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xf67q | how do they name guns and what do the numbers at the end of the names mean? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/xf67q/eli5_how_do_they_name_guns_and_what_do_the/ | {
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"It depends. Some examples:\n\nWinchester 94AE (rifle)\nWinchester is the manufacturer, gun design patented in 1894 ('94). AE stands for \"angle eject\", allowing the shooter to mount an optic on top of the rifle\n\nGlock 17 (pistol)\n\nNamed after Gaston Glock, designer of pistol. 17 refers to the number of patents filed at time of production. \n\nTaurus PT709\nManufacturer: Taurus International Manufacturing\nPT: \"Pistole taurus\"\n709: model number\ncaliber: .380 or 9mm short\n\nOther Taurus Models: PT 111 (9mm) PT 145 (.45 cal) PT 732 (.32 cal)\n\nas you can see, the numbers associated with this brand sometimes are associated with a caliber designation, and sometimes are not. \n\nOverall, they are typically named \"Brand\", \"Model Number\", kind of like cars. (Chevy Aveo, etc, you get the picture)\nHope this helps. go to /r/guns for more information, they are real helpful."
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6z1c0s | why are the recommend servings written on food so little? | For example, a medium bag of chips has five recommended servings. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6z1c0s/eli5why_are_the_recommend_servings_written_on/ | {
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"People see a small bag or box and assume it is one serving, but the manufacturer knows that if you saw the total calories/sodium/cholesterol you wouldn't eat it so they make it multiple servings so they can show you only a fraction of the total calories, etc. \n\nWhen you see this practice it is a good sign that you shouldn't be eating whatever is in the package. ",
"Something that is very high in calories will have a small serving size. Also high in fat, something high in fat will have a small serving size. You are not supposed to eat your entire daily amount of calories (combining carbs & fat) from one bag of calorie-dense low-nutrient chips.\n\nPopcorn makes for a much bulkier snack, one serving of popcorn is a lot more volume than one serving of chips.",
"It's a strategy by the manufacturer to show the calories per serving as small in the consumer's eyes. I've noted a package containing more than 500 calories will be split into two servings. \n\nBut if the contents are cookies or easily divided into a quantity usually consumed in a sitting then they'll base serving size on this serving size. \n\nThere is probably some variance by manufacturer as it's not a precise definition."
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363z9y | how are restaurants able to keep soda carbonated and ready to serve? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/363z9y/eli5_how_are_restaurants_able_to_keep_soda/ | {
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"They don't. Inside the soda machine are containers of syrup and a tank of compressed CO2. The two are mixed together at the time the drink is dispensed. On a small/home scale, you can look at a SodaStream system to see how it works. ",
"There are tanks of CO2 that are kept with the syrup for the sodas. When you order the soda, a machine pumps the two ingredients together in proportion and thus soda. "
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1gu2b4 | why are interest rates set by the fed and not the banks making the loans? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1gu2b4/eli5_why_are_interest_rates_set_by_the_fed_and/ | {
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"The Fed does not set interest rates. That is done by the market itself. The Fed sets the rate for bank to bank loans that fall under Federal regulations. The Fed rate does have some effect on what banks charge in interest (especially long term and mortgage), but it is not a direct correlation."
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1deyp4 | my rent keeps going up but my salary does not, what is the societal expectation or gain? | Are poorer people supposed to move out every few years so the wealthy can move in? Is this some sort of "step" in gentrification? What happens when all the neighborhoods are gentrified?
EDIT: I worded headline poorly. My bad. TIL: there will always be poor people and we will always live somewhere- not gonna fret about it anymore. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1deyp4/eli5_my_rent_keeps_going_up_but_my_salary_does/ | {
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"It's not like someone's specifically planning for your rent to go up without your salary going up. It just happens to work out that way.",
"This might happen some years.\n\nOther years, your salary might go up and the rent stay the same.\n\nBut I've noticed that, where I live, large houses are being split into several smaller flats or apartments. In my parents generation, they and most of their middle-class friends lived in similar three-bedroom semi-detached houses, whereas in my generation lots of people live in two bedroom houses or flats, despite having similar middle-class jobs to my parents.\n\nWhether this is true in other parts of the world, I don't know. It may not even be true in my area, it's just my observations of people I know.",
"Christ said, \"The poor you will always have with you.\" You need not worry about every neighborhood gentrifying. By the time the last ghetto is turned into chic lofts, the chic lofts of today will be the ghetto.\n\nGenerally speaking the only thing your landlord and your employer have in common is you. Your employer will pay you what he thinks your work is worth to him, and your landlord will charge you what he thinks other people would pay to use his property. \n\nThe way they find out they are wrong is by you mentioning it to them, and if they don't change, you leave. If you don't leave, you are proving that they are right.\n\nThere is no guarantee for rents or wages outside of minimum wage laws and some cities with rent control ordinances.",
"One thing to bear in mind is that rents are currently rising at a faster pace than they would otherwise be: more people are renting rather than buying in the wake of the housing collapse, and because the recession has hurt people's purchasing power, and so the demand for rental property has gone up. This means it's a landlord's market, and they can afford to charge higher rents. On the other hand, there are many areas of the country where buying property is extremely cheap.",
"My house payment is less than $700, but if I were to rent a similar house in my neighborhood, the rent would be over $1000. Anybody who is able to do so should consider buying instead of renting. As an added bonus, your house payment never changes (assuming you don't get one of those stupid ARM or balloon loans). ",
"One thing that affects rents is property taxes. These taxes are typically a percentage of the value of the property. When they raise these taxes, which they seem to do darn near every year, they are increasing the percentage of your property's value the owner has to pay. And like you, I cannot figure out how they can just keep jacking this. Are we going to eventually pay 100% the value of our property in taxes? Seems ridiculous.",
"Your employer is only concerned with the bottom line. And if not giving you a raise gives them more, or they cannot afford a raise, too bad for you. Why would they not be able to afford a raise? Sluggish economy, etc. Or just bad management. Don't worry, those bad managers will always get their pay raise or severance package.\n\nYour landlord needs to pay his own bills. Utilities, loan repayments, etc. And if he's investing, then he will raises the rent whenever he can to match the local rises rent prices. You can't afford it? Too bad. He can find someone who can.\n\nAll your employer cares about is money, not you. \nAll your landlord cares about is money, not you.\n\nMoney makes the world go 'round.",
"The expectation is that a person will get raises, promotions, and better jobs over time.\n\nAlso, that you will eventually buy a house with a fixed rate mortgage, which won't go up even if your salary does.",
"You don't get automatic increments for inflation? That's unfortunate. It's been standard at every job i've had.",
"Not all the neighborhoods are gentrified. Even if the only place left is a mud flat under a sewer drain pipe, there will be places. \n\nOf course, land developers and landlords don't really give a fuck what happens to people, and in many jobs, employers feel the same way about their workers. \n\nIf you want to know what I think, it's because we give away money to the rich and they either hoard it, or spend it snatching up property (increasing demand, and thus housing prices) to milk. And we do this because our government consists of people rich enough to get elected or powerful. And that in turn is because we are by and large a society of ignorant fucks who only pay attention when someone spends a fuck ton of money to ensure they get our attention. Of course, our shitty underfunded education system (see giveaways, above) certainly doesn't help that fact, either.\n\nAhem. < /rant > "
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5o213b | what are the differences between a condo, townhouse, and apartment? | What classifies a townhouse as a townhouse, condo as a condo, etc? They all seem to have similar qualities/features. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5o213b/eli5_what_are_the_differences_between_a_condo/ | {
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"In most of the U.S. in standard American English, an apartment means something designed for renters, while condos and townhomes are designed for homeowners.\n\nThere are exceptions - for example you can rent a condo from that unit's owner. But a large apartment complex probably has a management office, whereas condos and townhomes don't because the residents are the owners and they don't pay rent, so there's no need for a manager.\n\nAll three are buildings with more than one unit.\n\nApartments and condos are typically 2 or more floors, and quite often units don't have their own \"outside\" entrance, i.e. you have to first enter the building and then enter your own unit.\n\nTownhomes are typically made up of 2-or-3-story units that each have their own outside entrance. A townhome is basically just like a house but with no side yards, because one or both sides of your house share a wall with your neighbors.\n",
"Not sure if this applies everywhere, but where I live: \n\nAn apartment is a unit in a building that you rent. You do not buy an apartment. A landlord owns the building and is responsible for its upkeep and generally makes all the decisions for the building and the units.\n\nA condo is a unit in a building that you buy. Although, you can rent it from the owner, but generally a person owns a condo. Each person owns their own condo and a group of condo owners in a building have a condo committee that makes decisions for the building democratically. Individual owners can make changes as they please to their own units, within certain limits set by the committee.\n\nA townhouse is also a unit in a building that you buy (but again, can be rented from an owner). Townhouses are generally several units joined together in a single row, as opposed to an apartment or condo building which is stacked. \n\nApartment and condo buildings look similar. Townhouses are houses that are connected in rows.",
"Condos (aka condominiums) are a form of ownership. There are apartment condos, townhouse condos, and even detached condos. Anyone who describes a condo as similar to an apartment simply hasn't experienced the variety of condos and doesn't understand the legal meaning. All condo means is that you generally just own outright part of the structure (typically just the interior) while you have shared ownership of the rest (exterior walls, roof, land, yards, driveways, etc.). A condo association is essentially the corporation that manages the shared areas and enforces the covenants on the private areas, with each owner being a member of the association. \n\nAn apartment is a unit in a multistory, multi-family building. Typically each apartment is entirely on one floor but there are fancier duplex apartments, with units extending two stories. Historically apartments had a single owner who rented the units out to different families, but condominium apartments started becoming popular in the last half of the 20th century. \n\nA townhouse is a small urban home, usually two or three stories, but single family, and with walls touching the neighbors' walls. Sometimes it will be a single wall between houses, but in such cases there needs to be some legal mechanism to deal with the shared wall. \n\nI grew up in an apartment building in NYC that was owned by a real estate company and was strictly rental. Later on, after my parents retired and moved, the entire set of apartment buildings was converted to coops (basically a NYC concept, somewhat similar to condos), with the tenants given first crack at occupying them. \n\nIn Boston, you can find traditional apartment buildings. You can find buildings that started out as traditional apartment buildings and were converted to condos. Because housing is expensive in Boston, there are many cases of taking a large 3 story Victorian house and converting it into a condo with three units, one on each floor. \n\nMy brother, out in the Bay Area (Calif.) bought, with friends, a small four unit garden apartment building. (\"Garden apartment\" means a two story apartment building, versus regular apartment buildings which are taller.) They removed the exterior entrances for the upstairs apartments, installed interior staircases, and converted the four rental apartments into two townhouse condominiums. This shows how slippery the definitions can be. But if you remember that condominium is a legal concept, not an architectural one, you'll never go wrong. \n\nEdit: typo",
"I live in Australia and we don't ever use the term, \"condo\".\n\nAn apartment is usually a unit in a high rise building. These are usually in the inner city areas although they've started building them in large, mid - outer suburbs. They can be rented or bought and can be residential only or mixed in with commercial offices/retail spaces. They're usually only 1 floor high but double story penthouses isn't uncommon. Most apartments are occupied by groups of uni students, young people and professional couples. Some of them have a balcony and the penthouse might have a larger outdoor space. There's usually a body corp who is paid a fee to maintain shared areas.\nWe also have really ugly, huge government housing known as \"commission flats\" in the inner suburbs. They're technically apartments but I've never heard them referred to as that. They're not places you'd ever want to reside in. \n\nA unit is a group of small houses, usually built in a vertical line or a U shape, on a long piece of land. Although they can also be arranged other ways such as in a horizontal line on a wide block or scattered over a large piece of land. They can either be joined together or completely seperate. They usually have a small backyard/courtyard but this isn't always the case. Sometimes they're double/triple story but the individual units are only 1 level. They're usually pretty similar if not identical to each other on the inside and out. Old, cheap units are more likely to be occupied by poor people, young adults, uni students and people on VISA's. They exist everywhere and can be rent controlled, owner occupied or government housing. There's usually a body corp who is paid a fee to maintain shared areas. \n\nSubdivided properties are very common here and although they're technically a unit, I see them as being different. Houses were built on large blocks in the suburbs so people now often build a fence in their backyard and build a new dwelling behind the original. They differ from units because they usually have seperate driveways. Families often live in these because they're affordable whilst being bigger than a unit/apartment. They can also be rented or owned and don't usually have a body corp.\n\nTownhouses are usually newer, bigger and multy level units that share a wall with at least 1 other house. They often have small backyards, garages and their own driveway. They can be rented or owned and I don't think they have a body corporate.\n\nTerrace houses exist in inner city areas. They're very skinny houses that are usually joined to other terraces. They can be single or double frontage and some of them are double/triple story. Theyre usually just a long hallway with rooms coming off one side all the way down. Some have small yards and the majority don't have driveways or garages. Lots of them are hugely run down and rented for rediculous prices to young people and uni students. A lot of them are also heritage listed so you're limited in what you can do to them. There's also a lot that have been renovated/updated and they're amazing but unaffordable for the average person.\n\nEstates are all the rage over here at the moment. They're large areas of houses that look the same/similar, they're built by the same company and sold off mostly to new home buyers/young families/retired couples or investors renting them out. They're built quickly and cheaply in outter suburbs, usually when farmland is sold off after being approved for rezoning. The houses are built close together, they often have small yards, the roads are narrow and parking is minimal although most have a garage and driveway. I don't recommend them but I understand their purpose. They usually have a body corp that look after the gardens and make the rules about what you can/can't do to your property.\n\nLast but not least, single dwellings are still the most common residential building here. Unlike some areas in America, almost EVERY property has a boundary fence on at least 3 sides (back and sides), with a gate/fence connecting the front and back yards also common. They usually have a driveway and many have a garage or carport. They also typically have a good sized backyard. They're rented/owner occupied by families, couples, uni students, friends etc. If you own the property, you're only restricted by council regulations which differ depending on the area you live in. "
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50s2le | the difference between local banks, national banks, credit unions, etc and why should i care? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/50s2le/eli5_the_difference_between_local_banks_national/ | {
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"Generally, anyone can open an account at local or national banks. If you travel, it will be easier to get more cash from your accounts/find a bank/atm if they are with a larger chain. Think about it like your favorite local restaurant vs McDonalds. Both provide the same general services, but their actual products might be slightly different. You might get better customer service at one or there might be better deals.\n\nA credit union on the other hand is like a food court at your place of work. If you work somewhere where people make good money, there might be better options than if you went to McDonalds because the people there could afford better meals and they don't have to cater to people who can only afford the dollar menu. They would also know what food people who work for your company are most interested in and be able to provide that."
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55cwlr | how do certain types of music sound good to some and unbearable to others? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/55cwlr/eli5_how_do_certain_types_of_music_sound_good_to/ | {
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"What you're really asking is, why is aesthetic subjective?",
"Well, there's a psychological thing where the more you're exposed to something the more you like it (in general). So if you grew up listening to country, you're probably more likely to like it as an adult, but perhaps find something totally different, like screamo, weird.",
"i'm a musician and artist myself. i personally believe it may have something to do with validation; you expect specific sequences of notes and when you hear them it gives you some sort of personal confirmation on some core level we have a hard time analyzing. just a theory.\n\ntldr: you heard the notes you'd expect, and that makes you feel good about yourself.",
"It's harder for someone to enjoy a piece of music if they do not recognize the pattern.\n\nFor some genres with very complex patterns, it usually takes someone who recognizes the pattern to enjoy it, not everybody does.\n\nSimpler patterns, such as in pop music are deliberately simple, so that most people like them to some degree.\n\nAlthough simpler patterns expire faster."
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ahcixb | why must my car be a "sauna" in winter, or else my windows are all fogged over with zero visibility? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/ahcixb/eli5_why_must_my_car_be_a_sauna_in_winter_or_else/ | {
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"Humidity in your car will precipitate out onto your window (like dew) because the window is almost as cold as the outside. By heating up the air you increase the window temperature as well as increasing the moisture capacity of the air (hot air can contain more moisture than cold air) because the air can hold more moisture and the window is not as cold it's less likely to fog up.",
"In the winter, the outside air is almost certainly colder than the inside of your car. When the warm air inside hits the (cold) window, it cools down quickly and any water in that air condenses into a liquid form, forming fog (tiny water droplets coating the inside of the window).\n\nHeating the windows with the defroster can make it warmer and less likely to \"shock\" the water out of the air. More important for defogging the windows is turning on the air conditioner (yes, even with the heat on). One of the main things an air conditioner does is dehumidify the air. Thus, you're spraying the window with dry air, which gets rid of the fog and keeps it from forming again. You can defog a window with cold air with the AC on...try it! \n\n",
"Your car doesn't *have* to be a sauna, you might just be using the system inefficiently.\n\nIf your car has auto defog, use it (and set the temperature to something you're comfortable with).\n\nIf your car has manual controls, set them as follows:\n\n* Output vent: Defog/windshield (or the combination of defog & floor vents if you want).\n* Input: Fresh/outside air. Any light labeled \"recirculation\" or with the icon of a curved arrow inside the car, should be **off**.\n* A/C compressor: **On**. This is the part many people don't understand, they think that the AC is for cooling the car in the summer. But it also has the effect of reducing humidity, which defogs the windows.\n* Fan: On so that the air reaches the windshield. To quickly defog you can turn the fan to its highest setting, then turn it back down to medium or medium-low when the fog has disappeared.\n* Temperature: *You can set this to whatever temperature you're comfortable with*, as long as it's not lower than the outside temperature. It doesn't have to be all the way up. I normally start with 50/50 cooling/heating and then adjust from there.",
"This isn't true of your car. Turn your heater down and fan up. The windows will defog.\n\nYour car should also have a button that allows air to come in from outside or recirculate the air from inside. Make sure you are drawing fresh air from the outside.\n\nBecause you are breathing you are humidifying the air. This water condenses on the cold windows. If you make the whole care very hot, then the windows will also get hot and the water won't condense.\n\nBut there is a better way. The air from outside has very low humidity. you just need to get that air into the car. You could blow it in cold if you wanted, the only reason to warm it a little is for your comfort.",
"Don't forget you breath when in your car. When breathing the exhaled air has a higher humidity than the air you inhaled. So you humidify the air in your car with every breath you take.\n\nWhen you heat up the windshield in your car water will not or only sparcely condensate on it."
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116jqd | how do aircraft manufacturers deliver smaller planes (that cannot fly across the ocean ) to other continents ? | I hear Boeing sells a lot of 737s. How do they get them to customers in places like Europe and Asia, which would require flying over oceans that may be beyond their range ? I'm guessing they could ship them by sea ( inefficient due to wingspan ), assemble them on site, use add-on fuel tanks to extend their range, or maybe there's some special route to Europe that a 737 can fly, with stopovers ? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/116jqd/eli5_how_do_aircraft_manufacturers_deliver/ | {
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"1. Ranges for passenger aircraft have large safety margins\n2. Not having cargo, passengers, or even an interior increases range\n3. Flying from Newfoundland to Iceland is about the same as flying from Denver to New York"
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170phl | do chefs have to like the food they cook? | For instance: if a chef hates eating asparagus but has to cook something with it for a menu item. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/170phl/eli5_do_chefs_have_to_like_the_food_they_cook/ | {
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"They don't have to like it, but they should be able to appreciate what others like in it, so they can make cooking decisions that reflect those tastes."
