reich.\n\nModern right-wingers love to label the Nazi's as socialist in an attempt to link socialist ideals to the horrors of the Nazi party, when they were socialist in name only. If you actually bother to study the Nazi's and their political ideology you'll quickly realize they were anything left-wing but socialist."
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37q7qj | why do our hands go weak? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/37q7qj/eli5_why_do_our_hands_go_weak/ | {
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"This is probably part of the fight-or-flight reflex and includes the feeling of weak knees, butterflies in your stomach and elevated heart rate among others. During this reflex your body dumps a bunch of adrenaline into your bloodstream which amps you up and prepares your body for immediate and drastic action. Since some people are repulsed by blood they get a bit of the flight-or-fight reflex and feel a little woozy and weak-handed. Also when you dislike something and find it repulsive your brain automatically loosens your hand muscles so you can drop whatever it is that's grossing you out. On a side note, adrenaline amps up your muscle fiber recruitment as well and this makes you stronger but the feeling of this could be the weakness feeling we associate with being amped up. "
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||
2hl168 | why are surfboards so expensive? | I've been told that $200 is considered cheap, while you have to shell out $700 if you want a half decent one. Isn't it just a bunch of molded plastic? The raw materials probably cost $40 tops.
Please educate me. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2hl168/eli5_why_are_surfboards_so_expensive/ | {
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"text": [
"Life insurance premiums for board makerscare huge. They breathe in tiny fibreglass particles and sniff chemicals all day. Life expectancy is 55 max. Plus, it takes a long time to make one. "
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|
1imjj8 | why can't two anti-virus protectors work together? | My new Kaspersky anti-virus program sees Windows Defender as malware. This isn't the first time I've heard of two anti-virus protectors seeing each other as threats. Why do they recognize another protection program as malware/...? What part of the program do they identify as bad, and why that part?
EDIT: Thanks everyone! | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1imjj8/eli5_why_cant_two_antivirus_protectors_work/ | {
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"That never happened to me before as a user of both, but that probably because that one of them is trying to access the system files that the other one's job is to protect it.\nYou have two options to solve without disabling one of them:\n1- mark windows defender as trusted in Kaspersky; it is located @ \nC:\\Program Files\\Windows Defender\\MSASCui.exe\n2- contact kaspersky support on that issue so they release a fix update for it.\n\nhope that helps\n",
"Let's say you hire two security guards to guard your bank - without telling each other. When one of them sees the other enter the bank at night, with a gun, would you be surprised if he just shoots him?\n\nThe security guards will be able to work as a team, only if they know each other and work out a way to share their duties.\n\nTwo different Anti-virus programs can play well together if they are designed to recognize each other and play well with each other. If you use two programs not originally designed to work with each other, expect problems.\n\nAs a trivial example, if one of them locks access to some system files as a matter of protection, the other can recognize that it is being blocked and will identify the blocking software as malware.",
"Imagine you're the antivirus program. Your job is to find threats in the computer you live in, much like a police officer. \n\nOne way you decide who to send to jail is to use virus definitions, which are like \"wanted\" posters - people have discovered other viruses in the past, and post descriptions of them for others to see. If you see something that looks like one of these discovered viruses, you can send them to jail (quarantine or delete the virus).\n\nAnother way you check for viruses is to see if the program can do something suspicious - this is called \"heuristics\". For example, if a program has code to open a file, copy itself into the file, and then run that file, you might choose to flag that program as suspicious (because that program may be trying to hide inside another file). This is important because new viruses come out all the time, and you want to catch these new viruses even if someone hasn't made a \"wanted\" poster for it yet.\n\nSo you're cruising around, and you discover a new program - it's not on the wanted list, but it has the ability to lock down and scan every file on the computer. That's not good - maybe it's searching for programs to infect! Further, this new program has the ability to resist being shut down, delete and modify files automatically, and might even have files that match those \"wanted\" posters in the same directory!\n\n...except this new program is another antivirus. Antiviral programs need permission to scan all your files to check for viruses, resist viruses trying to shut them down and automatically delete or temporarily shut down viruses (renaming them from a .exe to something else, in case it's not a virus and you want to restore the file). In the case of renamed (quarantined) viruses, the virus code that matches the \"wanted\" posters is still there, which could cause a red flag if another antivirus scanner finds them.\n\nGenerally, antivirus programs generally know each other nowadays - *but there are problems if two are running at the same time*. They could fight over who gets to scan a file first, which could lead to the file not getting scanned (or even getting corrupted). As such, they generally agree not to install if they detect another antivirus is already the designated scanner - but it's possible they could also flag other scanning antiviruses as a virus as a failsafe, in case a user somehow installs two antivirus programs (I haven't heard of this happening, just a theory).\n\nI've rambled a bit, but tried to cover most possible scenarios. \n\ntl;dr - Two antivirus programs that are scanning at the same time can cause errors such as not properly scanning a file for viruses, or corrupting files. If only one antivirus is scanning, and the other isn't, things should be ok. You should also be ok if you manually scan with two different antivirus programs at non-overlapping times.",
"The short version is that they can, but not without help.\n\n[OPSWAT](_URL_0_) is a company that offers several products that use several anti-virus programs in concert to scan your files. The value-add that OPSWAT is selling is the ability to reconcile the struggles of one AV program identifying another as a problem and thus having a greater range of threat detection and removal."
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68duyk | if i have a great marketing pitch for a company i have no contracts with, how can i secure the idea so they cant just steal it after i have pitched it? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/68duyk/eli5_if_i_have_a_great_marketing_pitch_for_a/ | {
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"Did you just watch Silicon Valley? If not, watch Silicon Valley.",
"Just went through this. Give them the concept and end goal, but not the how. The how is where you make money. It sucks, it's hard, but done right you end up making $180k in 6 days. Good luck"
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3fgpx2 | why don't we see movie theaters compete? | There are very few advertisements for different movie theaters, and I don't see conptetive pricing or exclusive content in any major movie theater, why is this? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3fgpx2/eli5why_dont_we_see_movie_theaters_compete/ | {
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"People don't go to the movies to go to the theaters. They go to see the movies so whenever a movie is out and has different showtimes or different locations people tend to just go to the specific theater they are used to or prefer and won't likely win over customers of other theaters. Plus the advertising is for such a limited area with such little competition it isn't really worth the cost of the advertising campaign (except for special contests like first 100 to the minion show get minion hats etc)",
"Honestly, I have seen more effort on this in the last few years. Theaters with recliners, VIP seating, serving alcohol and/or dinner. A theater near me even gives away free popcorn and soda.",
"Movie studios and distributors traditionally had a lot of control over movie theaters. In the scheme of the movie business, theaters have the worst deals, are the worst at negotiating, and make generally poor M & A decisions (why, I don't know but they just do). for a while there was something called the Paramount Descent Decree, basically up until the 1980's movie studios couldn't own theaters. There are a lot of external threats to theaters (typical things like netflix, the general ease of seeing new releases at home). A big reason movie theaters are having issues have to do with shorter windows (time between theater release and at home release). 20 years ago, a hit film might have taken 6 months to 1 year from it's last day in theater to it's release on say VHS. That window has significantly shortened. (this is known as \"window shrinkage\", also threatened by \"simultanious release\", so like when they did the Interview in theaters and on demand at the same time, really hurts theaters). \n\nI know this is super rambling, but there is no real clear cut reason, other than the theaters don't have that much bargaining power, and have other things to worry about than competing with one another.\n\nSource: In grad school for accounting I took a Business of Film class for some reason. Super unrelated to my major but it was fucking fascinating. \n\nedit: grammar issues"
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4j6p3v | is there any difference for your body if you drink a glass of alcohol in 10 seconds or 10 minutes? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4j6p3v/eli5_is_there_any_difference_for_your_body_if_you/ | {
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"Not really, except it depends on what you do for the next 9 minutes and 50 seconds. If you have some more 10 second drinks, then I think you can see the problem. "
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||
3g6mvj | if the congress' decision on the iranian nuclear deal doesn't matter on the long run, then why is it hyped up so much? | Here's the facts:
1- EU won't back down.
2- Security Council won't back down.
3- The president won't back down.
So why do we care what they think? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3g6mvj/eli5_if_the_congress_decision_on_the_iranian/ | {
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"Because they can make a lot of noise and sway public opinion against the deal. Also, if Congress shoots the deal down and the President goes ahead anyway, the President's veto has to overcome a veto override. This is likely, but if it doesn't then the U.S. doesn't participate. Lastly, if the President's veto survives, then he is carrying out the deal under his executive authority only, which means that the next President can cancel U.S. participation unilaterally. "
]
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3e37do | why does amazing art, in whatever form, have such ability to inspire, motivate and evoke such strong emotion? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3e37do/eli5_why_does_amazing_art_in_whatever_form_have/ | {
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"Hi. Art grad here. Let's begin.\n\nFirst off, art is subjective. Now there are things such as the Frozen movie that is loved by most, and that is because the general population of the targeted audience enjoys similar qualities in things. What I'm saying here is that not all art will have the same effects on everyone.\n\nAbout art that might have those effects on someone. There are things in art that artists use to specifically and intentionally activate things such as motivation, emotion, and inspiration. In color theory, there are various colors that are often used to do this. Red can mean things such as hot, fire, hell, burning, and love. Blue can mean the opposite of red, such as cool, water, and sky. These colors can mean these things because on a deeper level, things in life are these colors and we have grown up with that reference. On the psychological level, those feelings are established in connection with the colors.\n\nOutside of color theory, but in the same way, artists utilize things such as the angle of a line, blurring, object placement, scene composition, and other elements because we know how things visually connect with psychology."
]
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a1rlsu | smiling in pictures for different cultures | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/a1rlsu/eli5_smiling_in_pictures_for_different_cultures/ | {
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"Probably i'm wrong, but i think it happen because in different cultures showing teeth is an offensive act. I remember a tribe where people cover the mouth with hand while smiling."
]
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||
4aues8 | why can't our bodies prevent tooth decay without the help of toothpaste? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4aues8/eli5_why_cant_our_bodies_prevent_tooth_decay/ | {
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"At one point, they could and did. But our diet has changed drastically in the last few centuries, much more quickly than evolution can correct for. We eat a much greater amount of not only sugars and such than our ancestors, but also processed grains and the like which physically erode our teeth much more than our \"natural\" diet of meats, fruits, etc.",
"\n\nWe eat WAY more sugar than our teeth really evolved to handle. If you look at ancient skeletons (from before agriculture) you find a lot of people with really nice looking teeth. So, with modern living comes modern problems that need modern solutions to fight them.\n",
"In addition to the previous answers: tooth decay is caused by a bacterial infection of the mouth (bacteria that most, but not all, humans have). Humans and harmful bacteria are in a never-ending arms race, each trying to exceed the other's defenses.",
"They could, however our bodies were never meant to suck down liters of sugary acid water all day, top it off with sucking on some super sticky melted sugar, and then having a bowl of sugar for dessert.",
"Stop putting refined sugar, flour in your mouth..only eat what you would find in nature (not farmed) with minimal cooking. You will need very little toothpaste. \n\nAbout tooth decay : theoretically good flossing should be more helpful with decay than toothpaste. Toothpaste keeps your teeth shiny though.",
"We can. Research western dietary effects on indigenous people and you will see. I believe the most prevailing evidence is from papau new guinea, though i am unsure of that.",
"Your tooth enamel is largely inorganic mineral. It's not alive and not made of cells. The only part of the tooth that is alive is the root deep within which contains the pulp and nerve. The outer layer receives no blood and does not grow really. The bacteria in our mouth adheres to teeth and forms a jelly-like film or 'biofilm' called plaque in dentistry, which makes it impervious to being sloughed off by our tongue and saliva, and is softened and removed through gentle brushing with tooth paste (which if you didn't know, contains mild abrasives to help scrape it off). This is how the bacteria evolved to survive. Leave this plaque on long enough and it solidifies even more into what's known as calculus. This is a virtually impenetrable solid mass that cannot be scraped off except with a hardened steel pick or an ultrasonic dentist tool. Since this bacteria adheres to the surface of the tooth there is no way for anything in our body to counteract this, as our immune system only exists in our circulatory system. Our saliva contains enzymes to break down carbohydrates but does not kill bacteria. Perhaps it once did, but the current bacteria in our mouths is immune to it and actually thrive very nicely in our mouths. \n\nEating a low carb/sugar diet keep the numbers down, but when you eat a sugary meal, notice the bad taste in your mouth 30min later? That's the population of bacteria in your mouth multiplying like 400 fold because you're giving them more sugar to thrive on. Since the waste-product of the sugar consumption by the bacteria is acidic, it burns through your teeth causing cavities. Now, if you clean your teeth well every day, the dissolves tooth slowly repairs itself (but only the outermost layer, and the process is quite slow). The way it repairs is calcium and fluoride ions in your food/toothpaste/water bind to the missing parts of the tooth and re-mineralize it. Again, this is slow and gradual and if the process of de-mineralization exceeds the re-mineralization (almost always the case if you have poor hygiene) a cavity results and the damage is irreversible.",
"The netflix mini-series \"cooked\" seems to agree with the majority here. Pictures and examinations of uncontacted Australian aboriginals showed healthy teeth even for elders, with that same tribe having massive tooth decay and problems with diabetes after entering the high-sugar western culture. ",
"Our bodies can actually prevent tooth decay without the help of toothpaste. Toothpaste is mostly to make your teeth shinier, whiter etc.\n\nDecay is created by certain bacteria. Those are destroyed with saliva. So those bacteria create a thin film (plaque) so saliva can't reach them. The point of brushing your teeth and flossing is to destroy the film so your saliva can do its job.",
"Depends what you eat, really. If you eat heaps of sweets, cola etc - the sugar level is way more than what your teeth can handle by itself. However if you go to, shall we say rural parts of countries (in my experience, South and SE Asia), there are people who brush with some sort of charcoal, or just leaves, and their teeth look good enough. But obviously, they don't sugar to such an extent."
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aclw6t | why is it that people leave all stickers/labels from purchase on baseball hats/caps? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/aclw6t/eli5_why_is_it_that_people_leave_all/ | {
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"text": [
"To show that your things are authentic and you have the money to spend on things like that. "
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25k2sp | i understand how median and mean are calculated, but how should i be interpreting them differently to get the most meaning out of them? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/25k2sp/eli5_i_understand_how_median_and_mean_are/ | {
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"Average as you might know is the sum of all the values in a data set divided by the number of values. This is also called arithmetic mean or to keep it simple \"mean\". Let's consider the mark of 6 different students in Physics out of 50. Let them be 10,12,12,12,13,25. Now according to the definition above the mean of this data set is (10+12+12+12+13+25)/6 which turns out to be 14. This makes both 10 and 25 equivalent to 14. Also it is more than five of the six scores present. It doesn't give you a good idea of what each student got in the exam. This is called \"central tendency\" in statistics. we want an approximate ballpark figure. As you can see mean is not such a good way to get _URL_2_'s exactly like Bill Gates walking into a bar and everyone in the bar turning into a millionaire because of his huge wealth.\n\nNow let's consider median. Median essentially means the middle value. In order to obtain median you have to arrange the data set in increasing or decreasing order. Once you are done with that you have to find the number of elements in it. let's say the number is n. Now if the number of elements is even there are two medians i.e the n/2th and n/2+1th term and if odd then n/2+1th term is the median. Let's consider the above example again.Arranging them in increasing order we get 10,12,12,12,13,25. The number of elements here is 6 which is an even _URL_0_ the n/2 term is 3rd term which is 12 and n/2+1 term is 4th term which is again _URL_1_ our median is 12. Now 12 represents a better picture. Right? It is closer to 5 out of 6 elements. So we can safely say the median is 12 which is how most of the students in Physics have performed. It represents central tendency in a better way. If we add one more element then the median will only be the 4th value which is 12.\n\nLet's visit mode now. You might ask that we have a estimate which provides a approximate picture of the performance. Why do we need something more? Let's tweak our example a bit. Instead of class let's consider an office which consists of 9 employees and let their salary be $10000 [≈ Average household credit card debt, 2010], $11000 [≈ Average community college tuition, four years, 2010], $11000 [≈ Average community college tuition, four years, 2010], $12000,$12000, $13000, $13000, $13000, $13000.If you calculate median it is the 5th figure which is $12000.if you look at above set it doesn't give you a great picture of what everyone is getting as salary. \"Most of them\" are getting $13000. When asked how much every one is making at your place, $13000 is a much better figure than $12000. And this is what mode is. In statistical terms mode is the maximum occurring value in data set when it is arranged in ascending or descending order.\n\nMean, median and mode are interchangeably used for calculating average.",
"Mean is sensitive to small numbers of very large values. Median is not.\n\nConsider this example: the mean salary for University of North Carolina graduates in the class of 1984 was somewhere around $750,000. Does that mean they were all rich? No - it's because Michael Jordan was in that graduating class and raked in like $40 million per year.\n\nThe *median* salary for that group of graduates would have been around $60,000.\n",
"Mean is what you want to use, if you want to know what to *expect* after X number of trials. This is more useful in finance and risk measurement, where you have lots and lots of transactions. In this case, of you have transactions of all sizes, but the average is $100/transaction, you can actually say, on average, a transaction is worth $100 dollars. The actual, individual transactions don't matter.\n\nMean is what you want to use if the actual, individual samples *do* matter. No matter what, 50% of the people *do* make less, and 50% *do* make more. You can also use quartiles to further divide the population. This is more useful in anthropology, where it is equally important to weigh what percent of the population is struggling, not just how much they are struggling as a whole. Some will argue it is still bad if a society is not struggling on average, but 80% are struggling and 20% are doing great."
