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ewd9c0 | what does this discovery of a white dwarf and a pulsar "frame-dragging spacetime reality" mean? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/ewd9c0/eli5_what_does_this_discovery_of_a_white_dwarf/ | {
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"There's an analogy of space working like a piece of stretched fabric, with massive objects causing dents that lighter objects can sink into (gravity). If you take one of those massive objects and spin it really fast, the fabric underneath will get twisted up.\n\nThe same thing happens to space when a super massive object spins at absolutely insane speeds. Space itself gets twisted and starts spinning, and anything in that region of space starts spinning too. In those regions, especially around a spinning black hole, you'd need to go incredibly fast in one direction (against the twist) to stay still relative to the rest of the universe, but if you went the opposite direction (with the twist), you can actually siphon energy from the spin to accelerate yourself to insane speeds. Theoretically, you could use this to slingshot rockets to utterly ludicrous speeds or use it to build the most powerful energy generator conceivable in the universe.\n\nHere's a good visual explanation. _URL_0_",
"[Frame dragging](_URL_0_) is a relativistic effect that happens when a massive object moves through space. \n\nWhat happens is that the object will deform space time around it (it drags space time with it), just by virtue of its momentum.\n\nYou might know that time slow down if you move close to the speed of light. This time dilation also happens when you get close to an object that moves close to the speed of light (even if you are not moving), because of frame dragging. \n\nFrame dragging can be observed around rotating black holes or neutron star. These objects are really really dense and tend to rotate at very high speed, to the point that their surface will move close to the speed of light. \nThis causes all kind of weird time dilation around them because of frame dragging (this cause orbiting bodies to have peculiar orbits, which we can observe to detect and measure time dilation around black holes).",
"As insightful as this is, since ELI5 does not allow current events this is better in r/askscience."
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6ekjn5 | "trust, but verify" | I see this phrase more and more. It seems like a contradiction. While not going as far as 'faith', 'trust' requires a firm belief in someone or something. Surely verifying necessarily implies less trust? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6ekjn5/eli5_trust_but_verify/ | {
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"Where exactly it comes from can be hard to say, but most people quoting it refer back to Reagan's use with Russia during the Cold War. It means that while you might want to think someone is going to do something good, you don't exactly believe they will. You can't force them to do it, so you have to trust that they will-but you check to make sure.",
"Trust is a spectrum. You've probably also heard \"full trust\" or \"complete trust\". Pairing either of those with \"... but verify\" would be contradictory. \"Trust but verify\" means to not initially doubt but independently affirm the assertion. It's very similar to giving the benefit of the doubt with the addition of independent validation.\n\nOne example is how a manager can lead his team. \"Trust\" would be for him to assume the report one of his team members has given him satisfies the request, then \"but verify\" would be him glancing over the report before using it in his presentation. A lack of trust leads to micro-managing and a lack of verification lowers quality.",
"It's ironic. If you have to verify, then you don't actually trust. However, one may be in a situation where it is undiplomatic to flat-out *admit* you don't trust. Therefore, the ironic \"trust, but verify\" is a way of saying \"we're *saying* we trust you, but of course we don't.\"",
"It's about what you expect. Imagine this: you're buying your friend's old phone. As you take it from him, you check that it still works. Of course, you trust him but you still want to avoid the chance of buying a phone that doesn't work. You don't expect that the phone won't work (hence some level of trust) but you still feel the need to verify it.",
"Strong trust is achieved by consistent verification and validation, so this phrase reads to me like \"just give us the benefit of the doubt\". Was it a politician that said it? ",
"In the nuclear industry, we have a couple core values that align with this phrase. Questioning attitude and Validating assumptions are \"tools\" ingrained in our culture to maintain nuclear safety. We say, \"trust, but verify\" to remind ourselves that mistakes can happen and there are many cases in our industry where mistakes are unacceptable. So, we trust our coworkers to do their jobs well, but we also accept that fresh eyes ensure higher quality and safer plants."
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3ntd62 | why does america have so many people in jail? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3ntd62/eli5_why_does_america_have_so_many_people_in_jail/ | {
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"When you privatize the housing of prisoners, you make it a business instead of a need. Businesses are run by shareholders, needs are taken care of by tax dollars. Once it's a businesses, the people making the money will do whatever they can to stay in the black.",
"The main cause, in my opinion, is \"The War on Drugs\".\n\nI say that, not because I'm some hippy pot-smoker and \"the government should just chill, man\", but because of the hardline enforcement of jail time associated with mere possession of virtually any class of drug.\n\nThe same logic applies to many other lesser crimes, which have mandatory minimum jail times associated.\n\nIn the grander scheme of things, the actual point of prison is to rehabilitate. Not, like many people want to believe, a sort of time-out type of punishment for bad behaviour.\n\nAs such, judges send people to prison to actually help them. It's not only meant to give people time to consider their actions and the repercussions thereof, but have a chance to change and better themselves. In particular through education.",
"Prisons are a private business, the more people they have, the more money they make. Everything else is secondary and a result of.",
"Because the USA government has deals with the private prisons to keep them occupied above a certain percentage.\r\rThe USA government is contractually obliged to lock up a certain number of citizens, irrespective of what crimes are committed.\r\rEdit - through discussion with the commenters below I have realised that this is most likely not a contributory factor in the high prison population in the USA. The contracts do exist, and the for profit prison system is wrong; but the contracts are more an example of how fucked the system is, rather than a cause. Thanks to the commenters for questioning my incorrect claim.",
"I think mandatory minimums play at least an important part in having many people in jail. There is a good episode of John Oliver's last week tonight that deals with that: [last week tonight](_URL_0_)",
"Because America has a lot of laws, and a lot of people who break them. Policies like the fabled \"Three strikes and you're in\" increase the need for the number of prisions. There are socioeconomic reasons and also, for some, crime is the family business.\n\nA general rule of thumb is that the higher the uneployment rate, the more number of people end up in jail. Keep in mind that there is a huge difference between the national published rate of unemployment, and the inordinately high rate of unemployment among certain subsets of the population.\n\nThis disparity leads to a higher rate of crime by the disadvantaged group. This disparity also leads to feelings of despair. Some attempt to manage this despair by using drugs, then become a slave to them, while others attempt to alleviate their financial distress by selling drugs.\n\nDrug use and sale lead to weapons offences, but ironically only a small portion of those using and/or selling drugs are caught. Those who are selling on the outside often find a way to continue their sales on the inside.\n\nAs far as rehabilitation goes, it makes for a nice sound bite, but in practice the rate of recitivism is very high. ",
"The short answer is that there is a lot of crime.\n\nMainly this might be caused by the lack of education within our lower socioeconomic population. Education traditionally hasn't been valued by these populations within America. That said, coupled with criminality being glorified by some in those populations you end up with a lot of crime. \n\nWhen people get caught commiting crimes, they're generally sent to prison.\n",
"Some people say that the underlying social causes behind crime are due to inequality and the lack of opportunity.\n\nThe U.S. celebrates 'material success' (owning lots of stuff) perhaps more than any other country in the world. The idea that 'Material success' = respect = your personal worth seems to be a powerful idea that is spread widely.\n\nIf you don't have these things, it might mean you feel like a failure. Nobody likes to feel like a failure. This might lead to a feeling that you've been screwed by society OR you simply aren't given a great deal of opportunity to change that.\n\nSo you commit a crime, to get ahead somehow. And you are more likely to be locked up if you don't have the resources to fight it, and if a snapshot of your life looks bad in the eyes of those looking at you in a courtroom.\n\nSome people suggest that there is a direct link between a country having a really weak social safety net (like the U.S.) and crime. Interestingly, they also suggest having a weak social safety net is also strongly related to being a religious country - though it isn't clear if one causes the other in any significant way.",
"Draconion sentencing is the issue: mandatory minimum sentences, 3 strike life sentences, triple life sentences for murderers etc. \nCrime rates in the US aren't dramatically higher than the rest of the western world but if you break the law you're going to prison for a bloody long time. ",
"One reason is because a nice easy platform to run on for elections is to \"get tough on crime.\" The form this comes in is more things being illegal, especially drugs, mandatory sentencing, so people don't \"get off easy\" and things like the Three Strikes Law. The concept as far as I can tell on the Three Strikes Law is that someone who commits a third felony is a \"career criminal\" aka a broken worthless member of society who only causes problems and should be locked away for the rest of their lives for the safety of others.\n\n\"Getting tough on crime\" also causes the problem of trying to pull back those laws. If a politician were wanting to make sentencing lighter, his/her political opponent could say they were \"soft on crime\" and would put voters in danger since a lighter sentence means less deterrence. What they fail to say is that harsh sentences hardly work as a deterrence. To many people, the risk vs reward, the reward always wins out, either not considering the possible sentencing when buying weed, or thinking they're smarter than those other burglars who just weren't good enough to not get caught.\n\nFinally, as others have said, there are private prisons. If you believe that politicians are immoral enough to purposely create laws intended to imprison people to increase the paychecks of private prison owners and get a \"donation\" as a reward, making more things illegal to create more prisoners would make sense. While I believe this is the case for several politicians, I think some are just ignorant about the facts on deterrence and honestly believe having harsher sentences will make people stop breaking the law.\n\nBut that is just my take on what I learned in some Criminal Justice classes I took and my own observations, so take it as you will. ",
"The data shows that the two dominant explanation of 1) mandatory minimums (the data on actual time served hasn't changed significantly) and 2) the war on drugs (\"only\" 17% of prisoners) are not the major causes of the increase of people in prison in past decades. \n\nWhat is statistically interesting is that the probability that a district attorney files a felony charge against an arrestee has doubled over the past two decades. More importantly, it's not clear WHY. Political pressure to prosecute? Private prisons and corruption? It remains to be seen.\n\nRelevant information: _URL_0_",
"Social control and profit.\n\nYou can keep large amounts of unemployed and underemployed in prison and out of the unemployment statistics.\n\nYou can scapegoat, marginalize, and disenfranchise undesirable groups like minorities with targeted policing. \n\nYou can create an entire economy based on the imprisonment, processing, and policing of citizens. ",
"Easy answer, Money. The prison systems here are corporations and make money off every single person incarcerated.",
"This is a very complicated question with no one certain answer, but I'll do my best to give as comprehensive of a response as I can. \n\nFirst, and without question the biggest part of the problem, is \"The War On Drugs\". A war which we are losing horribly. In the 1980's, First Lady Nancy Reagan (wife of then president Ronald Reagan) began her \"Just Say No\" campaign as a part of her husband's \"War On Drugs\" to try and stamp out recreational narcotic use in the United States. While the Just Say No campaign was the prettier, kinder side of the war, the actual legislation and enforcement would prove to be brutal. Not on drug dealers, but more on users. \n\nSentences were increased, more punishments were added to drug offenders, and within a few years you had small time pot dealers doing longer prison stretches than convicted rapists. It was thought that one of the best tools to fight drugs was going to be mandatory minimum sentencing, that is, if you commit certain crimes there is a minimum amount of time you have to serve in prison before you can even be considered for release. \n\nFirst time drug offenders were now going away for years instead of months, which basically gives you a PhD in crime. People that went into prison as non-violent offenders came out of prison as murderers. Add to this that if you commit a felony (which most drug related crimes are) you actually lose a good amount of your rights. You lose the right to vote, the right to own a gun, in some states the right to hold public office. It's harder to find a place to live, as some places won't rent/sell to convicted felons, it's more difficult to get into a good college or get any type of higher education, and you have to disclose that you are a convicted felon when you apply for a job (ultimately making it harder to get a job).\n\nThese factors combined together make for a very, very high incarceration rate. The incarceration rate brings us to the next point, recitivism. \n\nIn a nut shell, recitivism is the rate at which freed prisoners end up going back to prison. Last I checked, the rate of recitivism in the USA is around 65%, which is terrible. That means that 65% of prisoners that get out of prison end up going right back for committing more crimes. While, of course, there are people out there that are career criminals, the majority of people commit crimes a second time because they aren't left with many options. Take what I said earlier about felons losing their rights, and add in a very difficult parole/probation system and you have a recipe for making prison bars basically like revolving doors. \n\nThis also brings up yet another point, which is the parole/probation system. It's basically designed for you to fail, and if you violate, you end up right back on the inside. They dictate when you can leave your home, whom you can associate with, what you are allowed to do, if you can drink or not (and yes, they will test you), clearly you can't use any drugs (even if you are on probation for a non drug related crime). There are a million different ways your PO can have you violated, and if they have a personal grudge against you they can basically just invent a reason to have you thrown back in jail. \n\nAnd finally, private fucking prisons. Yes, private prisons are a thing. Prisons owned by corporations that turn a profit. It's just as bad of an idea as it sounds. In my state (Florida) tax payers actually have to pay the prison if it isn't full, so it's in the interest of the public finance to keep the prison full of prisoners. Yes, it's a terrible idea. Yes, they are openly corrupt. No, it doesn't make any sense. Yes, there are probably tons of politicians with ties to private prison companies that keep this insane practice going.\n\nSo anyway, add up all those and you have a pretty good recipe for locking people up. There are other reasons, as well, but those are the big ones. ",
"For every person in at least Madison Co. they get 65 bucks per inmate. And since Alabama is going broke and making a ton of budget cuts, they'd rather put any type of criminal in lockup to earn money. But alabama is corrupt as hell. I had to spend 2 months in prison just to get released for a probation restart. It's a vicious cycle. It's just best to get your life together and be good. I have one more year of probation and I'm paying a shitload of money in fines and fees. Hope this helps. Btw, no violent crimes on my behalf. ",
"I know I'm not gonna get popular for saying this, but having a private prison system makes prisoners a commodity, which means that prison lobbyists want bigger punishments to earn more money for having more prisoners longer ",
"It is due to the fact that, while prisons are a drain on the economy in some ways, there are people and companies that make a huge amount of cash off of them. I can't think of the name of it now, but there is a documentary on this. Also, there are judges who get kickbacks for sending people to private prisons even for minor crimes that the criminal would normally just get a slap on the wrist for. America is a scary place to live.",
"Because America is a lazy child who sweeps anything they don't want to look at under their bed.",
"The main reason is that it is profitable for law enforcement and corporate interests to do so.",
"because of creeping fascism, racism, and classism. we do not live in the land of the free. the war on drugs and the war on terror were designed to help the powers that be (regardless of party) take away our freedoms and rights a little at a time. set up a surveillance state, and then finally have us beholden to them. ",
"Old school conservative puritanism is our countries base. Multiply that by the scads of $$$$ getting made off of incarceration, you end up with the unholy shit storm we have brewing now. In a nutshell, it's massive money being made, multiplied by institutional racism, covered with a veneer of good old fashioned \"righteousness\".",
"We are a nation filled with horrible criminals (1.2 million) we give them the power to write, create, and execute inconsequential laws; we call them lawyers and politicians. ",
"We have a for profit jail system\n Criminals are a commodity, not people. The prison system em0lyes lobbyists who push for higher minimum sentences and stricter laws so they can get their \"product\". It is all about money.",
"Money? Everything that is large or a problem or a large problem in America is probably based on money. Sure there are other aspects, but we have privatized prisons which should be completely illegal, but that is a huge cash grab. Also, our system does not rehabilitate the convicted to get back into society, but much the opposite. Not only do people who go in, usually come out worse, but there is a stigma attached to you once you are convicted. No one will want to hire you with any sort of conviction, unless its the NFL most likely ( lame joke). But seriously. You get put in for any number of little tiny things because prosecuting attorneys and judges want to look like they are tough on crime for re-election, you do your time and probably harden up a touch from protecting yourself, you also get branded with a conviction and get secluded in the job market, so you resort to probably illegal acts again to make money or just steal or whatever your thing is. It is a god awful system and it is meant to have repeat offenders for the MONEY. And don't forget, once your name is in the system, you are not getting away from it without some sort of blemish being added to your record. Even falsely accused or whatever. The PA's want their restitution fees and court costs and conviction percentages. \n\nTake it from a guy who was set up and had to spend 2 years trying to tell his story that it was all bullshit, only to get a misdemeanor still added to my record.",
"There are a lot of reasons that combine but an overly simple answer would be to say we criminalize a great number of things that would be better left to public health initiatives and we criminalize being poor to large extent. The War on Drugs and the failed promises of public mental health treatment have created a monster. \n\n1. Drug crimes account for a huge percentage of the non-violent incarceration numbers. A good chunk of the violent crime incarcerations are also related to drugs, either as part of organized crime or someone acting violently as the result of addiction. Decriminalizing or reducing the penalty for various drug possession crimes and providing effective drug treatment for those with actual drug addiction issues would go a long way towards reducing the prison population. It isn't a silver bullet by itself, though. \n\n2. An incredibly large number of individuals in prison have some type of mental illness that has been either never been diagnosed or never effectively treated. Local law enforcement and jails without the training or resources to do so end up dealing with mentally ill as a result of nuisance crimes (yelling on the bus, public urination, petty theft, etc). Those individuals get continually cycled from the street through local jails, wracking up citations and convictions along the way without ever receiving treatment. That eventually land them more serious prison time - through accumulation of non-violent offenses, the eventual commission of a more serious offense or they have a violent reaction (or were perceived to have had one) when interacting with the police for a non-violent offense - where their mental health needs are still not met. \n\n3. Wealth plays into this as the wealthy are more easily able to obtain effective drug and mental health treatment as well as defend themselves from charges in Court (either completely getting off or getting treatment deferments, fines they can afford or negotiated probation). The poor are left to use strained public defense resources which often results in poorly negotiated plea deals and prison time. Additionally, in many places the penalties for possession of drugs are greater for the drugs most often used by the poor vs the drugs more often used by the wealthy (such as crack cocaine vs. powdered). In the end, the people with the least available resources are far more likely to do prison time which, in turn, further eliminates their ability to improve their lot in life. \n\nThe \"tough on crime\" and \"for-profit prisons\" answers also play a roll but the percentage of prisons that are for-profit is actually pretty low. It is a growing concern, though, and only going to get worse unless people put a stop to it. The \"tough on crime\" approach from many DAs and legislators creates an arms-race atmosphere where nobody wants to look soft or risk trying a new approach. That is what keeps what I wrote above in 1-3 happening. ",
"America loves punishment. We love to see \"justice\" served. We love to see people get what's coming to them. We love to think that criminals are \"just\" bad people who made their choices with a clear mind. We like to punish people proportionally to the wrong we think they did.",
"There is a good Special Report that just came out from Vice News called \"Fixing the System\" - it focuses on the War on Drugs but does a good job of showing the downsides to mandatory sentencing and other areas of the criminal justice process.",
"For Profit prisons is another big reason. There are companies that exist solely for keeping people in prisons, there were instances where judges were paid off to dish jail time listead of probation even for minor crimes, and super long terms",
"Money.\n\nPrisons are owned by private companies and the more inmates the more money they make.",
"It's because people commit crimes. This sounds overly simplified, but it is the truth. The US believes in the rule of law and as such is bound to try to uphold it. In many cases, this is near mandatory incarceration. \n\nWe have given up on real justice for the most part. Because we have been led to believe that judgement is unfair, we create blanket laws and blanket sentences for crimes and ignore things such as intent, harm, restitution, circumstance....therefore many people end up incarcerated for small crimes that could otherwise be handled more effectively with work programs, rehab, shorter jail time among other things.\nOf course, when someone has multiple offenses, they have little to blame but themselves.\n\n\n",
"Everyone is saying it's the War on Drugs and private prisons, or politicians being \"tough on crime' but that doesn't tell the whole story. They're certainly factors but that doesn't set us apart from other nations that much. Politicians everywhere want to be seen as \"tough on crime.\" Many countries have way more draconian drug laws and have half the rate of incarceration.\n\nThe main reason is that we are very effective at catching and prosecuting criminals. We have technology and databases with biometrics and well staffed police forces with adequate funding (in most places.) We also have 5% of the world's population and about 50% of the world's lawyers.\n\nThere are underlying social causes that contributed to certain groups committing more crimes, but they don't get prosecuted at a high enough rate to justify the number of prisoners. For example there were about 600 shooting in Chicago last year and only something like 40 of those resulted in a conviction.\n\nBasically because we are very effective at upholding law and order and have lots of laws on the books, if you commit a crime in America you are exponentially more likely to serve time for it than in other countries. Guatemala has a homicide rate that is several times higher than ours and an incarceration rate that is way lower. They just don't catch and convict criminals like we do. Same thing in Mexico where there is tons of corruption. We have almost no corruption.",
"I think the short answer is that we put people in prison for nonviolent crimes. \n\nIn most countries, you are only put in prison if you are a danger to others. In the US we just do it as punishment. For instance, you can go to jail for not paying child support. ",
"There's a lot of paranoia here about private prisons and so on...\n\nThe ELI5 reason is that we have a lot of crime, a lot of the crimes that are committed have mandatory prison time, and that mandatory prison time can be long.\n\nDigging a little deeper, we discover that many of the people incarcerated are drug offenders and not violent criminals. Many western countries don't incarcerate drug offenders to the same extent that the US does.\n\nWe also discover that many states have so-called \"three strikes\" laws which mean that people who are convicted of three felonies and/or violent crimes are put in prison for life. In other western countries, they would have been released earlier.\n\nAnd, the US tends to have substantially more violent crime than do many other Western countries -- the US Murder rate, for example, is 3-4 times that of most other western countries. Why this is true is a separate discussion. ",
"I didn't scroll through all the comments but I saw enough of the top ones to know they're all the automatic responses that people have to this question so here's a link to a relevant article that is based on some more recent research:\n\n_URL_0_",
"Mandatory minimum sentencing, severely underfunded public legal aid/systems, federal agencies and local police forces using arrests to justify their role and funding, a severely messed up healthcare system that is guilty of gross neglect and abuse towards the mentally ill and addicts who are treated as criminals instead of as patients, for profit prison companies (who have a vested interest in repeat offenders and thus aren't interested in proper prisoner rehabilitation) and finally people committing acts of crime (either violent and nonviolent) borne out of either desperation (the poor), arrogance (the rich who don't think the rules apply to them), peer pressure/culture (gangs, fraternity initiations...), calculated risk (professional thieves, bankers who get caught insider trading, etc) or just plain stupidity.",
"Some people make a lot of money from jails. They bribe... I mean \"lobby\" politicians to make more jails and reasons to put people in them.",
"As many people here have said, it is the \"War on Drugs\" that is the primary reason America has the largest prison population in the world, both in total and per capita. However, what often gets swept under the rug, as so often is the case with these things, is that the War on Drugs was created in response to the societal angst that was left in the absence of Jim Crow laws following the Civil Rights era. Put simply, the War on Drugs was implemented in the first place because the society is racist, though few would openly admit that. It was implemented by a Republican president who appealed to closet racist voters and the War on Drugs was a way of targeting poor communities that were being hammered by the introduction of crack cocaine. Back in those days, white communities didn't tend to suffer from drug problems the way they do today. And to this end, the WoD has worked spectacularly, resulting in a huge portion of the black population being in prison, almost all on drug or drug-related offenses, and many black communities utterly decimated by it. \n\nFast forward two generations: people no longer feel the same depth of racism as the Reagan era generation did, and the War on Drugs now effects far more lives than just black lives. The War on Drugs caused a massive spike in drug prices and a huge new demand for criminal organizations which have spread like cancer ever sense. Americas southern neighbor, Mexico, probably now holds the worlds largest drug cartel made fat and rich off of the high demand for their services. It was inevitable that such a profitable enterprise would spill into and infect the whole nation. Now it is ruining communities all across the country of all races. People are beginning to question whether the WoD was a good idea to begin with. \n\nBut America has always been the story of a great nation with high ideals whose greatness and nobility have, at every step, been undermined by the deep hypocrisy and ugliness of racism. The racism eventually starts to ruin things for everyone else and people get pissed and efforts are made to rid America of this ugliness and forget that it ever existed. Then it just mutates into some new form, the most recent being the \"War on Drugs.\" (But what did you expect when you tried to forge a single nation out of two with diametrically opposite worldviews, one with the belief that all men are created equal, the other with the belief in human slavery.)",
"Even better question: when an inmate is murdered in jail/prison shouldn't there be harsh penalties on the employees of that jail? I just think it would suck dying in a place you are forced to be at and can't leave. A place you should have guaranteed protection since you have no choice of being there. I see it as guards failing to do their job. ",
"We have an awful lot of people. We also have some really stupid laws designed to do nothing but give the politicians a way to say they're \"tough on crime.\" Like 5 years in fuck-me-in-the-ass Federal Prison for $30 worth of weed. ",
"Public corporal punishment would be much superior. People hate being embarrassed. A couple hours in the stockade in front of the courthouse for minor crimes. For something like stealing, a couple lashes. Etc",
"Because American voters think with their emotions. They rarely step back from a large complex picture like the prison system and all its costs and decide if it is working efficiently or whether society can really afford it or if it is achieving the desired goals. Those are hard to answer and you need to look at a lot of numbers to decide. \n\nIt's way easier to say \"drug dealers should go behind bars.\" That feels right. And feeling right is more important to the Amercian voter than facts. We actually love a story where the hero defies all logic, all stats, all conventional wisdom and just does what they think in their heart is right. Hollywood has churned out thousands of such tales.\n\nNow we're living in one at the grand scale.",
"I've tried everywhere to find it, but when I hiked the at a decade ago, one of the hostels was run by a recent college grad and some of her old course material was there for the hikers. One was a journal collection of academic essays deconstructing various elements of the prison system. \n\nThe thrust of the article I'd bring up here is that the modern prison system - the architecture of the buildings, the philosophy behind long term incarceration and punitive sentences as a social deterrent, the role of prison guards, the programs offered for rehabilitation... Grew organically (and not very much) from midieval notions of crime and punishment and the dungeon system... But whereas dungeons were a sort of short term solution, with the advent of penal colonies, the role of incarceration changed... But maintained the old tools.\n\nAnyway, that's an interesting topic. Also historically (and I'm sure people will roll their eyes at this), if you're looking at prisons as a product of history in the lens of my last paragraph... Of a cultural institution which grew out of archaic terms into a modern ideal... It's easy to see the impact of the mass incarceration in the post-reconstruction era on how we view crime and punishment. Even if you were to disregard the inherent racism and classism which permeate both periods, the practice of reducing criminals to this sort of 'other' group to be institutionalized and insulated against by society really took off in America during that period, and I'd argue it evolved into much of the current ideology of the prison system/lobby.",
"A huge part of the problem is that the police and prison industry is huge. Forget private prisons. They are small potatoes compared to the law enforcement industry. These people have largely become self-serving to a point where lying about things to protect themselves is normal. Local law enforcement agencies often have state legislator's family members on payroll so that doesn't help either. \n\nLEOs are a big special interest group now and politicians must pander to them. ",
"Well, there's a lot of really in depth stuff here already.\n\nBut I want to keep it simple because I think it is pretty simple.\n\nTwo reasons. And they're both tied together. First and foremost is the drug war and drug laws. Not only do we have a lot of nonviolent drug users in prison, but amounts that to any real drug user are small amounts are considered felonies in a lot of states. Like a few grams of heroin can land you a few years sentence with a felony on your record.\n\nAlso, because drugs are illegal there is an artificial risk that comes with an artificially inflated price for products that otherwise would be dirt cheap. This gives people very strong incentives to get involved in the industry. That coupled with the fact that you can't regulate a black market means that a lot of other crimes become associated with the trade. You can't settle disputes, there's a lot on the line for a lot of folks, and you're already breaking the law, so you wind up with higher crime levels other than drugs that otherwise wouldn't happen.\n\nAnd the second reason which ties in closely with the first big one is the amount of money in our prison system and the corruption with which it is made. Builders, maintenance companies, expensive security systems, and food and supplies, are all provided by private companies. Well these private companies now have an incentive to, say, donate to a state senators campaign (code for bribery). And of course that official is going to \"be tough on criminals, and clean up our streets, the drug epidemic is a scourge on our society and must be eliminated\" etc. Pretty much every public contract in the united States, from local street repair to military development are made in this way. With prisons specifically for example you have Purina foods which lobbies against marijuana legalization and for longer sentences precisely because they supply most of the prisons here with food, at a cost to the state.\n\nHow they tie together? None of this would be possible without drug laws. Laws governing private decisions of individuals that, bad as those decisions may be, are their private business. The only solution to this problem is the legalization of drugs. This would lower incarceration rates and associated crime at the same time. It's sensationalized, so it is hard to get support for something like this, but it really is the only solution to this problem.",