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bywwrx | how is it possible that extinct species are "brought back to life"? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/bywwrx/eli5_how_is_it_possible_that_extinct_species_are/ | {
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"Outside of science fiction movies, it isn't currently possible. Theoretically, you could use cloning methods to insert DNA from an extinct species into the egg of a existing close relative.",
"Essentially, it works the same way as cloning a living animal would. It requires you to have good quality DNA available, so is only really feasible when working with very recently extinct species. This is (one of) the reasons why there has been little tangible progress towards cloning woolly mammoths, despite much media hype. The only example I know of where an extinct species was cloned is the [Pyrenean ibex](_URL_2_), which is really more of a subspecies with several living close relatives anyway. These animals went extinct in 2000, and in 2003 an attempt was made to clone some using tissue samples taken from the last living individual before she died. You can read an article about this [here](_URL_1_), or the original scientific publication [here](_URL_0_). Out of a total of over 400 embryos the researchers created, 57 were implanted in surrogate females, of which 7 actually resulted in pregnancies. And of these 7, only a single one made it to term; it was born by Caesarean section, but died a few minutes later due to some birth defects.\n\nI'm sure that with further efforts, we could successfully get living individuals of this species and others that recently went extinct, but I think it's important to consider the ethics of this kind of work. It seems pretty clear that even in this best case scenario (a species that had been extinct for only three years, and for which frozen tissue samples from a living individual were available for use), getting an actual breeding population of these individuals established would take a tremendous amount of work, and might just be impossible. Though this kind of research is definitely interesting, I think at a certain point it's important to question what can really be gained from it. If it's too inefficient to actually reestablish any extinct species (at least with current methods), then it seems cruel to bring back a few individuals who will likely experience short and lonely lives in a world which may not even match the one they evolved in."
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b16kci | the idea of silver/gold/platinum | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/b16kci/eli5_the_idea_of_silvergoldplatinum/ | {
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4ucwqf | why do flies gather around the eyes of cows and horses but not around human eyes? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4ucwqf/eli5_why_do_flies_gather_around_the_eyes_of_cows/ | {
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"text": [
"We have hands to rub excess mucus away and prevent buildup of globs of it in which bacteria could turn that lovely eye snot into a super cheesecake for flies. Cows and horses cannot do this so they have essentially fly dinner plates under their eyes.",
"It's incorrect to say that they don't. What's more correct is to say that they tend not to, unless we're too sick, weak (young) or exposed to defend against them properly. \n\n[Photo proof here. Fair warning, though...person pictured is a child](_URL_0_)\n\nWhen we're not incapable, as others have suggested, we have hands to mitigate the problem. I'd add that we also have the advantage of social / cultural systems that teach us how to make tools to shoo them away (see: Australian cork hats) and buildings or nets when everything else is inadequate as a long-term solution."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[
"https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Jaya_Chidambaram/publication/8558359/figure/fig1/AS:280029364801545@1443775611763/Figure-1-Moisture-seeking-Musca-sorbens-flies-congregate-around-the-eyes-of-an-Ethiopian.png"
]
] |
||
3lbc2w | do euro countries still keep track of there old currencies? why or why not? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3lbc2w/eli5_do_euro_countries_still_keep_track_of_there/ | {
"a_id": [
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"text": [
"what do you mean? do european countrys that are in EU and use euros as official currency keep the tract of the previous currency they used? the answer is no becouse you cant keep track of somthing that no longer exists.",
"I don't know exactly what \"keep track of\" entails, but I can say with confidence that they don't do it.\n\nThe old currencies are no longer in circulation and, in some cases, the presses used to print them are no longer even around."
]
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[],
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] |
||
5pwpeq | why are some nfl teams generally better than others over extended periods of time? aren't new teams drafted every season? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5pwpeq/eli5_why_are_some_nfl_teams_generally_better_than/ | {
"a_id": [
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"text": [
"New players are drafted not teams. The teams with the best draft strategy over several years normally end up being better. Many players that are drafted are not as good as hoped and others are better than expected. Basically it's a crap shoot. The best teams have good front office management (drafting, hiring staff, etc), good coaches and good players.",
"you vastly over estimate the turnover. The best players stay with their team on the order of 10 - 15 years. Great coaches also stay for a long time (decades).\n\nWhile there is turnover on a roster from season to season, those are often fringe positions that simply do not matter much. The key talent is usually repeatedly there season after season. Brady, Rodgers, other top qbs, etc are not being replaced season to season.\n\nThus, if you look at teams over these longer time periods, you do definitely see the ebb and flow of how good they are. Who knows, after brady and belichick are gone, the patriots dynasty probably does end."
]
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[],
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||
42hprk | what is the format of the afl/nfl from the start of season to the superbowl? | I'm European and I know of the terms AFL/NFL/SuperBowl but that's about it.
When I say format I referring to teams in each/no. of games/is progression to SuperBowl based on wins or points? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/42hprk/eli5_what_is_the_format_of_the_aflnfl_from_the/ | {
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"text": [
"AFL isn't a thing anymore; it merged with the NFL many years ago.\n\nThere's a preseason, but results there don't affect a team's progression. The season proper starts with the \"regular season.\" Each of the 32 teams plays 16 games over a 17-week season. The teams are organized into two conferences (AFC and NFC) of 16 teams each, and each conference has 4 divisions of 4 teams each. A team's regular season games are as follows:\n\n* 2 games each against the other three teams in their division\n* 1 game each against all four teams in another division in the conference (the divisions are paired up, so all four teams in one division play all four in another)\n* 1 game each against the teams in the two remaining divisions in the conference who had the same division rank last year. That is, if the NFC North division is paired with the NFC East division this year, then the team that won the NFC North last year plays the winners of the NFC West and NFC South divisions from last year.\n* 1 game each against all four teams in a division in the *other* conference. Again, divisions are paired up, so every team in one division plays every team in another division.\n* Lastly, one bye week where they don't play a game.\n\n------\n\nAfter the regular season, it goes to the playoffs. The playoffs are done by conference; a team won't play anyone from the other conference until the Super Bowl. The team with the best record in each division goes to the playoffs; also, each conference has two *wild cards*, which are the teams in the conference with the best records who did *not* win their division. The teams are seeded in each conference; the division winners are seeded as 1-4, and the wild cards as 5 and 6, according to records (it is actually quite common for the wild cards to be better than the worse division winners; if you're second place in a good division, you're probably better than the winner of a bad division). Then, the 3 seed in each conference plays the 6 seed, and the 4 seed plays the 5 seed in the first playoff round (1 and 2 seeds have a bye). The losers are eliminated. The 1 seed then plays the lowest-seeded team remaining, and the 2 seed plays the other remaining team. Again, the losers are eliminated, and the winners of this round play for the conference championship.\n\nAfter the conference championship is decided, the champions meet in the Super Bowl, which is the NFL championship game."
]
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[]
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|
dpriy4 | what are raw photos? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/dpriy4/eli5_what_are_raw_photos/ | {
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"text": [
"Some cameras can give you both RAW and JPG photos. JPG photos are processed in the camera and give you a jpg file afterwards. RAW files are much larger because they contain much more data in the file which allows the user to process it themselves using a program like Photoshop to adjust things like exposure, brightness, contrast, sharpness, noise reduction, etc.. These RAW files MUST be processed using software after to produce the final jpg image, jpg being the most used file format for images. \n\nRAW files have none of the camera's processing settings applied to them. They are exactly what the camera \"sees\".\n\nMost professionals will shoot in RAW format so that they can then process the photos after and get them exactly how they want them to look. A jpg is much more limited in being able to be post processed.",
"A RAW file contains the raw data that the camera sensor captured.\n\nDigital cameras contain an image sensor - an electronic device which detects light and converts it into electrical signals. These electrical signals need to be processed in order to convert them into an actual image file such as JPEG, during which some of the data is lost. The RAW file however contains these values with minimal processing, allowing the photographer to work with them using a proper program (such as Adobe Lightroom) which does the same processing to convert the raw data into a useful image, but allows configuring different parameters in order to achieve the best result.",
"A RAW image refers to the proprietary file type from some camera's manufacturer. It is a non-compressed digital image that contains all image data captured by that camera. In other words, the data for *each and every pixel* is preserved during storage, with no compression or editing. That means that an image taken with a 20 megapixel camera (20 million pixels) will be quite large (perhaps around ~50 MB in size)\n\nMost cameras also save to JPEG, which is a compression method often used in digital imagery. It is a lossy-type compression, which means data is lost every time you compress an image into a JPEG (and why JPEGs get that pixelated look after having been compressed multiple times). Essentially large groups of similar-color pixels are grouped together during compression, making our final file-size much smaller. A 20 megapixel image might only be ~4-8MB when saved to a JPEG, for example, especially if a decent amount of the image is similar in color (i.e. a blue sky taking up much of the background).",
"So to add to the other answers, the main question would be: why would you want to take pictures in RAW?\n\nThe answer is because they're way, WAY more correctable. We're not talking about getting the last 10% of quality for professional publication, but that RAW allows to make amazing corrections that are impossible otherwise.\n\nRAW have a far better ability to correct exposure mistakes. A RAW image that's too dark to see is often correctable into something that actually looks quite good, while the JPG isn't.\n\nRAW is also much better in that it captures the original, unfiltered color data from the image. So if your camera got the balance wrong, and your photo is all tinted blue or yellow, a RAW allows you to fix things as if nothing had gone wrong in the first place. You can color balance a JPG but the result will be much worse.\n\nSo, if you're doing something important and not very repeatable (eg, like making a trip somewhere special), RAW is very worth the trouble because it can allow recovering from a lot of problems that otherwise are unfixable.\n\nThe downside is that it's bigger, and requires post-processing. But it's certainly possible to just go with the post-processing defaults and not bother changing anything unless there's something that really needs fixing."
]
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||
1bdn5l | what is the benefit of having the large hadron collidor? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1bdn5l/eli5_what_is_the_benefit_of_having_the_large/ | {
"a_id": [
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"Scientific understanding is it own benefit. Other benefits will follow once the science is better understood. \n\nNo scientist working on all the underlying physics thought about medical imaging technology at the time, but yet, x-ray, CAT Scan, PET scan, MRI, fMRI... are all the result of studying cutting edge physics. QM understanding makes all the micro electronics of the world possible, at the time that was not the goal. \n\nCutting edge science serves its own purpose, others will exploit the technology at a later time.",
"The LHC is basically a huge circular tube that is used to accelerate particles to very high speeds using magnetic fields; like a microscopic MagLev. They can use this for a variety of purposes, the main purpose being to accelerate two particles in opposite directions so that, at the other end of the circle, the two particles collide.\n\nParticles behave the same way normal sized objects do when they collide at high speeds: they break into pieces. This is useful because scientists are still not clear on what the really REALLY tiny particles are made of. They use the LHC to break apart these tiny particles and look at the pieces.\n\nI'm sure it has plenty of other uses, but this is the only one I'm clear on."
]
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[],
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||
4dlsfx | why are the lights inside buildings, skyscrapers, etc... always on at night? are they actually used by people or is the a requirement to make the night skyline look good? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4dlsfx/eli5_why_are_the_lights_inside_buildings/ | {
"a_id": [
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"text": [
"They aren't always on. However yes many of the buildings are still used by people at night. Cleaning crews. Security. Renovations. People just working late. Etc. ",
"Take a closer look at any skyline picture and you'll note that actually, nowhere near are all lights turned on. Even more so in modern builders, where most floors will have motion activated lights.",
"You have to look after midnight, many offices will still have people working late after 8pm but the central computer controlled lights will turn off (unless manually activated, which they often are by cleaning crews) after midnight.\n\nThough some offices still have manually controlled lights that the building manager must turn off once the place is unoccupied, and they don't always remember to do that. Or even when the lights are computer controlled they might adjust them to run later for some evening office meeting and then forget to adjust them back to normal hours for a few weeks.\n\nPeople are actually much better at remembering to turn off the lights than they are at turning off their computers or the thermostat/air-conditioning.",
"Noticed that Public Schools Always keep the lights on in all public (non-locked) areas 24/7 though... Guessing this is a security or legal thing.",
"From a security perspective, light is a deterrent. People are much less likely to break in if they thought they'd be seen doing it."
]
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f4e9u2 | why is it bad to plug extension cords into one another? like i know it’s bad, but why? | [deleted] | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/f4e9u2/eli5_why_is_it_bad_to_plug_extension_cords_into/ | {
"a_id": [
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"text": [
"Extension cords are designed to carry a certain amount of current over a fixed distance (length of the cord). Daisy chaining cords (plugging cords together) increases this distance and thus increases the extension cord’s resistance.\n\nWithout getting into the mathematics and physics of it, essentially this results in greater heating of the cord and possible damage to the insulation – this may be associated with a risk of fire and electrical shock. (commonly known as I2R or Joule heating)\n\nSecondly, you have the chances of the interconnection of plugs coming loose or pulling apart, resulting in a loss of power.\n\nThirdly, there is less current available to operate the load (although this is marginal and negligible). A fault furthest away from the source, in a daisy-chained arrangement, may result in the breaker failing to trip.\n\nFinally, if the interconnection comes loose gradually, it could likely create a spark and that is once again a risk of fire (just through a different failure mechanism).\n\n- OSHA\n\nto add, the longer you make the cord the less power will reach the end. the loss is added to by each connection(plug) adding even more resistance. as resistance goes up so do heat and chance of failure or fire.",
"Consumer extension cords have insulation on them. That insulation has a rating for a specific voltage/resistance. \n\nYou could technically make the cord soo long that there is soo much resistance that the angry pixies just jump through the insulation and end up burning your house down/shocking you. \n\nAlso. As you add more cord length you are increasing the total resistance which increases how hot the cords can get = burning your house down.",
"As the length of the cords increases by chaining them together, there is a drop in the voltage across the cord. According to Ohm’s law, voltage is directly proportional to current, so if the cord voltage drops, then the current capacity of the cord drops. That means that you could overheat your cord, plug, or socket (which is a real fire hazard) if you use a device that has too high of a wattage rating. \nNot only is it not a good idea to daisy chain power cords and strips, it’s also a good idea to make sure your cord has the correct rating for the device you want to power. Here’s a good resource that explains it pretty well: _URL_0_"
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[],
[
"http://www.m.electrical101.com/m.extension-cords.html"
]
] |
|
31ojp8 | what is causing that effect in the centre of the sky? picture in comments | _URL_0_ | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/31ojp8/eli5_what_is_causing_that_effect_in_the_centre_of/ | {
"a_id": [
"cq3h1bz"
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"score": [
2
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"text": [
"That's an [upper tangent arc](_URL_0_), one of a variety of effects produced by a bunch of ice crystals high in the air. They line up and form, essentially, one gigantic lens that bends the sun's light in interesting ways."
]
} | [] | [
"http://imgur.com/1pxkFpV"
] | [
[
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Upper_tangent_arc"
]
] |
|
4mv68y | why does the back of a rollercoaster train feel like it's going faster than the front? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4mv68y/eli5_why_does_the_back_of_a_rollercoaster_train/ | {
"a_id": [
"d3ykch1"
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"text": [
"The back of the roller coaster *does* go faster over bumps and down drops.\n\nTake the initial drop for example. When the coaster first starts going over the drop, it's moving very slowly. But as more and more of the coaster clears the drop, the more weight there is pulling the rest of the coaster down. \n\nThus the front cars go more slowly over drops, and the back cars go more quickly."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
||
1tgx8l | how is flying in a "v" shape better for birds? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1tgx8l/eli5_how_is_flying_in_a_v_shape_better_for_birds/ | {
"a_id": [
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"text": [
"The aerodynamics of the wind currents from the front bird help the birds in the back have to do less work. They rotate in and out of that front position, too.\n\nHave you ever been kayaking or rowing? When you're in sync, it becomes easier to paddle because everyone is helping the person behind them pull the water. Same situation.",
"It's basically drafting, like you would behind a semi truck on the highway, or riding a bike. The lead bird breaks the wind reducing drag on the birds directly back an to the sides, who in turn break it for the birds behind them. "
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
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] |
||
31la1t | do bones scar after a break? | I broke my clavicle a few years ago, does that mean there's a bunch of scars on the bone where it broke? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/31la1t/eli5_do_bones_scar_after_a_break/ | {
"a_id": [
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"text": [
"Not in the same way as skin does, but sometimes you can see a little kink or bump in an xray if it's a serious enough fracture.\n\n\nsource: have broken things, used google :) \n\nedit: phrasing (lana.........) ",
"I was always told that, in the location of the break the bone heals back stronger, like muscles when being worked out. So in the perfect situation, you would have a ridge or extra growth where the break took place.\n\nI'm not entirely sure that is accurate, just what I was told. "
]
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[],
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|
3dbxvc | what is clickbait, jailbait | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3dbxvc/eli5_what_is_clickbait_jailbait/ | {
"a_id": [
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"text": [
"Jailbait is the term for an attractive but underage (under 18) girl, so anything you did with her would be legally obscure at best, but the laws vary from place to place. \n\nYou got clickbait correct.",
"Watch the movie \"Up in Smoke\" I think this is the earliest use of the term in pop culture.\n\nIt simply means someone who attracts people older than 18 and sex with them would land you in Jail. Hence Jailbait. \n\n\n... And apparently I can quote a movie I haven't seen since about 1998.",
"Jailbait is a minor who is either dressed provocatively or acting seductively (the bait part) and inspires an adult to consider them in a sexual context (the jail part). That the individual is a minor might not be obvious."
]
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||
2om174 | when asked for the gdp of a country, what gdp is generally wanted? | For example on [World FactBook for New Zealand](_URL_0_) there are multiple different GDP's listed, such as: GDP (purchasing power parity), GDP (official exchange rate) and
GDP - per capita (PPP). Which of these would usually be stated when asked for the GDP of a country? Also on the site above, it says that the Health Expenditure of NZ is 10.1% of GDP, what GDP is it 10.1% of? Thanks in advance :) | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2om174/eli5_when_asked_for_the_gdp_of_a_country_what_gdp/ | {
"a_id": [
"cmoem0b"
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"text": [
"The first two are just about how to convert the NZD value to USD for international comparison. The per capita just divides the first one by population.\n\nFor the healthcare one it makes no difference, or rather, it uses the original NZD value."
]
} | [] | [
"https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/nz.html"
] | [
[]
] |
|
f2l0c6 | what are the black rope-like things sometimes put on roads across lanes? are they counters? how do they work? | Not sure if this is everywhere, but in the US occasionally these small ropes are affixed to the roads across the lanes.
I guess they're used for traffic counting or something but I don't know how they'd work. Like how does it know how many axles you have? or what happens if two cars drive over the rope at the same time? Or what determines how long to leave it? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/f2l0c6/eli5_what_are_the_black_ropelike_things_sometimes/ | {
"a_id": [
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"text": [
"Yep. Those types are usually hollow rubber hoses sealed off at one end and attached to a pressure sensor at the other end. When a car drives over the hose it increases the pressure in the hose slightly triggering the counter to go up 1. If two cars go over at the same time it will probably count it as only one, but the frequency of that happening is low enough that they'll still get a good idea of how much traffic is going by."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
|
8q2riu | what is the purpose of this wall outlet? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8q2riu/eli5_what_is_the_purpose_of_this_wall_outlet/ | {
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"text": [
"Is it a connector for cable television service?\n\nCable television wall plates are typically a single \"F\" type RF connector on a plate by themself, or sometimes on the same plate with a phone jack.\n\n\n(/Short comment)",
"Does it look like this?\n\n_URL_0_\n\nIf so, that's for coaxial cable, which could be used for feeding data to a TV (from a satellite or cable service, for example) or it could be used for a computer network in some cases. The TV use is probably more likely.",
"You'd attach a coaxial cable to that, and then plug the other end into your TV or cable box (or perhaps into your ISP's modem/router).\n\nOn the back side of that \"outlet\" is a cable that runs to an antennae or satellite dish or to your ISP/cableTV."
