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1we1pj | why is it that apple can continually post record breaking financial quarters and investors seem to always act like it's the worst thing that's ever happened? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1we1pj/eli5_why_is_it_that_apple_can_continually_post/ | {
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"People were expecting them to do better. Since they didn't, there is a fear that the company isn't doing as well as people earlier believed and won't do as well in the future as people expected. \n\nMeaning that their very high stock price may not be justified. ",
"The thing you have to remember is that investors are buying stocks continuously, not just when they announce the quarterly results. Here, let's give an example. \n\nSay you have a company that just had an IPO on the first day of the quarter, and the stock is at $1. On day two they release a new product that starts selling super well, and so the stock price goes up and up. People are predicting very good things for the quarter, with say, $1 billion dollars in profit at the end of a record few months. \n\nNow, the stock goes up to $5 a share based on this prediction. But then, at the end of the quarter, the company reveals they only made $800 million dollars. Still a record, still way more than anyone would have predicted at the time of the IPO, but not enough to justify a $5 share price. So now, investors pull back a bit, and so the price of the stock goes down to $4. \n\nThat's a huge drop in share price (20 percent!), but it makes sense because the $5 price was based on a higher expected profit that didn't materialize. That the quarter was still a record quarter is great objectively, but since it still wasn't as good as expected, of course the price is going to go down. \n\n**TLDR;** The price at the time of the announcement already includes the expected success of the quarter. If the quarter isn't as successful as expected, even if it's still record breaking, the stock price will go down. ",
"Imagine a child whose parents have dropped hints leading up to Christmas that he'll be getting a bicycle for Christmas. If he opens a wagon or some other toy, it doesn't matter how nice it is, the child is likely to feel misled and dissapointed. \n\nThe same is true about investors. They price stocks based on their belief in management's ability to meet its own goals for a period of time. If management merely meets the goals, everyone who expected them to exceed the goal will be dissapointed (and sell) while only those who expected them to not meet the goal will be happy (and potentially buy). If the price drops significantly, it means more investors were expecting management to exceed goals than miss. "
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5uvxdf | what part of the mammalian reproductive system is responsible for the perfect 50:50 chance of the fetus becoming either sex? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5uvxdf/eli5_what_part_of_the_mammalian_reproductive/ | {
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"Let's use humans as an example. Most of our cells have two complete sets of 23 chromosomes (46 in total). One of those in each set is a sex chromosome, that exists in X and Y versions. In females, both sex chromosomes are the X version, in males there is one X and one Y.\n\nSperm and egg cells, however, have only a single set of 23 chromosomes. Each one is more or less randomly chosen from one or the other of the two complete sets we have. Since females have two X chromosomes, all egg cells contain an X chromosome. But since males have an X and a Y chromosome, sperm cells have either an X or a Y, with a 50:50 mix.\n\nSo when sperm and egg combine to give two complete sets of chromosomes again, if the sperm cell contains an X, the offspring will have two X's and will be female. If the sperm cell contains a Y, the offspring will have an X and a Y and will be male.\n\ntl'dr: sperm cells randomly get assigned an X or Y chromosome, and that ultimately determines the sex of the offspring.",
"There are two kinds of chromosomes: X and Y. If you have two X chromosomes (XX) you are female. If you have one of each (XY) you are male.\nDuring reproduction, the mother (XX) contributes an X, the father (XY) contributes either an X or a Y, at random. If you get a Y from your father, you're a dude. If you get an X, you're a chick. \n (This doesn't take into account special cases; this is the ELI5 version. Nor does it address gender, OP asked about sex.)",
"Sperm and egg cells form through [meiosis.](_URL_0_) Normal cell division (meitosis) duplicates the DNA in a cell, but meiosis splits it into two halves. In a female this results in all eggs having an X chromosome, but in males it results in exactly half the sperm having an X and the other half having a Y. When sperm combine with eggs, then, half of the resulting are male (XY) and the other half are female (XX).",
"It isn't a perfect 50% chance. More like 51.5% chance of a male child (in industrialized countries- there are variations due to environmental factors).\n\nOther than that- these kind folks have given fine explanations for the close-to-50% chance.",
"None of the answers so far are actually saying or even attempting to explain the seemingly random chromosomes supplied by the sperm cell and biologically why each sperm cell has so close to a 50:50 chance of holding either one.\n\nI know it's ELI5, but I'm fairly sure that the actual question hasn't been properly addressed yet.",
"The male testicles make the sperm that determine a babies sex. Because sperm is produced by splitting the chromosomes into 2 halves, x & y, there's an even split of male producing sperm and female producing. \n\nThis even split is what should result in a 50:50 split. As others have said, that's not exactly what happens but pretty close. \n\nRegardless, testicles are responsible. ",
"Another thing to note is that over time, an equilibrium will form. For example, if there is a species that gives birth to 33% males and 66% females, but there is a subset that gives birth in a 1:1 ratio, that subset of the population will be more successful at producing offspring and will eventually replace the 1:2 ratio population. \n\nExample: A species with 90 breeding pairs that reproduce in a 1:2 ratio and 10 breeding pairs that reproduce in a 1:1 ratio. Each breeding pair produces 2 offspring. \n\nIn the next generation, there are still 10 breeding pairs that reproduce in a 1:1 ratio but only 60 that reproduce in a 1:2 ratio( since there are unmatched females). In this way, the 1:2 population will decrease until only the 1:1 population remains",
"Is this thread \"explain to me like I'm 5\" or \"complicate the shit out of it\"?",
"No one has mentioned Fisher's Principle, which describes why the sex ratio of most species is approximately 1:1 between males and females.\n\nSuppose you have a situation where male births are less common than female births and, subsequently, there are fewer males than females in a population. This means a male in that population will have better mating prospects than a female because the male has are more mates to choose from. A male can, therefore, expect to have more offspring. That means if any set of parents in this population are genetically predisposed to produce more male than female offspring, they will then tend to have more of grandchildren born to them. Therefore, whatever male offspring favoring genes they have, will spread more quickly, and this leads to male births becoming more common in that population. As the 1:1 sex ratio is approached, whatever advantage associated with producing males dies away. The same process would occur if the situation was reversed for the sexes. Therefore the 1:1 ratio is the evolutionarily stable strategy.\n\nEdit: Changed \"less common\" to \"more common\" at the beginning so it made sense. \nEdit 2: Changed \"more males\" to \"fewer males\". I hope this makes sense now.",
"As a male you have XY chromosomes and when sperm is made it basicly takes a chromosome and rips it in half making one X spermcell and one Y spermcell thus there is a 50/50split between them. It should be noted that the Y chromosome has less mass the spermcell is somewhat faster causing a 51,5/48,5 (with variations) split",
"Although the chance at conception is 50:50, the chance at birth is slightly skewed to more live male births. \n\nAnd yet, by the mid 20s, in most societies that do not practice selective gender based abortion, we are back to the ratio of 50:50\n\nIs it that more males survive gestation?\n\nNot exactly. The egg is fertilized before it implants in the womb. Not all fertilized eggs implant, many 'cruise on by' and become ... nothing.\n\nSo is it that more females cruise on by? Not exactly.\n\nThere is a condition known as secondary infertility. When a couple who welcomed a healthy baby without difficulty, cannot seem to get pregnant again.\n\nResearchers noticed that this happened more often when that first healthy child had been male. This phenomenon, devastating as it us to the individual couples, keeps / kept the species balanced. I put the past tense in because if the societies practicing gender based abortions.\n\nSo it seems that the human race prepares itself for the testosterone fueled 'loss' rate of fightin' and fast drivin' and bravado by having about 2% more male births with an equal loss rate by adulthood.\n\n"
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2j7015 | why do all of my electronic devices work perfectly fine until the new system update is available? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2j7015/eli5_why_do_all_of_my_electronic_devices_work/ | {
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"Are all of your electronic made by Apple? "
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28s3ig | if most predators have their eyes facing forward why do dinosaurs have them on the side of their heads. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/28s3ig/eli5_if_most_predators_have_their_eyes_facing/ | {
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"Probably the same reason crocodiles have eyes on the sides. Just because most predators have forward facing eyes doesn't mean they all do.",
"Mammalian predators often have forward's facing eyes, but non-mammalian ones don't, or it's much rarer. For example, sharks, snakes, alligators, hawks, ect.\n\nSo, it's likely that forward facing eyes evolved in mammals, but either never came up or was unfavourable in other populations.\n\nThis is just off the top of my head, and I don't have any sources, so it may or may not be accurate.\n\nAlso: /r/askscience is great for questions like this.",
"The dinosaurs that hunted did have forward facing eyes.\n\nI don't know why people are claiming that only mammal hunters have forward facing eyes, as all carnivorous reptiles like crocodiles, and all carnivorous birds have forward facing eyes too. \n\nCrocodile eyes are slightly unique in that they sit high up on their heads, so they can stay submerged but still see out of the water. At that point, there is very little to distinguish \"prey eyes\" from \"predator eyes\" but crocodiles do face forward. \n\nSo just because dinosaurs had big noses, that doesn't mean their eyes were sideways facing. T-rex and velociraptor had forward facing eyes. ",
"not all dinosaur were predators. Also not all dinosaurs species existed at the same time. Some were closer to us in years than they were to other dinosaurs."
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42mnve | how is it advantageous to use planets to "slingshot" satellites and make them travel faster? | Even though the gravity of the planet would make it go faster as it approached it, wouldn't the object lose the same amount of energy it gained trying to escape the planets gravity once it got to the point of leaving the slingshot? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/42mnve/eli5_how_is_it_advantageous_to_use_planets_to/ | {
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"No. It actually requires relatively little energy to escape a planet's gravitational pull, so you would still end up with quite a large net gain in speed. \n\nThink of it like spinning a rock around your head on a string. After the rock is up to speed, all you need to do is apply a small amount of energy to cut the string and the rock will fly off tangentially (at a right angle) to its original circular path, and a very rapid rate. \n\nIf you want to learn more about this phenomenon look up the concept of Angular Momentum, which is covered in all introductory Physics courses. ",
"The satellite actually steals energy from the planet to speed up. The amount of energy taken is incredibly small when compared to the size of the planet. Byt because the satellite is also small, it looks like its getting energy from nothing.",
"You're right: the speed you gain *from entering the planet's gravitational field* is approximately equal to the speed you lose when escaping it.\n\nWhere you're really gaining speed is by using the planet's motion around the sun. If the planet is moving around the sun at speed X, and you come *in the other direction* at speed Y, from the planet's perspective it looks like you're approaching at Y+X. If you then let the planet's gravity turn you around, you still leave (now in the opposite direction) at speed Y+X *relative to the planet.* But relative to an outside observer (like on the sun), you're now going the other direction, not at speed Y, but at Y+2X (because that's what you have to be going at to make someone on the planet think you're going at Y+X, because the planet is already going at X).\n\nThe catch is that you have to *want* to turn around; the planets have to be aligned properly to use this method.",
"You would be right if the planet were still; however, since the planet is in orbit around the sun, the satellite will actually pick up speed and slow the planet down. Think of it like you are falling towards the planet picking up speed, but the planet is moving faster than you are, so you keep speeding up until it has moved to far away. This is ok to do, because there is such a large mass difference that the planet will lose virtually no speed and the satellite will speed up greatly."
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1img9k | how do tastebuds work like do we only know what tastes good and bad due to comparison of the first thing we've eaten ? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1img9k/eli5_how_do_tastebuds_work_like_do_we_only_know/ | {
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"The cells in your taste buds express varying Chemoreceptors which are complementary to to things like glucose, fat and amino acids. The binding of, one of these chemicals, results in an action potential which is communicated to the brain, which is where its interpreted. \n\nGenerally speaking your brain is hard wired to find some things tasty like fat. For foods however whether you find something tastes bad or not is dependent on environmental factors and occasionally a few genetic ones. \n\nThe more you expose yourself to a food, the more familiar you are with it and its less likely it will taste \"bad\" ",
"It comes down to two things: Programmed Tastes and Aquired Tastes\n\nProgrammed Tastes:\n\nWhen we're still growing inside of our mothers, our taste buds grow. These are sweet, bitter, sour and salty. The one that grows first is \"bitter\", and soon after, \"sour\". \n\nThe reason for this is so that as babies who have no experience of the world, we can learn which foods are icky and which foods aren't so icky. Icky foods tend to be icky for a reason. It may be poisonous, it could be out of date, it could be something a child of that age is unable to digest properly. \n\nSo, if it's bitter, sour and icky, the child won't eat it and will be less likely to get poisoned.\n\nNow as baby grows, they also develop \"sweet\" and then \"salty\". This encourages the child to eat foods (after they've stopped drinking breast milk), as most foods have different levels of sugar or salt in them. \n\n\nAcquired Tastes\n\nThis isn't just something you hear about. Psychology has a lot to contribute towards what you like and don't like. The first way it does this is familiarisation. \n\nThe more you eat something, the more familiar it becomes to you and your brain stores it in the \"safe to eat\" category as well as the \"I like eating this\" category. Incidentally, you can actually learn these while still in the womb. Studies have shown that mothers who were fed carrots during pregnancy were much more likly to have children who liked carrots. (She was eating for two, baby had some of what mummy had, baby got familiar with the taste super early).\n\nThe second way is reinforcement. Now, the fact that something it sweet is generally a way of strengthening the idea that something is nice. Eat chocolate - > it's sweet - > I like sweet things - > I liek chocolate. Rinse repeat.\n\nBut we also take cues from our environment. For example...\n\nEats eel for the first time - > Eel is not unpleasant - > I was very happy that day - > I feel happy when I eat eel - > eat eel again - > brings back happy feeling.\n\n(Eel actually rocks)\n\nThis is why some people find they like food associated with their childhood so much. I mean, baked beans really aren't that great. But I often find myself fancying some beans on toast, like the good old days, even when I have some lovely smoked salmon in the fridge which I know I like infinitely more for its taste.\n\n\nTL;DR - Some of it is hardwired, some of it is learned. Some of it is emotional.\n\n\nEdit: Also worth noting that you can learn to hate tastes as well. I used to love apple sauce. I know it tastes good, because I've eaten it most of my life. But then, one day, I got sick on apple sauce and now every time I look at it, I feel repulsed by it. I won't touch it. Even though I KNOW it tastes good. This is what I mean by learning to like/dislike tastes."
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59qt9l | can out body repair the damage to our hearing caused by listening to loud music? | I understand that listening to loud music causes damage to the ears and so we can't hear softer sounds easily. But I was wondering if we gave it some time, would our body repair that damage like it does for wounds? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/59qt9l/eli5_can_out_body_repair_the_damage_to_our/ | {
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"As far as I'm aware no. In our ear there are tiny hairs that assist with hearing. If the noise is too loud (or just over time) these hairs can die and once they die they never grow back so that hearing can never come back. "
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832bzq | why does your throat hurt and/or you have an iron-like taste in your mouth after you go for a run in cold weather? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/832bzq/eli5_why_does_your_throat_hurt_andor_you_have_an/ | {
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"It's not neccesary with cold weather but capillaries on your respiratory tract breaks with the dry air you breath and the iron content of your blood gives that peculiar taste.\n\nEdit: capilars",
"your throat hurts because it's dry, the taste is blood, and we're not 100% sure how it gets there.\n\nyour lungs have membranes that keep your blood and the air separate, but they still have to allow oxygen and CO2 exchange, so they're very thin and peculiar in a number of other ways. \n\nmost attempts to explain this phenomena basically say that some microscopic amount of blood manages to move through the barrier because of the unusual conditions. this could be due to the substantial vascular dilation your body undergoes when under load, the increased CO2 on the blood side \"pushing\" blood through as it tries to transfer, simple irritation, or any combination of other minor biochemical/mechanical differences from a resting state. "
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6i1bzx | why do you need edge in windows 10 to play netflix in 1080p while 4k youtube videos are supported by pretty much any browser on windows 7? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6i1bzx/eli5_why_do_you_need_edge_in_windows_10_to_play/ | {
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"It's not a question of capability as much as it is DRM.\n\nEdge is the only browser that supports the DRM scheme used by Netflix in order to offer higher-quality content. Other browsers cannot offer that same DRM protection, so content providers do not allow Netflix to stream content higher than 720p to those browsers.\n\nMost devices that can run a Netflix app will display 1080p and higher content, as will the dedicated Windows desktop app for Netflix."
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1dc7be | why are vegetables and fruit so expensive in the us? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1dc7be/eli5_why_are_vegetables_and_fruit_so_expensive_in/ | {
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"So expensive compared to *what*, exactly?"
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frpe7r | why does nacl solution conduct electricity while solid nacl doesn't? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/frpe7r/eli5_why_does_nacl_solution_conduct_electricity/ | {
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"You have a room full of people slow dancing, each guy is holding a girl and moving slowly in their own place and this endangered koala bear is trying to get from one side of the room to the other, but koalas can only go from person from person cause its a koala and they don't like to be on the ground. The koala is also kinda heavy so only the boys can carry it. The boys can't help the koala because both of their hand a busy holding onto the girl. Now somebody turns on the salsa music and the room is rushed full of random people dancing with everyone, switching partners, and moving all over the place. Now that people are all over the place, with hands free cause their hands are no longer tied to the same person, they can easily help the koala get to the other side, passing it around towards the destination or walking a bit to help it. \n\nNow think of the boys as Na and the girls as Cl, The koala as the electron, and the random dancers due to salsa music the water.",
"NaCl has an ionic structure and these are notorious for having oppositely charged positive and negative ions within them. When solid these ions are fixed and cannot move in the lattice however when molten these ions are free to move and carry a charge that lets them conduct electricity.",
"Electric conductivity relies on the free movement of charged particles. Solid NaCl is held together by strong ionic bonds, and the individual Na+ and Cl- ions cannot move very easily. Dissolved NaCl is broken up and the ions are floating around in water, thus giving them more movement and increasing conductivity.",
"Ooh I actually know this one (11th grade chemistry). But too late to answer here goes anyway for practice for exams. \n\nSome terminology :\n\nElectron: the negatively charged subatomic particle in any atom\n\nProton: positively charges subatomic particle \n\nIon: the state of charge (number of electrons vs number of protons) of an atom\n\nSodium forms a negatively charged particle, as it gains electrons when it forms an ion. Chloride becomes negative. Opposites attract so they arrange in alternating pattern to make themselves stable. \n\nNow, NaCl does not allow the electrons within the structure to move, as they are in the electrons. Electron movement is what makes electricity. \n\nWhen you dissolve the NaCl, then the bonds between the Na and Cl are ‘broken’ and then it become Na and Cl not NaCl electrons can move, allowing electricity to conduct.",
"To conduct electricity you need charged and mobile particles. In iron electrons can move freely through what you can think of a mesh.\n\nNaCl is a chrystal where the Na has a positive charge since it gave an electro up to Cl which has therefore a negative one. Thus why their binding it's called Ionic (they don't share a pair of electrons, rather their opposite charges keep them together). This it's why it's very soluble and once in water the ions are free to conduct electricity.\n\nHope this helps makes it clear :)",
"In a solution (e.g. in water) you have individual Na and Cl atoms free to move around. They both have electric charge, and moving charges can produce a current.\n\nIn a solid crystal they are in a fixed arrangement so they can't move around.\n\nIf you heat salt so much that it melts you make the atoms free to move around and then it conducts electricity, too.",
"When you dissolve an ionic substance (like NaCl) you actually no longer have NaCl what you have are Na+ and Cl- floating around in the water.\n\nSince these pieces carry a charge, they can arrange to conduct electricity.\n\n & #x200B;\n\nEDIT: Since people keep asking why salt water tastes salty:\n\nYour salty receptors detect the sodium cation (Na +).\n\nIn fact if you have salt in your mouth, it's at least partially dissolved so it would be a more interesting experiment to try eat a block of salt with no saliva and see if you taste it( not that that's actually possible)",
"In a classroom (crystal lattice) with boys (negative ions) and girls (positive ions), they are all arranged to sit so that no boy or no girl sits next to each other. Until break/recess comes they dare not move from their spots in the classroom. However as soon as the bell rings (the classroom is dissolved) each boy and each girl carries a charge (they have a full bladder and need to use the bathroom). The boys go to the boys bathroom and the girls go to the girls bathroom. They couldn't take their respective charges where they were supposed to go when they were in the classroom (a rock salt lattice), but could as soon as they were dissolved (freed from the lattice structure) at the time of recess.",
"When sodium chloride is solid the bonding between the positively charged sodium and negatively charged chloride are very strong and thus there are no freely moving charged particles called ions that are able to carry a charge, however, when you dissolve NaCl, in water, for example, the water molecules' attraction to the charged particles rip this strong bond apart and allow these charged particles to move freely of one another within the solution. Thus when you put electrodes in the solution, negatively charged Chlorine ions will move to the positive terminal while positively charged Sodium ions will move to the negative terminal.\n\nThis type of solution that can conduct a charge by the movement of charged ions is called an electrolyte.\n\nIn the same way, when sodium chloride is melted, these ionic bonds are broken allowing them to conduct a charge.\n\nTL;DR: When you dissolve NaCl the bonding between charged particles Na+ and Cl- are broken and thus they are free to conduct a charge. This solution is called an electrolyte.",
"It's due to the ability of sodium and chlorine ions to move around freely when dissolved (ripped apart) by water, and geometrically arrange themselves in a way for electron transfer to happen. In solid salt Na and Cl are bonded to each other; Cl has Na's valence in its house, and as such both elements are stable and happy. All elements seek happiness and chemical reactions is how they get there. Neither element has any need for orphan electrons from the battery. They're a married couple where Na was the single dad and Cl isn't looking to have kids herself. \n\nThe caveat is, if the voltage from the power source is great enough, a charge can flow through just about anything. Think of it as the force foisting orphan electrons on to married couples.",
"As a solid, NaCl has its ions fixed in place. In a solution of NaCl, however, the ions are able to freely move about. Therefore, the ions can carry the charge and conduct electric current, a requirement for electricity.",
"Pretty sure it technically depends on what solvent you’re using. \n\nBut in water, NaCl breaks apart into its positive Na ions, and negative Cl ions. These positive and negatives ions allow for the conductivity of electricity. \n\nSolid NaCl is a bonded molecule in a fixed arrangement, which doesn’t allow electricity to pass through as easily.",
"To conduct electricity you need mobile charge carriers, or electrons or ions with the capacity to travel. In a solid block of salt, the individual Sodium and Chlorine ions are \"stuck\" together through ionic bonding. When they are in water, \"the universal solvent\" the salt is broken down into negatively charged Chlorine Ions (that have one more electron than they have protons) which try to travel to the Positive voltage, and the Positively charged Sodium Ions (with one more proton than electrons) try to travel to the negative voltage.",
"Na and Cl when in their solid form cancel out each other's ionic charges.\n\nWhen they are dissolved in water and the molecule breaks, each atom is then hydrogen bonded with a water molecule. This allows their ionic charges to be exposed (Na+ and Cl-). Now electrons can more freely flow between the diodes.",
"NaCl is Sodium(Metal) Chloride(Non-metal) an ionic compound as it is bonding that occurs between a Metal and Non-Metal this results in the bonds between the Na+ and Cl- very strong in its solid states thus the ions are held in place and there is no presence of charge carriers however in a molten or aqueous solution NaCl the ions are no longer held in place so they are free to act as charge carriers and move freely and carry charges ie electricity",
"To have an electric current to flow you need free moving charged particles such as ions or electrons NaCl in solid form creates a fixed crystaline structure meaning it cannot conduct as they are in fixed position. But when in solution the ions disassociate from each other becoming independent Na+ ions and Cl- ions, this means that the charged particles are able to move freely and conduct electricity.",
"In solid NaCl, the atoms are arranged like a building and the electrons between the atoms are the foundation for the building. It would take a LOT of energy to move one electron because they're strongly bound in their place. If you move a single electron, part of the building collapses. If you where to move electricity through solid NaCl it would tare the whole building down.\n\nIn solution, the NaCl breaks appart and both atoms are away from each other in the form Na+ and Cl- and both are surrounded by water molecules which are polar. If there is a voltage applied to the solution, on the negative side electrons can be pushed in and accepted by Na+ - > Na, and on the positive side electrons can be given by Cl- - > Cl. In this case the energy required to remove or recieve an electron isn't as high because the water molecules help stablelize the removal and acceptance of electrons by means not discussed in my undergrad chem classes lol. But they essentially fill in the \"void\" left over by an electron.\nThe now neutral Na and Cl can react with water to produce HCl and NaOH which break down into Na+ Cl- OH- and H+, the H+ and OH+ react together to from water again and the whole cycle continues.\n\nSo it takes a lot of energy to tare a material (the building) appart (down), it doesn't take a lot of energy to move electrons through an electrolyte solution because water stabelizes (prevents things from being completely torn down) the transfer of electrons.",
"Everything is made out of some positive matter and some negative matter called charges. When these charges are separate, they are positive or negative and lead to conduction of electricity, when these combine they become neutral, which does not allow electricity to conduct.\n\n\nNaCl by default is the combined form of Na+ (positive) and Cl- (negative). When in solid form, the positive and negative charges are in combined form (NaCl) thus electricity is not conducted.\n\n\nIn solution form in water, the charges split into Na+ and Cl- (separate charges) this leads to conduction of electricity.",