"Well when we freed the slaves we had to come up with a new system to force labor on minorities.",
"Because it is more profitable for corporations to have an endless supply of slave labor, than to provide livable wages to people outside of their prisons. So they have their servants in government make everything a crime.",
"It's a combination of factors: minimum sentences are the biggest culprit, and this was passed in the mid 90s to put a dent in the rising crime in the US. Unfortunately minimum sentences for many drugs are really, really poorly written out, so you're getting non-violent offenders with VERY long prison sentences (think *decades*). These are not the kinds of people that should be locked up. We see that over 95% of cases take a guilty plea bargain in agreement for a reduced sentence, and more often than not, the state-provided attorney who only has about 5 minutes before he has to move on to his next client will tell you to take it. Those defense lawyers often can't handle their own workload enough to effectively defend the defendant, and the prosecution loves to use threats of harsh sentences to get a plea, regardless of whether or not the person in question is actually guilty.\n\nAnother factor is prison privatization. Prisons in the US are a money-making machine now. Corporations make money off the incarceration of their fellow citizens. As you can imagine, this cash cow of an industry leaks into politics via campaign funding and incentives. It's in the prison industry's best interest to keep and pass laws that continue to increase the number of Americans in prison. Because of this, we see laws that do not change, we see unimaginable amounts of corruption, and the idea of \"rehabilitation\" is completely counter to what they *want*.\n\n\nThe war on drugs saw arrest HIGHLY skewed towards African Americans, and at this point, 1/3 will wind up in prison for an extended stay. Because we are placing non-violent offenders in prison, and once they are out they find it almost *impossible* to find work, there are a lot of people who can't meet their employment obligations just to stay out of the system (no one likes to hire felons because of the stigma, and despite the fact that most of these people are not violent/bad people, but just folks that made a bad choice like MANY of us do and don't get arrested for, but no one wants them around). The fucked up part about this is that prisoners often have ENORMOUS amounts of debt when they are released because they often have to pay for their trial (that they lost), the prosecution, AND their defense lawyer (because they lost) who they likely only received on a whim (everyone gets a lawyer, but defense attorneys are some of the most thin-stretched people in the country and have a job NO ONE can win at). This doesn't work out because the prisoners that have been released often cannot find a mode of income for months and in many cases, years. Because they can't pay their fines, but are required to if they don't want to return to prison, they very often do. The stress of this is one of the greatest factors that pushes people into crime straight out of prison. You have debts you can't pay, but have to or you will be locked up again (only to accrue more debts you can't pay), but no one will hire you. Now your only option is to figure out how to make income, and probably illegally. \n\n\nThis is a very vicious cycle. People are basically stuck in the prison system for their entire lives, and it pulls families apart. Because of the heavy focus on certain ethnic groups in the country, we've seen several generations of African Americans (and others) suffer from incarceration, and it has such a staggering effect that communities are unable to recover from the continuous cycle. Bitter sentiments from the civil rights era and before only add to the fire that these communities feel toward their nation and fellow Americans because they have quite truely been wronged and ignored.\n\n\nThe systematic oppression of lower-class citizens is basically the reason for all of this. It makes money, it keeps HUGE populations of ethnic groups from voting (think about that: felons can't vote, meaning 1/3 African Americans have NO SAY in our political system, and considering that's a notable chunk of the population, this is a massive problem).\n\nUltimately, our system is not designed to rehabilitate, but to place the burden of incarceration on masses of people for the sake of profit. Low-level offenders are slowly turned into serious offenders, and the cycle only continues through their children who have grown up missing one or even two parents, and are often bitter, angry and distrusting towards law officials for completely legitimate reasons.\n\n\nIn the end, it will take several changes to make this work:\n* Campaign funding NEED to be changed (and this actually affects countless levels of our government as is the first reason we see a lot of corruption and stagnation in the political system)\n* Privatized prisons need to be abolished\n* Mandatory minimums need to be abolished - judges cannot do their jobs even when they themselves believe an offender does not belong in prison, and often times they are forced to put rapists away for less time than a kid with a small bag of crack because of how these laws were written\n* With minimums gone, we need to revise the sentences of millions of Americans\n* Ex-convicts need long-term assistance once they are out of prison. Either debts need to be erased, or they NEED legitimate help finding good, full-time work.\n* To help find work, we need to do two things: Adjust our social outlook on felons, many of which are not violent and simply were in the wrong place at the wrong time or made a numb decision when they were young and stupid. Secondly, we MUST create a prison system that is not focused on incarceration, but rather, rehabilitation. Teach people trades, give them skills to better themselves on the outside. Provide mental health and addiction support.\n* Finally, one of the greatest moves we can make to top all of this off is to approach addiction in a different way. There is a powerful stigma attached to it and it causes many people to hide their problems until they spiral out of control, and in many low-income cases, there is just no access to help or treatment or even people who understand. Instead, cops arrest people, and people are justifiably terrified, so we see illegal activity continue and fester behind closed doors until someone kicks it in and pulls out the handcuffs. If people are were able to seek treatment without fear of their lives being destroyed, they would be much more likely to (see Portugal for more details on how legalizing many schedule 1 drugs led to a HUGE drop in addiction due to successful treatment approaches and social outlooks).\n\n\n\nAll in all, our prison system is a fucking mess. My best friend wrapped her car around a telephone pole on a rainy night. She hydroplaned around a turn (happens), there were even witnesses who said she was NOT speeding or driving erratically, but because her friend was in the car and they were both seriously injured, she was fucked. She was picked up by a University ambulance, and they shot her full of opiates (because her organs were outside her body, which I'm told is not normal) BEFORE they took a blood sample. When they ran the tests, it showed that she was high as a kite (no fuck, they shot her full of fucking opiates). You know what happened to this amazingly kind, hilarious, hard-working lady? Prison. 1st Degree Assault with a Deadly Weapon. She spent a full year in prison, was on probation for two, is in massive amounts of debt her and her husband cannot climb out of, suffers from depression and anxiety because of it, and her life has basically been ruined. She was fucking 23. She was barely a full-fledged adult and the system took a giant shit on her life. And this happened to a *middle class white girl*. It's not even suffering from the added racial weight most other Americans suffer.\n\n\nIt's terrible to see what the system does, and knowing that millions see MUCH more severe sentences because of discriminatory practices, it's fucking shameful.\n\n\nEdit: I'd suggest checking out a few videos that actually summarize all of this really well. John Oliver of Last Week Tonight does two separate segments: one about Mandatory Minimums, and one about Public Defenders. Watch those. They're VERY good and spot-on (as always). Additionally, there is a documentary on ~~Netflix~~ Hulu regarding prison reform and Obama visits a prison to discuss with inmates what their experiences are. It's called \"Vice: Fixing the System\"\n\n\nIt will be interesting to see Obama tackle prison reform in his last year of presidency. He's made a clear point that this is his central target to change on his way out, and I'm curious to see the impact of his moves as he no longer needs to appeal and play friendly with unrealistic and insane political parties pulling against each other. It's that sort of \"Fuck you I'm Tiny Rick!\" method in that he can do A LOT in his last year since he doesn't have to focus so much of brokering a shaky peace between the two parties just to make small bits of progress. ",
"There are two reasons: (1) the people making the laws and enforcing the laws are making money off of prisoners, AND (2) the growing wealth inequality in the USA.\n\nThe people who invest in prisons are the same people who lobby legislators for harsh criminal laws. The harsh laws are passed, the prisons fill up, and the investors make a profit. It's a cycle. The investors get paid, the legislators get paid, and prison populations increase.\n\nThe limit on this cycle is the constitution. But politicians have become hostile to the constitution and average people have little understanding of it. Most Americans today believe their rights are a gift from their government.\n\nThe wealth inequality factor also plays a big role. Being poor and being criminal are perceived as the same thing because of the faulty logic that criminals are usually poor, therefore poor are criminals. Once a poor person is arrested, they are then put into a justice system where wealth is more important than truth. The cards are stacked against them. Regardless of innocence or guilt, once you're in the system, you're fucked. [Here's anecdotal evidence that illustrates the above.](_URL_0_)\n\n*grammar & added link",
"The prison system in the USA is *HUGE* money...it's privatized, and regional governments have guaranteed minimum levels of occupancy, so they *have* to incarcerate large numbers of people to fulfill their contracts, or pay up anyway. By keeping the jails full, they also get a massive labour force, for pennies a year.",
"one word: Prohibition.\n\nThe united states has made a business out of everyone elses business and continues to enforce \"law\" that restricts a persons ability to perform certain acts upon themselves or willing partners.\n\nAs others may point out, prisons are largely private and make a ton in pure profits but thats not where it stops, The judicial system itself pads their collective pockets with court \"costs\" and \"fees\" for every person they send to prison. While the vast majority of those imprisoned are non-violent offenders and no one other than that system claiming \"damage\".",
"There are several reasons, but the biggest 3 are privatized prisons, politics, and a lack of openness and compassion toward mental health issues.\n\nI'll talk about these in reverse order.\n\nFirst, mental health issues, in American culture, are viewed as weakness. People are often made to feel lesser or needy or just plain weak for talking with therapists or taking medications for mental health issues. This causes people to self-medicate, leading to substance abuse, and often jail. People then sit in jail, jonesing for their drug of choice, get out, and immediately seek a fix. They're eventually caught again, jailed, and the cycle continues. These people are also often given fines, which they are unable to pay, because they're unable to hold a job, because they're in jail, because they're addicted, so they engage in other illicit activities to get money to feed their habit. They then land in jail for possession, not paying their fines, or whatever illegal activity they were partaking to get money to buy drugs. It becomes a vicious cycle of imprisonment and addiction, that would simply be broken with drug addiction treatment, compassion, and forgiveness.\n\nSecond is politics. As other people have mentioned, \"being tough on crime\" is an easy political talking point, especially since \"being soft on crime\" is something that doesn't win a lot of votes. No one wants crime, and being tough on crime sounds great to voters. Unfortunately, this \"tough on crime\" agenda is primarily pushed by the privatized prison system's lobby, who give millions of dollars to politicians to ensure that mandatory minimum sentencing laws are made more ubiquitous, keeping their jails full and taxpayer money rolling in.\n\nSpeaking of privatized prisons... They are one of the most well-organized and wealthiest lobbies in America. Privatized prisons take in just over $3.3B of taxpayer funds annually, and this does not include the supplementary service organizations who get a lot of their business from privatized prisons, such as Aramark. GEO is the second largest for-profit prison company, which has made significant campaign contributions to Marco Rubio and Hillary Clinton. In the last decade, total campaign contributions are over $45 million to political candidates. From 2000 to 2010, the prison population of the US doubled. This no coincidence. It is also interesting to note that jail time has never been proven an effective deterrent for crime, as people who go to jail are just as likely to re-offend as those who do not.",
"Someone who ran for president lost the race because he was considered \"soft on crime.\"\n\nHe used to let prisoners visit their families on the holidays. One of these prisoners killed his family on a holiday visit.\n\nIn the next election, Bill Clinton, another presidential candidate, realized he would lose the race if he was seen as \"soft on crime\" so he ran a pledge to get \"Tough on crime.\" This caused a HUGE increase in the imprisonment of non-violent criminals, especially if the crime involved drugs. \n\nRules changed across the US and the police were rewarded with # of arrests, so everyone focused on making arrests. Because all presidential candidates realized they needed to be \"tough on crime\" everyone was having a contest to see who was \"toughest.\"\n\nPolice officers who arrested a lot of people got more money and better jobs. Chiefs and higher-ups were considered heroes if their departments made lots of arrests. \n\nAt the same time, news stations were losing viewers to networks like MTV and decided to be more \"exciting\" by covering more violent, scary crimes. This made all of us at home think that the world outside was REALLY bad, and no one worried about how many people we were arresting because we were told they were BAD PEOPLE. Finally, someone noticed we had TOO many prisoners, and it cost TOO much money, so now the US is trying to find a way to make things better.",
"There are many reasons. Socioeconomic factors being the most important one. People who are poor often resort to crime because they see no other alternative.\n\nLong prison sentences without focus on rehabilitation is another big factor. Prisons in the US are harsh and can harden some criminals even more. When criminals are released, it's very likely that they will continue their criminal activities. That many companies refuses to hire felons only makes it worse.\n\nThere's of course \"the war on drugs\" which certainly hasn't helped.\n\nThe solution is of course simple. The US needs better general welfare and a prison system that focuses on rehabilitation instead of punishment. The war on drugs and private prisons certainly must go, but they are not the reason why people commit crimes in the first place.",
"[This John Oliver](_URL_0_) piece is worth the watch and somewhat relevant. ",
"John Oliver has a very good, albeit rather liberal explanation: _URL_0_\n\n\n",
"Hi. I'm from Germany, and I'd like to kind of latch on to that question. I mean no disrespect on this. But it seems to me there are some people in America that have an odd attitude towards punishment in general. Not just prison. Reddit is full of stories about teenagers and children getting suspended or expelled from school over trivial things like dress code violations or tardiness. Public humiliation is a thing, both for kids and criminals, being forced to publicly wear sandwich boards saying thinks like \"Drunk driver\" or \"I looked at porn\". /r/funny regularly posts pictures of crying children being publicly humiliated that way. Apparently that's funny. Corporal punishment seems to be acceptable, not just at home but even some schools, and not just a spanking with the bare hand, but outright whipping with a belt or such. Sex offenders are sentenced to have to publicly announce their crimes to their neighbors and are banned to live near schools - even if their only crime was to pee at a tree in a park at night. Teenagers are punished as child pornographers for having naked pictures *of themselves* on their own phones, even if they are over the age of consent. There ist that horrible school-to-prison pipline, and sadistic boot camps and reform schools for teens. Non-violent drug users are sentenced to decades in prison. People who have been to prison are prohibited from voting and other civil rights, even after having served their sentence. \n\nI don't get it. I just don't get it. I highly respect a lot of how Americans see freedom, like freedom of speech. In some ways, American laws are much more progressive and liberal than here in Germany. We still don't have legal weed or gay marriage here, and the separation of church and state is spotty. So why are there such strong currents of absolutely draconian punishments in the US?",
"Didn't see this posted. There are a lot of good explanations, but one of the reasons it's so hard to change any of this is that Black people vote Democrat. Overwhelmingly.\n\nRepublicans don't want Blacks to vote, because when they do, they vote Democrat.\n\nWhen a option comes up to reduce the rates at which black men become felons, they know that it's going to directly hurt them in the future as there will be more potentially voting black people.\n\nThis is not the only reason, but it is one of the reasons that there is political stagnation in the process of fixing this issue.",
"It seems to be mostly drug related. \"Half of males (50%) and more than half of females (59%) in federal prison were serving time for drug offenses on September 30, 2014\" from _URL_0_\nThe question might be, why are so many people using illegal drugs? Or, why are the drugs illegal? I think it's the cognitive dissonance caused by living in a society that claims \"liberty and justice for all\", \"pursuit of happiness\", freedom, equality, etc when those things just aren't true.",
"Where else are we going to warehouse the people we'd have otherwise drafted to be cannon fodder in bygone eras?",
"Because when you declare a War on ~~Drugs~~ People, you get a lot of them in jail for victimless crimes.",
"Because this country was build on slavery and after the passage of the 13th Amendment, the only way to get slaves is to imprison people. That's why we have the War on Drugs which disproportionally targets minorities.",
"The US does not rehabilitate criminals. The US relies on deterrents to keep law and order. ",
"In part because private prison companies have gotten contracts with states guaranteeing them a certain number of prisoners to house. ",
"Probably a bit late to this one, but there's been some interesting work that shows a big factor is that DA's over the last 20 years or so have dramatically increased the number of times they charge people with a felony. \n \n\"1994 to 2008, just based on the data that’s available—is that the probability that a district attorney files a felony charge against an arrestee goes from about 1 in 3, to 2 in 3. So over the course of the ’90s and 2000s, district attorneys just got much more aggressive in how they filed charges. Defendants who they would not have filed felony charges against before, they now are charging with felonies. I can’t tell you why they’re doing that. No one’s really got an answer to that yet. But it does seem that the number of felony cases filed shoots up very strongly, even as the number of arrests goes down.\" \n \n_URL_0_",
"That's like saying ELI5: Why do people exist. Very complicated question. \n\nShort answer:\n\n1. Racism and ghettoization of neighborhoods has left many black men ill equipped for success in American society resorting to crime and violence to get by.\n\n2. Instead of solving the problem of segregated crammed urban ghettos and racism which are at the root of high crime levels. High crime waves in the 80's and 90's lead to a crack down on crime. Larger police forces and heavy handed policies to quell crime.\n\n3. Drug wars. Related to one and two. Poor black men seeing few other options turn to selling drugs in an illegal drug market. In an effort to squash urban crime rings with drugs as their income sources heavy hand comes down on drug use and selling resulting in many people incarcerated for drug crimes.\n\n4. Economic benefits of prisons to states and private companies. Prisons are an economically viable enterprise for the state and for private companies. States recieve federal monies for prisons creating jobs and cash inflow all while \"getting criminals off the streets\". Private prisons reduce the cost of prisons for state government but incentivize prisons to keep their prisoners in jail to keep the amount of money coming in.\n\nEven shorter answer:\n\nRonald Reagan conservative era. Conservative America wanting to reduce crime waves and clean up America pass draconian drug and crime laws and fund larger and larger police forces.",
"My observation is that there is nothing to do in America. You can go to a bar and get drunk, or you can sit at home and watch a movie, or you can go to a mall shopping, or finally you can be into outdoor stuff.\n\nIn Europe there is cafés, places to hang out all over the city, people walk and are able to walk to places. People go on evening walks to interact and socialize with others in their town. Not in America. Here there is no nice places to walk around to. Towns are just not set up like that. They are set up with huge parking lots and huge highways to get you to the malls and back home. In bigger cities and urban areas this is even more drastic for teens. They are not allowed to be in groups. Cops bother them right away. They are not allowed to hang out in the parks after sunset. This causes for kids to go....the mental way to anti-depressants, or to be gangsters. Not all obviously, but it is tempting when you are bored and not allowed to do anything to get into drugs and such. \n\nAnd then cops are all over the place. You cant have a beer in the park. Even if your an adult. So you have to go to the bar where you are kinda tempted and pushed to drink more. This causes all kinds of dumb shit. People who would maybe only have 1 beer under the sunset, are now having 5 because they are in the bar and its all in their face, then they go home or elsewhere driving. \n\nYou get the point I think.....",
"In the 1980s, the owners of private security companies felt like they could be making more and easier money, so they told the federal and state governments they could run the prison system cheaper and more efficiently. This created a profit motive to keep people behind bars.\n\nPoliticians then discovered that prison sentences, with their attendant loss of voting rights, were a great way to control demographics that might not agree with them.\n\nAnd so an unholy marriage was born between companies who make money off of every soul in prison and governments only too happy to send people there for any number of senseless infractions because it ensured that only the \"right\" kinds of people would be free to vote in the next election.\n\nCommunities were generally in favor of this, since most uneducated people think that more prison = tougher on crime and the prisons provided a ready source of jobs for their citizenry. The government liked it because they got to funnel a bunch of taxpayer money directly into those organizations funding their next campaign.\n\nAnd now you get to feel the pinch of it. Every appointed case I take in our overcrowded federal system nets me at least a thousand dollars of *your* money, straight to my bank account. And I'm just a small part of this! You're paying Geo Group and Wackenhut far more than you would in taxes to run the same system the government could do cheaper and easier. Conditions are deplorable and it's more dangerous for the workers, which is OK because they're all on contract so Wackenhut doesn't have to provide them insurance.\n\nWhich just means when Charley CO gets shivved by the mentally ill inmate you wanted put in prison because there was no place better for him to go, *you* get to foot that bill too, since he'll go to the emergency room, not pay, and drive up costs for the rest of us.\n\nWhich could all be solved if we hadn't privatized prisons and provided a profit motive to keep people in there.",
"A lot of prisons are privatized. The more people you have in your prison, the more the state pays. Who decides if you get out on parole? People in the prison. Who loses money if you get out on parole? People in the prison. Now duplicate that process almost 30 years",
"A few reasons:\n\nIt's easier than offering proper affordable, anonymous mental health care.\n\nIt's very profitable for some, who work to make sure that prisons are filled, continue to create more of them, and fill those. Example: Saying mean things on the web will soon be a crime. \n\nIt gives the state huge job opportunities. They now hire prisoners to be firefighters, and soon other positions, at slave wages, than to hire a professional. What? Did you think that they would stop at firefightes? More jobs will be filled at slave wages, and more profitable prisoners will be needed to fill those positions.\n\nHaha, ahhh, good times to come.",
"War on drugs, for the most part. Not only the direct effect of incarcerating so many people for victimless crimes, but the effect the war has in creating a massive black market for drugs which is fueled by cartels and gangs. This leads to much more violence and theft than otherwise. \n\nThere is likely no government failure greater than the war on drugs. \n\nIf we abolished it and legalized all drugs tomorrow, within a couple years, we'd literally have hundreds of thousands less in jail and crime in general would drop dramatically. It would be one of the simplest and best moves we can make right now to improve the future of the country.\n\nSo naturally it won't happen. ",
"Number 1. Prison Lobbying. Plenty answers here regarding our private prison system already. And they're part of a feedback loop. The more they lobby politicians to fill their facilities the more money they make. The more money they make, the more they have to lobby politicians to pass laws to further increase their profits. And so on ad infinitum. \n\nNumber 2. The War on (some) drugs. More people die probably daily from painkiller abuse than have died from cannabis in the last 5000 years, but guess which is illegal? Tied to reason number 1.\n\nNumber 3. We don't rehabilitate. Just that opposite, in fact. Once you've done the crime, you are NEVER done doing your time, and the system guarantees recidivism. No one is going to hire someone with a criminal record, and it never goes away. Well, how do you prevent someone from committing more crimes and going back to prison? Give them something to lose. But they'll never get that, so the only way to make something of themselves, even after a one time mistake, is generally to turn back to crime. And if they fail, at least they've got a bed and food. Beats being homeless and starving on the streets because you're trying to do the right thing. \n\nIn short, the reason is systemic. And there's a lot of money behind it. ",
"We have harsher laws, lots of people, and a culture that romanticizes (I do think glorifies is the wrong word to be honest) violence, and in many respects crime itself. ",
"Tough on crime elections is correct but specifically it is prosecutors being elected that is the problem. Studies have shown that mandatory minimum sentences are not the factor that prosecutorial discretion is. eg it used to be judges had discretion and now because 90%? of sentences are the result of plea bargains prosecutors are responsible for our ridiculous prison population",
"Putting people in jail seems more justifiable than trying to figure out what got them there in the first place.",
"A few things exacerbate this issue. The first and main thing is the war on drugs. After the hippies started doing their thing, the conservative main stream got scared and allowed a feeding frenzy to occur on our citizens. The Government believed that harsher penalties for drug use would deter people from using drugs. This did not happen because the cause of drug use has less to do with criminal behavior and more to do with human behavior. \n\nFirst: recreational use of drugs. As humans we like to get high. Whether it be on alcohol or weed, altering ones reality is a very appealing thing to a lot of people. So corporate America found a way to legally supply certain drugs. They offered to supply this market, medicinally in the form of synthetic drugs. They used poppy plants to basically create a synthetic heroin in the form of pain pills. Pain pills have driven the use of heroin as well as other harder drugs. So our corporate sector has actually been feeding our prison system by getting people hooked on opiates. \n\nSecond: Black markets driven by low income and legitimate market deprived areas. Basic economics show us, that when there is a demand for something, someone will offer to supply. Whether that be in the form of a black market or a legitimate one. Prohibition is a good example of this. The formation of the Mob was the market realizing its need for the supply of alcohol. The Mexican drug cartel is also another black market supplier, that has filled the needs of the demand of all sorts of things. Mainly, marijuana.\n\nThird: over policing of low income areas and ultimate refusal to accept the black market hypothesis. Law makers and politicians get into an \"appease the crowd\" situation and preach that we need tougher laws and stiffer penalties. Being \"tough on crime\" sounds good to all the old voters and sheep people who think they need the government to protect them. So we wind up with a vastly undertrained, vastly overpopulated police force and absurdly stiff penalties for relatively small infractions. \n\nFourth and finally: Incentivized imprisonment. This issue is probably tied with the war on drugs as the two most important factors putting our people away in such high numbers. \n\nWe've allowed our police to now be incentivized to ticket, cite, fine, and imprison citizens to achieve quotas and to bring in revenue for their respective departments. Tools such as \"asset forfeiture\", are used to fund an ever expanding, self perpetuating prison system. This is why departments are beginning to look militarized. They have massive amounts of cash flow coming from \"criminals\".\n\nTl;dr: the war on drugs/crime is a self fulfilling prophecy. The judicial system(ironically based on the idea that justice is blind) has abandoned moral ideas of justice(such as common sense) and is now motivated monetarily to continue imprisoning people. \n\nThis is the reason most cops are pro drug war. Imprisoning people as much as possible has turned into their lively hood. \n\nEdit: grammar, spelling. Too much rant.",
"because for some reason the people who commit the worst crimes possible get a stiffy seeing everyone of a lower class than themselves suffering.",
"because they have privatized the \"industry\" they now have promised the corporations running them that they will have their expected occupancy. \n\non top of that the labor you are forced to do while in there is free for them... pretty much modern slavery."
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8ha2f0 | why are all water droplets roughly the same size? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8ha2f0/eli5_why_are_all_water_droplets_roughly_the_same/ | {
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"In a rain storm the winds are capable of supporting a droplet of a given size, beyond which they will fall to the ground. That applies to all the droplets; if they are smaller they keep flying around in the storm and once they get too large they fall down. That means we on the ground don't see the small ones and there is no opportunity for bigger ones to form.",
"Raindrops traveling down through air and encountering air resistance, air currents, and other turbulent weathers change the overall limit to the size and shape of raindrops. This \"tumbling\" effect, works similar to that of an equalizer, where all the shapes, over the long flight down to earth, will be evened out to a relatively uniform size on average."
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2afrhd | how do pills that go to the stomach help coughing in the lungs or muscle aches all over the body? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2afrhd/eli5_how_do_pills_that_go_to_the_stomach_help/ | {
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"The pills are dissolved, and then enter your intestines, where they are absorbed into your bloodstream. The blood containing the medication then circulates throughout your entire body."
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5zzdfr | what hits the ground first, a pound of bricks or a pound of feathers? | Im in tech draw class and the teacher and a few students are saying that the pound of feathers and bricks dropped from the same height will hit the ground at the same time. I disagree because the feathers have more surface area and have more friction so they will fall slower. My teacher thinks they fall at the same time. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5zzdfr/eli5_what_hits_the_ground_first_a_pound_of_bricks/ | {
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"You are right the bricks will fall faster if its here on Earth. What the others are thinking is how they will fall if they are in a vacuum ie air resistance isn't a factor.",
"That would depend. Are you just taking a handful of feathers and a handful of bricks and dropping? The bricks would hit first because each individual feather is much lighter than each individual brick.\n\nAre you taking a bag of feathers and a bag of bricks? Probably hits around the same time, but it would depend on the size difference.",
"Eliminate friction (air resistance) and it's a tie. In any practical experiment you're apt to be able to conduct in normal conditions, the bricks hit first.",
"They would hit the ground at the same time ONLY IN A VACUUM! But under normal circumstances yes the feathers would hit second do to wind resistance.",
"here's a vid of someone doing this in airless chamber\n\n_URL_0_"
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3yi4gv | (slightly nsfw) why do my ears ring whenever i ejaculate? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3yi4gv/eli5_slightly_nsfw_why_do_my_ears_ring_whenever_i/ | {
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"Quite seriously, you might like to discuss this with your doctor. I had a similar thing happen to me, and it turned out to be the first sign of a stroke, due to an undiagnosed blood condition and undetected minor heart abnormality. I've never really told anyone what I was doing to spike my blood pressure and blow the clot into my brain, but I'd hate for you to be damaging something and not say anything.\n\nI hope it's nothing, but talk to your doctor about a possible [PFO](_URL_1_) and/or [Leiden V deficiency](_URL_0_), or any other potential circulatory abnormalities like an aneurysm or similar.",
"I'd like to know the answer to this too; as a female this happens to me sometimes as well. Usually sounds like tinnitus or like listening to the world through straws."
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26fjnc | why does "walking it off" help with pain from minor sprains? | Typically used to talk about sprained ankles. It seems like the pain is greatest when you first apply pressure, but then lessens after you have walked around for a bit.
For a similar example, my jaw is a bit bruised right now. If I haven't opened my mouth in hours it hurts even with smaller movements. But while eating (bigger, more frequent movements) the pain mostly goes away. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/26fjnc/eli5_why_does_walking_it_off_help_with_pain_from/ | {
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"It increases blood flow, which helps in healing process."
