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44eyum | why do we want to drink milk or water when we eat something "rich" like chocolate? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/44eyum/eli5_why_do_we_want_to_drink_milk_or_water_when/ | {
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"Because your mouth gets all gunked up and you want that cooling blast of goodness to clean it out",
"Follow-up question, I hate drinking milk but i love it with cake, cookies or brownies; what causes the taste difference? I even notice when it goes back to tasting gross after a few seconds, its weird.",
"Two reasons.\n\n1. Cultural/personal tastes. I enjoy milk with my cake, brownies, etc., and it's naturally most appealing to me personally because it was regular during my upbringing. In other cultures, tea, coffee or otherwise may be more desired by the individual.\n\n2. Likes dissolve likes. Water is a polar substance, which will dissolve other polar substances like sugar. Milk is less polar than water in this case, but still has the desired effect, your tastes permitting.\n\nEdit: I'm adding to my explanation a bit here, because a few aspects I believed were obvious aren't so obvious in an ELI5 sense:\n\nWater/milk dissolves sugar well as a result of both being polar substances, which is helpful as a result of your salivary glands being overcome with the rich food you're consuming. This isn't restricted only to sugar. Richness refers to foods that contain quite a bit of sugar, yes, but the fat/oil present in butter or cream is a non-polar substance. You may crave milk to wash down these substances, because milk contains fats of its own; as like dissolves like, it goes well with these types of treats and desserts.",
"~~I don't think anyone else here has quite got it.~~\n\n**EDIT: Actually /u/Kanzel_BA 's answer is pretty good.**\n\n**As with all things in the real world the answer is a mix of several aspects. I think it's a mix of kanzel's explanation about polarity, elevated blood sugars, and a socialised/cultural element.**\n\n**Bonus side note: I'm a milk with rich food guy. Or red wine if it's savoury.**\n\nMy ELI5 understanding is that after eating somethings rich or sugary it raises you blood sugar level - this has the physiological effect of making you thirsty. (its to do with the chemical process involving a release of insulin into the blood, which the body is doing to try to return your blood sugar levels to a safe level. Elevated levels can damage the body in various ways.) \n\nSource _URL_0_\n\n**True ELI5 - your body needs extra water to process all that sugar you've eaten.**\n\nMy 5 year old would understand that but I might explain the process a bit too. ",
"The only explanation is a cultural. Where i am from you don't drink milk to chocolate or cookies. \n\nThat's American or maybe British culture, nothing else.",
"I don't know the scientific reason, but I feel like it neutralizes the sweetness of the cake ever so slightly. ",
"Another follow up, there is so much concentration on sugar here, but I feel thirsty after eating my preferred type of chocolate with 75 - 95% cocoa. Especially the 95% one has very little sugar in it (googling nutrition data, Lindt 90% has 7g sugar / 100g).",
"The fat from the milk mixes with foods better than your saliva, so you can taste more from the food.",
"Things like chocolate stick on your tongue. Eat a chicken wing. How strong is that flavor 15 seconds later? How about chocolate? The lingering and texture, based on personal observation, is what makes your taste buds beg for something thick like milk to help bring your taste back to neutral.",
" > Casein in milk binds to fats and oils and other things, my guess is it binds to the oils/fats in your mouth to clear them (cleaning your palette), unlike water which would just spread the oil around. Clearing the palette will make the next bite taste like that first bite, which is always the most delicious.\n\nFrom /r/askscience:\n_URL_0_\n\nwhich was from an older /r/askscience:\n_URL_1_ \n\nI was googling for an answer like this, as I recalled the fact of certain compounds in milk that bind more easily to fat (oily) foods like you would find in baked goods.\n\nAn example: Imagine you're eating pretzels without drinking anything. After a while, your mouth is dry and your tongue and cheeks are covered in a paste of pretzel mash. Drinking something washes away a lot of that mash, \"clearing the palate\". \n\nMilk can do that too, but because there are fats in milk, unlike water, soda, black coffee, it can \"clean up\" other fats better as well. ",
"I always believed it was because there is usually a very thick and sugary coating left in your mouth that saliva alone won't take care of very quickly. So, as an alternative, we drink fluid that will dissolve that sugary coating. Milk and water do this well and they also taste good with rich or chocolatey foods. Other beverages will get rid of the rich coating in your mouth but you wouldn't reach for a glass of orange or apple juice after you've had chocolate lava cake. ",
"When you mix fat and sugar in quantities at a ratio of 50/50 (half and half) it triggers all the happy places in the brain. The brain LOVES the feeling and wants more. This is why milk (fat) and cookies (sugar) go together so well. \n\nIf you don't have any milk or cookies, you can experience a similar sensation with crack cocaine. It's the same happy places in the brain that are triggered. \n",
"The answer has to do with the inside of your mouth being coated with lipids. Allow me to explain:\n\nHardly anyone eats pure, bitter chocolate. They eat chocolate that's been modified in flavor and texture by fats (butter, coconut oil, etc) and sugar, which result in a coating throughout your mouth which leaves you a bit thirsty. Water works to \"cut the coating\", but acidic and fatty fluids help more, because the fats that are coating your mouth are very soluble in both. Milk contains enough fat to wash away most of the coating. That coupled with the fact that things like orange juice with chocolate are distasteful to most palates leaves water and milk (with milk being preferable for most people) as the \"solution\". (ha ha)\n\nAll of that said, the more advanced palate may enjoy something like port wine with chocolate, because it's acidic and contains alcohol, both of which are champion for washing the gunk out of your mouth, adding a wonderful complementary flavor, and preparing your mouth for the next bite of chocolate. I would suggest a tawny port in this endeavor, should one be so bold.\n\nDrinking wine with fatty meats and fish serves exactly the same purpose of palate cleansing and flavor enhancement between bites.",
"Same reason that something that something might taste awful on its own, but taste amazing with other ingredients. ",
"I'm the only person I know who craves milk when I eat ice cream. Any other freaks out there?",
"Milk tastes good after anything. Dessert, pizza, steak, Mac and cheese, ect. Well, for me it does.\n\nI think it's because it clears the palette well, quiches thirst, refreshing, and tastes really good.",
"Ahhh like when you are drinking sweetened condensed milk from the can, and you become nauseated, then you drink some regular milk and you feel fine again - so you can continue to drink more condensed milk. ",
"I think it's two components: mouth feel and flavor.\n\nAfter eating something sweet and fatty, water tastes super bland and feels bad in the mouth. The fat content in milk, as well as its particular flavor, helps it to not taste bland and not feel bad in the mouth after eating something sweet with fat in it.",
"In my experience anything sugary or meaty will make me thirsty, and I always thought it was caused by depletion of water to digest the meat (producing HCl takes water) or excess sugar in the blood making it hypertonic and activating thirst to dilute it.",
"Water with chocolate? Really? That just sounds wrong. Milk though, yeah, chocolate and milk is perfect!",
"Milk? Water? Nah, black coffee & dark chocolate. Almost nothing is better",
"Do we? I don't think I do, and I don't know anyone who needs a drink with chocolate.",
"When you eat ice cream, you blast your body with all sorts of solutes. \nIce cream has salts, but also sugars fats, amino acids, and more for your \nbody to absorb into the blood stream. When your blood becomes laden with \nthese chemicals, (mostly sugars) your blood becomes more \"concentrated,\" \ngiving your brain (hypothalamus) the signal of dehydration. When water in \nthe hypothalamus leaves to the blood through osmosis, then the blood \nconcentration is greater than that of the hypothalamus. This triggers the \nthirst response in the body and brain.\n If you were dehydrated, there would be a high concentration of solutes \nin your blood, so you would become thirsty. Eating ice cream, in a sense, \nmakes your body think it is dehydrated, and in a sense, I suppose it is.\n This is one of the reasons that diabetics are thirsty all the time. \nDiabetes causes high blood glucose, and that increased concentration of \nblood solutes makes the diabetic feel thirsty.",
"Its not not a taste thing, not a texture thing, not a digestion thing.\n\nIts very simple, chocolate and ice cream have a ton more salt than people realize...salt makes you thirsty.",
"Okay, who the hell has water with chocolate!?"
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3ifwts | how do youtube stars like good mythical morning make millions of dollars with no obvious ad placement... and how do podcasts like my brother my brother and me make enough money for several grown men to live without constant ads? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3ifwts/eli5_how_do_youtube_stars_like_good_mythical/ | {
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"Do you not see the youtube ads played before videos? They get money from those.",
"They're sponsored by different companies who pay them to mention their name in the episode. It's much more reliable than using an ad service because it can't be blocked by ad-blocking software. In the GMM episodes you'll hear one of them say \"This episode is brought to you by [xyz]\"."
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2h42ym | why do people remove clothes as they freeze to death? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2h42ym/eli5_why_do_people_remove_clothes_as_they_freeze/ | {
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"We don't really know. \n\n_URL_0_\n\n > One explanation for the effect is a cold-induced malfunction of the hypothalamus, the part of the brain that regulates body temperature. Another explanation is that the muscles contracting peripheral blood vessels become exhausted (known as a loss of vasomotor tone) and relax, leading to a sudden surge of blood (and heat) to the extremities, fooling the person into feeling overheated.",
"When the body is about to die, people feel like they are hot, burning or cooking.\nIt happens because when body temperature sinks from 36-32 degree the blood vessels reduce size to concentrate blood at the inner organs (when you Are in the cold your arms and feet get cold first to keep body heat at the important internals organs) and then\nsuddenly when the body is about 28/27 degree the blood vessels expand on the Body surface, this sudden change feels like your body is boiling and too hot. So to get the heat away they undress and when they remove their clothes they freeze to death faster. \n\n(Some people who have been saved from nearly death by freezing tell that they thought (during getting unconsciously) that they thought they were saved and sitting in front of a campfire)"
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4f1b5x | of what saudi arabia selling off us assets would mean or do for both countries? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4f1b5x/eli5_of_what_saudi_arabia_selling_off_us_assets/ | {
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"It is a sign that Saudi Arabia is in financial trouble. \n\nUS debt is in the form of treasury bonds that have a set maturation date. When a country sells off these assets early it means that they need cash now and cannot wait for them to mature, which means they are in trouble. The fact that they can sell it to other countries/individuals also means that the issuer of the debt (the US) is seen as stable and valuable so it is a good thing for the US. ",
"It depends greatly on specifically what they are selling, but a common thing is that they hold large reserves of US currency. They then buy their own currency on the open market with these US dollars.\n\nThe effect and purpose of this is to increase the value of their own currency relative to the US dollar (since by doing this they are increasing the supply of US dollars and decreasing the supply of their own currency).\n\nMany countries maintain what is called a \"currency peg\" as an economic tool. They see benefit in having a stable currency value so they try to maintain a ratio of X local dollars for Y American dollars. These pegs are almost always against the US dollar due to the position of the USD in international trade (although this is slowly changing as some currencies move to a peg against a basket of other currencies including the USD).\n\nSo since Saudi Arabia has so many US dollars, they can outspend any currency speculator. If speculators think the Saudi currency is overvalued, they will short sell it which itself causes depreciation. By then buying up that excess currency, Saudi Arabia is basically saying \"bring it, we will outspend you and thereby cause you to make a loss so don't bother trying in the first place\".\n\nThis is a risky strategy if the local currency truly is overvalued since there are many examples of countries trying to do this and failing (and therefore wastefully spending wads of cash). Saudi Arabia has so many reserves that they will certainly be able to sustain this for years if they wanted to.\n\nWhy do they do this? Their local operators largely have contracts based petrol and most petrol contracts are priced in US dollars. If their local currency drops too much against the USD then those local businesses will get into trouble with regards to repaying debt and financing their concerns.",
"Say you had a brother who sells yu-gi-oh cards locally for a living.\n\nOver the years, he gives you (in reality SA buys) thousands of the rare cards he is selling. $750,000 worth. \n\nOne day, you and your brother get into a fight and as \"payback\" you dump your $750,000 card collection at the street corner for $100,000. It still doesn't sell because there's only so many people who actually want yu-gi-oh cards, even at 85% discount. But your brother is now screwed because he can't sell any and is running out of money.\n\nBut then you realize what you've done. Your brother lost a few thousand in lost sales and will have trouble selling for years, but he still has all the inventory and will recover. \n\nYou on the other hand, lost your retirement fund. Instead of having $750k in assets to fall back on, you now only have $100k (if you're lucky). And you know you're not getting cards from your brother any time soon.\n\nTL;Dr: It's an economic suicide vest"
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a15ke4 | can someone explain to me the science behind bruce lees one inch punch? | If you don't know what it is, here it is, _URL_0_. Like how did he do it and how much power would he have to put in, I'm just curious? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/a15ke4/eli5_can_someone_explain_to_me_the_science_behind/ | {
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"Think of his entire body like a wet towel. His body is completely relaxed and ready to be tense at any moment. With a boost of power from his legs he 'flicks' the power through his whole body (like the wet towel) to his hand and it culminates in the moment of tension as he creates a fist and moves it one-inch into the opponent.\n\nThe one-inch punch is not a 'shove', but an example of how much power he can create in a short space, and how effective his technique is - fully understanding the principle of movement. It shows not flashy skills such as the big spinning roundhouse kicks, but pure harmony with his body. That is why it is so impressive.",
"This has basically been answered, but the reason why it looks like a punch, where the person is knocked back on contact, instead of a shove, where the person starts moving relatively slowly and then gets knocked back (and the shover gets knocked back as well) is because **Bruce Lee had darn near perfect punching technique.**\n\nProper technique revolves around a couple things, but the most important to the 1 inch punch is making sure that you're engaging all of the relevant muscles at once/as soon as they can be without affecting balance instead of in stages.\n\nBecause all of the muscles are able to help push his hand from the start of the punch his hand is moving faster by the time it hits the person (obviously him being in excellent physical shape is also key), and this is where the unbelievable force comes from.\n\nThe last bit I'd like to clarify is that all proper punches are also \"shoves\" insofar as the person does not stop the punch on contact, but continues driving the person forward, generally until continuing further would knock themselves off balance.",
"First of all, there are Bruce Lee inch punch, and inch punch. \nInch punch come of chinese kungfu, often southern one. It's a fa jing (generation of explosive power). So there are dozen of styles doing it, and consequently dozen of ways to do it. \nSome says that the Bruce Lee on is'nt a true inch punch, but honestly, there are not really a true one way to do it, except to be capable to give power in a so short distance, without moving the fist before. \nGenerally speaking, it's very complex to describe, see and understand what's happening in movement, it takes years to most people to achieve what they are seing. \nThere are a lot of ways to learn to move, so take all the theory with a grain of salt. \nThe Bruce lee one, is often see with Bruce being on the side, as a lateral punch. With a loading of the body. This means, he is loading all the body (hip, bended back leg, with raised heel etc.) , behind the fist, without moving it. \nIt's the key, loading the body behind the punch, without moving it. Naturally, people tend to load the fist. \nLoading is often see as contraction of an articulation (bended), a contrary rotation of the futur rotation (in every axes possible), a state (relaxation before tension) and so on, but it can be misleading because this is not universal. \nSo now, he has is target, he has his distance, he is loaded, like a feline he just wait. \nAfter that, it's blurry, he move like a pendulum (the head goes in front), he rotate too, and the hip, knee,heel, elbow and so on release. That's it. \nYou must notice, that often the guy taking the shot, is front facing, with his two legs straights. It's the worst position to have if you want to resist a force in front of you applied on your thorax. It's make it spectacular. \nNormally speaking, you want to learn to relax/tense and to work on proprioception (where are your articulation, loading them), and on tempo (release together, release one after this others with increase of the inertia, to \"throw a dead part of the body\", to tense/relax, to relax and so on) and some sort of preparation of the body (musculation for exemple). \nAfter that you can work on target."
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389ksj | how do little birds beat up big birds? | Jays attack crows, crows attack hawks. It seems the bigger birds could destroy the little ones with ease but all they do is fly away | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/389ksj/eli5_how_do_little_birds_beat_up_big_birds/ | {
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"i think i might have something to do with maneuverability. the smaller birds can move faster and avoid attack while still attacking while all the big birds can do is try to get away. A hawk can flay quickly if is dropping down from high altitudes, but flying quickly in a straight line parallel to the ground is harder for them.",
"Little birds tend to take on a \"strike-first mentality\" to defend their territory (similar to small dogs in some ways). They see a large predator animal flying around and take immediate action to bother and pester the larger animal as much as possible. This is to promote the idea that they're not worth the trouble to deal with and that the predator should just avoid that area.\n\nIn a lot of cases the hawk is just swooping through looking for small game and isn't interested in eating a bird so they take the hint and move on. It's not a good investment of time or energy for them to try and kill the smaller bird as (A) the smaller bird has a lot more maneuverability, (B) small birds tend to bunch up in groups that could potentially overwhelm the hawk, and (C) small birds don't provide as much sustenance when compared to their usual prey.\n\n",
"Especially to crows against hawks: The crow may be within a group and maybe he's more maneuverable. But the most important thing (imo) is that the predator doesn't want to risk an injury. Yes, he probably could kill the crow one versus one. But he may risk an injury which could lead to his starvation. That's not worth it.\n\n > _URL_0_\n\nOften they don't really attack but try to lure the predator away from a nest or young birds.\n\n > Besides the ability to drive the predator away, mobbing also draws attention to the predator, making stealth attacks impossible. Mobbing plays a critical role in the identification of predators and inter-generational learning about predator identification.\n\nSome theories:\n\n > including advertising their physical fitness and hence uncatchability (much like stotting behavior in gazelles), distracting predators from finding their offspring, warning their offspring, luring the predator away, allowing offspring to learn to recognize the predator species,[7] directly injuring the predator or attracting a predator of the predator itself.",
"I'd guess that the small birds not being hunters means they can afford to get injured more than a hunter who needs to catch and kill its prey can – ie. even tho a hawk may be more powerful than a crow and could probably kill one easily, if it were to incur even a small injury that hampered its spee, it could mean starvation, so it's not worth it for the hawk."
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em52gi | why do record players still make sound with the speakers off? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/em52gi/eli5_why_do_record_players_still_make_sound_with/ | {
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"Back in the day, those old Victrolas didn't have speakers, just a huge horn protruding thing. Records used to be both recorded and played with no electricity. Sound comes from the needle in the groove and all the electronics do is amplify it- just like you can still hear an unplugged electric guitar",
"The way that a record works is that a small needle moves through the grooves of the record, which have the shape of the sound signal. This way, the needles basically vibrates in the same way as the recorded sound wave, and this vibration creates sound. It's not very useful though - the sound is within the solid material, which is difficult to convert into soundwaves in the air itself. That is why you can hear it only faintly. Old grammophones used a horn speaker, which is able to convert the sound waves from the needle into sound waves moving through air much more efficiently. More modern players basically use a microphone to turn the vibration\n into a weak electrical signal, which is converted into a more powerful electric signal by the amplifier which can drive the speakers."
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atr0j5 | how do twisted ankles work? why do they hurt so much? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/atr0j5/eli5_how_do_twisted_ankles_work_why_do_they_hurt/ | {
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"So inside you and I we have ligaments, they basically connect bone to bone around joints like elbows, knees, ankles, etc. they keep your ankle joint in order and lined up, keep it from slipping or folding left or right every step you take\n\n\nA twisted ankle is a damaged ankle ligament. The act of “twisting” it over stretched the inner or outer ligament and its now strained and inflamed from the damage.\n\n\nA torn or partial tear ligament is one that has completely ripped or has detached from one end or both, this often requires surgery and can lead to long term joint weakness, such as a habit to roll a specific ankle again and again your entire life\n\nEdit:spelling"
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68td4o | why is there unrest in puerto rico right now? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/68td4o/eli5_why_is_there_unrest_in_puerto_rico_right_now/ | {
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"Apparently the population just realized exactly how they are being screwed by their local government officials.",
"Lots of things.\n\nOur fucking corrupt government as a whole.\n\nOur inept fucking governor who thinks he's a coronel against an alien invasion.\n\nOur justice department not being able to finally arrest a current mayor for sexual harassment.\n\nA fucking $512m cut to the University of Puerto Rico.\n\nThe federal fiscal overlook board. A non-elected board of corporate puppets who basically have total control of our finances.",
"Because for the longest time irresponsible Puerto Rican politicians kept issuing bonds to fill holes in their budget. These bonds were seen as attractive since they weren't taxed the same since PR wasn't a state. Also PR also has government owned corporations running up massive debt, like its electric company.\n\nThe only forseeable solutions are privitization schemes and cuts to social programs and that's what people are angry about.",
"**$70 billion debt**\n\n**Government denies to audit said debt.**\n\n**In the last two months it was proposed a $300, then $450, then $512, then $241 million budget cut to the University of Puerto Rico (budget has been frozen for years), but now it is up to the Federal Fiscal Control Board to decide on the true fiscal plan for the institution.**\n\n**Project 938, a series of new laws and amendments to labor laws:**\n\n > * The most significant amendment corresponds to the public employees' health plan, which will not be altered until July 1, 2018... The original bill (Act 4 of 2017 that was done in January IIRC) stated that the contribution of corporations to employee health insurance would be $100.\n\n > * The project reduces vacation leave from 30 to 15 days.\n\n > * The Christmas Bonus cap will be $600.\n\n > * The sick leave days will henceforth be 12 days for government employees who began on February 4th of this year, when Act No. 8 was passed. It remains 18 days for workers who are already working in the government.\n\n > * Overtime work will be paid in half.\n\n > * This bill does not apply to the magisterium or the police.\n\n* Among others...\n\n[Source on Proyect 938](_URL_0_). Note the webpage is in Spanish, so ready a translating software. "
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3qr5af | what happens when a lithium battery "explodes"? what chemical process takes part when this rare event happens. an example would be an electronic cigarette exploding a user. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3qr5af/eli5_what_happens_when_a_lithium_battery_explodes/ | {
"a_id": [
"cwhmu71"
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"score": [
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"text": [
"There are 2 conductors in the battery, and a separating layer to keep those 2 from touching each other. When something happens and they come in contact, the battery is effectively shorted and there is a high current flowing through the conductors, which generates more heat than the battery can handle. The chemicals inside heat up, they release gasses, which cause the battery to expand and eventually burst. When the hot chemicals, which are flammable by the way, are exposed to air and therefore O2, fun happens."
]
} | []
| []
| [
[]
]
|
||
157x1u | - why aren't people who are caught lying under oath on courtroom tv shows arrested? | I've seen episodes of Judge Judy and such where folks are caught red-handed in lies. Aren't they under oath? Why are they not prosecuted?
EDIT - thanks, folks. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/157x1u/elif_why_arent_people_who_are_caught_lying_under/ | {
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"text": [
"Because those aren't real court shows. Shows like The Peoples Court and Judge Judy are arbitration shows. Basically both sides decide that they will give the power to decide who wins the case the a 3rd party and accept the out come. Those shows don't depict actual courtrooms at all. ",
"They're TV shows. Lying in court is [perjury](_URL_0_) and is illegal in most countries, lying on TV isn't.",
"Even if it was in an actual court, I would think that one caught lying would have to be formally charged with perjury and in most cases it's so minor that it's not worth pursuing.",
"On a similar note, what about actual jury trials where a witness's testimony directly conflicts with the verdict? Wouldn't that mean the jury decided that the witness was not telling the truth?"
]
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| []
| [
[],
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"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perjury"
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[],
[]
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|
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3k475n | why are you so much stronger while exhaling? | When squatting or benching, it's always important to pay attention to your breathing, since you get most of your strength while exhaling. Why is this? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3k475n/eli5_why_are_you_so_much_stronger_while_exhaling/ | {
"a_id": [
"cuun9pv"
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"score": [
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"text": [
"It's not that you're stronger when exhaling. Your core muscles tighten when you lift something heavy. Your abs tighten, your pecs tighten, and your back muscles tighten, all in an effort to keep your torso upright and strain against the weight whatever is in your hands.\n\nIf they didn't tighten your body, regardless of how strong your arms are, would fold up because it'd have no structural support from the muscles.\n\nWhen your muscles tighten they contract, which makes them smaller. When your abs, back, and pec muscles contract they make your chest cavity smaller. The lungs are in the chest cavity so your lungs are squished and air is forced out.\n\nYou can try to keep your lungs inflated, but that costs your body the ability to contract certain muscle groups, which means you can't lift as much because the other muscles groups have to take up the load of the muscles not being allowed to contract. That makes your working muscles fatigue faster and prevents you from lifting as much.\n\nAlso, if you don't breath out (by maybe keeping your mouth shut and not exhaling through your nose) the muscles tightening around your lungs can actually cause you real harm. That's pretty unlikely if you're not a professional body builder, but it's a danger all the same.\n\nSo when you lift, take a deep breath before hand, exhale while lifting, and then breath once you're static or after you put the weight down."
]
} | []
| []
| [
[]
]
|
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2tpjfb | why is it that every ufc fight seems to be a title fight and every fighter is a champion with a really impressive win to loss ratio? | It just doesn't add up to me :s | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2tpjfb/eli5_why_is_it_that_every_ufc_fight_seems_to_be_a/ | {
"a_id": [
"co1697p"
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"score": [
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"text": [
"The UFC has around 500 fighters on it's payroll iirc. These fighters are then split into 11 different weight classes (9 for the men, 2 for the women).\n\nWomen's Strawweight (up to 115lbs)- Champion: Carla Esparza 10-2-0\n\nFlyweight (115 - 125lbs) - Champion: Demetrious Johnson 21-2-1\n\nWomen's Bantamweight (125 -135lbs) - Champion: Ronda Rousey 10-0-0\n\nMen's Bantamweight (125 135lbs) - Champion: T.J. Dillashaw 11-2-0\n\nFeatherweight (135 - 145lbs) - Champion: Jose Aldo 25-1-0\n\nLightweight (145 - 155lbs) - Champion: Anthony Pettis 18-2-0\n\nWelterweight (155 - 170lbs) - Champion: Robbie Lawler 25-10-1\n\nMiddleweight (170 - 185lbs) - Champion: Chris Weidman 12-0-0\n\nLight Heavyweight (185 - 205lbs) - Champion: Jon Jones 21-1-0\n\nHeavyweight (205 - 265lbs) - Champion: Cain Velasquez 13-1-0\n\nAs there as so many fighters in so many different weight classes title fights are sure to come around fairly often. Champions are also \"forced\" to continually set up their next title defence pretty much as soon as their last fight is over as the UFC holds their contract pretty much dictates who they will face next. This is in contrast to the self-promotion and fight scheduling of other combat sports, namely boxing, where fighters have a much larger say in who/where/when they will fight and are surrounded by their own marketing and legal teams. Just look at the Mayweather-Pacquiao contractual wrangling as a recent example. In the UFC, with most of the worlds elite MMA athletes all under the supervision of one promotion there is always someone new to fight.\n\nAs for the really impressive win records, they're champions for a reason I suppose and the UFC is the elite tier of MMA. In general, the UFC operates a 3-strike policy i.e. if you lose 3 in a row, you're out. This isn't set in stone or anything, guys have went on 5 or 6 fight slides and still kept their contracts due to these losses being seen as bad decisions, close calls, freak occurences, or whatever. To survive in the UFC you need wins, if you don't have them then you'll probably be fighting in the smaller promotions (Belator, WSOF, Cage Warriors) until the UFC comes calling again."
