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Are adult children morally obligated to care for ailing parents? | Do you have a general moral theory within which you want an answer to this question?
Part of this is the extent to which you think familial status can itself cause a moral obligation.
edit--just adding a little elaboration.
Myself, it seems very unlikely that we can actually argue the "parentage" can be the cause of the obligation to take care of one particular ailing person. There certainly seem to be lots of things involved in parenting that make potential reciprocity morally right; but only in virtue of the nature of the parenting.
For instance, its plausible that you owe something to a parent who ensured you had access to great education and thus professional success. it seems extremely plausible to me that the same obligation would not attach to a parent who abandoned you at age 2 and never spoke to you for twenty years.
By extension, you would have to be arguing that there is some moral obligation arising from the mere genetic similarity. This seems very strange. | 11 | 20 |
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How does orbital resonance really work? What causes them and why are some unstable? | Lets take, for example, the Kirkwood gaps in the asteroid belt:
For asteroids in the asteroid belt, the biggest influence on them by far is the force of gravity from the sun. There is, however, a very minor effect from the gravity of Jupiter. Because force is proportional to the inverse square of distance, we can model the effect of Jupiters gravity as a tiny nudge that occurs when the asteroid and Jupiter are at their closest.
If there is no orbital resonance, this kick always occurs at different points in the asteroids orbit, so the tiny kicks do almost nothing. If the asteroid is in orbital resonance with Jupiter, then those kicks occur at the same spot in its orbit each time, and can, over the course of a few million years, amount to a huge disturbance, resolving itself when the asteroids orbit is either sufficiently perturbed so that it leaves the resonance, or it hits something, or it is flung out of the solar system.
However, not all orbital resonances are unstable. Sometimes, the regular boost is such that it will act to oppose deviation from the resonance. Some examples are Jupiters moons Io, Europa, and Ganymede are in a 1:2:4 orbital resonance, and Neptune and Pluto are in a 2:3 orbital resonance. Arguably, the stability of the Lagrange points could be called 1:1 orbital resonances, but that is kind of the is-a-hotdog-a-sandwitch of orbital motion. | 14 | 18 |
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Is there a term for the cost of convenience while shopping? | It's a bit of an odd question for a proper term so I'll present the story that led me to think about it.
At one store, milk is $3, but the produce is bad so I will purchase none.
At another store, milk is $4, but the produce is good so I will purchase produce there.
Is there a term for my unwillingness to go to the cheaper milk store to save $1?
Is there a term for the $1 difference in milk prices between the stores, assuming the other store knows I'm willing to pay this extra $1 to be able to purchase both milk and produce at one location?
It feels too easy an broad to call it price discrimination because my shopping preference is between two products instead of one, and that cost increase is based on my preference for produce which varies from time to time. The stores are also right next to each other which means I can't really account for travel time as a big factor.
Thanks! | Opportunity cost: the loss of potential gain from other alternatives when one alternative is chosen
(Definition taken from the Oxford English Dictionary).
In essence, opportunity cost is the value of your next best alternative activity. So, in your example, the opportunity cost of buying your $3 milk in one place and then traveling elsewhere to buy produce, includes the value of the gas, wear and tear on the car (if you're traveling by car), and time that you spend travelling to the other store for cheaper milk, in terms of how you could have spent these resources in the next best way. If this value exceeds $1, then you'll just buy your milk for $1 extra at the store you buy produce from. | 12 | 19 |
[Real Time Strategy Games] Where exactly is the Player or "Commander" supposed to be? | In games like World In Conflict the player is implied to be among the men that are fighting on the map, but where exactly are they? Are they the ones leading the charge or are they just hanging back and ordering their men from a safe distance? | It really depends on the context of the conflict and the exact circumstances/technology used by the faction in question. Most of the time, however, the "commander" is usually away from the field in a safe location so they can direct their forces without worry of an attack on their position. The various commanders of GDI and the Brotherhood of Nod throughout the decades famously use an Electronic Video Agent to communicate with their forces from far away. In another universe, the Allied and Soviet commanders speak through their assistants/lieutenants, who in turn report their results to the commander.
On the other hand, Jim Raynor was right there with his raiders during his fights, as were Kerrigan and Artanis. | 39 | 24 |
[Marvel] Is insurance expensive in cities like NYC? Do insurance companies even exist? With the number of superheroes and multiple villains the destruction just seems way too much. Does fighting like this cause mental health/financial problems in normal citizens? | The increased destruction is helped by the increased ability of repair- advanced tech/magic/helpful mutants/etc can fix a devestated city much easier then a conventional construction team, and luckily after a super-fight there tend to be helpful superhumans around to do so. (Indeed, it might even be part of their obligations to keep acting as superheores).
This helpfully prevents the premiums getting too high. | 41 | 46 |
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ELI5 : How and why does ice help swelling? | Swelling is the bodies response to anything that it perceives as harmful. It is caused by a rush of blood cells and your capillaries opening (called vasodilation) to allow more blood flow to the area for healing. This causes inflammation and heat around the area.
When you get cold, your blood vessels constrict (vasoconstriction) to keep blood flowing to your vital organs.
TL;DR: Putting ice on a swollen area helps constrict the blood vessels and keep the blood moving. 👍🏻 | 14 | 17 |
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ELI5: What is a hedge fund? | Normally when you invest on the stock market, you can invest in single stocks of specific companies. However this can be quite risky and will consume a lot of your time to manage your investments.
You could hire an investment manager to do this work for you but this is costly and isn´t really feasible for the majority of private investors.
Investment funds are basically a collection of managed stocks and assets that you can invest in as a whole. In essence you and many others share a common investment manager (represented by the fund) who manages a diverse portfolio of stocks and assets for you.
This way you gain access to risk management, diversification and economies of scale you would never have access to as an individual investor.
Hedge funds are special cases of investment funds, instead of being open to the public with many smaller investors, it´s basically a private group of investors.
So hedge funds like normal funds invest in stocks and assets (like buying and selling other companies) to grow capital. Unlike normal funds their capital does not come from issuing out "shares" to many smaller private investors but from a small host of private investors.
For example, imagine five rich guys each investing $1M into a hedge fund, that hedge fund now has a capital of $5M which it will invest in diverse assets to try and grow the capital.
Edit:
To add, because it has been pointed out several times (and quite rightly) another defining feature of a hedge fund is that they are less regulated. As hedge funds are not publicly traded they are subject to few regulations and can use a wider variety of financial instruments that mutual funds cannot (e.g. shorting).
Edit2:
Because it is a FAQ, hedge funds are not mutual funds. Unlike mutual funds (as they are commonly understood, it's bit a legal term) hedge funds are not publicly traded and are subject to less regulations (e.g. what type of assets they can actually invest in).
Broadly speaking hedge funds are a special type of mutual funds. | 1,687 | 3,925 |
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Is it morally justifiable to prefer luxury over charity? | I have no professional or academic background in the field of philosophy or ethics, but this question bugs me a lot:
I am a 17 year old white male living in Germany. I enjoy pretty much any advantage a human can hope for, I am healthy and my parents make a decent middle class living. I spend my time in school, studying, dicking off on reddit, drinking, you know the type, just to give you a little context to the question.
I recently bought a 150$ pair of headphones, pointless luxury, just because I can. This money could've saved lives. A ton of rice apparently costs 400-500 dollars, enough to feed families for months. If I buy a smartphone for the same price instead of donating the money, am I responsible for starvation and subsequent death? To what extent am I morally bound to help strangers over spending spending money on myself?
We (rightfully) praise firefighters, policemen, soldiers for protecting and saving individual lives because the stories appeal to us - but the distance and anonymity of far-away suffering silences our biological sense of empathy. African lives apparently have less inherent value than the ones close to us, close to our communities. Does that make us bad people?
On a related note, to complicate the question further: We spend a huge amount of resources to save the "weak but wealthy", it is not uncommon for cancer patients to receive treatment that costs a few thousand dollars a month just so they can live a little longer. Is it selfish of us to do this instead of saving hundreds of poeple? Is there a utalitarian or humanist consensous on the matter? Does acknowledging my moral shortcomings change anything about their nature? I don't think of myself as a horrible person, but laying things out like this, I apparently am.
Any thoughts on the matter are warmely appreciated. | Just a small comment, then I'll let people who actually know something about normative ethics answer the rest. There are two interesting questions in here:
> Is it morally permissible to prefer X to Y? (The question in your title).
> Is it morally permissible to do X rather than Y? (The question your post asks).
These are both interesting questions, but they should be carefully distinguished. | 16 | 23 |
How did you determine and refine your research interest to be as specific as possible? What kind of PIs did you reach out to? How did you go about requesting a supervisor? Whats big in the field of neuroscience right now? | Personally, I am interested in looking at neuronal regeneration and how it can be augmented or enhanced (plasticity, enhancing or replacing damaged tissue due to neurodegenerative disease or trauma, looking at factors that play a role in activating latent stem cells etc). Would like to work in a wet lab and look at something on the cellular level (at the synapse/genetic factors).
I'll be reaching out to PI's in order to find a potential supervisor and will try to incorporate some info from there publications into my correspondence. However, could you guys potentially help me with getting my research interest to be a bit more specific (if you feel its too broad), and assist with phrasing my correspondents in the best way possible. | Your research interests are probably as specific as they can be. People get more specific based on when they get their advisor, where the grant money is going, and what they can do someone in the lab isn’t doing. | 12 | 18 |
[Avatar The Last Airbender] Could the Avatar pass any bending for ther children? | If an Avatar who is already a master of the four elements has a child can he pass any element to his children or just the element the avatar was born with? | No. While bending is largely spiritual, there is a not-insignificant genetic component. The Avatar's unique bending abilities come from the Avatar Spirit, which doesn't have any effect on their genetics. (as far as we know) | 29 | 15 |
CMV: The result of an IQ test is not representative of a person's intelligence | I've seen a few people here and there saying how they passed an IQ test with a relatively high result, but that they still considered themselves stupid. However, their view of their own intelligence might be flawed in a pessimistic way, and might actually be smart. I've also noticed how many subjects of /r/iamverysmart posts were using their IQs to try proving that they're superior than other people. I also took an IQ test recently (one on the internet, just to see my own for fun), and don't really understand how they can generalize demonstrate how smart someone can be.
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> *Hello, users of CMV! This is a footnote from your moderators. We'd just like to remind you of a couple of things. Firstly, please remember to* ***[read through our rules](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/rules)***. *If you see a comment that has broken one, it is more effective to report it than downvote it. Speaking of which,* ***[downvotes don't change views](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/guidelines#wiki_upvoting.2Fdownvoting)****! If you are thinking about submitting a CMV yourself, please have a look through our* ***[popular topics wiki](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/populartopics)*** *first. Any questions or concerns? Feel free to* ***[message us](http://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=/r/changemyview)***. *Happy CMVing!* | IQ tests are a measure of a facet of intelligence, they show how efficient your brain is at doing certain basic tasks. Intelligence is more than how fast you can solve x y or z puzzle. It's how fast and to what degree you can remember something, and then apply that knowledge in a different setting with different constraints to your advantage. No paper test can accurately measure that in a quantitative way, but an IQ test tries and does so with relative success.
Think of IQ tests as the BMI of the brain.
Bodybuilders have BMI's that are in the 'Obese' section of the scale, but they clearly aren't obese.
It's the same way with IQ tests, you can do well on IQ tests but it doesn't make you a genius. The same way you can be a genius with a poor IQ. But a high IQ is an indication of intelligence and will work for a large percent of the population. | 60 | 86 |
[Star Wars] Are the humans (like Obi Wan, Princess Leia, Lando) actually human? | Since Star Wars takes place in a galaxy far, far away, I would assume that they are just aliens that happen to look like humans. | Follow-up questions:
* Why does it seem that humans are so much at the center of galactic history? The most important historical figures, both good and bad, seem to be predominantly human.
* Why was a human template selected for the clones in the Clone Wars? Are humans the best soldiers? | 56 | 95 |
CMV: Even though Cuban-style socialism leads to lower average standards of living than capitalism, it is immoral to allow anyone to live in abject poverty while others are rich and so socialist government is preferable | I think my long, rambling title basically covers it. I'm not inherently anti-market or anti-existence-of-rich-people, but AFAIK a system like the Cuban one is the only one that has truly allowed everyone to be "middle class" or better. I don't mean the system used in Cuba *specifically* (hereditary dictatorships aren't my thing, although I'm hesitant to say I'm in favour of full democracy because people tend to vote in free market quick-fixers that end up fucking them over ie Russia in the 90s), but rather a system based on state-owned industry, with limited personal property ownership, some private commerce, and universal free social programs up to post secondary education and all healthcare. Also, accusations of hypocrisy won't work to change my view. I live in a wealthy country, and although my family is poor I still probably have a higher standard of living than I would under a socialist system. Nevertheless I think it is the morally correct thing to do, *if not necessarily the pragmatic thing*, to adopt a socialist system.
**EDIT: I think the OP is unclear on what I mean by standards of living: What I really mean is less access to the *stuff* that capitalism produces. Fancy kitchen gadgets, Netflix subscriptions, memory foam mattresses. That stuff wouldn't be available under a socialist system. But I don't think *stuff* is necessary for leading a fulfilling life. People were happy before any of that was invented. Of course we can benefit from modern technology, but I think it should be better used in areas like healthcare, higher education, scientific research etc which flourish under socialism.**
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> *Hello, users of CMV! This is a footnote from your moderators. We'd just like to remind you of a couple of things. Firstly, please remember to* ***[read through our rules](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/rules)***. *If you see a comment that has broken one, it is more effective to report it than downvote it. Speaking of which,* ***[downvotes don't change views](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/guidelines#wiki_upvoting.2Fdownvoting)****! If you are thinking about submitting a CMV yourself, please have a look through our* ***[popular topics wiki](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/populartopics)*** *first. Any questions or concerns? Feel free to* ***[message us](http://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=/r/changemyview)***. *Happy CMVing!* | Does it lead to lower standards of living?
Cuba has one of the best schooling systems in the world. And one of the best healthcare systems in the world. All after decades long embargo from America.
Part of the healthcare training is to go to "third world" countries and practice medicine there, directly benefiting people outside of their country too.
If your definition of lower standards is the average then yes, you won't have the mega mega rich, but it would raise standards of living for almost everyone. Only lowering them for people who frankly, could cope. | 17 | 55 |
How to stay motivated and productive while advisor is on sabbatical? | My advisor just left for a year-long sabbatical on a different continent (and several different timezones) making regular meetings impractical.
I tend get things done when there are deadlines or something/someone to be accountable to. For those who've weathered the same conditions, what are some habits, strategies, and/or tricks you've used to keep you motivated, productive, and moving forward in your research? My biggest fear is that I will slip into complacency or otherwise fall behind.
I do have a lightly-involved co-advisor, but I get the feeling he's not very interested in stepping in to advise me full time. However, maybe that's my responsibility to advocate for myself and request the guidance I need.
**EDIT**: And while I'm thinking about things, I suspect part of my anxiety stems from my mental-model that most of my work comes *from* my advisor or deadlines they set as opposed being self-driven and working on (or discovering) lines of research on my own. So, yeah. advice on how to make that transition is also welcome! ;)
I've been used to semi-regular advisor check-in's, so maybe having some mental space to think about things will help. I guess we'll find out. | I like this question. This is a good question.