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a82xba | why does ranch dressing at a restaurant always taste better than ranch you buy at the store? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/a82xba/eli5_why_does_ranch_dressing_at_a_restaurant/ | {
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"Ranch at a restaurant is made with mayo and buttermilk. You can make restaurant quality ranch at home! All you need to do is buy the ranch powder packet, usually on the top shelf above the dressings, and follow the instructions by adding mayo and buttermilk. Voila! Ranch made the exact same way restaurants make it. This ranch will only last as long as the expiration date on the buttermilk. Enjoy!",
"Freshly made, it’s super easy to do at home it just won’t last nearly as long so use it up quick.",
"You honestly should just buy the ranch spices and milk and mayo. You’ll get incredibly great ranch. I used to make buckets of it at a pizza place. It’s as fresh as the buttermilk and tastes so good. The stores ranch has vinegar and other things that don’t make ranch. It also has preservatives so they can try and sell it for 3 months. A lot of them are also “diet” which means they perform some process to take the fat out. Super nasty but hopefully now you’re all the wiser.",
"...a lot of the places down where I live use large tubs of Ken's brand Ranch....\n\n & #x200B;\n\nBut the Ken's brand ranch in the grocery store does not taste anything like the huge canisters received via restaurant direct stored in walk-in coolers.\n\n & #x200B;",
"Good MF question! I had ranch dressing at home and it never tasted as good at the restaurants so I haven’t used it. Husband and I finally found this good ranch caesar and blue cheese dressing that has to be refrigerated and it came extremely close to what you’d get in the restaurants. ",
"I had ceasar dressing on a salad in a restaurant, it ended up burning inside my mouth, the skin was peeling but the wife her mouth was fine. ",
"Check out this [video](_URL_0_), it was just posted today coincidentally. Its a condiment expert reviewing/ guessing the price of different condiments and one of em is ranch ",
"Just to clarify.. There is a difference between mayo and mayonnaise. Real talk my southern folks know that Dukes mayonnaise is sacred hillbilly nectar. Adding that to your homemade ranch will take it to the next level! Also, you must use full fat Buttermilk, not any of that reduced fat poser. I come from a long line of lunch ladies who have perfected the homemade ranch recipe. Once you start making it at home, you can't never be satisfied with bottled imposters!",
"I’ll just leave this here. It’s amazing! Add cayenne to taste for a spicy version.\n\n\n_URL_0_",
"Same with Caesar dressing. Store bought Caesar tastes nothing like the Caesar supplied to restaurants. It's too vinegary. At my old restaurant they'd come in huge squeeze bottles. I used fill a large mixing bowl with fries and douse it in the Caesar dressing. So fucking good. Ranch and cheese on fries is also fucking good.",
"Same question, but with honey mustard. In restaurants you get a creamy goodness, but when you buy in store you get a weird thick amalgamation of actual honey and regular yellow mustard.",
"Buy a non-shelf-stable ranch dressing in the refrigerator compartment (usually near where they keep the packaged salads and so forth). Litehouse and Marie's, for two examples, make great ranch dressings that taste like homemade (or restaurant) ranch. The non-refrigerated stuff has tons of stabilizers and gum product and chemicals to keep it shelf-stable. ",
"This has been answered but the amount of mayo that goes into making ranch is... profound. You're basically eating ranch flavored mayo.",
"Because it does not last nearly as long. The ranch you buy at the store lasts a long time because it has preservatives in it to, well, preserve it. Restaurants don't need their ranch to last a long time because they go through it so quickly.\n\nThis is often also true with things like salsa. restaurant salsa tastes way better than salsa in a jar from the store for the same reason.",
"Buttermilk\nMayo\nOnion Powder\nGarlic Powder\nPepper\nSalt\nParsley\n\nAdd enough buttermilk to the consistency you like ranch and then just add a little bit of the spices to taste. Best homemade ranch. ",
"If you’re not going to make it yourself (as many suggested) you can buy good quality ranch in your grocery store. Look in the produce department in the refrigerated section. \n\nTaste and texture is nothing like the shelf stable crap. “Marie’s” is a popular brand here, but it only lasts a few weeks at best.",
"The real reason is the first ingredient on the packets they use in restaurants is MSG which tastes amazing ",
"A restaurant I worked at years ago made their ranch with horseradish and mayonnaise and a little bit of Worcestershire sauce. It was really good",
"The key is using Xtra Heavy Duty Mayonnaise. It has the consistency of spackling paste. Blend it with some buttermilk and spices and you got the best ranch ever that will be good for about a week if refrigerated. ",
"It’s the milk to mayo ratio. Some people prefer it more watery, and some prefer it thicker. I prefer it watery personally. ",
"Chef here. Too lazy to convert. \n-4 dry Hidden Valley ranch packets\n-3 1/2 gallons buttermilk\n-2 Gallons mayo\n-1 5lb tub sour cream\n\nRun a largish catering facility kitchen and restaurant, guests drink this stuff by the glass it seems. ",
"Because they typically make it themselves. I worked at a restaurant where it was a literal craze in the area. You could literally drink this shit straight. The trick is to put in the buttermilk, ranch seasoning packet, and not too much mayo to the point where it's thick. it's much better/tastier runny. The ranch from markets is loaded with mayo. When I have the time to make it at my house i'll NEVER go back to normal ranch again. It's the same brand too, hidden valley. go figure",
"Bolthouse Farms makes ranch with yogurt instead of mayo and it tastes super close to what they serve in restaurants. I've always assumed that was why.",
"I feel the same way but with Blue cheese. It's always way better at restaurants. Closest I've come to it is Marie's.",
"Does anyone know what brand of ranch does Domino’s use?",
"While everyone is saying its because restaurants make their own, theres another thing at play. Your perception of food quality is skewed at a restaurant. There's a few studies you can watch on YouTube. \n\nThey take regular fast food and tell participants that its 5 star food. Each time the participants say it's the best burger/taco/pasta they have ever had or that its much better than fast food. \n\nLPT: the reason most foods in a restaurant tastes so much better than when you make it home; its been marinating for at least a day. Meal planning is how you step up your home chef game.",
"My good friend owns a burger joint and makes his own ranch for the restaurant. Screw store bought junk.",
"Los Angeles. It's not nice diners it's more like greasy spoons where you pick up your own food and they serve a mix of standard American food and Mexican food. I lived in two different areas and it was the same thing. If you ask for extra ranch when you order they never give it to you and when you ask for more later they seem reluctant. There's specifically one place that's super strict on it. The lady seems mad when you ask for ranch and says with attitude \"you KNOW that's and extra 30 cents right?\"",
"It is the buttermilk. The ranch in a bottle has a vinegar milk base, because that's the cheap way to make \"buttermilk\" tasting milk. And preservatives taste like shit!",
"Like all the other comments have said, it's mostly because it's freshly made. \n\nThat said: restaurants put VERY rich, but very simple ingredients into their foods to make the taste amazing. Lots of salt, butters, cream, etc. The house dressing my restaurant makes is LOADED with fats and spices and cheese. It's comical how rich restaurant food is. If restaurants cooked like most people did, there'd be no reason to eat out.\n\nSource: line and prep cook at a major chain restaurant.",
"Am I the only one that thinks the opposite? ",
"Chef here: I always use a mix of sour cream and mayo with butter milk. THEN I use a dash of soy sauce or Worcestershire sauce for some extra umami\n\nOr you can just add straight msg, which isn't bad either",
"Australian here. What do you put this ranch stuff on? ",
"Why does the shredded cheese in lunchables taste way better than the shredded cheese you buy at the store? ",
"Former restaurant worker here. Its the MSG but they don't want to tell you that. btw its hidden valley ranch",
"Toppers pizza place of Ventura county, CA makes fresh ranch for pizza and they say they make enough to fill n Olympic sized swimming pool every year. ",
"Oh my god ive wanted someone to ask me this for years...\n\nYOU CAN BUY THE GOOD TASTING RANCH AT THE STORE! ITS JUST IN A DIFFERENT SECTION!\n\nThere are two main styles of ranch, dressing and dipping. I assume when you are talking about tasty ranch you mean that silky, white, beautiful pile of sauce that you sink endless fries, mozzarella sticks, and even your finger into.\n\nThat is dipping ranch my friend. Its slightly saltier, honestly intended for carrots and celery and shit, but oh god fuck me please its so good on everything. \n\nThe shit you think doesnt taste as good, thats the hidden valley shit. Thats the shit that you just kinda dribble on your pathetic little fuck salad and go on with your mediocre day. Most people search for ranch in the dressing section, when in reality you want to go to the baby carrot section, by the little finger vegetables.\n\nMy personal favorites are Maries and Lighthouse (non sponsored content but please god id love some free ranch)",
"The ranch you buy in a store is usually loaded with corn syrup giving it that gross sweetness that does not belong there. It's disgusting to me how nearly every bottled salad dressing is full of that unnecessary crap.",
"Buy the ranch dressing in the refrigerated section. The shelf-stable stuff often contains a lot of soybean oil."
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39xiv6 | how does the greek market affect the u.s. market? | Is there a direct relationship? Is it purely speculation from outside markets that drives people to sell? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/39xiv6/eli5_how_does_the_greek_market_affect_the_us/ | {
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"The US has close ties to the EU. Lots of money is tied from US- > EU but also the EU- > US. When there is uncertainty on the European market regarding Greece, investors will pull out and/or reconsider. These will also be investors in the US. Also, A lot of money from the US is active in Greece. People whom invested in certain projects. When these projects fail, people won't get their profit and or money back. this will cause for an setback. \n\n\nTried my best.. Didn't really succeed I think."
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3c5m6p | why are standardized scores used for major international exams like the sat and mcat? why do these organizations (college board, aamc) not simply give a percent score reflecting the number of questions answered correctly? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3c5m6p/eli5_why_are_standardized_scores_used_for_major/ | {
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"A paper could have hard questions and easy questions.\n\nIf a paper was half hard questions, and half easy questions, then Student A could get half the hard questions right, and half the easy questions right, while Student B could get all the easy questions right, and none of the hard questions.\n\nStudent A actually has a better understanding because they could answer the harder questions, but according to the percentage of successfully answered questions, both appear to have an equal understanding.\n\nQuestion difficulty may vary from question to question, and between papers.\n\nNow questions can be assigned different marks to try to reflect the difficulty difference...\n\nBut the difficulty needed to get a certain number of marks may still vary between each paper.\n\nSo instead of trying to determine the exact difficulty difference, what they do is make an assumption that on average students aren't getting any dumber or smarter.\n\nThey look at the distribution of how many people got how many marks for a test. They split the distribution into grades.\n\nEvery year, only the top X% of people will get an A grade. \nThe top Y% of people get a B grade. \nThe top Z percent of people get a C grade and so on... \n\nThey then use the amount of marks each grade of student exceeded to determine a marks scheme that tells a marker how many marks gets a student each grade.\n\nThis means that if the capability of students on average doesn't change each year, then the marks scheme takes into account the difficulty of the paper.\n\nIf the intelligence and education level of students does drift (and you know it does), then at least the grades allow you to compare a student against peers in their year.",
"It is impossible to produce an exam which is exactly the same difficulty from year to year, unless you simply reuse the same test (in which case it still isn't the same difficulty, because people in the future will just hear about and then remember the exact questions from the past.\n\nThe standardization process allows them the assign scores which mean closer to the same thing from year to year than raw scores would."
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a3ra61 | why does pizza made with the same ingredients taste so different when it's cooked with cheese on the bottom and sauce on top. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/a3ra61/eli5why_does_pizza_made_with_the_same_ingredients/ | {
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"When you cook a pizza normally, the sauce soaks into the dough a bit. If you put cheese on first, it forms a barrier so you have no sauce in your dough, leaving it a bit dryer and less flavorful. Putting sauce on top also prevents the cheese from browning & browning provides a lot of flavor.",
"Tomatoes are 95% water, and water boils at 100°c taking a vast amount of thermal energy with it in the process. \n\nCheese undergoes various chemical processes collectively known as \"browning\" at temperatures higher than that - temperatures which can be quickly reached when it's on top, but not while sandwiched between sauce and dough both of which contain water. \n\nThese processes changes the taste. ",
"The Maillard reaction, which is the flavor change when foods brown. Cheese under sauce doesn’t brown, so you don’t get the flavor change of golden brown cheese when on top."
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4rzsgo | why do some businesses choose not to allow credit card/eftpos transactions? | Seems like it would just mean losing potential customers since a lot of people dont carry cash, and there isn't always an ATM nearby. I know there's fees involved but surely it can't be much compared to what they're losing by not allowing it.
| explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4rzsgo/eli5_why_do_some_businesses_choose_not_to_allow/ | {
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"Depending on who the business banks with and their overall revenue, it might cost too much to offer it. Sometimes they get charged per transaction.",
"I know 2 businesses that don't allow them on 1) Cost of having equipment installed\\maintained 2) Having to pay a percentage of each transaction to provider of equipment when margins are already very low.\n\nPlus one of them just prefers cash because, well, it's cash.",
"They get charged a fee for those transactions, and customers tend not to like it when that fee is passed onto them or there is a minimum purchase. Especially credit transactions are often a source of chargebacks due to alleged fraud, and the merchant has limited recourse due to his agreement with the networks. Dealing with cash is simply much easier.",
"1. Fees - Every transaction incurs an extra fee\n2. Equipment - It requires equipment, which is sold at a business rate\n3. Fraud - Credit card fraud is taken directly out of the merchant's pocket, as opposed to a debit chargeback which is paid by the bank",
"I'm a small business owner, and I have an eftpos machine, it's expensive, I have a $10\nMinimum because too many people think it's ok to use it for a $2 transaction when I'm getting charged for that.\nAlso with this new paywave/paypass system I get charged even more, credit incurs a higher fee from the bank, hence why you get all those fancy perks like frequent flyer miles, so if you have a debit card and you paywave it, it gets charged as a credit card, meaning I'm paying higher fees to accept it.\nDon't get me started on Amex either, despite their advertising, they are defiantly NOT a friend of small business.\nI pay about $200-300 a month on fees and I get a special industry rate.",
"The bank takes a percentage of every transaction, plus a fixed rate. \nI lose a few customers but a few of those few come back with cash and pay. The loss is insignificant."
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1j1m33 | is the gomad (gallon of milk a day) diet safe/healthy? | I'm 5'10 and 117 lbs and male, quite underweight for being 18, and I want to start gaining some dramatic weight. This diet claims to pack 25 lbs in 25 days, something I'd be very interested in. Thoughts? And if this diet isn't safe, are there any alternatives? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1j1m33/eli5_is_the_gomad_gallon_of_milk_a_day_diet/ | {
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"Omg that diet would kill me. My stomach could not handle that much dairy...",
"World Of Warcraft, Mountain Dew, and Pizza Rolls. In 5 months you'll look like me."
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2xk36m | why did japan (and other countries) not develop the (conventional) chair and bed? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2xk36m/eli5_why_did_japan_and_other_countries_not/ | {
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"I don't have a correct answer for this but my two cents would be that historically and culturally, Japan and countries alike were more keen on sitting on the ground/blankets as opposed to using very westernized methods of sitting (e.g. chairs + tables). For instance, in Korea, traditionally, we would sit on the floors/use the floors to sleep on as opposed to real beds and such, and is something you are likely to see in more rural parts of the country. \n\nAlso, back in the day in Korea, wooden homes would be heated by a large stove-like fire that would transmit the heat around the house and make the floor warm; perhaps, through that, it would have been more practical to use the floors to sleep on/sit on so that you can receive the warmth. Also, perhaps back in the day, it might have been more practical to not have a real chair/bed. \n\nI am by no means historically inclined however -- just from experience. ",
"Posture and such was dictated by kings and queens at one time... you'll see furniture periods being attributed to the ruler of the day (queen Anne period, william and Mary period) I'm speaking of the western world, by I'll bet there reasoning is not too different.",
"Wasn't the purpose of raised platform of chairs and beds to avoid vermin? Maybe Japan didn't have the same vermin problems the west did?",
"Just because it's conventional, doesn't mean it's the best way either.\n\nIt's pretty widely accepted by Chiropractors and Osteopaths that our seated chair position isn't particularly good for our backs and posture, due to the way it shifts the load normally placed on the spine to different areas not normally load bearing (C4 vertebrae, lower lumbar) causing khyphosis.\n\nIt extends to other things as well. It has been demonstrated that the western toilet is pretty bad for your bowels and core muscles, as it makes your core relax and your sphincter muscles strain, leading to more fistulas and haemorrhoids. Squatting toilet cultures (Japan, India) have much lower numbers when it comes to these issues.\n\nBut fuck Nail Beds. Good support but damnit if you toss in the middle of the night and wake up looking like you unsuccessfully tried to have your way with a Honey Badger",
"It's interesting that China used chairs since antiquity, it's said they adopted it from nomadic tribes to the west and north. It might also have to do with Buddhism. Buddha is portrayed to be sitting on an elevated platform and not on the floor. This might have contributed to the use of chairs.\n\nJapan got a lot of it's early culture from China and Korea, but never really had direct contact with the Altaic nomad tribes and maybe that's why they didn't adapt to sitting on folding chairs. Buddhism came to Japan via the paekche dynasty in Korea and might be less influenced by Chinese traditions.",
"I can answer this for Korea.\nKorea traditionally used a heating system called \"Ondol,\" _URL_0_.\nThe houses were built with underground passages for heat to go through once a fire is lit. Think of it as a chimney that travels underground before being let out the top. \nFor this reason, the warmest area was the floor.\n\nNot only is it unnecessary to elevate yourself from the floor, it is counterproductive.\n\nTo this day, korean houses heat their floors even when beds and chairs are ubiquitous.",
"It is not that Japan and other countries did not develop the conventional chair and bed Chairs have existed at least since ancient Egypt and the idea of placing a wooden structure on the floor and covering it with softer material probably pre dates Homo Sapiens.\nJapanese rulers have had chairs since at least the 17th Century. So in these societies it is more of a cultural rejection of them due to a floor level \"tatami\" style way of living. The adoption of these new furnishings simply did not fit with their culture or the design of their homes traditionally. \n\nTldr: Tradition",
"I assume the western bed in it's contemporary form was developed in a single place and then spread out from there as it gained popularity - I doubt several countries developed mattresses independently.",
"In a traditional japanese house if they used beds the floor would be nothing but beds all day with no room. A lot of houses were single level one room layouts and the futons are pulled out to sleep on then put back up in the morning. Everyone just sleeps in the same room. ",
"Your \"Conventional\" is confused for \"Western\"\n\nTo those countries, it's conventional to them.",
"Why did England (and other countries) not develop the conventional chopsticks?",
"You could look at this the other way around: if you wear your outdoor shoes indoors, you need something to sit on/ lie on because the floor is dirty. If in your culture you always take your shoes off as you enter your home, the floor will be clean enough to sit on. ",
"I don't have an answer, but just to add something, I've spent a lot of time in all three east Asian countries (working or extended holidays) and I have only seen Western-style beds.\n\nIt might be worth asking this question in /r/AskHistorians, where you're likely to get actual sourced answers, rather than speculation and people trying to sound smart.",
"The real question is why did we develop the (conventional) chair and bed?",
"Don't confuse what you're used to with what's conventional. Through most of history if you go by population numbers, stuff from Asia (especially China) would be the \"conventional\" items and Western ones the unconventional.\n\nSetting that aside, there has been a *lot* of variation in Asia through history and geographically when it comes to bed and chair types. Culture, environment, and adaptive technologies play a big part in this sort of thing. China, for example, had some places that used beds and chairs that were very much like western ones, though differently shaped. Other regions didn't bother, for many of the reasons mentioned by others.\n\n",
"In Japan space is of premium when it comes to houses and the living space has traditionally been 4.5 tatami area. A smaller house was just more economical to heat and maintain for the avg person. So you just don't have room to leave a chair and table just sitting there. \n\nAlso if one room can be a bedroom, living room, work room, kitchen all in one that is getting the most out of the space.\n\nJust think of the many things in Japanese culture that has to do with utilizing the little space they have. Like they fold up their beds (futon) and store them in closets. In fact the English Futon-Bed derives its name from the Japanese bed. The table they eat at (Chabu-dai) also folds up and gets put away. Basically they can turn a living room into a bedroom and then into a work room if need be.\n\nNow a days you don't need to save space as much but the tradition of maximizing the limited amount of space keeps on in Japanese culture."
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1kvtc6 | how come colorful animals usually mean they are deadly, and most animals keep away from them except humans? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1kvtc6/how_come_colorful_animals_usually_mean_they_are/ | {
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"Humans have little instincts and rely heavy on being learned stuff unlike most other animals.\n\nIf you are say a poisonous animal of some kind and aren't showing it. Predator comes and eats you, predator dies. Nobody wins. But if you show you're dangers, they can avoid you and no one dies. Everyone wins. "
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1cnho7 | machiavelli's political philosophy | I have a report due and I can't find anything that doesn't require me to read the prince. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1cnho7/eli5_machiavellis_political_philosophy/ | {
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"\"The Prince\" is not Machiavelli's personal political philosophy. He wrote it as a parody. A manual of all the most evil things you could do to control everyone. It's awful that it's what he's most remembered for and that people think he subscribed to the ideas in it. It was a big joke that backfired on him. ",
"Just read The Prince. It applies to every human interaction. Its not hard, or long, just great reading. Full serious. ",
"The Prince is the only reason we know anything about Machiavelli, so you'll need to read it eventually. I will attempt to summarize his main ideas.\n\nFirst, a little background. Machiavelli occupied a government position in an Italian city state. A new leader came to power, and Machiavelli lost his post. He wrote The Prince for the new leader as proof that he knew his shit and should retain his government position. This is critical to understanding The Prince. Machiavelli wrote this for selfish reasons. He wants to seem knowledgeable about Italian history, politics, and make himself look like a man who can cause the new leader to become an emperor. The Prince is basically a giant resume.\n\nAs far as the actual manuscript goes, the overall emphasis is on how to retain and expand your own power. Machiavelli doesn't care about anyone except the man in charge. As a result, most of his advice involves exploiting and harming everyone for the same of the ruler becoming more powerful.\n\nClever examples are cited from history. One in particular is how a ruler appointed a man to 'keep the peace' in a city knowing full well this appointed man would be cruel to the populace. The ruler disappears for a while, comes back, and acts shocked at what this man has done and has him publicly executed. The effect of this is the populace is under control and they love the ruler for disposing of this tyrant. For the manuscript, the point is fairly obvious, you can cause others to take the blame for your actions and then be the hero. For Machiavelli's real purpose (getting a job) he is showing that he only cares about the ruler, which makes Machiavelli more likely to get his dream job back.\n\nMachiavelli goes on for a length about the importance of being frugal rather than extravagant with guests. If you are extravagant with one guest than you must be more extravagant with the rest and so on until you drive your country into debt. With frugality, other visiting nations will not love you as much initially, but they know what to expect after a while. As far as the manuscript goes, it's about keeping your financial priorities and diplomatic priorities in line. For the job, it's demonstrates that Machiavelli doesn't need lots of money for himself.\n\nThere's 100 more things I could write about, but I think you get the picture. Take The Prince at face value and you will probably get Machiavelli's political philosophy. But a far more interesting report would be on how The Prince was the best resume ever. Just read the damn book. It won't take you more than a few hours :P"
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8o9x9w | what is it about (steam or otherwise) turbines that makes them so ubiquitous for power generation? do we really not have anything more efficient after more than a century? | It's almost mind-blowing to think that large-scale electricity production is just a handful of different ways to spin a turbine (nuclear, wind, hydro, coal; all basically the same core principle). Is there really no better commercial technology available for generation? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8o9x9w/eli5_what_is_it_about_steam_or_otherwise_turbines/ | {
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" > Is there really no better commercial technology available for generation?\n\nNot really. It is important to note that time is not an assurance that improvement will arrive, that is just an expectation from our advances in other areas.\n\nIt turns out that steam turbines are just really good at producing electricity from a heat source. That isn't to say there have not been advances, but it is more in the form of better steam turbines rather than a fundamental shift in techniques.",
"It maybe the energy source we are tapping into for electricity generation. If you think of traditional energy sources, hydro and wind are kinetic energy sources (water and air are not reactive in generating their own electron). Natural gas and fossil fuel have a lot of chemical energy but they excel in combustion. Heat generally doesn't change chemistry but make them more energetic so we are still trying to harness kinetic energy.\n\nBut then look at solar and fuel cells, light is a electromagnetic wave and are not kinetic energy, so we can tap into that directly. Fuel cells work through electron exchange, so we can also ignore kinetic energy.\n\nI think the way we harness energy is more source dependant than it is technology dependant.",
"If there was a better way, we'd be using it.\n\nMost navies are getting away from steam generation and switching to gas turbines (in the US, the same General Electric engine that's used on the Boeing 767). Steam plants can take *hours* to get up to the minimum operating temps (running the main engines on cold oil is a really bad idea), but gas turbines can be online within 10-15 minutes. Combine the gas turbine with a variable-pitch screw and you have a 20K-ton ship that can stop in its own length. Can't do that with the old steam turbines connected to geared drives.\n\n*****************\nPer deleted post:\n\nI referenced a 20Kt ship, not an 90Kt carrier. It's also obvious that you can't use a gas turbine engine on a submarine. Cherry-picking a few ships to counter my point makes him nothing more than a troll, and **my point is correct**. Furthermore, carriers likely **would** use gas turbines except for the fuel requirements. The less space needed for fuel oil can be used for flight ops. The **hours** required to bring a carrier's nuke plants online and steam turbines up to operating temp is a serious vulnerability. A ship using gas turbines can go from a cold plant to underway in less than 30 minutes.\n\nThe US Navy got rid of the Boiler Technician rating back in 1996 because it was a dead-end profession; no new ships were being built using steam boilers and turbines. The Gas Turbine System Technician was added because new ships use the GE CF6 LM2500 series gas turbine to power the shaft. Add a variable-pitch screw to the shaft and a Spruance-class destroyer can stop in its own length. The Spruance class has been around since 1971, so the switch from steam to gas turbines has been going on for 47 years.",
"mostly that they're cheap and safe.\n\nwhile there are fluids with better thermal properties, they're much more expensive and tend to be fairly dangerous in one way or another.\n\nmethods besides turbines tend to be restricted to low power applications because of practical constraints. ",
"Almost all power sources are just to turn a shaft. It’s all about torque. \n\nNuclear powered aircraft carrier sounds like it should have some Star Trek looking engine. Nope. Radiation boils water. Water turns to steam. Steam spins turbine. Turbine turns shaft. \n\nCrazy that we can do all the amazing technological crap that we come up with, but haven’t found a better way to make something spin. ",
"If you can find a more simple, elegant solution to \"inclined plane\" to do all they work they do, then you will have indeed found a better alternative to turbines, and will be the richest person on the planet.",
"There have been a lot of advances in PV cells. But it is much more convenient to get our energy from something where we know that we will reliably have x for power production and that it will not be impacted by weather, seasons, etc\n\nSpinning magnets to either create a torque or electrical power ( depending on which side is your input) is a pretty effective method. But don't be fooled over time there have been a lot of advances in this technology.\n\nIs there/could there be something better? Quite possibly, but just because we want there to be advances in a particular field doesn't mean we will ever see them, or be able to anticipate when those will be seen. Look at almost any field of science and you'll see that many times we get bottle necked on some level of tech for decades, centuries, Millenia before something new comes out. ",
"Water is an amazing compound. By the way the actual power generation has nothing to do with temperature other than just keeping it steam throughout the process. The only reason it has to heat up so much is that you don’t want the steam condensing back to water on a turbine blade. Coal, natural gas, and nuclear, all do the same thing which is heat up water until it turns into steam. The steam passes from a higher pressure point to a lower pressure point and it’s path it through the turbine which in turn turns the turbine and creates power. Harnessing higher pressure that is going to lower pressure has been used for thousands of years (think of windmills or a water mill). ",
"Can you think of a more efficient way to move a coil through a magnetic field?",
"While the means haven't changed there have been tons of improvements in designs and materials through the years. \n\nSimilar to cars IC engines have been around for over a century but improvements made to the machine applying the base concept have allowed for better efficiency and power. ",
"Do we want a power plant for ants?! No, we do not want a power plant for ants, so let's talk about what's useful at a human scale and in human lifetimes. Can some future whiz-bang technology double the efficiency we get today? I think not, and here's why.\n\nEfficiency in todays power plants runs roughly from one third to two thirds of thermal output. Lets split the difference and call it 50% efficiency. If you want more, you've got to run hotter. (We would existing turbines hotter if we could, but we can't, because the steel would melt.)\n\nLet's say the end of mankind as we know it is 10 000 years from now, when Skynet has taken over the world and built a Dyson sphere around the sun, sucking up close to 100% of its power. That's as good as it gets. No matter what, you run up against the laws of thermodynamics.\n\nSo, don't expect any miracles. Even with cold fusion, powerful Terminator-style alloys, or alien technology, you can only double today's efficiency.",
"All this talk about thermodynamics and efficiency. How about the fact that a properly designed steam turbine has only one moving part and will run for decades if fed clean oil and dry steam?",
"I’ve been studying fluids and thermodynamics engineering, and steam turbines are actually surprisingly efficient. The main most common form of power generation is to take heat energy and convert it into mechanical energy. Because of thermodynamic laws, you need to take energy from a hot source (burning coal, nuclear power, etc), make it go through a process that uses up some of the energy, then dump the rest of the energy into a cold source (the air or some body of water usually). Water is good at absorbing energy and turning into steam, which can be pressurized to turn a turbine. This process works really well and has little losses, essentially being as good as you can get thermodynamically. Any other fluid could be used too, but water is well studied and is readily available.",
"Water is incredibly powerful when it is heated and changes from its liquid to gaseous state. It expands something like ~200 times in volume. Capturing that expansion is key. ",
"As someone who operates large water boilers and steam turbines, I can tell you that it is by far the most efficient method of generating electricity by burning fuels. The big advantage of using water boilers is the huge latent heat that water can absorb and release during a phase change, as well as the huge volume change associated with the phase change. \\(1 gallon of water becomes 1700 gallons of steam\\) This change in volume allows the heat sink \\(condenser\\) to operate at significant vacuum, lowering the condensation temperature of the water.",
"The most efficient machine for converting energy known to man is a turbine. It is known as F1FO ATPase and is the thing that creates energy for our cells in the mitochondria.\n\nIt uses protons flowing like water in a dam to turn a turbine that pinches together two molecules into one which, when broken apart again, releases energy.\n\nADP + phosphate turns into ATP using that turbine.\n\nThis doesn’t answer your question directly, but what it does do is tell you that so far we don’t have a more efficient way of converting motion into electricity because this method is already incredibly efficient.",
"Water expands 1600 times it’s original volume converted to steam at a mere 213 degrees.\n\n\nWhat liquid do you want to use?",
"The answer is that water has a massive expansion rate. One gallon of water heated in a pressurized chamber and released at atmospheric pressure expands to 1600 times its volume as steam. This expansion is used to spin the turbines and generate electricity. \n\nLiquid propane has and expansion rate of 270 gallons of vapour per gallon of liquid. Although this expansion is large enough for a 100 lb bottle to totally level a house (check out some YouTube videos) it is nothing compared to the expansion of steam. \n\nOther expansion rates from liquid to gas are:\n\nNitrogen 1:696\nHelium. 1:757\nHydrogen 1:851\nOxygen 1:860\nNeon. 1:1445\n\n"
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bbj0yc | why do big aninmals not realize their big size and get eaten by smaller animals when they could easily defend themselves? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/bbj0yc/eli5_why_do_big_aninmals_not_realize_their_big/ | {
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"They do realize their big size, and so do their predators.\n\nThe predators try to tip the odds in their own favor by going after the young, already sick, or injured, that's usually the hunts you see on TV.",
"Predators are good at their work. They know to avoid hind leg kicks, they know to clamp down on the other animal's throat as soon as possible, they know to attack from a less easily defended angle, attack a newborn if possible, avoid getting in a large herd,...\n\nPredators can a do get injured from a larger animal's defense but they mostly know how to avoid it."