]
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| []
| [
[]
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|
|
4ff6zw | the recent (writhing 2 years) scottish secession attempts from the uk. | Why would Scotland want to secede? Wouldn't it weaken the overall economy/standard of living for those Scots who live there? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4ff6zw/eli5_the_recent_writhing_2_years_scottish/ | {
"a_id": [
"d28j40b"
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"score": [
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"text": [
"As explained [here,](_URL_0_) the reasons were largely cultural. It was widely understood that in terms of economic prosperity and international power, independence would be a negative."
]
} | []
| []
| [
[
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scottish_independence#Reasons"
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|
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3n9hzg | why is the united states virgin islands the only place under u.s. jurisdiction that drives on the left side of the road? | In my own opinion, it just seems so weird and....un-American....to drive on the left like what Australia and the UK do. (Sorry I had to say that, USVI citizens) | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3n9hzg/eli5_why_is_the_united_states_virgin_islands_the/ | {
"a_id": [
"cvm1sfr"
],
"score": [
2
],
"text": [
"The U.S. Virgin Islands were purchased from Denmark in 1917 (as the \"Danish West Indies\"), and people already drove on the left at that time. Curiously, the people of Denmark proper have driven on the right since 1793.\n\nSome basic research suggests that there is uncertainty about why the Danish West Indies drove on the left, but some have attributed it to British influence, or simply to the fact that most colonies in the Americas habitually rode on the left until the right become standardized around the beginning of the 19th century."
]
} | []
| []
| [
[]
]
|
|
443lqa | why is there a 50/50 chance my packages are never delivered? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/443lqa/eli5_why_is_there_a_5050_chance_my_packages_are/ | {
"a_id": [
"czn76qk"
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"text": [
"Without knowing more about your situation the most obvious explanation I have is that the senders don't realize that they have to ship packages USPS instead of UPS or FedEx so when they send out the package it gets brought to their local hub, the hub notices its an APO address or the like, slap a RTS on it and back it goes.\n\ntl;dr Shipper ignorance."
]
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| []
| [
[]
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|
||
38wsip | what would happen if lightning struck my house while i was in the shower? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/38wsip/eli5_what_would_happen_if_lightning_struck_my/ | {
"a_id": [
"cryhnbv"
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"text": [
"Unless your shower has a constant, uninterrupted, stream of water you're pretty safe. The system we use for electricity demands a direct path to ground that's very likely going to be the path the lightning will take. \n\nYour house is more likely to catch fire from the bolt than you are to be electrocuted in the shower. "
]
} | []
| []
| [
[]
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|
||
7fsfz3 | how does thyroid malfunction make a person fat? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7fsfz3/eli5_how_does_thyroid_malfunction_make_a_person/ | {
"a_id": [
"dqe3d3y",
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"text": [
" > How does Thyroid Malfunction make a person fat?\n\nThe thyroid produces hormones which regulate the body's metabolism. Our metabolism is the rate at which we burn our fuel, our food, in order to power the processes of our body. You can think of it as the fuel pump in an engine, if the metabolism is high then more fuel than normal is being pumped into the engine's cylinders.\n\nIf the thyroid malfunctions and stops producing hormones like it should then the body doesn't burn as much energy and there is fuel left over to be turned into fat.",
"Thanks for asking. I had(have) to take immunotherapy and my bloodwork shows consistently low activity. My immune system seems to have possibly killed my thyroid glands(?). \n\nMy doctor and I have been having conversations surrounding this topic. \n\nI have been increasingly short fused and tired (similar to the sapping energy of having adult mono sometimes). "
]
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[],
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|
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5odbtd | what's the best way to sit at a desk for long periods of time? | [deleted] | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5odbtd/eli5_whats_the_best_way_to_sit_at_a_desk_for_long/ | {
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"text": [
"Supported chair back (roughly 90 deg) with a head rest allowing you to lean slightly back, relaxing your back and neck muscles. Arms dropping straight down to elbowrests, and your wrists resting on a support just above the keyboard (letting your fingers drop down to the keys). Legs at 90 deg to the body, with knees resting just past the seat and allowing the feet to drop naturally to a flat position.\n\nOverall, very difficult to do because of fixed desk height, but you can probably fudge it with some lifts under your keyboard.\n\nOh, and an important point is to make sure you're looking slightly down and straight ahead at your primary monitor (~10 deg declination).",
"Short answer: Whatever way is comfortable for you.\n\nLonger answer: I generally recommend that people don't sit in the exact same manner for too long. Don't sit too long upright, or too long slouched or too long reclined/supported by back/head-rest or too long on a ball chair. And don't sit too long period. You may still have an 8-10 hour work day, but plan on about 1-1.5 hours total of that work day that you are not sitting (including your lunch break, sit to eat, but walk some, too). Sitting isn't as bad as it it's made out to be, as long as you give your body variations.\n\nOne of the most important mechanical pieces I believe is to make sure your hip joints are level or just a little higher than your knees. Sitting (as in a bucket seat in a typical car) with your knees higher than your hips makes it very difficult to sit on your \"sit bones\" (sit on your hands and feel the bony \"sit bones\"). Vary your position on these sit bones. One way to do this is with a [inflated disc](_URL_0_). Sit on the disc for a while...when you feel like you've had enough of the disc, remove it and sit on your regular chair. Switch between the two occasionally, with regular (2-3x per hour) breaks to stand up and walk around a bit."
]
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[],
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"http://a.co/9dvEGql"
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df1kyq | what psychological glitch is at play when someone wont believe someone is a compulsive liar when it is obvious to almost anyone else? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/df1kyq/eli5_what_psychological_glitch_is_at_play_when/ | {
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"text": [
"Talking with confidence is often a very persuasive technique and if pulled off right, anyone can believe anything you say.",
"If you have already spent a considerable amount of time believing this person you don't want to think of yourself as the fool.",
"The phrase you're seeking is [cognitive dissonance](_URL_0_).\n\nTo summarize, we get vaguely uncomfortable when an observation of the world (e.g. a claim that Bob did an action we associate with \"bad people\") clashes with our existing beliefs of the world (e.g. I know Bob and consider Bob a good person and have defended him in the past). What happens next depends on how wired you are to make decisions based on what makes you fearful or uncomfortable.\n\nThe logical thing to do would be to analyze not only the new information that makes us uncomfortable, but the assumptions that are equally responsible for the stressed feeling. If we find the claim against Bob credible and reason that our desire to defend him is based on the positive feeling we had defending him previously, and the fear we now have that those past defenses were incorrect, then we might decide to accept the new claim and reject our previous reasoning.\n\nHowever, we're generally wired to favor those assumptions over new evidence, primarily as a survival tactic. (It's similar to our tendency to form tribes and protect them from an \"other \".) So, what happens in such a situation is that our tendency is to take the most direct mental path to end the disparity between observation and assumption. This, unfortunately, often means a tendency to reject the observation, possibly by inventing unobserved information that *does not exist* but, we conclude, *must* exist, because the alternative would mean that our assumptions are wrong. If we're wired to respond more to fear and discomfort, or this assumption is a deep, core belief, the tendency is reinforced.\n\nSo we decide the person accusing Bob *must be* faking it for their benefit, even though we can clearly see that they are troubled by sharing their story and losing social standing, even personal safety, by sharing it. Assumptions trump observations because they're valued more strongly.\n\nAn easy way to identify that this may be occurring when discussing a subject with someone is to pick up on how discomforting the discussion is for them. They likely have a strong opinion, but discussing it beyond swatting away the first or second observation that contradicts their assumptions becomes extremely uncomfortable, often in a way they don't notice. They switch tactics: changing the subject, attacking the speaker presenting contrary observations, or attempting to shut down the entire discussion (\"let me have my opinion\" or some such plea). They may concede the absolute minimum observation that allows them to exit the conversation while retaining the maximum amount of their assumptions. (Deciding there was \"bad choices on both sides,\" for example.)\n\nIf there was a fix for this, we could solve a great deal of the rift in current discussions across a variety of topics. The best advice I've seen is to be a person who lives a life of observation and pursuit of truth. Share observations and encourage their discussion. Don't throw in your assumptions unless relevant, and make them clear: they are your assumptions *and they are subject to change*.\n\nNote that this is sufficiently hard-wired that some people are predisposed to make value judgements against people who challenge their assumptions too harshly. You may actually have to choose between living a life of pursuing observable truth, and their support."
]
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8yfgzx | why is high-caliber ammunition (such as .45 and up) more common and accessible in handguns and pistols than in rifles? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8yfgzx/eli5_why_is_highcaliber_ammunition_such_as_45_and/ | {
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"Long narrow rifle cartridges would not easily fit into a compact handgun. (Picture the depth of a pistol grip with that deep magazine inside.) Preference: shorter and wider.\n\nMeanwhile, a rifle barrel is long, so when you make one high-caliber (wider) it gets pretty heavy. And the magazine is not inside the pistol grip so length isn't a problem. Preference: long and narrow.",
"One of the more common metrics of measuring a bullet's power is by it's ft/lbs of energy. Handguns in general use lower powered cartridges so a wider bullet allows for more mass, to increase that energy at lower velocities. Rifle cartridges have larger case sizes for bigger powder charges so you can have smaller diameter bullet that is able to travel at higher velocity with a lot of energy behind it. ",
"Two reasons.\n\nOne: long cartridges don't fit well inside the grip part of a handgun.\n\nTwo: short, fat cartridges with heavy bullets are generally designed to burn faster to take better advantage of shorter handgun barrels. Rifles have longer barrels, so their longer cartridges with less massive bullets can be made to burn longer but end up accelerating to a faster speed once they leave the long barrel.\n\nBasically, if you can't make your bullet go fast, you should at least make it bug and heavy to partially make up for it."
]
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3vmint | why do people like or enjoy things which are painful or scary? | From roller coasters to bdsm, what's the deal with this? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3vmint/eli5_why_do_people_like_or_enjoy_things_which_are/ | {
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"text": [
"Endorphins that are released by the brain from pain have opiate qualities and risk seeking behaviors can be rewarding in similar ways.",
"Pain, and perhaps fear as well, causes the release of neurochemicals known as endorphins. These chemicals act on the same receptor system in your body and your brain as do opiate drugs, so they are sometimes called endoopioids. Their function is to reduce pain, calm you down, and make you feel good - in fact the are the same neurochemicals released when you orgasm. That's why people enjoy things like roller coasters and BDSM, because the combination of pain, fear, and other feelings and emotions trigger a bodily response that makes you feel better, especially when those things don't actually put you in serious danger.",
"We need to be scared just like we need to be happy. It exercises the mind. We live in a society where fear is somewhat of an afterthought. We have a roof over our heads and locks on our doors. Fear has kept humans alive for millions of years but it is not used as often in today's civilization. However, fear still needs to be felt just as much as happiness, pain, jealousy, etc. Movies and fantasy gives us an outlet to feel terror so it can release from our bodies. "
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aq4lps | why it feels like you dont have any force in your muscles when newly woken from sleep? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/aq4lps/eli5_why_it_feels_like_you_dont_have_any_force_in/ | {
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"text": [
"Never finding any articles on this, but I heard once that while you're asleep you're body increases a type of chemical that numbs your muscles, and that is supposedly because your body does not want to accidentally hit itself too hard and hurt itself while asleep.\n\n & #x200B;",
"Honestly I have heard it’s like you are waking up too early. Essentially you take a shortcut from deep sleep to immediately being awake. This [article]_URL_0_ kind of explains it better.\n\nEdit: sorry for formatting on mobile and spelling.",
"When you are in REM sleep, the brain is very active and you experience this as dreams. During this phase the motor neurons (that normally send signals to your muscles) sort of switch off to stop you from kicking and thrashing. The chemical that blocks the motor neurons can take a while to wear off so the signals going to your muscles may be weaker in the meantime. "
]
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[],
[
"https://www.your.md/condition/sleep-paralysis/#chapter-key-information"
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[]
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||
8ee00i | why are chilli peppers widely used in asian cuisine (indian, thai, chinese, korean), but barely used in european cuisine? | As far as I know, chillis were introduced to Asia by Europeans, after which they became widespread in Asian cooking, but never really seem to have featured in any European cuisines? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8ee00i/eli5_why_are_chilli_peppers_widely_used_in_asian/ | {
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"text": [
"Simply put, hot food is an acquired taste, but once you like it you want more spicy food. The Europeans didn’t like the chili, but began to trade it to Asian countries, who began to like the taste and use them in their cooking. I found this in paragraph 7 of [this article](_URL_0_) in case I messed up.",
"For a different part of the answer, [here’s](_URL_0_) an interesting article from NPR on how spicy food got turned into a “low class” and undesirable thing in Europe. Basically it sounds like as more and more spices came to Europe because of colonialism for spices, they became widely available and therefore associated with the common people. Once it was no longer a sign of status, spices apparently went more out of style. ",
"One thing that should also be mentioned is the history of haute cuisine. The modern restaurant, as well as the idea that fancy European cuisine is French or inspired by French cuisine, dates from the early 19th century. At the time, many aesthetic symbols of wealth and power were becoming unpopular, in part because they didn't denote the elite as much as they used to (spices becoming more affordable, as others here have mentioned), but also because elaborate and heavily spiced dishes were closely associated with aristocracy and court styles of cooking. \n\nJust as the bold colors, ruffles, bows, powdered wigs, high heels, and huge skirts of the 18th century gave way to Neoclassical styles of dress after the French Revolution, there was a similar revolution in cuisine as the heavily spiced feasts of court banquets gave way to the modern restaurant that catered to the bourgeoisie and more simple elegant flavors. The 19th century is when you start seeing the French mother sauces (none of which are heavily spiced), for example. This was all happening just as chili peppers began to appear in Europe*, so by the time European elites were beginning to eschew strong flavors and exotic ingredients there may simply not have been enough time for chili peppers to catch on.\n\n*Yes, Columbus discovered the Americas in 1492, but a lot of foods, especially things that were not obviously attractive to Europeans, didn't catch on in European cuisine for centuries after that. Both the potato and the tomato were considered unfit for human consumption for a long time in Europe, for example.",
"You eat what you have. Chili peppers grow much more readily in hot environments, so they end up in food more. Even if they didn't grow there immediately, it was easy to trade for them. That's the basis for traditional cuisines. I mean, frogs and snails? The French must have had a ton of them and been pretty hungry. \n\nTastes, or rather culinary cultural normal, also take a long time to change and are colored by class stigmas and racism. Even when super spicy stuff became available, it just wasn't popular among the dominant average Joe of many European nations. Chinese food in, say, Sweden is soul crushingly boring and unspicy because the people who cook the food are selling it to swedes, who tend to like soul crushingly unspicy foods. \n\nIn the United States and in other cosmopolitan places, there are enough people who like different things - diversity - that the cooks can cook for people like them as their primary customers. As a result, the food is cooked to Asian tastes primarily and white people acclimate to the cuisine instead of the other way around because the cooks and restaurants aren't dependent on white people buying their food to stay open and make money."
]
} | []
| []
| [
[
"http://content.time.com/time/specials/2007/article/0,28804,1628191_1626317_1632291,00.html"
],
[
"https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2015/03/26/394339284/how-snobbery-helped-take-the-spice-out-of-european-cooking"
],
[],
[]
]
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|
4onte4 | what's the difference between the new hypothesis of "dark energy", and the old hypothesis of the luminiferous aether? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4onte4/eli5_whats_the_difference_between_the_new/ | {
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"text": [
"Quite a few things. The ether was a material that was supposed to support light waves, allowing them to propagate, and had no other role. \"Dark energy\" is related to the expansion rate of the universe, and its supposed matter-energy content. Current calculations show that Dark energy accounts for ~70% of the total energy content of the Universe -- so it does, apparently, exist, but we don't know what it is yet.\n\nPut another way, Dark energy is about a gap between how we see the Universe working and what we can account for. Ether was, at the time, a reasonable idea (waves, it seems, need something material to \"wave\" in), but ended up with no experimental support."
]
} | []
| []
| [
[]
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|
||
2dvg85 | air-frying | What's the difference between this and baking? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2dvg85/eli5_airfrying/ | {
"a_id": [
"cjtgmv6"
],
"score": [
3
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"text": [
"An air fryer uses super heated circulating air to rapidly \"fry\" what ever is in it. Whereas baking slowly heats food. There are many foods that need to be gently prepared via slow and steady heating, cakes, ribs, etc... The air fryer is to harsh for such foods."
]
} | []
| []
| [
[]
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|
|
2jmkuj | how much profit are bottled water companies making? is the water going through treatments, or are they just getting water from a more pure location? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2jmkuj/eli5_how_much_profit_are_bottled_water_companies/ | {
"a_id": [
"cld3es0"
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"score": [
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"text": [
"In 2012, DS Services Holdings, Inc. one of the large bottled water companies took in $894 Million. They spent $358 Million to create the products. That left $536 Million is gross profit. But, they spent that profit on salaries, advertising and other expenses of doing business. In the end, they lost $1 Million."
]
} | []
| []
| [
[]
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|
||
41e500 | social welfare and health care in the us | Hello ELI5.
I'm from Denmark and i was wondering how social welfare and health care actually works in the US. The impression of the american welfare system is very negative here, and i would like to hear it from people who lives there, instead.
Example questions:
What happens if you can't find a job and have no savings?
What about those permanently outside of the work force, like the disabled?
What about pension?
What happens if you get too old to work, but have no money for your pension?
What about liability insurance?
What about health care? Is health insurance usually something you pay for yourself, or get through your job? What happens if you get sick and have no health insurance? Let's say you get cancer and have no health insurance, what happens?
| explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/41e500/eli5_social_welfare_and_health_care_in_the_us/ | {
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"The US has a wide variety of temporary and permanent programs. Several of the largest are structured under our government pension system (Social Security Disability) or as a tax credit (to provide help to people who earn some money via work). Many smaller programs provide assistance to find food, healthcare, or housing (many of these are designed as federal money that goes to state goverments who administer them--so there can be variance in how each state program works). \n\nIn general, US social welfare programs are less generous than European programs, but the difference is likely smaller than popular opinions views them. For example,\n\n > [Only one nation (Norway) spends more per person than the U.S. spends.](_URL_0_) ",
"Others have explained that the US has a vast social safety net. I think it is also important to note that according to the Better Life Index America's bottom 10% do quit well and sometimes surpass the top 10% of European nations.\n\nSource: _URL_0_\n\nThe key point to remember is that there are a lot of politics at play here. There is a large income disparity between the wealthy and poor in the US and one of the two major political party platforms to raise taxes and give more to the poor. The other party says they more or less already get enough. Our media tends to be liberal and agrees we should be doing more which is probably why Europe gets the impression that our poor do not receive assistance. ",
"\"What happens if you can't find a job and have no savings?\"\n\nDepends. If you're a woman with dependents then there are welfare programs. If you're a single man then you end up on the street or reliant on family or charity. There's also welfare available for them but its not as abundant. \n\n\"What about those permanently outside of the work force, like the disabled?\"\n\nIf they're genuinely disabled then they can get disability benefits as well as medicaid, food stamps, and possibly other welfare. What you get in disability benefits is going to depend on what you were earning while working. \n\n\"What about pension? What happens if you get too old to work, but have no money for your pension?\"\n\nYou can start drawing social security when you're 62. \n\n\"What about liability insurance?\"\n\nWhat about it? Its not required. \n\n\"What about health care? Is health insurance usually something you pay for yourself, or get through your job?\"\n\nBoth. I think something like 2/3s get it through their job. \n\n\"What happens if you get sick and have no health insurance? Let's say you get cancer and have no health insurance, what happens?\"\n\nIf you're destitute then you can get medicaid for something like that. If you have a job and no insurance then traditionally you were kind of screwed but now with the ACA you can buy subsidized insurance or possibly get medicaid. \n\nI guess the thing to note about the US welfare system is that its weak and full of holes. And it doesn't provide much help for people with temporary setbacks. If you lose your job you get $400/wk in unemployment for 26 weeks and you might have to go without health insurance for a while. But there are certainly ways for people to spend most of their life on the dole."