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8c4dw9 | why is australia so dominant at the commonwealth games against other countries with much higher populations? | [deleted] | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8c4dw9/eli5_why_is_australia_so_dominant_at_the/ | {
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"Wealth/climate/space/culture is a potent mix. I've three teenage Aussie nephews and they and their friends all engage in sport at a level you very rarely see in the UK outside of fee-paying schools. \n\nThis time round Australia also has home advantage which plays a big part, particularly with the integration of para events: a wealthy host nation will always hoover up a disproportionate number of para medals. \n\nI also suspect that Australia (or at least Australian sport) is actually more 'culturally invested' in the idea of the Commonwealth Games than the UK nations are. The pinnacle of competition is World Championships and Olympic Games, and naturally only the very best can win there (Australia won 29 medals in Rio, cf GB's 67). For the majority of Australia's sports folk, the Commonwealth Games is their only realistic chance of a medal. For British competitors there's the intermediate level of European Championships, which is obviously sub-World/Olympics but in most cases significantly more prestigious and more competitive than CG level. Essentially most British 'name' athletes would sooner train to peak for European Championships than for the CG; perhaps more significantly, the British sports governing bodies feel the same way and CG teams are increasingly 'development squads'. \n\nLastly, I'd speculate* that most professional British athletes are 'embedded' in pan-UK training/coaching set-ups, and that being broken down into individual 'countries' is a disruption.\n\nThis seems to be less a 'why is Australia so dominant' and more a defence of the British teams' comparative weakness, sorry...\n\n*****\n\nEDIT: oops, speculation explicitly forbidden! Didn't notice this was 'ELI5' but will leave content as-is.",
"* they are a wealthy country, where people have leisure time and disposable income\n* they have a culture of sport, especially those place in the Commonwealth Games\n* they are isolated and have a strong professional sports sector which keeps top athletes local\n* they are a spacious country which provides lots of opportunities for outdoor sports and other activities\n* they are more vested in being a Commonwealth country than say Pakistan or Nigeria\n* being a host country tends to bring out more local participants, especial in the lower tier events, where athletes might not have the funding to travel abroad\n"
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5uw7mb | why do we sometimes have extremely dark, sinister subconscious thoughts about the ones we love the most? | [deleted] | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5uw7mb/eli5_why_do_we_sometimes_have_extremely_dark/ | {
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"those are called 'intrusive thoughts' and are usually linked with anxiety/stress/ocd. i can't provide anymore detail than that but if you're having an uncomfortable amount of them (im pretty sure everyone gets SOME form of intrusive thoughts at least some of the time) you can try to start meditating regularly. "
]
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|
5dsnld | why does anime have such a dedicated and/or snowed in audience? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5dsnld/eli5why_does_anime_have_such_a_dedicated_andor/ | {
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"Stop motion can be anything really. Whereas anime is Japanese animation (though China and Korean animation is getting popular, also many Japanese animation and even American animation uses Korean-based animation studios due to cheap labor costs) and almost all modern shows have good looking animation. \n \nBut mainly, a ton of anime is based off of light novels/manga/games/etc., so many shows will have an existing fanbase. It's similar to why so many books are made into movies. \n \nOne reason I like a lot of anime over American cartoons is because of story arcs, only a few American cartoons are heavily sequential, you can really skip between random episodes of random seasons in Family Guy and not skip a beat. Modern American cartoons that have gotten praise are shows like Avatar, which is heavily sequential and inspired by anime. Even good 90's cartoon like Batman and Gargoyles had arcs and were decently sequential. \n \nAlso, a lot of anime doesn't take itself seriously which makes for good comedy, Food Wars is a great show with comedy and awesome looking food, [clip](_URL_0_)."
]
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37su4m | what's happening in my brain when i listen to a song and can't make out the lyrics, then i listen to it while reading the lyrics and they're very easy to make out? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/37su4m/eli5whats_happening_in_my_brain_when_i_listen_to/ | {
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"If you have Netflix, I recommend the show Brain Games. The first episode, \"Watch This\", has a segment that explains exactly what you're asking about.\n\nIf I had to put it in a nutshell in my own words, I think it has a lot to do with expectation bias.",
"Its known sometimes as Researcher's Bias. Basically its really easy to spot something we expect to see.\n\nSo if I tell you the lyrics, and you get a bit that's sort of hard to figure out, you'll think \"yea, it sounds like that\". \n\nOn the other hand, if you didn't know what it was, and get to a bit you can't make out, you still can't make it out without some kind of help.",
"It all comes down to the fact that what we hear isn't based solely on auditory signals from our ears. What we hear (meaning, what our brains interpret as sound) is actually a combination of auditory signals from our ears plus visual cues from our eyes which is then filtered by what our brain expects to hear based on that sensory feedback along with our understanding of language and the world we've come to know. \n\nWhen you listen to the lyrics of a new song that's unfamiliar, you have no visual cues or previous knowledge of the lyrics, therefore your brain is less confident about the sound you're hearing and you consciously perceive that as a sound that's less \"clear.\" But add in some more sensory feedback like viewing the lyrics alongside the song plus the confidence that the words do in fact represent the sounds you're listening to, and all of a sudden you're brain will interpret the sound with a higher degree of certainty and you'll consciously perceive that as lyrics that are more clear. "
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2s6zsu | why college football and basketball seem huge but college baseball seems to be small scale. | I never hear or see anything of it as a non American. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2s6zsu/eli5_why_college_football_and_basketball_seem/ | {
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"text": [
"Baseball has the [professional minor league system](_URL_0_). Most minor league teams (Albuquerque Isotopes, Toledo Mud Hens, Tacoma Raniers) have loyal local fans. Plus, just about every minor league baseball team has a contract with a major league baseball team to act a development farm team to provide or develop future talent.\n\nFor football and basketball, the NCAA college system fulfills these roles."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minor_League_Baseball"
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|
1k9xlx | why is 'sgt. pepper's lonely hearts club band' considered one of the greatest and most influential albums of all time? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1k9xlx/eli5_why_is_sgt_peppers_lonely_hearts_club_band/ | {
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"It was something of a pop culture touchstone for the generation. The Beatles were popular before the album, SPLHCB simply pushed it over the edge. The band stopped touring for a while after becoming tired of the screaming crowds who would yell OVER their music. After a year and a half of studio solitude the fab four released this album. It was very different from what was around at the time and influenced a lot of future artists.\n\nI would check out the [wiki](_URL_0_) and Pandora's page about the band.",
"Paul McCartney and Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys were acquaintances and pen pals, and were in extreme rivalry with each other. As far as poppy boy bands went, they were both vying for the top spot, but then their musical interests became the point of the competition. Revolver was new and different, leading to Pet Sounds being even more new and different, leading to Sgt. Pepper's being incredibly different. The psychedelic sounds was essentially finalized with this album and went on to change all the rest of rock.\n\nThere are many reasons why it is considered so great. Foremost is it's innovation. Critics at the time were amazed by how different it was. Concept albums weren't really a thing until Sgt. Peppers. Full orchestras playing with a pop band was also hugely innovative. The sound effects and talking were also hugely innovative, giving it a sense of fun that was obviously fairly contagious.\n\nThe sheer popularity of the album also made it quite culturally significant. It had recognizable songs, catchy tunes, recognizable imagery, and a lot of drummed up publicity to thank for that, as well as the fact that it was by The Beatles, but it soon became an incredibly iconic and culturally important album, associated with 1967, the Summer of Love, and an entire generation. It remained near the top of the charts for almost four whole years. It was also the first rock album to ever win Album of the Year at the Grammies, paving the way for all future rock.\n\nGetting a bit back to the beginning, Paul McCartney visited Brian Wilson and played She's Leaving Home on his piano for him. Brian and his wife were both in tears, calling it one of the most beautiful songs ever written. There are multiple books on lyric writing by noted professionals that call it one of the best songs, lyrically, ever. Also, it's genre can hardly be called anything except for classical. On a pop album? At the time? HUGE deal.\n\nLucy in the Sky with Diamonds became a huge deal because of the supposed drug reference. The title tracks united the album in a way that albums had never been united under a common theme before. Within You and Without You explored to an even greater extent the Indian stylings that George was becoming known for. The animal sounds in Good Morning were arranged in order to form an actual scene.\n\nThe album uses complex song forms, difficult orchestrations, a full orchestra, skits, sound effects, harpsichords, modulations, song transitions, count ins, crowd recordings, Mixolydian mode (a rare musical scale), a laugh track, odd time changes, odd key changes, fictional band members, harmonization that was leaps and bounds ahead of it's time, purposely out of tune instruments, use of a comb as an instrument, compounds time meters, lyrics that are just the words of a circus poster, and so much more contribute to it's immense complexity, musical mastery, and innovativeness.\n\nThen of course, there is the albums final song and masterpiece: A Day in the Life. Frequently cited as one of the greatest songs ever, it is really two songs. It is a Paul McCartney tune and a John Lennon tune tied together with some amazing orchestrations. Paul was attempting to direct a forty piece orchestra to improvise along to his score, which he simply hummed to them, and managed fantastically. The lyrics are sad and haunting and the moods are strong and clashing. The song ultimately ends on a note held for forty seconds using massive recording innovations.\n\nIt was among the first major albums to use wah pedals, fuzz boxes, doubling of tracks, varispeeding, the first use of the word \"fuck\" in an album (although it was played backwards), instruments from the baroque period, the list just goes on and on. \n\nThe fact that musically, harmonically, rhythmically, and lyrically it is immensely complex and skillful may not be enough to say it's great. The fact that the critics loved it, the people loved it, and so many future bands loved it may not make it great. What is greatness? Influential is a much easier term to apply. It is probably the most influential album ever, for the reasons I listed. It is artistically and culturally significant, it is done with unprecedented skill, and is widely loved. But, in the end, I hear it and I feel fantastic emotions. That is the only thing that can make it great to me, and in my mind it is the greatest.",
"When they first became extremely popular (around 1963) their music was an unusual mix of different musical influences. They had good harmony, often had unusual syncopation, and had a songwriting team that had a way of coming up with very catchy melodies and hooks. Girls also thought that at least a couple of them were extremely cute, they had a hairdo that by the standards of the time was radical, Lennon in particular was very quotable, and McCartney was extremely likeable. These factors combined to ignite \"Beatlemania\". The record company and DJs loved to hype them up, and many adults loved to make fun of the way they looked. It was a kind of perfect storm that made them the most popular band in the world among teenagers. \n \nIf that was all there was to them, they would have gone down in musical history as a very popular band, but that's about it. But the Beatles' music evolved very significantly. With the help of a great record producer (George Martin) they first started incorporating classical instruments into their songs. This wasn't highly unusual at the time, but was something that was mostly done in more traditional ballads, not upbeat pop songs, and not carrying major melodic themes (usually). And then they started to experiment with other sounds. They would incorporate \"non-musical\" sounds into their songs, and play around with things like backwards masking and unusual instruments like the sitar. This kind of musical experimentation showed up quite a bit on \"Revolver\", but then reached a head on \"Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band\". \n \nSgt. Pepper's cemented the Beatles' place in musical history. Even though there is only one real standout song on the album (\"A Day in the Life\"), the overall sound of the album ignited a revolution in popular music. (For example, the Beach Boys' Brian Wilson heard it and became musically paralyzed, saying there was no way that they could do anything that would compare.) It is difficult to appreciate how different that album sounded today, since so many bands have been influenced by what they did. But at the time, it was as if someone added a new dimension to sound. The Beatles had invented \"psychedelic\" music. Sgt. Pepper's was also one of the first rock albums made to be listened to as an entire album rather than just a collection of songs. \n\nIt was as if the Beatles had first invented musical algebra in the Beatlemania era, and then went on and invented musical calculus with Sgt. Pepper's."
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"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sgt._Pepper%27s_Lonely_Hearts_Club_Band#Critical_reception"
],
[],
[]
] |
||
6h929x | why do most mmo's have reset on a tuesday? | I can vouch for FFXIV and WoW. I think Overwatch is also Tuesdays.
What is it about a Tuesday? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6h929x/eli5_why_do_most_mmos_have_reset_on_a_tuesday/ | {
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"WoW picked Tuesdays because it was a non-peak time of the week for game play back in vanilla. During that time it often took them 5 hours to do maintenance and 12 was not unheard of. Once that was established they simply kept it based on the play cycles they established in the game. Now most of the time they last 15 min-1 hour unless crazy things happen. \n\nOverwatch uses Tuesdays because it is a Blizzard game and that is the established maintenance time for the company because of WoW. \n\nFFXIV likely picked tuesdays because WoW has established that as maintenance time culturally for gamers, and because it is a non-peak time of the week for them (going back to the original reason WoW chose it). ",
"Balance of staff availability and user traffic. Regular tech staff only work Mon-Fri. With network support center running nights and weekends. \n\nYou never change anything on Friday, thats just rule #1. \n\nYou need Monday to catch up on everything from the weekend.\n\nSo that just leaves Tuesday Wednesday and Thursday. Tuesday is earlier in the week so you can see what flak appeared and have option to do hotfixes. You have less opporrtunity window if you do Wednesday and no window if you do Thursday.",
"Part of the reason in addition to the other comments, is that Microsoft Updates used to roll out on Tuesdays, and gamer's PCs were already down for any potential updates."
]
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[],
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|
3a0l4v | action potential and axons | Every time I try to understand I can't even. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3a0l4v/eli5_action_potential_and_axons/ | {
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"The axon is the sender of information from one soma (or cell body) to another.\n\nAction potential is the electrical impulse that allows nerves to communicate with one another. They stimulate the neuron to release its neurotransmitters so that the neuron can pass on the information. This is triggered by a stimulus.\n\nThe neuron potential is -70, so this is the charge when it is at rest and waiting for a message when it decides whether or not it is going to get excited when it receives the message. If the stimulus initiates the neuron to -55 (this is called threshold), an action potential will occur because of the \"all or nothing law\" which states that a neuron will shoot from -55 to +40. Failed initiation is when the stimulus does not reach threshold. After the neuron has an action potential, it goes through a refractory period in which it cannot be stimulated again, so it rests until it reaches -70 again."
]
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[]
] |
|
4cadbe | political ads: why do they all name the treasurer at the end of the ad? | Is there a legit reason why this occurs? In this election year every single goddamn ad has a person's name at the end. This ad brought to you by Republicrats, Bob Smith Treasurer. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4cadbe/eli5_political_ads_why_do_they_all_name_the/ | {
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"text": [
"It shows who paid for that ad. It's important to know that so that you can be aware of the connotations of the message. It also means that there's no deniability for negative ads and such. "
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
|
4ellch | strikes and picket lines | A bunch of Verizon workers on the east coast (USA) [just went on strike today](_URL_0_).
I've always wondered this about strikes:
Are the people in the picket lines collecting unemployment? Or, like... what's their deal? If not, how do they manage to stay in these picket lines for sometimes weeks at a time?
I've been fortunate enough to not have to resort to strikes and such, so its a completely foreign concept for me.
Thanks! | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4ellch/eli5_strikes_and_picket_lines/ | {
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"Strikes like the current one for Verizon are a long time coming, so they striking unions and their workers prepare. Unions have rainy day funds for supporting workers on strike, that's sort of like their version of unemployment... members pay into the fund, and when they have to go on strike the money is there to offer some subsidy. Additionally, since they know it's possibly coming, they'll know to save more, work overtime before, save vacation days, etc. to help get through. But it's tough, and sometimes the businesses get the concessions they want simply by being able to outlast the striking workers financially.",
"The whole point of the monthly/by paycheck union dues is for the pool of money to pay workers during a strike. "
]
} | [] | [
"http://www.providencejournal.com/news/20160413/verizon-workers-go-on-strike-amid-contract-dispute"
] | [
[],
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|
5c6uge | is there a common eyeglass prescription? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5c6uge/eli5_is_there_a_common_eyeglass_prescription/ | {
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"As people get older they require reading glasses, these normally have the prescription +0.5, +1, +1.5 or +2, So these would be the most common glasses, some places that require reading of legal documents often have a few in stock if customers forget them.\n\nIf you want to disregard the age related glasses, then the most common glasses are most likely still around +1 +2, -2 -3, Most people have good vision, or good enough, and wont bother getting glasses for really tiny deviations like -0.5 (Negative prescriptions are generally bigger numbers than the positive ones, -5 is not that rare, +5 is really up there)\n\n"
]
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[]
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||
2thi23 | why are the united states and european countries considered "the west" while russia and asia are considered "the east?" why is the map drawn the way it is? | This question has two parts.
1. Why are the US, Canada, South America, and Europe, the west, and why are Russia, China, and Japan the east? If I learnt correctly, the earth is a globe. Aren't certain countries considered west/east because that is where they were drawn? Suppose you are in China; you would think you are in the east, right? If you continued to go further east, you reach the United States, then if you kept going even further east you would reach Europe. So wouldn't you think Europe is further east than China? Well if you kept going east you're suddenly back in China, so maybe it really is further-east, but if you still continued to go east, you're in the US, which would make the US seem like the eastern-most country, and on and on and on it goes. You can always continue going east and and claim you are further east than someone else. Why are China and Japan considered where the east ends, and if you go further you are not more eastern, you have "restarted in the west?"