]
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"https://pimages.solidsignal.com/pvcwp20ivyhf_medlrg.jpg"
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||
1b9xq8 | why stimulant and depressant drugs wont cancel each other out | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1b9xq8/eli5_why_stimulant_and_depressant_drugs_wont/ | {
"a_id": [
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"text": [
"They can. But, there are lots of different kinds of stimulants and depressants, so sometimes the matchup isn't perfect, and you get some stimulant effects that aren't offset by depressants, and vice-versa.\n\nImagine you had two cars parked bumper-to-bumper. If they are identical, and perfectly lined up, and they push exactly at the same force, they should offset one another and go nowhere. But, if they aren't perfectly aligned, or one has slightly better tires, they may push each other off in strange and unexpected directions.",
"I think its because stimulants and depressants simply 'feel' opposite. Underneath the hood so to speak they are simply chemicals reacting and doing stuff to the brain/body. It is not like a stimulant increases chemical-A in the brain and a depressant lowers it, I think its more like a stimulant increases A-B-C and a depressant decreases C and increases E and F. \n\nSimilar things would probably be dopamine and seratonin (most recreational drugs feel good/satisfying to consume), I can't even guess any further."
]
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[],
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||
51ndwj | why are there so many competing small plug types | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/51ndwj/eli5_why_are_there_so_many_competing_small_plug/ | {
"a_id": [
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"text": [
"So 2 factor. \n\n1 improvement and obsoletion. USB - C is objectively better than USB - 3, 2 B and A. The problem is that everyone is on USB 2 architecture so everyplace uses the same USB 2 stuff and it's hard to move forward. You don't want to make a cable no one will buy. But eventually everything will move to USB - C unless something better comes out soon. \n\n2 exclusive proprietary designs. Apple likes to come out with their own designs as it keeps people using the newest technology whether they like it or not. This started as a form for quality control, as they would sell you only something good and you couldnt find a cheaper, worse alternative. Until they started making really bad cables and the cheaper alternatives were better. Now they are just annoying everyone. But they will continue to do it as they feel it adds to their uniform design of \"apple\" everything. "
]
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[]
] |
||
7xesku | why is it wasting water when we let it run while we brush our teeth? | It goes back to the system, so why and to what extent is it a waste? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7xesku/eli5_why_is_it_wasting_water_when_we_let_it_run/ | {
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"text": [
"Water that goes down the drain has already been purified once, and will now have to be purified again before it can be discharged.\n\nThe water itself can be reclaimed, but the energy used to purify it is wasted.",
"Because once it goes down the sink, it isn't drinkable water anymore because it goes into the sewer system and needs to be reprocessed which costs energy (and thus money) to do so.",
"'Water' itself is not wasted, but it costs energy to purify it again. Water that goes down the drain is assumed to be dirty and will be cleaned again before it can come out of a tap again.",
"The water cycle is a little more complicated than most people are taught. In most cases, the area where water is pumped from for human use is completely different and far away from where sewage (waste water) is disposed. This is so they don’t mix.\n\nThe city of Chicago gets its water from Lake Michigan. From there it’s treated to make it “drinking water” and pumped out to the Chicago-area and multiple surrounding suburbs. Water that goes down the drain from your house, manufacturing plants, and street drains go to one of few waste water treatment plants. The sewage treatment does not make it safe for humans to use. After treatment, it’s discharged into a canal which flows down stream to the Missippi River and then the Gulf of Mexico. ",
"Some areas don’t have enough clean water to support their population and industry, so it needs to be brought in from elsewhere. That is time and energy intensive to do. It also removes water from some other area, which may impact its plant and animal life. Huge demand for water leads to the creation of dams and reservoirs, which have environmental impacts of their own, and in worst cases can rupture and cause flooding disasters. \n\nWe’re all better off if we learn to use water economically. Just because water molecules never leave the planet doesn’t mean it’s impossible to waste water. You could just as easily say that the carbon and nitrogen atoms in a steak don’t leave the planet, so it’s not wasting food to throw that steak away."
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6i9fy9 | what is it exactly that sunlight "quality" (brightness, intensity, clearness, etc) cannot be completely/very closely replicated by man-made lightbulbs? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6i9fy9/eli5_what_is_it_exactly_that_sunlight_quality/ | {
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"It's mainly a problem with brightness. At the brightest, sunlight provides 1050 Watts per square meter of area. That's about the power of a regular microwave for just for a square meter! If you plug two microwaves into the same circuit and turn them on, you'll most likely blow the breaker. It would take a great amount of energy just to approximate sunlight especially if you want to illuminate a large room. \n\nYou also have to take into account that a lightbulb cannot completely convert energy into light so the overall power draw is going to be higher than the light energy coming out of the bulb.",
"It can be done, it's just really expensive for no good reason. Full sun is really really bright. And your eyes are sensitive to a wide range of light, you can read under office lighting just fine. But when I checked the intensity of an office florescent bulb, touching the bulb with the meter wasn't as much light as an overcast morning. That is you could cover an office with florescent lights so close the bulbs were touching, and there wasn't a single square inch on the ceiling that wasn't light bulb, and it wouldn't be even close to afternoon sun.\n\nBulbs that put out the amount of light you need are expensive, it requires crazy amounts of power to run them, and it will heat up the room very very quickly, and it will require a massive AC system to keep the temperature reasonable. They will do this when filming movies as the cameras can get much better pictures with those light levels, but as I said, it's very expensive."
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ah10th | how come rainforests are so lush if tropical soils are generally low in nutrients? | The Amazon rainforest is massive, but I've read that its soils are pretty poor. How does that work? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/ah10th/eli5_how_come_rainforests_are_so_lush_if_tropical/ | {
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"The nutrients are constantly recycled and absorbed into the top forest and generally all the roots hold the poor soil together from what I know.",
"Pretty much any nutrients that that become available are immediately used up. The trees also have partnerships with fungi that live in the soil and on their roots which help to break down dead plant matter, etc. The fungi hand all the nutrients they manage to produce over to the trees, and the trees give them some sugar and protection in return. "
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4gtor5 | how long can a phone charger be before it affects the amount of time it would normally take to fully charge your phone? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4gtor5/eli5_how_long_can_a_phone_charger_be_before_it/ | {
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"As long as the specification allows. In the case of USB 3, this is 3.0 meters or 9.8 feet. You can extend past that, but charging speed will decay as the line loses some power over distance."
]
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ch0i16 | is it possible that dinosaurs could exist on another planet like earth | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/ch0i16/eli5_is_it_possible_that_dinosaurs_could_exist_on/ | {
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"Technically possible but extremely unlikely that another planet would have nearly the same conditions and evolutionary path that would lead to dinosaurs existing. Actually, it's so unlikely that it is almost impossible."
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7b9mjf | how do the servers know a game is pirated, like if you had a pirated copy of c.o.d what happen s to stop you playing online? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7b9mjf/eli5_how_do_the_servers_know_a_game_is_pirated/ | {
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"Old games used to just want to connect so servers would let them play. \n\n\nNow a days with faster connection, the first message your game sends to the server is the exact version of the game and the serial number of the copy and a signature of all the parts of the computer(processor, Ram, graphics card, sound card ect) and the IP address exact version of the Operating server ect.\n\nThe server then looks up the serial number of the key with its database to realise that it has already been given to an other completely different computer with a different IP and not the same patch of the OS. \n\nIt now safe to say it is a copy. \n\n\nEli5: you call from a number. It is linked to your voice, speech pattern, the noise in the back and the caller ID. \n\n\nSame day, somebody with a different voice on a different caller ID, and a thick different accent call the same number pretending to be you. The person at the other end now knows it is not you."
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1f82mt | blood type inheritance | I was reading about the [Jeffrey MacDonald murder case](_URL_0_). He, his wife, and two daughters all had different blood types. How is this possible?
I know blood typing used to be used for paternal testing and forensic analysis in the pre-DNA days. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1f82mt/eli5_blood_type_inheritance/ | {
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"###The long answer\nThere are four different blood types: A, B, AB, and O. These are called \"phenotypes\". It's the traits that are displayed, genetically. However, they are represented as \"genotypes\", the actual genetic makeup. For example, the blood genotype AA means type A blood. But the genotype AO is also type A blood. Here's a quick list of the different types of genotypes and their corresponding phenotypes:\n\n| Genotype | Phenotype\n|:-----------:|:------------:|:------------:|\n| AA | A \n| AO | A\n| BB | B\n| BO | B\n| AB | AB\n| OO | O \n\n^(Reminder: **Genotype**: The actual genetic makeup; **Phenotype**: The traits exhibited by this makeup)\n\nAs we can see, there's three possibilities (A, B, and O), which are found in groups of two (one from the mother, one from the father) that make up six different combinations (order doesn't matter). However, A and B are considered *dominant* over O. So if either type A or type B appears with type O, the O is ignored. Even further, type A and B are considered *codominant* over each other, meaning if they appear together, they have their own traits (their own phenotype).\n\nNow, that's the different blood types. In the short, reproduction will give one of the types from each parent. So if the parents are AA and BB respectively, the child is going to have a combination of A and B (in fact, in that case, the only possibility is type AB). We can find out the possible blood types of offspring by arranging the parents' genotypes in a square which we call a *Punnet square*:\n\n| | A | A |\n|:-----------:|:------------:|:------------:|\n| **B** | | \n| **B** | | \n\nAs you see, we have arranged this simple 3x3 box with the parent's genotypes (AA and BB). This works like a multiplication table. We can get the type at the column and row where they intersect, allowing us to fill the table out like this:\n\n\n| | A | A |\n|:-----------:|:------------:|:------------:|\n| **B** | AB | AB \n| **B** | AB | AB\n\nThat's a simple example. In the Macdonald case, the father was type B (genotype of either BB or BO), the mother was type A (genotype of either AA or AO), the one daughter was type AB (genotype of AB) and the other daughter was type O (genotype of OO).\n\nA bit of mental work tells us that in order for one daughter to have type O blood, the mother and father both had to have some type O. This means the mother and father must be BO and AO respectively. We can put this into a Punnet square:\n\n| | A | O |\n|:-----------:|:------------:|:------------:|\n| **B** | AB | BO \n| **O** | AO | OO\n\nAs we can see here, the offspring of a type AO and type BO person could have four different blood types! They could be either AB, B, A, or O. That explains both of the daughters.\n\n###Short answer\nThe blood types of a person depends on their parents. Blood types can have a \"recessive gene\", which is present, but doesn't \"do\" anything. Combining two recessive genes (via the Baby Machine^(tm)) can make that recessive trait a \"dominant trait\" (meaning that it is shown). In this case, the parents had a combination of blood types that allowed their offspring to have any of the four different blood types.\n\n###Addendum\nSome of the biology in this post has been simplified. Also noteworthy that there's another major factor in blood types: Rh positive and negative. However, that's not important in this particular question. In the short, Rh positive means there's a specific type of chemical in the blood, while negative does not have that chemical. The vast majority of people are Rh positive. An Rh negative mother who has an Rh positive baby is a medical risk, as mother's blood will consider the infant's to be \"foreign\" and attacks the baby. This is only a problem for the second birth on, and there's a type of medicine that prevents this."
]
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21an8n | why do the chinese who lost family in mh370 have strong distrust of the malaysian government? | They are going to the Chinese embassy in Malaysia to complain. It seems like more than shock and grief at work. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/21an8n/eli5_why_do_the_chinese_who_lost_family_in_mh370/ | {
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"It's also possible (though I have no direct evidence to support this statement) that the Chinese government is feeding it's people anti-Malaysia propaganda.",
"Because the gov of Malaysia is [racist](_URL_0_) against the Chinese and Indian minorities. It's hard to trust a government that actively oppress you. "
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5swbsb | why can't someone take a glass of coca cola in a lab and learn the secret recipe? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5swbsb/eli5_why_cant_someone_take_a_glass_of_coca_cola/ | {
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"The ingredients and quantities are far less important to cooking times and ingredient order. The cooking process results in chemical reactions fundamentally altering the structure of the mixture (compound I forget my chemical terminology).\n\nTLDR: its impossible to know how long X and Y were heated before Z was added which contributes significantly to taste"
]
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29zp64 | why do mlm/pyramid schemes inspire such cult like behavior | So this guy I barely talked to in hs repeatedly msged me though I repearedly ignored him since I wasnt to fond of him. Until one day I asked him what he wanted and he began a pitch about wakeupnow how it would save me money help me manage money and make me money. I replied with that im a business student and im not falling for his pyramid scheme. He gets defensive saying life is a pyramid scheme and I tell him what the definition of ps is and how the fact that some people are richer than others doesnt make life a pyramid scheme. Then he had a semi breakdown about how hes breaking his back to get successful and how I dont like money (which is why im studying it in school). I ignore him and decide to unfriend him but when I look at his profile I see numerous posts about how wakeupnow changed his life. Moreso than on even the most religious persons wall about God or Jesus.
Now I know enough about how pyramid schemes work and why they fail and why people fall for them but why is there a cult like behavior?
Where you see people holding about 300$ on their profile pic saying wakeupnow is a scam my ass. Or show crudely drawn misinformed comics about inflation and how wakeupnow fights it. Or the 20 messages a day about their testamonial.
I know for a fact that it wasnt a bot because he still had the messaging ticks he had in highschool. So why is it so cult like between him and several others with their posts. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/29zp64/eli5_why_do_mlmpyramid_schemes_inspire_such_cult/ | {
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"Once people have invested in the idea they don't want to admit the loss, so they deny it."
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368rbj | why will there be a 5-10 year appeal process before the boston bomber is executed? don't we already have complete evidence of his guilt? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/368rbj/eli5why_will_there_be_a_510_year_appeal_process/ | {
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"In his appeals he (or his attorney) will likely challenge his sentence rather than his conviction. Presumably his goal will be to have his sentenced reduced to life in prison, not to have his conviction overturned.",
"I believe that all death penalty sentences are automatically given an appeal process according to U.S. law.\n\nSource: Criminal Justice 101",
"In order to have a fair justice system, we need to allow for appeals. And, as much as some people are kinda horrible, we need to allow appeals for them too because the minute we start denying legals such as appeals and presumption of innocence to even one person, we open up the possibility of denying them to other, potentially actually innocent.",
"The reason why there is such a period is because the courts of law have been wrong before, the legal process is not perfect, and appeals of this nature take a lot of time.\n\nFor example, we may have compelling evidence of his guilt, but the way in which the police collected that information might have violated the guy's rights in some way. Or a new witness might be found that indicates the guy was not responsible due to insanity.\n\nWithout an appeals process, there's no turning back from a death sentence. Doesn't mean much when you correct a mistake and release someone from custody after they're dead.",
"Because at least 4% of people sentenced to death are innocent. [Here's the paper.](_URL_0_)\n\nThis guy isn't innocent, but the law tries to treat all cases the same. And 5 - 10 years would be short in the federal system, which has had 3 executions since 1988, most federal death row inmates die of old age.\n\nExecuting Tsarnaev doesn't really matter in my opinion, whether he dies in 15 years by execution or in 50 years by old age, he will die in prison. His death won't bring back any of the lost limbs or those 3 people he killed."
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39pjfj | if things like nuts and seeds are not properly digested by our bodies, then how do we benefit from their nutrition? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/39pjfj/eli5_if_things_like_nuts_and_seeds_are_not/ | {
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"Nuts and seeds are made of more than one material. While you might not be able to digest the fiber, you can digest the protein, fat, etc.",
"That's kind of a tautology. By definition, \"not properly digested\" means you are not benefiting from the nutrition. Food that passes into your poop intact (corn kernals, pumpkin seeds, etc) has not been digested. Be sure to chew thoroughly, especially tough and fibrous foods.",
"We have trouble digesting the shells. We can digest most of the meat.\n\nThat's why you crack and/or peel nuts before you eat them."
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6rdi53 | what specifics are there when war is declared? is there a start date? is there a specific region that is designate as warzone, and are there boundaries? i know modern warfare is a little more complex than this. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6rdi53/eli5_what_specifics_are_there_when_war_is/ | {
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"It has always been quite nebulous and needs to be evaluated on a case-by-case basis.\n\nAs a modern example, the Iran-Iraq War started with a downgrade of diplomatic relations and persecution/deportation of civilians of the opposing country. This was followed by small skirmishes in disputed territory, then a full-scale invasion. Both countries started mobilizing their armies after the diplomatic breakdown, but the gap between that and the Iraqi invasion was about 6 months from March-September 1980. If you only count full invasion as \"war\", then it started on 22 September, 1980.\n\nA modern counterexample is the US invading Panama in 1989, which despite including a proper invasion isn't usually considered a \"war\". The US deposed the leader and dissolved the country's military, installing an opposition leader. We have a clear date of invasion, but it's unclear if this actually qualifies as a war.\n\nSometimes a government will declare war, which makes things a little more tidy, but doing so can have legal consequences in a country. The US hasn't officially declared war since WW2, despite various invasions of other countries over the years that we still commonly recognize as wars (Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, Iraq again). If you are a defending country, a declaration of war isn't necessarily that meaningful in the face of defending yourself.\n\nAs for what counts as a \"warzone\", that's a little unclear as well. Generally, a warzone is \"wherever the killing is happening\". When the US invaded Afghanistan, the mainland US was definitely not a warzone, but all of Afghanistan was considered a warzone. From a civilian perspective, the important factor is how safe your area is. A warzone is any area where you have a significant likely hood of getting killed by military action, with the meaning of \"significant\" really being important to the individual. For a military, a Warzone is anywhere where they can conduct operations with an actively hostile enemy. Again, all of this varies case-by-case.\n\nA given government might put out travel advisories describing the safety of traveling to particular areas. That government may designate an area unsafe due to war or violence, essentially defining a \"warzone\", but this definition is specific to the safety of the civilians of that country.",
"War is declared by congress, so the date that they vote would be the date that the war began. For example, we voted to go to war with Japan on Dec 8th, 1941 after Pearl Harbor. The fighting began much earlier, of course, but that was the date the USA officially entered the conflict.\n\nThe phrase \"war zone\" is generally used for the location that the hostilities take place in. During WWII, this included most of Europe, the Pacific Islands, and northern Africa. Nowadays the military uses the term \"Area of Responsibility\", or AOR for short, which refers to the geographical location that a Combatant Command is responsible for conducting operations in. CENTCOM is responsible for the Middle East, for example.\n\nWarfare is complex in general. There are colleges that have the sole purpose of teaching officers how to go to war, aptly named War Colleges. The War on Terror, aside from not really being a war, is even more confusing because our enemy does not have a central leadership, is almost completely grass-roots organized, operates in multiple countries across multiple continents, and does not wear uniforms. So the boundaries are essentially international borders, and with the rise of clandestine operations, even those don't matter that much."
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3s03wo | how did england politically justify keeping a chunk of ireland (northern ireland) after the war of independence, and why don't they come under more pressure from the international community to hand it back? | As a Catholic and an Irish American, I'm often told my by grandparents and other community elders about how the English "stole" Northern Ireland, but at the same time no one has ever explained to me how they got away with it. If they really did just refuse to hand it back with the rest of the island, why don't they have more pressure put on them by the other developed nations to hand it back (like they do with for example Gibralter or the Falklands)? If they didn't, what happened, and why did it cause so much hatred on both sides?