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[
"http://dailysignal.com/2015/09/19/us-spends-far-more-on-social-welfare-than-most-european-nations/"
],
[
"http://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2013/06/01/astonishing-numbers-americas-poor-still-live-better-than-most-of-the-rest-of-humanity/#5a1b401d23c4c4dc2523c457"
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20uopg | why school systems don't divide students based on ability rather than age | Edit: so many karmas but no karma added :( thanks for all the great responses and front page! | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/20uopg/eli5_why_school_systems_dont_divide_students/ | {
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"Schools are stuck in the ideals of the Industrial Age: kids sit in rows until bells ring like factory workers and they get summer breaks to help work the fields. ",
"Because they're lazy.\n\nAlso, because a lot of development happens that isn't pure cognitive, so grouping a genius 13-year-old with idiot 16-year-olds doesn't work well.\n\nLarger and better-funded schools will split years up for some classes (\"special needs\" vs. \"honors science classes\") but will rarely move students out of their year group.",
"In my opinion it's because they don't want kids to feel bad. If a senior in highschool is not as good at algebra as the rest of his class and hes put in a class with 8th graders or freshman that will make them feel bad about themselves.",
"They already do to an extent; most honors and AP classes will have students from a couple different grade levels. \n \nHowever, the reason that this isn't done all the time is because school isn't purely for academic learning. It is also important to learn social skills too. For school age children, there is lots of growth between each year. It would be harmful for a 14 year old to spend the entire day around 12 year olds just because he isn't good at schoolwork.",
"Well most teachers have year long curriculum and it's hard to tell at the beginning of each year exactly where to place a student. \n\nSchool districts are way to lazy to try to determine exactly where each student belongs and are underfunded to break into enough subsets to promote the learning necessary. Just because a kid in 2nd grade is smarter than 5th graders deosn't mean he's ready to jump to 6th grade the next year as he will miss some instruction forever. Also putting old dumb kids with young bright kids is a great way to promote ridiculous bullying.\n\nIn a perfect world You would change classes every month based on performance and never miss any instruction where eventually the brightest 1000 students will all go to the same high school",
"Welcome to many country's school systems besides America. You have to test into the schools starting from grade 1 in countries such as China, Korea, and Japan. Personally I love this system, students are on pace with their fellow peers, and no one should be held back because of other students. But you know.. no child left behind, too many people would complain about it being \"unfair\"\n\nEdit:Minor word\n\nEdit2: I love the downvotes, this is what our school system produces. Ignorance about our education system.",
"Dutch highschools do this.",
"That was normal for American schools until about 25 years ago, though not usually age separation, but separating students in a single class by ability. The system worked well and there was upward and downward mobility, so if geometry suddenly clicked with little Tommy, he could move to a more advanced group.\n\nThis allowed the teacher to focus more on struggling children while giving the other children more self directed work. Rather than see the increased teacher time as a benefit, parents of the struggling children saw the groupings as an insult and non-stop bitching eventually ended the practice. Now the only way to advance better students is to move them to advanced classes, which many schools lack the funds to offer.\n\nEDIT: When I say class, I mean a class room. These were groups of 5 or 6 kids, not honors and remedial classes.",
"Studies in psychology an education have shown that keeping students with varying abilities is actually better for both high and low ability students for various reasons. Also, school isn't just about academics, it's about learning social and life skills. These are better learned with other same-age peers.",
"It may be different for other schools, but, I attend a high school in California and while we are part of a certain grade and do prom and rallies with our grade, we are divided into each class that we are up to. For example, I'm in AP European History and Pre-AP English while a good majority of my class is in regular history or regular English classes and the opposite is true because some are in advanced science classes while I'm in regular Chemistry. \n\nAnother good example is our CAHSEE (High School exit exam). We took it today, but, as I'm in advanced classes, they put me in a special room with other advanced kids because we finish earlier than our fellow students who are not in advanced classes. \n\nThose students advanced enough can also graduate early if they want to but there are downsides to this because you can't walk the stage with those you've attend school with since kindergarten. ",
"A lot of countries outside of the United States do this. For example in Germany all students are kept together until the 4th grade. Following the fourth grade, students are divided into three different schools. The \"lowest\" being the Hauptschule which focuses on apprenticeship and a slower learning environment. Then there is the Realschule, which is the \"middle\" learning school. This school often leads to vocational training. Students at the top of the Realschule are sometimes able to join the Gymnasium after graduation which is the \"top\" level. Students in Gymnasium are somewhat focused on a specific track such as language or science and graduate with an Abitur and most will go on to the university to study.",
"The purpose is socialization and cultural indoctrination. If schooling was solely about academic education then the pacing would be ability based.\n\nAs recently as the 50s this was the practice in much of the American school system (single room schools). It was effective at bringing students up to academic readiness but did not meet the socialization requirements being pushed on the school system.\n\nIf you want extensive background on this I highly recommend starting with John Taylor Gatto's work on the subject:\n\n_URL_0_",
"Inner city schoolteacher here:\n\nThere needs to be more divisions into ability groups, certainly, and it is not the case where I teach. It is the state or district's procedure that a student can only be held back a grade if the parent approves and signs off--and most often they don't approve because it's more important for them to have their student with their friends. Social promotion, they call it. It leads to us getting a large number of woefully unprepared students into the middle school. I've had 8th graders who can't read.\n\nWe literally cannot hold students back when they need it. (No child left behind, my eye) In high school, we are able to hold them back without the parent's approval, but by then, they're in a \"credits earned\" situation where they are still generally with their peers anyway, but are in whatever class they need to be in for four years until they either meet the bare minimum of ridiculously-lowered requirements or drop out. ",
"Has nobody talked about Montessori schools yet?",
"Former high school teacher. In a perfect world, we would teach kids that the best form of learning is to COOPERATE, and for them to teach their peers and learn from their peers. Then when students of all ability levels are dispersed in any given classroom, the weaker would learn from the stronger. But instead we teach children that the best form of learning is to COMPETE, and that requires a zero sum game. When students of all ability levels are dispersed in any given classroom, the weaker have to fail so the strong can succeed. I know that's kind of the \"unicorns and rainbows\" way of looking at it, but I always remember the horrified looks of the \"smart\" kids in my classes when they found out I assigned group work where every member of a group received the same grade. I told them, \"help each other, solve problems and work it out.\" It left them baffled. I can't imagine using that approach in 2014--I'd probably get fired.",
"I don't know but I do know that it screwed me over. I was the smart kid and every class I was in was much too easy. But being the kid who screws the curve on tests without trying not only pisses off the other kids in your class which isn't great for making friends but it also doesn't motivate me to learn how to learn which screwed me over in college when I actually needed those skills I was never forced to develop ",
"Ability is a narrow parameter. So is age you can argue. The key objective of any school is not just developing the students through information and knowledge but also helping them develop life skills through the curriculum. The one who's low on 'academics' might be high on life skills and vice versa. The real experience is in the opportunity to mingle and work together with students of different abilities and also at different levels of life skills. Age is the closest you can get to having a leveller. ",
"Because quantifying intelligence is extremely subjective. You can't simply define one's ability and divide them accordingly. Like Einstein once said, paraphrased, if you judge a fish's ability to climb a tree, it's going to live its whole life thinking that it's stupid. In other words, not everyone is smart in the same way. So to divide based on ability would require a system to objectify what ability is. Therefore, it is divided by age so that each class consists of many different intelligences. To an extent, you have APs, IBs, and honors to further clarify ability only in \"school smarts.\"",
"A lot of the current western education system was born out of the industrial revolution, when the shift from work-from-home-tradesmen to work-away-in-a-factory created the need for a combo child-care/education system. Many of the emerging philosophies of industry were applied in its creation. Think of the education system as a massive factory made to produce workers, children go through an assembly line of grades, and pop out the other end ready to join the workforce.\n\nNow, the problem with a nationwide system involving thousands and thousands of people is that change is slow moving, and with all the bureaucracy in the way, any informed changes tend to get distorted along the way. So not a lot of effective change ever really takes place, even if there are substantiated arguments for ability based sorting.",
"That's actually something that is starting to be talked about. With the varying social levels, maturity, and intelligence it only makes sense. \n\nWhen I give a class an assignment, 50% take the time they are supposed to with some clarifying questions, 25% finish incredibly quickly and can handle more, and 25% really take their time and need more remedial help. It is a struggle everyday. \n\nSource: I teach high school and go to a lot of teacher conferences. ",
"I actually do this for a living... The answer is demographics. If you have to divvy up 20000 kids into 50 schools, it's much easier to consider objective factors such as geography and age than subjective ability. Public school boards must address administrative concerns and budgets (such as transportation) while ensuring equal access and opportunity for every student. \n",
"I went to a school like this--it's called an essential school. basically, it was nice to learn at my own pace, but it's difficult not to put a \"norm\" on ability--sure, some kids took a year to pass math, some took three, but MOST took two, and if you took three it was hard not to feel stupid. ",
"Good lord. Imagine the asian parents...",
"Because K-12 schools have absolutely nothing to do with learning. Their only purpose is to ensure that the cattle know how to be herded.",
"Schools have little incentive to maximize learning. They have every incentive to do what is easy and logistically convenient. Age grouping makes it very easy to calculate how many of each teacher you will need next year, how many books to order, etc.\n\nSchool districts are massive, complex operations. No one is going to add complexity unless it is strictly necessary. The reality is that most of these big systemic decisions in education are made for the benefit of the adults running the system, not the children.",
"It seems like a lot of people in this thread are thinking solely of secondary education and forgetting completely about primary education. \n\nA 2-year age difference (say, 8th grade and 10th grade) is, while significant, not as significant in secondary schools as it is in the primary years. A 2-year gap in elementary school can literally mean the difference between a child who can read a chapter book and write complete sentences and a child who might not even be aware of his/her surname, let alone write it. \n\nIn California, lots of public schools have something called transitional kindergarten, for those students born on the cusp (they'd be older than the rest of their class if parents held them back a year, but much younger if they turned five while in kindergarten). Think about it: the social and emotional developmental needs of this age group are discrete enough that a state already in significant debt felt it was warranted to publicly fund specifically targeted educational programming. There is a huge debate over what to do with these kids in states where transitional kinder does not exist. For every bit of research which supports holding them back because they're not mature enough to enter kindergarten, there's research which suggests that they should be pushed into an older group of students so as to not remain intellectually latent for a year. \n\nAs for dividing students by ability/age, I can definitely see the argument for it (especially within age bands, e.g., 11-13 year olds). However, to make this logistically feasible, you need an extremely low teacher-student ratio so as to allow for the greatest flexibility in scheduling, not to mention the tech/HR capital to support the scheduling operations (which would likely be a nightmare). And we all know how much money people are willing to throw at public schools. ",
"I work at a private school that does this. It's functioning poorly.\n\n-Older students that are below level do not perform in a class with younger students. The social pressure they feel causes them to withdraw as much as they can.\n\n-Younger students do not feel motivated to learn in a class with oder students. \n\n-You have all of the social problems (drinking, drugs, sex) that are present in the upper grades finding thier way into the younger students. \n\nPutting kids that are more than a couple years apart is a mistake.",
"Theres the Social skills aspect to it of course but often the major player in that decision is the parents. Parents dont want to have their kid held back by their lesser abilities, theyre often pushing the Social skills aspect and insist their child be bumped along (which eventually forces students into states of stress/being ignored by the system). Of course these parents would immediately change their mind once their child becomes the smart child and finds their grade beneath their skill set. \n\n- Teacher in Training in Alberta",
"As a teacher, because the parents will literally begin shooting people. \n\nI am not fucking around here. Parents are actually insane. ",
"They used to have tracking when I went to school, starting in the 7th grade. It was awesome. Track 1 for the dumb kids, track 4 for the smart kids. If you were a smart kid, you could learn and not be held back by people who didn't belong in the same class as you.\n\nThat's the perspective from a track 4 student. From a track 1 student, it was less positive. You bomb one test and you're screwed for the rest of your life. Also, there will be way more black and Hispanic kids in track one and more white and way more Asian kids in track 4. So, it's very easy to call it racist and to have lots of data to support that. \n\nIt's also similar to putting all the poor people in a housing project rather than putting small chunks of section 8 in better neighborhoods. It gets rid of the \"problem\" which is that it keeps dumb/poor people away from the rest but it ultimately leads to a significantly worse environment for the poor/dumb. \n\nWe've moved from a society that wants to support our smartest students to one that wants to uphold a minimum standard for all our students, hence No Child Left Behind. This hurts the smarter kids but the rich and clever are expected to find their own way, regardless of state sponsored assistance.\n\nSo, basically; the ability way is racist and hurts the lower performing students and that's what we happen to value at this particular point in time. ",
"One word: morale.",
"To some degree they do. There are separate schools for particularly smart, particularly struggling students, and there are streams of education as you get further in. Of course you don't see them or know about them if you're not in them or one of your relatives aren't in those programmes because those kids are kept separately. \n\nBut then the spread between the a bit below average and the bit above average is not really that huge, and in many cases it would be impractical in small places to have many teachers and many small classes. Teachers cost money after all.\n\nKids need to learn to deal with a broad swathe of the real world too. Gifted programmes are particularly bad about preparing kids for the real world where they aren't surrounded by extremely smart, well informed people. And kids who are stupid need to learn that there are people who are smarter than they are, and there are times you should rely on different people for different things. The insular bubble of a classroom can be good and it can be bad. \n",
"In NYC, where I went to school, you had chances to advance to a more advanced junior high school (Hunter) if you passed the test. And for high school, you could take a test to advance to one of the six specialized schools, where your intelligence is similar to the other students. The entire system is publicly funded and you could be a poor student and still make it into one of the better schools. And in between all of that, you can skip a grade if you demonstrated that you're smarter than your actual age. And the opposite was true. You could get left back one grade if you're dumb. And even within the same grade, my elementary school divided students into 3 groups. They grouped all the smart kids together, all the dumb kids together, and all the average kids together for the basic subjects (math, reading, and science).\n\nSo at least in NYC, this system works in favor of one's abilities, and I think it worked out perfectly fine (at least for the smart kids).",
"Because the modern public school system is largely a reflection of 1930s depression-era America, and was designed to put kids in a box just to keep them out of the already-overcrowded workforce, with the primary object of getting adults jobs, rather than educating children. \ntldr; govt doesn't care about your child's growth and development",
"I was in English 2 as a Senior (12th grader) and they most definitely do. I also attended basic english 1 & 2 for two years and it was filled with all grade level students 9-12.",
"to explain in a really simple statement, \n\nage is an easy cheap way to sort students. It can be considered a random factor that most schools use. ",
"The discussion here has some far have been a tad disappointing here so I'm going to focus on why students should be divided based on ability rather than age. But before we move on we need to agree on that;\n\n- All children are creative.\n- All children have a different pace of learning. Curriculum should be individually tailored.\n- All children have talent and potential.\n- The current school system is broken.\n\nNow you may disagree on these sentiments, but for the purposes on this discussion we are going to go ahead and agree with [Sir Ken Robinson](_URL_1_), a renowned educationalist that thinks [that our current school system is horribly out of date and that we need to allow students to develop on their on pace.](_URL_4_)\n\n**What's broken about the system? Or why should we change it?**\n\n- Every education system on earth has the same hierarchy of subjects. At the top are mathematics and languages, then the humanities, and the bottom are the arts. Everywhere on earth. I think you’d have to conclude, if you look at the output, who really succeeds by this, who are the winners, I think you’d have to conclude the whole purpose of public education throughout the world is to produce university professors. But this shouldn't be the case. A child should have the freedom to advance in the area s/he likes, enjoys, is passionate about. Sir Robinson uses the example of Gillian Lynne, who was taught to have a learning disability, only to discover that she was a natural dancer and went on to a dance school and become a very successful choreographer; choreographed Cats and Phantom of the Opera for example. If we could give students the ability progress in their respective area after discovering where their potential lies in, the output of our educating system wouldn't be people who have no idea what they want do with their lives and end up in jobs they have but rather productive members of our society.\n\nFor more info: _URL_3_\n\n- It doesn't allow for individually tailored curriculum's, which are essential in helping students do better in schools. [Bloom's 2 Sigma Problem](_URL_0_) demonstrates that the mentor-protégé system that the old Greeks had was a better system. It refers to an educational phenomenon observed by educational psychologist Benjamin Bloom and initially reported in 1984 in the journal \"Educational Researcher\". Bloom found that the average student tutored one-to-one using mastery learning techniques performed two standard deviations better than students who learn via conventional instructional methods--that is, [\"the average tutored student was above 98% of the students in the control class\"](_URL_2_). It’s not that 1-1 tutoring is so potent but that Bloom and his students proved that it’s possible to provoke remarkable improvements in the performance of the\naverage student\nby altering just\none or two variables.\n\n- Students get left behind, because we allow them only a certain amount of time to become proficient at a subject. Didn't comprehend it, well tough luck, the curriculum will advance whether you learn it or not. But the credit system allows students to advance and graduate without having any understanding of the subject. There is absolutely no reason why we shouldn't give students the time they need. But for that we need to stop grouping them by age and also stop calling advance classes AP and honours which cause self worth issues as if the child isn't smart enough or whatever. There should be no negative connotation between going to a math class with students two years younger than yourself or a positive connotation with going to an advanced physics class. The mentality should be this; there is no such thing as a bad student, you all have your strengths and weaknesses and you may choose any path that suits you as long as it leads you to the finish line.\n\n**Right. But is it even possible to implement this in our education system. How? Why hasn't this been done before?**\n\nWell, because it wasn't possible before due to cost and other reasons, but thanks to technology we live an era that for the first time in history allows us to change the 19th century school system. As we speak an education revolution is happening, in fact we might be the last generation ever to have experienced back pain due to heavy backpacks :) We are taking baby steps but step by step we are getting closer to a system that will be individually tailored according to the student's needs and will help him make the most of everything. This also includes grouping them by ability rather than age. How? Well that's a loooooong answer which I can share if there is any interest but for now this should illustrate my point.",
"Personally, I'd like to know why we don't divide students based on learning styles, but this question is fairly interesting as well.\n\nA lot of it has to do with No Child Left Behind and the age of accountability. While educators are supposed to be able to provide material suitable for all students, no matter their ability, they just don't have the time or resources to do it because of the number of standards they have to cover each year. They have to keep up the test scores in order to stay open (we've had a number of schools close where I live because of student achievement over the last couple of years).\n\nYou can't really cater to everyone, and it makes more sense to focus on the kids that need to score above basic instead of challenging those that can already hit proficient/advanced.\n\nI'm a graduate student in the field of education, this was derived from the Professors that I have been gifted the chance to learn from. Most of them are administrators at schools in my area. ",
"This would present a whole new set of problems for the school systems, state education, even national education policy. Because you would have to set standards that are to be achieved by testing, you have a whole new area for testing prompters, scorers, etc. Also, it would be hard to do this from state to state because of different culture and the like. If a family consistently moved from state to state then the student may miss an important process of the learning experience. Basically, it is easier and more efficient (in most school systems) to pluck out kids individually and help coach them back up to speed.",
"Because if they did it that way, mostly blacks, latinos, and native americans would never get out of school and mostly whites and Asians would go to college, and then the social justice assholes would bitch about systemic racism. So instead we don't teach kids anything and let them graduate with D's in every subject and give them loans so that they can flunk out of college instead of getting held back and learning something.",
"It's because of hurt feelings...anyone who says otherwise is lying.",
"In Finland (at least the first grade) they do this for some subjects. I'm not sure if this is school specific. When learning to read students are divided into different groups based on their ability. Every now and then the student will move from one group to another based on how well he is doing.",
"Because there are entire organizations dedicated to making as little change as possible in the education industry. (It's a business people, a very poorly managed one with terrible output, but it's a business.) \n\nWe funnel huge amounts of money into a system dedicated to spending X dollars per student per year. (see that again, Spending X dollars, not actually benefiting the student, just spending.) Because if they don't use it they'll lose it.\n\nThey do that on inane things, they also perpetuate 90-120$ textbooks that take such little effort to manufacture (updates are often spelling mistakes from previous volumes, as well as minimal updates.) \n\nThe current education industry doesn't actually focus on teaching, it's on hitting the goals they need to-to continue their funding regimens.\n\nThe newly minted, un-jaded teachers, we salute you, you actually still try and teach. The hardened criminals who have been there for decades and still haven't given up the hope, you are doing god's work. \n\nTo the 90% of the teachers union who have given up on teaching. \n\nQuit. \n\nForcing the issue that we have a terrible education system is better than what you do to your students futures.",
"I love how when in high school, teachers are still concerned with the beilief of \"sit down, shut up, heres the lecture\" when in just 4 years, you are suddenly expected to make life altering decisions.",
"Kids here in the Netherlands are divided at age 12. We have VMBO, HAVO, Atheneum and Gymnasium.\nVMBO means literally 'preparatory middle-level vocational education' and lasts 4 years.\nHAVO is one step higher, it means literally 'higher general continued education' and lasts 5 years.\nAtheneum and Gymnasium are both part of VWO (meaning pre-university secondary education. Both last 6 years. The only difference is that Gymnasium also teaches Latin and Ancient Greek.\n\nI went to a highschool where HAVO, Atheneum and Gymnasium were all in the same building, so you would still mix with people from your own age, but you would get the education you deserve. I think that's the best way to mix things up...",
"Cause that's how we used to do things, and people are terrified of change. Especially when their kids education is involved.",
"CITE YOUR SHIT! Jesus Christ, 95% of you are breaking like four rules: \n > Please be neutral in your explanations, and note your personal bias in controversial topics.\n\n\n > Top-level comments are for explanations or related questions only. No low effort \"explanations\", single sentence replies, anecdotes, or jokes in top-level comments.\n\n > Don't post just to express an opinion or argue a point of view.\n\n > ELI5 isn't a guessing game; if you aren't confident in your explanation, please don't speculate.\n\nFix your shit ELI5. Obvious schools are failing because no one here can read.",
"School systems divide by age because \"That's how we always have done it\".\n\n",
"Self-esteem and maturity issues. To put it in the least descriptive answer.",
"i know its not normal school, but i teach private after school esl classes in seoul. its incredibly frustrating when they just shove 10 year olds in with other 10 year olds no matter their ability. i have a class now that is focusing on reading comprehension and writing short stories and half the class doesnt even know the alphabet.\n\nbut despite this, i have to move along with the book. the parents (customers) demand it. they dont want to admit their kids cant do something. oh, and everyone gets an A. the system works!",
"Children (and adults) do not only learn from teachers, but learn primarily from interactions with others. If you put in one class random talented kids with less skilled kids, the result will be a general improvement and less talented will tend to reach others. That's why we also do not divide students of the same age by ability, but we do prefer have randomly assorted class).\nSource: pedagogy studies at high school. ",
"There is a more complex answer than this but, simply put, your tax dollars pay for the same education for every child. If you want your child to have an ability-based progression system you can pay to send him or her to a private school or you can teach your child at home.\n\nThe reality is that the public school system is overburdened with security requirements for which the taxes pay, money which otherwise would be going toward hiring more and better teachers. Many schools can barely afford to pay the educators they have on staff, let alone hire more to split classes up by ability.",
"Because it is easier to measure age than ability. ",
"Ok, so why not have honors classes in elementary school? The kids are divided into 4-5 classes in our school so why not put the more advanced children in one class and the least in another? The teacher can focus on teaching to the class level rather than to the average level.\n\nWhy do kids who are doing advanced reading in kindergarten have to be sent to the corner with a book while the teacher spends the day teaching letters? Or why do kids who can do algebra in 5th grade forced to do long division? \n\nConversely, wouldn't it be better for a child who are less advanced to be in a class where the teacher spends more time teaching to their level? Why base the lesson plan solely on the \"average\" student or what the state says should be taught at a certain grade? \n\nDisclaimer: I have one extremely gifted kid and one who is always struggled with math that I spend hours with each night tutoring. \n\nAnd the super advanced kid hasn't learned \"social skills\" being with the other kids. Rather, she's been bullied all her life. ",
"As a High School teacher, a lot of these ideas are preached by teachers as well, however there is a school board and federal regulations. Schools do a mixture of division where some are based on age and some get moved up and down. The problem that is happening is that parents think they their child should be moved up with their regular friends even if they do not have the academic skills. \nThe middle school that flows into our HS doesn't allow students to fail, so in my regular level classes I have students who are at 3rd grade reading levels. When we tell parents they will be held back they blow up at us and say we have done something wrong. ",
"Because the objective is indoctrination not education",
"I was put in school too early and I got bullied too much (because I was physically smaller than them) even though I had the brains to take the next step. Long story short, as smart as it sounds it can have social consequences which might hurt in the long run. But I do agree we are not getting the most out of the school system no doubt about that. ",
"A lot of parents are obsessed with the kids socialising and seem to be under the impression that school is for socialising, not learning. They also insist that reading is a big boring chore and should be put off as long as possible. It's depressing. I was fortunate that my schools let me skip years and I had no problems socially. It should depend on the child and whether they can cope with being skipped, not blanket policy. Some might not manage, and that's okay, they don't all have to be skipped. It doesn't mean educational development should be stunted in general.",
"This is called tracked classrooms. Some charter schools do this, but a lot of public schools tend to avoid it because the students will be able to identify pretty easily what level they are. Students work really well off each other, and having a variety of levels in the class does benefit some. Now as a teacher myself, I think there are pros and cons. Pros: everyone is on the same level, and teaching to them would be easier. You don't have to worry about going too fast or slow. Students might try harder to move up. Cons: resentment fron students not in the top classes, lack of student to student growth. They need to interact with all different types of minds to see all the perspectives. Unhealthy relationships between students because they'll probably only see a smaller group of people compared to what they were used to.\n",
"We did that in my home town in North England, in a school that was supposedly on of the worst in England and subsequently got knocked down.\n\nWe had 'sets' where set 1 were the smartest kids, including me (brag brag brag), and set 4 were the kids who had the most trouble. Set 4 was pretty small, so they got more individual help which was great. We also had a gifted child thing which (brag brag brag) I was included in (brag brag brag), got to go to universities and stuff, loads of fun.\n\nIt worked out pretty nicely. We also had lessons like P.E (Personal Exercise or 'Gym'), where we went based on our form groups, which was pretty evenly mixed, so there were no divides between kids in the year.\n\nIt's actually a shock to me that a lot of places don't do this. It's such a helpful system that allows students to get the most from their teachers and those who need the help get the help.",
"Many schools organize students by ability within an age range. The thing is, there is not an overwhelming amount of data that shows dividing students by ability is wildly effective. In fact, the data shows that lower performing students do better in classes and when grouped with higher performing peers.\n\nThe other huge component is that the purpose of school isn't just for students to acquire academic knowledge and become critical thinkers, it's to become socially competent. There is mounds of data showing that social skills are a better predictor of future success than academic ability. George W. Bush... \n\n",
"They do in Germany. \n\nAfter 4th grade (age 10~11) people are being split into three different types of schools, based on their grades.\n\n* \"Hauptschule\" for low-scoring students, which is shorter with more focus on getting a practical job later.\n\n* Realschule which is still quite practical but without leaving out science entirely.\n\n* Gymnasium which is the most academic and has a lot of science classes and fewer practical subjects. \n\nHauptschule is shorter than Realschule which is shorter than the Gymnasium. At the end of Haupt-/Realschule you can however switch to the next higher form of scool if your grades are good so it's not like you'll forever be stuck with manual labor simply because youw erent good in school when you were 9 years old.\n\n",
"They do this in the Netherlands, after 8 years of primary school you take a sort of IQ test. Based on this outcome and the teachers advice you go to one of the three different high school levels. The lowest takes 4 years and after that you go to vocational school the highest 6 years and this diploma is needed to enter university. The percentages are somewhere around 60/25/15 for these three levels. Of course if you perform well you can go to a higher level and vice versa.\n\nIt actually works quite well. The lower level have a lot of hand work etc teaching a trade, the higher level only consists of AP classes. ",
"Two things.\n\nFirst, they already do to some extent. Kids at the very high end of ability tend to get diverted into \"gifted\" or AP programs. Kids at the very low end end up in intermediate units. And in many public high schools, each student's curriculum will vary slightly depending on their interests and academic progress. Not everybody takes calculus, etc. \n\nSecond, actually doing this on a subject-by-subject level would be a logistical nightmare for several reasons.\n\n* Classroom education works best with manageable numbers of kids in a particular class. More than about 30 and you can't get much done. And most schools can't afford to devote an entire teacher-hour to a class with less than about fifteen. So we need classes which are roughly the same size. Dividing them up by age is an arbitrary but convenient way of dealing with that.\n\n* Changing classes introduces down time, not only as kids (or teachers) move from room to room. The first five and last five minutes of any given class are basically useless for pedagogical purposes. Moving the same block of kids from class to class (or having teachers come to them) is a lot less disruptive than having them change groups every period.\n\n* Maintaining a schedule for each student is a significant administrative/clerical burden. In high school it's usually worth it, as kids that age can be expected to learn and follow their own individual schedules. But the younger you get, the less true that is. There's no way elementary school kids can be expected to follow an individual schedule without a heck of a lot of supervision.\n\n* Though kids mature and develop at different rates, kids in a single age cohort will tend to be closer than kids in different cohorts. Is it perfect? No. But it's the best fit that can be reached by an objective-yet-arbitrary standard. Further, physical development is also a huge deal here. A particularly precocious first-grader may be able to keep up with the second-graders *academically*, but he's likely to be significantly behind them *physically*. That stuff matters to kids. A kid who is the big guy in a first-grade classroom could easily be the runt if you advanced him a grade.\n\nTL;DR: most schools do *some* sorting by ability, but age is the easiest and most appropriate way of dividing kids into logistically manageable class sizes.",