Here are some ideas.
-Join a writing group or research group, if there isn't one that fits your exact needs, why not create an informal reading group for the year. Connect with others writing on overlapping topics and arrange to meet for coffee once a month for the next 8 months. Agree with each other that on the 1st of the month or whatever you will each circulate a draft paper and critique it during coffee later in the month.
-Plan 1-2 meetings with the co-advisor to check in and use those as deadlines for some other component in your work (and newly written chapter, for example).
-Write out an ambitious timeline for everything you hope to achieve that year, remind yourself that you don't have to "hit" all of these goals, but they are your most ambitious aims. | 25 | 34 |
How does a ponzi scheme work? I'm 5 years old. | Is a pyramid scheme the same thing? | #1. you borrow lots of money, and promise to pay it back at huge interest rates over a long period of time.
#2. you live like a king spending money on whatever you like until the money runs out.
#3. you borrow even more money to pay off the original loans.
#4. repeat this until china stops lending you money. | 36 | 84 |
ELI5: the Holy Spirit in Christianity | I literally went to Sunday school for a decade growing up and just realized I still have no idea what the heck the Holy Spirit is or how it's distinct from the other parts of the Trinity. | That'll depend somewhat on your denomination, but AFAIK the most common teaching is that the Holy Spirit is the personal presence of God in a believer. Sort of like an additional conscience, untainted by sin, guiding believers to salvation. The Holy Spirit entering the body is what baptism represents, whether the church uses oil, dirt, water, etc. | 13 | 19 |
CMV: Whether climate change is man-made or not is irrelevant. | In political discussions around climate change a common argument by those who do not want to legislate against fossil fuels, deforestation, mass land farming, greenhouse gas emissions, industrial biodiversity loss, rising temperatures, etc. seems to be that climate change is a natural thing that happens on Earth over time. I personally don't believe this argument is realistic since studies show a sharp spike in greenhouse gases and global temperature over the past 100 years uncharacteristic with any long-term trend, however that isn't the point of this CMV. I won't be responding to comments about what \*\*causes\*\* climate change, and I encourage any discussions to avoid that topic as well. The point is that, no matter what, the governments and corporations of the world should be investing more into sustainable technology than they already are.
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\*\*Even if\*\* climate change is largely or wholly natural, I still believe we should be doing more about it. If we accept that it's going to be happening no matter what then we should still be investing money, time, and expertise into moving away from using hydrocarbons and taking \*proactive\* steps to reduce the future impacts of things like forest fires and hurricanes that have been growing more and more prevalent. Weather disasters, rising sea levels, and record high temperatures are things that are observably happening more and more frequently. Regardless of the cause we need to deal with these problems before they become insurmountable. We need better forestry programs. better disaster planning, coastline protection, improved flood defenses, and ways for farming to adapt to cope with summers that are growing longer and hotter.
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\*\*Even if\*\* investing in green energy and sustainable resources not derived from fossil fuels won't prevent climate change we should still pursue them as a more sustainable world will always be better to live in than the same world with finite resources. An unfortunate consequence of supply-and-demand capitalism is that if a desirable (or even vital) commodity is in short supply, it will inevitably end up being exploited by whoever first corners the market. Now I'm not suggesting that some Star Trek style post-scarcity socialist utopia is just around the corner; some of these things will take decades or even centuries to perfect, but it's never too early to start. It seems obvious to me that with a degrading habitat and depleting resources humanity needs to find new ways to do it's old tricks.
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We can develop new, efficient ways of extracting resources without fundamentally changing the way we live. For example if electric cars were as good in every way as combustion cars then we wouldn't notice a difference, but we'd have removed one of our dependencies on a finite resource. If all our electricity came from renewables, we could still surf the web, go to the cinema, use our mobile phones, but we'd remove the risks of increasing energy prices as fossil fuels inevitable become more scarce. By moving away from a scarcity economy we'd also remove a major factor in global political and military conflict; resource acquisition. More resources -> less demand -> less need for competition. It's a bit of a meme by this point, but I don't think anyone can disagree that Western intervention in the Middle-East was largely motivated by securing oil supplies. This, like Chinese investment in sub-Saharan Africa, is behaviour that stretches right back to European colonialism. The world moved away from colonialism after improved technologies levelled the field and allowed for national self-determination. Similarly, new technologies allowing cheaper living will actually give a way for the existing public pressure surrounding sustainability to enact the change it wants to see.
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Some counterpoints I anticipate seeing:
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\> This sounds expensive, we need to focus on "now" problems like the economy, social justice, and world peace.
Yes, true, but I don't think these are mutually exclusive goals. New infrastructure technology, from steam power to mass transport to computer chips, if properly applied has \*always\* benefited the economy whether it was intended to or not. All we need is for everyone to agree to invest in and use it; if nobody had bothered to invest in microchips we wouldn't be living in a digital age right now. Renewables promise entire new professional and industrial sectors that can benefit everyone. It also requires a shift in political thinking away from selfishly centralising power and towards "legislative altruism" (I made that up but you get what I mean). This is the same root issue as with social justice; poverty, systemic racism, rehabilitation, education, etc.; and so these two issues again go hand-in-hand. I've already outlined how more resources means less conflict, and I think this applies easily to homeland security for everything from terrorism to illegal immigration (again, this CMV isn't about whether immigration poses a security threat). Simply put, if resources are more available then less nations will step on each others' toes and less people will need to seek life in other countries.
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\> This should come from the people; you can't legislate societal change, it needs to come from the ground up.
Sure, the pressure for change works best when it's from the people, but the people cannot enact those changes themselves. The resource consumption of one person in their lifetime pales compared to what a corporation burns through in a day. I have no control over these corporations; the free market does not apply because \*\*there are no alternatives\*\*. I can't boycott the oil industry because I need to drive my car to get to work, everything is made of plastic, and most of my electricity comes from power stations. Small scale eco-communes exist, true, and these demonstrate that such a society is broadly possible, but to make it feasible for everyone we need top-down legislation and funding from governments to enforce the change.
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\> New technologies will just create new monopolies favouring whichever country/company develops it first.
Speaking as someone working in engineering academia, for any given problem there are dozens to hundreds of teams working on it simultaneously. They don't all just stop when one finishes, because any solution can always be improved and innovated upon. The one concession I would make is that countries who have more resources \*now\* will be better able to make use of these new technologies and that poorer nations risk being left behind. This is where that legislative altruism I mentioned rejoins the party; in this instance I think richer economies have a moral duty to help elevate poorer economies. You could say this is simply colonialism in a different guise, and you'd probably be right, but frankly that's a short-term price I'd happily pay for a long-term sustainable future.
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Thanks for reading, I know it was a long one, but I think it's a point worth discussing. The world can only change if enough people want it to, and for that to happen we have to agree what we're fighting for. | Knowing why the climate is changing is very relevant because that dictates the actions that need to be done to prevent change.
If you believe that it is man made then you will agree with people reducing their CO2 footprint. You wouldn't mind policies that restrict your choices of products (i.e less gas engine vehicles compared to electric vehicles). You wouldn't mind policies that force/encourage you to switch over to green energy.
Now on the other hand, if you believe that this is a natural cycle which man plays no big role, then all of those policies above could seem to be more intrusive into your freedoms. Which in turn makes you less willing to support those actions. Also it could seem to be an overreaction at the expense of the economy. | 23 | 100 |
ELI5: Why do bees have stingers if using it will kill them? | Bees have a social order very different than ours. Don't think of a bee colony as a bunch of individuals working togehter, like a city. Instead, think of a colony as a single organism made up of many small parts.
A bee will sting to defend its colony and queen, and it does not care if it dies, since it will never personally reproduce. Its existence is based on ensuring the survival of the hive, not of itself.
Because they never reproduce, there was no reason for a stinger that didn't kill them to be developed. In fact because it benefits the colony (which, again, more like one thing than several things) by protecting the queen, the ability for the non-reproducing ones to deal as much damage as possible would be beneficial to the colony's survival. | 56 | 29 |
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Why do multiples of 9, always come back to 9 when their digits are added together? | Sorry I could have probably worded the title better.
I remember my second grade teacher taught me this but never explained why she just said it was a a magic number lol.
Example:
9*2=18, 1+8=9
9*3=27, 2+7=9
9*4=36, 3+6=9
etc, etc, etc.....,
Of course there are many interesting recurrences with small number and wen we learned our multiplication tables as kids, but this trend seems to stay the same even as the number you multiply by 9 increase. Even with random numbers in the tens and hundreds similar pattern.
Example
9*53=477, 4+7+7=18, 1+8=9
9*87=783, 7+8+3=18, 1+8=9
9*681=6129, 6+1+2+9=18, 1+8=9
9*217=1953, 1+9+5+3=18, 1+8=9
Now I've only used positive integers, haven't even looked into negatives, nor decimals, nor any other parameters so to speak. Are there any exceptions doing this with positive integers? And why does this work? This is a smart sub and I'm sure the answer is simple but I've just always been curious about it. I'll try a few more larger random numbers with greater number of digits.
9*876,257=7,886,313 :
7+8+8+6+3+1+3=36, 3+6=9
One more even larger number
9*12,345,678=111,111,102 :
1+1+1+1+1+1+1+0+2=9
Are there any other weird happenstances like this? if so please elaborate...
| To see why this works, we first have to start with how a number, when written down, is constructed.
Take the number 123. This notation means: 1 * 100 + 2 * 10 + 3 * 1. To deconstruct a number in this way, you take a digit and multiply it by the power of 10 appropriate for the position of that digit within the number.
Now we make a brief detour through the realms of divisibility and remainders. Note that we only work with integers, so no decimals or funny stuff behind the period. When we divide something like 52 / 9, we can fit 9 a total of 5 times and are left with a remainder of 7. So we can write:
52 / 9 = 5
but also
52 % 9 = 7
The %-sign is often used for the function that gives you the remainder in a certain division. This function is called the modulo function. If a number fully divides another number, the remainder will be zero:
18 % 9 = 0 (this says: The remainder when dividing 18 by 9 is 0)
Now, the modulo function has some nice properties. One of which is that it is distributive with addition and multiplication. What does this mean? It means that if we have an expression like (a + b) % c (or: the remainder of (a + b) when divided by c), then that's the same as a % c + b % c (or: the remainder of a when divided by c plus the remainder of b when divided by c). The same holds when you replace the addition-operation by multiplicaiton.
Now, lets put the pieces together. First we look at the remainder of a few numbers when divided by 9:
1 % 9 = 1
10 % 9 = 1 (10 divided by 9 is 1 with remainder 1)
100 % 9 = 1 (100 divided by 9 is 11 with remainder 1)
1000 % 9 = 1 (1000 divided by 9 is 111 with remainder 1)
Notice a pattern?
If we have a number of the form abcd, then from the first section we know that this can be written as:
a * 1000 + b * 100 + c * 10 + d * 1
So if we want to see what the remainder of this number is when divided by 9, we can use the properties of the modulo function:
abcd % 9 = (a * 1000 + b * 100 + c * 10 + d * 1) % 9 = (a * 1000) % 9 + (b * 100) % 9 + (c * 10) % 9 + (d * 1) % 9
Each term can be rewritten as:
(a % 9) * (1000 % 9)
Since we know that a power of 10 has remainder 1 when divided by 9, these factors drop out and we're left with:
(a % 9) + (b % 9) + (c % 9) + (d % 9)
Once again applying the distributivity of the modulo function:
(a + b + c + d) % 9
So the final conclusion is that the remainder of a number when divided by 9 is equal to the remainder of the sum of the digits of the number when divided by 9. More specifically, if a number is fully divisible by 9 (so remainder 0), then the sum of its digits is too.
In some cases, the sum of the digits will be a number consisting of multiple digits. In that case, you can reapply the same reasoning to the sum of the digits of the sum of the digits. And repeat this process until you end up with a one digit number that is divisible by 9. And which one digit numbers are divisible by 9? Just one, 9 itself.
So a general conclusion is that if a number is divisble by 9, then the repeated summing of its digits in this way will always end up with a 9. And, to check if a number is divisible by 9, you can add up its digits and check if that value is divisible by 9. If that value is still to big to quickly check, you can repeat the process.
Note: There is a similar property when dividing by 3: A number is divisible by 3 if and only if the sum of its digits are divisible by 3. The proof of this statement follows the same reasoning as for division by 9.
Finally, homework for the interested reader: There's a similar, but slightly more involved trick to determine whether a number is divisible by 11. Find it and prove it :-) | 156 | 204 |
In the USA...Why do I pay more taxes as an individual, than I would if I was married? | The tax code in the U.S. is often used to support larger social objectives, like home ownership, caring for children and/or elderly parents, and to support certain nascent technologies (e.g., giving tax credits for installing solar panels). Marriage is one of those social objectives promoted by the tax code. It's slightly cheaper from a tax standpoint (usually--see below) to remain married than to divorce. And, at least until recently with the adoption of gay marriage in many states, this was a way that the tax code discriminated against homosexual couples.
Incidentally, it is not always the case that "married filing jointly" is the best option even for a couple who are married. Sometimes, (e.g., if the spouses don't have similar salaries and the one making less has large medical bills and one can itemize the medical bills) significant tax savings can be reaped by filing separately. Also, particularly as one moves into the upper income brackets, there can be significant disparity between rates when filing separately and jointly. | 19 | 17 |
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ELI5: how is light made | My 4 year old asked about the sun and light bulbs. Describing the mechanisms (hydrogen or electricity) and why they, as opposed to other chemicals, make brightness totally threw me for a loop. | All objects emit electromagnetic radiation according to their temperature. The higher the temperature, the shorter the wavelength of that radiation. Warm human bodies emit infrared radiation, which is longer waves than visible light. A hot iron emits red visible light. The lightbulb wire and the Sun emit yellow-white light. | 28 | 22 |
Help for job after long pause ? |
Hi,
I really need help in this. I am a housewife living in Canada. I am planning to resume job after a long hiatus ( 8 years ). I did my MCA and worked at least 8 years ago in India as .Net developer, then I came to Canada. Now I want to start job and I know technology has changed a lot and pretty much with kids don’t want to do coding much ( little bit is OK ),
So to be in pace I am planning to do a certificate course or diploma from a college here.
I feel that cyber security has a bright future and if I learn tools then I can accomplice the job with less coding ( I am not sure about this ).
Can some one suggest me what course and from which college should I do course ?
Is cyber security career is good ? If not then can someone suggest ?
I will really appreciate... | What’s good for you is what you want to do. If cyber security interests you then that is what you should do. Once a programmer, always a programmer. Logic is logic. The only thing that changes is the syntax. | 14 | 32 |
Marxist critiques of Singer's effective altruism. | I have heard some claim they they exist, so what are they and (if you can be bothered) what counter arguments could be raised against them? | A fairly standard criticism of charity from a revolutionary Marxist perspective is that charity can function as a means of making an otherwise unjust capitalist system tolerable. It both prevents those who would suffer under the system from revolting, and prevents those with power from seeing the reality of the suffering the system would naturally cause. In effect, charity treats the symptoms and not the cause of problems due to inequality.
A possible counterargument is that lifting people to a level beyond extreme poverty can be a step towards allowing them to have time to be educated and reflect on their circumstance, so rather than disguising problems it might provide more people with what they need to begin thinking about ways of correcting the root problems. It also might raise expectations of what standards of living are possible.
