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How is the original amount of C14 in a fossil determined? | When it comes to carbon dating, I understand how the age of a fossil can be determined with the necessary information, being how much C14 is in the current fossil, how fast that C14 deteriorates, and the original amount of C14 in the animal. My question is how the original amount of C14 is determined? Looked everywhere I could and couldn't find an answer, so thank you for any replies. | 49 | It's not the absolute amount of C^14 that matters, but the ratio of C^14 to C^12 in the sample. The atmospheric ratio is held more or less constant by the creation of C^14 from Nitrogen, but once stored inside a body, it will decay to ~~C^(12)~~ N^(14). The longer it has been since the body breathed or ingested, the more C^14 will have turned into ~~C^(12)~~ N^(14). | 40 |
ELI5: Why does a weak am/fm radio signal result in a consistent static/fuzzy sound while a weak satellite radio signal results in intermittent high quality sound? | 40 | The simple answer is that AM/FM is an analog signal, which you can "kind of" pick up. Think of analog as a scale of 100-0 with the quality increasing or decreasing as you move from the transmitter.
Satellite radio is a digital signal. Think 1 or 0. It's either there, or it's not. The same holds true for satellite TV, where in a severe storm your picture will be perfect right up until it cuts out into nothingness. | 21 |
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[Starwars/predator] Would a predator hunt yoda? | A yautja(predator) crash lands Dagobah. Weeks go by. Without anything to do while waiting for pick up, He explores around until he spots a small old green creature and a young boy. Suprisingly, The green creature somehow lifts a sinking space scraft out of the swamp without even touching it. He Watches them, curiously observing. Soon after the boy leaves in the craft, and the green creature wonders slowly off alone back to his little tree home. Would this creature be worthwhile for a quick bit of exercise? Or something interesting to eat, or even worth leaving alone? | 42 | It would most likely ignore yoda, predator wants a physically competent opponent, not just a powerful one, it would probably see yodas frail body and leave him be, its likely it would keep tabs on luke and perhaps come for him in the future though | 55 |
ELI5: How are so many books voted no.1 best sellers? | 19 | They aren't voted. Somebody simply compiles the data of all books are sold each week and then makes a list of the books that sold the most (best).
There is not much too it.
Given that there are 52 weeks in a year and that the New York Times breaks their list down into multiple categories and that books actually don't sell that much, it can take surprisingly few copies sold to become a "best seller". You just need to sell more copies than anyone else in that week in that category.
In terms of music. A Best Seller is not an album going gold or platinum (which would mean a certain absolute number of albums sold), but charting at the top of the billboard charts (simply more albums sold than anyone else in your category in that week). | 27 |
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[Batman] Considering his biology/metabolism, how does the staff of Arkham Asylum feed Mr. Freeze? | 252 | This is part of why the Asylum constantly struggles to keep their inmates locked up. Freeze is just one of many freaks in that place that demand weird and expensive accommodations. Their budget for security is constantly being redirected to pay for new weird requirements. Freeze needs everything frozen and powdered (so he doesn't break his teeth), Ivy demands an all meat diet, Penguin stages a hunger strike if he doesn't get fish, and don't get me started on Killer Krok's absurd food budget. | 210 |
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How can an educated amateur in philosophy get something proportionally akin to peer review? | (I hope this kind of question is allowed under the "the state of the field" clause in the rules. The lead-in to my question, and the thing prompting me to ask it, is a personal anecdote, but I imagine the answer to the actual question could be very useful to anyone else like me out there.)
I have a BA in philosophy from almost a decade and a half ago. I once dreamed of getting a PhD in the subject, but I can't afford the time, money, or opportunity cost of doing so -- too busy surviving by other means. Despite that, in my free time I've continued studying to the extent I can, and writing a book on the subject as a hobby, with no particular intent to sell it or try to get professional journals to publish it or anything like that. I more or less finished it in 2019, though I've continued polishing it up since then.
Usually, when I do a hobby project of some kind, I share it with other hobbyists with similar interests, usually some of whom have at least similar if not superior skill levels. I've tried doing that with this project as well, but it seems like I fall into some weird limbo space between lay philosophy enthusiasts and actual professionals in the field that makes that not work out so well.
Most of my attempts to get any feedback from amateur places on the internet have gotten very little response at all, and the little feedback I have gotten has mostly been either people saying they don't understand it or it's over their heads, or else people who seem to think they understand it but clearly don't because their counter-arguments usually aren't attacking my actual positions.
A few people have given very positive responses, some even asking where they can buy it / suggesting I should publish it. But I would feel very uncomfortable trying to sell something the quality of which I am very unsure of because I haven't been able to run it past anyone who seems like a good sounding board.
On the other hand, I'm fairly sure that no professional journal would even consider \*actual\* peer review, by real professionals, of something written by a nobody on the internet like me, who is not really their peer.
So I'm left wondering, what's an educated amateur to do to get some kind of sanity check on his work by people of at least a similar competency, without having to become an actual professional with a PhD first? | 132 | Anyone can submit a paper to any journal. The review process is blind and no one will know if you are employed as an academic or not, have a PhD or not, etc.
For the entire book open an account on academic.edu and upload it there. Worth trying researchgate as well but they tend to accept only published papers/books from independent researchers. | 81 |
ELI5: What did Edward Snowden actually reveal abot the U.S Government? | I just keep hearing "they have all your data" and I don't know what that's supposed to mean.
​
Edit: thanks to everyone whos contributed, although I still remain confused and in disbelief over some of the things in the comments, I feel like I have a better grasp on everything and I hope some more people were able to learn from this post as well. | 27,328 | In a nutshell he revealed data that showed that the US government, and multiple allied governments had the ability to do things like listen to everyone's phone calls, read their texts, their emails, follow their internet searches, track their locations (via GPS in phones) and also remotely activate people's cell phone cameras and microphones to listen and see what people are doing in real time.
In short, it was estimated that the data revealed that the US and it's allies had transparency into roughly 80% of all digital communications in the US.
It's less that this was "Bad" honestly, more that these agencies shouldn't have been doing A. to US Citizens, and B. on US soil and C. that the major data providers, the Verizons, AT&Ts, etc, were providing the "keys" to their networks for the government to provide this access. | 23,250 |
Does Marx justify colonialism as necessary for modernity? | I understand that Marx has this idea of stages of development.
Namely this idea that there's feudalism/pre-capitalism-> capitalism-> Socialism.
Indeed he talks alot about the great service which he considers colonialism to have rendered in the Communist manifesto:
*" The bourgeoisie has subjected the country to the rule of the towns. It has created enormous cities, has greatly increased the urban population as compared with the rural, and has thus rescued a considerable part of the population from the idiocy of rural life. Just as it has made the country dependent on the towns, so it has made barbarian and semi-barbarian countries dependent on the civilised ones, nations of peasants on nations of bourgeois, the East on the West. "*
This sort of talks present in some of Marxs other writings. Does he then see capitalism as being a way of modernizing the world and bringing about modernity? As such then is he not justifying the colonialism and bondage that early capitalism is built on? Does Marx only believe in decolonisation because he first believes in colonisation? If a part of the world is untouched by colonisation with just indigenous people? Is Marx not hinting that he wants to see them suffer colonialism, because this will draw them into world markets which will deliver the productive forces for socialism?
Or have I completely misread the man?
Let me know what you think? | 42 | I think talking of 'wants' will just confuse you understanding of Marx's project. Clearly Marx did want various things, but his wants are not what he's trying to get across in his works. In Capital you easily hear his trembling fury aa his dispassionately describes the horrifying conditions of workers in england, and its clear he sees the emergence of capitalism as something that has declined the condition of the working class.
Doea he say that this decline is justified because it will eventually lead to communism? No, because that's not the point of his project. He is rather trying to prove that capitalism is something that inevitably emerges out of Feudalism, and that communism is something that inevitably emerges out of capitalism. Colonialism too is part of capitalisms advance across the globe, is it good that this happens? What Marx thinks about it morally is not the point of his writings, its just an inevitability. | 61 |
Are all liquids incompressible and all gasses compressable? | I've always heard about water specifically being incompressible, eg water hammer. Are all liquids incompressible or is there something specific about water? Are there any compressible liquids? Or is it that liquid is an state of matter that is incompressible and if it is compressible then it's a gas? I could imagine there is a point that you can't compress a gas any further, does that correspond with a phase change to liquid?
Edit: thank you all for the wonderful answers and input. Nothing is ever cut and dry (no pun intended) :) | 4,392 | Liquids are ‘incompressible’ in that they are only slightly compressible.
If we set ‘z’=1 where a fluid density doubles for a doubling of absolute pressure at constant temperature, liquids have a ‘z’ between about 0.001 and 0.05.
Gasses/vapors typically range from 0.4-1.6.
Z is compressibility. | 2,096 |
[Matrix] How fast does Neo fly to save Morpheos and the Keymaker in the Matrix Reloaded? | Maybe there's two answers here, one is how fast would he have to travel to physically cover the distance, and the other is how fast he was going when he formed the car hurricane tsunami behind him? | 49 | Well, when Neo calls Link he informs him that Morpheus and Trinity (and the Keymaker) are **"500 miles, due south."**
It takes Neo about **13 minutes** to get to them.
SO... math:
13 minutes / 60 = **0.2167 hours** (we need this for the mph calculation)
*We know that speed = distance / time...*
500 miles / 0.2167 hrs = **2307mph**
The speed of sound is ~761mph. So Neo could theoretically be clocked going about **3.031 times the speed of sound**.
The One is fast yo'.
| 50 |
CMV: The debates between socialism vs capitalism are often useless, as they often hinge on the premises of pure economic systems. | People arguing for/against capitalism and socialism tend to do so from a "pure" economic perspective. Browse just about [any debates on CMV](https://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/search?q=socialism+capitalism&restrict_sr=on&sort=relevance&t=all) or other websites and you'll see how one-sided each debate is. The debate between socialism and capitalism (whether it is a casual debate on the Internet or especially a serious debate in politics) should rather discuss the efficacy and inefficacy of multiple elements from both economic systems.
History alone proves that "too much of anything is bad". A successful economy derives from a mixture of both socialism and capitalism. How so? That's because happiness is an indicator of how successful an economic system is. Look at Norway or Denmark --- though often misinterpreted as countries of socialist paradise, they are countries that have successfully integrated capitalist and socialist policies. In turn, people who live under a more mixed/diverse economy tend to be [much more happier](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Happiness_Report) than those whose country leans further towards one side of the economic spectrum. Based on that premise, people (and I mean a significant portion of a country's population) who have experienced misery have done so because of a nearly pure economic system, whether through the means of wealth inequality/poverty (e.g., [19^th century America](http://www.ushistory.org/us/43b.asp)) or dictatorial rule (e.g., under [Stalin's rule](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor)). Unless people are willing to submit to these types of pure economic systems, then there is no point in debating which economic system is superior. | 21 | Debates aren't just about convincing people to support an ideology, they are a tool for teaching going back to the time of Socrates.
Arguments force you to defend your ideas and presumptions in logical ways. They identify weaknesses in your logic and evidence, challenge you to think from alternate points of view, and cause you to specifically define your assumptions.
Those who don't argue will often brush over or ignore weaknesses in their ideas, misunderstand the views they support, and be very susceptible to groupthink.
I believe the best arguments are ones where neither person's mind is changed, but both walk away having learned something new about their own views and with respect for each other. | 15 |
ELI5: Why are Cinematic movies shot in only 24fps? | 26 | It's for historical reasons. In the very early days, over 100 years ago now, a range of frame rates were tried before a standard emerged. Film was expensive and not very light sensitive so they basically went with the lowest acceptable rate. Even so, projectors display each frame twice, fudging a 48fps rate, to reduce the flicker effect. This is very similar to the way TV uses interlacing to display 60 "fields" per second with only 30 full frames. | 10 |
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CMV: The costs of restricting or banning guns far outweigh it's benefits | The intent of the 2nd Amendment was to provide civilians power to challenge the government if it were to become tyrannical. Having a tyrannical government without citizens having guns would result in a far scarier and deadly outcome than the consequences we have today of civilians owning guns.