"Because academic ability is tightly correlated with wealth- so it would look like discrimination.",
"I do not understand full how they do it in the USA , but if you are interested I can explain how they do divide students based on ability in the Netherlands. \n\nMost of us start school when we are 4. The first 2 grades, we learn how to listen to the teachers. \nGrade 3 we learn how to read and do basic math 1+1 music history etc. \nThese students will be together until the eith garde, when they are 12. At the end of the year they will do a test which will decide where thet will go after primary school. Your grades through the years do matter , but they are not very significant. \n\nAfter primary school you go to highschool, there are 4 levels here. \n1 Kader this level is for kids who have a hard time learing and scored bad on the test in primary school 4 years\n \n2 This level is called tl translated theoratical studyroute. Here are kids who are good with their hands , less with their head 4 years \n\n3 This level is called Higerh General secondary education. These kids are pretty good at thinking, in their tests they for geography and biology they get 70 % knowledge questions 5 years\n \n4 This is the higest level, Pre-University education. These kids are mostly bad with their hands but really good at using their heads. \nOn their tests is 30% knowledge questions and 70% insight questions. 6 years \n\nAfters you are done with high school each level can choose which directiosn thet want to go economic side science etc etc \n\nBut these levels aren't really solid. If a kid is on the second level but getting really good grades he can move a level up. Same if you are scoring bad \n\nI hope it was interesting, and understandable \n\n",
"Teacher here! There are a couple of reasons this doesn't happen in the elementary system for setting up classes. People have mentioned \"mentoring\" programs and I will try to talk about that as well because it does happen in schools, just not all day. \r\rSo the biggest reason is that, at least here in Ontario, the government decided to stop having kids jump/repeat grades. When that was made a basically \"law\" then all public schools had to follow this. Before I get flamed, it might actually be a board to board decision, but I know teachers in many different boards and this seems like standard practice.\r\rThe reason why is social development. Kids want to be around kids their own age. A kid that jumps ahead could feel ostracized because she cannot relate to the other kids in her class, and the same would go for being held behind. School is also about social development. Its good for students to learn to problem solve and deal with normal kid social issues with people their own age. School is one of the places where we practice these things that we keep for the rest of our lives. It feels safest and it is most effective when students do it with their friends and people they have developed ties with already. \rEvery kid also has their strengths. I have a lot of students who could benefit from more time on writing, to the point that they are almost a grade or two behind, but they are killer at art, gym, math, or any of the other subjects we do in class. This shows kids that its ok that we all have things we are good at and things we need to work on. That's an important lesson, and if kids were always in classes where everyone was the same it would be less obvious. Lastly these kids know each other from out of school. They are on hockey teams, scout packs, they are neighbours, or go to the same church. In these places they hang out with other students around their own age. If they have friends in different grades they can always play together at recess or in different clubs (dance, art, debating, junior volleyball) where things are divided by division and not specific ages.\r\rNow for mentors. People have mentioned that it is good for kids to learn the different responsibilities of working with kids older and younger than they are. It lets them have role models and be role models. Schools have activities where we design them for this exact purpose. There are the clubs that i just mentioned, there are school wide activities where kids are put in groups of all different classes and ages and the leaders are the grade 7s or 8s. Older classes have \"buddies\" where they go and read with younger kids or help them with projects. School is a place of social learning, at least in elementary. We try and provide the best environment to give kids the opportunities that will help them build their social skills. \r\rThere are academic programs for gifted students and also for students identified with exceptionalities. They get pulled from class at specific intervals to work at their own academic level. This could be on their own or with other kids. I can talk more about that if people have questions but I'll leave it at this for now. ",
"The entire school system is divided by ability. There is no dividing by age.\n\nIt only appears that they do since a majority of parents choose to enroll their children in kindergarten at the same age. \n\nExamples,\nWhen a student transfers to a new school the administration looks at their transcript to assign\ntheir grade level not the student's age. So if you are at a new high school they look at home many classes you have passed instead of \"you are 16 so you will be in the 10th grade\"\n\nGrade promotion is determined by ability not age so many kids repeat grades.",
"Self-fulfilling prophecy and social psychology, especially for teenagers. If you expect a student to learn at a certain level, they will (oversimplified but that's the gist of it). Teenagers want to feel accepted and respected and valued. Splitting them up from their peer group and socialising them with older or younger students can be very damaging and unhealthy socially. Students in mixed ability classes develop better social skills- more considerate of others and more accepting of differences between themselves and others. It makes them more well rounded people. Many Australian schools 'stream' students (my highschool did and most schools I have been in do) but the selected 'stream' is not necessarily permanent or indicative of the kind of careers a student may choose from. Streaming often occurs in the core subjects like maths/english/SOSE/science, while all the other subjects remain mixed. This allows teachers of those subjects to better maximise learning opportunities for their students. I'm a final year Secondary Education student (Science major/SOSE minor). ",
"It's a matter of simple logistics.\n\nWhen a child is ready to do \"social\" learning, or classroom based learning, they are about 4-5 years old. We heard them up in groups of 10-30 and teach them basic things, based on their attention span.\n\nMost people have an attention span equal to 1-2 minutes of age. So.... a 5 year old has 5-10 minutes of attention span. As they age, it gets, progressively better.\n\nBut here's the issue... We use Years to mark time's passage.\n\nAfter a year has gone by, that first year student now has a year's head start, so the next batch of 4-5 year olds would have to catch up.\n\nIn Junior High School, we are able to cross skill levels more (math, science), and in High School, Skill is more important than age. Age is just a merker for class year.",
"Which ability? Math? Reading? Social development? Artistic? The only way to really ability segregate would be with computer classes where you are in the same room as your peers yet are able to work on learning at a personal level. Every science fiction book I've read that addresses education has this sort of set-up yet I have not seen the technology for this developed yet.",
"The main reason is that the school system still has no good way to measure ability. You see all this controversy over standardized testing and how effective it really is? That should tell you how impossible it would be for the US school system to really separate kids based on abilities.\n\nBut, as some have said, that's what honors and AP classes are for. It's not as extreme as you're probably asking, but it's the only thing we do like that for now.",
"A rising tide raises all ships. We learn from people smarter than us so it's not always good to ability group for all classes. Teachers in theory should be able to teach to different levels of abilities within one lesson. ",
"Separating based on ability sounds great and all until you end up with three or four levels of education within the same grade. My wife is a middle and high school teacher and talks about this frequently.\n\nYou end up with \"slow\" kids, \"underperforming\" kids, \"normal\" kids, and \"smart\" kids. In a lot of schools these days, those kids are separated into three different classes for the same subjects. Of course, you might say, that sounds about right....until you realize that once these kids are put into one of those categories, it's really hard for them to get out, especially at higher levels.\n\nA lot of things go into that categorization, but to some extent, a lot of it has to do with parental involvement, rather than \"ability\". You end up with kids in normal or slow classes who could actually be intelligent children, if their parents actually cared enough to ask them about homework, or care about their school attendance.\n\nI think we do kids a disservice to label them and separate them, apart from obvious learning challenges, or obvious situations where kids excel above their grade level. By graduating 3-4 levels of high school seniors, what does a diploma mean anymore when the educational accomplishments among 100 students could be so vastly different, and the standards for each student be on such disparate levels.",
"What you see as \"ability\" may in fact be motivation. And it's good for less-motivated students to have higher-motivated students around as role models.",
"Not really an expert opinion but schools are also a childs main method of socializing so putting them into a younger peer group would prevent them from developing socially",
"Because ability is difficult to measure accurately and to amount of time and energy required to place students based on ability off every for every subject would be insane. It's also because \"ability\" is extremely subjective and can be changed me factors that are not academic. What is a student is extremely bright but just had a close family member pass away? What if the student taking the test just came from being screamed at by their parents? There are to many factors",
"ELI5: Why should school systems divide students at all? There is much to learn from interacting with your peers, both those older and younger than yourself. Teacher other students, and learning from other students, are both methods of higher learning and retention.",
"The problem with our education systems isn't with the way we divide students.. its the way we neglect more individualized learning, lectures, and use of the Socratic method.. in favor of a heavy reliance on powerpoint presentations and mindless group-work wherever possible. The lazier the teacher, the more the powerpoint and the more the group-work too.",
"Something something money",
"Because school is as much about socializing little humans as it is educating them academically.\n",
"I always figured in the US it was just to minimize violence and bullying--try to keep all the kids who regularly interact with each other at about the same size.",
"government is not good at evaluating individuals.\ngovernment creats \"classes\", pidgion holes people into them, and deals with them as a category....\nthats how people become \"just a number\"",
"Because social (and physical, specifically puberty) development more closely associates with age, and school is as much a place for social development as it is for intellectual development. Put a ten year old in a room with a bunch of fifteen year olds, and he or she is in for a rough ride, as they are much more developed.\n\nThe simple examples of group dynamics and understanding sarcasm comes to mind.",
"In my high school, students of different years can be in the same class. We have different levels of the same classes, i.e. Advanced Placement (AP) > Honors > Academic. However, to answer your question, it's probably a matter of convenience for staff. I don't personally know, but I would imagine that it is far easier to classify and divide students on the basis of age than by performance.",
"School isn't only about education, don't forget the social aspect. ",
"No 15 year old wants to be in a 4th grade class.",
"Because it would be deemed racist",
"My brother's high school did this, and he performed VERY VERY well.",
"I actually went to a school that did! It was K-8 and all age groups had the same class at the same time (say, 9-10 everyone had English, 10-11 was math for all, etc). Because of this structure, it allowed the school to divide the students largely by ability PER SUBJECT. So, for instance, in 1st grade I went to 8th grade for English, kindergarten for math, 5th grade for science, etc. It was an excellent system, but sadly the school got new management when I was in 4th grade and closed the next year.",
"They used to, but then the equality for the sake of equality brigade arrived and said it was wrong to 'segregate' people based on ability.",
"I wanted to point out a reason that I did not see below.\n\nThe goal of society should be to help ALL it's members reach their potential. Systems that focus on promoting the \"smart\" kids will, invariably, leave a peer system that is well balanced, and that is a terrible idea for the children who struggle. We are shown, time and time again, that people rise with the level of their peer group. If you remove the smart kids, the kids who mess up the curve for everyone else, through advanced promotion, you will cause the kids at the bottom of the curve to fall off faster, because they lack the peer pressure to keep up.\n\nThink of it as a law of averages. If the classroom is made up of some behind the grade kids (-) some average kids (=) and some ahead of the grade kids (+) ALL the students are likely to pull closer to the class average. In a class of 30 kids, even with balanced distribution of 10 -, 10 = and 10 + you end up with a class that is =. Remove even a few (say 3) and you get a - skew (-.1 below average.)\n\n... I really need to learn to use periods.\n\n",
"Can only speak about my experience.. I started reading as soon as I could talk and was reading adult novels by 5 or 6... was teaching myself algebra and such before I even started school. Public school was really my only option.. my parents weren't wealthy and didn't have time to home school. I found out years later the school had wanted to skip me to third grade in kindergarten. My parents said they nixed that idea because they were afraid it would hurt me socially. And to be honest, if I'm being completely impartial.. it probably would have been difficult. Unfortunately the result was that I was always just bored.. I never did homework.. dashed off term papers off the top of my head.. in 15 minutes before class.. where I would almost always get a C...marked down for no references and handwritten.. and eventually I started making poorer and poorer grades when I couldn't skate by and had to have actually studied.. but I was just so bored.. I just didn't care. Turned out I was socially awkward and didn't fit in anyway (big surprise right?) and got really depressed.. anyway today.. I got a computer science degree just to have one.. I work a run of the mill 40hr/wk job to pay the bills.. and I read about cosmology, subatomic level physics and enjoy doing calculus and physics problems for fun. I study history and write essays about it, government, economics and post about those subjects online anonymously in my spare time. But it's all for nothing really. I can't help but think there should be something more.\n\nWould things have changed if I had been around kids at my ability level? Maybe... I just don't know. Perhaps I'm a born underachiever.",
"Age groups, at least early on, tend to be more alike in ability. The biggest differences you can see in Preschool-1st come primarily from culture: how they resolve personal issues, conflicts, speech patterns, and the like. Extreme issues arising from genetics can be discerned, but for the most part, everyone is VERY much alike.\n\nI think, but can't prove it, that because of the \"childlike\" status of the younger ages, and the sensitivity that comes with not having emotional coping strategies, that this system was extended to 4th/5th grade (depending on the local edu system). It's also why middle school is such a hard time for many youths what with no more coddling from school staff coupled with the hormonal changes of a developing body. It's a serious life adjustment that varies from awkward to downright oppressive.\n\nBy the time High School rolls around, most everyone has figured out their station in life and works accordingly. This is why the HS system can place students in appropriate classes. Good in math? Pre-Trig for you! Suck at Science? Here's shop class! (Not to say \"shop\" is bad, but it seems that those that prefer working with their hands over thinking hard wind up there. It's appropriate.)\n\nSo why can't that system start earlier? Tradition. It's the way it's been done for decades now. Unions. Bad habits passed down to the next generation of administration. Politics. Large school systems. Take your pick. Any and all reasons are valid and not limited to this list.\n\nThe question that we SHOULD be asking is: \"What is a better system that takes the students abilities into account?\" I mean, the goal is to learn at an individual's personal level, right? It does me no good to learn 2 levels lower than where I'm at: I already know it! It does me no good to learn at 2 levels higher... I don't have the basis to understand that! Sticking 20-30 children of \"diverse\" backgrounds in a classroom just for the sake of being diverse is asinine and hurts the chances of learning for the group of people not learning at the level that is being taught. (I'm bracing for the knee-jerk race-nazi's out there. It's not about race. There are geniuses and dumbasses in all races. It's just that more dumbasses make the news than geniuses.)\n\nSo what's the real answer? I think that Math and Literacy are very rigid subjects where students can and should be objectively measured and separated on skill levels. Social Studies and Science can also be measured, but can be graded much less harshly depending on the exact content. (Geography cannot be argued. Reasons for war can be argued. The life cycle of a mealworm is known. Predicting the weather is often a crapshoot.) So students of a wider range of ability can meet for these subjects. Then there are the \"special areas\" as they call them in elementary schools: art, music, gym, library, and computers. These areas can be the broadest of all as far as ability goes, most especially in the early years as it is just to expose children to various subjects so that they can cultivate their interests. They are barely graded on them! (Satisfactory, Unsatisfactory, or Outstanding.)\n\nSo in my utopian daydream of a perfect education system, students would meet in homeroom (separated by age) for head-count and morning business. Then they could all go to their learning areas for individual learning for Reading at their individual levels. (I imagine individual learning centers like what Spock is seen using in the Star Trek reboot movie.) Come back together for some Social Studies with extremely low outliers going to a remedial room to teach them at their level if need be. Then a bathroom break and lunch. Refueled, separate again for Math at their individual levels. Pop in the special area and recess if the school is still doing that. (Bathroom break.) End the day with some interesting science, again, with the extremely low outliers going to a remedial center, if necessary.\n\nIn middle school, the separation can be more stratified by ability just because the technology alone can be adjusted on a per-student basis. There may be a need to have a few collaborative classes such as science or social studies, but by that time, the students will have a record of their abilities following them from school to school and class to class. By High School, everyone should have a clear idea of what their education trajectory is and can adjust their studies, attitudes, and life goals as warranted. On graduation, the individual is not awarded a useless degree for showing up all that time as is done now, but is given a list of skill achievements (that's right. \"Gamify\" the education system and see who takes learning to the next level!) that can be enhanced the rest of that person's life through college, adult-ed, trade schools, and the like. This list, being an indicator of that individual's proven abilities, can then be included with job/college applications.\n\nThat's just about all I have to say about that.\n\nSource: Elementary substitute teacher for 1 year. Parent with children \"in the system\". Lots of friends still working \"in the system\".\n\nTL:DR; Real little kids are too much alike. They do divide on ability much later, but they could do it earlier. They just won't because that's just the way it is now.",
"They sometimes do. It's called tracking.\n\nIf could fuck a kid up for life. He's put in the \"dumb class\" and treated like a \"dumb kid\" by everybody. It can cause psychological problems.",
"Because this is Lake Wobegon where all the children are above average. Any you better not tell their parents otherwise. ",
"You would hurt my snowflakes feelings."
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"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloom's_2_Sigma_Problem",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ken_Robinson_%28educationalist%29",
"http://i.imgur.com/RN5qZA4.png",
"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iG9CE55wbtY",
"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDZFcDGpL4U"
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2gwsbv | are testosterone levels related to muscle growth and if yes how? | I was tested at a young age and found out I have my testosterone levels quite higher than the average. However, I'm quite skinny. Shouldn't I naturally have a muscular build? Or does this mean I can build muscle easier than the average person?
How does testosterone influence muscle growth? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2gwsbv/eli5_are_testosterone_levels_related_to_muscle/ | {
"a_id": [
"ckn8pqt",
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"score": [
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"text": [
"Not a biochemist, so take with liberal application of salt...\n\nIIRC muscle growth is dictated more by things like HGH (Human Growth Hormone) than testosterone.\n\nIIRC post-menopausal women also have similar testosterone levels to men.",
"bear in mind that muscle require protein to grow. if you have a very high metabolism or do a lot of aerobic exercises/hobbies and live alone/don't eat well and regularly, your body could be metabolizing the muscle for energy as fast as you are creating it. stop doing the cardio and talk to a fitness nutritionist and you might bulk up a bit."
]
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[],
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11koy5 | why should germany bail out spain? | I don't really understand why there is so much pressure for Germany to bail out Spain. Why is it the responsibility of other nations to solve this issue? This article led to my questions. Thank you in advance for the information. _URL_0_ | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/11koy5/eli5why_should_germany_bail_out_spain/ | {
"a_id": [
"c6nazbu"
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"score": [
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"text": [
"Europe is in a bit of a pickle at the moment... here's the gist of it, politically Europe is still a bunch of nations with their own laws and government. But, years ago, to increase trade and their economies, european countries banned into a union -- with a single currency.\n\nSo, all the european union countries, like germany, france, spain and greece and others use Euros (the currency) to collect their taxes and pay their bills. The problem now however is that some countries are doing better an have money, like france and germany, while other countries don't, like spain or greece.\n\nSo, like a family, the union need to come to terms with the fact that two older children, france and germany, may need to give some money to spain and greece so that the whole family doesn't get in trouble for not paying the bills that were run up by spain and greece.\n\n"
]
} | []
| [
"http://www.project-syndicate.org/blog/imf-calls-on-germany-to-allow-spain-bailout-by-christopher-t--mahoney"
]
| [
[]
]
|
|
bx1o1e | how does a chickens reproductive system work? | [deleted] | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/bx1o1e/eli5_how_does_a_chickens_reproductive_system_work/ | {
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"text": [
"A chicken will produce eggs whether or not the rooster is involved, just as a human female will release eggs, whether or not a guy is involved. If there's no conception, there's a period, if there is, there's a pregnancy.\n\nWith chickens, the eggs are laid and are either laid fertilized or not, depending on if the rooster had his way.",
"Does it help to know that fertilization happens BEFORE the eggshell gets formed? Chicken sperm meets chicken egg, then the shell forms around the whole mess.",
"Bare with me as English is not my first language. When the rooster sits on the hen their coacal openings make contact alowing the sperm to travel to the egg that is been formed and fertilize it. Later on the hen will lay the egg and incubate it until it the new chick hatches. If there is no rooster the egg will never become a chick. Most of the eggs that are been sold in the supermarket are never fertilized, but some times they are and thaats when you can get those partilally formed chicks when you crack the egg."
]
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ed6ius | why is freeze an option? (fight / flight / freeze) | [deleted] | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/ed6ius/eli5_why_is_freeze_an_option_fight_flight_freeze/ | {
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"You’re in danger. Your options are:\n\n*Fight* — you try to defend against the threat by attacking it until it’s dead or not a threat anymore. \n\n*Flight* — you run away until you are out of danger. \n\n*Freeze* — you don’t react until the threat goes away. \n\nThese responses work for various situations. For example, say you are in danger but out matched in both speed and strength. The best thing for you to do might just be to chill out until the potential threat loses interest in you and goes away. Some animals only hunt running prey, and some won’t eat something they didn’t kill themselves. This can also work in more complex contexts where action and evasion aren’t great options and it’s better for you to just wait and take stock of the situation.",
"i think it's best to look at it in a different order.\n\nFlight: The danger has seen you, but you're not cornered and you can move faster than it, so you run away.\n\nFight: The danger may or may not have seen you, but probably will see you, and you can't outrun it, so you might as well attack it, maybe surprising it and gaining an advantage.\n\nFreeze: The danger may or may not have seen you, and it might just pass you by. if you stay put it might not notice you. \n\nFreeze can act either alone or as a precursor to the other instincts, and it's the only one you can stop doing with no ill effect. if you fight or run, then change to freeze, you'll get killed, but if you go from freeze to fight or flight, you'll have a chance.\n\nIt's a convenient way to wait for the circumstances to be clear, so you can make a more rational decision",
"Fight or flight are very well studied responses because we know a lot about the neural pathways leading to different physiological changes that help you either fight or run. But the freezing response is not as well studied, because it's not as common in humans (it is in animals though).\n\nFrom what I know, the freeze response, or tonic immobility, is only evoked when fighting or fleeing are completely ruled out by the brain. So if you are in a cage with a giant lion that is charging towards you, your brain realizes there's not even a slim chance of fighting and winning and an absolutely no chance of running (because, cage). So it evokes a freeze response, you might find it counterintuitive, but if fight or flight are truly impossible, it actually holds some value in increasing your chance of survival. Some predators may be less inclined to attack you more than once if they see you're frozen (it interprets it as death or giving up), whereas resisting might make the predator keep gnawing on you until they rip you apart. Predators may also believe you're dead so you won't run away, so they may slow down or take a break before finishing the job giving you some extra time where other solutions may come in. So as you can see, in an absolutely hopeless scenario, freezing may play an adaptive role.\n\nFor us, as humans, we have a very developed brain, and we are relatively highly intelligent, so in any given scenario, you're not so likely to just give up, and you may be tempted to fight (you may think okay I know some anatomy, if I can just get to the lions eyes or heart or something it might get scared off, or maybe I can try climbing to the ceiling of the cage and the lion can't get to me). That's why it's not so common. But it does happen, and a lot more than you think. Usually in the context of social anxiety, your boss asks you if you did something and you have absolutely no excuse why you didn't, you can't fight him or you'll be fired and you can't run (change the topic), because they got you dead on. So you freeze. During rape, many victims also report being paralyzed, that's because it's something so unexpected and so ugly that the victim may give up even though there often are numerous chances to run or even harm the attacker, but psychologically it's so traumatizing that the victim may lose hope or think it's too late, I am already getting rape, no point in running now.\n\nBut freezing did start as a good tool evolutionary speaking, it's just now we find it kicking it even thought it's useless and detrimental in most circumstances.\n\nEdit: English"
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7rz22n | when and how did we determine time to the exact second, and how did we decide what was midnight? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7rz22n/eli5_when_and_how_did_we_determine_time_to_the/ | {
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"It wasn't a sudden thing. Time has evolved slowly over millennia, and we simply got better at measuring it.\n\nMidday was always the time when the sun was highest in the day. Using a sundial we could track the progress of the sun through the hours of daylight, and it was a simple thing to mark off 12 equal divisions. Since it was the Babylonians who were the first great astronomers and mathematicians, and since they counted in 60s, we simply divided the hour into 60 minutes.\n\nAt night we didn't really need to know the time to any accuracy, but if necessary we could burn candles or use water clocks.\n\nThen came the invention of mechanical clocks that could very accurately measure the time even when it was cloudy or night time: we only had to calibrate them so that midday was at the right time (when the sun was highest in the sky). We could easily measure minutes and even seconds, just by gearing the mechanism so that the second hand moved 60 times slower than the minute hand, and the minute hand 60 times slower than the hour hand.\n\nBut ships needed very accurate clocks in order to navigate by the stars and could keep time even when the ship was being tossed about by the waves; the invention of something called the balance wheel enabled this. Observatories were built near where ships moored (the most famous is at Greenwich, London): astronomers would observe the stars or the sun with telescopes and, at a very specific time allow a huge ball on a pole to drop so that ships could calibrate their chronometers -- they knew what time the ball dropped and they knew exactly what longitude the observatory was at, and that's the information they needed to set their chronometers. (The idea of dropping a ball -- something clearly visible to ships moored nearby -- is what's behind the famous ceremony at Times Square on New Year's Eve.)\n\nUp to this point, each city had its own local time. This didn't matter when travel was slow and people generally didn't worry much about everything being timed to the minute or second. Wherever you were, you set your watch to the local church clock. (In the English city of Bristol is a very old clock with two minute hands, one showing local time and one showing London time. They're about ten minutes apart, but nobody really cared.)\n\nBut then came the railways, and it suddenly became really inconvenient to have local time: it made it an absolute nightmare to draw up timetables, and an absolute nightmare to read them. And so railway companies adopted a standard time, with employees carrying personal chronometers synchronized to each other. This was made easier by another recent invention, the telegraph, which allowed instant communication over long distances. The Great Western Railway, which linked London to Bristol, was the first to do this in 1840. By 1880, the whole of Britain was on the same time.\n\nIt was an obvious idea to simply extend this all over the world. Over the next few years, the world was divided into 24 time zones, offset from British time (Greenwich Mean Time)."
]
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3rghn4 | i just burnt my finger. why does the pain come and go in waves? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3rghn4/eli5_i_just_burnt_my_finger_why_does_the_pain/ | {
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"text": [
"Because the signal for pain travels through your nerves, to your brain, in big slow waves. \n\nLot's of the very basic and 'primal' feelings like pain and hunger travel on very slow and 'primitive' nerve networks. That's why there is a delay between eating and feeling full. And why more complex feelings can override pain, like pressure or itching.\n\nYour bowel moves in long, 20 minute waves. When you have to poop really bad and it feels like it's going to force itself out... then goes away. Well the next wave has already started at the top of your gut, and the movement slowly works its way down your digestive tract... moving everything a bit. Then when it gets to the end you get that overwhelming urge to poop again.\n\nI hope this was helpful, there was a great national geographic documentary I watched where I learned this stuff from. Maybe it's on netflix or something now."
]
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[]
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2hzmkw | how is the happy birthday song not in the public domain by now? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2hzmkw/eli5_how_is_the_happy_birthday_song_not_in_the/ | {
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"text": [
"It's not in the public domain because the [Copyright Act of 1976](_URL_1_) extended copyright protection to 75 years from date of publication, and the [Copyright Term Extension Act of 1998](_URL_0_) added another 20 years. So the \"Happy Birthday\" song, which was published in 1935, is under copyright for 95 years. It will enter the public domain (barring any more laws that extend the copyright further) in 2030.",
"As major brands come close to losing their copyrights, such as Disney losing copyright on Mickey Mouse, Congress extends copyright which is now practically into infinity (not really, but it may as well)."
]
} | []
| []
| [
[
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Term_Extension_Act",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Act_of_1976"
],
[]
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|
||
5xzvh9 | why did the us choose to take out the soviet union after ww2? | They were severely weakened and would be no match against the us full power, the us also had nukes. Why did the us back out when Stalin took over Eastern Europe and half of Germany? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5xzvh9/eli5_why_did_the_us_choose_to_take_out_the_soviet/ | {
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"text": [
"Because America had the guns, but the Soviets had the numbers. Massive numbers. I'm talking a gobsmackingly horrendous disparity in combat ready forces in Europe. The Western Allies crunched the numbers (_URL_0_), and determined that the Soviets had a 3 to 1 numeric advantage; taking the Soviets in a straight fight just wasn't happening. That, and they did just get done watching Adolf Hitler try and fail to do the same thing, even using tactics that the Western Allies would find unacceptably brutal.\n\nThe nukes are useful, but they still hadn't reached the \"I win\" button status of the later Cold War. Nukes were still delivering yields in double-digit Kilotons and the ICBM, SLBM, etc., weren't happening yet. You couldn't just point a missile at Moscow and order the Politburo to lick your taint, you actually had to get bombers in there, bombers that might get shot down and put an A-bomb and the hardware needed to drop it from a plane in Soviet hands. ",
"To keep it ELI5, because a continued war would have been even worse than the entirety of WW2. Both sides were strained and made huge losses. Both sides had plans to invade each other but none were pursued, because Europe was in ruins. Europe was split into influence spheres. While the Soviets had most of Eastern Europe with the exception of Czechoslovakia (which later still became socialist following a revolution) and Greece, the Allies had Western Europe.\n\nFurther regarding your question, realistically speaking the Soviets would have most likely won. If you can call it a victory. While they suffered tens of millions in casulties, their war industry only really started, but Eastern Europe was hit the hardest during the war due to the scorched earth tactics. Whole countries had to be rebuilt. Communist support was high throughout many European countries at the time, especially in Italy and France in Western Europe. Without US manipulation communist and socialist alliances would have even likely won the first elections after the war in those both countries. Greece just started a civil war and Spain was still argueably at least somewhat unstable and certainly not on good terms with either side, though I would argue they feared the Soviets more due to their history. The rest of Eastern Europe was under Soviet control leaving the UK only really the Scandinavics and Lowlands. The US and UK would have fought a lost war. That war would only have destroyed what was left of Europe and killed tens or even hundreds of million more people in the end through all that destruction. It would have been a very bloody war with no real victor in the end.",
"It should be noted that the US and the Soviet Union were technically allies at the close of WW2. Dividing Germany was one of the terms of the peace treaty which both the US and USSR assented to. While neither side's government had any real illusions about the long term relationship, the Americans saying in 1945 \"And let's push on to Moscow!\" would have been completely untenable.\n\nAlso, peace was declared in Germany months before the nuclear weapons were used in Japan."
