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2776q8 | library ebooks | So what, are they like, free or do they expire eventually? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2776q8/eli5_library_ebooks/ | {
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"They are free, but they expire after a few weeks."
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6cmpuv | why is it so hard to kill people painlessly? | So the recent push in Arkansas to execute several death row inmates before their drugs expired has me wondering. Why do we need such specially produced drugs to execute people?
It seems trivial that the human body is fragile enough that stopping it from working is a minor issue itself. People die without even trying all the time. In fact, we have to work hard to keep that from happening. So the problem is apparently doing that painlessly. But people can also be numbed, aneththetisezed, "put under" in a million ways, and if you disregard future health effects, a million more.
I guess I'm just in doubt that with all the drugs and their various properties that exist for so many reasons, it's only this specially produced combination that can reliably do the jobs involved. Why can't we use the many other drugs which at large dosages will numb past pain and end a life? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6cmpuv/eli5_why_is_it_so_hard_to_kill_people_painlessly/ | {
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"It isn't hard at all to kill a person painlessly. A bullet through the brain stem will do the trick almost every time. Decapitation is also painless. The issue here is that it is seen as barbaric and cruel not only to the prisoner, but to the persons pulling the trigger on the device that kills them.\n\nThere are many different kinds of ways to kill a person painlessly, and here in the USA we use a variety of different methods depending on which state you're in. Some states use a single drug (usually a lethal dose of an anesthetic like pentobarbital or a paralytic agent like pancuronium bromide), some states use a three drug system starting with a dose of midazolam (a sleep agent), then hydromorphone (a painkiller), then a lethal dose of potassium chloride.\n\nThere are two issues with these methods; the first is that the drugs are expensive and are prone to shortage (not enough companies are allowed to make them), and the second is that *they don't always work as intended*. There have been several botched executions using these kinds of drugs on prisoners.\n\nRecently, many states are switching to a new method which is inducing nitrogen hypoxia (like you get during dental and medical procedures, just with a more prolonged dose) with nitrous oxide. Tennesee still allows the electric chair, Utah still allows a firing squad, and New Hampshire still allows hanging. \n\ntl;dr Killing people painlessly isn't a problem, it's just that we use drugs to do it, and drugs don't work the same on every living person.\n\n",
"It isn't. Asphyxiation via inert gas (such as nitrogen) kills you in a couple minutes after a wave of euphoria that's caused by a lack of oxygen. It doesn't feel like suffocating, because that reaction is triggered by a buildup of carbon dioxide in your blood.\n\nWe don't use that method for two main reasons: it's reminiscent of the Nazi gas chambers and people on death row don't \"deserve\" a wave of euphoria before death. I don't agree with the logic, but that's the argument.\n\nOne state (Tennessee? Oklahoma? I don't remember.) actually got permission to use inert gas asphyxiation in their capital punishment. It'll be interesting to see how things change once that's done a few times. ",
"A lot of it is political.\n\nThe US buys a lot of its drugs from pharmaceutical companies in the EU. The EU is very anti-death penalty. So these pharma companies have a policy that they will not sell any drug to a country if there's a chance that that country might use it in an execution.\n\nWhat this means is that if we use morphine to execute someone, we won't be able to buy morphine from these European companies. And not just \"morphine for executions\", but any morphine. That means the stuff marked for legitimate hospital use, as well. So the morphine supply in the US would go down, prices would go up, and hospital patients would suffer.\n\nSo places like Arkansas have to be careful with what drugs they use for executions: they have to pick drugs that won't really matter if they can't buy them from Europe anymore. ",
"It's an artifact of how the drug regimen for execution was determined. Medical professionals aren't supposed to be killing anyone, it violates their oath. And prison personnel don't have the medical background to determine medications and dosages. So there was a guy who was a bad doctor who determined the drug regimen to be used in executions. He set a dosage and an order for the 3 drugs to be used. In the ordinary use of those drugs, an anesthesiologist carefully determines how much of each drug to use, based on weight, age, and metabolism of the person. But for executions, there's just one dosage. This means that the dosage of one or more of the 3 drugs might be inadequate for its purpose. Like, the drug that puts them to sleep might not be enough to put them to sleep, so they stay awake. But the drug that paralyzes them might be enough so they're completely awake but paralyzed, which is incredibly unpleasant, when the third drug, which stops their heart, is given. That drug apparently is quite painful as well as terrifying. If they were asleep, then they wouldn't feel it or suffer. Since they're awake, they might be in terrible pain, which some argue is cruel and unusual punishment. So there's the problem. But they can't just change the dosage to add more of, say, the sleeping drug. Or just go ahead and give them a fatal dose of morphine, which isn't painful at all. Because there's a protocol involved, it can't be just randomly done. And also there's the consideration of where they can get the drugs. Drug companies have decided not to sell their drugs to prisons. That's why Arkansas wanted to execute 8 prisoners in the space of a few days--these guys were all on death row, and one of the drugs they had was going to expire, after which time they couldn't use it, because, again, they needed to follow protocols. And they couldn't get any more of that drug because the drug companies wouldn't sell it to them. \n\nSo that's it. Sure, there are better ways to painlessly (or less painfully) kill someone, but who is going to be the one to sign their name to a new protocol for that? They could lose their license. And even if they did get a new protocol, where would they obtain the drugs to carry it out?"
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1obyey | why do my teeth, the most durable part of me, require substantially more care both daily (brushing) and yearly (clinic cleanings) than any other similarly-sized body part, many of which are more vital? how is dentistry not a scam? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1obyey/why_do_my_teeth_the_most_durable_part_of_me/ | {
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"Because unlike other body parts teeth don't self repair easily. They're not made up of cells and have no blood supply. The only way teeth self repair is by absorbing some of the minerals in food and drink while they're being consumed. \n\nPlus we didn't evolve with a high refined sugar diet. The waste produced by these bacteria isn't something we evolved to handle and without daily brushing your teeth will soon be filled with cavities. ",
"It isn't dentistry that is the problem - it's just the way we evolved. Teeth can bring down the best and strongest of us."
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1w1isb | why is 'snitching' looked down upon so much? | I don't understand this culture of not snitching. Why is snitching looked at as worse than the actual crime. Even in everyday life as kids, we are taught not to be tattle tales. How is this beneficial? Is this something that is embedded in our history? I've tried searching but most people just guess at the reason. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1w1isb/eli5_why_is_snitching_looked_down_upon_so_much/ | {
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"because it's the breaking of trust. as kids, you're supposed to be basically trustworthy. snitching equals lying, because the other kids you were with knew you'd seen or heard what you did, but they didnt pressure you into not saying anything. because they trusted you wouldnt. and thought they could trust you wouldnt. snitching breaks that trust. \n\nas an adult if a child comes upto you and tells you something one of the other kids did, you know that child is breaking the other children's trust. that's not good for that child's social relations. and then it adds a lot of hassle for you, because you're supposed to take action on something you normally probably wouldnt be bothered about.",
"I'm going to assume that if you and somebody else are about to do a very bad crime, there is some sort of unspoken agreement saying \"hey, if you don't tell on me, I won't tell on you\". \nAnd of course, somebody who does a very bad crime, is more than likely not a very good person, who is likely to do very bad things when they are upset.",
"You need to consider it from the other direction. If snitching isn't worse than the the crime, they those crimes won't happen.\n\nIf I see someone stealing a car in my middle class neighborhood, I'm calling the cops, and no one would even consider that snitching. And because my neighborhood doesn't have that sort of anti-snitching culture, not a lot of people try to steal cars in broad daylight.\n\nBut in a less affluent neighborhood where criminals hold more sway, those criminals will try to foster that sort of attitude so they may operate more freely.",
"It's kind of seen as screwing someone over for your own personal benefit"
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6bynio | how do you make something out of just genetic information (i.e. gene expression) | I'm really emphasizing the as if I were a FIVE YEAR OLD part. How do you make something functional out of DNA. It's not like I could just spray DNA into my protein powder or saliva and then suddenly get an organism right? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6bynio/eli5_how_do_you_make_something_out_of_just/ | {
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"You're right in that it is not nearly that simple. A strand of DNA by itself is not useful, just like a hard drive without a computer cannot do anything. DNA just stores data. For it to work you need a massively complex system for generating energy, producing proteins from the DNA, regulating what proteins are made, how much is made, and when they are made, regulation of entry into and out of the local environment, a method of dealing with waste products, and much much much more. When you stick all this stuff together, you get a cell. This is why we call the cell the smallest building block of life. There are things smaller than cells, but you have to have all the parts before it can do anything meaningful.",
"The process of DNA to protein is called transcription and translation. [Youtube video](_URL_0_)\n\nIn short, a strand of RNA is made based off of the DNA (transcription), and then that RNA is used to determine what order to add a bunch of amino acids together in order to make a protein. Proteins can do pretty much everything, from physically build your body to catalyze chemical reactions. All your cells have the same DNA, but they each use different genes, and in different amounts, which is how they can all specialize and fit together into a multicellular organism. "
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1ppe17 | why has russian society seemed to take a turn for the worst in recent years? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1ppe17/eli5_why_has_russian_society_seemed_to_take_a/ | {
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"I dont think Russian society is to blame.\n\nI think Russian government has taken a turn of the worse. I think it has become more and more clear over the past few years that Russia is essentially a dictatorship and that Putin and his inner circle are running Russia like their own personal corporation.\n\nIf anything I think at least the younger part of Russian society is at least starting to recognize this and show signs of starting a movement to do something about it.",
"worst? I wouldn't say that, although I might say \"worse.\"\n\nRussia, and what's left of the Soviet Union has been struggling for many years now (more than 20) to define what they are, and how they will survive. Political and fiscal insolvency has always defined what we now think of as Russia, and previously, as the Soviet Union.\n\nCapitalistic intent has obviously involved itself with the rise of profiteering, what we might call cartels, or gangs, or even \"mafia.\"\n\nThey're evolving, and until we get a \"perfect\" system (if that's even possible) they're attempting to make the best for them and theirs (if that's even a grammatically correct way to phrase that statement)."
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epjdyn | how does the human body know to mix skin tones rather than making interracial people spotted (like cows)? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/epjdyn/eli5_how_does_the_human_body_know_to_mix_skin/ | {
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"Skin color is determined basically by the amount of melanin is produced by the cells.\n\nYou get one copy of each gene from each parent and they usually work together to determine the final effect.\n\nIn the case of melanin, the dark-skinned parent provides a gene that produces more melanin and the light-skinned parent provides a gene that produces less. The result is an intermediate skin tone.\n\nThe specific tone may be determined by a huge lot of other factors that are out of the scope of a eli5 answer",
"All your cells have the same DNA, inherited from both parents. So all of your skin has the same information as to whether it should be light, dark, or somewhere in between. Spots are a largely separate process controlled by different genes, there's no gene for spotty people. Unless you count freckles.",
"Because people don’t have a gene that provides for large spots on their skins. So, since both parents genes say “make all melanocytes act this way, creating X or Y amount of mélanine” the combination of two parents’ genes will still say “make all melanocytes act this way, creating (X+Y)/2 mélanine”."
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4aebhl | why when an iv is not hooked up to a drip bag, why does blood not come back out of the catheter portion (the part inserted in your arm) | my guess is that the catheter maybe self sealing or that the opening in the catheter is so small the pressure of the blood does not squirt through. Anyhow I am not sure. Thank you. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4aebhl/eli5_why_when_an_iv_is_not_hooked_up_to_a_drip/ | {
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"Usually after inserting the cannula and removing the needle there is a brief backflow of blood which *can* bleed briefly (though most who are good at it occlude the vein to prevent this), but then a \"bung\" which basically acts as a one-way valve is attached. Any subsequent IV fluid bags are then attached to this to deliver fluids."
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1uij6i | what causes humans to wonder, or be curious? | Why do we feel that? Is there a reason? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1uij6i/eli5_what_causes_humans_to_wonder_or_be_curious/ | {
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"Why do you ask? ",
"Many aspects of human behavior evolution-based. Curiosity superior to apathy. Early humans who explored, benefited. Could spread their lineage, discover new technologies, find better habitats. Curiosity also a subset of intelligence... intelligent humans survived. They begot others, others begot us. We are curious. "
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5nsel9 | why is the average work week so much higher in the united states at 34.40 hours per week in comparison to other countries such as germany where the average person works 26.37 hours per week? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5nsel9/eli5_why_is_the_average_work_week_so_much_higher/ | {
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"The way Fortune took the numbers from oecd and converted it to hours per week is not taking holidays out of the calculation.\nThey simply divided the number by 52.\nAccording to a slightly older article from the FAZ, Germans were working 41.1 hours per week on average:\n_URL_0_\nThere might have been a rise of very short part-time work which skews the statistic,between then and 2015, but I doubt that it is that much.\nI personally work 8 hours per day at 5 days a week, so 40 hours, which is a very common working schedule for Germany.",
"It's not as if, in any given week, Germans work 26 hours. A full-time job in Germany is 40 hours a week, but Germans get mandatory paid leave, and a lot of public holidays (and those who work in a profession that means they have to work on a public holiday -- like nurses, for example -- then get another day off in lieu). Also, Germans get mandatory sick leave, maternity leave and so on. Added to that, since the 26.37 hours/week figure is an *average*, a robust welfare benefits system means low wage-earners are not taking two full-time jobs just to try to make ends meet, and that also affects the figures.",
"You should really watch the movie \"where to invade next\". it sheds a light on this...as well as many other things.\n\nIn a nutshell, people in the US are \"forced\" to work longer hours and receive less benefits from their employer just to be able to afford to live here"
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4wpzd5 | what is "cupping", and how does it benefit swimmers? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4wpzd5/eli5what_is_cupping_and_how_does_it_benefit/ | {
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"\"Cupping\" therapy is performed by taking a hollow container (such as a cup) and causing it to contain lower than usual air pressure, often by filling it with warm air from a candle. It is then placed against the flesh where the air cools, pulling tissue into the container from the pressure difference.\n\nThis pulling damages the tissue causing internal bleeding and inflammation. This swelling is believed to promote healing; in a sense it does because the body is reacting to injury.\n\nThe practice is \"alternative medicine\" or more accurately a somewhat harmful superstition and quackery. It stems from the recognition that swelling accompanies wounds healing and then attempting to cause swelling without obvious wounds with the thought it would cause healing for whatever other ailment targeted. But of course we should all know stabbing yourself isn't going to heal your asthma, and bruising your back won't help other problems. If anything it would hurt your ability to cope with other injury.",
"It's quackery/seasonal fad. Every season you have one of those. One year everybody, including chess players, paints those black spots under their eyes, next year everybody puts those plastic strips on their noses. Now it's all about kinetic tape and cupping. Next year it will be something else.",
"Cupping is a non compressive therapy. If I try to work broad muscles with massage, I have to press on them. If they have an adhesion on fascia that doesn't get moved when I press, I have to pull. A way to do that is to attach a handle and pull on that. The cup is that handle. ",
"It's a form of massage to stretch/loosen the muscle - if you have muscle tightness or knots, you put this cup/vacuum on it and it just pulls it up and stretches it out. That's it. It's the same thing a massage is doing when they grind their elbow into a knot to try to loosen it up. You're just using suction instead. It doesn't replace a regular massage but can be effective when treating specific spots (assuming the person knows what they're doing). ",
"What was the context you heard it in? Everyone here is talking about cupping as a form of holistic medicine, but it could have another meaning for a swimmer. \n\nI was a competitive swimmer for 6 years, and one of the common things was making sure you cupped your hands, specifically for freestyle. Essentially, it means make each hand into a cup shape so you can pull more water. ",
"everyone is talking about cupping because Michael Phelps had 3 or 4 large \"cupping\" marks on his right shoulder and neck area during last night's broadcast. So I think OP is asking about the eastern \"cupping\" and not the forming a cup with your hand for swimming.",
"I was thinking about this today, this is all just speculation. The info on cupping says it's traditionally used to treat aches and pains. An ache or a pain would presumably be some sort of unhealed wound in a region that might not be obvious on the surface. Cupping basically creates a massive bruise in a region (a wound) without beating you and causing any serious injury to muscles/bone/larger blood vessels.\n\n_URL_1_\n\nIf you look at this page, platelets release all sorts of chemicals to stimulate wound healing. Presumably a bruise would cause this to occur. By cupping in certain regions of the body, the treatment could possibly stimulate a stronger, localized wound healing response by the body.\n\n_URL_0_\n\n\"Platelet-rich plasma (abbreviation: PRP) is blood plasma that has been enriched with platelets. As a concentrated source of autologous platelets, PRP contains several different growth factors and other cytokines that can stimulate healing of bone and soft tissue. As of 2016, no large-scale randomized controlled trials have confirmed the promise of PRP in basic science and preclinical trials to treat musculoskeletal injuries (including tendinitis, nerve injuries), help in bone grafting or androgenic hair loss.\"\n\n\n\nThe above is all speculation.",
"Take all the responses on here with a grain of salt. I've yet to see any responses which use actual research papers as a basis of their argument. The actual answer to OPs question is that we don't actually know as there isn't enough research on the topic.\n\nAll these replies have been trash"
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5mtu5z | how snooker works | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5mtu5z/eli5_how_snooker_works/ | {
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"Snooker is played between two people. The basic aim is to sink all the balls on the table in order. Red, yellow, green, Brown, blue,pink, then black. You must sink a red ball before going for a coloured ball. Reds are worth 1 point, yellow, 2 green 3 Brown 4, blue 5, pink 6 black 7. A foul means 4 points are deducted. \nThe highest attainable score is 147. Play continues until one player is so far in front that he can't be caught\nEdit\nAny coloured ball pocketed while reds remain on the table are replaced as near to starting position as possible. Once all reds have been pocketed, then colours are pocketed and remain off the table"
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3h3hj2 | why is the english language full of "bad words"? is there a language that have no words that can't be said on tv or written in books? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3h3hj2/eli5_why_is_the_english_language_full_of_bad/ | {
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"Probably not. All languages have curse or swear words; words used to describe acts, ideas, or concepts that are considered taboo by the culture that uses said language. These can vary widely from culture to culture, of course, but the common taboos in western civilization are (as I'm sure you're aware) sex-related.\n\nIn English, at least, the idea of \"poor\" or \"bad\" language also comes in part from how the language as we know it today developed during the middle ages. In the simplest terms, the common people spoke a different dialect than the Norman French nobility, and the so-called \"vulgar\" (literally \"common\" in Latin) vernacular was seen as dirty, impure, and distasteful to the prim and proper Norman overlords.",
"Japanese of course has taboo words, just like most any language I suppose, but the taboos are different than English. Saying the equivalent of \"shit!!\" (くそ！！) on a Kid's TV show wouldn't be unimaginable, for example."
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cv4b51 | why do stings from bugs hurt *so bad*? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/cv4b51/eli5_why_do_stings_from_bugs_hurt_so_bad/ | {
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"The more painful stings inject complex chemicals in.\n\nTake a bullet ant - they inject a paralyzing nerve toxin that hurts for up to 24 hours - \"pure, intense, brilliant pain...like walking over flaming charcoal with a three-inch nail embedded in your heel.\"",
"\nI'm no entomologist soooo...\n\nEach sting is different. Meaning a wasps sting isnt the same as a cute bumblebee, or like a bullet ant.\n\n\nIt hurts cause its poison injected into your body that is designed to break down cells and kill you. \n\nWhen you get stung by the humble honey bee, your immune system goes batshit insane cause in this particular insects case, it releases a chemical called melittin which just wrecks havok at the cellular leval and your body is losing the battle at this point. And your body is like 'hold up, we got this stuff Histamine.. should we do it? Yeah call in the histamines'... it makes it so the roads to the poison site are vastly wider and we can send more cells to fight this poison. This is why your bites or stings swell into a gross bump. So histamine gets sent, then a ton of the white blood cells and boom. The good guys win and you dont die. \n\n\nSometimes your body is a lil overzealous or just wrong about sending those histamines and then you have an allergic reaction and you might die then too. But its cause your body was trying too hard to protect you. It loved you to death."
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5wd7sp | is canned tuna "cooked," and if so, how? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5wd7sp/eli5_is_canned_tuna_cooked_and_if_so_how/ | {
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"It is pressure cooked in the can. [Inside](_URL_0_) the Bumble Bee canning plant.",
"foodeducate:_URL_0_\n\n \n\"1. After the tuna is caught, head and tail are removed and the fish is gutted\n\n2. It is then pre-cooked in a steam oven for 2-4 hours depending on its size.\n\n3. The fish is then cooled.\n\n4. The cooked fish is boned and fileted.\n\n5. Each 6 ounce portion is placed in a can with a liquid medium (usually water or vegetable oil).\n\n6. The can is vacuum sealed\n\n7. Another cooking session then takes place (called retort cooking) - the sealed can is heated for a few more hours, to kill off any potential bacteria.\n\n8. The can is then decorated with a brand label and sent off to your friendly neighborhood supermarket.\"\n\nAnd just some stuff to fuel nightmares....\n\n_URL_1_"
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"http://www.fooducate.com/app#!page=post&id=57A33C48-AF5B-9C8E-4EB1-816E643119A6",
"https://www.google.com/amp/www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/man-cooked-alive-with-12000-pounds-of-tuna-10210038.html%3Famp"
]
] |
||
3earvc | why do playground slides always have so much static electricity? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3earvc/eli5_why_do_playground_slides_always_have_so_much/ | {
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"text": [
"People's clothes sliding on the plastic, so basically certain materials become electrically charged after they come into contact with another different material and are then separated ",
"Lots of rubbing means lots of electron shedding.\n\nWhen you shuffle your stocking clad feet on the carpet you get the same effect. Now imagine hundreds of pairs of pants passing over the slide."
]
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[],
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] |
||
5qbht5 | how is it possible that it takes so long to test athletes on doping? | Nesta Carter tested positive on doping 9 years after date. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5qbht5/eli5_how_is_it_possible_that_it_takes_so_long_to/ | {
"a_id": [
"dcxuya6",
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"text": [
"It's not that the testing took so long. It's that over time, scientists come up with ways to test for previously undetectable drugs, or to find them at previously-undetectable levels. That's why they save urine samples for years, and that's what happened to Carter. ",
"They are constantly retesting samples as new doping drugs are discovered and testing technology improves.\n\nThere is a chemical arms race going on, where dopers switch to new drugs and masking agents, and testing agency try to keep up. Being able to punish someone in the future for a drug that can't be detected today provides as least some degree of deterrent."
]
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[],
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|
476v5q | when you compress a spring, why does it jump up when released, instead of just using the potential energy stored in it when being compressed, to return to it's natural state? | My physics teacher doesn't even get this. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/476v5q/eli5_when_you_compress_a_spring_why_does_it_jump/ | {
"a_id": [
"d0alo57",
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"score": [
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"text": [
"You are storing the energy in the spring. That energy is transferred into kinetic energy when the spring is released, which moves the spring back to its original form. Thing is, you stored more energy in the spring than is needed to just return to that shape, so it keeps on moving. ",
"Are you saying why does it jump? You put energy into the system when you compressed the spring. When you release it you turn potential energy into motion. The spring starts leaping up. When that potential energy in the compressed spring turns into kinetic energy there is enough energy for the whole spring to jump into the air."
]
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[],
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|
6yrk9b | the federal reserve and the fiat dollar | A while back I watched a documentary on the Federal Reserve and how currency is generated in the US economy. In the documentary, several aspects of the process were explained but i could not help but feel I may have missed some of the information. So could someone please ELI5 the creation of the dollar and how the fed interacts with banks and the differences in a gold standard and the fiat dollar? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6yrk9b/eli5_the_federal_reserve_and_the_fiat_dollar/ | {
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" > the creation of the dollar \n\nLike any other currency the dollar was created as a medium of exchange of value. It started out being backed by gold in that someone could if they desired go to a Federal bank and exchange it for a set amount of gold. Later on it became a fiat currency.\n\n > the differences in a gold standard and the fiat dollar?\n\nWith a gold standard every unit of currency is tied to a given amount of gold. This means that the value of the currency is tied to the value of gold; if someone finds a ton of gold then the value of your currency drops. It also means that the total amount of currency which you can produce is limited by the amount of gold the country can physically keep on hand, otherwise people start to lose faith that they can actually exchange their currency for gold.\n\nInstead converting to a fiat currency bases the value of the currency on what it can be exchanged for in goods and services. By law the currency is \"Legal Tender for All Debts, Public and Private\" as written right on the bills, which means if you owe someone you can give them dollars to pay that debt off. Legally they cannot refuse that medium of payment.",
"Economists don't actually agree on how best to describe modern banknote currency. Trying to be as uncontroversial as possible, here is an explanation.\n\nMost, if not all, money 'creation' comes from the creation of debt. You put money in a bank, the bank makes a loan, and both you and the borrower have money in your accounts which together are greater than the amount you first deposited.\n\nMost banks have costs and restrictions on how much of this debt money they can create and these are imposed upon them by the central bank (in the U.S.A. this is the Federal Reserve). Banks are required to keep reserves of cash and pay interest to borrow from the central bank should they be unable to get money from other, less expensive sources.\n\nThe central bank doesn't have these restrictions and it can create as much money as it wants just by noting it in its books. It is only restrained by the good will of the people running the central bank (and those who pull their strings).\n\nSome people find this arrangement to be unsettling because there have been cases in the past where poorly managed central banks created too much money or allowed dangerous banking practices and as a result, the value of the currency evaporated and everyone left holding notes that were valuable a short time before, lost pretty much everything. They would prefer a system where the money supply is mostly fixed and free from meddling which they see as risky and costly.\n\nOthers disagree with this view, usually by citing problems with all of the alternatives.",
"These previous threads might help\n\n_URL_1_\n\n_URL_2_\n\n_URL_0_"
]
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[],
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"https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/search?q=gold+standard&restrict_sr=on&sort=relevance&t=all",
"https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/search?q=fiat+currency&restrict_sr=on&sort=relevance&t=all",
"https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/search?q=federal+reserve&restrict_sr=on"
]
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|
2ybu6e | how much power does a judge really have in court? | Can a judge theoretically decide whatever he wants in court or can someone put in their veto? If not every judge would give the same sentence for the same criminal act, isn't one of them not judging correctly?
For example could the judge responsible for the boston bomber case just let the guy go free even though there is clear evidence he is guilty? How much influence does the one judge really have and how much power goes to the jury? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2ybu6e/eli5_how_much_power_does_a_judge_really_have_in/ | {
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"It's hard to reduce years of law school to a single, simple answer, but I'll do my best to be accurate and brief.\n\nThe judge is a person we trust to decide questions of law. They have the power to determine what evidence is allowed, and they control the behavior of the court. Except in the case of a bench trial, the judge does not determine questions of fact; that is the role of the jury.\n\nThere is no \"veto,\" but there are \"appeals.\" Usually, you have to have a final decision in order to appeal to a higher court, but under some circumstances, you can appeal an individual decision a judge has made, like whether to allow some specific testimony. You appeal individual errors a judge has made, not the finding of fact from the jury--that is absolute. So you can say the judge made an error when she let in some particular evidence; that decision can be reviewed. There are \"standards of review\" depending on the kind of error being appealed.\n\nSentencing is a touchy subject, and there is often little leeway in the choices judges are allowed to make. The US has something called \"sentencing guidelines;\" I'm sure you've heard that the sentences for possessing crack cocaine are bizarrely disproportionate to the sentences for possession of powder cocaine. The guidelines are *very* detailed and constrain the kinds of decisions judges can make.\n\nThe judge ruling in the Boston Bomber case cannot \"just let the guy go free\" under any circumstances. The judge has no power to do so; there is no mechanism through which a judge can let someone go free. A jury can determine that the guy isn't guilty, in which case, the jail and police have to let him go free.\n\nYou may have heard of a \"judgment notwithstanding the verdict,\" where the judge overrules the jury, but this is an extremely rare circumstance and only applies to **civil**, not criminal, trials. It is only done where the evidence is so extremely and obviously on one side and the jury finds, counter to all available evidence, for the other side."