Without a doubt, gun violence, especially mass shootings, are tragic events that happen as a result of civilians owning guns. Tougher background checks and the process to obtain a gun should certainly be improved upon, but to put a ban on all guns but handguns, or to ban guns altogether is not the way to proceed. A government in full ownership and control of guns would prove to be much more devastating.
There are also cases where there are mass killings of people in countries that have bans on all guns. There are cases of mass stabbings in public places where about the same amount of people die before the attacker is caught. As such, banning guns will not put an end to mass killings, though it might make it more difficult for the attacker to commit the crime. But the fact remains that it is necessary for civilians to own guns so that they can keep the government in check and may have a fighting chance against them if they were to ever arise as tyrants. | 35 | > The intent of the 2nd Amendment was to provide civilians power to challenge the government if it were to become tyrannical.
It's well on its way right now. The people with guns are largely standing *with* the government. Can you elaborate on how and by whom you imagine this playing out in reality?
> Tougher background checks and the process to obtain a gun should certainly be improved upon
This is a restriction on guns, which you seem to be arguing against?
> A government in full ownership and control of guns would prove to be much more devastating.
Any precedent or place where we've seen this happen before?
> There are cases of mass stabbings in public places where about the same amount of people die before the attacker is caught.
Yeah? Like what?
> As such, banning guns will not put an end to mass killings,
It will sure put an end to mass *shootings* | 13 |
[CatDog] How did CatDog happen? | I've been wondering about this for some time now, but how did that happened and why is Dog ditzy and Cat is maniacally smart? | 21 | In a post-apocalyptic wasteland, a dog and a rainicorn had a litter of pups. Due to the father's constantly feuding with magic, wizards and extradimensional beings, his sperm was altered and had interesting effects with the magic of a rainicorn womb, leading to them mistakenly believing they had 5 pups-- when in actually, they had six, with one teleporting to another dimension at birth. Unfortunately, the only half of that pup that can teleport back is too dumb to figure out how-- if he even knew he could in the first place.
It was Jake Jr's twin, if you were curious. | 14 |
ELI5: Why doesn't the intensity of the urge to urinate directly corralate with the amount of urine? | There have been times when I felt my bladder was about to explode and only a squirt came out. | 147 | Think of a bag which is being filled with water. The amount of water in it directly determines the amount of pressure on the walls of the bag. This is what you expect from your bladder as well, right?
Well, you are far more complex than just a bag. For example, psychological stress is also directly correlated to the "urge to pee" regardless of how much pee their actually is in your bladder.
This means: Besides the amount of pee in your bladder, there are many factors influencing your urge to pee, nearly all of them are of a psychological nature. | 41 |
ELI5: What are the most likely effects of this super powerful El Nino season? | 75 | I remember in the 90's being in California and having a powerful El Niño taking us from a 10 year drought to "normal" in a month (it was referred to as March Miracle).
There's a lot that could happen or could not happen.While we know it will generate more precipitation, where that lands is going to vary. Also in states like California that are so parched, a large amount of rain will cause a lot of mudslides (less vegetation on the ground to hold things together).
As to if it will make a dent in the drought, that's also unknown. This is where the "where" matters. For example, rain falling in Southern California isn't as important as rain/snow in northern california as far as Los Angeles and the agricultural central valley is concerned (they get a lot of their water from Northern California).
Lake Mead in Nevada is 60 feet below normal, but rain in Las Vegas isn't really important compared to rain and snow in western Colorado (i.e. upriver) as far as Lake Mead is concerned. | 20 |
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ELI5: How does tax evasion by large multinationals work? | I hear a lot about large multinationals (Apple, Google, but also Panasonic etc) setting up their 'headquarters' in a country that has relatively low tax rates. How precisely does this work though and how come they don't have to pay tax in other countries if they've also 'set up shop' there? | 15 | Take a coffee company who buys coffee in country A then it is placed into a small bags in country B and then sold in country C. Now any profits the company makes can be taxed in country A, B or C, now for most companies this would normally be country C, however if the company sets up sub divisions of its company in country A B and C and if country B has a very low tax rate it may do some sneaky accounting. Division A buys coffee and sells it on to division B without making a profit, division B then sells the newly packaged coffee to division C at a huge profit, division C sells the coffee to the public without making a profit.
The company then pays minimal tax in country B and no tax in countries A and C and has successfully evaded tax. | 13 |
ELI5:Is there truly such a thing as a "fat gene"? If so, does that mean people can become obese if they eat a normal amount of calories? | 58 | There are some indications that some genetics, and/or medical conditions, may contribute to some amount of increased weight gain. However, the amount is often dramatically overstated, and minor relative to diet. | 54 |
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CMV: It should be illegal to ask job / school / housing applicants for race | Race is a protected class. It is illegal to discriminate on hiring, school, and housing based on race. So I don't understand why the race question is legally allowed on these types of applications. They certainly don't ask for religion. Having a race question on the application officially unblinds the process. Receivers of the applications might be be able to figure out the race anyway based on the name, but at a minimum, it increases the cost of doing of doing so. We should not make it easier for institutions to be racist.
Posting from the USA.
EDIT - my OP is about making it illegal to put on all applications, not specifically about job applications.
EDIT - adding my personal experience. I was recently asked to put down my race for a mortgage application. Since it was covid and done over the phone, the banker (apologetically) read the disclaimer that if I choose not to answer, a selection would be picked for me based on other information on my application, or physical apperance. This was at Citibank. I was shocked. | 82 | The hiring manager doesn't get to see race gender or ethnicity info.
It's used by HR to see who the applicants are so they know if they're hiring process eliminate non white candidates or if they're only getting white candidates. | 49 |
CMV: The hatred of ketchup among self-professed "foodies" is arbitrary and irrational. | There is no condiment in America more broadly loved and widely detested than Ketchup. Regardless of whether or not you enjoy ketchup, there are people who will criticize others just for putting it on literally any food. There are restaurants which refuse to provide ketchup for their customers specifically because they don't feel it belongs on their food, or that it reflects poorly on the personal tastes of the person asking for it. No other condiment invites that kind of behavior, and the justifications that I have heard for Ketchup's denouncement seem arbitrary at best. I think mustard is vile, but I don't feel the need to try to make people who do like mustard feel bad about it.
Edit: For the sake of clarity, and so people stop sending the same responses, I am referring specifically to instances where ketchup is singled out for criticism. I am well aware that it is bad form to go to a fancy restaurant and ask for additional condiments because it is rude to the chef. It would be rude to ask for any additional condiments in that case though, not *just* ketchup. | 421 | The restaurant is well aware that it could lose the patronage of people such as yourself when they implement such a rule. A restaurant is a business, and a business' biggest concern should be generating revenue via selling a product or service so theoretically this business should try to appease its costumers in whatever way possible if cost efficient. However, a restaurant with a chef who thinks highly of himself and his food is also akin to an art gallery. The chef the artist, and the meal his art, exhibited to you via your mouth hole. This analogy will surely lose me points, but you wouldn't paint over the Mona Lisa, simply out of respect for it's artistic value.
That addresses the body of your argument. The title is a different story almost completely.
"Foodies" are (I'll assume) amateur food critics. These "foodies" have just as much say in what you put on your hot dog as Rotten Tomatoes has in your film preferences.
Criticism does not prevent you from doing as you please. To an extent criticism is arbitrary, but there is almost always some type of rationale to it. In this case, the reasoning behind a hatred of ketchup could be health-related or related to preserving the purity of the "art" you're preparing to consume. | 98 |
[Fantasy]In many fictional Works being a member of the clergy gives someone certain Supernatural powers, protection or abilities. The Queen of England is the head of the Church of England. Does she gain any such abilities? If she blesses a cup of water can she melt a vampire with it? | 166 | Followers of Yahweh don't gain any specific special abilities, however they do get access to pretty much all of His power (provided they have enough faith). This means that any devout believer has a potentially limitless power level (Jesus tells us that someone with enough faith can easily perform the miracles he does, and could even "move a mountain"), but this comes with the caveat that any action must be completely dedicated to God's plan, and motivated out of complete love of (and trust in) God.
This is shown when Satan encourages Jesus to throw himself from the top of the temple, and he doesn't, because he shouldn't. The limits of His power are whether one ought to, not can. | 109 |
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Why, on a bad connection, do websites occasionally load without CSS? | Sometimes when my connection is bad websites will load without CSS on the first try, and then when refreshed fail to load at all. This has also been the case at school, where loading a page that should be blocked occasionally work the first time (albeit without CSS), but refreshing brings up a screen saying the firewall blocked it.
The network one I can potentially understand as if the webpage loads the html and then the css, and then connection happened to just break between loading those two, but the firewall one perplexes me.
Screenshot: http://imgur.com/euYSQwB | 29 | The css is retrieved via a separate network transaction - first the page is downloaded and interpreted and as the browser finds other page elements that the page is requesting, the browser downloads all those elements - js, css, images, etc. Often on poor/overloaded connections those other elements will time out. | 21 |
CMV: People insisting on being referred to by genderqueer pronouns do not want equal treatment, they want special treatment. | While I can sympathize with mtf or ftm trans people, those who identify as genderqeer or non-binary, while also insisting on being referred to as ["they", "ze", "sie", "hir", "co", or "ey"](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genderqueer#Pronouns_and_titles) do not want equal treatment, they want special treatment. Equal treatment would be treating them like we treat everyone else. We don't call other people (singular)"they", and we sure as hell don't call other people "ze" or "hir". I have zero sympathy for people who insist on being referred to by made up pronouns.
​ | 61 | This is a bit like the argument of "gay people who want to be able to marry someone of the same sex don't want equal treatment, they want special treatment. Everyone is equally free to marry someone of the opposite sex."
The problem with that argument is that it's taking a one-size-fits-all (or, in this case, two-sizes-fit-all) approach to equal treatment. When that size *doesn't actually fit someone*, it's hard to say that that is actually equal treatment. | 44 |
[MCU] How does Surtur and the rest of the fire demons fit in a scientifically explainable universe? | What is their physiology?How do they come to life?Can all fire demon manipulate fire?Is the Fire Dragon a hybrid of a fire demon and an other race?As we see Surtur is not a normal fire demon because his whole being is connected to a crown.So is he a magically created being and If yes by who? Also is the eternal flame part of Surtur's being or it is just a relic? | 23 | It's simple. The universe (MCU) is not scientifically explainable across the board. Things might have that way years ago, but now there are numerous examples of magic in the universe: Scarlet Witch and Doctor Strange being the primary examples. | 33 |
This [Square Kilometre Array] video states 'the energy of a single snowflake falling... provides more energy than all the energy ever received in radio astronomy" - Is that true? | [The video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jlzG8NcRLLk)
We can harvest energy from radio waves, enough to actually do useful work (say, powering a sensor). Granted, those are terrestial radio waves, but can interstellar ones really be *that* much weaker? Some of these radio telescopes are **huge** (think Arecibo) and we've been using them for decades.
Could he be referring to the *mass* energy of a snowflake? I had assumed kinetic energy.