Another possible counterargument is that it is inhumane to ignore the very real and extreme suffering of people on the small hope that things getting worse might lead to revolutionary change. | 33 | 33 |
ELI5: in the military, what are NCO's, how do they differ from normal officers, and why do some countries not have many of them? | What does non-commissioned mean? Do these officers go through officer academy like ordinary officers? And why do some analysts say that having a strong NCO class is essential to a well-functioning army (i.e. what can they do that a normal officer can't?)
Thanks in advance! | In general, an officer is a soldier who has authority over other soldiers. In modern militaries, a commissioned officer is an officer who is formally granted that authority by a government.
This document granting such authority is called a commission, as in the officer is literally commissioned by the government to lead. A non commissioned officer is an officer who was not expressly commissioned, but has been promoted to the office.
What this means is that commissioned officers are, usually, trained at an academy, commissioned, then assigned a duty. These officers are generally trained for leadership or specific roles *before* they do them. Non commissioned officers enlist, are assigned a duty, then promoted to leadership as they prove competency/gain seniority.
Commissioned officers are the "educated" academy folks, the ones who are trained to lead, command, or perform specialized jobs such as fly a fighter plane, or command a platoon of tanks. Non commissioned officers are from the common soldiers, the enlisted troops. They start at the bottom, they do the "grunt work," are the ones "on the ground," and make up the bulk of the military.
This is with regards to a modern national military. Older militaries were very different in not just organization, but in their function and purpose.
While not part of the original question, anyone interested should read the other posts regarding warrant officers, another important part of military leadership. | 1,220 | 821 |
ELI5: How is the decriminalization of all drugs in a country beneficial? | 1) It frees up police resources to better utilize their time. Fewer court dates, less paperwork, etc... Police departments are still free to take down dealers and distributors, but are no longer concerned with catching the average user.
2) Speaking of the average user, it frees them up to seek treatment without fearing jail time. This theoretically reduces the number of addicts by getting them help.
3) it reduces prison populations, which saves everyone a little money. | 190 | 203 |
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ELI5:How does voice analytic software work? | And does inflections and or accents effect the probability of matching? | Most speech to text software works based on machine learning algorithms that use statistics.
The gist of it is that you can "teach" computer software to become good at pattern matching. By analyzing the wave pattern of the sound you make when you say words, and by telling the computer what the word is for each pattern, you can train the computer software to match a sound pattern to a word.
So if you have a large amount of voice clips, and someone has transcribed all those clips, you have created something called "training data", which you can feed into the software to teach it how to match those patterns.
Accents will effect the probability of matching if the software wasn't trained with recordings of accents. But that's easily fixable by adding accented data to the training data. | 10 | 34 |
Why is/was there a tendency for like minerals to collect together on earth? | It seems that the original source for minerals was random and that they should be randomly, and relatively homogeneously spread over the surface of the earth. Yet minerals like iron oxide, sodium chloride, gold, silver, (and most others it seems) have had a significant tendency to be found concentrated in various areas, making mining them and collecting them a practical endeavor.
What has caused that to occur? | 2 parts to this (admittedly insufficient) answer.
Sodium chloride stands out on this list. Sodium chloride build up is often due to sea water being trapped or secluded from fresh water. Over time the water will evaporate leaving the salt concentrated in that area.
As for concentration of other elements, despite starting out mixed, density will cause elements to separate out. Much in the same way a copper will sink in water, in a molten state iron will sink in silica.
A volcanic eruption can take some of the molten minerals in the magma nearer to the surface causing similar density of materials to appear near each other near the surface as they originated from a similar area/density. | 71 | 306 |
CMV: Demanding more minority people/characters in media is misguided and not reflective of the reality of demographics. | To simplify my standpoint, I'm going to focus only on the representation of Americans of African Descent (AoAD). First of all, it doesn't seem that most people are aware of the actual numbers. Racial demographics very depending on the region. But, in general, AoAD make up ~13% of the population. And, of that 13% or so, **over 50% live in the South**. In **20** states, that figure is less than 5%. This matters because lived experience influences **both** the way we *respond to media* and the **what we create**. For instance, if you grew up in a place where less than 5% of the population were Muslim, you would be unlikely to feature Muslim people, culture, or the religion of Islam in your creative work, just statistically speaking. In fact, I would hesitate to represent them because I would be afraid of being criticized for misrepresenting them due to lack of familiarity and knowledge.
There is also the issue of demographics when it comes to **creators** of media. Who is creating our media? What is their background? I don't think a white boy, who can neither jump nor dance, and grew up in Colorado has any place depicting the lives of a family from Mississippi. If he wants to try, that's great. But there is no grounds for criticism if he does not make such an attempt and there is no responsibility to do so.
Recently, Tyler the Creator [went off on someone](http://afropunk.com/2017/07/tyler-creator-goes-off-black-representation-comic-con/) about representation of black characters in cartoons. He asks how many black cartoon characters are on TV right now. Well, how many black cartoon *creators* are there in the industry? If AoAD are ~13% of the population and cartoon creators are a very, very small subset of that population, then what percentage of cartoon creators are also AoAD?
I completely agree with his statements and creative decisions. And I think more advocating for more minority **creators** makes sense, but criticizing people for not representing minority ethnicities in their art and creative output is misguided.
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> *This is a footnote from the CMV moderators. We'd like to remind you of a couple of things. Firstly, please* ***[read through our rules](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/rules)***. *If you see a comment that has broken one, it is more effective to report it than downvote it. Speaking of which,* ***[downvotes don't change views](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/guidelines#wiki_upvoting.2Fdownvoting)****! Any questions or concerns? Feel free to* ***[message us](http://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=/r/changemyview)***. *Happy CMVing!* | >For instance, if you grew up in a place where less than 5% of the population were Muslim, you would be unlikely to feature Muslim people
What proportion of US citizens are soldiers, or police officers? Less then 1% for both, yet these two careers make up a huge plurality of all TV protagonists.
Why is it, that writers can imagine life in the zombie apocalypse, but not life as a gay man? That they can imagine the adventures of a starship full of aliens, easier than the adventures of a starship that is full of women? That they can write about the last heir to an ancient magical kingdom raised as a farmboy, incognito, but they can't imagine said farmboy also being black?
You might say that people reflecting on reality and their upbringing is a "natural process of art", but art is also **not** just a perfect mirror to society, it is a warped reflection of our fantasies, *of what interests us* in the world.
We appear to be really interested in violent conflict, in heightened romantic entanglements, in fantasizing about the existence of supernatural, in idolizing the virtues of heroism... and also, in the stories of straight, white men.
No one cares, if media overrepresents soldiers at the expense of accountants, or overrepresents New Yorkers at the expense of dusty small towns in the Midwest, or when it overrepresents Destined Princes instead of commoners.
The criticism is **NOT** that media fails to be perfectly accurately representing reality. It's that in spite of having may opportunities to warp reality, and to shine lights on any parts of life it wants, it has consistently used this power to further marginalize the already marginalized.
| 53 | 25 |
ELI5: How do "active cultures" get into yogurt? | To make yogurt, milk has to be inoculated with bacteria. Typically Streptococcus thermophilus, Lactobacillus bulgaricus, Lactobacillus acidophilus, and Lactobacillus casei.
With out those bacteria, the milk would never be converted into yogurt. Active cultures mean that the factory did not kill the bacteria in the yogurt, so they're still alive when you eat the yogurt. | 12 | 16 |
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What happens at a chemical level when a bottle of liquor is allowed to "rest"? | I'm curious about this and don't really see it addressed elsewhere. It's become common to allow a bottle of liquor (whisky, cognac, etc) to "rest" after opening. In fact, I just read this in a vodka review: "It is Beluga’s philosophy to have this vodka rest after each step of the production," explains Borisov. After a five-time filtration process to achieve maximum smoothness, the vodka's final resting period is 90 days. "This allows it to reach perfect balance and harmony,"
Since I always like to ask myself "why is that" and "what mechanism is at work here", I'm asking precisely that. Is there some chemical change happening to drive a flavor shift or is this "resting" of a seemingly stable substance mostly psychological in nature. If a sealed or capped bottled is allowed to "rest" sans additional oxygen or heat, how is it changing? | With a lot of spirits, their individual character comes from the infusion of other flavors based on what vessel they're resting in. Bourbon, for example, uses oak barrels that are charred on the inside. As they rest in large barns that are not temperature controlled, the natural thermal expansion and contraction causes the spirit to move in and out of the barrel wood, absorbing various organics and other chemicals along the way.
Once bottled, spirits don't age anymore. Ideally. If they're poorly sealed, then they may oxidize.
Resting a bottle after opening will allow for any volatiles that want to escape to do so, although in a narrow bottle your available surface area is limited. That's usually why you decant into a different container from the bottle before drinking.
Any flavors remaining in the spirit after it rests are what 'should' be there.
Vodka is a bit silly though, as it's generally going to be as close to straight ethanol and water as you can get. | 2,974 | 4,098 |
What causes a star to expand at the end of its life? Then what causes it to collapse after a certain point? | I understand that the fusion process triggers this expansion once the star starts fusing larger elements that don't release the same amounts of energy as hydrogen, helium, etc., but I don't understand why this translates to an expansion (e.g. a red giant). Scientists will then say that the star "collapses on itself" leading to a supernova, dwarf, etc. but it's not intuitive to me why this happens. Someone wanna school me? | Stars have what is called hydrostatic equilibrium for much of their life. In essence, this is a balance between pressure in the star against the force of gravity.
Gravity works to compress the star at all times, and as the star is "squeezed" this heats up the interior of the star. Eventually it gets hot enough to reach the ignition point of an element (initially hydrogen). As this element burns, it generates pressure that pushes outwards against the force of gravity, and where these forces balance is the surface of the star.
In a red giant, the hydrogen burning in the core is extinguished. As the "fire" goes out, the pressure balancing gravity lessens, and the star begins to contract. As it contracts, the heat rises. The core, where it is hottest and had been be burning, is depleted of hydrogen, but the outer shell of the star is not, and eventually the contraction raises the temperature there to ignite that hydrogen. As that hydrogen ignites, the pressure again rises and pushes out against gravity, swelling the size of the star. The greater temperature leads to an increase in reaction rates, which means a greater pressure pushing out against gravity, and thus the "balance" is further out, so the star expands.
When the star has depleted all of its fuel, there is no longer at element that it can burn to release energy, and thus nothing can balance out the force of gravity, causing the star to contract. At this point, the force of gravity compresses the matter of the star, resulting in various end of life stages depending on the mass collapsing. | 22 | 42 |
CMV: The human race will never leave the solar system | Science is amazing and it can create amazing things but unfortunately I do not think light speed will be one of those things. The closest Earth like planet we know of is 31 light years away and that is unimaginably huge.
Even if we built a space ark and set out on a quest that would take generations the society would collapse or be destroyed before it reached the destination, space is incredibly dangerous!
We as a species are doomed to stay on this Sol system
I am not saying we can make living here great just that we will never travel anywhere else
CMV: Is there hope that we can do it? | You're using current knowledge and speculation, but if there's one thing that science has proven is that we know so little, and one discovery can lead to what today could only be seen as miracles. Even in the past 100 years out lives have improved vastly, and given another hundred, we could potentially discover the miraculous. | 31 | 20 |
i want to use a graph from an academic article in my publication. How does this work? | It is a chart of some dry academic stuff. Will academics generally give permission to use it (free) or do i ask the publisher? My other option is to rewrite it, I guess, and present the same material with my own graphics. | If you're wanting to use a figure from an existing article in a new article there's a well-established process for this in most cases. Go to the website for the original article, and then try to find a link related to Permissions or Rights or Copyright. For example, for RSC journals there's a "Request permissions" link on the right side. Click on that and give the requested information. For the most typical cases, you won't have to pay anything, but there's often a requirement for a Copyright notice, and when you submit your new article you may need to also submit the proof that you got permission to reuse the figure. As another commenter implied, it's weird to use someone else's figure in your work unless you're writing a review or there's another very good reason.
Edit: Changed “reviewer” to “review” | 56 | 18 |
CMV: Teachers should have a degree in the subject they teach not education. | What surprised me to learn after graduating high school was the fact that my teachers did not have a degree in what they taught. What did my history, physics, health, and civics teacher have in common?
They all had the same degree. This leaves the vast majority of teachers at best dabblers in the subject they are in charge of instructing.
I am aware that they had to take more courses related to their topic but often times they take the education version. However, you can't major in the actual topic and take the education version. That should signal warning bells. I even know of programs that will hand out lower degrees in a subject with a PhD or Masters in education without the graduate fulfilling requirements for even an undergrad in that subject.
What is the result of this?
I had a biology teacher who taught alternatives to evolution,
math teachers who had no idea what the point of math was,
and I don't really understand the use of a comma and I have suspicions neither did my teachers. I think we can all agree that these three things are not desirable outcomes of public education.
I'm also familiar with education curriculum and have serious skepticism it is a four year program.
What I would propose is that educators should be required a degree in the subject they want to teach. The curriculum should not be watered down to achieve this (i.e. a science education or math education degree). This would end the problem of students being taught about a subject from someone who can't motivate the topic, and in some cases is very uncomfortable with the material themselves.
What I would be interested to hear is someone who wants to explain why a four year degree in education to be, say a math teacher, is preferable to getting a four year degree in math and having an educational mentor like most other jobs.
What I'm not really interested in is hearing about how we have a shortage of teachers and making it harder to become one will cause even worse shortages. That isn't the point of the CMV.
EDIT: As some people have pointed out grade school teachers have to teach everything. I wasn't really including teachers who don't have a subject when I wrote this. I'd really like to be more focused teachers who have to teach a specific subject.
EDIT:
Hey everyone, thanks for your comments. I tried to respond to everyone as a way of showing appriciation that you took time two write an answer.
Unfortunatly due to time I can't continue to do this.
I did award a delta for the consideration of special education students. It didn't fully change my veiw that in most casess the subject is better, but it did make me realize there are some groups of students a subject major leaves you unprepaired to engage with. | Education degrees are a hybrid degree. Half the courses that they take are in a focus on the specific subject they are going to teach, half are classes that teach you how to teach. And that is important. Being an expert on a subject in no way qualifies you to communicate that subject to another person, yet alone teach that subject to a complete novice such as a child in school. Those classes that teach you how to teach are as important if not more important to the subject courses.
Additionally half of standard education is done with a single teacher teaching every subject (in the US). This is grades k-5th. Such teachers have to have special education for dealing with young children and having a subject specialty is basically useless for them. | 95 | 150 |
[The Culture] They've been around god knows how long, why don't those Culture freaks just sublime like everyone else and let someone new sit atop the galaxy? | The Culture is a collection of several space faring civilizations that joined together about 9 thousand years ago. In the context of the universe, that is a vanishingly short time to be "involved".
Parts of the Culture do break away and sublime on their own, but the Culture "proper" feels no need to "vanish up their own behind", as it were. The Culture isn't finished doing good works and generally making the universe a better place.
Also, any civilization can still become a major player on the galactic scale. In the past few thousand years there have been anywhere from 7 to 11 civilizations included as part of the 'Optimea'. So its not like the Culture is alone at the top. | 17 | 19 |
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ELI5: Why are some gases odorless (like helium), while others have strong odors (like ammonia)? | The exact mechanisms of human olfactory detection aren't too well understood but essentially certain molecules fit better into receptors of a particular shape in your nose. We have evolved and also learn to notice certain smells and find them attractive or repulsive.