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5xr87d | did rick astley get rich from everyone linking to his youtube video? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5xr87d/eli5_did_rick_astley_get_rich_from_everyone/ | {
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"Despite being wildly famous for performing the song, Ashley didn't write it. Ergo, he is only entitled to a share of the royalties. Purportedly, this share is about 12 USD, but I can't see any information that backs it. "
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6dhtuu | why are people naturally split about 50/50 liberals and conservatives? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6dhtuu/eli5_why_are_people_naturally_split_about_5050/ | {
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"Because anything left of middle is liberal, and anything right of middle is conservative. You might as well be asking why half of a table is on the right and the other half is on the left.",
"The general rule is that whenever a party starts losing elections, it moves a little bit in the other direction in order to balance out the scales. This will change, of course, as certain issues become more mainstream, or if the leading party does a poor job of managing.\n\nSo for example, if the liberal party lost an election, and the votes were split, say, 55/45, then over the next few years the liberal party would shift to become a little more conservative in order to pick up another 5% or more of the voters. So by the time of the next elections, they'll have shifted the \"center\" point over to the right a little bit, and the split should be closer to 50/50, or it will swing the other way. At which point, the conservative party would start making some changes.\n\nEDIT: This is why there's no definitive \"center\" in the world. Political moderates in the US would be considered conservative in most of the EU, for example - they've each shifted from each other as their nations and states have gone through their political histories."
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ayjh7q | what role does a stills photographer or director of photography actually play in a film production? | In credits for a film I always see roles related to photography, but what role does that play in shooting a movie? Why would they need a photographer if they're making a movie? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/ayjh7q/eli5_what_role_does_a_stills_photographer_or/ | {
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"The director of photography isn't photographer in the classical sense. They are a cinematographer, they are in charge of the cameras and lighting. They pick the fim, lenses, all that technical stuff to make sure the movie looks good.\n\nDepending on the director they are working with they might mostly do the technical stuff or all the way to having a decent amount of creative input.\n\nSomes times the director might say \"ok, i want it to look really cool and dark! make it look dark and sad\" and then they get to interpret that and have a lot of creative freedom. Other times the director might be much more involved and even recommend/require they use certain equipment.\n\n & #x200B;\n\nIf you have ever watched a scene and if you pause it and go \"wow, that looks cool\" the DoP likely had a lot to do with that.",
"Stills photographer takes still photos which are used in publicity and promotional photos for advertising the film. That way they have still photos of the characters in costume, and against the backdrop of their iconic scenes."
]
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[],
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der3v6 | why isn't braille in the shape of the local language? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/der3v6/eli5_why_isnt_braille_in_the_shape_of_the_local/ | {
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"text": [
"Braille is not universal.\n\nBraille is optimized for fast reading by touch, which written languages definitely aren't. Braille can be read at 200-400 words per minute, while reading tactile letters is *much* slower for almost all written languages.",
"The shapes of different letters aren't always the easiest to distinguish from one another by touch. Think about O vs. Q. There are also some printing issues that make dots more advantageous, such as being able to write with smaller \"letters.\"",
"At one point people did learn to read by using a raised version of the actual letters. Very few blind people could learn to read this way and only very slowly and with great difficulty. \n\n\nThe normal written word is designed to be easily seen, not easily felt. Braille is the opposite."
]
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6zvgor | what is copay and how is it different from deductible? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6zvgor/eli5_what_is_copay_and_how_is_it_different_from/ | {
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"text": [
"A copay is what insurance companies make you pay so that you aren't just frivolously going to the doctor (God forbid!)\n\nBasically, you have to pay a small amount, say, $50 per visit, and your insurance company pays for the rest.\n\nThe difference with a deductible is the deductible is what you pay first, before your insurance company starts to pay. Say your auto insurance has a $500 deductible, and you need a repair costing $400 - your insurance won't pay for it, because it's less than your deductible. But if you need a repair costing $2000 - your insurance will pay $1500 after you pay the $500 deductible.",
"Not the answer I'm looking for. Health insurance only. You don't have a copay on your car. \n\nWhen does a copay override a deductible? I go to have a check up, pay my $25 at the window. They do blood work, an mri and whatever else.. Am I only liable for the $25 copay? I guess the question I'm asking is what will a copay cover, is there a list? I assume if you have a bunch of other things done, mri, catscan, x-ray they're going to nail you for it, but if you were to just have blood work done would that fall under the copay category? ",
"For prescription insurance (since it's a little different from auto insurance, which was already explained), most people have a copay that they have to pay every time they pick up a prescription. It could be something like $10 for generic medications, $25 for brand name drugs that are preferred by the insurance, and $75 for non-preferred brand name drugs. So, if you go to the pharmacy to pick up a generic prescription that costs $50, you pay your $10 copay and the insurance pays the other $40.\n\nA deductible is typically a minimum out of pocket expense that you have to meet, usually at the beginning of each year, before your insurance pays anything. Let's say your deductible is $500. On January 3rd, you go to pick up that same generic prescription. Now, instead of paying your usual $10 copay, you pay the whole $50. Ten dollars of that is just your normal copay, and the other $40 goes toward your deductible. Now you have $460 left on your deductible before the insurance starts kicking in again.\n\nAs a pharmacist, this is a HUGE source of annoyance around the beginning of the year when 90% of the population doesn't understand their copay and is convinced that we're somehow billing the insurance incorrectly or overcharging them."
]
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||
9w2yid | how/why do tongue twisters twist tongues? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9w2yid/eli5_howwhy_do_tongue_twisters_twist_tongues/ | {
"a_id": [
"e9h91k8"
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"text": [
"Tongue twisters rely on difficulties within certain dialects to manipulate their mouth in ways that they aren't used to. A tongue twister designed to trip up people from New York, for example, likely won't work on someone from the Pacific Northwest. \n\nWhen we're growing up, we're learning the accents and dialects of the people around us, and we're mimicking them. This is how we learn to talk, and why you can pinpoint where someone grew up by listening to them speak. We use specific words and phrases, and our mouths get really accustomed to moving in those specific ways. \n\nA common tongue twister like \"Susy sells seashells by the sea shore\" doesn't work at all on someone from Russia or Poland because they're used to frequent \"z\" and \"s\" sounds. When their mouths are relaxed, their tongues sit in the very front of their mouths. Most native English speakers rest the flat of their tongue on the roof of their mouths, and aren't used to those frequent \"z\" or \"s\" sounds, so Susy's tongue twister is especially effective. "
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
||
74axrz | why is sugar considered a wet ingredient? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/74axrz/eli5_why_is_sugar_considered_a_wet_ingredient/ | {
"a_id": [
"dnwuyoh"
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"text": [
"It is not itself wet, but you add it to the wet ingredients because it makes the water molecules less available for gluten formation. That prevents your cake getting chewy like bread.\n\nSo we sometimes call it a \"wet ingredient\" only because it is supposed to go in the bowl with the wet ingredients.\n\nIn other recepes it's a \"dry ingredient\" because it goes in the other bowl. Sometimes, both!"
]
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[]
] |
||
dvm2b1 | how do earphones/headphones emulate surround sound? | [deleted] | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/dvm2b1/eli5_how_do_earphonesheadphones_emulate_surround/ | {
"a_id": [
"f7diyoy"
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"score": [
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"text": [
"Consider a sound that comes from behind you and slightly to the right. \n\nIt will reach your right ear a fraction of a second before your left ear. The sound will also have slight variations in the frequencies when approaching from behind (because it basically has to go around the big part of your ear before going into the ear canal). Lastly, there will also be a change in the frequencies your left ear is hearing compared to your right ear (this time from having to go around your head) \n\nNone of these are things we can conciously detect without advanced computer systems, and they will be slightly different for everyone. But knowing the genereral changes to the timing and frequencies means we can tweak a sound with those changes, and then even when played directly into your ear, the brain is tricked into thinking it is in that specific position, because that is what those time and frequency changes have always meant."
]
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|
24mgn9 | what is this "pop" or "crack" sound that my pc monitor and tv make? | Very often when I'm laying in bed, ready to fall asleep, I hear a strange "crack" sound that I'm sure comes from either my pc monitor or my tv. They both do it, and the sound slightly differs- but it still happens randomly (not more often than once a night), only (though I'm not sure) if they're off.
Anyone have any idea what that might be? It kinda puzzles me and fascinates at the same time. ELI5, please. Or ELI18, if you wish. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/24mgn9/eli5_what_is_this_pop_or_crack_sound_that_my_pc/ | {
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"text": [
" > only (though I'm not sure) if they're off.\n\nThey are cooling down. When they were turned on they heated up and the case expanded (which is likely plastic). As they cool down the case shrinks and at some point a joint will shift under the pressure and cause a popping sound."
]
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[]
] |
|
5ue6kv | how is japanese adult videos profitable? | The sheer number of videos pumped out daily,the fact that they cater almost exclusively to Japan and the rampant piracy of these videos, makes me wonder, how is this all profitable?
It is not even uncommon to see dozens of actresses in 1 video. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5ue6kv/eli5_how_is_japanese_adult_videos_profitable/ | {
"a_id": [
"ddtdz8r"
],
"score": [
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],
"text": [
"They Make Money through Ad Revenue from Other Companies that have the same thing but sell DvDs instead."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
|
2uvozb | why don't companies pay wages based on profit earnings rather then what the state deems acceptable? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2uvozb/eli5_why_dont_companies_pay_wages_based_on_profit/ | {
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"coc2wae",
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"text": [
"They're trying to make a profit, social responsibility is not their forte. ",
"Decisions in a company are made by the owners. The owners invested in the company to make a profit.\n\nIf paying employees likely won't increase profits it's not something investors would be interested in doing.\n\nThis is handled indirectly through the company leadership, specifically the CEO. If a CEO is increasing wages and profits are dropping the investors will replace him with someone who will increase profits, even if that means lowering wages.",
"If a company is losing money, should the workers pay it?"
]
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4dltou | how do people join secret organizations? how do they get so big and infiltrate governments/companies with being found out? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4dltou/eli5_how_do_people_join_secret_organizations_how/ | {
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"text": [
"They actively hunt for recruits. They send head hunters to the military, other agencies, related fields. That is how the Stazi grew in east germany, they would recruit people and find them and make them inform on others. Also some do have applications, you can just send your resume to the CIA. ",
"Governments hire hundreds of thousands of people. They can't do a detailed security check on everyone hired into ordinary positions. Nor can they follow everyone around after they've been hired. ",
"Secret organisations such as? ",
"Are you referring to groups like the Freemasons and the Skull & Bones society? Their existence is not secret, nor or a members particularly quiet about membership. What is secret are the rites and rituals they perform in private.",
"Secret societies/organizations/club houses are not the sinister, manipulative, world domination type of stereotype movies and wives tales have led us to believe. In fact the first \"Secret organization\" was called The Order of The Eye from ancient Babylonia. They were tasked with \"secretly\" watching over the king for his protection. The King had a guard in full armor that followed him around and also these \"normal looking\" civilian type of guys that were undercover. Today's version of the Secret Service for the president of USA. \n\nIt later dissolved into a manipulative sinister organization that plotted to kill the King of Babylonia and steal his army/re disturbed the wealth. They achieved that and moved on over the years through the changing civilizations, controlling what goes on and who \"rules\" as nations arose over the years. To this day we haven't been able to prove their existence or infiltrate them...and quite frankly why would we even want to? U think you can do a better job? ",
"OP i think Cicada 3301 would be an interesting thing for you to read about.\n\n_URL_0_"
]
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[],
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[],
[],
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"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cicada_3301"
]
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||
4kq4ph | why does a higher fps mean slower footage on a slow motion camera, when in videogames, it means faster? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4kq4ph/eli5_why_does_a_higher_fps_mean_slower_footage_on/ | {
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"text": [
"Higher FPS doesn't mean slower footage. Time passes at the speed time passes. However, if you want to shoot slow-motion stuff, you need to shoot with a higher framerate or else the camera is not recording enough data for it to look good when you slow it down.\n\nSlow-motion stuff is shot at high framerates. It still records normal speed. But then, in editing, the footage is normalized to the framerate of the rest of the video, like 24 or 30 fps. If the footage is shot at 300 fps and normalized to 30 fps, you'll be watching it at 10% of the it's original speed. Specialized cameras like the Vision Research Phantom can shoot thousands of frames per second.\n\nIn video games, higher fps doesn't mean faster either. A second is still one second. However, there are more frames per second in 60p than in 30p so the movement appears smoother.",
"In the case of video games, fps refers to how many frames can be *displayed* in one second. The higher the fps, the more fluid motion appears.\n\nFor cameras, fps refers to how many frames can be *captured* in one second. \n\nLet's say you have a camera that can capture 240 frames per second. When the video is played back, it is typically played at at a much lower fps (30? 60?). Let's say you record one second of motion at 240 fps and play back at 30 fps. It will take 8 seconds (240 / 30) to show the one second of motion captured. Bam! slow-mo.",
"Because it's the difference between *taking* 300 frames a second and *displaying* 300 frames a second. (FPS = Frames per second)\n\nIf I *take* 3 seconds of footage I have 900 frames. Now I can display those frames any way I choose. If I throw them onto a 60 inch TV and choose to display my frames at 60 frames per second. I get 15 seconds of video. I could choose to put it on a fantastic monitor to display 900 frames per second, then I would only get 1 second of video. The latter would look 3 times faster, and the former would be 5 times slower.\n\nNow let's do the reverse. In a video game I have three seconds of game play. I want to *display* those three seconds in as accurate a way as possible. For best gameplay, I want to shove as many frames into those three seconds as my GPU and Monitor will allow. Anything longer than three seconds will give me lag, and anything less than three seconds... just isn't possible unless I can predict the future."
]
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||
bwixir | what is 5ge that at & t is offering and how does it differ from 5g? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/bwixir/eli5_what_is_5ge_that_att_is_offering_and_how/ | {
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"text": [
"5Ge is the rebranding of AT & Ts LTE evolution which is a quicker slightly more advanced LTE network. Real 5G is a giant leap ahead on technology. So the biggest thing is download speeds. 5Ge would be between 50 and 100 Mbps. Which is good but real 5G can be closer to 1000 Mbps. AT & T is hoping people will think it is 5G and sign on. Real 5G actually requires a new phone with a different antenna. Currently not a lot available.",
"The 5GE you are seeing is **purely a cosmetic change** to AT & T's current \"LTE\" system. Nothing has changed at all. Nothing. The change was purely branding/cosmetic only.\n\nIn fact, current mobile devices aren't even capable of working with the 5G portions of future networks, which just to be clear again, absolutely do not exist yet either.",
"Its a slightly more advanced version of 4G. The speeds aren't better but the network is able to handle more users and data. Its pretty much just a brand name."
]
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||
2kn8bh | why do some electronics make noise? | For instance, my computer screen (a Samsung Syncmaster PX2370) when is asleep at night, and the power light is flashing, i can hear the power slight almost making a high pitch sound everytime it comes on. Or anytime my flatscreen plasma TV displays pure white color, it almost makes a high pitch buzzing noise. WHY?! | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2kn8bh/eli5_why_do_some_electronics_make_noise/ | {
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"text": [
"Most noise from electronics (other than things with moving parts like a hard drive or a relay obviously) is from transformers. Any electronic device you plug into the wall has one, they are one of the parts required to turn the higher AC wall voltage into a lower DC voltage usable for electronics. So anything the device does causes electricity to flow through the transformer, as that's its power supply. \r\r\rA transformer is basically two coils of wire next to each other. Currents flows into one and acts as an electromagnet and makes a magnetic field. When this magnetic field changes, as it does because it is AC, it creates a current in the second coil of wire. While nothing in the transformer is supposed to move a lot, as you can imagine with magnetic forces inside and them changing 60 times a second (60Hz AC electricity) some vibration is created. This vibration then causes audible sound known as mains hum (mains is the name for the main power grid, in north america at least). \r\r\rAs for the devices you listed, this may or may not be the cause. Based on my knowledge of plasma TVs, white would take the most power, which would mean the most current flowing through the power supply and the most hum. Though you described it as high pitch, so this may not be it. I know old CRT TVs had high pitch noise (magnetic forces again, but much faster than 60Hz making very high pitch noises), but I'm not sure about plasma. \r\r\rYour monitor I'm not sure if I can say this is the transformer for sure either. I don't think a single LED would draw enough power to cause audible noise alone. The LED itself also would not make noise. There must be something else going on. ",
"This is attributed to coil whine, or switched circuit designs.\n\nWhen power is put through a wire, it generates a magnetic force. In certain conditions, that wire can move just like a magnet being attracted to something magnetic. The best example is speakers, electricity flows through them, and the magnetism follows around the wire and they move relative to a magnet and vibrate the diaphragm and produce sound. But this can also be unintentional. \n\nMany components and designs need a circuit to alternate or switch power on and off for them to work, transformers for example, do nothing of interest with a flat DC signal. Many designs chose frequencies you can hear. What you are hearing is that portion of the circuit physically vibrating, hence why it is often very subtle. "
]
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[],
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|
565yqz | why do things like splinters come to the surface after a while? shouldn't they stay in place given the size and shape? | [deleted] | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/565yqz/eli5_why_do_things_like_splinters_come_to_the/ | {
"a_id": [
"d8gqf8h"
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"score": [
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"text": [
"Your body hates foreign particles. Your body hates foreign particles so much that it has developed multiple systems to deal with them. When you get a splinter your body triggers an immune response known as inflammation. By changing the tissue size under the splinter it can push it up and out of the skin"
]
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[]
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|
dywvbe | - regression analysis. what does it show and how is it calculated? | Always been a bit confused with regression analysis and feel like I have read conflicting things regarding what R squared indicates and what a regression truly shows. Thank you in advance! | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/dywvbe/eli5_regression_analysis_what_does_it_show_and/ | {
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"**Regression analysis** -- and I will assume for most of this post that you mean Ordinary Least Squares (OLS, also called linear regression) is a way of taking a dataset with an outcome *y* and some number of input variables *x_i* and finding the line (or higher-dimensional thing) that is *least distant from every individual datapoint at once*. The idea is essentially that this line (or plane, other shape, etc.) is the best approximation of the true relationship (a function) between the inputs and the output based on the data set to which it is fit. Determining the *exact* shape of the line for a given dataset involves picking different coefficients (usually represented by the uppercase Greek letter beta or a b in social sciences, econometrics; or as a weight w in machine learning) that define the way a change in an input changes the output (e.g. in y = bx + e, for a regression with one input and one outcome, b is a number that scales the value of x to determine y). \n\nOther types of regression (e.g. logit/probit, multinomial, etc.) usually introduce some other transformation that alters the value of y for a given x and b. \n\n**R-squared,** the coefficient of determination, is a ratio of different errors that remain in the fitted model. In OLS, it offers an idea of just how well the regression line actually fits the data in terms of variation. A low R-squared indicates poor fit (i.e. with the data, the input variables do not account for much variation in the output). Higher values indicate progressively better fit, but as you approach the maximum R-squared value of 1 (it is a ratio, so it lies between 0 and 1), there is a risk of \"overfitting\" - basically getting a model fit so close to the data that the relationship between inputs and the output is difficult to characterize (imagine drawing a line from each point to the next as you move along the x-axis; this tells you nothing about an estimated relationship because it effectively eliminates variation). High R-squared values are useful in *some* applications (e.g. in finance, passive market-tracking funds want to maximize R-squared because that means they accurately track the market, which is the point), but in most regression analyses an R-squared that is close to 1 is a sign that something is not right.\n\n**As to what a regression model means?** It depends. If you fit a regression model to some data post-hoc (e.g. I download a dataset, read it into R, and fit a linear regression on things that seem related), then the coefficients (b) are just indicative of some possible relationship between the corresponding inputs and the output; strictly speaking, these are correlational but *not* causal in this setting. If you fit a regression model using data from a well-designed experiment, you can edge into making causal claims (e.g. \"The intervention to change *x* caused b change in *y*\"). The interpretation of the model is *highly* dependent on data and on the underlying theoretical motivation (i.e. why you think you should/not see a relationship between the variables in your model, based on an assortment of logic, prior research, etc.)."
]
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6zw0rh | when and why did art switch from a 2d perspective to 3d? | I am into art history but I still don't understand when and why art moved from a 2d flat perspective (Egyptian art) to 3D perspective (Renaissance Period). Anyone know the factors of went into this complete overhaul on how art was interpreted and who was responsible? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6zw0rh/eli5_when_and_why_did_art_switch_from_a_2d/ | {
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"text": [
"Some scholars now believe a major factor was invention of the *camera obscura,* a pinhole projection device which allows people to see an image of a place projected onto a flat surface. Advanced artists traced this image and figured out how it worked.\n\n_URL_0_",
"Alright, so I assume you're an artist as well if you care about art history. Remember how you used to draw things in kindergarden? It didn't look realistic at all right? But you got better and at some point someone told you about perspective and how you make all lines point at this one point in the distance. Consider then that this would actually be a hard thing to figure out for yourself if nobody had ever done it before. To understand why it looks better that way you need to understand that your eyes don't see a straight field of view but a cone of light rays that gets focused through one point in your eye and then projected onto your retina. This is of course a distorted way of viewing the world because an object of the same size that is closer to you will block a bigger part of your vision cone.\n\nIf you're an ancient egyptian and nobody even knows how our eyes work yet you wouldn't just randomly realize that the way your eyes have worked all your life is distorted and that there's a mathematical way to fix that when projecting objects on a 2D plane. It's just too complicated. I don't know who first figured it out but from then on it became easier to teach."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hockney%E2%80%93Falco_thesis"
],
[]
] |
|
9ar1yl | why do cell phones' internet work outside or in the car but not laptops'? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9ar1yl/eli5_why_do_cell_phones_internet_work_outside_or/ | {
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"text": [
"Different transmitter/receivers. You can get a usb adapter for a laptop that will use cell signals.",
"Cell phones use a data connection through cell towers, while laptops use wifi that needs to connect to a wireless router connected to the internet via an ISP (Comcast, etc.). ",
"Cell phones contain a small antenna, like you have on a car or an old radio and use that to connect to big telephone company towers and satellites. These connections allow information to be sent from all over to your cell phone. In addition to this special antenna chip, most cell phones also have another chip that helps them communicate with wireless internet (wi-fi) signals and not just ones from telephone companies. This is the same chip in your laptop, so they can both communicate over wi-fi, but most laptops don’t have the specialized cell tower chip so they can’t access the internet without being near something that sends out a wi-fi signal."
]
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a2nrm3 | are police allowed to lie in order to obtain information in the us? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/a2nrm3/eli5_are_police_allowed_to_lie_in_order_to_obtain/ | {
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"text": [
"Yup. Absolutely. The only thing they can't do is use violence (or threats of violence) to obtain a confession.\n\n\nIt's why if you're ever questioned by the police in the U.S. you should *not* speak to them.\n\nYou ask for a lawyer, and then say nothing. Especially if you're innocent.",
"Yes. Police can legally lie to get information. \n\nThey can say they have physical evidence, eyewitness accounts, and recordings. When they really don't. \n\n_URL_0_"
]
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[],
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"https://www.njmoorelaw.com/10-ways-police-can-lie-to-you"
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||
44gabr | why do humans mourn the loss of a loved one? is there a deeper sense behind it? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/44gabr/eli5_why_do_humans_mourn_the_loss_of_a_loved_one/ | {
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"Mourning is essentially a severe journey through the five states of grief - denial, anger, bargaining, depression, then finally acceptance. Sometimes people get stuck in one stage for days, or regress to a former stage, but eventually make it through. But you asked why. \n\nPersonally, I think we experience grief because simply, what else can we do? We live our lives in a day to day quasi state of control- you make your breakfast, drive your car, operate your phone, all of these things are you controlling an item to get what you want. And over time we kid ourselves.. Because when something entirely out of our control occurs, like death, we realize there is nothing we can do to reverse it, to get what we want, and our quasi state of control gets outted. Our ability to understand death is one of the most fundamentally terrifying aspects of human existence so.. Grief is the only thing we can do. Just my opinion..",
"Humans are social creatures, which is to say that almost every part of our life requires a social context. Obtaining food, shelter, raising offspring, self-care, and so on, occur within a social framework. When someone dies, there is a critical need to rearrange that framework in order to maintain its viability. \n\nMourning seems to play an important role in this reorganization. Those closest to the deceased enter a temporary state of diminished capability, requiring that the next degree of the group attend to them closely, creating both a more general awareness, and a sort of convocation in which adjusted roles can be considered and negotiated. \n\nAt the same time those belonging to that first degree of closeness become deeply introspective, allowing them to internalize the loss. Imagine someone who is socially dominant, and has lost a partner that protected them physically. Continuing as though nothing had changed might leave them vulnerable to attack by someone wishing to supplant them in the hierarchy. We could come up with many other scenarios. \n\nAdditionally, that introspection allows a process of consolidating memories of the deceased and their history, which may be important socially, and also in terms of maintaining important cultural knowledge that they held - techniques, stories, wisdom etc. This is also echoed in cultural practices such as eulogies, wakes, the jewish ritual of sitting 'shiva' etc. "
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62e856 | why did contact with the vikings not have the same effect on native american population that contact with europeans at a later date did? | After contact with Columbus and Europeans in the 14-1600's Native Americans lost massive amounts of people due to exposure to diseases they had no natural resistance to. Why wasn't there a similar effect when the European Vikings came to love settle in in North America. Wouldn't they have brought similar diseases with them? Wouldn't they have caused a similar effect?