]
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"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Unthinkable"
],
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[]
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4i237r | can you get a computer virus if you go to a site but don't click anything? or stream a video but don't download it? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4i237r/eli5_can_you_get_a_computer_virus_if_you_go_to_a/ | {
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"It is totally *possible*, though not very common.\n\nVirus that infect you by merely visiting a web page take advantage of a vulnerability in a plugin, like Flash Player or Java, or a vulnerability in your browser itself.\n\nUsually these vulnerabilities get fixed relatively quickly but new ones get discovered all the time. So again, it's totally possible.",
"Yes. A site could have javascript that downloads or installs things, or if it uses flash, you could have an out of date version that's susceptible to an exploit in what you're watching.\n\nTo stream something, you have to download it. Think of a download like going and buying a book to take home, and a stream as getting pages in the mail, reading them, and throwing them out as soon as they're read. You're still getting the content. If it's a reputable site, you're usually pretty safe, though.",
"You sure can! \n\nThere are a far too many ways attackers can bypass security for me to list here, but it's certainly possible. \n\nNot too long ago a host of popular websites were infecting people's PCs with malware through adverts embedded in the websites. Not only were the web hosts and site administrators unaware of this, the 3rd party provider of the advertisements had no idea either as the ads had been provided to them in an infected state. \n\nThis is just one example. There have been exploits hidden in applications like Java and Flash also! \n\nYou can never be truly safe from viruses and malware online, but you can take steps to mitigate potential threats. Making sure your OS and applications are up to date, running AV and Anti-Malware, along with ad blockers will go a long way to protecting you online. \n\nEdit: Words. Typing on mobile."
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e17kuu | when we get sick and have a fever, we feel cold, but what about when we feel extremely hot (like a consistent hot flash) with no fever? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/e17kuu/eli5_when_we_get_sick_and_have_a_fever_we_feel/ | {
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"text": [
"Your sense of temperature compares your internal temp to the temp of the area around you. Your body isn't going \"This room is 25c.\" it's going \"This room is cooler than my skin\"\n\nSo when you get a fever your body get's hot, so the room by comparison *feels* colder.\n\nHot flashes are a bit different though. During a hot flash your blood vessels get bigger, so blood from your (warmer) core rushes to your (cooler) skin. This tricks your body into thinking the area you're in is hotter than it actually is."
]
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2g8kse | what does the us spend tax money on? how does it compare to other countries? | I was discussing with a Canadian friend and it seemed like we were taxed at similar rates. I always assumed the US could have healthcare like Canada, but it would cause taxes to go up. Do Canadian's actually pay more in taxes? What is the US spending all the tax money on if it's not things like healthcare? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2g8kse/eli5_what_does_the_us_spend_tax_money_on_how_does/ | {
"a_id": [
"ckgo3d0"
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"text": [
"First, some perspective. The total budget of Canada is 279.2 Billion Canadian dollars (249 Billion US Dollars). The US budget is 3.77 Trillion US Dollars. In other words, the US budget is more than 13 times the size of Canada's budget.\n\nThe US spends more discretionary money (more on this in a second) on the Department of Defense (526 Billion) each year than the entire budget of Canada. We spend nearly 80 Billion on health services. 70 Billion to the Department of Education. 60 Billion to the Department of Veterans Affairs. The list goes on and on.\n\nAnd that is just discretionary. More than 60% of the US budget, or more than 2 Trillion Dollars, is \"mandatory spending,\" or spending that does not need to be appropriated. The largest of these are Medicare and Social Security, which together account for about 1.5 trillion dollars. "
]
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dmx7b6 | exactly how dangerous should i think of processed meats as being? specifically cured pork products, and specifically because of the cancer risk of nitrites and nitrates (ignoring cholesterol, macro contents, etc, and also ignoring environmental & ethical implications). | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/dmx7b6/eli5_exactly_how_dangerous_should_i_think_of/ | {
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"Bananas are radioactive, in fact one measure of radioactivity is the \"banana equivalent dose\". If \"cured pork is a big part of the diet here\" and you don't see lots of people dying young, it's not a problem. The whole point of knowing that nitrates cause minor health concerns is to motivate manufacturers to use less when possible.\n\n\"Cancer risk is doubled\" means the very low risk of food-caused cancer is doubled from 1 in a million to 2 in a million (numbers made up for an example).",
"As with everything, the dose makes the poison.\n\nNitrates and nitrites, at the levels encountered in a typical Spanish diet, are likely safe.\n\nThere is science out there suggesting there could be health benefits to consuming them: _URL_1_ and _URL_3_\n\nThere is also a suggestion the fattier and smokier the cured meat, the higher the risk - that is, nitrates and nitrites alone are not the issue: _URL_0_\n\nThis study is a meta-paper, so assessed several papers dealing with gastric cancer and nitrites/nitrates, and actually found a health benefit to consumption levels between 65 and 220mg/day. _URL_2_\n\nOf course, IARC classified processed meats as carcinogenic, and the media whipped it into a frenzy and pointed the finger. \n\nSo here we are."
]
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[],
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"https://clinical-nutrition.imedpub.com/nitrates-nitrites-and-nitrosamines-from-processed-meat-intake-and-colorectalcancer-risk.php?aid=21326",
"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0271531715001359",
"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4690057/#!po=23.7705",
"https://academic.oup.com/ajcn/article/90/1/1/4596750"
]
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||
6m9w17 | why is watering your lawn considered bad for the environment? how does it "waste" water? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6m9w17/eli5_why_is_watering_your_lawn_considered_bad_for/ | {
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"I think these are two different questions.\n\nFirst, lawns are [sometimes] considered bad for the environment, not watering the lawn. \n\nLawns are often considered bad for the environment because they A) usually don't grow naturally where they're planted (i.e. they're not native) B) choke out native species of plants and rob native insects and birds of habitat and food C) require fertilizers that damage our downstream waterways D) contribute massively to pollution (CO2 and noise) through the mowers and blowers E) are usually not good for the trees we've planted in them.\n\nSecond, lawns are relatively thirsty plants so they consume a lot of water. Since lawns that aren't used productively don't add any habitat or economic value (agriculture or recreation), some people consider that a waste of water. By contrast, flowering plants offer food to birds and bees, fruiting trees and vegetables produce food we can eat, trees provide shade and clean the air, etc.\n\nThird, irrigation systems are notoriously wasteful. Sprinklers can cause water to be aerosolized and sent into the air, can be broken and send water into the sewer system, irrigation schedules are often neglected and don't reflect the current local water needs of the plants being watered, etc."
]
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1xmlmk | what happens inside our brain when we don't understand something? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1xmlmk/eli5_what_happens_inside_our_brain_when_we_dont/ | {
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"text": [
"Ironically, we don't really know. ",
"This would be easier to answer if we had any clue what happens inside our brain when we understand something."
]
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5ul7ql | why can we not harness lighting as an energy source? | Even if not the most practical or maybe reliable, seems like it's free energy we could put to some use? Do we have the technology to hypothetically charge batteries or convert to thermal?
Edit: Trying to add 'flair' on mobile app. Fyi you can't which is convenient. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5ul7ql/eli5_why_can_we_not_harness_lighting_as_an_energy/ | {
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"Can we predict where they are going to hit?",
"Lightning is unpredictable and at the same time very powerful. The voltage is extremely high and also the current. This results in the components and power stations need to be really robust and will be much more expensive. \n\nAnorther thing with electricity is that it's a fresh produce, and only produced for immidiate consumption. No power plant is producing more power than what is being consumed, that's because there's no effective way of storing energy. So this means that the lightning would have to strike exactlt at the moment people need it. And since it only last for a fraction of a second it can be a problem if you want to watch tv for 2 hours.",
"1. Unpredictable.\n\n2. If you solve the issue with unpredictability (building a lightning rod, for example and placing it somewhere stormy), gathering that energy in batteries would be difficult, as the energy source discharges the energy episodically and in very short periods of time (think what happens to your phone charger when there is spike in electricity).\n\n3. There are plenty of ways to gather energy with the existing technology (cheaper, no need to start from scratch).\n\n",
"We don't have devices that can \"charge up\" fast enough to capture all the energy in a lightning strike, and dumping the electricity directly into the electric grid would make people's home electronics break.\n\nSort of a weird example, but if you look at your phone, no matter how much power you force into its charging port, the battery won't charge any faster. It'll charge at its normal maximum rate, or just get ruined if you try to force electric power into it faster that. \n\nPower stations have enormous capacitors that can store large amounts of power in order to stabilize electricity supply, but even huge, industrial grade capacitors wouldn't be able to soak up all the power in a lightning bolt. Most of it would be wasted, and then you'd have no power generation from the system until the next unpredictable lightning bolt decided to strike in the same spot.",
"EE here. It's mostly about storage and charging speed. Capacitors or batteries are the right tool for the job, but they have trade offs that make any reasonable capture impossible. It's a battle between being able to charge fast enough and being able to hold a reasonable amount.\n\nCeramic capacitors have very low resistance (waste when being charged), so a huge bank of them could handle being charged quickly. They can charge in a microsecond. The problem is that the best ceramic capacitors don't have much storage capacity. \n\nSupercapacitors, which can hold thousands times more energy, has some resistance. They can charge in 10 seconds or less. The waste heat of the sudden rapid charging from a bolt would definitely destroy them. Also, they are mostly low-voltage (under 3V each) so it would take tens of thousands of them to handle a bolt. Some day we might have a higher voltage supercapacitor with a low resistance, enough to make it at least partially work. I recall reading this has been done, but it wasn't anywhere near good enough to be worth the cost.\n\nA big battery bank could definitely hold a bolt's total energy, but the charging resistance is way too high. Specialized batteries can charge in 10 minutes.",
"You could just redirect the lines going from lightning rods and redirect them into generators inside the building making money by being payed by the electrical companies for the extra electricity you harnessed."
]
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36mdxt | would climate change caused by the greenhouse effect slow down, when all man-made objects that face up to the sky where painted white? | I learned that the melting poles are also a problem because the ice reflected a lot of the harmful sun rays back to space. Now that the ice is melting, would it help to paint all cars and an buildings white on top so they would reflect harmlful UV rays and heat?
Maybe also build streets with lighter materials? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/36mdxt/eli5_would_climate_change_caused_by_the/ | {
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"Generally, yes, but getting that much white color is not easy, and you won't even touch the oceans (which after all are 2/3 of the surface and very, very dark). ",
"That is a solution that is being considered.\n\nIt would probably have to be more than painting buildings, though. Some scientists have proposed to release aerosols into the air that will make the atmosphere more reflective."
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bsocwx | why is it when chinese words are spelling with roman letters they are spelled like that? | In many languages that don't use the latin alphabet (a, b, c, ect...) words are often written romanized so people not familiar with that script can understand. For example, in Japanese with word for thank you is ありがとう. It is romanized like arigato and pronouned ah-ree-gag-toh. However in Chinese, the word for that you is 谢谢 and is romanized as Xie Xie. It's pronouned Shay-Shay. Another example is the word that's romanized as Qing is pronounced "Shing". Why is this? Why isn't 谢谢 romanized as Shay Shay. Why isn't Qing written as Shing? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/bsocwx/eli5_why_is_it_when_chinese_words_are_spelling/ | {
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"text": [
"It's called pinyin and it was developed in the 50s by linguists for the Chinese government. The pronunciation of Roman letters varies even among languages that use it natively. Think about John vs Juan. Same letter differnt pronunciation. You just have to learn the correct sounds for the letters in pinyin and it makes sense.",
"It's a foreign mispronunciation. Xie is pronounced \"see-eh\", but just one syllable. Qing is not pronounced \"Shing\" either. Like another comment mentioned, once you get used to pinyin (characters written romanized), you'd be able to read pinyin easily. It's like Romaji (for Japanese), for instance \"to\" is pronounced as such instead of reading it like English.",
" > It's pronouned Shay-Shay\n\nIt’s not. How an English speaker pronounces “shay shay” is completely different from how “Xie xie” is pronounced. Pinyin was designed to write down Chinese, not how Chinese sounds to an English speaker. “X” represents a sound that doesn’t exist in English, likewise for “Sh” and “q”. The vowels in this example are different as well."
]
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1mldpk | vacuum chamber, pressure chamber? | What is the diffrence. As far as my understanding goes Pressure and vacuum are the exact opposites. But their effect on the human body (as seen in movies whereby the person exposed to extreme pressure/vacuum explodes). Or maybe the person exposed to vacuum implodes or something. Anyway please explain. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1mldpk/vacuum_chamber_pressure_chamber/ | {
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"You don't explode in a vacuum chamber. Read this for how the human body reacts to a vacuum: _URL_0_\n\nPressure chamber is ambiguous. Does it refer to high or low pressure? Vacuum and pressure aren't opposites: vacuum refers to a system where the pressure is zero (and is a complete void).\n\nI'm not familiar with the effects of high pressure on the body. However, asphyxiation often occurs due to high pressure of some sort (it's how most people die during stampedes: they get squished between people so tight they can't even draw in a breath.).",
"First of all, movies almost [never](_URL_1_) know what they're [talking about](_URL_2_).\n\nPeople rarely explode in either type of chamber.\n\nA vacuum chamber removes all air from itself to simulate outer space (and other things), which makes people think that all your insides are going to try to get outside and you'll explode. This [isn't true](_URL_0_) essentially because your *skin* is really good at keeping everything together.\n\nA pressure chamber exerts *more* pounds of pressure (yes, the very opposite thing) on its occupants. A lot of people think this will make your outsides want to be on the inside and that you would *implode*. This is not true, because the fluids inside your body are more or less uncompressible (I said more or less. Don't try to jump into a black hole without becoming the size of a pin prick).\n\nThat doesn't mean that your lungs won't collapse, though, as those are made out of mostly air. But that certainly wouldn't make for very dramatic television on account of nobody would be able to see it."
]
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[
"http://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/ask_astro/answers/970603.html"
],
[
"http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/06/28/man-survives-life-threate_n_628162.html",
"http://www.cracked.com/article_19781_6-stupid-gun-myths-everyone-believes-thanks-to-movies.html",
"http://www.cracked.com/article_19856_5-ridiculous-medical-myths-you-probably-believe.html"
]
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|
699nes | why have urls got so long and complicated over the years? it used to be _url_0_ | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/699nes/eli5why_have_urls_got_so_long_and_complicated/ | {
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"More complex website's have more sublevels. Yu can think of it like subfolders in a computer disk. \n\nAlso, arguments that carry information of what you seeing (or want to see) are passed in the URL sometimes. Google Maps has a big URL to contain all the information about a what map are you seeing so that you can send it to someone else and that someone else sees the same as you. ",
"I remember back in 1993, my url was _URL_0_\n\nAn entire web history of stuff has happened since then.\n\nFirst of all, load balancers came into play, where the same domain actually pointed to multiple IPs. This simplified things further, such that we got to the _URL_3_ that you're used to. Next came virtual hosts, where the Apache httpd checked to see what domain was being queried, and sent you to a completely different machine/server based on that (so multiple domains were hosted on the same IP that pointed to whatever machine was currently available.\n\nFrom there, web hosting got more complicated as the domains got rarer; CDNs came into existence (content distribution networks) where the _URL_1_ domain actually pointed to some server geographically close to you that had the content cached.\n\nSince not all content could be cached in this way, the rest came from _URL_2_ which was still the original virtual host balancing system.\n\nTHEN things started to move to unstructured databases. At this point, each uri, instead of being a directory path on a server somewhere, was actually an entry in a database. So they got served up as parameter values instead of as paths.\n\nMeanwhile, many sites became ad-supported by ad networks that served content off of an ad service into frames linked to the main site.\n\nThis was all well and good until the WWW started switching from http (ascii text sent in the clear) to https (encrypted authenticated connections). At this point, yet another layer of tracking was needed to ensure that all the assets on the page were legit. We went through a period where most ads were still served http, most logins were https, and everything else was a mix of cleartext and encrypted by a plethora of certificates. Each part of this needed its own entry in the query to ensure the correct data was served up for the end user.\n\nAdd to this sites like Amazon/Google, where the content served up is custom to each user account, and the use of AJAX and friends to serve up the actual content through back channels to a custom javascript-based client running in your browser window, and more tracking, parsing and organizing is needed to keep track of everything and make sure it is both secure, and going to/from the right system.\n\nTL;DR: the web moved from static content on a single server to dynamic content served up by numerous databases distributed globally that need to keep track of context to give you timely, context-driven data."
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"XXX.XXX/XXX"
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[],
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"http://www.some.edu/department/~myusername/www/index.html",
"cdn.host.com",
"host.com",
"xxx.com/path"
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amevz6 | led lights | Why do LED lights flicker on slow-motion cameras - like around sports grounds? I sort of get that they turn on and off really quickly, faster than we can see, but why do they do that? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/amevz6/eli5_led_lights/ | {
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"Video is basically just hundreds of pictures taken back to back. When played one after the other, it gives the appearance of motion.\n\nBecause the camera frames don't match up the LED's flicker rate, sometimes the camera catches the LED when it's off.\n\nThis causes the LED flicker. \n",
"LED is short for light emitting diode. A diode is an electronics component which allows electric current to pass through it in one direction but not the other. \n\nStadium lights are generally hooked up to the alternating current electricity grid of the area they're in. As a result, an LED only has current moving through it about half the time unless equipped with relatively expensive rectifying and smoothing equipment. \n\nSince this happens too fast for human perception to notice it unassisted, stadiums tend to prefer not spending the extra money to eliminate it. ",
"But this ‘flicker’ also occurs in cars that use a DC battery. Why is that....alternator?"
]
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2rgyne | if insurance companies make a profit, does that mean insured individuals slowly lose money in the long run? | Aren't insurance companies just slowly siphoning money? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2rgyne/eli5_if_insurance_companies_make_a_profit_does/ | {
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"They provide a service, namely insurance, that is very useful to those who need it when the time comes. In doing so they make a profit. Are grocery stores slowly siphoning money because they make a profit selling us food? I suppose you could look at it that way.\n\nPaying for insurance is only a 'loss' if you know for a fact you'll never need it. You pay them money and they stand by to pay for disasters when and if they strike. It's a service for money and they make a profit from it or they wouldn't do it.",
"You buy insurance to protect against catastrophic loss the idea being that if the event you bought insurance to cover happened you wouldn't have enough saved up to cover the loss. You don't buy insurance for your new TV because if you break it you can just buy a new one you do buy insurance for your home because that's something you can't replace.\n\nIf you're Bill Gates you *don't* buy insurance for your home because if you lose it purchasing a new one is well within your means. weather or not insurance is just \"slowly siphoning money\" depending on your economic standpoint."
]
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32o2y3 | why is it important for a nation to have some debt? | I read somewhere that it is healthy for nations to run on a little bit of debt. What is the reasoning for this? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/32o2y3/eli5_why_is_it_important_for_a_nation_to_have/ | {
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"It's useful for their pensioners for a country to have some debt g i.e. The government is borrowing money from pensioners and paying the pensioners back a small but certain amount.\n\nGovernments are usually very safe debtors, so pension funds put some of their client's money into government bonds to have a very safe investment for a portion of the pension. The pension fund will put some other fund money into more risky but higher paying investments, to try and grow the fund. If the risky investments go belly up, the pensioners aren't totally screwed because some of their money is safe.\n\nAlso, if I understand it correctly, if a country's economy grows faster than their debt grows, the government can keep borrowing indefinitely because their ability to repay the debts of yesteryear, through increased tax revenue, becomes easier with time. This means the government can permanently spend a little more on the country (e.g. More on roads, more on schools etc) than they take in from tax. \n\nHonestly, I'm a little fuzzy on the details here, so if an economist can weigh in, that'd be grand. For example, if a country's long term growth rate is believed to be 2.5%, does that mean they could permanently run a 2.5% deficit? Or a 2% deficit?",
"The \"debt\" ends up being invested in the economy which stimulates growth. .... e.g. the Government borrows \"100 million pounds\" to buy some tanks. That means someone will form a company to build tanks, and employ people to build tanks. Those entrepreneurs and employees will spend their money on other goods and services, and people in those businesses will spend their extra income on goods and ..... and so on and so forth."
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1lx8wq | why has australia had 3 different prime ministers in the past four months? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1lx8wq/eli5_why_has_australia_had_3_different_prime/ | {
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"The Labor Party won the election in 2007, their leader at the time was Kevin Rudd and so he became Prime Minister.\n\nIn 2010, following disatisfaction within the party, there was a leadership election which Julia Gillard won. Rudd therefore stood down as PM and Gillard became Prime Minister. Two months later the federal election resulted in a hung parliament, with Labor (i.e. Gillard) retaining the PM's position in a minority coalition government.\n\nThe internal Labor rowing between the Rudd supporters and the Gillard supporters never went away, and in March 2013 another leadership contest took place. Gillard was returned unopposed but a mere three months later Rudd *did* challenge her and this time won the leadership ballot, returning him to the position of Labor leader and PM.\n\nFollowing the federal election yesterday, Rudd's Labor Party has lost power and the new PM-elect will be Tony Abbott, leader of the Liberal Party.",
"The TL;DR; version is that the prime minister isn't the President.\n\nThe prime minister a Westminster style parliament is not the head of state, they are not even really the head of the country. What they are is the leader of the government elected by the government not by the people. The people of Griffith voted for Kevin Rudd (and elected him), no one else did or could.\n\nThat means that legally speaking the prime minister can actually change multiple times a day. The voters don't like that crap and even aside from that the actual head of state is likely to dissolve parliament if that happens, but it can."
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8d5c2y | why does water taste sweet when we're super thirsty? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8d5c2y/eli5_why_does_water_taste_sweet_when_were_super/ | {
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"The taste you detect with your tongue is relative. Imagine you drink something with a lot of sugar in it and then eat some fruit. The fruit will not taste as sweet as if you had drunk water or tea before eating it. \n\nThe taste of water depends on what you saliva tastes like. Saliva contains, among others things different kinds of salt. If you do not drink water for an extended period of time, your saliva will have a stronger taste because there is more salt etc. in it. When you then drink water, you will water down your saliva and this might give you the sensation of tasting sweetness.",
"I don't think it really tastes sweet, it's that drinking water when you're parched triggers a gratification response in the brain similar to that you get when eating sugary stuff. ",
"source of water makes a huge difference. ive been to a water bar in south africa. had like 120 different waters from different places. i was thinking it was pure bs but they actually tasted different. probably just different amounts of urine added to them. i remember rain forest water having a sweeter taste.",
"Along these lines, why does food tend to taste \"better\" when we're hungry?",
"Hypothalamus modulates the intensity of the response in your taste buds relative to the state of dehydration and electrolyte balance. There is a strong evolutionary drive to make sure you don't die of thirst so it can interact with your reward system to encourage you to drink more water. ",
"It does? Maybe the water where I live is special, but \"sweet\" is never one of the descriptions I'd give.",
"Here's a fun fact: heavy water is drinkable in small quantities and always has a distinctly sweet taste. Just that small difference equates to a difference in taste.\n\nPerhaps your taste receptors can pick up on those heavy water particles in all water better when your mouth is dry? ",
"Wtf?! Water has never tasted anything close to sweet for me. It always tastes bitter like broccoli. "
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5k74pc | could a theoretical santa claus traverse the entire world and visit each house all in one night by any means? why or why not? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5k74pc/eli5_could_a_theoretical_santa_claus_traverse_the/ | {
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"dbltvz2"
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"score": [
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"text": [
"he could be doing it from outside the space-time dimension we live in. \n\nlike Matthew McConaughey."
]
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||
18vjbj | how does a tv series have different writers credited for each episode but still have continuity? | I've noticed this on most of the recent shows I've watched (Suits, Homeland, Breaking Bad, etc) that when you look up who wrote the episodes, it is usually either a large amount of different people, or a group of people who seem to keep popping up. How is this done but the story still flows between the episodes? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/18vjbj/eli5_how_does_a_tv_series_have_different_writers/ | {
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"text": [
"Because most tv series are written at least weekly or even daily they need to have a bunch of writers working at once. All these writers have a basic idea of the over arching plot but each do their own thing in the episode. ",
"I don't think you need the same writers in order to keep continuity. The main writers, creators, and producers of a show basically set up a template. They create the characters, establish the style, and have a general plan for the show. The individual writers basically fill in the blanks. I mean, you or I could write a TV show from an existing series without breaking continuity. We would just have to watch the previous shows and look at the notes of the other writers and producers.",
"Some TV shows avoid the problem by minimizing changes in any given episode.\n\nOther TV shows keep special reference books as they go that help keep important details in check. When a writer wants to take a story in a certain direction, they can refer to this reference book to make sure they're keeping details consistent (\"Oh, that character has been married twice, and has a sister who has never been married.\")\n\nThe Star Trek franchise is especially famous for this, as they know that fans are probably keeping track just as well, and will write in the second they find an inconsistency.\n\n**EDIT:** Others shows just don't pay attention to details. On the final episode of Happy Days, after a wonderful speech about family and friends from Richie, Marion gets the last laugh by asking, \"Wait, where's Chuck?\" Chuck Cunningham was Richie's and Joanie's older brother, who was dropped after the first season, and never mentioned again until the last episode. See: [Chuck Cunningham Syndrome](_URL_0_)"
]
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as5ojl | how do fire engines change traffic lights when they hit red? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/as5ojl/eli5_how_do_fire_engines_change_traffic_lights/ | {
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"If you look at some traffic lights, you can see a little sensor by the lights, the fire truck has a strobe light that triggers that sensor and causes the light to switch.",
"Yes. Some of the modern ‘strobes’ are IR LEDs and flash a unique code that is recorded so it can be identified if cloned and used nefariously. "
]
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8ivg4c | what is different in the brain of a person having add or adhd? | In comparison to a average brain what is different in someone having a attention deficit disorder ?