It works the other way too. If you are in the United States, and you travel west, you would eventually be in China, since the earth is spherical. So why was the side of the world with the US and Canada called the west, and why was the side with China and Russia called the east?
2. Who decided the map should have those two countries at their respective ends? Why is the map not drawn with the US, Canada, and South America to the east, and with Russia and China to the west, or any other way for that matter?
| explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2thi23/eli5why_are_the_united_states_and_european/ | {
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"It has to do with medieval Europe. Everything East of them was the East (also called Orient). The terms came into use before travel was possible across the large oceans by Europeans. \n\nThe reason that the Americas are the West is that we are descended from Europeans. Europe colonized the Americas and left their cultures. \n\nRussia is also kind of a mixed place. They are physically on the Asian Continent and for most of their history were well removed from the cultures of Europe, but they also took great efforts in the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries to adopt European culture, and spent most of the 20th isolating their culture from the world. ",
"If you draw the world on a two-dimensional map (rather than a globe) then you need to choose which continents to put on the left side and which to put on the right side. \n\nIt is natural for people to think of their own country as the center of the map, but in 1884 a conference of many countries decided to use a common \"Meridian line\" as the center for maps and time zones. This is known as the Prime Meridian and it runs North-South through the British city of Greenwich.\n\n_URL_0_\n\nIf Britain is the center, then naturally the Americas are going to be on the West side of the map and Asia on the East side (since it is standard that North is the top of maps).\n\nAs an additional speculation, I suspect that it has something to do with the fact that Europeans discovered sea routes to the Americas before they discovered the routes to Asia, so at that time the Atlantic Ocean had been more traversed while the Pacific ocean was perhaps less important to both Europeans and North Americans (who had the most power internationally at the time these standards were being set).",
"The world in general seems to ignore the fact that a lot of Asian countries were recording histories well before Europe was, and most world perspectives are based from a Euro-central way of thinking.\n\nWorld maps are almost always based with Europe at the centre because they were the 'first' to go adventuring and recorded what they found, they drew the map with themselves in the centre.",
"It also seems to be most logical.\n\nMaps that have Eurasia on the western portion, and the Americas on the Eastern portion will have the international date line going right thru the middle of the map, which would seem awkward...as well as having the Pacific Ocean...which is the largest body of water on earth...directly in the center. This pushes most of the land masses to the edges. So you would end up having all the important stuff crowding the edges, with a big non-essential taking up most of the prime real estate in the center.",
"Why is the map drawn that way? [Well...](_URL_0_)"
]
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[],
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"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prime_meridian#History"
],
[],
[],
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"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vVX-PrBRtTY"
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|
3imyto | would you loose more gas going constantly fast versus constantly slow and why? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3imyto/eli5_would_you_loose_more_gas_going_constantly/ | {
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"There's a sweet spot for each vehicle where it gets the most fuel economy. It depends on the engine, body shape and other factors unique to the car.",
"depends how fast and how slow.\n\nThe general drag of the passive systems like HVAC and the electronics and lower gearing makes slow speeds inefficient.\n\nBut going too fast has extra drag and inefficient gearing.\n\n55-65mph in top gear is routinely designed to be the most efficient speed for most cars."
]
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||
6286wl | why do domesticated animals appear to be more loving towards humans than they are with other animals? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6286wl/eli5_why_do_domesticated_animals_appear_to_be/ | {
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"Because the definition of domestication means that another species is being manipulated by us for our own benefit. We are basically \"making\" them do what we like so that we can benefit from it. Which is domestication. Whether it's for food or for companionship etc. And it's not always the case that they are always more loving to us than other animals. Only some species are that way. The overall simplified reason though is just the method of domestication that a human uses on a specific species. Edit: ELI5 part: We breed dogs, for example, to be nice to us and and to protect us against threats such as other animals etc."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
||
3n664q | why do heat and cold kill things? | We all know that extreme temperatures damage or kill most living things (fire hot, ouch!) but why? What do high and low temperatures do to cells that damages them? And how do things that thrive in extreme temperatures (like worms in volcanic vents) get away with it? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3n664q/eli5_why_do_heat_and_cold_kill_things/ | {
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"Imagine you had a small office, with some guy and a couple of assistants, all managing a bunch of paperwork. Usually, they're all very organized and manage to get all of the filing done more-or-less exactly right. One day, you pump them all full of tons of caffeine, and in the excitement and rush, they misfile everything, forget some appointments, and basically cause their entire business to fail. That's what heat does. It starts throwing in tons of energy, making the things that do what your cells need to do go completely haywire or fail entirely. Cold temperatures can have a similar effect (even when you are well above freezing) for the same reason. Imagine the same office, but now everyone is showing up tired because they couldn't sleep. You still get misfiled paperwork and missed appointments, but from the opposite cause.\n\nExtremophiles (what we call things that can handle harsh conditions) have special adaptations to their particular environments. They have things that stabilize their proteins in the presence of heat, or things that keep their cell membranes from freezing in the cold. Each extremophile is specifically adapted to its particular niche in the world, and we've taken advantage of some of these adaptations ourselves. The best example is how we commonly use [anti-freeze proteins for a whole lot of things.](_URL_0_)"
]
} | [] | [] | [
[
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antifreeze_protein#Commercial_applications"
]
] |
|
4bzo75 | graph theory. what exactly is it and what are some of its applications? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4bzo75/eli5_graph_theory_what_exactly_is_it_and_what_are/ | {
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"Graph theory's essentially the mathematical study of connections between things. It's not necessarily about x-y graphs or curves that you'd normally imagine but more about points with lines connecting some of them like on a detective or conspiracy theorist's pin-board with bits of string connecting things. But obviously, string gets quite expensive so you just use points and lines in practice.\n\nA guy called Euler came up with it to solve the Seven Bridges of Koenigsburg problem. In short, he's wicked smart. The solution's impossible though.\n\nWhat can graph theory do? All kinds of stuff. Biggest applications are in computer science and mathematics but you can use it anywhere you've got connections.\n\nIf you think about your computer connecting to a server, to access the internet, you could show this with a graph where your computer is a point, the server is another point and the connection you just made is a line between them. And then you can add more points and lines for more computers connecting to the server.\n\nObviously that's a bit of a trivial example but it illustrates the point well.",
"As others have mentioned, a graph is just a set of vertices (or nodes) with connections (called edges or arcs) between them.\n\nSounds unremarkable, but the applications are myriad. Many, many problems that we want to solve are actually just graph theory problems in disguise. Others have given examples, but here are a few more.\n\nSay you've a set of cities and connections (e.g., roads, flight paths, etc.) between them. Each connection here has an associated cost (e.g., distance, money required to traverse). You want to visit every city once and end up back where you started having incurred the minimum possible cost. This is the [traveling salesman problem](_URL_2_), a common graph theory problem. It's actually a hard problem (or so we believe).\n\nBut suppose just want to find the shortest or cheapest path between one city and another, because you're Google Maps. That's the [shortest path problem](_URL_1_) for graphs, and it's easy.\n\nOr maybe you have a set of cities and possible connections between them, each with associated cost. You're stingy and don't want to build every possible road or railroad, but you want every city to be reachable from any other. So you want to find the cheapest way to connect every city to every other without laying down any more train tracks than necessary. Then you're trying to find the [minimum spanning tree](_URL_0_) of a graph.\n\nOr suppose you want to know, given a set of tasks, where some tasks are prerequisites for others (so that a task cannot be started unless all its prerequisite tasks have first been done), whether there exists a sequence in which you can complete the tasks, and if so, to find that sequence. For example, you might want to find a good order to take your courses in university. This is simply finding a [topological ordering](_URL_3_) in a graph.\n\nOr perhaps, and this is very interesting, you want to know, given a set of teams that have already played some number of games against each other, so that each has their own number of wins and losses, and given the number of remaining games to be played between each pair of teams, whether or not you can know right now, before any more games have been played that some team is already eliminated or not, where eliminated means that there is no way at all for that team to end up with the maximum number of wins, no matter how the remaining games play out. This again is solvable with graph theory.\n\nThere are all very simple problems, but there exists many more interesting problems that one might reasonably want to solve, and they are pretty much all reducible to graph theory problems."
]
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[],
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"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimum_spanning_tree",
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shortest_path_problem",
"https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Travelling_salesman_problem",
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Topological_sorting"
]
] |
||
59ph5g | how do we destroy nuclear weapons safely? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/59ph5g/eli5_how_do_we_destroy_nuclear_weapons_safely/ | {
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"You disassemble them.\n\nNuclear weapons aren't like regular explosives; they aren't a set of compounds that are basically on a (comparably) constant hair-trigger. Instead, the actual process of starting a nuclear reaction is rather involved, and if one step in the process fails, the bomb doesn't really detonate.\n\nThis is also why one of simplest counters to nuclear weapons is to literally shoot them with other missiles. The only reason it's hard to do has nothing to do with the nuclear material itself; it's just hard to hit a missile with another missile.",
"Depends on your definition of \"safely\".\n\nQuick and dirty in-field disposal just requires setting it on fire or blowing it up or otherwise interfering with the *very* sensitive mechanics of the bomb. That leaves you with about a football field's worth of area contaminated by uranium and plutonium, which can be cleaned up later.\n\nMore thorough methods are concerned with destruction of uranium and plutonium, in particular the latter. In theory the stuff can just be stored or buried, but that leaves it ready to be re-weaponized in a pinch. However, the recently suspended US-Russian deal requires the fissile fuel to be used up via fast neutron reactors; the problem has been the US's unwillingness to build such reactors, and the decision to, \"in the spirit of the deal\" (but in defiance of what was put on paper), to just store it.",
"Think of a nuclear weapon as Swiss chronograph. They are designed and built to some of the highest standards and tightest tolerances of anything.\n\nEven the nuclear materials and explosives used in the device are incredibly machined and the explosives are very heat and stress tolerant.\n\nNeed to take out a nuclear weapon in the field - like your movie IED nuke in a crate - hammer on the explosives and electronic components with a hammer because if the explosives don't perfectly compress the Plutonium or Uranium it either doesn't go off or it's a fizzle.\n\n_URL_0_",
"Basically you just take them apart. If complying with some arms control treaty there will typically be witnesses or at least video recording involved so other parties to the treaty can verify it was done. Some of the disassembled parts may be further destroyed by physical smashing or melting or something.\n\nThe crucial part is the \"pit\", or ball of fissionable material at the heart of the weapon. This is usually plutonium but may be uranium 235 in some weapons. Being solid balls of metal, pits are rather difficult to destroy physically, and doing so would be quite dangerous as dust particles of these materials are dangerously radioactive. It is a weakness of many arms control treaties that no provision for destroying the fissionable pits was made, and after disassembly the pits wind up stored away somewhere, available to have new weapons built around them.\n\nSome more recent treaties have arranged for the fissionable pits to be reworked into fuel for nuclear reactors, then burned up in the reactors, generating electricity as a byproduct. This is a much more satisfactory solution than leaving the pits in storage.",
"You safely shoot them into deep space and the set them off for some astronomic pyrotechnics. Light em up in way to send a signal of intelligence to the universe. ",
"The governments still keep the explosives and cores. All they do is destroy the bombers, ships, and missiles that carry them. Bullets are useless without the guns needed to fire them."
]
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||
3h5kf2 | why does letting your phone die permanently affect the life of the battery? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3h5kf2/eli5why_does_letting_your_phone_die_permanently/ | {
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"Just to make a clarification, the act of letting your phone die in itself does not affect the battery. If the device's battery management hardware is engineered properly, which most are, you can use your phone until it dies without worry.\n\nThe problem arises when you let it die, and then never charge it for an extended period of time (months, not days). Basically the internal resistance of the battery cells increases drastically and the battery is therefore less capable of receiving a charge. If you find an old device that hasn't been used in a long while, take caution if attempting to charge it. The battery can overheat and explode!",
"Lithium batteries are subject to damage outside of a certain narrowly defined voltage range.\n\nHowever, modern consumer devices (or the batteries themselves) all have 'protection circuits' that monitor the voltage and prevent this from happening, so you don't actually need to worry about this. Your phone will turn itself off before damage to the battery occurs due to under-voltage. (And will stop charging before damage occurs due to over-voltage, which is especially important, as overcharged lithium batteries can [explode](_URL_0_).)\n\nYou *can* still get damage from under-voltage if you run your phone down to the point where it shuts off and then don't plug it in for weeks or months. This is because the battery leaks some charge even when it's not in use, so the voltage will eventually drop too low.\n\nAnd, of course, even if you prevent under/over-voltage, lithium batteries do slowly degrade as more charge cycles occur, so eventually you will notice the battery holding less charge."
]
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[],
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"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SMy2_qNO2Y0"
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||
3i4459 | how do bats know which click is theirs when using echo-location? | Watching the caves episode of Planet Earth on Netflix and in the scene about bats there are thousands of them flying about in the cave. I understand how echo location basically works ( I think ), but when the bat sends out its 'click' how does it know the one it hears back is its own and none of the other thousands of clicks? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3i4459/eli5_how_do_bats_know_which_click_is_theirs_when/ | {
"a_id": [
"cudctgu",
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"text": [
"How do you know that an echo you hear is your voice and not someone else's?",
"Bats change their echo so they know its theirs.\n\nFor example some will change the pitch of their echo.\n\nImagine you are in room of a lot of people and you are trying to talk to someone across the room. You don't get confused as to which voice is taking to you because you focus on the uniqueness of their voice."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[]
] |
|
cecyqo | what does it mean when the house of representatives votes to "condemn" something? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/cecyqo/eli5_what_does_it_mean_when_the_house_of/ | {
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"It means just that. They agree, as a body to condemn something. They formally disagree with it. The main reason this happened is because the Democrats wanted a permanent record of who supported condemning the words of the President and who didn't.",
"Nothing, really. It's just a statement saying that they condemn it. It carries no more weight than that. No legal penalties or other ramifications. It's a bit like when terrorists blow up a building somewhere, and the United Nations sits for 3 days and eventually agrees on a statement saying that \"we condemn this action in the strongest possible terms\". It basically means (and results in) nothing at all. But it generates news coverage, and might sometimes persuade someone that what they did was wrong. But with Trump there's no hope of that."
]
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[],
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] |
||
1p6kij | why is ceramic used for superconductors? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1p6kij/why_is_ceramic_used_for_superconductors/ | {
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"text": [
"Superconductors are a specific combination or elements, elements that do not normally mix to create alloys. 'Ceramics' is just what we call that sort of combinations of elements."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
||
16mgpm | why is the v shaped peace sign an insult in the uk? | I never quite understood why it was an insult. What does it mean? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/16mgpm/eli5_why_is_the_v_shaped_peace_sign_an_insult_in/ | {
"a_id": [
"c7xgudo"
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"score": [
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"text": [
"Well, Churchill's V for Victory sign is fine, that's like the stereotypical Asian teen girl sign. It's the backwards V that's frowned upon, another poster explains where that comes from, though."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
|
25xr1g | do costco and sam's club receipt checkers actually check for anything in that 2 seconds they spend looking at my receipt? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/25xr1g/eli5_do_costco_and_sams_club_receipt_checkers/ | {
"a_id": [
"chlpqv2"
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"score": [
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"text": [
"They are only looking for high priced items in your cart or electronics. They see 1 item and find it on receipt then mark it. Its mostly just for show. A theft deterrent."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
||
4pp5rm | what is the affect of war on terror on economy of usa ? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4pp5rm/eli5what_is_the_affect_of_war_on_terror_on/ | {
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"Any kind of government spending, whether it be a foreign war, new road infrastructure, a big wall, tax cuts, or carving the President's face into a mountain creates economic stimulus.\n\nWhen a government borrows money, it issues a bond, which is considered a safe investment. So they take cash that people were looking to hide under the bed and put it back into the economy, employing a bunch of new people. Any kind of deficit spending is great for the economy.\n\nIt is not, however, sustainable. When a government needs to go from a deficit to a surplus, it has exactly the opposite effect, moving money from the working economy into the coffers of people who want to sequester their money. Sometimes we get lucky and they've retired, and will look to spend their bond money right away. Othertimes, it will go into other investments. When the US finally does balance the budget, it will push us into a much more serious recession. \n\nAnd yet, the longer we put it off the worse that recession will be. Ideally, you're supposed to go into a surplus when the economy is strong so people don't feel it, and a deficit during recessions. Bush's War and Tax Cuts have therefore created huge problems for the future (that have not yet come to fruition), where in the strong economy of the 00s he should have raised taxes, cut spending, and focused on eliminating the debt.\n\nSadly, it's truthy to be frugal when things are going well and spend wildly when we're broke, even though that's the exact correct thing for government to do. For now, the correct play is to allow the debt to grow throughout the Great Recession and then raise taxes and cut spending once the markets are doing well.",
"Consider the following affects of the War on Terror:\n\n* The War on Terror spreads and sells fear, and fear is the ultimate form of economic stimulus and advertising psychology. \n\n* It generates profits from a constant stream of news about terror or the fear of it.\n\n* It encourages the election of war mongers who are more loyal to the money stream from those who benefit from the War on Terror than to the people they claim to protect. The economic policies of these war mongers will have long lasting affects on our national debt. Like the War on Drugs, having a never-ending War on Terror is big business.\n\n* It increases the dependence of business on government funding for war and nation building related expenses and a permanent state of war.\n\n* The fear of it increases sales of duct tape, guns, survivalist supplies and shelters, long lasting food stuff, etc.\n\n* Its underperforming or ineffective counter-terrorism programs add to our national debt.\n\n* It means funding counter-terrorism programs in remote rural locations.\n\n"
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1j2chz | how can medical studies with very small sample sizes be deemed as credible? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1j2chz/eli5_how_can_medical_studies_with_very_small/ | {
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"One reason is that the available group to sample is very small. Take, for example, a new chemotherapy for retinoblastoma. There are less than 500 new cases each year. Even if I go to a really populous area, there aren't that many people who have it to test on.\n\nThe other reason is that the studies are extremely rigorous otherwise. The big reason for having big samples is that the larger the sample size, the less likely other factor are to have a statistically appreciable effect, but with extreme rigor in every other possible area, there can be useful information obtained from a small sample.",
"It depends on the question you are asking and the rigor of your controls. A very rigorously controlled study can get pretty good results...IF you ask the right question. I've worked in drug and device research, and Small studies are usually enough to get an idea of a safe drug dose, look at whether it seems to work well enough to keep studying, or maybe test some new device where the changes from existing technology aren't that great. \n\nAs littleelf says, too, for rare diseases, smaller samples may be deemed acceptable because there's no practical way to test in larger groups. ",
"It's statistics. In any statistical analysis you're looking for validation that a given conclusion would apply to the general population. The more samples you have in your study, the more certain you can be that your conclusions are due to the effect of your independent variable (whatever treatment you're testing), but after a certain number of samples this has diminishing returns. Conversely, the cost of running a study scales linearly with the number of participants (grad students are underpaid, so the biggest expense is on a per-participant basis), so there's a fine balance between the sample size needed for statistical significance and keeping costs down.\n\nIf you can have 80% confidence in your results with 10 participants, but it takes 100 to get that to 93%, you're going to run with the smaller group."