"The NaCl will separate into Na+ and Cl-, and the electrons will be able to move around a lot in the solution.The solution has free-floating electrons, which let's a current pass through. NaCl is a salt, and the electrons of salts are mostly frozen in place unless they are in an aqueous solution.",
"I am a solid-state chemistry PhD candidate.\n\nThe answer about why NaCl as a solid does not conduct electricity in this thread is not very good. \n\nFirst lets think about why would a solid conduct electricity in the first place. Electrical conduction is the motion of electrons through a material. For an electron to move in a solid, it must be able to transition from an orbital centered in one place, to an orbital centered in another place. \n\nPure metals like copper primarily have covalent bonding (think quantum mechanic wavefunctions). The result of this type of interaction in metals ends up making a bunch of very close in energy orbitals and only some of them are occupied by valence electrons. It is this partial filling of similar energy orbitals that allow the electrons to move from one orbital centered on one metal atom to another similar energy orbital on a near by metal atom relatively easily.\n\nFor solid NaCl, the interaction that holds it together is primarily an ionic interaction (think electromagnetic interaction) consists of Na+ and Cl- ions. This type of interaction ends up resulting in valence electron orbits that are fully occupied. This full occupation means that there are no similar energy orbitals for the electrons to move into easily. This inability to move to a nearby orbital is why electrons don't move in NaCl. This is typically true for ionic solids.",
"In order for electricity to move through something, something inside it needs to be able to move to carry the electricity.\n\nThink of electrcity like getting a message to someone.\n\nMetals, even though they are solid and don't move, have tiny bits inside them that CAN move around (electrons). So they pass those tiny electrons around but the metal itself doesn't have to move. Like passing a note from one person to another to get from one side of the room to another.\n\nSalt (not just NaCl, any salt), doesn't have those electrons that can move around everywhere. So actual bits of salt (ions) have to be able to move and \"take the message\", and in order to do that the big chunk of solid needs to be broken down they need to be either dissolved (pulled into small pieces by water) or melted (pulled apart by heat).",
"When NaCl is solid, it's NaCl. When NaCl is in a solution, it's actually Na+Cl-. It exchanges electrons with H2O when it's in it, making some HO- and H+.\n\nAnyway, since Na+Cl- is charged (=it has an imbalance of electrons, either too much or not enough), it conducts electricity.",
"You need free mobile charge carriers to conduct electricity in any medium. In conductive metals like copper, some valence electrons can easy 'hop' from one atom to next...creating a 'sea' of mobile charge carriers.\n\nIn water... the polar nature of O-H bonds can provide a solvation shell around ions and will allow salts like NaCl to disassociate into Na+ and Cl- ions, each with a bunch of water molecules semi-organized around the ion to keep them 'happy' despite their positive or negative charge. The free Na+ and Cl- ions can diffuse through the water medium providing 'mobile charge carriers'. Also, some water molecules in solvation shell also donate hydrogen (H+) or hydroxyl (OH-) ions to balance Na+ and Cl- dynamically. But ion (charge carrier) mobility is still really the key concept: H+, OH-, Na+, Cl-. Ice is generally not as conductive as water due to the fact that ion / charge carrier mobility is significantly reduced in ice.\n\nFWIW... molten NaCl also conducts electricity really well because the high internal/thermal energy can temporarily overcome the Na-Cl bond strength and you have some portion of free Na+ and Cl- ions in the molten salt. Also, molten NaCl is 'flammable' in the sense that the Free Na+ can react with oxygen and water to form NaO or NaOH, which is a highly exothermic (heat releasing) process.\n\nI DO NOT recommend trying this... but if you add water to molten NaCl it will create a temporary & very hot gas flare which may look blue in color, which is a mix of steam, hydrochloric acid, a probably a little NaO/NaOH vapor. Again, do not try this unless you want to severely injure yourself. I did this once a long time ago but I'm a chemical engineer and I was wearing protective gear... the flare is no fucking joke.",
"In pure water all the electrons have a job and they stick to that job.\n\nIn pure salt all the electrons have a job and they stick to that job.\n\nWhen you mix the salt with the water, the sodium and the chlorine atoms get separated. When a sodium or a chlorine get near a water molecule they start trying to give or take electrons to or from the water molecule. So now while all the electrons have a job they're getting distracted, they're basically hopping the fences between the various ions of the salt and the stability of the water molecule.\n\nOnce the electrons are hopping around like that the electrodes, the wires at either end of the circuit you're making through the saltwater, have some place to send electrons to or steel electrons from.\n\nSo these extra electrons that are going into the water and out of the water don't just rush through the water, right? Their appearance or disappearance from the water makes the region of the water near them a little plusy or a little minusy. This is the same way generators, by using magnets, push electrons in wires, and so make parts of the wire a little plusy or a little minusy.\n\nVoltage has another name which is electromotive force. That force will create a current only if the whole circuit, the whole circle, will let electrons move. When current is flowing the electron You get out of any section of wire at one end is not generally the electron you just put in the other end. They sort of muscle each other around.\n\nSo when you cram electrons into one end of a wire it's like shoving people into one end of a tunnel or pushing water into one end of a hose, you push some water in one end and some different water comes out the other end; where you push people into a tunnel and the other people come out the other end.\n\nIf the electrons can't move the electrons are trying to push in just don't fit.\n\nMetals are generally good conductors because the \"metallic bond\" involves a lot of electrons that aren't stuck to just a particular atom. That is, in metallic bonds the electron's job tends to be just chilling out between atoms.\n\nIn molecular \"covalent\" bonds the electrons are very busy being associated with their particular molecules.\n\nSo the chlorine in the salt convinces the molecular water to loosen it's grip on its molecular electrons while the sodium kinda just kinda tries to do the metallic bond with anything it can find. This creates a lot of electron motions that pure water wouldn't have.\n\nOnce you get the electrons moving around in the water by adding the salt you can cause the electrons in general to move around through the whole circuit. Some electrons can jump into the salt water from the minusy side and some can jump from the water to the plussy sides.\n\nSo the salt just electrically destabilizes the otherwise stable water and that creates enough cumulative mucking about in the electrons to allow a substantial current to flow. That's why you don't need a whole lot of salt. It doesn't have to be a brine to work. But the more salt you have (up to a point) the easier the current will flow.\n\nSo on a side note it's not getting your phone wet that ruins your phone it's the fact that there's crud in the water that deposits inside your phone. The circuit card's in everything you've ever bought have been rinsed into distilled water to clean them after they were assembled. And sometimes you can repair a phone that's been dropped in a toilet or whatever by repeatedly rinsing it with distilled water, also known as de-ionized water, to rinse away the impurities that are causing all the shorts in the equipment.\n\nClean and stable (at the atom/molecule scale) things make crappy electrical conductors. The salt, like any other impurity, dirties the water electrically and turns it from an insulator into a conductor.\n\nEDIT: many autocorrect and voice recognition irregularities.",
"When they're solid they can't move to carry electrons to and take electrons from the wires, I think that molten salt is conductive."
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mdnx2 | elim5 black friday | I've never fully understood Black Friday. What is it exactly? How did it get started? Is it only things that are technology related on sale or are there other things on sale too? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/mdnx2/elim5_black_friday/ | {
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"My take: \n \nRetailers figured that American shoppers would be too busy to shop for Christmas presents until after they'd finished all the preparations for Thanksgiving. \n \nSo when Thanksgiving is over, and many Americans have the Friday off (U.S. Thanksgiving is always on a Thursday), they have sales to kick off the Christmas shopping season. (Hannukah, too, of course, but most Americans aren't Jewish.) \n \nI think it was called Black Friday by people working in retail, who knew that they'd be really busy the next day. It's not a fun day for the average slaes clerk, who would rather be home with the family. \n \nIt's definitely not just electronic things that are on sale. Lots of stores in lots of industries have sales on lots of stuff. \n \nAlso, it's a commonly believed myth that it's the biggest shopping day of the year. But apparently, as Christmas gets closer, retail sales go up.",
"Retailers realized that people generally didn't have enough time for Christmas shopping until after Thanksgiving, and most people have the Friday after that off of work, which worked out the date.\n\nIt was originally called Black Friday by police, who had to deal with so many shoppers that it caused traffic accidents and even led to violence. It was a negative term, but retailers decided to use it to reflect their success. Accountants usually use black for profit and red for loss, so Black Friday came to reflect a very profitable day.",
"My take: \n \nRetailers figured that American shoppers would be too busy to shop for Christmas presents until after they'd finished all the preparations for Thanksgiving. \n \nSo when Thanksgiving is over, and many Americans have the Friday off (U.S. Thanksgiving is always on a Thursday), they have sales to kick off the Christmas shopping season. (Hannukah, too, of course, but most Americans aren't Jewish.) \n \nI think it was called Black Friday by people working in retail, who knew that they'd be really busy the next day. It's not a fun day for the average slaes clerk, who would rather be home with the family. \n \nIt's definitely not just electronic things that are on sale. Lots of stores in lots of industries have sales on lots of stuff. \n \nAlso, it's a commonly believed myth that it's the biggest shopping day of the year. But apparently, as Christmas gets closer, retail sales go up.",
"Retailers realized that people generally didn't have enough time for Christmas shopping until after Thanksgiving, and most people have the Friday after that off of work, which worked out the date.\n\nIt was originally called Black Friday by police, who had to deal with so many shoppers that it caused traffic accidents and even led to violence. It was a negative term, but retailers decided to use it to reflect their success. Accountants usually use black for profit and red for loss, so Black Friday came to reflect a very profitable day."
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7bzppq | why are cavities black? | I have some small visible cavities on my molars and my dentist never mentions them.... I've read some sources that have claimed it being remineralization of the tooth. Others saying that it's the rotten part of the tooth...What is it? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7bzppq/eli5_why_are_cavities_black/ | {
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"likely what you're seeing is an old filling. amalgam fillings turn black after some time. i seriously doubt a dentist would not mention it if you had a cavity. "
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difmcm | how do atoms create living things? what differentiates something animate from something inanimate? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/difmcm/eli5_how_do_atoms_create_living_things_what/ | {
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"So do you realise that you basicaly just asked how does life come to be? That is the ultimate question in general and scientist don't know the answer yet. There are things like viruses which if you ask scientist is it alive or not, the answer would be \"yes\", because it depends",
"How do atoms create a \"living\", functioning thing? Well, as part of chemistry, atoms can do all sorts of things like combine with each other or gain electrical charge. As a result, they can form many different substances with different properties. These substances can range from the small and simple to the large and complex. Useful properties that a substance can have include the ability to make chemical reactions happen, the ability to store and release energy, or the ability to move around the body in appropriate and useful ways. Our bodies just happen to be a perfect recipe of substances with useful properties that, when you add up all of their effects, they create a living thing that is able to utilise energy to grow and maintain itself, and that is able to reproduce in one way or another. Animals, plants, germs etc. do these things to keep themselves alive and for the most part they are quite self-sufficient. A rock on the other hand doesn't actively grow and maintain itself through it's own inventory of useful substances, nor does it use any of these substances to reproduce itself.\n\nWhy the thing becomes conscious is a whole other story that no one knows the answer to yet.",
"Atoms— > molecules— > proteins— > organelles— > cells— > organs— > bodies\n\nSimple things— > evolution/time— > complicated things",
"What does a living thing consist of? It's a bunch of specific reactions that get triggered by outer influences, like the proteins (long chains of aminoacids (20something special molecules)) in your visual receptors changing shape when hit by light. These reactions are structured and serve a purpose in living things (like seeing) while they do not when in inanimate objects (like chemical reactions in rock). You could say that atoms make the chemical reactions in living things possible so that it can react to macro stimuli. But there is no clean cut since viruses have These reproducing reactions but are not considered as \"living\"",
"You've got two questions here but the second one needs to be answered first: what is life? Well, life is what we define it to be. A lot of time the things we take for granted (what is life, what is a species) are just lines we draw because they make some sense and because the division is useful. \n\nIn biology at secondary school level (here in Ireland) the books defined life as possessing certain qualities - metabolism (living things need food for energy and create waste products), growth (living things get bigger), reproduction (living things make copies of themselves), behaviour (living things respond to their environment), and cellular structure (be made of cells). If you have all of those, you count as alive.\n\nPutting this to the test: is fire alive? Well fire needs fuel and oxygen (metabolism), fire can grow, fire can make more fires, fire responds to stuff (mainly the availability of fuel, which it grows towards), so maybe its alive? Except fire doesn't have a cellular structure. That criterion always irked me, because it's sort of shoehorned in there to exclude stuff like fire but it feels very arbitrary, and it excludes things like viruses which we might want to consider alive.\n\nAn alternative criterion to cellular structure could be heredity and evolution. Do you pass on your makeup to your offspring? Can evolution occur over generations? This lets us include viruses but still exclude fire. While I think heredity and evolution is a really important quality to define what is alive, even this definition is going to fall short somewhere. Given time, I'm sure you could devise some theoretical thing that ought to be alive but isn't by any definition, for example a complex artificial intelligence. We try to put life ina box but, uh, life finds a way.\n\nOk, so what is life is a bit hazy but there are some rough guidelines we can use to define it and we can tailor them as needed. For what you're asking I think our criteria above are a suitable definition for biological life, so we'll stick with that. Above all is the idea that biological life involves some complexity should be in your mind.\n\nNow, how do we go from just atoms to life? Put another way, how do we go from atoms to atoms in complex arrangements that do things to meet our criteria?\n\nWell atoms like to react with one another to make compounds. Given the right conditions of heat, pH, etc. atoms that are just bouncing around in solution will make pretty big compounds of their own accord. Imagine if a bunch of different atoms (carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen and a few others) collided by random motion in water to make some big compound. (Actually first there would be small, simple compounds, then these would react to make bigger ones, but for simplicity I'm skipping that.) Now suppose one of those compounds was special. It could, because of its shape and structure, help colliding atoms make another special compound just like it, just by speeding up that reaction. Pretty soon, it has made lots of copies of itself from simple chemicals - it can reproduce, and because its structure is passed on to the others, it has heredity and the capacity for evolution.\n\nThis big molecule is probably not very stable - it would need a suitable environment to keep existing or it would break into smaller compounds again. To do this it needs energy.\n\nLet's suppose our big, replicating molecule has found some friends - other big molecules that don't replicate much but which it can use. One bunch of molecules makes a coat for it, with a stable environment inside, and another lot allow it to pull high energy molecules (food) from its environment into the coat, where they can be allowed to break down (into waste molecules, which are kicked out of the coat) and provide the energy needed to keep all these big molecules intact and together. Now our big compound has metabolism.\n\nSince our big compound now has a coat and other friends, when it replicates what happens? Well it can't keep copying inside the coat or it would very quickly run out of room - it has to push the copy out. In doing so, the copy takes half its coat and other molecules! If this happened every time it replicated, very soon it would be naked again and, eventually, break apart without the energy holding it together. The solution is to make more coat (and other compounds) before splitting so there's enough for both copies, ie growth. And if you're going to grow, you probably want to grow towards food (high energy molecules} if you can - our molecule has developed behaviour. As far as our criteria go, our molecule is alive. Sure, it's just a bunch of chemicals that use chemical reactions to sustain itself, but that's pretty much biological life. It's really just a matter of complexity.\n\nThat, more or less, is one of the routes by which atoms might go (indeed, might have gone!) from just atoms to atoms in living things. I've glossed over a lot, partly because I don't know all the details and current thinking (while the origins of life are fascinating it's not my main area) and partly for simplicity. But you might wonder how energy stops a big molecules from breaking down (a question of thermodynamics), how our molecule got its coat (its cell membrane) and just what conditions you need exactly to make this big molecule. Current research has made a lot of pretty complex organic compounds under conditions simulating habitats of a young earth, but making RNA and DNA - in case you hadn't guessed these were our big molecule - hasn't been managed yet (I don't think).\n\nAnyway, hope you found this entertaining, and maybe it answered some of your questions!",
"There are lots of natural processes. Crystals form, fires burn. Life itself isn't really a \"something\" that animate stuff is imbued with and inanimate stuff isn't. Rather, it's a term for a specific set of processes that, when they are present together, cause us to describe something as alive.\n\nJust as not every object is on fire, not every object is alive, but there's not a fundamental difference between the atoms of 'not burning things' and 'burning things,' rather one group happens to be undergoing a process that the other is not."
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21xtlh | why is it painful to move your leg after it goes numb? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/21xtlh/eli5_why_is_it_painful_to_move_your_leg_after_it/ | {
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"I assume you're referring to the pins and needles feeling? \n\nYour foot \"falling asleep\" results in pressure being put on different nerves or blood vessels so electrical impulses/nutrients and oxygen can't be sent to the limb. So when you adjust your position and relieve that pressure, the nerves start to function again. But it's like rebooting a computer, it doesn't all happen at once, so the pressure receptors and pain receptors go a little crazy for a few minutes until chemical equilibrium is restored. Just wiggle your toes to get the fluids pumping and will be over soon. ",
"This happens to me all the time when I sit on the crapper for more than 20 minutes. Hurts like a motherf'er after the numb feeling goes away."
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5d9rv5 | how does a water purifier jug work and could you put 3rd world ditch water through one and drink safely? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5d9rv5/eli5_how_does_a_water_purifier_jug_work_and_could/ | {
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"jugs work by dripping water thru activated carbon. this material traps bad tasting molecules.\n\nconsumer water jugs do NOT filter out all chemical contaminants (like lead) or bacteria. so no you can't run nasty water thru it. ",
"The passive type of jug won't filter out bacteria and other things that can make you sick. There is a thing called [LifeStraw](_URL_0_) that can do this, but it forces water through a filter as you use it. Something like a reverse osmosis system can make water safe, but that also involves forcing water through a membrane. These things can't be done with just gravity."
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aklibs | why cycling burns more calories while walking is harder & tougher? | Edit: Thanks everyone for the detailed answers | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/aklibs/eli5_why_cycling_burns_more_calories_while/ | {
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"It depends on how fast you go. Cycling slowly will burn a lot less calories than walking, and it's the most efficient way of covering distance on smooth terrain. Cycling quickly will burn more calories because you're going a lot faster.",
"~~Actually, cycling and walking 'burn' roughly the same amount of calories (cycling just a little less) if you don't count per unit time but instead in terms of distance covered: Walking one kilometre and cycling one kilometre burn the about the same amount of calories, walking (usually) just takes more time to do so.~~\n\nEdit: I misremembered this, actually cycling requires only between half and a third the calories walking any given distance. It is different speeds of walking or running that are roughly the same with a light jog being just slightly more efficient.",
"It doesn’t.\n\n > On firm, flat ground, a 70 kg (150 lb) person requires about 60 watts to walk at 5 km/h (3.1 mph). That same person on a bicycle, on the same ground, with the same power output, can travel at 15 km/h (9.3 mph) using an ordinary bicycle, so in these conditions the energy expenditure of cycling is one-third that of walking.\n\n_URL_0_\n"
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33xn1m | why do realtors use zillow when trying to sale a house? |
Not sure if this post belongs here. If it doesn't I'll remove it.
I'm currently trying to sale my house and the realtor/agent came over and gave me a estimate of the value of my house by pulling up zillow listings of other houses nearby. However those houses are ten years older, outdated, and not maintained.
So why zillow, instead of trulia?
Why does zillow price houses so low?
How can the realtor/agent tell me an estimate without factoring in my upgrades?
EDIT 1: Should I appraise my house before I put it on the market? That way I have an actual price value based on an appraisal instead of Zillow/trulia?
EDIT 2: What all is involved if I decide to do a for sale by owner instead?
Thanks | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/33xn1m/eli5_why_do_realtors_use_zillow_when_trying_to/ | {
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"Zillow owns Trulia now so no reason to use the smaller listing. The value of your home is going to be determined by the neighborhood you live in unless it is glaringly better than the other homes around it. You can always tell them to list it for more if you like but they want to sell your home more than you do so they will want to list it lower.",
"Ignore the Zillow estimates. They're almost always wrong...and by wrong I mean low. \n\nIf the realtor doesn't bring over estimates based on the \"solds\" from the local MLS, they're not worth their marketing weight. \n\nAlso, realtors worth their weight, will have featured advertising on Zillow, Trulia and _URL_0_.... it's important you understand the term featured. Just being listed on those sites isn't enough ... a home needs to be claimed by the realtor doing the advertising.... and featured so it appears in the advertising section where featured homes are placed. \n\nAlso, If you have overlapping Listing services in your area ... make sure your home is placed in all of them. If they can't do this ... and they can't show you examples of current homes they're advertising ... walk away.",
"Keep in mind that no matter how you get your home appraised, either through a professional appraiser or from an informal Zillow estimate, it will almost always be lower than you expect. Its just human nature to expect a higher value on your own possessions in comparison to others. The number of complaints that appraisal management companies deal with from people who think their appraisal came in way too low is crazy.\n\nJust saying, don't be surprised if you pay for an appraisal and it's still lower than you expect. It may still be good for piece of mind though."
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7aqb4e | how fiber cabling is faster than standard cabling. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7aqb4e/eli5_how_fiber_cabling_is_faster_than_standard/ | {
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"Standard cable uses copper wiring to send electric pulses that send data from one place to another. It's fast, near instantaneous for simple signals like telephony and SD cable.\n\nFiber-optic cable uses mirrored flexible tubes to divert pulses of light, instead of electrons. Using fiber-optic cable, you can send different frequencies of light at the same time, increasing the number of channels available and increasing the speed in which information is transferred.\n\nThis results in higher quality video, more variety of cable channels, faster internet, and clearer calls.",
"There are several reasons at play here at the same time.\n\nThe first is about reach.\n\nA signal will loose strength with the length of a cable. The longer the cable, the less strength it will have when it arrives at the other end.\n\nFibre optics definitely have an edge over copper wires. I'm not sure about the actual numbers, but I believe that technical reach with manageable loss is ten times longer in fibre optics than in copper wires.\n\nThe second is about reliability.\n\nWhen the signal arrives at the other end, you have to be able to trust it. If you can't trust it, you'll have to add functionality that handles faulty transmissions. Mathematical checksums, twisted pair wiring and very narrow acceptance levels are all things that came to be to manage that transmissions often go wrong because the earth naturally produces it's own electrical interference all the time.\n\nAt the same time, laser wavelength light is manmade. There is literally no natural occurrence of it. If something interferes, it's your own communications equipment, and you have full control of that since it's your own equipment.\n\nBecause it's highly likely that there is some electrical interference that you get into your communications cable, you'll be forced to...for lack of a better expression *listen longer* to be sure that the signal you hear is actual data. With lasers, you can skip some of it because the uncertainty is just not there.\n\nCombine these two, and you get the reason why fibre optics are better than copper wires. They can reliably, without interference, transmit data over longer distances. And for that reason alone, they get faster. When you add to that that lasers are capable of being turned on and off real fast, and that laser sensors often react a lot faster than a regular electrical sensor and you'll end up with a system that is better in almost any way you can think of.\n\nThe main issue with fibre optics is that the cable is kind of fragile. But that is outside the scope of your question.",
"Individual signals inside both fiber and electrical cables do travel at similar speeds.\n\nBut you can send way more signals down a fiber cable at the same time as you can an electrical cable.\n\nThink of each cable as a multi-lane road. Electrical cable is like a 5-lane highway.\n\nFiber cable is like a 200 lane highway.\n\nSo cars on both highway travel at 65 mph, but on the fiber highway you can send way more cars.\n\nIf you're trying to send a bunch of people from A to B, each car load of people will get there at the same speed, but you'll get everyone from A to B in less overall time on the fiber highway than you will on the electrical highway because you can send way more carloads at the same time."
]
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[],
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2m1sem | why are there no white race horses? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2m1sem/eli5why_are_there_no_white_race_horses/ | {
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"There are. They're just rarer. People breed horses with winners. If you have a full 200 years of black and brown horses winning races that's the semen you're going to sell to breed race horses.",
"I wouldn't say there have been NO white race horses, but they are somewhat rare....\n\nThe reason for this is that [all modern Thoroughbred horses (the breed used for racing) can trace their lineage back to 3 original Arabian horses.](_URL_0_) and none of those 3 were white. \n\n > All modern Thoroughbreds trace back to three stallions imported into England from the Middle East in the late 17th and early 18th centuries: the Byerley Turk (1680s), the Darley Arabian (1704), and the Godolphin Arabian (1729).\n\nI'm not an equine geneticist, but given that fact, I'd have to assume to that equine pelt colour is largely related to paternal genes. (I won't delve into dominant, recessive genes etc. at the moment)."