I tried googling it but I couldn't find a real answer
Also can someone please tell me what causes adhd ? Is it genetics ? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8ivg4c/eli5_what_is_different_in_the_brain_of_a_person/ | {
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"It’s a disorder having to do with dopamine deficiency, which then affects executive functions. Essentially it’s less rewarding to do certain things. It’s also a self compounding process, where past failures cause anxiety and lower self worth, which then negatively affects future decisions.\n\nBesides the initial chemical imbalance, I don’t think there are other differences between brains of adhd and “normal” brain. \n\nDISCLAIMER: I’ve read a few articles and have ADHD. Not an expert.",
"They just blanket it all under ADHD now because even if you do not appear to be a hyperactive/“twitchy” person, your brain still is. Right now I’m thinking a bunch of different “loud” thoughts that I can identify. It feels like having five hundred radios being played in my head at once. It’s immensely frustrating.",
"A 'normal' brain filters all the senses and focuses on what matters most. An ADHD brain rates more/most things as important and floods the brain with too much input. It's the difference between talking to a person and hearing what they say, and talking to a person and hearing traffic and static, seeing a blue poster, red pants, a stain on the carpet--is that a light?--smelling garlic, and somewhere, faintly under all that, hear their response.",
"This is something that simply isn't answered yet by scientists. We used to think that excessive dopamine was a cause, but we now consider that as a *side effect* due to the sensory overload a person with ADD experiences.\n\nIf someone comes up with a genuine answer in this thread, take it with a grain of salt. There is simply no consensus about what neurologically causes ADD."
]
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17s7ig | what is "eye movement desensitization and reprocessing?" treatment for ptsd? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/17s7ig/eli5_what_is_eye_movement_desensitization_and/ | {
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"text": [
"If this is what I think you are talking about, this was used on me by my therapist. \n\nThe doctor moves an object back and forth to replicated Rapid Eye Movement, R.E.M. The doctor wants to do this because when you are asleep and dreaming, your brain starts to label all the things in your head. The labeling causes your eyes to go back and forth very rapidly, hence the name Rapid Eye Movement. \n\nThe problem is your brain is labeling certain things as REALLY BAD and causing unneeded/unwanted stress making life difficult. So the doctor gets the brain into REM like state and starts to help the brain label things more correctly so doesn't freak out anymore when certain events happen. \n\nThis method is great if you are trying to get results fast! I would not suggest to everyone though. A lot of emotions might come out really fast and nightmares might become the norm for a while. It's a very short but very intense method for not just PTSD, but a lot of psychological problems. \n\nDoes that make sense? "
]
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||
3mq8e5 | request: how can big pharma get away with long term price gouging? | With the recent news reports of skyrocketing healthcare costs and 1000x drug price increases, how can the companies get away with such greed? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3mq8e5/eli5_request_how_can_big_pharma_get_away_with/ | {
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"text": [
"They have a captive audience and (most of the time) not enough public unrest to force them to change. You need their medicine, but they aren't obligated to provide it to you, they can charge what they want for it. ",
"There are basically three ways that a price gouging company can be stopped:\n\n* Don't buy from them\n\n* Someone else gets into competition with them to drive the price down\n\n* Government regulation changes the price\n\nNumber one is difficult when a pharma company is the only producer of a drug that you need. People with HIV can't just decide not to buy their drugs, and if they've only got one source of supplier, they're stuck with it.\n\nNumber two is tricky for a couple reason. First, many drugs are patented, meaning that one company has a legal monopoly for a certain period of time, and it's illegal for anyone else to sell their drug. Second, even if a drug isn't patented, or if a company can produce a generic version of the drug, it takes many years, and millions of dollars, to get set up and get all the government approval you need to manufacture and sell it. There's a saying: \"How can I charge so much for a pill that costs 4 cents to make? Well, the second pill cost 4 cents. The first pill cost $70 million.\"\n\nThe third option is hard because pharma companies make massive donations to politicians, who then do their nefarious bidding and stop government crackdowns on this kind of exploitation."
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1x80l7 | unfinished accommodations and olympic althelets refusing to participate because the events are too dangerous due to poor construction. how did the winter olympics get to such a state of disarray and why was this allowed to happen? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1x80l7/eli5_unfinished_accommodations_and_olympic/ | {
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"Even in better developed and less corrupt host countries there is a crunch to get this stuff done at the last minute...\n\nThere is also a desire to make everything BIGGER, Apparently for Sochi they are trying to make the luge track safer than Vancouver _URL_0_",
"To all the people saying cut Russia some slack:\n\n1. This is an elite international event that they had 7 years and 51 billion dollars to prepare for. There should be no reason why buildings are still months behind schedule.\n\n2. Thousands of conferences, sporting events big and small take place around the world every year. People devote their whole lives and careers to making these things happen. These are not new concepts, ideas or the first olympics ever held. \n\n3. Yup, having working curtains or proper hotel furniture might be a \"first-world problem\", but having clean water, electricity and other amenities are not. Again, this is an elite world sporting event - having proper facilities for international media just makes sense.\n\n4. Three hotels for the media have not been completed. This isn't \"oops we forgot to stock the bar or have extra towels\" this is quite frankly a mess. \n\n5. Saying that they shouldn't complain because it is not ready a week before hand is ridiculous. Again, this isn't the first olympics to take place. People arrive early, on purpose, every single time these things are held. So the facilities should be ready to rock it a good week before hand...not the day of the opening ceremonies.\n\n6. To give them a bit of credit, the venues and athlete facilities do seem to be ready. \n\n7. They are culling stray dogs, but to be fair this isn't the first time this has happened at an international event/isn't the only place where this should happen. Yup, every country has their own set of problems, ethical issues, human rights problems etc. but when international eyes are set on you, be prepared to get judged. Thats what happens.\n\n8. I didn't know an athlete withdrew, but that is their choice.\n"
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bgt9p2 | if our brain paralyzes our body when we go to sleep, how do we roll over? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/bgt9p2/eli5_if_our_brain_paralyzes_our_body_when_we_go/ | {
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"REM cycle. Sometimes you’re more asleep than other times. When you’re dreaming you’re not in a deep sleep, and when you’re in a deep sleep you can’t move. Wild right?!",
"The muscle paralysis only occur during REM sleep when the brain is very active, to stop you from moving in response to your dreams. \nIn other stages of sleep the muscles aren’t paralysed because the brain isn’t dreaming and sending out all kinds of random signals that need to be blocked. Now you can respond to pressure/discomfort by changing position. \n\nSo interestingly, the sleep stage where the brain is hyperactive is the one where your body doesn’t move. \n\nAnd often you are awake when turning, just not awake enough to remember. \n\n_URL_0_"
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30izhd | if feminists are fighting for gender equality, then why call themselves feminists? | Doesn't this title imply superiority of women over men? It's an honest question not meant to be mean-spirited; I certainly agree that gender equality is an important issue. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/30izhd/eli5_if_feminists_are_fighting_for_gender/ | {
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"It doesn't. You can fight for women's rights without having to demean men's rights. Equality is not a zero sum game.",
"Well, historically, equality required building up the status of women. You might argue, or not, that it's still required today. But the name, at least, is historical and made perfect sense when it was coined at a bare minimum.",
"If you're an egalitarian then you need to say what you think equality looks like and why inequality exists. It's the difference between \"I'm religious\" and \"I'm catholic\". Feminism says the main root of gender inequality comes from a societal disrespect of women and femininity. They view many men's issues as being \"It is degrading for a man to be feminine\". This would be things like showing emotion, wearing dresses, being penetrated during sex, etc.\n\nThis view can also explain why discussing men's issues is difficult. Suppose you're a chauvinist. Even if you think they shouldn't you can understand why women would want to be the doctor but it would confuse you why a man would want to be the nurse.",
"Combination of several answers here. Historically women have been building up from a lower status, which made a lot more sense back then. Still makes sense today since they're not entirely equal.\n\nAnd, as someone else pointed out, the societal disrespect of feminism and femininity as being a major source of problems and gender inequality.\n\nThe two hand in hand keep the name very apt even today. Hopefully one day there won't need to be feminists because we've stopped being dicks.",
"There's also different groups that identify themselves as feminists as well. So a simple label doesn't quite work out. One group of feminists might have completely different ideals than another. \n\n",
"Think of it this way;\n\nBlack Power wasn't about black people being superior to white people. It was part of a movement to ensure black people's civil rights.\n\nSimilarly, feminism isn't about women being superior to men. It's a movement to ensure women's civil rights.\n\nWestern culture has historically devalued women. So when people wanted to make society more equal between the genders, they named the movement feminism because it was women who were the inferior ones. To attain equality, they needed to build women's status. \n\n",
"Does \"LGBT rights\" imply the superiority of gays over straights?",
"One popular misconception is that if a person is supporting Group A, they must be taking something away from other Groups. This is not so. ",
"Look at it this way: feminism is called feminism because it is the female that needs the most \"help\" to achieve equality in society. Now that legally, we're very close to gender equality, modern feminism is more about double standards and the social and economical equality of the sexes, than about the law and actual rights. We've come a long way, but the way this society views women still has a long way to go. Although we'll probably never reach 100% equality, its something to aim for. ",
"These other answers are long and confusing. \n\nI'll try and make this simple:\n\nwe live in a patriarchy. a society where over time, males had the upper hand and have purposefully denied rights to women. You've had to have noticed this inequality some point that this in your life.\n\nDid you know that there is a name for a society that holds women as more obvious leaders? A matriarchy is a when women are in charge and there have been societies like this in the past. \n\n\nSo, we live in a patriarchy, the GROUP (regardless of gender) trying to advocate for change and equality are simple called Feminists beause that is the opposite to balance a patriarchy.\n\n\nIF YOU LIVED IN A MATRIACHY WHERE WOMEN ARE IN CHARGE, THE PEOPLE CALLING FOR EQUAL RIGHT WOULD BE CALLED MASCULISM"
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5nfxog | what would happen if a president or other high-ranking us government official just blurted out highly classified information on live tv? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5nfxog/eli5_what_would_happen_if_a_president_or_other/ | {
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"I know this violates the sub rules, and I honestly don't have a genuine answer. But [this](_URL_0_) is the first thing that came to mind when this post came up."
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1pyp0m | what does it mean to be audited and why do people not like it? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1pyp0m/eli5_what_does_it_mean_to_be_audited_and_why_do/ | {
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"*Edit: like others are pointing out, there are lots of different types of audits. I assume you are asking about a typical income tax audit, as that's the type you hear people complain about in media or IRL.*\n\nDishonest people don't like it because they cheated on their taxes and they are afraid of getting caught, having to pay more money and possibly go to jail. That's pretty obvious, so let's talk about honest people.\n\nThe tax laws, at least in the US, are very, very complicated, in some cases contradictory, and a lot of the time open to interpretation. Honest people hate audits because they are afraid that despite their best efforts, they might be found at fault for a mistake in their taxes because they didn't understand complex tax code or because the auditor decided to interpret something different than they did. This leads to a lot of anxiety going in to an audit. \n\nFinally, taxes - especially if you own a business - are a very complicated matter. Because the tax laws are so complex and there are so many thing you have to prove (where did this money come from? Is this a real business expense?) getting ready for an audit can take a lot of time and energy. And the end result is the process above - going in and worrying about being caught for doing something wrong that you thought was correct and facing a fine, penalty or (in less typcial situations) jail time. ",
"**Edit: after reading other people's comments, I realised I've described the wrong type of audit! I'll leave this comment here, since I've gone to the effort of typing it out - but read other replies for a description of the type of audit you're probably interested in!**\n\nInternal auditor here (amongst my other responsibilities).\n\nThere are two types of audit: internal, and external.\n\nBoth types of audit basically do the same thing: they check that procedures are being followed.\n\nBasically, what we do is this:\n\n- We go into a department of our office, and read their procedure manuals.\n- Then we write a list of things the manual says they should do. For example, if it says: \"Customers' personal details should be stored securely\", then we will write, on our list: \"Are the customers' personal details stored securely?\".\n- Next, we speak to the staff who work in that department, and ask them if customers' personal details are stored securely. We ask to see where they are stored, and how they are secured. And we satisfy ourselves that what the manual says ought to be done, is actually being done.\n- Often, we will find something that's either not being done correctly, or which could be done better (known as an opportunity for improvement). We write a report of all the things we find.\n- Finally, we come back and check that the things we wrote in our report have been fixed (if they were being done incorrectly) or considered (if they were just opportunities for improvement).\n\nAs an internal auditor, my job is to help the departments I visit, to help them spot problems, make improvements, and to help them work as efficiently as possible.\n\nAn external auditor does the same things, but with a different objective. An external auditor, if he finds problems, might withdraw a company's accreditation. Or he might represent a customer, in which case if he finds problems the customer may take their business elsewhere. One of the main jobs of an internal auditor is to ensure that external auditors don't find problems.\n\nBecause of the potential ramifications of external audits, people find them scary. The reason people don't like internal audits is because a) they don't understand the difference between internal and external audits, or b) they view it as being the auditor sticking his nose into their business, where it doesn't belong, or c) they view it as taking up their time for no reason."
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1miewm | how is monstanto not a monopoly? | I was reading back in 2010 they had something like a 90% market share.
Then I was watching the daily show recently and again, Monstanto is in the news with their domination of the industry.
We almost broke up Microsoft for releasing IE with the Windows OS, how is Mansanto, which has a much larger market share, not considered a monopoly? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1miewm/eli5_how_is_monstanto_not_a_monopoly/ | {
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" > I was reading back in 2010 they had something like a 90% market share.\n\nMarket share of what? Monsanto makes *a lot* of different products. Also, as far as I know, they're pretty much neck-and-neck with DuPont in most common crop seed markets. Each of these companies sells about 25-40% of the supply of corn, soybeans, beans, peppers, tomatoes, onions, and cotton (to name a few). But I'm unaware of any single market that either owns a 90+% share.\n\nAlso, there was a DoJ antitrust inquiry back in 2009 or '10, but the DoJ apparently never had enough to go after them, IIRC.\n\n",
"As far as I'm aware it isn't being a monopoly that is illegal, its abusing that status to keep out competition.\n\nMicrosoft's situation had a lot more going for it than just releasing IE with Windows. "
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av6zfo | how did netflix remaster the friends episodes from 4:3 to 16:9 and increase the field of view? | [deleted] | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/av6zfo/eli5_how_did_netflix_remaster_the_friends/ | {
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"The content was always widescreen but was formatted to 4:3 back in the day. It has always been this way, ever since movies came out back in the 20s or 30s or whenever it was.",
"If this is true, the episodes must’ve been taped with a wider aspect ratio (16:9) and then cropped down to a (4:3) ratio for television in the post production process. \n\nBefore widescreen TVs were common in households the broadcasting standard for picture ratio was a 4:3.\n\nMost movies that were broadcast on tv in those days were also cropped down from their wider aspect ratio to fill the whole frame of the tv without having the black bars on the top and bottom. After cropping in to fill the frame, they could then employ a technique called “pan and scan” to recreate the look of a camera panning across areas that had now been chopped out of the overall picture.\n\nSo the producers and or creative leads of the show “Friends” must have understood that one day in the future, televisions would be wider, allowing for wider ratio to be shown. They were prepared."
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2ahwsb | do two organisms that differs greatly in relative size perceive time differently? | Why do movies of miniature organisms or of giants show the bigger of the objectives moving at a slower rate? Do they truly perceive time differently? As smaller organisms do tend to have much shorter lifespans than larger ones. (Ie bugs to humans) | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2ahwsb/eli5_do_two_organisms_that_differs_greatly_in/ | {
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"The answer to your question is both yes and no. Size doesn't specifically alter the perception of time. What you're talking about is called critical flicker fusion frequency (CFF) It is the rate at which anything can observe and interpret imagery. Basically; the higher the CFF the slower time is perceived. The animals that have evolved to have high CFF is typically animals that have a need for it which tend to be smaller animals due to fast mobility or survivability (think of how hard it can be to hit a fly)\n\n_URL_0_",
"Do insects experience bullet time? That is the question. "
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ceex2d | how did einstein realize that light will bend near heavy objects? | Hi, i was a reading a book and found that Einstein knew light will bend near heavy objects but how did this idea pop into his head or how did he realize it?
edit: i am so glad my question was helpful to many other people as well! thanks everyone. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/ceex2d/eli5_how_did_einstein_realize_that_light_will/ | {
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"The bending of light is a bit of a mis-representation of what is really the bending of space-time through which the light travels - that spacetime is bent by mass of objects.\n\nBut..to your question, tt was a mathematical consequence of the rest of his theory. The model he created of how the universe worked was a set of mathematical \"axioms\" that if accepted and \"true\" (as a pedantic aside \"true\" is a tough one here as we're talking about a model, so...\"pretty darn good at predicting reality\" is better than \"true\") have downstream consequences - things that if they are not true indicate that axioms are false. We have subsequently measured the bending of spacetime (and it's indeed how we find many objects far away) which has been one of many tests over the years since einstein that have further validated his theories.",
"The curvature of space and time was something that was implicated in a lot of mathematics before Einstein, so there were a lot of hints that straight things were actually curved. It took him 10 years from special to general relativity so it took a genius 10 years to sort out the implications of special relativity. Specifically, it had to do with accelerating reference frames but that is too far for a five year old explanation. It is to say, he knew something was 'up' with the situation because the problem between Newtonian calculations, Clerk's observations, and the fact that Mercury's orbit was wrong using Newtonian mechanics. It took him 10 years to solve it.",
"Edit -- I'm leaving my original answer below but user @missle636 points out that this was not his original thought experiment. [_URL_1_](_URL_0_)\n\n\\----\n\nYou don’t need math to understand this. Here was Einstein's thought experiment.\n\nStart with the Equivalence Principle (EP), which (essentially) states that acceleration and gravity are the same thing. Einstein came up with this as follows:\n\n1. You are in a windowless box\n2. The box has a rocket attached, which is firing, so you are accelerating.\n3. Because you are accelerating you feel a force on your feet.\n\nNow, how can you tell the difference between the force you feel in an accelerating box and the force you feel due to gravity standing on a rock? Einstein concluded that you can't, hence the EP. Scientists use their sciences to test the EP and so far it appears to check out.\n\nNow consider this\n\n1. You are in a box in space that has a window\n2. Someone shines a laser through the window straight across.\n3. If you are not moving relative to the source, the laser beam goes straight across your box.\n4. If you are moving at constant velocity relative to source, the light beam still moves in a strait line, but will contact the other wall opposite the window “lower down” towards the direction opposite of motion, since the box is moving and it takes time for light to cross your box.\n\nHere’s the important one\n\n5. If you are accelerating relative to source, the light appears to follow a curved line through your box.\n\nGo back to the EP. Since gravity and acceleration are the same, light must curve under gravity. Note this is NOT a proof, just a line of reasoning that points to the conclusion. The math came next and then the experimental verification.\n\nEdit\n\nheres a crappy picture I drew to help illustrate\n\n[_URL_2_](_URL_2_)\n\nSecond Edit -- holy crap my first Gold!!! Thank you kind benefactor for bequeathing me this great honor.",
"Einstein and Infeld wrote a very accessible book on the subject if anyone's interested. \"Evolution of Physics\". It's not very mathy but explains the concepts and historical context well."
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18fw61 | why is the american paper currency green? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/18fw61/eli5_why_is_the_american_paper_currency_green/ | {
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"Green ink was something that were really easy to get hands on during the period when the dollar first arrived. It was also a strong ink so it doesn't rub off easily. That's was good, considering how many touched it. The ink were also made up of many different inks, which made the colour hard to counterfeit. Mostly though, at this point, it's tradition."
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j3tgi | what is the boehner bill that just passed? what does it cut? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/j3tgi/eli5_what_is_the_boehner_bill_that_just_passed/ | {
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"It didn't pass.",
"The bill passed the House of Representatives but was rejected by the Senate. \n\nIn the United States, in order for a bill to become law it must:\n\n- Pass the lower house (House of Representatives)\n- Pass the upper house (The Senate)\n- Be signed by the Executive (The President)\n\nThis bill cleared the first hurdle but never had any chance of passing the 2nd or 3rd. ",
"So... What was the bill?",
"No one's really answering this fully. What exactly was his bill about, regardless of whether or not it passed?\n\nEdit: See MellowLemon's post above",
"The Boehner Plan has a two-step process to raise the debt ceiling (more below). The most important stuff to know is that: Congress would raise the debt ceiling by $1 trillion dollars now. Congress would vote again on raising the debt ceiling six months from now.\n\nCongress would cut the budget by $1 trillion in 2013 and 2014.\n\nOnce we hit 2014, Congress can only increase the amount of money it spends in a year by the rate of inflation. The exception to this is money spent for Medicare or Social Security. \n\nA Super-committee of six Republics and six Democrats would meet. They would come up with a bill to reform taxes and entitlements (such as Medicare and Social Security). They would be aim at coming up with another $1.8 trillion in cuts. Both Houses would then vote on whatever decisions the Super-committee comes up with.\n\nRaising the debt ceiling six months from now—as far as I can tell, two things would be tied to raising the debt limit again in six months. \n \n•\tA large debt limit increase which would be tied to the results of the Super-committee suggestions. Boehner’s Bill doesn’t explain what would happen if Congress can’t agree on the Super-committee’s suggestions and pass the Super-committee’s bill. Most likely we’ll be back right where we are now.\n\n•\tBecause the Tea Party wasn’t helping Boehner pass the bill, he had to add a special bit into the bill to get them to support it. It is called the Balanced-Budget Amendment and would amend our Constitution. The debt ceiling would be raised a balanced budget amendment had already been sent to the sent to the states for ratification. The bill doesn't specify what the Balanced Budget Amendment would say, so that's another thing that will be up for argument later on.\n\nAn interesting thing I found: Republicans have said all along to their base that they would not support a plan that increased taxes, but they will most likely be increasing taxes (by eliminating deductions) through the super-committee bill. \n\n",
"The bill said they would make it OK for the men who work for the United States government to borrow more money from their other government friends around the whole world. This means that the other men outside of the US will give the US men money, and the US men give it back later. The reason this is a big deal is because the US men already have borrowed lots and lots of money from other men and have not paid it back yet. It is an even bigger deal because the US men who work for the government are saying that all the US men in all the cities of the whole land, all 50 states, have to pay back the money, and they are also spending money that came from all the US people.\n\nOver the past 100 years, about 20 times your lifespan, the US men have created many plans that cost lots of money to try and solve problems. However they have created a problem where they spend more money than they have. It would be like at your birthday party instead of you getting $10 as present and then spending $10 to buy a toy, you get no money as a present, everyone at your birthday party gets a toy, but you have to pay $30 back later around Christmas time instead of getting Christmas presents.\n\nHowever, this is the tricky part. The US men who are spending the money, are not the same US men who have to pay the money. The US men who work for the government are working for the US men who pay the money for them to be there.\n\nI can see it doesn't make much sense to you either, but don't worry, it will make even less sense when you become an adult.\n\nAn amendment means a really big major change to the most important law, the big important rules that the US men follow, a change to the Constitution. For now let's just call the Constitution a really old document that is very important because it is the foundation for what the US men who work at the government are allowed to do, and thus the freedom for the US men who do not work at the government.\n\nFreedom means the US men at the government can not tell us what to do and how to live our lives. It also means that they should not only be able to be stopped from using our money to buy too many bad things, but also we should be able to stop them from taking money from their friends if we do not agree, and then making everyone in the whole US pay it back later.\n\nA balanced budget amendment means that we will make a new addition to the Constitution, that old document, and then we will mean that the US men in government must not spend more money than all the rest of the US men gave to them. (I think, ask your mother.)\n\nThe people in the US can never seem to agree about what to do. The US men in the US government have power to make choices outside of the power of the US men at home like you and me. We are able to vote for them, but there is no way that we can all get our way. This is why the whole idea of protecting our money is so important and making sure that the US men who work at the government and can decide how much money they can take and how much debt make us take, are able to be blocked by the US men who are paying the money and being forced to pay money back later.\n\nIf the US men who work there today are borrowing lots of money to spend on big adult things, but later when you grow up and become an adult, you will have to pay back the money they spent today rather than spending your money on buying new things that you can afford to make life better.\n\nIt is very scary that they can take our money without asking, but it is even more scary that they can borrow more money than we have and make us pay it back later. They should not have so much power over such a large number of people. This is why we have 50 States, however the US men in the big US government have taken the power away from the 50 States over a long period of time. Over 20 times your life! Over 100 birthdays!"