Given that helium is inert, non-toxic and unlikely to appear in any significant concentration anyway, there is little evolutionary drive to have receptors that can pick up hydrogen.
Ammonia, on the other hand, is produced in many decompositional processes, can be found in cat urine in large quantities, etc. Not really something you'd want to be hanging around if it's there in large concentrations. Thus, we have a benefit from being able to detect it. | 18 | 19 |
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ELI5: How is blood pressure measured? Why do
doctors measure it? What does it tell them? | Blood pressure can be measured in many ways. Most commonly we use sphygmomanometers (you may know them as "blood pressure cuffs"). They wrap around your bicep to measure your radial pulse. On top of using the sphygmomanometer, we use a method called ausculatory method, which basically means inflating the sphygmomanometer cuff an using a stethoscope and listening to the pulse at your elbow. Note that when in a clinical setting, such as when you're admitted into a hospital, we'll hook you up to a machine so that we can log your pressure.
Us nurses are usually the ones who get these readings, not MD's. I'll sum up your last two questions into one. We care about blood pressure because it is a part of the vital signs. Other vital signs include temperature, pulse, and respiratory rate. What blood pressure readings tell us is how much pressure is being put onto your arteries for each heart beat. Your BP varies from a low point (diastolic) and a high point (systolic) during each heart beat. The systolic number tells us how much pressure is being exerted in the arteries as the heart squeezes out blood during each beat. The diastolic number tells us the amount of pressure in the heart when it is heart relaxes before the next beat.
When you hear them say it's, for example, "120 over 80", they are specifying how much pressure in terms of millimeters of mercury (mm Hg).
We care about this because, as an adult your BP should be below 120/80, between ~90/~60 and ~119/~79. This is what we consider in the normal, healthy range.
Anything below ~90/~60 is what we call **hypo**tension. Typically people who are **hypo**tensive are so because of shock, or manually by vasodilation (note: vasodilation is when we want to open the blood vessels to increase flow of blood).
When your BP is between ~120/~80 and ~139/~89, you're considered pre-**hyper**tensive. Generally people who are overweight are in this range most of the time. This is your body telling you something is wrong and you need to fix it. You cannot live in this range for long, and it only gets worse.
From pre-**hyper**tensive we get to **hyper**tensive, or high blood pressure. This range is anything from ~140/90 and ~179/109. Your body starts to fail. You are at risk for heart attacks and strokes (due to the thickening of arteries which is called atherosclerosis). You're at risk for an aneurysm, which if ruptures, is usually fatal. Kidneys start to fail because of the narrowed blood vessels. Your vision can deteriorate due to narrowed blood vessels.
Anything above ~180/~120, you gonna' die! Get help immediately. Risks are fluid on the lungs (pulmonary edema), brain swelling and/or bleeding, a tear in your arteries, heart attack, stroke, and if you're pregnant, seizures (aka eclampsia).
Hope this helped
edit: fixed mixup of systolic/diastolic | 20 | 28 |
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ELI5: How come nobody talks about the dangers of acid rain anymore? | When I was a kid in the 1990s, school taught us all about this environmental scourge. (I remember thinking literal acid was going to fall on me). Now, it's not. What's happened to eradicate the problem? | Countries around the world, especially industrialized countries started to set limitations for sulfur emissions from combustion engines and power plants. It is still an issue, but not a huge one. But for example currently there are efforts to limit sulfur emissions from marine traffic for the same reasons.
On a related note we don't talk about the ozone layer that much either, because governments started limiting the use of ozone depleting substances, allowing the ozone layer to start recovering.
Now, let's hope governments would agree limiting greenhouse gases. | 42 | 54 |
ELI5: How to wash clothes and bedsheets and cook for one person and socialize. Autistic at college and freaked out. | I have no clue what I am doing. Preferably tailor your advice to someone with a HUGE pile of unwashed clothes (I have bought at least four detergents b/c I was unsure of what to buy). I have been staying up in my room, and I don't really know what venues are offered for socialization at college and I don't really know who to ask. In other words, I'm helpless and need a reddit mom right now, thanks! | 1. Chores. Make a schedule for the routine tasks and put them on the calendar along with your class schedule.
A. Wash sheets every Saturday morning
B. Wash clothes every Sunday morning
B1. Do homework while clothes are in machines
C. Grocery shop every Sunday afternoon
C-1. Write down every item of food and household product you need for the week before you go to the store.
2. Food. Again, use a schedule.
A. After having done C from above, write down every meal you plan to eat from your weekly grocery trip for every day of the week. E.g.
*Monday breakfast: cereal and milk. lunch: chicken sandwich. Dinner: beef stew.
*Tuesday breakfast: cereal and milk. Lunch: ramen noodle. Dinner: spaghtti with red sauce.
And so on.
B. Cook a week's worth of dinners on Sunday evening, put into smaller containers and freeze. This way you don't have to cook every night!
3. Socializing
A. Join at least 2 clubs. 1 acivity based, e.g. rock climbing or chess or whatever you like to do. 1 academic based, e.g. history club or whatever your fav subject. Once you get the hang of it, join others. Don't be scared, college club groups love to have new members!
B. If you are religous join a student religious organization for your religion, this way you get spiritual support away from home.
Gotta go, babies crying. Hope this helps. | 37 | 23 |
ELI5:What happens in our bodies during the acclimatization process? | Our bodies constantly adapt to handle temperatures in summer/winter, how does that process work? And can the body adapt to extreme cold and extreme heat at the same time? | Cell membranes are made up of different types of fatty acids. Some fatty acids can be packed more than others, therefore affecting their melting point. Think of butter and oils; butters are mainly solid (compact, saturated fats), while oils are mainly liquid (less compact, unsaturated fats). Now our cell membranes must maintain a proper fluidity to function, so they have the ability to change the types of fatty acids over time. When it is cold, the cell membrane is consists of more fatty acids that compact less. Think of how hard butter is when it is cold; now imagine your cell membranes are too hard! When it is hot, less compact fatty acids create a membrane that is too fluid. This would cause an improper shape, so the membrane begins to incorporate the compact fatty acids. So basically, hot —> more compact fatty acids; cold—> less compact fatty acids. | 70 | 323 |
ELI5: Why were prehistoric animals so much bigger than their present counterparts? | As a general rule of thumb: animals gradually evolve to larger and larger sizes as the environment permits, until the a change in the environment occurs (drought, food source goes extinct, etc) and then that large animal goes extinct because it has evolved to a size that required all of the existing food and is adapted to a very specific climate and any change in either of those things will lead to extinction.
Prehistoric animals had tens of millions of years of gradually reach enormous sizes (the Cretaceous Period lasted about 79 million years) whereas the last ice age ended only about 11,000 years ago. Anytime there is a dramatic environmental change, the massive animals tend to go extinct and the smaller and more environmentally adaptive species tend to survive and be the dominant lifeforms for the next age.
When you have a climate that is rich with biomass and it doesn’t change dramatically for tens of millions of years, there is sufficient time and material for massive animals to evolve. | 8,026 | 11,539 |
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CMV: schools should start later and finish later (maybe 10h00 instead of 8h00-8h30) | Aside from irrational attachment to tradition, I see no benefits from having schools (especially middle schools and up) starting early in the morning. Various research has confirmed that teenagers naturally sleep later and wake up later (https://sleepfoundation.org/sleep-topics/teens-and-sleep). It's a BIOLOGICAL fact and has nothing to do with people being lazy. Plus, other data has shown that when schools start later, kids have an improved performance, which would be another argument to start schools later.
One argument that I hear is about extracurricular activities. I don't think this is a good argument for two reasons:
1. For the vast majority of time they don't even matter. Most programs in universities only look at academic performance anyway.
2. Someone's soccer competition is nowhere near important enough to risk permanent brain damage in other students https://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-michael-j-breus/sleep-brain-health_b_5508930.html
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> *This is a footnote from the CMV moderators. We'd like to remind you of a couple of things. Firstly, please* ***[read through our rules](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/rules)***. *If you see a comment that has broken one, it is more effective to report it than downvote it. Speaking of which,* ***[downvotes don't change views](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/guidelines#wiki_upvoting.2Fdownvoting)****! Any questions or concerns? Feel free to* ***[message us](http://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=/r/changemyview)***. *Happy CMVing!* | Its to acclimatise them to the workplace. The average job is 9 to 5, thus it makes sense to have students start at 9 (which is the norm here in Australia). The other reason to finish earlier is to still have daylight in the afternoon. Sure, Johnny might be the only kid playing sport, but its better for him if his sport is in daylight hours than night hours. And even those who don't play sport will still do stuff outside, which means that if there's sun, they get their Vitamin D. | 11 | 24 |
ELI5: Why do musical chords sound good? | Why do the notes that make up a major chord sound good together and others don't? Why do three random ones sound terrible? | Acoustics, physiology, and cultural bias.
Imagine each note on the piano is a square grid, and each grid is large or small depending on how the note is. Now take two grids that have similar proportions and lay them on top of each other, this set will create shapes that are symmetrical and in alignment with the other grid. Now imagine that you have two grids that aren't similar sizes, when you overlay these on top of each other the shapes that are created look random, and are definitely not symmetrical. These grids are very similar to what happens acoustically with "good sounding chords." Every note has an overtone series on top of it, which is like the grid, and when the notes are pleasing the grids line up in a sort of symmetry. You can see this mathematically as well, a perfect fifth, a very pleasing interval, the foundation of the power chord, is a ratio of 2/3. But a minor second is a ratio of 11/12 (when tuned justly, which is a whole other thread).
Our ears also process sound in a specific way based on how it is shaped. Inside our ear, our hearing cells are kind of similarly laid out like a piano keyboard. The nerve cells for things that aren't pleasing are close together, and some theorize that the cells are bumping into each other. This bumping into each other could be unpleasant, but they are still trying to figure this out honestly. If someone else knows more information about this please correct me!
Finally cultural bias has a great deal to do with what sounds pleasing and good. For example, Gamelan music from the south pacific uses a pentatonic scale with two notes that are close together but not in tune for each scale degree. This scale is called the Pelog scale. To westerners this music is very dissonant, but to those in the region the music is considered to be extremely beautiful. Using the first example, this music uses grids that don't line up very symmetrically. The culture of both regions impacts very much what people interpret to be "good sounds."
It's a little bit of all three columns at the end of the day. | 12 | 20 |
ELI5: Alzheimer's is dementia, but not all dementia is Alzheimer's. So what is the difference? | Both my grandmothers had dementia before they died. But my mom's mom had Alzheimer's. She died when I was about 9 or so. My only real memories of her are when she was in advanced stages.
My dad's mom lived quite a while longer. She died about 8 years ago and had dementia. I remember her once asking where one of my uncles who died when I was a baby was. It was as if he had just stepped out for a few hours.
What is the difference between Alzheimer's and other forms of dementia? Do other forms have names? And how are different forms diagnosed?
*edit*
Added a missing verb and cleared up some wording | There are a range of types of dementia, and they all look slightly different on scans of the brain (often MRI's) and might have different signs from blood or other tests that differentiates the types from each other.
The different types also effect people's function slightly differently, and both family history and just general life history can help with determining the type of dementia. For example, if someone is known to have had a history of alcohol excess they might be more likely to develop an alcohol related form of dementia so that might be the starting point for investigations.
Alzheimer's is the most common hence being the one most people are aware of.
The other main types are:
Frontotemporal dementia, which often develops slightly younger and can lead to quite significant personality changes and challenging behaviours (among other things).
Lewy Body dementia, which can often present quite similarly to Parkinson's disease.
Vascular dementia, which is often correlated with multiple strokes or other vascular (blood flow) changes to the brain. The functional impacts to a person can often depend on which part of the brain is most impacted.
Mixed dementia, which is essentially a combination of types.
But that isn't an exhaustive list and there are other less common types, and yes most of them have names. | 135 | 170 |
Eli5: Why does it feel like your eyes are sandy, when running on little sleep? | Your tear ducts create a mixture of liquids and oils (tears) to coat, lubricate, and protect your eyes. When you stay awake longer, the quality of these tears worsens so your eyes will be more exposed to the surrounding air, causing dryness and irritation.
Sleep allows your tear ducts to recharge and go back to producing high quality tears. | 80 | 35 |
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ELI5: How did different races cone to existence if at first we were all of the same race? | Two main factors - distance, and inbreeding.
For most of prehistory, humans were very nomadic. There was no incentive to settle down in one place until the advent of agriculture, which occured a few times in different places around the world around 10,000-4,000 years ago. Before that, you had to move with the food - once the prey animals moved on and/or the fauna was over-foraged, human groups had to move on to a new area. Over time, distance increased between different human groups. Eventually, several groups uncovered the techniques for agriculture, began settling down, and started the very first civilizations.
With this vast distance between populations, inbreeding was fairly normal. Not brother-sister or parent/grandparent-child, but cousin-cousin was fairly frequent. Today, we often scoff at anecdotes of people like Albert Einstein or Edgar Allen Poe marrying their first cousins. But for most of history, this was a fairly normal practice (and one that tends to avoid the damaging genetics of closer inbreeding). Populations were simply too small and too distant for everyone to be able to mate with someone they weren’t closely related to.
Eventually, this began strongly concentrating certain traits - some of which arose through chance mutation and others which arose by environment. Those populations in Europe developed lighter skin to attain adequate vitamin D, while those in Africa maintained darker skin to protect from excess harmful UV light, and some developed the genes for sickle cell anemia to stave of malaria. Another adaptation, the eye fold characteristic to far northern populations and populations in east Asia, may have been developed to protect the eye from UV light and snow blindness. These differences are very largely superficial - not enough time has transpired for any living human population to diverge into a different species - internal organs and cognitive capabilities have remained the same (although genetics and contagion exposure over time have played a role in epidemiology)
Since these populations were concentrated amongst
themselves for so long, those traits eventually became definitive in those areas, to the point where such traits can identify ethnicity and ancestral origin.
It wasn’t until about 600-700 years ago that interactions between these previously distant populations became relatively common, and it wasn’t until the past few hundred years that the intermingling of these populations became common (e.g. interracial marriage in the United States was illegal until 1967).
The globalization of all world populations may introduce something equally revolutionary in our genetic pool in the future - a single, unified ethnicity. Because almost every population has access to almost every other population, traditional ethnic traits will likely converge over time. | 27 | 26 |
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ELI5: Why do many people motion with their hands when speaking? | My partner doesn't even realise that she does it, so it's definitely a subconscious action in her case. | Human communication relies on much more than just words and tone of voice. Body language is important and hugely telling what someone's true feelings are. Gesturing reveals a level of openness, relaxation, or intensity. Standing perfectly still with your arms at your side comes across as robotic and awkward, because it cuts off that vital subconscious communication. | 11 | 16 |
eli5: what makes tea, tea? like what's different than me plucking leaves off a random tree or finding dry ones off the ground and essentially making flavoured water? | In addition to being from a specific plant, actual-tea is processed differently to make different kinds of product.
If you just take the whole leaves and try them, you get white tea which has a very delicate (some might say almost nonexistent) flavour.
Most of the interesting-flavoured compounds in tea are produced by oxidising and/or fermenting the leaves before drying them.