Thanks. | 22 | It's true, and it is indeed referring to the kinetic energy of the snowflake. Astronomical sources are very, *very* faint. As faint as starlight is, there is **far, far** more energy coming out in optical wavelengths than in radio. If you were to put a cell phone on the moon, it would be one of the brightest non-solar radio sources in the sky, including things like the black holes in the center of the Milky Way and quasars and active galaxies. | 39 |
ELI5: Where do my antibodies get stored when I’m not using them? | Like if I’m vaccinated for a bunch of diseases and I’ve built up antibodies for the diseases I’ve had... where do those antibodies go when they’re not active? Or is it more like a software update in that it’s more my body knows how to create those antibodies when needed not that they’re physically kept in some subdermal bat cave waiting to fight crime when called upon? | 41 | Some are stored in the spleen (that's why after the spleen is removed because of accidents or so, vaccinations might have to be repeated), but yeah, your body also learns how to produce them.
Making an antibody that fits is a trial-and-error thing, they body will produce some and test if they work.
So if you are vaccinated your body had the chance to try them out with the harmless version and knows what will fit when the real thing comes- time is saved, reaction is faster. | 26 |
ELI5: How are outdoor extension cords safe? | I just plugged in my Christmas lights. It's been raining today, so I made sure to thoroughly dry off the prongs first. But it got me wondering, what is it that makes an outdoor extension cord (and outdoor Christmas lights) safe to use in the rain and snow? Or is it actually not as safe as people tend to assume? | 245 | The cord itself is generally fine; it is well insulated with a thick, tough layer of rubber that prevents any problem. As long as the cord is in good shape (no cracks or tears) and isn't abused (excessive flexing, tight bends, strong pressure, etc.) it is moisture-proof.
The problems come at the ends of the cords. If those connections aren't well sealed against the weather, moisture can get in and cause a short circuit. This will typically cause a breaker to trip before anything really bad can happen. | 104 |
Eli5: why can’t we fill deserts with human waste to make it dirt? | Ok this might sound a bit silly but, if cow manure is soil, and deserts can't support much plantlife because they don't have the proper soil, wouldn't relocating all human waste to deserts make them into normal dirt that can grow stuff? I figure at least moss or mushrooms or whatever grows in that stuff would form making it better suited for life and less deserty, right? | 79 | Cow manure is not the same thing as soil. Soil is dirt and cow manure is feces. People spread manure ON soil because as it breaks down it releases nutrients into the soil.
Deserts are made up of sand, not soil. Soil has an entire biome of bacteria, insects, and other microscopic creatures that are a part of it other than just the dirt itself.
Soil also has a fairly high moisture content compared to sand. Soil also has the roots of plants to help hold it in place.
Sand in a desert has no such structure of roots holding it in one place so it tends to blow around.
So if you put a ton of shit in the desert, it would just be shit in the desert. It wouldn’t transform into soil and would instead probably just dry out and stay there for a very long time since the micro biome that breaks down shit doesn’t exist in the desert. | 200 |
[Marvel] Does Thanos wear socks? | I mean those boots look like they would chafe like crazy and get super hot and sweaty super quick, does he wear socks or does he just go in raw like a heathen or something? | 60 | Titan morphology is similar to human but their biology and physiology are very different. IE chafing isn't a concern for thanos and his boots have interior padding and fabric that aids in comfort as well as providing additional protection. | 44 |
[ALIEN] Question about its circulatory system | If the alien/xenomorph has acid for blood, how is it able to circulate oxygen in its body?
I know the movies never explained or explored the biology of the xenomorphs in-depth, but I'd like to have some sort of theory concerning its blood.
| 42 | Xenomorphs don't need to breath and can survive in a vacuum. They do need to eat though. Because they don't need to take in air much of the function of a circulatory system is unnecessary. The literature does explore the xenomorphs biology a bit, but doesn't give any solid answers other then they are very different from any other life form known by man. It is also worth noting that xenomorphs are silicon based. | 29 |
CMV: Acceptance of cigarettes defeats the purpose of the War on Drugs | Cigarettes are the leading cause of preventable death, responsible for roughly 480,000 deaths per year in the US. 41,000 of those deaths aren't even those of users -- they are the deaths of those exposed to secondhand smoke. If you use the drug (nicotine), it can directly affect the health of those close to you.
Smoking harms nearly every organ in the body, causing cancer and disease. Cigarettes are extremely addictive and many people can't quit even if they try.
Yet other drugs pose less threats and have a much lower or even a nonexistent fatality rate. They certainly aren't killing 1,300 people per day.
Can you imagine if an illegal drug killed over 1,000 people everyday, users and nonusers? There would be political crusades.
For all illicit drugs combined, the number of resulting deaths were about 17,000 in 2013. For all drugs combined -- legal and illegal -- that number jumped to about 46,500 for that same year. That's an extra 29,500 deaths from legal drugs.
Cigarettes cause 10x more deaths per year than all the drugs in the US.
Why are we pouring so much time, resources and money into the Drug War to keep these *super dangerous* illegal drugs out of the hands of the American public such as marijuana (easy argument, 0 deaths) or even heroin (much more difficult argument, ~6,000 deaths in 2013) when cigarettes are so acceptable?
Cigarettes kill nearly half a million people per year and are the direct cause for serious health issues and reduced lifespan. They are highly addictive. If the objective of the War on Drugs is to keep people safe and not addicted to drugs, how can we rationalize this continuing support of cigarettes while stigmatizing the use of other, less harmful drugs?
- - -
**Reasons I think we overlook this high fatality rate...**
* culture and ingrained public perception of acceptance.
Cigarettes used to be advertised as good for you and everybody knows somebody who smokes. Smoking is not something you necessarily have to hide. Jobs don't (generally) screen for cigarette smokers.
* in the eyes of the public, cigarettes aren't really "drugs" (i.e. they don't alter your state of consciousness; they don't get you high)
An 18 year old can legally buy as many packs of cigarettes as they want. In the US, they can't even do that with alcohol (which gets you drunk). In states with legal marijuana, you also have to be 21 to buy/consume.
* cigarettes don't cause immediate death. (shortsightedness)
You don't overdose on nicotine. Instead, cigarettes slowly kill you so there is no instant connection between cigarettes and death. For example, a heroin OD would be an instant "drugs kill you." If you smoke a cigarette, you know you aren't risking your life right that second.
- - -
**What are some other reasons we overlook this fatality rate and continue to socially and legislatively accept cigarettes?**
*Sources*
[X](http://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/data_statistics/fact_sheets/fast_facts/) [X](http://www.drugwarfacts.org/cms/Causes_of_Death#sthash.2ALBksdH.dpbs) | 52 | The antismoking campaign is one of the largest health campaigns in the history of health campaigns. We don't "support" smoking. We just learned a lot from prohibition and knew that education, policy efforts, and economics was a better way to fight smoking than a criminal war against smoking. The fight against smoking was led by the actual scientists, and it has been largely successful.
The war on drugs on the other hand has been a complete disaster. It has been a political and criminal war. It learned nothing from prohibition. It hasn't followed the advice of the scientists at all.
I think your making a false comparison here. It isn't that we are too accepting of smoking. We've handled smoking pretty well. The problem is our ineffective approach to drugs. We could learn a lot from the antismoking movement about how to reduce drug use. | 25 |
[Captain America: Winter Soldier] What was the political fallout from Project: Insight? | Along with the whole Mandarin trouble, which got the VP arrested, how badly did the US Administration take it in the shorts from its political enemies (and allies, for that matter)?
First off, anyone who thinks that the UN is going to take over the US would have a field day with this, since SHIELD was overseen by the World Security Council.
Second, anyone who thinks the defense budget is too pork-laden is going to wonder just how much American money went into the building of three heli-carriers which are now so much scrap metal.
Third, the complete leaking of SHIELD's database makes Edward Snowden look like a minor inconvenience.
Finally, two branches of US government were infiltrated by Hydra; do we believe that it only went as far as Secretary Pierce, or Senator Stern from Pennsylvania, or will we get several senate and hosue committees asking "Are you now or have you ever been a member of Hydra?" ("Nope, just a communist sleeper agent." "Oh, well, that's fine then, on your way.")
| 28 | Agents of SHIELD TV series Spoilers!
SHIELD was shut down, with all still operating agents either retiring(and getting jobs elsewhere) or being labeled criminals and chased by various agencies like CIA and the military.
The larger public(including most governments) didn't differentiate between Hydra and SHIELD, to them this was just SHIELD going rogue as an organisation. So Hydra survived and established themselves as a legit corporation and soaked up a lot of the people leaving SHIELD. | 29 |
Why is AC used instead of DC in power transmission? | 16 | The short, short version is that it is easier (cheaper) to change voltage under AC than DC.
You want to use very high voltage when delivering power over a long distance, but you want to use (relatively) low voltage in a home or business (for safety). | 27 |
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If your goal was to be a well-rounded programmer, and were granted perfect fluency in 5 languages, but only those 5. Which would you pick? | You are not able to read any different languages from these 5, but can read derivative languages as much as you would be able to anyway (i.e. PHP -> Hack, and vice versa) akin to real life
*You cannot, however, write in the languages that you can read* | 31 | You can read derivative languages? Cool.
* C
* Perl
* Classical LISP
* ML
* Smalltalk
And that covers basically every language as a derivative, as long as nobody shows up with COBOL or Forth code. | 30 |
Could someone offer thoughts on this article about Biden stealing the election? | Hi all!
I'm not a statistician (my knowledge extends to knowing some basic things like multiple regression and some really rudimentary machine learning type stuff). I work in the policy space so I try and stay aware of what is floating around on both sides of the political spectrum, and I saw this article floating around:
https://theredelephants.com/there-is-undeniable-mathematical-evidence-the-election-is-being-stolen/?s=07&fbclid=IwAR3mLKdGa_q8osvSD4l9KuwfvdP9sj1ujybrWOjwBDJOaQGJnHFGPHRl_VU
And I'm not trained enough to break down / understand flaws in these arguments. Does this article "hold up" so to speak? My intuition is that it is probably a misrepresentation of facts and theory, but I don't feel comfortable in identifying those flaws.
Edit: Thank you to to everyone for your responses! This was all really insightful! | 22 | The author starts their argument with saying more people voting is a "statistical impossibility" which is just downright nonsense. Combined with the fact that instead of citing anything he just follows a pattern of unnamed experts said so, here's a graph with no statistical information. I'd wager it's likely a load of bollocks. It's too painful to read the rest. | 66 |
ELI5: Why are gas prices typically the only thing we sell to the $0.009? When and why did this start? If it's only supposed to be effective marketing then why do other products not use it? | 132 | It started because of taxes. Back when gas only cost about 0.15/gallon the federal government decided they wanted a piece of that to build and maintain roads, so they enacted a 3/10 of a cent tax. Gas companies weren't about to eat that so they passed the cost along to customers. Since gas was only 15 cents, rounding up a whole penny would be too much and would drive customers to your competitor.
Eventually they noticed that people didn't round up. If you price something at 49.9 cents, people treat it like it's 49 cents, not 50. That's why damn near everything is priced like that. 2.99, 14,990, etc. So they get to pocket almost an entire cent per gallon that people don't even feel like they're paying. | 43 |
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[Breaking Bad] Why did Gustavo Fring associate directly with street drug dealers? | >!There were two drug dealers that were killed by Walter White running them over, Gustavo Fring referred to them as "my employees".
With all the precautions he took, this seems odd. | 85 | You still need street level distributors when dealing drugs, no matter how professional your operation. Gustavo kept himself separated from those low-level dealers anyway, so if any of them went to prison or got taken out in other ways none of them could turn on him. | 81 |
Could gravity waves theoretically be reflected or refracted? | Also, just as light waves [impart a force](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_sail) to things they interact with, would it be possible to cause net motion with gravity waves? | 25 | Gravitational waves can be "refracted" by massive objects in the same sense that gravitational lensing is a form of refraction.