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4gbnt9 | what exactly happens when gas is pumped into a running car that causes a fire or explosion? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4gbnt9/eli5_what_exactly_happens_when_gas_is_pumped_into/ | {
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"It's very unlikely that anything will happen, but leaving your car running increase the chance of a stray spark from a spark from some system in your car, which can ignite the vapors in the air from the gas you're pumping.",
"Back in the days before Catalytic Converters in exhaust systems, it was common for mufflers to blow out pieces of built up carbon at very high temperatures so there was [is] a risk of these particles starting a fire from gas/oil on the ground or the vapors in the air. This still happens to this day and most of the fires that happen along highways get started either this way or when converters fail and spit their guts out the exhaust pipe. ",
"One thing not mentioned here is runaway combustion.\n\nIf it's a Diesel engine, the gas will act as more fuel for the engine. The faster it runs the more gas it sucks up making it run even faster. Eventually the engine will over speed to self destruction, in which case it will break with a flame and ignite the gas around it.\n\nFor this reason mining vehicles can be fitted with an over speed damper, which closes the air inlet to the engine enough to prevent run away when you hit the big red stop button.\n\nThat's assuming just the right mixture of gas and air. Too much gas and the engine will choke to a stop, not enough gas to over speed and you just get better fuel economy and a sore head.\n\nA modern engine won't cause a spark to start an explosion unless it's turning on the starter.\n\nEdit: oh wait. By gas you mean petrol, not a gas like methane.\n\nThis is the problem with describing a liquid as gas.",
"I've been pumping gas with the engine running for over 20 years. Nothing ever happened. If you really want to die, fill a gascan in the bed of a pickup with a plastic liner. You will easily generate enough static electricity to ignite the vapors trapped in the bed. ",
"It's usually a spark from the nearby on-location movie-set that causes the explosion. /s\n\nIOW, IRL cars don't explode at gas stations very often at all."
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bfsq6s | why is there blood outside the veins? | [deleted] | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/bfsq6s/eli5_why_is_there_blood_outside_the_veins/ | {
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"Because it transports nutrients to all your cells. If it stayed in vessels, it wouldn't reach muscle and other cells to do its job. \n\nInstead, it goes from large veins and arteries to a sort of middle man called capillaries, which are very tiny vessels. \n\nThey're so thin that individual blood cells and other substances in blood can flow through them to surrounding tissue/cells, to exchange butrients and oxygen and take away waste.",
"Imagine your body's circulatory system as a road network, with a big city (your heart) at the center. Now imagine the big highways that run out and connect to that city. These are your arteries and veins, all relatively large. Now, branching off of these you would expect a lot of small roads that connect each and every house in the surrounding areas to the main city, so everyone there can continue to live and work. Your body does the same thing, with very small blood vessels called cappilaries, that crisscross ever which way throughout your skin and every other organ. These connect every cell in your body together, ensuring they all have access to the oxygen and nutrients that your body provides. Even though they're too small to see with the naked eye, these cappilaries are everywhere, and when you get even the tiniest cuts like you mentioned, these are why you bleed.\n\nHope this helps!",
"There isn't blood outside of the blood vessels (including veins). When you cut yourself you have damaged the blood vessels and it is able to leak out. The blood is mostly leaking from capillaries (unless the cut is bad) which are so tiny you can't actually see them. Whilst you can't see capillaries - when you blush or go red, you can see the effect of more blood being moved to the capillaries in your skin.",
"Put simply, blood does not exist outside of your. blood vessels. \n\nBlood flows through the body as such: heart > aorta > arteries > arterioles > capillaries > venules > veins > vena cava > heart > lungs > heart. \n\nWhen you get a small scrap or cut that oozes blood, you have disrupted a capillary. Capillaries are the smallest blood vessels in the body and are the point at which the tissues of the body exchange nutrients and waste with the blood. They are so small in diameter that red blood cells must pass through them in a single file line. This small diameter helps facilitate the movement of oxygen from red blood cells to the other cells of the body. These capillaries exists in abundance within every tissue of the human body.",
"If you are looking for a 5-year old answer, capillaries, which are the smallest blood vessels, transfer the blood that final step to/from tissues (cells). You have cells everywhere so it's possible to bleed, even from a shallow cut."
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8frbxh | how can dna program out instinct but not our memory? | I understand that some animals survive pretty much on instinct and experience alone. But a human baby is completely I'll equipped to do so, yet we have instinctual fears and reflexes that are pre programmed into us. Why cant DNA give us memories of the past if it can make us afraid of bears? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8frbxh/eli5_how_can_dna_program_out_instinct_but_not_our/ | {
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"Because memories aren't stored in genetic material but are stored in an individual's brain where they are fallible and ultimately perishable.\n\n\"Instincts\" themselves are rather ambiguous and many behaviors that we would consider \"instinctual\" can easily be seen as learned behaviors that we pick up from our parents, siblings and society. Even \"instincts\" aren't necessarily something that are stored genetically, and they can't be measured.",
"Your DNA does not change in a directed manner throughout your life. Mutations will happen at random, but nothing you do can cause your DNA to change in a particular manner (DNA can be used differently depending on what you do, but that's another matter entirely and doesn't have anything to do with memory). When memories are stored, they take the form of groups of neurons that are all primed to activate at once. \n\nThink of instincts like simple \"if. . . then. . .\" statements. For example, \"if being chased by something large, then activate fight or flight response.\" Memories are generally not in the form of \"if. . . then. . .\" statements. They are two fundamentally different things. ",
"Something interesting to take a look at (Im not sure how relevant this is to what you are asking) would be the effect of whats called epigenetics. Essentially as an individual lives his/her life there are certain 'changes' that occur to the DNA which can increase or decrease the likely hood of particular genes to be expressed. Epigenetics refers to the ability for these changes in the DNA to carry over into offspring. A very cool example of this is in drosphillia (flies) - \nThe mother will transcribe a particular gene and pack the transcript into the egg of her offspring, these are called maternal effect genes. The outcome of this is a gene present in the mature mother who's only purpose is to be transcribed for her offspring. Because this transcription occurs before the egg has even developed this means that the development of the egg will be impacted by not only its own environment as it develops but its mothers environment at the time of maternal effect gene transcription."
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bvofxi | why do saying or writing our thoughts out can help relieve stress? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/bvofxi/eli5_why_do_saying_or_writing_our_thoughts_out/ | {
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"Once you express a thought, the brain “checks it off the list,” considering it a done deal even if you don't actually act on the thought you express. This is also why you might feel less motivated toward a goal after telling someone about it."
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7a3ah2 | how does video and image stabilization technology work in our smartphones on such a small scale? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7a3ah2/eli5_how_does_video_and_image_stabilization/ | {
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"Two kinds of image stabilization systems exist: mechanical and digital.\n\nThe mechanical systems use small accelerometers built into the chips of the camera to notice movement in the camera during the time the camera is taking the picture and make small opposite movements in the CCD sensor so that the sensor and lens remain focused on the same point. As the picture usually takes less than 120th of a second for mechanically stabilized pictures, it only needs to move the sensor a few tenths of a millimeter in most cases. \n\nDigital stabilization works by taking more than one picture in quick succession, finding common points within the successive images, determining how much they have moved and reversing that movement digitally, so in the output file they don't appear to have moved. ",
"There are 2 main types, optical stabilization, and electronic stabilization. \n\nOptical has a special lens where one of the lens elements is on a gimbal (can rotate up down, left right like your eye) with a small solid state gyroscope to detect motion and counter act it, like a chicken that holds it's head still as someone handles it, or the camera rig on a drone. This keeps the optical image it projects stable on the sensor. This is mechanically more complex and hence more costly, but it allows the use of slow shutter speeds in low light conditions without causing image blur from movement. \n\nElectronic stabilization works by digitally zooming into the image a little so that there is overlap all around the screen, and then it identifies areas of the image with high contrast, like white next to black, and tries to keep them from moving by panning the image up down, or left right. It's much cheaper to do it like this but because of the digital zoom, it does affect picture quality somewhat, and it doesn't help at all for long exposures in camera mode. It's mostly used for shooting video. "
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b5vhu8 | in economics we have to have population growth of 2.11 for a good economy. why would it be a bad economy if the population was not growing? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/b5vhu8/eli5_in_economics_we_have_to_have_population/ | {
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"**In Economics we have to have population growth of 2.11 for a good economy. Why would it be a bad economy if the population was not growing?**\n\n & #x200B;\n\nEdit: If a store clerk is not replaced, because there is no one to replace him, then the person can go to another store. So I really don't see how that is a problem loosing some jobs. Social programs (like Social Security) I can see could be affected as not enough people to pay into them. But the fix is just when the Government takes the social-security-tax, keep it for later, don't spend it like they always do. I don't see it as catastrophic. But I feel like I missing something...\n\n & #x200B;\n\nEdit 2: Thank you, responses are so good and enlightening. Follow-up question if anyone knows: It is true, no culture has recovered from a fertility rate less than 1.9 growth? If true, then what cultures/civilizations?"
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2zcact | why can't i fully picture people's faces in my imagination? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2zcact/eli5why_cant_i_fully_picture_peoples_faces_in_my/ | {
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"Our memories aren't perfect. If you had a \"photographic (eidetic) memory\" you might be able to. \n\nFaces are so complex that it's difficult to memorize them exactly. This goes for most things in nature",
"I read an article some time ago which discussed people dreaming in black and white when b & w TV was normal and then later dreaming in color again after color TV was introduced. The synopsis pretty much was that people think & dream in \"feelings\", not in actual pictures, and that the color was only brought into it when people were awake and consciously interpreting it. If this is true and we think in feelings, this holds an explanation for your question: You basically remember the feelings you have towards a person and only a few facial structures, not the whole faces at all. Why would you anyways? There is no (evolutionary) need for your brain to fully remember the face of a person, it's enough if you recognize them *when you see them*.",
"Interesting. I am an artist, I draw faces all the time. I notice that there's a part of my brain that seems to be devoted to constantly studying the features of people I see or interact with on a regular basis. I've gotten pretty good at picking up on key features quickly and I can generate a fairly accurate mental image of anyone I'm close with. ",
"Context. You need context. You need something specific, like my wife trimming the rose bushes.\n\nCue Matt Damon's improved barn story.",
"A slight aside, but I'm sure I read somewhere that humans can't imagine a completely new face, due to the level of detail required, and when we do try, or inhabit our dreams with \"strangers\" and that they are actually people we have seen before and have retained the details of in our subconscious.\n\nMight be talking out of my arse but its a vague memory aha",
"I can hear my brothers voice in my head perfectly, but I cant accurately remember what anyone else's voice sounds like. similar i guess",
"Is this a thing? I can picture peoples faces right down to the wrinkle and eye intricacies. I am extremely visually orientated person though, so maybe that's what it is? I just assumed everyone could do that, but I guess it's not a topic that comes up very often.",
"People have a hard time encoding an image, especially a flexible 3d image like a face. If you have a good background in a memorization system and the thing you you are trying to memorize you can do it. Example, I have a degree in art, and have done more portraits then most visual artists. I also have spent a long time practicing memory tricks and system so I don't forget stuff. With that being said I can fully draw a portrait from memory if I have had a bunch of exposure to theta face AND I studied the face with those memory tricks in mind. But if I just am hanging out with some one a couple of time I don't have perfect recollection of their face. \n\nI bet this is true for other fields, like if someone is a electrical engineer and like encoding things into memory they could do it with a schematic. I see one of those and two minutes later all I could tell you is that is a bunch of damned lines.",
"Practice doing it with a photo. Stare at the photo for 2 minutes and make a road map starting at the chin, then up to the mouth, over to the left ear back to the mouth, the right ear, then the nose the left eye, the left cheek, the right eye, the right cheek, the forehead, then the hair. \n\nOnce you do this close your eyes and retrace your steps, eventually picturing the whole face. After some practice it will become quite easy to picture people's faces, you just aren't used to actually observing people's faces in detail in your day to day life.\n",
"Thanks for asking this! I always assumed this only happened to me because I'm bad with faces.",
"I think it varies by person. I don't really have a \"movie screen\" in my mind. I don't particularly visualize anything. In fact it bothers me when people ask me to visualize something in my head. To me it's pointless. I always thought it was just a figure of speech. Do people actually close their eyes and see a scene? Or just imagine it (not actually like a photo)?",
"Remember the scene near the end of Saving Private Ryan? Try to remember a specific memory of then, not just the image of their face.",
"*\"To see is to forget the name of the thing one sees.”* - Paul Valéry*\n#\nThe human brain doesn't process the world like a camera. Doing so would require far too much of our \"RAM\", which is in pretty high demand most of the time. \nYour brain simply isn't built to focus on multiple tasks at once, so if you're concentrating on hunting a wild boar, you aren't concentrating on the precise outlines of every leaf on the ground. Instead, your brain will basically project the concept of \"leaves on the ground\" and only look for changes in the pattern (like a coiled snake).\n#\nIt just so happens that most people spend the majority of their lives doing stuff. That means we aren't observing our surroundings as they really are, but as we *think* they are. \nThe same thing goes for people. When you look at your mom, your brain applies the *concept* of mom instead of observing her as she really is. So if your mom leaves the room and comes back in, you automatically know it is her without even looking. This is also why we occasionally think the person next to us is someone we know, only to turn around and be surprised by a stranger.\n#\nTo truly *see*, you need to throw away your brain’s preconceived concepts of the world. This is very difficult at first, but any artist will tell you that it gets easier over time.",
"I can picture faces with incredible accuracy, is that unusual?",
"This is a supposition here, but there is a portion of your brain, the fusiform gyrus, which is responsible for recognising and remembering faces.\n\nFace blindness is called [prosopagnosia](_URL_0_). I would imagine that during certain sleep phases this part of your brain is not accessed and as such you lack the cognitive tools to recall and construct faces.",
"I've never had a problem with imagining moving faces. I'm sure what I imagine isn't high definition and is probably not as motion like as what I see, but it's close enough. Maybe some people can put it together differently? I remember I had a friend in high school who told me he dreamed faceless people. I was surprised because in my dreams faces are the most detailed; almost like television! Sometimes I even dream of people when they were younger \"clearly\". Anyone else have this? The clear detailed face dreams?",
"One important note of cognitive theory was that many chess experts have perfect perception and memory of a chessboard. When shown a layout for a brief time, they can reconstruct it accurately from memory later.\n\nHowever, *only if the layout follows the rules of chess!* If you instead add 3 black kings, no while king, place both white bishops on black squares, place a line of pawns behind the line of other pieces, the high-performing chess-memory experts' performance drops precipitously in most cases.\n\nWhat we take from that is that they're using heuristics to reduce the data's features. There can only be one black king, so a range of 64 possible states. For a person who knows nothing about chess, the total range he thinks he needs to remember would be 2^64 possible data points, nearly impossible to remember!\n\nThe same could hold true for face memory. There are a billion possible data points for the cheekbone shape. And they morph around 100 times a second during expressions! \n\nBut after dealing with 10,000 faces, the skilled mind seeks to break this down to fewer data points- there are high cheekbones, and low cheekbones. After watching the person's face for a few moments, a skilled mind familiar with how faces work can break down the data it sees and say \"ok, this is a clearly high-cheekbone face, we do not need to literally remember every detail of every moment we see of it\". \n\nMachine face recognition tech varies, but the number of remembered data points that identify a face is quite small relative to say a single megapixel image.\n\nAccording to this, [80 nodal points](_URL_0_) can be used. And the possible range of each point it itself has further limitations, the left eye cannot be lower than the nose, for example.",
"This is the most annoying thing ever when imagination-masturbating",
"Am I the only one who has no trouble thinking of faces? Almost anyone I've known I can vividly think of their face. ",
"I have a hard time recognizing peoples faces, and I cant picture things in my mind.\n\nWatching movies/shows can be very frustrating because its not until its over that I realize who characters are...if I figure it out at all.",
"What about not being able to visualize things in your head or control them in general? Say I imagine a glass of water on a table- chances are, this cup is going to fall over even though I don't want to imagine it that way. Everytime I 'fix' it in my head, it immediately falls back over. It's not just things like cups, but other objects or people. I usually give up trying to 'fix' the cup because it feels like I'm fighting my brain.",
"Think of a context. Don't just try to picture a face, picture something the person has done or said.",
"I can. I can see my children's face perfectly for short periods of time, like watching a short Vine clip. Wife and parents. \n\nNot too many other people though.",
"Strangely, it seems the greater emotional bond I have with someone, the harder it is for me to see their face clearly in my mind. I've always supposed my brain is developing a more complex (transcendent?) way of seeing someone, as if the more fully I love a person, the less their physical characteristics matter. ",
"Think of a specific instance, I usually like to think of someone laughing. Treat it as a gif, not a jpg",
"Me too, I can't even remember the color of the hair of my friends I see daily. Something just don't work. I always feared being the only witness of a crime and being unable to describe the guy to the police sketch-up artist.",
"I think a lot of people actually can. But generally it's probably because faces are very complex. There is a part of the brain that is specifically for recognizing faces, and in cases where this area of the brain is injured people are incapable of recognizing people by their faces. Most inanimate objects that you might visualize are much simpler in their geometry, so it takes less processing to visualize them accurately. I bet if you studied a face and practiced visualizing it, you'd get much better at it.\n\nEdit: [Prosopagnosia](_URL_0_)",
"If you've ever tried to draw a face, or even an eye, you would have maybe gotten a hint as to why it's so hard to picture a face in your mind. There's so much information that is conveyed in such subtle ways through these parts of the human body.",
"We remember lots of things (faces, words, patterns, etc.) holistically rather than as individual parts. In order to access a memory, you basically need a path of access. When actually seeing someone's face, that path could be any part of their face (ex. if you see just the side of their face if you're behind them, or if you just see their eyes above a fence) or their face as a whole. When trying to imagine someone, you have to \"create\" that path yourself, so you try to imagine a specific part of their face to do so. Problem is, that \"path\" doesn't actually lead to their face, because we don't remember people's faces by detailed images of the individual parts of their face.\n\n/u/unkooth also noted that we may be able to remember pictures of people's faces better because that picture is a 2d image with a lot less information than a 3d face.",
"Is it weird I can picture people's faces in my head perfectly? "
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3y7ls2 | why is it bad to eat cookie dough for risk of salmonella but things like cookie dough bites are ok? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3y7ls2/eli5_why_is_it_bad_to_eat_cookie_dough_for_risk/ | {
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"Any edible \"cookie dough\" products are made without eggs so there is no risk of salmonella since the salmonella bacteria is from the egg. ",
"It's not really bad to eat raw cookie dough.\n\nSource: have been doing it for 50 years, so far so good.",
"Cookie Dough Bites are made with the express intention of being eaten \"raw\" whether this means they're made without eggs, partially cooked, or whatever, the persons preparing the product have taken some steps to eliminate the danger posed by salmonella found in the raw eggs used in normal cookie dough."