]
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[],
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"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thoroughbred"
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7rtqpy | how do bacteria photosynthesize if they don't have membrane bound organelles (chloroplasts)? | [deleted] | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7rtqpy/eli5how_do_bacteria_photosynthesize_if_they_dont/ | {
"a_id": [
"dszi076",
"dszn1hw"
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"text": [
"It uses the space between the inner and outer membranes. See here:\n\n_URL_0_",
"Choloplasts are actually, in a certain view, symbiotic cyanobacteria which were absorbed by the ancestors of plants. This would have happened around 1.5-2 billion years in the past. \n\nChloroplasts have their own DNA, and plant cells can only acquire new ones by their division. When plant cells divide, some of the chloroplasts are passed to the new cell. However, By this time, the metabolism of both has become completely interdependent and neither the plant cell nor the chloroplast can survive without each other. So they're considered a single organism.\n\nFree-living Cyanobacteria have an outer cell wall made of a compound called Peptidoglycan. Underneath they have an outer lipid membrane. They also have an inner highly folded membrane, which contains Photosystem proteins, pigments, and ATP Synthase Complexes. This isn't considered a membrane-bound organelle as such, since it is not self-contained.\n\nBetween the inner and outer membranes is the *Lumen* or intermembrane space. \n\nThis space plays a key role in both the production of ATP (Photophosporylation) and in *Photo-oxidation* of water into H+ ions, free electrons, and O2. \n\nLight energy splits the water, then boosts the electrons into an excited state. These electrons are used to perform a set of key reactions, then pumped into the inner membrane, and excess H+ ions are pumped out into the lumen space. This causes the lumen to be acidic and the inside of the inner membrane to be basic. The cell uses this separation of ions to generate ATP. ATP is then used to run the light independent reactions of converting CO2 into sugars. The need to set up an electrochemical potential is the main function of the folded inner membrane.\n\nInside of the inner membrane, is contained the bacterial DNA as well as ribosomes and most of it's protein machinery.\n\nIn chloroplasts, the cell wall has been lost, since it's redundant to the plants' own cell walls."
]
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"https://nanohub.org/app/site/resources/2013/09/19319/slides/002.01.jpg"
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3ho24x | why are there shiny rainbow markings on white chicken/duck meat after refrigerating it for a day without being completely sealed? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3ho24x/eli5why_are_there_shiny_rainbow_markings_on_white/ | {
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"cu9aisf"
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"score": [
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"What you are noticing is likely a phenomenon referred to as iridescence, or more technically birefringence. Essentially, this is the same effect as light passing through a crystal and splitting into a rainbow of colors, only the rainbow is from light reflecting off of a surface rather than passing through something. This can happen with either fresh cut or cured meats, and depends mostly on the angle at which the muscle fiber happens to have been cut.\n\nBirefringence is more noticeable on darker colored meats like beef than lighter ones like chicken because the dark background gives greater contrast.\n\nProvided that it is caused by the reflection of light from the surface and not a permanent green color to the meat, it is still safe to eat. You can tell by moving the light source, the meat or yourself to a different position and seeing if the rainbow colors shift or disappear.\n\n\n\n"
]
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| []
| [
[]
]
|
||
1r0od0 | how are synthetic fuels produced? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1r0od0/eli5_how_are_synthetic_fuels_produced/ | {
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"cdiem3r"
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"score": [
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"text": [
"It depends what kind you're talking about. There's syngas where they turn coal into synthetic natural gas. There's another process where they take natural gas and turn it into synthetic diesel. \n\nHere's a howstuffworks link for gasification...\n_URL_0_"
]
} | []
| []
| [
[
"http://science.howstuffworks.com/environmental/green-tech/energy-production/gasification.htm"
]
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|
||
1ankll | how are images/artwork coded into computer games | I just watched the documentary Indie Game: The Movie and know nothing about coding but was wondering how they code the concept design into the game, essentially how do you go from artwork to coding the artwork, what does that entail. thanks! | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1ankll/eli5_how_are_imagesartwork_coded_into_computer/ | {
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"I'm going to keep this at a fairly simple level (this is ELI5 after all), as it's not quite my area of expertise, but I do have some familiarity with this world.\n\nThere are lots of different types of \"images and artwork\" in games. First, lets talk about models. Models, as the name suggests, create the shape of in game objects. For example, the character your playing has a model, so do the walls that you crouch behind, and so do the platforms you jump from and to. The artists and modellers design these, and they are exported as a series of co-ordinates (x, y, z). These co-ordinates are loaded from the file, and into the game when the game needs them, and the game uses that to build up a wire-frame of the game world.\n\nNow, that's all well and good - we know how the level and the characters are structured, but not what they look like. This is where texturing comes in. Again, the artists and designers will use their tools to draw textures (and they'll apply them to the models in their tools to make sure they look right). Once they're done, the textures are exported in whatever format is required by the game. The models specify which texture they require, and also hold instructions about which part of the texture goes on which part of the model. Once the model is loaded, it will grab the texture it needs, and apply it. Now we have our models, and they are textured, and the artwork that the designers created is in the game.\n\nAn alternative approach is to actually bake the textures into the models themselves. There are pros and cons to both approaches, but the end result is pretty much the same.\n\nOther art asset, like sounds, are exported from the design tools and imported into a game in a similar way. Animations are probably similar (but I'm not 100% sure on that one).\n\nShaders are a bit of a different beast. Shaders are used by the graphics card and are useful for doing things like particle and lighting effects. These would probably have to be written by the programmers themselves, as they're specified in code, rather than drawn by the artists.\n",
"MY MOMENT HAS COME!\n\nI'll only talk about 2D sprites right now, because it's much simpler than talking about 3D models, though the concepts are fundamentally the same:\n\nSo the way computer programming works is that you tell the computer to do something in computer-speak. That's what coding is; you're commanding the machine in a language it can understand.\n\nFor any video game, in this case a 2D sprite based game, the devs will write a piece of code that will basically say, for example in a Megaman game, \"*Okay, computer; inside the game file, there's a folder called \"sprites\". Inside that folder is another folder called \"megaman\". Inside that, there is a sprite called \"megaman jump\". When Megaman jumps, call that sprite up and display it and move it up and down in X trajectory.*\"\n\nSo now, when you press the jump button, it shows the [Megaman Jump sprite](_URL_0_) and moves it up and down. They'll tell the computer what animation or artwork to draw up at any given time.\n\nfor 3D models, the idea is the same, but it has to call up the 3D model and it's textures once and then just call it's animation files over and over depending on the action.",
"I am going to keep the explanation at a very high level and somewhat sloppy in terms of terminology. \n\nA computer monitor (or any other display device) is essentially broken into a [grid (like graph paper)]( _URL_1_). Each cell in the grid is called a pixel. The resolution of the monitor tells you the count/size of the pixels. Each of these pixels is assigned a color to form the image that is displayed. Each pixel can be addressed with a number or two (with the origin usually at the top left corner). Similarly each color can also be expressed as a [number (or a few numbers)]( _URL_0_). In this manner whatever image is being displayed is essentially a bunch of numbers (or one great big number).\n\nThis is also how images are often stored, a series of numbers telling you what the color of each pixel is. Usually some compression scheme is applied to this, but not always (as in the case of bitmaps). A video or a computer game (minus the sound) is one image after another: The frame rate tells you how fast images are being changed. The images that are being displayed can either be stored statically (as in the case of pictures and videos), generated on the fly, or some combination of the two.\n\nGame graphics fall into the third category: A mixture of static and dynamic. If you take a modern game with good graphics, much of the size of the game on disk is the artwork, the images encoded as numbers. When the game is running, part of the work it is doing is deciding which of these images to show, how to put them together, how to modify them (zoom, day/night, etc.), and adding on dynamic elements.\n\nIt would be terribly tedious and inefficient if everyone had to generate the raw string of numbers representing the entire image to display directly themselves. To that effect there are helpers that do some of the manipulation for you. These can be either helpers in software or separate pieces of hardware (ala video cards) for added speed. Each of these may introduce other notions into the mix. For example, if you want to layer/composite one image on top of another then you may introduce the notion of transparency (alpha). Similarly you can introduce notions such as shading, lighting, transforms etc. \n"
]
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1o76dj | if we have so many medical advancements, why don't pills and medicines taste delicious? | We've come so far with all the things we can do for medicine, but I still cringe every time I have to take a pill. If we can extend our life spans and cure all sorts of diseases, why doesn't my Dramamine or allergy pill taste like artificial strawberry or something equally delicious yet? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1o76dj/eli5_if_we_have_so_many_medical_advancements_why/ | {
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"text": [
"If pills tasted like strawberry, unknowing children may eat them like candy, which is extremely dangerous.",
"Well the only people that would benefit is kids who are use their good ole naturally selected sense of taste to determine that something is icky (and therefore, maybe poison!) and they don't want to take it.\n\nBy the time you're an adult the hope is you're able to overcome that to realize that even if it doesn't taste good that it's good for you.\n\nAlso something about not wanting to encourage people (like kids) to take too much good tasting medicine. ",
"It's important that medicine tastes bad so that kids don't get it and overdose--if your cough syrup tastes like candy then there are going to be kids that drink it like candy. ",
"I think besides discouraging people and children from taking them when they shouldn't, there is a certain psychological aspect. You expect medicine to taste \"medicine-y\" or kind of bad. \n\nIn the same way that you expect grape drink to be purple, or butter to be yellow, even though you can get examples of both that aren't, people expect certain things.\n\n"
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21lept | why everyone is scared to be sued by peta. do they usually get their way in court? | . | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/21lept/eli5_why_everyone_is_scared_to_be_sued_by_peta_do/ | {
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"text": [
"To the extent that people are, it's because even winning a lawsuit is an enormous and expensive pain in the neck. But I'm not aware that people tend to be especially afraid of PETA beyond the fact that PETA has a reputation for being kind of lawsuit happy. "
]
} | []
| []
| [
[]
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|
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6eriw9 | why do we like to mimic noises we hear? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6eriw9/eli5_why_do_we_like_to_mimic_noises_we_hear/ | {
"a_id": [
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"text": [
"The ability to mimic sounds we hear is ***VITAL*** to learning how to speak. Memorizing and repeating sounds accurately is the primary way in which we get words with which to communicate. The brain, being an information hog, likes learning new things.\n\nThe fun starts when we turn this ability onto non-living or non-human targets. That circuitry in our brains that analyzes sounds and turns them into vocal motions is set to work against novel stimuli, which the brain enjoys.\n\nA side note, there's a sub-portion of this circuitry that analyzes the rhythm of a sound. This clump of neurons also lets us enjoy the beat of music and coordinate our entire body to that rhythm - in other words, because we can sing, we can dance."
]
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126oui | why can't excess energy from windmills be stored in something like a rechargeable battery instead of overloading power grids? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/126oui/eli5_why_cant_excess_energy_from_windmills_be/ | {
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"text": [
"Ordinary electric batteries would be far to expensive. \n\nBut you can build something called \"pumped storage stations\" which are [hydroelectric powerstations](_URL_0_) (link goes to simple wikipedia) which have dams that are filled up with water being pumped up into a dam when there is a surplus of electricity which can be used later to when the need peaks. \n\n[Here](_URL_2_) is an illustration of a pumped storage station. The \"elevator\" pumps it up and when you need extra power it goes down the \"intake\" into the generator.\n\nStill very expensive to build though but they are being used, here is a list of major [pumped storage power stations](_URL_1_)."
]
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"http://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydroelectricity",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_pumped-storage_hydroelectric_power_stations",
"http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9a/Pumpstor_racoon_mtn.jpg"
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39f4gi | how exactly does r/subredditsimulator work? i read the explanation in the sticky, but i still don't understand. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/39f4gi/eli5_how_exactly_does_rsubredditsimulator_work_i/ | {
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"cs2xapm"
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"score": [
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"text": [
"There's a good explanation of what a Markov chain is by /u/reostra [here.](_URL_1_)\n\nBasically, you create the bot, give it a user account, and point it at a subreddit. It trawls through the posts/comments and takes all the text. Then, it looks at each word, and determines what words most often follow it.\n\nSo if you gave a bot the sentence \"the quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog,\" it would determine that the word \"the\" has a 50% chance of being followed by \"quick\" and a 50% chance of being followed by \"lazy.\" Note that the bot doesn't understand the words at all, it's purely probability. With much larger samples of text (or *corpora*) you of course get much more possible words. \n\nA markov chain is a kind of state machine, where in this case, each word is a \"state.\" [Take a look at this image I found on google.](_URL_0_) Imagine a much, much larger graph like this, where each word is in one of the circles, and the number above each line represents the possibility that the next word will be that one. (Note: in this image, all the arrows only go left to right, but there's no reason you couldn't make a loop between a few states or even make a state point back to itself.)"
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"http://i.imgur.com/WY3Audu.png",
"http://www.reddit.com/r/Python/comments/2ife6d/pykov_a_tiny_python_module_on_finite_regular/cl3bybj"
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1z6ggk | weather forecasts | Looking at making travel plans earlier in the week, I looked at TWC, Accuweather, Weather Underground, and Forcea. Their forecasts were all over the range from up to 13 inches from Saturday to Sunday to 1 in of flurries on Sunday only. Which of these has the best historical performance (or other source, too)? Why are their forecasting models so different - this is the ELI5 part. Does anyone track their performance? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1z6ggk/weather_forecasts/ | {
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"Weather forecasts vary for a couple of reasons. One is that there are numerous models used for forecasting. Second is that often times weather services will actually change the forecast. No joke, but TWC will actually increase the chance of precipitation in certain cases so that people won't get mad at them...so increase the chance of rain to increase people's awareness of it since forecasting low chances of rain and then having it rain make people angry.\n\nProbably the best place to look is _URL_0_. Not only do most of the other American weather services get their data from them, but these guys actually will go back and calibrate against past performance. The web site also has a great deal of data.\n\nSeriously, it's like the one thing the government does well.",
"\"Want 40 inches of snow? There's a model for that.\"\n\nIn my experience, the best source of weather forecasts in the US is the one conspicuously absent from your list -- the [National Weather Service](_URL_0_).\n\nThe forecasters there are top-notch, and get paid the same whether you look at their website or not. With some commercial sites or stations, the desire to attract viewers can affect the forecasts models they use.\n\nSensationalism sells with weather -- but it's not good science."
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20z7em | why is cocking your head/raising an eyebrow a sign of confusion? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/20z7em/eli5_why_is_cocking_your_headraising_an_eyebrow_a/ | {
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"We don't truly know the cause of human behavior but assume it's a reflex caused by something that happens in the brain.\n\nMy belief is that the \"something\" is an \"asymmetrical pattern match\", which is reflected physically in the face, because patterns in the brain trigger motor neurons to move muscles.\n\nWhen you identify something, there is a type of symmetry happening - what you see is what you believe. You are matching together two models - the one that you see, with the one in your memory that contains your beliefs. If there is a match, you might raise your eyebrows together, maybe even give a symmetrical smile.\n\nWhen you are confused, their is a mismatch, it's anti-symmetrical. What you see isn't what you understand or believe. And your face shows that quite nicely! \n\nI like to think all facial reflexes and expressions have this type of explanation.\n\n(Others may tell you it's simply a way our bodies learned to communicate what we feel or think)."
]
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e01s8k | how does the body create large volumes of phlegm so quickly and why? | ELI5: So I'm sick right now and it's got me wondering, how is it that the human body seems to be able to create endless mucus and what purpose does it serve? Is it a defense mechanism, or do diseases hijack the body to their own ends? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/e01s8k/eli5_how_does_the_body_create_large_volumes_of/ | {
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"text": [
"there are some great Kurgestagt videos on you tube that explain it far better than I could in text.",
"Because phlegm has a productive, beneficial purpose. It's not a waste product. You might as well be asking why you're sweating while it's hot outside (no offense). Think of it like bacteria/particle cleaner for all your pipes. \n\nMucus also stops stomach acid and other reactive fluids in your body from destroying things they're not supposed to, like your stomach lining or esophagus. Pretty much any fluid you excrete that isn't waste has a major purpose for survival."
]
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9qlcha | how can aliens listen to the golden record on voyager 1 if they ever found it? | Assuming that someday they find it, how can they have the technology to play a record or understand it works? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9qlcha/eli5_how_can_aliens_listen_to_the_golden_record/ | {
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"text": [
"The record comes along with the device intended to play it, as well as instructions that are decipherable as long as they understand basic scientific concepts (which, if they are a spacefaring civilization, they likely will). ",
"Included with the record is a stylus for playing it, as well as instructions on how to set it up and play it using fundamental mathematical and physical concepts. The assumption is that any spacefaring civilization advanced enough to intercept it would be able to decipher the instructions on how to play it.",
"**An audio record is an almost primitive form of technology that is not hard to understand at all**, if you are technologically advanced, which we can reasonably assume a spacefaring species to be.\n\nJust look at it (or touch it) and you immediately notice there is a microscopic structure. Look at that under a microscope and you see there is a single, long, spiralling groove with tiny wriggles all along it. Translate those wriggles to a graph, analyze it mathematically, and you see that there is a complex spectral pattern, sometimes only a few frequencies dominate (music), sometimes it's a wider mix (speech). It's not a big leap of imagination to translate that into vibrations, even before you do the mathematical analysis - and at that point you are playing the record.\n\n**The real open question is not whether the aliens can play the record, it's whether they have sensory organs to perceive vibrations.**\n\nIf not, the audio might forever be a mystery to them. But it's also possible that there's a pretty straightforward \"translation\" of audio into their form of communication - for example, if they communicate with pulses of light, you can map volume to brightness and tones to colors easily enough.\n\nBut if they do, they can \"listen\" to the record. There is almost no chance of them understanding the messages spoken in a large number of completely alien languages, but they could use it as a good starting point for communication if they ever come to meet us. And there's a good chance the musical parts with be meaningful to them as art."
]
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5elsex | how does ear wax build up? and why? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5elsex/eli5_how_does_ear_wax_build_up_and_why/ | {
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"Ears like vaginas are self cleaning. Earwax is a self-cleaning agent, with protective, lubricating and antibacterial properties. There are tiny glands in the outer ear canal constantly pump out a watery substance, which gets mixed with bits of dead hair and skin and together is called earwax! \n\nThere is also wet and dry earwax the wet earwax is the dominant gene and the dry earwax came about as a mutation in Northeast Asia",
"A doctor told me you shouldn't put anything smaller than an elbow in your ear canal, don't ask me why he used this wording. So no q-tips, use a water syringe. You can get one specifically made for this from the pharmacy, they're fairly inexpensive.",
"I don't know why, but I can say, definitively and without hesitation, that the way to remove wax buildup or a clogged ear canal is with a water syringe. Get in the shower with a glass, fill it with warm water and maybe some peroxide. Fill the syringe with the warm water and shoot it into your ear repeatedly until the big disgusting wax ball comes out. There's no mistaking it. I've had nurses do the same thing for $100 and figured out how to do it myself. \n*edit here's what I use for this: _URL_0_",
"First off, everyone has a different amount of wax production, so some have way more of a buildup than others. It can be a serious problem for some people. Secondly, it exists to protect your tympanic membrane (ear drum) from foreign substances. It does this by being sticky and catching everything that goes in. If you stick a lot of things in your ear, spend time in the sand, in dusty areas or outdoors or with pets or anywhere where the environment can get inside your ear canal, more things are going to be sticking to your ear wax, thus causing a bigger build up! Shoving q tips will just shove the wax further and further back, making it more impacted and harder to fall out. Thirdly, Our ear wax is actually produced in a way where wax is continually being pushed out of the ear naturally so some people literally never need to clean out their ears! The ear is a strange thing. \n\nPro tip: if a bug crawls in your ear, your ear canal is so sensitive that you'll know it's there (no need to worry about bugs crawling in without your knowledge) and they rarely get stuck in the wax, but all you do is turn off the lights and shine a flash light or bright light near your ear and it'll crawl out! ",
"So, if you wear a hearing aid it seems to get more abundant. Is that good or bad?",
"This seems like a follow-up to _URL_0_\n\nand /u/BUTT_PLUGS_FOR_PUGS gave a really good explanation on there:\n\n > Wax comes from the keratin cells that make up the outer 1/3rd of the cell sandwich that makes up the main part of your ear drum. These keratin cells migrate, like your nails or your hair keratin so that any holes can be healed by a new sheet of cells growing out to the edge and replacing them. Kinda like a little conveyor belt.\n\n > When the sheet of cells comes to the hairy outer section of the ear they peel off, mix with natural oils in the skin and become brown/orange waxy substance called cerumen (ear wax) "
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30n4k4 | the trend of sagging pants below the buttocks. | We sagged pants in the 90's. But our fucking jeans didn't fall off our asses. Wtf is the point of walking around with your pants sagged below your ass where simply letting go of your belt sends them to the ground? How is this a trend?
Damn whippersnappers. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/30n4k4/eli5_the_trend_of_sagging_pants_below_the_buttocks/ | {
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"I'm pretty sure it originated in the prison system. Inmates would get their belt revoked by causing trouble and thus their pants sagged. This was viewed as cool and became a trend among young people. Because outlaws are cool dontchya know. ",
"for kids In the \"hood\", money is tight, but status is shown by wearing expensive clothing and having larger colleagues who can back you up in a fight. A young man with an older brother is more threatening than one on his own. as money is tight, young men would often wear the hand-me-down clothes of his older brother, if they are of sufficient status (name brand, home sports team etc). This lead to the trend for wearing clothes far too big for the wearer. A young man with oversized clothes, has an other sized brother who would fuck you up if you be dissin' his hoes. (fo' shizzle)",
"[Here's an article from NPR]( _URL_0_) that isn't really much help TBH, but it does say there's basically no evidence that it started in prisons as a signal for being gay or because of lack of belts. Sounds like they don't really know how it started. ",
"my biggest problem is that you look like a jackass and on top of it...ISNT IT UNCOMFORTABLE??? ",
"I've always heard that it did originate in prison, but not for gay men to show that they're available. Prison clothing is usually one-size-fits all, so for most people it is loose fitting and baggy. Within certain cultures (i.e. hip-hop culture), anti-establishment behavior is glorified. So continuing the \"fashion\" trend within prisons of baggy clothing is a way to demonstrate that you either have been in prison (thereby giving you \"street cred\") or at least associate with a culture that endorses \"being a thug.\" "
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8wc1e3 | why do companies provide open source software? what is the benefit of providing free software when you could be making money? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8wc1e3/eli5why_do_companies_provide_open_source_software/ | {
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"Open Source Software (OSS) is known for providing security advantages, because many more developers are working on and looking at the code at the same time, versus a proprietary software where the source code is closed source.\n\nMany companies will embrace this by releasing a \"Community\" version of their software, and having an \"Enterprise\" version, possibly with advanced features. The companies will, in these cases, make money by selling hosting and support for the product, instead of just selling the product itself.",
"They make money on support services. \n\nBy providing software for free, they become more established in that particular space, which opens them up to all kinds of customers. \n\nPlus, the F/OSS community tends to enjoy finding and poking holes in software, so these companies can often get better faster bug reports so they can patch it. Which gives them a better rep, more installations, more support contracts and services..."
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awes3j | what is temporal non locality and what are the practical applications if proven true? | [deleted] | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/awes3j/eli5_what_is_temporal_non_locality_and_what_are/ | {
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"So, quantum physics is weird. One major aspect of quantum physics which gets people scratching their heads is the concept of \"entanglement\", where two particles can be caused to have their features become linked in a fundamental way. Particles can be in a state called \"superposition\" which if we consider a particle to have a state of either A or B, is where the particles is not either A or B but sort of acts like it is both. An entanglement reaction is where particles are generated by an event the requires certain factors to be conserved (no qualities can vanish, no qualities can come out of nothing), such as in our example A and B. We don't know which of the particles will be A or B but if one is A then the other must be B and vice versa.\n\nThe interesting thing here is that we can have two particles which haven't yet settled into being A or B and if we measure a particle which forces it to settle on A or B, the other particle instantly takes the other state. This happens *instantly*, faster than the speed of light. So this seems to imply spatial non-locality, the violation of the premise that things are only affected by their immediate surroundings. Those two particles are connected in a way which transcends distance!\n\nNow that is pretty weird, where particles can be linked across any distance at all, but the concept of temporal non-locality is equally weird. It turns out that in a similar way that particles can be made entangled across space they can also be entangled across *time*. Two photons have been entangled despite their life spans not overlapping in time; one photon exists and then ceases to exist, then the second comes into existence and then ceases, and yet their states are dependent on each other.\n\nWhat does this imply? It might mean that the state of particles today can somehow directly dictate the state of particles in the future, or even that alterations to particles now can change the state of particles in the past, rewriting history. More broadly it implies that perhaps our entire concept of time is an illusion, that to say the universe of tomorrow is different from the universe today is just the same as saying that the universe here is different from the universe a distance in some spatial direction.\n\nPractical applications of this? I haven't the foggiest idea. Perhaps faster than light travel, perhaps time travel, perhaps predicting the future or altering past reality? In the foreseeable future it just means more research and a billion terrible internet articles from freelance journalists with neither the time or brain power to fully understand what they are writing making click bait."