If you just oxidise them a little bit (by mildly bruising them and allowing them to sit a while before drying), you get green tea - the leaves are still green, but you get a greeny-yellow liquid from steeping them in water, with a mild flavour.
If you chop them up and leave them to sit longer before drying, the air and the enzymes really get to work transforming the chemical composition of the leaf juices, and you get black tea - producing a red-brown liquid with a lot more astringent tannins and a deeper flavour.
ETA: also the type (eg young leaves from the tips vs older leaves) and the exact variety, growing conditions, etc all go into the differences between different teas.
Plus some are heat treated, some are cultured with fungus, etc. etc. it's as intricate as winemaking and cheesemaking, seriously. | 88 | 22 |
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ELI5: What is Homeopathy and does it really work? | Homeopathy is:
> the treatment of disease by minute doses of natural substances that in a healthy person would produce symptoms of disease.
Basically, they take something that might cause you problems, and then dillute it an extreme amount, to the point where mathematically there is not a single atom left of the original stuff.
So a drop of arsenic in a gallong of water, shake it, empty it all but a drop, fill it, repeat 100 times. Then take a drop of that water, and that's your treatment.
There is no evidence that homeopathy is an effective medical treatment. | 33 | 24 |
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ELI5: When you see a lone tree growing in a meadow, what’s preventing other trees from growing nearby? | Historically, farmers would clear frees to make larger more efficient fields. But before tractors, they would leave a small number of trees behind to provide shade during breaks for themselves and their horse or ox.
It was a compromise between pure crops and having a bit of shade at break time. | 26 | 16 |
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ELI5: Why do we see black spots after looking into a bright light? | The spots aren't, strictly speaking "black", they are "no signal" areas.
Sight is basically a chemical reaction. The rods and cones of your eyes produce dyes. (See "Rhodopsin" and/or "visual purple" et al.) These dyes are how your eyes see.
Photons come in, intersect, and change these dyes. This is what produces the initial chemical stimulus that becomes the nerve impulse response to light.
The photon(s) intersecting with the dyes "uses up" the dye.
Your body is constantly making new dye and cleaning up the used-up dye.
When you look at a bright light it uses up a lot of dye. Then those rods and cones don't have enough to really generate a good signal.
Similarly, if you've been in darkness for a while, you've got a lot of dye built up and you can see really well in the very dim light. Further the very dim light uses up very little dye and so you continue to see well in the dimness.
So this whole mechanism is why the room looks "darker" right after you turn off the lights, and then "your eyes adjust". It's also why the "blue spots" move with your eyeballs, because its the individual sensors that are exhausted.
(EDIT: yes, your eyes also _physically_ adjust to darkness or brightness by opening or closing the iris, but that's a different level of responsiveness. After two or three seconds the dark room will be somewhat more visible because of the iris thing, but it can take minutes for the dye levels to get good, and after half an hour the room might be really quite visually available. etc.)
So your eyes work on eye-fuel, and the more light they process the more of that fuel is exhausted. As it gets exhausted the cells that are exhausted put out less signal for the same light and "dark patches" seem to appear in your vision. | 1,174 | 1,864 |
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ELI5: In trading, what does liquidity mean and how does it work | You can think of it as the 'transferability' of a financial instrument (either cash, or an investment). High liquidity means it's easier to use and transfer an item; low liquidity means you're pretty much stuck with it.
Cash is a very liquid thing. You don't need to find a buyer before you can use it, or involve a middle man. You can just go out and spend it. If all of your wealth is tied up in housing, for example, that's not very liquid. If you can't find a buyer, you're technically *worth* a lot, but if a hot new investment opportunity opens up, you're probably not going to be able to get enough cash together quickly to invest in it.
Similarly, if there's an investment that is constantly changing hands -- Bank of America stock, as /u/Bhimpele said -- then it's considered liquid; it moves around the marketplace a lot. If you have a stock that very few people are interested in buying or selling (and it can be either, not both), it's not liquid. It's either very hard to take possession of it, or if you've got it it's a pain in the ass to get rid of -- therefore it's not easily transferable.
It's liquid because it flows easily from one place to another. | 26 | 24 |
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How do Olympiads keep breaking world records? Won't there come a point where they can be broken no longer? | I understand that technology has improved training immensively, swimsuits, nutrition, and training regimes, but eventually the human potential physically has to be reached, doesn't it? | Of course there *is* a limit, but the limit can be pushed further and further with the proper technology, diet and training. Maybe someone discovers a new technique for sprinting, or a better way to propel yourself at the start of the race. Or a new method of acceleration? Or perhaps someone discovers a diet that gives the sprinter a slight advantage. And then there's the occasional genetically exceptional athlete.
It's pretty difficult to truly know when we've hit the limit. Athletes have been steadily improving over the last 100 years. If we're still pretty much in the same place in 30 years with regards to world records, there's a pretty good chance we're nearing our limits.
But who says we can't host transhumanist Olympics? | 209 | 424 |
ELI5 why isn’t it sufficiently satisfying just to chew tasty (but unhealthy) food rather than also needing to swallow it in order to enjoy it fully? | In other words, we all eat food that tastes great but is unhealthy. The part that we like is chewing it and enjoying the taste in our mouths. It would be great to do only that and then just spit it out and then turn to less tasty food and swallow that for the health benefits. But our bodies seem to need us to also swallow the bad (tasty) food in order to be satisfied. Why is that? | Food tastes good to us as an incentive to eat it. Our bodies evolved this to make us eat food that is calories dense specifically for our (over) nutrition; our body is much more worried about starvation than obesity. So that appealing flavor is almost inherently tied to us actually swallowing the food, rather than spitting it back out. | 68 | 86 |
Best ECONOMICS Books for beginners? | I am planning to study economics in university. But before that I want to read some economic books. Any good beginner books, I don’t want to start with Wealth of nations first | The usual advice is to start with an introductory textbook. Mankiw's *Principles of Economics* is a typical example; you can pick up a used copy for about $30.
If you want something a little lighter, Tim Harford's *The Undercover Economist* and *The Undercover Economist Strikes Back* are two good pop-econ introductions to the subject.
If you're interested in the history of thought, the go-to introduction is Heilbroner's *The Worldly Philosophers.*
The r/economics sidebar has a wealth of topic-specific recommendations in microeconomics, macroeconomics, development, behavioral, etc. | 59 | 140 |
Is it hard to learn how to program on IOS/Android from scratch? How should I do it? | I have ideas but not the money to pay a programmer to create the app so I'm thinking about learning how to do it myself. How should I approach it? | Programming apps is the deep end of the pool, because you'll have to deal with a lot of complexities from the very beginning. A simple "hello world" app can consist of several dozen files and there are many different ways to do even the simplest little thing.
I would most definitely start with something simpler, like java or c#, to get a feel for programming in itself before trying to understand the highly specialized environment of a modern phone OS. | 21 | 18 |
ELI5: Freudian psychology | Freud was one of the first people to say that how we act and think as adults is hugely determined by our parents and our childhood situation.
He outlined different stages that children go through and said that if the child has some kind of trauma or unresolved problem during that stage, it will become a psychological problem when they are adults.
He believed in using free association, in which patients laid on a couch and just said whatever came into their heads. He would analyze what they said as well as their dreams, looking for symbols to uncover the source of the person's problem.
He is famous for finding sexual symbolism in many things and for supposedly blaming mothers for an adult's emotional problems. (Mom didn't provide even affection, mom was top clingy, mom was too distant, etc.)
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CMV: Adding pronouns to emails sigs and Zoom call names and what not is extraneous and unnecessary unless your name is ambiguous, or if your pronouns aren't what we'd reasonably expect | Okay, let's say you get an email from someone named "Steven". What are Steven's pronouns? I'm gonna guess they're probably "he/him". Now, it's possible that Steven is actually a ciswoman. After all, I have known women named Michael and even met several cis men named Maria. So it's not like it's impossible for a ciswoman with "she/her" pronouns to be named Steven. Or Elliot (Scrubs!!!) And then there are ambiguous names like DJ, Terry, Shawn or perhaps names that someone would be reasonably unfamiliar with (my mother's name was Chassye, and I've met the occasional Dashonta or Luree). So I guess in those cases, you probably should include just if you wanna avoid awkwardness when someone gets your pronouns wrong.
But like, come on. If your name is Ronald, we probably don't need you to explicitly state your pronouns. We can safely assume that Sandra is a "she/her", and if they're not, then I can see why you'd wanna include pronouns. But I think it should be like this:
Obvious male name belonging to a he/him = no need for pronouns
Obvious female name belonging to a she/her = no need for pronouns
Ambiguous or uncommon name = include pronouns
Obvious gendered name belonging to someone who does not match the obvious gender = include pronouns
Working in a foreign country where they probably have never seen your name = include pronouns
I feel bad saying this cuz I've added a "he/him" to my email sig and I use it a lot in my working life (zoom calls and stuff) but I feel like my name is a fairly common male name that no one could reasonably get my pronouns wrong.
I'm not opposed to doing this. I voluntarily added my pronouns to my work stuff, in spite of slight jabs from coworkers who tease me for it (they're all old school backwards types who believe in binary gender). So I support doing it. I'm just wondering why I do it.
For the record, I am not a backwards, old school gender binary type. I understand that gender is not the same as biological sex, and I've had a relationship with a trans woman, and I support people being who they are and I've even marched alongside LGBT folks at rallies before.
I just think the pronoun thing is sorta silly.
Also, someone is gonna have to tell me how to type a Delta on my phone in case I need to award one (I suspect I will). | The reason many people do this is to normalise the practice. So it makes it easier for people whose gender may present more ambiguously to volunteer their pronouns. It’s also an easy, low effort way to show solidarity. It costs no one anything and it’s a pleasant gesture.
(You can award a delta by writing !_delta without the underscore and with the ! and delta next to each other alongside a short comment explaining why your view changed) | 618 | 482 |
Since potential energy adds to an objects mass, would an object almost infinitely far from a gravitational source have almost infinite mass? | I’m going off of this video here. I have zero background in this kind of thing, just curious.
https://youtu.be/Xo232kyTsO0
Seems to me if one blocked stacked on top of another block has more mass because it’s higher up, that an object much further away would have even more mass due to its greater potential energy. | The potential energy contributes to the total mass of the system.
So say you have the Earth, with mass M, and an object, with mass m.
The gravitational potential energy of their interaction is -GMm/r.
Assuming the object is at rest in the rest frame of the Earth and is being held at a fixed distance r from the center of the Earth, the mass of the Earth-object system is just
M + m - GMm/(rc^(2)).
(Note that this only applies if the object is *outside* the Earth itself.)
So as r goes to infinity, the potential energy contribution goes away, and you just get the sum of the masses of the two infinitely far away, non-interacting objects: M + m.
But as r gets smaller, the interaction gets stronger, and the small mass becomes more and more bound inside the gravitational well of the Earth.
For an 80 kg person standing on the surface of the Earth, your gravitational potential energy is decreasing the mass of the Earth-you system by around 50 micrograms. | 34 | 16 |
ELI5: Why do German luxury automobile brands such as Audi/BMW/Mercedes recommend oil changes every 15K+ miles whereas American standard brands like Ford and Chevy still recommend oil changes every 3-5K miles? | I have always owned American car brands and regularly changed the oil at the recommended 5K mile mark as part of the routine maintenance. I recently got a BMW X3 and found out that the recommended mileage before getting an oil change is around 15K. This lead me to ask:
What is it about the design of the German vehicles that allow them to go longer without changing the oil? Does the engine run at a slightly temperature than American models? Does it have to do with the fact that I am combusting higher rated gasoline in it(requires premium)? Do they use a superior oil filter? If anyone could give some insight, I would greatly appreciate it because I was genuinely curious and don't know enough about cars to formulate my own hypothesis.
| Service contracts.
BMW used to recommend oil changes every 5000 miles or so, but then the marketing department got involved and offered free oil changes for the first X years, and once the dealers had to pay the cost of the service the interval magically tripled so you needed fewer of them.
The effect is that with the reduced servicing the car will still run fine for the duration of the warranty, but at the end of the warranty period it'll have more wear and tear and may need to be replaced sooner - another win for the marketing department. | 51 | 69 |
CMV: Bojack Horseman does a better job in portraying mental illness than 13 Reasons Why, and deserved more media attention. | Two popular shows on Netflix about mental illness is 13 Reasons Why and BoJack Horseman. I feel that 13 Reasons Why is more popular in the media and is more known overall. However, I really don't think that it does a great job portraying mental illness and teen issues and often puts a dramatic spin on things. It has a specific and narrow focus on the idea that bullying leads to suicide, when there are usually other factors involved. It also contributes to teen suicidal ideation instead of accurately portraying characters. It is also often considered traumatizing and triggering, especially to the majority of viewers who are teens. For example, there was a study that found a correlation between suicide rates and the premiere of 13 Reasons Why. I understand that 13 Reasons Why wants to explore serious concepts, but it does it in a provoking and clumsy way.
I think Bojack Horseman does a better job of portraying mental illness. The writing, specifically Bojack's dialogue and monologue expresses what people with mental illnesses sometimes want to say, but cannot. Bojack’s childhood was immensely traumatic as both his parents were emotionally and physically abusive and neglectful.. While adult Bojack is somewhat rude, abrasive, harsh, and cynical; young Bojack was sweet and innocent who was subjected to the trauma from his parents. Bojack’s inability to sustain healthy and stable relationships and fear of abandonment can be traced back to his cold parents. Psychological studies have proven how a traumatic childhood can lead to PTSD, and could even manifest in different disorders such as Borderline Personality Disorder and Dissociative Identity Disorder.
The show does a good job in that it doesn’t characterize Bojack as kind and lovable. There are moments where the audience is disgusted and appalled at his actions. This makes things more realistic because those viewers with depression know that they are not at their best most times and know they usually tend to do destructive things. This argument could be made for 13 Reasons Why characters, but I argue that characters and relationships in Bojack Horseman are much more layered. In 13 Reasons Why, there are clear distinctions between the victim of bullying, the bullies and the “good guy.”
Overall, 13 Reasons Why should not get as much media attention as it does already. I could even go far as to say it should be cancelled, since its storyline and plot is becoming increasingly dull. Meanwhile, Bojack Horseman is getting increasingly better and I think it also deserves much more attention than it has already. | What kind of attention do you mean? Bojack Horseman is adored by critics and fans. It may not have the pulp appeal of schlock like 13 Reasons Why, but it's got respect and admiration.
For all the adoration Bojack gets among critics and mental health experts, 13 Reasons Why gets consistently panned. | 11 | 66 |
Why is infrastructure spending such a contentious subject in the US? | From my understanding, infrastructure spending would improve the supply chains in the US, create jobs, reduce green house gases, along with providing many other benefits.
President Eisenhower's interstate highway system seemed to be a success so why is there such pushback now? Wouldn't infrastructure spending be a net positive for the country?
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Thank you. | First, the economics is about tradeoffs. Resources have alternative uses, so opportunity costs matter as well as benefits. Second, everyone might value benefits and oppotunity costs differently depending on their age, economic status, ideology, personal preferences etc. Many people simply dislike paying higher taxes to finance more public spending, Also, for instance, an elderly person with no kids might not care as much as a young person about how much the potential output would increase in the long run. | 16 | 27 |
ELI5: Ayn Rand's objectivism | What we perceive with our senses around us is real and not just a figment of ours or some other beings consciousness.