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a4iicq | does everyone love pewdiepie or hate pewdiepie? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/a4iicq/eli5_does_everyone_love_pewdiepie_or_hate/ | {
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"A fair number of people don't know he exists, what he does, or anything else about him except he has a stupid name. So indifference rules the day for most of humanity.",
"People that actually watch him know he’s a generally down to Earth guy who despite having a lot of money never flexes, has donated money to charity, and doesn’t seem to be interested in scamming his fans, even though he clearly has had a few slip ups. I think his sense of humor and content is give or take, depending on how much you like memes. Mainstream media hate him though and write slanderous articles on him to get attention. The people who hate him usually believe these articles. The recent love for Pewdiepie in the race against t-series is partly because he is a person and not a corporation. T-series taking that #1 spot represents corporations being first on the platform, and personalities taking a back seat, which many people including myself find unappealing."
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37w9sl | how in the world do we know that stars undergo proton-proton fusion when the nearest star is 93 million miles away? | All we really have is telescopes, so how can we be certain? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/37w9sl/eli5_how_in_the_world_do_we_know_that_stars/ | {
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"_URL_0_\n\n > At the time there were doubts about whether the proton–proton cycle described the processes in the Sun, but more recent measurements of the Sun's core temperature and luminosity show that it does.\n\nWe have more than just telescopes to observe the sun. Using other measurements, enough evidence was collected to corroborate the theory.",
"This was actually an active problem in physics until only a few years ago.\n\nThe classic p-p fusion model for the Sun that was generally assumed to power the sun had one major issue. For models of the Sun to be correct, a certain rate of fusion is required - a certain amount of p-p reactions needs to take place in order to produce the temperature and luminosity seen.\n\np-p fusion, the reaction produces produces electron neutrinos. But when the numbers of electron neutrinos were detected, they were smaller than expected. Fortunately, this issue was resolved as neutrinos can oscillate between different types - when these were observed, the discrepancy vanished.\n\nNeutrinos provide one of the best methods of verifying the mechanism by which the sun heats.\n\nOther methods have been used - observing the fluctuations across the surface of the sun and measuring the spectral structure of the light emitted has also proved useful.\n\n[This article contains a good overview of the issue.](_URL_0_)",
"Great question. \n \nFirst of all, there's a ton of light coming out of stars. Like, really a lot. So much that we can see it billions of miles away. So that's a fairly big hint that there might be fusion going on. \n \nThat's also a really obvious, unsatisfying answer. \n \nMoving on, we add a prism to our telescope. This is a device that spreads out light into its parts -- you've probably seen one making rainbows on the cover of [a famous record album](_URL_1_). \n \nOk, but this is a really high-quality prism, and you're going to do this in a really dark room. What you end up seeing is a rainbow with little black lines in it. Those lines are how we can tell what stars are made of. (If you want to dive into wikipedia, start here: _URL_0_). You can think of it as a fingerprint for elements -- if you make an element (say, hydrogen or helium) emit light, you get a pattern of lines that can only come from that element. \n \nRight, so now we know 1) that the star is emitting light and 2) that it's made of mostly hydrogen and helium. \n\nAt this point we can say hmm, we have a lot of hydrogen sitting around emitting light, and a lot of helium kicking around too -- and we can realize that when you smash two hydrogens together, we get helium and a lot of energy out... At this point, we're pretty sure that proton-proton fusion is occurring. \n\nAdd to this that (again with just the telescopes) we can see how big the sun is, and we can work out that gravity exists. So now we're also pretty sure huge amounts of hydrogen and helium are getting crushed together -- giving you conditions that are great for starting fusion. In fact, you might start to ask yourself how come such a massive amount of hydrogen in one place doesn't collapse down into some sort of solid, or maybe a black hole? It's almost like something is pushing outward from the center of the sun to keep that collapse from happening... some sort of really energetic reaction must be happening in there... oh, right. Fusion. \n \nTo be REALLY sure, we do need more than telescopes. With a particle accelerator, we can do experiments here on Earth to see what happens when we smash protons together, and we can see if that matches pretty well with what we're seeing from our sun. (short version -- it does). We then can compare the sun with the stars, and we have a lot of excellent evidence to say yeah, the protons we smashed together here gave us the same sort of photons, helium atoms, neutrinos and other particles that we're seeing pour out of the sun on a daily basis. \n \nSo in short, once you know what fusion is, you can be *pretty* sure it's what's happening in the sun and the visible stars, all with just your eyes and a few bits of precisely polished glass. \n \nTo be *absolutely* sure, you've got to try fusion yourself! (Not recommended at home)"
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3ij3t7 | why people squint when they are angry. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3ij3t7/eli5_why_people_squint_when_they_are_angry/ | {
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"They are locking onto their target, so that there is no mistake where their anger is directed. Furrowing the brows also contributes to the narrowing of the eyes, and it is a way to show one is upset. "
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85ytw9 | what gives acid a burning property like sulfuric acid? why doesnt vinegar or lemon juice "burn"? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/85ytw9/eli5_what_gives_acid_a_burning_property_like/ | {
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"They do. The acid in lemon juice and vinegar can trigger the same chemical reactions as sulfuric acid, but they're much weaker and the reactions aren't nearly as intense. Lemon juice can be used to make a battery, can cause mild burns on sensitive parts of your skin, and can even \"cook\" food in ways very similar to weak sulfuric acid.\n\nThe sour taste of lemons and vinegar is a sign of the acid in them. I accidentally got a taste of dilute sulfuric acid once: it tasted like the sourest lemon you could possibly imagine. (Do not try this at home, obv.)",
"Acids (and their chemical antitheses, \"bases\") have their strength measured in a scale called pH (that's labelled correctly). pH stands for \"potential of Hydrogen\", which means how aggressively the acid will work to take or acquire a hydrogen atom from a substance it comes in contact with, or how likely to donate one, in the case of an alkaline solution. (Alkaline is the technical name for a \"base\".)\n\nThe pH scale reads from 14 (for the strongest bases, such as chlorine bleach) to 0 (for the strongest acids). \n\nIn general, as others have noted, citric acid (lemon juice) is less aggressively acidic than battery acid, sulfuric or hydrochloric acid, to name some of the more potent ones that we may encounter. (Most of the common things that we drink are mildly acidic, including milk and orange juice. Plain tap water generally has a \"slightly acid\" reading - just below 7 on the pH scale, and your blood has a \"slightly alkaline\" reading, just above 7. A pH of 7 is absolute neutrality, neither acid nor alkaline. Lemon juice and vinegar are generally around pH 2 or a little higher - still plenty acidic, but not as strong as the strongest acids.)\n\nHave a look at the Wikipedia entry for pH for more understanding and a visual representation of some common pH values: _URL_0_"
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3b6vpf | what are the benefits of communism? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3b6vpf/eli5_what_are_the_benefits_of_communism/ | {
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"The basic idea is that everyone works as hard and as smart as they can to make sure the nation as a whole is the best it can be. With this comes ideas like taking the concept \"all men are created equal\" seriously, provides healthcare, housing, food and work for all. \n\nAs you can see these ideals sound really nice, and should things like bureaucratic inefficiencies and basic human greed not exist, would work beautifully. Turns out working your hardest for the betterment of all becomes a difficult idea for most people, especially once \"all\" becomes millions of people.",
" Communism has never happened in a country where it was meant to. However, two of the larger \"communist\" countries, they have became major world powers. Infrastructure and military both can be increased easier than on capitalist countries because these are both made by governments, and if a government pays everyone's wages then these are valid things to build.\n\nAlso, guaranteed work and pay is a benefit I suppose.\n\nI'm not a communist but I think it can be a creative force at its inception before it folds on itself due to the lack of economic growth.",
"In the Soviet Union, communism had a couple revolutionary social changes considering it was the '30-40s.\n\nAbolishment of religion, Communism is athiest. Stalin would later bring churches back during the german invasion to raise morale.\n\nEquality of all ethnic groups, Communism considers all people to be part of a workers group. This played out in the Soviet Union by purposefully mixing caucasians with mongolians and more arabic peoples all drawn from the soviet empire into the same army groups. The British, by contrast, would group all their Indians together as one coherent unit, same with African troops or any other colonial unit. I have no idea how much equality there was among higher ranks however...\n\nEquality for women, the Soviet Union allowed women to take jobs on an unprecedented scale considering the time period, there was an entire bomber unit made up of women during ww2 for example.",
"None of the modern states that have called themselves communist really were. Indeed \"communist state\" is an oxymoron. Real communism is a stateless society.\n\nHowever some tribes in human history--like some Native American tribes--HAVE lived in societies that were very close to being actual, for-real communism.\n\nThey lived in societies where the *point* of the group was the *welfare of the group,* not how much wealth one guy could accumulate at the expense of his fellows. Most property was communal. An individual might have a few personal possessions, but that wasn't considered the point of life, to accumulate stuff. The chief was not a dictator, just a well-respected Lead Speaker in councils. It's important to grasp that people weren't FORCED to share, that's simply the way they lived, they way they thought was perfectly normal.\n\nLike any other group of humans, there were bad apples, people who were lazy or didn't want to be bothered with working for the betterment of the tribe. These people would always have a place to sleep and food to eat, but they would be shunned socially by the tribe.\n\nIt's doubtful if real communism could exist in a very large, industrialized society, and it *certainly* can't exist (except as a nightmarish dictatorship--and there's that \"stateless\" thing again) in any group where people still think that owning more stuff than others is the important thing in life.\n\nA more realistic alternative for modern, industrial society is a modified form of socialism, where the government and the society value the good of the society in general over the greed of individuals. You don't need to resort to any wild Marxist ideas of \"the people own the means of production\" or anything, as long as the law keeps a short leash on capitalism, and makes it work for the society instead of the individual.\n\nSome European nations are moving towards this, and they will wind up much better off for it.\n",
"First of all, Communism is a term describing a classless, moneyless society with common ownership of the economy.\n\nThe first major upside is the equality which is and has been the aim of the communist movement. Women, LGBT-people and racially discriminated against groups.\n\nThe common ownership of the economy creates a stable and just economy where your work and struggle pays off, regardeless of your wealth or socio-economic group. We can focus on promoting enviromentally fiendly and more usefull products whilst maintaining a fairer distribution and keeping the workdays as low as possible.\n\nRidding ourselves of the profit motive is said to lower innovation. Here I would claim the contrary, capitalism hinders innovation when it is not the most profitable solution or way of action. Capitalism supresses idea that cannot bring profit and its market systems forces companies to produce cheaper goods to keep up.\n\nRunning the economy democratically and in the interests of the population instead of in the interests of private capitalists would be the greatest thing ever pretty much.",
"Some of the problems with the answers here don't acknowledge that Communism is not one single ideology, but rather a huge umbrella of ideologies which all attempt to explain how a Socialist and Communist society would develop and be run. Some people have already mentioned that a 'Communist state' has never existed, which is technically true (and explained later). In the interests of disclosure, I don't consider myself a Socialist, although I do consider myself left wing, and over on /r/mhoc the left wing Green Party (of which I am a member) are in coalition with the Labour (social democrats), Socialist, and Communist parties, so i'm exposed to a fair amount of this. I suppose you could consider this answer more ELI12.\n\nHonestly it's difficult to talk about what the 'benefits of communism' are without talking about the history of it, so without further adieu:\n\n**Background**\n\nSo the industrial revolutions happen and a lot of workers are fed up with the poor conditions forced upon them - stuff like child labour, poor wages, poor working hours, zero social mobility (no way up the 'career ladder'). They realise that, without the workers, the factory owners in industrialised countries cannot make money. The Trade Union is popularised such that the workers have collective bargaining powers.\n\nIn 1848, two blokes called [Marx](_URL_35_) and [Engels](_URL_32_) write the Communist Manifesto. The Communist Manifesto has a bunch of concepts in which i'm not going to bother talking about, but includes the theory of [historical materialism](_URL_6_). This theory suggests that capitalism will give way to socialism (which is loosely defined as a system in which there is worker ownership of the means of production, possibly through a state proxy - more on that later), which will eventually lead to a situation where the state 'withers away' to give communism (which is loosely defined as a system in which there is common ownership of the means of production). It is important to note that there is hence a difference between Communism (referring to the Marxist concept where the state withers away), Communism (referring to socialist states attempting to achieve Communism), and Communists (who attempt to achieve Communism via Socialism or other means). The works of Marx develop into the distinct ideology of [Marxism](_URL_13_).\n\nWithin the Communist Manifesto, they also talk about the idea of the 'vanguard party'. A guy called [Vladimir Lenin](_URL_30_), a communist revolutionary, uses the idea of the vanguard party in order to overthow the Russian Tsars (kings) with the Bolsheviks (an organisation of workers), and instill a [Dictatorship of the Proletariat](_URL_14_) - a form of socialist state in which the workers are the ruling class, instead of the 'bourgoisie', who are defined as those who exploit the labour of the working class for their own personal gain. The idea of the vanguard party, and creation of the dictatorship of the proletariat, are essential part of [Leninism](_URL_21_), which is sometimes called [Marxism-Leninism](_URL_17_), to show credit to the original. Marxism-Leninism is adopted as the official ideology of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.\n\nMassive industrialisation of what was mostly agrarian Russia happens under the new socialist state, which i'll come back to later. Eventually Lenin has multiple strokes and is replaced by a guy called [Joseph Stalin](_URL_2_). Now Stalin was controversial even at the time, with Lenin not even wanting him as General Secretary (de facto 'Leader') of the Communist Party. Amongst those opposed to Stalin was [Leon Trotsky](_URL_23_). Trotsky was one of the revolutionaries and original bolsheviks, who was extremely critical of Stalin and was eventually killed during the [Great Purge](_URL_25_). Trotsky hated the cult of personality around Stalin and the increasing bureaucracy within the Soviet Union, but he also differed strongly on the concept of Revolution.\n\nA significant amount of Communist ideology is with regards to Revolution as a means of liberating workers, who are perceived to be oppressed under capitalism. Trotsky believed in [Permanent Revolution](_URL_31_), which was worldwide and fast acting, whereas Stalin believed in [Socialism in One Country](_URL_36_), which can be boiled down to 'Socialist revolutions haven't happened in other countries, so let's just massively industrialise Russia so that she can compete with the Western nations.' Socialism in One Country was extremely controversial, with many individuals such as Trotsky believing that it was against the whole point of Marx's works in the first place. It remains now a fundamental tenet of [Stalinism](_URL_16_), along with a centralised state (an accumulation of power within the government), [collectivisation of agriculture](_URL_19_), and the idea that Communist parties in other countries were subordinate to the Russian Communist party. Again, Stalinism is sometimes referred to as [Marxism-Leninism-Stalinism](_URL_4_).\n\nMeanwhile, the Chinese have been having a civil war, which culminates in their own [revolution](_URL_20_), which puts [Mao Zedong](_URL_9_) into power of the People's Republic of China, which also had Marxism-Leninism as official ideology. Mao had several ideas about how society should be run, including the [Mass Line](_URL_24_) (which is epitomised by the phrase 'From the masses, to the masses'), and a focus on agrarian socialism, instead of the industrialised socialism seen previously. Mao is mostly known in western society for the [Great Leap Forward](_URL_11_) (which caused the [Great Chinese Famine](_URL_26_), but also rapidly and massively expanded China's industry) and the [Cultural Revolution](_URL_22_). [Maoism](_URL_10_) in general is considered very anti-revisionist (which is analogous to 'orthodox') - the Cultural Revolution involved a lot of purging through 'violent class struggle' of people considered to be trying to reimplement capitalism. These people were classified as revisionists. A power struggle between Khrushchev, Stalin's successor (who was undergoing a [De-Stalinisation program](_URL_7_))and Mao (who wanted China to be the leaders of world communism, and who believed Krushchev was appeasing the West) culminated in the [Sino-Soviet Split](_URL_29_).\n\nEventually Mao dies and [Deng Xiaoping](_URL_33_) takes command in 1976. Deng was actually not massively popular with Mao (and in fact had been purged twice under the Cultural Revolution), but had managed to outmanoeuvre his opponents. Deng was much more open than his predecessor, creating new diplomatic links with the West, and implementing economic reforms under names such as [Socialism with Chinese Characteristics](_URL_0_), which essentially said that limited capitalism was essential for China to transition from the 'first stage' of Socialism. Deng's reforms are a major factor in how China operates today - he was actually very critical of Mao, and convinced the country of the dangers of 'ultra leftism'.\n\nVarious other Communist parties had varying degrees of success. [Josip Tito](_URL_1_), General Secretary in Yugoslavia, had his own brand of [Titoism](_URL_3_), and is seen by many today as an example of 'the benevolent dictator'. [Ho Chi Minh](_URL_34_) of Vietnam, [Enver Hoxha](_URL_15_) of Albania, and [Kim Il Sung](_URL_8_) of North Korea all had their own opinions on how to apply Marxism-Leninism to the countries they ruled.\n\nFinally, fast fowarding to 1985, [Mikhail Gorbachev](_URL_18_) takes up the mantle of Gen Sec of the Soviet Union. His own reforms include [glasnost](_URL_27_) 'opening' (which generally involves a strengthening of civil liberties, including freedom of speech) and [perestroika](_URL_28_) 'restructuring' (which involved restructuring the Soviet Union to better suit the people, including some market reforms, and more transparency in government). However, glasnost and perestroika are thought to have exacerbated nationalistic tensions in the individual Soviet states (which had until then been kept in check by Moscow), which eventually lead to the downfall of the union.\n\nFour countries with [ruling Communist parties](_URL_12_) now remain - China, Cuba, Laos, and Vietnam. North Korea is called 'communist' in colloquial use, but officially shrugged off Marxism-Leninism in favour of [Juche](_URL_5_), Kim Il-Sung's ideology, which isn't really particularly Communist at all. \n\n(See next comment)"