]
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[]
] |
|
1r7n83 | why do stove tops have a general indicator for their temperature? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1r7n83/eli5_why_do_stove_tops_have_a_general_indicator/ | {
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"score": [
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"text": [
"For safety. A light indicating that a stovetop is hot tells people not to touch it."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
||
5sji66 | what is an exoplanet and the "goldilocks" zone? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5sji66/eli5_what_is_an_exoplanet_and_the_goldilocks_zone/ | {
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"text": [
"An Exoplanet is a planet that is not in our solar system. \n\nThe Goldilocks Zone is the zone around a Star that liquid water can exist on a planet. "
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
||
1khwid | did the biosphere 2 work? could life on earth be replicated on other planets? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1khwid/eli5_did_the_biosphere_2_work_could_life_on_earth/ | {
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"That really depends on your definition of \"work\". Was it a sustainable environment for a short time? Yes. Was its mis-managemnet likely a major cause of its \"failure\"? Yes, as well. \n\nAs far as bringing in massive amounts of data on closed systems, it was quite remarkable. Imagine being able to perfectly monitor air quality, water chemistry, human health (in regards to caloric intake and psychological stresses), and many other factors in a perfectly sealed system. \n\nAfter the first two initial missions, Biosphere2 was used by Columbia Univ. then by the Univ. of AZ where it was used to conduct testing such as experiments on the greenhouse effect and terrestrial water cycle. Those sort of experiments really benefit from a mostly closed system (the Biosphere2 is no longer airtight as it once was because the circulation system has been updated to a flow-through system that has the capability to be closed off in certain sections) because so many variables can be controlled and changed as needed. \n\nNow, how does all that relate to us replicating life on Earth on another planet? In my opinion, it's a step in the right direction. If we can gather data while on Earth of how to exist in a closed system, that can help our astronauts in currently in space. When our space program evolves to having a base on another space object, say the moon for instance, we have already collected a massive amount of data to help the scientists and engineers construct a habitat that is **less** likely to fail. Not saying that the first shot will be a resounding success, but it may have a better chance because we have more knowledge available from our research here on Earth. "
]
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||
5bna1d | why a manual transmission vehicle can sometimes stalls from a hill start | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5bna1d/eli5_why_a_manual_transmission_vehicle_can/ | {
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"Manual transmissions work by manually selecting a gear and then supplying the engine with the right amount of gas to get a 3,000+ lb car going as you engage the gear. Normally, you're on a flat surface so the amount of gas required is that which generates enough energy/momentum to \"push\" the weight of the car forward.\n\nOn a hill, things are slightly different.\n\nThe moment you take your foot off the brake (assuming you're in neutral or the clutch is pushed in as it should be), the car starts rolling backwards. To counteract this, you have to feed the engine much more gas than you normally would because you have momentum in the opposite direction of which you want to go. If you're not VERY familiar with the engagement point of your clutch (i.e. the exact point in the releasing motion of the clutch where the clutch begins to engage the selected gear by connecting the flywheel and the transmission which feeds energy to the wheels), you likely won't feed the appropriate amount of gas into the engine, which will cause you to fry your clutch (too much gas) or stall out (too little gas). Since most people are afraid of doing the former, they undershoot the increased gas requirement because of the hill and stall the vehicle."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
||
5ftn1n | how are glasses lens prescription determined by an ophthalmologist or eye doctor? | I have glasses myself, so I know you go in and read letters while the doctor changes the lens machine thing, but how are the specific prescription +/- values found from that? Is it just trial and error? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5ftn1n/eli5_how_are_glasses_lens_prescription_determined/ | {
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"text": [
"With current technology they can actually map the curvature of your eye more accurately than a doctor can find by doing the lens \"better 1 or 2\" thing. \n\nHowever they have found most people don't really want to be 20/20, we prefer somewhat far sightedness. \n\nAlso the way it works is by using the eye chart they have a rough idea of the correction factor needed. \n\nDoc puts something close to that in the aperture of the device. Then they start with moderate offsets from that and work their way in using smaller and smaller adjustments. Also they have to correct for any astigmatism which is basically any deviation that is not on the true x, y axis. "
]
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|
6tyi8h | what would happen if you tried to hug a wild panda? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6tyi8h/eli5_what_would_happen_if_you_tried_to_hug_a_wild/ | {
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"You mean if you just were to come up to one in nature and suddenly attempt to grab it? Well their claws arent for show, neither are their teeth. And if they think you're a threat - say, by walking up to one and hugging it - it'll fight back and then run away.\n\nYou would probably not die, probably. But you'd need a lot of stitches and youd be lucky to come out without fractured bones.",
"There are no domesticated pandas so....they're all wild.\n\nI hugged and picked up a baby one. Still alive to tell the tale.",
"In general, wild animals are not especially thrilled with being hugged by humans. It's entirely possible it would avoid you from the get go, but if you irritated it, it could attack you. Hugging a wild animal is often a good way to irritate them. Hugging a large, irritated animal [may suck](_URL_0_)."
]
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[],
[],
[
"http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/peoplesdaily/article-2997328/Man-lose-leg-attacked-wild-panda-tried-flee-local-officials-trying-capture-China.html"
]
] |
||
5h70rv | how do rear windshield heaters work? | As an example, my rear windshield has those thin black lines on it. When I activate the rear defogger/ rear heater, those lines are where the windshield starts clearing first. How do they work? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5h70rv/eli5_how_do_rear_windshield_heaters_work/ | {
"a_id": [
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"text": [
"The lines are conductive material with a reasonable level of resistance, like a lightbulb filament. When a current is passed through them, they get warm, causing ice to melt/water to evaporate.",
"They are thin wires made from a metal with high electrical resistance. As current flows trough it, the resistance causes the wire to heat up, which heats the window, which melts the ice. \n\nBasically it's the same thing as any electrical heater (boiler, oven, toaster, whatever), just super thin and embedded in a sheet of glass. "
]
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[],
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|
bb2mi6 | why is it inherently worse to eat a fast food burger than to cook one at home? | Are the ingredients really that much worse? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/bb2mi6/eli5_why_is_it_inherently_worse_to_eat_a_fast/ | {
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"text": [
"It isn't *inherently* worse, but it typically is. Generally, fast food has a fair amount of preservatives in it that, while not overtly harmful, are difficult for our bodies to digest (although as the general public is getting more concerned about those things, some companies are making an effort to get that kind of thing out of their food). Fast food is also tailored to be, well, fast to make, even if it means sacrificing nutrition; frying food in oil is not a healthy way to cook it, but god damn it's fast.",
"Most of these answers assume that fast food manufacturers are putting preservatives in their beef. They probably are not. McDonald's for example, freezes most of their beef or at least they did when I worked there. Their beef probably has more fillers but that is not exactly unhealthy, just not digestible. The bun on a McDonald's burger though is filled with preservatives and more sugar than normal to make it sweeter. As someone else said, the other stuff you get with it makes it much worse. If you were to order a plain burger with no bun (keto diet for example) it would not really be any worse than what you make at home.",
"It's not. Fast food is no more unhealthy than if you made the same thing at home. It's just generally cheaper so people eat more. \n\nA McDouble is $1.50 and 380cals. Spend $3 and you're at nearly 800cals."
]
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139v19 | why do arrays/lists in programming languages begin at 0? | I know enough number theory to recognize the somewhat arbitrary nature of counting numbers. However, since many common things in programming languages do use counting numbers, why are lists/arrays the exception? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/139v19/eli5_why_do_arrayslists_in_programming_languages/ | {
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"Most languages store arrays in consecutive memory locations.\n\nso if A is an array of ten 16 bit values, the first value might be stored in location & 12900, the second would be two bytes later at & 12902, the third at & 12904, etc.\n\nIf you number your array elements start from 0, it makes the math a lot easier. You ask the computer for element A[i], all it has to do is start with the base address ( & 12900) and add i * size the data type (2 bytes) to get the location of A[i]. \n\n",
"In many languages, like VB it begins at 1 instead of 0. This is strictly a convention of the language, and is one of the hardest things to get use to when switching from a language that does it one way to one that does it the other. (Always drives me nuts)",
"The most basic answer is that it is because digital computers natively start counting at 0. Since in digital computing we use binary to represent numbers, not using zero would lead to some inefficiency, particularly in integer arithmetic, which is often used in lists/arrays. \n \nConsider a two bit computer. It can represent four integers, as so: \n \n00 \n01 \n10 \n11 \n \nNow, we could call those anything, but for humans it is easiest to translate those to be 0,1,2 and 3. And if we didn't use 00 (zero), we'd give up the use of one of those entries. That matters a lot for a two bit computer, but isn't that big of a deal for a 32 bit or 64 bit computer. \n \nBut, when doing circuitry to look for comparisons quickly, comparing against \"00\" or \"00000000000000000000000000000000\" is really easy to do quickly and efficiently. Historically, doing a compare in a microprocessor to determine if a register is equal to zero is hardwired in as an separate, fast instruction. (Some instructions take just a few clock cycles to complete, some can take several. Comparing against zero often takes the minimum, 1 cycle.) \n \nSo if you are writing a code loop and want to do a compare within every loop to see if you are done, comparing against zero will use the fewest clock cycles. Since you may go through the loop many many times, it makes sense to make this comparison as efficient as you can. This same reasoning holds for lists and arrays, since when you need to fill/empty them in order you have to make sure you haven't reached the end. "
]
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5m7qsk | what causes certain food to upset your stomach? | Ex: a vegetarian eating meat for the first time in 3 years. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5m7qsk/eli5_what_causes_certain_food_to_upset_your/ | {
"a_id": [
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"text": [
"when stomach forgets how to produce digestive juices for certain foods (or all foods - after prolonged starvation), or some combination of foods confuses it, this causes a \"food traffic jam\" in the digestive system - hence [upset stomach](_URL_0_)"
]
} | [] | [] | [
[
"http://www.aurametrix.com/topics/indigestion"
]
] |
|
g1nbbt | how does heat equal electricity? | I see things online like “two seconds of the Sun’s heat output could power the world for a century”, even if that’s not accurate, how does heat get converted into a measure of electricity? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/g1nbbt/eli5_how_does_heat_equal_electricity/ | {
"a_id": [
"fnglrac"
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"text": [
"You can convert both into power since both are energy. Both heat and electricity is a power that can be measured in W (watts).\nThe sun also provides energy as light this is converted into electricity using solar panels. This might also be what they mean."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
|
2m5oel | why do we feel comfortable playing with toys as children and then lose that with age? | Is there something psychological causing us to feel embarrassed about playing with a toy in a sand box as adults? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2m5oel/eli5why_do_we_feel_comfortable_playing_with_toys/ | {
"a_id": [
"cm15ywl"
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"text": [
"We don't really stop playing with toys. Toys are just what we play with as kids in place of tools in order to learn how to do stuff, like a toy construction set, a toy car, a doll house, etc.\n\nAs we get older, our \"toys\" get replaced with \"tools\". The toy construction set becomes a workbench and actual tools, the toy car becomes a real car, the doll house becomes a real house, etc. And we then use these to do actual work, rather than just imaginary work that we do as children.\n\n_URL_0_\n\nHave you seen adults at the beach? Many of them still build sand castles, bury each other in the sand, make sculptures, etc."
]
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"http://static.fjcdn.com/pictures/Like+my+pc_c456aa_4807213.jpg"
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bg2s7q | what happens at the hardware level when a computer executes a for loop? | Put another way: what was the difference in hardware between the first computer that could run a for loop and the computer it superceded? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/bg2s7q/elif_what_happens_at_the_hardware_level_when_a/ | {
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"text": [
"Nothing that has any relation to a for loop. The for loop is a software construct, and does not require any special hardware. Any digital processor at its core (har har har) performs tasks roughly the same.",
"The processor keeps track of its current location in the program in something called a [program counter / instruction pointer](_URL_0_). Normally this counter progresses sequentially, pointing to the next instruction each time. Any change to the standard flow of the code (whether it's a conditional statement or a loop) uses a JUMP instruction which sets the program counter instead of just incrementing it.",
"A for loop isn't special. It's at best a fancy while loop.\n\nthe for loop \n \n for( A;B;C) { D; }\n\nis functionally equivalent to \n\n A;\n While( B ){\n D;\n C;\n }\n\nwhich both are translated down to assembly and from there machine language. The hardware doesn't care what structure your loops have, it's all going to boil down to the same set of instructions either way."
]
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[],
[
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Program_counter"
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[]
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|
1xhnl8 | why don't we use the concept of licenses more to prevent irresponsible/untrained people from doing things that require responsibility/training, like voting or parenting? | We make people get trained and tested before they can drive to ensure its only done safely by responsible people who know what they're doing. If you ever demonstrate that you're no longer capable, you have your license revoked, there's no 'right to drive'. It makes perfect sense and prevents people from causing harm in a field they don't understand. It seems like a perfect way of handling who in society gets to take part in more complicated activities or privileges, on a case-by-case basis.
But with other things that require serious understanding and responsibility; i.e. voting or parenting, we have a completely different understanding. Anyone can do these things without the slightest oversight or testing to ensure that they understand despite requiring *even more* responsibility and understanding than driving. The reverse is the case with drug-use; no display of responsibility is considered enough to be safe despite people actively vomiting in the streets from over-consumption of alcohol.
Why don't we use licenses for more things? Wouldn't the whole argument of "who is allowed to do what in society" be solved on a case-by-case basis that way? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1xhnl8/eli5_why_dont_we_use_the_concept_of_licenses_more/ | {
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"text": [
"So you would have the government tell us what we can and can't do even more? You do realize that, at least in the US, you would be taking away the very basic rights that make up our constitution, the very foundation of the USA. It is thinking like this that scares me the most...",
"Well, voting is a right. In the past there have been qualifications that needed to be met in order to vote, but they were largely made to keep minorities from being able to vote. If it was instituted today, you'd largely have the same issue. Like, I'm sure you saw how much fuss there was over laws that required someone to simply show a photo ID in order to vote.\n\nAs for parenting, it's something that people are biologically wired to do. Granted, some people obviously aren't fit to be parents, but trying to restrict who can be parents and who can't opens a whole other can of worms. People hate when you infringe on their reproductive rights. And to take children away from unlicensed parents puts even more strain on the already broken foster care system.",
"Because that's called oppression, and is the basis for the worst things humans have done to other humans.",
"You're comparing basic human rights with privilege. Just as innocents are put to death because of a flawed legal system, good parents would fall through the cracks and be denied children and vice versa.\n\nAnd of course, rich people would have a stark advantage.\n\nMy girlfriend's parents would have failed any test by the way, and somehow she turned out to be the opposite of them: moral, compassionate, and highly intelligent.\n\n",
"But what's a passing grade on the parenting test. Are u going to deny a husband wife from conceiving if they fail? Are u going to force an abortion?"
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3ginub | simple and detailed explanation of mig welding | I've tried wikepedia, but I just get lost in all the words and stuff. If someone could write an explanation that's actually readable by someone with a smaller attention span than a squirrel, I'd be thankful. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3ginub/eli5_simple_and_detailed_explanation_of_mig/ | {
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"It is simply electric arc welding, but with a continuous wire feed instead of a stick rod you have to stop and change as it is consumed.\n\nThe other half is that it uses a shielding gas (typically argon, sometimes helium) to keep oxygen out of the weld, rather than a powder flux.",
"This is in the arc welding family - a high current melts the workpiece and the metal (usually called \"wire\" or \"rod\" ) being added to fill the weld joint.\n\nIn MIG welding, the rod is a spool of wire - it's fed from a propane torch-looking handle that also streams out an inert gas, like argon. The gas prevents oxygen from getting into the weld, since oxygen makes the weld rusty and weak.\n",
"The simplest explanation I can come up with: Lots of electric current flowing through a thin wire causes the wire and surrounding metal to heat up enough and melt. It's the same principal as a light bulb filament or the element in your toaster. \n\n\nMIG, as I'm sure you've gathered from the Wiki, stands for Metal Inert Gas. The gas, usually Argon, is a nobel gas so it is non-reactive. Oxygen would react with the metals causing them to rust and it can prevent the melted metals from properly fusing. Argon, or some other inert gas, is used to flush the atmospheric gas (oxygen and nitrogen mostly) away so you get a good weld that won't rust internally (if done properly). "
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2rxazb | can humans eat anything in the animal kingdom raw (besides poisons venoms and toxins) and stay healthy? | Assuming the meats (insect, seafood, weird wildlife) don't have bacteria or viruses inside.
I was watching a video on ants eating a bee-thing and they were picking at the yellow shit inside and it made me wonder if we could eat that too and not get sick, since obviously, the ants are fine with it.
-
Also, how do insects know whatever theyre eating is edible and to keep trying to pick at it until it breaks open | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2rxazb/eli5_can_humans_eat_anything_in_the_animal/ | {
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"For the most part yes. If you include/exclude things such as overdose of nutrients then definitely.\n\nHowever \"Assuming the meats (insect, seafood, weird wildlife) don't have bacteria or viruses inside.\" Doesn't happen. Maybe after irradiation.",
"You are forgetting parasites, that is why its important to cook meat",
"It is perfectly safe to drink venom as long as you don't have any open sores or ulcers in your GI tract."
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40wmvi | how would a bank make money if i deposited 1 billion dollars into my savings, considering the interest would be millions? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/40wmvi/eli5_how_would_a_bank_make_money_if_i_deposited_1/ | {
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"They would take that money and lend it out to someone else and the interest on that person's loan is higher than the interest rate on your savings account",
"They take like 80% (or whatever % the Fed caps them at) of your $1,000,000,000 and loan it out to a bunch of people at an interest rate much higher than what they are giving you. They then sell those loans in big bundles to other banks and use that money to make more loans and so on and so on... ",
"They loan it out for a good bit more than they pay you. For example (I'm using rates that are high because they're round on a monthly basis the difference between them is the important part--not their level):\n\nItem|Balance|Rate|Monthly Income/Cost\n--:|:-:|:-:|:-:|\nBusiness Loan|$1,000,000,000|6% (0.5%/month)|+$5,000,000\nDeposit|$1,000,000,000|3% (0.25%/month)|-$2,500,000\nMargin|||$2,500,000\nSo in that simple example, the bank would get $5 million per month in interest, pay you $2.5 million per month, and have $2.5 million remaining to pay for their costs (branches, employees, insurance, etc). Like most businesses, they make money on a spread or difference between the cost of acquiring something sold by the business and price their customers (the bank's loan borrowers) will pay for that same thing (one of the main functions of the bank is to save the loan borrower from having to coordinate loans with all sorts of smaller savers). ",
"From what I know, banks do whatever they want with your money once you give it to them. Even though they are paying you several million dollars in interest, they still have your billion dollars, which they can use to invest. The real problem would be when you withdraw all that (capital) money, which is much harder than depositing as far as I know.",
"they loan the money they loaned from you to others, with a much higher interest, and thus they make more money than they lose"
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5qgy3z | how big are human intestines and why? | I've often heard something about football fields but am not sure. I'm an adult, but small, and that seems like a lot. More importantly, why is this size the case, whatever it is?
(Also yes I am talking about the large and small intestines)
(I tried to post this on mobile last night but couldn't get flair up so I deleted it, in case anyone saw it for the short time it was up.) | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5qgy3z/eli5_how_big_are_human_intestines_and_why/ | {
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"It's nowhere that big. The 2 intestines together are a bit less than 30 feet, which is still huge. The reason is that it gives your body more time and area to fully absorb all the food. \n\nIn addition, you can break down your intestines into different sections, which are specialized in absorbing different types of food. For example, Vitamin B12 is only absorbed in one particular part of your small intesntines",
"The small intestines is about 20 feet long while the large intestines is generally about 5 feet long. The main purpose of the intestines is absorption of nutrients and water from your diet. To do this, you must expose whatever food or drink you have ingested to the enzymes (which facilitate absorption) lining the walls of your gut. For this reason, it's really important to have an extremely large surface area to your intestines so that everything you take in as an opportunity to be absorbed.",
"The fun part is when you compare it with other species. Herbivores have longer intestines to absorb as much nutrients as possible. Carnivores have shorter intestines so they are sooner ready to hunt and that food goes in and out faster and bacteria doesn't have time to develop in larger numbers. \nHumans are somewhere in between because we are omnivores but raw meat can be dangerous and we can't process \"simple\" vegetables like grass."
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2twdqp | why were raves made illegal in the 90s? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2twdqp/eli5_why_were_raves_made_illegal_in_the_90s/ | {
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"In what country are you talking about? I believe you could still have a rave party if you wanted to in the US if you followed relevant laws/zoning codes."
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5juel4 | why is a penis not a muscle? | I don't understand why the penis is a completely different kind of system than just a muscle. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5juel4/eli5_why_is_a_penis_not_a_muscle/ | {
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"What do you mean you don't understand why? You mean you don't understand why it is categorized that way, or you don't understand why it evolved that way?",
"It worked well enough. Evolution doesn't always select the \"best\" solution for a problem, it just cobbles one together from genetic parts.\n\nOther animals that have more *intense* mating processes have evolved some truly exotic penis solutions involving muscles and bones, but human mating is fairly simple from a physical standpoint.",
"Could you imagine what fitness centers would look like if they were though?"
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3d3tzc | why mobsters drop their gun at the scene of a murder. | The most famous example is The Restaurant murder scene in *The Godfather*, why does Michael drop the gun as he leaves. IN The Sopranos they also drop the gun at the scene, why is this? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3d3tzc/eli5_why_mobsters_drop_their_gun_at_the_scene_of/ | {
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"If you are caught with a gun which kills someone the gun can be linked by the bullets to the murder and becomes very difficult to explain why you have a gun on you which has killed someone. If the gun is left behind then there is nothing to link you personally to the gun.",
"Ballistics and finger printing have been around for a long time, but gun registration hasn't. \n\nIf you're careful, you can use a gun multiple times, and not leave any finger prints. One gun could be tied to multiple crime scenes, but we'd never know who exactly pulled the trigger. Dropping a gun at the scene of a crime means that the gun is too \"hot.\" Meaning, it's been involved in too many crimes, and could be easily be traced to who ever is holding it, regardless if that person was actually the perpetrator of every crime the gun was used in. \n\nGun registration ties one gun to one person. If the ballistics of that gun shows up in a crime or murder scene, then that owner gots some splanin' to do."
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81k6oe | why are the majority late night shows left leaning? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/81k6oe/eli5_why_are_the_majority_late_night_shows_left/ | {
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"I don't know for sure, but I am guessing that it is because, like most entertainment, late night shows are based in large coastal cities which tend to be left leaning. Another thing is that it is easier to make a joke by mocking or being negative towards something. For that reason it is easier to make comedy against the party in power. ",
"Making national broadcasting stations take a lot of people (cast, crew, tech, etc) and so national TV stations tend to be in big population centers like New York and LA in America.\n\nCities, by and large, are much more liberal-leaning, and so in the entertainment industry liberals are represented more often.",
"Most likely because they're filmed in blue states from citizens of those states. California and New York are both mostly Democratic so the probability of late shows filmed in those areas also leaning towards Democratic politics is is high.\n\n",
"Id try a two pronged approach. Firstly, look up the owners of show's network. Look into their political philosophy, philanthropic leanings, and known public political sentiments. Look into executive producers and search for the same. You could even pull writers and individual personalities from the show into it if need be. You may be able to generalize an institutional bias toward a specific political ideology. Not the full story though.\n\nSecondly, look into demographics for late night shows vs. prime time t.v. You will probably notice a big shift in age and possibly gender. You can find statistics that will support the overall political leanings of the target demographics of late night shows. Producers are going to curtail their content to their audience to some degree. People love to have their ideas supported, and seek out entertainment that doesn't conflict their beliefs but reinforces them. \n\nLastly look into the political leanings of the demographics of people who get tired by big networks. These are well educated, witty individuals. The higher the education level generally speaking, the greater the likelihood to lean left politically. \n\nHope that helps, or at least gets you started. What do you think?\n",
"Because that's how humor works. Political satire is about poking fun at the people at the top, about questioning the status quo.\n\nAnd that is inherently a left-wing thing to do.\n\nHumor is, and has always been, a way to question authority and ridicule the rich and powerful. And those are the *last* things you want to do if you're right wing.\n\nRight-wing ideology is about reinforcing the status quo, about how the people at the top deserve everything they've got, and the people at the bottom deserve their misery, and that is simply not good joke material.\n\nLeft-wing ideology is about saying that the people at the top don't deserve to be there. It is subversive. And you can easily build jokes on that premise, because jokes are about subversions, about screwing with people's expectations and questioning assumptions.\n\nOn the other hand, it is very easy to make right-leaning TV shows relying on anger and outrage. Right-wing ideology is at its core about comfort and stability. \"I like how the world is now, and so I despise anyone who would upset the status quo\". And so, all those pesky people who go around saying the world isn't great the way it is, you can talk for *hours* about how they're a danger to society and how someone should just run them down in a SUV and how they're lazy and jealous and looking for handouts. It's not funny, but it's *great* for channeling anger and outrage.",
"The perception of left/right is in the eye of the beholder for the most part. In the Clinton years, the same comedians pilloried Democrats, and I don't remember complaints about general media bias. Most politicians almost expect it, and few complain because they want a mention no matter what. \n\nBefore you accept the left/right division, look around. Talk radio is almost exclusively right wing, the Sinclair group (a very, very conservative group) is about the largest holder of TV stations in the US. You've no doubt heard of Fox (conservative, not conservative leaning), another large chain. All are firmly in the conservative column, but you frequently hear of \"liberal bias\" in the media. Strange, since most media outlets are conservative owned.\n\nIt seems like there is an extreme amount of hand wringing over this perceived bias these days. Some might lean left, but if you watched late night for years, you would see that every president gets made fun of. Some have a thick skin and let it run off, others, like the current president, have an extremely thin skin which feeds the sharks. Clinton and Bush ignored them for the most part. \n\nJimmy Carter didn't complain, and he was mercilessly roasted as a country bumpkin with a drunk for a brother and a mother who famously wondered if she shouldn't have remained a virgin."
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6y2ufk | why is it hard for some people to give compliments, when they almost always are responded to positively? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6y2ufk/eli5_why_is_it_hard_for_some_people_to_give/ | {
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"Giving a compliment sometimes forces people to put themselves out there and risk rejection. I might not tell a guy he's hot because he might think I'm coming on to him and he might reject me for it.\n\nIf you meant between friends and the like though I completely agree",
"For people with fragile self-esteem or low self-confidence, showing admiration for someone can make you feel vulnerable. There is the basic hurdle of knowing how to say something complimentary without sounding creepy or awkward. Even if you're not socially awkward, though, there is still the risk of rejection, that someone you admire would refuse to be touched even by your kindness, or that they'll misunderstand your intentions and think you want something."
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3ipsik | china is selling massive amounts of american treasuries. what does this mean for the us? | Crosspost from worldnews: [China's Record Dumping Of US Treasuries Leaves Goldman Speechless](_URL_0_).
I've read this article 3 times and I'm still not sure what it means. Is this good for US/bad for china or just bad for everyone all over the world?
edit: Thanks u/napapuda | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3ipsik/eli5_china_is_selling_massive_amounts_of_american/ | {
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"It means that China is wanting money now and cannot wait for the bonds to come due as you cannot cash out a treasury bond early. It is a signal to the world that China's economy is hurting a lot, and that US debt is a strong enough commodity that they are willing to trade it for what they need now. ",
"The sale iself nothing. Means that somebody else will buy it and hold until maturity. \n\nBut if creates enough sell pressure, prices will fall. And interest rates are inversely proportional to prices so they will likely raise.\n",
"They are having liquidity issues.\n\nIts the same as someone in money trouble dumping or borrowing from their 401k. If they dump, they have to pay a penalty, but the penalty is better that losing it all, basically.",
"Also understand zero hedge is not the best source of accurate news, every story they do has a tl;dr of ITS THE END OF THE WORLD HOLY SHIT WE GONNA DIE "
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3ls3w4 | what happens with edible mushrooms and other fungi when they pass their expiring date? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3ls3w4/eli5_what_happens_with_edible_mushrooms_and_other/ | {
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"If you sit and watch a mushroom, you'll see that as soon as the clock ticks over to 12.01 of the expiration date, the mushrooms will shrivel and melt like that dude's face in 'Raiders of the Lost Ark'...'\n\nThe answer to your question is \"nothing.\" \n\nIf it smells funny, or doesn't look like its meant to- don't eat it. \n\nExpiration dates are *entrirely* meaningless (but great for supermarkets when customers throw out food for no reason). But food does go off; use common sense (crazy, I know) and be cautious with meat, esp fish and chicken.\n\nYour nose is your freind...\n\nNormal mushrooms are fine though, they get a little 'tough' or dry, after a while, but fine. ",
"I'm assuming you're asking this because you figure \"mushrooms are fungus and mold is fungus so do they go moldy??\"\n\nMolds that make your food bad are different from edible funghi like mushrooms. Just like some plants are harmful to eat and some are fine. Fungus is just another very varied kingdom of life.\n\nAlso, sometimes food going \"bad\" is due to bacteria and there's no reason these can't grow on mushrooms as well.\n\nJust because mushrooms are fungus doesn't mean they are immune to nasty stuff, like other funghi or bacteria, growing on them.\n\nIf this wasn't the reason you asked, sorry for the misunderstanding.\n\nIn my experience the actual physical thing that happens is that they go dry and shrivelly and then if you've forgotten about them in your fridge drawer for a REAL long time they go slimey. Like with other vegetables this is probably a bacterial biofilm or where bacteria have digested some of the food item's surface and made it go pulpy and gross."
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a686yz | why is the flame on my lighter blue at the bottom and yellow or orange at the tip of the flame? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/a686yz/eli5_why_is_the_flame_on_my_lighter_blue_at_the/ | {
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"Blue flames are hotter than yellow flames are hotter than orange flames.\n\nThe flames at the bottom are closer to the fuel and heat source, and thus burn hotter.\n\nAs you move away from that heat source, the flames get less energetic and throw off lower-energy light as radiation."
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2it2gb | how can jordan stay at peace with so many conflicts around the country? | Jordan always seemed to be the most stable country in the Middle East, why is that? It has Syria, Irak, Iran, Lebanon and Israel in proximity but looks more stable and inmune to say, ISIS, than other countries. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2it2gb/eli5_how_can_jordan_stay_at_peace_with_so_many/ | {
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"It's all about the money. Jordan is provided about a half billion in military aid every single year since 1951. Jordan continues to get foreign dollars all on the presumption that they are going to stay peaceful.\n\nThey do have some rather large tensions with Israel. But as long as the western powers continue to pay them, they stay at peace."