Edit: Psyk60 has given me a great answer. Thanks for the help everyone! | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3s03wo/eli5_how_did_england_politically_justify_keeping/ | {
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"If it was up to England, Northern Ireland would probably have been handed back in the 70s or something. Generally speaking, most people in Great Britain (so including Wales and Scotland as well as England) would have preferred giving Northern Ireland to the Republic of Ireland. At least that was the case until recently, if you excluded don't knows and undecideds.\n\nThe majority of the population in Northern Ireland want to remain part of the UK. That's the fundamental reason why it's still part of the UK.\n\nGiving it to Ireland despite the majority being against it would cause huge problems. It would probably immediately descend into civil war. There are a lot of people in Northern Ireland who will fight to keep it from being ruled by the rest of Ireland.\n\nSo most people now would prefer Northern Ireland stays in the UK to avoid that happening. Now that violence from republican groups has mostly died down, people don't want to upset the status quo too much and take the risk that unionist groups will start the violence up again.\n\nedit - I guess you're also asking about the history too.\n\nEngland conquered Ireland (the whole thing) a long time ago. They solidified their rule in the 16th Century.\n\nAfter that there were a few waves of colonisers from England and Scotland, particularly in what is now Northern Ireland. This meant that by the time the war of independence happened, most people there were protestants who were descended from the settlers. So they did not want to be ruled by Irish Catholics. \n\nAs a sort of compromise, the UK agreed to partition Ireland into two, and each one would get to vote to remain in the UK (well technically rejoin it) or become part of the Irish Free State. But the borders were drawn in such a way that the outcome was inevitable, and Northern Ireland stayed in the UK.\n\nOf course this was all really unfair. The native Irish were being ruled by a \"Protestant elite\" and their rights were limited, and they were generally oppressed. But stuff like that was pretty typical between the 16th and 19th Centuries. Britain and other European powers were doing it all over the world. Not that it excuses it, but it was how it was. By the time this sort of colonial behaviour was starting to be considered unacceptable, Northern Ireland already had a large number of people who were there because of it.",
"North Ireland was the portion of the Irish populace that chose to not leave the British Empire when the rest of Ireland won the right to leave. Why would the Empire kick them out when they wanted to stay? \n\nEdit: There is also not a lot of pressure from the international community for the UK to give up Gibraltar or the Falklands. Argentina wants the Falklands (the Falklands want to stay with the UK) and Spain wants Gibraltar, but most of the rest of the world does not care or actively supports the UK. ",
"To add to /u/Psyk60 's points - you talk of 'pressure by other developed nations to hang back Gibraltar or the Falklands'. The pressure in that case is to steal them against the wishes of the residents. Argentina wants the Falklands, so places pressure, and attempted an invasion, to take them. The residents have repeatedly demonstrated a desire to be connected to the UK, including a referendum where, as I recall, only 2 votes were cast in *total* for swapping it for Argentina. Gibraltar doesn't manage quite that hegemony, but in consultative referendums, well over 90% of the residents state they want ties with Britain, not with Spain. When nearly everyone living there wants one thing, it's profoundly dishonest for other countries to 'place pressure' on them to be moved to a country they don't want to be part of; that is stealing (or invasion & occupation).\n\nSimilarly, Northern Ireland wants to remain part of the UK. There's a substantial minority that don't, but by and large, the residents do. It would be much easier for the UK if NI were not a part of it - but the violence that would result would basically be another Irish civil war, and nobody wants that, not Ireland, not NI, not the UK. So the current arrangement persists.",
"It would have meant causing a far more bloody civil war than the one that happened because the UVF was a larger and better armed organisation than the IRA at the time despite being confined to what would become northern Ireland.\n\nThey did give the people of northern Ireland a vote to stay in the United Kingdom or join the rest of Ireland, they chose the former.\n\nThe hatred on both sides (in northern Ireland) has existed for centuries and even when things are on an even keel, like now there is a mistrust amongst the communities. This was further exasperated by the stormont governments discrimination against catholics when in areas such as housing and gerrymandering of the voting process. Not to mention the mayhem and murder practice in Northern Ireland by both sides during the troubles.",
"Alright. Don't mention the Falklands unless you want a paddling. 99% of Falkland residents voted to remain part of the UK. The UK has held the Falklands longer than every other nation COMBINED. Argentina has never owned the Falklands. \n\nGibraltar and Northern Ireland also want to remain part of the UK. The UK want to give NI back but they can't just force them to leave.",
"Irish-Americans who advocate the whole lazy \"give Ireland back to the Irish\" line never seem to understand the principle of consent; that's to say, you can't just \"hand back\" a territory any more than the US could \"hand back\" Arizona to the Navajo. \n\nIt all depends on who lives there now and somehow, I don't think the people of Arizona would fancy living under a Native American tribal council any more than the unionist/British people of Northern Ireland would like to live under the Irish state.\n\nAnd of course if someone is advocating that the current population of the disputed territory leave and \"go back where they came from\", well that's about as likely as the Jewish retirees of Florida lining up to board a boat \"home\" to Lithuania. And with all of the uncomfortable precedents that implies.\n\nMy advice is to remember nations are made of people, not rocks. The majority of the people of the Falkland Islands don't wish to be Argentine; the majority of those in Gibraltar don't wish to be Spanish. Neither Argentina nor Spain offer a solution beyond \"tough shit\" when asked how to square that circle. \n\nAnd that lack of understanding and empathy is why they don't control those places."
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1west6 | why do fruits and vegetables always feel cold, even when they should be room temperature? | If I leave an apple, carrot, cucumber, etc. on the counter, when I pick it up it feels cold to the touch. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1west6/why_do_fruits_and_vegetables_always_feel_cold/ | {
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"How cold things feel to the touch is a reflection of their ability to conduct heat. Items which are better heat conductors will feel colder, whereas items that don't conduct heat well, will feel less cold.\n\nPut a glass cup, a plastic cup, and a metal cup on your counter and let them all come to room temperature. The metal one will feel coldest, because it has high heat transfer. The plastic one will feel least cold, for the opposite reason.\n\nFruits have a high water content, and so generally conduct heat fairly well. Thus they feel cold."
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5wnx0q | when a bug gets stuck in your car and travels a few miles with you before it gets back outside, does it ever find its previous home/nest/colony again? does it care? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5wnx0q/eli5_when_a_bug_gets_stuck_in_your_car_and/ | {
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"That depends on the bug. Some bees have been shown to be able to re-locate their hive after being separated by a reasonable distance. Over time they learn the area while foraging and can find their way back if they're not moved too far.\n\nAnts trace their location carefully with scent and would be lost if moved.\n\nMost non-social insects don't really have a permanent \"home\" and would just do bug stuff in their new location. ",
"In a forensics class I took, we were learning about the body farms that can be found throughout the USA. An experiment was done involving decomposing rates where flies were taken off a body, placed a drop of paint on their back for marking, and driven a few mile(s) away. The flies were recorded to have made it back to the body before the individual who drove them away did.\n\nEdit: Redditors, please donate your organs and body when you're through with them. Advancing the sciences and medicine requires bodies. Medical schools would love to use you as a cadaver. And afterwards, if you're lucky, your body might be the next \"Mr Bones\" in Mrs. Smith's 6th grade science class",
"I learned from my Turf-Inscets professor that ants relocate to their ant piles by using familiar smells, sun and the gravitational pull. Ants are a truly magnificent creature...\nNot related to location, but a queen bee can release a pheromone that causes the rest of the bees to bite the hive, tear it open a little and flutter their wings making a draft for the queen bee to cool off. ",
"Damn these are some really good explanations! thank you folks, this has always crossed my mind lol"
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b9b6ey | why is caucasian the only racial category for white people? is it for the sake of simplicity, or because the caucasian hominids are the ancestors of europeans? why not have italic/slavic/germanic etc. instead? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/b9b6ey/eli5_why_is_caucasian_the_only_racial_category/ | {
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"Increasingly fine distinctions don't add anything and would probably lead to more confusion as to which group people fitted into.\n\nIf you had all those sub-categories, you would also have to differentiate between Asians from different parts of that continent, Hispanics from parts of the Spanish conquests. black people from a variety of origins - Northern or Southern African, Caribbean, African Americans etc, etc. There are just as many differences in other groups as the ones you mention.",
"There's no scientific basis for race at all. We're all humans and we all came from Africa. The concept of race was invented in the 16th century. Racial categories are completely arbitrary and were made up by racists, race scientists, and social darwinists. There's no science behind it at all. Using the term \"Caucasian\" to refer to white people was coined by a German named Christoph Meiners. He believed that different races had different origins, and that they were defined by their beauty. He though that all the non-white races were ugly, and only the \"white race\" was beautiful. He thought that people from the Caucasus were the most beautiful of all, so they must have been the original \"white people\", and the term spread from there. \n\n & #x200B;\n\n & #x200B;",
"It's got a long history, but the term is really obsolete and meaningless. In the late 18th century, European philosopher divided the world into three races, Caucasoid, Negroid, and Mongoloid. Christoph Meiners chose the term for white people in 1785 because Caucasians had the \"whitest, most blooming and most delicate skin.\" \n\nJohann Blumenbach agreed: \"Caucasian variety – I have taken the name of this variety from Mount Caucasus, both because its neighborhood, and especially its southern slope, produces the most beautiful race of men.\"\n\nSo, in the original usage, it was a form of flattery. As an aside, neither philosopher had been to the Caucuses, and their conception of people there as being particularly beautiful came not from any contact, but from art: European artists were freer to paint erotic scenes when setting them in Ottoman harems, where 'caucasians' would typically refer to the slave girls, concubines, and odalisques. So, they were taking their own lurid fantasies as true, and then calling those women their racial mothers. Waifu for the 1700s.\n\nFrom the mid-20th century forward, race is not considered to have any objective, biological meaning, and racial categories are entirely from how a society treats people.",
"Ethnic categories are cultural, so you presumably live in a culture that doesn't distinguish between different kinds of white ethnicities. Other cultures do distinguish between different kinds of white.\n\nAs an example, in England, ethnic identification forms give the following options:\n\n* White\n * Welsh/English/Scottish/Northern Irish/British\n * Irish\n * Gypsy or Irish Traveller\n * Any other White background, please describe\n\nIn Scotland, on the other hand, you would see these options:\n\n* White\n * Scottish\n * Other British\n * Irish\n * Gypsy/Traveller\n * Polish\n * Any other White ethnic group, please describe"
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4jcj5e | why wont older printers connect with newer operating systems? | Why isn't it backwards compatible or whatever? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4jcj5e/eli5_why_wont_older_printers_connect_with_newer/ | {
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"It's all about the drivers. If no one writes a driver for the new OS you are out of luck. You can try generic drivers but you will lose some functionality. ",
"What is missing is a \"driver\", which is the piece of code that communicates with that specific model of printer. Think of it like a translator between the language the computer speaks and the language the printer speaks.\n\nSo an old printer might work fine on say Windows XP, because the printing company wrote a driver that works with XP. But now years and years later, there is no real reason for the company to spend time writing new drivers so their ancient printers will work on Windows 10. So they don't."
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frh41d | how are ip addresses identifiable by location? | How is it that services are able to know the exact real-world location of a public IP address? Is there some prefix or suffix that gets linked to that location, ISP, or organization? Do these services just perform a WHOIS lookup? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/frh41d/eli5_how_are_ip_addresses_identifiable_by_location/ | {
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"Blocks of IP addresses are assigned to organizations on request by a handful of non-profit organizations responsible for maintaining the IP space. These are the Regional Internet Registries.\n\nIn North America this organization is ARIN, in Europe its RIPE, in Asia it's APNIC, etc\n\nThese organizations each have certain number of IPv4 and IPv6 ranges that they can issue to companies upon request.\n\nWhen you get an IP range assigned to your company or organization it's registered into their database along with your head office location. That's what defines those IP ranges as belonging to a certain country + state + town.\n\nWe don't usually think about top-level organizations like ARIN though, because most people and companies get their IP's assigned to them by an ISP. But the ISPs in turn get their IP ranges from ARIN, RIPE, etc\n\nOnly very large organizations tend to get dedicated IP ranges all to themselves. Apple, HP, and the US government for example have massive IP ranges that belong to their organizations.",
"So, for example, I have my house location listed in my Google account as a base location for Google Maps. So when I access Google from my house, it sees the incoming connection known to be from a home ISP (not mobile), so it now knows to match the IP to the location. Amazon, Pizza delivery companies, etc all get the same. \n\nEven if I don't give Google an explicit home location, enough searches, map queries, etc will probably allow them to figure it out. Additionally, my cell phone is Android, so logged into Google and various Google apps share location data, so when my phone is on WiFi, they get it that way.\n\nISPs allocate IP addresses in area blocks, so once Google or whoever has locations of several IPs in a block, if a new IP pops up in the same range that they don't have explicit information for, they can reasonably guess that it's in the same area as the rest.",
"1. Static addresses assigned by an ISP are linked to a company and location.\n\n2. For most residential cases, dynamic addresses assigned by an ISP are leased for a limited amount of time. You go through multiple addresses every year. These addresses are linked to you profile while they are leased to you. Your profile holds your address and contact info.\n\nIn terms of geotagging, many factors contribute to your Geolocation which is encompassed in a term called Metadata. Some apps ask for the permission to use info such as GSM, GPS, ISP info, carrier info when you use their service/app/ and even browser.\n\nThus, pizza pizza knows the closest location to you is the one down the road because google chrome gave them that info.\n\nSame goes with Google Maps. It gathers everyone's gps coordinates that use the app. Therefore, it can give you the quickest route by determining how many users with their GPS enable on the road."
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6hqfhv | does pickle juice have the same effect as grapefruit juice for intensifying medications? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6hqfhv/eli5_does_pickle_juice_have_the_same_effect_as/ | {
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"No. The acidity is not the issue with grapefruits. The problem is that there enzymes in Grapefruit that mess with the medications in various ways. "
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4xau0b | why does fruit taste sweeter when it decomposes? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4xau0b/eli5_why_does_fruit_taste_sweeter_when_it/ | {
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"The complex sugars are broken down by bacteria, turning them in to simple sugars which are much sweeter"
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836z3x | how would aliens figure out how to decipher the voyager 1 golden disk? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/836z3x/eli5_how_would_aliens_figure_out_how_to_decipher/ | {
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"The instructions are written using chemical and physical knowledge any advance civilization should have. It's also written in the most basic numeric system that exists, which is binary. So any alien race which is capable of logic, knows the time period associated with a fundamental transition of the hydrogen atom (Most common in the universe) can probably decipher it.\n\n_URL_0_",
"Wikipedia has the way we hope some alien civilization that has the technology to capture an extremely fast moving probe can decipher the messages on board.\n\nSee that page and if you have more questions r/answers or r/nostupidquestions"
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a8ggx3 | why do brightly lit objects stay in our vision for a few minutes after we look at them, especially when blinking? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/a8ggx3/eli5_why_do_brightly_lit_objects_stay_in_our/ | {
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"Your vision works by damaging easily repaired parts of your eye. Brighter objects damage it more. You see outlines until they’re repaired."
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mn7md | how a bunch of lines of code can become a complex image like a video game | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/mn7md/eli5_how_a_bunch_of_lines_of_code_can_become_a/ | {
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"If you are talking about something like CoD, or Halo, then you have to separate work into what programmers do and what artist do. \n\n\nArtist needs to design how game world will look like, how characters will look and how will they move. If wheel on a car is rotating, or character is limping, or guns make flash when fired, or rock look like a rock and sits still - that is what artist do. They model characters (sculpt) and texture them (apply paint) and animate them.\n\n\n\nProgrammers are guys that add rules by writing program, a heart of a game. For example: if you click left mouse button, yours character weapon will animate a shot and will check if it hit something. If it did, it turns on animation of death. \nAbility to trigger animations, the way a car is responding. Even things we take for granted, like that we cannot pass through walls, but can through fog - those are the rules that programmer needs to write. \n\n\nGenerally speaking, making a game, especially 3D game, is a hard and cumbersome task. \n\nTL;DR Programmers write how things behave, while artists make those things.",
"Computer code has a lot of built in functionality to draw any pixel onto your screen at any colour, and on top of that, how to draw lines and squares and so on. Programming complex images such as video games uses coordinates all the time - x and y for 2D and x, y and z for 3D. If you were to build a 3D shooter from scratch you'd at first write a lot of code building objects out of lines and fills and setting coordinates for them. It involves a lot of angles and maths.\n\nOnce you have lots of shapes and objects made out of shapes, you tell the computer to apply more complicated detail to the objects - you change the fills to images, called textures.\n\nOnce you have that, you write in a lot of rules along the lines of as to when a certain object should behave a certain way, which translates to when a certain object should look a certain way on the screen.\n\nProgramming games is a lot of telling things to be at an x, y and z position in a virtual space at various times for various reasons.",
"Take a big piece of graph paper and a pencil\n\nIt wouldn't be hard to write a set of instructions for draw a big square in the middle of the grid. \n\n* Erase everything on the page\n* Go to the 300th column, 300th row, \n* Draw a line from here to the 700th column, 300th row\n* Draw a line to 700,700\n* Draw a line to 300,700\n* Draw a line to 300,300 \n\nYay, we have code that can display a simple square. \n\nNow let's say we want to display a square tilted backwards, as though someone pushed the top of it away from them. \n\nAll you do is foreshorten it a little, and bring the top corners in a bit, so you draw a trapezoid. Try drawing a tabletop on paper, that's exactly what you do. So, (numbers not to scale):\n\n* Clear all.\n* Move to 350,400\n* Line to 650, 400\n* Line to 700,700\n* Line to 300,700\n* Line to 350,400\n\nAlrighty, we have instructions for drawing a trapezoid. \n\nFrom there, it isn't so much of a stretch to imagine writing a whole *series* of sets of instructions, to draw all the frames of the square being pushed back, to make an animation. \n\n For each number F in the range 0 to 50\n Left = 300 + F\n Right = 700 - F\n Top = 300 + (F*2)\n\n Clear all\n Move to Top, Left\n Line to Top, Right\n Line to 700,700\n Line to 300,700\n Line to Top, Left\n Rinse and repeat\n\nDo that all very very fast (or make a flipbook with a new sheet of paper each time), and you'll have a little animation of a square slowly tilting backwards. It would be all distorted because the numbers are all wrong to keep the example easy, but the concept is there. \n\nI'm sure you could imagine a similar version that works out the numbers for all four corners, for any given angle you want to rotate the square, then loop over all the angles from 0 to 360 degrees - and you would have a lovely little animation of a square spinning in space. \n\nNow say we wanted to have not a simple square, but one with a logo painted on it, spinning in space. That's actually not that much harder to do.\n\nSay you have a handy 400x400 logo you want to paint on the square for each frame. Keep it on one side ready to refer to.\n\nFor each point *on paper* that your image of the square takes up, work out which point *on the square* it represents. For example, look at our first trapezoid we drew. The point (350,300) on paper is the (0,0)th pixel of the square itself. \n\nSo, we find the (0,0)th pixel of our logo, and paint (350,300) on our graph paper with that colour. Rinse and repeat for each and every point on paper that our square takes up, for every separate frame of our animation - and boom, we have a *textured* animation of a logo-painted square spinning in space. \n\nIt's a shitload of drudgework, but that's what computers are for. \n\nFrom there to a computer game is simply a matter of repeating the process for entire 3d objects constructed out a bunch of squares and triangles connected at angles - [wireframe models](_URL_0_) - and then painting them with useful textures. \n\nAnd instead of simple rotation animations, have angles and positions change according to how you move the mouse and keyboard.\n\nJust keep layering on complexity (things moving by themselves until they hit other objects, things hunting down other things), and eventually you have yourself a video game. \n\nAs it stands, the vast majority of the drudgery gruntwork is done by the specialized computer that is your graphics card - but at the end of the day, it all boils down to the same process. ",
"If you are talking about something like CoD, or Halo, then you have to separate work into what programmers do and what artist do. \n\n\nArtist needs to design how game world will look like, how characters will look and how will they move. If wheel on a car is rotating, or character is limping, or guns make flash when fired, or rock look like a rock and sits still - that is what artist do. They model characters (sculpt) and texture them (apply paint) and animate them.\n\n\n\nProgrammers are guys that add rules by writing program, a heart of a game. For example: if you click left mouse button, yours character weapon will animate a shot and will check if it hit something. If it did, it turns on animation of death. \nAbility to trigger animations, the way a car is responding. Even things we take for granted, like that we cannot pass through walls, but can through fog - those are the rules that programmer needs to write. \n\n\nGenerally speaking, making a game, especially 3D game, is a hard and cumbersome task. \n\nTL;DR Programmers write how things behave, while artists make those things.",
"Computer code has a lot of built in functionality to draw any pixel onto your screen at any colour, and on top of that, how to draw lines and squares and so on. Programming complex images such as video games uses coordinates all the time - x and y for 2D and x, y and z for 3D. If you were to build a 3D shooter from scratch you'd at first write a lot of code building objects out of lines and fills and setting coordinates for them. It involves a lot of angles and maths.\n\nOnce you have lots of shapes and objects made out of shapes, you tell the computer to apply more complicated detail to the objects - you change the fills to images, called textures.\n\nOnce you have that, you write in a lot of rules along the lines of as to when a certain object should behave a certain way, which translates to when a certain object should look a certain way on the screen.\n\nProgramming games is a lot of telling things to be at an x, y and z position in a virtual space at various times for various reasons.",
"Take a big piece of graph paper and a pencil\n\nIt wouldn't be hard to write a set of instructions for draw a big square in the middle of the grid. \n\n* Erase everything on the page\n* Go to the 300th column, 300th row, \n* Draw a line from here to the 700th column, 300th row\n* Draw a line to 700,700\n* Draw a line to 300,700\n* Draw a line to 300,300 \n\nYay, we have code that can display a simple square. \n\nNow let's say we want to display a square tilted backwards, as though someone pushed the top of it away from them. \n\nAll you do is foreshorten it a little, and bring the top corners in a bit, so you draw a trapezoid. Try drawing a tabletop on paper, that's exactly what you do. So, (numbers not to scale):\n\n* Clear all.\n* Move to 350,400\n* Line to 650, 400\n* Line to 700,700\n* Line to 300,700\n* Line to 350,400\n\nAlrighty, we have instructions for drawing a trapezoid. \n\nFrom there, it isn't so much of a stretch to imagine writing a whole *series* of sets of instructions, to draw all the frames of the square being pushed back, to make an animation. \n\n For each number F in the range 0 to 50\n Left = 300 + F\n Right = 700 - F\n Top = 300 + (F*2)\n\n Clear all\n Move to Top, Left\n Line to Top, Right\n Line to 700,700\n Line to 300,700\n Line to Top, Left\n Rinse and repeat\n\nDo that all very very fast (or make a flipbook with a new sheet of paper each time), and you'll have a little animation of a square slowly tilting backwards. It would be all distorted because the numbers are all wrong to keep the example easy, but the concept is there. \n\nI'm sure you could imagine a similar version that works out the numbers for all four corners, for any given angle you want to rotate the square, then loop over all the angles from 0 to 360 degrees - and you would have a lovely little animation of a square spinning in space. \n\nNow say we wanted to have not a simple square, but one with a logo painted on it, spinning in space. That's actually not that much harder to do.\n\nSay you have a handy 400x400 logo you want to paint on the square for each frame. Keep it on one side ready to refer to.\n\nFor each point *on paper* that your image of the square takes up, work out which point *on the square* it represents. For example, look at our first trapezoid we drew. The point (350,300) on paper is the (0,0)th pixel of the square itself. \n\nSo, we find the (0,0)th pixel of our logo, and paint (350,300) on our graph paper with that colour. Rinse and repeat for each and every point on paper that our square takes up, for every separate frame of our animation - and boom, we have a *textured* animation of a logo-painted square spinning in space. \n\nIt's a shitload of drudgework, but that's what computers are for. \n\nFrom there to a computer game is simply a matter of repeating the process for entire 3d objects constructed out a bunch of squares and triangles connected at angles - [wireframe models](_URL_0_) - and then painting them with useful textures. \n\nAnd instead of simple rotation animations, have angles and positions change according to how you move the mouse and keyboard.\n\nJust keep layering on complexity (things moving by themselves until they hit other objects, things hunting down other things), and eventually you have yourself a video game. \n\nAs it stands, the vast majority of the drudgery gruntwork is done by the specialized computer that is your graphics card - but at the end of the day, it all boils down to the same process. "
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26gxge | light into matter? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/26gxge/eli5_light_into_matter/ | {
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"I have no clue what that is referring to, but we have known about light making matter for quite some time. The process is known as pair production, in which two photons (light) with sufficient energy can form a electron-positron pair (or some other matter-antimatter pair). This is allowed because an electron and positron have opposite charge canceling to the zero charge the photons have, the photons momentums become the electron-positron momentum, and the photons energies cover the matter mass.",
"If you smash two photons together with enough energy, they can create an electron/positron pair. (A positron is the anti-particle version of an electron.)\n\nThis is basically just doing the opposite of what happens when matter and anti-matter meet. At a very simple level, it's saying if you add the energy that comes out of the reaction, you can undo matter/anti-matter annihilation.\n\nThe famous equation E = MC^2 essentially says that matter is a form of energy, so it makes sense that we can convert other forms of energy in to matter."