Gravitational waves do cause objects in their path (including you and me) to move a tiny amount. That is in fact how they are detected. | 13 |
ELI5: What is it that makes human beings orders of magnitude smarter than other animals, and why are we the only species with such intelligence? | 112 | "...on the planet Earth, man had always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much - the wheel, New York, wars and so on - whilst all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time. But conversely, the dolphins had always believed that they were far more intelligent than man - for precisely the same reasons." | 117 |
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ELI5:Why do identical twins have different fingerprints? | 3,921 | Debunking a popular misunderstanding of DNA:
Your DNA does not contain enough information to describe every single cell and how they should be layed out. What it contains are patterns. So for instance, your skin is created by a pattern which says "turn the outer layer of stem cells into skin cells and have them grow until they are so-and-so thick". The cells themselves grow in semi-random ways as long as they obey the pattern. The whorls and rings in your finger pads are an example of this. The pattern of the finger pad is dictated by which cells divided when, and where they happened to be. With the exact same DNA, you will end up with a different skin pattern every time. This is true for identical twins, but it is also true for clones (assuming you had the technology to create them). Even if you grew two clones in identical tanks, the small bits of random chance in the arrangement of cells during development would give them different fingerprints. | 2,933 |
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CMV: Fanny packs are objectively useful, and do not deserve their 'dorky' reputation | I think that fanny packs have obvious pragmatic utility, and I think they get too harsh of a reputation for being dorky or stupid looking. I think that this reputation is undeserved, and that fanny packs should be more widely used, and those who use them should not be ridiculed.
Here are my reasons
- For men in particular who don't typically have purses, it provides an obvious way to easily access various things you might want to carry that don't fit nicely in your pockets.
- even for those who have purses, I think a fanny pack is still superior. When I sit down or do some kind of active activity, I often have to set my purse aside. This is not only inconvenient, but it also typically puts my valuables at risk of being stolen, forgotten, or misplaced.
- They really aren't *that* dorky looking. I mean, sure, they're not super cool. But I fail to see how they are substantially less cool than a purse or man-purse.
- They provide extremely easy access to utility items like wallet, keys, pens, etc. - better than other means of transporting those items such as purses, pockets, or backpacks.
- Its hard to steal from them. It is relatively easy to pick someone's pocket, and it isn't unheard of to have someone steal your purse either by just grabbing it or cutting the straps off. I think theft would be harder with a fanny pack.
> *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!* | 18 | Fanny packs are useful, but they are still dorky. Think about the rules of fashion and you'll see why:
1. Being practical is often the opposite of being fashionable. Women's pants don't have pockets. Neckties serve no practical purpose. Suits must be dry cleaned instead of being simply tossed in a washing machine. High heels are difficult to walk in. Impracticality is important in fashion because it implies the wearer is elite. Why wear practical clothing when you have people to drive you around, wash your clothes, and carry your stuff for you? Even purses are annoying because you have to take out all your stuff and put them in a new bag every time you want to change your purse to match your outfit.
2. Fanny packs have traditionally been worn by uncool people like suburban moms and people at Wal-Mart or theme parks. Attractive models, designers, and celebrities set trends, and for whatever reason they have avoided fanny packs. This might change in the future, and everyone will follow suit and start thinking they are cool. But until that happens, everyone still thinks of them as dorky. | 21 |
ELI5 why was leprosy such a big issue hundreds of years ago? | I remember watching a documentary about a Greek town where they would send people with Leprosy. Why was leprosy such a big deal if 95% of people are immune to it? | 52 | Before the cure for leprosy was discovered it was common throughout most of the world. North America was largely spared but the US did have it's own leper colony in Louisiana. If you contracted leprosy you were sent there to die. Ancient sources tended to call every skin disease leprosy, even what we now call leprosy today is actually three different diseases with different origins. | 71 |
Why does Belarus have the 3rd best Gini coefficient worldwide, very low income inequality, despite being a dictatorship? | Title says it all. Belarus has 25.2 Gini coefficient according to the World bank. This is better than Norway Belgium Finland and more. How could this be possible | 96 | Income doesn't really matter for the gini coefficient - only how equally it's distributed. The private sector is relatively small in the country, and the public sector wages are highly regulated, meaning the wages of most people sit within a relatively smaller range than in most European countries.
Dictatorships lead to cronyism and that can boost inequality, but if the circle of elites is relatively small, then this is unklikely to shift the gini coefficient much. | 117 |
[MCU] Why are the jump points ships use hexagonal? | 25 | Maybe because the ships have a fixed amount of generator which create the jump field and the lines connect the points of what-ever-energy, that they create. So if they have 3 generator the points would be triangular.
And state of the art are 6 generator as the best speed / energy demand system | 31 |
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CMV: The US Senate should be a ceremonial rubber stamp in practice, rather than a body that regularly blocks legislation from the House. | The US Constitution was written at a time when states believed they needed a check on federal power. Requiring a body that represented all states equally to pass any legislation seemed to preserve those rights.
However, this attitude is mostly archaic today. Representing every state equally allows small states disproportionate power in matters pertaining to the whole country. Why should they be able to block the rest of the country's people from deciding on federal matters? It's essentially saying that voters in North Dakota, Vermont and Alaska are more important than elsewhere.
If you can find me a purpose for the US Senate as an actual decision-making body in today's day and age, and not just as a vastly unrepresentative body that has the power to completely kill legislation that most Americans support, please CMV.
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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!* | 17 | You seem to have a very weird view that preventing tyranny is tyranny.
Small states have a voice in the Senate so that the majority in the country doesn't trample on the rights of the minority.
The minority can't similarly trample the rights of the majority. All they can do is *prevent* the federal government from taking action, and only if they are sufficiently united in their opposition to the majority position to actually hold a majority in the Senate on some one issue.
A bunch of small states *cannot* pass a law. They can, however, prevent an unjust law by being forced upon them by a tyranny of the majority.
The Supreme Court can't help here. It's job is to interpret the laws and their constitutionality, not their level of tyranny. The executive is similarly a poor block on the tyranny of the majority.
Filibusters are a completely separate problem. If that's what you're concerned about, I'll agree with you on that one. Except where provided by the Constitution, all votes in the Senate should take place after a reasonable period of deliberation with a straight up and down vote. | 12 |
ELI5: Will a kickball that is pitched faster go further when it is kicked? | Why or why not? My friend tried to say it was related to Newton's "Equal and opposite reaction" thing, but I think the action here would be the kicker's foot, nothing to do with the ball. I believe that a faster pitch will be harder to kick because more force is required to turn it around. | 23 | Keep the elasticity of the ball in mind. The harder you throw a tennis ball against the ground, the higher it bounces, the same principal applies here. The kinetic energy of the ball is converted into elastic potential energy as the ball deforms against your foot, then is converted back into kinetic energy as the ball goes flying. More energy in yields more energy out.
The equal yet opposite reaction basically means that as your foot exerts a force on the ball, the ball exerts a force on your foot, which slows it down a small bit, but not a whole lot considering a human leg has much more mass than a kickball. | 14 |
[Rick & Morty] Does the dimension where all proper nouns begin with shmloo only affect English speaking countries or does it also affect countries where the native tongues have difficulty pronouncing shmloo? | 24 | Depends on which of the infinite number of universes where proper nouns begin with shmloo you're talking about.
There's the one where only *English* proper nouns start with shmloo, or there's the one where it's only *French* proper nouns, or Chinese proper nouns, or there's the one where it's all proper nouns, regardless of language.
There are also dozens of universes where proper nouns *end* in shmloo.
The thing about infinite universe is that you get infinite possibilities. So if your question is "is there a universe where _______ is possible," the answer is basically always yes.
Within the scope of the show, it's difficult to know which *shmloo* universe we're talking about here because we only see English speaking scenes. If anybody's seen Rick and Morty dubbed in other languages then I'd be curious to know how they handled that particular scene, though.
| 20 |
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[Ultimate Marvel Universe] Was anyone a true hero, other than spiderman, in the Ultimate Marvel Universe? | 32 | Thor wasn't so bad. He was played like some kind of slightly creepy cult leader but he wasn't an outright asshole.
Captain Mahr-Vehl seemed nice, but he didn't show up that much. The Vision (who was really more of a Silver Surfer type character) was alright... and didn't show up that much. | 25 |
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ELI5: why do certain countries, such as the United States, seem to always be at war with someone? How have some countries managed to stay relatively peaceful? (Ex. Switzerland) | 1,943 | The US has a large economy and far reaching economic interests. This puts it in conflict with almost anything ~~nasty~~ contentious on the planet, as somehow it impacts their interests.
Switzerland has a relatively narrow set of economic interests (banking) that encourage neutrality in conflicts. They also benefit by being close to powerful countries with a vested interest in protecting them from attack. This allows them to be protected by proxy. | 1,903 |
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Is there a -- and if so, what is the -- "feedback" mechanism from the bladder to the kidneys? (Is there a message like, "Stop already!!"?) | Like normal humans, I wake up in the morning, put on my glasses, and take a humongous morning pee. It has not been an emergency to get to the bathroom; I am not in pain; etc.
Thing is, I can void nearly the same volume an hour later.
It's almost like, say, at 3ayem the bladder told the kidneys to take a break for a few hours, then later called them back to work to "finish the job" -- which results in the large volume of the second trip.
Is there a special nerve for handling this situation? Some special fast-acting enzyme that makes it back to the kidneys via the bloodstream? What? | 85 | No. The kidneys keep making urine regardless of what state the bladder is in. This is necessary because our bodies make waste continuously, so we need to make urine continuously. If there is a distal obstruction impairing urine flow (large prostate, big stones, neurologic injury, etc), the urinary tract dilates and can ultimately rupture. At a cellular level the kidneys do eventually become unable to filter as much urine due to back-pressure, but that's not something the body was actually trying to do, and is Very Bad. This can lead to temporary or permanent kidney failure. Relevant search terms here include obstructive acute kidney injury, hydroureter, hydronephrosis, calyceal rupture, and pelvic urinoma.
The reason you pee a lot in the morning is probably more due to your brain suppressing the urge to urinate overnight, possibly with a contribution from gravity. Standing up can certainly change the distending pressure on the nerves innervating the bladder and generate an urge to urinate. | 81 |
CMV: Laws against holocaust denial is a bad thing. | 82 | In Germany and Austria, holocaust denial laws are a historical legacy.
In the decades after WW2, those countries were such a mess that they could not afford to adhere to lofty ideals of absolute free speech. They had to be pragmatic in order to rebuild a civilized society. De-nazification was part of that effort. It is hard to imagine just how brainwashed society was. It is difficult to fix that without restrictions on free speech.
Nowadays, these laws are no longer necessary, but repealing them would send the wrong message and offend a lot of people, so Austria and Germany are stuck with them.
These laws are not as illiberal as they seem. You are not going to go to prison for denying the holocaust while talking to someone on a bus stop. In practice, only the people who express these views to larger audiences get prosecuted.
| 44 |
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ELI5: What physically happens in your brain when you forget something? | 42 | If you can't recall something, then for some reason you can't connect the neurones that hold parts of that memory together, usually because other pathways are opening up and blocking it. But really we don't have a clear understanding of how memory works. | 18 |
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[Marvel] How come Tony doesn't break his bones inside Iron Man suit? | Doesn't it move in inhuman speed and absorb inhuman amount of damage? | 380 | On Earth-616, Stark has heavily modified his body to withstand G-force and heal most of his injuries quickly, almost on par with the SSS.
On Earth-199999, common consensus is that the suit has a repulsor field that acts as an inertial dampener. | 420 |
[Another Metro 2033/Last Light question] Does the value of MGR go up over time due to inhabitants shooting them away and the inability to manufacture more? | This is kind of a continuation of my last post (http://www.reddit.com/r/AskScienceFiction/comments/21tfph/metro_2033last_light_how_many_military_grade/) but I was thinking a little about the economics of the Metro. Namely the fact that bullets, once fired, become worthless. Therefore everytime a stalker decides to open up with MGR instead of dirty ammo they rob the metro of a little more currency, eventually leading to higher values for existing rounds. Here lies the problem, as the metro is unable to create anymore of these rounds eventually they'll either shoot them all away or the remaining bullets will become so valuable no one would be able to afford them with dirty ammo. My question therefore is do the various factions of the metro have a way of preventing this inevitable loss if hard currency or is there a factory somewhere producing those shiny treasures that everyone needs? As an afterthought I just realized that wars become so, so much more expensive because after having to hire soldiers and buy equipment you're literally paying the soldiers in the bullets they're shooting at the enemy. This also means that mercenaries would be less likely to offer their services because after a firefight half your wages are gone. | 15 | The metro isn't the entire world. Don't forget that.