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4ezgf3 | how does a country get rid of their king/queen? like jamaica might do. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4ezgf3/eli5_how_does_a_country_get_rid_of_their/ | {
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"Well, the old way was to have a revolution (see America overthrowing their status as a British colony, see France overthrowing the monarchy, etc.)\n\nHowever I expect Jamaica's plan would just be to amend their constitution. Queen Elizabeth II is the Queen of Jamaica at the same time that she's the Queen of the UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, etc. If any of those realms wished to cut their ties with Queen Elizabeth, they would need to amend their constitution so that She is no longer their Queen.\n\nI'm not sure how it works in Jamaica, but in Canada, Australia, and the UK, the \"Crown\" is the personification of the state. So if one of those nations cut ties with the monarchy, they'd need to replace the Crown with something else. ",
"In contrast there was a recent survey in Jamaica where 60% of Jamaicans would choose to become a British territory again due to mishandling of government finances. \n\nPersonally I think that would be a shame to give up their independence (bear in mind, for the average Jamaican nothing would change, they would still be effectively autonomous under British rule, but the government would have the power to intervene in certain cases like human rights law)\n\nSo, okay I guess. Britain has her problems, but we're usually pretty good with managing money. \n\nIt's the principle of the thing, I guess."
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6p16na | it is easy to identify whether or not a trailer is professionally made or fan-made, judging from the way the camera moves and the number of seconds spent on each sequence. how exactly do professional film makers do this, i.e. make their films more dramatic? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6p16na/eli5_it_is_easy_to_identify_whether_or_not_a/ | {
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"Check out FoldingIdeas on youtube. He's an editor (i think) and a wizard with a lot of insights into why something looks right or wrong, themed or chaotic, dramatic or rambling etc etc."
]
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2j92ry | how is the minimum wage enforced? | If someone is being paid less how does the government find out and what will they do? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2j92ry/eli5_how_is_the_minimum_wage_enforced/ | {
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"Short answer: someone complains.\n\nLonger answer: A person who thinks they are not being paid fairly can file a complaint with the Department of Labor through their Wage and Hour Division. The complaint forms are online, and the locations of the WHD offices are posted as well. There are similar offices and structures for state complaints.",
"If the person is being paid below minimum wage they should be clever enough to report, and if the government find out, the person could be fined or prosecuted!",
"The same way that the government finds out if there are unsafe work standards, or anything else illegal. Someone reports them.\n\nThey may also be audited and have all their financial records examined to see how much money they bring in, how much they put out and if all the numbers add up.",
"Most of the enforcement for minimum wage violations come from claims brought against an employer by a current or former employee.\n\n(Note: This is based on experience in California, things may be different in other states)\n\nIf you are being paid less than you are supposed to be paid (unpaid overtime, not getting lunch breaks, not being paid minimum wage) you look up your local National Labor Relations Board office _URL_0_\n\nThe NLRB does not require lawyers, but you can hire a lawyer if you wish. There is a form you fill out to make your claim against the employer. After you fill out the claim form the nlrb sends the complaint to the employer who now has to respond. \n\nTypically the claim breaks down as such:\n\nFirst the employee needs to establish that they are, in fact, an employee of the person. If you're an independant contractor minimum wage laws do not apply to you. If you're a person in a managerial/supervisory position, typically overtime laws do not apply to you. \n\nOnce it is established that the person is an employee the employer now is required by law to produce the time-keeping records that they have kept on their employees. If you are employing an undocumented worker under the table and have no time-keeping records you're about to be in a serious world of hurt because the nlrb can take the employee's credible testimony as evidence of the hours works (this means the employee can lie like nuts if he can get the nlrb 'judge' to agree with him and make out like a bandit). \n\nOnce the nlrb has established the hours worked and the amount that the employee has been paid, it will then make a judgment against the employer in favor of the employee for whatever difference is owed. So if you were paid a dollar-per-hour less than you should have been, you will get that dollar-per-hour.\n\nNow, the fun thing is that, at least in California, we have a thing called waiting time penalty. When you are fired from a job an employer is required to pay you the entire amount due to you on that day. If you quit a job an employer must pay you within 3 days of you quitting. Failure to do so results in a days average wages per day that it takes for the employer to pay you, up to 30 days. So let's say your employer is paying you regular hourly wages when they should be paying you overtime. Let's say you make minimum wage of $9.00 so you're average daily wage is somewhere around $72.00. What tends to happen is that your employer might owe you only $200.00 in unpaid overtime, but you now have a $2160.00 ($72.00 * 30) waiting time penalty because your employer did not pay you the full wages you were owed. (It's surprising how many small employers are not aware of this law, and how quickly they want to cut a check once they're educated)\n\nThe employer can choose to appeal this decision and force you to go to actual civil court to retry the case. To do so the employer must post a bond for the full amount of the judgment.\n\nTypically from start to finish the process takes a year to a year and a half at least in the area I'm in. There's a lot of forced mediation before you actually go before a 'judge' at the board, and typically the mediators will lay it out in really clear terms to the parties and they usually settle at that point. "
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bo298t | when you swat a fly or step on a insect, why can it still move? | Like isn’t its head destroyed or a bunch of its organs crushed? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/bo298t/eli5_when_you_swat_a_fly_or_step_on_a_insect_why/ | {
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"Kind of like if you kill an animal it could still move it’s legs due to the nerves, it’s not alive anymore just electrical pulses through the nerves",
"Depends on how badly the exoskeleton is damaged. It will die either way since insects don't heal.\n\nInsects don't feel pain the way you and I do. The only know something is wrong, but will proceed to try and get away from you and try to live it's life, even though it's dying."
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1qx4ig | what the difference is between race and ethnicity and why we differentiate between the two. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1qx4ig/eli5_what_the_difference_is_between_race_and/ | {
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"\"Race\" indicates similarities in biological factors such as skin color, hair color, etc.\n\n\"Ethnicity\" indicates similarities in cultural factors such as nationality, language, familial heritage, etc.",
"1. [Race](_URL_1_): \"is a classification system used to categorize humans into large and distinct populations or groups by anatomical, cultural, ethnic, genetic, geographical, historical, linguistic, religious, or social affiliation...Social conceptions and groupings of races vary over time, involving folk taxonomies that define essential types of individuals based on perceived traits. Scientists consider biological essentialism obsolete, and generally discourage racial explanations for collective differentiation in both physical and behavioural traits.\" I would also say that the term \"race\" has a lot of strong negative connotations, in particular because race seems to be a label applied unto a person from someone else.\n\n2. [Ethnicity](_URL_0_): \"Ethnicity or ethnic group is a socially defined category of people who identify with each other based on a shared social experience or ancestry. Membership of an ethnic group tends to be associated with shared cultural heritage, ancestry, history, homeland, language (dialect) or ideology, and with symbolic systems such as religion, mythology and ritual, cuisine, dressing style, physical appearance, etc.\" In contrast to race, I would say that the term \"ethnicity\" has more positive connotations in that it is how people define themselves from others - a person constructs their own ethnicity within a larger community of people. It is not a term applied to them.\n\n3. Population: In science, the more relevant and applicatble term would be population \"x\" of humans. A population occurs whenever \"the probability of interbreeding is greater than the probability of cross-breeding with individuals from other areas. Under normal conditions, breeding is substantially more common within the area than across the border\". Populations are important for understanding the prevalence of certain traits/behaviours, the way traits move between populations, how traits become more frequent or less frequent over many generations, and how speciation occurs. In this way a population might be a particular city, or a country, or a continent depending on the scope of the study in question. A population is not just restricted to a physical location, in this way we might consider a group of immigrants to be their own population.\n\n**Differences:** Race typically focuses in on physical appearance (skin colour, eye colour, hair colour and texture), where as ethnicity focuses in on culturally constructed traits (language, dress, customs, traditions, religion and shared history) to distinguish one person from another. However, as you can read in the race definition it also considers religion, language and any number of other cultural traits - that is to say the traits (physical or cultural) used to define race and ethnicity are not mutually exclusive. There can be a bit of overlap.\n\n**Similarities** Both race and ethnicity are social constructions have nothing to do with how we should classify ourselves in biologically relevant terms. You cannot classify people into distinct racial or ethnical boxes because what defines one race/ethnicity from another race/ethnicity is fluid. These classification schemes change through time and across cultures. Neither are scientifically relevant terms. \n\nEdit: Just a little extra information - It is more correct to say the human *species* and not human *race*. Biologists, scientists, taxonomists, geneticists etc. will not say \"race\", they will say \"species\". This is the correct way to classify humans. It probably sounds nitpicky, but race has so many negative connotations that the neutral, and more scientifically correct term \"species\" is preferred. "
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5nenez | how did facebook know i might be friends with a person in another city, when i've given them almost no information? | I made my first Facebook account ever yesterday, and I used a brand new email address for it. I gave neither the email provider or Facebook any personal information beyond my name and I think my birthday. Somehow, within hours, Facebook was able to determine that I might be friends with a guy I used to know who lives in another city now. I want to reiterate, neither Facebook or the email provider has my
* phone number
* address
* school information
* employment information
Also, I didn't download the Facebook app. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5nenez/eli5_how_did_facebook_know_i_might_be_friends/ | {
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"If you've already added some friends then if those friends are friends with that guy facebook will think that you a friends with them too.\n",
"Have you accepted any friend requests or sent any friend requests to anyone? If so, it most likely recognizes mutual friends. ",
"Perhaps that person has you in a virtual address book on their email, phone etc which they have given permission for FB to link through.\n\nYou gave FB your name, it sees your name on his contact list and suggests the connection. ",
"Have you been stalking peoples pages? Facebook can also track who you are looking at, and infer potential relationships from that. ",
"The fact that you didn't give Facebook your address is kind of irrelevant because Facebook can find out the approximate location of the device you used to access it. ",
"I've actually wondered the same thing, I recently made a FB acct. And I got all sorts of random people I sort of knew, even some people from Niger. I used to go on craigslist personals and you would get the occasional scammer from Niger. Anyways I think anyone who has your number in their phone will pop up as possible friends."
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3f44zz | why is trump ahead in some of the primaries when it seems like everyone hates him??? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3f44zz/eli5_why_is_trump_ahead_in_some_of_the_primaries/ | {
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"Publicity. Many Americans vote based on whose name they hear the most. These people are obviously not vocal about their beliefs, so that's why what you hear is mostly against him.",
"[That's pretty much the most common question this month](_URL_0_) :)",
"Because everyone *on reddit* seems to hate him. Reddit is extremely liberal overall while Trump is very conservative, so Reddit hates him. Never make the mistake of thinking reddit is an accurate cross-section of society as a whole, because there are a tremendous number of Americans who are politically very different than reddit. ",
"The most he gets in any of those is 24%. So his lead only means that one out of every four or five Republican voters love him. \n\nBut note also that [he's also the most hated candidate](_URL_0_). The other republican candidates may now have fewer votes, but none of them gathers nearly as much hate from the public as Trump does. So if some of the candidates start dropping out of the race, their bulk of their supporters will not switch to Trump.\n\nAlso note that the page you link it has some poll results on Clinton vs. Trump and Sanders vs. Trump, which have the Democratic candidates beating him by more than 10%."
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1ruxri | e-reader screens or "electronic paper" | How do they work in contrast to other displays, and why do they produce that weird flickering effect when they render a new screen? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1ruxri/eli5_ereader_screens_or_electronic_paper/ | {
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"You have three types of 'normal' screens.\n\nOLED: Organic Light Emitting Diodes that light up when electricity is ran through them. Great colors and blacks, but expensive.\n\nLCD: Liquid Crystal Display. Contains liquid crystal that have different colors depending on the current you run through them. To get blacks, there is a thing called a 'raster' in front of them. Note that by itself, LCD is not that bright, so there is usually a backlight behind the screen. Semi-decent colors, very bright, but shitty blacks.\n\nPlasma: Gas cells are rapidly heated by electrical current, causing them to form plasma and emit light. The color is dependent on the type of gas. Very fast, very good color, very good blacks. The gas cells and heater however, are bulky and energy-ineffecient.\n\nElectronic Paper (also called E-ink): There is a layer of electrostatic-charged ink capsules stuck between two very thin layers. Changing the charge re-arranges these ink droplets based on what the E-reader wants to render. Yes, you are looking at real ink. The flickering is caused because moving ink around is a LOT slower than changing currents in crystals, diodes or plasma.\n\nThe advantage to E-ink, however, is that it has no refresh rate. If you tape a screen with a camera, you can see the screen 'flicker' constantly. This is what tires our eyes when gaming long sessions or watching TV for a long time. E-ink doesn't have this, because you are (not entirely, but for the sake of the argument) staring at a piece of paper.\n\n",
"Basically, each \"pixel\" of an e-paper display is a capsule of charged particles. Black is charged one way, white with the opposite polarity. You put an electric field under the capsule, say a positive one, and the positively charged pigment flees to the top of the capsule while the negatively charged pigment scoots down to the bottom. As for t6he \"flickering\" effect, it takes a small amount of time for the pigment scooting to take place. So it's not as uniform as opening an LCD shutter or hitting a chunk of phosphor with an electron beam.\n"
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1mdwfn | how do bodybuilders make a living? what is the point of competitions? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1mdwfn/how_do_bodybuilders_make_a_living_what_is_the/ | {
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"The vast majority of them do it as a hobby and work other jobs.\n\nThe few that do it professionally make their living from competitions, sponsorships, personal training, and occasionally acting/modeling.",
"Some also own gyms for a living which in turn gives them the freedom to workout whenever they want. Guys like Rich Froning Jr(3 time Crossfit games champion) owns his own crossfit gym and is sponsored by BSN I believe. "
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2lql9b | why is it that sometimes we feel even worse after we stop exercising? | Have you ever been vigorously exercising, maybe going on a run or something and then you stop to walk...Why does it feel even more uncomfortable in the moments immediately after you stop? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2lql9b/eli5why_is_it_that_sometimes_we_feel_even_worse/ | {
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"Same reason spicy food is hottest after you stop eating. While doing both, your body is releasing a constant stream of endorphins that, among other things, suppress pain so that we can continue doing it. When we stop, the endorphin flow stops and the pain hits us.",
"One possible reason is that when you are moving, all those muscle movements help pump \"used\" blood back to your heart. When you stop, the blood flow no longer has that help, and tissues don't get as much oxygen and cleaning effect of good blood flow."
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6b38zc | how do nurses not get sick all the time if they're working long hours, likely stressed, and constantly around sick people? | EDIT 1 - thanks for all of your answers, genuinely reading all of them, and some really interesting insights!
EDIT 2 - so it seems like the large consensus is that they actually do get sick quite a lot! Although with all the preventative measures outlined below, maybe still not as often as I would expect
EDIT 3 - all this talk of hand sanitiser is starting to make me picture a naked Frank in IASIP | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6b38zc/eli5_how_do_nurses_not_get_sick_all_the_time_if/ | {
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"Our mind & body was blessed by a fascinating way of fighting problems and you asked about two types of problems. We will discuss how we fight it & why we might lose the fight:\n\nA) problems affecting mind and thinking: \n*cause: due to stress; being required to lots of things in a short time and these things have big impact.\n*how we fight it naturally: with time our minds become used to these things, so we do it faster and better (like we discovered shortcuts).at the same time we feel less guilt due to the repetitions of these situations, also we try to remember good things when bad things occur even if we did it.\n*why we might lose: if there is too much stressful things especially if they are not only at work, if we cannot forget bad things and let it go.\n\nB) problems affecting the body and its organs:\n*cause: dealing with lots of sick people.\n* how we fight it naturally: nurses and other people who work with lots of sick people have very strong body against infection; as they get little bit of bad organisms from sick people everyday.Being very little in amount these bad organisms cannot win the war against our bodies ,also our fascinating bodies remember those bad organisms so when they meet again even if these organisms are too many our bodies can fight better and faster without us feeling this war.\n*why we might lose: if we have problems in our mind our bodies cannot fight as they were before, also some organisms are very strong and change alot like wearing different mask when they get to our bodies, so we cannot recognize or remember them, another thing is if we don't eat enough , not getting enough sleep or taking some drugs that weaken our bodies.\n\nHope this was helpful to you :)",
"Good question there. \nTrue that many nurses work around sick people, however not all diseases are “catching”. There are communicable, and non-communicable diseases. I could be taking care of a person recovering from a heart attack, someone fresh out of the operating room, or another with liver problems. It does not mean I would catch their diseases or problems. The trickier part is when there are patients who come in with communicable diseases like the flu, have C-Diff (clostridium difficile, very nasty bug), or even tuberculosis. With communicable cases like these, many facilities require PPE (Personal protective equipment), so we are required to wear gloves, gowns, masks depending on the situation. That, and proper handwashing. \n\nAs for the long hours, not all of us work that many hours every day of the week. \nThis is only a generality and does not apply to all nurses:\n12 hour shifts = 36 hours = 3 days on, 4 days off (in a 7 day work week), \n10 hour shifts = 40 hours = 4 on, 3 off, for example. \n\nSince the field of nursing is highly variable (not all of us work in a hospital), there are many differences in work environments. Places like school nursing, public health, corrections nursing, forensic nursing, hospital nursing (includes but not limited to ER, OR, ICU, PICU, NICU, CVOR, blood bank, wound care)...\n\nTL;DR., The variety of hours, work environments, and common sense protection like handwashing would be general reasons why nurses don’t get sick as often. That, and we’re often taking care of people in the worst times of their life, so there are some of us who get a +1 immunity boost because we’re helping someone. \n \nSource: am a nurse. \n\nEDIT: Wow, many thanks for the gold. Was not expecting that. Thank you again, kind stranger. ",
"They do get sick often but come into to work anyway because they're get disciplined for calling in.",
"That's an actual danger to them. My sister, who is a nurse, caught tuberculosis while still in training. ",
"The same but different: I am a preschool teacher and my work is a cesspool, despite strict cleaning and sanitizing. My first year I had the stomach flu twice and a cold for all of winter. A coworker got pneumonia AND bronchitis her first year. But after that first year my immune system bucked the hell up. I had a cold for three weeks at the end of winter but that's about it. ",
"Am not a nurse, but work in hospital with very sick patients (respiratory therapist)\nI spent the better part of my student clinical year sick with strep, flus and general illnesses. Almost 5 years later and I've only caught one GI bug that spread around our department! \nI think we have better immune systems because we spend so much time around sick people. Also as someone else mentioned; the more communicable the disease, the more personal protection we use. ",
"A variety of reasons! Not all patients are admitted with a contagious illness (MI, Stroke, GI Bleed VS flu, meningitis, or TB). Hospitals do provide Personal protective equipment, or PPE, for particularly resistive infection and educate the staff on appropriate use of the equipment when dealing with these types of infections. It's also important to properly clean shared equipment (EKG machines/Glucometer) that may go from room to room to prevent contamination.\n\nIf nurses are working in a hospital setting, they do work 12 hour shifts but typically work 3 days a week. Our facility practices \"self scheduling\" so the staff manages their own schedules. As long as the units needs are met, management doesn't switch days around. \n\nAnother important part of this, as OP mentioned, is stress. As coworker job satisfaction decreases there is an increase in stress and illness. It's important to try to manage work life balance and stress in the work place. Some of this is on the bedside nurse and can be helped with time management and critical thinking (all those nursing buzzwords); but a lot of it is in the hospitals administration to ensure appropriate staffing is being maintained and nurse to patient ratios are safe for the levels of care throughout the hospital. When this starts getting out of hand, nurses get sick.\n\nSource: Clinical Nurse Educator for Critical Care \n\nTLDR; hand washing, contagious vs noncontagious illness and work/life balance are important but hospital administrators have to help ensure safe staffing and nurse to patient ratios if they want to keep happy, healthy nurses.",
"I'm a nursing student. The main thing that we learn is how to not spread disease. We have a special way of washing our hands after every patient contact (even if we wore gloves). And with the especially contagious diseases (TB, shingles, etc) we have PPE or personal protective equipment. Which includes gowns, masks, gloves, sometimes hair covers and shoe covers, respiratory masks, etc. And theres different rules for each contagious disease, like how close you can get to them, they may have to wear a mask when leaving their room, they may need a negative air pressure room, or the patient may need isolation. I say our PPE is the main thing that helps us stay well. ",
"Nursing does have a high rate of injuries. Back injuries happen frequently from lifting and positioning parients. Needlesticks are an occupational hazard as well. I work in mental health so we have had many nurses attacked and this too can lead to injury. As far as not being allowed to call out, I am not sure if I have heard of anyone being disciplined for this. There are policies in place to protect the units from some abuses with call outs. Most of the time you need to give your unit or house supervisor plenty of time when calling out. Five minutes before the shift starts is unsafe for patient care. Also if you call off on a weekend you should expect to work the next. Same for holidays. Nurses do work sick but if you have the flu or pneumonia then you are not coming in. No manager wants you to infect the whole unit (patients and staff). I think for the most part nurses are washing their hands much more than the rest of the population and always foaming in and out with sanitizer. This keeps us moderately healthy.",
"Being around sick people a lot [eventually] gives you an immune system that can stun a horse. The hours worked and stressful environment take their toll same as with everybody else.",
"I'm just speculating but I would suspect that nurses DO get sicker more than the average but due to their training, procedures, for not spreading diseases, etc. they probably get sick a lot less than what you would imagine would be the case if they were just a bunch of untrained schmoes going about their jobs while spreading disease around hither-thither.\n\nPlus, the job is probably self-selecting, with people who DO get sick a lot just sort of eventually switching careers.",
"Antidotal responses. I worked as RN for several years. Primarily worked SICU for my first few years and just would have the occasional cold. Started working ER and it seemed I was sick with a cold or the flu for my first two years. The next 3 years in ER, I very rarely got sick. The exposure to potential viruses in the ER or a walk in clinic are much higher than per say the floor and other areas of the hospital. Although I have never seen a study correlating the first few years of clinic or ER work with increase illness, I have seen it not only in myself but in other colleagues after working in these environments. ",
"Op does not know many nurses, they are sick all the time.\n\nWife is an OR nurse people are constantly calling in sick",
"Proper PPE (personal protective equipment) use, handwashing, proper care when dealing with hazardous items like needs and used tubings, and eating well (outside of work since I never have enough time during my shift). My fiance and I are both nurses in different fields. I work 8 hr. shifts for 5 days/week which is standard for a lot of jobs but she works 12-14hrs regularly 3 times/week. Back then they used to make them do 18 hour shifts but I got her to talk to the nurse manager and after that, she'd pull 1 every few months only. I used to do a lot of OT (16 hr shifts) and got sick more often. I remember being at work for my first birthday as a nurse from 6:30am until past 12am and that was an exhausting day. Not just the long working hours but the stress got to me. I only do it now during emergencies (storms, disasters, etc) and do my best not to bring work-related stress outside of the workplace. ",
"A few points on this as someone who employs around 25 nurses for a small private medical company.\n\n > constantly around sick people?\n\nThey usually aren't! Very few nurses have any more contact with people with contagious diseases than the postman or local shopkeep. \nNone of ours ever see a patient who has a contagious disease, it's completely seperate from our field, which is injuries and stress at work and pre employment medicals. \n\nAnd for those in hospitals that *do* have contact with people with contagious diseases, that disease has usually been already diagnosed, so precautions can be made. If someone goes into their local GP service with flu like diseases, they will speak to the receptionist, followed by the doctor. Only contact with a nurse will likely be if a shot needs to be given.\n\n > likely stressed\n\nNurses often combat this pretty well. We compete for staff with the NHS, which is famously being tested to it's limits by the current pro austerity government. And yet we still find that we have to offer benefits above and beyond to standard nurses to allow for the fact that the strength of camaraderie in the NHS is so strong, and the feeling of job satisfaction so high. When we are sending nurses out to factories on their own to check out people with bad backs and hearing loss, we can't compete on that level with a team of ward nurses working together to save limbs and lives.\n\n\n\nIn addition to this, certain types of people - particularly the elederly, very poor (who cannot afford heating etc), children or those with pre-existing conditions catch viruses a lot easier than 18-50 year olds in the workforce.\n\nAnd, talking about the workforce, you'll often find that non medical industry employers and even employees are rather stupid when it comes to viruses and work, and engage in practices which essentially spread disease (i.e coming into work sick, discouraging breaks to keep clean etc).",
"My wife worked as an RN for 40 years. She's since picked up a part time retirement job as a cashier.\n\nSince then we're both sick like 5x as often as before, because of the constant contact with people, their money, whatever. (First she gets it, usually I get it after)",
"I am an advanced practice nurse who in part left full time practice because of the stress and illness it was causing me. I have an autoimmune disorder so this put me at greater risk of illness. I was working an average of 100 hours a week, sometimes 26 hours or more awake, little rest time between shifts. I ended up gaining 50 lbs, and caught every viral illness going around. It also contributed to infertility, IMO, although you'd be hard pressed to find a medical person to agree with that- but I got pregnant THE MONTH AFTER I stopped working the crazy hours and slept every night.\n\nHowever, in my regular RN jobs prior to I didn't get sick, etc. in all jobs I washed my hands frequently, followed all precautions for personal protective equipment for contact with infectious people. I am fully vaccinated. The key for me (and I'm sure many others) is working a reasonable amount of hours, sleeping regularly, hand washing, and a general healthy lifestyle.",
"Nurses are taught not to do some of the gross things most normies do, such as: eye touching, nose picking, not washing up before eating, and not washing our hands after toilet. Once these basics are learned it's actually quite easy not to get sick. \nPlus vaccines, those help a lot. Oh, and wash your hands.\nSource: am a med/surge nurse",
"In terms of long hours, days off are mostly for recovery. I sleep anywhere from 12-16 hours on my days off. \n\nIn terms of the stress, self care is a must. I try to be in the sunshine for at least 30 mins before work, I see a counselor, I work out 3-4 times a week, I shower daily, I frequently do facemasks or relaxing bubble baths. I also take a weekly pottery class and volunteer to have meaningful free time. \n\nIn terms of sick people, I've never had an issue. I get sick at the start of Spring and Winter, almost every year. Those normally knock me out for 1-2 weeks then I'm good. I took daily vitamins and lots of zinc/vitamin c when I start feeling down.\n\nIt can be hard, but finding a good fit staff wise and job wise helps a lot. I work on a pediatric psych unit and I love my kids and my coworkers. It's hard work, but I wouldn't trade it. Just yesterday I brought in some salt dough to make Mother's Day gifts and today we're painting them. It's little things like that that help ease the workload.",
"I'm an RN.\n\nPerhaps I am one of the unlucky ones, but I am constantly getting sick. But it's more from the psychoemotional burnout than any physiological threat. Long hours, shift work, high stress - all of that comes together to create a very difficult living experience.\n\nI'm off on long term disability due to PTSD from childhood issues that were exacerbated by my line of work. I am also a drug addict in recovery, and I was stealing drugs from my hospital. Now this was my choice initially, of course, but the nature of the work combined with the veritable candy store that is the hospital environment made drug addiction an all too easy choice to deal with the maelstrom within.\n\nSo I'd say we are just as susceptible, perhaps even more than the general public, to psychoemotional threats to our well-being.",
"We do. \n\nThe first year for most new nurses is wrought with numerous upper respiratory infections, influenza, conjunctivitis, and strep throat. \n\nAfter that, we are usually gravy!!!",
"ER nurse here. Unfortunately, we're not super heroes, we get sick too. We are, at least, better trained than most to prevent the spreading of diseases, even when we aren't sure what we're dealing with yet. \n\nIn the ER especially, you're trained to immediately assess your patient to determine not only the kind of care they'll need but also their potential risk to other patients, staff, or themselves. This quick analysis helps us triage patients effectively and, hopefully, narrow the exposure risk. When there was a risk/fear of ebola we heightened our education and safety plans dramatically. However, even patients who have flu like symptoms and nuchal rigidity (possible symptoms of meningitis) are masked immediately and isolated as soon as possible. But, there are always patients we don't know have communicable diseases until after they've been around the department a little while. That's a risk of working emergency medicine. If this happens, say a person we've been caring for ends up having bacterial meningitis, whooping cough, etc., if there is a medication available to help prevent us from contracting the illness (in my case strong antibiotics after caring for a patient with whooping cough) the hospital will provide you with prophylactic medications. It's in their best interest that their nurses aren't sick. Also, if there were ever (God forbid) chemical warfare used and you are at a hospital with at decontamination setup, you and your family will be some of the first provided with the antidotes. Again, keeping your Healthcare workers healthy so they can continue to help others is priority.\n\nSo, that became a bit of a tangent, but I think it's interesting and pertinent. Let me know if anything I said needs clarification. ",