The best way to learn about our world is through reason and science. Your mind is the greatest tool that we as human beings possess.
Your life is your highest value. All other values serve that.
Human beings have free will and should only deal with other people through free exchange of materials and ideas.
You should not initiate the use of force and only use it in retaliation. | 36 | 68 |
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Do different gases convect heat at different rates? | Metal and wood conduct heat at two different rates, but do gases behave the same? If there is a difference, would the effect be noticeable by touch? | Heat transfer due to natural convection is not trivial, and there are many different, generally empirical, approximations that apply in different circumstances (see Nusselt number).
In general there are a few material properties that affect the rate of convection and resulting heat transfer:
\- Thermal expansion coefficient. The more a fluid expands as it warms the greater the buoyancy force, which is the driver of natural convection.
\- Thermal diffusivity. If heat diffuses (conducts) easily through the fluid then there won't be strong thermal gradients to drive convection.
\- Viscosity. Clearly convection involves mixing of fluid and so viscosity is relevant. Viscosity of gasses is lower than liquids so perhaps less important for the former.
It would certainly be possible to set up scenarios where certain gasses would generate strong convection currents and others would generate noticeably weaker ones. | 17 | 20 |
Why are water bottles always #1 plastic, milk jugs always #2, and yogurt/margarine containers always #5? | I am a packaging engineer. The numbers refer to different types of plastics which all have different properties - strength, barrier to oxygen or moisture vapor, how it reacts to temp extremes etc. There are a variety of reasons the packaging is chosen including how the product will be filled, how it will be stored, consumer needs and product compatibility with the package. Example PP holds up well to heat which is why it is used for hot fill applications, microwave trays and sealant films for steam able veggie bags. Also you might see "other" which can mean either it is a coex (think a sandwich of different plastics to take advantage of all the features of the different layers) or that the plastic doesn't have a number assigned. Example of a coex "other" is ketchup bottles use a coex containing EVOH which is an oxygen barrier and keeps your ketchup from oxidizing and turning brown, since EVOH dissolves in water it gets sandwiched between PET. (Sorry for typos on phone) | 23 | 22 |
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Why do we use significant figures? | In high school chemistry this year, I was introduced to significant figures and taught the 'rules' of how to use them. I understand the gist of it being an answer cannot be more precise than it's measurement tool and I know about the example with the cutting of wood (not rounding to correct sig figs caused the person to redo it when it wasn't necessary) but I still don't understand *why* we use them.
About the *'an answer can't be more precise than it's measurement tool',* why is that a rule? For example, in math we've never used them and only round to how much the textbook or teacher specifies. And wouldn't it be better to just put the answer you get when doing the math?
About the cutting wood example (or any real world applications), wouldn't it be better to just use common sense? Like if someone measures the width of a piece of wood to be 0.18ft and they had to convert it to inches to give to a woodcutter, they would get the exact answer as 2.16in but once they talk with the person, couldn't they agree that .16 isn't that important and just have it as 2 inches? What I don't get from this example is that using sig figs would still be more difficult and might cost the person more if the woodcutter messes up.
* Also, when we're doing multi-step problems in chemistry, our teacher tells us to wait to round until the very end, but if significant figures are really more precise/accurate, wouldn't it be better to round after every step?
* And finally if significant figures are actually better/more precise/more accurate, why does it not work for simple things like 5 x 5 (which equals 25 but because of sig figs have to be rounded to 30)?
**Edit:** Thanks to everyone! In chemistry, our teacher just vaguely told us the *an answer can't be more precise than its measuring tool* but never really went in depth and so it still didn't make sense to me. But now, after everyone's help, I feel more confident about knowing *why* we use significant figures and *where* to use them, so thank you everyone! | Here you should distinguish between math in an ideal sense, and math in its real-world application. So your examples of math class or 5 x 5 = 25 don't consider any uncertainty at all - that's fine, because you're learning about the rules of math.
Significant figures come into play when the input and output have uncertainty in them:
> About the 'an answer can't be more precise than it's measurement tool', why is that a rule?
Because you're trying to faithfully represent the certainty of your answer. If you're, say, trying to calculate how many donuts you've eaten last week, but you using very crude measurements (i.e., "meh, about 5 donuts a day for something like 5 days", when reality you aren't sure if it's closer to 4 or 6 donuts or days), you cannot with confidence state that you have eaten _exactly_ 25 donuts, when the answer could range from something like 16 to 36 donuts). | 34 | 39 |
How do they load operating systems onto completely blank computers? | Say I have a computer that is just the absolutely bare electronics. Nothing to read a usb or any inputs. How would I load an operating system onto it? How do computer manufacturers accomplish this? | The motherboard of a computer is equipped with something called UEFI (Unified Extensible Firmware Interface), the successor of the BIOS (Basic Input/Output System). The UEFI handles the first steps of starting a computer. It contains enough logic to manage storage devices (HDDs, SSDs and USB storage), input devices (keyboard, mouse) and display output. The UEFI software is stored on a dedicated chip on the motherboard, which is preloaded by the manufacturer.
When the system starts, the UEFI will check its settings to determine which devices to search for operating systems and it will hand over the reins to the first operating system it finds in the boot order. In this context, a USB stick with an OS installer also counts as an operating system that can be started. Once started, this OS will handle the process of copying the files from the installation media to the permanent storage location (typically from USB to SSD). | 48 | 27 |
Is it possible, consciously and voluntarily, to do something without ever having decided to do so? | In crime & punishment, Raskolnikov never decides to commit his crime. He is fascinated by the hypothetical, i.e. the possibility of it, and rehearses the crime repeatedly -- but, still, he never decides to kill the old woman. In holding onto this potentiality, his mind's climate was perversely affected, and by a peculiar concatenation of events he commits the murder, albeit in a dream state as if it were another rehearsal. And the multiplicity of contradictory ideological explanations advanced throughout the novel derives from this fact. Is Dostoevsky's rejection of the common-sense thesis that actions follow from the last determination of the will apt? | Consider a lot of everyday habitual actions, like getting a coffee in the morning, going to school/work, greeting friends as you see them. Most of this is conscious and voluntary, but you certainly aren’t deciding to do them in any sense that involves deliberation. | 45 | 78 |
[WH40K] So there's some 9 ft. tall Jehova's Witness at my door - how can I get him to go away? | Hi reddit,
I live on a small island by myself and try not to mingle with people much. Yesterday however, I looked out my cottage window and saw some kind of floating castle spaceship.
Some odd fellows popped down and told me if I've heard of the God Emperor. Well. I don't much pay attention to religion, so I asked which one. The Jewish God, Islamic God, or Christian God, or any number of gods that we on Earth worship. I was also mindful to remind them that some people here and on Earth don't even think there's a god at all!
They got awful stroppy and went back to their ship, telling me we'll be hearing from them soon. Did I say something to upset them? How will they act on this?
**TL;DR** What would the Imperium of Man do when confronting a pre-spaceflight, multi-cultural planet that has a wide array of religious beliefs? | First, they send the missionaries. If the missionaries fail, they send the Ecclesiarchy. If the Ecclesiarchy has deemed the task of converting you is wasted effort, they send the Guard. When you retaliate against the guard, one single drop pod with 5 Space Marines inside smashed into the surface of your world and they slaughter you. | 18 | 18 |
How do we / did we decipher the structure of molecules given the fact they are so small that we can't really directly look at them through a microscope? | Hello there,
this is a very basic question, that I always have in my mind somehow. How do we decipher the structure of molecules?
You can take any molecule, [glucose](http://img.tfd.com/mgh/ceb/thumb/Structural-formula-for-x3b1-D-glucose.jpg), [amino acids](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/ce/AminoAcidball.svg/702px-AminoAcidball.svg.png) or anything else.
I just want to get the general idea.
I'm not sure whether this is a question that can be answered easily since there is probably a whole lot of work behind that. | The two most common techniques for elucidating small-molecule structure are X-Ray Crystallography and NMR (nuclear magnetic resonance) spectroscopy. Both of these methods may also be used to get the structures of much larger molecules, such as proteins. Both methodologies work on completely different principles and are great compliments to one another. | 220 | 1,014 |
ELI5: Why do law firms always have the last name of partners IE "Smith, Jones & Jackson" and not names like other businesses | Because lawyers, like doctors, engineers, architects, etc. are personally licensed to practice their profession. A corporation can't become licensed to practice law, only a person can. It varies by state, but even in places where lawyers and other professionals are allowed to form corporations, they often still have to advertise themselves as "Laws, Inc., the firm of Dewey, Cheatem, and Howe". | 20 | 23 |
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ELI5: How are artificial color dyes made differently from natural color dyes? | Natural dyes are made by taking something that's the right color and processing it into a dye.
Artificial dyes are made by putting generic, commodity chemicals into a chemical reaction process that ends up with a dye. | 27 | 71 |
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CMV: On the whole, fossil fuel use is a net positive for mankind and should not be curtailed from current levels | I'm sure this post will generate lost of hate, but this is actually how I feel. No, I'm not a shill for the oil companies. Scientifically, I've looked at the evidence and the benefits of using fossil fuels far far far outweigh the associated potential costs of anthropogenic climate change.
First of all, the benefits of fossil fuels are obvious. The gasoline engine has transformed the entire world. The coal and natural gas electric power plant literally makes our modern way of life possible. There is no alternative that would not either cost substantially more, or result in a reduction of quality of life for the entire world.
Regarding climate change, I don't understand why we don't hear more discussion about the preventive effect of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere against the onset of another ice age. Actually I should say prevention against falling "back" in to a colder ice age, since we're actually [still in an ice age](http://www.sciencedaily.com/articles/i/ice_age.htm)
The IPCC "worst case scenario" for global warming predicts a 4 C increase in average global temperature over the next 150 years. But the [average temperature decrease during an ice age is - 5 C](http://earthguide.ucsd.edu/virtualmuseum/climatechange2/01_1.shtml)
So it would appear that our current carbon dioxide levels would shield the planet indefinitely against the onset of another ice age, a position that [science has already embraced](http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-16439807)
given the fact that another ice age would be orders of magnitude more deadly to life on earth (human, animal, plant) than any results of global warming, I'd say we should continue as we are, using cheap power derived from fossil fuels, with the added side effect of acting as protection against any new Ice Ages.
Change my view!
EDIT: View changed somewhat. The information seems to be that we have plenty of CO2 in the air now to prevent an ice age for at least a thousand years (maybe more), so if anything, we should be preserving the remaining fossil fuels for use in the future, if (or when) the carbon dioxide levels start to fall low enough that we need to be concerned about an Ice Age. I can agree with that.
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> *Hello, users of CMV! This is a footnote from your moderators. We'd just like to remind you of a couple of things. Firstly, please remember to* ***[read through our rules](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/rules)***. *If you see a comment that has broken one, it is more effective to report it than downvote it. Speaking of which,* ***[downvotes don't change views](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/guidelines#wiki_upvoting.2Fdownvoting)****! If you are thinking about submitting a CMV yourself, please have a look through our* ***[popular topics wiki](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/populartopics)*** *first. Any questions or concerns? Feel free to* ***[message us](http://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=/r/changemyview)***. *Happy CMVing!* | > First of all, the benefits of fossil fuels are obvious.
WERE obvious. Fossil fuel had its place in our history. It advanced a lot of technology. But your CMV hinges on the assumption that fossil fuel is the only way to accomplish these things, and because that's how it happened, that's the way it should continue to happen, and that simply isn't the case.
The knowledge exists to accomplish the same things in much less harmful ways to the environment.
Now, you are correct that an abrupt halt to fossil fuels would be harmful to society, because we simply don't have the set-up yet to completely cease their use. But there is no reason to believe that it's not something we should continue working toward.
Regarding the ice age argument, an ice age would not be as harmful to the planet as the current levels of climate change, because what causes problems ecologically is a RAPID change in conditions. The planet could survive just fine being 10 degrees warmer or colder, it just needs time to adapt. And when we're doing these things in the span of 150 years instead of 150,000, that's when we have the issues we're currently running into.
An ice age would not be nearly the problem you claim for humanity, because it would happen a hell of a lot more slowly than this is. | 27 | 25 |
CMV: Auto Insurance should be required to cover the full amount of medical bills of crash victims up to about $8 Million. | In most US states, auto insurance is required to pay out [$25,000](https://www.thebalance.com/understanding-minimum-car-insurance-requirements-2645473) to crash victims. This is a ridiculously small amount, considering the cost of healthcare in the US. [According to the CDC](https://www.cdc.gov/vitalsigns/crash-injuries/index.html), crash injuries in 2012 resulted in a total of $18 Billion in medical costs.
$25,000 is also a very low valuation for a human life. According to a few US government offices, [the value of a human life is somewhere between $7 Million and $10 Million](https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/11/upshot/virus-price-human-life.html). I don’t think that these numbers are sacrosanct; I am completely open to any valuation that’s within a factor of 10 of one of them.
In Denmark, auto insurance is required to cover [121 Million Krone](https://www.swissre.com/dam/jcr:1db99c04-4977-4a83-966a-ec2ebf354c81/2018_bodily_injury_landscape_denmark.pdf), which is about $16 Million. Denmark has about [70% fewer] (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic-related_death_rate) traffic deaths per capita than the US.
While a death payout won’t provide much consolation to a grieving family, I still think the insurance providers should pay about $8 million. It will help to cover expenses for a family that has lost the income of an earner. It will also force insurers and drivers to care about preventing traffic deaths.
The obvious downside of this policy change is that driving would become more expensive, and some people will be priced out of it. However, the increase for most drivers would be relatively small. There are [228.2 Million](https://www.statista.com/statistics/198029/total-number-of-us-licensed-drivers-by-state/) licensed drivers in the US. There are about [40,000 traffic deaths](https://www.nhtsa.gov/press-releases/early-estimate-2021-traffic-fatalities) each year in the US; at a valuation of $8 million per person, those would cost $320 Billion. The average cost per licensed driver would be (320 Billion + 18 Billion) / 228.2 Million = $1481.16 per year.
The insurance companies already know which cars are relatively safe and dangerous, and which drivers are relatively safe and dangerous. If a dangerous driver has had a couple of DUIs and a bunch of moving violations, their premiums should reflect their probability of killing or injuring a human being whose life is worth $8,000,000. If some new cars offer better safety features, then the insurance companies should use discounted premiums to incentivize buying those. | >It will also force insurers and drivers to care about preventing traffic deaths.
Auto insurers already care deeply about making safe, they find the IIHS which is a leading organization for automotive safety. More coverage, if anything, makes drivers care less about causing an accident. After all they are still legally liable for any damages they cause over their policy max.
>The obvious downside of this policy change is that driving would become more expensive, and some people will be priced out of it.
What this actually results in is uninsured drivers. The unfortunate reality is that most people will continue to drive weather they have insurance or not. You are just creating a situation where there is a much higher chance you get nothing of someone hits you, at least not without a long legal fight and hoping the person actually had the money to pay at the end.
>If a dangerous driver has had a couple of DUIs and a bunch of moving violations, their premiums should reflect their probability of killing or injuring a human being whose life is worth $8,000,000.