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"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_Revolution",
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leon_Trotsky",
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_line",
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Purge",
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Chinese_Famine",
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glasnost",
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perestroika",
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sino-Soviet_split",
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vladimir_Lenin",
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permanent_revolution#.27Permanent_revolution.27_according_to_Trotsky",
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedrich_Engels",
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deng_Xiaoping",
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ho_Chi_Minh",
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Marx",
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialism_in_One_Country"
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2s8gkq | why can't we treat deseases like depression with happiness hormones like dopamin? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2s8gkq/eli5_why_cant_we_treat_deseases_like_depression/ | {
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"Because too much dopamine causes psychosis (as seen in people who overdose on levodopa, a dopamine drug used to treat parkinsons). And giving people regular doses of dopamine have no beneficial effect on mood--as you must send the dopamine directly into the pleasure centers of the brain for it to work--and pills can't do that. ",
"We do. Stimulants like Adderall work on dopamine. There is also Wellbutrin (Dopamine and Norepinephrine) and MAOIs (Serotonin, Dopamine, and Norepinephrine). Serotonin, Dopamine, and Norepinephrine are the neurotransmitters commonly linked with depression. It really depends on which one an individual is low on that's causing the depressive systems.",
"Dopamine isn't just a happiness hormone. It's also a neurotransmitter AND a hormone. It affects everything from motor control to feeling horny to feeling full after a good meal. Included in this huge umbrella is the \"reward\" system which correlates to happiness. \n\nDumping a whole bunch of dopamine on a depressed person doesn't work because dopamine has more than one function. Having a huge amount of dopamine causes more harm than good. Moreover, the body regulates itself when it feels like there is an overabundance of a certain neurotransmitter or hormone. It can make cells less responsive or secrete less of the hormone. \n\nLike Gemmabeta said, large doses will also cause psychosis. Drugs that are abused frequently cause increases in dopamine. Part of what makes these drugs addictive is when the body compensates to larger than normal levels of dopamine ...it does this by making less natural dopamine (so then when the high wears off the person has very low dopamine levels and takes the drug again to instantly feel better). ",
"There are complex reasons why people are depressed. Some might have low dopamine levels, but others have other reasons for being depressed, so more dopamine won't help them. It would be like giving water to someone who is starving to death. Their problem isn't a lack of water, it's a lack of food. ",
"Because the brain's chemical systems are much more complicated than that. There ARE medications that increase dopamine production in your brain, and these are sometimes effective.\n\nThe first target is usually serotonin; you take medications that slow down how fast you use it up (though new research suggests that these drugs - SSRIs - might actually work a different way). This helps some people with depression, but not all. If they don't work, then you have to try different drugs that work on different chemicals, or more than one.\n\nCommon drugs that increase dopamine tend to be abusable, which is another reason they aren't prescribed often. Which is a shame because they can be a useful tool in treating depression. At least in the USA, the more street value a med has, the tougher it is to get legally - even if you absolutely need it.\n\nBut brain chemistry is a complicated mess, nobody really understands it well, and your brain is a difficult organ to get medication into. Tinker with one transmitter and end up with side effects, or depleting something else, or... it's just really tricky at best."
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5swfft | why is a large propane oven with 6 burners safe to use indoors while a small propane camp grill is not? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5swfft/eli5_why_is_a_large_propane_oven_with_6_burners/ | {
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"Small camp grills are portable and cheap. They more likely have poorer burning of the propane or less oxygen supply built in. \n\nIf you completely burn propane you get carbon dioxide and water. In very large amounts carbon dioxide will suffocate you but its unlikely to build up much. \nHowever incomplete burning makes carbon monoxide. This lovely compound in small amounts attaches itself permanently to the molecules that carry oxygen around your body, and its the small amounts made in camp burners that can cause issues in poorer ventilated areas."
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68uoct | how are things like steel cables and wires possible when steel normally bends permanently? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/68uoct/eli5_how_are_things_like_steel_cables_and_wires/ | {
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"So there are a few different things in play. Yes, steel can bend, but it does not bend permanently. You can bend it back, but it will not have the same structural integrity as before. With steel cables you take lots of small wires and twist them around one another, just like ropes, until you are evenly distributing the stress on the individual wires. \n\nSometimes you want a wire because it is more malleable, but will have enough integrity for the desired task like holding two things together. While other times you want steel beams because they are structured for holding something up and supporting it."
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17aq0o | who owns airports and how do they generate money | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/17aq0o/eli5_who_owns_airports_and_how_do_they_generate/ | {
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"The larger airports are owned and operated by public agencies, which in turn are owned by state or local governments. Revenue is generated from a variety of sources: taxes on airfares, landing fees, selling gate rights, concessions (retail space rental and percentage of revenue), parking, and other stuff. Very few taxpayer dollars go to airports or airlines, it's mostly funded by the users.",
"I asked my dad this same question last week as he is a VP of maintenance at a large airport. The airports may be municipally owned (owned by the city that has the airport) or may be financed by bonds (that is the airport borrows the money from the city and pays it back in regular installments.)\n\nAirports make most of their money, not by raping the passengers on the cost of a cheeseburger, but by landing fees. These fees are set based on the landing weight of the aircraft. There are charts that show what the expected landing weight of a particular model of aircraft is based upon the number of passengers. The contract for per pound weight is negotiated for several years out and can be renegotiated if a need arises. \n\nThe airport, for obvious reasons wants to get the per pound weight as high as it can. The airlines want it to be low. Set the rate too low, and the airport loses money. Set the rate too high, and the airlines will land somewhere else. \n\nAirports generally don't want aircraft to park at the airport, as this takes up space that could be better used by planes taking off and landing, however some of the larger airports may have some maintenance bays (hangers) that the aircraft can lease while services are being performed. \n\nOne other thing I learned that I found fascinating is that airlines do not buy the aircraft they operate. They lease the aircraft from leasing agencies and frequently the aircraft will change hands. The airline will pay to have the aircraft repainted, renumbered, and even the seats changed to match the color scheme of the new ~~lessor~~ lessee. \n\nEdit: typo",
"Found this for you (pertains to US airports) - _URL_0_\n\n > Most U.S. commercial service airports are typically owned by local or state governments, either directly or through an authority (a quasi-governmental body established to operate the airport). While Congress established a \"privatization program\" in 1997 under which the airport ownership would be transferred to a non-governmental entity, no airports currently participate in this program. However, The Branson Airport (in Missouri) became the first privately financed and operated commercial service airport in the United States when it opened in May, 2009.",
"It sounds like a lot of people are talking about how large commercial airports make money. What about the small municipal airports that don't have control towers and can't land big planes. As I understand it, it's free to land non-commercial flights at most airports. How do the little guys make money, or does the county or city residents eat it?\n\nJust for clarification, I'm not talking about Farmer Joe's private strip of grass.",
"My local airport is mostly owned by the pension fund of the teachers of Ontario. Which surprised me as it's in rural UK.\nAnyhoo, the money comes from those exta \"taxes\" that you have to pay on top of the flight cost.",
"In Sydney the airport is owned by a private corporation. That corporation has a 99-year lease from the government. \n\nWeirdly, one source of income is fining airlines whose planes arrive too late or too early. ",
"I used to charter air planes for a living and airports are quite able to be owned by multiple parties. An FBO (Fixed Base Operator) owns, or at least rents, a portion of an airfield. An FBO will give a chartered plane a place to fuel and park and load ect. They also sell the fuel in addition to charging for their services parking the plane. They can provide de-iceing services if needed. They take turns with the commercial planes when using the runway and pay for their turns individually. They have to wait in line and usually get scrubbed by larger airlines so FBO's like to set up in smaller airports but they are everywhere. ",
"What about a major airline owing an airport? This would be too expensive I'd imagine, but has it been tried?",
"I was CTO of a company that had an awful lot to do with working out how airports made money, because we needed to work out how much they would charge our customers (business jet operators).\n\nThey are owned by local government bodies, private companies, and every other organisation you can imagine. They are *very* money-oriented once you get above the small airfields intended for light aircraft.\n\nHow they make their money varies dramatically.\n\nVery small airfields will actually make most of their money from hangarage: owners of light aircraft will pay them a rental fee to keep their aircraft there when they're not using them.\n\nLarger airports make most of their money from landing fees (or takeoff fees at two European airfields), and parking fees - a fee for an aircraft to be on the ground. \n\nThe list of extra charges they make to aircraft owners is comprehensive: to park a B737 at a gate at Heathrow might cost £150, but if you want to park it on the apron away from a gate it's free. Except you then need to bus your passengers to/from the terminal. And the bus costs £150. Go figure.\n\nThere are then \"mandatory optional\" services. You need to empty the toilets? Of course you do. But that's an optional extra. You need to de-ice the aircraft? Well there's a couple of grand extra please. You want to park the aircraft in a hangar overnight to avoid needing to de-ice? That's a couple of grand extra as well.\n\nAdd in the middle-men known as \"handling agents\" and the fees can get quite substantial. A substantial part of the cost of flying a business jet around is landing and handling fees - fuel and crew costs would often be less than half the cost-base for some of our customers, espcially if flying into \"City\" airports in Europe (look up the parking fees at London City if you want a laugh - it would be cheaper to overnight by buying your plane a floor of the Ritz if it were practical).\n\nThe charges themselves then can depend on multiple variables: time of arrival, time of departure, day of week of each, whether it's a public holiday, where you are inbound from, where you are outbound to, and so on. \n\nThe most important variable though is an aircraft's Maximum Takeoff Weight (MTOW) for most airports, in that you will pay $x/kg of an aircraft's MTOW adjusted for time of day and so on.\n\nThen there is the fire category needed: depending on the length and width of the fuselage, there is a minimum number of fire engines of certain types required for you to operate the aircraft, and some airfields have a lower category by default and you need to pay extra for an upgrade, again that can be determined by time of day, day of week, etc.\n\nThen there are parking fees that can be determined by length of aircraft, wingspan or area (length x wingspan).\n\nSome airports are obsessed with noise. We did a lot of work on this, because it's hard. Every airframe and engine combination has a type certificate with a noise rating. This corresponds to some international standards that airports can use, or they may actually measure how much noise the aircraft makes on approach, landing, taxiiing, takeoff, etc. IIRC, it's Vienna who then have a ridiculous forumla you need to put these numbers through in order to work out a weighting you multiply by the aircraft's MTOW and then use a lookup table to determine how much you pay.\n\nHeathrow for example doesn't have a landing fee based on MTOW which is very, very unusual. All of their charges for landing are based on noise. In theory, a glider would pay nothing in landing fees. They would however get stiffed on handling fees, parking, etc.\n\nSo the short answer is it's very complex, and the company I was working for spent several years mapping it all out, and as such is now worth a lot of money. But they basically make money from owners of aircraft paying them big piles of cash based on a multitude of variables that are almost endless.\n\nIf you have any questions, I'll do my best to answer them but I'm constrained by some commercial confidentiality clauses in my last set of contracts.\n\n**EDIT:** I've just thought of an example I experienced that might explain some of the detail better.\n\nI used to live in Manchester and commute to London every Monday morning, stay in a hotel and then go back Friday night. Monday mornings it was cheaper/easier for me to fly down from MAN to LGW (or EGCC to EGKK if you're in the industry) on a BA flight.\n\nOne morning, Gatwick was very foggy. We were told we were diverting to Jersey because we couldn't land at Gatwick.\n\nI sat there furious, knowing this was a lie, and was a purely economical decision. Because I knew how airports made their money, and because I knew something about flying, I knew the following:\n\n1. The plane *could* land at Gatwick. It had an ILS autoland that could get us down in a bowl of soup if it had to.\n2. The plane could *not* take off at Gatwick. Once it was down, it was down until the fog lifted.\n3. If the plane went into Gatwick on schedule it would be parked at a gate for a long time. I didn't have the handling agent fees for a B737, but I had an idea that based on the B737's MTOW that a delayed turnaround would cost thousands of pounds\n4. Jet fuel in Jersey is really cheap. Like, *really* cheap\n5. Landing fees at Jersey for a B737 are quite low, and if passengers don't need to use the terminal, handling fees would be near non-existent. Also, parking is expensive, but not as expensive as Gatwick.\n\nTherefore instead of landing at Gatwick and me getting to work on time, they flew us down to Jersey, brimmed the tanks with cheap fuel and then took off again, burned some of the fuel off over the South coast and then went into land at Gatwick about 3-4 hours later than originally planned. This was done because it was cheaper than just going straight into Gatwick and being hit with big parking fees.\n\nThis obviously isn't the case for all weather diverts, but it was pretty obvious it was the case here. I was the only person on the flight who probably realised it and I was the last person off the plane. As I walked out the pilot was at the cockpit door and I just said \"nice way to save parking fees, that\". He just looked guilty.",
"Melbourne airport: owned by Australia Pacific Airports Corporation Limited. \n\nRevenue comes from car parking. [Seriously](_URL_0_), it's 93% profit.\n\n(The alternatives are a $50 taxi or $17 privately-operated bus. We'd love a rail link, really we would.)",
"[The Biggest Company You've Never Heard Of](_URL_0_)"
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a666wq | why are humans so adaptable in terms of habitat? | What enables humans to live almost anywhere in the world, physiologically? I know that mentally, we have creativity and logic, but how to we deal with so many harsh conditions in terms of environment? There are very few mammals that can live in the hottest, coldest, driest, and rainiest parts of the world all at once as a species. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/a666wq/eli5_why_are_humans_so_adaptable_in_terms_of/ | {
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"We develop tools to deal with different conditions, such as clothing and shelter. This allows us to expand our range beyond situations suitable for us naked. Before that, we had good adaptations for dealing with hot climates, such as our ability to sweat, but couldn't exploit the full range we do with tool use. ",
"Physiologically, nothing. If you stuck a naked human in the middle of the arctic, or the middle of the desert, without access to tools and shelter, they would be dead very quickly. What allows us to survive in the places we do is our mental capacity. It's the ability to make and carry shelter, tools, weapons, fire, etc. \n\nOur language, and shared knowledge was also extremely important in settling over the entire world. We have access to the knowledge of all the humans that came before us. That's completely unique in the biological history of the earth. An early human figuring out how to make a spear means nothing historically if he or she cannot share that knowledge with other humans. So because of language and writing, somewhere, sometime, someone figured out how to make a fire, therefore I know how to make a fire, despite being separated by millions of years."