"As a nurse, I DO get sick all the time! And I wash my hands like a crazy person. People aren't put on droplet precautions for colds (at my hospital), and too many patients don't see the problem with coughing in your face when you're listening to their heart or lung sounds.",
"Doctor here, while working in hospital I was sick every four weeks often I went to ENT and had my running nose plugged, fever still running.",
"I'm an ER nurse, and arguably one of the most vulnerable fields in nursing. There are truths in a lot of the responses here but let me put it all together and give my perspective. Keep in mind I am trying to keep this simple, so by all means if you want to elaborate further or if you want me to clarify just reply. \n\nAs some one noted, not all people that come through the door actually have diseases that spread. Those that do have diseases that spread - there are certain factors that need to be met to actually get infected. There needs to be a way to spread it, usually through one of the very many bodily fluids we have (common: blood, stool, pus, vomit, mucus, moisture from your respiratory tract. Uncommon: saliva, urine, sweat, semen etc). So someone sick comes in and has something to spread, but it needs a vehicle to get into you, like a cough. Very few infections actually linger in the air, even ones that can be spread through air will only effectively travel a couple feet before falling to the ground. Think when you see someone must when they sneeze, that's about the reach with many infections spread with a cough. So we try to contain that to the person if possible. We might have them wear a mask, give medicine to stop/slow vomiting, or even isolate them with physical barriers like curtains. \n\nNext, it needs a way to get into you. Either by you breathing it in, or if you have a cut in your hand, or if blood splashed into your eyes... There are a million ways we deal with this - gowns, masks, gloves, face shields, etc. A good rule of thumb is if it's warm, wet, and not your own, don't directly touch it. There's more to it, but a lot is common sense at this point. If blood might splash, wear eye protection. If someone has diarrhea wear gloves. \n\nIt also needs an environment to grow. Fact of the matter is, we have a lot of bugs that make it into us every day. But your body has a way to deal with it, ways to keep it from growing and ways to keep it from staying. In healthcare, we receive a myriad of vaccinations to help with this. We also get testing, and with any potential exposure we get another round of testing. \n\nIf you succeed in any one of these steps, you have effectively saved yourself from becoming sick. In healthcare, we also have the luxury of knowing that you might be sick, and sometimes even knowing exactly why you're sick. That gives us the advantage of knowing how to protect ourselves. I feel safer in the ER than I do at Walmart, because at Walmart I don't know who has what and everyone touches/sneezes/coughs on everything. \n\nIn addition, just because someone is sick and the stars align doesn't mean it will actually transmit, or that it will actively infect you. On another note, we do get sick, we just try not to show it because it doesn't matter. There have been times where we are much sicker than patients, but we are stuck at work and hsve to pretend that we are feeling compassionate for your 2 hours of a runny nose. \n\nFinally, and most importantly, do you know the best way to fight infection? Wash your hands! Seriously, we mean it. It is such a great tool, and nurses wash their hands constantly. Those machines on the wall the jjizz foam? They help us disinfect between patients, and it works. If you learn anything today, wash your damn hands. \n\nHope that helps.",
"As a former medical professional, I used to get sick multiple times per year. Before that, I would get sick all the time, being locked up in a small room with tons of sick people, during high school. After working at the clinic, I continued getting sick during college, for the same reason as in high school. Now that I work in an office with just 5 other people, I haven't gotten sick in two years, for the first time in my life. I wonder if Native Americans had weaker immune systems, because traditionally, most of them were not exposed to crowded spaces, passing all kinds of germs all around the community.",
"I've been an RN for 10 years. I have spent all 10, until recently, working in the MSICU. I would get the common cold occasionally, but not often, until I had a child. Once I had a kid in daycare, I get sick frequently. He brings home more little viruses that I cannot avoid. As far as serious diseases and infections, I would guess that most hospital nurses would test positive for MRSA and C-diff. We don't show symptoms because we are generally in good health, but we are colonized with the bacteria from being in frequent contact. ",
"I have to tell you as much as we don't get sick, when we do, we can get very sick. I've been battling MRSA for the last year. I keep getting reinfected at work. We are colonized as healthcare workers. Our environment is colonized. It's a hard thing to get rid of. ",
"Nurses wash their hands constantly and also have pretty robust immune systems. My dad has hand sanitizer everywhere! He still gets the flu every other year and is sick a couple times a year, so they do catch more than the average person.",
"People made great points about how the types of illnesses we see being contagious via various vectors. However, that applies to the big scary things, generally.\n\nRule of thumb: don't be fooled, we do get sick. Moreso in the first 1-3 years of our jobs. We build up immunity, self medicate, and self loath to not seem like some of the patients we talk shit about (man colds...).\n\nSource: am too a nurse. ER.\nSource: am a man. Have had man colds. Bitched the entire time.",
"Not a nurse but my gf who is a Dr got sick all the damn time when she was working paediatrics. Kids are full of new and interesting communicable diseases :D",
"Many do get sick all the time. However theres many measures that are done inside of a nursing home/hospital that many of us don't do as much as we should. Gloves, mask's, washing hands everytime you touch something. \n\nAlso some factors to help: specialized air filters, and strong disinfectants. ",
"Not a nurse, but I work at a hospital, and people from every department here get sick all the time. Most people work through it, but sick calls are in plenty. ",
"They do get sick. And they do get fired if they call out sick enough. That shit really happens. ",
"I overheard some doctors talking while getting a mole removed. Apparently they do get sick more than most people and therefore are awarded about 4x the amount of sick days than an average place of work. That's in New Zealand anyway.",
"In my experience of my mom (night icu nurse), they do. But usually it's their coworkers getting them sick. It doesn't go full blown often, but she's \"trying to catch a cold\" /trying to doctor herself out of one on a semi regular basis ",
"Nurses wash their hands constantly and custodians constantly sanitize stuff and everyone probably makes it a habit to not touch their face if they work with sick people.",
"Nurse here, we do get sick but usually not as significantly as others not constantly exposed. Example: I got the sniffles, my husband got the flu and almost died. ",
"I work in the operating room. We are always sick. Illnesses go around and around and around. Even though our patients are supposed to be healthy when they come to us, we still catch stuff. And co-workers come in when they're sick because there's so much to push back against calling out when you're ill. So yeah, what your nurses says is probably allergies? She's been sick for 3 weeks with a hacking cough and a fever. She's just been getting through it with Motrin and Tylenol.",
"They do. Health care professionals definitely get sick more often despite wearing protective equipment and washing hands every 5 minutes.\n\nI am told eventually you build up an immunity to communicable diseases but I've been doing this for two years and I still get sick nearly every month.",
"Not a nurse but a doctor. Already a lot of good theories but I'll add that we really don't know. This phenomena is often brought up concerning nurses, doctors, teacher, preschool workers. I'll add there is probably a component of where you draw the line of level of illness/stay home ratio. In a lot of cases doctors have no back up if we \"call in sick.\" Therefore suck it up, sudafed up, imodium up as the situation dictates. Patients often ask how I don't get sick and I tell them lots of hand washing and healthy habits. In reality I get sick and just can't miss work so patients associate being at work and not \"looking sick\" with not being sick. If I had an alternate or sick days or someone to carry on the load I might miss work and appear to be sick. I'm sure this is true for nurses, teachers, and other too. \n\nI have a lot of office workers I'll see with simple colds and they are taking a sick day because \"their boss doesn't want them getting everyone sick.\" Probably a good policy if you have that option available to you. ",
"Because nurses are badass AF and are immune to all kinds of shit. \n\nSeriously though, when I hear people talk shit about nurses with a broad brush in a negative light, I want to throw down the hammer of justice. ",
"I think it's all about the immune system and regular exposure keeping it strong. I've worked with patients for 13 years daily at a hospital so am exposed to frequent pathogens. I almost never get sick. Most of my coworkers are pretty hardy too. The ones who get sick the most are the ones who bathe their entire work areas in bleach daily (well beyond standard precautions) and I assume do similar at home. My coworkers born outside the US (developing countries) are by far the most impervious to illness compared to US-born coworkers. I assume that exposure to pathogens early in life develops a stronger immune system but regular exposure in an otherwise healthy individual in adulthood also helps maintain a strong immune system. \n\nIt's also been accurately pointed out that many patients aren't in a hospital with easily communicable diseases. You can't catch heart failure, liver disease, or trauma. Those with illnesses like TB are isolated and precautions taken. ",
"I was an adolescent psychiatric registered nurse (RN) for twenty years. Some med-surg RN's don't consider psych nursing to be \"real\" nursing, because often our patients are physically healthy, but their psychiatric problems may be a greater threat to their lives than something like influenza, for example. It's really kind of a matter of proportions. Med-surg nurses do psych too, but in smaller amounts. When people are sick or injured, they are psychologically stressed as well as physically stressed, so med-surg RNs may do 90% med-surge and 10% psych. Psych RNs do 90% psych and maybe 10% med-surg. (Edit: the term \"med-surg\" is pronounced \"med-surge.\" It stands for \"medical-surgical nursing\" i.e. regular bedside hospital nursing for patients who have a severe illness or are recovering from surgery or some other hospital procedure and who need nursing care (burns, orthopedic, labor & delivery, oncology [cancer treatment], etc.) There are many different kinds of nursing. One can go to see a physician in his or her offices, but if you need 24-a-day nursing care one must either hire a private-duty RN or admit to a hospital. Very few people can afford to hire a private duty RN, and so they go into a hospital. There are a lot of other jobs being performed at a hospital of course, including patient care technician (PCT), housekeeping, respiration therapy, radiology, transportation, maintenance, dietary service and so on. A hospital is a lot like a hotel or a cruise ship in terms of ancillary support.)\n\nI was injured twice by patients in twenty years, both times put me out of work for about a week--sutures both times. I caught numerous colds at work and got pneumonia twice from psych patients who refused to cover their cough and refused to wear a mask. One patient was an autistic 16-year old boy and altogether nine people on my unit got sick--four nurses and five patients. He should have been placed in isolation, but he was autistic and we decided in a staff meeting that putting him in isolation would be very detrimental to his mental health. The hospital would not allow us to wear masks (it would have been \"shaming\" to the patient.) The other teenaged patients avoided him, but they got sick anyway. His attitude was, \"I'm sick, so what do I care if everybody else gets sick too? That's what they pay you for.\"\n\nPsych nursing is very stressful, and most psych nurses (and all psychiatrists [M.D.'s] and psychologists [Ph.D.'s]) have a therapist that they see regularly. I went into therapy after a 13-year-old boy on my unit took his own life. I lost one patient in twenty years, and it seriously affected me. (For the record, the best statistics show CPR is only about 18% effective. The other 82% die despite receiving CPR.) My daughter, who is a cardiac ICU nurse told me, \"Dad, do you know how many patients I've seen die at work? Focus on the ones you saved, not on the one kid you couldn't help.\"\nI feel like I fought the Good Fight for twenty years, but Lord I am grateful it's over. I am retired. I have no interest in doing any more psychiatric nursing. It's just too hard.",
"My wife's a nurse. Yeah, there's always some virus going around our house. \n\nPlease don't go to the ER because you have a fucking cold. Stay home. Stay in bed, drink water, sleep. Stop spreading your shit around. The ER cannot help you. Your kid is not dying, they have a cold, stay home. ",
"They do get sick, it's a stressful job, and mostly they are overworked and under appreciated.\n\nHow many people can say that they go to work and it's almost accepted that you will be punched, kicked, bitten, beaten, harassed by your clients or customers?\n",
"Anecdotally I usually get 1-2 colds a year, near the beginning of the winter and towards the end. This year I've been working at an urgent care a lot, and I've had 6 colds since September. \n \nIn short, if people are coming in with their viral colds, bronchitis, or flu the nurses and doctors will likely catch them and become sick themselves unless they've already had decent immunity from that virus (ie they've been infected with it before).",
"My wife is a labor and delivery nurse. When she admits pregnant women, she has to wear proper protection such as gloves and a mask, so that she doesn't get infected with a baby.",
"I'm in EMS. I just want to stress that the first thing in an emergency we do is protect ourselves. \n\nWe don't rush in un prepared. We don't even rush in. Every course in illness or trauma dictates we use body substance isolation and we use as much as we deem necessary. Gloves glasses or a mask with faceshield. A gown or bootcovers. Deliberate and repeated changing of these items when soiled and frequent sterilization and handwashing. When done right we limit these opportunities to catch a communicable disease. \n\nRisks such as particulates in the air and dealing with patients who have high risk lifestyles are always present, but before we deal with them we are trained to consider these. ",
"Nurses get sick all of the time. If you live with a nurse they will bring home terrible things about twice or so a year. Liquid will spew from both ends of your body and you'll curse the day they were born. Oh sure, they'll apologize and you'll say its nbd, but in the back of your mind part of you will believe that they are trying to kill you. I would be willing to bet that home health care nurses and those that do not work in hospitals get sick much more often than those who do. That has been my experience anyway.",
"i work at a hospital and believe me , nurses are the biggest users of sick time so they must get sick",
"Hand washing with soap. At times with hand sanitizer.\n\nEdit: The auto moderator said this answer is too simple so I had to review why nurses(should be all hospital staff) do hand washing often. In nursing school there are multiple discussions regarding [Chain of Infection](_URL_0_). Essentially **Agent -- > Resevoir/Source -- > Portal of Exit -- > Mode of Transmission -- > Portal of Entry -- > Susceptible Host**. Hospitals and hospital staff are always trying to block this pathway to prevent infection. Hand washing is a big deal because it stops a big \"Mode of Transmission\" which is contact transmission. With aerial or droplets transmission we use Personal Protective Equipment such as gloves, gowns, masks and face shields. So if a nurse tell you to \"please gown up\" please effing gown up. Other ways hospital try to block the Chain of Infection is negative pressure rooms which sucks air into the vent to keep the Agent in the room or in the proper filter. For immune compromised patients or operating rooms(need citation/I'm probably wrong) they do positive pressure rooms where they keep pumping the room with clean air to keep the outside air out. Also not touching your **portals of entry**, such as your face holes, with your **mode of transmission**, your dirty fingers, stops the **agent** from reaching the host(you). ",
"I'm not a nurse but am retired schoolteacher. I would think after a time on the job, your body builds up an immunity to most of the germs, etc. Like teachers. You can always tell the first year teachers, cos it seems like they catch everything and are always sick. After awhile your body just seems to ward off most of that stuff. \nAm I on the right track here?",
"The way my mother explained it to me (she's a 30+ year RN) is that she would get sick whenever she changed units, but her immune system would eventually adapt to the new unit and sickness would be fairly rare. Most hospitals also require flu shots or other immunizations to help with that as well.",
"Don't let this distract you from the fact that if you or a loved one has been diagnosed with mesothelioma, you may be entitled to financial compensation",
"Current nursing student, but I work as an EMT in an ER. As I was told from working there, the first year is the worst and it was for me. I'm a pretty healthy guy and I still ended up getting sick pretty much every month. However, after working there for a while you get exposed to almost everything. Some of these nurses who have been in my department for years have gotten no more than a small cold once a year. Your immune system eventually becomes amazing at keeping bad stuff out. \n\nA few other things that come into play. One, we always wash our hands. \"Gel in, gel out\" is the common use of hand sanitizer. We know how to keep ourselves protected. The top comment sums up the whole long hour thing. There were some weeks that I worked 60+ hours but that was only because I had nothing else better to do during the summer. And yeah, we may get stressed during our shifts, but it isn't always like that. But at the end of the day, I still find time to relax and do something I enjoy",
"how they deal with disease: they are not always around something you can catch. I work in the cardiac OR where generally if patients have an infection they delay surgery if possible. Plus for the most part if their disease state is caused by a spreadable disease it happened years prior (i.e. rheumatic heart disease). plus all the hand washing, glove wearing and masks are just as much to protect ourselves as it to protect the patient.\n\nhow they deal with hours/stress: i don't know about the entire country but around me most if not all nurses are union and like any union they can have the hospital by the balls. They are generally very strict about breaks and keeping overtime on a volunteer basis. I've seen surgeries delayed because too many nurses were on break or I've even seen them giving each other breaks while a patient is coding, continuity of care is non existent. I understand doctors can be demanding, unreasonable and downright mean at times but I won't argue with them complaining that they have 3 different crews for a 4 hour surgery. Honestly, most of the stress I observe in nursing is self inflicted.\n\nDon't get me wrong, nurses work hard and the work they do is truly a calling I cannot appreciate. That being said, the quality of the work environment for nurses is not nearly how it is often thought of or portrayed partially due to change in public awareness and support.",
"I worked at a commercial embalming facility, around dead sick people every day. We would process people for the funeral homes around town and would have 20 to 40 people pass through our doors daily. MRSA is rampant, c-diff, HIV, Hep c, everything. Shit you don't hear about every day too, like a CJD case came in once. \n\nEmbalming is basically a blood transfusion, except we replace the blood with preservation fluids. The blood is drained onto the table and can/will splash into you. Even with the best PPE, you still get gross. Autopsy cases are a fucking mess, like a special kind of blood and shit and organs everywhere mess. We try to clean as we go, but it's impossible to keep it clean. Dead people also leak. They are like a wax paper bag holding back a Hoover dam of biological atrocities.\n\nI didn't get sick a lot, but when I did, it was really bad.\n\nThe immunity of the people I worked with was super-human. Except when we all got this cold. This cold kicked our asses, everyone got it. High grade fever, vomiting, shaking, sweating, but not the flu. I went to the minor emergency clinic and told the doc where I worked and he pretty much told me that my body would fight it off better than any medicine he could give me. He gave me a script and told me to fill it if I didn't get better in 2 days. He was right, so I never filled it.\n\nSlightly off topic, but don't ever kiss dead people. I know that seems logical, but I've seen people kissing on dead people that died because of contagious diseases. I know you love them, but they wouldn't want you to catch what killed them. This includes when they are inside the casket. Please for the love of God stop holding your little kids up to the side of the casket to \"kiss grandpa good bye\", it's gross and unsafe.",
"As the son of a nurse, the long and short of it is [Universal Precautions](_URL_0_). Wash your hands and wear/remove PPE (gowns, gloves, face shields, etc) at the correct frequency and with good technique.",
"Having been a nursing home nurse for several years, I'd argue that we catch the most communicable diseases that go around. Generally we get all the people that are in the later stages of their disease and have the best chance to be contagious. We get all the diseases from the hospitals, as that's where they send those that can no longer live in their own. We get all the diseases from schools as everyone brings their kids to see grandma. Basically we get all diseases in the community. We get the biggest patient to nurse ratio, creating some of the highest stress. We are always desperately understaffed. Most facilities have poor housekeeping. \n\nStarting work in a nursing home as a nurse, generally you will spend the entire first year sick. You will catch everything until your immune system catches up.",
"I'm an ER nurse for five years. In the beginning I was sick quite a bit, but I contribute that to difficulty sleeping moreso than the work. Working in many healthcare environments is stressful, but in my experience I've found the unknown of the ER to be the most stressful. \n\nYou can't be a good caregiver without taking care of yourself first. Basically, with experience comes effective coping mechanisms. Better eating habits, learning to sleep better, exercise, and built immunity from exposure and being super hygienic. Sooooo many gross things come across our way every day. I took a guys sock off this morning and three of his toes came with it! I had diarrhea on my ARM today, and my shoes have probably seen more urine puddles than a bar bathroom. \n\nBut, I wouldn't trade my stressful, bladder-holding, puke-filled, leave-my-shoes-in-the-garage, three day a week job for anything. It's a wonderful life. \n\n",
"I use hand sanitizer every time I touch someone or something, and I don't touch my face without sanitizing. Even still, I get sick. Outbreaks happen and I've caught whatever was going around a few times. We have a lot of sick time and a lot of our staff needs to use it.",
"They do catch a fair number, but hospitals have pretty strict exposure protocols. After every patient encounter they will use hand wash. If they use a stethoscope on someone who was sick they bleach it after. There are also specific gowns and stuff for patients with airborn illnesses. ",
"Please be considerate when you're sick and you go to your doctor's office, urgent care or ER. Please put on a mask, use hand sanitizer and do your best not to sneeze or cough on anyone. I know the masks can be uncomfortable, but they're very helpful. When you go to the doctor, you're coming in contact with people with compromised immune systems as well as children and the elderly. Please do your best to limit others exposure.\n\nThank you!",
"Wash your hands, wash your hands, wash your hands. Don't touch your hands to your face. Wash your hands.\n\nSimilar reason to why cooks rarely get food poisoning :).",
"Hospital policy to get vaccinated. But I mostly get sick when I work around Pedia patients. The common cold is the worst thing ever! \n\nSource: was nurse, now doctor. ",
"Chef here:\n\nI'm 24 years old, and I work incredibly long hours in a very high-stress environment. I get sick once or twice a year when allergy season(s) come around in the spring/fall. \n\nI just do what everyone else does, or at least should do. I work in a kitchen, so I eat more regularly than not. Since most of my eating is done at work, I don't tend to buy groceries often, which makes it really easy to cut out junk food. I drink roughly 2 gallons of water, little more probably, get a flu shot, and wash my hands a little more than the average person. I drink alcohol regularly, but I don't go out drinking often. I also don't take any medication. \n\nSo far, I've only had the flu 6 times, and strep once. I like to think the weed helps keep me healthy. It's medicinal, right?\n\n",
"As a new nurse, I can tell you there is definitely a 1 to 2 year break in period for new hires. Kinda like teachers you have an improved immune system when you are done but when something new gets introduced it can spread like wildfire. Herd immunity has been defeated, so there is no stopping it. \n The staff was wiping down our keyboards, phones, and everything else you can think of with anti-bacterial wipes that are strong enough to cause cancer. Cancer causing if repeated exposure to skin aka use your gloves. But we couldn't stop a bad case of Noro virus. At least 2/5 of the staff spent some time at home ejecting bodily fluids from one end or another. Both ends if you were lucky. \n\n Random side note: Alcohol foam and alcohol disinfectants only works when they completely dry. You using it and touching things while your hands are still wet isn't as effective. "
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5p188q | why is division so much harder than multiplication? | (Under the assumption that multiplying is to dividing as adding is to subtracting) why are adding and subtracting equally easy but multiplying is far simpler than dividing? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5p188q/eli5_why_is_division_so_much_harder_than/ | {
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"As you multiply you will always come out with a whole number (assuming you start with two whole numbers), when you divide not everything divides equally resulting in decimals and remainders and shit which just require more work.",
"I don't think I agree with your assertion that subtraction is equally as easy as addition - maybe younger students struggle with subtraction even though they can easily master addition. In fact, addition is easier for people to conceptualize than subtraction \n\n\nIn my view, the issue is that subtraction and division are not commutative. Addition and multiplication are easier to master because it is so eays to manipulate and transform them algebfraically"
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2bb5no | what happens in the daily life of an ancient pagan, pre christianity, what were their views, and how did their perception of the world differ from ours today? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2bb5no/eli5_what_happens_in_the_daily_life_of_an_ancient/ | {
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"I couldn't summarize this if I tried, so I apologize for not doing that. Anyway, one of my old professors wrote this book, which is almost precisely what you're looking for. \n\n_URL_0_",
"Depends exactly where and when. The experience of someone in Ireland in 400BC, the experience of someone in Egypt in 3000BC, and the experience of someone in India in 1300AD are all 'Pagan', in so far as they had multitheistic pantheons, and none of them had any significant exposure to Christianity.",
"Daily life: Eat, sleep, shit, jack off, maybe pray or whatever."
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3nvb60 | if we can regulate controlled medication down to the quantity of pills issued to a specific person on a specific day, report and investigate anomalies and make it incredibly difficult for people to obtain potentially harmful drugs, why can't we do the same thing for guns and ammunition? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3nvb60/eli5_if_we_can_regulate_controlled_medication/ | {
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"Medicines are difficult to synthesize and often times you only take them when you actually need them. Even then, drugs of abuse continue to flourish in black markets and prescription drugs are incredibly abused by working around certain laws. Perhaps not the best analogy to use in this situation. ",
"First, you have to get such control past regulators and it's opposition. That'll kill such a thing dead right there.\n\nBut there are more practical reasons why this could never work. Anomalies are obvious with drugs because there's a rate at which you're supposed to take them and limits to how much you can buy at a time.\n\nAmmo, I can buy all I can afford and stockpile it, I can go shooting full automatic every waking hour of the day to go through it. There's no law controlling how much I can buy, own, or use, and so that would have to be part of your regulation. I can also make my own ammo, which people do. I can get brass anywhere unregulated, and who's to say how much powder I put in each shell?\n\nThat's just the ammo side. As far as the gun side, there are already all sorts of regulations in place to track the sale and ownership of guns. The law states that if you privately sell a gun, you have to keep records of the sale for I believe 7 years. So if police obtain a gun in a crime, they're going to trace the serial number from the manufacturer, to the merchant, and through the chain of owners. People could register the sale, sure, but laws and opposition...\n\nAnyway, whatever we got in place, that's all well and good, but what about stolen guns? Criminals don't obey the laws. There are plenty of guns that are unregistered, legally, and plenty more that are stolen merchandise. How do you connect the purchase of ammo to illegal guns and odd behavior?\n\nOne could write a small book about the practical problems that basically have no actual functional solution. And even if you could come up with one, you then have to get a law passed to make that happen. And even if you had laws in place, they don't stop criminals, by definition. Laws don't make bullets drop from the sky, and they don't address the reason one person wants to murder. Gun crimes aren't a legal problem, they're a social problem, and we need social solutions. And social solutions are hard and complicated; everyone want's to be able to enact a law and have the problems magically disappear.",
"What would the legislation hope to prevent? Mass shootings? Gun violence? The shooter could just hoard his supply instead of use it. \n\nIts also important for gun owners to be proficient with their weapons. They cant do this if they're limited to ammunition. It takes hundreds of rounds and constant practice to be proficient.",
"I wrote this on another site about the problems of \"make bullets hard to get/expensive\":\n\nSo, I think there’s a lot of issues with the “make ammo really hard to get.”\n\n1. The most effective way to reduce gun accident deaths and wayward rounds is well trained people. You’ll just increase the number of poorly trained people with a gun they don’t really understand.\n\n2. Not to be rude but….do you know nothing about human nature? People will drive across state lines to stockpile phosphate clothes detergent, and you’re talking about AMMO?\n\nLemme walk you through this:\n\nDay 1: Rumor spreads that congress is considering the “$5,000 bullet” law. IE the \"Chris Rock Routine\" Law\n\nDay 1 H+1: every ammunition factory in the world starts running three shifts.\n\nDay 1 H+2: Every piece of ammunition for sale in the US is gone at obscene prices. Much of it to people who came in, bought a box of bullets, and then started the background check process on a gun. Much more to mass buyers now selling it on the black market.\n\nAt the end of a week, ammo prices and sales and gun prices and sales are higher than ever. Russia is now covertly selling off all their surplus (and even non surplus) ammo because the profits are so large.\n\nThe law is announced, passed (we presume total political approval for funsies) and a date is announced- in two months, all ammo will be government controlled.\n\nThe shit really hits the fan. Every ammo factory in the world is so far backlogged with grandfathered orders before the deadline that crates of ammo will be shipped legally to addresses all over the US well into 2018. Ammo is so hard to find, that many third world rebels are now using swords.\n\nThe law is implemented. All ammunition sold in the US must be bought from a government dealership. Everyone in the United States owns a gun and enough ammo to run World Wars III-V.\n\nCrime halts because everyone is heavily armed and paranoid, but spree killings are at an all time high because armed paranoics tend to develop mental illness of the shooty type.\n\nAmerica secedes from the American governments, realizes they have all the ammo, and invade Russia. Millions die. We conquer moscow but are eventually driven out. Militarily crippled, russia is subsumed by china, and Canada takes over the US. Our healthcare improves, but tim hortons causes the diabetes rate to spike even higher.\n\nSo if you care about diabetes- please keep bullets legal."
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71dggv | why does putting a hot piece of metal into cool water, such as the metal hardening process, cause fire to start on the surface of the water? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/71dggv/eli5_why_does_putting_a_hot_piece_of_metal_into/ | {
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"Usually that's because it's not water, it's oil (some steels should be quenched in oil rather than water). The steel is often well above the oil's ignition temperature, so the oil ignites on contact with the steel. ",
"Have you been watching *Forged In Fire*, by any chance? Keep watching to find out what happens when someone actually does quench in water, and not oil."
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drgxdx | how does eating before drinking alcohol lessen the effects the next day? | So I work where you we get breathalysed every day prior to work. People generally "blow numbers" on the breathalyser in the morning if they don't eat the night before when they drink the same amount of standard drinks as not eating. From what I've read, eating slows the absorption of alcohol. If that is true then would alcohol not be processed quicker when not eating vs eating? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/drgxdx/eli5_how_does_eating_before_drinking_alcohol/ | {
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"Drinking on a full stomach still gets you drunk, just not AS drunk.\n\nThe stomach actually breaks down some of the alcohol before it reaches your blood stream, this is more pronounced in men than in women, since men tend to have more of the enzyme that breaks down alcohol present in their stomachs. This is the same enzyme present in your liver, just not as much.\n\nThis means that eating before drinking keeps your blood alcohol level down in two ways: First, the drinks have to sit around in the stomach waiting to get dumped into the small intestine, and during this time some of the alcohol breaks down. Second: the alcohol reaches your small intestine in a slow trickle which your liver can handle more easily.\n\nWhen you drink on an empty stomach, the drinks get dumped into the small intestine which is REALLY good at absorbing alcohol, and quickly goes into your blood stream.\n\n & #x200B;\n\n\\*BIG edit because I misunderstood what OP was actually asking and because I left out some really relevant things."
