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8e2f9n | What makes Kopi Luwak (Civet Coffee) so coveted and special in Asia? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"There are two \"Kopi Luwak\" coffees. One is harvested from the piles left behind when wild civet visit a coffee plantation. They naturally only eat the best, slightly over ripe cherries, which are naturally sweetest, and part of their digestive system destroys the flavoid responsible for the bitter taste in coffee, and removes some of the tannins. It's bright, sweet and not at all bitter, and fully worth $500 a pound. The other kopi is why it's not drunk any more, because people found out about it, trapped and caged civets, and force feed them the cheapest coffee cherries they could find /steal. The coffee produced is terrible, over priced and supports criminals and animal cruelty. The quality and quantity they flooded the market with practically destroyed the market over night."
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8e4fne | How do global rules of war work? How does one enforce the rules while at war with another country? What would stop an opposing power from breaking these rules? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"If you break the rules, you will be sanctioned. This makes it a lot harder to access the global market, making you poorer and less able to fight the war. If you lose the war then you may be tried in a court for war crimes and imprisoned. Alternatively, the enemy may start to commit war crimes against you and your soldiers become scared and demoralized and become a less effective fighting force.",
"The basic idea is if you break one of the rules alot of people dont l like you, or the other side starts doing the same thing. For example in WWII the allies and the germand both had gas to use, but they had a implied agreement to not use it since it was such a terrible weapon. The rules were kinda enforced on the battlefield as well. Like in WWI soldiers with serrated bayonets were executed if the enemy found them. (It wasent really a rule, but it was a very cruel weapon so thats how they got people to stop using it). Sadly in guerilla warfare its extremely hard to follow alot of these rules, take vietnam for example with bombing of civilian targets because the VC were hiding with them. Basically in war there are rules that are not followed as well as they should or as others are. Especially killing civilians (im looking at you Japan). But things like using fire, glass, or gas dont happen because it causes an extreme amount of unnecessary suffering (which is very demoralizing). Tl;dr if they dont use gas i wont use gas because i dont want my troops to fight in gas.",
"The rules of war are enforced by international pressure. If you break them, other countries you would be considered justified in using diplomatic, economic, and military pressure against them. This can be a complicated matter, and is there is no automatic procedure that will try and punish a country that violates the rules of war. For example, Syria is using chemical weapons, a clear violation, but Russia supports Syria and China opposes military intervention on general principles, so they are questioning the accuracy of the reports to make the violation less clear.",
"if you break the rules, you're court martialed by your own government or tried by the winners, whoever has the bigger stick. and they're not laws. they're gentleman agreements.",
"Most of the rules are laid out in the Geneva Convention, URL_0 You can't really enforce the rules during the war, unless you capture those who have committed the violation and send them to International Criminal Court, the boy that handles such violations.",
"In general, 'rules of war' are enforced by practical expediency. For example, if I summarily execute all captured prisoners, then my opponents will probably do the same. Likewise, any weapon I use on you, you'll use on me. Since World War II, the world hasn't seen a military conflict between the great powers. This means that the conflicts it *has* seen are mediated to some extent by those powers - one or more sides of the conflict is backed by a power that imposes rules on them lest they withdraw their aid."
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8e60pz | Why are so many national flags just three colored lines? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Often because the colours themselves symbolize what the flag needs to symbolize. For example: * Germany: Black, red, gold (horizontal): first used by revolutionaries who wanted to set up a republic, so it basically stands for \"German democracy\". Probably originates with the uniforms used by the Lützow Free Corps (black with red trim and brass buttons) in the German Campaign of 1813, fighting against Napoleon. * Ireland: Green, white, orange (vertical): green for the Catholic Irish nationalists, orange for the Protestant Orange Order loyal to the UK, white for the peace between them. * France: Blue, white, red (vertical): blue and red are the colours that traditionally represent Paris and used by the Paris militia after the Storming of the Bastille. White was added as an extra colour for the whole nation. * Russia: White, blue, red (horizontal): the original meaning is not known, but the colours are said to represent in order: nobility and frankness; faithfulness, honesty and chastity; courage, generosity and love. It should also be remembered that a large number of countries originated in some military movement or uprising of some kind (e.g. the French Revolution); for a small popular movement, the easiest kind of flag to make was one consisting of two or three strips of cloth sewn together.",
"In Europe a tradition evolved, starting a few hundred years ago but really picking up steam in the 1800s, of using a 3-color flag to identify a new, revolutionary government. URL_0"
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8e6iue | Why was the old Germany split into many small territories? | Edit: Before the 1900s, before Germany was the country it is today | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"What we now call Germany was once part of the Holy Roman Empire, which was loose collection of hundreds of counties, duchies, principalities, kingdoms, and free cities that existed from until 800 (or 962 depending on whether you consider Charlemagne or Otto I as the first Emperor) until 1806. They were nominally vassals of the Holy Roman Emperor, but in practice, were independent. In 1871, what we now call Germany was unified under Prussian rule as the German Empire, which lasted until Germany's defeat in WWI. After WWII, Germany was again partitioned into 4 occupation zones, 3 of which merged and became West Germany, and other became East Germany. They reunified in 1990."