The surface, as fucked as it is at first glance, is still littered with areas prime for looting if you don't mind fighting off a horde of mutated sheep-bats. Plus, with the huge military build up prior to the war, there are surplus stores of ammo still extant. Obviously as time goes by these supplies will dwindle, and finding a large enough cache could completely destabilise the metro economy. But hey, it's not a perfect world. | 12 |
ELI5: Why can't fighter jets just fly straight into space? | Edit: I didn't understand how a jet engine worked, but now that I do, the question has been amended to this...
"Why does a rocket have to travel faster and faster the higher up it goes? Shouldn't it require less and less speed as it is further from the earth it gets because there is a non-zero number(very small) of negative gravity change the higher you are?"
Edit #2: I think I suck at asking this so I'll ask it like a 5 year old.
We have all seen videos of rockets taking off. They start very slowly, and then build in speed. Although, at first, they build up in speed. It's not as if they torque off the earth at 20,000mph, although that would be ASTOUNDING to see. So here's my super drawn out really dumb question that I cannot wrap my head around the answer for the life of me.
Let's say you have a rocket going 100mph going 90 degrees straight up from the surface of the earth. Why can't it just keep going 100mph straight up. Just keep going and going. Up, straight up. Up up up and away? Why can it move up starting from zero miles an hour? If it can move up at 5mph even for an instant, why can't it continue at that velocity all the way up.
All the answers have been wonderful if I was asking how to get something in orbit. I'm asking why 100mph 90 degrees going straight up works down here, but not up there? I cannot find a straight answer to this question no matter what I google. I appear to be bad at research or this is just a stupid ass question. I really just don't understand the physics of this at all.
Let's try this another way. Say I threw a magic baseball that whatever velocity it was tossed at, it maintained until it hit a object. It doesn't disregard gravity. It just has a magic anaerobic motor that maintains the speed. Like cruise control. Say I throw it 90 degrees straight up at 35mph. Will it leave Earth? Why or why not? | 48 | The way jet engines work is by pushing air backward. As you get higher, the air gets thinner and jet engines become less effective. Once you get high enough, a jet engine won't work at all.
That being said, if a fighter jet used a rocket instead, there would still be issues. Space ships are CRAZY fast. Just to be able to stay in space where the international space station is, you have to go over mach 20. That takes way more fuel than a jet can hold.. at least for now :P. If you want to go slower and stay in space you have to go higher, and again, have more fuel.
Final note, since there's no air in space an airplane's wings won't work either. The plane won't be able to turn or pitch, and anything that helped it stay in the air before won't do it much good now | 61 |
ELI5: Why is marijuana "impossible" to overdose on? | Edit: totally forgot I posted this last night. For the first time in probably 6 months I was not on reddit during work hours... fml
Thanks for the answers and upvotes everyone! | 3,639 | Bluntly put, the median lethal dose (LD50) of THC (the active ingredient in marijuana) is so high and the methods of intake so dilute that you would have to do absolutely impossible feats to have it occur. While there are a couple of different and conflicting sources, one estimate placed it at 40,000 times as much as the dose needed to get high. This is contrasted with alcohol, where five to ten times the amounted needed to get you drunk can kill you. To extrapolate, With pot brownies you'd die of sugar poisoning long before the THC got you. With smoking, you'd have to smoke something like 1,500 pounds of weed in a period of 15 minutes.
To actually manage a THC overdose you'd have to spend a lot of effort to first purify a sizable quantity of THC and then ingest it rapidly. This would never happen accidentally. | 4,575 |
I think pornography depicting (not real) rape should be legal and accessible, because it would likely lower actual rape rates. CMV | This post is mostly because of what has happened now in the UK:
http://metro.co.uk/2013/11/17/rape-porn-possession-to-be-punished-by-three-years-in-jail-david-cameron-to-announce-4189512/
Our government has decided that rape porn, even though not real, will carry a jail sentence for possession. I believe that allowing people with vices and fetishes such as rape, would be much less likely to commit an actual rape, were they able to achieve satisfaction from pornography.
Banning and censoring this type of pornography, is only going to exacerbate rape statistics, by causing many people with rape fetishes, to actually rape innocent people.
| 131 | > Banning and censoring this type of pornography, is only going to exacerbate rape statistics, by causing many people with rape fetishes, to actually rape innocent people.
Are you saying that people who fantasize about rape are going to have their fantasy satisfied by masturbating to porn?
Tell me, does watching porn satisfy your desire to have sex? | 64 |
CMV: Married couples that maintain separate finances are, at best, not fully committing to the true spirit of marriage as a partnership. At worst, their reasoning is cynical and/or selfish. | I’ve been reading /r/financialindependence lately. It’s an interesting sub, and an excellent resource for ideas related to saving and planning for retirement. However, I’ve noticed something which I think may increasingly common among younger people at large, namely that more couples these days seem to maintain separate finances. Even prior to finding /r/financialindependence, I have known a few friends who did this. Each partner will have their own accounts and, generally speaking, this one will pay this bill and that one will pay that bill until it’s close enough that they consider it square. When I’ve asked why they do it that way, rather than just share money and expenses, I’ve always gotten some variation of “it’s just simpler.” Indeed some people I asked in the sub echo that reasoning.
It’s certainly none of my business, so I don’t “care” per se, but that explanation has always bugged me from a logical standpoint. Keeping track of who owes what or devising shorthand/rules of thumb about who pays what bills, rather than just paying bills jointly, is by definition more complex. It may make you more comfortable, but it’s certainly not *simpler*. The addition of kids or a hardship into the mix can only serve to complicate things more.
Once you accept the simplicity argument as illogical, the other explanations I can come up with all seem to hinge on fear, mistrust, or plain old selfishness, and start to sound very cynical to me. Genuinely looking for other ideas as to why this might be.
*I will make an exception for couples who maintain personal accounts, but fund a joint account for bills. At least they are acknowledging that the responsibilities are shared, even if they keep some money just for themselves. I've never encountered anyone who does this, however.*
edit: I'm getting off for a while, but will be back. I'll say, most of the arguments I'm seeing are simply seeking to justify or rationalize selfishness or cynicism. I'm not saying there aren't reasons to maintain separate finances, just that doing so seems inherently selfish ("I want my own money so no one can give me shit for going to lunch or buying a video game") or cynical ("I don't need to worry about whether I can trust my spouse's financial decisions because that's *their* money, not *our* money.") The best answers so far hinge on the idea that it's more of a non-decision than a decision. "We never opened a joint account because we couldn't be bothered." That doesn't really strike me as too committed, though. I also wonder about future accounts (IRAs, 529s for the kids, investments). Should they be joint, or not? If I have a lot of money, can I retire while my spouse keeps working?
edit 2: Thanks for the answers. I have seen a few that gave me insight, and I'll pass out some deltas. I think my mistake was assuming that if people don't share an account or a debt, then they must not share resources, which was pretty far off. I did see a lot of people basically saying "I want to keep some of my money just for me," but the good answers were more focused on the fact that having just one name on a bank account doesn't mean you don't have each others' backs. View changed.
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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!* | 15 | 1. Who says that the "spirit" of marriage has to be the way *you* define it?
2. If a married couple finds that keeping finances separate leads to a less stressful and therefore more successful relationship, doesn't that mean they're correct in their action?
3. Selfishness is a motivation, not an action. If a couple keeps their finances separate because they find that they are less prone to arguments over it, is that selfish? Or is that reasonable and caring? Could it not be that the selfishness you're attributing comes from your own history, and not theirs? | 13 |
Do reliable food allergy/intollerance tests exists? | 20 | The short answer is no... skin tests are pretty good if they come up negative, but positive results are only accurate 50% of time. Oral tolerance tests done by a professional in a safe setting are most accurate but even those don't work for all types of allergies. Many types of food allergies have their own recommended tests. None of those random blood draw ones should be trusted, complete scam. This is for allergies though, which is completely different from intolerance.
When it comes to intolerance, honestly the only reliable thing to do is strict elimination diet and very slow reintroduction. There are no tests which will show intolerance of all foods, again there are tons of different tests depending on what you're looking for... (breath test, stool samples etc) and even then some intolerances can change over time, even over a menstrual cycle. Intolerance is a pretty subjective term in general. Intolerance can mean foods cause anything from diarrhea, headaches, fatigue, bloating, general discomfort, attention disorders etc.
Best thing is to take control of your own diet with a very detailed food log and symptom tracking. Read all labels and take the time to do full elimination diet. Talk to an immunologist if worried about allergies or a registered dietitian if worried about general intolerance. | 22 |
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[Star Wars] How did only two Jedi survive (Obi Wan/Yoda) when only two other people in the galaxy knew how to sense/find Jedi (Vader/Palpatine)? | I find it very far-fetched that all 10,000+ Jedi were killed after the clone wars ended. Let’s assume that after order 66 was completed 1,000-2,000 were killed by the clones. That leaves 8,000-9,000 Jedi left who had ample time to go hide. From what I understand, in the canon, Vader and Palpatine hunt down and kill all the rest of the Jedi by either the vast amounts of intel that come with running a galactic empire or by sensing their force power. I have trouble believing that 8,998 Jedi were hunted down and killed just based on those two things. It’s not like the Jedi are stupid, they should know how to hide across AN ENTIRE GALAXY OF PLACES TO HIDE. There are literally an uncountable amount of planets to hide on. Some may say “well Vader and Palpatine sensed their force and that’s how they were found,” but if Sidious could hide his force for 80 freaking years in the heart of the city where ALL THE JEDIS LIVED why didn’t all the other Jedi do this? We know that Obi Wan and Yoda do, so why did nobody else? I just find it hard to believe that they are the only two who were able to hide their forcenesss. STAR WARS REBELS SPOILER: also if Asoka is out of hiding or whatever how come Vader hasn’t sensed her before this. You’d think he would sense his own padawan quicker than anything or anyone else, especially if he has been travelling the galaxy hunting Jedi based on their force. Anyone got an answer? | 25 | You forget that Darth Vader, as one of the highest-ranking officers of the Galactic Empire, had access to nearly all the military reconnaissance resources in the known galaxy, as well as the funds to hire out mercenaries and bounty hunters as he saw fit. Arguably even worse, Palpatine very publicly made them enemies of the state, turning even civilians into eyes and ears against the Jedi, deterring them from venturing too close to civilization lest they be identified and reported. Even with their ability to conceal themselves, the Jedi Purge was a long campaign of attrition for them against a never-ending well of military force; most of the Jedi were haggard and worn-down after being on the run for close to nineteen years, making them much easier for Vader and his strike teams to track and eliminate. Now in power, the Empire had plenty of time to be thorough, after all.
As for your specific examples:
- Darth Sidious is a particularly unfair point of comparison. The man was exceptionally powerful in the Force and specialized in manipulation and deception; he was quite probably the most skilled Force-user in the entire galaxy at concealing himself by a wide margin.
- Yoda explicitly chose Dagobah to hide himself due to the energies radiating from the Dark Side Cave there being well-suited to mask his presence.
- Obi-Wan Kenobi was closely familiar with Darth Vader, and as such was especially qualified to avoid his detection, especially considering the level of fine control he gained over his force abilities through years of meditation in the Tatooine desert.