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1wydg3 | why do i need to take a square root? | I can understand ratios, for instance when I say "Johnny gets 4/5 of the pie" it means Johnny now owns 4 out of 5 parts of a pie. But I can't think of a practical explanation for a square root, why do I need to take a square root? where do I apply this in real life? if you could provide a "Johnny" example and dumb it down for me, that'll be really helpful. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1wydg3/eli5_why_do_i_need_to_take_a_square_root/ | {
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"You have 49 square yards (at 1 inch) to lay in a square. How long are the sides of the square?\n\nThat is the most basic of examples. But many equations in science and engineering involve the square of a number, so you have to do the inverse (the square root) to \"undo\" the square and solve the problem.",
"In statistics, a common heuristic regarding a valid sample size is that it be at least the square root of the population. For example, if you want to know the average age of people in a city of 750,000, how many would you have to randomly sample to get a statistically valid average? (Answer: about 866.)\n",
"If Johnny knows the length of the two arms of a right triangle, what is the length of the other side? Knowing the Pythagorean Theorem, you know that A²+B²=C², Johnny will need to solve for C = sqrt(A²+B²)."
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1hfgbh | why is it considered necessary for a planet to have an atmosphere to sustain life? | Couldn't life have evolved to survive without respiration?
| explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1hfgbh/why_is_it_considered_necessary_for_a_planet_to/ | {
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"Of course; it's not really strictly necessary. But having an atmosphere does more than provide metabolic fuel, it also shields the planet's surface from some types of radiation, smooths out the night/day temperature gradient, and keeps liquids on the surface from boiling away into space. All of these things make it much more likely that we'll find *recognizable* life on planets with atmospheres than without, but as usual with the search for life on exoplanets, \"recognizable\" is the key word.",
"My grandfather explained it to me like this (probably when I was about 5 years old):\n\nBasically for all we know there could be giant gold whales floating around in gas giants or huge sentient clouds of gas floating around in space. But creating life is apparently very difficult because we haven't seen any of it around us. So instead of looking for life, we look for life as we know it. And life as we know it requires water and air and all the other things that make our planet unique",
"You are walking down the street and you drop your wallet. Do you look for it on the sidewalk, or down a sewer grate, where it is too dark to see?\n\nSure, your wallet *might* be down the grate, but if it is, it doesn't matter, you can't find it, so why waste the effort?\n\nThe search for extraterrestrial life is like that. We know a *lot* about carbon/water based oxygen breathing lifeforms, and have some pretty good ideas how to find them from very far away. But beyond that, we have virtually nothing about what other kinds of life are possible, and even less about what to look for."
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wtmy4 | the difference between justice and revenge. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/wtmy4/eli5_the_difference_between_justice_and_revenge/ | {
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"I think of revenge as an action caused by spite. Justice is a similar action, but it is in the name of righteousness. ",
"Number of people who agree with you.",
"If Paul stole five sweets from Mary and the Teacher made Paul say sorry and return the sweets or replace them that is justice. \n \nIf Mary somehow prevents Paul from eating sweets for a week to make him suffer, that is revenge. \n \nJustice removes the benefit of doing wrong so that playing fair is the most profitable course of action in the long run.\n \nRevenge makes you suffer for doing wrong so that doing right is safer in the long run.\n \nBoth things depend on the kid doing the wrong thing getting caught. Most naughty kids don't really believe deep down that they will be caught. That is why even though the punishment for being naughty can be very bad , some kids will still be naughty. ",
"There's a very interesting Korean movie trilogy that deals with the two concepts of justice and vengeance:\n\n[Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance](_URL_0_)\n\n[Old Boy](_URL_1_)\n\n[Lady Vengeance](_URL_2_)\n\nThe movies do a good job of showing how pointless vengeance can be and how vengeance can start a chain reaction of escalating acts of revenge.",
"I would argue that justice, in its highest form, is an attempt to undo or negate the negative consequences of an action. Revenge is an attempt to weaken another, to bring them down to the level they brought you down to.",
"Somebody just watched Batman Begins",
"They can overlap, but justice implies calculated and objective corrections of a crime, while revenge implies personal gratification sought by the person who was wronged. \n\nJustice is also often associated with a society or collective, while revenge is often personal. ",
"This is a good question, because they are quite similar and a lot of people confuse them. I'll try to answer in a way that plain demonstrates the difference, regardless of your opinion on the subject.\n\nWhat both revenge and justice have in common is that they both happen when someone is hurting someone else. Also, both of them try to reverse things, each in their own way.\n\nThere are two important things about revenge. The first is that revenge hurts the one who was hurting someone. It doesn't just help the person being hurt. The second thing is that revenge has to be carried out--at least in part--by the one who was being hurt. It can't just be other people coming in and doing it. Sometimes it looks like it's other people, but if you think about it, they were also hurt. Like the family of a murder victim. Some people even say that hurting someone hurts society in general, and so *any* punishment counts as revenge.\n\nWhat *doesn't* matter for revenge is what is done or how much it hurts. You could kill someone for stealing a stick of gum, or you could steal gum from someone who killed your brother: both would be revenge. It also doesn't depend on right and wrong (although they can still be part of the reason, they just aren't necessary).\n\nThe important thing about justice is that it does depend on some sort of right and wrong. This can vary from person to person, but whoever is doing justice has to be acting in a way he or she thinks is right. The motivation should be to restore things to the way they were or should have been, or if that's impossible to try to make up for it in some way.\n\nThere are several things that don't matter about justice. One is that it doesn't necessarily matter who does it. In fact, for a lot of people it's better that it's done by someone who wasn't involved, because it's more likely that they'll act based on their idea of right and wrong rather than their feelings. Another is that it doesn't have to hurt the person who caused the original hurt. Justice can also be done by helping the person who was hurt, or some combination of the two. It all depends on what you believe about right and wrong.\n\nSometimes the same action can be viewed as both justice and revenge. Most people, though, believe that revenge is wrong itself, so even if you believe hurting someone who hurt you would be a just outcome, it wouldn't be justice if you did it yourself.\n\nFinally, some people argue that justice doesn't exist, because there is no such thing as right and wrong (just people's opinions). I have tried to explain justice in terms of what each person thinks about it, so that what is justice to one person might not be to someone else. That way you can make up your own mind whether you think it exists. Either way, it is useful to understand what people mean when they talk about it.\n\nThat was long! Here is a tl;dr, but it leaves out a lot: \n- Revenge is getting back at someone who hurt you \n- Justice is making things right when someone hurts someone else"
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4ogqz3 | why is it so expensive to be poor in the us? | Bonus if you can tell me about some banking details and also how it is in some other first world countries.
I'm actually American but I have to do a project on first world poverty in Japanese and I'm only semi-decent at Japanese.
I can give gold for the best response!
Thanks!
EDIT: A Word | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4ogqz3/eli5why_is_it_so_expensive_to_be_poor_in_the_us/ | {
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"Google search on \"High cost of poverty\" and you'll find some articles.\n\nSome reasons:\n\n* No flexibility. A poor person can't wait for a sale, or even bargain-hunt, because they need those shoes to go to work tomorrow. The soles just fell off the old pair, and they don't have another.\n\n* Cheap junk: Can't afford nice stuff? Buy cheap garbage or used stuff that breaks down a lot.\n\n* No buffers. Everything is on a thin-to-no margin, so you cannot recover when things go wrong. Got a lead on a better job? Better not take it unless it's 100% guaranteed, because you can't go back to your old one if you try, and you have no savings to job-search or move to a better area.\n\nExample of why this is so much worse in the US than elsewhere: Transportation. Public transit is terrible almost everywhere, as the US assumes everybody has a car. The poor end up buying cheap, unreliable cars. When they break down, they have no buffer and so MUST get it fixed or replaced as fast as possible to get to work tomorrow.\n\nHealthcare is also an issue, as the US medical system only workes well for folks with good insurance. It's REALLY expensive if you don't.\n\n\n\n\n\n",
"Here's my example. \nI pay high interest rate on my mortgage because of a bad credit rating. My credit is bad because I couldn't afford a medical emergency that my insurance didn't cover.\nIf I had more savings and a larger income, I could refinance my house and save 500 USD a month. I'd use that extra money to buy good insurance to avoid this situation... Rinse and repeat.\n",
"“The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money.\n\nTake boots, for example. He earned thirty-eight dollars a month plus allowances. A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. Those were the kind of boots Vimes always bought, and wore until the soles were so thin that he could tell where he was in Ankh-Morpork on a foggy night by the feel of the cobbles.\n\nBut the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that'd still be keeping his feet dry in ten years' time, while the poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet.\n\nThis was the Captain Samuel Vimes 'Boots' theory of socioeconomic unfairness.”\n\n\n― Terry Pratchett, Men at Arms",
"This quote really struck me as true: \n\"\"An overseas colleague characterized the situation well: America is a place where the luxuries are cheap and the necessities are expensive,\" said Joseph Cohen, a sociology professor at Queens College in New York.\"\n\nWe typically have gadgets and cars and things, yet the burden of medical debt, educational loans, housing or even just poor credit as a result of the first two put SO many at a disadvantage for a huge part of their life. "
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69nnzd | why do springs not "unbend", even after decades? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/69nnzd/eli5_why_do_springs_not_unbend_even_after_decades/ | {
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"A simple example to augment the sciencey explanation:\n\nBasic idea: *Materials have a point of no return*\n\nA simple sheet of printer paper can flop back and forth for eternity with little adverse effect. As soon as something puts a crease in that piece of paper, it is pretty much permanently changed. That crease will probably remain there in some form for the rest of its paper life. Essentially, the fold stretched the paper at that crease (like a spring!) beyond its point of no return and weakened it a little bit. \n\nThe difference between the paper and the spring? It's significantly harder to stretch a spring than to crease a paper, especially if using the spring in a traditional sense (like an accordion!)."
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4g9ypu | why are some body parts more likely to get cancer than others? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4g9ypu/eli5_why_are_some_body_parts_more_likely_to_get/ | {
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"Cancer can develop during the process of cellular replication because a copy of *all* of the cell's DNA must be made for the new cell. During this process, mistakes can be made, resulting in DNA that accidentally codes for unregulated growth (resulting in a tumor).\n\nCertain types of cells in the body replicate very often and are therefore more likely to develop cancer. Examples of this are the lining of your GI tract or the cells of the lung. \n\nOther types of cells, like those found in your muscles or bones, do not replicate very much at all and as a result are more rare.",
"While the other answer is correct, there is also the fact that some parts of the body are more vulnerable to damage. Skin cancer is usually caused by radiation and your skin is the place that gets most of it.",
"On top of what has already been said, when cancer cells start to grow they can go through a phase known as metastesis, this means they can move about the body to another area and grow there, so we see a lot of cancer of the lower gut area due to large blood flow through those organs for example the liver which filters blood.\n\nto be noted normal healthy cells cannot go through metastesis."
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6803lc | how can we be sure that the challenger deep is the deepest part of the ocean if less than 5% has been explored? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6803lc/eli5how_can_we_be_sure_that_the_challenger_deep/ | {
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"We can tell how deep the ocean is by pinging sound waves toward the bottom and measuring how much time it takes the signal to bounce off and return to the receiver (i.e. sonar). We have not covered the entire ocean floor with sonar because the ocean is HUGE, the area covered by a sonar beam is comparatively tiny, and there are only so many ships in the world that are interested in taking such measurements. Also, most of the ocean floor is flat, featureless and frankly, uninteresting from a cartographic standpoint. \n\nWe know that trenches are the deepest parts of the ocean, and they only occur in certain predictable areas, so there is unlikely to be an undiscovered trench hiding out there somewhere. Because trenches are relatively small, mapping them out on sonar is a reasonably manageable job. Therefore, we know how deep the deepest part of the ocean is and which trench it is located in (the Marianas trench. Or, as I like to call it, the \"Marinara Trench\", which in my mind, is the home of the great Chthonic Meatball Monster). "
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5ka2w7 | what is meant by a port of a game? | Also how are games ported? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5ka2w7/eli5_what_is_meant_by_a_port_of_a_game/ | {
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"Adapting a game from one platform to another, typically from an earlier platform to a current one.",
"Is taking that was originally played on a platform ie PlayStation or PC and making a version that can be played on on another like Xbox or on arcades especially older games.",
"On the old time, video game where relying a lot on hardware optimization (machine where not powerful enough to afford being generic). For example you had to use different set of instruction to talk to different type of graphic cards (Nowaday, it's still the case for people doing GPU computing, and software relying on GPU usually specify a very short list of compatible GPU board). Porting is simply replacing the *hardware dependent* part of the game by another one. Now you have tool which are able to produce code for different hardware, it's not as efficient as a code optimized for a given hardware (by someone specialized in that field, if it's done by a random dev it can be even worse) but machine are nowadays powerful enough to afford a little loss of optimization (this time can be used to improve the scenario or the usability) \n"
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29wmqw | why do notes on drums always sound in tune with other in instruments, no matter what note the drum is accompanying? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/29wmqw/eli5_why_do_notes_on_drums_always_sound_in_tune/ | {
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"Because with the exception of the timpani, and probably some other drum I don't know about, drums don't have a 'note' they play. This is a little counter-intuitive because drums *do* differ in pitch, which is determined by the head material and drum height and diameter, but acoustically, the noise they produce isn't a set pitch or note, it's a range of frequencies that, while you may be able to mathematically model it, is considered *noise* instead of a specific *note*.",
"Drums have multi-tones, and you're almost guaranteed to always find a piece of sound from it that matches other instruments. Cymbals can be the same way too",
"They don't ALWAYS sound in tune...you have to tune drum heads too.",
"In EDM it's popular to tune the kicks to the key of the song because they are generally long and very subby. If this is out of tune with the basslines they will clash. "
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5lem9z | what exactly does it mean for a system to be 8 bit/16 bit/32 bit/64 bit? why is it in multiples of 8? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5lem9z/eli5_what_exactly_does_it_mean_for_a_system_to_be/ | {
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"It means how much memory can be addressed. The bigger the number the more memory. Since computer memory must be a power of two the measure is expressed as such.",
"It's multiples of 2, and it's because bits are 2-base. This means they are either 0 or 1. So when we have a number that is 8-bit it means it is a number represented by 8 bits. This can be converted to the regular number system -- decimal also known as 10 base -- by going from right to left along the 1s and 0s and adding. The bit on the right is 1 or 0. The next bit to the left is 2 or 0. The next bit to the left is 4 or 0. The next is 8 or 0, etc.\n\nFor example, 0110 in binary is equal to 6, because the 1 spot is 0, the 2 spot is 1, the 4 spot is 1, and the 8 spot is 0. This means we have a 2 and a 4, so we add them to get 6. In this example we are dealing with a 4-bit number, because there are 4 bits.\n\nIn an OS it generally means the size of an integer, and can affect things like the amount of memory that can be used.\n\nInteresting addition: 4 bits is a nibble, 8 bits is a byte.",
"A lot of replies in this thread say that it is because a bit is base two and 8/16/32/64 are powers of 2. This is NOT the correct reasoning. Firstly, each bit is a binary digit that is either 0 or 1 (think of a switch, it's either on or off). Each bit has 2 possibilities. A 1-bit system is obviously not too useful because of the two states it can represent, so we connect multiple 1-bit systems together. So for a 2-bit system, there are 2^2 = 4 representations. 3-bit systems have 2^3 = 8 representations, 2^4 = 16 representations, etc. You might have seen or heard that computers cannot handle numbers larger than about 2.1 billion. This is where the limitation of 32-bit systems come from (2^31 is about 2.1 billion. One of the bits is used to represent the positive/negative sign).\n\nThere is nothing stopping you from building a 3-bit system, or a 23-bit system, or a 377-bit system (the point is none of these are powers of 2). In fact, this has been done before. There are modern video cards that have 192-bit memory channels which is not a power of 2. I don't know what the real reason is (perhaps someone who works in processor design can better answer this) but I am suspecting that this comes down to convenience and scalability from old to new software/hardware. System with weird bit sizes are usually designed to do a specific task. For example, digital signal processors (DSPs) have used 9 bits, 18 bits, 26 bits, 48 bits, etc. in the past.",
"It indicates the size of a pointer(computers use this to address memory). 32 bit pointers can address up to 2^32 bytes(around 4 gigabytes) of memory and 64 bit pointers can address up to 2^64 bytes or 16.8 million terabytes. It is multiple of 8 because for almost all computers, 1 byte is the minimum addressable unit of memory and 1 byte equals 8 bit.",
"Think of the 8bit vs 16bit vs etc as describing your vocabulary; 8 bit being a 5 yo and 64 bit a PhD in vocabulary! Ask the 5 yo the color of a bird. The child can give you 256 different colors, 2^8, whereas a HS student can give you approx 65,000 different colors, 2^16. Now back to the 5 yo. What if he couldn't speak, but he had a map with 256 blocks of color on it. To identify the color he needs a way to point at it...maybe use a number? Say 0 to 255? But the kid doesn't wright numbers like you... remember he's an 8 bit kid. So his numbers look like this; 00000000, 00000001, 00000010 to 11111111. So, if he told you the bird was 00000110, you would go to block 6 on your 'bitmap' and there would be the color of the bird. How loud is the bird singing? Go to the sound map. ETC. Back in the day, our computers were simple, using 8 bits to describe stuff/what to do/ etc. Today the norm is 64bit. My first computer was as big as my refridge, but less descriptive then my cell phone! ",
"Sigh...\n\nComputer engineer here, all of the answers in this thread have thus far missed the mark.\n\nThe simplest and most correct answer is that there is no technical definition of a microprocessor's \"bit width\". They're largely marketing terms that rest on a foundation defined entirely by the manufacturer.\n\nConsider for example the MIPS R4000 microprocessor used famously in the Nintendo 64. It's widely known as being one of the first \"64 bit\" microprocessors, and it does indeed have 64-bit instructions. However, most of these 64-bit instructions are implemented in microcode on top of 32-bit harder and involve the sequential execution of multiple 32-bit instructions. Despite its namesake, very few if any Nintendo 64 games used the R4000's 64-bit instructions because they were simply too slow.\n\nConsider next the Intel 8086, marketed as a 16-bit microprocessor. It is true that the 8086 has 16-bit general purpose registers and can perform only 16-bit arithmetic, but it uses a segmented address space which provides access to 20 bits worth of memory (1 megabyte).\n\nIntel introduced the MMX instruction set extensions with the P5 series of microprocessors. The MMX instructions included the ability to load and store 64-bit values in the MMX registers, perform boolean logic operations on 64-bit values, shift 64-bit values, perform vector arithmetic on packed values (two 32-bit values, four 16-bit values, or eight 8-bit values), but did not include the ability to perform scalar arithmetic on unpacked 64-bit values. Despite having some 64-bit capabilities, they were not marketed as 64-bit microprocessors.\n\nThe most common reference point for a microprocessor's \"bit width\" is the width of the microprocessor's general purpose registers which is where most of the microprocessor's instructions are executed. Specialised registers such as those used for floating point arithmetic, vector arithmetic, and special functions are not considered, nor is the width of the external address and data busses. The Intel 8088 was an Intel 8086 with an 8-bit external data bus rather than a 16-bit external data bus yet it was still marketed as a 16-bit microprocessor with a 20-bit address space."
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4u6keh | why aren't the major media outlets covering the dnc emails leak? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4u6keh/eli5_why_arent_the_major_media_outlets_covering/ | {
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"Optimistically; because they're waiting to confirm stories before breaking them, which would be expected under the tenants of journalistic integrity.\n\nMore realistically; because they're being told not to discuss them.",
" > Why aren't the major media outlets covering the DNC emails leak?\n\nYou mean major media outlets like [CNN](_URL_2_), [ABC](_URL_0_), and [The New York Times](_URL_1_), just to name a few? Clearly your premise is wrong. This is still new, and the validity of the emails is likely being vetted."
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"http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/emails-released-wikileaks-show-dnc-aid-hillary-clinton/story?id=40815253",
"http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/23/us/politics/dnc-emails-sanders-clinton.html?_r=0",
"http://www.cnn.com/2016/07/22/politics/dnc-wikileaks-emails/index.html"
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fa73oz | why are forklifts mechanized in a way that only the rear end of the tires turn left/right? why not the front end, like every other car or bus? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/fa73oz/eli5_why_are_forklifts_mechanized_in_a_way_that/ | {
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"Forklifts are made to move extremely heavy loads in tight spaces at slow speeds.\n\nRear wheel turning allows for tight turns and navigation in a warehouse, as well as more precise movement when picking and dropping pallets.\n\nSlow speeds make rear wheel turning safe enough in forklifts.",
"Another reason is that when handling a very heavy load, most of the weight is on the front tires. It would take a great deal of force to steer the front wheels.",
"If you've ever tried to reverse round a corner, you'll notice that rear wheel steering allows for much smaller turning circle as you're swinging out the rear (front in the example). Now if you've tried doing this at speed, out of a parking space for instance you'll be pretty aware of the heavy gforce you get, which is why we use front wheel for cars generally, as it provides a less dangerous level of turning at speed."
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8ckgfw | why does it rain less during summer? wouldn't the increase in sunlight and heat cause more evaporation and therefore more precipitation? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8ckgfw/eli5_why_does_it_rain_less_during_summer_wouldnt/ | {
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"When water evaporates, it makes the air more humid. The hotter air is, the more moisture it can take, because the air molecules have more energy which leaves more room for water molecules to mix in there. So yes, there is more evaporation in the summer, but it takes a lot more moisture for the air to get fully saturated and cause precipitation.\n\nIn the winter, you get storm systems where warm air blowing in off the ocean rises over the mountains. The air atop the mountains is much colder, and the warm moist air can't keep all its moisture. So as the ocean air cools (as it rises over the mountains,) it dumps moisture in the form of rain, and that's called a orographic storm. You don't get those kinds of orographic storms in the summer either, because the mountains are warmer and you don't have a big discrepancy between the heat of the ocean and the cold mountains.",
"It actually doesn't rain more or less because of the season. At least not consistently across the whole world.\n\nEssentially weather is the result of swirling within both the oceans and the atmosphere. At different times of year, varying amounts of sun combined with the rotation of the earth cause the oceans and the atmosphere to swirl differently (in a complicated and interconnected way).\n\nThis swirling causes heat (and in the case of the atmosphere, moisture) to be moved from place to place, and up and down within both the atmosphere and the oceans. The result is that conditions that create rain are much more likely in some parts of the world in summer, in other parts of the world conditions that create rain come mostly during the winter. "
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5dnjux | reaction formation | Relating to psychology | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5dnjux/eli5_reaction_formation/ | {
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"You mean the psychological defense mechanism? That would like if someone was deeply closeted gay and their reaction formation would be to come out and bash gay people and generally be anti LGBTQ.",
"Remember when you were little and girls had cooties and you weren't supposed to like them, but there was this one girl you secretly liked... so you were a jerk to her. You would knock her books to the ground, make fun of her hair, and steal her cookies at lunch. You might even proclaim hatred for her if anyone asked why you were so mean.. you might deny that you actually liked her even to yourself.\n\nI mean, what if your friends found out, or you admitted your feelings and she didn't like you back? It would be devastating, you couldn't allow that reality to happen, so you make sure it doesn't.\n\nThis is reaction formation. A particular feeling, belief, or situation goes against what you think of as normal, and/or instills such fear in you about the outcome that you have to make sure it doesn't happen by acting in the opposite way."
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1koewu | why is booking a nonstop flight pricier than a multiple-stop flight that includes the nonstop flight? | I was looking at flights online today and noticed one for $165, which started from a local airport and made one layover in San Francisco. That was exciting because I thought my friend from San Francisco could join me (we are travelling to the same place).
However that same flight from San Francisco to our destination costs $450!