EDIT. It seems like it comes to the point that Viking society wasn't dense enough to produce the plagues that the later settlers brought. I never would have thought about that. Thank you guys so much!! | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/62e856/eli5_why_did_contact_with_the_vikings_not_have/ | {
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"That assumes they had any significant contact with a group that then had significant contact (before dying) with more natives. Knowing the vikings it's also possible they were terrifying enough that the natives stayed the hell away. Remember the Europeans also brought horses, lots of people, and they intended to bring people and gold home. The Vikings were not thinking on that scale, but on a much more personal kind of scale. \n\nPlus, the vikings could have met some brutally stiff resistance, while the Europeans had firearms plate armor, and horses. ",
"I would guess the urbanization of the later European migrants meant they were more frequent and effective carriers of disease.",
"the explaination is in[ this interesting video](_URL_0_) from cgpgrey.\n\nTL:DW: Native americans didn't get sick from norse people for the same reasons europeans didn't get sick from native americans: \nWe had spread diseases because we HAD the diseases in the first place, which developed in highly dense population areas in XIII/XIV/XV century.\n\nNorse people in X century didn't live in highly populated areas and much more important, they were ~~much less~~ *fewer* people.",
"When the later Europeans came, it was settlement after settlement and that increased the exposure to various tribes. Also, later Europeans purposefully spread disease (smallpox blankets)",
"**It comes down to population density and contact.**\n\nThe kind of A-level diseases in Europe (smallpox, measles, cholera, typhoid, plague, etc.) that whipped through North America require a certain population density to become endemic, and Norse farms and villages didn't quite make the cut. Remoteness and lower population density than the 15th century Spanish made Norse sailors less likely to have the diseases to begin with, and probably less likely to survive and keep them going if they did catch them.\n\nThese diseases also require a pretty good population density to take off once they get to North America. Many areas of the New World had just that (Easter Woodlands, Valley of Mexico, etc.), but I suspect that remotest Newfoundland did not. The combination of distance from other folks and a complete lack of immunity meant that, if the Native Americans did get a disease from the Norse, the whole family/village/clan was likely wiped out before they had a chance to pass it down the line. Newfoundland was also pretty far removed from the intra-continental trade networks that linked many of the cultures further south, so were less likely to pass disease on through trade.\n\nMost of these diseases require physical contact or proximity to transfer. The Norse didn't stay particularly long, were limited in location, and a lot of their contact with the \"Skrælings\" was violent, so there weren't as many opportunities for disease to spread as there would be under the sustained and (violently) intimate contact initiated by the Spaniards and others.\n\nThis website has some interesting theories as well:\n\n_URL_0_",
"They very well could have spread disease. I know one very early account of the new world includes seeing smoke pillars dotting the shore as far as the eye could see from miles out from said shore. Before the classical Thanksgiving/Puritan settlement there were numerous prosperous tribes. I think Squanto may have been a \"survivor\" of one. My history is a bit rusty. \nKeep in mind that Native American/Vikings were not much for written history and also if \"History is written by the victors\" a lot of history has been erased.",
"Sort of an aside, but there's a pretty awesome movie that somewhat explores OP's question, called *Valhalla Rising.*\nBe prepared for some strange scenes, though. ",
"Europeans don't innately carry diseases - the Columbian Era Europeans were leaving crowed & unclean cities, crammed into crowed boats with livestock for 3 months. All it takes is one sick person to get on board and everyone else is at risk. Escaped pigs from Spanish explorers probably spread diseases quicker than humans.\n\nThe vikings were traveling comparatively short distances from Greenland, probably with no livestock. Trade routes may have been more connected further South compared to Newfoundland, so disease spreads quicker with sustained contact.",
"The account I heard (sorry, I don't have a source to cite, so take this as anecdotal if you want), was that the native population was far greater, and the vikings didn't stay for long for *their* safety. Then, supposedly a plague hit the natives, decimating the population (which never recovered), giving way for Europeans later. I also heard that because of the population drop, heavily deforested areas regrew, possibly causing a greenhouse-gas sink, which in turn contributed to a mini ice-age in Europe (afaik this climate even is documented, and the timing is right, but the connection is just a theory). Again, without a source this might all be fooey. But it makes for a good story.",
"Apart from what everyone else is saying about Europeans having much greater numbers, The Europeans also had a very successful strategy of making the native's believe they were friends by taking one of them in, showering them with food and gifts, and releasing them so they could tell the other natives how kind they were. Then they would steal there land with almost no resistance.",
"There are a number of factors. Most notably was the intention of the Vikings vs the Europeans. The timeline also plays a role. The Vikings were more concerned expanding trade, and least likely to explore violently because both the Vikings & Indigenous were Pagan. \n\nWhere as the European were as much concerned with trade as they were with Cheap Slave Labor for \"natural resources\". While disease is often touted as the cause of the huge amounts of genocides that took place, these diseases were often used as some early methods of chemical warfare. The Europeans used forced slave labor of the indigenous Americans (Central, Northern, & Southern) for gold, and then brought them over to Europe as slaves and oddities of the old world. \n\nIn short it was because of the vast differences in intenet and the time ranges that these interactions happened in.",
"You would also do well to remember that most vikings, especially the norwegian and icelandic ones, weren't usually out to pillage. That's somewhat of a misunderstanding.",
"Disease/plagues come from huge cities. Dont think the vikings ever had big cities full of animals, hence no plagues for the natives.",
"The Vikings had settlements in Iceland, Greenland, and Newfoundland. In Newfoundland they likely made contact with the Beothuk people. However, the settlement did not last for a long period of time and was abandoned by the vikings, likely due to the hostile nature of the Beothuk. Newfoundland is an island, so there wouldn't have been contact with others. I would assume these conditions would have not allowed disease to spread in the way that it did later. \n\nNow, move forward to the French, English, Spanish, we are talking about a much more large scale colonization, development of long term communities, and actively sending out missionaries and traders into Native American communities. So, much closer and prolonged contact over a much longer period of time. Combine that with the lack of knowledge about how disease spreads, lack of medical care for Native American, and general active disregard for the lives of the Native American. For example, as smallpox spread in Victoria/Vancouver Island, medical care was setup for white colonists, but Natives were moved, quarantined out of site, and denied medical attention. \n As the fur trade grew, more and more Native hunters/trappers became involved and gave up their traditional seasonal food gathering in favour of trading fur for European products. Traders went to them, bringing disease, or Natives went to the traders, became exposed to disease, and brought it back to their communities. Next, animals became overhunted which led to starvation. As people are starving, you can imagine that overall health drops and disease is able to spread even more. Finally, in some cases disease was spread quite willingly or purposefully. For example the trading of smallpox infected blankets to Native communities and so forth. \n\nHope that helps. ",
"That's easily stated. Check the relative industrial, agro and cultural level differences between the Norsk of the 9th C. AD versus the technical/cultural level of Western Europe in the 17th C., when the major North Am colonies were successfully started. The difference was huge.\n\n2ndly, the Norsk colonies were limited sharply by climate change. The 9th C. was the onset of the later medieval warming period, and ended in the 1200's when the earth began to cool off into the Little Ice Age, when the sun grew cooler for about 400-500 years. Consequently the Norsk colonies did not impact much of the more temperate zones of North Am, plus the fact very few persons were actually there, compared to what happened after 1620 all over the east coast of North Am, and into the gulf of Mexico shores.\n\nThat's the difference.",
"So, I'm sourceless atm, but I could probably find it, if given time.\n\n\nWhat I read was that the native americans had just gotten their ass kicked by their own plague, otherwise the European settlers would have met millions of angry natives. This tracks, mainly because of early accounts relating to manifest destiny. The settlers thought America was a paradise, since huge areas were cleared. They didn't think that someone had cleared all of it, because the amount of people required would have been immense, and they didn't find that many natives. \n\n\nIf you know what an eastern American forest looks like after hundreds of years of growth, then you know that a place to pull up a boat and start a colony on the east coast is almost ridiculously hard to find. Somehow, the settlers found large tracts of clear land with no population to support the actual clearing of that land, so they went right to \"God did it for us\" and skipped over \"Uh... maybe there were more natives at one point\"\n\n\nIt makes sense, I mean, natives had largely no metal working skills. They would have had very few permanent structures in an area that's almost entirely woodlands. They didn't use stones or quarrying skills to build houses, so again, no permanence. They used hides, strips of bark, thatch (ish), and longhouses, which would be \"Stack of logs thats called a deadfall\" when it decayed enough(maybe 10 years with no maintenence)\n\n\nUltimately, they had a high enough population to clear vast amounts of forest, but NOT a high enough population to stomp the settlers (although they had metal and guns, an arrow is still deadly, which the natives had) That means there was a huge population decline BEFORE the settlers got there, and the rest were finished off over the course of the settlements. By the time the settlers moved out into the interior, all trace of their civilization would have been lost. Population density spreads disease, and the natives had so few people that the settlers thought God cleared the fucking forest, so that's a pretty good indicator that they had high density and a disease as well.",
"It probably has something to do with four big differences between Norse Medieval contact and Renaissance Europe contact with the New World.\n\n**1) Norse contact benefited from a natural quarantining** In order for any disease to use Norse contact to get the New World it first had to travel to isolated communities in Scandinavia. Then it would probably have spend time wintering in the Shetland Islands or Dublin. Then it would definitely have to winter in Iceland. And finally it had to reach Greenland. At every stage of the way the Norse would spend time waiting out the worst of the weather for weeks at time. And even if a disease had jumped from a walrus ivory trader in Greenland to an Inuit, the Inuit would also introduce their own natural quarantining to any disease because of their well spaced apart settlements. Meanwhile Spanish contact came straight from crowded urban areas to the Caribbean (one of the most populated parts of the New World) within about a month a half. This was short enough time for a person sick with small pox or measles to have spread it to his crew and they and their trade goods to still be be highly contagious when they started interacting with North American natives. \n\n**2) Norse contact was much lighter** The Norse only established one failed village on mainland North America, and the population of Norse Greenland topped out at 10k at the most, maybe a similar sized population of Inuit nearby. Hispaniola, Spain's first colony, had a native population of around half to 1 million when founded and was tied by native trade routes through out the Caribbean. \n\n**3) Europeans were not as diseased when the Norse were visiting** The version of measles that that was fully acclimated to humans probably evolved around 1100 to 1200 AD. The Black Death did not come to Europe until 1346. Smallpox just reached Europe in the 8th and 9th centuries, but did not become widespread until the 16th century.\n\n**4) Norse may have been more xenophobic** There is some evidence that the Roman Catholic priests who where the primary owners of the Greenland territory, may have forced the population to stay away from the Inuit for religious reasons and order to keep their population under thumb so they continue to benefit from the walrus ivory (If the Norse had known the Inuit's survival tricks they would not have been beholden to producing ivory for trade) . As such, even if disease had made it to Greenland, the isolationist behavior of the Norse would have kept from spreading to the Inuit. Meanwhile the Spanish were f*cking, trading with, converting, and enslaving what ever natives they could find.",
"Vikings washed and groomed frequently. Europeans did not. Funny to think that the savage Vikings were actually more civilized than the Europeans in some very basic ways lol.",
"Vikings: oh look there's people here, lets trade/steal some shit then go home.\n\n\nEuropeans: oh hey look land with no civilised government.... DIBS!!!!",
"In the book Westviking by Farley Mowat, he traces the expansion of the vikings to North America. In the ninth and tenth centuries, Viking farmers were about as well armed and equipped as the natives of Labrador and Newfoundland. Spears, bows, and knives or a sword or two. \n\nThose guys were farmers looking for better fields and places to grow a family than the shores of Greenland or Iceland.\n\nSo the native population had the capacity to repel them and make life too difficult to bring in a harvest.\n\nAlso look at the Mini Ice Age from the 11th to 14th century where climate change made those latitudes pretty difficult for marginal human settlements. Very short growing seasons, and they had also murdered off a large proportion of the export resource of walrus skin and tusks.\n\nContrast this with religious fanatic europeans arriving with cannons and iron tools in great quantity. After the toe hold, the expansion and taking of native resources was unstoppable. The natives were not seen as fully human and entitled to 'rights' when there was no Geneva Convention on rules for civilized warfare.\n\nPlus with the Spanish it was a simple proposition, kill the men, then enslave the rest for workers in the mines, and take all the gold and other portable wealth away.\n\nIn the Americas it was more the idea of establishing the perfect society after over a century of European warfare over - religions all of them being a flavor of Christianity.\n\nThe smallpox and disease were incidental events, not policy, the Europeans had no idea about the germ basis of diseases, or where the black plague came from, even the idea of doctors washing before surgery is very late 1800's, after most cowboy moveies were shot. Doc."
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5u9xkp | why do schools, specifically public, not make math classes mandatory that involve finance, how to file taxes, economics, but will teach you basic calculus and trigonometry, which you will most likely never need to know? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5u9xkp/eli5_why_do_schools_specifically_public_not_make/ | {
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"Calculus and trigonometry are important stepping stones in advancing to important careers like engineers and scientists. The idea is that every student should have the option to choose such a career if they want to. ",
"Taxes are simply \"read and follow directions\". You should be able to do that long before high school. \n\nGeometry and trig teach critical thinking skills. It's not 'learn that opposite angles are congruent', it's \"learn how to apply logic to known facts to derive proof\".\n\nIf you don't think you need to know critical thinking skills, you are a fake news website's wet dream. \n\nAlso, accounting and economics classes are available. Don't blame the school if you don't choose to take them. ",
"There are a couple of reasons. \n\n* To use a physical analogy, the math we teach in school is more like weightlifting for your brain, vs the applied math in finance, econ, etc are more like learning a sport (so by learning geometry, algebra, trig, and calculus you'll be better equipped to succeed in fields using applied math later--for example the income statement is very close to the first derivative of owners' equity in finance).\n* The math required for most of those fields is just arithmetic (with a healthy application of logic and following directions). Balancing a checkbook and filing your taxes are tedious and high stakes not hard math. \n* You'll have many opportunities to use algebra (many areas in life involves lots of story problems common to almost everyone are those in cooking), possibly geometry (many crafts, but more importantly the logical applications of rules is very similar to proofs, etc), and calculus (calculus is the math of change and change is almost constant) in daily life. ",
"finance and taxes arent math, theyre just arithmitic and following instructions.\n\nI do think there should be classes for this stuff but it wouldnt be a math class.",
"Those are life skills, not math. Some schools do have life skills classes, our public middle school tried to do it in 8th grade and nobody had any idea what we were supposed to do with a ledger even after they explained. Some stuff can't be taught very effectively to students with no concept of a salary. ",
"To help us develop our critical thinking skills. Thinking about a problem in a reasoned, step by step approach: What do I know, what do I need to know, how does the information relate? What sound steps should I take to reach a solution?\n\nYou can apply these skills to literally any problem.",
"those are easily self-taught and not too hard to comprehend. Calculus? cant really be learned on your own and is needed for engineering an many other technical jobs these days. ",
"You don't attend public school to learn practical skills and trades, per se, because then why bother teaching dodgeball or poetry? You'll likely never need to know either of those things, either. This alludes to a greater purpose to the education material and process. You go to school to *learn how to learn*. It's not a mystery why they call class work \"exercises\".\n\nBut I'm not disagreeing with you, either. My high school taught some basic economics, at the very least, and I think we were better for it. Basic finances wouldn't be bad, either. At the very least, people should know how to calculate effective APR and compound interest, because high school students and young adults are stupid as shit when it comes to credit. I've literally heard people call it \"like free money.\"\n\nBut to pay taxes? That's a moving target - it's complex, different for everyone, and changes every year. In fact, too much of finance is a moving target that most things that make sense today might be garbage a few years from now. Before my wife transferred colleges, she had a finance teacher tell the class T-Bonds are a good investment; it's just dated, dodgy advice.\n\nAfter the last financial crisis, there was a bit more interest in pushing financial literacy, but people have largely already forgotten. You also have a problem where politics get involved in deciding the state curriculum, then you end up with state endorsed lessons cranking out children who believe in deregulation and self regulating markets.",
"How to file taxes can change every year. Trig and calculus won't.\n\nMore to the point, to understand things like compound interest, you need to understand exponential growth first, and not just grind a formula like a computing machine.\n\nEven if you do teach taxes, as a random assortment of uceless to students at the time which won't be used again for years, how many people will remember when they do need it?"
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3ct21b | why is it legal to be a prostitute in canada, but illegal to buy a prostitute? | It seems like it should be the other way around to me, right?
Edit: Thank's for all the great answers, I didn't consider the sex trade tying into that. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3ct21b/eli5_why_is_it_legal_to_be_a_prostitute_in_canada/ | {
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"It's to protect people forced into the sex trade. When prostitution is illegal, prostitutes are reluctant to report abuse for fear of being arrested, and have to rely on pimps to bail them out.",
"The argument usually is that prostitutes are often people who feel they have no choice---or who really do have no choice, because they are trafficked or threatened. And, because their actions are illegal, when they are further abused (say beaten up or robbed) they can't go to the police without risking their own freedom. \n\nBut, if you still want to deter prostitution because of how often it is forced---or if you think that buying a prostitute involves criminal exploitation of another person even if the prostitute is not themself a criminal---it makes sense to continue to make it illegal to use the services of a prostitute. ",
"Its a harm reduction strategy for the prostitutes. It keeps the act of prostitution illegal but opens up avenues of police protection for prostitutes in need. When being a prostitute was illegal the people who needed police help couldn't get it because they'd be immediately arrested for their profession. Now that the John faces the risks the prostitutes can call on public services without the fear of going to jail. ",
"It's a new wave of thinking on the matter that originated in some European countries.\n\nThe idea is that the act of soliciting prostitution is a violent act by (usually) a man in a position of power (he has the money) against the (usually) woman, who is powerless (she needs the money). The thinking goes that prostitution is not like other services because of the general taboos surrounding it, as well as the culture that drives women into the profession.\n\nWomen who are prostitutes are typically of low socio-economic standing and might have drug dependencies or some form of mental illness. By classifying these people as criminals, the idea goes, you are doing further harm and perpetuating a cycle that doesn't allow these people to properly seek help from society. Prostitutes, when treated like criminals, find it hard to get help for the myriad of other problems they generally face.\n\nIt being illegal to buy sex stems from society still seeing it as something that shouldn't be allowed, but charging those with the power, rather than those without it. Or so the theory goes.\n\nThere are other countries still, such as Australia, where it is legal to both buy and sell sex.",
"If a prostitute is being assaulted or stolen from, she does not need to fear prosecution from the police herself.\n\nIf a prostitute is being a nuisance then they could still be charged for other offenses (loitering, public indecency, something) but if she needs *help* she should not fear being arrested just for being a prostitute."
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1ck6ib | the hawk-dove game in game theory | pls | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1ck6ib/eli5_the_hawkdove_game_in_game_theory/ | {
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"Hawk-Dove is any scenario where each side has a choice between a passive choice or an aggressive choice, where the aggressive choice wins out over the passive choice, but both sides choosing aggression is the worst case scenario. The childhood game of chicken is such a game. Chicken is where two people move towards each other (on bikes as children, or theoretically in cars) at high speeds and the first person to swerve is the \"chicken\" and loses, but if neither one swerves they crash into each other. \n\nThis type of scenario happens frequently in the real world as well. For example the current situation in North Korea, with their aggression towards South Korea/Japan/US could fit (although the lead up to many wars fit the same pattern). Each side might push the other to try to \"win\", but if they keep pushing, both eventually lose (by going to war)."
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a6dh7r | why are sound waves, light waves etc. shaped like waves and not straight lines or any other shape | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/a6dh7r/eli5_why_are_sound_waves_light_waves_etc_shaped/ | {
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"I understand wavelengths and amplitudes but why are the shaped like waves ",
"Actually sound waves can have a wide range of shapes. [Such as these.](_URL_0_)\n\nSince sound waves are vibrations, the graph will always have an up-and-down shape of some kind.",
"First, sound wave doesn't look like a classic sinusoidal wave, Sound wave air that changes it's density. Density changes are caused by thing that makes a sound, for example, when you talk you blow air forward. If sound is loud that means that density changes greatly, if sound is high, it means that it chnages fast.\n\nMagnetic waves, gravitational waves are waves, because those waves are disorders in the fields. To say it simple, those are waves for the same reason that stone thrown in the water makes waves, it disturbs order.\n\nLight waves are the most complicated ones. Let me just say that you probably know that you probably know that light is a particle and a wave at the same time. We sometiomes \"use\"' straight line to represent light, because it also behaves like a particle. \n\nBut it also behaves like a wave. Why? We don't fully know, but possible explanations usually are based on some quantum effects. Let me just say that it's probably caused by the fact that you can tell precisely where particle is and how fast it is. You can know only one of this information. \n\nLet me know if I explained everything clearly. Feel free to ask more questions. "
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1csrsf | as a non-american, if cispa is ratified and legislated, then would there be reason to worry? | i'm reading about CISPA and how the american government wants powers to attack, censor and remove "cyber threats" and people are trying to start a whole bunch of protests about it including internet blackouts.
could CISPA turn into a serious global issue? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1csrsf/eli5_as_a_nonamerican_if_cispa_is_ratified_and/ | {
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"Provided a lot of websites are American or have American servers, those sites will be affected. ",
"i have the same question, but as an american",
"CISPA doesn't have anything to do with \"attacking\" or \"censoring\" anything. It's a privacy issue. It protects companies like Google/Microsoft from being sued by their customers if they hand over user data to the US government (voluntarily, they are still allowed to refuse), provided that the US government requested that data in the name of \"cyber security\". CISPA is not SOPA. They are both bad, but for entirely different reasons.\n\nAnd yes, if you are a non-American, but use services based in America, the same rules apply to your data.",
"CISPA doesn't have anything to do with attacking, censoring, and removing \"cyber threats.\" CISPA addresses the sharing of \"cyber threat information\" between two or more entities and the liabilities that come with doing so. The problem lies mainly in their broad definition of \"cyber threat information\" and the like. If you really want to learn about CISPA, I suggest that you [read it](_URL_0_::).",
"Potentially, yes, although not directly. Many smaller companies do not have local EU-based datacenters. Microsoft, Google, and Facebook, for instance, do have non-US datacenters for local users, but many do not have the capacity of the funding to do so. This means that non-US resident data may be stored directly by a US company.\n"
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72pk3w | why do lawyers recommend to not speak with the other party at all during a lawsuit? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/72pk3w/eli5_why_do_lawyers_recommend_to_not_speak_with/ | {
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"Because if you say something stupid to them, they can use it against you in court. The lawyer is trying to make his job easier and your case better.",
"because.....you failed at talking for the entire time leading up to the lawsuit. a lawsuit isn't the first communication between the parties. it's the LAST",
"Generally we recommend parties don't speak to each other because this keeps us out of the loop. If you got lawyers, then you probably need us in the loop.\n\nHowever, it is very common in civil litigation for the lawyers to set up a meeting between the clients to negotiate and talk things through. Often this is without the lawyers present to avoid the whole adversarial atmosphere.\n\nA large majority of civil litigation cases settle, and often because of meetings like this. \n\nThe parties will just report back to their lawyers on what happened, and the lawyers will confirm with each other formally on the settlement points and then deal with the formalities."
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emw9vw | do particles truly move randomly? | (Just a preface that I tried /askscience to see but it was a bit complicated for me)
In the question I mean: do particles (eg gas) move truly randomly or is there a method behind the "random"?
Thank you! | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/emw9vw/eli5_do_particles_truly_move_randomly/ | {
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"At small enough scales yes, particles 'move' randomly. But this isn't so much just how they move and more about existence itself. A lot of people will misconstrue the Heisenberg Uncertainty principle to be about measurement or some human influence but it is much more than that. The uncertainty in particle location and momentum, and therefore how it 'moves', is a fundamental property. It exists because there isn't exact information about the location or momentum. \n\nThat isn't to say we cant say on average how things move, we do that all the time. But at the smallest scales movement isn't a defined property.",
"I think “probabilisitcally” is a bit better than randomly here in the following sense:\n\nThere are rules that govern the notion of particles. However, these rules can only affect the probability of particles being in certain places or moving in certain ways.\n\nSo while we can’t talk about deterministic/exact location and movement for small particles, it’s not true that it’s entirely random.\n\nThe fact that the world you see is pretty consistent is evidence that overall, the particles tend to behave in a certain way i.e. the most probable one.",
"This is a weird one to answer because its not really a yes or no answer. From what I understand it has to do with whether or not we are looking at them. This is an old video that explains an experiment that threw the theories behind it on its [head](_URL_0_). Forgive the crappy animation but the idea is the still cool.",
"Simple answer: nobody knows, but there are a number of arcane\n\ntheories (consisting of dense mathematics) that try to answer this."
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7un01w | what are the main tasks of diplomats? how can i become one? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7un01w/eli5_what_are_the_main_tasks_of_diplomats_how_can/ | {
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"The U.S. Department of State offers five different career tracks for diplomats. An individual interested in becoming a diplomat must be a U.S. citizen and be between the ages of 20 and 59. A college degree is not necessary; however, possessing a college diploma and having the ability to speak a foreign language improves an individual's chances of being hired.\n\n[Source](_URL_0_)",
"They typically study foreign affairs, politics, and the culture(s)/language(s) and history of the region they are interested in.\n\nYou can get an idea of what sort of diplomatic careers there are at the State Department website (US DoS): _URL_0_ \n\nThere are also military attaches who may be Foreign Area Officers (military commissioned officers with specialized language and culture training) or other personnel who apply for a Military Attache Service. \n\n",
"I've taken the Foriegn Service test twice, and passed both times. When you pass, you're given 5 or so personal questions to answer in long form. If they like your answers and resume, then you're invited to D.C. to stand an Oral Review Board. If you pass that, then you're given a job offer in whatever carreer path that you chose.\n\nBoth times that I passed the test, I didn't make it past the personal questions."
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9agkf3 | how do monetary printing presses put different serial numbers on every single bill when they are flying down the line at blistering speeds? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9agkf3/eli5_how_do_monetary_printing_presses_put/ | {
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"[They use numbering blocks](_URL_0_), wheels with numbers which can be automatically set and stamped into the bills. As they are mechanically actuated this can take place extremely quickly and with extremely low chance of error.",
"the blank media goes thru several steps to print the image portions. one of the steps is a press component that looks like a date stamper that a legal/acccountant would have, with all the digits on a reel and gears to advance the digits. it works the same way your car's odometer works. "
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6qi35d | why are camillia bowles and kate middleton duchesses and not princesses? | Can someone also explain the difference between a duchess and a princess (if there is any). | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6qi35d/eli5_why_are_camillia_bowles_and_kate_middleton/ | {
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"To be a Prince or Princess you must be the child of a Monarch. Being the Consort (wife) of a Prince is not enough. They are Duchesses because the are the wives of Dukes (who happen to also be Princes). Duke/Duchess is the highest rank of Nobility that is non-Royal in the British Peerage system, though members of the royal family are often given this rank in addition to being a Prince or Princess. \n",
"To elaborate a little bit... the spouse of a royal Prince/Princess becomes a Princess/Prince Consort upon marriage as a courtesy title.\n\nCatherine styles herself Duchess because it is a \"higher\" rank than a mere Princess. Compare this to the wife of Prince Michael of Kent. She styles herself Princess Consort, because she lacks any other British title (although by birth she is a Baroness).\n\nBoth Camilla and Catherine can become Queen Consorts upon their husbands' accession to the throne. However, Camilla in particular said when she got married that she would take the title of Princess Consort only out of respect for Diana (but there's nothing binding her to that).",
"It's slightly complex. This is close, if I think, but maybe not exactly right.\n\nThere are basically two kinds of princes: A Prince of the United Kingdom is an honor granted by the sovereign to her sons and grandsons (and now, great-grandsons). They are addressed by their first names, and a 'the.' \"The Prince William,\" \"the Prince Charles.\"\n\nSeparately, there is the title of Prince of Wales, a peerage customarily held by the heir to the throne, as it is now. The holder is addressed as _____, Prince of ______. \"Charles, Prince of Wales.\"\n\nTo make it more confusing, royal family members are often given other titles, usually named as Dukes when they get married.\n\nThe wife of a peer is may use the feminine version of her husband's title: the wife of the Duke of Somesuch is the Duchess of Somesuch, the wife of the Prince of Wales is the Princess of Wales. That does not extend to the wife of a Prince of the United Kingdom, since that's not a peerage, and the title is linked to their name, only. The wife of the Prince Billybob is \"the Princess Billybob.\"\n\nAccordingly, Diana was both \"Diana, Princess of Wales\" and \"the Princess Charles,\" and used the former. Camilla is, actually, also Camilla, Princess of Wales, and \"the Princess Charles,\" but chooses not to use describe herself as a princess, because it's so strongly associated with Diana. Since her husband is also the Duke of Cornwall, she calls herself the Duchess of Cornwall.\n\nPrince William is *not* the Prince of Wales, he's only the Prince William. Kate would have to be \"the Princess William\" to use that title, which isn't favored. But he is the Duke of Cambridge, so she is the Duchess of Cambridge. When the Queen dies, and Charles becomes King, William will become the Prince of Wales, and then she will be Catherine, Princess of Wales.\n\n"
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a3gt0b | how can overthinking lead to failure? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/a3gt0b/eli5_how_can_overthinking_lead_to_failure/ | {
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"It can lead to indecision. In order to even try to succeed at something, you have to be able to act. If you never act, you've already failed.",
"Over thinking leads to indecision. Indecision leads to self doubt. Self doubt leads to over thinking. It just creates a cycle. ",
"Overthinking is the path to the dark side. Overthinking leads to inaction. Inaction leads to stasis. Stasis leads to suffering.",
"Silvia Plath addressed this perfectly in The Bell Jar:\n\n“I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor, and another fig was Europe and Africa and South America, and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Attila and a pack of other lovers with queer names and offbeat professions, and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldn't quite make out. I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn't make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet.”"
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66rc1z | what is the thing they use to trigger an explosive in cartoons? | I'm talking about something like this: _URL_0_ I have some experience with explosives, but never encountered such a thing. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/66rc1z/eli5_what_is_the_thing_they_use_to_trigger_an/ | {
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"That is a blasting generator. Back in the days before microelectronics it was not that easy to generate a high voltage current from batteries to set off electronic blasting caps. So you would have a small hand operated generator to generate the current you needed to set off the blasting caps.",
"It's called a dynamite plunger. You press down on the handle, which creates an electric current, which sends a charge down the wires to trigger the explosive. \n\n_URL_0_\n\n",
"Its called a plunger detonator, or a plunger box detonator. \n\nEdit: From _URL_0_ -\n \n > It is a generator, like in those old crank phones. Except, the one in the plunger is a bit beefier for more current. The shaft has teeth on it, these rotate a gear inside the box, which is connected to a shaft on which is a coil of wire. Around the coil are magnets. The rotating of the coil between the magnet poles makes an electric current (these things will bite you if you are not careful) which then goes out to the detonator cap. The cap blows, setting off the high explosive of your choice. Modern detonators are spring loaded, and much smaller. You can see the A-Team using them, a little box with a Tee handle. wind up the spring, and let it go. "
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8r83nj | why do i, after having graduated years ago, still have nightmares about missing school examinations? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8r83nj/eli5_why_do_i_after_having_graduated_years_ago/ | {
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"It's basically very very very light PTSD. \nPeople think only war or some other really terrible things trigger it, but it's a spectrum like all mental stuff.",
"I have a follow up question. \n\nFor people that have these dreams, was school stressful for you? \n\nI've never had a nightmare about school before. But I never found school particularly stressful.\nI've had nightmares about my first job . And that's been almost a decade ago. ",
"You're not alone. I have similar dreams with a slight variation. In them I manage to convince myself that I \"forgot\" to take an advanced class but still for some reason had my degree. I need to take this advanced class or I'll loose my degree and my job. I start going to the class and everything feels familiar, only to have it dawn on me that I've completely forgotten all of the material that advanced class is based off of, leaving me completely unprepared for lectures and homework. Sometimes my dreams skip right to the moment where I have to take the final exam that determines my ultimate fate and livelihood. In every case, I wake up still panicked, thinking I need to get to that class or study. Shortly after, I remind myself about how illogical that is, because if I was missing any requirements for my degree, my university would not have granted it to me. After all, that's more money in the form of tuition that they could have brought in! \n\nSome of the other posters pointed it out and I agree, it's likely a form of minor PTSD. For many of us, college is the best shot we have at obtaining a comfortable lifestyle in a job that won't physically kill us. In a way, it can seem that college professors and deans have ultimate arbitration in our future success. Of course, that's an anxiety-inspired statement, and like all statements of that kind, it's irrational. There are plenty of ways to be successful and obtain a comfortable lifestyle that don't involve college.\n\nEdit: Adding PTSD stuff"
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6imro9 | why does jello get squishy when refrigerated in its liquid state? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6imro9/eli5_why_does_jello_get_squishy_when_refrigerated/ | {
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"Jello is in a liquid state only when it is initially made, it's a chemical process with the gelatin which causes it to get jiggly."