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50mxqm | if our bodies are naturally 36c, why does 36c weather feel very uncomfortable? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/50mxqm/eli5_if_our_bodies_are_naturally_36c_why_does_36c/ | {
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"Because our body is basically a walking heater. Our cells constantly produce heat, and our body is tuned to produce so much heat that we can maintain an internal temperature of 36°C. The amount of heat we produce can change to react to the environment, but when the environment is too hot we can't tone down our own heat production enough to still keep the 36°C, which leads to overheating.\n\nEdit: Thank you for the gold, kind 5 year old :)",
"Our bodies are continuously producing more heat than they need. They want to stay at 36c (or 98.6 f), but to do that they need to give off the extra heat they are making. \n\nWhich actually makes sense. In almost every environment, for at least a good chunk of day outside is cooler than 36, so if we weren't otherwise overheating we wouldn't be able to maintain the right temperature ourselves (essentially we'd be cold blooded). Better to produce too much and then have a few mechanisms to cool down (sweat, blushing, etc).",
"Our bodies like to stay at a certain temperature, but we produce heat, and we must lose that heat to the environment, or else we'll get too hot and die. When the weather outside is the same temperature as our bodies, it's hard to lose heat, so we have to resort to sweating to help.\n\nThink of it like a car engine. The engine works most optimally around 200F, but to maintain that temperature it has to have a whole host of systems to help it lose its heat to the environment.",
"Our bodies need to be cooled due to our muscles and respiration generating heat. If the ambient temperature is the same or greater than our internal temperature then our bodies can't cool properly and we can overheat. \nHumidity is also an issue when our sweat can't evaporate.\nEven though we're at 36C we need it cooler and drier to allow our bodies to cool and function properly.",
"also worth noting, this is why humidity and airflow play such a big factor in comfort - if the air is still, the heat builds up much more quickly in your immediate area (the air directly around you); a nice breeze helps distribute that heat more and make it take longer for your immediate, ambient air to be \"saturated\" with heat.\n\nLikewise, you also expel heat via sweating (evaporation of sweat carries heat away) - if you are in dry air, the sweat can easily and quickly evaporate. If it is extremely humid (such as its been in Pennsylvania lately), the sweat takes a lot longer to evaporate, and your evaporative cooling reduces significantly.",
"your body is always producing heat - to cool itself off it pumps blood closer to the the surface of the body (ie the skin) - when the blood gets closer to the surface the heat is able to be passed into the environment (heat exchange); its why when you are under a blanket it gets warm - when the area you are trying to put the heat into is the same temp as the internal temp the heat transfer works less effectively. \n\nbasically you begin to overheat because you can't get rid of the heat into the environment as well anymore. - the body deals with this by sweating; to cool; and hopefully evaporate some of that heat away. (but if the humidity is high; you can into the same problems) ",
"That's our internal temperature. \nLiving inside of someone's mouth would\nBe pretty uncomfortable temperature-wise. Our external temperature is much cooler so 36 feels uncomfortable from the outside.",
"Basically, our body produces heat (by making and using energy from sugar and fat). heat flows through our body. The only thing that cools down our body is our environment (with air and sweat).\n\n\nIt means that 36°C is our internal temperature (I used to hear it was 37,5 but I guess it is just that we, french people are damn too hot) but our skin and extremities (feet/hands) are colder (they're farther from main heat and in contact with more air).\n\n\nWe feel the temperature from our skin so if your skin is at 33°C, 36°C will seem hot.\nAdditionnaly, we don't feel absolute temperature but relative temperature (to ourselves). 20°C may either feel cold or hot if you were just before in a cold shower or a hot one.\n\n\n\n\n",
"My father as a doctor told me that 36c is our internal body, but skin temp is a lot lower, so when the skin feels 36c its hotter than the original skin temp",
"The most important factor is that air is a *very* good insulator, and you are simply used to being exposed to a substance that does a good job of not letting your body's thermal energy escape. As the air approaches your body's temperature it absorbs even less than it does normally, and you start to build up heat.\n\nIf you ever take the temperature of a swimming pool that feels cold you may discover that it's temperature is around 34 C. That is what 34 degrees C actually feels like. It feels colder than your body (obviously), but it also feels colder than 20 C air most of the time. You feel cold water very strongly because the water is starting to absorb thermal energy from your body (which is also mostly water), whereas air that is 34 degrees is itself the same temperature as the water, and is also unlikely to let much heat energy escape from your body, and so you will gradually feel hotter as the trace amounts of heat that would normally dissipate continue to accumulate.\n\nOr on a day when it is 20 - 25 C outside you may touch a piece of metal outside and notice that it feels cold (provided it was a cloudy day). That metal is exactly the same temperature as the air, but it is extremely good at conducting heat, so it rapidly draws thermal energy from your body (to such a great extent that you will be providing heat to parts you aren't even touching as the heat is conducted all throughout the metal).\n\nAnother important factor is that your body is constantly generating heat. Although it is capable of cooling itself down using sweat to perform evaporative cooling, you will still *feel* hot because the point of your nervous system is to alert you to these things and make you feel the appropriate stimulus. Your senses are almost all calibrated to detect changes moreso than absolute values. If you were in a room that was 40 C, stepping outside on a 36 C day might feel cooler, but on most days you probably are exposed to temperatures that are cooler than that.\n\nFinally: remember that on all days the temperature outside that is being reported is actually the temperature of the *air*. Air can't be seen (except at great distance as you start to see the cumulative effect of several kilometers of it), and that's because it tends to let most radiation pass right through it. On a sunny day the air doesn't get nearly as much heat from solar radiation as you would. Your skin is designed to absorb solar radiation, and it does so by absorbing it as heat. Fun experiment: if you want to know roughly how much solar radiation your skin can absorb on a given day, just go outside and close your eyes and look around for a bit. Any light you can still see is whatever is seeping through the skin of your eyelids - the rest is being absorbed or reflected.\n\nIt's a small anecdote, but I have a friend who moved to India from Canada. When she came back after a few years she needed to put on a sweater when it was still 30C outside on a hot summer evening because she had become so accustomed to the hotter weather.",
"Our bodies always produce heat, so when our environment's ambient temperature reaches or exceeds the temperature that our body wishes to stay at, it now has excess. We remove heat through perspiration (sweating), but we have a limited amount of water to sweat out and dehydration which is also harmful to our body's chemistry along with over heating. Being uncomfortable is a reaction so that we want to find a way to cool off or find a cooler environment to inhabit than the current one, to prevent dehydration and over heating.",
"Temperature difference. The air cools the outside of our body i.e skin, we are used to it being that way which is less than 36C. When we contact water at 36C our skin is cooler than that hence the stimuli response. ",
"Second law of thermodynamics: heat will always move from an object at a higher temperature to an object at lower temperature. Heat will never flow from lower temperatures to higher temperatures naturally. Think of the earth and the sun. The earth will always be warmed from the hotter sun and the sun will never receive heat from the earth. \n\nLet's twist this another way, during a hot summer day, the interior of your home feels great at 21/70 degrees. The lower humidity plays a roll but not as much. During the winter, a room at 21/70 will likely feel cold to most. It's the same temperature as during the summer so why wouldn't it feel the same? \n\nYour body is constantly giving off thermal radiation except when you are in an environment with the temperature higher than the temperature of your body. In the winter, even with the interior at 21/70, your body is radiating far more heat because the walls, windows, doors are much colder than your body. In extreme conditions, your body will radiate heat even quicker to the point of hypothermia and even death. \n\nIn a hot environment, your body is not radiating heat nearly as much, if at all. Remember hot to cold. \n",
"Our body is basically a heat engine converting internal energy of food into work. Heat engines must have hot source (body) and cold sink (environment). When temperature of hot source and cold sink are close, efficiency of the engine is low, it can't produce much work:\n\nEfficiency = 1 - T(cold sink)/T(hot body)",
"Because that is our core temperature, right between the heart and liver and stomach. Our skin actually stays around 19.4 C.",
"Have you ever wondered why you take your temperature in your mouth? Our core temperature might be 36C, but it's much cooler on our skin- and so we prefer the ambient temperature to be the same as our skin.",
"Think of a computer's processor. A 90watt CPU (think of how hot a 90w incandescent light bulb gets) in a 30c environment at full load will run at 70c. If we put the running CPU at 70c into a 70c oven, it will no longer be able to *lose* it's extra heat (temp over environ-temp) to the environment. The temp of our CPU will rise until the difference in temperature is so great that the environment is again able to absorb the heat from the 90watt CPU.\n\nIf we drop 50ml of water at 101c into 50ml of water at 1c the resultant mixture would be 51c. The heat lost by the hot water is directly proportional to the heat gained by the cold water. The same holds true for our bodies ability to modulate heat in extreme conditions, which is why we sweat as an evaporative cooling measure.",
"To extend this question (I hope this hasn't already been answered): What are ideal, \"perfectly comfortable\" conditions for a human? temperature, humidity, airflow, etc",
"Think about a car engine. An engine will operate around 800 degrees F in winter or summer. The radiators release excess heat to the surroundings when the engine is working, even just a stroll down the highway, the radiator is releasing heat much like we do when wet sweat. Now on a hot day, say around 120 F, still way below the operating temperature, the engine can overheat because the radiators can't release as much of the built up energy inside. Same with us, we have an operating temperature but when it's too hot (in this case, the same 98F), we simply can't release the heat as fast as we produce it, causing our bodies to overheat",
"Because your body is continually creating heat.\n\nThe net result of your body generating heat and also expelling heat to the environment is 36C. But if the environment is also 36C, then your body can't expel the heat effectively and you begin to feel uncomfortable. Your body will sweat a lot, putting a lot of that heat into water which then evaporates, taking even more heat with it as it does. This is what's happening when, even on a hot day, wind can make your skin feel cold.\n\nYou'll notice the perfect temperatures where you never feel cold or hot range from the upper 60s F to the mid 70s F for most people. The most common temperatures for indoor thermostats here in the States are 68-72. This is the range where you body is able to expel just the right amount of heat to maintain temperature without using energy to shiver or water to sweat."
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5tqxff | why do some flames (like a candle) put off a lot of light, while others (like a butane torch) put off almost none? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5tqxff/eli5_why_do_some_flames_like_a_candle_put_off_a/ | {
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"The temperature of the flame determines it's color. A candle has a lot of flame in the yellow and orange range. A butane torch produces blue flame. \n\nBlue light doesn't brighten a space as well as yellow light does. At least to the human eye.\n\n",
"Generally, a bright flame contains a lot of carbon dust, or soot. This carbon is heated - either heated so it glows, or even vaporized and turned into a bright glowing plasma. \n\nLess bright flames are ones where all the carbon is burnt to carbon dioxide. This is a gas, and it glows less intensely, if at all."
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3mmn3c | how do we unconsciously put parts of speech in the right order to form sentences? | Seems like such a complex process compared to something like unconsciously learning how to type. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3mmn3c/eli5_how_do_we_unconsciously_put_parts_of_speech/ | {
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"Practice. Followed by more practice. That is followed by even more practice. Did I mention practice? The whole thing is based on practice. You took years to learn how to speak. Notice how little kids screw it all up all the time? Eventually you practice it so much that you don't even have to think about it, you just do it like you ride a bike. "
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ooqyz | what's the whole deal with the satanic verses and what in it caused a fatwa on salman rushdie's life? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/ooqyz/eli5_whats_the_whole_deal_with_the_satanic_verses/ | {
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"I'd like very much to hear someone explain this, I'm currently reading it, and, being about half-way, found nothing particularly offensive about it. ",
"Bear in mind that there's not necessarily some big objective blasphemy that would clearly necessitate a fatwa to any true Muslim. It's somewhat analogous to the cartoons-of-Muhammad incident, people have been making images of the guy ever since he was alive, but there was one particular incident that happened to be blown out of proportion.\n\nOnce people start going on about it, it spreads the word to more and more. And once someone gets righteously indignant, other people like to try and be more indignant, that's just how people work. And at this point, it becomes a great way for (say) an evangelist cleric to get his congregation riled up, because they all already know about it and enjoy having someone tell them how terrible it is. This process continues, and suddenly there are death threats everywhere.\n\nFor an illustration of how the process isn't simple and objective, South Park included Muhammad as a super hero in its super best friends episode years before the Danish cartoons thing, and simply didn't draw much attention by chance. Nothing was less offensive, just like nothing was particularly offensive in the cases where people did get riled up about it.",
"Some Muslim scholars, philosophers and biographers tell a story called the Gharaniq Incident. Basically what happened is that Mohammed, when he was alive, set about converting the Mecca area to his new religion (Islam). People in the Mecca area worshipped Lat, Uzza and Manat at the time. One day, Mohammed was reciting words he believed to be delivered by the angel called Gabriel, when Satan entered his mind and added extra verses that implied Lat, Uzza and Manat actually existed, and can be prayed to, which Mohammd speaks aloud and commits to scripture, believing Satan to be Gabriel (which obviously hurts his attempts to convert them to a different religion). The angel Gabriel is disappointed in Mohammed, Mohammed takes back what he said. The verses Satan put in Mohammed's mind are the \"satanic verses\".\n\nNow, this incident isn't actually in the Qur'an, it's an apocryphal tale, and most Muslims reject that it ever happened. You can see why it would be controversial.\n\nRushdie's book involves Gabriel and Mohammed as characters, and retells this incident. That's controversial enough, but many Muslim critics claim that Rushdie depicts Mohammed as too flawed, and at one point, Mohammed's friend says that he believes Mohammed is editing the Qur'an as the angels dictate it to him, to suit his own beliefs and purposes. \n\nThere's another segment in which a girl believes that Gabriel is speaking to her, and telling her to make a pilgrimage to Mecca across the sea. She and her flock will be allowed to walk on the surface of the water. She gathers her supporters and goes, but they walk into the water and vanish, with it left vague whether they actually walked on the sea (because she was really speaking to angels) or whether she drowned (because she wasn't). \n\nThe combination of these things was enough for it to be deemed incredibly blasphemous. Ayatollah Khomeini issued an order for all faithful Muslims to kill the author, Salman Rushdie, if they got the chance. Salman's still alive, but many other people were killed; bookstores were bombed, translators were murdered, and several Muslim leaders who opposed the decision were murdered by their congregations.\n\nRushdie was called on by Muslim leaders and some politicians in Britain to disown the book and cease publication. He issued an apology that pretty much said \"sorry it offended you\", but didn't disown the book or stop publishing it. There was a big debate between \"We should have freedom of speech, and shouldn't cave in to violence or threat\" and \"You should stop offending people, it's causing problems and is disrespectful\".\n\nThere was a similar controversy surrounding the novel and Scorsese film \"The Last Temptation of Christ\". The core idea of that novel is that Jesus of Nazareth was both fully divine and fully human, and as a human, experienced human feelings like anxiety, emotional and sexual desire, fear, and reluctance, which upset many people for many reasons. The author of the novel received death threats, and some Christian protest groups burnt down cinemas who showed the film and assaulted people who bought tickets. That incident is worth reading about because it was more localised and lacks the international-politics angle."
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8vdpuk | what would be some of the long term effects if a giant canal was built from the mediterranean to bringing water in the the heart of the sahara desert? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8vdpuk/eli5_what_would_be_some_of_the_long_term_effects/ | {
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1zt80m | baseball contracts. what is this gray area of "might stay or be traded"? | I'm not a huge fan of baseball, but there are a couple players I follow. One of my favorites, David Price, had his contract run out this past year. I thought that meant he'd be a free agent, and given Tampa's historically low salary pool I thought he'd be going somewhere else. Prepared to buy a new team's merchandise... but he's still with Tampa.