Why does it cost so much more than my flight, which includes that flight? What is to stop my friend from purchasing my flight, throwing away the first ticket (local airport - > SFO), and flying directly to our destination for a fraction of the cost? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1koewu/eli5_why_is_booking_a_nonstop_flight_pricier_than/ | {
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"If he doesn't get on the first leg of the flight, they aren't going to let him on the second leg. Trust me on this one.",
"Let's say United has a route from Denver to Milwaukee, and Milwaukee to NYC.\n\nJust about every other airline is going to have some routing that gets you from Denver to NYC, so there is gong to be a lot of competition on that route, regardless of where exactly the layover is. United wants your business, so they are going to lower prices to get to get you to flight with them.\n\nBut if they are the only carrier going to Milwaukee, less competition, so they can charge higher prices. \n"
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24j4d7 | why some subreddits like /r/topgear encourage pirating the show, while others like /r/gameofthrones strictly forbid it? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/24j4d7/eli5_why_some_subreddits_like_rtopgear_encourage/ | {
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"It's up to the mods of those communities.\n\nI dont think pirating is going to hurt Top Gear that much as the BBC gets its funding through the television license fee regardless of how you watch the show in the UK., However Top Gear earns the BBC money through international sales, which piracy might hurt\n\nGame of Thrones is made by a premium broadcaster and is funded through subscriptions and advertising, more piracy equals less revenue for HBO and less budget for the show",
"Because they're run by people, and people have varying opinions.\n\nAs for Top Gear specifically, the show gets made whether people buy the DVDs or not, as it is supported financially by the BBC, a state-funded enterprise.",
"It's at the whim of the individual mods - i.e. whoever got there first. This is the main problem with reddit.\n\nAs for pirating it... /r/gameofthrones can ban us all they want, but everyone from /r/australia is going to pirate it, and talk about it, anyway."
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3n5cmg | why is the sound level so different for each tv show? | Can't we have a standard so all Shows has volume 1, instead of volume 1, 3, 5... | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3n5cmg/eli5_why_is_the_sound_level_so_different_for_each/ | {
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"We can, but a show would need to have regulations on maximum decibells level compared to other shows.\n\nThese regulations are not there, and thus in editing sound levels may vary per show, and vary on the TV as well ^^",
"Audio transmissions already have a maxim level at which they can be encoded. The problem is with the nature of audio its self. It's a signal that swings from positive to negative and back at varying intensities and at varying frequencies. \n\nSound engineers can apply a technique called audio compression which essentially makes the loud parts quieter and makes the quiet parts louder. The end result is a signal who's volume is squished into a small range. Once a signal is compressed, the whole signal can get turned up with out distorting it. \n\nEven though the loudest part of a compressed signal never gets louder than the loudest part of a regular signal, because there is more of the signal at the higher level, the human ear perceives it as louder and so it stands out.\n\nThe more you compress the signal, the more it starts to sound weird and unpleasant. So TV shows and broadcast networks will only compress things so much. Commercials however are always willing to sacrifice audio quality if it will get you to notice their ad more. "
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2hlhgc | does time dilation means we're doing time travel, but not enough to make a difference? | I just read about time dilation. So what I understood is that, if you travel very fast for a lot of time, you will be aged less than a person who was staying still for all that time. [Source](_URL_0_).
So does that mean, if we travel like 50% of the speed of light for some time, and then reach earth back, will I be in the future? I mean Would all my friends and known people be dead already? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2hlhgc/eli5_does_time_dilation_means_were_doing_time/ | {
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" > So does that mean, if we travel like 50% of the speed of light for some time, and then reach earth back, will I be in the future? I mean Would all my friends and known people be dead already?\n\nYes. You can outlive all your loved ones by going on a very fast spaceship.\n\nWhether or not you've \"traveled into the future\" is up to how you define \"the future.\" In Earth terms, you've traveled into the future without aging.",
"Pretty much, yes. It's extremely hard to accelerate anything near the speed of light to make any significant difference, but it's possible.\n\nBackwards time travel is problematic though. We have no idea how it could be achieved.",
"Just to make it perhaps easier to understand, space-time is inextricably linked. So the fastest you can travel is when time is zero and the slowest passage of time is when your velocity is zero.\n\nNow, perception of time stays the same for everyone in the same referential space, everyone on earth experience the passage of time the same because our velocity through space is the same. However, for someone traveling faster than us their time will pass slower in relation to our time.\n\nOne interesting fact we can get from this is that for a photon there is no time between being created by a sun and being absorbed by the object it hits. It is instantly created and destroyed, even though for us it took the photon 2 billion years to reach us. "
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76ht8f | why does there seem to be a global rise in xenophobia? | Or has it been there all along and people are just more vocal now/have more visibility due to the internet. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/76ht8f/eli5_why_does_there_seem_to_be_a_global_rise_in/ | {
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"Many people displaced from Middle East wars. Eu forcing countries to accept immigrants. Taxing already broke social support systems",
"We're probably at nearly the lowest rate of xenophobia in millennia. In fact in the past, hating on foreigners would probably be considered a virtue akin to patriotism, and peoples would have derogatory labels like \"barbarian\" for foreigners. Nowdays we have the internet to connect everyone to everyone, and similarly with globalization and trade -- never have people been more connected to more foreigners. And with the internet, everyone is just people.\n\nIn addition, we have journalists who exaggerate stuff for a living, a recent increase in refugees from unpopular countries, jobs being lost to foreigners. People who normally wouldn't give a crap can get scared, and people who think they lost a job or are paying to support foreigners can get grouchy about it real quick. Plus the most controversial people get the most press.",
"If you mean the rise of identity politics and nationalist ideology, my thought is that there's a perception that there's just not enough to go around. Take the women in STEM thing. If you believe that there are a finite number of STEM jobs, then every woman who gets one means a man doesn't, and the same is true of immigrants. \n\nThe civil rights movement reached the highest point in 1968, which not coincidentally was *also* a point of high prosperity in the US. Things like affirmative action were accepted back then because it was not going to hurt anyone to do that. There were plenty of well-paying jobs available, even with just a high school diploma. This is no longer true. In 2017, if you want a livable wage, you need a skilled position, you need post high school education, most likely college, and you probably need at least a 3.0 and a few internships. Even then, you might not make it. So when a white man hears about women/minorities being recruited to STEM (one of the few good jobs left) he might not admit it, but it scares him. He knows there aren't enough good jobs, and if Judy gets one he might not. And it's not like he can simply go do something else, everything else either pays little or requires more (expensive) schooling. The same thing happens in the immigration debate. If there aren't enough jobs period, then it's hard to convince a poor guy that immigrants are a good thing -- they might mean he or his kids can't find jobs.",
"there is none. For various reasons at this point in time immigration is on net (there are winners and losers) detrimental to the populations of most developed countries. This is why a lot of people are against large immigration numbers across the world.\n\nYou can't actually explain why they're wrong, so you have to deflect and accuse everyone of xenophobia, whatever that is even supposed to mean. \n\nSo the better question is, why don't you NOT be a jerk if you can't actually explain why the people yoh disagree with are wrong?"
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fpaiy1 | how is dumping two trillion dollars of new money into an economy that is shut down a good idea? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/fpaiy1/eli5how_is_dumping_two_trillion_dollars_of_new/ | {
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"not only are people not spending money (they don't have because they're not working) so giving them money will put that money into purchases but as people slide backwards on the socioeconomic ladder they actually perform worse.\n\nfor instance, imagine holding down a 9-5 job if you're homeless.\n\nImagine you're homeless because you couldn't pay rent during the pandemic.\n\nSo paying people's rent (for instance) means when this pandemic is over they're more likely to return to their 9-5 job and return to contributing to GDP (and income taxes)."
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8moxtz | what is your "third eye"? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8moxtz/eli5_what_is_your_third_eye/ | {
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"Lots of people believe that the Pineal Gland is the 3rd eye, as it resembles the Egyptian eye from a side view, apparently. They also believe that the Pineal Gland is linked to our spirituality and higher consciousness. Some drugs/substances are thought to \"activate/deactivate\" the Pineal Gland, caused one to become in or out of touch with their spirit.\n\nI don't know about it well enough to explain it with enough detail. There's a whole lot to it and some if it sounds, and probably is, just plain silly or wrong. \n\nAnother way it could be explained is by Chakras. One of the many Chakras one has is supposedly located right between your eyes in/on/around your forehead. It is often referred to as your \"Third Eye\". ",
"Those people are using words they heard on the outside to describe feelings they experienced on the inside. MDMA is very similar to serotonin and melatonin, so the experience is probably not that different from self-induced shamanic trips. I cannot comment on the ecstasy high, but I'm pretty sure I can explain the third eye.\n\nFirst of all it's a metaphor. We don't really have a third eyeball, but we do have a pineal gland, and the pineal gland responds to light exclusively. It's what produces DMT in our brains, and DMT is also very similar to mela. and sero.. Organic functions like ovulation are triggered by the pineal gland, but science is just now beginning to discover the association.\n\nIt's my belief the third eye within cultures and religions functions mainly as a control system. Think of it like resurrection or nirvana - if you work really hard and do exactly what they tell you, the ancient masters say you can attain this unattainable peak. Their students and disciples support them with offerings, but nobody ever really 'gets it'.\n\nSubjectively, the third eye is the first person perspective. The capitol I. I know it sounds crazy, but give it a chance. 'It' is something we construct or develop - we're not born with it, and it has nothing to do with the two real eyes. Real eyes can see matter, but our third eye can only see what matters to us. Thus, the world on the inside of the brain becomes separated and different from the real world.\n\nReal eyes look outward at the real world, but third eyes can only look inward at our imaginations. This is likely what the people you mentioned were experiencing under Ecstasy - a heightened awareness of what's happening on the inside of the brain. Since such awareness is so foreign to us, it can be surprising and overwhelming at first.\n\nThe next level would be an awareness of what's happening inside other brains. There's nothing spiritual about it - street hustlers and con men use it to make their living."
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a29u3d | why is it important to eat a variety of foods? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/a29u3d/eli5_why_is_it_important_to_eat_a_variety_of_foods/ | {
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"Different food are rich in different minerals, vitamins and essential nutrients. \n\nYour body requires a vast variety if minerals, vitamins and nutrients.\n\n\nEating small portions of several different kinds of foods helps ensure you get some of everything your body needs on a daily basis."
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3yhsln | why would somebody buy a game streaming box like the steam link when you can literally just plug your pc into the tv for better results? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3yhsln/eli5_why_would_somebody_buy_a_game_streaming_box/ | {
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"My pc is upstairs and wired in to two monitors and a battery of peripherals. There's no way I'm going to unplug it and log it around every time I want to use it downstairs. Not only is it an effort but there's also the stacking risk of damage.",
"Because the PC is typically in a different room than the TV. While it is certainly possible to make a wired connection in such a case, it requires drilling holes into walls and using very long cables. A Steam Link is a much easier solution.",
"Sometimes the most important thing to consider in a living room is the WAF. (Wife Acceptance Factor). \n\nA small Steam Link has a higher WAF than a desktop computer."
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428m8u | what makes a safe space different than a dorm room for these college protestors? | Hi, I have been reading more about the arguments going on at college campuses and I was curious why people don't just use their dorm room as a safe space? When I was in school my room was my refuge away from the outside world, and as in many colleges, I shared it with like minded people who wouldn't make me uncomfortable.
Is it because its public? I just don't see much of a difference.
Thanks. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/428m8u/eli5_what_makes_a_safe_space_different_than_a/ | {
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"There are students who may not feel safe in their Residence Halls, whether it be the campus, the building, or even their roommate. This is brought on from a variety of factors which can include home-sickness, poor roommates, rude/insensitive floormates, and more.\n\nSafe is a relative term, and the feeling of not belonging on a particular floor can make it seem like your room is not a [;ace where you can feel comfortable and able to take refuge. It may end up only a place to sleep, or only a place to hold your belongings that you brought with you. I've seen it countless times.\n\nI don't know exactly what you are referring to, so if you could let me know, I could probably do more to answer.",
"There's actually a lot that goes into a safe space that people don't realize. A good example is what they did at my high school. There were certain classrooms designated as safe spaces for LGBT students (that was all, actually, I know what I'm about, son). It was a public school, and part of the requirement said that teachers whose rooms were designated as safe spaces had training on how to support such students. These classrooms were totally confidential, and some of them were silent-designated, so someone could just go and sit in a quiet room until they felt better. \n\nThings to consider:\n\n- the space has to be public. For some students, their roommate is who they're trying to get away from, and a large number of students don't have dorms, as they commute, and spend a lot of time on campus for class.\n\n- the space must have a faculty member that is specifically trained to deal with the issues of that population. This is not always a requirement, depending on the school in question.\n\n- the space should be open and available. I know that public spaces are legally supposed to be accessible to people with disabilities, but that doesn't mean that they are. A safe space must be accessible to the people who would use it. My university had certain places that were only accessible by stairs, which was against the law, but didn't change that it was the case. There were also places that were only open for certain hours, like the health center, which was only open from 9-5 on M-Thur and 10-3 on Fridays. Those are not acceptable safe spaces.\n\nA lot of people don't really have any idea of what a safe space actually is. It isn't a place free from discussion, or an echo chamber, or somehow limiting someone's free speech. It's just a place where people (I must interject here that safe spaces were created entirely for LGBT students and workers) can go that is safe and open. Safety is the key word, and it takes place in many forms. Some teachers at my high school had it so that their rooms were just places where students could be kids, without the added stigma of being gay or bisexual (we did not have any out trans students, and I was the bisexual). It was mostly just a room where we could all hang out and kind of goof off. It was also the room that the Gay-Straight Alliance meetings were held. Some others were silent, which offered a respite for disabled students who had problems with the noise of the school, and needed a quiet place to exist (please keep in mind that the principal's office was far from quiet, as was the counselor's office, plus the stigma of being in the counselor's office of principal's office). Safe spaces take on a lot of different forms.\n\nUniversity is a very very stressful time. Some students are dealing with being away from home for the first time, or the added stress of coursework, having to deal with roommate problems, having to deal with commuter problems, the onset of many many many mental illnesses, financial woes, loneliness, alienation, etc. It's not so far out of the ordinary to want a safe space. "
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9cz7lb | infrared thermometers | Hey guys. Just watched the Great British Bake Off and Dan was using an infrared thermometer to measure the temperature of his chocolate.
How do they work? How can you measure the heat of something by firing light at it? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9cz7lb/eli5_infrared_thermometers/ | {
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" > How can you measure the heat of something by firing light at it?\n\nIt doesn't fire light at it, it looks at light coming off of it. Everything emits light of a frequency related to its temperature, an example is how metal will glow visibly when very hot. Cooler things still emit light but not in the visible range.",
"The laser emitted by the IR thermometer is just to aim it. It it purely absorbing and interpreting the IR already being emitted by the chocolate. Hot objects emit more IR light than cold objects on a predictable scale. So the temperature can be inferred by the amount of IR being emitted. Night vision works on the same principle of IR emission. "
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am00kx | why, although i speak good english and am able to understand regular conversations, movies and album skits etc. do i struggle so much to understand lyrics in english songs? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/am00kx/eli5_why_although_i_speak_good_english_and_am/ | {
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"Lots of native English speakers also have *some* trouble with song lyrics. So much of the experience of a song has to do with the melodies that perfectly understandable lyrics aren't really a priority for singers. ",
"Native english speakers often have problems with the lyrics too. Back in the day, when people bought CD albums (I'm old but not that old), the lyrics were usually printed in the little booklet, so we could figure out what the eff the vocalist was saying",
"I am no expert but I'd say human brain first focus on the tune or melody the song has to give. I usually give 4-5 hears before I could actually focus on the lyrics..\n\nOnly exception would be foo fighters, where I deliberately chose to focus on lyrics first. ",
"Probably due to the often fast tempo of some songs, along with the song being sung to music which is distracting your ear from clearly hearing the words. \n\nAlso, many times words in songs are not pronounced clearly or fully in songs, so that the flow, rhythm, rhyme whatever fits better so you might not pick it up. \n\nMany native English speakers mis hear and mid quote lyrics all the time, it’s nothing unusual. [Here](_URL_0_) is a funny take on it from comedian Peter Kay.\n\nHopefully you don’t have trouble understanding him as he has a strong Lancashire accent, and also recognise some of the songs he references as it’s quite funny. ",
"***TL;DR:*** *Music is complex and distracting and not simple white noise that we're used to screening out, lyrics are often nonsense anyway, and singing isn't the same as speaking normally because word lengths and pitches and speed are all different from normal conversation.*\n\n\\- - -\n\nWhen someone is speaking either to you or someone else in a conversation, in most cases, it's against a background of either relative silence or \"white noise\" - uniform buzz such as a quietly chatting crowd or the sound of waves or tree leaves blowing or traffic driving by. As long as those other sounds not too loud, there's little effort required to sort out and remove that white noise and clearly understand the words. (In movies these background sound effects are almost always staged or processed in a way that they're lower in volume than the speaker so the audience can actually hear what is being said.)\n\nHowever, in music, often those words are accompanied by beats or rhythms that go up and down and form a background that's often as loud as the lyrics, and often not smooth like white noise is. So you have a lot more processing to do to make out what is said.\n\nAnother big reason is people are singing, not talking, and that really changes the flow of what they're sharing. When you chat with someone, your own voice isn't going up and down like it does in many songs, and you're not making some words artificially lo-o-o-o-nger or shorter than others (like how some American Idol stars take six seconds to sing the word \"love\" and their voice warbles all over the place when they do it). And all those odd word lengths and pitches and speeds and distortions all add up to a harder-to-understand mix. It doesn't help that because most of us have heard way more normal conversation than sung music back when we were learning language, so most of us aren't super-used to interpreting it, although that can be learned.\n\nIt can get worse with some styles of music. Opera can be super high pitched, rap can be very fast, for example.\n\nAnd finally, conversations in a language we're comfortable with lead us mentally to the next thought. You hear \"I'm going to drive to the school and pick up...\", and you expect something like \"your brother\" to come next. But music lyrics often are goofy and unnatural, and one verse doesn't lead to guessing the next easily. ",
"A couple of reasons. In no particular order:\n\n- sometimes it's just hard to actually gear the lyrics. \n- you're not getting any context. When you're speaking or reading, your brain is constantly anticipating what vocabulary is going to come up. This doesn't really work in a song which can be all over the place. \n- rythym and tone are all thrown off. So english like most languages has a predictable rhythm of stressed and unstressed syllables. But in singing, the rhythm of the song might be different from the normal rhythm of that sentence. Also the intonation will be different (obviously) so phrases that would have falling or rising intonation in normal speech will now have whatever the melody is. You're just not used to it.\n- English might be particularly hard with this because of consonant at the end of words: so a word like \"strange\" is distinguishable from \"straight\" in normal speech, but in singing we might lengthen the vowels like \"straaaaaaange\" And that \"ng\" is just kinda squeezed into the end of the phrase and you're like did he say \"straight\" or \"strain\" or \"strangle\" \n- unstressed and small words might be left out or not really audible, this happens in normal speech as well but it might be more so in a song ",
"And there are so many things/phrases/idioms/old words/references that won't show up when we try searching them on google. ",
"This is an interesting dilemma with people who aren't native English speakers but become fluent in the language, for which I commend you.\n\nEnglish already has a reputation of being a rather stupid language, for lack of a better term, because it's not a romance language like most people think, our words are derived from several different languages, and this leads to things like inconsistent phonetics in sounds, i.e how the vowels can sound significantly different depending on the word and where they're placed.\n\nBut to get back to eli5, there's a phenomenon where people learn English and how to speak it properly, and try their best to follow those rules when they come to America, but once they do, most of the people here don't speak proper English. This effect is especially notable in music, as native English are very used to bending the rules, so they will change whatever they need to make the syllables of a word fit in a song. So when you change the inflection and pronunciation of a word in the midst of a baseline and other instruments, it becomes very hard to understand."
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3ke25o | why is the gym curves allowed to bar men from joining, since gender is a protected class? | [deleted] | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3ke25o/eli5_why_is_the_gym_curves_allowed_to_bar_men/ | {
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"1) Membership clubs are allowed to discriminate. \n\n2) They are associated with gyms that allow men to use them. Some are even build adjoining these gyms. \n\nYou have similar things with salons and spas. ",
"First it must be challenged. Unless a crime against the state has been committed there is no obligation for public litigation. Do you want to challenge them? What are you losing?"
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3dunu8 | why don't online retailers (eg amazon, asos etc) just let you view all the search results straight away on one page, rather than 24 items per page for hundreds of pages? | When online customer service can be measured by how easy the website is to use, why would they make it so damn long to read through search results | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3dunu8/eli5_why_dont_online_retailers_eg_amazon_asos_etc/ | {
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"I assume it would take longer to load, which would make most people impatient and quit. Better to load sections of results at a time",
"There are many reasons for pagination:\n\n* server-side: having to fetch less items from the DB is faster\n* transmission I: smaller file size for the page\n* transmission II: if the item the customer wants is on page 1 you just transmitted a whole lot of useless stuff\n* client-side: rendering thousands of items is not that fast\n* advertisement: on each page you can show the user an ad (or in case of amazon, a placed product), which increases revenue\n* conversion: the user does not get distracted by that many choices but initially sees a few that are exactly what he needs in 99% of the cases. Showing a user too many choices reduces his chance to actually buy something"
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4leel8 | does light lose brightness the farther away it is? | [deleted] | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4leel8/eli5_does_light_lose_brightness_the_farther_away/ | {
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"Light follows the [inverse square law](_URL_0_). So yes, it gets less intense the farther you are from the source.",
"No. Brightness has an inverse-square relationship with distance. A light source would appear 1% as bright at 100 feet compared to 10 feet. (because 100 is 10 times larger than 10. So (1/(10^2)), or 1/100 brightness.) At 1,000 feet the light would appear 1/10,000 as bright, and at 100 miles the light would appear 1/278,784,000,000 (1/((100*5280)^2)) as bright."
]
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26yuuu | a dinosaur skeleton is found and is said to be the most complete ever discovered. why wouldn't they be able to find all the bones for every skeleton? | Why do so many bones go missing when the dinosaur died in one place? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/26yuuu/eli5_a_dinosaur_skeleton_is_found_and_is_said_to/ | {
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"Fossilisation is rare, not everything becomes a fossil. It takes specific conditions for something to turn from organic matter to rock. And then, on top of that the fossil has to go undisturbed by tectonic movement, disasters or water for 60 million years (in the case of dinosaurs). We are very fortunate to have as many fossils for animals as we do.\n\nEither:\n\n* not the whole organism fossilised\n\n* part of the organism was missing (eaten as an example, you wouldn't expect to find a whole specimen)\n\n* the fossil has been disturbed by outside conditions"
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3hrccb | how do people with limited variety in diet survive? | I see it all the time that eating (INSERT FOOD HERE) will help boost your (INSERT VITAMIN HERE) which is great for your (INSERT BODY PART, ORGAN, BRAIN, ETC HERE). My question is, how do cultures that live in a geographically separated area, such as an island, survive and do well and live long lives, by only eating a couple items, such as rice and fish?
| explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3hrccb/eli5_how_do_people_with_limited_variety_in_diet/ | {
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"We're still learning about how exactly nutrition and bodies work, because it's actually a really complex subject. We've only fairly recently learned more about microbiomes, or gut bacteria, which apparently affects how much nutritional value you can use from a food. In one example, they found that Asian cultures are able to get more nutrients from eating seaweed than westerners due to the different types of bacteria present in their stomachs, indicating that the human body has adapted for that diet.\n\nIt's entirely possible that the cultures such as secluded islands have bodies more adapted to the type of eating that is native to that area. \n\nIt seems that the body can function quite well on a wide variety of diets, whether they be mostly plant, mostly meat, fish and olive oil, etc. provided that it's actually food. One of the only consistent underlying links between diet and the \"western diseases\" (like diabetes, hypertension, etc.) seems to be that the 'western diet' is generally highly processed, with lots of additives. "
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3ovffe | why are tin cans still made out of metal? | Surely by now we would of found another material to use? Or are tin cans still cheap enough and sustainable enough to satisfy manufacturing? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3ovffe/eli5_why_are_tin_cans_still_made_out_of_metal/ | {
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"Tin cans are made out of tin... which is a metal. \n\nThey used to use a tin-lead alloy but then they found out that lead poisons people and they went for straight tin. Tin is cheap and plentiful so there has never been a reason to stop using it.",
"Bimetal cans (Tin cans are usually steel coated in Tin) are very easy to recycle and use nearly 100% over again. Metals in general are good at that. Plastics you can't continually recycle (at least not into the same components, whereas a tin can can become another tin can over and over and over)."