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znlfp | why are some words in english considered "rude" or "obscene" but their synonyms are not? | ie. Poop vs Shit or Crap
I know it varies by region/culture but that's about it. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/znlfp/eli5_why_are_some_words_in_english_considered/ | {
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"Because people decided they were.",
"Language exists to express ideas. Sometimes the idea that you want to express is that you are angry and disrespectful. In English we have special words to express this. (In Japanese you can conjugate verbs into a disrespectful tense and it has a similar effect to inserting swearwords into english). On the other hand sometimes you want to talk about poop or sex and not be disrespectful so we have synonyms that express that. ",
"One theory is that it boils down to prejudice against vulgar language. \n\nNotice that the rude words are mostly of old English origin, words like shit, cunt and dick, whereas the polite terms are of French or Latin origin, such as faeces, vagina and penis. \n\nEngland's elites used to speak French or Latin. They were deemed the \"polite\" society. The poor were deemed to be vulgar, hence \"rude\" or impolite.",
"I actually just learned this myself. What happened was that in England they spoke with germanic derivitives and then some french king took over and all of the nobility started speaking french. While all of the upper class would say coppulate instead of the german fuck. its all about class",
"Social constructs, like all words. Society \"decided\" (I'm not using that words to talk about a democratic or aristocratic conscious decision, but more in a memetic sense) that we need some words to be rude. We have constructed verbal taboos for the sole purpose of breaking them. By breaking them, we indicate that we are in an extreme situation. If *all* words were considered equally polite, then how would we communicate distress? We couldn't say fuck, shit, cunt, or nigger, since those wouldn't have such strong meaning. This is the same with insulting others. We need a way to tell someone \"I disrespect you\" verbally, efficiently, and quickly. If we didn't have \"fuck you\", what would we do? We could say \"I disrespect you\" but that hardly has the same punch.\n\nThis is why all, or nearly all, cultures have swears and slurs. Basic memetics. We need taboo words to communicate powerful emotions.",
"You also have to consider that many of these probably originated as euphemisms. ",
"Why just english? That happens in almost all languages...",
"If you want a true 5-year-old explanation then this won't help; but, Stephen Pinker wrote a really interesting article on this that you might find informative if you're looking for more detail.\n_URL_0_",
"Here's a pretty good run down:\n\n_URL_0_\n\nInteresting background info:\n\nIn 1050, with the Norman Conquest of England, the language of the aristocracy and court became the Latin based French, instead of the German based English. The English tongue was considered base or vulgar or profane (interesting that our word \"vulgar\" in English, means both common [unrefined] and nasty). Most English \"cuss\" words are simply the Germanic/English base word which, if re-stated with the Latin/French base word, would be perfectly acceptable in mixed company.\n\nThe very thing that makes them \"profane\" is that they are from the common tongue of the peasants instead of the court tongue of the aristocracy.\n\nIf I describe an object or action with the German based word, I'm cursing; if I describe the same object or action with the Latin based word, its all fine and dandy. Examples:\n\nFuck - Copulate\n\nShit - Defecate\n\nPiss - Urinate\n\nCock - Penis\n\nPuke - Regurgitate\n\nHell - Hades (Greek)\n\nButt/Ass - Derriere (a generation ago butt was vulgar)\n\nIn another example, we see the same force at work regarding food. The meat as it is in the field is called by the Germanic based name; the meat as it is served at table is called by the French based:\n\nCow - Beef\n\nPig - Pork\n\nDeer - Venison\n\nAll this to say that \"bad words\" are culturally based. What is considered a bad word today won't be tomorrow, and vice versa.\n\nOn the one hand, we are cautioned in the Scripture to avoid coarse speech. On the other hand, God doesn't give a fuck about what words we use; words are words. Everything is contextual. If I use \"foul\" language around friends and in a non-condemning way that's perfectly fine. If I use the same \"foul\" language in some social settings, it would be scandalous, and as a representative of Christ, I ought not bring scandal. In other words, field and court still exists, even in our societies. C.S. Lewis describes a true knight like this: \"The knight is a man of blood and iron, a man familiar with the sight of smashed faces and the ragged stumps of lopped-off limbs; he is also a demure, almost a maidenlike, guest in hall, a gentle, modest, unobtrusive man. He is not a compromise between ferocity and meekness; he is fierce to the nth and meek to the nth.”\n\nEven the notion of taking the Lord's name in vain (and breaking the 3rd Commandment [or 2nd, if you're Roman Catholic]), has to do not so much with vulgarity as with manipulation. The person who says, \"I'm a good Christian, you can trust me,\" and then sells his customer a piece of crap for twice what it's worth, is taking the Lord's name in vain more than the guy who stubs his toe and inadvertently blurts out, \"God damn, that hurt!\"\n\nThere is a time and a place for a good cuss word.",
"I don't have an explanation from myself, but two Steven Pinker books I've read touch on this. One is The Stuff of Thought, which is about language and cognition; the other is The Better Angels of Our Nature, about the decline of violence. The latter isn't really relevant, but the idea that words that might offend people become less accepted as societies encourage people to be more concerned with the needs of others fits in with his thesis.",
"I've always thought this was somewhat ridiculous, particularly for people that do it for what they see as religious reasons (IE saying \"fudge\" instead of \"fuck\" or \"shoot\" instead of \"shit\".) Yup, you definitely fooled God, way to go boss. ",
"This is exactly why I don't understand religious people and their problems with \"swear words.\" Saying \"heck, gosh, darn, frick, eff, geez\" is still putting the idea across to the receptive audience, ergo you're no better saying that than the actual words. So, grow up.",
"People often attach two sorts of meaning to words: the thing the word is referring and an attitude towards the thing. Poop is more neutral. Shit, on the other hand, contains both the object that is poop and the attitude of looking down at the object in some manner.",
"You know, I've noticed that the word \"cunt\" is used a lot in Europe and Australia, (that road rage video was epic in the use of \"cunt\") men calling men \"cunts\" and weirdly, I am not offended by it at all, but if I hear an American man call an American woman that, I lose my mind! ",
"I remember someone saying it was like the difference between saying someone was in a fatal car accident and someone describing said accident in detail. ",
"There was a whole thread on this a while back.\n\n_URL_0_",
"But, I mean, doesn't every language have \"rude\" and \"polite\" versions of certain words?",
"There's been some [research into cursing and swearing](_URL_0_) in recent years. Apparently every culture has had curse words, and curse words work a unique part of the brain separate from other language. If the words we now consider obscene became acceptable, other curse words would appear to take their place.\n\nIn Middle and Early Modern English, the most common curses were based in Christianity and especially in blaspheming Christ. \"Zounds\" was a euphemism for \"God's wounds,\" and \"Gadzooks\" meant \"God's hooks,\" referring to the nails on the Cross. More recently, of course, we've become less uptight about religion and talk of sex, body parts, and excretory functions have filled the gap. Even more recently, we've become very sensitive to sexism and racism, so words like \"cunt\" and \"nigger\" have become the strongest taboo.",
"\"Cuss\" is \"curse\" with a speech impediment.",
"There was a great post on this in /r/Christianity a few months ago, I'll quote the first part as it has more to do with the topic at hand, but if you want to see the second part, which goes more into the religious aspects, [here's the link.](_URL_0_)\n\n > In 1050, with the Norman Conquest of England, the language of the aristocracy and court became the Latin based French, instead of the German based English. The English tongue was considered base or vulgar or profane (interesting that our word \"vulgar\" in English, means both common [unrefined] and nasty). Most English \"cuss\" words are simply the Germanic/English base word which, if re-stated with the Latin/French base word, would be perfectly acceptable in mixed company.\nThe very thing that makes them \"profane\" is that they are from the common tongue of the peasants instead of the court tongue of the aristocracy.\nIf I describe an object or action with the German based word, I'm cursing; if I describe the same object or action with the Latin based word, its all fine and dandy. Examples:\nFuck - Copulate,\nShit - Defecate,\nPiss - Urinate,\nCock - Penis,\nPuke - Regurgitate,\nHell - Hades (Greek),\nButt/Ass - Derriere (a generation ago butt was vulgar)\nIn another example, we see the same force at work regarding food. The meat as it is in the field is called by the Germanic based name; the meat as it is served at table is called by the French based:\nCow - Beef,\nPig - Pork,\nDeer - Venison,\nAll this to say that \"bad words\" are culturally based. What is considered a bad word today won't be tomorrow, and vice versa.",
"Well if you're taking it from a British point of view, the ultimate one is probably fanny/cunt. Fanny is mildly offensive but not really, it's just seen as generally silly, whereas cunt is widely considered to be the most offensive word in the English language. Just to clarify for those who haven't caught up - fanny means vagina in the UK.",
"I live in a former british colony. Here English is unofficially the official language. People hold English in high prestige. It is a symbol of high education and class. So, the words for a lot of things in the local language are considered vulgar and the English words (some time even words like \"shit\" that native speakers considers vulgar) are used as a more \"formal\" alternative. \n\nAlso, i would say that words that have been used as obscenities for some time will become vulgar and people would start using other words; Until enough people start using that word as an obscenity. ",
"Words are this way because of the connotations we put on them. Every word has a connotative meaning, and a denotative meaning. A denotative meaning just means the actual dictionary definition of the word. A connotative meaning means that there are feelings or implications attached to the word. \n\nFor instance, let's use the word \"Home\". The denotative meaning is, the place where you live or reside. The connotative meaning is comfort, security, and family. \n\nI once heard a foreign student use the word \"Accomplices\" in the place of \"Friends\" in reference to them participating in an activity together. Although accomplices are friends who you do things with, it has the connotation that you are doing something illegal.",
"I am late to the party, here, but a lot of the answers so far are not very accurate. To over-simplify a complicated question:\n\nVulgar words have mostly always been vulgar. What is \"new\" is the commonplace use of \"clean\" words to describe vulgar things/functions, and this is mostly due to societal changes and more widespread literacy and familiarity with science and medicine.\n\nTo illustrate (and again, I am steam-rolling over a lot of nuance and hundreds of years of history in a reddit-length over-simplification): 200, 300, 400, 500 years ago, let's say (over-simplifying), people did not talk about \"pooping\", \"vaginal secretions\", or \"sexual intercourse\" in polite society. It wasn't that the *words* were offensive or vulgar, the topics themselves were out-of-bounds (sort of). It's kind of like, you wouldn't talk about \"fisting\" or \"double-penetration\" at dinner with your in-laws, even though those are not dirty words. It's the *topic*, not the verbiage, that is taboo.\n\nWell, going back 200 years or whatever, \"fuck\" meant fucking, but \"sex\" meant something like what we now call \"gender\". You would not have said \"I had anal sex with my girlfriend\", anymore than you would now say, \"I had anal gender with my girlfriend\". You would have said, \"I fucked her arsehole\", and saying it would have been received much the same way that it would be received today: with revulsion and offense by her father, with ribald laughter by your drunken buddies, and with something in-between by her girlfriends. \n\nMeanwhile, still talking some hundreds of years ago, doctors and the like obviously needed to have some way to talk about putting a penis into a vagina, and the term was \"sexual intercourse\" (a modern equivalent euphemism might be something like \"gender interaction\"). I.e., \"sex\" didn't used to mean \"sex\", it meant something like \"gender\". \n\nBy way of illustration, you might imagine a typical 2012 family dinner: saying, \"that's a load of shit\" might not necessarily be welcomed in polite company, but saying \"that's a load of human excrement\" might actually be *more* offensive, since it is more explicit than the \"vulgar\" figure-of-speech.\n\nTo back up a few hundred years: words like \"shit\" and \"fuck\" were the regular everyday words for the things they meant. And they were not things that were discussed in polite company, or around women and children, they were \"vulgar\", \"coarse\" things to talk about. \n\nStill back 200 years ago, scientists and doctors used big, 50-cent euphemisms such as \"sexual intercourse\" or \"excretion\" to discuss fucking and shitting in medical journals and the like. Not because they expected women and children to read their papers at the dinner table, but for the same reasons that modern scientific journals do not say \"subject reported shitting an average of 1.5 times per day\" or \"control subjects fucked an average of 2.3 partners per year\"... it means the same thing, but they are supposed to be scientists, after all...\n\nFast-forward to roughly the early 1960s... a number of things have made previously-verboten topics the subject of dinner-table discussion, at least among the liberal intelligentsia... Freud is old news, in this circle. Stuff like feminism and the Kinsey Report are new and exciting, important topics of cocktail-party discussion in Manhattan, Los Angeles, London, Paris, etc...\n\nFashionable, educated people are now talking openly and frankly about things like \"sexual intercourse\", \"masturbation\", \"homosexuality\", \"incest\"... 100 years prior, a 60-year-old coal-miner in West Virginia at the time might have been vaguely aware that \"sexual intercourse\" was a fancy word for fucking, but might have guessed that \"masturbation\" was some kind of steam-engine, that \"homosexual\" was some sort of prehistoric man, and that \"incest\" was a kind of bug...\n\nIt wasn't that there were \"nice words\" and \"naughty words\", it was that there were naughty *topics* (such as shitting and fucking), and necessary clinical *euphemisms* used by scientists and doctors and lawyers and such...\n\nSo anyway, sometime starting roughly post WWII, and peaking roughly around the early 1960s, there was a kind of cultural turning-point where naughty *topics* became acceptable discussion in mixed-company, at least among the liberal intelligentsia. Clinical/medical/scientific-sounding euphemisms were still employed, but it became acceptable to talk about \"sexual intercourse\" as a thing that human beings do, even in non-medical circles. \n\nOnce that threshold was crossed, i.e., once it became acceptable to talk about \"shitting\" and \"fucking\" under other names, the hypocrisy of euphemisms rapidly eroded. Popular movies, music, fiction, and culture began using the older, \"vulgar\" anglo-saxon words for the same topics, and the official and unofficial censors were hard-pressed to explain why \"sexual intercourse\" was acceptable, but \"fucking\" was not. \n\nIn short, the older, more direct words still carried the stigma of being vulgar and unfit for polite conversation. The clinical/medical terms were never intended to part of everyday conversation, but once they became such, a certain kind of hypocrisy or double-standard was exposed...\n\n\"Fuck\" is not a dirty word because it's a bad word for \"sex\". Instead, \"sex\" is a modern corruption of the old medical euphemism for \"fuck\". \"Sex\" kind of leap-frogged over \"fuck\" and became the shorthand word used in polite company, for a topic that was not supposed to be discussed in polite company, back when the word was \"fuck\". \n\nSame with stuff like \"excrement\", \"erection\", \"anal intercourse\"... it's not that those are the \"nice words\", it's that those are the clinical euphemisms for things people weren't supposed to talk about in mixed company. The old words, the real words, have kept their association with vulgarity, while the medical euphemisms have become everyday vocabulary. \n\nHope that makes sense. ",
"Personally, I don't find any words offensive. Its the intended meaning behind the words that tends to offend me.\n\nSomeone could say \"fuck\" for emphasis, or exclamation, and I couldn't care less; but when used as an insult it has a whole new meaning.\n\nI'm actually quite interested in the fact that some people are inherently offended by a specific word, regardless of the meaning or intended meaning behind it. This word is \"cunt\", I use it just about as often as i use any other curse word (which is fequently) but its the only one people seem to consistently find offensive (for in my eyes, no reason.).\n\nEDIT:\n\nIf anyone can provide some insight into while \"cunt\" is far more offensive, to a far greater number of people than say \"fuck\" i would be very interested in reading your response."
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1w5d48 | if ancient civilizations are buried so far under ground, is the earth getting bigger with each year? | Why are ancient cities so far under ground? Are we sinking or is the Earth gaining width with each year? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1w5d48/eli5_if_ancient_civilizations_are_buried_so_far/ | {
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"Things are moving around the surface. Take a bottle of sand, put an action figure on top of it, and shake the bottle. You're not adding sand, but the figure will settle below the lighter particles.",
"I have always wondered a similar question regarding unknown super duper ancient civilizations. Like a billion or more years ago could their have been a creature that used tools , built a home of some kind, and then died off and been recycled beyond any hope of discovery?",
"I'm not sure if I really have the information to accurately answers this, but I do have some idea.\n\nOf course, the first thing we need to think about is which ancient cities you're talking about. Depending on where they are, ancient cities have been buried in many different ways. Ancient desert cities sink into the sand; ancient cities found in jungles and forests are buried under the plant life that grew, died, rotted and became the foundation for the next generation for years and years and years (on a smaller scale you can see it happen to neglected gardens); there are many that have been buried under the dust from a nearby volcano (my personal favorite version of buried cities because of the way the ash preserves everything); and for the most part, the rest of the ancient cities are buried by people from a) abandoned cities that become easy garbage dumps, or b) They are simply built on top of (If I recall, Rome is a good example of that). \n\nAs has already been said, the world is moving, and I'm not just talking about the continents. The deserts are always shifting, dirt is washed away with each rain, and even people move and rebuild. Somethings get buried along the way, some are swept away, and the rest crumble. If it weren't for the fact that that these cities became buried, they might have had the 2 latter fates and we would have never known and wondered about them."
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4rcl7l | what is the difference between physics and chemistry? what separates them? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4rcl7l/eli5_what_is_the_difference_between_physics_and/ | {
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"True ELI5:\n\nPhysics - > \"Why the apple fell from the tree.\" \n\nChemistry - > \"Why the apple turned brown after a while\" \n\nPhysics talks about movement and energy in macro levels.\nChemistry talks about the small particles(Atoms/Molecules/Ions) that make up things and how they react with each other. ",
"Physics is probably wider in scope, covering the behaviour of systems that chemistry simply doesn't care about either as they are far smaller or far larger than chemical systems. But there is an overlap in the way the two fields are approached, some common methods and calculations, and some knowledge required by both -- for example, both chemistry and some fields of physics require some understanding of how temperature affects the behaviour of systems with large numbers of particles; these days, both also require some understanding of quantum mechanics, particularly in how it determines the behaviour of the outermost electrons in atoms/ molecules.\n\n"
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pbn80 | how does a phone on speaker transmit your voice but not the other end of the conversation. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/pbn80/eli5_how_does_a_phone_on_speaker_transmit_your/ | {
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"You'll have to clarify this one. It doesn't make much sense at the moment.",
"Because the phone is able to remove the output signal from the input signal. Noise cancellation. ",
"You can think of the phone having two lines, one that's coming in carrying the callers voice, and one that's going out carrying your voice.\n\nWhen the callers voice is coming out of the speakers the microphone listening for you voice also hears it. But the phone knows that it should take sound that it's putting out from the callers voice and subtract it from the noise it's receiving from your voice.",
"Sound is made up of waves of energy. When waves intersect, they can exhibit constructive or destructive interference. When the high energy peak of one wave hits the low energy trough of another, the two waves cancel out (this is destructive interference). \n\nThe speaker on your phone knows what wave it is putting out, and the microphone knows what it is getting in. There is a chip in the phone which subtracts the outputed wave from the inputed wave. This creates destructive interference which \"crosses out\" the other end of the conversation.",
"Basically, check out this [diagram](_URL_0_). What it's showing is that two identical but ‘opposite’ signals will cancel each other out and result in no signal at all.\n\nYour phone can compare the sound coming from your speaker with the sound coming in from the microphone and turn one of them ‘upside down’ (polarity reversal if you want the proper term) so that the words coming out the speaker cancel themselves out but leave the rest of the signal intact.\n\nIt's one of the times when noise cancellation is useful - a lot of the time, it can be frustrating when signals we *do* want cancel each other out.",
"You've probably heard that sound is what happens when the air vibrates. Technically, sound means \"fast changes in pressure.\" Pressure is either positive or negative, never both. \n\nOne thing that's very easy to do with sound, once it's been put into a computer, is to \"flip\" it upside-down, like a picture of a mountain range -- every peak becomes a valley. The cool thing is, you can then make the sound go away by playing back both at the same time -- ever time the first sound tries to make a peak, the other sound makes a trough, so there's nothing left.\n\nYour phone obviously knows what sound it's making, so it can very easily take whatever it's hearing, add a flipped version of its own sound, and end up with just the sound that wasn't coming from itself -- your voice.\n\nNow, this process isn't perfect, since the phone's sound will be very, very different once it's bounced around the room and come back, so there are a few more tricks the phone can do -- like noise gating.\n\nNoise gating means that everytime the phone talks, it stops listening to itself for a very, very short period of time. That way, it won't record itself. It also does the reverse -- whenever you talk, it lowers its own voice so that it doesn't try to speak over you. The cool thing is that you barely notice this, since your hearing kinda works like that anyway.",
"A chunk of the people's answers in here are correct. The only way to avoid a loopback from a speaker is to identify the voice and remove it. How to do this can vary, but a basic answer...\n\nFor an ELI5... Think of a jump rope being waved up and down. Normally you see those waves go all the way to the end of the rope. If you've ever had someone move the rope on the other end, you may recall the waves in the rope doing some crazy things. If they were to move the rope exactly the same as you do, when they meet in the middle, they'd actually cancel each other out.\n\nNoise cancellation does something similar to this. The phone memorizes the last few sounds it heard, then takes the new sounds and asks itself, \"gosh, part of this sounds familiar!\" and takes the part it's heard before (aka your voice), and subtracts it.\n\nELI21 - Sound waves are saved as digital points on a phone, using an Analog to Digital Converter. To remove noise, you need to identify the noise somehow, then mathematically subtract it from the new signal. Since voices are measured in both frequency and magnitude, removing a sound of a particular frequency from a voice call isn't as destructive as it might sound. Ex. A tuner on a stereo. This removes/amplifies frequencies it receives.\n\nIt's all a rather fascinating subject, feel free to PM with any specific questions."
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9ql962 | why is price a function of supply and demand? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9ql962/eli5_why_is_price_a_function_of_supply_and_demand/ | {
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"If you make more money this tomato season, you can now buy more land to grow more tomatoes next year. Then your supply will match the demand to re-normalize the pricing. ",
"If you have nobody that needs what you sell, you might be able to act like that. It's a free country, you don't have to make more money.\n\nLet's extend your analogy. I run a ketchup factory in your town. I like to buy your tomatoes, they make good ketchup. If you are out, I have to get them from a farmer two towns over, and it costs me gas to go and get them. Even if that farmer's price is the same, my cost is price + gas. So if the new guy wants to buy tomatoes, I can save money if I offer you a little more to sell to me instead of him. Without tomatoes, I have to lay off my workers and default on my loans, so I'm motivated. If I can't pay you more, I start looking into paying a hitman to deal with the other guy.\n\nSince society can't have tomato users shooting each other in the street, a different system was selected. It's called supply and demand, plus tomato futures contracts and all that other commodity pricing stuff."
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39sm7q | why can't my conscious mind communicate with my body on some important things? | For example, if I have a severe allergic reaction to a peanut, why can't my brain just tell my body: 'It's a peanut, chill your beans.' What prevents communication between the two systems and why? I get why you wouldn't want to have full conscious controls of all your systems, but I don't get what prevents there being a kind of 'manual override' system. Also, people claim to be able to moderate pain and heart rate through meditation - would that imply that it is possible to control these things with enough practice? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/39sm7q/eli5_why_cant_my_conscious_mind_communicate_with/ | {
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" > I don't get what prevents there being a kind of 'manual override' system\n\nTry evolving something like that. Evolution is incredibly complex and with no single conscious involvement in the process. Unless you could find a time when it could evolve and it did bestow some great survival qualities, it will never happen."
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4n1w42 | why do movie previews often show scenes that were deleted from the movie itself ? | I've seen this happen so many times that I have to ask. I'll watch a preview of a movie on TV or at the theater, and then when I go to see the movie, one of the scenes from the preview isn't even in the movie itself. What the heck ?
Examples:
**Big Hero 6:** Preview had a scene where armor was put on the inflatable guy, and then explodes off him. Not in the movie.
**Iron Man 3:** Preview shows Iron Man jumping off a building saying "You complete me !" to Pepper Potts. Not in the movie.
**Trainwreck:** Preview shows Amy Schumer asking her sister "Did you put a sweater on your husband so no other women would want to have sex with him ?" Again, not in the movie.
**Underdog:** Preview shows the dog saying "I am underwear ! I mean, underdog !" That was only in the movie in the blooper reel.
Why ? Drives me batty to be honest. That line from Trainwreck was what inspired me to go see the movie, and it wasn't even in the movie itself. Go figure ! | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4n1w42/eli5_why_do_movie_previews_often_show_scenes_that/ | {
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"These previews are released before the movie is complete. They *think* it will be in the movie, but there's no guarantee that it will be. "
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73nk79 | how does gravity relate to the atmosphere. | I am currently doing a lab, and found the acceleration due to gravity on the hypothetical planet is 2.23 meters per second squared. Now I have to write something about what I can conclude about the atmosphere of this planet. I know that air particles in the atmosphere are attracted by gravity, but I am not sure what the general picture looks like. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/73nk79/eli5_how_does_gravity_relate_to_the_atmosphere/ | {
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"Well, we know that gravity has to hold down an atmosphere, or else it'll be stripped away. We also know that lighter elements (like helium) aren't held down enough in our own atmosphere, so how strong gravity is apparently matters.\n\nIs this hypothetical gravity stronger or weaker than ours? Would you expect the atmosphere to be thicker or thinner? How does it compare to other planets without an atmosphere like Mars? Does this gravity seem strong enough to hold down an atmosphere at all?",
"I already mentioned this in the thread below, but I'm going to mention it here so OP can see it. This seems like a very misleading question. You may want to mention Venus to your instructor, as it has lower surface gravity than Earth, but has an atmospheric pressure 92 times greater than the sea level pressure on Earth."
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87r3l1 | what happens in our bodies during the acclimatization process? | Our bodies constantly adapt to handle temperatures in summer/winter, how does that process work? And can the body adapt to extreme cold and extreme heat at the same time? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/87r3l1/eli5what_happens_in_our_bodies_during_the/ | {
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"At altitudes over 3,000 meters, people are exposed to hypoxia, a condition in which the body is exposed to air with low levels of oxygen. To counteract this deficit, the heart and breathing rates get faster. This alone is sufficient to increase the amount of oxygen in the body for a short period of time. For longer amounts of time, this adaptation is not sufficient and the increased work rates start posing significant risks.\n\nAcclimatization is a biological process to create more red blood cells and increase the flow of oxygen in the blood. This makes it possible to normalize the heart rate and regulate hyperventilation to a certain extent. If a person spends several weeks above 4,500 meters, the percentage of red blood cells in the blood can more than double. \n\n_URL_0_\n\ncheck this site for more",
"Cell membranes are made up of different types of fatty acids. Some fatty acids can be packed more than others, therefore affecting their melting point. Think of butter and oils; butters are mainly solid (compact, saturated fats), while oils are mainly liquid (less compact, unsaturated fats). Now our cell membranes must maintain a proper fluidity to function, so they have the ability to change the types of fatty acids over time. When it is cold, the cell membrane is consists of more fatty acids that compact less. Think of how hard butter is when it is cold; now imagine your cell membranes are too hard! When it is hot, less compact fatty acids create a membrane that is too fluid. This would cause an improper shape, so the membrane begins to incorporate the compact fatty acids. So basically, hot — > more compact fatty acids; cold— > less compact fatty acids. "
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4zdjkm | how come the 4x100m relay world record (37.10s) gives a faster time than the 100m world record (9.58s) multiplied by 4? this gives each runner an average time of 9.275s, faster than any 100m ever ran. how is this possible? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4zdjkm/eli5how_come_the_4x100m_relay_world_record_3710s/ | {
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"In the handoffs runners have already started running and don't need to start from 0 mph. The fact that they don't need to accelerate as much cuts quite a bit off their time.",
"The faster part of the 100M is the end. It takes time to get up to speed - acceleration is really hard. So...on the 400M, you have 3 100M sections where you don't have to accelerate. This more than makes up for the slightly diminished top speed.",
"Ever watched a relay? Besides the first runner, they all get a running start before they take the baton. In a 100m race, the runners start from a dead stop and have to get up to speed.",
"The slowest part of the 100m is the beginning, when they start from a stationary position.\n\nIn the 4x100m race, the slowest part of the 2nd, 3rd and 4th runner's 100 meters overlaps with the previous runner who is coming in with the baton. The baton is then handed off at speed.\n\n",
"Each runner after the first is running (up to) 140m. \n\nRunners receive the baton while running, and continue into the \"passing zone\" after they're \"done\" to hand off the baton. \n\nThis means all their acceleration is finished and they don't have to launch themselves out of the blocks, which is relatively slow and uses a lot of energy.",
"The fastest person in the world today is Usain Bolt - he can run 100 meters from a stationary start in 9.58 seconds. He set that time in 2009 and during that race he traveled between the 60 meter and 80 meter markers in 1.61 seconds which is 44.7 km/h or 27.8 mph, the fastest anyone has ever run.\n\nIf he was allowed a running start and went on to run the whole race at that speed he would finish in 8.06 seconds. That's 1.52 seconds faster than his standing start record. In real life it's not possible to run quite that fast over the full 100 meters - Usain also holds the record for the fastest electronically recorded time for a 4 x 100 leg at 8.65 seconds.\n\nIn a 4 x 100 relay three of the four runners in each team get a running start and have an extra 20 meters to get up to speed before their 100 meters starts. The first 10 meters of that are purely for acceleration, the next ten are for handover within the first runner's 100 meter distance.",
"As everyone else has said, it's the running start. It also explains how the 200m world record is 19.19s (only a shade over double the 100m WR, and is less than double the 100m OR of 9.63s). ",
"Everyone talking about the running start meaning you're already up to speed, which is true, but it also removes reaction time to a starters gun for the 3",
"I'm confused by reading all these posts. Is it because it's a running start?\n",
"When you hand off the baton, you have to time it correctly so that both runners are at their top speed right at the moment that the baton changes hands. \n\nThe slowest point of any sprint will be the start. Think of the baton as the \"runner\", not the athletes themselves. The first runner will have to accelerate but once they're at their top speed, the baton isn't likely to slow down from that speed until the end of the race.",
"The 4x100m relay world record is 36.85s, not 37.10.\n\nThe 37.10 has been beaten a couple of times actually.",
"One thing people aren't mentioning is that it's not just the handoffs, it's the fact that the runners know exactly when to start running so there less reaction time as opposed to a normal start which the runner can't anticipate. This is why in swimming relay times are often fast as well. ",
"They get a running start. How is this not extremely obvious?",
"Really dude? Three of them get a head start running.",
"It's all about the handoffs. Only the first person has to come off the blocks; every handoff is made at almost full speed, essentially cutting out the acceleration time when starting to move from being still. ",
"ELI5: You know when you play mario kart and your second lap is faster than your first because you are already at a high speed going across the starting point? \n",
"Running start. Any half competent sprinter runs the second 100m of a 200m faster than the first 100m even though he's slowing down over that distance",
"Every runner except the first gets a running start. They have ten meters to pass the baton. ",
"Running at Bolt's top speed (44.7km/h) for the full 400m the time would have been 32,20s.\nAccelerations and curves don't help.",
"Because runners 2-4 don't receive the baton (relay stick) while stationary. They start running in the passing zone, which means they're already close to their top speed when they pass their 0m line.",
"Since this is an ELI5....You time the baton not the runners. The goal is for the baton to never lose speed. \n\nSo...the baton travels faster than the 4 fastest sprinters in the world running 100 meters each because the baton doesn't start from a complete stop 4 times, only once.\n\nEveryone else has clarified how splits (individual times are measured), but it's really all about watching the baton. \n",
"Because all of the relay runners, except for the one who starts the race, get a running/jogging start. You can cover a distance much faster if you get a running start than you can starting from a dead stop",
"Cause you have to accelerate from zero. Look at the 200m world record and compare it to the 100m world record. OP's mind might explode.",
"How the f**k has this got so popular?!",
"It take time for anything with it's own propulsion system (human, animal, car, plane, rockets) to accelerate to top speed, only the first person must spend time accelerating, the three other team mates are allowed to catch up to speed prior to passing the baton, decreasing the time of the over all race. ",
"They are already running by the time they get handed the baton. Rather than 100m when they're standing still. ",
"Running start. The relay team members don't start from a standstill like the 100m runners do.",
"It's because the 2,3,4 racers are not starting from 0! They all get a running start which shortens the time their 100m took. It takes a while to accelerate to their top speed but runners 2,3,4 are starting at full speed!"