- The ability to sense the presence of another individual Force-sensitive being requires some relative degree of proximity; there's no reason why Vader should have been particularly aware of Ashoka's presence before being within shuttle distance of the same planet as her. Space is notably huge, after all.
*EDIT: Typos.* | 30 |
ELI5: Why do we feel cold when we have fever | Just doesn’t make sense
Our temperature is higher
We should feel hot (IMO) 🤷♂️
Edit 1: With that why do we feel so weak and tired when sick/have a fever | 3,307 | Your body has a kind of built-in thermostat that it can regulate. When you get a fever, the first thing that happens is that the thermostat gets cranked up a few notches when the body decides it needs to be hotter e.g. to kill off an infection more effectively. The body then suddenly finds itself at an actual core temperature lower than the “set” temperature of the thermostat. This produces the feeling of cold forcing you to get under a blanket, drink hot beverages etc. in order to raise your core temperature to the “set” temperature as fast as possible. So that feeling is the way your body communicates to you what it needs to be done right now. You also get involuntary shivers which are a way of raising core temperature as well (rapid muscle movement spends their stored energy and releases heat). | 3,960 |
2 years since I received my B.S. in Physics. Applied twice for Physics PhD Programs. Rejected twice. Currently working as a High School Physics Teacher. I want to go back to grad school, but I don't know how anymore. My current plan is to build up Summer Research Experience. Looking for advice. TIA. | Hi everyone,
I am in my mid-20s from the US. I am 2 years out of undergrad with a B.S. And here's my story. Got a full merit scholarship to a public university in a major city. Finished with a GPA of 3.4 and a B.S. in Physics. During undergrad I participated in a research lab doing work on photonics with TMDs and creating hybrid bi-layers using a stacking method. The next two semesters after I graduated I participated in a Science Undergraduate Laboratory Internship (SULI) program at a National Laboratory working in Nuclear Data Science for the first and Theoretical Quantum Mechanics for the second.
During these past two years I applied to many PhD programs. The first round of applications I was arrogant. I thought I could apply to a bunch of super duper advanced schools (IVYs and such) and definitely get into at least one. I learned it doesn't work that way. Second round I applied to schools at or lower in ranking than my undergrad. Thought a lower ranked school would be more willing to take a chance on me. Wrong again.
Before I received my last decision for the second round of applications I made a deal with myself: "If I get rejected again, I'll take a break and try something else". I got rejected again and tried something else. I am currently a physics teacher at a private high school in New England. And after a few months of working with uninterested and lazy students, I am so bored and disheartened. I didn't think every student would love math and physics, but the administration just pushes these kids through and I am pressured to walk the line.
I need to try. I need to go back to grad school and see how far I can go. My current plan is to work here for a few more years and save as much money as I can; my family and myself aren't wealthy enough for me to just not have an income while I apply to grad schools. I also plan to accumulate as many accolades, research reexperiences, and letters of rec as I can before I apply again. That is what brings me here. As a teacher I have summers COMPLETELY OFF. I am currently searching for Summer Post-Baccalaureate Internships and Research Programs preferably in Experimental Particle Physics (I prefer theoretical, but I know it's harder to get into) OR PhD Bridge Programs with a stipend during the regular Fall and Spring semesters.
Thankfully other than money, I have no obligations or restrictions on where I can work, live, or travel to. I am open to living and working anywhere as long as it gets me closer to my goals.
Thank you to anyone who takes the time to respond and good luck to everyone else on their grad school journeys!
**TL;DR - I want to go to grad school for a PhD in Physics. 2 years since my undergrad. A few random research experiences. Currently a high school physics teacher. ISO Summer Physics Research Programs.** | 92 | Two thoughst:
You might want to pay someone to look at your application materials, but it sounds like something is very wrong with them. Sure, Ivy league schools are competitive, but if you are applying to grad schools of lower ranking and not getting any offers, then something must be wrong with your applications.
If you want to improve your chances of getting into a top ranked school and can afford it, you might consider an MS program as a stepping stone. | 102 |
Does crime cause poverty or does poverty cause crime? | I'm in disagreement with a friend of mine who's quite insistent that poverty doesn't cause crime, that it's the other way around. Is there much truth to this? | 36 | Neither. According to Quinney, in The Social Reality of Crime (1970), he argues that social inequality rooted in class conflict creates both poverty and crime. He also writes about this more thoroughly in Class, State, and, Crime (can't remember year, sorry). Poverty (the have nots) is a state of deprivation that is perpetuated or recreated by social, economic, political, and legal institutions dominated by the haves. Those in power shape the law in ways that (to use a common phrase) protect and serve their interests. Definitions of crime, and the criminal justice system, serve as a key mechanism of social control which recreates social inequality. | 16 |
[Dungeons & Dragons/Silence of the Lambs] What would Hannibal Lecter's alignment be? | I've seen him used as an example for all three evil alignments in different places. Where would he be most likely to fit if he were a D&D character? I would lean towards saying he's Chaotic Evil, but wants people to think he's Lawful Evil. | 64 | Neutral Evil.
The Evil aspect should be obvious enough, what with the lies, deception, manipulation, and murder. The Neutral aspect comes from not having regard for law, or any sort of code or ethics that he lives by. Sure, he manages to stay under the radar, but that has more to do with him deliberately manipulating those around him than by living an upstanding life. He's not a raving maniac, so he can't be considered chaotic, either. Just pure, unrepentant, Neutral Evil. | 94 |
Why would it not be within the interests of the wealthiest individuals/companies to attempt to eradicate poverty? | Apologies in advance if this isn’t a particularly well thought out question - I have had no real education in economics so there may be an obvious answer to this.
It is quite often a moral criticism of billionaires/multinational corporations that they don’t do enough to try to eradicate poverty - this is often seen to be evidence of them lacking on a moral basis. However, as far as my limited knowledge can make out, it seems to be almost as much of an example of them lacking on the level of enlightened self interest and rationality - I would have thought that it would be more profitable in the long term for them if poverty didn’t exist.
My logic for this is fairly simple and can probably be summed up by this statement: someone who can barely make ends meet and put food on the table isn’t going to buy a car (or house or any other type of product or service that isn’t part of the bare minimum). So long as someone is living in circumstances where they have little money, they are excluding themselves from the potential customer base of almost every company (and even out of those who do supply the bare minimum items, most of them have large numbers of more ‘luxury’ items that would be excluded such as almost all of the food in a supermarket that isn’t as cheap as possible). If poverty were to be eradicated, it would ensure that for the majority of companies almost the entirety of the population is a potential customer, rather than the smaller subset it is currently.
I understand there would be trade offs for this - it is my under that a less well off population creates more favourable labour market conditions for employers, as a desperate individual is more likely to agree to poorer (and thus cheaper) conditions. However, in the vast majority of cases it seems to me that the customer base of any given company will always be larger than its workforce, and by maximising it it also reduces reliance of repeat customers and other such things. Furthermore, while you might end up spending more on wages in a poverty free world, you would also have employees more likely to be wealthy enough to be able to buy your own products, meaning some of that money would end up reinvested into the company by itself.
Like I said previously, I understand that this is an incredibly simplistic argument based on limited knowledge, so I am sure I have almost certainly missed out on some of the fundamentals of economics. Furthermore, I am sure that said wealthy individuals and corporations have both a level of self interest that cannot be underestimated and large numbers of highly intelligent people being paid to further it, so if such a simple approach was within their interests they would already be performing it. With that in mind then (ideally without diving off the deep end too far into advanced economics!) what is the flaw in my logic? | 104 | I do agree with your logic that the economy is a positive sum game and richer customers are better overall. I'll add to that that reducing poverty can also increase people's productivity and thus mean we can all consume more. This is the same logic as to why it's better for a country to have richer trading partners than poor ones.
But I'd like to raise a question: why would the wealthiest individuals or companies be particularly good at eradicating poverty? If someone is living in poverty there are multiple potential reasons why. Perhaps they have mental health problems, or perhaps they have a disabled child requiring full time care or perhaps they can't find a house to rent due to zoning laws or perhaps they're living in a war zone or perhaps they're an ex-prisoner who is legally restricted from working most jobs. There's nothing about those situations that necessarily imply that a tech billionaire or Walmart is good at or even capable of fixing them all.
One important concept in economics is "comparative institutional analysis". Different institutions (markets, governments, non-profits, etc) are good at different things. There's no simple one-size fits all answer. Not even for poverty. Governments are plausibly more competent at paying poor people money than at fixing difficult mental health problems, and some things, like changing bad laws, can only be done by governments. | 106 |
[Lord of the Rings] Why did Gollom not die of old age after he lost the ring? | (For the sake of this argument, I am speaking more in terms of the movies as I know in the books much more time passes) But when Bilbo gives up the ring, he ages drastically in just a few months, but Gollom, who had already lived for a a few hundred years lost the ring for 60 years and seemd more of less the same. | 50 | The long-term exposure Gollum had to the ring seems to have deeply warped him in a biological sense; he doesn't respond the same as a Hobbit does to losing the Ring because *he isn't a Hobbit anymore*, but a species of one.
Alternately, his connection to the Ring may be deeper than Bilbo's, meaning that even with the Ring out of his grasp he is still bound to it and under it's influence. | 71 |
If one capsid of HIV works its way into my bloodstream, what are my chances of getting the virus? | 36 | probably pretty rare. first things first, if HIV just gets into your blood stream, it could still be intercepted by Ab and get phagocytosed, where it would hopefully be degraded and not infect the macrophage. however, if it does attach to its receptor on T cells (CD4), it could enter the cell, and being a retrovirus, create a DNA copy to integrate into your T cell's genome leading to massive production of virus after activation, because HIV's genome is specifically made to make it be an asshole. The LTR's essentially create a new promoter site in YOUR DNA, and you just start pumping HIV's shit out for it.
TLDR: maybe, but probably not. | 45 |
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How do animals live at the bottom of the ocean, with the intense pressure? | I understand that there is immense pressure at the bottom of the ocean. This is why when we send submarines and such down, we need to counter this with either solid constriction or counter pressure. If a person were suddenly exposed to the pressure, they would be crushed, right?
So how do creatures live down there, ones such as anglerfish, and the tube worms near volcanic vents. I know they are not crushed, as they live down there, but how are they not? | 23 | Because they consist of incompressible materials, making the pressure pretty much irrelevant (wrt. "crushing", at least). Subs contain gases, so they can be compressed if the hull fails.
If you fill a balloon with air and take it to the bottom of the Challenger deep, it'll be crushed (that is, become very small). If you had filled that balloon with water instead, it will have the same size, since water is ~incompressible. | 15 |
ELI5: Why does a body temperature increase of 1-3 degrees Fahrenheit make the environment feel so much colder than if the temperature of the environment decreased the same amount? | 32 | It would take a lot more than 1-3 degrees of change in environmental temperature to make that significant of a change in your core temperature. When you get a fever your body is doing it on purpose usually to fight off infection. Feeling cold is the result of your hypothalamus setting your target temperature higher than it normally is. You feel cold so get chills/shiver to raise your temperature.
In short, if your body is working to get warmer to increase the fever to fight the infection, you will feel colder to help get your temperature up. | 16 |
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ELI5:Why was it such a big deal to be gay in the military? | 41 | Many just didn't want gay soldiers around, and felt they would erode the largely macho culture the military encourages.
Others had more legitimate concerns.
Soldiers often live in intimately close quarters and engage in activities that involve close physical contact. Some were uncomfortable with the idea that they person they were showering with might be sexually attracted to them, or use it as an opportunity to take physical liberties.
| 35 |
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Do heavier objects actually fall a TINY bit faster? | If F=G(m1\*m2)/r^2 then the force between the earth an object will be greater the more massive the object. My interpretation of this is that the **earth** will accelerate towards the object *slightly* faster than it would towards a less massive object, resulting in the heavier object falling quicker.