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j29tx | can someone describe the debt ceiling to me (like i'm five?) | This is basically the question that started me on this subreddit. Anywhere I look to get it explained to me, it's still kind of confusing. I keep hearing that this is the first time raising the debt limit has been such a big deal. Why is this the case? And what REALLY happens if it doesn't get raised? (no politics, please!) | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/j29tx/can_someone_describe_the_debt_ceiling_to_me_like/ | {
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"I hope this gets seen. Al Jazeera English just posted some great info about the debt ceiling: [Q+A about the debt ceiling](_URL_1_), [details](_URL_0_), [will it work?](_URL_2_) (those are three separate links)",
"Khan Academy did a video on it the other day, check this out.\n\n_URL_0_",
"This is how I understand it.\n\nPretend you have a credit card. And this credit card has a limit, we'll say $1000. This credit card is pretty near maxed out and you don't really have any cash. You need to buy some stuff soon, and you know that between now and August 2nd you need to buy some things, and you have no choice but to buy them on the credit card. At that point the credit card will be completely maxed out.\n\nThis credit card is our debt ceiling. We will hit the limit of our borrowing limit on August 2nd.\n\nNow let's continue further. We know we have some bills next month, and we also know that we have some cash coming in, but when we look at what we have coming in vs what we have to pay, we don't have enough to cover it. Let's just say we know we'll be short by $100. So now we know ahead of time that we'll be short, and we only have one real option: call the credit card company and ask them to raise our limit.\n\nThis is what the debt ceiling legislation is trying to do: raise our credit limit.\n\nAs you said, normally this happens all the time without issue. This time, some politicians decided to stand up and say: \"Umm, long term this whole 'borrow more money' method may not work out.\" So they are holding off on raising the debt ceiling until we can better align our \"bills\" and our \"income\". There's two ways to do this: either you lower your bills or you raise your income. Either you pay less money out, or you bring more money in.\n\nThis is where the argument happens. Democrats (traditionally) would prefer to bring more money in, so they'd like to \"raise taxes\". Republicans (traditionally) would prefer to have lower bills, so they'd like to do \"spending cuts\".\n\nSo the argument now is \"How can we find a compromise where everyone is happy?\" We haven't (yet, hopefully) found that compromise.\n\nIf we don't find the compromise, and we don't raise the debt ceiling, then we'll have a bunch of bills due and not enough money to pay them. At this point we'll have to start prioritizing who gets the money we do have. Should it be seniors on Medicare? Should it be active duty military? Should it be people we owe interest to for a loan payment?\n\nThis is just like our credit card example if the credit card company doesn't raise our limit. Do we pay our rent? Do we pay our car payment? Do we pay back a guy we borrowed $50 from?\n\nAnd the repercussions are this: whoever we DON'T pay, how does that negatively affect us? Will we be able to get more loans? Will people lose trust in us and a government? Etc. So the outcomes could be nothing or they could be disastrous. No one knows for sure.",
"Obviously this is a complicated issue (as most things are in government finance) so forgive me if I round some things off a bit. \n\nThe \"debt ceiling\" is an arbitrary (read: just made up) limit on how much money the United States can borrow. If we need to spend money and can't borrow it, it must come from actual revenues. Since the US spends much more than it makes, within days of hitting the debt limit the government will be writing bad checks. Many of the checks that will go out in the days following hitting the debt limit cannot be stopped, so there would be a large number of checks out there that could be claimed and would not be backed up. As far as I know, nobody is quite sure what would happen if you tried to cash a bad government check. \n\nThe more certain consequence would be the loss in trust to the US government to pay back it's debts. Like how you and I have credit ratings, so does the US government. As you might expect, having millions of taxpayers and a stable government means the US has the highest rating. If the debt limit is not raised, that rating would go down. If you or I couldn't pay some of our debts, we'd be considered a riskier and would have to pay more to borrow money in the future. The same would happen for the US government. As a result, not only would the US government's interest rates go up, but so would yours and mine. This is not good. We don't want that to happen.\n\nThe debt limit was originally set back in 1940, and has been adjusted many many times. It was even changed during the current administration. Historically, it has never been a contentious issue, but right now both parties are unwilling to simply raise the limit further without a plan to pay back our debt as well. It's this plan that is the contentious issue. With few exceptions, it's generally agreed that the debt limit must be raised. ",
"When the federal government needs more money than it takes in, it can issue bonds. A bond is just a promise to repay a certain amount of money at a certain time; pretty much any country issues bonds. The treasury holds an auction and sells bonds to the highest bidder. So a $1000 5-year bond might sell for $950 (NOT AN ACTUAL NUMBER). The difference in those numbers is the interest on the bond. \n\nThere isn't any sort of outside authority (EDIT: used to say \"law\", thanks tekumse) holding the United States to paying back its bonds, except that if word got out that the government didn't pay back its debt, its bonds would lose much of their value. So the price of bonds on financial markets is an indicator of how likely people think the US government is to default.\n\nCongress has to approve the issuance of new debt specifically. But that got too troublesome around World War I, so they just authorized all debt up to some number. That is the debt ceiling. Congress has raised it a whole bunch of times as the government/economy has grown. Right now, there is about $14.2 trillion (I think) in US debt out there in the world, and we are fast approaching the 14.29 trillion limit on how much debt the Treasury can allow to exist.",
"The Washington Post's Glenn Kessler had a [good explainer](_URL_0_) on this a couple of weeks ago. Unfortunately he tied it into a political (read: Critique of Sarah Palin) issue, so I'll post the relevant section:\n\n > The debt limit was originally crafted to make life easier for Congress. Before World War I, Congress literally had to cast a vote every time Treasury borrowed money to make purchases authorized by Congress (such as tanks). In 1917, Congress decided to do away with the cumbersome procedure and simply gave blanket approval for most types of borrowing. To keep a check on the executive branch, Congress established a limit.\n\n > But this is not the same as a credit card limit, a frequently used analogy. A credit card limit prevents someone from making more purchases. You may want to buy that $1,000 refrigerator but if you only have $500 left on your credit card, tough luck—unless you round up some cash.\n\n > We have had trouble coming up with a real-life equivalent, but here’s stab at it. Suppose the son of a millionaire was told he could spend $100,000 in a year, and not only that, but he was told exactly how he needed to spend the money. (That’s the fiscal year appropriations bills passed by Congress.). At the same time, the parent told the son the bills would not be paid after a certain date unless he got additional permission to pay them. (That’s the debt limit.)\n\n > In other words, the money has been spent, but an arbitrary ceiling has been set for how much can be paid. If it doesn’t make much sense, it is not supposed to. **But it is the exact opposite of a credit card limit or any such similar analogy.**\n\nMy emphasis.\n",
"I've often had this thought about why really rich people don't help pay off the debt. If a number of rich people got together and gave money like they do to charities then it would at least help right? I know it wouldn't solve it, but it's got to make some dent. ",
"The government does 3 things with money:\n1. It spends money\n2. It brings in revenue\n3. It borrows money\n\nThese 3 things have to add up: spending = revenue + borrowing. In other words, borrowing must make up the difference between spending and revenue.\n\nCongress is in charge of setting all three numbers, and then it's the executive branch's job to carry out what Congress has said for it to do. Congress determines what taxes get collected, and then the Treasury Department (which includes the IRS) collects that money. Congress passes a budget each year which authorizes the spending for the upcoming year (and some kinds of spending, like Social Security, get set for many years into the future so that they don't need to be a part of each year's budget); then it's the Treasury's job to distribute that money to the various departments to actually carry out that spending. And Congress also sets a limit on the total amount of borrowing that the government can do (that's the debt limit), and then the Treasury Department borrows as much money as needed (up to that limit) to carry out all the spending beyond what it's able to do with the revenue it collects.\n\nIn many countries, there is no debt limit because it's not actually needed to give the legislature control over borrowing. The legislature already determines how much borrowing needs to be done by setting the revenue and spending (since the borrowing must equal the difference between the two), so setting the amount of borrowing separately is redundant. But in the United States, the rules have evolved to include separate Congressional control over borrowing in the form of a debt limit.\n\nNormally, political battles in the US over government revenue, spending, and borrowing take place over the budget bill, which directly sets revenue and spending (and, by implication, borrowing). The debt ceiling gets raised frequently without much fuss, often as part of the agreement over the budget bill. In some cases, individual members of Congress (typically members of the opposition party) have used the vote on increasing the debt limit as a way to express disapproval of the majority party's policies, by voting against the increase to the debt limit when it was clear that the increase to the debt limit still had enough votes to pass. But members of Congress understood that the debt ceiling had to be raised, so they wouldn't actually try to block it.\n\nThis time it is different. Congress passed a budget bill in April 2011 (after a long political fight) but did not raise the debt ceiling to allow the amount of borrowing that would be required by that budget. The President did not push to make a debt ceiling increase part of that budget deal, and the Republicans in Congress decided to make the increase to the debt ceiling another political battle. For the past few months, Republicans have made a concerted effort as a party to block a debt ceiling increase from passing in an attempt to extract concessions (spending cuts) in return for their votes, and the President and other Democrats have been willing to negotiate. So far, both sides have shown a willingness to pass large cuts but they haven't been able to agree to a deal (the main sticking point seems to be that Democrats want to include some revenue increases in the deal, while Republicans want it to be all spending cuts).\n\nIn May 2011, the government reached its debt limit, but the Treasury Department had a bunch of financial assets on hand that it could sell to keep the government running as it normally does. On August 2, that extra leeway is expected to run out. At that time, the executive branch will have to deal with the fact that the revenue that it brings in, the spending that Congress told it to do, and the borrowing Congress allows it to do simply do not add up. It's still not entirely clear what the executive branch will do.\n\nOne option which is extremely unlikely to happen is for the government to refuse to pay back the people who have lent it money (by buying treasury bills), since a government which relies so heavily on borrowing must maintain the trust of lenders that it will pay them back as promised (plus, the 14th amendment says that the US debt shall not be questioned). What's more likely is that the government will simply be unable to pay many of its bills - Social Security checks won't get sent out, government buildings will be shut down, companies that have contracts with the government will get IOU's instead of getting paid for their work, etc. Incoming revenue will be able to pay for about 60% of government spending, so without any additional borrowing about 40% of government spending will need to be put on hold. It's unclear how the executive branch will be able to do this - the executive branch normally can't refuse to carry out the spending that Congress has authorized, and it can't pick and choose which spending to do and which to skip.\n\nAnother option is for the executive branch to ignore the debt ceiling and to keep borrowing money, arguing either that the debt ceiling is unconstitutional (14th amendment), or that the laws which require spending supersede the law which limits the debt (there is some legal precedence for following the most recent bill - in this case the April Budget bill - when Congress passes laws that are inconsistent with each other). A wildcard option is for the government to just print money - the US mint could print out a couple trillion dollars in cash (a loophole in the law may allow the printing of a trillion dollar platinum coin) which the government could use to make up the gap between revenue and spending.\n\nReaching the debt ceiling limit may undermine people's trust in the government and lead lenders to demand higher interest rates when they buy Treasury bills. That would increase the cost to the federal government of borrowing money, which would make its debt problem even worse. And that cost could remain higher even after the current problems are resolved.",
"I've been posting short responses to questions as bes I can, but I think one questions merits its own post:\n\n**What happens if the US defaults?**\n\n* First of all, this will NOT happen, due to the reasons outlined below. There is also a fluidness around the definition of default, this could mean quite a wide range of things, but not worth getting in to.\n\nSo:\n\n1. US Defaults on Treasury bond obligations \n\n2. Ratings go down, i.e. trust in full faith and credit of USA goes down.\n\n3. Borrowing costs (interest rates) go up\n\n4. Almost ALL interest rates go up - got a mortgage, car loan, small business loan, credit card, student loan, anything similar? Your Payments will go UP! By potentially A LOT. Talking double, triple. THIS is why this is a big deal. This is the impact on consumers, but this has a massive impact on companies as well:\n\nAll companies are dependent to a large extent on debt - if companyies' cost of borrowing goes up then no expansion in the best case, bankruptcy in the worst case - the economy WOULD TANK.\n\n5. Downward spiral - like Greece - higher cost of national debt together with shrinking economy - pretty much catastrophic, there is no one to bail out the US..\n\n6. Worldwid economic meltdown - the world is dependent on the US economy. If the US goes into deep recession, so does everyone else.\n\nI hope this proves why a default is not going to happen, once the cycle starts I'd say it's impossible to stop. In my opinion, even if the talks fail, a default will not happen. What will happen if talks fail:\n\n* Either selective default on domestic obligations - social security, government salaries etc won't get paid; tax revenue is enough to cover payments on sovereign debt obligations (the ones that matter)\n\n* Obama somehow sells treasury bills anyway and goes beyond the debt limit using executive powers. Don't know how this would work, but if I was him I'd declare a national emergency and sell T Bills anyway, screw Congress. I don't see how there's anything other than good manners (and a silly law) stopping the treasury from continuing auctions. Sure it wouldn't be pretty and would lead to a political mess, but at least it wouldn't be an economic mess..\n\n\n",
"Sadly, the discussion appears to have gone way over the 5 year old level. I'll check back to see how it plays out.",
"Someone needs to just walk into the house and show everyone this\n\n_URL_0_\n\nI think it puts a fuck of a lot of all this bullshit in perspective.",
"Everyone here is mentioning war with China, which Idk, seems a little ridiculous, as some have said.\n\nWhat my question is, if we default or our rating is lowered, and the economy gets even worse, what happens DOMESTICALLY?\n\nUnemployment will go up. interest rates go up. People here at home get more and more upset with the situation. Revolution? New, worse great depression?\n\nAlso, I've heard mention of another possibility, albeit probably not very likely either but still a possibility, and thats a global economic collapse. no one knows what happens with that because its never happened before yeah?",
"There are a lot of comments in here, so this may have been asked and I missed it, but here we go anyway.\n\nIt seems that all I hear about on the radio (I don't watch TV much) is talk about fighting over what gets cut. Has there been any serious debate over raising taxes to fight this issue, rather than cutting what we're already spending? I can understand cutting out 'dead-weight', those programs that eat a lot of money but don't contribute much, but shouldn't we be raising taxes as well? \n\nIn Sim City, when my budget started getting out of hand, along with cutting funding to things like schools and fire departments, I would raise taxes a bit as well. Is there much talk about doing that?",
"The US government has many resposibilities and goals that it requires funds to fufill. These include things as diverse as:\n \nSocial Security (~20%)\n \nMedicare Payments (~20%)\n \nDefense Spending (~20%)\n \nInterstate Roads ( < 1%)\n \n \n \nAll money spent by the US federal governement comes from one of two sources. \n \nThe first is government revenues. This is the amount of money paid to the US government. The main way the revenue is generated in the US is through taxes. Many things in the US are taxed, such as income, business profits, imports, and many other things as well. Taxes on income and payroll (the taxes taken out of your paycheck) make up about 80% of government revenue. About 57% of US Federal expenditures in 2011 will come from revenue sources.\n \nThe second method of paying for things is debt. Conceptually this works similar to the way in which individuals pay for things with debt (like home mortgage or a credit card payment). The US treasury borrows money (from who is complicated and beyond the scope of this discussion), and then has to pay it back over time. For example, if the treasury needed $1000 to pay a teachers salary, but had $0 in its coffer, it could pay the teacher by borrowing $1000. It would then pay $50/year for 10 years, after which it would pay back the whole $1000 dollars. The disadvantage is the Treasury has paid $1500 in exchange for only $1000. However, it got the money right now, and didn't have to pay it back until much later. In 2011 the government is predicted to pay for about 43% of its expenditures with debt.\n \nNow that we know how the government finances its expenditures, we can discuss the debt ceiling. \n \nEvery year, congress creates programs that need money to function. They can also create taxes to help fund these projects (as well as existing projects). Congress doesn't actually fund these projects however. The treasury does it for them, according to rules they put forth. The treasury department tries to match the intake of money with the amount being spent, and in doing so often borrows money from lenders. When it does so, there is a limit to the total amount of debt which it can not go over. Currently this is about $14 trillion. This is set by congress, and periodically increased. \n \nIn US politics, there is currently a trend against government spending. Many politicians and their constituents, most notably the \"Tea Party\", are opposed to government spending. Since proponents of this trend currently control the house of representatives, they are using the threat of not raising the ceiling to pass laws which decrease government expenditures. This is significant because all bills must start in the House, so the ceiling cannot be raised without their support. \n \nIf the ceiling is not raised, the treasury will have to discover a way to cut current spending such that it takes on no new debt. This is significant because for 2011 about 43% of spending should come from debt (as shown earlier). There are various ways they could do this, each with its own problems. Here are a few examples:\n \nNot pay federal employees (this will anger federal employees).\n \nNot pay for entitlement programs (this will anger the recipients of medicare and social security)\n \nNot pay for the interest on its existing debt (this is also know as defaulting, and would have far reaching effects on the world economy. I don't really know what would happen, but it wouldn't be good).\n \nAnyways that the debt ceiling, as I understand it at least. All numbers are from wikipedia.\n \nTL:DR; I summarized a bunch of Wikipedia articles. ",
"This whole 'debt crisis' is simply an artificial emergency that BOTH parties are pretending is urgent so that they can pass legislation that is unpopular with the majority of the population.\n\nThere is literally ZERO chance that the US will default. None.\n\nReally the idea that the Fed is just going to sit there and let the US government lose it's standing in the financial world, which would cost the banks buttloads of cash, is laughable.\n\nI understand that the media is not presenting things this way, but anyone who is investing based on information they get from the US media may as well flush their money down the toilet.\n\nHere is a great video by Yves Smith, who runs a blog called naked capitalism. In it she explains some of the possible options, one of which is that the US Mint could just create a platinum coin in the $1 trillion dollar denomination, and sell it to the Fed for cash. Another way is that Obama could just ignore the ceiling, based on the 14th amendment. (Of course Obama has already dismissed this possibility, because ultimately he wants to cut SSDI and Medicare the same as the Republicans do) Also a large amount of debt is owed to the Fed, and the Treasury could simply default on the payments to the Fed.\n\n_URL_1_\n\nHere is another video from William Black, who was a regulator during the Reagan Administration and the S & L crisis, which explains how the debt crisis is simply a way for the government to attack social security.\n\n\n_URL_2_\n\nFinally, here is another video from Michael Hudson, who is in my opinion one of the best economists of our time.\n\n_URL_3_\n\nAnyone who watches these 3 videos will understand the 'debt ceiling' crisis better than 99% of the population.\n\n(Just to give some information about myself here to demonstrate that I have some idea what I am talking about, I have a degree in Economics, am a CPA, and have made millions of dollars investing in the market in my personal account. I know, everyone on the internet is rich and hung like a horse, but hey, it's true.)\n\n(Maybe not the horse part. Damn that Irish curse!)\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n_URL_0_",
"This whole 'debt crisis' is simply an artificial emergency that BOTH parties are pretending is urgent so that they can pass legislation that is unpopular with the majority of the population.\n\nThere is literally ZERO chance that the US will default. None.\n\nReally the idea that the Fed is just going to sit there and let the US government lose it's standing in the financial world, which would cost the banks buttloads of cash, is laughable.\n\nI understand that the media is not presenting things this way, but anyone who is investing based on information they get from the US media may as well flush their money down the toilet.\n\nHere is a great video by Yves Smith, who runs a blog called naked capitalism and also wrote what is in my opinion the best book on the banking crisis, Econned. In it she explains some of the possible options, one of which is that the US Mint could just create a platinum coin in the $1 trillion dollar denomination, and sell it to the Fed for cash. Another way is that Obama could just ignore the ceiling, based on the 14th amendment. (Of course Obama has already dismissed this possibility, because ultimately he wants to cut SSDI and Medicare the same as the Republicans do) Also a large amount of debt is owed to the Fed, and the Treasury could simply default on the payments to the Fed.\n\n_URL_1_\n\nHere is another video from William Black, who was a regulator during the Reagan Administration and the S & L crisis, which explains how the debt crisis is simply a way for the government to attack social security.\n\n\n_URL_2_\n\nFinally, here is another video from Michael Hudson, who is in my opinion one of the best economists of our time.\n\n_URL_3_\n\nAnyone who watches these 3 videos will understand the 'debt ceiling' crisis better than 99% of the population.\n\n(Just to give some information about myself here to demonstrate that I have some idea what I am talking about, I have a degree in Economics, am a CPA, and have made millions of dollars investing in the market in my personal account. I know, everyone on the internet is rich and hung like a horse, but hey, it's true.)\n\n(Maybe not the horse part. Damn that Irish curse!)\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n_URL_0_",
"Here's my understanding\n\nThe US spends money every year and makes money every year. They make money through taxes. The US spends money through the budget it passes and in most cases it spends more money than it makes(except for Clinton years, but it was the perfect situation). So nearly all years there's a [deficit](_URL_2_). Every year that deficit gets tacked onto the deficits or surpluses of the previous years, creating our national debt.\n\nThe US doesn't have the actual money to put plan into action unless it borrows money. So the US Treasury issues bonds. You give them money for a piece of paper that says they'll pay you back with interest in some amount of years. They take your money now and give it to someone else today. Every year the US is therefore obligated to pay the interest on those who they borrow money from and that's part of their expenses.\n\nHere's what the US [owes](_URL_0_) , here's what they [bring in](_URL_1_)\n\nThe debt ceiling itself is fairly arbitrary number wise. Congress since 1980 has voted to raise the ceiling every time high enough so they can pay for budget they just voted for. It really has become a formality and every year they just keep raising it...until now.\n\nThis year the Congress passed a budget (with much contention) and held up on raising the debt ceiling. The House of Reps (with a Republican majority) didn't pass it saying we want a really debt reducing plan that ties in with the debt ceiling. \n\nThere's two ways of reducing debt. Spend less and/or make make more money.\n\nThe Republicans want to do it through trillions in spending cuts (many in medicare, medicaid, and Soc. Security) and calling for a balanced budget (no deficit any year). A purely spend less method.\n\nThe Democrats want to make cuts, but not as drastic as the Republicans while also increasing taxes. So a make more money and spend less method.\n\nThe US has the money and capabilities to do what it wants, however with this stalemate, it can't until the debt ceiling is passed. \n",
"Can someone please explain the specifics of these plans being proposed? I was reading that [article](_URL_0_) in the Washington Post about John McCain flipping out. In it, it talked about some politicians wanting another vote on a \"cut cap and balance\", others wanting the \"balance budget amendment\" voted on again, and some want the \"two-tiered debt ceiling increase\". I know all the rhetoric and bullshit that goes into naming these things so I don't want to just take them at face value. Can someone explain the differences in all these different plans being proposed and highlight the main parts of each? Thanks.\n",
"The government takes most of their income once a year. They have expenses all year round. They cover these expenses by borrowing money, and then they pay them off when they have income from taxes. Borrowing money is CRUCIAL for the government to function. This is in addition to the deficit, which is permission from Congress (who enacts the Budget) to spend more than the government can take in.\n\nOver decades, deficits have been so large that the US now has a lot of debt. Well, not really so much debt to pose a real problem, but enough to start thinking about ways to get it under control and maybe pay some of it back. In any case, there is no plan to cut the debt in any real way. At the same time, there is a \"debt ceiling\", which is sort of a legal credit limit that the government has, which the US is pretty close to getting there. The US is one of only a few countries around the world with such debt ceiling, and to raise it, the Government needs permission from Congress. Now, bare in mind that Congress has already enacted a budget allowing for more deficit (which increases the debt), so raising the debt ceiling should be natural.\n\nIn fact, raising the debt ceiling is so routine, it has been done a few dozen times in the past 20 years. The government finds out that it needs to borrow more money, and Congress allows the debt ceiling to be raised. It's that simple. Now, remember, the government needs to borrow money regardless of whether or not they are in deficit. Conceivably, if the economy got large enough, they would be able to spend as much as their debt ceiling, and still make for it back in taxes. But because their income cycle varies from their spending cycle, the Federal Government still needs to borrow money to operate. So, the debt ceiling is really not necessarily tied to the deficit or to excessive debt problems, though in this case, it is.\n\nSo, what's stopping congress to raise the debt ceiling? Basically, the Republican Leadership (who has a majority in the House) has told the President that they won't agree to raising the Debt Ceiling UNLESS the government agreed to a long term budgetary plan that would cut future deficits and allow the Government to get the debt under control.\n\nThe President and Congress are now in agreement over the above point, and also on the amount to cut from the deficits. The disagreement stems from where the money should come from:\n\n- The democrats want the money to come from a combination of cuts for Federal Programs, Defense Spending, curtailing inefficiencies, and raising taxes for people making over 1 million dollars a year. The taxes would be raised to what they were back in the year 2000.\n\n- The republicans are adamant they will refuse any bill that includes raising taxes on people making over 1 million dollars a year (which is less than 1% of the US population), and they want the budget cuts to come mainly from Federal Social Programs such as Medicaid, unemployment, and others...\n\nThe President has said he won't sign a bill that doesn't ask \"the wealthiest Americans\" to \"share the patriotic burden\" of paying for their country. The Republicans in the House and Senate have said they won't vote for a bill that includes tax increases. And because this budget bill has been tied by Republicans to raising the debt ceiling, if there is no agreement in the budget negotiations, there will be no raising of the debt ceiling. Usually, debt ceiling talks and budget talks are independent, but the Republicans have tied them this time around.\n\nWhat would happen if the US Congress doesn't raise the debt ceiling before America runs out of cash and needs to borrow more money (supposedly, next Tuesday, August 2nd)?\n\nWell, for starters, the US will not be able to pay their bills. There will be an immediate shut down of many activities performed by the US government.\n\nBut that's the least of your troubles. The other thing that will happen if the US runs out of money is that, for the first time in its 235 year history, the United States will default on some debts. Not all of them, but some of them. Most likely, debts to the Social Security Fund (who is the nations biggest creditor).\n\nIf the US defaults, which means, \"not paying their debts\", they will immediately lose the trust of investors around the world. The problem with this is that investors around the world regard US government debt as \"the safest\" investment on Earth. If the US defaults and shatters investor confidence, confidence on all other investments will be affected as well. This means rising interest rates not only for the US Government, but for every company, every person and every organization and government throughout the world. Higher interest rates forces people and organizations to borrow less. This could have an impact on investment, hiring, operations and spending, worsening the current crisis. Also, the raise in interests won't be subtle. After all, it isn't like some small country like Zimbabwe is defaulting. We are talking about the US government here.\n\nSome people are saying the resulting financial crisis resulting from a shattering of investor confidence will be \"10 times worse\" than what happened in late 2008. \n\nThe worse part is that America doesn't even need to default to get to this crisis. All that needs to happen is for investors to lose confidence. This is already beginning to happen, as evidenced by [the volatility in markets recently](_URL_0_). \n\nThe implications of an American default are so great, that they can literally cause catastrophic economic effects throughout the world. Unfortunately, there is no deal in sight in Washington. As long as the Democrats refuse to give in to Republicans, and the Republicans insist in tying the debt ceiling negotiations to the budget, and insist on not taxing the super-rich, there will be no deal. Without a deal, there will be a default. And with a default, will come a financial crisis. It is as simple as that.",
"[I teach high school students](_URL_0_)",
"The US has a self-imposed limit on money they can owe to others.\n\nWe are close to that limit.\n\nWhen we hit that limit we are out of money.\n\nWith no money the government cannot pay ANYTHING.",
"**The United States spends more money than it makes.** This normally isn't a problem, as long as the economy grows and taxes incomes grow along with the economy. However, during 2008 and 2009 tax incomes declined because the economy and financial markets collapsed. The government also spent a bunch of money attempting to fix the economy. \n\n\n**In the congressional budget somewhere is a \"debt ceiling\".** The government can rack up as many bills as it wants, but they cannot actually pay those bills if the amount goes higher than the debt ceiling. We are at that ceiling right now. The debt ceiling really doesn't matter. The US is constitutionally obligated to pay back its debtors. They might be forced to withhold payments to entitlements programs for a few days, but nothing worse.\n\n\n**What is happening in Congress?** Ignore everything Congress is saying. The national debt doesn't matter, because if it starts to hurt the economy the Fed can just start to print more money (unfortunately, that is a story for another post). Both sides know this debt ceiling issue could make or break the election in 2012. If they have to vote on this again in 2012, the Republicans will probably KILL the Democrats in elections. So the Republicans say \"no new taxes\" blah blah as an excuse to postpone it, and the Democrats say whatever they're saying (I don't even really pay attention to the rationale) to try to get it taken care of. They are playing chicken to try to make the other side give in first and give a huge advantage in the election, risking the well-being of the average person.\n\n\n**How will this affect you?** First, you have to understand**what if the government \"defaults\"?** It won't help or hurt the long term direction of the economy. There will be a nice big blip, and probably a 1/2 week terrible period in bonds and stock markets. \n\n\n**This will be a redistribution of wealth to the already wealthy**. I work in finance. I am PRAYING for a default. Why? I'm selfish. The big bond mutual funds/ETFs that hold the average person's 401k money will be forced by their rules to sell US government treasuries at whatever price they can get for them. **THESE BONDS ARE GOING TO BE PAID BACK.** There is absolutely NO chance that the money will not come. That means that hedge funds and active investors are going to be borrowing as much money as possible and buying these absolutely risk free bonds at ridiculously cheap prices, and that free money is going to come directly at the expense of the mutual funds that have been selling them (and YOU, the investor). \n\nTL;DR--Political brinksmanship",
"Uncle Sam wants to buy more airplanes but is approaching an arbitrary limit on imaginary money he can spend. Congress needs to agree to let him spend more imaginary money by arbitrarily raising this arbitrary limit. Uncle Sam's 310,000,000 nephews then have to give up more real money so Uncle Sam can spend more imaginary money.",
"My future prediction: This subreddit spins wildly out of control...and I'll be enjoying every minute of it.",
"I'll try to explain this without making analogies to personal finance, since those analogies have a bad tendency to get extended to the point that they lead to wrong conclusions.\n\nIn the US, and pretty much only in the US, Congress separates the right to *spend* that it grants the US treasury, from the right to *borrow money*. Importantly, Government has *obligations,* that is, it is required by law to spend money on things; the people running the Treasury cannot simply decide not to use some part of the budget set by Congress. The debt ceiling is a limit on how much the Treasury can borrow, defined by Congress. It's essentially an arbitrary limit; there's no particular reason for it being what it is; Congress simply raises it whenever necessary. Until recently, it had been treated as a formality, since in times of deficit spending (That is, when government is spending more than it takes in and thus borrowing to cover the difference) the debt ceiling has historically just been raised by Congress whenever necessary.\n\nHowever, when the US government hits the debt ceiling - when it has as much outstanding debt as this limit - it cannot issue any new bonds, that is, it can't borrow any more money. What happens next is default, as the US government can't keep operating, day to day, without borrowing money; it can't even pay interest on the debt that is already out there. So the US government's obligations cannot be fulfilled. Not for any real reason, but because the law places an arbitrary limit on how much the Treasury can borrow; indeed, failing to raise the debt ceiling can create a situation where the US treasury needs to borrow money, there are plenty of investors who want to lend the US government money by buying US treasury bonds (If you invest at all, in a pension or college fund or savings account, then you own US treasury bonds, directly or indirectly!) but the Treasury is restricted by law from doing so and is essentially railroaded into default. Default basically means not paying your obligations; it means that you owe money, and that the loan has come due, and you haven't paid. The consequences of an US government default, even a partial one, are left as an exercise to the reader.",
"There should be a word limit on explaining things to a 5yo.",
"If anybody is interested in learning more about economics/finance/money in relatively simple terms, you must check out NPR's Planet Money and all of their special pieces they've done for This American Life. It may not be \"Explain Like I'm Five\", but certainly \"Explain Like I'm Ten\".",
"This has turned into \"Describe the debt ceiling to me (Like I'm Five years into my advanced economics degree)\".",
"Most governments have offbeat, unnecessary bureaucratic proceedings; I would tell you about Brazil, but that's besides the point. One of America's offbeat, useless proceedings is the debt ceiling. No other developed country has one, and as far as I know (I'm an economist) every country that has experienced a debt ceiling didn't have a law about it -- they just were unable to borrow because no one would lend them money, so they had to be rescued by the IMF. America is still able to borrow money, so it's pointless to use the debt ceiling formalism to change longer-term fiscal policy issues that may or not be important -- depending on whom you ask.\n\nQuick, convulsive changes in the political landscape in America are getting parties more and more belligerent. They've fought over health care reforms, they've fought over the \"Ground Zero mosque\" and now they're squabbling over this minor procedure that used to be a formality. In every case, both sides had a point, but instead of collaborating towards a middle ground, both sides used every opportunity to fight horsie battles.\n\nWhat's more, it's more of a battle about public perception than about future policy itself, because it's easy to revert or just ignore budget pledges. Both Obama and the House Republicans are trying to pin the guilt over this issue on each other, and have actually hampered the search for a resolution by standing their ground on aspects that would affect the public perception of the outcome of this crisis. \n\nSo, the bottom line is that this isn't a real issue -- America may have trouble borrowing money in the near-future, but it doesn't have funding problems right now. Instead, it's a proxy battle over Obama's reelection, the Tea Party's role in the Republican Party and the ability to enact certain reforms that have more of a democratic flavor (like taxing the rich more and extending health care to more citizens) but many republicans would and did get behind. To wit, Mitt Romney's ideas about health care are very similar to Obama's. \n\nOf course, having a debt ceiling enforced by legislation would have consequences that are more complicated to explain, but since that won't happen, it's like discussing relativistic time effects in an imaginary universe where quantum chromodynamics works in reverse.",
"I hope this gets seen. Al Jazeera English just posted some great info about the debt ceiling: [Q+A about the debt ceiling](_URL_1_), [details](_URL_0_), [will it work?](_URL_2_) (those are three separate links)"
]
} | [] | [] | [
[
"http://english.aljazeera.net/news/americas/2011/08/2011815169437290.html",
"http://english.aljazeera.net/news/americas/2011/07/201172765440139455.html",
"http://english.aljazeera.net/programmes/insidestory/2011/08/20118272621437391.html"
],
[
"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-05OfTp6ZEE&feature=youtu.be&hd=1"
],
[],
[],
[],
[
"http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/fact-checker/post/sarah-palin-and-the-debt-limit-debate/2011/07/14/gIQAsSbgEI_blog.html"
],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[
"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=17jymDn0W6U"
],
[],
[],
[],
[
"http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/",
"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n_yAh27O4jA&feature=youtube_gdata_player",
"http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=6061",
"http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=7011"
],
[
"http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/",
"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n_yAh27O4jA&feature=youtube_gdata_player",
"http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=6061",
"http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=7011"
],
[
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:U.S._Federal_Spending_-_FY_2007.png",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:U.S._Federal_Receipts_-_FY_2007.png",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Revenue_and_Expense_to_GDP_Chart_1993_-_2008.png"
],
[
"http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/post/mccain-erupts-conservatives-are-lying-to-america/2011/03/03/gIQAUm2HdI_blog.html"
],
[
"http://www.heraldsun.com.au/business/markets/us-stocks-mixed-on-debt-ceiling-fears/story-fn7j1dyq-1226103954480"
],
[
"http://www.cnn.com/video/?/video/education/2011/07/27/sn.sum.0727.cnn"
],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[
"http://english.aljazeera.net/news/americas/2011/08/2011815169437290.html",
"http://english.aljazeera.net/news/americas/2011/07/201172765440139455.html",
"http://english.aljazeera.net/programmes/insidestory/2011/08/20118272621437391.html"
]
] |
|
d9kxpd | the current us white house scandal involving national intelligence director joseph maguire. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/d9kxpd/eli5_the_current_us_white_house_scandal_involving/ | {
"a_id": [
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"text": [
"The financials have nothing to do this this scenario, that's another issue playing in the background. In essence, the worry is that Trump made an official call to the president of Ukraine and asked them to investigate one of Trump's political rivals, Joe Biden (and Biden's son). This was all recorded in a transcript that was released yesterday, and people are still digesting it. Meanwhile, someone who observed the whole thing made a formal complaint about it, causing an investigation to confirm that it happened, should be investigated further, and should be treated as urgent. Today, the Maguire appeared in front of the House and testified on the whole thing.\n\nWhat will happen next remains to be seen, but a lot of people are pissed off or worried right now, depending on their relationship to/perspective on the president."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
||
2x8il4 | how does cellphone tracking work? | I have an issue where I need to explain the methodology and science behind cell-phone tracking. I am not sure if there is more than one method or not. I want to know if it's something I could really rely on in saying hey this person is at place X. I know it doesn't work like TV makes it out to be. I guess my questions are two-fold:
1. How does cell-phone tracking work? From beginning to end how can the police, or some government agency, say this is where your cell phone is? Does the cellular data need to be turned on? Wifi?