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md2go | fragmentation/defragmentation | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/md2go/eli5_fragmentationdefragmentation/ | {
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"ELI5 version:\n\nYour hard drive is like a warehouse. There's stuff going into it and leaving it all the time. The guys in the front office keep track of what spaces are open, and what spaces aren't. This is your Master File Table and the Allocation Bitmap.\n\nIf someone calls and says \"I have 19 crates of teddy bears to store\" the guys in the front office will go looking for a place to put them. They obviously want to store them as close to the front as possible, 'cause they're lazy, but there might not be room up front. So they might be stored altogether, or they might be stored in a couple different chunks. When they're stored in chunks, that's a fragmented file.\n\nThis can also happen if you have 19 crates of teddy bears and then ship another 6. They're all the same sort of thing, but since they came in at different times they might not be stored together.\n\nDefragmentation is the process of the guys in the front office going through and saying \"If we move these 4 crates of Etch-a-sketch and over *there* then we can move the paintings by Matisse over *here* and then we can put all 25 crates of Teddy Bears together in one place.\n\nBonus 'Splanation:\n\nIf you ever delete something, you don't actually get rid of it. All it does is say that you *can* get rid of it next time anything gets shipped in. So if you delete your 19 crates of teddy bears, until another 19 crates show up, they probably won't be deleted.",
"Reddit says there's 2 comments but I can't see either of them...so here we go:\n\n**Fragmentation**: Your harddrive is a set of spinning discs with a needle that points to the current section being accessed. When writing to the harddrive, the computer will write to the next **available** section of harddrive it finds. This may not always be the next sequential part of the drive. There could be old data that was already there. The random nature of the data becomes more prominent over time, as data is written, removed, etc etc. That's part of why computers that haven't been reformatted (wiped clean and restarted with a fresh windows install) slow down. Not the only reason, but a contributing factor. Because the data for one specific application/file is spread across multiple sections of the harddrive, it takes longer to find all the right pieces when it comes time to load that data into RAM.\n \n.\n\n**Defragmentation**: Defragmenting is basically an algorithm that is run on your harddrive which attempts to find like-pieces of data and put them closer together, making them easier to find. It's like going into a filing cabinet that was randomly filled, and sorting it out to be alphabetized. Next time you need the \"Smith\" file, you'll know to start 19/26th of the way back from the front of the file. The system isn't perfect, which is why you'll still see some fragmentation even after running the defrag tool, but it should be much better. Note that unless the system is REALLY fragmented, you probably won't see a huge performance gain, but it's still a very important thing to do to increase the life/sanity of your rig.\n\n.\n\nrandom aside: SSD's work in a totally different way and running defrag tools on them is actually a **BAD** thing, from what I've heard.",
"ELI5 version:\n\nYour hard drive is like a warehouse. There's stuff going into it and leaving it all the time. The guys in the front office keep track of what spaces are open, and what spaces aren't. This is your Master File Table and the Allocation Bitmap.\n\nIf someone calls and says \"I have 19 crates of teddy bears to store\" the guys in the front office will go looking for a place to put them. They obviously want to store them as close to the front as possible, 'cause they're lazy, but there might not be room up front. So they might be stored altogether, or they might be stored in a couple different chunks. When they're stored in chunks, that's a fragmented file.\n\nThis can also happen if you have 19 crates of teddy bears and then ship another 6. They're all the same sort of thing, but since they came in at different times they might not be stored together.\n\nDefragmentation is the process of the guys in the front office going through and saying \"If we move these 4 crates of Etch-a-sketch and over *there* then we can move the paintings by Matisse over *here* and then we can put all 25 crates of Teddy Bears together in one place.\n\nBonus 'Splanation:\n\nIf you ever delete something, you don't actually get rid of it. All it does is say that you *can* get rid of it next time anything gets shipped in. So if you delete your 19 crates of teddy bears, until another 19 crates show up, they probably won't be deleted.",
"Reddit says there's 2 comments but I can't see either of them...so here we go:\n\n**Fragmentation**: Your harddrive is a set of spinning discs with a needle that points to the current section being accessed. When writing to the harddrive, the computer will write to the next **available** section of harddrive it finds. This may not always be the next sequential part of the drive. There could be old data that was already there. The random nature of the data becomes more prominent over time, as data is written, removed, etc etc. That's part of why computers that haven't been reformatted (wiped clean and restarted with a fresh windows install) slow down. Not the only reason, but a contributing factor. Because the data for one specific application/file is spread across multiple sections of the harddrive, it takes longer to find all the right pieces when it comes time to load that data into RAM.\n \n.\n\n**Defragmentation**: Defragmenting is basically an algorithm that is run on your harddrive which attempts to find like-pieces of data and put them closer together, making them easier to find. It's like going into a filing cabinet that was randomly filled, and sorting it out to be alphabetized. Next time you need the \"Smith\" file, you'll know to start 19/26th of the way back from the front of the file. The system isn't perfect, which is why you'll still see some fragmentation even after running the defrag tool, but it should be much better. Note that unless the system is REALLY fragmented, you probably won't see a huge performance gain, but it's still a very important thing to do to increase the life/sanity of your rig.\n\n.\n\nrandom aside: SSD's work in a totally different way and running defrag tools on them is actually a **BAD** thing, from what I've heard."
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8908hf | how does a numbing agent block pain but not pressure? | I did a quick search of this sub to try and find an answer but all I could find were posts about limbs going numb from lack of circulation.
When someone gives you a shot of a localized numbing agent, why can you still feel pressure in that area but not any pain?
Edit: r/todayilearned that there are many different types of nerve receptors in the human body.
Bonus question(s): is each type of receptor triggered by a different chemical reaction? Or how can one be isolated and turned off while the others remain active? Also, if a numbing agent is injected into your body, how does it stay localized and not spread through your bloodstream?
Spoiler: I know nothing about biology | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8908hf/eli5_how_does_a_numbing_agent_block_pain_but_not/ | {
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"Because the nerves responsible for pain are different than the ones that feels pressure. A numbing agent basically makes it so that the nerves responsible for sensing pain don’t fire any messages. But you’re nerves that sense pressure work differently so the numbing agent doesn’t work on it.",
"Most pain receptors (nociceptors) are within the dermis (exception to muscles and certain organs). Pressure receptors are within the dermis as well (meissners corpuscles) and other pressure receptors are deeper (pacinian corpuscles). Most numbing agents are usually injected superficially (closer to the skin) where the pain receptors are, and only block out the pain and some pressure receptors (Meissners). The deeper pressure receptors still detect pressure. ",
"There are more or less five different types of nerve fibers, each with varying sensitivities to nerve blocking agents. The reason that some fibers are more easily blocked is an active area of research, and does not appear to be completely explained by the physical size of the nerves (I.e bigger nerves are harder to block). Fast pain nerve fibers are the easiest to block and are responsible for pain and temperature. The get blocked first and most completely. Pressure and more “crude” sensory fibers are very difficult to block and so will continue to transmit signals after the others have stopped.",
"In addition to everything previously mentioned, pain and pressure travel to the brain through two different pathways. :) pain and temperature are transmitted through the spinothalamic tract (sPAINothalamic!), while pressure and vibration sense through the dorsal column medial lemniscus tract. :) consequently, you can eliminate pain and temperature sensation while retaining pressure and vibration sense (and vice versa!).",
"In addition to what everyone else has said, the receptors responsible for pain tend to have thinner or non-existent myelin sheaths that others. Myelin is like a fatty jacket covering neurones.\n\nThe exact mechanism of NSAIDs is poorly understood, but there could be a modicum of relevance here with regards to why we don't lose our sense of touch when we take certain painkillers. It's speculative, but interesting to keep in mind."
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70h0de | what is the kind of skill required to be an f1 driver? what really makes the greats like senna, lauda and others? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/70h0de/eli5_what_is_the_kind_of_skill_required_to_be_an/ | {
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"Lauda and Senna were two different styles but they had a huge technical skill. As a driver you need physical fitness on one side. The other side you need to understand exactly what the car is doing, how it responds when you push it to the limits.\n\n\nBoth were good at that. Lauda was a very technical, calm driver. Senna was brash and aggressive. Both had 100% confidence in their abilities. Lauda focused on calculated risks, wore down his opponents with technical skill and pressure. Senna was going to take a line whether you were in it or not, once he caused a crash because another driver took his line. He banked on reputation, and he maintained it.",
"This is a pretty big question. I'd say the biggest thing one needs is determination - its massively difficult to get in to F1 so a driver has to be utterly obsessed with getting there. Currently there are only 20 cars in F1 and at any given time probably 75% of these have a contracted driver.\n\nIt sounds obvious, but a driver also needs great skill behind the wheel. The ability to drive very fast and not crash is vital. Racecraft is also an important skill - how to use any advantage you may have over a rival to catch and then overtake them, how to defend your position, the ability to not only drive fast but also do that consistently over a race distance - no point in driving 5 fast laps in a 60 lap race.\n\nPhysically drivers don't necessarily to be strong, but they need to be very fit. This weekend is the Singapore grand prix, this is the longest and one of the hottest races of the season, the drivers will expect to lose up to 5kg in body weight (through water loss). A driver will experience constant g-force loads of 2-3g on each lap, a race is 200 miles/2 hours. \n\nA driver also needs to understand his car and every component. Probably the most important bit of this is the tyres. There are various compounds of tyre used in F1 depending on the track, softer compounds give more grip (thus, allowing the car to go faster) but won't last as long as the harder compounds, but the harder compounds don't provide as much grip. If the car is driven aggressively it can wear out the tyres prematurely so a key skill for a driver these days is to be able to drive as fast as possible without damaging the tyres - its a tricky balancing act. \n\nThe car will also have various modes - mainly relating to how the engine works (these days the cars have very complicated hybrid engines that use both a normal ICE and electrical power harvested from the ICE). If you look at a modern F1 car steering wheel it has any number of buttons and switches on it - there are as many as 80 different settings the driver can change!\n\nOut of the car the driver needs to be able to effectively communicate with engineers to describe how the car is handling and what they feel when they drive it. This then needs to be backed up by some engineering knowledge so that the driver and engineers can set up the car to suit the driver, allowing them to drive as fast as possible.\n\nThe best drivers ? they have all of the above, even if its manifested in different ways.\n\nSenna had immense natural talent, he just had a feel for how much grip was available at any given moment. Martin Brundle tells a story of a rainy race both he and Senna were in. Brundle was amazed to see Senna take a wide line around a particular corner, this let Senna overtake another car. Brundle was amazed, he was certain that it wasn't possible to do what he'd just seen and in true arrogant style said to himself \"if he can, I can!\". A little later in the race Brundle tried to use the line Senna had and promptly aquaplaned and spun. Somewhat irked he later caught up with Senna and told him how he'd tried to use the same line and spun. Senna narrowed his eyes and asked when in the race Brundle had tried, Brundle told him and Senna said \"No, I wouldn't have done that then, it was too wet\".\n\nBrundle was blown away, not only was Senna driving as fast as possible in pouring rain but he had enough mental capacity to be scanning the entire track looking for standing water (which could cause a spin) and avoiding it, not only that he remembered every lap too. This extra level of mental capacity appears to be a common link between the greats - Schumacher was known for driving absolutely flat out and using the radio to ask the team what other cars were doing with regard to pit stops and which tyres they were using - he'd often make suggestions on altering the strategy (when the pit stops were) on the fly. He could drive that fast and work out the pros and cons. \n\nSenna used every fibre of his being to win, he simply tuned his mind and body to the task at hand and relied on that natural skill. He was a massively intense and complicated person. He told a friend that he would hold his breath for the first part of the first lap because he believed it heightened his senses and concentration. In 1988 at the Monaco Grand Prix he qualified 1.4 seconds faster than his team mate, Alain Prost. Prost, along with pretty much everyone else were in awe, to beat your team mate is always the goal, but to utterly demolish a driver at Prost's level was simply unthinkable. When asked about the lap he said:\n\n > I was already on pole, then by half a second and then one second and I just kept going. Suddenly I was nearly two seconds faster than anybody else, including my team mate with the same car. And suddenly I realised that I was no longer driving the car consciously. I was driving it by a kind of instinct, only I was in a different dimension. It was like I was in a tunnel. Not only the tunnel under the hotel, but the whole circuit was a tunnel. I was just going and going, more and more and more and more. I was way over the limit, but still able to find even more.\n\nThis became known as his \"out of body experience\". Whatever did happen that day there is no doubt that Senna believed in what he had said - he later remarked that it had scared him because he was beyond his own conscious understanding. \n\nProst by comparison was much more of a \"logical thinker\", he studied everything meticulously and used absolutely everything he possibly could to his advantage. His nickname was \"the prof\" and it was often said he drove with his head whilst Senna drove with his heart.\n\nMansell by contrast never had the natural skill of Senna or some of the others, but what he did have is have determination that simply made him push himself to extreme limits. \"no you aren't going to pass me\", \"Yes, I will catch and pass you!\" and he just made sure it happened. After F1 he went to Indycar an d had a massive crash in Phoenix in which he was badly injured, nevertheless as soon as he could he was back in the car, despite having a tap in his back that was used to drain fluid from his spine, he was in a lot of pain but would go out and race just as hard as ever and won the championship. Earlier during his F1 career he suffered heat exhaustion during a race in South Africa, the car failed a few hundred meters before the line, he refused to be beaten, got out and pushed the car over the line and duly collapsed. His sheer bloody-minded attitude carried him through.\n\nRoss Brawn has remarked that Michael Schumacher wasn't always the best test driver because he instinctively changed his driving style to match the car, as an engineer Brawn really wanted a driver to give feedback on how to improve the car, but Schumacher apparently found it difficult because he was able to feel what the car was doing and just alter how he drove it. That sort of adaptability can be the difference between an average race result and a good one.\n\nA great example I saw recently of how a driver uses absolutely everything to help them. Its late 2013 and F1 is set for new engines for the 2014 season (the old engines were 2.4 litre normally aspirated V8s, the new engines were 1.6 litre turbocharged V6s). Lewis Hamilton visits the factory that makes the engines for his car (Mercedes Benz HPE). He discusses matters with Andy Cowell, one of the senior engineers. An engine is running on a dyno (a static test bed). Test gear is running the engine according to recorded data from a previous grand prix. \n\nHamilton asks which circuit the engine is \"driving\" around - Cowell is unsure. Hamilton closes his eyes for 20-30 seconds and listens to the engine \"Its Hungary\". He was right. How did he know ? because he uses the sound of the engine to help him drive at the limit - probably sub-consciously he knows when to release the throttle to brake for a corner, how hard to accelerate at a given point by engine sound. He was able to recognise the sounds the engine was making, how long it accelerated for and so on and differentiate them from the 25+ tracks he's driven at F1 car at. Its a great example of how a great F1 driver uses everything to help them.\n\nTL;DR Driving skill, intelligence, determination to the point of obnoxious arrogancy, physical fitness.",
"The two greatest skills, in my opinion, is anticipating how their car will respond in a given situation and spatial awareness.\n\nMost people have pretty poor spatial awareness of their vehicles. You've seen this if you are have ever tried to let someone merge, leaving them what looks like a giant hole, only for them to slow down even further hoping it will get bigger. A successful racer has to be able to put their car into the tiniest of holes and do so at high speed.",
"Old Top Gear did some clips on this, in particular, Hammond had a go in the Renault F1 car and he described the challenges he had as a mere mortal and what's required of an F1 driver.\n\nIt will be on youtube somewhere. "
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2npcws | why is it that when i sleep in, i feel like i have not slept at all? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2npcws/eli5_why_is_it_that_when_i_sleep_in_i_feel_like_i/ | {
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"I honestly feel like this gets asked every week on ELI5. Jesus.",
"Guilt.\n\nActually, your varying your sleep cycle too much from the usual, throwing off your cycle.\n\n\n_URL_0_\n\n"
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bct435 | why are names of molecules and such in chemistry so long and convoluted? | For example, riboflavin, or vitamin B2, is also known in chemistry as 7,8-Dimethyl-10-[(2S,3S,4R)-2,3,4,5-tetrahydroxypentyl]benzo[g]pteridine-2,4-dione. Why are the names so complicated? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/bct435/eli5_why_are_names_of_molecules_and_such_in/ | {
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"Because there are millions and millions of possible molecules. It takes a lot of details to describe a complex one.\n\nSimple ones have shorter names: *carbon monoxide*",
"the complex name is a systematic name that creates an unambiguous description of the molecule. it's designed so that if you just know the name, you can figure out the entire molecular structure. Obviously, more complex molecules are going to require more complex descriptions.",
"If you are familiar with your IUPAC naming conventions then the big long name actually tells you exactly how to draw [the molecule](_URL_0_). There are two(di) methyl groups (CH3) off to the left, thus Dimethyl. There's a 5 carbon long string(pentyl) with 4(tetra) OH(hydroxy) groups coming off the side, thus tetrahydroxypentyl.\n\nThe names seem long and complicated because they're not just names, they're instructions. If you're a German Chemist and you've never heard it called Riboflavin before you wouldn't know what Riboflavin was, but you could use the long name to match it up to the common name you know that molecule as."
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e7koc4 | why are washing machines usually smaller than dryers? (have way less space for clothes in them) | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/e7koc4/eli5_why_are_washing_machines_usually_smaller/ | {
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"Dryers need to tumble the clothes apart from each other more. Washing machines can have clothes very close to each other. They rub against each their helping to clean each other with friction. \n\nDryers need to get the clothes more separated, to get the heat in. If a pile of wet clothes had heat blowing on them but they stayed close to each other, they wouldn’t dry as quickly. \n\nSo while dryers may look like they can take more clothes, they’re at their most effective with a load that matches the size of the washing machine. \n\nThis is true with blankets and comforters as well. Allowing the blanket to get a loose tumble is what dries it. \n\nNot very scientific sounding, but it’s the basic answer. I’m sure someone smarter could explain heat dispersion, and give us a more technical answer, but this is the gist.",
"Dryers tumble clothing to allow the hot air to move through and around them and doing this requires more space for the same amount of clothing. As such a washing machine paired with a dryer set to do the same sized loads will be smaller than the dryer.",
"Appliance tech here:\n\nDryers have very low RPMs (rotation per minute) compared to washers, about 50-60 RPM. This is because dryers use heat, ventilation (unless it's a condenser dryer), and the tumbling action to dry the clothes. If it spun faster the clothes wouldn't tumble and would instead get flattened along the drum due to centrifugal force.\n\nA top load washer peaks at about 800 RPM and a front load washer is anywhere from 1000-1200 RPM. This is because unlike dryers washers rely on this high speed to create enough centrifugal force to remove the water. They aren't trying to remove all the water just most of it.\n\nWashers fill with water which is very heavy compared to the wet clothes you put in the dryer.\n\nWhat this means is that washers are much higher stress and energy machines compared to dryers. This affects the drum design.\n\nIn a dryer there's a single drum. It sits on rollers (they 100% look like rollerblade wheels), felt and plastic guides, and in some models a bearing at the rear.\n\nWashers, both front and top load, use a double drum design. The inner drum is what rotates and where you put your clothes. The outer drum doesn't rotate and is suspended by dampers and shocks. This suspension system is absolutely critical to absorb the tremendous energy and vibration that comes with rotating a heavy wet load at high RPM.\n\nIn fact this is why forgetting to remove the shipping bolts can be lethal to washers. When washers are delivered they don't want the drum banging around during transport. Both top and front load washers have shipping bolts to secure the drums. When customers forget to remove them and run the washer it will shake so violently it will start walking along the floor. This happens way more often than you think - despite warning labels, brightly coloured shipping bolts with tags on them, lots of folks don't read the manual and take them out.\n\nThis can crack or otherwise damage the drums. It's a very expensive ($500-$800 Canadian) to fix and will take 2 technicians 2-3 hours to repair.\n\nTo sum up: washers have less available working internal volume compared to dryers due to the double versus single drum. The double drum is necessary to allow the outer drum to be suspended to absorb the higher stress and energy associated with washing versus drying."
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2gtyrx | the process of making butter involves over whipping heavy cream then straining the solids (butter) from liquids (buttermilk). so why is it ok to leave butter out at room temperature for days whereas buttermilk and cream would spoil? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2gtyrx/eli5_the_process_of_making_butter_involves_over/ | {
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"Butter's not a good environment for most germs, because it has very little sugar and moisture. Milk (and most unfermented liquid dairy products) has two big strikes against it: it's got a bunch of sugar (lactose, mainly) and protein in it, which are the resources bacteria and molds need, and if it gets infected a little bit, the germs can easily spread to the whole thing.\n\nThat said, buttermilk generally doesn't go bad very quickly, even if you leave it out for a day or so (it's inoculated with a harmless-but-tasty bacteria that, ideally, uses up the available sugars before competing germs can get at it), and butter *will* grow spots, mainly mold, if it's left out too long."
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aionyr | what is different about a good student instrument and a pro level instrument? | Please be specific about the steps in manufacture that go into a very high level instrument that would not be found in a good student instrument. I know with a violin or guitar there is a huge difference in sound, but what would I see about a pro level instrument? Is it all in the ear? EG this one sounds good so charge more. I really expect there are additional manufacturing steps taken for the really good guitars/violins. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/aionyr/eli5_what_is_different_about_a_good_student/ | {
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"A Professional quality instrument will have better quality materials and be finished/constructed to a higher standard. That's about it.",
"Just like with any precision instrument (think cars, watches, etc.), you get better performance out of better materials and more careful craftsmanship. Cheap instruments are usually made of plastic and are created on an assembly line. They won't sound as good, they won't last as long, and they may have defects. Expensive instruments made by hand by experienced professionals out of high quality ingredients will look better, sound better, and last longer. I bought a mid-range wooden clarinet and had it tuned up by a professional instrument repair man and I can tell you it sounded much better than my old plastic practice clarinet. And the levers and joints on the keys worked better, so they were quieter and the instrument was easier to play.",
"A lot of it is fit and finish, I like electric guitars as an example because they have many upgradable parts that can be compared.\n\nIf we start at the headstock most entry level guitars will have rather loose tuning machines, loose fit to the holes in the headstock and a loose fit between the gears can result in them being unstable and having some give, this hurts your tuning stability, a high end guitar will have a much tighter fit. These can be upgraded to the same ones as a high end guitar but may lack a good fit to the neck \n\nMoving down the nut of the guitar is part of what sets your action hight and plays a part in tuning stability as well, there are different types from cheap plastic to locking nuts these are generally not changed but can be modified or swapped if they present any problems \n\nThe frets themselves are one of the things that can really separate an ok guitar from a great one. Modern machining has resulted in even cheap guitars have very precise and accurate spacing between the frets but where you see a difference is the quality of the the fret wire and the thickness, different thicknesses and crowns completely change the feel of the neck\n\nWe move on to the pickups which are largely dependent on what style you are going for, the nice thing about pickups is they are easy to change and can radically shape the tone of a guitar\n\nThe pots used for volume and tone vary in resistance and have different circuits you can wire to them to produce different effects such as a treble bleed that generally won't be found on an entry level guitar, also higher end guitars will usually have thicker wire and nicer solder joints as well as a shielded cavity to try to reduce noise\n\nFinally you get to the bridge which is the other half of setting the action of the guitar, the quality and weight of a bridge as well as its mounting affect sustain and resonance and contains the saddles that determines the guitars innotation, most student guitars will come poorly innotated causing chords to sound out of tune as you move along the neck, this is user adjustable but takes time and is well worth it\n\nUltimately after a certain point that I personally would say is around the 800-1200 mark the guitars are very well made and as long as the neck is good you can change out parts to your preferences and achieve the same or very close to the results as a much more expensive instrument\n"
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8zvuhn | why can't we recycle the stuff that's sent to landfill? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8zvuhn/eli5_why_cant_we_recycle_the_stuff_thats_sent_to/ | {
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"There are two reasons, both of which are applicable in many cases:\n\n1) Things that are mixed together are more expensive to take apart. Aluminum cans are easy to recycle because they are almost pure aluminum. There is aluminum in food packaging, but it's bonded to paper, plastic, and other non-aluminum things in a way that's hard to undo.\n\n2) Some things are not very valuable, and the energy that would be needed to process them costs more than the output of the process could be sold for (even when the cost of the landfill is included).",
"Comes down to money. It doesn't pay to filter the invaluable things. Contrary to popular belief you can filter a good 95% of garbage. But some you can like paper cups. The wax inside the cups to prevent breakage/leak prevents the cup from being recycled. I'm sure there are ways around it by now but.. cost.",
"In general, recycling is what we call it when someone figures out how to break something down and then rebuild it into something else, or just straight re-use or re-purpose it. For example, lots of plastic gets melted into a big blob of mixed plastics, which gets re-formed into something else. \n \nWith some substances, like certain plastics, metals, and glass, this is pretty easy to do. However, there are some products where recycling would just take so much energy or time or fancy tech that it's simply not worth it now. And even if you can do it in a city, it would be way too inefficient to do in rural areas. So there's a simple question of logistics for certain things. \n \nFor example: construction scraps. Could someome, somewhere use little broken bits of wood thrown out from a housing build? Sure. But sometimes there simply isn't the demand nearby, or the system to connect the disposer with someone who might want it. And depending on regulations where you live, you can't always just leave stuff on the street and say \"free\" for a variety of health and safety reasons. So what's a contractor to do except throw it out? It's simply not worth their time to try to find someone to take it risk-free. \n \nThen there's stuff like styrofoam. Could it theoretically be broken back down into base chemicals and re-used? Probably. But does the technology to do that exist today in a way that's cheap enough and common enough to do that? Not that I know of. (Though there are people working on bacteria that dissolve polystyrenes, so maybe we'll be there soon). \n \nSometimes people say magic is just science we don't understand yet. Landfills are where we put the stuff we don't know how to recycle cost-effecticely *yet*. Maybe someday we'll figure it out. Until then, dump. \n \nAlthough \"mass burn facilities\" are things. Giant incenerators with state-of-the-art filtration for removing toxic fumes and such. It's a way of at least turning trash into heat energy/electricity. But again, expensive and high-tech, so they're not very common...yet. Maybe someday they will be, though.",
"Sorting is the problem; it's expensive. Someday when robots are ridiculously cheap, or (less likely) we are truly running out of some key material, we'll dig them back up and sort them to recycle the valuable bits, and likely compost or burn the rest for fertilizer or energy."
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1oyurp | why is it when people see an incredibly cute baby one of the reactions is to 'eat' the baby? or bite at it? | Just something I've noticed amongst various cultures and people. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1oyurp/eli5_why_is_it_when_people_see_an_incredibly_cute/ | {
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"text": [
"I feel the same way with cats, because they're so cute I need them inside of me ",
"_URL_0_\n\nTake a read of the article above.\n\nTo put it basically it is because the smell of the baby activates the same receptors of the brain as smelling nice food."
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"http://www.medicaldaily.com/why-do-people-want-eat-cute-babies-scientists-say-its-their-smell-257806"
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cmo33g | what is a freehold tenancy? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/cmo33g/eli5_what_is_a_freehold_tenancy/ | {
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"text": [
"In English law it refers to owning land rather than leasing it. Lots of property in England is owned by large landholders and leased long term (99 year leases etc). Freehold is land purchased outright (to the extent possible under the law)."
]
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|
||
bxg8dx | how do energy companies safely obtain radioactive material for nuclear power plants? | The new HBO Chernobyl series has me pondering about this. For instance, after the unfortunate indicident of the reactor core exploding, radioactive graphite was seen exposed. Consequently, radioactive particles were emitted at an extremely dangerous level.