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dkm4lr | how do tech companies manage large amounts of code? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/dkm4lr/eli5_how_do_tech_companies_manage_large_amounts/ | {
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"by alot of modularization. your team's code doesn't touch my code because we don't work on the same modules. just like someone from the clothing dept doesn't go to the meat dept and start butchering meat. if your code needs to run something from my module, then you will do it using the specific functionality that my module has implemented and exposed and given access for you to use. the interfaces between modules are documented in architecture and those are also compartmentalized. system A talking to system B doesn't use same interface as system B talking to system C. \n\nyou do audits by auditing each module. by building or purchasing tools or hiring consultants to audit each module. and especially in modern software systems, the modules won't even be in the same programming languages. some will be in .net, some in java, some in python, some in javascript, some in scala, some in R. again..you break down into modules and do individual tasks.",
"Firstly, they use version control systems to manage all the code. Some choose a \"monolithic\" repository with all the code, others choose a \"sharded\" repository setup with different repositories for various subsystems. Each has various benefits and detriments. Ontop of those repositories will be some type of deployment tooling that can build and package the one or more repositories into the final products that get deployed on servers or shipped out to customers.\n\nInside the teams, there's always going to be a split of owership. Various teams will be in charge of various subsets of directories within a given repository. Usually there's both unit and integration tests setup to make sure that each of these teams isn't breaking the assumptions of anyone that depends on their work. Thus at submit time, your change could be blocked because it potentially breaks someone else's code.\n\nIn the largest companies there's usually a team in charge of tools and code health. They'll find and fix vulnerabilities, perform mass upgrades of libraries and other types of cleanup that affect all the code at the company. They rely on each team having their own tests setup, so that possible breakages can be found long before the changes are forced upon the team. (eg. updating the version of Java your company uses can take a long time, as some code may not work on the new version and the fixes have to be farmed out to the relevant teams)",
" > do software engineers each manage their respective part of the puzzle\n\nThis. We know our \"part\" of it. We know what it dose, and how our part accepts and outputs data. We also document that so if some other group needs to interact with our part of the software they can. Even if they have no clue how our part actually works.\nThis is called abstraction. This allows other software engineers to use my part of the software as a magic black box. \n\nFor example I work with http requests all the time. A http request is actually a fairly complex beast, but I don't have to worry about that. I use a requests library which has all the code to actually make the request. I just enter the address and any information I need to send. The the requests library takes my data and creates an actual http request with it. How? I don't know and I don't have to know.\n\nFor very large pieces of software it is not possible for one person or a small group to know how everything works. You instead see it a collection of these black boxes. Were you know that each box dose a certain thing even though you don't know how it dose it.",
"The first thing they do is break it down into manageable pieces called modules. An eCommerce site might have an inventory module, a search module, an account management module, a payment module, etc. The payment module might be broken down into submodules, credit card, credit, PayPal, voucher, commercial, retail, internal, etc. There might also be orthogonal modules called libraries, that control more low-level things, like database access or web display. Different developers will be responsible for different modules, ideally, there will be some overlap so no module will only have one developer supporting it.\n\nAfter that, you have configuration management, which consists of specialized tools that manage the code, and usually engineers dedicated to that task alone. Developers keep their code in a repository that tracks changes and keeps a version history, and the CM staff takes that code from the repository, combines it into the application, and makes the application available to developers and testers."
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9amrk8 | why does your ear ache when your tooth/teeth are in pain? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9amrk8/eli5_why_does_your_ear_ache_when_your_toothteeth/ | {
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"The body isn't like super well designed, so the nerve fibres that sense pain from your teeth will travel up towards your brain and connect with nerve fibres that come from your ear. Sometimes when you get tooth pain, the pain is 'referred' to the ear, meaning the brain gets tricked into thinking that the pain also comes from the ear, so it radiates there. ",
"What Mr. Pineapple said. \n\nThe other possibility is related to why your teeth hurt. If you have a sinus infection causing pressure and pain in your teeth, you likely have drainage that can be blocking your eustachian tubes (little tubes that connect your middle ear to your throat, for a tdlr version). When these get blocked, it is really hard for your body to equalize the pressure in your ear, which can cause pain. \n\nEdited because auto correct "
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cea1gf | speed cameras | I understand the actual physics behind the measurement of speed of an approaching object I'm just curious as to how the software/hardware works, what happens if 5 speeding cars come at once? How/when does the camera take a photo and of what? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/cea1gf/eli5_speed_cameras/ | {
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"I don’t know where you live, but where I live, the most lanes a speed camera will cover, is two (To my knowledge) - On motorways, they have an array of speed cameras; one camera per lane.\n\nAlso, I believe most speed cameras use number plate recognition, to identify which car is the speeding vehicle.\n\nI’m not sure how they’re able to discriminate on two-lane roads, such as dual-carriageways, but when it comes to roads with anymore lanes, they use more than one camera. I live in the UK, so this might not apply to you though. Please let me know if this answers your question"
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1twc3a | if mormons are often thought as very nice and caring people, why are they generally talked about as crazy? | I've noticed that a lot of media portrays mormons as nice people. Sometimes overly so, and I was just wondering if they really are like that, why do people talk about them as if they're weird or crazy?
Like how for example if some celebrity was a Mormon, the common response would be "Oh my god, really?" or something to that effect, where as, if they were a "regular" Christian, the reaction would be more of a couldn't-care-less reaction.
Edit: Added last paragraph | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1twc3a/eli5_if_mormons_are_often_thought_as_very_nice/ | {
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"Religious zealots are often thought of as crazy ",
"Because that is a very nice way to summarize the Mormon faith, nice but crazy.\n\nWhy would someone be judged more harshly for being a Mormon then other religions? Because it is a very specific sub-set (or sub-culture if you would) of Christianity. \n\nThink of it this way. If I tell you I am Christian, then you can only really assume I believe in the divinity of Christ. There are so many Christian faiths out there you cannot even be sure someone who calls themselves a Christian actually goes to church.\n\nBut if I tell you I am Catholic then that is more specific. You can safely assume that I attend church, go to mass, participate in confession, believe in the holy trinity and so on. Simply because Catholicism is a more specific set of faiths.\n\nMormonism is one of the most specific. If someone is a practicing Mormon then they believe in the teachings of Jospeh Smith. Now not to go too deep into but this means belief in things like the concept that when Jesus came to earth he manifested in all nations including pre-Colombus America. Combine that with some more unusual modern practices (magic underwear) and people view the Mormon faith as bit \"crazy\".\n\nBeing Mormon is generally accepted as believing fully in the Mormon faith, which people view as crazy.",
"It's because Mormonism started more recently, we know who started it, we know that he was a convicted con man, and we know that the claims made by the religion about Joseph Smith look exactly like what somebody would be doing if he were making up a story and trying to pretend it's real.\n\nMost religions that the average person is familiar with are quite old. They've been believed by some subset of humanity for so long that it's hard to know how they started. We don't know who physically wrote the old testament. We don't have any direct evidence of Jesus' life. We tend to think that Buddha believed what he was saying and have no reason to suspect otherwise. With time (and nothing to prove them 100% wrong), religions have gained a certain place in society and beliefs have become respected. Many people \"believe in belief\" so to speak. \n\nThat's not quite true with Mormons and Scientologists. We actually know who made both of those religions up. In the case of Mormons, their religious texts were penned by Joseph Smith, a known and convicted con artist. Once you look at the beliefs, they are pretty far out there (although arguably no stranger than most religious beliefs are to outsiders). When he claimed that only God would let him translate the new scriptures, somebody tested him by claiming that the translation was lost and wanted to see if he could reproduce his work. He couldn't. He came up with something similar, but different. \n\nScientologists are in a similar boat, where a science fiction author (who is on record as saying that making up a religion is the best way to make money) wrote a religion that sounds an awful lot like a science fiction novel. \n\n",
"Because Mormons really do tend to be genuinely nice and sweet people. That being said, they believe some really strange stuff, even from a Christian point of view. One of the best things I have seen illustrate this is the song \"I Believe\" from the Book of Mormon musical. In each chorus the main character goes through a list of beliefs. He states things that all Christians believe, then at the end of each section he says something specific to Mormonism.\n\nBy the way, if you haven't heard it, the Book of Mormon is a brilliant musical. It pokes fun at Mormons, but in my opinion has a really sweet message after it is all said and done.\n\n_URL_0_ \n\nEdit: The last chorus is all Mormon beliefs, not general Christian beliefs.",
"[South Park Mormon Episode](_URL_0_)",
"Worst ELI5 responses ever. If you're Jon Snow you probably shouldn't post. I'd respond but I don't know much about Mormons, but I do know that everyone who posted below knows less than me.",
"Some of the finer points made by t_hab are pretty accurate. As a mormon for 15+ years, having converted in my 20's, married in the temple and currently have three children, I can say that I get a 50/50 split of people who think I am crazy and others who are \"meh\".\n\nA few of the other posts talked to specific incidents and give the impression all mormons are the same. That is like saying every catholic priest is a pedophile. I am sure there are some Catholic Priests that do good work, keep their promises/covenants and are shinning examples of what Christ would be.\n\nFaith is an exercise. You think Kolob is crazy, that doesn't even scratch the surface of the nuttiness in mormonism - if that is in fact what you are looking for.... nuttiness.\n\nI think celebrities and average joe's are viewed different because we put such value in being a celebrity - like somehow, being in a celebrity means you are smarter or more worthy or whatever. I can think of a lot of celebrities who are nuts and aren't mormon.... or scientologists.... or whatever.\n\nUsing the South Park episode or the broadway play as a highlevel overview of mormons is like using coles notes to understand shakespere. You might get the gist of it, but you won't get anywhere close to feeling or understanding what it means to be a mormon.\n\nAre there crazy ass mormons? Hell Yes. My ward (local church) seems to be full of lunatics. You should know, we aren't all a bunch of lemmings following Joseph Smith off a cliff.\n\nAs a mormon, I struggle with some parts of my faith. I bet you dollars to dougnuts we can take JW, Catholic, Anglican, Shinto, Buddhist or ANY faith - branch or pure sect - and find a good portion who attend services / \"practice\" their faith - who are in the same boat.\n\nI love reddit. That said, I hate those sub's who are just downright nasty - the horse sex, nasty sex, regular porn, my little pony craziness........ the list goes on. Should we say that everyone on reddit subscribes to spaceclops?\n\nI believe very strongly in what I know. I also believe very strongly that everyone has the right to say, believe whatever is on their mind. I believe in freedom and that means allowing others to say their mind - even if it is some stupid, retarded shite like what Chikens1 said.\n\nAre we misunderstood? No, not completely. We believe in some crazy stuff.\n\nAre we nice on the outside crazy on the inside? This is reddit - every religion is nice on the outside and crazy on the inside.\n\nAnd just for sake of clarity - mormons believe in the entire body of scriptures - not just one narrow view. Old testament and New testament are both in our standard works. Do we think the book of mormon is the most correct? Yes.\n\nIs mormonism all bubblegum rainbows and unicorns? Nope. The massacre in the 1800's bothers me greatly. The revelation about blacks and the priesthood at the height of the civil rights movement? Yep, i have an issue. Prop 8 activity and now that gay rights has overwhelming support and in the last few months the leadership of the church is stating that gays are okay, so long as they don't act sexually on their feelings...... okay. that seems odd.\n\nMitt Romney was not my kind of mormon. I saw right through him at the begining of his campaign and many wards were divided on him.\n\nI hate to ramble on and off topic, but I wanted to put my two cents on your question, add some backfill to give you some idea of who you were dealing with and provide some props to what I believe.\n\nWill you find crazy lunatics in mormonism? No more than any other relgion.\n\nAre we fanatical? If they have a temple recommend - most likely. Even if they don't, they probably are.\n\nIs every mormon - celebrity or otherwise typical of what you will find every mormon to be? God I hope not.\n\nDo we have some dark parts in our past we wish to be kept filled away? Yes. I don't like the answer, but, that's the reality.\n\nWhen I look at the good, the bad and the ugly of the faith I believe - I still believe. That believe is probably comprised of blind faith, pure faith and a dash of hope.\n\nAm I crazy? I sure hope so.",
"Dear OP.\n\nMormons are considered crazy because they are different than the general run of the mill Christians. They are Christians, and define themselves as such. But they also believe in the following things:\n\n*There is other scripture besides the Bible. The Book of Mormon. Mormons say that it was written by ancient prophets who lived in the Americas, and was translated by Joseph Smith by the power of God. Joseph is the founder of Mormonism. Mormons revere Joseph Smith as a modern prophet, but they dont worship him.\n-There are modern prophets. In other words, Mormons believe that God is real, God knows what is going on here on Earth, and He cares enough to speak on the matter. The President of the Mormon Church is their Prophet. As far as I am aware (in my limited understanding at least) the only other Christian Church that makes a similar claim is the Catholic Church.\n\n-Mormons have pretty strict (to some) dietary practices. A practicing Mormon (by practicing i mean one who actually believes and follows their teachings.) does not drink alcohol, does not do any drugs (prescriptions are fine), does not drink coffee. Some interpret this as they cant drink anything caffeine. But caffeine is never outlawed in their beliefs anywhere.\n\n-Mormons have pretty strict laws regarding sexuality. Basically they believe its fine between a married man and his wife. But anything outside of that is a very serious no-no. Emphasis on a man and a woman marriage. Mormons define marriage as being between a man and a woman. Family is a pretty huge deal to them.\n\n-Mormons have a number of cultural practices that set them apart from others. For example:\n\n1. Many (though very far from all) young Mormon men, and some women, between the ages of 18-22ish go preaching their beliefs to people all over the world for 18-24 months. They dont get to choose where they go, the assignment is made by their prophets. Many people find these missionaries annoying. And many people think its strange for young people to go preach.\n\n2. the so-called \"magic-underwear\". First off, if you ask any Mormon about it, they will probably be a little offended. It is roughly analagous to calling a muslim a towel head. Second, they dont actually believe (most of them, anyways) that there is anything magic about their underwear at all. It is a religiously proscribed garment that serves as a symbol for them of promises they have made. Its a symbol, like a flag, or a cross or a crucifix. Mormons just happen to wear theirs. Thats pretty much all it is. \n\n3. someone else on this page said something about Mormon \"secret police\". There is no such thing. But they do like to keep track of each other. And each active member is assigned a few people or families for whom they are responsible to try and be friends with and help out if they can. But there is nobody in the Mormon church who is going to knock on your door in the middle of the night and take you for prison for speaking out against the Prophet or anything like that. You are free to do as you like, they cant stop you.\n\n4. They are a tight knit group. Mormons tend to be a pretty tight community, and they can be pretty damn judgemental of anyone who does not adhere to their standards, kind of like some jewish communities. Honestly its hard to blame them. In their early history they were driven and forced out of their homes from one city and state to another. They eventually came out and settled Salt Lake City because they were forced out everywhere else. The state of Missouri had an extermination order against them at one point. That isn't to say its ok for them to be judgemental, its not, and some of them are very very bad that way, but they have some reason for it.\n\nI could go on. But the basic idea is that people consider Mormons crazy because they are different from what they consider the norm. Mormons have pretty high standards that they are supposed to live up to. And when one of them does not people react stronger than if someone else did the same thing. Mormons have a lot of beliefs that set them apart from other Christians and which are more or less unique to them.\nHaving said that, they do tend to be very friendly people. I have gone on way too long though. And I am going to shut up now. I hope i gave someone a little better idea of an answer to this question.\n*edited for formatting*",
"They're nice, but then use their niceness as an \"in\" to convince you how they can help you with religion/why their take on life is the best way. I have a bunch of friends who are Mormon, awesomely nice, then have tried to convince me I swear too much as god will not love me/let me into heaven and other shit. Then their common belief in getting baptized for other members in their family who aren't Mormon.\n\nSource: I lived in Vegas, a lot of momos.",
"I live near a lot of Mormons and have two of them for best friends and I can say that they are very nice people. In public. In private, it's a whole other world. These are some things I've noticed and noted as crazy while being an outsider and living among them. Take my words with a grain of salt.\n\nBiglefttoe's top 13 oddities of Mormons!\n\nNotice! These are my experiences and opinions! My opinions do not go for all Mormons! Everyone is different! I am not an expert of the religion so PLEASE fact check me!\n\n1. Magic underwear- I'm serious, look it up. It's funny.\n\n2. They're friendly cause they want to save your soul- Every Mormon friend I've ever had has tried to convert me. My best friend likes to leave The Book of Mormon at my place every now and then and refuses to stop. Apparently it's expected of them to try and convert everyone possible, and it's a lot easier when the convert-ee likes you.\n\n3. Holier-than-thou.- They can be very judgmental. I've seen people chatting about how much of a sinner so-and-so is for drinking alcohol while they themselves drinking a beer. I cannot tell you how many times I've seen people duck while in the liquor store because the local preacher is driving by.\n\n4. Doomsday survival buddies.- They are very apocalypse minded, and as far as I'm aware, their religion encourages it. I think they are encouraged to have a years worth of flour and a well. Not sure as to the why.\n\n5. History of Polygamy.- THEY DO NO ENCOURAGE IT TODAY. IT IS LOOKED DOWN UPON. In their history, polygamy WAS (past tense, not current) encouraged and widely practiced. Much less so now. They tend to get really mad when you bring it up though. It's the part of their history they would like to bury, like how Germany wants to forget that Nazi's ever existed.\n\n6. How is baby formed?- They are really encouraged to reproduce quickly. I mean married ASAP and have lots of babies. I could be really wrong on this, but I think it's like have 13 kids and you get your own planet or something. Premarital sex is a major no-no, divorce, not so much. So if you see a couple get married and baby soon after, yeah, it's usually to hide the first one.\n\n7. We're on a mission from God,- and they're not getting the band back together. It's expected (but not required) for all men to go on a Mission (travel and convert people) for 2 years time. They will send you almost anywhere, and technology is forbidden. They can write letters and ride bikes, but no phones. Women can do it as well, but can go for a year and a half instead and tend to get sent to be more like a nun in Salt Lake City (happened to best friend number 2).\n\n8. South Park heaven.-Mormons go to heaven. You a good, kind, and near saintly person? No heaven for you. According to the faith, the only way to get in is to accept Mormon Jesus into your heart. South Park has this as a running joke.\n\n9. Racism!- Was wondering when it was gonna show up. In their book, there were three groups in the war in heaven. Satan, God, and the neutrals. God went with a \"If your not with me, the your against me\" approach and scorched their skin black for not siding with him. Thus black people were created. Black priests weren't allowed until government got involved.\n\n10. What's a Purgatory?- Despite being very easily insulted by being compared to other Christian religions, they know shockingly little of other religions. 9 out of 10 Mormons will not know what Purgatory is. This goes for a lot of religions, but they tend to be pretty open minded about learning about other religions.\n\n11. Sheltered Life- Everyone is a good person! This is how a lot of them view the world and I've seen a lot of them get used by other people for it. They want the perfect world and are woefully under prepared for the real deal.\n\n12. And so it came to pass- This line is like a joke to them. Their holy book uses this so often. A theory is their founder wanted to make his writing sound more bible-like so he did this a lot.\n\n13. It's like a mirror!- Despite the protests of both sides, Mormons and Christians are really similar. They both see things about the other and judge them for it only to not realize their own religion encourages the same thing. Thus why Mormons are shocked when someone nice isn't Mormon, and a Christian is shocked when they learn someone else is Mormon. This falls back into the \"Holier-than-thou\" bit again.\n\nOnce again these are my experiences and opinions. Hope this helped you to understand!\n\nEdit: formatting is not playing nice."