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8e6r4h | Why are Americans so prude compared to Europeans? Is there a historical reason? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"America was settled early by [puritan]( URL_0 ) settlers. They had a very strict moral code. Consequently it has influenced American culture even to this day."
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8edgvw | How does one become a town crier in england? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"My local town has one and they held auditions for the position. Pretty much a practical job interview. It’s a ceremonial position paid for by the local authority and held, usually, by men of a certain age who fancy themselves as very good public speakers with loud, commanding voices. They are paid positions but our local one was advertised as very much a part time job with the person having to be be available as required by the local council on special days throughout the year. I went to watch the auditions as I was in town and it was quite a spectacle. All the would be town criers were retired men with the aforementioned attributes who had held similar positions before as hobbies. All very red faced, good at ringing bells and shouting"
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8edwxc | Why was Euro Disney (Disneyland Paris) such a financial disaster when it opened ? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"What i understand from my hospitality and culture classes, is that Disney tried to copy and paste Disney World into Disney Europe. Like everything was the same, company culture, work ethics whatsoever. Since Europeans and Americans are most definitely not the same type of people that completely backlashed and made them consider the cultural differences."
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8ee00i | Why are chilli peppers widely used in Asian cuisine (Indian, Thai, Chinese, Korean), but barely used in European cuisine? | As far as I know, chillis were introduced to Asia by Europeans, after which they became widespread in Asian cooking, but never really seem to have featured in any European cuisines? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"For a different part of the answer, [here’s]( URL_0 ) an interesting article from NPR on how spicy food got turned into a “low class” and undesirable thing in Europe. Basically it sounds like as more and more spices came to Europe because of colonialism for spices, they became widely available and therefore associated with the common people. Once it was no longer a sign of status, spices apparently went more out of style.",
"You eat what you have. Chili peppers grow much more readily in hot environments, so they end up in food more. Even if they didn't grow there immediately, it was easy to trade for them. That's the basis for traditional cuisines. I mean, frogs and snails? The French must have had a ton of them and been pretty hungry. Tastes, or rather culinary cultural normal, also take a long time to change and are colored by class stigmas and racism. Even when super spicy stuff became available, it just wasn't popular among the dominant average Joe of many European nations. Chinese food in, say, Sweden is soul crushingly boring and unspicy because the people who cook the food are selling it to swedes, who tend to like soul crushingly unspicy foods. In the United States and in other cosmopolitan places, there are enough people who like different things - diversity - that the cooks can cook for people like them as their primary customers. As a result, the food is cooked to Asian tastes primarily and white people acclimate to the cuisine instead of the other way around because the cooks and restaurants aren't dependent on white people buying their food to stay open and make money.",
"One thing that should also be mentioned is the history of haute cuisine. The modern restaurant, as well as the idea that fancy European cuisine is French or inspired by French cuisine, dates from the early 19th century. At the time, many aesthetic symbols of wealth and power were becoming unpopular, in part because they didn't denote the elite as much as they used to (spices becoming more affordable, as others here have mentioned), but also because elaborate and heavily spiced dishes were closely associated with aristocracy and court styles of cooking. Just as the bold colors, ruffles, bows, powdered wigs, high heels, and huge skirts of the 18th century gave way to Neoclassical styles of dress after the French Revolution, there was a similar revolution in cuisine as the heavily spiced feasts of court banquets gave way to the modern restaurant that catered to the bourgeoisie and more simple elegant flavors. The 19th century is when you start seeing the French mother sauces (none of which are heavily spiced), for example. This was all happening just as chili peppers began to appear in Europe*, so by the time European elites were beginning to eschew strong flavors and exotic ingredients there may simply not have been enough time for chili peppers to catch on. *Yes, Columbus discovered the Americas in 1492, but a lot of foods, especially things that were not obviously attractive to Europeans, didn't catch on in European cuisine for centuries after that. Both the potato and the tomato were considered unfit for human consumption for a long time in Europe, for example."