Am I missing something or is the difference so tiny we could never even measure it?
Edit: I am seeing a lot of people bring up drag and also say that the mass of the object cancels out when solving for the acceleration of the object. Let me add some assumptions to this question to get to what I’m really asking:
1: Assume there is no drag
2: By “fall faster” I mean the two object will meet quicker
3: The object in question did not come from earth i.e. we did not make the earth less massive by lifting the object
4. They are not dropped at the same time | 6,389 | You are correct, heavier things will accelerate the earth more than light things. The acceleration of earth is equal to G*m2/r^2. For a 1000 kg mass on the earth's surface (~6 x 10^6 m), this translates into an acceleration of about 2 x 10^-21 meters per second^2 .
The very best accelerometers can measure things on the order of 10^-9 m/s^2 , so you're also right in that we cannot measure this. | 6,622 |
[The Time Machine] Was there a proper name for the actual Time Travel vessel or was it just called ‘The Time Machine’? | 47 | [Assuming the book, rather than any of the various movies]
No. It was just called "the time machine" or similar descriptive terms, just as the time traveler himself was only known (to any who did not know him personally) as "the time traveler." | 20 |
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ELI5: How does muscle relaxers not stop muscles needed to live. IE: your heart | Happened a long time ago, but I remember being prescribed some muscle relaxers for a pinched nerve in my back. The things they gave me hit me so hard, I could literally feel my heart slowing down. I thought to myself "Well, this is how I die I guess". I woke up about 18 hours later, still alive but with that drugged feeling. How do muscle relaxers not relax yourself into a slow death? | 26 | Imagine any drug you take is like a key and that key can only fit into certain keyholes (receptors) on certain doors (target organ/tissue/nerve etc). There are different types of muscle relaxers (keys) that open certain doors and causes a reaction to occur behind that door (this is the drug action). This is how the drug works.
Now, there are three types of muscles (smooth - ex intestine, cardiac - heart, and skeletal). A muscle relaxer like Zanaflex fits in one type of keyhole on a certain door (brain) and behind that door a reaction occurs to only cause the skeletal muscle to relax. In Anesthesia (my profession) We give a paralytic (key) during surgery that will only fit a certain keyhole on skeletal muscle that the heart and intestines do not have (they have different keyholes). This is how we paralyze the body and not the heart/intestines. | 35 |
CMV: Linda Fairstein and her team should be prosecuted as criminals for their actions in the Central Park 5 case | Here is a list of the laws that they broke:
•interrogated minors without parents present
•coerced false confessions from the minors
•deprived them of food, water and relieving themselves for multiple hours
•lied to the minors by telling them that if they confessed they would be allowed to go home
•did not tell the minors or their parents their rights to lawyers
•despite finding DNA evidence that it was someone else, they didn’t investigate to find the real rapist (not sure if this one is illegal)
This is everything that I’ve found but there may be more.
Linda Fairstein has resigned from her job due to public pressures but despite her many criminal actions, she has not been legally punished in any way.
The laws that she and her team broke are there to prevent a case like the Central Park 5 from happening in the first place. She should be prosecuted as a criminal because she and her team committed crimes with extreme consequences.
For anyone who disagrees, please try to change my view. | 19 | Pretty sure you can’t charge someone for these types of minor offenses 30 years later.
Maybe if there was some sort of felony, or violent crime... but it’s debatable if these are even criminal violations. | 16 |
ELI5:Why do we humans enjoy music so much? | 39 | Rhythm is rare in nature. Especially more complex "beats". Combined with a melody (that again is rare in nature), your brain relaxes as it's not listening to these sounds for security or pursuing food etc like it normally is. This instantly allows your subconscious to relax releasing "feel good" hormones. Being able to anticipate the beats/melody before they materialize also does the same. Animals don't have the subconscious intelligence to pull this off | 25 |
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ELI5 why Colors Fade in sunlight? What actually happens to the color? Does it dissipate into the air somehow? | 36 | The photons of ultra violet light from the sun interact with some chemicals that are used to create dyes and pigments (i.e. colors) in a way that causes the chemicals to change and stop having the color. The energy of the photon causes certain bonds between atoms in the dye molecule to break. | 41 |
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If there was a way to have a person born blind have an "eye" transplant to see, would their brains be able to process images? | If, in some odd years there was a tried and true way of either connecting tissues properly or taking an organ donors eyes and attacting everything properly and performing that surgery on someone who has already matured ( like say a 25 year old) person who was born blind, would their brains be able to process the images they see or would that be too much for them and drive them insane or severely depressed? or would their brains be able to adapt?
I know that there would be a probable blur period for them. Taking that into account, how would that go over? | 33 | >would their brains be able to process the images they see or would that be too much for them and drive them insane or severely depressed?
I can't speak for the exact scenario you mentioned, but Oliver Sacks wrote about a similar scenario in his book, An Anthropologist on Mars (Chapter 4, *To See and Not See*). The subject was a 50 year old gentleman who developed severe cataracts at six years old, and was effectively blind for most of his life. He received cataracts surgery at 50, and his vision was more-or-less restored (it wasn't 20-20, but it was apparently decent).
In doing so, however, he started experiencing problems. When he first opened his eyes after surgery, the world was a mess of colors to him. He couldn't recognize any shapes, he didn't know what objects he was looking at. He started making connections ("that tan bluer from where the voice is coming must be a face"), but it was a learning process, and he had difficult taking objects as a whole. He'd see parts, and the parts would run together. He had difficulty understanding perspective; he had difficult recognizing objects seen at new angles; he had difficulty putting letters together to form words; he had difficulty corresponding colors to their names. He could eventually do these things pretty passably, but it was never natural, never comfortable.
He fell into a depression and other illness; his work as a masseur became foreign to him after seeing his clients for the first time; he still only really "understood" an object if he closed his eyes and felt it with his hands. Sight had virtually no meaning to him, especially in visually cluttered spaces.
Eventually, he lost his eyesight again for reasons not fully known (though it was theorized that seeing light for the first time in half a century caused excessive damage to his eyes), and he was much happier with his blindness. It was all he had known for most of his life.
It's an interesting read. | 22 |
Why does a pot of water or tea pot make the most noise right before the water reaches boiling? | Then it seems to get quieter once it reaches a rolling boil. | 26 | Assumed: a typical configuration, where heat is applied by conduction through the bottom of the vessel. The water near the bottom is warmed by contact with the heated surface. This warmed water rises, cooler water drops, and this convection distributes the heat energy.
When the average water temperature approaches the boiling point, small parcels of water near the bottom will acquire just enough heat to be converted into small bubbles of steam. These small gas bubbles cool as they rise through the cooler water, and condense back to liquid.
As the average water temperature rises further, less energy used to raise its temp, and more is available to vaporize it. The steam bubbles grow larger and the water temp grows hotter. The bubbles *nearly* break the surface before collapsing/condensing back to liquid.
It is these percussive, collapsing bubbles of steam that you you hear. When the bubbles collapse, the water slams into itself and, being a non-compressible liquid, converts that energy into sound waves.
When the bubbles of steam begin to make it all the way to the surface, the noise diminishes. When all the steam makes it to the surface, the sound stops
| 24 |
What does Slavoj Žižek mean when he says "The only way to be an atheist is through Christianity."? | 137 | He means basically that Christianity has already killed God for you, as it were, since God dies to Christ and Christ dies to God. The idea that "there is no God" is already part and parcel of Christianity itself. It is only in the concrete syllogism of our self-consciousness that the \[holy\] spirit lives on in the community that is mankind. | 72 |
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[MCU/Doctor Who] Is it worse to be a civilian in the MCU or Doctor Who version of Earth? | 138 | I tihnk the best way to settle this is to compare disasters and their severity.
**The MCU**
Most of the events in the MCU are limited in scope. The Battle of New York, the events surrounding the defeat of Ultron, the fall of the Helicarriers, the partial destruction of Greenwich during the Alignment...these all happen in specific cities and are relatively rare occurrences. Even Hulk rampages are confined and infrequent (although devastating).
That more or less sets the pattern for the MCU. The things that happen tend to be geographically dispersed, which means their impact is also spread out and, consequently, the MCU Earth is a relatively safe place.
**Doctor Who**
...well, safe relative to the Earth that The Doctor protects. Working from 2005 onwards, we find that London is the most dangerous place to live on the planet. Cardiff is also similarly dangerous, although the amount of danger to Cardiff actually tails off after Torchwood is shut down. That said, the danger to the rest of the world *rises* at that point. There are a number of global events, including a succesful invasion by the Daleks and the theft of Earth, that caused mass civilian casualties.
Even though some of the global events in Doctor Who - like when the Master took over and enslaved the population with the help of the Toclafane - were literally undone and technically never happened, when things kick off in this universe, they tend to do so on a massive scale.
On balance, it's a dodgier proposition to live on the Doctor Who Earth. The MCU Earth looks like it might be about to rival those stakes, though.
| 119 |
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Are there any examples of organisms that completely contradict the theory of natural selection? | 17 | Evolution by natural selection (including artificial selection, humans are also part of the natural world) requires 4 things:
* Offspring are similar to their parent(s)
* Imperfect copying system (in terms of reproduction)
* Variation amongst individuals of a species
* Limited resources
Find a species that species that isn't of this nature and you'll get yourself an organism that doesn't evolve by natural selection.
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ELI5 How WhatsApp can allow reporting of messages and still be considered as e2e encrypted? Can the app itself automatically "report" all the messages if requested by the police without user action? | 20 | It's pretty simple....when you view a message on your device it is decrypted on that device. When you report a message, your device creates a new encrypted message between you and Facebook that contains the contents of that message (and the 4 previous from what I've heard) and (likely) the user you received it from.
So from there, because you made a new message the original is still e2e encrypted, *and* the new message (the report) is also e2e encrypted.
It's no different than showing your screen to a friend. They were not the intended recipient but now they saw an e2e encrypted message without breaking the entire e2e encryption process.
EDIT: As for the 'automatically report', theoretically yes, it could, and your primary protection against that is hoping you trust FB enough to not build that in. Though if they did do that and word got out, people would likely move away from the app which would be bad for FB. | 24 |
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If you are heading west on the equator, what speed would you need to maintain to continually outrun the sunset? | 105 | In order to keep the sun in the same position in the sky by flying due west you need a speed of 1035 mph times cosine(latitude). That means it takes the full 1035 mph at equator and only half, around 500 mph, at 60 deg north or south (cos(60) = 0.5). Since 500 mph is around the top speed at altitude for most civilian airliners, such jet would be able to keep up if it flew at around latitude 60 deg or more north. | 120 |
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Experts say 70% of a population needs immunity to reach the herd threshold. Where I live, in Texas, polls say 1/3 of people refuse to get the vaccination. Can we reach herd immunity? | Considering that children are not currently being vaccinated, and studies are showing that immunity is stronger and lasts longer through the vaccine as opposed to infection, how likely is it that we'll actually reach the point people are calling "back to normal"? | 608 | Natural immunity will work to fill in the gaps. We don't know how long it lasts, but seems to be a while.
Also, keep in mind that the biggest issue with COVID-19 is how quickly it overwhelms medical facilities. Even if the virus is not wiped out, if the most vulnerable and a good chunk of the population are protected, it will become just another deadly virus we live with like the flu. | 231 |
ELI5: The three species in video game StarCraft II are "trivially" balanced. When developing and maintaining the game, what are the methods used by Blizzard Entertainment to make sure that the species are "trivially" balanced? | 71 | Play testing, play testing, play testing.
Then they play test some more.