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6iaah9 | why the word "drink" being more associated with drinking alcohol beverages rather than any other drinks? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6iaah9/eli5why_the_word_drink_being_more_associated_with/ | {
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"Probably because consuming non-alcoholic drinks doesn't constitute a whole activity worth talking about. When was he last time you drank orange juice and wanted to talk about just that?\n\nOne exception to this when you drink water or sports drinks during exercise or in the heat. But there people usually use the word \"hydrate\" instead of \"drink\"."
]
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5uxhd1 | is it possible to workout so much in space that you lose neither muscle mass or bone density? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5uxhd1/eli5_is_it_possible_to_workout_so_much_in_space/ | {
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"The current recommended training regime of astronauts on ISS will keep most of their muscle mass and bone density or even increase them in places. There is still some refinements needed to make it perfect as there is some issues with bone density in the pelvic region as the astronauts do not balance enough when they work out. However even with the hard training regime there are plenty of changes to the body. Even if they maintain the muscles and bones the problem is using them correctly when they get back to Earth. Astronauts have to recalibrate their nerve system to cope with the changing gravity and there is no way to train that on the treadmill."
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4qhdzm | who pays for reddit? the few ads here can't possibly pay for the server time. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4qhdzm/eli5_who_pays_for_reddit_the_few_ads_here_cant/ | {
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"Venture capital and users buying gold for themselves and others. Reddit really hasn't learned how to monetize itself yet in a way that would not drive away users.",
"As a whole, Reddit is funded through investor money. However, they generate money in other ways:\n\n* Almost [$1 million](_URL_1_) is made per year via Reddit Gold.\n\n* I couldn't find recent numbers, but in 2014, Reddit made [$8.4 million](_URL_0_) in ads.\n\n* There are also sponsored sub-reddits that corporations fund. /r/formative, for example, is a joint venture with Google.\n\n* More recently, Reddit announced that it will be inserting its own referral code into various links on its site (ones not already utilizing a referral code). This should generate quite a bit of money.\n\n* Reddit has a store that sells merchandise + owns the Reddit Gift Exchange, which generates additional ad/referral revenue.",
"You notice how some things make it to the front page, and you're wondering, \"Now, how did that get there?\" Or maybe some suspicious comment gets highly upvoted? Reddit is bought and sold as a way of influencing opinions concerning people, politics and products. ",
"Government subsidies to push the reptilian propaganda cover most of the server and payroll expenses. This has been common practice since 1947 after our alien overlords took over the Vatican, and then ultimately the world."
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fsn024 | how the collapse of the bretton woods system led to the oil crisis | I just need to be walked through the logic in relatively simple terms since most of the explanations that I can find assume you know the basics of macroeconomics, but unfortunately that's something I'm teaching myself right now | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/fsn024/eli5_how_the_collapse_of_the_bretton_woods_system/ | {
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"In 1971 the United States left the Bretton Woods Accord and abandoned the gold standard; other countries followed soon after. For various complicated reasons this resulted in the value of the U.S. dollar falling. Oil was priced in dollars, so when the value of the dollar decreased oil producing nation's income decreased as well, even though output remained the same. OPEC nations were making less money, without having done anything different.\n\nOPEC nations were slow to adjust prices to the new system of floating currency. Eventually, however, OPEC got its act together and started pricing oil to the market, which resulted in what Wikipedia calls the \"oil shock\". They increased prices significantly to make up for lost time.\n\nThen came the Yom Kippur War, but I think that's a separate question."
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63n99l | how were the graphics in donkey kong country so much more impressive than the graphics in most other snes games (like super mario world)? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/63n99l/eli5_how_were_the_graphics_in_donkey_kong_country/ | {
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"It used pre-rendered graphics. Basically they built the characters and levels in a high resolution in 3D. Then they coverted the 3D animations to 2D. They're just flat pictures of the character, not the actual model. So they were able to capture a lot of subtle detail that would be very difficult to reproduce if they built it straight in 2D.\n\nIt's closely related to rotoscoping, which can produce very realistic animations because it's traced from actual live action.",
"The sprites and animations in DKC1 were made by taking several 2d'screenshots' of a higher quality 3d model, this was the first game to do this.\n\nOther games were generally made by using traditionally drawn and animated sprites that were either plotted into bitmaps pixel by pixel, or scanned in from animation cels ( The first game to do this was aladdin on genesis )\n\nBack in the heyday of games this technique was even more primitive, as you can see from the [original design drawings for pacman](_URL_0_)",
"Ooh! Something I actually know! And about my favourite video game too! So, they firstly went to study apes and monkeys at the local zoo in order to see how they move and how they can make their characters look as realistic as possible. They then created 3D models using computers and used special software to turn these models into sprites they could use for the game. There was a promotional tape that showed off the game and they talked about the development process. I think this is it [here](_URL_0_)"
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6okwxk | how do steakhouse restaurants cook so many steaks at the same time to varying degrees of done-ness and get them all relatively correctly cooked for each customer? | Edit: you guys are blowing my mind with your answers. I wish I could give you all golds, seriously, for some reason I find this fascinating. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6okwxk/eli5_how_do_steakhouse_restaurants_cook_so_many/ | {
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"Back when I was doing it, organization, practice and minithins (pseudoephedrine). Different areas of the grill run different temps, and different doneness needs different heat and cook times. Well done goes on first at medium heat, everything down to medium is the same but timed out accordingly. Medium rare needs a good sear but not a lot of cooking and rare even more so, so you put those on late on hotter parts of the grill. You also keep a warming section just in case you mess up the timing a little bit and need to slow something down so the others can catch up. It's remarkably stressful during a rush, especially considering the $5.20/hr I was being paid to do it.",
"When I was a cook, I had to get to know the grill. There are different hot-spots and cooler spots on most grills. I would have 10-15 cuts of meat during busy periods. You really just have to keep track of each one. There are no shortcuts in this tbh. A few tricks I learned while managing everything..If blood is sweating from the top-uncooked side, its ready to flip for medium/well to well. In the trash for a rare/medium rare if that happened. For medium/rare use the hot spot of the grill to sear then move to a cooler section to cook a little more. Also, with a knife, cut a tiny slit in the thickest part an pry the meat open to check before plating. It really is a skill (I have mostly lost) that you acquire. ",
"Although I've not cooked in a steak house, I've managed a few, 2 large corporations, actually. Both these gentlemen are correct. The surface area of the grill has a variation of heat ranges, and the Grill Cook will continually rearrange the cuts depending upon: volume/size/mass, the type of cut ( leaner cooks faster, like a piece of shit filet vs a deliciously marbled Kansas City Strip), whether the cut has a bone in it or not, and the serving temperature, or doneness, requested by the guest.\nIn Chicago, I once had the pleasure of working with a gentleman who, on a busy Friday night, grilled over 500 different cuts, without a Single re-fire...( meaning: every steak, chop or filet he grilled, was served at the desired temperature to the guest that ordered it, no one said that their steak was over or under-cooked) \nAnd, if you really value a correctly grilled cut of meat: give some Fucking Respect to the Cooks!! ",
"A lot have gone to sous vide baths so the steaks are all maintained at a perfect rare awaiting grilling to final doneness.",
"Please bear in mind one fact: If I'm your grill cook, cooking 15 steaks (on average) to medium rare or medium, then I have a little give, don't I? Behold:\n\n1.) 3 orders come in for medium well, 5 for medium, and 7 for medium rare. \n\n2.) Grill 'em all.\n\n3.) REST ALL THE STEAKS. See, this is where the wiggle room comes in. When you order your steak, a ticket rings into the kitchen telling me to start cooking the steak. Even with a well-done steak, if you have a salad or an appetizer, I've bought myself about 30 minutes to get that steak cooked and then rested (vital for proper cooking of meat). \n\n4.) Oops. This one I THOUGHT was a medium was a little over (by \"poke testing\" it or using a cake tester - more info available upon request). I'll move that over to the \"medium well\" pile, and this one over here... well, I can use that as medium. Perfect! \n\n5.) When it's time to bring your entrees to the table, the grill cook will flash the meat on a grill (getting the surface ripping hot - the meat inside should not have cooled terribly).\n\n6.) Slice (possibly) and serve!\n\nSo in other words, what /u/gearhed said is totally spot on. But to add to his/her point, I get a little insurance, because I don't take the meat directly off the grill and put it on your plate, or else when the plate comes to your table, it is just a puddle of meat juice with a steak on top. Resting is key! And during that resting period, I can quality check and correct if needed.\n\nAlso, I can't emphasize this enough, cake testers.",
"Okay, I was a grill cook in everything from pub to steak house and even a Grillardin in a fine dining restaurant.\n\nSteak grills are sloped and higher at the top, lower at the bottom (this is adjustable). Then the cook adjusts the level of heat for each burner (anywhere from 2 to 6) so he has a range of heat levels, usually from right to left. They usually make the lower right corner the hottest and the upper left the coolest on average. There is some variation due to size of the gas outlets and how clean they are.\n\nAll steaks start on the right side for their initial sear then moved to an appropriate area when they get their first turn (what makes the diamond pattern) The more well done the steak the ***slower*** you cook it or ***it drys out*** (so many people and cooks don't know this). So well done are moved towards the left upper corner and are started soonest. Then you use the most well done steak of the order to take your timing for starting the other steaks from. \n\nMost steaks (not blue rare) are turned when you first see the fluid start to appear on the surface. Let too much of it appear and it burns up when you flip the steak and you again end up with a dry steak. You can tell when a steak is done by pressing on it and ***should never cut it*** to check because it lets out the liquid. Cooking tightens the fibers so a well done has more resistance than a rare when you press on it. [This is how you learn how it feels like.](_URL_0_) \n\nAfter your second turn on the other side you keep checking its state and moving it on the grill so that all the steaks on the order start reaching the level you want together. Meat also needs a resting state to allow juices to redistribute and the longer it's been cooking the longer this needs to be. So well done often go to a warming rack or what I did, put it on top of a rarer cooking steak. When this is done the steak is pretty much no longer cooking and will stay at it's level from that point on unless it receives too much heat again (why most cooks ***hate*** heat lamps)\n\nAfter that it's all about timing. Knowing how fast your grill is running because the more or less you have on the grill the more this changes. Noting which steak is which and sometimes substituting one steak for an order for anothers if necessary (no steak has a customer's name on it till it's plated). Knowing what else is with the order, and most importantly communicating with all the other cooks. Because depending on volume the grill cooks responsibility can range a lot. After that it's pure hustle and memory.\n\nMost people don't know how hard being a good restaurant cook is. It's pretty much not worth what you make, that and the stress (has one of the highest incidents of substance abuse of any career) is why I quit doing it.\n\nEdited to add: To give you an idea how much resting a steak helps with timing, there's been times, rare, but still times where I would have two steaks on top of a steak of the same order. Only ever did three a couple of times when I was swamped or had a big table.",
"Everyone here has all these overly complicated methods at the restaurant but I just sit at home and run my Sous Vides....",
"Chef here. It's practice, practice, and practice. \n\nRunning a busy grill is difficult and takes a lot of skill. However, that skill can be learned slowly. Line cooks usually rotate around and cross train during slow times. Once you've cooked a couple thousand steaks you just gain a feel for it. ",
"Long time cook here.\n\nFirst you need to know the grill, where it's hot/where it's cooler. \n\nSecond you need an experienced cook. Lot's of people think because they can BBQ 4 steaks on the weekend theyknow what theyre doing. In my 10 year career I've probably cooked more steak that most people in their whole lives will. \n\nThird is you need to be organized, the top comment here talks about how you start a steak here and move it there blah blah blah but it all depends on the cooks preference and grill. Constantly touching and checking the doneness of the steak then pull it off when it's finished cooking.\n\nIf a big party was in and let's say 20 steaks were ordered I would throw them all on and just start cookong to rare. Check the ticket and pull off all the ones that become rare first I pull off what I need. Then just keep moving up the temperatures with medium rare and medium etc. For me I would rest them in an order so I wouldn't lose track, rare closest to me then progress out to well done (but that's just my preference). Then before plating fire them in the salamander to blast them with heat quick before sending them out.\n\nSome people can use sous vide and cook all the steaks to rare or medium rare then just bring them up to higher temps after. But that defeats the purpose of sous vide. It's a great tool but still has limitations\n\nIt might seem crazy but the biggest reason all those steaks come out perfect isnt some tool or machine...it's entirely based on the skill of the cook. I can proudly say I can count all the steaks I've had come back to me on one hand. For all the too cocky chefs out there who say they never mess up, yeah it happens get over it. Although in my defense 1 out of the 3 was perfect the costomer just didnt like it.\n\nPractice makes perfect. Not everybody is some grill master right off the bat. Knowledge is power.",
"I worked at Texas Roadhouse for 7 years as a broiler through college. Most of what everyone has said is true so I will not further contribute to the explanation. However this post has given me PTSD of an overflowing Epson printer, 25 minute ticket times, and a too serious manager trying to fix the bottlenecks by screaming profanity at employees instead of physically helping. "
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6kx6sb | if flies don't bite, why does it hurt when they land on you? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6kx6sb/eli5_if_flies_dont_bite_why_does_it_hurt_when/ | {
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"It doesn't hurt when a fly lands on you. It's that simple. If you are talking about the sensation of having a fly on you, you feel it because when things touch you, you can feel it. ",
"While some kinds of flies do bite, what you're likely feeling is the hairs on their feet that can be irritating especially to sensitive skin. Flies have adhesive pads on their feet called pulvilli that consist of tiny hairs that have spatula-like tips. These hairs produce a glue-like substance made of sugars and oils that help them stick and can irritate some people's skin.",
"Some flies do bite, with varying intensities. Some take their bite pretty quickly after landing so that's probably what you're feeling. Black fly bites can be very intense, given their small size. Some gnats give you a bite that's less intense than a typical mosquito bite.",
"It does not hurt when a fly lands on you. It feels like a mild irritation at most. If it hurts, the fly probably bit you.",
"It doesn't hurt when a fly lands on me, it tickles and is annoying.\n\nMaybe you are thinking of a certain type of fly?"
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7x3stt | what happens to skin cells we inhale? | Apparently we inhale a lot of skin cells in the form of dust. What happens to it, and could it damage our lungs the way inhaling other particles does? I don't imagine it accumulates because that seems like it'd cause problems later on in life, when we'd have taken a lot of breaths. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7x3stt/eli5_what_happens_to_skin_cells_we_inhale/ | {
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"The pathway to your lungs are lined with [tiny microscopic fingers](_URL_0_) that push dust up and back into your throat.",
"tl;dr - mucus is made in most areas that interact with the outside environment. The mucus protects, traps and removes these foreign items.\n\nMost surfaces, if not all your insides that have openings to the outside have a lining that produces mucus. This mucus traps all sorts of things including dust, bacteria and foreign objects to prevent these things from accumulating, obstructing etc. The mucus drains in specific directions, depending on their location to remove these things, to not be a problem. ",
" > Apparently we inhale a lot of skin cells in the form of dust.\n\nGenerally speaking, this isn't really true. There's a myth that most dust in homes is skin cells, but it's not. Most of it is stuff like tiny dirt particles, possibly some scraps or fibers. A small portion of it may be skin cells. \n\nAt any rate, the same stuff happens to those as any other small particle you inhale constantly. Most of it is caught in mucous between your lungs and your mouth, and tiny cilia move it to be removed, either by you hacking it out, or by dumping it into your stomach where it is broken down like most any other substance you eat. ",
"via a process called mucociliary clearance. These tiny finger like cells that constantly beat upwards from lungs to direction of your throat. Once the skin cells get to the top, you can swallow it down into your esophagus. Your stomach acid will likely break it down (protein in your skin cell gets broken down into individual particles called amino acids) and then the particles are absorbed by your intestines and everything gets recycled or used for energy in your body. When people smoke cigarettes the mucociliary clearance gets messed up. That's why when people quit smoking, they start coughing up massive amounts of mucous because their cilia start working again and start cleaning up their lungs all of a sudden and they find that there is a lot of junk to get out. (p.s. I learned all of this in medical school)"
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"http://img.webmd.com/dtmcms/live/webmd/consumer_assets/site_images/articles/health_tools/lung_cancer_overview_slideshow/princ_rm_photo_of_lung_cilia.jpg"
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b96kjl | how did i get a phone call from my phone number? | I didn't answer because I: a) didnt want it to be scammers or b) it was really myself from a future time | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/b96kjl/eli5_how_did_i_get_a_phone_call_from_my_phone/ | {
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"It's basically just an app or website that allows you to choose any number you wish to make a call from. Back in the day used for prank phone calls. Now, still prank phone calls or occasional scammer slipup. ",
"the caller ID phone number that shows up is data that's sent by the caller, not the phone provider. you can literally send any phone number you want in the caller ID. lots of businesses use this legitimately to route hundreds or even thousands of outgoing calls to 1 official company phone number. think a customer service call center. thousands of reps, everyone comes out of 1 phone number, even though there's thousands of actual lines. \n\n & #x200B;\n\nof course scammers use this to try to goad us to pick up their calls "
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5hqsio | why do some people grind their teeth when they look at something cute ? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5hqsio/eli5why_do_some_people_grind_their_teeth_when/ | {
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"Brains are complicated and can sometimes send a bunch of instructions at once.\n\nWhen you get overwhelmed, you can get a weird mix sometimes. Have you ever been so angry that you've laughed? or been so happy you cried? \n\nThis happens to people to when they see cute things too. That reaction to cuteness can make you react in a strange way.\n\nThe ELI10 version is below:\n\n_URL_0_"
]
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"http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/so-cute-i-could-eat-it-the-science-behind-cute-aggression-9860440.html"
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36nsuf | why does nailpolish chip off of my nails so easily, but irreversibly stain anything it spills on? | Asking for a "friend" | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/36nsuf/eli5_why_does_nailpolish_chip_off_of_my_nails_so/ | {
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"Not an expert by any means, but I would bet that you can probably chip off dried nailpolish from any surface thats as clean, flat, and hard as a human fingernail",
"Nail polish bonds differently to different materials. Fingernails are fairly slick, so traditional polishes do chip and peel away from nails fairly easy. To make polish last longer use a base coat, they tend to help polish adhere to nails better. Apply thin, not thick coats of polish. Top coats also will help seal your polish so it lasts longer. "
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1ub4z6 | why do some people work better after they have been reprimanded, whereas others work worse? | I fall into the former category... I feel like I frequently need a foot up the butt to pull my act together. It's not even about pressure, I just need to be told off once in a while to actually keep trying harder.
However, my S/O is in the opposite category, she hates being reprimanded and if it ever happens, or even if she makes a mistake, she tends to become ineffective at doing much of anything for at least a few hours before she pulls together.
Why is there this divergence? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1ub4z6/eli5_why_do_some_people_work_better_after_they/ | {
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"text": [
"You explained it. \n\nSome people see it as an opportunity to grow and improve. Some see it as a message that they are not good enough and are failing. "
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3ymzt1 | why does ketchup at restaurants taste so much better than ketchup i would buy at the store? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3ymzt1/eli5_why_does_ketchup_at_restaurants_taste_so/ | {
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"The ketchup at a restaurant is likely fresher than the ketchup you have at home, because they refill those bottles quite frequently. Also, restaurant ketchup is kept at room temperature. The flavor of ketchup goes bad in the refrigerator. You can test this by making some fries at home and comparing the taste of a bottle of Heinz that's been in the refrigerator for 2-3 weeks to one that's just been freshly opened.",
"It should also be pointed out that some restaurants serve fancy ketchup, which is a little different than regular ketchup in that it has some added sugar."
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4xgsdh | why are tobacco and alcohol not considered schedule 1 drugs in the us when the inclusion criteria is "no currently accepted medical use and a high potential for abuse?" | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4xgsdh/eli5_why_are_tobacco_and_alcohol_not_considered/ | {
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"US drug scheduling doesn't actually follow the characteristics laid out. Cultural acceptance of tobacco and alcohol overrides the Schedule 1 classification. In a similar vein, cultural rejection of marijuana keeps it classified as Schedule 1. ",
"Money, and the fact that prohibition doesn't work. Look where Marijuana, and even hard drugs are; highly illegal in most places and can still obtain it. Also the prohibition in the US of alcohol from 1920 – 1933 is a great example.",
"Ethanol is actually the antidote for ethylene glycol poisoning, so it does have a somewhat valid medical use. Plus when we tried to ban alcohol, that really didn't work out. Plus for many of the cultures which have been blended to create American culture, beer and wine are traditional parts of a meal.",
"Because they are both extremely profitable.... regulation is difficult and creates a distinct rebel movement because they are already lifestyle stables",
"if held to the same standard as marijuana, both of those would be schedule zero. It's corruption. wherever it's at. someone it making a lot of money because pot isn't legal. And that person/those people have a large influence on policy regarding it.",
"It sounds like a joke, but in all seriousness, I have used cigarettes as a medicine for constipation.",
"Nicotine actually does have some accepted health benefits though they are often looked over because, you know, cancer. Nicotine is an anti-inflammatory and helps minimize symptoms of onset Parkinson's syndrome. Alcohol probably has some as well but I am not sure. It was also said by u/5iMbA that culturally alcohol and tobacco are much more acceptable than most schedule 1 drugs.",
"Because they are not considered drugs at all. They are legal for purchase by citizens and taxed heavily. They are regulated by their own government agency as well. \n\nWe tried to outlaw alcohol once and it resulted is massive amounts of lost tax money, massive amounts of tax money wasted in trying to enforce the laws, and the growth of organized crime. ",
"Cause the system is a racket?",
"Because the way the law is written, tobacco and alcohol are specifically excluded from being controlled substances. Unless Congress changed that law, they could not be Schedule I. \n\nAs to why it's that way, what others are saying: history, money, lobbying. ",
"Because the War on Drugs and the DEA have absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with public heath. Their creation was a political power grab justified on public perception, not medical fact. \n \nThe guy who started the war and came up with the idea probably has the best ELI5 so I'll let him speak. Here's a direct quote from it's architect on his motivation for it 30 years later. \n > \"The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. You understand what I’m saying? We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.\" \n[— John Ehrlichman, Nixon White House Domestic Affairs Advisor, on the War on drugs in a Harper's Magazine interview in 1994](_URL_3_) \n \nNixon's prohibition thugs at the Drug Enforcement Administration were established on July 1, 1973 by essentially executive order (Reorganization Plan No. 2 of 1973) and have been doing untold unchecked violence domestically and abroad ever since. \n_URL_4_ \n \nExcept hilariously enough (if you have a dark sense of humor) when they stepped on the toes of the CIA's drug trafficking in Panama. (Don't worry, they weren't successful and Reagan made sure it kept snowing from Mena, Arkansas to Miami.) But this goes beyond an ELI5 unless you watch the last few episodes of Archer Vice. \n\"When the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) tried to indict Noriega in 1971, the CIA prevented them from doing so.\" \n_URL_2_ \n_URL_1_ \n_URL_0_ \n_URL_5_ ",
"The real question is why are any drugs classified schedule 1? What harm could possibly come from any drug being legalized?",
"The whole scheduling system makes no sense. There should be ratings based on toxicity, addiction, and impairment. Based on a rational approach marijuana is pretty low on all three criteria. LSD and Mushrooms which are considered \"hard\" drugs by some are neither addictive nor toxic. I do not understand why medicinal value even matters at all. If you start from the premise that people are going to get high, it seems irrelevant.",
"Because when that schedule was created, alcohol and tobacco were already enormously profitable industries with a lot of clout, so they used it to preserve their profits. Any dummy can grow pot, but booze and smokes takes a lot more effort.",
"When the Controlled Substances Act's system of scheduling was implemented, alcohol and tobacco were already regulated under other acts, and Congress did not feel the need to break up that existing and long-standing system--so they are exempt from the CSA altogether. Simply put, alcohol and tobacco regulation isn't based on the schedule system, so where they might potentially fit on the CSA schedules is irrelevant.",
"Lobbiest + the negative effect of prohibition. Tobacco/alcohol also very profitable, marijuana is becoming profitable, but not for those in the 'boys club', thus the reason for the continued restrictions. Always follow the $",
" > The term \"controlled substance\" means a drug or other substance, or immediate precursor, included in schedule I, II, III, IV, or V of part B of this subchapter. The term does not include distilled spirits, wine, malt beverages, or tobacco, as those terms are defined or used in subtitle E of the Internal Revenue Code of 1986.\n—21 U.S.C. § 802(6)\n\nSo you could really enjoy eating marbles, and it becomes a cultural norm to eat marbles, and it turns out eating marbles is harmfully addictive, and there is no medical benefit to eating marbles, but because they aren't considered a \"controlled substance\" by the DEA, because reasons, they don't include them in any of the Schedules. Not Schedule 1, not Schedule 5. Nowhere. The regulation of marbles is therefore left to another agency. In the case of alcohol and tobacco, that's left to the ATF, because reasons.",
"For anyone interested, here is a complete list of everything scheduled by the DEA:\n\n_URL_0_\n\nDisclaimer: list is for educational purposes, not a to-do list.",
"Because Alcohol and Tobacco have rich white men to lobby for their continued sale. Marijuana was outlawed because Mexicans use it, and fear was spread that it made Blacks want to rape white women and turn into animals.",
"None of these laws and regulations were enacted to protect you...\n\nThis goes back a long time.",
"Pharmaceutical companies control the DEA and they don't benefit from those substances being controlled.",
"Because prohibition doesn't work. If the government says no alcohol for me, Ill make my own illegally. Then I'll sell some to my friends and colleagues. Then I'll make a business out of it and maybe I'll kill my neighbour for competeing with me or ratting on me. Then the government will think it's ok to poison some illegal alcohol and kill users of it. Then the death and crime will be so high that maybe some politician's will vote to end it. ",
"I was having a discussion with my father about this just yesterday. I came across this bit of satire that really did the topic justice; I highly recommend giving it a read-over:\n\n[Imagine if the media covered alcohol like other drugs](_URL_0_)",
"why is pizza classified as a vegetable?\n\nmoney talks. that only happened cause people wanted to get around laws trying to make cafeteria food healthier.",
"All angry rants aside, the real reason is historical. Alcohol has been used by human civilization for almost 10,000 years and for all of recorded history, it's use was widespread. Tobacco is more recent in the global stage, but it's popularity absolutely blew up in the 1800s.\n\nBy the time drug prohibition laws were enacted, american society had widespread alcohol and tobacco use. You can't ban something 20%-40% uses regularly, and many more have used in their lifetimes. \n\nIt is true that marijuana is also an old drug, but it's use was never as widespread as alcohol or tobacco. It was an outsider drug, gaining popularity with the youth and threatening to potentially influence the future generations.\n\nMost every other drug is a recent innovation or import. \n\n**TL;DR:** At the time the drug laws were enacted, alcohol and tobacco were in widespread use, whereas drugs scheduled as Schedule I were not. ",
"Certain \"elite\" individuals already controlled the alcohol and cigarette market, so there was no need to make it illegal. They needed a catalyst to give them control of the drug market, and boom the DEA was born. The DEA can wipe out leaders to make room for these \"elite\" distributors (cough cough Warren buffet), and in return they are heavily compensated for their service. It's obvious the war in drugs isn't working and it wasn't supposed to work. They turn their heads on certain individuals, and take down their competition. What a perfect fucking plan.",
"\"Because the people with all the power wanted it that way, my son.\" That's the best explanation I'm going to have for my kids and it's depressing"
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"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_invasion_of_Panama",
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_on_Drugs#Operation_Just_Cause",
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_on_Drugs",
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drug_Enforcement_Administration",
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIA_involvement_in_Contra_cocaine_trafficking"
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3hc95v | is there a way to manipulate dopamine levels in the brain? | Can i train my brain to feel the same dopamine rush eating chocolate for when im eating broccoli? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3hc95v/eli5_is_there_a_way_to_manipulate_dopamine_levels/ | {
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"Cocaine is an excellent dopamine reuptake inhibitor. Try smoking a little crack each time you eat broccoli. Eventually your mind will associate broccoli with the cocaine high and you'll get an associated \"high\" from the smell/taste of broccoli, much the way drug addicts get a flood of reward chemicals just going through the ritual of preparing to get high before they even take the drugs. \n\nOf course, smoking cocaine would probably negate most of the health benefits of eating broccoli, so it's not the *best* plan. \n\nMaybe try masturbating every time you eat broccoli?"