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8ee0df | Why could people smoke massive amounts of cigarettes in 40s but not get cancer? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"They did get cancer, it just didn't happen until the 70s and 80s when they all got older. A lot of them also died of other causes before lung cancer could develop, but many of those have since become more treatable."
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8er3nc | Why is that when we cry our noses become stuffy and we get a lot of snot coming out? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"There is a duct going from the corner of your eye to your nose. When you cry, the tears drain into the duct and into the nose, hence the stuffiness and snot.",
"When you cry your tears mix with the mucus that's already there in your nose and sinuses. You are always dripping mucus down into your stomach, whether you're stuffed up or not, about a quart a day. ~~This constant supply of snot dripping into your stomach protects your stomach from gastric juices that would otherwise eat away at your stomach walls.~~ URL_0 Still doesn't explain why sometimes there is an abundance of snot when we cry. I found a website for kids written by an M.D. that explains it better. From: URL_1 You may have heard the old joke: If your nose is running and your feet smell, you must be upside down! But why does your nose run? Read on to find out the whole story. What's Running? To understand why your nose runs, you need to know what mucus (say: MYOO-kus) is. This is the gooey, sticky, slimy material that's made inside your nose (also known as snot). Believe it or not, your nose and sinuses make about a quart of snot every day! For something kind of gross, mucus does a lot of good. It keeps germs, dirt, pollen, and bacteria from getting into your lungs by stopping them in your nose. But sometimes mucus doesn't stay put. Reasons for Running If your nose is running, there are several possible explanations: You have a cold or the flu: When you have either one of these, your nose goes into mucus-making overdrive to keep the germ invaders out of your lungs and the rest of your body, where they might make you even sicker than you already are. You know what happens then: The mucus runs down your throat, out your nose, or into a tissue when you blow your nose. Or it can fill your sinuses, which is why you get that stuffy feeling. You have allergies: Kids who have allergies get runny noses when they're around the thing they're allergic to (like pollen or animal hair). That's because their bodies react to these things like they're germs. You're crying: When you cry, tears come out of the tear glands under your eyelids and drain through the tear ducts that empty into your nose. Tears mix with mucus there and your nose runs. Baby, it's cold outside When you're outside on a cold day, your nose tries its best to warm up the cold air you breathe before sending it to the lungs. Tiny blood vessels inside your nostrils open wider (dilate), helping to warm up that air. But that extra blood flow leads to more mucus production. You know what happens next. Drip, drip, drip. Stoppin' the Runnin' If you have allergies, your doctor might give you medicine called an antihistamine (say: an-tye-HISS-tuh-meen). But sometimes the easiest thing to do is — you guessed it — blow your nose! Reviewed by: Steven Dowshen, MD Date reviewed: January 2014"
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8erl8z | Why are the words for "mom" and "dad" so remarkably similar among a lot of different cultures around the world? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Mama, papa, baba (in languages such as Chinese). M, P and B are all bilabial consonants, we make them by putting the lips together. M is just using your voice with your lips together. P and b are plosive consonants, b is voiced, p isn't. Basically, babies make these words very easily and dads and mums across cultures think they are naming us. Mama is the easiest to make and mums traditionally spend more time with the babies so they took that one. TL:DR - the babies named the adults Edit: Anything do do with babies brings up a lot of anecdotal evidence as they don't all follow the same steps, and often we are a little biased in what we are hearing as well. u/stupidstray gave an excellent breakdown as to why many parents might hear 'dada' before 'mama' [here]( URL_2 ) There's a lot of academic research about language acquisition in babies. [this one]( URL_0 ) basically sums up a lot of it. There's so much more. p.16 is where it starts answering this question in particular. u/MudkipzFetish posted [this podcast: Did Cavemen Say Mama and Papa]( URL_1 ) which gets into this subject. It's really interesting. Someone said that knowing this ruins the magic, which is fair enough. I think it makes it more magical when you know what's going on when listening to them babbling away.",
"My 7 month old started making some consonants noises recently. Guess what the first sounds she made were? da da da da da and (specially when crying) ma... ma... ma we name ourselves after the noises that babies make. Pa Pa Pa is also and easy one, as is baba (Arabic for dad). before should could make consonant sounds she used to just say, \"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA\" all the time. She still does that actually. Its horrible.",