So, how to energy companies initially obtain the radioactive material? Where do they transport the material from? How do they safely transport the material? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/bxg8dx/eli5_how_do_energy_companies_safely_obtain/ | {
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"Uranium requires a \"critical mass\" to sustain a chain reaction. If you don't have that critical mass, you'll just have regular old radioactivity, which can be dealt with using specialised containers and vehicles for transportation.",
"There are highly regulated facilities that produce the fuel rods. Uranium can be mined in some places. That has to be enriched to be usable as fuel for the usual reactor designs. As long as the reactor wasn't started yet the fuel is not that radioactive. That happens when you start the chain reaction and you get fission products and other material catches neutrons and is activated.\n\nTransporting it takes a specialized containers. If it's already very radioactive you use _URL_0_ to sore and transport the material.",
"Reactor fuel, uranium, is mostly safe before it's put into the reactor. You can actually hold a chunk of uranium in your hand and be just fine, as long as you don't lick it, ingest it, or inhale any dust from it. It's mined from the ground, enriched a little bit depending on the type of reactor, and then formed into pellets. These pellets get assembled into fuel rods, the rods get grouped into bundles, and the bundles go in the reactor. It's the fission process that they undergo once inside the reactor that makes new isotopes that are far more dangerous than the original unused fuel.",
"Not every radioactive material ore is very radioactive by itself, normal uranium (238) is not much radioactive but the isotope uranium-235 is. Try to avoid associating radiation to immediate danger, not all kinds of radiation are dangerous and it's impossible to not be exposed to radiation during your life.\nNuclear power plants that use thorium for example are very safe and efficient and not the big deal people usually think when the subject is nuclear energy.\nThe most dangerous \n\nWe are surrounded by naturally occurring radiation. Only 0.005% of the average American’s yearly radiation dose comes from nuclear power; 100 times less than we get from coal, 200 times less than a cross-country flight, and about the same as eating 1 banana per year.\n\nObs: the most dangerous kind of radiation isn't a particle but an electromagnetic wave (gamma radiation).",
"We simply mine Uranium from the ground. Natural Uranium is made of two isotopes U238 (99%) and U235( < 1%). U238 is very stable with an half life of 4.5 billion years and U235 is not that much more unstable with an half life of 700 million years. This mean that it take a lot of time for them to decay and emit radiation. In addition, those two decay in alpha radiation, which basically mean that they emit helium nucleus. That type of radiation is not that dangerous, a sheet of paper or your skin can stop that radiation. Ingesting it on hand will be dangerous.\n\n & #x200B;\n\nU235 is a fissile material, meaning that if it absorb a neutron it will split, creating energy in different form including gamma ray which is a dangerous radiation and 2 isotopes which are both more radioactive than U235, meaning they decay a lot faster. U238 is a fertile material, meaning that if it absorb a neutron it won't split, but it will become unstable and decay rapidly into a fissile material which is this case would be Plutonium. In a reactor you don't want natural Uranium, you want more like 95% U238 and about 5% U235 (the exact number depend on the reactor) and we call that enriching the uranium. When U235 split it also create more neutron to keep the reaction going, so the U235 will produce most of the energy, but the U238 will produce a good portion by become plutonium and split too (between 10 and 40% of the total energy depending on the reactor). But when you run low on U235 it won't produce enough neutron to keep the reaction going and you end up with mostly U238, < 1% U235 (around the natural level) and a bunch of radioactive isotopes coming from the fission. So until you put it into the reactor the Uranium is really that dangerous, you can take it in your hand if you really want."
]
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"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dry_cask_storage"
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3clpnp | what happened at the new york stock exchage today and what it affects | What exactly happened at the New York Stock Exchange today, and how does it affect anything? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3clpnp/eli5_what_happened_at_the_new_york_stock_exchage/ | {
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"To put it simply the computer system that runs the NYSE crashed and it took about 3 hours to get it back up. It's believed to be an internal technical issue that has now been resolved. Strangely enough though, Anonymous, the hacking group, tweeted something about it yesterday, but the media is reporting that there was no malicious involvement. \n \nWill this affect anything? Not really. There are 11 other stock exchanges and lots of the trades from today were just routed through the NASDAQ.",
"Ask next week. All we really know is that some computers went down & they had to stop trading. There might be a postmortem on the event at a later date.",
"The NYSE did not give any other reason than \"it was a technical issue\"; they didn't investigate it yet. They did rule out the possibility of a cyberattack, though.\n\nThe NYSE only handles a small fraction of all trades on the market (about 5-10 percent, some estimate it to be even less). There are many other exchanges, including the NASDAQ and BATS; networks that allow direct trading without a middleman, and firms that directly sell the stock to investors.",
"The quote system failed. I trade occasionally and its not really an issue if you hold stocks for a long time because you don't need a daily quote. Biggest issue is for people who day trade because one minute the quote is 50.00 and then no info. Orders still come and go but you don't where the stock is trading you can get killed if it moves against you that's why they halted trading till they got it fixed. I don't think it was malicious because in my opinion it would be a pretty lame attack. "
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d4hdo1 | why there is no bacteria or something can't eat the plastic waste? plastic is organic matter | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/d4hdo1/eli5_why_there_is_no_bacteria_or_something_cant/ | {
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"text": [
"[Cellulose](_URL_0_) is made of (long strings of) sugar, and is a natural \"building block\" of most plants, but it takes specialized stomachs to digest (break down) cellulose. Your really strong HCl stomach acid doesn't do the job.\n\nPlastics are long strings of some small molecule, chained together because carbon can chain with carbon pretty much indefinitely. Anyway, there are plastics (and rubbers) that resist acids, bases, heat, cold, water (easily), compression, stretching, etc., so they will last a long time before they decompose.",
"The properties that make plastic so useful also make it difficult for any natural bacteria to eat it. Plastics have very long chains with interlocking bonds sometimes. This makes it very durable, resistant to chemicals etc etc. Unfortunately most natural digestive systems are not designed to handle such materials since one step of digestion is to break down food chemically.",
"It doesn't occur naturally, as discussed in other comments. But there are bacteria that can eat it, and in the long run it is just a matter of time. We put plastic everywhere, bacteria that can digest it have an advantage, over time they will spread and evolve to digest it better than now. People have found these bacteria in places with a lot of plastic. [Ideonella sakaiensis](_URL_0_) is an example, it can eat PET, a material used for bottles. It was found near a plastic bottle recycling company.",
"Imagine you are 3 years old. You know.your alphabet decently well. You see the letters and know what they mean. But when the letters are put together to form words you have no idea what to make of it. \n\nThat's kind of how plastic is to nature. We take bits of compounds and string them together into large chains. The chains are relatively new in the world and unlike pretty much any other natural substance. \n\nNot only that but microbes don't have a reason to try and eat plastic. Plastic waste is usually found in places with other, more easily digestible sources of food."
]
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3zv4y5 | how come tim cook makes so much less then other apple execs? | Tim Cook made $10.3M last year, but most of the Senior VPs at Apple made about $25M.
Source: _URL_0_ | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3zv4y5/eli5how_come_tim_cook_makes_so_much_less_then/ | {
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"The board of directors aka the largest shareholders of the Apple get too decide how much to pay Tim Cook. ",
"He doesn't. His actual \"How much, in total, by all sources, is Tim Cook paid\" is closer to $65 million.\n\nThis is because he also receives *stock rewards* (payments on the old stock he was given). While you could argue that those are now his stocks and don't count, they're included in the $25million for the other VPs in that MacRumours article.\n\n_URL_0_\n\nThe article you quoted confuses things by including different things for Tim Cook and the rest of the VP's, making it sound like their total income from Apple is higher than his. If we exclude the same things, he's on more than they are.",
"There's another factor at play here, too. [Section 162(m) of the Internal Revenue Code](_URL_0_) only allows businesses to take a tax deduction for the first $1M of a CEO's pay. Business ordinarily are able to deduct all employee pay as a business expense, meaning they don't have to pay taxes on earned money that is used to pay employees. If you're not a CEO (or one of the top 4 highest paid officers), Apple can deduct all the money it pays you. If you are the CEO, they find other more creative ways to pay you, like stock options. "
]
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| [
"http://www.macrumors.com/2016/01/06/apple-ceo-tim-cook-2015-salary/"
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[],
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"http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-04-17/tim-cook-s-65-million-pay-is-best-deal-among-top-paid-u-s-ceos"
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[
"https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/26/162"
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|
48pk7f | how do ip bans work on games, forums etc if your ip changes daily? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/48pk7f/eli5_how_do_ip_bans_work_on_games_forums_etc_if/ | {
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"text": [
"Well, most broadband connections don't quite have a static IP, but the IP doesn't change that frequently either. Maybe not for weeks or months. If your IP is changing every day, then an IP ban doesn't work. \n\nThey could do a partial IP ban. For example, even if your IP changes, often times the first 3 segments will be the same - 12.34.56.78 might change next time to 12.34.56.90. They could ban any IP starting with 12.34.56 but that could have the unintended consequences of banning other users."
]
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1t7wgn | how can a space craft (in space) redirect itself without an atmosphere to push against? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1t7wgn/eli5how_can_a_space_craft_in_space_redirect/ | {
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"For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.\n\nYou send a force in one direction (exhaust) and it pushes you in the other.",
"Rockets do not work by pushing against the air, so they don't need air to operate. \n\nRockets work by throwing mass (exhaust) away at high speed. It's like standing on a stakeboard and throwing a baseball...you will recoil opposite the direction you threw the ball. \n\nEssentially, the spacecraft is pushing off of the exhaust.",
"It must eject a small amount of mass at a very high velocity in one direction so that the reaction force (see Newton's laws of motion) pushes the craft in the other direction.\n\nUsually this is accomplished by rocket engines.",
"The universe works in weird and surprising ways. This is one of those ways.\n\nImagine you are in a complete vacuum. Just you, and a baseball. You are floating in zero gravity.\n\nYou throw the ball. Intuitively you might expect to remain stationary while the ball flies away. Actually what happens is that the ball flies away from you AND you fly away from the ball! Newton expressed this effect when he described his Laws of Motion. This is the third: \"Each action has an equal, and opposite reaction\"\n\nThe force exerted on the ball when you throw it is matched by an equal and opposite force on you. But since the ball has a lot less mass than you, it moves a lot faster than you do. Same force amount on two different masses creates two speeds one fast (the ball) one slow (you).\n\nNow imagine you have a huge supply of balls. As you throw them, each ball has about the same speed. But you accelerate a little bit every time you throw a ball. Throw enough balls and you will be moving at a speed equal to any one ball that you throw. Keep throwing them and you'll keep speeding up and your speed will be higher than any individual ball's speed.\n\nThis is how a rocket works. The \"balls\" are atoms of gas, and the speed the gas is \"thrown\" with is extremely high. The more gas, or the higher the speed of the gas, the more the rocket accelerates.\n\n"
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205yzj | why is "globalization" liked by most people? or does the media just want us to think most people like "globalization"? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/205yzj/eli5_why_is_globalization_liked_by_most_people_or/ | {
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"Globalization has resulted in hundreds of millions of people being lifted out of poverty in the past few decades. At a basic level, you could view globalization as the gains of modern civilization and the modern economy being more equally spread amongst the world's population. The global economy isn't exactly a zero-sum game, but the gains have not been very evenly spread. \n\nThere are plenty of problems and potential downsides with globalization. But it has contributed a lot to improving the lives of millions if not billions of people. ",
"Globalisation means a lot of things.\n\nA lot of income has been generated for poorer countries by making stuff for richer countries. Some of these poor countries are actually managed quite well and have used the resulting flow of income to improve the lot of their people, building sanitation, transport networks, providing more education to their children, and general other building-for-the-future type stuff. India has a long way to go for example, but has substantially improved in the past 20 years alone, ditto China.\n\nYou are right though that as the network spreads, and everyone's involved with everyone else's business, those at the centre of the financial web can cause problems. Part of the lingering problem with the credit crunch is people forgot how to be prudent (not helped by lax financial laws). They took excessive risks; risks that were even riskier than they actually thought. Some of these risks turned into busts (as risks can do), but that meant they weren't getting income from someone. Which in turn meant they couldn't pay someone else.\n\nThe problem is, they'd been allowed to get too big. The government could have let them fall, but like dominoes, they'd have taken a lot of other companies with them. It's one of the few safe bets out there that the resulting mess would have been far worse than it is, because everyone loans to everyone else.\n\nEffectively though, by buying out several banks (northern rock in the UK for example), you simply turned private debt into public debt and loaded it onto the tax payer. I haven't looked at the American statistics, but the UK won't pay its debt off for another 2 generations."
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5yyv8p | what gives us the legal, social and ethical rights to dig up, claim ownership, and display mummies and other ancient humans? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5yyv8p/eli5_what_gives_us_the_legal_social_and_ethical/ | {
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"About 1000 years has to pass before it is currently considered culturally acceptable to dig up graves just to have a look, and potentially display bodies.\n\n\nTaking headstones and other identifiers away is a FAR shorter period of time. Most churches use old headstones for their paths, the going rate is about 150 years old and older, IF clearly no-one has visited the grave for years.\n\nGraves are often also moved for building purposes and other infrastructural concerns (such as 'we have to have a water-pipe going through that bit or it will cost us millions to divert')..",
"Legal: The person digging up the mummies often own the land. Or they have obtained permission from those that own the land. \n\nSocial: The society that created mummy is long dead. Normally the religion that was practiced in the death rite is also dead. There can be no social violation if that society does not exist currently to be violated. \n\nEthical: The person is dead so cannot be harmed, and there are no living family members to take offense at what is going on. "
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94ysqa | why is the achilles' tendon so infamous for injuries? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/94ysqa/eli5_why_is_the_achilles_tendon_so_infamous_for/ | {
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"text": [
"It's a story from Greek Mythology. \n\nAchilles was a great warrior who was dipped in a river as a child making him either invincible or very very strong (not exactly sure which one). However when he was dipped in the river there was a part of his heel that didn't get submerged in the water and one day in battle he took an arrow to the heel and died. ",
"The Achilles tendon is the tough band of fibrous tissue that connects the two calf muscles to the heel. It's also the strongest tendon in the body. \nIt's infamous because rupturing the Achilles normally results in a very prologed period of recovery and maybe surgery. "
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|
||
3supsc | how do shows that expose drug trafficking in prisons protect the dealers they film. | Shows like Drugs Inc on Nat Geo for example, like how do guards look the other way while dealers are showing how they smuggle drugs in front of a film crew? Some people wear masks and others allow their faces to be completely seen. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3supsc/eli5_how_do_shows_that_expose_drug_trafficking_in/ | {
"a_id": [
"cx0r8xs"
],
"score": [
2
],
"text": [
"Some things are very real and the people being interrogated, whether they are a dealer or a witness, may be unaware of the consequences of revealing their identity. Also the interrogation of suspects is spotlighted in each episode and several shows. A witness from a documentary went missing after his identiy was show on television"
]
} | []
| []
| [
[]
]
|
|
99h6mg | what about watching or hearing another person throw up—or even pretend to throw up—makes someone have to throw up worse? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/99h6mg/eli5_what_about_watching_or_hearing_another/ | {
"a_id": [
"e4nm9a7"
],
"score": [
6
],
"text": [
"I remember reading somewhere it's a biological indicator. Essentially when you see or hear someone else do it that triggers your body to try to flush out potential toxins. Basically your body thinks the other person ate or drank something bad so as a preventative measure forces you to flush out all your food and liquids. "
]
} | []
| []
| [
[]
]
|
||
et2ht4 | why is a triangle always 180 degrees? | I’m trying to relearn GEO for an upcoming assessment, and need to explain with things such as “Interior Angles Theorem” and etc. If anyone could shed some light on this, that’d be great! | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/et2ht4/eli5_why_is_a_triangle_always_180_degrees/ | {
"a_id": [
"ffdr2m8",
"ffduyj1",
"ffdw9ba"
],
"score": [
4,
12,
4
],
"text": [
"This is actually something you can prove using one of the five assumptions of euclidean geometry. If you have a triangle then one of the lines is the line from the fifth postulate ( _URL_0_ ), and the point is the corner not on the line. The second line is 180 degrees, and so the interior angles add up to 180 degrees because they're the same angles.",
"If you are walking along the perimeter of a triangle, you will turn a total of 360° by the time that you get back to where you started. That 360° will be spread among the three corners of the triangle. At each corner you will turn by some amount. 180° minus the amount that you turn is the interior angle of that corner (draw it out if you aren't sure). The sum of the interior angles is therefore (180°-turn1)+(180°-turn2)+(180°-turn3)=540°-(sum of turns). Since the sum of the turns in 360°, that means the sum of the interior angles is 180°",
"Take any point on a straight line and the angle on one side of the line is obviously 180° / a half circle. Now take three lines all intersecting each other at the same point, the angle on one side of any of these lines - still obviously 180° - is now separated into three sections which are the the angles between the lines. Now move any of these lines without changing the angle and you get a triangle where the interior angles are the same as the angles between the lines before since you didn't change any angles, and therefore these angles add up to 180°."
]
} | []
| []
| [
[
"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PnW5IRvgvLY"
],
[],
[]
]
|
|
1x3gxg | why is the drug culture amongst hollywood rock/movie stars so prevalalenty? what about that industry makes drugs so alluring, and sometimes, fatal? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1x3gxg/eli5_why_is_the_drug_culture_amongst_hollywood/ | {
"a_id": [
"cf7r6fv",
"cf7u3dy"
],
"score": [
2,
3
],
"text": [
"There's nothing special going on here except that the media lets us know that there are a lot of stars using drugs and alcohol. The truth is that there are a lot of people who aren't stars who are doing the exact same thing. No one knows about them because they aren't on television or in the tabloids, but it's happening.",
"Music and Acting have a critical thing in common, and that's empathy. \n\nMusic channels empathy with lyrics, and a well written, emotional song can be extremely moving. As a performer, you're often expected to perform these songs constantly.\n\nActors channel emotions into characters that they must convincingly portray. Depending on the role, they could jumping in and out of this character constantly for months on end.\n\nThe drug culture comes up when you need to get into a certain emotional headspace, and you're finding yourself coming up short. Can't get that sad, happy, excited, whatever. \n\nThe musician struggles to reach that emotional headspace of their song, and it falls flat compared to the radio/studio version.\n\nThe actor can't portray the character, incapable of drumming up the emotions required to portray them convincingly.\n\nEnter drugs. They lower inhibitions, they often open your awareness, they enhance your moods. They're wonderful for all this empathetic emotional stuff. Ecstasy was originally a clinical drug designed to help cure anxiety and psychiatric disorders.\n\nNow the problem:\n\nAs they take these drugs to reach their necessary headspace, they are positively reinforcing it. Their peers will applaud their accurate portrayals, the audience will cheer loudly as the musician leaves his soul on the stage for the song. They're high, and they're rewarded for it.\n\nIt snowballs from there. Their tolerance builds up, and they need more to get to the same place. When their sober, their work is so so, they're harassed and told to get their shit together. They were so much better in their previous role, what happened to that great person?\n\nThe great person everybody praises for authenticity and skill, is the normal person high as a kite.\n\nCombine that with lots of pubic exposure, fame, money, very easy access to very high quality stuff, and a constant pressure to be exemplary. And you've got a recipe for constant drug abuse. Life is stressful to normal people; for the famous it just get's amplified. Worse, when you start using drugs to facilitate you're 'work' (which many do) you're just being praised and congratulated for getting high. And did you know that when you're high, you're just the fucking best?\n\nMost are able to handle it, some cannot."
]
} | []
| []
| [
[],
[]
]
|
||
r7sni | how smartphones connect to the web | My phone automatically connects to the internet to check email, or whenever I want to browse the internet. How does it do it? Does it just automatically connect to the nearest wifi? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/r7sni/eli5_how_smartphones_connect_to_the_web/ | {
"a_id": [
"c43mt9u",
"c43ptah"
],
"score": [
8,
2
],
"text": [
"I started to answer this, but my answer was so full of technical jargon that I couldnt possibly expect the average american to understand, let alone a five year old.\n\nTo sum up what I was about to say, your handheld computer with cell phone capability is able to access the internet via the nearest wifi, the nearest cellular tower, or (if you spent enough money) the satelite network directly. If you want me to, I can explain *how* it works, just be prepared for a wall of text.\n\n-Army Communication Specialist",
"In USA, it's common to use WiFi. Here in Sweden, it's more common to use 3G (UMTS) for internet connections (WiFi is also common, but much less than in USA).\n\nThe phone pretty much just keeps track of the radio base stations (by listening to them broadcasting their identity to the world, which they do to let phones find them) or WiFi routers."
]
} | []
| []
| [
[],
[]
]
|
|
3az27n | what is happening when i put a coin into a vending machine and it instantly falls into the change holder? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3az27n/eli5_what_is_happening_when_i_put_a_coin_into_a/ | {
"a_id": [
"csh9j27",
"csh9n6p",
"cshcvxa"
],
"score": [
2,
4,
23
],
"text": [
"Each coin has a magnetic signature. When the signature isn't quite correct the machine detects it as not a coin. It's only when it detects a coin that it triggers the deposit action.",
"Either the coin is not the correct weight or size of accepted coins per the manufacturer of the coin slot.",
"As a person who has worked in vending, I can say the below (or above) is incorrect. Every coin operated machine employs the use of a coin mechanism, which is simply a gravity fed chute about the size of a post card with a few levers, a magnet, and channels. Let's say the coin mech is adjusted to accept only quarters (they generally ONLY accept one type of coin) and you drop a nickel through. Your nickel will pass through the channels, and since it's not the right size and weight, it will fall through the reject slot, instead of falling through the path to the coin switch. This is true for a other coins that aren't the same size, that can fit through the slot. Some will just outright jam the mech, some get stuck to the magnet, like a Canadian quarter. Now by all means this system is NOT foolproof, it just works really really well. Every so often something makes it through that shouldn't, like a nickel in ever 15000 quarters, even some foreign currency. I've found a British 10 pence coin in one of my coin counts before. So if you drop a quarter through and it keeps being rejected, try another quarter. If the next one does the same thing, then it's the coin mechs fault and it needs to be worked on. "
]
} | []
| []
| [
[],
[],
[]
]
|
||
224doy | halo's plot | I think I understand the following: The Halos were built to wipe out the flood (all living things) so they don't take over the universe. This was kind of like going scorched earth. The covenant came to worship the Halos. Then I get kinda lost.
I've read wikipedia's summary a few times and just never got it. I've also started to read one of the novels and got sidetracked and never finished it. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/224doy/eli5_halos_plot/ | {
"a_id": [
"cgj7v84",
"cgjawx0"
],
"score": [
3,
40
],
"text": [
"_URL_0_\n\nSomeone explained it perfectly here. Marking explained.",
"This is a very, very simplified overview of the story so far:\n\nTens (hundreds?) of thousands of years ago the galaxy was ruled by a species called the precursors. The precursors were incredibly advanced beyond our comprehension. They were overthrown and driven from the galaxy by the forerunners. The precursors left the galaxy and transformed themselves into a desiccated powder to bide their time to exact their revenge on the forerunners. This powder eventually becomes corrupted and becomes the Flood. It turns out thousands of years ago humanity had an interstellar empire on par with the forerunner. Both species were [tier 1](_URL_0_) civilizations. Eventually humanity encounters the Flood which begins to overtake them. The humans come into contact with the forerunner while trying to escape the flood, igniting the Human-Forerunner War which lasts for millenniums; humanity loses. The forerunners devolve humans as a punishment and confine them to Erde-Tyrene, now known as Earth. The forerunners eventually encounter the Flood. They are unable to stop the Flood's advances and so develop the Halo array and shield worlds. The Halo array is fired killing off the forerunner and Flood. Humanity is deemed the forerunners' heirs and dubbed the Reclaimers.\n\nThe Covenant forms between the various alien species based on their worship of the Forerunner as gods. They misinterpret ancient forerunner writing and think reactivating and firing the Halo array will cause them to return and/or cause the faithful to ascend on the Great Journey. After the Covenant encounter humanity and after consulting an ancient forerunner AI learn that humans, not the Covenant, are their gods' anointed ones. The covenant hierarchy declares humanity to be heretics and institutes a holy war against them to cover this up. The war against humanity lasts from 2525 to 2552 and nearly wipes out the humans. The only thing that saves them is a rebellion within the Covenant when one faction learns the truth about the forerunner and the Halo array.\n\nHalo 4 starts with Master Chief arriving on a forerunner planet known as a shield world and accidentally setting loose the forerunner's military commander the Didact who had been sent into exile before the array had been fired. He hates humanity because his children were all killed during the Human-Forerunner War. The remnants of the Covenant ally with him.\n\nEdit: Dammit, just saw you marked this as explained. All this effort wasted."
]
} | []
| []
| [
[
"http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/za5a9/eli5_plot_summary_of_all_the_halo_gamesjust_the/"
],
[
"http://halo.wikia.com/wiki/Technological_Achievement_Tiers"
]
]
|
|
381b7o | what are composers doing when they wave their hands around all over the place? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/381b7o/eli5_what_are_composers_doing_when_they_wave/ | {
"a_id": [
"crrhq16"
],
"score": [
3
],
"text": [
"You mean conductors? They are giving cues to to the various sections of the orchestra about the exact timing of when to play their pieces, how loudly, how softly, etc."
]
} | []
| []
| [
[]
]
|
||
2wl6fz | (in the uk) why do we not need a tv license to watch tv shows on iplayer? | Why is it that we don't need a TV license to watch BBC shows on iPlayer an hour or so after they have aired? I don't really get the point. Also, why is it that you are allowed to watch TV on iPlayer live if your laptop isn't connected to the mains? I just don't understand the logic behind this at all. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2wl6fz/eli5_in_the_uk_why_do_we_not_need_a_tv_license_to/ | {
"a_id": [
"corvvtg",
"corw9uu"
],
"score": [
3,
5
],
"text": [
"1) If you are watching any shows live without a TV License, then that's illegal.\n\n2) TV Licensing laws are to watch live things, or TV that you have recorded on a TiVo, or a Sky+ box. Uploading your shows to be watched \"On demand\" is the decision of a company, and not the government.\n\nSo, because you are watching something live, you need a TV license, and the live watching is regulated by law. However watching an on demand service is okay, because the company (BBC, ITV etc.) uploaded them as an institution separate from the government.\n\nIf you're wondering why companies upload \"On-Demand\" Stuff, it's simply a question of logic. Either people will want to see their show live and buy a TV license, or they will buy a DVD/Blu-Ray of that show.",
"The reason for the exemption for laptops not connected to the mains is because of battery powered portable TVs (Like the Sinclair Microvision, or Sega Game Gear TV tuner). If you had a TV licence at your home it also covered you for battery-powered portable TVs. A laptop counts as a portable TV receiver as long as it's running on its own batteries. It's pretty archaic now."
]
} | []
| []
| [
[],
[]
]
|
|
12q0y5 | what is protein(whey) made of/from? | Do they like pulverize meat or what? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/12q0y5/eli5_what_is_proteinwhey_made_offrom/ | {
"a_id": [
"c6x71jj",
"c6xa5xg"
],
"score": [
2,
2
],
"text": [
"Whey protein is extracted from milk, usually as a leftover from cheese making. It's then dried out and powdered to add protein to supplement powders. ",
"Whey is what is left over after acid or an enzyme was used to process milk. When this happens, the proteins that are precipitated (become insoluble) are designated the Curds, and get turned into cheese. The soluble portion becomes the whey. Whey can be dried up/dehydrated to make Whey Protein Concentrate, which is usually marketed to people as a protein supplement."
]
} | []
| []
| [
[],
[]
]
|
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