]
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6sro56 | how does foreign aid food compete with local markets if people can't afford food anyway? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6sro56/eli5_how_does_foreign_aid_food_compete_with_local/ | {
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"It's not necessarily that they can't *afford* to buy food, but that well-meaning agencies don't always think things through.\n\nIf the problem is an acute shortage of food -- such as during a time of famine or immediately after a natural disaster -- then giving free food is entirely appropriate and necessary.\n\nBut if it's a general feeling that there are poor countries around and so we should give them free food, that may not be the most helpful thing to do. We need to actually look closely at what the challenges and needs of different communities actually are, and apply a little common sense. Just because an economy is described as \"third world\" doesn't mean ordinary people are penniless; but if we simply give them food for free, local farmers can't sell their produce any more and then they *will* end up penniless. Of course, the local farmers could just stop farming and accept the food we give them, but what happens when that supply dries up? Maybe a war flares up preventing supplies getting through, or our own governments change their foreign aid policies. Suddenly, these communities are left to fend for themselves, but there are no farmers any more."
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7212dr | why do indian people and other asian people have different skin tones despite being so close geographically? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7212dr/eli5_why_do_indian_people_and_other_asian_people/ | {
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"Because while they belong to the same country, there are far more Ethnic groups within that area that came about in relative isolation to one another and evolved different traits.\n\nIndia might be one country for instance, but in reality is many MANY different sub-divisions of ethnicity.\n\nPlus this happens in more than just Asia. If you take a look at Europeans, Italians and Spanish as well as those groups on the Mediterranean coast tend to be much more tanned than their more norther Europeans like in Germany, Russia, France ect. Despite being within a few hundred Kilometers. \n\nEven such a small distance geographically can produce a vastly different climate, and thus different needs for skin tone. The hotter and more sunny a place is, the darker the people will tend to be.",
"People in India and neighbouring countries are of a different genetic line to people in, say, China or Japan. They still look fairly distinct because of the hard barrier of the Himalayas mostly separating India from East Asia. But it's more complicated than that - as with race anywhere in the world things tend to transition gradually rather than sharply separate. In northeastern India (Nagaland), there are people who look like [this](_URL_1_). In Uttarakhand near the Nepalese border, there are people who look like [this](_URL_0_).",
"India has a huge natural barrier at it's Northeast border the himalayas which would make it difficult for central Asian groups and Indian groups to meet. There are a few ideas about how people left Africa, but generally it is thought that about 50000 years ago people left following the coast and taking a southeast route to India, Indonesian and Australia then a bit later a second group left Africa in a northern route towards the middle East, Europe and central Asia. "
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5cbq71 | what causes candle flame to stay still and larger flames to be more active? | Why is it that the flames on candles look like [this](_URL_0_) and remain still to the point of inanimate, but larger fires are more active and animate?
There has to be science behind this. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5cbq71/eli5_what_causes_candle_flame_to_stay_still_and/ | {
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"Assuming by larger fires you mean things like camp fires and fireplaces fires, the main reason would be the amount of fuel the larger fire has comparatively, and the fuel is typically more fibrous. \n\nThe temperature, wind, and humidity play a large role as well. In the case of the campfire, wind is much more likely to have access to the flames, for example. The wind not only provides more oxygen but also blows the flames around. \n\nIn either case, the small candle, or the large fire, most of the reason for a \"dancing\" flame is air disturbance. With the larger fire there is a higher likelihood of disturbance because there is more of it."
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2x4fyx | why do dogs/wolves extend their head back when howling? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2x4fyx/eli5_why_do_dogswolves_extend_their_head_back/ | {
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"Straight vocal tunnel= better resonance=throw sounds further."
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5dse9l | "eli5:" the difference between c3 and c4 plants? | And possibly CAM plants as well. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5dse9l/eli5_eli5_the_difference_between_c3_and_c4_plants/ | {
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"When most plants(C3) get hungry they get their ingredients(CO2) from the air outside and use it to make food (sugars). \n\n\nSometimes it gets really hot and the plants(C4 this time) don't want to go outside to go shopping so they stay inside but then they still get hungry so they have to find creative ways to use up all the ingredients in the pantry like making \"taco surprise\"(a 4C compound instead of 3C)\n\n\nOther plants(CAM) know that they won't be able to make dinner during the week so they make a big batch of food and store it in the freezer so they easily reheat it and have food when they want it"
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1qcr0r | why can israel construct illegal structures in palestinian land without apparent consequences? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1qcr0r/eli5_why_can_israel_construct_illegal_structures/ | {
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"Who's going to do something about it? Everybody that can doesn't want to, every body that wants to can't.",
"Mortar fire from the territories into Israel is 'illegal' too. Quite simply, Israel doesn't feel bound to agreements violated by the opposing side - and neither side is particularly willing to be the bigger man about past transgressions.\n\nThe UN declaring each action by both sides illegal doesn't do a single thing if no one is willing to actually intervene.\n\n"
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3fic6z | why do so many conspiracy theories end up being anti-semitic? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3fic6z/eli5why_do_so_many_conspiracy_theories_end_up/ | {
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"*The Protocols of the Elders of Zion*, a forgery out of 19th century Russia, purports to be an account of the workings and dealings of a cabal of Jews who secretly control the world's economics and finances and business and … etcetera.\n\nIt meshed with the anti-Jewish hatred that was built by Martin Luther, the man who effectively was the father of the Protestant movement.\n\nAnti-Jewish hatred built for centuries before that, fed by Christianity's Biblical accounts of Jewish leaders (!) demanding that Jesus Christ be executed for claiming to be the Messiah, and because many highly-observant Jews have traditionally been insular, private, and \"rude\" to non-Jews, to the point of having separate economies, not speaking the local language, not marrying into the community, etcetera.\n\nFor many centuries, Christianity held that charging interest and handling money was sinful, so Christian financiers employed Jews to count and collect money, even extending to governments appointing Jews as tax collectors and heads of banks — contributing to the view that Jews controlled governments.\n\nThen the Nazis happened. And then, Israel happened.\n\nSo today, when you see conspiracy theories that include \"the Jews did it\", you're seeing sympathy towards the Nazis or toward Arabic Islamic politics. Even the KKK (and, by extension the Southern Baptists) blamed Jews for the Civil War, Reconstruction, and the Civil Rights movements.\n\nFinally, they often include \"the Jews\" in their conspiracy theories because it's ridiculously easy to blame other people and hate other people. People who carry conspiracy theories are emotionally ill — they have a need to play out a role in a psychosocial drama, one of either the Victim, the Persecutor, or the Rescuer. \n\nBlaming \"the Jews\" for the ills of the world, allows them to don the mantle of the Victim *and* the Rescuer simultaneously *and* absolve them of any guilt for being the Persecutor (of the Jews, or of anyone else). It emotionally justifies any action they choose to take, as long as it can be cast as being in opposition to \"the Jews\".\n\n---------------\n\nEdit: I wrote \"people who *carry* conspiracy theories are emotionally ill.\" \n\nEmotionally healthy people will entertain \"conspiracy theories\" as *hypotheses* — something that may be *plausible* but which lacks evidence. They will withhold judgement until more evidence for or against the hypothesis is presented, or will work themselves to build a case for — or against — the hypothesis, and will only *carry* the \"conspiracy theory\" if they themselves can find sufficient evidence to *reasonably believe* that it emerges *from the realm of conspiracy theory* — to bring it from the realm of hypothesis to the realm of working theory, something worth society considering *without the person being involved*. Or, they will simply carry on with their lives.\n\n\"Conspiracy theorists\" who derive personal emotional needs and attention from involvement in \"conpiracy theory\" movements, are emotionally ill — which *is* mentally ill. The underlying mental illnesses that motivate them are diverse and *beyond* the scope of this discussion. If you want to know more about the psychosocial dynamic at play there, feel free to research the [Karpman Drama Triangle](_URL_0_), a framework for understanding how these dysfunctional emotional and social relationships interoperate.\n\nNot everyone who puts forward a hypothesis is mentally ill. Not everyone who puts forward a hypothesis that gets labelled (by *someone*) as a \"conspiracy theory\" is mentally ill. Those who *need* the \"conspiracy theory\" to give their life meaning — who \"carry\" it — in the sense of carrying a disease — they are the ones who are ill.\n\nWhistleblowers and concerned citizens put forward important information about *actual* misdeeds, abuses of power, and conspiracies *all the time*, and part of the rhetoric of discrediting them is to label them a \"conspiracy theorist\". \n",
"The thing about conspiracy theories is that there's always a bad guy -- someone quietly in the shadows who is controlling things. Jews have long been a very popular target for such stories. Painting a picture of Jews as a group of people who did things to the detriment of everyone else has been the basis for everything from inquisitions to conspiracy theories to a little man trying to take over Europe.",
"People turn to conspiracy theories when there is a question that doesn't have an answer or they feel the answer is unsatisfying. The *Jews run the world\" conspiracy theory (which is sort of the underlying theme in a lot of more specific conspiracy theories) comes from asking the question: \"Why are Jews so disproportionately rich/successful/powerful?\" I've wondered this myself and I don't really know what the answer is. If you're uncomfortable not knowing the answer, or just accepting that something is just a coincidence or something is just random, then it's pretty easy to reach for an antisemitic/jews are pulling the strings conspiracy theory given the reality that we find ourselves in where it seems like there are more Jews in position of power than one would expect.",
"It's really not just Jews. It's any minority. Keep in mind, Jews are one of the smallest minorities on Earth but also the loudest and most powerful.\n\nAround 2 billion people want nothing more than for Israel to disappear. They have good reason, Zionism is a massive force of destabilization that ripples across the entire planet. So anti-Zionism becomes antisemitism quite quickly and easily.\n\nConspiracies need a source, an enemy. Jews are an easy target, with so many people predisposed to hating them. \n\nGonna get down-voted, I'm a cultural Jew. Leave me be oh sensitive reddit hivemind. ",
"Conspiracy theories are like black holes. They will absorb anything given time. Let a theory go on long enough it will involve the Jews, UFOs, Freemasons, ancient astronauts, The Knights Templar, contrails, the hollow earth and goat glands. ",
"Historically, Jews have been persecuted as a consequence of being perceived as cultural and ethnic outsiders. From Synagogue burning in the Roman Empire to the Holocaust, there is a long historical record for anti-Semitism (a partial timeline for which can be found [here](_URL_0_)).\n\nTo understand modern anti-Semitism, I think it is helpful to look at the relationship between Christianity and Judaism in the Renaissance era. Essentially, the handling of money at that time was deemed sinful by the Catholic Church, based mostly on the teachings of the Bible, e.g. \"it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God\" (Matthew 19:24). So, because good Christians could not handle money, the task was largely relegated to the Jews, who became successful bankers.\n\nThis historical tie between Jews and banking continues into the present day. Because we live in a neoliberal capitalist society (in the US and most 'developed' countries, anyways) bankers have enormous influence over not just the economy but our entire political system, thanks in part to the dissolution of boundaries between banking and politics from the US Supreme Court's ruling on Citizens United and similar legal precedents, which treat money as a form of constitutionally protected 'free speech' and financial institutions as human beings with inalienable rights.\n\nSo, in a neoliberal political-economic system such as ours, the decisions of a few elite hedge-fund managers, bankers and financiers have an inordinate amount of influence over our society. And the people in these positions, even today, are disproportionately Jewish. Combine that fact with a long tradition of anti-Semitism and it's easy to see why people use anti-Semitic theories as a crutch to avoid seeing the actual complexity of the problems that plague our society.",
"Conspiracy theories, in the modern period, tend to get more and more capacious over time. It's useful to remember that conspiracy theory, and loosely related ideas (say, ancient astronauts or new age practice or whatever), exist in a separate sphere from mainstream knowledge. So what ends up happening is that these alternative models, which have been stigmatized, start to bleed into one another.\nMistrust of Jewish groups, as other comments have mentioned, has been around for millennia. Because it's been the basis for conspiracy theory in the past, it becomes an easy go-to basis for current theories. It just gets attached to other common, long-standing targets: Illuminati, Masons, the government, reptilians, etc.\nEventually, conspiracy theories, given sufficient time, and enough people working on them, start to just look like distorted versions of the very complex reality that we all actualy inhabit. Whereas the term \"conspiracy\" is meant to denote a small group of conspirators, modern conspiracy theory includes, say, all the Masons, the Illuminati, the Jews, some other ethnic group, the bankers (probably just a euphemism for the Jews, again), top government officials, whatever people in whatever class one is not in, the communists, etc. In short, the whole world that isn't the theorist.\nConspiracy theory is an attempt to understand the whole social system and to conceptualize the way the social system affects the individual actor. It's like a distorted sociology. It gives the theorist a paradoxical sense of power or agency. Yes, he or she is ultimately powerless in the face of such a total system, but he or she understands it, really gets it, which is more than most people ever even try to do, and understanding the system is the first step to reclaiming individual autonomy.",
"Here's the background: Jews have been scapegoats for many different cultures for millennia. This is partly simply because EVERY society seems to pick a few scapegoats to blame their misfortunes on (see Salem Witch trials or about a billion other examples). It's a very primitive worldview, but hey, we're still a primitive species. In the US we have blacks, poor people, Mexican immigrants, gay people (obviously this one is beginning to change), Muslims, etc. -- as scapegoats. But Jews have remained a consistent scapegoat figure across Western (and middle Eastern) cultures for a very long time (not in the East really -- they have no real concept of Jews as scapegoats). One of the factors that have contributed to the demonizing of Jews is that they very often refused to convert to Christianity over the centuries, even after Christians became the overwhelming majority -- so there's a kind of religious fundamentalist scapegoating (even though Christianity is an outgrowth of Judaism for chrissake!). There's also the fact that any kind of extreme minority (and there really are not a lot of Jews in the world) are historically looked on suspiciously. Laws have been enacted in many Western countries AGAINST Jews. Centuries ago in England (just as one example) they were not allowed to own land or other permanent property, have political office, hold many professional positions or many other kinds of jobs, and they were not even allowed to move about freely. In a vicious cycle, the laws created to make Jews suffer ALSO create MORE suspicion. Jews become more and more marginalized. People don't bother to try to make friends with them and understand their customs and traditions, or the fact that their customs and traditions are not really that alien. (Just a caveat that there are a few exceptions to this extreme marginalization of the Jews, just like Queen Elizabeth the First (died 1603) was one of the most powerful monarchs in the world and yet she governed a country where women had NO RIGHTS AT ALL. People are not rational beings -- don't look too hard for rational behavior.)\n\nNow here is the most interesting part. SINCE Jews were so marginalized and had SO FEW options in terms of making a living, in large numbers, they turned to banking BECAUSE, historically, money-lending was considered a dirty and immoral profession that no decent Christian would do (obviously it's TOTALLY mainstream now, but just go back 2 centuries and less in many cases, and this was not the case). They simply didn't have a lot of other choice. (Starting their own business was another option.) This tradition of money-lending and starting well-designed businesses continued over the centuries. Jewish families tended to stick together (also, they didn't have a choice), they tended to bolster each other up in this tough situation, and over the centuries they became skilled at certain kinds of business (including banking) which they, obviously passed down to their children. Some got rich through these traditions as well. Then, guess what!? Money-lending (banking) suddenly became completely mainstream and even CENTRAL to the way we live in the 20th century. The stink wore off practically overnight and all the angry suspicsious conspiracy nuts immediately started saying, \"hey, why are the Jews the ones doing all the money lending? And why do some of them have so much money to begin with?\" See explanation above.\n\nOne last note. There are also a high percentage of Jews who are in entertainment and media and the reason for this is very similar to the one I have already described. Theater, acting, dramatic arts were really considered the domain of dirty scummy people UNTIL THE TWENTIETH CENTURY. No kidding. You would never want to be associated with any actors or theater people, you would never invite them to a party, and if your child married into an theater family, you would be horrified. They were considered kind of like good-looking carnies with no breeding, no education, and very loose morals. So this was a marginal space where Jews were not excluded and then SUDDENLY in the 20th century, theater turned into film and almost overnight, actors and movie-people were considered gods. And many Jewish families were already in the profession BEFORE it was considered cool. Only then did conspiracy nuts begin to say, \"Hey, why do so many Jewish families control the media?\"\nSee explanation above. \n\nBanking and mass media arguably are the two most powerful forces in our economy. The fact that there are a high percentage of Jewish families involved in both (though they are NOT the majority in either), may look suspicious if you KNOW NOTHING AT ALL ABOUT HISTORY. In fact, it's just a weird quirk of culture that the two most hated professions (and therefore the refuge of marginalized people) suddenly became the most loved and/or powerful. (The last shall be the first.)\n",
"It has been said that the history of almost all of the Jewish holidays can be summed up succinctly: \"They wanted to kill us; we won. Let's eat.\"(someone commented saying that they have heard it a different way and it actually sounds better if not more applicable \"They wanted to kill us; we survived. Let's eat.\") Why has antisemitism been so pervasive in so many countries, in so many time periods and for so many reasons? (One begins to wonder. Perhaps there is something wrong with the Jews and Judaism? After all, there is an old Yiddish saying -- \"If one person calls you a donkey, ignore him; if two people call you a donkey, buy a saddle.\")\n\nBetween the years 250 CE and 1948 CE - a period of 1,700 years - Jews have experienced more than eighty expulsions from various countries in Europe - an average of nearly one expulsion every twenty-one years. Jews were expelled from England, France, Austria, Germany, Lithuania, Spain, Portugal, Bohemia, Moravia and seventy-one other countries.\n\nHistorians have classified six explanations as to why people hate the Jews:\n\nEconomic -- \"We hate Jews because they possess too much wealth and power.\"\nChosen People -- \"We hate Jews because they arrogantly claim that they are the chosen people.\"\nScapegoat -- \"Jews are a convenient group to single out and blame for our troubles.\"\nDeicide -- \"We hate Jews because they killed Jesus.\"\nOutsiders, -- \"We hate Jews because they are different than us.\" (The dislike of the unlike.)\nRacial Theory -- \"We hate Jews because they are an inferior race.\"\n\nAs we examine the explanations, we must ask -- Are they the causes for anti-Semitism or excuses for Anti-Semitism? The difference? If one takes away the cause, then anti-Semitism should no longer exist. If one can show a contradiction to the explanation, it demonstrates that the \"cause\" is not a reason, it is just an excuse. Let's look at some contradictions:\n\nEconomic -- The Jews of 17th- 20th century Poland and Russia were dirt poor, had no influence and yet they were hated.\n \nChosen People -- a) In the late 19th century, the Jews of Germany denied \"Choseness.\" And then they worked on assimilation. Yet, the holocaust started there. b) Christians and Moslems profess to being the \"Chosen people,\" yet, the world and the anti-Semites tolerate them. \n \nScapegoat -- Any group must already be hated to be an effective scapegoat. The Scapegoat Theory does not then cause anti-Semitism. Rather, anti-Semitism is what makes the Jews a convenient scapegoat target. Hitler's ranting and ravings would not be taken seriously if he said, \"It's the bicycle riders and the midgets who are destroying our society.\" \n \nDeicide -- a) the Christian Bible says the Romans killed Jesus, though Jews are mentioned as accomplices (claims that Jews killed Jesus came several hundred years later). How come the accomplices are persecuted and there isn't an anti-Roman movement through history? b) Jesus himself said, \"Forgive them [i.e., the Jews], for they know not what they do.\" The Second Vatican Council in 1963 officially exonerated the Jews as the killers of Jesus. Neither statement of Christian belief lessened Antisemitism.\n \nOutsiders -- With the Enlightenment in the late 18th century, many Jews rushed to assimilate. Antisemitism should have stopped. Instead, for example, with the Nazis came the cry, in essence: \"We hate you, not because you're different, but because you're trying to become like us! We cannot allow you to infect the Aryan race with your inferior genes.\"\n \nRacial Theory -- The overriding problem with this theory is that it is self-contradictory: Jews are not a race. Anyone can become a Jew - and members of every race, creed and color in the world have done so at one time or another.(this is disputed, even by jews, the current classification is jews are a ethno-religious group)\n\nEvery other hated group is hated for a relatively defined reason. We Jews, however, are hated in paradoxes: Jews are hated for being a lazy and inferior race - but also for dominating the economy and taking over the world. We are hated for stubbornly maintaining our separateness - and, when we do assimilate - for posing a threat to racial purity through intermarriages. We are seen as pacifists and as warmongers; as capitalist exploiters and as revolutionary communists; possessed of a Chosen-People mentality, as well as of an inferiority complex. It seems that we just can't win.\n\nNow we know what are NOT the reasons for anti-Semitism.\n\n\nThese are just the excuses that have been used over the century, honestly trying to explain why jews are hated is A fruitless argument, they have been scapegoats for centuries, there is no explanation outside of the historical fact hatred of the jews has been ingrained into western society for centuries, the jews themselves are a small easily identifiable and susceptible to attack more then any other group. Plus their long storied history, repeated success regardless of environment, combined accomplishments with more then 139 Nobel laureates, some of the greatest minds in human history like Einstein being among their number and it would be hard to not simply state it's envy wrapped in malice of the Jews.\n\n“Of all the extreme fanaticism which plays havoc in man’s nature, there is not one as irrational as anti-Semitism. … If the Jews are rich [these fanatics] are victims of theft. If they are poor, they are victims of ridicule. If they take sides in a war, it is because they wish to take advantage from the spilling of non-Jewish blood. If they espouse peace, it is because they are scared by their natures or traitors. If the Jew dwells in a foreign land he is persecuted and expelled. If he wishes to return to his own land, he is prevented from doing so.”\n\n- Lloyd George stated in 1923\n\n \"The uniqueness of anti-Semitism lies in the fact that no other people in the world have ever been charged simultaneously with alienation from society and with cosmopolitanism, with being capitalistic exploiters and also revolutionary communist advocators. The Jews were accused of having an imperious mentality, at the same time they're a people of the book. They're accused of being militant aggressors, at the same time as being cowardly pacifists. With being a Chosen people, and also having an inferior human nature. With both arrogance and timidity. With both extreme individualism and community adherence. With being guilty of the crucifixion of Jesus and at the same time held to account for the invention of christianity.\"\n\n- A speech about the irrationality of anti-Semitism \nby professor Michael Curtis, of Rutgers University, 1987\n\n\n:EDIT WOW MY FIRST REDDIT GOLD THANK YOU!!\nI was in a rush to go paint-balling today, so i kind of had to rush my responses, in i left a lot unsaid to allot of commentators here, I'm really happy my first gold came from something i'm really passionate about, as an African american living on the south-side of Chicago, i did not grow up around many Jewish people, but after i graduated from high-school, since i was so into history, learning more about opposing views of historical accounts, eventually getting more involved into politics after my Palestinian high school teacher gave a lesson on the conflict between israel and palestine, doing my own research, meeting and becoming more involved in Jewish issues after learning how heavily Jewish Americans and the Jewish people in general have helped my community I've felt it a personal responsibility to correct misconceptions, hatred, heavily biased criticism and hostility directed at the Jewish people, i know i'm going off on a lil speech here, some may even call me a Zionist shill but w.e all i know is out of all the people i have had the pleasure and displeasure of getting to know, the only people that still fascinate me with the way they interact, debate(seriously nothing is more crazier then a Jewish pro-israel Facebook fight where one commentator is telling another to not overly demonize or be critical of Palestinians) and how they choose to help other people even if the cause negatively effects their own like with b'tselem or haaretz frequently cited by critic's of Israel. I find that amazing, hell it's one of the reasons why i support the Jewish people, because throughout their history many amazing Jewish individuals and groups have gone head first into helping others, not because they expected a reward or to be lauded but because it was the right thing to do. In for that i will always have major respect for the Jewish people and their continued endeavors in a world that hates and does not understand them. ",