"Words like \"mama\" or \"papa\" consist of the simplest consonants (both the \"m\" and \"p\" sounds only involve the lips, requiring no complex tongue movements) and the simplest vowel (simply vocalizing with an open mouth will get you an \"a\" sound). Babies will naturally learn these sounds first, no matter where they are born.",
"So, here we are, being all Finnish, expecting our babies to say 'äiti' and 'isi/isä'. Got to do it the hard way from the beginning :)",
"Fun fact: In Georgian \"mum\" is ~~\"dada\"~~ \"deda\" (pronounced DAY-da) and \"dad\" is \"mama\" (pronounced ma-ma).",
"I’m definitely no linguistic major but I always heard that many of the languages that use ‘ma’ and ‘pa’ sounds would come from the indo European language. We see a similar connections between mater, mother, and madre due to all of them being a common language back in antiguity. Father, Pater, and padre also follow this. I know people still look for other connections between Latin and old German. Edit : auto correct spelling sucks",
"I think they are just noises that babies make that was adopted into languages, so when language first evolved, they used those words as the babies said them, so they sound similar as it's found the same way",
"Anthony Burgess believed there was a innate reaction to certain stimuli which explained the similarities of certain words across different cultures. Primitives would look up at the moon and make a sound like \"Loo,\" which became words like \"Luna.\" He used his theories when he created an artificial primitive language for the movie Quest for Fire (1981).",
"It's thought to be because sounds like \"ma\", \"pa\" or \"ba\", and \"da\" or \"na\" are among the first sounds a baby learns to say. Parents then assume that those sounds must refer to themselves. It's not always the case, by the way, that the word for \"mother\" always begins with \"m\"; it *is* the case in most European languages which are all related to each other as Indo-European languages. But, for example, Japanese has \"haha\" for \"mom\",\\* while Hungarian (which is not Indo-European but Finno-Ugric) has \"anya\" or \"anyu\". ------------ EDIT: \\* Well, sort of. It's not used now except to refer to one's own mother when talking to other people. I have accidentally started a surprisingly complex discussion here, but among native Japanese speakers the consensus is that children now call their mothers \"mama\". At some point in the distant past it may have been \"haha\", but there seems to be some disagreement about how long ago that actually was. The basic point -- that there are languages where the word for \"mother\" doesn't begin with \"m\" -- still stands, but I could have chosen a better example.",
"Even very regional languages have these similarities... Amma in Kannada Maa is used all over India and Ammi in Urdu.",
"Not just these words that are similar, there are many. The word straight for example. There's a very academic book called \"gods of the word\" by Margaret magnus (if I remember correctly) which is a study of all the similarities.",
"Followup question: Similarly, I noticed that the word \"tea\", specifically chai tea, is universally similar all over the world\\- across cultures and languages. Clearly it came from one place and was adopted everywhere, but why is the word so uniquely dominant?",
"Bit of a rare language hear but in Scottish Gaidhlig we would use Màthair (Mum) and Athair (Dad) not really the same as everyone, I imagine it's the same jn Irish.",
"Tell that to Georgians, for us მამა (Mama) means father and დედა (Deda) means mother. No idea why is reversed",
"Nobody seems to have posted this but \"ma ma\" is the sound you make while suckling at a breast, or making the facial movements which convey that you *want* to suckle at a breast.",
"This video lecture is pretty long but Leonard Bernstein, the classical composer/conductor, did a lecture for Harvard called The Unanswered Question after the Ives piece. URL_0 He explores the idea of “mom” being the first word a hominid ever spoke. Then he goes on to expound on his ideas of a universal language in both words and music. Profound lecture. Hope you find something in it."
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8ethfs | The origin of using "left" and "right" to describe political affiliation, and why left and right were use rather than 2 other things that are opposite each other. | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"I might be completely wrong here, but I think it started after the french revolution. It just described the way the partys sat in the parliament. If I remember correctly one party was even called \"les montagnes\" (the mountains) because they were sitting all the way to the top."
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8euvuq | Why do awesome books come out in May? Coincidence or planned? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Planned - publishers shoot to put out their biggest books in May and June because book sales are highest in summer - people are going to the beach, hopping on a plane for a vacation, kids are taking the time off school. Summer reading is a big thing, and having a book come out in May gives enough time for good reviews to pop up in magazines and the first buyers to rave to their friends before summer vacation kicks into gear."