2. How accurate is this tracking? Inches? Feet? Miles?
I have read multiple articles questioning the accuracy of this technology. e.g.
_URL_0_
(Yes I know it is a legal blog post but nonetheless appeared in my search).
Any help is greatly appreciated and thanks in advance.
| explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2x8il4/eli5_how_does_cellphone_tracking_work/ | {
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"text": [
"A phone in order to work sends signals to towers around them to let them now where it actually is that moment\nWhen you receive a phone call the phone central must know under which tower your phone is in order to deliver the call thru that tower so if phone is on but likely even if off as long as it has a battery inserted it can be located with an accuracy between a few hundreds of feet to a couple of miles interpolating the results of several towers\nOf course if gps is on the accuracy is in a range of around 10 - 100 feet depending on how good the gps signal is \n\n",
"Nobody has yet discussed that 2G GSM cell towers have to know how far you are from them to work correctly: The phones that are connected on the same frequency \"take it in turns\" to talk to the tower (Time Division Multiple Access). So that all these communications synchronise correctly, phones further from the tower have to transmit earlier so that the delay caused by the radio waves travelling to the tower are compensated for and arrive at their allotted time. This is called Timing Advance and breaks the distances from phone to tower into 550m chunks.\n\nThis information can be used to improve location accuracy beyond triangulation of cell towers.\n\n[Wikipedia: Timing Advance](_URL_0_)\n\n[Wikipedia: GSM Localization](_URL_1_)"
]
} | [] | [
"http://fairlielaw.net/cell-phone-tracking-method-is-junk-according-to-experts/"
] | [
[],
[
"http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timing_advance",
"http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/GSM_localization"
]
] |
|
3e7lwz | why aren't they making apps compatible for pc use too? why do they only make them for ios and android? | It's something that seriously pisses me off. Why are there so many apps out there for Iphone/iOS and Android, but no working/functional websites or stand alone applications (Windows, for example)?
I'm using some apps right now, and the only thing I can think about is "wow, this would be so much easier and convenient to use on my laptop" | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3e7lwz/eli5_why_arent_they_making_apps_compatible_for_pc/ | {
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"For starters, a big portion of apps are just a link to the company website in mobile-friendly format (banks/cable companies/etc). In those cases, it is available on any device, even if it doesn't look the same.\n\nLots of apps are written in a universal language. From Angry Birds, to World of Goo, to Bejeweled, to Evernote, to Plants vs. Zombies, to hundreds of others, they can all be used on PC.\n\nSome apps are written in OS specific code and only work on a given device. Some of them need specific input/data/code that only works on a mobile device (for instance, the tilt sensor for a racing game). \n\nSometimes, it's a case of money-ads on mobile can't be blocked as easily, and generate revenue. Or, the game is sold to generate revenue. Sometimes, it's a matter of value-the effort to \"port\" to other platforms costs more than the profit to be made from doing so. Sometimes, it's a matter of support. Angry Birds is no longer supported on PC because the team just doesn't have the manpower to maintain all platforms.\n\nTL;DR: Most are available on PC, but for those that aren't it's either: not worth it for the developer, not possible due to the way the app works, or impractical for monetary or workload reasons."
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7p8yz8 | what is the difference between 3gb on a hardrive and 3gb on a graphicscard? | And why is there a huge price difference? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7p8yz8/eli5_what_is_the_difference_between_3gb_on_a/ | {
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"Graphics cards store data in ultra-high-speed silicon memory chips. Those are costly.\n\nHard drives store data in very-low-speed magnetic recording media, which is read and written by moving devices with electric motors. This is cheap but 10,000 times slower.",
"It's a different kind of storage. The storage on a graphics card is more like RAM than it is like hard drive space. The memory on a GPU is meant to do more work faster. The type of connection it has to the processor means the data will travel back and forth from the GPU memory much faster than it would from a hard drive.",
"The gigabytes in a hard disk are for permanent storage. You save files onto them that will still be there after you've turned the computer off.\n\nThe gigabytes on a graphics card refers to the amount of RAM it has. RAM is for temporarily storing the data it is using at that time. The data doesn't persist when the power is off. The RAM on a graphics card is used for storing things like textures, models and other graphics related data.\n\nThere is a huge price difference because they are entirely different things, for different purposes, using different technology.",
"Hard Drive = Size of Trunk/Gas tank.\nRAM/Processor = Engine size/Horsepower.\nYes, this is an oversimplification.",
"3GB on a harddrive is storage and whether it is flash or magnetic platter based it is stored permanently until it is erased or replaced with other data. 3GB on a graphics card is ram and the data only exists as long as electricity is being provided, if power is lost for even a second the data will be lost too.\n\nAs for price we can start with the fact that permanent storage and ram are different things, the most comparable might be flash storage (SSDs and memory cards) and DRAM, both of which are made with silicon chips. However the number of transistors or 'parts' on the silicon chip needed to store 1 bit of data are different between those technologies and so the prices are different.\n\nOn a much bigger scale is the fact that a graphics card is much more than the ram - the 3GB of ram is only a secondary component to the GPU (graphics processing unit) which provides the power, the ram is just a place to store results. So when you buy a harddrive almost all of the cost is for the 3GB of storage. When you buy a graphics card most of the money is for the GPU, while a smaller portion is for the RAM included with it.",
"A hard drive is persistent storage, and graphics cards have VRAM or Video RAM; \n\nRAM means Random-Access Memory; that is, a computer can write to or pull from RAM. \n\nThis is in contrast to ROM, or Read-Only Memory, which could only be read from and could not be written to. \n\nThis was more prevalent in the early days of computers, and the form most people under 40 or so would be most familiar with are the cartridges from Nintendo systems (I suppose a CD/DVD/Blu-Ray that wasn't re-writable would qualify; the full title of your CD drive in computers that had them was CD-ROM).\n\nRAM requires power to hold data; if you turn off your PC all the data that is stored in RAM is lost, whereas hard drives use magnets to create a charge that can be read and overwritten.\n\nGraphics cards are more expensive because they are pretty much bleeding-edge tech; hard drives can also be, but the tech for data storage has been blazing ahead such that the bleeding edge of storage tech is in the terabytes.\n\nThe other factor to take into account is that for the graphics card, how much VRAM it has is only *part* of what it needs to do well; if it can't perform calculations fast enough, it's VRam is going to get full. A lot of the performance will be determined by how many operations per second it can do per core, and how many cores it has running graphics processing.",
"Different memory technologies have different speeds. In general, more speedy memory is also more complex, and thus more expensive. \n\nSo memory in computers are tiered. Generally, the faster your memory is, the more expensive it is, so you use less of it, but in tiers closer to the CPU. This is roughly how it goes: \n\n1. there is a very, very fast but also relatively small memory directly built into the CPU. Adding more becomes just too expensive as you are putting it directly into your CPU. This is the L1 cache and usually only a few kb, but this is what the CPU works with. \n\n2. then you might have another of these caches on the motherboard, again, it is bigger but a bit slower, but also a bit cheaper. These are the L2 and L3 chaches, where data from your RAM is stored until it can go into the CPU. Makers of CPUs and boards carefull plan it that the L3 cache can feed the L2 and that the L1 so no delays happen.\n\n3. at one point you arrive at the RAM which feeds your caches. Today that is typically 4 GB to 16 GB. This one is pretty fast, and comes in reasonable sizes. Servers, workstations etc might sport up to some 64 GB or more RAM. You have a bandwith of some 10 to 20ish GB/s with modern DDR3 RAM, and access times in the range of nanoseconds (billonths of a second). \n\n4. then you might have a fast SSD for your windows partition and the pagefile, which is basically an extension of your RAM, just on your disk. Typical SSDs today are in the range of 128 to 512 GB. You can get 1 TB SSDs for some \"reasonable\" price today. You have a bandwidth of some 300 MB/s or up to 2000ish MB/s and access times in the area of some < 100 microseconds (millionths of a second). \n\n5. for large storage you use normal spinning disks, HDDs. Those are slower, but you can easily afford a few TB if you want to. Servers can sport some 100s of TB for \"reasonable\" cost. The throughput is some ten-ish MB/s, access times are in the range of 5,000 to 10,000 microseconds (so thousands of a second), so they are much slower than SSDs. But again, cheaper.\n\n6. if you want more, much more storage you can use tape drives, but they again are much slower. You can store a real lot with modern tape drives, but you might get access times measured in seconds or even minutes. Or someone needs to go to the shelf and put the tape in (in large centers, you might have a robotic arm or so that does that). \n\nGraphics memory is basically RAM that needs to be really, really fast because modern GPUs need to process a lot of high-res textures. A *real* lot, so the makers of higher tier GPUs pick the fastest memory that is industrially available, but that is also the fastest. And for the most powerful cards with the fastest memory it can happen that the memory actually is not (yet) available in sufficent quantities. The bandwith of modern graphics RAM is around 40 to 120ish GB/s, while the most recent developments (as just said: it is not even widely available for the actual demand) has a bandwidth of some 265 GB/s. Samsung currently expects the next generation (without delays in 2020) to do even twice of that.\n\nAs last note: There of course is the question of volatilty. If you switch of the computer, what was in your RAM, Graphics memory and caches will be gone because these memories only work when powered. SSDs, HDDs and tapes are persistent, meaning they keep the data when they are off. So the fastest, cheapest RAM would be pretty useless to you if all in it was gone with a reboot. Yes, there are works on memory that'd be as fast as RAM but still is presistent. But those are not ready yet. ",
"Graphics card memory size is like square footage in the trunk of a car. It's what you use to store things temporarily when you are using them. \n\nHard drive size is like square footage in a warehouse. It's what you use to store things for long periods of time.",
"Most simply, 3GB is 3GB. There is no difference. It's simply a measure of the size of storage or data. Like a gallon is a measure of volume.\n\nI assume you're asking what's the difference between graphics memory and hard disc space. Hard disc space is long term storage, traditionally as magnetic fields stored on a metal platter. Graphics memory is a specialized, very fast form of RAM (Random Access Memory) which can very temporarily store some kind of information, usually textures (images) or shader programs, which the GPU uses to render a scene.\n\nSo why is there a price difference? Same reason as there is a price difference between a gallon of water and a gallon of gasoline. They're both a gallon, yes, but a gallon of something different.",
"As to the price difference, a hard drive is storage, and the components needed to read and write to it. While a graphics card is much, much more. This is in addition to the difference in the kind of storage or memory in question, which others have explained.\n\nA 3GB HDD is one cost, 3GB SSD is more, RAM even more, and the super high speed RAM in a graphics card is even more. But that difference doesn't even begin to make up for the difference in price between what a 3GB HDD would cost, and a 3GB graphics card costs. The real difference is that the two components, while both listing a number of gigabytes as a stat, are fundamentally different.\n\nFor a hard drive, that GB number is the primary measurement - and prices will vary based on that number. While for a graphics card, the GB number is one of many considerations. While higher end graphics cards generally have more memory, it's not just the memory that makes them higher end.\n\nThe actual difference then between the two types of storage, is the way the data is stored, how long it needs to be store, and how quickly it needs to be recalled. Each technology has trade offs. Hard Disk Drives are cheap to make, and can hold lots of data indefinitely . Normal RAM is much more expensive per GB, and hold data only while it is powered on - but it's far, far faster. Graphics card memory is the highest end memory, and is even faster - but just like normal memory, it stops holding data once the power is gone."
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2bj7c8 | when does freedom of speech become bullying, harassment, etc? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2bj7c8/eli5_when_does_freedom_of_speech_become_bullying/ | {
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"If the sole intent is to cause harm to the individual it is directed towards.",
"Your freedom to swing your fist ends where my face begins.\n\nSeems like a simple concept - yet in practice, defining the line where \"your fist ends and my face begins\" can be reeeeeally tricky, e.g. Westboro Baptist Church, etc."
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4p8xpx | how does watch tv/ watching tv too closely damages a person's eye sight? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4p8xpx/eli5_how_does_watch_tv_watching_tv_too_closely/ | {
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"It doesn't; kids with undiagnosed bad eyesight sit close to the TV to see better, so the correlation gets reversed in the minds of their parents.",
"Despite what some others are confidently saying, this is a contentious topic among experts and the reasons behind it are poorly understood. \n\nI believe that you're referring to developing shortsightedness -- actually called myopia. This occurs when the eye doesn't focus an image properly so things appear blurry at long distances. I would argue that a blurry image because of a focusing problem isn't really \"damage\", the problem can be corrected with glasses, compared to a nail penetrating through the eyeball or going blind from nerve cells at the back of the eye dying.\n\nAnyway, there is lots of speculation and current research on the causes of myopia. A recent review in an academic journal states: \n\"*In European, South Asian, and East Asian populations, rural areas have less myopia than urban settings*\". \nAnd: \n\"*A study of boys attending orthodox schools in Israel compared with Israeli secular schools demonstrated that children in less intense educational curriculums have lower amounts of myopia.*\"\n\nThe rate of people developing myopia has also been increasing in recent decades. So it does appear that there is some kind of association between activities that involve lots of focusing at close distances and myopia. However it's difficult to come to a definite answer on why this is occurring. For instance, maybe being exposed to sunlight is the reason for outdoors activity (rural areas) being protective rather than spending less time looking at books or TVs. \n\nAs for the theories about what is actually going on inside the eye. Again, it is poorly understood. It is thought to somehow involve the process of [emmetropization](_URL_0_).\n\nFinally, [here is a more readable article on the topic.](_URL_1_)\n\nReference: *Update on myopia.* Curr Opin Ophthalmol. 2016 May 25",
"Early TVs emitted radiation that could be harmful if you sat too close.\n\nModern TVs are safe."
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"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emmetropia#Emmetropization",
"http://www.popsci.com.au/science/fyi-could-i-have-prevented-my-nearsightedness-if-id-just-spent-more-time-outside-as-a-kid,380023"
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2lv85d | what would happen to loans if us currency crashes? | For example if I get a mortgage for 150k, and a few years later something major hits the economy. Lets say I get a mortgage today, and 2 years later $100 is equivalent to $1. Could they raise the loan amount based on currency inflation? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2lv85d/eli5_what_would_happen_to_loans_if_us_currency/ | {
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"Not unless they had a clause in the loan agreement that allowed them to adjust the loan to scale relative to another metric like the euro.\n\nBut that is highly unlikely. ",
"They couldn't raise it unless it was an ARM (adjustable rate mortgage) and even then most ARMs have limits to how much they can raise them.\n\nTo see how hyperinflation affects people look to zimbabwe\n_URL_0_\n\n",
" > Could they raise the loan amount based on currency inflation?\n\nSometimes.\n\nHigh inflation is usually accompanied by high interest rates. If you had an adjustable rate loan, the interest would go way up.\n\nIf you had a fixed rate loan, your lender would be out of luck.",
"High inflation is usually parallel to high interest rates because the rates are increased by the fed to artificially remove money from the economy, hopefully to tame inflation. \n\nInflation at times is intentional, specifically for the reasons of loans, or in particular for those who owe the money. This is part of the reason the US chose to go off of the gold standard, to allow for inflation. \n\nLook at people who purchased homes for $30,000 in the 70s, with those homes now selling for $300,000. The loans were based on the original purchase price, which means that the owner gains equity even if the principal isn't being paid down. It encourages people to buy real estate rather than rent. \n\nAs long as wages keep pace with inflation (which until the 80's they were in the US) a moderate amount of inflation is desirable to keep the economy growing. If wages don't keep pace, on the other hand, it's not good for the average person, but is good for the very wealthy who have plenty of investments in hedge funds and stocks that exceed the growth of wages. That is why the Dow being over 17,000 is good for the ultra wealthy but not the rest of us.",
"If the currency crashes, paying you're loans back will be the least of your concerns. "
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5qzoc1 | why are high pitched sounds harder to locate what direction they are coming from? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5qzoc1/eli5_why_are_high_pitched_sounds_harder_to_locate/ | {
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"It's the opposite - low frequencies are harder locate for humans. That's why it is less important as to where you put a subwoofer with regard to the other speakers in the system. It's very hard for us to work out exactly where very low frequencies emanate from.",
"This assumption doesnt hold true for the entire frequency band humans are able to hear. Everything below ~80Hz is virtually impossible to locate for our ears (that is why the positioning of a subwoofer is not as relevant as the one of the satellites). There are two mechanisms that enable us to locate a sound: the angle the soundwaves hit our ears and the latency between the two ears (a sound coming from your right will hit your right ear a tiny bit earlier than your left one, our ears are incredibly good at picking up on that). The lower the frequency, the less it will have changed from hitting one ear tobtge other (lower frequencies are longer, so they require more space to unfold). ",
"It has to do with the wavelength and phase of the sound waves. The sound reaches our ears with a small time delay depending on the angle of our head with regards to the source of sound. This can also be interpreted as phase shift at a given point in time. \n\nFor frequencies in the middle range e.g. 330 hz, the wavelength is 1 meter. The distance between our ears and 1 meter is fairly comparable, as such it is easy for our brain to detect the phase shift between sound reaching our respective ears. Depending on phase shift between the ears, it is trivial to calculate the direction from which the sound originates. For extremely short and long wavelengths we cannot distinguish the phase shift that well.\n\nFor very low frequencies e.g. 30 hz the wavelength is 10 meter, as such the difference in phase between our ears become very small, and is difficult to detect. On the other hand, very high frequencies, > 3000 hz, the wavelength is less than 10 cm, that means that the phase shift between our ears cover multiple wavelengths, which again means that we interpret sound coming from everywhere. \n\nMoreover, high frequency sound have generates wild interference patterns, meaning that in one place in a room there may be total silence, but when you move your head just a few cm the loudness may become extreme. Low frequencies on the other hand tend to create standing waves in a room. This can also confuse our brains. \n\nPeople with one functioning ear can only use loudness to locate sound. They have to turn their heads until the sound becomes loudest, and will have special problems in the cases mentioned above. Whereas people with two ears can use both phase shift alone and together with loudness. \n\nAnother nice example of this is elephants and mice. Elephants having longer distance between ears can locate lower frequency sound, whereas mice having less distance between ears have an easier time with shorter wavelengths. For this reason, a mouse squeaks where elephants rely on infra-sound, we have a hard time locating either. For humans middle wavelengths are the easiest to locate. \n\nUsually, sound is a composite of various wavelengths covering the whole spectra, we can still discern the middle ranges and locate the sound. The problem of location is only evident when we have sound sources lacking components in the middle range. \n\nTLDR: The phase shift of sound waves are easiest to detect for middle frequency sound. "
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3yf5ad | why wouldn't every species evolve to live for a really long time? | Isn't that a desired trait? What's the point of the mayfly that only lives a day, why not longer? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3yf5ad/eli5_why_wouldnt_every_species_evolve_to_live_for/ | {
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"Evolutionary changes happen when they improve the chances of reproduction. Long life does not necessarily do that.",
"It's not about desire or having a point, it's about being able to produce children reliably. \n\nHaving a faster generational turnaround is actually often an advantage; it means you can adapt faster because you're getting mutations in the gene pool and getting them tested constantly. In the time it takes some humans to reach sexual maturity a day-long generation species has had thousands of generations come and go, each one a chance to get better adapted.\n\nThere's a reason small mammals that had litters of 5+ and lived maybe a couple years thrived while dinosaurs, big lumbering long-lived creatures died off."
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9033ot | if space is vacuum, how are rockets, iss, satellites is moving? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9033ot/eli5_if_space_is_vacuum_how_are_rockets_iss/ | {
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"Rockets move because for every action there is a positive or negative reaction. Satellites and the ISS move because being in \"orbit\" actually just means they're basically constantly falling to Earth by Earths gravity, but their horizontal velocity is so great that it keeps them from getting too close to Earths atmosphere",
"Newton’s 3rd law. For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. When fuel is burnt (or pressurized gas is released), it exits the spacecraft at great speed. That translates to forward motion. There’s no need to push off of anything. "
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36hpi5 | from what angle are organs viewed during ultrasound examination? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/36hpi5/eli5_from_what_angle_are_organs_viewed_during/ | {
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"They're viewed from wherever the ultrasound device is positioned. This is a lot easier to understand if you actually watch the process in action. Ultrasound technicians move sensor (no clue what it's actually called) around to try and get the best possible view of whatever they're looking for."
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6p0isn | why do we forget about all the surroundings when watching a screen? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6p0isn/eli5_why_do_we_forget_about_all_the_surroundings/ | {
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"The surroundings are usually dark when watching a movie or similar, which limits what you can see. There's also usually not much happening in the background for you to focus on, especially compared to what you are watching/playing. "
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1og6su | the stigma surrounding the f-35 fighter jet, and what the better alternative would be. | I've been reading on the F-35 as I thought it was strange a newer jet wasn't met with the same enthusiasm as the F-22. I don't know much about jets, and wanted an explanation as to what the purpose of the F-35 was, and why people don't seem to think it's worth the cost. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1og6su/eli5_the_stigma_surrounding_the_f35_fighter_jet/ | {
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"Short version? Because it was built to satisfy a rather difficult requirement, thus compromising the overall design.\n\nThe plane has three variations: an air force variation, navy variation, and marine variation.\n\nThe marine variation required the plane to be able to take off vertically (VTOL). Objectively it's kind of a silly requirement as the actual utility of that feature is debatable. \n\nHowever, the bigger problem is that the whole body of the plane is shaped oddly to meet that VTOL requirement and it is not a good platform for building combat planes. Planes we already have (f-22 for airforce and f-18 for navy) are better in general. \n\nSo this was supposed to be an awesome program because it was supposed to kill three birds with one stone, but basically one of the \"birds\" took the stone and flew off, leaving a over-cost and bloated project that produced sub-par planes.",
"There are three purposes.\n\nConventional multi-role land based fighter, similar to what F-16 does\n\nConventional multi-role naval fighter, similar to what F/A-18 A/B and C/D does\n\nV/STOL multi-role land or naval fighter, a replacement for AV-8B and Harrier II\n\nIn the 1960s the United States also tried a number of one-plane fits all programs, some were successful, like the F-4 Phantom, others were not successful, like the General Dynamics–Grumman F-111B (Tactical Fighter Experimental (TFX) program).\n\nIn the mid 1990s it was decided that one plane could do the job of a number of other types (A-6, F/A-18 A/B, C/D, A-10, F-16, AV-8B, Harrier II) and so there a joint US/UK program was launched called JSF.\n\nBasically the problem is that aircraft have become so complex and integrating the electronic systems and all the features into hardware and software that it takes much longer to make everything work than anyone estimated at the start of the program.\n\nThink about how complex computers and software was in 1996 (when JSF was started) compared to now. All the new sensors that have been invented, software based communication, software based jamming suites, and so on and on."
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3akrd9 | how is sitting in the back seat of a car safer than the front if the front has all those airbags? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3akrd9/eli5_how_is_sitting_in_the_back_seat_of_a_car/ | {
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"The backseat doesn't have the dashboard to hit, so it doesn't need airbags in the front. Airbags do hurt. It's just that it hurts less than slamming into the solid dashboard and front of the car. The backseat has space between it and the solid part the airbags are trying to protect people from. There's more to it than that, but that's a simple explanation"
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3mv7zj | why are humans easily deceived or influenced and reach false conclusions by simple things? | Last time I checked I was not one of the Crab People, sorry.
As the title said, why are humans easily deceived or influenced and reach false conclusions by simple things?
A question can have the same meaning however depending on how it is worded you're influenced to one side or the other. Opinion polls, surveys or experiment questionnaires are often specifically worded to make you lean towards the result they want.
Other times despite knowing and being told figures that say X you believe Y because it's repeated. I recall reading an article about this and despite the homicide rate dropping in America from the '90s to' 10 the coverage went up a few hundred percent and people believe the situation is getting worse.