"Conspiracy theories tend to be ways for people to explain apparent tendencies as rational forces. \n\nThe only requirement is some form ofplausability, and the informational available to the theorist to be incomplete enough. at that point, we have to fill in the blanks. Conspiracy theorist fill in those blanks with conspiracy.\n\nThe western world has long had a fixation with groups identifying as Jews. And, today, the zionist movement and its allies are a poweful international cabal. They influence politics and commerce across the world, in particular with wealthy democracies. This is largely because these places were the homes of displaced Jews from WWII. It is easy for someone to blame a group with these kind of forces, just visible enough to be seen, but not visible enough to be understood casually, for anything.",
"The reason why that happened is because after world war 1 when the allies were imposing restrictions on Germany to the point of starving the country ultra nationalism arose.\n\nPsychos like Hitler started blaming all Germany's economic power on things that weren't German like Jews, Romani people, the allied powers and the people bought it because they saw how the allies and their tough restrictions on Germany were destroying the country. \n\nThe scary thing is that this way of thinking has existed throughout history whether it be trump blaming Mexicans or muslims, German people hating Turks, etc. \n\nEveryone always wants to blame someone else, but because the german one turned into a total shit storm with millions of people dead people naturally focus on that one the most. ",
"There are many rich and powerful people who happen to be Jewish. The assumption is made that they are powerful and scheming together. It is comforting to believe that all the negative things that happen can be laid at the feet of a single group of people who are \"other\". Who can then be blamed for one's own misfortunes.\n\nIt doesn't help that they are singled out as God's Chosen People. \n\nWe are in the grip of chaotic forces, with scrums of powerful people vying for some semblance of control, most of it self-interested and relatively uncoordinated. That is scary. It feels better to have an identifiable enemy who has a plan.\n\nThe Jews have also historically held themselves apart from the cultures of the countries in which they dwelt, while at the same time often being shunned and not assimilated by their countrymen. Any prosperity that group displayed could through envy be interpreted as coming from exploitation. Assigning negative motivations to the successful and powerful is nothing new or unusual. And by virtue of being so separate and different, they are a salient target.\n\nIt is similar to the thinking that goes into this thought process: I saw a violent drug dealer who was black. And another one. They must all be bad. Rather than looking at another common denominator: poverty, or broken homes.\n\nSee a few rich and powerful people who have one thing in common? Must be a cabal.",
"Jews are \"statistically overrepresented\"[1] in top positions in media, politics and business despite being minorities. \n\nA sizable portion of the population has it internalized that any sample of the population should reflect the distribution of the population, despite this not being true anywhere anytime in history or in any culture [_URL_0_].\n\nThis spews resentment - and applies not only to Jews but to any \"over-representation\" like in the case of the Chinese in Indonesia [_URL_1_] or \"Old White Men\" now.\n\n[1] - I'm using scare quotes on purpose here, Jewish culture and upbringing has much to do *why* Jews are \"overrepresented\" in science, culture and politics.",
"It's always been ok to blame the Jews for whatever ails a population. Got a plague? Blame the Jews for poisoning your wells. Economic woes? Blame the Jews. 9/11? Black president? The rise of ISIS? Jews, Jews, Jews. It's a convenient, reliable mechanism. My recommendation is to meet actual, real life Jewish people. Visit a synagogue, sit in on a service (open to all, with nothing to hide.) Talk to a rabbi. You'll discover that Judaism is all about community, valuing ALL life, and making the world a better place through good deeds and charity. Yes, there is a small segment of Jews who are insular, highly religious, fundamental types, who choose to live apart from our flashy, digital, celebrity-fixated world. Every religion has its hardcore adherents, but I can assure you the orthodox aren't looking to secretly control the world. They live to pray and study. TL/DR it's historically easy to blame Jews. Go out and meet some.",
" > Already at the anecdotal level, the difference between the Fascist and the Stalinist universe is obvious; say, in the Stalinist show trials, the accused has to publicly confess his crimes and to give an account of how he came to commit them – in start contrast to Nazism, in which it would be meaningless to demand from a Jew the confession that he was involved in a Jewish plot against the German nation. This difference points towards the different attitude towards Enlightenment: Stalinism still conceived itself as part of the Enlightenment tradition, within which truth is accessible to any rational man, no matter how depraved he is, which is why he is subjectively responsible for his crimes, [2] in contrast to the Nazis, for whom the guilt of the Jews is a direct fact of their very biological constitution; one does not have to prove that they are guilty, they are guilty solely by being Jews – why? The key is provided by the sudden rise, in the Western ideological imaginary, of the figure of the wandering „eternal Jew\" in the age of Romanticism, i.e., precisely when, in real life, with the explosion of capitalism, features attributed to Jews expanded into the whole of society (since commodity exchange became hegemonic). It was thus at the very moment when Jews were deprived of their specific properties which made it easy to distinguish them from the rest of the population, and when the \"Jewish question\" was \"resolved\" at the political level by the formal emancipation of the Jews, i.e., by granting Jews the same rights as to all other \"normal\" Christian citizens, that their \"curse\" was inscribed into their very being – they were no longer ridiculous misers and usurers, but demoniac heroes of eternal damnation, haunted by an unspecified and unspeakable guilt, condemned to wander around and longing to find redemption in death. So it was precisely when the specific figure of the Jew disappeared that the ABSOLUTE Jew emerged, and this transformation conditioned the shift of anti-Semitism from theology to race: their damnation was their race, they were not guilty for what they did (exploit the Christians, murder their children, rape their women, or, ultimately, betray and murder Christ), but for what they WERE – is it necessary to add that this shift laid the foundations for the holocaust, for the physical annihilation of the Jews as the only appropriate final solution of their \"problem\"? Insofar as Jews were identified by a series of their properties, the goal was to convert them, to turn them into Christians; but from the moment that Jewishness concerns their very being, only annihilation can solve the \"Jewish question.\"\n\nSlavoj Zizek, [link](_URL_0_)\n\nTl;dr the stereotype of the jew (consumed by business, greedy) contained attributes that became very common with the expansion of capitalism. thus jews are blamed for the excesses of capitalism, in an attempt to disavow the fact that capitalism is inherently exploitative, etc. i.e. the fantasy is that if we remove the jews/jewishness, then all will be well. "
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[
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karpman_drama_triangle"
],
[],
[],
[],
[],
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"http://www.simpletoremember.com/articles/a/HistoryJewishPersecution/"
],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[
"http://www.nationalreview.com/article/352704/lefts-central-delusion-thomas-sowell",
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discrimination_against_Chinese_Indonesians"
],
[],
[
"http://www.egs.edu/faculty/slavoj-zizek/articles/zionism-and-the-jewish-question/"
]
]
|
||
2jzan7 | why is there a "jump" in our chest when something scares or startles us? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2jzan7/eli5_why_is_there_a_jump_in_our_chest_when/ | {
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"It's a fight or flight response. You fill your lungs with air quickly because your brain thinks you will face a life threatening danger. You will fight or run for life. Either way you would need more oxygen. ",
"It is the effect of adrenaline (and some other hormones). [Adrenaline](_URL_0_) is an incredibly fast acting hormone, it increases heart rate and thus blood pressure along with other things that make your body prepared to fight or run, in an instant. The jump is sort of like your body jumping into action, stepping it up a gear so you're ready."
]
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| []
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[],
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"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epinephrine"
]
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|
||
d9b4yd | where do the rockets that a spacecraft leaves behind go? | If they fall down to earth does that mean they come crashing down on land or sea? And isn't that dangerous threat to people who may be on ground or maybe a ship like a Cruise ship? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/d9b4yd/eli5_where_do_the_rockets_that_a_spacecraft/ | {
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" > If they fall down to earth does that mean they come crashing down on land or sea? \n\nYes\n\n > And isn't that dangerous threat to people who may be on ground or maybe a ship like a Cruise ship?\n\nNot really, no. We can predict the crash zone, and plan the mission to make that zone an empty patch of ocean. The location of launchpads all over the world are influenced by having good options for crash zones.",
"Some parts of rockets are calculated to fall back to earth, like the space shuttles's reusable boosters and space-x's self landing boosters.\n\nSome are calculated to fall into remote parts of oceans where you won't find cruise ships or anything else. Such areas are sometimes specified in \"notices to mariners\" that tell shipping about areas that are at risk.\n\nMuch of the debris burns up on re entering the atmosphere and never reaches the surface.\n\nSome remains in orbit as space junk. The biggest bits of junk are tracked so that other space craft don't hit them.",
"IT depends on what orbit the spacecraft is left in, and what the rocket does when it finishes.\n\nIf the orbit is high, the rocket stage remains in orbit practically forever. After the craft is released, the rocket often does another burn to put it in an orbit that won't cause a danger to other spacecraft.\n\nIf it is lower, then the rocket will eventually return to earth. These days they often do a burn to make sure the rocket does so quickly, changing to rocket's orbit so that the orbit drops into the thick atmosphere. Other times the orbit is low enough so that it is slowed down passing through the upper atmosphere, which reduces the height of the orbit slowly, until, again, it enters the thick lower atmosphere. \n\nEither way, it runs into the air at 8km/sec or more - which is fast enough that the rocket will always break up. Most of it will vaporise, much of the rest will be shreds of light stuff that float to the ground, and only very small parts are heavy enough to be dangerous to anything. And the planet is very, very big, so the danger of anything hitting anything except empty and and ocean is very small."
]
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[],
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|
mp06g | how did frank sinatra get to be so popular? | Seriously. I'm in a foreign country and even my host family (that doesn't speak English) has had the complete works on a loop since the Christmas decorations went up. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/mp06g/eli5_how_did_frank_sinatra_get_to_be_so_popular/ | {
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"Good singer and mafia connections.\n\nThe rest is history...",
"Talent, hard work and also the right friends.",
"He's pretty damn sexy as well.",
"Great voice, good looks, confidence, charm and a metric shit-ton of hard work. The gals wanted him and the guys wanted to be him. ",
"I don't think there's any conspiracy. He was a talented singer. ",
"He started out his career as a skinny, aw-shucks kind of teen singer with a smooth voice (coughcoughBeiber) who made girls scream when he toured with Bob Hope. Later, in the late 50's/early 60's he hooked up with a few other talented party animals and cemented his reputation as a cool guy with a life everybody wanted. At that point, he could have done 12 versions of the Call to Prayer in Mono and people would have bought 8 million copies.\n\ntl;td Frank Sinatra's xmas music isn't popular just cause it's good- it's freaking FRANK!",
"Good singer and mafia connections.\n\nThe rest is history...",
"Talent, hard work and also the right friends.",
"He's pretty damn sexy as well.",
"Great voice, good looks, confidence, charm and a metric shit-ton of hard work. The gals wanted him and the guys wanted to be him. ",
"I don't think there's any conspiracy. He was a talented singer. ",
"He started out his career as a skinny, aw-shucks kind of teen singer with a smooth voice (coughcoughBeiber) who made girls scream when he toured with Bob Hope. Later, in the late 50's/early 60's he hooked up with a few other talented party animals and cemented his reputation as a cool guy with a life everybody wanted. At that point, he could have done 12 versions of the Call to Prayer in Mono and people would have bought 8 million copies.\n\ntl;td Frank Sinatra's xmas music isn't popular just cause it's good- it's freaking FRANK!"
]
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pkp37 | what's so great about jeremy lin? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/pkp37/eli5_whats_so_great_about_jeremy_lin/ | {
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"I don't really know how to explain this like you're five, but the essence (from what I've gathered) is that it's a \"feel-good\" sports story. He's a hard worker who is making the most out of his chance, a graduate of Harvard (only the third NBA player from the University), Asian-American (which is rare in the NBA) and is currently \"beating the odds\" similar to many of the most famous sports stories out there. He's had great statistics considering he has only started 4 games thus far (over 26 points per game and 7 assists). He has helped the previously-struggling New York Knicks win 4 straight games and given them a shot at the playoffs.\n\nAs J.A. Adande put it, \"That's because it's an ageless story. A guy made the most of his chance ... Isn't that what we ask from sports? Show us something. Surprise us. Amaze us. Inspire us. Or, in Jeremy Lin's case, all of the above.\"\n[Adande's Article, good read](_URL_0_)\n\nIf you need any further explanation, let me know - I'm not sure how to make it more simple but I can do my best.",
"* The only top basketball player in the state of California to not receive a Division I scholarship out of high school.\n* Did not get drafted to the NBA\n* Eventually got signed by two different NBA teams (Warriors and Rockets) but then got cut\n* Got moved down to the NBA's Development League (D-League) 4 different times\n* Signed with the Knicks, got moved down to their D-League team but did good there and got moved back up to the Knicks bench.\n* Came off the bench and scored 25 points off the bat, followed by his first ever NBA start scoring a career high 28 points.\n* Beat the Lakers and ended up with another career high 38 points in just his 3rd ever NBA start\n* The first player EVER since the NBA/ABA merger of 1976 to score the most points in their first 3 starts\n* ALL HE DOES IS LIN!!!",
"He is also extremely humble. In an interview, he tells the reporter that it isn't just him who is making the Knicks win, but the performance of all his teammates",
"Once you go yellow, who needs camello?\n\n\n",
"Basically he is a guy who struggled to get a chance in the NBA, and now that he finally got one, he is surprising everyone and his team has been winning. It's a Cinderella story. ",
"Asian, Harvard, undrafted, NY Knicks, 38 points in his third game starting, Asian"
]
} | []
| []
| [
[
"http://espn.go.com/nba/story/_/id/7564789/nba-jeremy-lin-continues-provide-hope-knicks"
],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[]
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|
||
4ccy1s | why does the moon appear to stay in the same position yet orbits earth at 3,683 kilometers per hour? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4ccy1s/eli5_why_does_the_moon_appear_to_stay_in_the_same/ | {
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"It doesn't stay in the same place. The moon rises and sets just like the sun. Next clear night make a point to go look at it every hour of so and you will see that it has moved. The moon is very far away so even at that speed you won't be able to discern motion in a short time span.",
"You can clearly see it rising over a period of just a few minutes with a reference point like a tree. ",
"It's worth noting that the moon is *really big* and *really damn far away*. It plays with your sense of scale and perspective. Humans tend to view and orient to a human scale. So for instance, a small boat might be going the length of itself every minute and look fast, but a large container shop far away is going way faster, but your brain tries to put it in the same scale as the small boat...sure, it's going fast but it's only going a quarter of its length every minute. So it appears to be going slower.\n\nThe moon is the same. It's going stupid fast, but because it's so far away your perspective is off and it seems to be going very slow."
]
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[],
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|
||
2cxysa | why do scientists think space isn't spherical? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2cxysa/eli5_why_do_scientists_think_space_isnt_spherical/ | {
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"First of all, we have to define some terms. Instead of spherical, it is more correct to say that something is positively curved (ie. that if the curvature continues indefinitely then it will eventually enclose some space bounded by the curve). Hence, a sphere. A quick way to determine this is if the angles on a triangle drawn on the surface of the curvature add up to **more than 180 degrees**.\n\nNegatively curved space looks basically like a saddle. If you extend this infinitely then the edges don't actually ever meet up so it doesn't bound some finite zone. A quick way to determine this is if the angles of a triangle drawn on the surface of the curvature add up to **less than 180 degrees**.\n\nThe last option is flat. That is, the triangle's angles add up to **exactly 180 degrees**.\n\nSo, using the triangle idea, we measure incredibly huge triangles in space using known reference points like quasars. We have to use huge triangles (the larger the better) because a sufficiently big sphere or saddle would look flat on a small scale.\n\nIt turns out that, when you do those meaurements, the universe is flat to significantly less than 1%. That is, the angles of the triangle add to somewhere between 179.5 degrees and 180.5 degrees.\n\nThat's it in a nutshell. This method works because space, on very large scales, is homogenous and isotropic. That is, it looks virtually the same no matter what direction and how far we look. So we can take those huge triangles and be pretty certain that what we're seeing is a good approximation of \"everywhere\"."
]
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[]
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||
1hol34 | if a police officer stops me in the street, what can i do/not do? | If he asks to see ID, do I have to show him? What if I'm in a car, do I have to get out if he asks me?
EDIT: I live in New York | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1hol34/eli5_if_a_police_officer_stops_me_in_the_street/ | {
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"Treat him with respect and he will most likely treat you the same.",
" > If he asks to see ID, do I have to show him?\n\nPossibly. It depends on your state. It also depends on a bunch of other factors. If the conversation is consensual, meaning you can leave at anytime, you don't have to answer any questions or identify yourself unless [your state has a law stating you do.](_URL_0_) The Supreme Court found that a [law in Texas](_URL_3_) was unconstitutional, but didn't address the concept as a whole. The issue is complicated further when considering [police checkpoints](_URL_2_).\n\n > What if I'm in a car, do I have to get out if he asks me?\n\n[Yeah, you have to.](_URL_1_)\n\nIt's been a long time since I read about this stuff, so please feel free to correct me if I am mistaken or something has changed.",
"Depends on what country you are in. For instance in the UK a police officer can demand your name, address and date of birth for a variety of infractions. The reason being is that they could potentially be served a summons to court. Now if they don't believe you or you refuse you can be detained until your identity can be confirmed, even if the original infraction they stopped you for isn't something thayt you can be arrested for. The reason offocers in the Uk will ask you for ID is because it's the easiest and quickest way of identifying you. It's often in your own best interest to provide it when asked for because they have the power to arrest you and detain you INDEFINITELY until you do. The relevant law is Section 50 of the Police reform act 2002. > If he asks to see ID, do I have to show him? What if I'm in a car, do I have to get out if he asks me?\n\n",
"Where do you live? Tell us that first and we might be able to answer the question.",
"Ask very clearly if you are being detained. If the answer is not yes, you're free to go. For the ID thing, check your state's law.You're in new york apparently, so yes, you do have to provide your name and address. If you lie and he decides to arrest you, that's an offense(well, either way it's an offense,l but you get what I mean)\n\nBasically, if they aren't detaining you, you're free to go. This means that they have a \"reasonable suspicion\" you are doing something illegal, have done something illegal, or are going to do something illegal. This is not the same thing as being arrested, it just means you can't leave for the moment until it's confirmed nothing illegal's going on(in the eyes of the officer).\n\nTo get arrested, the officer needs probable cause, which means they personally are certain you have committed a crime. After you get arrested, a court figures out if you actually did it(to the best of their abilities). It goes to another court if you appeal and it's accepted.\n\n",
"You have to identify yourself, verbally, and in many states, with ID if you have it.\n\nIf you are in a car, you have get out if asked. You also have to show registration and proof of insurance.\n\nIf there is reasonable suspicious (a much lower standard than probable causes), you may be detained on what is called a Terry stop. You can be patted down for weapons, but not searched without consent. The cop can then spend a reasonable time (15-20 minutes) checking your information before releasing or arresting you.\n\nBeyond that, you don't have to do or say anything. It is a good idea to ask if you are being detained. If you are not being detained, you can leave at any time. Sometimes cops will try to be vague so they can keep you there without imposing a Terry stop, so ask multiple times and insist on a direct answer. If you are being detained, assume it is now an adversary situation, and refuse further cooperation. ",
"ask if you're being detained, if you're not, then ask if you're free to go. repeat ad nauseam.\n\nvolunteer nothing else. ask for a lawyer to be present if they persist.",
"Streetside, you don't *have* to show him an ID or provide your name unless you are suspected of a crime but you are going to cause more problems by not giving it. In your car, if an officer asks for your license and asks you to get out of a car, you are required to do so by law.",
"Always ask \"do I have an option\" as in \"do you mind if we search your car?\" \"Do I have an option/choice?\"",
"You can and can not do whatever they arbitrarily decide you can or can not do. Just pretend that it's 12,600 B.C., and that officer Grog has no rule book. Do as he says, or prepare to be clubbed. Easy peasy.",
"No. Don't listen to this. Stop & Frisk is for NYC, so if you live on the island or upstate, then it doesn't apply to you. ",
"If you are in the US, it depends on whether you are black or white. If you are black, be very cooperative, make it visually clear that you do not have a gun in your hand. If you are white, it depends on how well dressed you are. If you look poor, you can grumble, but still must be cooperative. If you look wealthy, you should stand by your rights and demand to contact your lawyer."
]
} | []
| []
| [
[],
[
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stop_and_identify_statutes#Obligation_to_identify",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pennsylvania_v._Mimms",
"http://www.policechiefmagazine.org/magazine/index.cfm?fuseaction=display_arch&article_id=234&issue_id=32004",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brown_v._Texas"
],
[],
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[],
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2021t6 | if spontaneous generation has been disproved, how did the first living organisms erupt on earth? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2021t6/eli5_if_spontaneous_generation_has_been_disproved/ | {
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"text": [
"That is one of the biggest unanswered questions in science. It is the object of a lot of study and research. Look up \"abiogenesis.\""
]
} | []
| []
| [
[]
]
|
||
3p2umi | how do we recognize the scents from others' homes? | I recognize the scent of my parents' home now that I'm an adult, but prior to that I'd have had no idea how my home smelled. How do I recognize scents as belonging to others and how do I now know that my parents' house smelled a certain way? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3p2umi/eli5_how_do_we_recognize_the_scents_from_others/ | {
"a_id": [
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"Senses like smell, taste, and sound can be tied to memories. It's exactly the same thing as you recognizing the smell of fresh baked cookies or the smell of peanut butter. The smell of a house is a combination of many smells such as cleaning agents, detergents, flowers, candles, whatever is around- and all of those smells together simply register in your brain as one smell: \"parents house\"\n\nMemories that involve the senses often run through the limbic system in the brain, which is known for regulating emotions. The smell of your parents house may instantly have a calming or loving effect on you. There you go! Your brain is an amazing thing. \n\nWhen you're around a smell for a long time you get acclimated to it, and your brain begins to ignore the smell. After you've been away a while, your brain notices it again. That's why you didn't really notice until you moved out "
]
} | []
| []
| [
[]
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|
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