Again, the problem is you just turn them into uninsured drivers, pretty much every state already has systems in place to artificially lower the highest risk groups premiums in the hopes they will get insurance instead of driving without. | 116 | 395 |
[Star Wars] How do the people on Coruscant breath, eat and drink without any nature left? | Also: Why did they destroy all nature? At least something like the parks in New York should be there. | A gigantic portion of Coruscant's space and air traffic is the infrastructure that imports and distributes off-world food, water, and other resources. A significant amount of the galaxy's trade and business is done on that one planet alone, and a huge amount of it is the simple buying of food. It's one reason the Separatists attacked and blockaded the planet like they did at the end of the clone wars. They would have very quickly starved the Republic's very core if the battle lasted longer than it did. In legends, the Vong also cut off the planet's trade, and it caused death and suffering on an unimaginable scale.
That being said, Coruscant does have intact ice caps, so it also has significant amounts of native water still present. As well as a few shallow lakes and seas that are either used as farms for sea life, or resorts for tourism and relaxation. There is a single mountain peak that has not been built on, and is the last piece of the planet's visible landmass remaining.
Coruscant has been the center of trade and politics for well over 10,000 years. In legends, it was upwards of 30,000. Many hyperspace routes have an exit near the planet, which made it a natural trade hub, and the perfect place for meetings and government to form. With an entire galaxy constantly converging on it, infrastructure had to constantly be built to accommodate it. Over the many centuries it had been the galaxy's beating heart, it was turned into a single huge city out of grim necessity. And then it became tradition that no one dared defy, given how many benefits there are to conducting business on that single world. Soon, it was just a way of life that no one questioned. | 39 | 25 |
How to read philosophy? | I'm reading Descartes' Meditations right now, and I feel like I'm getting the overall picture but not many of the finer details, the exact logic of his reasoning, and in general I don't feel that I'm understanding all that I should be.
I'm not used to reading philosophy, is there a specific way of reading so that I can understand the concepts better? I'm going to reread Meditations after I finish. | It helps to try and analyze the logic of the text as you read. Most philosophical texts give arguments for or against a particular thesis. This is in fact the case of the Mediatations, where each meditation gives an argument to underpin a proposition in Descartes philosophical system.
Try to first locate the logical conclusion of the chapter (paper, book). The rest of the text should relate to this in some way (though there will be some filler also). Then as you read keep the conclusion in mind, and ask yourself how what you are reading supports the conclusion. Try to ask yourself whether there is anything else that needs to be proven in order to make the conclusion follow, and see if you can find it later on. You may also keep notes of this process if you need to.
This active engagement with the text will provide you with a more structured understanding of the issue. You will not only read but also critique at the same time, which is supposed to boost retention rarte as well. | 14 | 33 |
ELI5: Why does glass break when transferred from hot to cold water, but not something like an egg? | First, a plaque of glass is very solid and strong, an egg shell is very porous and bendable.
Second, hot objects expands while cold objects contract.
Because an egg shell is bendable and porous, it is able to deal with the internal stresses caused by the temperature difference. And because the glass is solid and strong, the internal stresses caused by the temperature difference can make it shatter. | 27 | 31 |
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If there isn't an objective truth, where does the authority of a art critic come from? | For the sake of argument we will follow the following premise that there is not an objective truth.
Recently I was wondering this. "If there is no" good taste "or" bad taste "to appreciate art, where does the judgment of an art critic come from?"
​ | You're asking two questions: first, if there is no objective truth, where does their authority come from, and second, if there is no good taste or bad taste, where does their judgment come from.
With respect to the first, they might be good at articulating compelling points, or good at drawing on knowledge of other works of art, or good at guessing what the typical reader cares about, or good at touching on enough points to cover stuff that most readers will care about, or knowledgeable about the subjective truths of the matter, and so on.
With respect to the second, first of all please note that "no objective truth" does not lead to "there is no good taste or bad taste." There's no *objective* good taste or bad taste, but there could be good taste or bad taste. But in any case, if there somehow weren't good taste or bad taste, judgment could come from basically anywhere! There aren't any standards! | 18 | 18 |
What is academia like in Germany ? | I have been reading a lot of posts about how bad the academia is in many countries like Publish or Perish or pressure to constantly publish in big journals but then i read some good things about academia in Germany and that is chilled than academia in most countries so i wanted to know is this really the case and how is it different than academia in countries like USA or UK like is Publish or Perish a thing in Germany also . I am interested in Math , Physics and computer science so it will be nice if you can tell some specific things about academia in those fields . | Working conditions for most non-permanent academics in Germany are overall better than in many other places. For most, salaries are very decent and they get all the benefits that anybody else gets. That's all fine.
In terms of career development, it is generally much worse. There are almost no permanent jobs beyond full professor and your chances of getting one of those are pretty much zero. Your only real chance is to win an ERC grant, and you are very unlikely to get one. In the last years, ERC grants have basically become the ticket into the academy in the German-speaking world. Without one, you have no chance, and with one you are automatically given a position and can basically choose where you go. | 68 | 88 |
How do man made structures get naturally buried and forgotten over time? | Often times you hear of long lost buildings or even full cities that get buried underground and forgotten over the years. How does that happen? How does ground level get higher and higher over the years? | People tend to build near bodies of water, and areas near bodies of water tend to be depositional environments. Basically you've got two types of environments...your hills and mountains are where dirt erodes _from_. Your flatlands and floodplains are where dirt erodes _to_. People tend to build in the latter, so over long timescales, sediment tends to accumulate (often through occasional floods).
Also, people bring their own dirt. Before the advent of dumptrucks, nobody was really interested in going through the massive amount of trouble it would be to haul out the rubbish of a knocked over or burned down house. Or even the rubbish of everyday life. The debris would get left behind and the next house built on top. Eventually you wind up with many layers of old junk burying the ruins of old buildings. This is especially important in ancient cities. | 37 | 31 |
Can executive functions be improved? | Hello. Apparently fluid intelligence can not be improved, yet. Can we do something about executive functions? Wikipedia article about executive functions says it can be improved at any age.
I am 22. Perhaps, I can specifically do certain things since the prefrontal cortex gets myelinated between ages 20-30? Can adults above 30 do something to improve their executive function? | Studies show that meditation builds executive function. The most useful part of executive function is that it controls impulsivity, and that is something that meditation helps with. The less executive function you have, the more you are on autopilot when it comes to your emotional control and decision making. Meditation helps you recognize the physical signs of emotion, which allows you to head them off, or put a gap between feeling and action in order to make a conscious choice. "Thinking, Fast and Slow" by Kahneman covers a lot of this, definitely worth a read. Essentially, your brain is lazy and wants expediency and efficiency, so it tries to spend as much time on autopilot as possible. That time on autopilot does nothing to build executive function, so being conscious of, and questioning your automatic reactions to things and automatic thoughts and beliefs are also ways to build executive function (in addition to meditation).
Gallant, S. N. (2016). Mindfulness meditation practice and executive functioning: Breaking down the benefit. Consciousness and cognition, 40, 116-130.
Kahneman, D. (2011). Thinking, fast and slow. Macmillan.
Luu, K., & Hall, P. A. (2017). Examining the acute effects of hatha yoga and mindfulness meditation on executive function and mood. Mindfulness, 8(4), 873-880.
Short, M. M., Mazmanian, D., Ozen, L. J., & Bédard, M. (2015). Four days of mindfulness meditation training for graduate students: A pilot study examining effects on mindfulness, self-regulation, and executive function. The Journal of Contemplative Inquiry, 2(1).
Tang, Y. Y., Yang, L., Leve, L. D., & Harold, G. T. (2012). Improving executive function and its neurobiological mechanisms through a mindfulness‐based intervention: Advances within the field of developmental neuroscience. Child development perspectives, 6(4), 361-366.
Taren, A. A., Gianaros, P. J., Greco, C. M., Lindsay, E. K., Fairgrieve, A., Brown, K. W., ... & Creswell, J. D. (2017). Mindfulness meditation training and executive control network resting state functional connectivity: a randomized controlled trial. Psychosomatic medicine, 79(6), 674. | 16 | 26 |
ELI5: What's that wall of gibberish text when you open some type file in notepad? | "¾xàÏù" An enormous wall of basically **that** is what you can expect when you open up any type of random file in notepad that isn't meant to be in notepad. What is it? What happens if you just erase a random part of this gibberish? What is it representing and is there any way to comprehensively read it? | You can classify computer files into two main types: text files and binary files.
All computer files are just a big sequence of numbers -- or in computer terms, bytes.
In a text file, each of these numbers is intended to corresponds to some human readable letter. For example, the number 65 usually corresponds to an "A". When you open these files in Notepad, it has an easy time translating each number to a letter for you to read.
In a binary file, anything goes. It could be a picture where each number corresponds to a color of a pixel; it could be a database file where the numbers could mean all sorts of things.; it could be anything at all. When you try to open these files in Notepad, it will attempt to translate each number into a letter, but since that data is not intended to be interpreted that way, you wind up with gibberish. | 20 | 15 |
CMV: I think all of human endeavor is a result of the desire to get laid. | Every achievement that mankind has been part of has its origins in the instinct to pass on genes. Every skyscraper and monument built, the moon landing, great works of genius and moral teachings. All of them produced by people to differentiate themselves from the flock and be chosen as a mate. People work harder than they have to in order to accrue wealth which will provide evidence that they have desirable DNA. Life's only purpose is the pursuit of a wet hole to explode into (or a hard thing to explode into you). Change my view. (Sources and readings on this topic are appreciated.)
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> *Hello, users of CMV! This is a footnote from your moderators. We'd just like to remind you of a couple of things. Firstly, please remember to* ***[read through our rules](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/rules)***. *If you see a comment that has broken one, it is more effective to report it than downvote it. Speaking of which,* ***[downvotes don't change views](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/guidelines#wiki_upvoting.2Fdownvoting)****! If you are thinking about submitting a CMV yourself, please have a look through our* ***[popular topics wiki](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/populartopics)*** *first. Any questions or concerns? Feel free to* ***[message us](http://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=/r/changemyview)***. *Happy CMVing!* | Isaac Newton. Father of classical mechanics, optics, gravitation and calculus. Arguably the most influential scientist and mathematician of all time. Was also asexual and avoid physical and social contact. | 96 | 68 |
ELI5: why is 12 volts very common? Why not 11 or 9 volts? | The voltages produced by a single cell of a battery is determined by the battery chemistry. For lead-acid, this is ~1.5V. 8 of those cells produce 12V.
In terms of "why not 11 volts?", you can't build an 11V battery from a cardinal number of 1.5V batteries. In terms of "why not 9 volts?", it's simply a matter of the people who standardized battery sizes back in the early 20th Century deciding it that way. In theory, we could just as easily have square batteries that produce 9V instead of rectangular ones that produce 12V if they had decided differently.
Once these standards were established, there's an incentive for manufacturers to simply use what the market offers unless there's a compelling reason to do otherwise.
EDIT: It's actually 8 1.5V cells that produce 12V, not 6. | 20 | 16 |
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ELI5:What is the concept of Buridan's Ass? | I read this article https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/buridans-ass-why-doctors-make-mistakes-anurag-mundhada?trk=pulse_spock-articles
However I am confused - can someone shed light on this principle? | The basic principle is that it is very hard to make a decision if you have two options that are of equal value, and this often results in the decision not being made even though both choices would be hugely beneficial.
To quote Aristotle:
> ...a man, being just as hungry as thirsty, and placed in between food and drink, must necessarily remain where he is and starve to death. | 10 | 15 |
What should I look up/study to get started with OS design and deployment. | I am a pretty decent problem solver, I enjoy programming and it has been one of my dreams to learn to and finaly create my own Operating System. (I am currently in my first semestr at Uni - EU)
Where should I begin ? What should I look forward to learning ? | No expert in OS design, but it seems natural to study how other operating systems work first.
Also you'll need to decide which CPU architecture you want to target.
You'll have to handle peripherals, interrupts, pipelines, caches, etc. etc.
Kudos to you because it will not be easy :S | 11 | 19 |
Department forcing me to teach a course even though my advisor has funds available to fund me from a grant | TLDR: My department is forcing me to teach a course even though my advisor has funds available to pay me from a grant. Is this even legal? Should I contact the dean of students or graduate school?
My advisor has funds for me to use for research from his grant so that I don't have to teach in my final semester. Unfortunately my department is denying the request and forcing me to teach a course to be funded since they are low on teachers. 75% of other students are being allowed to use research funding in my department, and I am one of the 5 who is not being allowed. The reasoning is because of timing and a change of policy that once the department determined they were running low on instructors they started denying requests for research funding.
I have exhausted avenues within my department and have still been denied. I do have a lot of savings and could afford not to be funded at all. Honestly, I am tempted to deny teaching altogether. Of course I would not earn my 10-15K + health insurance + tuition benefit that I would get for research funding or teaching or being on the grant for research, but it is doable and honestly tempting to me right now. I am really upset about this. Teaching takes 20-30 hours a week of my time.
I am going into my last semester and need time to finish my thesis, find a job, and everything else that comes with graduating. I simply do not have time to teach and have been counting on this funding from my advisor. I think it is completely ludicrous that the department is telling my advisor he cannot fund me using the grant money which was set aside for me.
Can you think of anything I can do to fight this? It seems both immoral and illegal to me. Should I contact the graduate school or the dean of students? Do I have any legal recourse for this? It just feels they are stealing the grant money from me because they won't allow my advisor to give me the grant money meaning I am forced to teach if I want to get paid.
If anyone has any ideas, I am open to hear them. I can also clarify things if anything is unclear. Thank you. | It’s worth asking, but chances are your advisors grant funding is only partially supporting you (stipend) with the department funding the rest of the cost (tuition, benefits).
This means that your department has a legitimate say in who that funding gets applied to based on the work that needs to be done, and probably means you don’t have much avenue for fighting this. It’s well within your employers (departments) purview to offer you one job over another based on their needs, just like faculty often have little to no say in what they teach, which is largely determined by need.
::edit:: A possible intermediate would be for your advisor to pay you a salary for your research, rather than as an assistantship. It might mean forgoing the stipend and insurance, but would be easier than self funding if the issue is the departments funds towards a RAship. | 62 | 84 |
ELI5: What are the duties of military personnel stationed in peaceful countries. | For example American military personnel stationed in South Korea or Japan. What are their responsibilities and duties. | There are lots of things to do around the base like maintaining equipment and routine training. There are hospitals to run, jeeps to clean, and paperwork to fill out.
However their main duties, i.e. the reason they are there is first place, is to be ready in case something happens. Something may happen that at least a few of them need to be mobilized at an hours notice. Most of the time it is to help with some sort of disaster but in theory they could be the front line for a war with North Korea.
That might seem very unlikely but the fact that they are there and that they are ready is a large part of the reason that such a war is unlikely. | 10 | 18 |
ELI5: How can "making the body more alkaline" be a good thing? | I've seen a few things about the idea you should make your body more alkaline (chicken is acidic etc.), it seems like bullshit, but just wondering if there is even the slightest real science behind this idea. Most foods seem to have a pH lower than 7 from what I've seen?
edit: I know it should technically be flaired as chemistry, but I'm seeking more of a biological explanation. | Organic chemical reactions are in some cases pH dependent, pH is actually defined as the concentration of hydrogen ions in a solution, this is expressed as acid or alkaline 7 being neutral, lower then 7 is acid and higher is alkaline.
now the body usualy operates at around 7.4, Slightly alkaline, and if it differs from that it could affect some body functions but it shouldnt differ too much unless you have some serious condition.