How does the contract work? Why is there another year or two (or three?) where he can stay with the team without someone else offering more money? Is this just a trade-only time period, with free agency coming later? Can you trade a player any time you want? The more I think into it, the more questions I have. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1zt80m/eli5_baseball_contracts_what_is_this_gray_area_of/ | {
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"[David Price agreed to a 1-year, $14 million contract in January.](_URL_0_)\n\nThis means he will not be a free agent until this contract expires. When/if that happens, he has the ability to sign with any team he chooses. In the meantime, while under contract, his rights are controlled by the Rays. They can trade those rights to any other team if they so choose (unless it says in his contract that they can't - this is known as a no-trade clause - but I don't think his particular contract has such terms)."
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9sjzh0 | what's the difference between delirium and psychosis? | From what I could find they look very similar. What are the differences? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9sjzh0/eli5_whats_the_difference_between_delirium_and/ | {
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"In the most basic sense, delirium is caused an underlying medical/physical illness or problem. \nWhen the underlying problem is treated, delirium is resolved. \n\nPsychosis is a symptom of a mental illness like during a manic episode or more commonly in schizophrenia. Antipsychotic meds help to control these symptoms. "
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101tdh | how do 47% of people in the us not pay federal income tax? | Is 47% of the population below the poverty line? Does that number include children and other ineligible-for-work demographics? I'm so confused.
Thanks for keeping your responses civil : ) | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/101tdh/how_do_47_of_people_in_the_us_not_pay_federal/ | {
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"The majority of households in the US make under $45k a year. The government offers pretty significant tax deductions to families, and it just doesn't take that many deductions to cover the entire income tax burden when you're making that amount of money.",
"There are a few groups of people who don't pay federal income tax. \n\nThe biggest group (about 60% of them) don't because they qualify for enough deductions to reduce their burden to $0 (think lower-class families with kids). Both parties are responsible for introducing tax cuts/credits, so if this is in response to Mitt Romney's leaked video, it's a bit of a stretch to blame it on Obama and the Democrats (in fact, the biggest jumps in non-taxpayers happened under Reagan and Bush II). With that said, they do pay payroll taxes, for things like Social Security.\n\nAlmost a quarter are elderly and retired.\n\nAbout 15% are the under-the-poverty-line types.",
"Here is an ELI5 answer:\n\nWhen you have a job and earn money, that money is totaled up at the end of the year and compared against the amount of tax taken out of your paychecks throughout the year. At this same time, the IRS says that you can subtract money from the amount you earned depending on different things:\n\n- If you have kids, you can take away $$$ per kid\n- If you own a house, you can take away $$$ for the interest on your mortgage\n- If you work from home you can take away $$$ for your expenses like electricity and office supplies\n- If you donated to charity you can take away $$$ for that\n\nOn top of this, each person also gets a standard deduction, meaning you can take $$$ right off the bat, but a lot of times you can either do the standard deduction OR the items from the list above. This is called itemizing. \n\nSo, imagine if you owned a house, and had 3 kids, but only made $30,000 last year. Your standard deduction (that everyone gets) might bring your earnings down from $30,000 to $20,000. Then, for each kid lets say you can take away $5,000 more (3x$5000=$15,000). That means you have $5,000 in earnings left that can be taxed. Finally, you paid $5,000 in intrerest in your home for that year, so you take away $5,000 from your earnings.\n\nJust like that, you now made $0 taxable dollars as far as the IRS is concerned. This means you don't owe any taxes, and any taxes you did pay throughout the year will get returned to you.",
"That statistic is kind of a stretch. However, John Green wrote a really [great blog post about it that breaks it down.](_URL_0_)\n\nIts well worth reading and sharing. Basically, there's no one reason. Some people are just flat poor, others have lots of deductions, some people re-invest their money in their business, and other people (like many on Reddit) are full time students."
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3dsxjb | the miller-urey experiment | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3dsxjb/eli5_the_millerurey_experiment/ | {
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"Scientists were trying to determine if the chemicals needed for life (amino acids) could be produced from the chemicals that they believed existed when the Earth was young.\n\nSo, they took those chemicals and put them in a closed loop along with water. They heated that water to simulate evaporation from the oceans and zapped the air with electricity to simulate lightning strikes.\n\nIn the end, they found well over 20 amino acids were created, many of which are the fundamental building blocks of organic life.\n\nSo, this experiment shows that it is possible to create organic chemicals from inorganic sources."
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6kfyya | do breathalyzers measure bac accurately for people with lung issues such as asthma, copd, or just being generally out of shape? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6kfyya/eli5_do_breathalyzers_measure_bac_accurately_for/ | {
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"Breathalyzers are \"good estimates\", not highly accurate. They don't measure total breath flow, either. They just determine the percentage of alcohol in the C02 of your breath, and conditions like asthma, COPD, or others don't really have any affect on that.\n\nIf you're on the verge of blowing just at the legal limit, you can contest the findings of a breathalyzer test by providing urinalysis, which is highly accurate. They can then work backwards using simple math to find your BAC at any given point in time.\n"
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2i3i86 | so, given that people use quantum physics normally and also talk about how it involves observation or whatever, how has this fact been proven? | Or perhaps that wording is incorrect.
I recently got a quick little explanation about quantum physics from vsauce, and they talked about how things are actually random in Quantum Physics, and measured in probabilities. That the thing is actually decided upon observation (Sleepy, can't remember exactly what was said). I might want an explanation of Q.P. itself sometime, but right now I'm curious as to what evidence exists that confirms this, to the point that it actually appears to be common knowledge (based on a few forays onto the internet).
How can there be proof that something is decided only upon observation, when it's impossible (or, at least, apparently paradoxical) to observe this happening? What evidence supports something like this? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2i3i86/eli5_so_given_that_people_use_quantum_physics/ | {
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"Look up 'the double slit experiment'. It explains how light behaves as a wave and a particle .\n\nBasically if fire photons one at a time through slits onto a background, where the photons land should eventually form two slits on the background (two slits, two lines right?). Well, it doesn't. It creates multiple lines.\n\nThis is because the photon is acting as a wave and travelling trhough both slits at the same time, when they exit the slits the waves interfere creating an interference pattern. If you throw a pebble on to a lake it makes waves extending outwards. If you through another pebble at the same time it's waves will interfere with the others, creating intersection points.\n\nThe photons wave intersect causing the wave to collapse into a particle, producing multiple lines on the background. This is known as an interference pattern. But we had one photon fired from the emitter! The photon has landed in multiple places at the same time! This is quantum super-position and Heisenberg uncertainty principle in action, we don't know anything about the particles position or momentum until it lands on the background.\n\nNow, if we put a detector in between the background and the slits, the photons are detected by the emitter and the wave collapses immediately into a single photon and the lines on the card represent two slits exactly.\n\nBy observing the photon via a detector before it has chance to reach the background we force it to become a particle.",
" > \"*the thing is actually decided upon observation*\"\n\nThis is the most common way of describing it, but it trips people up because it implies the necessity of an observer.\n\n\"observation\" in the quantum-mechanical context simply means that the system in question has come into causal contact with another, different quantum system. A human scientist, or their photon detector, is a quantum-mechanical system.\n\nWhen that happens, the two systems may be, for some length of time, in a state that requires a definite outcome rather than a probabilistic range of *possible* outcomes. As soon as the systems become separated again and no longer require a definite result, things (we presume) return to their more fuzzy state.\n\nAs mentioned by /u/CptCreosote , the double-slit experiment is an excellent example of the proof required. In fact, it was having this experiment shown for me in a darkened high school physics classroom using nothing but a sheet of cardboard and a cheap laser pointer that convinced me of the validity of the whole scientific method.\n\nBut if that's not good enough, you very probably have working proof for quantum mechanics in your own pocket right now: your phone.\n\nThe [touch screens](_URL_0_) on modern smartphones rely on a quantum-mechanical phenomenon called \"tunnelling\" to work, which is a product of the fact that the precise location of a given particle (in this case, an electron) is indeterminate until some event causes it to become determined (in this case, the pressure of your finger).\n\nThe microprocessors in that phone are also proof - the same tunnelling phenomenon is one of the major remaining obstacles in modern microcircuitry design because once your circuits are small enough and the track width is narrow enough, they can wind up with electrons tunnelling from one pathway to another, causing signals to arrive where they shouldn't and resulting in incorrect outcomes from the input provided. \n\nWe also exploit quantum mechanics in the construction of atomic clocks, without which my phone's GPS wouldn't work because none of the satellites would remain synchronized.\n\nFinally, the transistors which are at the heart of any computer, no matter how old or crude, rely on quantum mechanics to work.\n\nQuantum Mechanics is well beyond the realm of theory at this point. Sure, things like pointing a laser (*which itself exploits quantum mechanics in order to work*) at a couple of slits in a darkened classroom makes for a compelling (and beautiful) demonstration, but for my money the really conclusive proof is that there is a little device in my pocket that was designed from the ground up to exploit quantum uncertainty, and that this is considered a normal part of daily life. \n\nI'd say it's pretty solidly established to be completely real at this point.\n\n**TLDR**: Your smartphone is proof of quantum mechanics."
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53u00u | what makes ram volatile and hdd's and other memory devices like that non volatile? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/53u00u/eli5what_makes_ram_volatile_and_hdds_and_other/ | {
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"Fundamentally, it's about the way the memory is constructed. Volatile memory requires a constant source of power to maintain its storage, whereas non-volatile memory doesn't.\n\nDRAM (which is the RAM you're thinking of) is made of capacitors that are charged up if they're storing a 1 bit. It's very small and simple, but capacitors always leak charge, even if they're not connected to anything. Thus, if you don't constantly refresh them, then all the 1s will have their charge drain out and the data is lost. Without power, that refreshing can't happen, so it loses whatever it's storing within a very short amount of time (generally a couple hundred milliseconds) once the power goes out.\n\nHard drives, on the other hand, store data by magnetizing a physical disc of material. The magnetic properties of the material don't change as long as a magnet doesn't come by and mess it up, so you can safely remove the power and then power it back up later and read it again."
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1o5b0m | why someone with half a brain can live? will he lose something from the surgery? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1o5b0m/eli5why_someone_with_half_a_brain_can_live_will/ | {
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"We just did this in my psych class actually so here goes.\n\nHalf the brain is only actually removed in young children, because their brain is still developing, it adapts to only having half of it there so the person learns to function almost normally.\n\n[Here is a video about a girl who had half her brain removed to prevent seizures.](_URL_0_)\n\nWith adults they do not remove half the brain, they just sever the connection between the two halves. Both halves of the brain are still functional, they just can't communicate. This leads to the person having \"two minds\", although they are only conscious of one of them. Some interesting stuff happens with that, for example, a man was aware of things he saw with his left eye but couldn't name them, but when asked to draw what he saw he could do it with his left hand. He did not know why he drew these things, but it was the correct image.\n\nedit: [Here is the video I was describing about the guy with the disconnected brain. The bit I described starts at 1:20.](_URL_1_)",
"Depending on how much of the brain is removed, someone can live with much less than half of a brain. Depending on the sections of brain they will lose, they can also lose, sight, muscle control, memories, spacial reasoning, timing, and all sorts of other weird things that the brain controls. \n\n_URL_0_\n\nCheck out this lady, the Wikipedia article is very light for her amazing abilities. She had a kiwi sized chunk of her brain removed to fix an issue with seizures. Since she has become the worlds most elite distance runner. She lost the ability of spacial reasoning and time. She can sleep for an hour and feel like she has slept all night. She can run for hours and not feel tired, because she doesn't know how long she has been running. Really a remarkable story. "
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"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZMLzP1VCANo"
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4uwe63 | why are their age restrictions in american public offices? | Say if I was 25 or even 30 I wouldn't be able to run for President, or if I was 18 I couldn't run for Congress? Why is that? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4uwe63/eli5_why_are_their_age_restrictions_in_american/ | {
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"text": [
"It mostly has to do with what the constitution says. For president you have to be at least 35 years old as it was thought you would have enough life experience and wisdom to lead the country. :) "
]
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[]
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|
641sb3 | why are residential solar panels common, but not wind turbines? or water wheels for people who live by rivers? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/641sb3/eli5_why_are_residential_solar_panels_common_but/ | {
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"Because solar panels are small and compact, compared to giant turbines and water wheels that have a tendency to be as big as the house itself. ",
"Wind turbines are all about size, bigger is more economic, not more (edit: not more of them. If a manufacturer/operator could choose, they would pick bigger size over quantity), so they're not cost effective in a subdivision. They also make a lot of noise, require quite a bit of maintenance, and space, kill birds, and are unsightly (for those who care). You can't expect homeowners to keep up on the maintenance of their own turbines, so you have to build a far less efficient model that at least won't explode in a catastrophic failure, sending blades sailing and impaling people or property.\n\nI don't think there are enough people who live along rivers to make this a viable market for a manufacturer. I think they'd be more interested in hydro turbines instead of old fashioned water wheels, but that requires building dams, which have a huge environmental impact and we're doing what we can to tear down small, privately held dams, not build more of them.",
"You can buy them, but they are usually quite expensive. After all, they need to be durable in order to run for years. But the real problem is that ground level wind is a lot weaker than at the altitude that real wind turbines are positioned, so you're not getting a lot of power. I've only ever seen them being used on boats, running the fridge and other low power devices. ",
"Micro-wind turbines (under 1.5kW) are notoriously bad at producing a reasonable amount of energy to make them economically viable. Indeed, some probably consume more energy than they produce.\n\nThis is mostly down to the size (too small), the mounting height (too low, wind blows faster at greater heights) and poor wind regime (urban areas have too many obstacles that disrupt wind flow)"
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61cd6g | "nuking" the filibuster | I get the gist (changing the rules from requiring 60 votes to requiring a simply majority), but I've heard it can only be done at the beginning of a new term. Is this true, or can it be done at any point? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/61cd6g/eli5_nuking_the_filibuster/ | {
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"It can be done at any time. The Senate Majority Leader would declare Senate Rule 22(filibuster rule) a Constitutional question, and the Senate would immediately begin debating Rule 22 with a simple majority needed to change the rule.",
"It can be done at anytime. The filibuster is just a Senate procedure (they have 100's of them) and a simple majority can change any Senate procedures. So they can essentially change it at any time they want.\n\nThe reason it has not been changed, and probably will not, is because both political parties know without it the minority party has a lot less power. And at some point in the future they *will* be the minority power. \n\nBack in 2009 there was a lot of talk about the Democrats getting rid of filibusters to pass the ACA. They chose not to. If they had chosen to get rid of it, they would have had more power back then, but have almost no power now. Likewise, the Republicans also know at some point in the future they will not be the ones in power. "
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abm8tk | when you shake flour, why do all the larger bits make their way to top and not the bottom? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/abm8tk/eli5_when_you_shake_flour_why_do_all_the_larger/ | {
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"You can do the same experiment with a jar of rocks. Shaking the jar allows all of the little rocks to find their way down in the spaces between the larger rocks. Keep shaking and pretty soon all of the big rocks will appear to \"climb\" to the top.",
"Basically because the small bits go to the bottom.\n\nStarting out, all the big and small bits are randomly mixed. When you shake them, there is an opportunity for things to fall into a more efficient spot.\n\nSo, all the flour (sand, nuts, whatever...) is momentarily separated a tiny space; what bits will be able to fall? Big bits or small bits?\n\nThe small bits are able to fall into the small gaps created by shaking, so the small bits all go to the bottom and the larger bits eventually make their way to the top."
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3dmxww | why do we die instantly when our heart stops? why don't we asphyxiate from lack of oxygen from blood no longer circulating? | I know this sounds extremely dumb but I've always wondered about this. I can understand dying via shock if shot or stabbed in the heart. But when it just stops because of old age or sickness, why is death instant? They say you can live about 5 minutes without oxygen so why don't we die after about 5 minutes since blood is no longer circulating?
Like I said, I know this sounds really dumb because it's basically like "well because your heart stopped, duh!". But why does it stopping kill you instantly instead of brain death through suffocation? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3dmxww/eli5_why_do_we_die_instantly_when_our_heart_stops/ | {
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"You don't die instantly; people with a totally stopped heart often die, but it is possible if the heart resumes in a timely manner you'll survive.\n\nThere's a distinction between alive and conscious, though. A total stop in blood flow will make you pass out really quickly; in fact a sudden decrease in blood flow to the brain can easily cause one to faint even without the heart stopping.",
"Even if you are not breathing, there is still oxygen in your body that your heart circulates. Enough for about 5 minutes. When it stops, your brain is not receiving the oxygen it needs anymore and you die.",
"Why do you think you die instantly? If that's a concept brought to you by Hollywood, bear in mind that they are more interested in (and familiar with) dramatic effect than physical science.\n\nThat being said, you'd die *quickly.*",
"As u/terrkerr pointed out, when your heart stops beating you quickly lose consciousness but do not die immediately - that's why CPR sometimes works.\n\n\nYour brain can survive without adequate blood flow for about five minutes before ireversible damage occurs and you become a vegetable, even if your heart is artificially restarted and the rest of your body is ticking away - that's how we get brain-dead organ donors.\n\n\nThe reason your brain is so sensitive to lack of blood flow is because as well as oxygen, blood contains all the other nutrients that circle around your body. One of these is glucose (sugar). Other organs can survive a little while by switching to a different form of respiration but the brain cells only eat glucose. They are also very active cells and go through glucose at a very fast rate. Hence if the supply stops even for a little while, they quickly die.\n\nEdit to add: death often isn't instant in old age or sickness, but people lose consciousness before they die so sometimes it looks like they die in their sleep or that they are dead when in fact they're just on the way out. \n\nHollywood paints a slightly confusing picture of death- if you believe the films, people are talking completely coherently, shut their eyes and game over.. In reality, It's sometimes difficult to tell and there's a whole protocol that doctors go through before they are allowed call someone dead, which involves checking for a pulse, breathing and eye changes. \n",
"So this is all about perfusion. \n\n\nYour brain has no stores of anything, so when your heart stops, glucose AND O2 cease to flow. Since your brain takes about 20% of total cardiac output, it tends to die quite quickly after the blood flow is shut off. After about 2-5 min of no O2(depending on the person) , the brain simply has suffered too much damage and won't come back without deficits, or at all.\n\nThat's what happens to you physiologically. What you'd feel is nothing. Your heart stops, count to 10, you slip into unconsciousness, and for all intents and purposes, you're dead there Capitan.",
"Wait, what? What makes you think we die the moment our heart stops beating? Did you see that in a movie or something?",
"It is the lack of oxygen (mainly to the brain) that kills you when your heart stops, so you don't die right away but you do lose consciousness pretty quickly. Your five minutes is pretty close.\n\nThere is a thing called the rule of threes (though it's only approximate): You can survive three minutes without oxygen, three days without water, and three weeks without food. This just a rule-of thumb, and is often broken by wide margins.\n\nSo when you hear that someone was brought back from the dead remember that just because their heart had stopped doesn't mean they were dead.",
"I was undergoing a series of tests at a hospital when my heart stopped for about 20 seconds. Didn't die. At least I'm pretty sure I'm still alive. Maybe I'm just a ghost and no one's told me... \n",
"As a nurse, we stop people's hearts in the hospital all the time. When you get shocked by a defibrillator, it actually stops your heart, not starts it. It starts back on its own.\n\nWe also give a medicine called adenosine that stops your heart. We do this for a number of reasons I won't go in to unless someone's curious. Anyway, it stops it for somewhere between 1 and 5 seconds. Once someone's took 7 seconds to come back, and let me tell you, that was a LONG 7 seconds.\n\nOpen heart surgery is another example. Your heart is paralyzed for hours during the surgery and a pump takes over. \n\nTL;DR : you don't, silly. Not if it starts again. ",
"The problem is defining what is 'dead'\n\nIf having no pulse is dead, then when your heart stops, you are by definition dead.\n\nThe definition of 'dead' has shifted as medical technology moves forward and our ability to resuscitate someone from the brink of death pushes the brink further and further out.\n\n[you are clinically dead](_URL_1_) when you are no longer breathing and your blood is no longer circulating. However, it is possible to revive someone at this point if you act quickly (~3 minutes before brain damage, which directly leads to brain death)\n\n[Brain death](_URL_0_) is what we would currently consider at as being really dead, because that is the point where the brain is damaged to the point it can no longer keep the body alive.\n\nProbably the only death that could be considered instantaneous would be one that destroys the brain instantly.",
"The biggest thing you should know is that when people say \"deoxygenated blood returns to the lungs to be reoxygenated\" they really mean barely LESS oxygenated blood returns to the lungs to be reoxygenated. I hate how this is worded in virtually all textbooks. \n\nThe blood returning to the lungs is usually only down to about 75% oxygen, while the blood leaving your heart has about 100% oxygen. \n\nIf you stop breathing but your heart keeps pumping blood to your brain, the oxygen content of your blood will decrease over time until you pass out. If your heart stops pumping, there will be no oxygen delivered to the brain and you die very quickly.",
"In 2006, I watched my dad die in the hospital. When his heart stopped, he suddenly started breathing really heavily which kickstarted his heart again. He would then stop breathing, and his heart would start beating really fast to kickstart his lungs. Then his heart would stop again and the cycle would start again. It went on like that for about an hour, even though he was dead.",
"You don't.\n\nWell, in the USA you do by definition, but for example in Europe the point of death is defined at the point in time, when your brain cancels out.\n\nThe problem is, that life and death are really not that horribly different as everyone always says.\nThere is simply no clear point when the Alive-LED stops shining..."