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179wiw | the shreds of skin that i get sometimes on my cuticle | You know those little shreds of skin that disconnect from your cuticle? HOW DO I STOP THEM DEAR GOD THE STINGING? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/179wiw/eli5_the_shreds_of_skin_that_i_get_sometimes_on/ | {
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"I know exactly what you're talking about. Don't know what causes them or what the most effective way to prevent/treat them is, but *for me* cutting it as close to the skin as possible with a pair of nail clippers works well. Try to peel one off, and, well... It might not stop coming off for a long time. ",
"Are you referring to [hang nail? ] (_URL_0_ nail) Wikipedia says they can be prevented with moisturizing of skin. "
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aqwn0o | why is a 12 lead ecg so named? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/aqwn0o/eli5_why_is_a_12_lead_ecg_so_named/ | {
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"Those are not leads. Those are electrodes. Leads are the views of the heart, 1, 2, 3, avr, avl, avf, v1-6",
"6 across you chest are unidirectional. One limb is a ground and they don't care about it. The other 3 limbs read between each other, so you have the vector from R arm to L arm, R arm to leg, etc. This give you 6 on the limbs plus the original 6 that are unidirectional. "
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c8i6lu | how does instinct work? how does an organism know how to do something without learning it from something else? | Thank you everyone! Such amazing responses, didn’t expect the post to gain traction like it has. From what I’ve gathered, the answer isn’t simple haha and it is somewhat philosophical by how the question is interpreted. But thank you, I’ve been given a lot to ponder | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/c8i6lu/eli5_how_does_instinct_work_how_does_an_organism/ | {
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"I'm no expert but I imagine it works like a neural network. Parents pass down a basic neural network from birth that new information constantly updates as we learn more about the world. I imagine the initial setup of the neural network is our instincts at birth and those initial connections are not random but set by something natural selection deemed advantageous.",
"I probably shouldn't be saying anything on this subject because I am not educated in the area but Its not really known. They are starting to theorize that DNA might store some type of memories. Like I said its above my head I am just rambling BS that I have heard from others.",
"Yeah I guess I can kinda wrap my head around natural engraved constant instincts such as breathing coming from DNA but just intrigued as to how something knows what to do later on in life when the situation occurs e.g a turtle or salmon knowing how to navigate back to its birth grounds \n\nEdited: said can’t instead of can",
"There’s parts of your brain that are genetically wired. It kind of has a hard coded structure and purpose, independent of your life experiences.\n\nYour cerebral cortex is a general purpose brain power section. It can learn to do things and is meant to be reprogrammed.\n\nEvolution shaped certain instincts. Eg the turtles that, for some random genetic mutation reason, returned home to spawn proliferated over those that didn’t. The people with phobias of snakes and spiders. Etc.",
"If one cave man has the instinct to pet the tiger, he'll die not making (anymore )babies. If another cave man has the instinct to kill the tiger, he'll be alive to mate. His offspring will instinctively want to kill the tiger.",
"Everyone is missing an extremely important distinction between \"DNA\" and the expression of that DNA. ALLIRIX alluded to this but I'll go into more detail.\n\nWe have a ton of DNA, many times we have multiple copies of traits that you may have learned in school are dominant and recessive. Well we also have a vast amount of DNA that is not \"turned on\" or expressed. These pieces make up an incredibly complex ecosystem of traits that can be turned on or off throughout an organisms life in reaction to external stimuli. A great example of this is Jews that survived the Holocaust. If we simply went the evolution route we would say that people who are able to survive famine better would be the most likely to survive and reproduce. What we actually see is a change in genetic expression of how their metabolisms reacted to food.\n\nEpigenetics is such an amazing study that we still know very little about. But one thing that is very impressive is the ability to change the expression, or in simplified terms \"turn on or off\" specific traits. While we simplify this in middle/high school science and say dark hair is a dominant trait while light hair is recessive, there are many traits which are controlled by multiple pieces of DNA which combine to create an outcome (or in this case a protein) that causes certain physical or mental manifestations of said information.\n\nEpigenetics is so curious that we can actually change the expression of our DNA simply through thought. Now this seems like some crazy witchcraft but there are studies showing things like meditation, saying positive things about yourself and the way we treat others can physically change our expression of our own DNA (which may be more complicated as these actions also reduce stress and increase oxytocin levels which could be causing or compounding the changes in expression).\n\nNow the kicker, epigenetics is also a really great tool in genetic modification because instead of adding or removing DNA, which comes with a slew of ethical issues and is very difficult to do to EVERY cell in the area you wish to effect, you can simply turn on/off the genes that are already there to cause your body to change/react/suppress certain processes or traits that may not be beneficial (such as allergies or susceptibility to disease etc.)\n\nI originally learned of epigenetics in my botany classes and many plants have the ability to grow in completely different morphological forms based on their environment. My professor compared it to people who could get extremely dark from sun exposure. We all have these abilities that we don't really see as epigenetic expression but it's there. When you go to the gym often and yearn for that feeling of afterglow you get from working out, when you find your love for cooking, when you learn to play an instrument, when you spend time with loved ones. Everything that happens in life is constantly effecting our expression of genetic material that is already inside of us.\n\nWe all understand that we pass down physical copies of our DNA but scientists are starting to show more and more that we actually can pass down our epigenetic expression of that DNA as well as in the example of Jews that survived the Holocaust above. Recently there has been a lot of discussion on the effects of PTSD and anxiety on epigenetic expression and children of parents who had either of the aforementioned issues are more likely to have it as well. Interestingly enough, before having children if you seek help and treat these issues with counseling and therapy you can prevent the passing of this trait (or so scientist theorize based on the limited data and studies so far).",
"Organisms are algorithms. There are parts of these algorithms that are triggered by different stimuli and therefor enable the organism to carry out the intuition without even knowing why. \n\nIt is your instinct to reproduce, your body tells you to reproduce in many ways and makes it difficult for you to ignore the innate desire to have sex. Human babies also instinctually find their mothers nipple after they are born. You lay the baby on the stomach and it will wiggle up to a nipple to start feeding.\n\nThere are spider species (and other insects) that after mating surrender themselves to their mate to be eaten. One spider a long time ago had an ever so slight mutation that made the spider chill out long enough for the female spider to eat him after sex. Because that mother had plenty of food to stay alive long enough to birth the next generation of spiders those genes were very successful overtime until eventually all spiders in that species had those genes. \n\nThe spider never thinks about any of that and has no idea why he lets the female eat him.",
"I always wondered how birds manage to migrate thousands of kilometers , reaching a precise location, without having any experience of it.\n\nis this related to epigenetic?",
"simple example right now baby turtles follow the light of the moon reflected in the sea when they hatch to get to the ocean.\n\nNow lets go back before any such behaviour happened. The baby turtles would go to random directions when hatching.Only those lucky to get to the water would survive. \nThen a mutation happened that baby turtles were attracted to light. Those who had it were way more likely to get to the ocean so spread the gene. \n\nNow how can you code for something to happen, not that complicated just when they saw a light the brain rewarded them with serotonin or some similar neurochemical. so the baby's were chasing the high :) \nNow this behaviour doesn't have to persist , it just need to be active at the beginning of their life then it can be inactivated. \n\nThis is a simple example, but you can build upon it, like the magnetic field leaves an imprint on a baby so it knows to return to the same beach to lay eggs instead of searching for other more dangerous places.",
"Simplest example: Look towards a light. How do you know to contract your iris to reduce the amount of light entering your eye not to be blinded?\n\nYou've just experienced a very base instinct. It's hardcoded in your brain, it just happens automatically, you may or may not be aware of it but this is how it works.\n\nWant some instincts that are easier to perceive? Stand on the edge of a tall building. Your self-preservation instinct kicks in, you must actively fight the need to step back from the edge. Similarly, take a sharp object and think about stabbing yourself with it. You won't, that's not just logical reasoning, that's the instinct that prevents you.\n\nBreathe some dust in (say, try to eat a spoon of cinnamon) - and you won't be able to resist the instinct of coughing.",
"Consider this: would it be confusing if a line of dominoes fell after I pushed the first one? No, of course not. Over time, evolution has built certain \"lines of dominoes\" into living organisms. In humans, for example, we'll recieve an input of stimuli (a loud noise for example), and our built-in response mechanism will be triggered. Hormones like adrenaline are released, which causes our muscles, organs, etc to behave differently. A similar thing happens when you touch something hot: the nervous system is set up with a conditional, \"if the nerves in my hand send up a pain signal, then my arm and hand will pull away\". You don't even have to think about doing it, the system in your body is built with that conditional.",
"So this is basically evolution that happens not over long periods of time like 10s of thousands of years but within one generation? This is actually quite frightening. Especially that a parents trauma can affect someone on a genetic level. So theoreticaly (as far as we know with our limited findings) even if someone has the best parents, can develop problems b/c said parents hadn't dealt with it when their child was conceived? God, now I definitely will never have kids.",
"So to add something people aren't going much over: \n\n\nMechanically speaking instincts manifest as an 'emotional' response to specific stimuli. This can be anything from anger to a feeling of wanting to move certain muscles. \n\n & #x200B;\n\nThe key point is that intrinsically instincts do not typically have any active \"thought\" behind them, put your hand near a spider and your brain doesn't automatically think a specific thought like \"Spider's can be toxic so I should move my hand away\", instead you just get a general feeling of nervousness at being close to it motivating you to pull away. Thus while they strongly motivate to engage in certain actions (move your hand away), this is not necessarily going to be reliable or consistent, especially in more complex minds. Humans in particular can often come to interpret the feelings our instincts produce in a wide variety of different ways, e.g. the same feeling produced by something \"dangerous\" can be a deterrent to some people, but can be interpreted as thrilling to others. You can even train how you view these emotions, such as putting your hand around spiders a lot until you get used to the nervous feeling and stop interpreting it as wanting to pull away.\n\n & #x200B;\n\nThing's get especially fascinating around sexuality but that's a more intense topic.",
"This question can be answered from several different perspectives. We have a pretty comprehensive answer from the perspective of genetics, but there is also cognitive science. \nHugo Mercier and Dan Sperber have a fantastic book called _The Enigma of Reason_ which I highly recommend and is really worth a read.",
"Instinct is a bit of a vague word that is generally avoided in the behavioural sciences. A more appropriate term for the kind of feelings/thoughts/behaviours that people often call instinct is \"species-typical behaviours\". \n\nEach species has a unique toolset to deal with different situations and the composition of these toolsets are often decided genetically. It depends on which situations actually occur in an individual's life whether the genes responsible for guiding specific behaviours are actually triggered.\n\nYou might see species-typical behaviours as a network of responses that helped an individual's progenitors to survive, and through their survival those responses are passed on. The more certain behaviours contribute to a favourable evolutionary outcome (survival, procreation, the survival and reproduction of one's offspring) the more they will be embedded in these \"go-to\" responses to certain situations for a species.",
"Instinct is wired into your genes and the interplay you receive from the environment. It’s a complicated question sure but it’s also as simple as saying your genes and environment generate cues that create said behavioral reaction and that behavior was selected via evolution. You can talk about epigenetics and literally any concept in biology to link it to instinct but that would just be putting your head up your ass. Instinct is wired by your genes to react to a stimuli that was selected for by evolution."
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a4cvap | why did it take over a year to convict the man who ran his car into people in charlottesville? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/a4cvap/eli5_why_did_it_take_over_a_year_to_convict_the/ | {
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"Because we value due process and its important that all the steps are followed\n\nIts far more difficult than \"show the video and convict\" because there are many degrees of crime and intent matters. The state must *prove* that the accused did what they're being charged for and that the charges the state picked are appropriate. A car hitting a crowd doesn't mean that it was that person driving the car or that they had the intent to kill people when they drove into it. Those aspects both require far more than just \"Show the video and convict\"\n\nThe long legal process often seems bulky and inefficient but that is actually good. Quick and callous handling of trials for \"guilty\" people results in quick and callous handling of trials of people who aren't actually guilty of the crimes they're accused of. The slowness is there to try to find the truth and avoid imprisoning innocents if possible.",
"The wheels of justice grind slowly in the U.S.\n\nMost murder trials take many months to reach the courtroom. The police may continue to investigate well after a person is indicted. There are lots of pre-trial motion hearings, the discovery process, extra time to prepare for death penalty cases. Very few murder trials make it to court in less than a year.\n",
"All sorts of things can makes these cases take longer to finish than you might think. First, the court schedule might be full. Even when both sides are ready to go the next time that a courtroom and judge are available might be months away. Second, in high profile cases the prosecution is going to be *extra* careful they've got everything perfect before they go to court. Similarly, the defense might ask for delays as well to get their side ready or even just to let the memory of the event fade from the minds of potential jurors if you think there's no chance of getting people that never heard of it. There might be attempts to change the venue in there as well.",
"IANAL but given that the standard in criminal trials is \"beyond reasonable doubt\" you really need to cover all the bases. \n\nBasically any possible explanation has to be ruled out. Are you *sure* his brakes didn't fail? Are you *sure* someone behind him wasn't pointing a gun at him? Are you *sure* he wasn't just a passenger in the car and the criminal driver slipped out into the crowd?"
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5pxci1 | why is it that birds can fly with wings and humans can't? | Why can't we just build wings and lift off like birds, they make it seem so easy.. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5pxci1/eli5_why_is_it_that_birds_can_fly_with_wings_and/ | {
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"Too heavy and our arms are not strong enough.\n\nNote that flying birds have MASSIVE chest muscles relative to their size. These are used to flap the wings.\n\nAdditionally, they are very light weight, with adaptations such as hollow bones.",
"Birds are very light. They have hollow bones, even. In order to fly, you need to generate enough lift to offset your body weight. Humans are very heavy, and the kind of wings you would need to generate that much lift would be insanely large and unwieldy. ",
"Flying is a lot more work than it looks like. For once thing, the size of wings you need increases exponentially with body mass. You'd need about a 20-foot wingspan to achieve very basic flight as a human, and that's assuming your wings weigh 0 pounds. 40+ feet is a more reasonable number.\n\nFlapping wings is a LOT of work - for most flying animals, the pectoral muscles which flap the wings are around a third of their body weight. If you consider a wingflap to be about an equal amount of effort to a pushup, well... imagine doing pushups for several hours, continuously.",
"A) Birds are extremely light and fragile. Their bones are hollow, which cuts weight and makes flight easier. But it also makes them very easy to injure. Humans are built for physical combat and are thus sturdier, but this also makes us heavier. We would need bigger wings than a bird of equal size would.\n\nB) It takes more than wings to fly like a bird; it takes feathers. It looks like they're just flapping their wings up and down, but each flap comes with complicated feather movements. They have to make sure they maximize their push on the down-flaps, but not push themselves downwards on the up-flaps. If you were to build wings for yourself, you wouldn't be able to control the feathers like this, so you wouldn't be able to fly.\n\nC) Even with their light weight, it takes a lot of force for birds to lift themselves off the ground. As such the biggest muscles in their body by far are the chest muscles; human chests are not strong enough to keep us aloft. Humans are built for running, so our biggest muscles are in our legs - you would have to design a system whereby you flapped with your legs somehow."
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9t6q3f | how does orbit happen so frequently? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9t6q3f/eli5_how_does_orbit_happen_so_frequently/ | {
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"There is rarely anything perfect about it. An object has to be going at a sufficient (not perfect) speed at a sufficient (not perfect) distance to orbit another object. Orbits are almost never circular, they are almost always elliptical. Even the Earth's orbit around the Sun varies by more than 3 million miles."
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c8psgz | activated charcoal food | I've seen a lot of cool looking black foods made with activated charcoal. The comments sections are always full of helpful people saying 'Don't eat that! It will make your meds stop working!' Ok, good to know. But does activated charcoal have adverse health effects for a person who isn't on any continuous medication? All my searches keep coming up nothing but med interactions. I understand how that works by reading the same copy/paste articles over and over trying to get a more specific answer. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/c8psgz/eli5_activated_charcoal_food/ | {
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" > Activated charcoal is safe for most adults when used short-term. Side effects of activated charcoal include constipation and black stools. More serious, but rare, side effects are a slowing or blockage of the intestinal tract, regurgitation into the lungs, and dehydration.\n\nSo, as with most things, short term you should be fine. But probably not the best idea to do it long term.",
"Activated charcoal is good at absorbing small organic molecules, which is why people would be concerned about it interfering with drugs taken orally. I believe it would simply pass through you normally, but I still wouldn't make a habit of consuming it regularly.",
"It's highly porous and absorbs a range of stuff in your digestive system, from fats and vitamins, to your meds. Because your meds are a prescribed dosage, if you consume charcoal which then absorbs some of your meds, your body will not absorb the meds and you won't get your prescription. It's impossible to know exactly how much will be absorbed by the charcoal, so you can't just double your dosage to be able to eat charcoal food. If you don't get your prescription, you'll get adverse side effects.",
"Activated charcoal is indeed used as a way to effectively dilute any poisons before it gets fully digested. What makes it \"activated\" is that it have gone through a process that increases the surface area of the coal by several orders of magnitude by creating lots of tiny pits in it. This causes the charcoal to become more like a sponge and will work as a very good filter. The charcoal itself does nothing to you and will just pass straight through your digestive system and end up more or less intact in the other end. This is why it is used as a general treatment to poisoning as it does not require any examination of the patient and does not come with any complications.\n\n & #x200B;\n\nI am not sure why you would put activated charcoal in your food as I have not heard of this before. I can not see much culinary use as it does not taste very good or alter other aromatic molecules. It might be used as a filter during the cooking process, for example it is used in both water and smoke filtration. However it would not do much good in the food itself. It might be used in an attempt to loose weight. But you need to be very careful with this. Eating activated charcoal might filter out some of the nutrition better then other and cause an unbalanced diet. So even if activated charcoal does not have any direct effects on your body you should be careful about long term use."
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22j8zf | how do some strains of marijuana get their sweet smell/taste such as root beer, or blueberry? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/22j8zf/eli5_how_do_some_strains_of_marijuana_get_their/ | {
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"Terpenes. \n\nExample, limonene is found in the rind of the lemon, making it smell, well, lemony.",
"Terpenes, or terpenoids are just one class of compounds that give that smell/taste. Other compounds, such as lactones, can also give that smell.\n\nSource: I work with flavors and fragrances. The isoprenoid pathway is really cool at making these compounds."
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2chgio | when i press the inner corners of my eyes, what is the fluid i feel draining in my nose and the back of my throat? | This happens frequently when I apply pressure to the inner corner of my eyes. I have searched this every which way I could think to, and yielded no results. Sometimes this is rather uncomfortable, and so I am curious if this is a normal occurrence and, if so, what causes it. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2chgio/eli5_when_i_press_the_inner_corners_of_my_eyes/ | {
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"Man I sat there for a good minute trying to get this sensation. ",
"I think you may be defective. Sorry to have to break it to you. ",
"If your sinuses are draining like that when you apply pressure, you may have some serious sinus problems. Go to a nose and throat doctor (not a normal doctor, these guys are nose and throat specialists). ",
"Yeah, not normal, dude.",
"Because you are pushing on your Ethmoid Sinuses, which drain into the sinuses of the nose, which drains down your throat. The fact it only happens sometimes would probably have something to do with how much fluid is in your sinuses.\n\nSource: _URL_0_\n"
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3okg50 | what exactly does it mean to have your parking validated? | Title says it all. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3okg50/eli5_what_exactly_does_it_mean_to_have_your/ | {
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"Basically, it means a business pays the city money in exchange for you to have free parking (obviously assuming you parked in a paid public parking lot). So when you use that business, you get a ticket as you leave verifying that you used them so you don't have to pay the normal fee.\n\nIt's just a courtesy businesses use to attract/please customers.",
"In areas that charge for parking in a garage or lot you are given a ticket when you park. The ticket is used to determine how long you stayed when you leave and you are charged based on that time. The lot/garage owner may have a contract with nearby business or services to allow their customers to park at reduced rates or free. To take advantage of the reduced rates the customer must get the garage ticket stamped by the local business, this is \"parking validation\"."
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a57g7h | why does meningitis sometimes cause people to get their digits and limbs amputated? | I know that there are different types of meningitis but how can it vary so much from one case to the next? One person gets headaches and the next person gets stumps for legs. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/a57g7h/eli5_why_does_meningitis_sometimes_cause_people/ | {
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"That happens when the meningitis is caused by a bacterial infection. The bacteria attack the meninges, and infected fluid travels down the spinal cord, and from there to other places. This bacteria causes blood capillaries to become inflamed and burst, in very high amounts. The swelling from the blood under the skin stops blood from moving correctly.\n\nWhen blood can't flow correctly the cells in the area will rapidly die. After a while too many cells have died for the area to heal itself, a condition we call 'gangrene'. There's no saving it once that happens. So at that point we have to remove the dead limbs to stop the organisms in the dead tissue from infecting still living tissue.\n\nThe reason it doesn't happen in non-bacterial meningitis is just because the bacteria is the only thing that can actually spread the problem to other parts of the body."
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8z2h61 | why do gas stations still have an 89 octane offering? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8z2h61/eli5_why_do_gas_stations_still_have_an_89_octane/ | {
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"Because there are still a lot of cars on the road that don't require higher octane fuel. Not to mention boats, lawnmowers, generators, etc. ",
"89 octane, or mid grade gasoline, is required by some engines, and the owner's manual will indicate this. If your engine requires 89, but you use 87 (regular), it will still run, but at lesser efficiency, and you may experience engine knocking, as gasolines of different octane ratings behave a bit differently with regard to detonation and exhaust products. Engines are typically designed with a particular grade of fuel in mind for smooth running and optimum efficiency.",
"89 octane fuel is often a mixture of 87 and 91 octane fuel.\n\nMany engines with electronic ignition and valve control can use either 87 or 89 octane fuel. When 89 octane fuel is used, the engine will use a more aggressive spark advance than it would with 87 octane fuel. This yields more power and greater fuel economy.\n\nSome engines, such as the 5.0 litre Coyote engine used in Ford's Mustang and F-150 trucks can adjust their power depending on the octane rating of the fuel."
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60z4q1 | why is it so hard to do two different beats on your hands? | For example...