As an intelligent species how did we not evolve or develop a way to stop those that would want to think things we wouldn't necessarily think when typically it is done to their gain with possibility of your detriment? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3mv7zj/eli5_why_are_humans_easily_deceived_or_influenced/ | {
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"A lot of our irrational thinking and behaviors are the result of the brain evolving to make decisions to improve survival, not intelligence. Most of this falls down to our brains using inductive reasoning (essentially patterns, which can be quite practical given the circumstances) and we don't often use deductive reasoning intuitively."
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j9zml | just what recently happened in the us that caused the cad to plummet? | I'm a Canadian who is a lowly bank teller and I feel like I should know this but I don't. Our dollar was doing so well and then I heard there was a bunch of stuff being reported on the news and all of a sudden we are almost at par again!
Help? Like I'm five! Ironically I am a bank teller who has a tough time getting her head around even moderately difficult financial ideas and concepts :( | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/j9zml/eli5_just_what_recently_happened_in_the_us_that/ | {
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"It dropped for a few reasons:\n\n* \nOur jobs report wasn't as good as expected, reporting only 7,100 new jobs (lowering unemployment to 7.2% – which I'm still happy with). Economists' estimates were around 15,000.\n\n* \nAmerica's job's report was above expected, but still not as strong as needed. They got only about 115,000, higher than the *very* weak estimates, but still less than the needed 150,000-200,000.\n\n* \nThe debt ceiling makes things scary for Canadians because of our great interest in ensuring our main customer for our exports (the US) does well.\n\n* \nBoth the international recovery, and our own (as shown in the jobs numbers) are slowing down, with jobs numbers and optimistic economic forecasts being slashed around the developed world.",
"It dropped for a few reasons:\n\n* \nOur jobs report wasn't as good as expected, reporting only 7,100 new jobs (lowering unemployment to 7.2% – which I'm still happy with). Economists' estimates were around 15,000.\n\n* \nAmerica's job's report was above expected, but still not as strong as needed. They got only about 115,000, higher than the *very* weak estimates, but still less than the needed 150,000-200,000.\n\n* \nThe debt ceiling makes things scary for Canadians because of our great interest in ensuring our main customer for our exports (the US) does well.\n\n* \nBoth the international recovery, and our own (as shown in the jobs numbers) are slowing down, with jobs numbers and optimistic economic forecasts being slashed around the developed world."
]
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[],
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3vlj6g | what determines a person's sexuality? | Biological reason I mean | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3vlj6g/eli5_what_determines_a_persons_sexuality/ | {
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"Scientists tend to say it's genetical, studies have been done on twins and the turn out to have the same sexuality more often than other people.\n\nThen again there isn't 100% proof of it and nobody is absolutely sure.",
"The matter is heavily debated and there's no concise answer to it yet. \n\nGenetics is a promising possibility, but is confounded by the aforementioned factors involving twins and sexual mismatch. \n\nThere are a large number of interesting sex-related interactions that occur before and shortly after birth. For example, the Westemarck Effect makes you immune to finding people you grew up close to sexually attractive (it's why, generally, you don't think family members are sexy.) This prevents inbreeding and leads to more fit children. \n\nAs for before birth, recent studies have indicated the possibility that female mothers \"feminize\" males because their immune system attacks the non-matching male fetus. This was proposed to explain why later male children are more likely to be feminine or gay.\n\nThere are other, less formal correlations being investigated, such as that between being abused sexually when young and having pedophilic tendencies. \n\nAt the heart of it is simply that we don't know. We know for certain that biology plays a very large part, but there's very little certainty that any one mechanism accounts for an individual's sexuality entirely. \n\n On a genetic level nothing is as cut-and-dry as \"you have gene therefore you'll be this way or that way\" because that ignores a large number of regulatory mechanisms your cells have to control gene expression past just the code itself. \n\nIt's highly unlikely the answer to this question will be simple in the foreseeable future. \n\n\n"
]
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[],
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|
c74rwh | why is caffeine found in so many plants while other compounds like nicotine/cocaine/thc only come from a single source? | As we know caffeine is present in a lot of food and drinks like cocoa (chocolate), tea leaves, and coffee beans. After some quick googling I came to find that caffeine is present in over 60 other plant species!
Why is caffeine such an abundant stimulant, while other stimulants such as nicotine or cocaine seemingly only come from tobacco leaves and coca leaves, respectively? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/c74rwh/eli5_why_is_caffeine_found_in_so_many_plants/ | {
"a_id": [
"esd0m5j"
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"score": [
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"text": [
"Many plants fall under the Cannabaceae family and contain THC, much like many plants fall under the Nicotiana tabacum and contain Nicotine. You're probably used to just hearing the more popularized plants: Weed and Tobacco, which are very specific labels that can classify a broad spectrum of plants. The chemicals these plants produce will automatically label them under a broad term instead of a specific plant because we as humans tend to simplify things to create a wider understanding under a generalization of categories. If you look at just the chemicals, they have some variety (or brother and sister plants) that produce it. Sometimes chemicals can be found in both plants and animals, such as the chemical N,N-Dimethyltryptamine."
]
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|
fkwo6h | the airline industry in america is asking for a bailout, many people are upset about this because it appears airlines have used much of their cash on buybacks. what is a buybacks and why is it a frivolous way of spending their cash which is why people are upset? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/fkwo6h/eli5_the_airline_industry_in_america_is_asking/ | {
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"text": [
"Hopefully someone can fill in what I miss. As far as I understand it, they use the money to buy their own stocks, causing the value of their stocks to increase. It's manufactured demand."
]
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[]
] |
||
y7p84 | american isps "six strikes" plan | What does it mean for me, and isn't it Invasion of Privacy? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/y7p84/eli5_american_isps_six_strikes_plan/ | {
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"If you are caught pirating, you will receive notices telling you not to.\n\nAfter a few notices being sent out, you will be forced to confirm that you have received this notice - by throttling you or blocking some websites. \n\nAt the 6th strike, the ISP may hand your details over and your account can be terminated and you could be sued. \n\nThis isn't a law but a bunch of ISPs and Hollywood and Music guys got together and agreed to implement this. \n\nThere's a [good article about this](_URL_0_) from Yahoo (yes, Yahoo) about this.\n\nWhat can you do? Call your ISP, threaten to leave. If you have the option, switch to an ISP that isn't part of this. If you have no option, you can use a VPN."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[
"http://news.yahoo.com/six-strikes-youre-screwed-upcoming-piracy-crackdown-means-144559247.html"
]
] |
|
aerysl | can sperm/eggs be cancerous? | was randomly thinking about how I was warned so heavily in school about cancer in the testicles. I was wondering, since my understanding of sperm is basically their a cell with half your DNA in it, could a sperm cell have cancer, and do we know what would theoretically happen to a fetus (or baby assuming it lives somehow) if that sperm was the one to get inside the egg. I think it would probably be the same result but just in case it's not, could the same happen to an egg?
& #x200B;
sorry if this isn't appropriate for ELI5 but it seemed like the right place to ask. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/aerysl/eli5_can_spermeggs_be_cancerous/ | {
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"The answer to your question is basically no. Cancer is uncontrolled replication of cells, and if the sperm fertilizes the egg, that new zygote will undergo controlled divisions or the pregnancy will be spontaneously aborted/miscarried. \n\nThat being said, if the sperm or egg has problems with its genetic material, it can increase the baby’s chance of certain cancers (sometimes as high as essentially 100%) or they can cause developmental defects like Down syndrome. \n\nIt is also possible for a baby to have cancer before it is born too, but that’s not determined at the germ cell level.",
"No. Cancer is by definition abnormal cell growth. Since sperm and eggs can't divide on their own, they can't be cancerous. It's possible to have germ cell cancers (germ cells are the cells that produce sperm and eggs) but it's impossible for a gamete to be cancerous itself. A zygote, however (the fertilized combination of an egg an sperm cell) can grow abnormally, and be cancer-like, although this will never produce a viable pregnancy. ",
"Sperm themselves can't have cancer because they can't replicate on their own. What makes a cancerous cell cancer is that it is a cell that normally makes more cells, but the normal safeguards that regulate how often and how much a cell reproduces have failed. If you have sperm and they are left, sitting mature in the testes, they don't make more of themselves. Those cells come from another source in the scrotum. \n\n & #x200B;\n\nNow, once the sperm and egg join and the embryo begins to grow, those cells can become cancerous. But it isn't a cancer brought in by a cancer sperm, it's a cancer that develops during replication after the egg and sperm join up. "
]
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[],
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|
81qewe | how many generations does it take to train the natural instincts out of a group of animals? can some instincts never be forgotten? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/81qewe/eli5_how_many_generations_does_it_take_to_train/ | {
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"Of course they tried it in Russia, apparently foxes can become \"tame\" in about 4-5 generations _URL_0_ ",
"Some Russian scientists worked on domesticating foxes. After 10 generations of selective breeding, about 18% of the foxes acted like dogs, eager for human contact. After 20 generations 35% did.\n\n_URL_0_\n"
]
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"http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20160912-a-soviet-scientist-created-the-only-tame-foxes-in-the-world"
],
[
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domesticated_red_fox"
]
] |
||
dyjcs9 | when people say that if another solar system were to look at us via telescope of some sort in the present, that they would see dinosaurs. what exactly do they mean? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/dyjcs9/eli5_when_people_say_that_if_another_solar_system/ | {
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"Well, they'd be wrong for a start. You have to be several galaxies away to see things as far back as the dinosaurs.\n\nWhat they mean is that, because light has a finite speed, you're always seeing things as they were in the past. The further away you view it from, the bigger the effect. If a civilisation 2000 light years away were to point a hyper-powerful telescope at Earth, they'd see Earth as it was in Roman times, because light from that period would just now be reaching them.",
"Light takes so long to travel those distances that the light you would see from that far away is millions of years old. \n\nThere are stars that we see light from earth that don't even exist anymore because they've gone supernova, but because they're so far away from us the light hasn't reached us yet.",
"The last dinosaurs are believed to have lived 65 million years ago. \n\nWhen you see something it's really light bouncing off of it and hitting your eyes. \n\nThe light that bounced off of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago has traveled 65 million light years.\n\nIf the solar system in question is 65 million light-years away, that light bouncing off the last dinosaur is just now reaching the solar system to be seen right now."
]
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||
3reetd | are the beautiful colorful pictures of planets real pictures or are they created/colored in? | I was reading an article which I can't find now :( That showed the most beautiful aww inspiring pictures of the planets. Mercury really caught my eye! But some of the pictures mentioned stuff like composite and multiple pictures and different light stuff.
I am just wondering if these pictures of planets are real pictures and what they really look like, or is it just photoshop? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3reetd/eli5_are_the_beautiful_colorful_pictures_of/ | {
"a_id": [
"cwndkgf"
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"text": [
"Some pictures are \"artist's impressions\" and are not taken with real cameras. Out of the ones that are taken with real cameras, the colors are often exaggerated to make them look more interesting. Some images that are taken outside of the visible spectrum are shown in \"false color\". Almost all color pictures are used solely for publicity; astronomers work with black-and-white images most of the time."
]
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|
akqjnk | whenever i buy a video game disc, (xbox, ps4, etc.) it says it needs to download the game into the console. isn't the game already on the disc? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/akqjnk/eli5_whenever_i_buy_a_video_game_disc_xbox_ps4/ | {
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"Back in the 90s and 2000s, yes. The game would have been fully on the disk.\n\nNowadays disks are almost treated like user licenses. Whereas a digital download would be \"Buy game, download game, game checks if the user has a license, play game\", a disk would be \"Put disk in, download game, license is there, play game\"",
"On modern consoles it has to install the data from the disc onto the console's hard drive. That's because blu-ray drives are just too slow to load data for modern games, so it has to be installed on a faster (although still pretty slow to be honest) hard drive.\n\nUsually you also have to download patches, even if the game has just come out. The data that goes onto the disc has to be ready months before the game comes out. So in the time between that data being ready and the game actually coming out the developers continue to work on fixing bugs, tweaking the gameplay, maybe even adding features. So when the game actually comes out there is an update ready and waiting to be downloaded.\n\nIn theory if the game is single player you can choose not to download the update and just play it anyway. But unfortunately some games are pretty broken without that day 1 patch.",
"Nowadays, no. Often times the only files on the disc are an installer and a form of identify verification. The installer provides your device with the instructions for finding, downloading, and installing the game from wherever it is hosted. The identify verification ensures that you have a real disc in the device and haven't just downloaded a copy of the game from someone else. ",
"optical drives max at 27megabytes per second\n\nplatter (moving parts) hard drives read at upto 240megabytes per second\n\nnormal platter drive speeds are around 100megabytes per second\n\n & #x200B;\n\nsolid state drives (no moving parts) are available upto 2.3GIGABYTES per second\n\n & #x200B;\n\n & #x200B;\n\n & #x200B;\n\ntry playing a game directly off the optical drive and you won't even get into the actual game while you still want to play it."
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1d5uc7 | cellular automata to a non-cs major | I really want to understand Cellular Automata. I am a science major and I think it has general application in simulation of interconnected systems such as crystals, networks etc. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1d5uc7/eli5_cellular_automata_to_a_noncs_major/ | {
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"Read [this part](_URL_0_) of WWW:Wake (a young adult novel)\n",
"A *cellular automaton* consists of a structure of cells and a set of rules what happens to those cells (or how the *state* of the cells change). The rules are applied step by step.\n\nAn simple example would be [Conway's Game of Life](_URL_0_) which consists of a grid auf square cells. Each cell can have two states: Alive (usually expressed by painting it black) and dead (usually white). There are also simple rules how a cell changes from \"dead\" to \"alive\" or vice versa:\n\n1. Any live cell with fewer than two live neighbours dies, as if caused by under-population.\n2. Any live cell with two or three live neighbours lives on to the next generation.\n3. Any live cell with more than three live neighbours dies, as if by overcrowding.\n4. Any dead cell with exactly three live neighbours becomes a live cell, as if by reproduction.\n\nSo in this example you would set a few cells as \"alive\" as a start state of the \"world\", and then go through all the cells one by one. If a cell changes its state, note that down (don't change the state yet, you note what is *going to happen*). If you are done, create a new state with all the changes you noted. Of course you would not do this by hand, but instead use a computer. The patterns that result can be very interesting.\n\nYou can imagine other cellular automata with e.g. 3D cells, cells with more complex states (e.g. a integer value from 0-100) or another set of rules (e.g. simulating the transfer of heat or information). ",
"Cellular automata are cells--little boxes--like in MS Excel or tic-tac-toe, that can be black or white, and change over time.\n\nYou could play with cellular automata with a pencil and a sheet of grid paper if you wanted to.\n\nAfter you set things up, coloring certain cells black and leaving other ones white however you want, you get to draw the next step of your grid. Imagine this as the second turn in a game that you're playing with the boxes. There are rules (and you can make your own up), about which boxes should be white and which ones should be black on this turn. Your rules could be simple. If you wanted, you could make a rule that if the box was white during the last turn, the box to the left of it has to be black this turn. Then you can take a third turn, and a fourth, and so on, using your same rules. \n\nLots of people have made up lots of different rules. It would be a pretty boring game to play with graph paper, because you'd have no control, except when you made up the rules. The rest of the time, you'd just be watching the patterns that your rules made.\n\nWhat's interesting (or what's interesting to me) about cellular automata, is that very simple rules make things happen that seem very complicated. Simple rules can make it seem like there are living things moving around and interacting with each other, like in [Conway's Game of Life](_URL_0_). Also, sometimes you can see patterns that look like the same ones you can find in flowers and sea shells and all over nature. \n\nSome people think that cellular automata are interesting because they show us that complicated things can come from very simple rules. At least one really smart person, [Stephen Wolfram](_URL_1_), thinks that maybe the whole world is really just a system of cellular automata, and probably one with really simple rules. In some very important math software that Mr. Wolfram made, cellular automata are used (if I remember right) to come up with random numbers. Of course, they couldn't really be random, since they're being found using those rules! But if Mr. Wolfram is right, maybe nothing is really random.\n\nThere are probably a lot of interesting things about cellular automata that I don't know about. But these are the things that I've heard about them that I think are really interesting.\n\n",
"Cellular automata is a fairly basic idea, but is open to extremely complex studies as you look deeper into it (the same way that math starts out simple, but the more you study the deeper it gets). At it's most basic a cellular automaton is a grid of cells, and a set of rules that look at the current state of the neighboring cells, and use that to determine the future state of that cell. [Conway's Game of Life](_URL_0_) is by far the most famous example. It uses a 2 dimensional grid, where cell in the grid has two states \"on\" and \"off\" (where on is visualized as a black square, and off is a white square). The initial state of the grid can be set to a specific pattern, or filled randomly (a blank grid will always remain blank given the rules). Here is the ruleset used (copy pasted from wiki):\n\n\nAt each step in time, the following transitions occur:\n\n* Any live cell with fewer than two live neighbours dies, as if caused by under-population.\n* Any live cell with two or three live neighbours lives on to the next generation.\n* Any live cell with more than three live neighbours dies, as if by overcrowding.\n* Any dead cell with exactly three live neighbours becomes a live cell, as if by reproduction.\n\n\nNow that doesn't sound very complex or interesting really. But if you play around with it at all you will quickly notice emergent complexity. What that means is that from these basic rule spawn much more complex behavior. You will see the same patterns appear over and over again. You will see different types of \"life\" emerge. Some of them are stable static patterns that won't change unless acted upon by another pattern invading it's space. Others, called oscillators, will flip/flop through a repeating series of patterns. The most interesting though, are the spaceships. These are shapes that repeat themselves, but move as part of the pattern. This is why cellular automata are so interesting, and why studying them can help us better understand other real world phenomena. For example they have been able to mimic bird flocking patterns will a very basic ruleset. It's possible that many of the complex behaviors we see in the real world aren't that complex at all, they are just the emergent complexity of basic systems.",
"It's a model for effects caused by close-area environment. \n\nGenerally CA systems are iterative, and provide a set of rules that determine the next state of element X based on the current state of element X as well as the elements surrounding it. \n\nMost common CAs, such as the most popular, Conway, are directionally indifferent; that is, it doesn't matter which neighbors have which states, but that N neighbors have a certain state. \n\nOf course, there's no reason you can't get more creative there. I've played a CA game where diagonal neighbors mattered for one state and not the other (orthogonal neighbors always mattered). You can add more than two states (typically off and on aka \"alive\" or \"dead\"). You can alter dimensions and directions (there are 1D CAs and 3D CAs, no doubt others, and I see no reason that you couldn't have a hexagonal CA instead of the typical orthogonal ones)\n\nThe interest in CA is that certain ones do reflect certain natural processes, much like fractals do. In fact a CA is sort of like a fractal that operates over a time function; in both systems the design is generated by a set of rules applied iteratively. Rudy Rucker (q.v.) is a researcher that eats this stuff up -- the similarities between the natural world and CAs and fractals, and I have to say the connections are philosophically seductive IMO.\n\nConway's game of life, the most common CA, was stumbled upon more than it was designed to be lifelike. It's the most popular one because it is the most \"interesting\" in terms of activity and motion and stable / repeating patterns.\n\nLife32 is a program that is great for playing with CAs, including designing your own. I dont know if there are better ones but that is one I have always liked -- lots of flexibility in neighborhood rules, and a boundless playfield.\n"
]
} | [] | [] | [
[
"http://books.google.com/books?id=F7yJptQko2YC&pg=PT152&dq=www+wake+cellular+automata+are+patterns&hl=en&sa=X&ei=tbJ6Ud3tKPK40AGriIHADA&ved=0CDIQ6AEwAA"
],
[
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],
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"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_wolfram"
],
[
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway%27s_game_of_life"
],
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] |
|
3g51hm | why the area around a volcano is flat? | I was looking to [this](_URL_0_) post and realized that despite the area being hilly, around the volcano the land is pretty much flat. Why? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3g51hm/eli5_why_the_area_around_a_volcano_is_flat/ | {
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"text": [
"Lava is like water when it flows. It wants to stay flat all the time. When it cools it hardens and remains flat."
]
} | [] | [
"https://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/3g46d6/mount_fuji_seen_from_the_international_space/"
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[]
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|
27y6v5 | how does homeschooling curriculum and grading work? | Can someone explain the organization of homeschooling? Are there required subjects to study? How are students graded? Are materials (textbooks, writing utencils, etc) paid out of pocket? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/27y6v5/eli5_how_does_homeschooling_curriculum_and/ | {
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"When I was home-schooled, it was all 100% up to the parent. There was no 'checking in' done by the state, and the curriculum and books were paid for by my parents only. At no point was my learning ever audited or monitored it was simply left to the parent to decide when/where/how to teach their children."
]
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|
em9vo7 | rainbows. how come rainbows appear to stay in place as you move unlike other light reflections? how can they be seen from different perspectives and look the same? | Rainbows are very odd to me. They stay in place as you approach them and don’t move in relation to you unlike some other reflections of light. I may be crazy but it feels like something unique is going on. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/em9vo7/eli5_rainbows_how_come_rainbows_appear_to_stay_in/ | {
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"text": [
"A specific raindrop set doesn't \"emit a rainbow\" in all directions, but only at very specific angles from light source (the sun). Light bounces several times on raindrop walls until it reaches your eye, and it always happens at the same [you, raindrop, sun] angle.\n\nWhen moving, there is little relative movement between you and the light source (the sun), so a potential rainbow would not follow your movement. Instead, it is reflected through a different set of raindrops. However, later the same day, as the sun position would have changed, the rainbow would also move if rain/humidity persists.",
"Rainbows are always directly opposite the sun.\n\nThe sun is pretty stationary and you can walk, run or drive as fast as you can without the sun seeming to move relatively to you.\n\nIf you make a rainbow with a light source other than the sun, you will be able to see it looks less stationary.",
"The simple answer is that it is a different rainbow. \n\nYou are seeing the light reflected off a certain particular set of rain drops. A person standing 100 feet away from you is seeing light reflected off a different set of rain drops. \n\n(what you both see is basically identical, it is far away and circular and the colors are in the same pattern so it appears to be 'the same rainbow' but it's not)",
"Rainbows do move, but since the water droplets that form them are usually miles away, their movement isn't very apparent. Its the same way a distant mountain doesn't appear to move with you. They are both moving, but it is so small you don't notice.\n\nAlso, a rainbow consists of the water droplets that make a very specific angle between you and the sun, so the rainbow will always be oriented in the same direction with respect to the sun. When you move, the angle changes, and you are seeing light from droplets in a different location than before."
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74si3g | what keeps the baby in the womb sterile? | I read that the baby in the womb is sterile until the moment of birth. What keeps microbes from getting to the fetus ? Is it a structural thing that keeps them from entering? Some chemical that sterilizes the area? Or something else? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/74si3g/eli5_what_keeps_the_baby_in_the_womb_sterile/ | {
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"The mother's immune system takes care of most of the baby's defense needs, and the amniotic fluid is indeed sterile. *However*, during the birthing process the baby is coated with billions of good bacteria as s/he passes through the birth canal. This compromises the previous sterility as well as preparing the baby for life on the outside.",
"[They are not sterile](_URL_0_).\n\nBut they *are* kept more generally germ-free than the rest of the body. The placenta filters out most things, much like the blood-brain barrier. Germs just simply have difficulty passing through the placenta. The mother's immune system also kills off a lot of the bugs that might be inclined to infect the fetus. There are some notable exceptions, like zika and toxoplasma gondii, which can cause birth defects and death of the fetus."
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4g60dr | why does swaying your bicycle side to side make you pick up speed faster? | I have always done this and never really understood if it's psychological or not. Is it that you get more power behind your pedaling? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4g60dr/eli5_why_does_swaying_your_bicycle_side_to_side/ | {
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"You're pushing *down* on the pedals with one foot, which means the pedal is pushing *up* on that foot, but you don't want to go up, you want the pedal to go down, so you transfer that force into the handlebars to help hold you down so you can push down harder on the pedal. Makes sense? If you stand up straight on the pedal, you're not *pushing* the pedal down, you're just standing on it and gravity is pulling you down. But if you lock yourself in place and push on the pedal, you're getting gravity pulling you down *and* the force of your leg trying to stand up. If you use your arms to push you down even harder, you're getting your arms *and* your legs *and* gravity.\n\nWhen you sway, you're using the strength of your arms to rock the bike to the side, putting a lever action on the pedal on the opposite side, bringing it up into your foot as you're pushing down with your foot. Moving to the side like that also brings in some of your core muscles and your shoulders, giving you some mechanical advantage on the pedal with the lever action, *and* the muscles in your back and shoulder, *and* your arms, *and* your legs, *and* gravity.",
"Long story short is that technically it doesn't. If you can keep the bike upright while still maintain the same amount of force to the pedals you'd be more efficient and faster.\n\nThere are two main things that happen when you do this.\n\n1. It counteracts the energy/force you apply to the pedals to stop the bike from tipping. \"Pre-swaying\" (which is what everyone does) allows you to use a more explosive movement and apply more force. \n\n2. It allows/makes you engage your upper body (especially core and arms) into the movement which increases power.\n\nYou'll notice the pros usually only have about a 10-15 degree sway sway when sprinting. This is due to the efficiency and power in their technique. Clipless (clip in) pedals make this possible. (ie. power through the whole pedal stroke)"
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9tnnkn | why are the billboard hot 100 so disconnected from other countries' record charts? | I've often seen a song peaking in nearly every country in the world, but only getting into like Top 10 in the US. Why is that? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9tnnkn/eli5_why_are_the_billboard_hot_100_so/ | {
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"Generally speaking, other countries (particularly non English speaking) have a wider breadth of contemporary popular music in circulation than the US. This is because, aside from the US and UK music, these countries listen to local music, regional music, foreign music in their language and foreign music in other languages. This means that the distribution of listeners is far more sparce, so the peak song will usually have only marginally more plays than the second ranked, top 5 and so on. Another reason: lyric is a very important part of most music. Many countries (populations really) will put more emphasis on the lyrics from their native language than English lyrics, but they may all converge on a catchy, rhythmic song and cause it to peak. US and UK can think the lyric of that song is lackluster, or not as relatable, and listen to other songs instead. "
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492rm4 | where is the cash that i spend electronically? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/492rm4/eli5_where_is_the_cash_that_i_spend_electronically/ | {
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"Only about 8% of the world's money is actually in physical cash. The rest of it, 92% exists as just numbers on some computer or ledger.\n\nIt seems odd at first, but these numbers on computers are basically just IOU's. If anyone every came and asked to get their money out of the electronic form and into cash, they could. But unless there is a giant rush to the bank to get physical cash, the system works perfectly well, because there is still more than enough physical cash around, and we can move around these electronic IOUs from place to place."
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7jr2ts | ell5: gravity between newton and einstein | If I understand correctly Einstein's theory of gravity has been proven to be correct, but we still use Newton's calculations that works perfectly even though his theory is wrong.1. how is this possible? 2.Einstein's theory have been proven to be correct why are we still searching for Graviton? since that Einstein said that gravity is just an illusion when particles with mass tries to attract in a 4D plane. simply explain what is gravity like I am 5 | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7jr2ts/eli5_ell5_gravity_between_newton_and_einstein/ | {
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" > we still use Newton's calculations that works perfectly even though his theory is wrong.1. how is this possible?\n\nNewtonian gravity is a very good approximation\n\n > Einstein's theory have been proven to be correct why are we still searching for Graviton?\n\nThere is no fundamental law that I know of that predicts the existence of the graviton. We think there might be a gravity carrier particle because all other forces have one. \n\n > gravity is just an illusion\n\nThis is the [Equivalence principle](_URL_0_). It tells us that there is no way to distinguish between gravity created by mass and the force created by a constant acceleration. \n\nGravity can be expressed as a constant acceleration in a curved space time, not as a force by itself. (Grossly simplifying it means that gravity is an acceleration but in a dimension we can't see)",
" > Einstein's theory of gravity has been proven to be correct,\n\nNo theory is ever \"proven correct\". It's predictions have been validated by every experiment so far carried out to test it. But that doesn't mean that it always works - just that it has always worked so far.\n\n > we still use Newton's calculations that works perfectly even though his theory is wrong\n\nBecause Newtonian gravity is still a very good approximation as long as you are moving much slower than the speed of light. For most problems of practical interest, there is no need to invoke relativity. Newton's theory stood for hundreds of years precisely because it predicts most things very well.\n\nRelativity becomes important at speeds close to the speed of light, or close to large masses. Newton's theory is able to predict the orbits of the planets very well, except for the orbit of Mercury (which is closest to the Sun). This discrepancy was not properly explained until general relativity was introduced, and it was one of the first tests of the new theory.\n\n > Einstein's theory have been proven to be correct why are we still searching for Graviton?\n\nThe graviton is not predicted by general relativity, it's predicted by some [more recent theories](_URL_0_) that attempt to unify general relativity with quantum mechanics.",
"Newton's theories are good enough for most purposes, and the calculations are much, much simpler. If you want to launch a rocket to Mars, Newton's theories work just fine. But if you want to use a satellite to calculate your exact position on earth, using Newtonian physics will give you the wrong answer: you need Einsteinian physics for that.\n\nNeither of these theories pretends to tell you what gravity *is*. (Well, to be sure, Newton did think his did, but those were the early days of modern science.) They give you a way to predict the effects of gravity. Newton's theories suggest that you imagine gravity as a force. Einstein's theories suggest that you imagine gravity in terms of geometry.\n\nIt's not that Newton was wrong and Einstein was right, but that Einstein found a way to make Newton's theories more accurate.\n\nAnd Einstein's theories may be tweaked again in the future. His theories are much better than Newton's for calculating the orbit of Mercury, but don't work so well for calculating the rotation of galaxies. The universe behaves as though it has a lot, *lot* more mass than we can detect -- this is the \"dark matter\" that some scientists are hoping to prove the existence of. Maybe it is dark matter, but maybe it's an inaccuracy in Einstein's theories, and we just need some new Einstein to have a brainwave.\n\nThat won't mean, though, that Einstein's theories are actually worthless. GPS uses Einstein's theories and they work perfectly for that. It would just mean that we have to refine our theories about how the universe works, but that's exactly what science is supposed to do."