As for miracle cures and treatments being pushed by womens magazines and fake doctors on TV... Ignore that bullshit and follow the advice of your GP. | 23 | 28 |
[Judge Dredd] What's the shortest sentence a civilian can be subjected to by a Judge? Similarly, what's the most minor offence? | Judges have a lot of discretion; the SJS will be on them if they're chronically lax or harsh, but otherwise the judge rules. For instance, Dredd once caught some kids smoking outside (smoking anywhere outside a designated area is a jailable offense) and instead of sending them off to juvie for a few months he ordered them to do 5 minutes in a smoking area. And in MC-1 the smoking areas are special lounges where everyone is has to wear a protective helmet so they only breath their own smoke, and these kids didn't get helmets; essentially a dystopian version of the "we caught you smoking, now smoke this whole carton until you puke" punishment. | 226 | 199 |
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In Star Trek If the Federation did not have/need currency how did they barter with other species? | The UFP as a whole does not have currency/credit per se - but many people have different mass/energy allocations due to either their socio-economic status or responsibilities.
While this is not money - every living being is allocated, at a minimum, enough mass/energy (power and raw materials for replicators/transporter uses, etc) to live a comfortable and satisfactory life, if you contribute to society as a whole, you receive additional allocations commensurate with your contribution to society. As well, those who choose to engage in private enterprises can receive compensation equivalent to a portion of someone else's current mass/energy accumulation.
A certain portion of this mass/energy, in common parlance, is called a credit, or Federation credit. Any person and/or government who is not a member of the federation of planets can redeem these credits in goods and/or services at any time. Member planets and/or local governments can choose to handle their individual economies under the concept of local autonomy, with the caveat that participation in that local economy is voluntary, and anyone can 'vote with their feet' if they choose not to participate.
Mass/Energy is used due to the way that the post-scarcity society of Replicator technology works. Replicators can create virtually any known substance, except for whose with strange properties like dilithium crystals and latinum, but it is cheaper, in terms of energy cost, to take existing particles and assemble them in the replicator, versus creating those particular particles from pure energy. (Mass/Energy equations/E=mc^2 stuff) | 12 | 26 |
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CMV: Millennials don't have it worse than any other generation. Some things have gotten worse, some things have gotten better. Each generation faces their own unique challenges. | I know this is a hot button issue for Millennials. Let me start by saying, I am a member of the Millennial generation. I was born in the late 80s and grew up in the 90s. I graduated high school in the early 00s and am now in my early-mid professional life.
The oft cited view is this; Baby Boomers are the most self-interested generation that has set up the Millennials up for failure. They are continually only interested in sucking every last cent out of the environment, the people, the colleges, etc.
I say that this view is doom and gloom. I conjecture that this situation is not unique subject to control for the following factors:
1.) Normal economic cycles of "boom" and "bust"
2.) Socio-economic/race/gender/ethnicity-based opportunities (i.e. different folks may have had better opportunities based on these factors)
That is to say, on the whole, all else being equal, I think that generations is a poor fault line to evaluate success on.
Millennials have seen the advent of so many beneficial technologies opening up avenues of success and innovation that are absolutely unparalleled. These include:
1.) Rise of mass communication
2.) On-demand media consumption
3.) Deregulation of the airline industry (cheap, fast travel)
4.) Rise of non-traditional career paths (alternate valuation on skill sets); think Snapchat, Facebook, Occulus VR
5.) Advancement of medical science (longer, more healthy lives)
6.) Advancement in agrarian sciences (cheaper, better food)
Granted, there is the case for student loans, runaway housing prices, "joblessness", and the like. I submit to you that these are all factors that have opportunities for mitigation, but that are not palatable to Millennials as a whole, and such continue to plague the generation as a whole. Examples include:
1.) Student Loans - target a career with tuition reimbursement, go to a comm. college and xfer, join ROTC or use GI Bill after a stint in the military.
2.) Housing - try living in alternate locations with lower COL relative to salaries in that market. Follow a trade that is in-demand, regardless of geographical area (HVAC, RN, etc.)
3.) Job Growth - target underrepresented markets in the Midwest or southern states.
I think the most common argument against these remedies is "I don't want to do that" or "I'm not passionate about that" or "I shouldn't have to join the military to live". Hey. I get that we don't want to do things sometimes. But sometimes these things are necessary. Sacrifices must be made. Want to complain about student loans? At least you didn't get shipped to Europe for 4 years to fight in your 20s.
If one thing is true about our generation, it is that my generation has been conditioned to think that everything must be ideal. Sure, it would be great if everything was, but it rarely is.
Please, CMV.
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> *This is a footnote from the CMV moderators. We'd like to remind you of a couple of things. Firstly, please* ***[read through our rules](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/rules)***. *If you see a comment that has broken one, it is more effective to report it than downvote it. Speaking of which,* ***[downvotes don't change views](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/guidelines#wiki_upvoting.2Fdownvoting)****! Any questions or concerns? Feel free to* ***[message us](http://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=/r/changemyview)***. *Happy CMVing!* | As with any sort of absolute statement, the validity of it depends on what things you prioritize. If the most important thing to you is being able to build a debt-free life and support a nuclear family on a modest job, then you could say that millennials are pretty screwed, because it's next to impossible to have that kind of life without incurring debt these days. And to many people, that IS what matters, so it's not unreasonable for them to see themselves as struggling compared to previous generations, even acknowledging that we have a lot of cool shit that no one had before. Being able to look up porn at a moment's notice isn't necessarily worth the negatives. | 54 | 76 |
ELI5 why there is a nominal size that is different from actual size when working with something like lumber | Lumber is what we call wood that's used to build things. When you're planning out how to build a house or something, it's very important to know the size of the wood you're using. It'd be very hard to make a design if you were going to actually build it by just cutting down random trees and nailing them together.
It's also really useful for lumber to be shaped so that it's flat on all sides and so that all corners are right angles. That way, you can stack it up nicely in a warehouse or on a truck, and you can attach pieces to each other in a sturdy way. Of course, trees don't grow with flat sides.
Finally, wood cut directly from a tree isn't a great building material. It's full of water, because it was alive and that's how the tree kept nutrients moving through it. Eventually, after you cut it, the wood will dry out, which will make it change shape and get a little smaller. If you use wood that hasn't been dried out (or "seasoned") to build something, after the water dries, whatever you built could break.
So, when they cut down a tree, they have a piece of wood that they then have to dry out and then cut all the sides (or "plane") until they're flat.
When a "two by four" starts, it kind of is around 2 inches wide and 4 inches long. After it's seasoned and planed, though, it's about a half inch smaller in both of those dimensions. | 10 | 41 |
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ELI5:why are our fingers different lengths? | Hands are useful for grasping—hanging onto a tree limb (or hanging onto a ladder), picking berries (or picking up groceries), throwing a clod of dirt (or throwing a baseball). If our fingers were the same length, our hands wouldn't be such flexible tools. When we hold a spherical object like an orange in the palm of our hand, the fingers actually curve around evenly, giving us a firm grip. Tapering fingers (and strong thumbs) allowed early humans to use specially-shaped stones to smash, scrape and cut other objects. (A long pinky finger would be more likely to get caught and squashed itself.) Besides precision grips, our different-length fingers also provide a balanced support for crawling or leaning on our hands. | 10 | 16 |
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CMV: The HOV lane should be removed. Limiting access to a lane during rush hours is moronic. | The HOV lane is a terrible idea that has failed us as a society. I don't know if the original intention was to force people into carpooling or they thought it would be smarter to provide a lane of travel dedicated to 'higher occupancy vehicles'. But the true result is obvious; more traffic. Why during the busiest hours of the day (7-9AM and 4-6PM here in south florida on I-95) would you restrict travel? This not only causes more traffic in itself, but it causes humans to act in ways the create even more congestion. When people see the HOV lane moving they jump into it illegally and then quickly jump out of it if they think they see a highway patrol man up ahead. If we really want to reduce traffic and fix our rush hours, we should reduce the speed limit during those times and not restrict lane travel. The largest cause of morning traffic is tailgating. People ride each others asses (trying to prevent people from entering their lane selfishly and pointlessly) and then have to over compensate when braking. This causes a chain reaction making traffic come to a complete stop. And the cycle continues. Reduce the speed limit during rush hours not lane travel. Please I dare you to change my view.
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> *Hello, users of CMV! This is a footnote from your moderators. We'd just like to remind you of a couple of things. Firstly, please remember to* ***[read through our rules](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/rules)***. *If you see a comment that has broken one, it is more effective to report it than downvote it. Speaking of which,* ***[downvotes don't change views](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/guidelines#wiki_upvoting.2Fdownvoting)****! If you are thinking about submitting a CMV yourself, please have a look through our* ***[popular topics wiki](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/populartopics)*** *first. Any questions or concerns? Feel free to* ***[message us](http://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=/r/changemyview)***. *Happy CMVing!* | I train air traffic controllers for a living. The thing about air traffic and ground traffic is you can't just slow down and airplane and have it sit in stop and go traffic. We're taught in extreme detail how traffic works and how to ease its congestion.
Compression is THE primary component in traffic. Imagine you have 4 cars on a 1 lane road. Car 1 is doing 60, car 2 is doing 60, car 3 is doing 55, and car 4 is doing 60. Car 1 and 2 will have no issue; they'll virtually maintain the same distance between the two cars as long as they travel at the same speed.
However, car 3 is travelling 5 mph slower than the car in front of it. He's not doing anything wrong, because he's not speeding. However, he's creating an issue for the car behind it. Car 4 will close the gap until he's too close to maintain his 60 mph speed. This effect is called compression. Car 4 will slow down to match the speed of the car in front of it, or slower. If he taps his brakes to slow down, car 5 may see the brake lights and tap his as well, not knowing whether there is danger ahead of him. This follows through to car 6, 7, and 8, continuing down the line until at some point someone either doesn't tap their brake light or traffic stops.
Believe it or not, this is what causes stop and go traffic. A never ending chain of people slowing to avoid a collision. The car responsible may have only slowed 5 mph, but he's caused minutes to other peoples commutes.
Adding more lanes doesn't solve this problem because this problem happens in every lane. The problem isn't that you can't pass this slower moving car, the problem is that cars can move at separate rates. There's no rule dictating a car must move at or above 45 mph.
So we try to set "rules" of the road, such that slower moving traffic will stay in the right lanes while faster traffic stays in the left lanes (that's how we do it in California.) Other states who only have 2 lanes of travel (such as Oregon) have laws stating that all vehicles must travel in the right lane because the left lane is only for passing traffic.
While opening the HOV lanes might seem like a good thought, it'd cause more problems in the end. The faster moving vehicles that ease through traffic would just be stuck in the same traffic as you. People will still switch lanes, thinking "oh, that lane is moving faster. Let's go!"
It's a good idea, but it just won't work. Not until we have a microchip that regulates the speed of every vehicle by force to be identical. But when that happens, 1 lane would be all you'd need for any sort of travel. | 27 | 24 |
ELI5: How does a food processor work differently than a blender? | A food processor tends to have a much wider, flatter work bowl, which means that it is much better at getting larger amounts of food - particularly solid food - to a smaller-but-not-puree consistency. A blender, with its tall, narrow shape, would struggle to get an even consistency with non-liquid foods unless you take it all the way to slush.
Could you get by with juse one? Sure, but having the right tool makes the job easier and the results better. Blenders are the right choice for some applications - particularly liquid ones - and food processors are the right choice for solid foods. | 5,420 | 9,263 |
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ELI5 why people have different bloodtypes | There are two main antigens that form around our red blood cells, they are known as A and B. So, if your blood type AB, then you have both the A and B antigens. Type O lacks the A and B antigens, so the antibodies of a type O patient would attack A or B blood from a transfusion. Think of antigens as a hall pass, if your blood cells have them, then they won't get any trouble from the hall monitors (antibodies).
Back when humans first roamed the Earth, we weren't concerned with blood transfusions. But science has yet to explain why some groups of people are more likely to have one blood type over another.
Type A is thought of to be the most ancient. Pre-humans began with type A blood before early humanoids began to exhibit certain mutations in the form of other blood types, which might or might not have turned into survival advantages.
So about five million years ago, this mutation pops up called group O. And around that time, and subsequently, group B developed,
One clue to how these mutations survived can be found in their unique resistance to certain diseases. A 2007 study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences indicates cells infected with malaria don't stick well with type-B or O blood. So, those with the O or B type lived long enough to reproduce, while the type As died out.
Infectious organisms that carry A- and B-like antigens may have indeed played a role in the somewhat different distribution of blood types worldwide.
Do you know your blood type? You should. | 23 | 25 |
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Why does our hair continue to grow? | I was told our hair is what's left from fur after evolution. But why does our hair continue to grow whereas animal fur stays roughly the same length (and regrows to the same length after cutting it). Also: Are there any animals that loose their fur with old age? | Hair length is regulated by controlling the timing of hair growth (anagen), cessation (catagen) and rest (telogen).
During anagen, the hair root dives into your scalp, giving your hair something to hold onto as it grows.
During catagen, that hair follicle (which produces the hair) becomes attached to the hair and forms a "club" at the end that prevents more growth.
Telogen is the last stage, when growth has completely stopped and the hair just sits there, waiting to be forced out by another hair growing from below, or pulled out by the elements.
In reality, scalp and facial hair don't grow endlessly; for most people, hair can only grow for 2-7 years; the exact length of time is genetically determined in large part. The reason our hair seems to never stop growing is because we are always cutting it before it can reach that maximum length.
Hairs on the rest of your body have much shorter cycles. Fur is similar; it grows for a much shorter period of time, so their hair length is defined by that length of time.
Hair loss/alopecia does occur in other mammals, often having to do with illness. But even men with severe male-pattern baldness maintain their body hair, and often their facial hair. In that sense, we maintain most of our "fur" but lose only a small portion atop our heads. | 79 | 242 |
What can be known with little or no evidence? | Some things, like math or "I think therefore I am", can be known a priori. Is there anything else? Is reasoning futile without good information. Why or why not?
| Tautologies, e.g. "All bachelors are unmarried".
One need not consult experience to determine whether all bachelors are unmarried. Now of course -as one may object- experience is required to understand the concepts "bachelor," "unmarried and so forth. However, the a priori/a posteriori distinction as employed by Kant refers not to the origins of the concepts but to the justification of the propositions. Once we have the concepts, experience is no longer necessary. | 13 | 15 |
How are billions of transistors put on a microchip the size of your thumbnail? With what tools are humans able to arrange materials with this (nearly atom specific) level of precision? | We find it impressive when an artist can carve a sculpture on the tip of a pencil or on a grain of rice, but a transistor is hundreds of times smaller than the tip of a pencil... | There are two main ways. You start by coating silicon wafer with a special chemical called resist. Then you either use light or electrons to burn the resist. If you use light, it's done by exposing it through a mask so that the right patterns are transferred to the resist. If you use electrons, it's basically like an electron microscope, where the beam moves around and burns the resist. Electron has higher resolution but takes longer. After the resist has been exposed, you can put the wafer in acid to etch the silicon where the resist was burned, or deposit other materials that stick to the silicon only where the resist was burned. When you're done, you remove all the resist and you have a finely etched silicon wafer. | 38 | 49 |
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