Left hand - 1-1-1-1-1-1
Right hand - 1-2-1-2-1-2 | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/60z4q1/eli5_why_is_it_so_hard_to_do_two_different_beats/ | {
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"Being a drummer, i have no clue what you're talking about. But if i had to explain HOW to do it to a beginner, I'd tell teach them counting rhythms. Like one, two, three, four, on the right hand, and one, two +, three, four +. With practice, these patterns can be done in your sleep. Or perhaps on every surface your hands can reach as in my case. \n\nEDIT: Spelling",
"In a general sense, it's difficult at first because your brain can't fully focus on two things at once. Anytime it seems like we are multitasking, we are actually rapidly switching our focus between tasks. (And we are *much* less proficient in both tasks, and *very* poor at estimating how much worse we're doing. Don't text and drive!) \n\nIf the beats are new or unusual to the performer, it takes conscious effort to maintain each one, and the rhythm falls apart. Yet all musicians and dancers are able to coordinate complex movements with extreme precision. And I think that's the heart of your question: how to they do it?\n\nWell, there are a lot of ways to answer that, but for most polyrhythms the performer usually lets one rhythm, usually the simpler of the two, \"lead\" the other rhythm. So in your example, the left hand is just marking time for the right, and you would focus on where the right hand falls in the left hand rhythm. \n\nUsually polyrhythms push against the basic pulse of the lead rhythm, like this:\n\n(groups of 4)\n\n1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4\n\n**1** 2 3 **1** 2 3 **1** 2 3 **1** 2 3 **1** 2 3 **1**...\n\n(groups of 3)\n\nThat's syncopation, which is kind of like an aural-illusion that shifts the pulse of the rhythm. But you can follow it in the same way, by focusing on where the syncopated rhythm falls in the lead rhythm, that is, where those bolded downbeats are lining up with the leading 1234 rhythm. \n\nWith practice, it's just like walking: you don't worry about each leg, but how they work together. Two tasks become one task by learning the way that they relate and interact.\n\nEDIT: formatting"
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3te6cl | why do some ammo types use caliber (.50, .45, etc.) and some use mm measurements (10mm, 5.56mm, 12.7mm, etc)? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3te6cl/eli5_why_do_some_ammo_types_use_caliber_50_45_etc/ | {
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"Those are both caliber specifications. .50 cal means a caliber of .5 inches. Things developed in the US used to use inches for caliber, although there's been a shift in some cases to millimeters (among other things, the US military uses metric these days, as does NATO). ",
"Why does the rest of the world use metric and we don't?",
"It's a units thing. Caliber is just a different way to represent the size of the projectile.\n\nCaliber represents the inches measurement for the diameter of the round. A .22 caliber round has a diameter of .22 of an inch. A 10 mm round has a diameter of 10 mm.\n\nWhich unit is used is based solely on location and what unit is used there.",
"Metric or imperial measurements of the projectile diameter, decided by place of origin, mostly. Although the calibers are not often precise (.38 Special is actually .357\" in diameter, and the famous 9mm is actually 9.01mm (and incidentally .355\")). There are better examples but this is free and online so you're welcome :P\n\nAlso there's the issue of there being a billion different calibers: fringe and \"wildcat\" calibers, as well as one-offs, impractical, defunct, never caught on, etc.; so naming is sometimes political. For example the .357 Sig is a necked-down [bottlenecked] .40 S & W case that fires a 9mm, or .355, projectile. They called it .357 Sig because the Sig corporation was attempting to match the performance of popular .357 Magnum loadings in an auto. However if you were to buy bullets, projectiles only, to load your .357 Sig cases and used .357\" diameter bullets, it wouldn't work, because it's .355\".\n\nHere's some weird politics. The 9mm Luger or Parabellum (Latin for \"for war\", named politically) sometimes drops the surnames and is called 9x19mm (9mm projectile, 19mm case length). There is a 9mm Kurtz (meaning \"short\"), which is 9x17mm. In the United States it's known as the .380 ACP (**A**utomatic **C**olt **P**istol). Also there's a 9mm Makarov, a Russian caliber that's 9x18mm. All totally different calibers with so many names!\n\nBut what's in a name?\n\nEdit: A typo.",
"The names of rifle/pistol calibers come from the internal diameter of the barrel. Imperial measurements go from land to land, metric from groove to groove. [illustrated here](_URL_0_)\n\nThe powder charge and shape of the casing also affect the ~~caliber~~name of the cartridge. For example,7.62x51 NATO, 7.62x39, .308 winchester, .30-06 springfield, and .300 winchester magnum all use a bullet that is 0.3\" (pronounced \"thirty caliber\") in diameter, but they all have different casings and powder charges.\n\nedit: yes, caliber only technically refers to the bore measurement, but people commonly interchange \"caliber\" and \"type of cartridge\". Most people wouldn't say: \"Hey buddy, what type of cartridge is your new rifle chambered for?\", instead you'd typically say: \"Hey buddy, what caliber is your new rifle?\", which is why I went about explaining it that way. ",
"But I want to know is how the exact caliber number is chosen. As in, why is it .22 and not an even .2 ?\n\nI know with some modern ammo they start with how much energy they want to deliver at what range with what length barrel, then use computer programs to optimize the efficiency of achieving that and have it give an odd ball diameter. Like Load-X 408 Cheytac 419gr BT Ammo. was designed like that.\n\nI am mostly curious about how it was done in the old days before computers.",
"Because there is no rhyme or reason to the naming of cartridges.\n\n30-06 - well that's a .30 caliber bullet in a cartridge developed in 1906. \n45-70 - .40 bullet backed by 70 grains of powder\n\nThere are many, many more examples.\n\nAnother fun fact, the caliber designation is usually \"wrong\" as well. Just one of many examples: .38 Special is actually about .357 of an inch. That's why you can fire .38 Special rounds from a .357 Magnum revolver. (But not vice versa [usually] because the .357 Magnum cartridge is too long to fit in a .38's cylinder. "
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1n67rn | why are rocket scientists considered some of the smartest people? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1n67rn/why_are_rocket_scientists_considered_some_of_the/ | {
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"The USA went through a period where we were racing with the Soviet Union to make milestones in space exploration. During that time there was a huge amount of government investment and public expectation toward the field, and this attracted the best of the best in many fields toward constructing the technological marvels that space rockets are. A rocket scientist would need both advanced education in engineering and physics, and was afforded generous salaries and social benefits for their contribution to the space race effort. This reality of such a person's value to society fueled the birth of the saying.",
"Because the amount of thought and work that goes into making a rocket to go to outer space is mind-blowing compared to the amount that goes into most other jobs.",
"Everybody knows that rocket surgeons are smarter.\n"
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3jn6u8 | to what extent does a conductor actually conduct a band and how? isn't the performance choreographed and rehearsed? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3jn6u8/eli5_to_what_extent_does_a_conductor_actually/ | {
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"The conductor is like the director in a film. Their goal is to get the orchestra or choir to deliver their vision of a particular piece of music.\n\nThe conductor has a few roles, all of which are important.\n\n1. The conductor generally chooses the music to be performed. They will learn the piece inside and out and make edits to the piece as necessary. They will determine how quickly the piece will be played, how loud or energetic each section will be, determine tempo changes, etc. All of these are rehearsed.\n\n2. The conductor is often responsible for auditions, placement of performers (particularly important in a choir to ensure a unity of sound), and organizing the performers.\n\n3. During a live performance, the conductor basically acts the way a director does on set. They set (and keep) tempo for the entire ensemble, ensuring that everyone is playing at the same pace. They cue performers/sections on when to enter to make sure they all enter on precisely the same beat (imagine you and ten of your friends trying to clap on cue, but you don't get 3-4 claps to find the shared rhythm. You have to clap at exactly the same time starting from the very first clap. It's much easier if there's someone leading the group in that first clap). Since they can hear the overall piece better than anyone who is playing, they can make a adjustments on the fly if a particular section comes in too loud, too soft, too fast, etc. They can also make the decision to emphasis or underline particular parts of the piece live, hold or shorten notes, etc., subtly changing each performance.",
"For a world-class ensemble (and even many lesser ones) a conductor's job at the performance is relatively pointless. Really good musicians can follow each other, listen to make sure they're together, and have an innate sense of blend and balance to ensure a good performance. The conductor's arm waiving is an added visual spectacle. Many world-class conductors conduct with reckless abandon--their gestures aren't precise (which would actually help instrumentalists come in at the same time). They can give the audience a visual cue about the music (a point to a part of the ensemble for the audience to listen to, or body positioning to reinforce the mood of the music), or help remind the ensemble of something they worked on in rehearsal, but the world's best ensembles can perform without a conductor. You're right -- it's really in rehearsal where conductors lead, shape, and perfect the ensemble's music-making.\n\nHowever, conductors do have some use during a performance. When large ensembles started being formed in the early baroque period, there was no conductor. [A violinist would tap his bow to keep time, and sometimes would thrust a stick on the floor as the ensembles got bigger.](_URL_0_) Of course, that can be distracting to the music, so some folks thought that the leader shouldn't be playing and instead could give visual cues to the rest of the group. So, at a minimum, a conductor starts and stops the ensemble's performance. And the conductor provides guidance and instruction on how the conductor would like the piece played in rehearsal-- that's critical.\n\nAnd for lesser musicians, (and to a lesser extent, for better groups too) the conductor can do quite a lot during the performance. If the ensemble isn't keeping time together (one section is rushing, while another is dragging) she can use gestures to get everyone back together. \n\nSometimes, amateur musicians get lost in the music and are not sure when to start their part. A strong cue from the conductor can help ensure the player knows where he is. If you watch a symphony orchestra play a complex, modern piece with multiple time signatures or challenging entrances, you'll see that the conductor's flowy gestures suddenly become much more precise, as the musicians seek guidance. \n\nSometimes the ensemble plays in a different space than where it practices, which might affect the volume (how loud or how soft the ensemble is) or the balance (how loud or how soft a particular instrument is compared to the rest). The conductor can make on-the-fly decisions about volume and balance. The conductor's gesture then means \"play softer than we've rehearsed\" rather than just \"okay, here comes the soft part....\"\n\n There are times in a piece when the ensemble is supposed to slow down, or hold, or pause, and while the musicians have an idea about what those changes are like, having one person guide the ensemble makes the group more together. The larger the ensemble, the more critical a conductor is for this cohesiveness.\n\nAnd of course, the conductor starts the ensemble together and stops them together. Just like the ensembles in the link above, it'd be really hard for a violin player in the front row to make a big enough signal to start a 100 piece orchestra.",
"Ok. So let's take this out of the high school band/marching band arena and pop it into professional ensembles. So first you'll notice that the difficulty of the music goes way way up. Thats ok for performers, but difficulty isn't just decided by the speed and amount of notes. Difficulty comes in controlling sounds and blending them properly, it comes from disappearing as a trumpet section and integrating your sound into an ensemble. So how do you do that? Well if you've ever played in a band you know it's kind of hard to hear yourself. It's next to impossible to hear the clarinets if you're in the brass it's impossible to hear the flutes if you're a percussion player. So you look to the conductor, he guides the pace of the piece, he can hear you and mold your sound to fit everyone else's so that one section of players isn't slow or fast, loud or soft or even out of tune. Without his direction even pros could ruin an entire piece because human tendency is to get louder and speed up, but a conductor marches you along making sure that the beast is tame. Also, a conductor has indicate knowledge of a piece you're playing. Think about it, they read the score, a piece of paper with literally every part written on it and he's NOT lost or confused he's matching in REAL TIME the music you play to what everyone at once sees, he can tell you that a soft section is too quiet or that when it says get loud you play until a lung pops, without a conductor it falls a part ",
"So, the conductor's sheet music encompasses all parts. Each player had their own sheet music that directs what they need to be doing. The conductor puts it all together. Aside from keeping time, he cues in each part when they need to play, and directs how they play, loudly/softly (big swoopy movements for loud, crescendo, small for quiet, decrescendo), he directs when there are changes in the tempo, and he indicates how a piece should be played (smooth and flowing movements for soft tonguing or slurs, legato, sharp movements for hard tonguing/short quick notes, staccato). If you're careful enough to watch the conductor, you'll see him do all of this and then some."
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cajwra | dizziness after long hot bath. | Why do I get dizzy after a long warm bath?
& #x200B;
In particular, it's not in the bathtub, but when I got up I got so dizzy that I fell over.
(Apart from a bruise, nothing serious happened, but I had to rest on the floor for almost half an hour until it got better.) | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/cajwra/eli5_dizziness_after_long_hot_bath/ | {
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"Perhaps you stood up too fast, sort of like in a chair, where you get a huge spout of vertigo and, if you're like me, temporary blindness.",
"It could be a low blood pressure issue. Depending on how hot the water is it could lower your blood pressure causing you to feel lightheaded and dizzy. This is exasperated if you get up too quickly as well. Nothing to be concerned about. Just be aware and be careful when standing.",
"Your body regulates blood pressure when you go from lying down or sitting to standing by telling your blood vessels to squeeze and contract, which ups your blood pressure and keeps blood moving up to your brain properly. But heat causes your blood vessels to dilate and expand more than usual, so when you’ve been in a bathtub or hot tip or out in hot hot weather for a good while and aren’t super duper hydrated, it’s very common for your blood vessels to not squeeze quite enough when you stand up all of a sudden and you get pre-fainting symptoms, like a head rush, weakness, loss of balance, loss of vision, whooshing in your ears, etc. That’s one of the biggest reasons they put time limits on hot tubs and stuff! \n\nThe slower you get up and the more you pay attention to how hot you are and how you’re feeling, the less likely it is to happen. Good job staying on the floor till you felt sure you could get up safely again! That was the right call."
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40nfl3 | why is the roman numeral for 49 written xlix instead of just il? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/40nfl3/eli5why_is_the_roman_numeral_for_49_written_xlix/ | {
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"It's kind of like grammar.\n\nI before a number is fine for V and X. \n\nX before a number is fine for C and L.\n\nC before a number is fine for D and M.\n\nIL probably would have been understood but seen as a specific style. (VIIII would have been acceptable for 9, it's just a different style. In general they didn't want 4 of the same symbol in a row, but that was a preference).",
"Roman numerals have 10's, 100's, 1000's like like the system we use today. so 49 is 40 and 9. 1984 is 1000+900+80+4 or in roman:\n\nM+CM+LXXX+IV\n\nLast super bowl was XLIX, XL for 40 and IX for 9.",
"Can any of you responders cite a legitimate source for your answers? Otherwise, I would encourage OP to investigate further."
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z45qp | with today's technology, how come we have not been able to reverse myopia (nearsightedness) without permanently damaging our eyes such as lasik? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/z45qp/with_todays_technology_how_come_we_have_not_been/ | {
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"It's totally possible. Earlier this year I had a procedure called VISIAN ICL. ICL = Implantable Collamer Lens. Basically, they implant a contact lens inside your eye, behind your iris and in front of your eye's lens. The procedure is completely reversible; they can remove the lens, and your vision goes back to how it was before the procedure. \n\nJust an FYI, they say this is painless. They lie. "
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a81mf7 | how does water re-open wounds? | Cw for blood and general skin grossness
For context, I chew on my skin and nails pretty badly. I was chewing on them today at work. No blood, but it was pretty raw.
When I got home 5 hours later I washed my hands and my fingers started bleeding around the nail where I'd been chewing. What happened? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/a81mf7/eli5_how_does_water_reopen_wounds/ | {
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"The water breaks down the partially formed blood clots which are keeping the wound closed causing it to reopen.",
"Water is a really good solvent. Your capillaries either already ruptured but clotted quick without showing visible blood and the water dissolved the clot. \n\nOr your washing of hands action by applying pressure and friction ruptured your capillaries.",
"Water could have entered the wound, caused it to swell, and break the blood clot seal.\n\nThe blood clotting process is very rapid (seconds to minutes), so the blood clot seal should have been fully formed. It is unlikely that the clot dissolved.\n\nOr it could be that you are washing your hands vigorously, and tearing the blood clot seal."
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3ccgmx | why does the lotr movies get special long directors cuts but yet none of the star wars movies have any? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3ccgmx/eli5_why_does_the_lotr_movies_get_special_long/ | {
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"One difference is that the LOTR movies were based on very popular books that many people have read. They had to cut out parts of the story to keep the movie to the target length, but the director's cut includes a lot more details from the books that they wanted to include but couldn't.\n\nThe Star Wars movies weren't based on books, they were written for the screen first - so they didn't shoot very much extra footage that they didn't intend to include. Even if they did, audiences wouldn't know what they're missing.\n"
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2xjjj2 | why do tv stations mainly air earlier episodes of television shows (such as family guy)? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2xjjj2/eli5_why_do_tv_stations_mainly_air_earlier/ | {
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"They re-air the most popular episodes to generate the most viewers/network traffic which generates the most revenue which generates the most profit"
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ofxw7 | evolutionarily speaking, why did the first living cell decide to divide? | Aside from the kick-start of life happening perchance, this is the only thing I really struggle with as far as evolution. What made the first single celled organism decide to propagate? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/ofxw7/eli5_evolutionarily_speaking_why_did_the_first/ | {
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"It didn't decide to propagate. It somehow mutated and, through a complete accident, that mutation caused it to propagate. How did that mutation occur? Nobody knows, but ultraviolet radiation from the sun is a good choice. Once it started propagating, its children also started propagating, and before you knew it, you had a lot of random little organisms running around, all propagating. The organisms that didn't get that mutation allowing them to propagate, well, didn't produce any children. \n\nIt is also worth pointing out that self-propagation probably first occurred in fairly basic organic molecules. Cells likely came later.",
"Because the other hundred million first living proto-cells that didn't divide stopped existing. The first cell didn't \"decide to divide\". It's just the first one that ended up doing that is the only one who has ancestors around to talk about it. It's like saying \"why giraffes grow long necks\", a simple answer would be, \"the ones that didn't aren't around to talk about it, so all you know are the ones that did\". Neither group \"decides to\", but when it happens that way, one is more likely to propagate then another.",
"Don't attribute consciousness to single cells."
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723ue6 | why is walking up a hill backwards easier than walking up a hill forwards or sideways? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/723ue6/eli5_why_is_walking_up_a_hill_backwards_easier/ | {
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"It is not \"easier.\" However, it may feel better because you are giving the muscles you normally use to walk up a slope a rest.\n\nYou are going to expend the same amount of energy either way.\n\nIt is mostly psychological. But you are using different muscles so if they are in shape, the muscles you use to walk forward appreciate not having to be used at the time."
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72v1li | why does near darkness seem to have a faint blue tint to it? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/72v1li/eli5_why_does_near_darkness_seem_to_have_a_faint/ | {
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"So this can go a few ways, so the biological standpoint...\n\nYour eyes have rods and cones. Cones are what you used in normal daylight, and rods, which are far more numerous, are for low light. You then have 3 types, red, blue, and green. As they are hit, they show only those colors, much like a computer monitor, and your brain then compiles it and makes an image.\n\nThose types also show in a certain percentage. Blue is the most numerous, then green, then red are the rarer of the bunch in your eye. So in low light, or almost no light, your rods are what get the signals. Since there's very very little light, the chances of a particle of light hitting the red rod is very small, since there are far fewer of them in your eye. But the chance of it hitting a blue rod are fairly high, allowing them to activate.\n\nAs well, cones work very quickly, but rods work slowly. This is also why it's not bad during the day, but if you are to go from a bright room to a dimlit room or vice versa, it takes a long time for your eyes to \"adjust\" to the light and you to be able to see.\n\nAs a fun fact, because of this, raiders would wear blindfolds or patches over their eyes during the day time, to allow their eye to be on a constant \"night\" mode since they did their raids at night. This is where the idea of pirates having eye patches came from, as they would do this and wear the patch to be able to see better during night raids. And as far as the red bit, is why the military uses red flashlights, as they are harder to see (again, fewer red rods, so less a chance of them turning on) and thus while they allow the person there to see somewhat clearer, the chances of them being detected by someone else is much lower. Adversely, blue lights are used for distress as they are easily recognizable and easier to find.\n\nHope that helps, and hope you got a TIL out of that all!"
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60tj0a | why are bicycles so much more popular than tricycles? | I have been working on a project to evaluate different types of practical personal transport in a modern city. I have never ridden a tricycle, but seems to me that at least on paper an electric-powered tricycle (such as [this one](_URL_0_)) is a much better alternative to electric-powered bicycles.
There's no need to balance on tricycles and they can carry bigger and heavier loads. This make tricycles very useful especially for workers and the elderly. They are also better than bikes for zipping to the nearby grocery store and back. The only negative I can see is that tricycles may not be as foldable as a bicycle, which makes them more of a hassle to carry onto a transit train.
So why do are bicycles so much more popular than tricycles? Is there a practical reason why bikes superior to trikes?
| explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/60tj0a/eli5_why_are_bicycles_so_much_more_popular_than/ | {
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"I'm sure a large part is the stigma associated with tricycles. You ride tricycles as a kid before you learn to balance a bike. If you ride a trike, people will think you're doing it because you *can't* ride a bike. People are afraid of being judged, so they ride bikes, even if a trike is a better choice on paper.\n\nAlso, bikes are smaller and easier to store, which is preferable. They can carry the same load as a trike, you just have to balance.",
"bikes are faster, handle better, and cheaper; in a generality. They are also easier to store. Bikes are available with multiple gears, which would be much more complex on a trike. ",
"Bicycles are lighter, which matters when using pedal power alone or when required to carry the vehicle. Also bicycles actually corner better by leaning, whereas 'delta' trikes - the ones with one front wheel and two back ones - need to slow down to avoid tipping over. This is less of a problem for a recumbent trike, with the rider sitting in a low seat with their legs out forwards, giving a low centre of gravity.\n\nTrikes do have advantages. They're better for carrying larger things and for keeping the vehicle stable when stopped. So cycle rickshaws are nearly always trikes (and so are most motor rickshaws) and freight tricycles are used in some areas. Then again, people in less developed countries routinely show it's possible to move a lot of stuff on a regular bicycle anyway."
]
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6dtai8 | why are there never any stars in space walk/moon landing videos? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6dtai8/eli5_why_are_there_never_any_stars_in_space/ | {
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"The moon's surface is really bright and the cameras can't handle the contrast. Keep in mind, those videos are on 'daytime' moon! \n\nHow many stars do you see on daytime Earth? Yes, it is for slightly different reasons, but a similar result.",
"Basically. When the Earth is lit by the sun, it's many thousand times brighter than the stars around it. It washes out all the stars. It's possible to see them if you look away from the sun, but it doesn't show up in photographs because the camera cannot gather enough of their light in short exposure.",
"Because the subjects (astronaut, space ship, etc.) are too bright. If you set the camera exposure for the background stars, it will make everything in the foreground become completely white.\n\n"
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4vqr8v | what are chickenpox and why does everyone get it and only once? | doesn't it seem strange that we just accept this virus(or whatever it is) just being passed around ? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4vqr8v/eli5_what_are_chickenpox_and_why_does_everyone/ | {
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"It's the varicella zoster virus. It's one of the herpes viruses. It causes chicken pox and then it lives dormant in your body. It may later rear its head again as shingles when you are older (I've had both). \n\nYes it is weird. The way that viruses live inside us and alongside us and how our immune systems interact with them is amazingly complex. Molecular and cellular biology is one interesting mind blowing reality after another if you start down that path. \n\n",
"It's a virus, and typically with viruses, you only get it once. Then your body has made antibodies for it so it can fight off the virus if you're exposed again. However, your body doesn't completely cure you of the virus. The virus stays dormant in your nerve tissues. Then, years later, it can resurface, but instead of taking the form of chicken pox again, it is shingles, which are itchy, painful sores that inflame your nerve pathways. It's very unpleasant. \n\nIt was kind of accepted as just happening because it's not usually that dangerous as long as you get it as a child. When adults get it, it can be a lot more dangerous and there are deaths every year from it. Shingles can also be quite a plague on people. So they have developed a vaccine for chickenpox and a vaccine for shingles. Neither vaccine lasts that long so you have to get it several times. ",
"You can get chicken pox more than once. I had it three times before the age of 10. Rare, but it does happen. ",
"Chickenpox is a herpesvirus. Herpesviruses infect you, and then live inside you forever. For most people, it stays dormant and you never have it again, and also can't get it again because.... you have it already. \n\nHowever, for some people it can reactivate and indeed infect you again. However, as an adult we call it \"Shingles\". "
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68tz64 | why can't we just coat anything that risks water damage with hydrophobic spray? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/68tz64/eli5_why_cant_we_just_coat_anything_that_risks/ | {
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"text": [
"Hydrophobic spray is expensive and might have other damaging properties. It might for example corrode certain materials, prevent proper airflow, provoke thermal problems, change the stiffness of the material, etc."
]
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||
pu64k | how is tea healthy? | Hey all!
I was wondering how tea is healthy? Normally when you cook food, it kills it and can burn off nutrients. How is it that fruit bits, herbs, and flowers hips etc. are doused in scolding water can retain any nutrients? Also is there a way to make a cup of tea heavier with nutrients by doing something?
Cheers all!! | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/pu64k/eli5_how_is_tea_healthy/ | {
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"Combustion (burning) is not the same as merely heating something.",
"Green tea has L-theanine, a compound that is known to reduce stress and improve focus.\n\nMost teas have lots of antioxidants. Getting some matcha (concentrated green tea) is a good way of amping up antioxidants.\n\nBut honestly, tea is mostly seen as healthy because people drink it in lieu of other non-water beverages, like soda or juice. All in all, it's a pretty healthy way to hydrate (and in some cases, get your caffeine fix).",
"Like all things in nutrition, there are too many variables in a food to fully classify it as completely healthy or unhealthy. Tea contains caffeine, which in doses that result in more than a serum level of 200mg starts to have what we call a \"therapeutic effect,\" which means to say it begins to actively interfere (for good or bad) with your body's normal function. At 200mg, it acts as a mental stimulant, increasing focus and neural action potential, but can also cause high blood pressure (hypertension) and tachycardia (your heart beats faster than 100 beats/minute). Doctors can prescribe an muscular injection of caffeine to enact a circulatory stimulant effect, usually when the heart is beating too slowly. The amount of caffeine in a cup of tea varies greatly based on amount of steeping and type of tea, and it would be impossible (and irresponsible) to try and tell you a flat rate. A good rule of thumb is: drink tea or coffee with gaps, take your time with it, and do not drink it when stressed or super-awake. As always, the therapeutic effect level will change based on how often you take the drug. *Source: Pearson's Nurse's Drug Guide, 2011)*\n\nNow, why do people call it healthy if it's just coffee light? Because of the antioxidants! You're correct that blanching or boiling nutrients removes it from the food, but you're not consuming the food. You're drinking the water that all the good stuff steeped into. Now in your body, you've got all these cells. And all these cells contain atoms called free radicals. *Free radicals* are any atom that is not bonded with another. Atoms love to bond, they've all got these gaps or extra electrons that they need to lose. These free radicals will try to bond with atoms intended for other cellular functions. This can cause a nasty reaction that can result in DNA mutations, which leads most often to cancer. Free radicals develop when other atoms oxidize, that is to say oxygen interferes with them. Since oxygen is so necessary to survive, we can't stop oxidation from happening completely, so free radicals are always going to exist in some form. Don't worry! We can consume foods that are rich in chemicals called antioxidants. *Antioxidants* are chemicals that safely interact with free radicals, stopping their interference with bodily functions, more specificly prevent other cells from oxidizing and releasing free radicals in the first place. Tea, and other foods full of Vitamin C and Vitamin E, are loaded with the stuff. *Source: Rolfe, Pinna, & Whitney's Understanding Normal and Clinical Nutrition, 9th Edition 2012.*\n\nLast part of the question: the longer you steep tea (not boil it, and remember tea water is never boiling when you start steeping) the more nutrients are going to get pulled from the leaves and into the water, and thus, \"heavier\" with nutrients.\n\nAnd that's what makes tea good for you!\n\nThis is my first ELI5, so please let me know if I've done it incorrectly, or should continue in the future.\n\nEDIT: Corrected embarrassing mistake, two instead of too.",
"Boiled foods can lose many of their nutrients because they go into the water you're cooking them in. You lose the nutrients because you don't drink the water and the nutrients therein.\n\nBroth is considered very healthy, and is essentially the water various foods are boiled in.\n\nTea is like broth, not boiled vegetables.",
"I know it's not exactly ELI5, but Wikipedia has information:\n\n_URL_0_",
"I read somewhere that any hot liquid increases the possibility of esophageal cancer. Google it."
]
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|
4etsic | why are men much more willing to have casual sex than women? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4etsic/eli5_why_are_men_much_more_willing_to_have_casual/ | {
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"I thunk this is a popular misconception. Men are more willing to be seen as having lots of casual sex, but this is a social construct. The famous slutty double standard, if you will.\n\nObviously, if men are having hetero casual sex, so are women.",
"From an evolutionary point of view, the \"cost\" of sex is much lower for men than women. Men can impregnate multiple women and run off, while a woman may become pregnant with a child who will be dependent on her a long while after birth. A woman may therefore want sex just as much, but be pickier about partners. \n\nFrom a social point of view, there is a much higher stigma on women's sexuality than men's. It's the men are studs, women are sluts dichotomy. "
]
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||
3tg8on | how some services/websites stay funded without ads or membership fees, such as craigslist? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3tg8on/eli5_how_some_serviceswebsites_stay_funded/ | {
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"Craigslist does charge for some types of ads, like job postings. This is a key source of revenue for them.",
"Craigslist charges money to list jobs, housing, and other categories in some cities. That's enough to cover its operating costs, but it doesn't really make any profit.\n\nOther companies sell information to third parties, or offer various other benefits to attract paid sponsorships. For example, Firefox's default search engine (used to be Google, idk now) is Mozilla's main source of income. ",
"Craigslist charges for businesses to post 'For Sale' ads in many large markets.\n\nAlso, always remember that on the internet, if you are not the customer, you are the product. CL collects and sells metric a**loads of data from everybody who visits the site. Place an ad? Browse ads? Respond? All activity gives a lot of data for them to sell."
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40bpe8 | how can games make things sound "behind" you when headphones are just 2 speakers? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/40bpe8/eli5_how_can_games_make_things_sound_behind_you/ | {
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"Rethink the question. How can I hear something behind me if I only have two ears pointed out at my sides? \n\nThe way we hear direction has to do with the differences between each ear. What you can do is make a mathematical model of that, and use the model to process audio to make it sound like it comes from anywhere on a game system. \n\nHowever there's no good way to do it today. Anything you hear in a commercial system is most likely quiet and hard panned, not actually processed in a complex way. ",
"You could equivalently ask \"How can humans detect things behind them when we only have two ears?\"\n\nThe answer is pretty involved, and in its simplest form can be achieved by putting two microphones on a mannequin's head where a person's ears would be. You can play sounds in three-dimensional space around the microphone setup, and then when you play the composited file back through headphones, it will sound exactly the same.\n\nMore generally, it's a subset of acoustics called [Head-related Transfer Functions](_URL_0_) that basically use math to describe how our brains determine where audio sources are using our two ears.",
"A sound coming from behind the ear is going to be transmitted slightly differently than one from the front. Our hearing is kind of side facing, but made to pick up more detail from the front because of the shape of the ear cartilage.\n\nIt is not so much about direction, but what you do to the sound that is supposed to come across as from the rear.\n\nThe way we do this is to take a specific sound, and listen to it from all angles, finding that at the back it is a bit flatter. So when we use a sample in a 3d game \"from behind\", we run that sound through a bit of a process to flatten it out.",
"They generally can not. What you are hearing is probably the result of the McGurk effect, which is the changing of audio perception due to visual feedback.\n_URL_0_\n\nThe exception is usually if you play with virtual surround sound, then you can hear behind you due to it taking advantage of time and sound differences between two ears to create directionality. So for example, something destined for the front right speaker can sound like it is coming from the front right due to the time delay between the ears (taking slightly longer to reach the left ear), how the sound is different between the ears due to sound changes caused by the head and outer ear, and the simulation of reflections in the room that also creates a difference between the ears and helps with direction. These changes are usually created by digital processing done by an audio chip, when downmixing the surround sound to 2 channels for headphone use."
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||
qiz85 | why is drilling for oil in the us bad? | I consider myself a liberal. However, one thing I have never really understood is why drilling for oil in the USA would be a bad thing. I'm sure there are plenty of reasons, I've just never heard them.
Wouldn't it just lower gas prices, AND create jobs? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/qiz85/why_is_drilling_for_oil_in_the_us_bad/ | {
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"People are concerned about the envionmental repricussions of drilling. A good example of the danger is the BP spill in the gulf a couple years back.",
"The arguments aren't so much that drilling for oil in the U.S. is bad, it's more that it would not be an effective use of time, money, and resources. The major arguments:\n\n\n1) Oil is a finite resource and whatever your feelings may be on it, we HAVE to severely cut down on our usage if we wish to preserve that resource for future generations. You may have heard something along the lines of \"all the easy oil is gone.\" As we run out of easily accessible oil sources, we take more risks in the form of environmental and finaicial risk. \n\n\n2) If somebody gives the go ahead to start drilling or building refineries right this second, it will be a long long time before that oil hits the market and does anything for fuel prices. (if anything at all)\n\n\n3) Oil is a dirty fossil fuel and a temporary energy solution. The money would be better spent on the development of renewable or sustainable resources. ",
"Few things. \n\n1. People are concerned about environmental impact. Part of the reason for the Keystone Pipeline that was meant to go from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico was cancelled was fear over the pipeline cutting through an important aquafer. \n\n2. People aren't happy about the idea of opening up more and more government land and potentially destroying that land so oil companies can profit. \n\n3. Oil is seen my many as simply a dead technology. It'd inefficient and we're going to run out eventually, so many people think time and resources would be better spent on researching new sustainable technology. \n\n4. Increasing oil production doesn't have an immediate impact. If a place like ANWR were opened up to drilling, it could take ~20 years for that oil to actually reach a consumer. ",
"The other comments have pretty much explained the environmental aspects, but there's one that I didn't see posted that's pretty good to keep in mind.\n\nPolitical. It's cheaper to drill through sand (like in Saudi) then through the hard rocks we have in the US. So it's actually cheaper to import oil from places like Saudi Arabia then it would be to drill in the US. Also, if we ever get into another big nasty war, we will still have a huge portion of our own oil reserves that we can drill from without having to worry about enemy nations. If we start drilling in the US now, we'll deplete resources that we might someday seriously need in an environment where we won't have the ability to get oil elsewhere.\n\nThe big dogs in the govt don't give two fucks about the environment. The reason we aren't drilling as much as we could is for future geopolitical security. "
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7rbh15 | the difference between a church organ and a piano? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7rbh15/eli5_the_difference_between_a_church_organ_and_a/ | {
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"Organs use bellows or motors to blow air through different sized pipes in order to create different tones, a piano has a number of different size and length strings that a hammer comes down when you hit a key and strikes the wires and creates a different tone. ",
"An organ makes sound by driving pressurized air through pipes of varying size. Each pipe makes one specific pitch.\n\nA piano makes sound by striking strings with a hammer and making the string vibrate. Each string makes one specific pitch.\n\nEach instrument uses a keyboard (and the keyboard layout is very similar between the two.) The difference is what happens when you press a key - on an organ, it opens a valve to let air into the corresponding pipe. On a piano, it causes the hammer to string the corresponding string."
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