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4jjc6r | can someone explain what is happening in this video and if it is legal? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4jjc6r/eli5_can_someone_explain_what_is_happening_in/ | {
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"when an officer tells you to \"don't go anywhere, what's your name\" they'r performing a terry stop. they're not sure if you committed a crime but they have reason to believe so and they're temporarily detaining you to investigate/confirm. you are not free to leave. a terry stops ends in one of two ways: they find good cause and arrest you, or they fail to find good cause and let you leave. \n\nif you try to leave the scene, you're essentially fleeing. that in itself gives the police the reason to arrest you. "
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3pyfvt | the protesting that has been going on at south african universities. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3pyfvt/eli5_the_protesting_that_has_been_going_on_at/ | {
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"The current protests are simply about tuition fees: the universities wanted to increase them by 10-12%, which could have forced poorer students out. A government proposal to limit increases to 6% didn't stop the protests, and they are now proposing a cost freeze for the next year. "
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4ai7j7 | why does sunlight reveal a ton of dust while artificial light doesn't? | This seems to only happen under certain circumstances. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4ai7j7/eli5_why_does_sunlight_reveal_a_ton_of_dust_while/ | {
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"If you have a lamp which is as bright as the sun, you would also be able to see the dust. But sunlight is orders of magnitude stronger than most artificial light - if you want to light a room as bright as if the sun is shining through a window, you're going to need something like a 250W metal halogen light, the kind of lamp used to illuminate stages and stadiums.\n\nJust turn your light on in a room lit by sunlight. The difference it makes is so low, chances are you won't even notice it if you don't look right at the bulb.",
"It's a matter of contrast, to see dust particles floating in the air you need the light of the sun *and* a darker background. This effect is much easier to see when you're indoors, outside it is still possible but much less frequent because there's a lot of light all around, and even though the dust is illuminated with the same intensity as indoors, when you're outside you will not see it. \n\nThe opposite is also true, if you turn on a strong spotlight in a dark room you'll get the same effect as you get with the sun. So it's always the particles off dust and a darker background, no dark background no particles.\n",
"Artificial light does reveal a ton of dust. \n\nTurn on a laser pointer and see for yourself.",
"Lots of answers here. The reason you see the dust is the light's power relative to the backdrop of the dust. The dust is illuminated against a much darker background. A bright flashlight or desk lamp in a dark room will give the same effect, and of course some environments/homes/etc. are dustier than others.",
"Artificial light *does* allow you to see dust. It all comes down to the contrast of the brightness of the illuminated dust against the darkness of the space behind it and also the angle at which you're viewing from.\n\nThe reason you don't see dust/airborne particles with artificial light as often is because that artificial light is usually *inside* your room, filling that entire space up with light. This makes it so that you don't see the illuminated dust because the walls, floor, objects in room, etc, are all illuminated by the light. There's no contrast with which to see the dust standing out.",
"Part of the answer is the specularity of the light ( I might be using this wrong but there you go) sunlight shining through a window is very straight when the sky is clear : you cast a clear shadow. The particles are therefore very bright in the light and not at all around it. Artificial lighting has a diffuse light that allows very little contrast. It is the same as with a covered sky where the light comes from all over, even if it is very bright it does not create that effect. Same as having your high beams on during a snow storm. That is why the fog lights are wide beams.",
"Can you see dust very easily when you are outside? Not really, at least not any better than when you're inside, it's just brighter outside. \n\nI think what you're talking about are sun beams coming in through a window and lighting dust in the air inside your room. The reason this illuminates the dust very well is because the light is more collimated and direct. When you light a lamp in a room it is reflecting and diffusing the light off the walls and ceiling so the light comes from many directions at once and it's more spread out. The dust is there, it's just the same brightness as the rest of the room. \n\nWhen you have a beam of light though like a laser, a strong flashlight, or rays of sunshine coming in through your window as the sun sets, the light is focused and directional so when it strikes the bits of dust in the air it's reflected and much brighter than the rest of the room so it shows up very clear. \n\nWhen you measure the air quality for the amount of dust, it does so in a similar fashion, by shining a light onto a photo receptor. The light is a known brightness and the receptor responds with a known voltage. As the amount of dust in the air increases, the scattering of the light causes the voltage to drop on the photo receptor and by carefully measuring these slight voltage drops, you can make an estimate of the PPM of dust in the air. \n\nThere are more accurate ways to measure dust like using two charged plates instead of a light and photo receptor but in principal it can be done. "
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4xdk2p | how do "death taxes" work? | I was listening to NPR political radio and they quickly mentioned it but I was still little confused. Thanks! | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4xdk2p/eli5_how_do_death_taxes_work/ | {
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"\"Death tax\" is a slang name for an estate tax, which taxes assets that are being passed on to one's inheritors after one's death. This is generally only applied to estates above a certain value (in the US, about $5.4 million).",
"It is not really a tax on death.\n\nThere are inheritance taxes which come into play when a death occurs and wealth is passed on to the next generation.\n\nA totally fair capitalistic society would have a 100% inheritance tax. Each person born would have the same amount of wealth. Their wealth at death would be redistributed.\n\nIn the US Federal inheritance taxes do not take effect until there is a large estate. Congress sets the amount and the rate each year so it varies widely. Currently I believe inheritance taxes begin with an estate of 5 million dollars. Which means it affects very few people. \n\nBut it matters to really rich people. People rich enough to hire lawyers and lobbyists to do many things. One thing is that they can give gifts to their children during their lifetime. They can set up estates, and trusts. No rich person ever really fears leaving their children destitute.\n\nOrdinary people who do not hire lawyers to help them prepare are subject to probate, which can take a lot of money from an estate. Elvis Presley did not prepare well. Priscilla did not inherit nearly what she could have if Elvis had planned ahead. But Priscilla got smart people to help her sell Graceland as a tourist attraction. They make money making her money. Elvis is dead.",
"If you are referring to the estate tax, you probably don't have anything to worry about, because it only applies to people who have an estate worth several million dollars. Basically, if you look at your collection of junk that you own, but wouldn't describe it as an estate, it doesn't apply to you. The only people to whom it applies are people who have at least 5 million dollars worth of stuff to pass on to other people when they die, which is probably an extremely small percentage of Americans.",
"It's an intentionally loaded term for inheritance taxes used by the right wing to get people riled up about laws that don't affect them.\r\rBasically, if you're really rich and die, the money you're giving your heirs gets taxed. In the US there's some ridiculously high minimum value for taxes to kick in - somewhere in the millions of dollars.",
"It's an estate tax. Pretend your parents die. everything they owned is considered their estate. Home, furniture, car, bank accounts, etc. As their heir, you are able to claim ownership of their estate (after their debts have been settled using money form the estate). \n\nIn order to prevent old money from staying in families forever, the US Government taxes the value of the estate, so you get the estate - taxes owed from the price of it. This is the death tax. a tax you pay to inherit your parent's estate. \n\nEveryone claims it's a big deal, since no one wants taxed because their parents died. what everyone forgets is that the estate tax only applies if your estate is worth more than ~ $5million. The vast majority of people will not have this much of an estate, so the tax doesn't apply to them. but politicians love to bring it up anyway, even though they (and their billionaire backers) are the ones benefiting from it's removal, not you or me.",
"It is an estate tax and it only applies to people with estates worth more than 5 million dollars being passed on to inheritors. It is an tax on the extremely rich to somewhat hinder their ability to horde wealth over multiple generations and it is a decent way to generate extra money for the government. ",
"If the value of all the assets you own minus all the debts you owe (your 'net worth') is greater than ~$5 million, then you have to pay a portion of that money to the government when you die. After they get their cut, the rest of your estate (your property) will be distributed according to your last will and testament."
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4ygdhb | how does your iphone (or other device) know that the accessory you plug into it is unsupported by apple (or other company)? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4ygdhb/eli5_how_does_your_iphone_or_other_device_know/ | {
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"tl;dr: various methods, often very simple or implied by its design.\n\n\nusb and/or very similar interfaces: devices when they conect do something often described as a \"handshake\", where the host (the phone) expects the guest (the gadget) to identify itself by a number associated with its manufacturer (the number tells who made it by a [known set of numbers in a widely known table](_URL_2_))\n\n* from this is not hard to imagine that they can [blatantly refuse](_URL_1_) to work with something not manufactured by someone under a whitelist\n\n\nmore \"primivite\" devices like a laptop charger often use simpler handshakes via protocols like the [1-wire bus](_URL_0_), dell laptops actually CAN use the voltage suplied by a third party charger, but they are often equiped with a check do actually refuse the ones that fail to identify themselves as a authentic one.\n\n\nother places that use those protocols: \n\n* smart batteries (often in laptops, they can describe themselves, often telling the origin, capacity, health and manufacturing date)\n\n* bluetooth works mostly as usb does, even without understanding \"what the device is or what it does\" you can at least right away know who manufactured it\n\n* earphones/headphones might be a little bit more complex than the default \"classic way to do it\", they can include internal logic mecanisms that may be able to do a hand shake similar to the 1-wire bus."
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29v4ps | why is hobby lobby getting so much hate? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/29v4ps/eli5_why_is_hobby_lobby_getting_so_much_hate/ | {
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"Because they do not want their insurance to provide birth control for women, claiming it is a religious stance. Meanwhile, they actually invest in birth control, and many of their items are produced in china - which is a country with a large list of human rights problems, not to mention forced abortions for women. They are getting some hate because it appears pretty hypocritical. ",
"Because people are too lazy to look up the facts for themselves and would rather read the news headlines. They forget to mention that Hobby Lobby provides 16 other choices of birth control. ",
"Because people are fucking retarded. Hobby Lobby has paid for and continues to pay for 16...not a misprint. Sixteen different forms of contraceptive. They were fighting to not have to provide 4 specific forms of birth control, each one a way of ending a pregnancy AFTER conception. In short, Hobby Lobby doesn't want to not provide birth control, they don't want to pay or contribute to any form of after conception birth control, which they consider forms of abortion. "
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2bkz8x | how is it that with today's technology, something like a plane can go missing? | How is it that something as high-tech as an aeroplane can just vanish, apparently I can be tracked on my phone sending a text but a plane can just disappear? I am of course referring to the MH370 and today's AH5017 flights. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2bkz8x/eli5_how_is_it_that_with_todays_technology/ | {
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"You can be tracked on your phone via text because you're on the ground within range of a cell site and GPS. Planes don't necessarily have such systems. They could, but a plane disappears precisely when the devices used to track it fail, as if you had broken your phone",
"If you turn off your phone it can no longer be tracked; similarly if the radio equipment that lets traffic control know where a plane is located is turned off, either deliberately or because of an accident, it becomes significantly harder to track that plane. Civilian radar coverage isn't available everywhere, it is mostly reserved for airports and other places with a lot of air traffic."
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3b0g73 | that sentence that only uses buffalo | Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo. I've tried reading about how it works but I always get confused. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3b0g73/eli5_that_sentence_that_only_uses_buffalo/ | {
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"What helps is replacing the words with near synonyms.\n\n* Buffalo 1 - a type of **bison**\n\n* Buffalo 2 - a city in **New York**\n\n* Buffalo 3 - a verb meaning to **intimidate** \n\nAnd now we can make the sentence\n\nNew York bison New York bison intimidate intimidate New York Bison.\n\nAnd if we add a few commas and a few words for clarity, we can say:\n\n**New York bison, who are intimidated by New York bison, themselves also intimidate other New York bison.**\n",
"* **Buffalo** - a noun, an animal - big and furry - bison\n* *Buffalo* - a noun, a town in New York\n* Buffalo - a verb, to intimidate or bully\n\nAnother way of thinking of it is like this:\n\n(The) New York bison (that) New York bison bully, bully New York bison\n\nThe (The) and (that) can be removed and they're assumed.\n\nWords are weird.\n",
"Buffalo is a place. (Buffalo, NY) A place can be a descriptor, as in a person, or in this case animal from Buffalo. \n\nbuffalo, lower case, is an animal. It is also the plural from of the animal. \n\nSo far we have; *buffalo from Buffalo..*\n\nAfter that we have buffalo as a verb, like bullying or stampeding.\n\nNow the sentence would read *Buffalo from Buffalo, run over/bully...*\n\nAnd then we repeat.\n\n*Buffalo from Buffalo bully other buffalo from Buffalo...*, and so on.",
"Another great English example of this is: \"James while John had had had had had had had had had had had a better effect on the teacher\""
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|
cxb4k9 | which part of the brain "automates" muscle recruitment? | When you want to lift up a heavy box you don't need to consciously choose which muscle to activate, your brain does it for you. For example you don't need to think "activate my biceps brachii and brachialis at 33% maximum power each, along with my forearms....". You just acknowledge that the box is heavy and your brain does all the heavy thinking unconsciously.
Which part of the brain does this? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/cxb4k9/eli5_which_part_of_the_brain_automates_muscle/ | {
"a_id": [
"eyk4d5x"
],
"score": [
7
],
"text": [
"So it's motor cortex - > basal ganglia - > thalamus - > cerebellum - > spinal cord. I don't have my textbook and i'm kinda fuzzy on the details. \n\nmotor cortex: initiates movement\n\nbasal ganglia: helps select motor programs (such as move arm to mouth vs move arm to eyes) and deals with \ncompeting signals (contract vs relax muscle). It also deals with memory of what happened before and \ncan overrule the motor cortex (It can say: No, don't do that you got hurt last time)\n\nThalamus: Relay stop that routes signals (we're not sure why)\n\ncerebellum: coordinates muscles and sensory info to actually execute motor programs. This is where we go from \nsomething like move hand to contract muscle x to 50% and relax muscle y to 80%. \n\nSpinal cord: low level reflexes. going from contract muscle x to 50% to muscle x is at 48% contract further. \nWithdrawal reflex (if you step on something sharp your foots moving by the time you feel it). Things like \nthat"
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
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