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4mnf5m | why do sharps and flats exist in music? why not just have 13 individually named notes? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4mnf5m/eli5_why_do_sharps_and_flats_exist_in_music_why/ | {
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"Music is just math. I think the way it's set up now is because the math works out ALMOST perfectly. Kind of like how our calendar works out ALMOST perfectly (Leap year).",
"Music is, as /u/ucanhearmyhairgrowin said, Math.\nIt is also a language. This is especially true when it comes to sheet music. When describing a tone by a given name, you also describe how it relates to other notes in the context it's found in. Simply having individual names for them, would make reading music harder, because you wouldn't be able to contextualize the note to the other notes as easily. A flat or a sharp is among the notes called 'accidental notes' (I think it's called that in english, not my first language, so sorry for any mistakes). Accidental notes are notes, that do not naturally occur within a given scale that you're currently playing in. A flat (the 'b'-sign) or a sharp (the '#'-sign) indicates the note that follows deviates from the scale that you know. This tradition can actually be traced all the way back to the middle ages, and was originally made to avoid dissonans (a tone and the following semi-tone results in an undesirable harmony) when the notationsystem was based upon hexachords. \n\nLook up \"Musica Ficta\" if you wanna know more about the story of sharps, flats, naturals and notation. ",
"First of all, it's 12 tones in the chromatic scale, not 13. Second, the notion of an 8-note scale with sharps and flats is just a convention of traditonal Western music. \n\nThis is why eastern music (Japanese, Indian, etc) sounds a bit \"weird\" to our Western ears, since they combine tones in ways we aren't accustomed to. There are Western composers who used a 12 tone system, though; look into \"atonality\" and in particular the work of a composer named Schönberg. ",
"Fun fact: the sharp of a note isn't exactly equal to the flat of the note above it. They're slightly different frequencies, and we average them together to get the note that's played. For example, A# =/= Bb. B# is higher than a Cb, but not quite up to the C we equate it with. Apparently elite string musicians actually compensate for this.\n\n...though now that I'm looking, I can't find a single source to corroborate this. My physics teacher might have lied. Can anybody back this up?",
"I believe it all has to do with how music evolved. People started simply by finding musical ratios that sounded good. In the western evolution, enough of these were aligned to create an 7 tone scale. They made up a language about it (a through g) Then they found out there were other interesting, although less technically pleasing notes in between the notes of their 7 tone scale. They wanted to keep the language they had already been using for a while, so they created sharps and flats that could be inserted as needed.\n\nThis seems even more needlessly silly to us since the advent of tempered tuning. Back in the day, a piano would be tuned to a certain key, and transposing is would result in a different sounding song. So you would just play every song in the key it was tuned for. Then someone used logarythms to make each note the same distance from the next so that a modern piano can play anything in any key. So now things are much more commonly written in any key, so the traditional style that evolved looks cumbersom.",
"Sharps and flats arise from transposition of scales.\n\nA scale is a set of notes between two notes an octave apart. The major scale is the most recognisable one. It is also the most natural one. It's a close approximation to what you get from the 8th to the 16th harmonic by subdividing a string or overblowing a trumpet. Some adjustments are made so that you also have some nice ratios between different subdivisions of the octave, such as having the fifths having a ratio of roughly 3:2 just like the natural fifth (second to third harmonic), and some other things that I won't go into, such as having there be seven notes before the original one is repeated.\n\nSo you have this major scale, and it starts on a particular note. As it goes up, some of the gaps between the notes are different from others. There ends up being two sizes of gap - a large one and a small one. A large one we call a tone and a small one we call a semitone.\n\nAs you go up, starting on the original note, first there's a tone, then another, then a semitone, then three tones in a row, then a semitone that takes you back to the original note, only higher.\n\nThis arrangement sounds pleasing. There's some tension but each note feels like it naturally follows the other.\n\nBut what if you wanted to start on a different note?\n\nThe most obvious one to start on instead would be the fifth, as that is the closest related note to the start note (due to the 3:2 ratio mentioned earlier). It's the most basic natural interval.\n\nIf we take our arrangement from before, tone-tone-semitone-tone-tone-tone-semitone, and start from the fifth note, we end up with something different. It instead becomes tone-tone-semitone-tone-tone-semitone-tone. This sounds different - the tension changes at the end produce a different character to the scale. It is no longer the same major scale.\n\nIf we want it to be the same major scale as before, we have to create a new note. That note comes just before it reaches the original note again, halfway between it. This means you can change that last semitone to a tone, and the last tone to a semitone.\n\nI've been avoiding using note names but it will make it easier if I do now.\n\nThe 'home' major scale we started with is C major. C D E F G A B C. The white keys on the keyboard between C and the C above.\n\nNow we are moving it to G. G A B C D E F G is our new scale, but the end bit, E F G, doesn't sound the same as the end bit from before, A B C, so we have to insert a new note. This we call F#, a tone up from E, a semitone down from G. G A B C D E F# G becomes our new scale, and it sounds pretty identical to C Major. The starting pitch is different, but the arrangement of the pitches follow the same pattern, so the tension feels the same and it's equally satisfying to reach the top note.\n\nWe have to add notes every time we want to start the scale on a different note. If you go around in fifths, you will add one note every time. By the time you get to a scale starting on B, you will have added five new notes, one between every 'tone' gap on the original C scale.\n\nAnd that's all you need. Of the seven notes on the original scale, five had tone gaps and two had semitone gaps. Filling in all the tones means that you can now have the same pattern starting anywhere on the keyboard. You can even start on one of the new notes.\n\nSo the reason we don't have 13 individually named notes is that they don't form a part of the natural scale that you arrive at if you start experimenting with a string or natural trumpet. \n\nIt also means you can keep track of what is happening when you move that scale to a new note, giving you an idea of how the new scale is related to the old scale. This enriches the language of music, because you can see how different scales are related and what that means for how they sound like used in succession. If there is only one sharp difference between two scales, this means they have most of their notes in common and so will sound good if you make music using notes from both of their scales together.\n\nEdit: Here is a video of the two scales from above - the C scale and the G scale, so you can hear how they are different from each other. \n\n_URL_2_\n\n_URL_0_\n\nAnd if you listen to this scale you can see the F# has been added, and it sounds more similar to the first video.\n\n_URL_1_\n\n**tl;dr:** We started with the natural major scale which has 8 notes per octave, with uneven gaps between them, but found that if you want to move that to start in a different place it will sound different. So we filled in the larger gaps between the notes so that you could make the scale sound the same wherever you start if you follow the same pattern. The sharps and flats filled in the gaps, and it was kept that way rather than by changing the note names because keeping track of the sharps and flats preserves the ability to keep track the harmonic relationship between keys when writing music.",
"Most of the top-rated answers are deeply Eurocentric and Platonic. The truth of the matter is that it's wholly arbitrary. You can divide sounds up however you like, and there is no mathematic or audiological reason why it MUST be divided the way we do. It's convention, pure and simple.",
"It seems that the top few comments have answered this sufficiently, so let me use this as a moment to plug r/musictheory! It's a great community, and have lots of people happy to answer any music question you can think of!",
"Musician/studying to be a polyglot...(not even close right now) checking in:\n\nFirst of all, idk OP's understanding of music...so if he is a beginner then all of the cliche answers given so far are appropriate.\n\n__However__ if OP is an intermediate to advanced player then all of those answers do not explore the full range of possibilities imo...\n\nThe truth is \"music is math\", \"it explains how the notes relate to each other\", \"it helps to not have more than one of the same letter in a scale 'F# G# A# B C# D# E# F#' \" are all textbook answers but they're still answers not exploring all of the possibilities because by naming the keys from A-L you can still say \"music is math\", \"it explains how the notes relate to each other\", \"it helps to not have more than one of the same letter in a scale\".\n\nThe difference is, now when following the WWHWWWH pattern you are no longer saying the alphabet in order...and this is where we can go back to the root of things. In some cultures they dont learn letters for their instruments they learn the scale system using 'do re mi fa so la ti do' ...which is kind of nonsense if you think about it...so to add 5 varients with different names is completely possible and would thus eliminate the need for sharps or flats...\n\nhowever this would create a new problem of having to explain what key you are in and then use 'do re mi etc' from that point...for example: if you said \"we are in the key a 'la' \" then had to be pronounce 'la' as 'do'... it would just be an absolute cluster fuck...\n\nYou could potentially use the new 'do re me +5(additional names)' system for the scales and a number system 1-12 for the keys and all theory practices such as scale patterns, circle of fifths, relative minor would still be the same patterns.\n\nbut the biggest probelm of all is that you would be fighting against a multi hundred if not thousand year old system and nobody likes change...or as they say in the south \"if it ain't broke, dont fix it\".\n\n__TLDR__\nMusic is because it was and forever will be the same as always.\n\n__Bonus reading__ \nI use the nashville number system when performing with bands which varies from traditional music in that you say the key and everything thereafter is numbers instead of using letters or sheet music.\n_URL_0_\n\n\nEx: \"Don't stop believing\" - Journey, Key: E\nIntro/verse/chorus\n(1, 5, 6m, 4 - 1, 5, 3m, 4)\nBridge\n(4, 1) \nHits\n(5, 4, 5, 1/3, 4)",
" > why not just have ~~13~~ 12 individually named notes?\n\nWe do that too, it's called solfege. The notes are named: do, di, re, ri, mi, fa, fi, sol, si, la, li, and ti.",
"Because nearly all music is diatonic.\n\n_URL_0_\n\nThe seven notes of a diatonic scale expressed through notation lends itself to patterns that make it easier to interpret as a language. The real question is why is almost all music diatonic. pentatonic scales fall ambiguously inside several diatonic scales, so they can be said to fall within diatonicism.\n\nLooking back to chromaticism we have 12 logarithmic divisions of a frequency. Some frequencies are sympathetic. an octave is a 1:2 ratio. We picked the notes we like. That's why. Stop asking questions.",
"I'm trying to figure this out myself, so I'm going to post how I understand it with the hopes that someone can help correct or verify it for me:\n\nIn the C scale, you have certain fractions of frequencies that sound nice together (string 1 vibrates 4 times to every 5 times that string 2 vibrates, sounds nice) and if you split an octave up into 12 logarithmic steps, some of those pleasing fractional frequencies are very close to the nice equal 1/12th fractions, but with some extra half steps between some of the notes. You can ignore those half steps in C major, but if you want to play music in a different scale, like G, then some of those pleasing fractions give you a frequency that lands between the notes on the C scale, so you say \"oh shoot, we need a note between F and G,\" so you make F#. Keep doing this for all note scales and you add in sharps after all notes except B and E. So basically you have sharps because it makes for nice whole notes in C major scale, but sometimes we want to use a different scale. \n\nI'm new to this and might be wrong on part of this. If so, please let me know. ",
"From what I understand, it is mainly to do with simplifying the language of music and to make it easier to notate which 'key' the music is in, which is written alongside the treble-clef at the beginning of the manuscript, with sharps/flats, or none (no sharp/flat notation would be the key of 'C', as the key of C has no flats or sharps in the musical scale and contains all natural notes. Of course, it gets more complicated with relative major to minor, etc, and with scale modes, but how I understand music theory myself, the flat/sharp notation, makes it easier and less complicated to notate, over having a 12 note octave written solely in letters.",
"ELI5: Western music recognizes 12 tones. \n \nScales in western music are built with 7 different tones and 1 repeated higher. \n \nInstead of skipping names out of the 12, they set a system where each name is always repeated in a scale with modified names depending on different factors for different scales. \n \nIn analogy form: It's easier to remember teacup, toy, standard, and giant for different sizes of poodle. All the same dog, but definitely different.\n \nELI16: Like any means of communication, musicians want the smallest vocabulary to get their meaning across. \n \nModifying 7 names is easier to express quickly than 12 individual names. \n \nMusicians are also lazy (more specifically music printers didn't want to make huge scores with a ton of information if they could avoid it) so they developed a system that saves ink, time, printing press molds, and condenses musical understanding to what we know today.",
"The names are just convention. The patterns are what matter. \n\nIn Europe, they have 13 names for the notes, saying \"Do, Di, Re, Ri, Mi\" instead of \"C, C#, D, Eb, E\"\n\nMost musicians don't necessarily think of a scale as \"Alright so we do A and then B and then C# and then D etc...\" rather they think \"A scale has the root, then the 2, then the 3, then the 4 etc...\"\n\nSo to go from Major to minor, you don't think \"Okay that C# turns into a C natural and the F# turns into an F natural\", but rather \"Okay every time you play the 3rd or 6th notes, play it half a step flat.\" That pattern is true for every scale.",
"How is the top answer so wrong...\n\nHere's the right answer: tradition.\n\nIn the past music was based on what we now call \"modes.\" This essentially mean't that you didn't really have different scales or keys, you just had one and you start on a different note in that key to get a different \"mode.\" When people would improvise on these modes (as they would often do in early church music) they would often use notes that weren't in the \"mode\" or scale, yet which were musically satisfying. These notes became known as \"accidentals\" due to the nature of how they came about in this time. \n\nAs music theory developed, these accidental notes started to find their place in proper theory, and started to be notated as \"sharps\" or \"flats.\" (Of course in music something is sharp if it is a higher frequency and something is flat if it's a lower frequency, so these terms stuck with the accidental notes.) This was especially important when the concept of different keys started to emerge. Now we could say this piece had no accidentals and starts on \"C\" or this piece has a flat and starts on \"F\" and this would indicate what we now call different keys. \n\nBut the early world of different keys was very limited, as instruments were often tuned in such a way that one key was in tune, while the others were progressively more out of tune as you move away from that main key. This is when \"Mean temperament\" emerged, which basically meant that no key would have totally pure intervals, but all of them would be slightly detuned to allow a wider array of keys. This period is epitomized by Bach's \"The Well-Tempered Keyboard,\" which has a piece for each key on the keyboard, something that was impossible just a bit earlier.\n\nOf course with this new tempered keyboard people could now modulate between keys easily, so these things now needed to be notated. In other words, you needed to know if that was a B-flat or an A-sharp because they had different TONAL implications. So if I was in C Major and played a B-flat, that would be very different than being in B Minor and playing A-sharp, even though they are the exact same note on the piano.\n\nAs people moved away from tempered systems and into equal temperament, we started to move away form the idea of tonality at all. Enter the \"Atonal serial music\" movement. Here, the actual purpose of sharps and flats became ambiguous, and their original meaning became practically irrelevant.\n\nThe truth is we COULD notate with just 12 notes (not 13, the 13th note is the octave of note 1), and some forms of notation actually do just this. Or you could notate with exactly however many notes you are using (say, for instance if you were using a non 12 tone equal temperament tuning). Or you could notate based on the instrument (this would be called \"tabulature\"), or whatever. Nowadays you can do whatever you want.\n\nTL;DR: Sharps and flats exist because of historical reasons, are still used because of tradition, and some people do have systems of notation that don't use them.\n\nP.S. music is neither math nor language, that's a huge oversimplification and misrepresentation of all three fields. . ",
"The first part to understand is that there are some good reasons **not** to use the 8-note system, and there are some good applications for using absolute pitch, and/or a 127-note scale such as midi, for example, or microtonal systems, or all kinds of other things. And no explanation is ever going to make all of those other systems go away. So there is value in having more than one way to talk about music, and more than one way of identifying a \"note\", and so on. It's not just a binary choice between two absolute systems. \n\nSo coming back to the 8-note scale system (and grossly simplifying for ELI5 purposes):\n\n- In music, there are infinite number of possible divisions of frequency. Birdsongs and waves are tuned to A440 in the key of C, for example, they just made of sound, of a continuum of vibrating air-pressure at all different frequencies. \n\n- If you pick a random frequency out of thin air, most other frequencies will sound *dissonant* (call it \"bad\", for ELI5 purposes, for now), like when some goofus on a TV show tries to play an instrument when they don't know how. Only a small number of certain frequencies will sound *consonant* (or \"pleasing\") when played together at once, or in a melody. \n\n- Those \"consonant\" frequencies are based on specific harmonic *intervals*, which slide up and down the frequency spectrum together. So different birds might be singing in all different \"keys\" and \"tunings\" and so on, and none of them might be in tune with a guitar or a piano, but they still sound \"in tune\", \"consonant\", and, for lack of a better word, *musical*. \n\n- As it turns out, those \"consonant\" frequency relationships are related to **mathematical fractions**. You know, fractions, like 1/2, 2/3, 3/4, 1/3, 1/5, 4/3, 1/6, etc etc. Two frequencies at a simple fraction of each other will tend to sound perfectly consonant, or \"in tune\". \n\n- For reasons that are much more complex than I can cover in an ELI5 post, the most useful and consonant fractions are the ones with smaller numerators and especially with denominators: 1/2, 4/3, 3/2, 2/1, etc etc: these frequency relationships have very strong consonance and are the kind of intervals that things like birdsongs are made up of. \n\n- More complex fractions, such as 1/25th, 32/31, etc etc, tend to sound more dissonant, and are generally much less \"Musical\".\n\n- So when we map out those simpler fractions on a frequency spectrum, we get a series of \"hot spots\" on spectrum, marking out kind of harmonic \"scale\", which we can slide up and down to center on any frequency. So long as the fractions/proportions remain consistent, the \"hot spots\" can be strung together into melodies, or combined into chords, and most of them will sound quite \"musical\" (much more so than combining random frequencies \"between\" the hot spots). \n\nNow, since there are an infinite series of possible fractions dividing any given part of the musical spectrum, how many divisions do we need to have a musically-useful toolbox for construction melodies and harmonies? That's a big question, and different cultures and musical traditions have answered it differently. \n\nI'm going to continue in reply to this comment...\n",
"Say you begin with the melody, say, a bird song. You want someone else to hear it but you cannot catch that bird. You can whistle the song, more or less, just like the bird. You practice it a few times and you have it memorized.\n\nYou want to share this song with a friend, but find he's moved to another village far away. You invent a way to abstract the song of the bird so that you can remember it when you get back to your home. You travel once to the other village and teach your friend how to read your notation. Now, instead of traveling yourself, you just send something with the notation on it.\n\nIn the early days of written music, there were many different ways to notate a melody. Over time, some became more useful than others. Over time, music became more complex. The complexity of music began to weed out the less useful systems of notation until we get to the system of 8 note scales with sharps and flats to notate the mood.\n\nFun fact: there has been research that indicates the human brain can only keep track of seven things, plus or minus two, at once. This gets mentioned in computer programming texts as a reason to write simpler code by adopting good coding practices. It's fascinating that the modern musical scale has exactly seven distinct notes before repeating the octave above the first note.\n\nNatural selection at its artistic finest!\n\nAnd then there is jazz. Bent notes. Notes sung off tune on purpose to create the perfect emotional response in the audience. Improvised chords and melodies based on what the audience has just heard you play. All of this, as in classical music, takes advantage of the human ear's ability to quickly memorize what it's hearing. Beethoven's Fifth Symphony begins with a simple, emphatic theme, then delicately builds on the melody and rhythms and chord progressions. This is only possible because our ears remember those first few notes without us consciously trying.",
"Short answer: The western european music system is based on a 7 note scale. The twelve, equally spaced pitches allow for the 7 note scale to be played starting on any of the notes. ",
"I'm probably late to the party, but I don't see the explanation that made the most sense to me, so here goes. Most scales in Western music are 8 notes (if you count the octave), and music notation was designed with this in mind, as was the piano with black and white keys. However, chromatic instruments like guitar don't have this distinction, since there are actually 12 equal divisions (or \"half-steps\") in an octave. So, a guitar player learns that you need to skip some of these divisions to make traditional scales. For instance, a major scale (whichever one) will go skip-skip-next-skip-skip-skip-next (or 2-2-1-2-2-2-1, which adds to the 12 in the chromatic scale, or, starting at 0, 0-2-4-5-7-9-11-12). Minor scales, augmented scales, diminished scales, and others will use different patterns, all adding up to the full chromatic 12 (octave). So, often guitar players will learn in terms of numbers in reference to the starting note, since it's really easy to change key and improvise in that framework (which is why guitar players generally use tabs rather than traditional sheet music). Piano (the instrument itself) and traditional sheet music take a different approach, and are designed with the 8 note scales in mind. So, on the piano, playing in C is super easy, since you just play all the white notes, and none of the black ones (the sharps and flats). Learning which sharps and flats to use makes transposing to different keys more difficult, but once you figure it out, you're less likely to hit notes that are out of the scale (or key) you're playing in. So, the two instruments take different approaches to the same problem; there are 12 chromatic steps, but most scales have 8 notes. You can learn which notes to skip, or learn which notes are in a given scale.",
"TL;DR\nmusic is a language and notes have different functions. Sharps and flats makes it easier to understand these functions and how notes relate to each other.\n\nLong Version:\n\nWhat was listed already is correct. Another example would be: When you harmonize the notes in a scale, you're building chords and each chord has it's own function. It would be much harder to understand how the chord functions if you had to consider every single note as described by the question. \n\nex:\nC,Db,D,E,F,Gb,G,Ab,A,Bb,B,C\n\nNotice that some of the notes (F and C) have no flats next to them. These are spaced right next to the E and B notes respectively. They are basically 1/2 of a musical note away from each other instead of a full step like most of the others. (b-c = half step; c-d = full step.)\n\nC Major Scale - no sharps (#) and no flats (b)\nC-D-E-F-G-A-B-C\n1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8\n\nIf you skip a letter and add three notes you build a Chord triad. Lets look at what happens when you take 4 notes.\n\n1 Chord (I) would be C, comprising of the notes (C-E-G-B)\n2 chord (ii) - D minor (D-F-A-C)\n3 (iii)... - E minor (E-G-B-D)\n4 (IV) ... - F major (F-A-C-E)\n5 (V)... - G Dominant (G-B-D-F)\n\nLets stop here as to make this long post somewhat understandable. Chords I,IV,and V7 are all major chords but notice how the 4th not is 1/2 step away between chords I and IV (B-C and E-F) like we discussed earlier. Look closely at the V chord. F-G is a full step away making a much different function. Now this is a long winded post but imagine how much more complicated it would be if we were doing this in multiple different keys. The relationship between everything would become a mess. \n",
"Really, you need to understand how music works to understand why there are sharps and flats. These are known as *half steps*, and will share harmonic properties with their respective note. There technically is no C*b* or F*b*. There is also no B*#* or E*#* These are both *4th*s of each other, and also *5th*s of each other when the base note is flipped (Base C 4th is F, Base F 5th is C).\n\nDiminished/Augmented notes (half step down/up, respectively) also play a crucial role in the tone styling of the music. A C minor scale uses B. A C blues scale will use B*b* instead (a half step down from B), and also F*#*, a half step **up** from the 4th - which is also a half step ***down*** from C's 5th: E.\n\nBase notes and 5ths don't change unless you change the key. 3rds and 7ths do, and you can use diminished/augmented notes to change the style of the music. ",
"Because \"Do, Re, Mi, Fa, So, La, Ti, Do\" sounds so good. So we have a grand old time singing this and come up with the notes C, D, E, F, G, A, B, C. But wait. I don't like singing that high, but I don't want to go all the way down to the previous C. So, I'll try it part way down and start at G. So I sing \"Do\" (G), \"Re\" (A), \"Mi\" (B), \"Fa\" (C), \"So\" (D), \"La\" (E), \"Ti\" --- now wait a minute. F doesn't sound like the right note for \"Ti\". That note should be a bit higher. Sort of half way between F and G. I know, we'll call it \"F#\". Great! We've got it. Now lets try starting with D. Same problem. We're going to have to add another note and call it \"C#\". We can keep doing this starting on different notes. Before you know it we see that we need 12 tones *and* also that this is enough. At least, it's enough for our Do Re Mi song (known as \"[Solfège](_URL_0_)\" to the smarty pants). The flats can be generated by going the opposite direction around [the circle of fifths](_URL_1_) (making it a circle of fourths).\n\nEDIT: links",
"The key to music theory is realizing that there is no such thing as a B# or an E#, everything else (A-C-D-F-G), has something in between it. \n\nThis is also key to memorizing the fretboard or any musical instrument that uses a similar mechanism. \n\nIf you know what the string is tuned to, you can immediately know any note on that scale by walking up or down the string. \n\nOnce you get ahold of that, you should actually learn intervals, 1-2-3-4-5-6-7, similar concept but intervals are relative terms, so the concept is agnostic to the 'key,' e.g., (A, B, C#, etc.) that you are playing in. \n\nFor instance, a 6th, or a 2nd, or a minor 3rd or major 3rd, always sounds the same given the root note (or what musicians call the 'tonic,' which is the main key of the song, what everything resolves to.) \n\nIf you understand intervals, it doesnt matter what key you play in, you know where to find the sounds that you want to play, the emotion/feeling you want to illicit, etc. \n\nHere's a video that covers single string slide guitar licks using intervals: _URL_0_",
"I think it really has to do with the fact that there isn't enough space on the current staff for more notes and also that the relationships to other notes and how they form chords are affected by how they're written. For example, the reason that someone would write B# instead of C has to do with the key that the piece is written in, or the context, that makes the relationship of that note to the other notes in the chord make sense. Each chord is made up of a relationship of notes spaced out by a number of half steps. The number of half steps is determined by the name of the chord. If each half step was represented by a new name completely and not a sharp or flat (or double...those exist :D), it would ruin the integrity of how the chord itself was built and what the relationship of one note to the next means. There would just be too many note names for the chords to make sense on the staff, in context. There would have to be a giant new staff built because an F and an F sharp are placed in the same spot, just with a # sign next to it. With new notes, you'd have to make more room for the note Q or whatever, it wouldn't just be a rendition of F.",
"Everyone in this thread is massively over-complicating the answer.\n\nWestern music recognizes 12 distinct tones. In music these tones are often arranged into seven note scales, as seen [here](_URL_0_). Notice how with sharps and flats we can keep the same \"shape\" no matter what key we're playing in. Since most music isn't extremely chromatic (using a lot of sharps and flats not from the key) using this system reduces the amount of clutter on the page. If we were to have 12 distinct pitch names, the \"shape\" would be much more uneven and written music would be a lot more cluttered."
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"https://youtu.be/VJzGLFxeemc?t=32",
"https://youtu.be/2lxOX4PNvEc?t=162",
"https://youtu.be/QDWKzG5oaog?t=7"
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"https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nashville_number_system"
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"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XNiWnvWawqQ"
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"http://www.piano-lessons-made-simple.com/images/15-Major-Scales.png"
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9xhn41 | how can the us charge a citizen of another country, living outside the us, for violation of us law? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9xhn41/eli5_how_can_the_us_charge_a_citizen_of_another/ | {
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"You don't have to be a US citizen or be in the US to break US laws.\n\nIf, for example, you threw a rock over a border fence and beaned somebody, that's a crime in the US. \n\nIf you broke Spanish law they could seek your extradition in US courts. If the US court agreed you would be arrested by US police, and turned over to Spanish authorities. International extraditions are based on treaties between countries that outline what kinds of crimes they will turn over citizens/residents for when committed abroad.",
"Any country can charge you for violating their laws if they have jurisdiction. Generally this means that the crime needs to affect the country, its citizens, take place on their soil, or otherwise be of interest to the government in question. Some crimes, such as torture and piracy, have Universal Jurisdiction, which means that anyone can prosecute you for those crimes regardless of where you committed them.\n\nYou could not be arrested for breaking a Spanish law if you were not in Spain and did not affect Spanish citizens or government by doing so.\n\nFor the case of Assange, he has released documents that the US government had classified and would have preferred been kept secret(this is indisputable), which is a form of espionage. Additionally, he possibly acted as a conduit to unduly affect a US presidential election. Consequently, the US has interest in punishing him, and seeks to have the UK arrest him for us and extradite him, that is, hand him over to the US government for prosecution. ",
"You're a kid! \n\nYou break your neighbors window while playing baseball in your yard!\n\nYou're neighbor tells your parents what you did and that he wants you to come over and mow his yard as payment!\n\nYour parents take you over because they want your neighbor to be happy and because they want you to learn consequences. You spend an hour mowing. Once you're done the neighbor says you can go.\n\nCongratulations! You just broke a law in a foreign country, were charged with that crime, were extradited by your own country to maintain the relationship with the other country, served time while performing hard labor and then were released once your sentence was completed. \n\nThe foreign country/neighbor can't forcibly remove you without invading your country/parents territory but they can make it known what you did and if you ever step foot in your territory then they can act. By extraditing you your country/parents placed you into the other country/neighbors jurisdiction so that you could serve your time for the crime you committed.\n\nIn Assange's case he's some other neighbors kid who broke your neighbors window and is hiding in your parents house and for the moment your parents haven't forced him to leave yet. \n\n & #x200B;\n\n & #x200B;",
"His actions of obtaining private and classified material violates US law regardless of where on the planet you are located. Jurisdiction applies not only when you are a citizen or when you are within their country, but also if the victim of the country is a US citizen or the US government. "
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