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38hecu | the more i rub my eyes the more colors i see | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/38hecu/eli5the_more_i_rub_my_eyes_the_more_colors_i_see/ | {
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"When you rub your eye you are mechanically stimulating your retina, causing you to see light that is not actually there. The images projected by said light are called Phosphenes, specifically pressure phosphenes. It's you fooling your brain into believing photons are entering your eye when they really aren't."
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6l55qg | difference of lcd, oled, and amoled that can be easily understood | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6l55qg/eli5_difference_of_lcd_oled_and_amoled_that_can/ | {
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"LCD: Liquid Crystal Display.\nA flat panel display which uses light emitting properties of liquid crystals. These crystals are illuminated by a fluorescent backlight. \n\nSmartphone LCD panels are classified into two types - IPS (In-plane Switching) and TFT (Thin Film Transistor). IPS LCDs are usually seen on high-end smartphones and consume less battery than TFT. TFT displays are inexpensive but contribute to faster battery drain. LCDs offer better sunlight legibility and consume less power (only IPS panels) than AMOLEDs, but they lack the deep blacks offered by AMOLED panels.\n\nLED: Light Emitting Diode; OLED: Organic LED\nOLED displays contain an LED, which itself has an organic material that emits light when current is passed through. OLEDs exhibit deeper and darker blacks than vanilla LEDs.\n\nOLED displays are classified into two types- PMOLED (Passive Matrix OLED) and AMOLED (Active Matrix OLED). AMOLED adds a layer of semiconducting film behind the OLED panel which allows it to more quickly activate each pixel. AMOLEDs provide better picture quality than LCDs, have faster refresh rates, deeper black colour and most importantly, no limitation on the display size. The downsides of AMOLEDs as of now - they are generally more expensive to manufacture and incorporate into devices, they have poor readability in sunlight, and they eat up battery faster than LCDs. Most importantly, they are prone to image burn-in.\n\nThese issues are somewhat addressed by a variant of AMOLED called Super AMOLED. Although Super-AMOLED has been around for some time now, it's mostly installed on higher-end phones.",
"/u/kittuboy/ is correct about *LED, but made some mistakes about LCDs.\n\nLCD basics: structure with liquid crystals and polarizers that can be switched to pass light through or block it. Three such structures with RGB color filters and white backlight make one pixel. Because of constant white backlight LCDs are bad at producing deep black color.\n\nThere are several kinds of these structures. \n\n* TN, for twisted nematic, is cheap, but when you look at it from the side, colors are off — this is because its structure blocks light well in small angle only.\n* IPS, for in-plane switching, is more advanced, it can be viewed from any angle and generally have better colors, but it's more expensive. Also a few years ago it was considerably slower in switching from closed to open (from black to white), so IPS displays were not fit for videogames with lots of small fast changing details. They got better since.\n* PVA/MVA — were an alternative for IPS, a bit cheaper, a bit faster. Mostly went out of use when IPS improved.\n\nAlso, TFT is not an LCD type. It just means that there is a transistor for each pixel, unlike, say, in calculator's display. It means roughly the same as Active Matrix in AMOLED. So TN and IPS actually are TFT TN and TFT IPS.\n\nNow, *main* difference between LCDs and *LEDs is that first require backlight for the whole screen even if you need only one white pixel (and some light is leaking through even if scren is set to black), while second have pixels produce light themselves and powered off pixels are completely black. Guess difference in power consumption.\n\nThe only problem with *LED screens (aside of price) is that making good color filters for LCD is easier than making good color LEDs. Many consider AMOLED screen colors too vibrant and unnatural."
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65yhtm | why do you feel full faster if you eat slower? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/65yhtm/eli5_why_do_you_feel_full_faster_if_you_eat_slower/ | {
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"It takes some time for the chemicals responsible for fullness to be released and move from the stomach to the brain. When you eat slowly, these chemicals are released gradually and so your brain's levels of them rise gently. When you eat quickly, you suddenly shift from no fullness to tons of fullness, but it's delayed."
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2qo0s7 | the millennium prize problems | _URL_0_
One by one...nice and slow :) | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2qo0s7/eli5_the_millennium_prize_problems/ | {
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"Okay, i'm a CS guy so here you have **P vs NP**\n\nThis problem asks whether every problem whose solution can be quickly verified by a computer can also be quickly solved by a computer. (thanks [wikipedia](_URL_0_)).\n\nNow, like you were 5:\n\nJust imagine you have a box and a few keys and you are asked to find the key that opens the box. You try every key until you find the correct one, but this takes you a lot of time. You could verify that your key is the correct one very easyly, but to find this key isn't that simple. ( P is not NP )\n\nBut if you used some crazy NSA technology, you could look how the lock is and then just make a key that fits in that lock and opens the box. ( P = NP )\n\nIt is believed that P is not NP, but the problem is that you cannot **prove** it.",
"OKay let's try this with the **Birch and Swinnerton-Dyer Conjecture**. It's not the easiest to explain with simple words but let me try.\n\n\nThis is a conjecture about some particular curves, called elliptic curves. These curves are similar to one of [these drawings](_URL_0_). More precisely, an elliptic curve is the set of points (x,y) in the plane satisfying an equation of the type :\n\ny^(2)=x^(3)+ax+b\n\n\nSo imagine you get one of this curve, and then one asks if this curve goes through any *rational points*, namely points (x,y) on the curve where both x and y are rational number (like 3/5 or 11/27). Despite its apparent simplicity, this is a very difficult question. We have no general method of answering that, it depends on the specific curve we have : sometimes there are no rational points, sometimes there are just a bunch, sometimes there are an infinite number.\n\n\nWhat's interesting is that we know that for an elliptic curve with an infinite number of points, we can get all of them by only knowing a few of them, and finding the rest using just a ruler ! How to do it : you take two rational points on the curve, you draw the line between these two with your ruler, it will intersect the curve at a third point, and you take the symmetric of this third point. (see the left picture [here](_URL_1_)) and you get another rational point.\n\n\n\nOne question is \"What is the minimum number of points I need to have in the beginning to be able to get all the rational points with my ruler?\". This is called the *rank* of the elliptic curve and it changes from one curve to another. Computing the rank is, again, extremely difficult.\n\nThe conjecture says that we can compute the rank of a given elliptic curve by looking at a seemingly complicated object called the Hasse-Weil function. This is getting really difficult to explain with simple words so I will stop here ..."
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11cm7y | how come when were not thinking of something, we don't sense it? | Kind of badly worded, but I mean like, it you don't think about blinking or breathing, you'll still be doing it, you just wont sense it, but if you start thinking about it, then you'll sense it until you forget about it. (Again, sorry for it being poorly worded) | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/11cm7y/eli5_how_come_when_were_not_thinking_of_something/ | {
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"And now you've made everybody self-conscious of their breathing! :-)\n\nI don't know the exact mechanisms for things like breathing and blinking, but I *imagine* it's a similar concept to (for example) when you place your hand on a table and you feel the surface, but after a while you forget about it.\n\nIn these cases, it's to do with 'brain boredom'. Your job - as an animal - is to remain hyper alert of *changing* conditions, so that you can respond quickly to them and ensure your survival. When your brain detects that something *isn't* changing, it automatically filters it out, so that you can focus on other things instead. So, the sensation *is* still there, in a way, but your brain is deliberately ignoring it."
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4gpncc | how do animals survive being struck by lightning if the temperature of an average bolt is 5 times of that of the surface of the sun? (roughly 30,000 kelvin) | [Apparently this bison got struck by lightning. Seems alright to me. Sorta.](_URL_0_) | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4gpncc/eli5_how_do_animals_survive_being_struck_by/ | {
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"Temperature is not the same as heat. Tiny samples of atoms in the LHC can reach trillions of degrees, but because there are so few, there isn't much heat and it dissipates quickly. Same thing with lightning. The temperature increase is relatively short-lived.",
"How much heat you absorb is a function of both temperature and time. A lightning strike is over in a millisecond, so only a small amount of energy is transferred. It is enough to burn the skin, but not enough to damage anything internal. It's sort of like how if you cook at too high of a temperature you can burn the outside of meat and still have the inside undercooked."
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b3hppe | how do animals like geckos and other lizards climb on smooth walls like concrete? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/b3hppe/eli5_how_do_animals_like_geckos_and_other_lizards/ | {
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"Their fingers are covered by very tiny textured bristles, called setae, which hook into and around the tiny irregularities on the surfaces they're climbing."
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92agda | in footage of nuclear explosions, what are the white vertical stripes? | As seen for example [here](_URL_1_) and [here](_URL_0_)? Another question about nuclear explosions, I once read on Reddit about the experiences of someone who as a kid was watching some nuclear test in Mojave, I think, and he said that at the moment of detonation he saw these speckles of very weird colours. Does this really happen and if yes, why? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/92agda/eli5in_footage_of_nuclear_explosions_what_are_the/ | {
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"The vertical stripes I think are for measurement of the shockwave / pressure wave. So they can calculate its velocity. ",
"Those are smoke trails from smoke rockets. Before nuclear tests, they would sometimes fire smoke rockets up into the air near the blast location, which would allow them to monitor the blast's shock wave by watching how the smoke trails moved in response.",
"Those are rocket trails. Just before launch small rockets are launched which leave those plumes of white smoke as they go up. Scientists can watch how the plumes behave in the vicinity of the blast and get a nice visualization of how the air around the fireball is behaving.\n\nIt is possible that the specks of white light at the time of the blast were from the interaction of high energy gamma radiation with the retina of the viewers. Radiation interacting with photoreceptors often appears as a small white speck or flash.",
"Pertaining to your second question, my grandfather was commissioned for some work on Enewetak atoll tests with the military. He recalled that the officers stood on a navy ship deck some signigicant distance away when it detonated. He held his hand up and could see through his hand like an xray. Maybe the speckles of light are a similar outcome of radiation exposure from the blast?\n\nEdit: He described it as holding his hand up and the light was so intense he could see his bones more or less",
"How can they sit \"so close\" completely exposed and not at least be sick from radiation?",
"They are used to calculate the yield if the bomb. Shoot a few small rockets in the air to make smoke trails in front of the camera, do a little trigonometry, and you can determine the size of the fireball/blast. This gives you yield.\n\n\nInteresting history, before the trinity test in July 1945, they carted out 200,000 lbs of TNT and filmed it explode so that they could use to baseline big explosions and later calculate the yeild of the actual nuke using visual techniques.\n\n\nI find it interesting that there was no crazy math or science used to calculate the size if the bomb, but rather just a test explosion with conventional explosives. That same method was used through the \"atmospheric\" testing days with the rocket smoke contrails.\n\n\nWhen they went to underground testing they had to develope another technique that I cant recall if its classified or not, so I will error on the side of not saying.\n\n\nSource: I am a nuke weapons engineer.\n\nEdit: just noticed your second question. atmospheric testing done on the mainland was done at the nevada test site (now called NNSS) that is about 1.5 hr drive North of vegas.\n\n\nSpeckles...hmmm, there are some materials (I wont name) that do make some really cool effects when you blow them up (think sparklers), however they only last a moment (high speed camera catches it) and only in conventional explosions. When it goes nuclear, everything is pretty much vaporized in less that 100 micro seconds and vapor doesn't really sparkle. Plus, he would have been mikes and mikes away and nonway would he been able to see that even if it wasn't vaporized. I call BS on his story. \n\n\nPlus they quit atmospheric testing decades ago, is this your grandpa or something?",
"Also, when nuclear detonations happen and you see what appears to be very thin spears of fire coming from the fireball, that's the support wires from the scaffolding that holds the bomb in the air, instantly vaporising because the heat is travelling faster through the metal than the air.\nExample [_URL_0_](_URL_0_)\n\n~~Edit:apparently I am wrong, thanks to u/smmstv for correcting! [_URL_1_](_URL_1_)~~\n\nEdit 2: nvm",
"They would launch rockets that would leave a smoke trail, so you could see how the air moves around the blast. You'll notice they get pushed outwards as the shock front passes, showing how the air moves. Sometimes they'll get sucked back in as the air behind the shock front gets more rarefied. ",
"Can atomic blasts have any affect on the angular momentum of our planet? or, do we know if any of the detonations caused a wobbling affect upon the Earth? Maybe bombs we've built now could have this magnitude of affect?",
"Question: does a nuclear bomb \"stuck in\" at first then expand? ",
"Another question here... In 100 years will these explosions look the same? It sounds a little crazy asking but the mushroom cloud and all that, is it set it stone or can they look different? Sometimes the cloud is not symmetrical or maybe \"ugly\" in a way that makes me think newer models would look more like cgi or closer to what might be drawn in a comic book."
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"https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-4wiZIOGi3Nw/V9ctkBJi_qI/AAAAAAAALCc/Yty6idIbgwAHFWveeBS_Zn-JkonoJYbJACLcB/s1600/atomic_annie.jpg8"
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g19m8p | why isn't gravity scaled to smaller things? | Like if I took a 100ft wide ball and a .5cm wide marble why wouldn't the marble be attracted to the ball? Or would it be attracted and I've lived my entire life without this info | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/g19m8p/eli5_why_isnt_gravity_scaled_to_smaller_things/ | {
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"I read somewhere once that if you put 2 pens floating in space near each other, after a very long time they would eventually gravitate towards each other. It does happen, it would just take a very very very long time",
"They are attracted. All things with mass are always pulling on all other things with mass. But it takes A LOT if mass to make a difference. So if you have a large and small ball, both are still pulled to the earth. Earth is a bigger ball.",
"It is. All objects/particles with mass (or energy) exert a gravitational pull on the objects/particles around them.",
"They are attracted to each other through gravity, it's just such a small effect that there's practically no way to measure it and they'll have practically no effect on each other. Every object in the universe has gravity pulling everything else towards it - a marble, a planet, you and me. But gravity's effects are so weak at small scales that they're almost unnoticeable - it scales up really well though so that when you get to the size of a planet or a moon, it becomes really significant.",
"They are attracted to each other, it's just a basically non-existent force compared to the gravity of Earth, friction, inertia, ect. that keep the marble and the ball stationary.\n\nIn the vacuum of space without any other forces, they would (very slowly) come together.",
"Scientist Henry Cavendish [did exactly that](_URL_0_) with two different-sized balls in 1797 and successfully measured how strong gravity is, to within 1%.",
"This is how the gravitational constant is measured. Henry Cavendish did [an experiment](_URL_0_ ) in the 1790s to measure the strength of gravity without using the Earth as a mass. This was important, as the mass of the Earth was not known accurately. The experiment used 2-inch (51 mm) diameter 1.61-pound (0.73 kg) lead balls, and 12-inch (300 mm) 348-pound (158 kg) lead balls to measure how the large balls attracted the small balls.",
"They are attracted. The problem is that at that small scale, the attraction is so small that it is easily negated. \n\nIn fact, one of the first ways we measured the gravitational constant was the [Cavendish Experiment](_URL_0_), which involved the gravitational attraction of two balls. You can check out a video with a demonstration of the experiment [here](_URL_1_). The experiment needs to take advantage of some stuff to scale up the value to something that actually has a measurable effect at the scale.",
"Aside from other answers, people don't realise Gravity is VERY VERY weak. People see it as strong , but that's only because it's one of the easiest forces to observe.\n\nThey do attract, but the force between the two is a joke compated to the earth."
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6aytt5 | why does black absorb sun rays so much? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6aytt5/eli5_why_does_black_absorb_sun_rays_so_much/ | {
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"Colors we see are perceived by light rays (certain wavelengths) that are reflected. Meaning the object doesnt absorb that color. For example, apples reflect the color red. White reflecting all colors essentially and black reflecting no colors. Since black is absorbing these colors and light rays contain energy it heats up faster.\n\nHope that helps. I may be a bit off on the details but the gist is correct.",
"Dark colors are a result of a particular pigment or material that absorbs pretty much all the light that comes into contact with it. Wearing black means your absorbing all the light, along with its energy, when it hits you.",
"Since it doesn't appear on the visible spectrum, black is basically the absence of color. The spectrum are varying wavelengths of light. For example, grass appears green because it's reflecting the wavelength of green light and absorbs the wavelength of the other visible colors. All of the absorbed light turns into energy, or heat.\n\nIn the case of black clothing, there are no wavelengths for light to bounce off of. As such, it absorbs all wavelengths and thus, creates more energy/heat."
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34xlmc | why is nickelback the butt of so many jokes? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/34xlmc/eli5_why_is_nickelback_the_butt_of_so_many_jokes/ | {
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"Because they are pretty famous and, while their main songs aren't bad, they do sound similar to each other, so people call them formulaic.",
"Because they're not very good, generic pop with some metal painted over it. \n\n[At least two of their songs are exactly the same music with different melodies](_URL_1_)\n\nMost of their songs are about sex and drugs. The few that aren't have little lyrical creativity. \n\nThey regularly get booed off stage, and have stuff thrown at them. \n\nThe music is over-compressed, they have no dynamic range, and most of their music sounds the same. \n\nHere's what some professional music critics say:\n\n\"Brazenly consistent, if unimaginative.\" ––Rolling Stone\n\n\"Nickelback can now afford a little more time in the studio and a little more time to indulge themselves, and they turn out the same record, only slicker, which only highlights just how oppressively and needlessly sullen this group is.\" ––Allmusic\n\n\"Like all Nickelback releases before it, All The Right Reasons was made for all the wrong ones and follows all the formulas and cliche's you should be bored to death of by now.\"––Tiny Mix Tapes\n\n\"Nickelback are a gnarled, vulgar band reveling in their ignorance of the very notion of taste, lacking either the smarts or savvy to wallow in bad taste so they just get ugly, knocking out knuckle-dragging riffs that seem rarefied in comparison to their thick, boneheaded words.\"––Allmusic\n\n\n\nThe LA times summed it up well, \"Nickelback's music isn't for hipsters or music lovers, it's for people who don't want to have to think\". \n\n[Here's another good description in video form](_URL_0_). ",
"It's because people like to jump on the band wagon. Having a go at something which is popular to dislike often carries people until they actually think it's their opinion. So instead of not listening to it...which is what you do to music you don't like, people actually feel the need to attack it.\n\nJust look at the comment from HannasAnarion. Huge sweeping generalisations, which could be said about almost any band. It's annoying to think someone like that considers their opinion to be notable."