Even then they don't get it exactly right. There is a constant cycle of players developing unbalancing strategies, and Blizzard adjusting the play balance to compensate. | 52 |
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Eli5 If bug killer can kill insects, how is it safe to spray all over your house and not be harmful to humans? | 155 | In general, modern pesticides are designed to target specific things that the insect has and mammals (like humans) don’t. Since we are pretty distant from insects genetically, there are numerous proteins in insects that either do not exist in, or are substantially different from ones, in humans. | 151 |
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ELI5: when people use a supercomputer to supercompute things, what exactly are they doing? Do they use special software or is just a faster version of common software? | Also, I don't know if people use it IRL. Only seen it in movies and books and the like. | 74 | They are mostly fast because of multiple processes at the same time. The do not work well on linear problems and scale best on tasks that can be done in parallel. They have special schedulers that assign calculations to cores and collate the results.
Its more like a hundred or thousand PCs all working together on one problem. | 78 |
ELI5: Why are phone scammer that spoof caller ID unstoppable? Why can't telecom operators filter spoofed caller ID info the way data networks filter spoofed IP addresses? | 640 | Telecom operators benefit from spoofed caller id, it leads to more calls. Network operators use the return IP to send answers back, so spoofing it doesn't get you any data. They mostly check for spoofing because it's a symptom of evil. Telecom operators are evil, so it's not on their list of problems to solve. | 97 |
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[Star Trek] So... the holodeck DOES get used for lots and lots of sexual depravity, right? | 60 | What people do during their holodeck time is up to them and as long as it doesn't interfere with their work or life outside of the holodeck then they're left alone but there's a reason for holodeck waste removal... | 64 |
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ELI5: How can illegal websites (i.e. piracy and illegal streaming) have advertisements on their sites of well-known companies and brands? | How can companies be allowed legally to do this and why doesn't this immediately expose these websites to the federal government? | 21 | If a site isn't based in the US they have no obligation to comply with US law.
Most sites just sign up to an advertising service and then that service places ads on the site. Well-known companies & brands often have no ability to choose where there ads appear. | 19 |
How large does an object in space need to be in order to gravitationally bind an average human to its surface? | 15 | "Bind an average human" seems to be the crux of your question.
Lets instead ask "Whats the biggest object a human can escape the gravitational pull of?"
For this we need 2 items: the escape velocity of an object, and the average speed a human can reach.
A small amount of googling tells me that the average jumping height for males is about .504 meters, while a good height is .6. Lets use .5 for a simple answer.
Using basic kinematics, we find that humans can generally give themselves a velocity of sqrt(g) or about 3.13 m/s.
However, this is only vertically. Humans are generally able to sprint at a speed of around 7 m/s. So it will be much easier for our astronaut to simply start sprinting then it would to be jumping.
The escape velocity of a body is given by v=sqrt(2*G*M/r). So big objects are hard to get away from, but large objects are easy to get away from. So density comes into play. This won't be as easy as giving a simple number.
Instead, lets find some likely candidates. Ceres is the largest asteroid in our solar system. Ceres has a mean radius of 473,000m and a mass of 9.4*10^20 kg.
This gives Ceres an escape velocity of 515 m/s. No, chance of getting off that.
67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko is the comet that was recently landed on by Rosetta's Lander Philae, which famously bounced but stayed on the surface. Because of its odd shape, we can get about 4100 meters away from its center. It has a mass of 9.98*10^12 kg. So it has an escape velocity of around .5 m/s at its tip! We can definitely escape this!
So we're looking somewhere between our solar system's biggest asteroid and an oddly shaped comet. | 20 |
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ELI5: What about cold brew coffee gives it a higher caffeine content than regular black coffee? | 486 | i’m a coffee roaster & i manage a cafe. it has nothing to do with extraction time. almost all caffeine that can be extracted is extracted within a minute of exposure to water. you can google this, there are plenty of studies. people say espresso has more caffeine too, however this wouldn’t make sense in an extraction theory because a average american style double shot of espresso should take about 23 seconds to extract. you can consult the SCA website for more info on what is defined as an american style double shot.
cold brew is sometimes served as a concentrate, so there are simply more ground beans used and as such, more caffeine. if it isn’t prepared as a concentrate, which many places do not do, it has the same amount of caffeine as any other cup of coffee & you are experiencing a placebo effect because of your expectations.
this, along with cold brew often being consumed faster than hot coffee, causes it to enter your system faster and feel like you’re consuming “more caffeine” when you are consuming the same amount, just all at once instead of over 15 minutes. same goes for drinking a shot of espresso.
edit: spelling | 942 |
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CMV: I don't think it would be immoral to clone a Neanderthal. | It's widely accepted in the scientific community that cloning a Neanderthal (or other extinct homo ____) for scientific reasons would be immoral. I disagree. We could learn so much from it, and there is no reason why a Neanderthal clone couldn't live a happy life. We don't know exactly how it will be once it's alive, because we don't know how intelligent Neanderthals were (could they even understand language? It's likely but we don't jnow.) However, we know they had larger brains than us, so there's a chance they could have been just as smart, and if not, we already have special education and social services for people that are mentally deficient compared to the rest of society. A volunteer couple of anthropologists could raise the Neanderthal on their own as if it were their child. The way I see it, the worst possible case scenario is that you have an essentially retarded human (which is ok, they already exist and can be happy), or best case scenario it could be an excellent student and star linebacker on the high school football team. We also know that Neanderthals mated with humans, so it could have a very satisfying sex life as well. I don't see a downside to this anywhere and it would be a HUGE benefit to our understanding of human evolution. Why is this seen as so immoral?
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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!* | 80 | A child or person of diminished mental capacity can't on their own agree to participate in scientific research, they have a parent or guardian consent on their behalf and there are generally much stricter guidelines on their participation than regular adults. A Neanderthal would exhibit similar issues, there's no clear agent who could consent for them. Their entire existence would exist for scientific study, there's no particular benefit for them and there may be significant downsides, many people would consider the level of observation such a creature would have over their life to be a detriment. | 23 |
ELI5: How do directions work in space? | 18 | They're either relative to the orbit that the ship is on(prograde, retrograde, normal, anti-normal, radial in, radial out) or relative to a fixed set of reference points(Earth, moon, or sun) which you can then use up/down or north/south, east/west to refer to directions.
Once you have your reference set you can define things with angles just like we do here on Earth with incilination(up/down) and ascension(left/right rotation) | 14 |
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Traditional black holes happen where something is so dense that it has such a strong gravitational pull that not even light can escape from it. Could there be, theoretically, black holes caused by one of the other four fundamental forces? | Black holes caused by the electromagnetic force or the strong nuclear force, for example. Or maybe the weak nuclear force.
I am imagining the same concept as a gravitational black hole (nothing can escape from its grip past a certain distance from it), but caused by one of the other three forces, just to clarify. | 123 | Such an object would affect only things that interact with that force, so only charged objects for the electromagnetic force, or objects with colour charge for the strong force, etc. Even though they might never be able to escape, light still could.
Quark pairs are sort of analogous to this: if you try to pull them apart, it requires so much energy that you just end up creating another pair of quarks. | 41 |
As a philosophy student, is there any use to me learning Set Theory especially if my focus in grad school will be around Kant and Hegel? | 15 | Learning set theory won't directly help you understand Kant and Hegel.
Learning set theory might be useful for general intellectual development, and you might find set theory itself inherently interesting. But the concerns of set theorists are far afield of Kant's and Hegel's concerns. | 19 |
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I think several "academic" disciplines (such as theology) should not receive funding nor be carried out at universities, CMV. | **edit: I have changed my view on this topic, [here](https://pay.reddit.com/r/changemyview/comments/1qdrzn/i_think_several_academic_disciplines_such_as/cdcp2qt) is my explanation of why.**
This seems to be a pretty popular opinion these days but I have never really seen any good counter-arguments.
To sum up, I think theology and possibly philosophy and some social sciences should no longer be carried out at universities and that these disciplines no longer deserves public funding. I don't see how progress in these fields contribute to humanity, why the disciplines needs to be carried out in universities, or in some cases what even constitutes progress in those fields. It seems like a really bad investment, and that the money would be better spent in the natural sciences or in medical research.
Please, CMV.
edit: Well I was trying to keep this short, but since I haven't quite gotten the responses that was sought, I'm gonna try to clarify. To change my view I need a clear motivation for why theology (and philosophy) should receive funding and what good it does for the public (the investors) that know nothing of these subjects. Why shouldn't the money being spent on theology and philosophy be used in medical research instead? Why shouldn't it be used in chemistry, biology, climate science or physics? From the progress in all these subjects I see huge benefits being made to the public even if they know nothing of the subjects themselves. I don't see how theology or philosophy does this (if I did, I would have already changed my mind.) Sure, these subjects are sometimes useful to apply to other areas as many have argued. But why should we continue funding the pure research into for example theology and philosophy, that only university professors in these subjects are aware of anyway? Could the public make a better investment instead by placing that money into medical research to increase our understanding of infectious diseases, cancer, etc. or into meteorology to get better predictions of the weather, or even mathematics or computer science to develop new methods and techniques of solving complex problems which have direct, day-to-day implications for the rest of science and to better our understanding of these problems? These are, to me, good reasons for the public to invest in these research areas. In a similar way I want to know what good reasons there are to invest in theology and philosophy. | 59 | In terms of theology, regardless of whether you believe in and/or respect religion at all, denying its influence on the past and present day would be ridiculous. So of course we should try to understand it.
Philosophy is the basis for all forms of rational thought, including hard sciences. How would we even begin to know what we could consider "true" without philosophy? And even if science could discern truth without a philosophical backing, how would we know what we should pursue? Don't our values become intertwined with scientific pursuits, in terms of what we want to pursue, the ethical implications behind it, and how we interpret and implement the knowledge we gain? The eccentric mathematician character in Jurassic Park puts it well when he says that the scientists who resurrected dinosaurs were so eager to figure out *if* they could do it that they never considered whether we *should.* The scientific method can help us describe the world, and it can tell us how to do something. But it can't answer questions about what our values are, what are goals are, what problems are most pressing, what the moral implications of something are, etc.
More importantly, though, it sounds like you should just go read the Wikipedia page on the social sciences whose value you question. Or at least name the ones you suspect are worthless so people here can try to convince you otherwise. Because, frankly, it sounds like you simply have no idea what these fields are all about and what they can do (which you basically admit by saying that you don't even know what constitutes progress in those fields). | 83 |
[Marvel][X-Men] How did Wolverine's claws get sharpened? | Wolverine's bone claws seem to have a naturally sharp edge to them but once his skeleton has the adamantium bonded to it they seem to gain a significantly sharper edge. Was this done after he got the adamantium? Did it bond that way around the bone? Thanks for your time. | 49 | It could be that the natural tendency of adamantium is to form a monomolecular edge, much like how some crystals and rocks will naturally form cubes, or cylinders due to their molecular makeup. When the adamantium mixed with the bone claws, the leading edge forces the cooling metal to crystalize into an edge a single atoms thickness. The cohesion of the adamantium is strong enough to the edge never dulls, remaining sharp forever. | 66 |
How is it that dogs and wolves are still the same species? How much more do dogs need to change before they become a different species? | 30 | Dogs and wolves *are* separate species, *Canis lupus* and *Canis familiaris*. There are many species of animals that can still interbreed but are still classified as separate species due to physical, behavioral, or temporal barriers that make it extremely unlikely for the animals to hybridize. Dogs and wolves are more physically distinct than some, so it seems more surprising. | 19 |
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[Doctor Who] Why do some Daleks shoot immediately and others yell "exterminate" 1-3 times before shooting? | 545 | In the Witches Familier we see how the Dalek Tank is controlled by the organism inside. *Exterminate* is just a word that's blurted out from any emotional expression, while strong emotion fires the gun. Perhaps we can infer from this that the screaming of EXTERMINATE hypes the Dalek up enough that the gun fires, in the same way that humans chanting rhetoric fire us up | 404 |
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