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ohl3s | polish reverse notation | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/ohl3s/eli5_polish_reverse_notation/ | {
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"I'm assuming you are referring to Reverse Polish Notation\n\nOn paper, RPN is just postfix (operator after the numbers) arithmetic read left to right. \n\n2 + 3 becomes 2,3 +.\n\n3 * 5 + 70 becomes 3,5 * 70 +\n\nDo not get caught up with how it looks in this format, it is actually much simpler to think of it as you would have done it is grade school, with the numbers written over each other, and writing the operator to the left of the bottom number. Just remember that this comes last. Then you \"draw the line\" under it and get the answer. If you want to use that number again, you just write the second number, then the operator, then draw the line. Note: below I just put the operator after the number to avoid confusion of the order.\n\n3\n\n5*\n\n__\n\n15\n\n70*\n\n__\n\n85\n\nRPN is essentially worthless on paper, since you can just write the formula out in a more natural mathematical style. \n\nIt's implementation in HP calculators and some computer systems is the only reason to learn this. I will describe the HP system. \n\n\n The enter key replaces the comma in the linear notation, and the line break in the elementary school way. The enter key stacks the number you just entered into the next register, and then you input another number and perform the operation. The operation performed on the bottom 2 registers, and the one you type into is the bottom most register. (On most HP calculators, I think the graphing calculators do this a little differently). Once you do the calculation, the result is left in the bottom most register, for you to see, or use. On most, you can start entering a new number, and it stacks automatically, some you have to manually stack it. Refer to the user guide on that one\n\nUsing this type of entry, it is imperative to know your order of operations, the machine will not do them for you, but a familiarity with the equations you are using guarantees this. The benefit of this is that you can unambiguously tell the calculator what to do, and don't need to enter parenthesis. the downside is that you have to know how to do it. \n\nWhen faced with a long scientific equation, you must dissect it and chose where to start, and it sometimes isn't the left side. Knowing how to do this is just something that comes from practice, I highly recommend just sitting down with a TI and an RPN calculator (with at least 2 registers visible) and a math book, just plugging and chugging, and checking your answers. I did this with a one line display unit, it can be done if you have the time. It is the only way. "
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27u2bz | could someone explain google seo, and what to look for when choosing a google seo package? | We run a +Size Online Clothing store, and are considering using _URL_0_ to find a Google SEO Package and promote our business, with so many packages available, We are unsure which to choose. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/27u2bz/eli5_could_someone_explain_google_seo_and_what_to/ | {
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"SEO means \"get your result to appear higher in the results for a search\". The closer to the top of the results list the more likely a link is to be clicked. Being at the top of the results list generates the most clicks.\n\nGoogle (and Bing) optimize the results that are returned for every search with the goal of presenting the most useful link in first position, the second most useful link in second position, etc.\n\nSo \"Search Engine Optimization\" (SEO) means \"figuring out how to change your web page, and change how that web page is embedded in the space of web pages to convince the search engine that it is more useful as a result than other options\".\n\nRemember that no major search engine will publish its exact system for generating page ranks. Everything that is known about how they work is derived from experiments, some occasional hints dropped by the Search Engine companies, and research published before Google became wildly successful.\n\nThe two biggest factors that apply involve the content on the page itself and how that content is structured.\n\nYou can find lots of advice on how to structure your page and your site to optimize the value it presents for various search queries. That involves things like including certain tags on the page, the ratio of advertising to content, the use of headers, etc. \n\nYou can also find lots of articles on how Google's Page Rank algorithm works (and by extension, how Bing works, etc.) These all involve the concept of \"link juice\" Page Rank is based around the idea that a page gains value based on having high-value pages link to it. A link from a tiny blog with 10 readers generates less \"link juice\" than a link from _URL_0_. Figuring out how to get high-quality links to your page is a huge part of what SEO optimization companies promise to help with. **Actually** getting high quality links to your page is really a function of your Public Relations team - most people who claim they can generate quality links are using techniques that Google doesn't like and if they detect them, they'll actually generate negative \"link juice\" (your rating will be worse than if you had done nothing).\n\nSpend a half-day researching this topic and you'll quickly figure out who the scammers are and who the reputable companies are. There are no magic bullets. There are no short cuts. Once you configure your pages and your site with best practices all the rest comes from hard work and PR.",
"I've never heard of Google SEO Packages but I can give you some information on SEO and PPC. \n\nSearch Engine Optimization includes free ways to optimize your website so that it ranks higher in search engines. For example, including popular search terms in your URLs, site titles, site copy, and meta tags makes your site more relevant in the \"eyes\" of the search engine. \n\nPay Per Click is a form of advertising that allows your site to appear at the top of certain keywords--for a price. You use a tool like AdWords to bid cents or dollars on certain keywords or combinations of keywords. If at any point your keywords are queried and clicked on, you then pay Google or Bing or whatever you had bid. \n\nMany companies outsource their SEO and PPC to marketing companies, but I would discourage you from using some faceless internet company over a company in a major city near you. Using a local company can help ensure you stay on top of your results and enable you to have meetings with the actual analysts doing the work as opposed to talking on the phone with customer service. \n\n\nSEO is not incredibly difficult to learn. There is a lot of literature online and in print that can help guide you through the process and save you some money. Good luck!",
"_URL_0_\n\nUnless you've followed the instructions in this guide, you're wasting your money on SEO work."
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3em58c | why are actors not allowed to drink alcohol in commercials right after drinking it/ doing drugs in shows? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3em58c/eli5_why_are_actors_not_allowed_to_drink_alcohol/ | {
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"There are different laws for advertisements. In TV shows, drinking alcohol is generally an aspect or a character, or important to a scene, or something that isnt directly related to wanting to make you buy that alcohol. \n\nAdvertisement on the other hand, would want to make you buy alcohol in any way they possibly could. they dont care if they motivate people to become alcoholics as long as sales are being made. So, because of this, laws are made to lessen the potential effectiveness of advertising manipulation. "
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17bpbq | why does water go down a plughole differently depending on which side of the equator you're on? | Or is this a myth? I remember hearing something about it ages ago. I was just wondering, if true, why it happens! :) | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/17bpbq/eli5_why_does_water_go_down_a_plughole/ | {
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"It doesn't\n\nWater goes down the plug hole depending on the design of the sink. The forces due to the side of the equator are tiny so have essentially zero effect on water in a kitchen sink or toilet.\n\nWhich side of the equator you are on can have an effect on water through the [Coriolis effect](_URL_1_) but only in large scales (like weather systems) or very special circumstances where you have carefully removed all other forces and kept the temperature constant ([as described in the 2nd paragraph on this part of the wiki](_URL_0_) )",
"I went to this little tourist trap in Quito that was supposed on the equator. They had a basin, and put it on one side, it would drain one way, then put it on the other side, and it would drain the other way.\n\nI was mildly impressed, until I took out my GPS, and say that we were nearly a half kilometer from the equator. The \"official\" line they draw was based on pre-GPS surveying, and was inaccurate.\n\nSo obviously, it was a trick, and it doesn't matter where you are."
]
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"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coriolis_effect"
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5s3stx | what happens to you if you sell something that says "not labeled for individual sale"? | My question is legal in nature. What power does the law give to producers of products that say "not labeled for individual sale". Would I be risking civil or criminal penalties selling such items? If so, why are these laws in place? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5s3stx/eli5_what_happens_to_you_if_you_sell_something/ | {
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"text": [
"You lose your contract with your distributor, and maybe get sued for breaching that contract.\n\nRetailers contract with lots of different distributors, who in turn contract with producers and manufacturers. If the manufacturer only wants its products sold in six-packs they'll be labeled \"Not for individual sale\" and its contracts with the distributor will stipulate that. The distributor's contract with the retailer will have similar language. So if the retailer decides to disregard the manufacturer's directives, the distributor either has to cut them off, or risk losing their contract with the manufacturers.",
"In addition to what u/rhomboidus said, there might also be legal penalties. The most likely scenario is with food products, where there are laws requiring labeling of all the ingredients, allergens, calories, etc. On some bulk purchases of individually wrapped items that are all the same, they put one label on the outside box but don't label each individual package of food. If a retailer decides to sell the individual packages, the consumer isn't able to get the legally mandated info about what's in the food from the packaging."
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j4hks | trust funds | How do trust funds get established? How do they work? What exactly are trust fund babies? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/j4hks/eli5_trust_funds/ | {
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"A trust fund is basically a bank account with a sum of money in it. The interest on the account goes out as a check to the receiver, every month, for the rest of their life because the trust fund will keep generating interest forever. So trust fund babies are people whose grandparents thought they'd blow all the cash by the time they were 30 on expensive cars, cocaine, and clothes, so instead they choose to make the trust fund to slowly leak money to the child who then can't blow it all.\n\nSo if you are a trust fund baby, you might get a check for $2500 a month, for the rest of your life, for doing nothing. Wouldn't life be easy?"
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5qga7s | why terminally ill liver cancer patients feel so drowsy? | Many years ago my father died from liver cancer.
I remember that the last days he was drowsy and sleepy. I didn't think much about that at the time. Maybe I thought that being so ill, the body was just giving up.
However, few months ago I read that this has something to do with the liver tyhat is not able to process correctly some chemical that is similar to benzodiazepine but I'm not able to find the source again.
Someone can explain me if there is a chemical correlation between drowsiness and a non functioning liver? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5qga7s/eli5_why_terminally_ill_liver_cancer_patients/ | {
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"Likely it was the cocktail of drugs he was given towards the end. Was he on palliative/end of life care? Ativan, (Which is a benzodiazepine) Fentanyl, and Morphine (which are opiates/opioids) are frequently given which all cause drowsiness, and potentiate each other. \n\nEdit: also, our liver is what allows us to break down these chemicals in ways that lets us process them. If the liver isn't producing the enzymes used to process those chemicals they stay in the body longer, causing stronger effects. Which is why some drugs have warnings not to drink grapefruit juice while taking them...alternatively, people drink grapefruit juice and use other enzyme inhibitors to make certain drugs stronger. ",
"Well the liver is our body's chemical treatment plant if you will. It processes many harmful chemicals into other stuff that we can use. If the liver shuts down your body slowly can't handle the toxins anymore that build up in our system every day. Also if he got pain medication the liver could not longer process those either."
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1qezji | how can frozen dinners (like banquet brand) cost as low as 89¢ per box? is it even food? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1qezji/how_can_frozen_dinners_like_banquet_brand_cost_as/ | {
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"I never heard of this brand, so I Googled it. The cheapest I was able to find was $1.65. Either way, it's cheap because it's small amounts of low-cost food -- corn, potatoes and low-quality meat. \n\nRounding: The whole thing weighs 9 ounces, so let's say each bit is 3 ounces. You can get a can of corn for less than a dollar and it's 3 servings, so a serving of corn is 33 cents. You can get a pound of potatoes for a dollar, so 3 ounces is less than 20 cents. The cheapest ground beef I could find was $4.50 a pound, so that's 84 cents. Total: $1.37."
]
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[]
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||
72psmy | how does meditation improve mental stamina? | I've read that meditation can improve your mental stamina and I was wondering how exactly it does this. I'm a full time student and I spend a lot of time studying and doing flashcards to learn new material, but once I reach a certain point my mental energies are completely zapped and I can't bring myself to do anymore. I was wondering if meditation could help my brain last longer before throwing in the towel for the day.
I also read that meditation gives you the best results when it involves you actively focusing instead of just zoning out. If this is the case, will meditation simply drain even more of my mental stamina? I am already consciously controlling my thoughts for long stretches of the day when I attempt to memorize flashcards and solve problems, how is the focus you use in meditation different?
Just to be clear, my attention span and ability to focus on my studies are not deficient in any way. It takes me hours of flashcards to hit this wall (Also I do take breaks, get plenty of exercise and sleep, etc.). I am just looking for a way to improve my ability to focus and learn new information beyond how it is now. If possible I would love to see official articles regarding this subject, but any and all input would be greatly appreciated, thanks. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/72psmy/eli5how_does_meditation_improve_mental_stamina/ | {
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"I feel like the other two are too quick to jump on the placebo explanation.\n\nA better way to think about meditation that sounds less mystical is that you're training your brain to stop wandering and having too many thoughts at the same time. It's a real and documented effect, and it does wonders for eliminating negative thoughts and helps you focus (less noise)\n\nIt is easy to see why having a less noisy and distracted mind would alleviate the drain on your mental faculties.",
"Although meditation has several evidentiary benefits, with a long and colored past of scholarly investigation, it hasn't been shown to be more effective at producing the kinds of results you're looking for than focusing on any other single task for a long period of time.\n\nTo be blunt; exercising your ability to mentally focus helps you improve your ability to mentally focus. It doesn't matter if you're meditating or reading complicated material or building a boat in your basement. It's the practicing and exercising that gradually improve your ability. \n\nEDIT:\nSome scholarly sources of information on the topic.\n\n_URL_2_\n_URL_1_\n_URL_0_",
"Although you are looking to extend mental stamina, I’d offer than in my experience meditation does a great deal more than that. The best way I can describe it is like drinking liquid luck if you are a Harry Potter fan. It has this amazing effect that just makes things work out better. My interactions with others improve, I can stay calmer for longer, and yes, I can focus for longer periods of time because it relaxes my mind. Meditations allows the mind and body to release the stress that inevitably builds up in our lives, given clearer though and a more focused mind."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[
"http://online.liebertpub.com/doi/abs/10.1089/acm.2007.7022",
"http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0306987703001750",
"http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1053810010000681"
],
[]
] |
|
1102gz | why do we see rays of light going in different directions when there is a single light source in a dark area? | If you're looking at a light (say, the status light at the bottom of a monitor) in a place where it's otherwise completely dark, why does it look like there's rays of light going in other directions? I know that light goes in every direction from the source, but why can we see it when it goes in other directions? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1102gz/eli5_why_do_we_see_rays_of_light_going_in/ | {
"a_id": [
"c6i4ddo"
],
"score": [
3
],
"text": [
"Reflections. Everything you can see is literally reflecting (or emitting) light."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
|
43w52c | what led to the us policy of containment? | I understand the policy in itself, and how it was part of the ideological conflict of the cold war, but what historical events specifically led the US to adopt this policy? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/43w52c/eli5_what_led_to_the_us_policy_of_containment/ | {
"a_id": [
"czleqtv"
],
"score": [
2
],
"text": [
"People in the US government were divided between striking a conciliatory tone with the USSR and a strategy of confrontation that eventually became containment.\n\nThe single event that most directly led to the adoption of containment was George Kennan, a diplomat in embassy at the USSR, writing what has come to be known as \"the long telegram\" which basically coalesced the views of the \"confrontation\" side of the argument into a coherent strategy (which was, basically, containment) and served to convince a lot of people in DC that it was the way to go, including the Truman administration. "
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
|
ofpjx | why do some states get to vote first? who decides? | ...for primaries ~~and general elections~~. It seems unfair.
[corrected by kouhoutek] | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/ofpjx/elif_why_do_some_states_get_to_vote_first_who/ | {
"a_id": [
"c3guvez"
],
"score": [
6
],
"text": [
"First, all states vote on the same day for national general elections.\n\nSecond, primaries are not a part of government...they are for two private clubs to decide who they want to support in the eventual election, and they get to make up whatever rules they want.\n\nSo fair doesn't enter into it. The parties like the current system, because weak candidates usually bow out quickly leading to a consensus and unity that will help them beat the other party. If this means Iowa gets a bigger voice than California, so be it."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
|
76y95d | how does an inverter increase voltage from 12v to 240v instantly? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/76y95d/eli5_how_does_an_inverter_increase_voltage_from/ | {
"a_id": [
"dohjvs3"
],
"score": [
2
],
"text": [
"Hi! \n\nAn inverter, first and foremost, converts from a direct current input to an alternate current output, rather than converting from any lower voltage to a higher voltage. The latter is simply an advantageous side effect or features in most inverters. \n\nThis DC-to-AC conversion is achieved using anything from a simple, rapidly-moving mechanical switch in concert with smart circuit design (which results in a [square AC wave](_URL_1_)), to complex circuitry with semiconductors, transistors, diodes, FETs, ICs and software-level control to output a very clean [sine AC wave](_URL_4_), similar to what you get out of the power socket. \n\nNow... \n\nThe voltage step-up is achieved usually using a variety of ways, but these can be distilled into two main groups: a DC-voltage step-up, or an AC-voltage step-up. \n\nThe former is achieved using what's seen in your PC/notebook power supplies: a [DC-DC converter](_URL_3_), which is a little bit of semiconductor (usually a diode or transistor) together with a capacitor to step up the voltage. The actual circuit design would make this an ELI20. This is a [fairly basic one.](_URL_0_)\n\nThe latter is somewhat simpler: using the principles of electromagnetic induction, the already-converted AC current is sent through a copper coil wrapped around one side of a square iron ring. On the other side is another copper coil with more windings, which means the voltage is stepped up. This coil-ring-coil arrangement is called a [transformer](_URL_2_). \n\nSo let's say we have a 12 V DC current that's perfectly converted to AC. This current is sent through the first coil which has 20 coils. The coil on the other side has exactly (240/12) × 20 = 400 coils. \n\nThroughout all this, one equation is king: P = V × I, or power equals voltage times current. Meaning to say whenever the voltage goes up, the current goes *down*, and vice versa. In an ideal scenario, power is conserved throughout the inverter. \n\nIn real life, actually, some power is lost to the environment as heat, or mechanical energy in other components, so the output power will actually be slightly *less* than the input power. \n\nHope this helps. "
]
} | [] | [] | [
[
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File%3ABoost_circuit_2.png?wprov=sfla1",
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Square_wave?wprov=sfla1",
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transformer?wprov=sfla1",
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boost_converter?wprov=sfla1",
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sine_wave?wprov=sfla1"
]
] |
||
2vqcnl | what exactly happens when a light bulb burns out? why is it that when i shake a burnt out light bulb, the filament is always disconnected such that it rattles? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2vqcnl/eli5what_exactly_happens_when_a_light_bulb_burns/ | {
"a_id": [
"cojzlwt"
],
"score": [
4
],
"text": [
"_URL_0_\n\nThe filament burns out, breaks in the middle form heating and contracting or gets too think in a spot and melts through. \n\nThe support wires don't get hot or deteriorate, so they still hold the ends of the now split filament wire, so it rattles when you move it. "
]
} | [] | [] | [
[
"http://i.imgur.com/kIJWVgs.jpg"
]
] |
||
7dlwx5 | why does the electricity in some cars get cut off when starting the engine? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7dlwx5/eli5_why_does_the_electricity_in_some_cars_get/ | {
"a_id": [
"dpyomgn",
"dpyp5og",
"dpypjtu"
],
"score": [
6,
8,
2
],
"text": [
"There are two sources of electricity in a car. The battery, and the alternator. \n\nWhen your engine is off, the battery provides power to the accessories. This does drain the battery, which is why leaving your lights on overnight might kill your battery.\n\nWhen you turn your engine on, the alternator both powers your accessories and charges the battery, using power out of the engine to do so.\n\nWhen you're turning your car on, it shuts off the accessories so that the battery is dedicated to starting the car. Once the car is started, the accessories come on via the alternator.",
"The starter motor draws a lot of current, enough current to reduce the voltage output from the battery. Since electronics sometimes do wonky things when operated at lower than necessary voltage, it's better to just disconnect them for a couple of seconds while the car starts.",
"The battery is being used to forcibly crank the engine over. This isn't a trivial thing to do, as the air in the cylinders is resisting the starting motor, so it takes more than a little electrical oomph to do it. More going towards turning the engine over means less available for other electronics in the engine."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[],
[]
] |
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