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8evav0 | Why do so many languages, even when some use a completely different alphabet from English, use the same punctuation at the end of their sentences? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Western influence. Some languages have independently invented their own versions of various punctuation. For example, there are several different variations of the period. However, Western influence is causing some cultures to forego their traditional full-stop mark for the period as we know it in English. For some other characters where the concept previously did not exist in the language (like the question mark in Japanese), they just purely imported it from English.",
"I live in Thailand, the language here as no punctuation nor does it have spaces between words"
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8evfv2 | In America, why does so much of society often become obsessed with culture from about 30 years ago? | So in the early 2000's people were very into "hippie" stuff, it was cool. Now in 2018 there is a lot of 80's style stuff going around in terms of culture, entertainment and so on. It seems much of current culture is based on an interest or obsession with about 30 years ago. In 2025 I feel the 90's will be popular again. | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Because a good portion of the people that are in positions to influence media (film directors, writers etc) are looking back with nostalgia to their childhood and using that as source material for what they're producing. There will be enough people of a similar age to make their works succesful and this, in turn, influences what the public think is cool and what they're happy to buy into. Give it another five years or so and the 80s will be out and the 90s will be in.",
"It’s not just America. Every generation does this. Seriously, read some Alexander Pope or try the Hagakure. Even in the earliest literature known to man, people are bitching “about kids these days” and how things were better a few decades ago. It’s just the human condition. Every generation - past or present - tends to view the past with rose-colored glasses. I suspect much of it has to deal with the fact that our childhoods inevitably become the ‘status quo’ against which today is measured."
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8exy9s | Preference falsification theory by Timur Kuran | Having a hard time trying to grasp this theory, pls ELI5 URL_0 | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Basically, people don't say what they really prefer but instead say what's seen as the acceptable preference. And because people do this, they don't realise that everyone may want what they secretly want... and when a certain number of people put forward their hidden preferences, it can cause a \"tipping point\" effect where the socially acceptable preference that everyone portrays changes. And that is what causes large revolutions that were unexpected.",
"He's saying that people tend to hide their preferences when they want change. They pretend to conform, and thus deprive others of information or motivation to push for change themselves. That doesn't feel true today, at least not in the West. Trump and Brexit seem to be the opposite problem. People who don't want change get drowned out by agitators or by people who desire change for other reasons eg gaining a personal powerbase."
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8f9omp | Why is there so much fighting in Northern Ireland? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"A quick-ish summary of the history that has led to the current situation: By the 1500s, Ireland was sort of ruled by England, but not really. The King of England was only the Lord of Ireland (a title given by the pope) and only really controlled a small part of Ireland. The rest was effectively rules by Norman lords who had integrated into Irish society. Henry VIII came along and split from the Catholic church. No longer recognising the Pope's authority, he declared himself King of Ireland and set about \"reconquering\" it. Protestants were put in charge of Ireland, while the majority of the population remained Catholic. Later monarchs continued this, and sent protestants from England and Scotland to settle in the north east in order to \"tame\" it, as that area had been particularly resistant to British rule. In 1801 Ireland was made part of the UK. Throughout all of this Irish people were treated very badly, and there were lots of rebellions. Eventually the Irish war of independence broke out in the 1920s. The result of this was Ireland being split into the Irish Free State, and Northern Ireland remaining in the UK. This split happened because the majority of people in Northern Ireland were the descendants of those settlers from Britain who were protestants and feel more British than Irish. However, there were still many Irish Catholics in Northern Ireland who weren't happy about being separated from the rest of Ireland. They were also discriminated against by the protestants who were in power. Around the start of the 70s the Provisional IRA formed, who committed acts of terrorism to push for unification with Ireland. But there were also acts of violence against the Catholic population from British authorities and loyalist (as in loyal to the UK) paramilitaries. But eventually a peace agreement was signed in 1998 and the PIRA disbanded. Some splinter IRA groups formed, so there's still some conflict, but much less than there used to be.",
"Because right now in Northern Ireland, there are Nationalists (mostly Catholic and from Ireland) and Unionists (mostly Protestant and from the UK), they don't like each other as they have very different ideals. So they fight. As the Nationalists want there to be a united Ireland and the Unionists want Northern Ireland to be a part of the UK, there isn't as much fighting recently as this was mostly during The Troubles before deals were made, but there's still groups on both sides who refuse to back down"
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8fc64b | Why are guitarists and pianists more likely to receive song writing credits than drummers and bassists? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Copyright applies to melodies and lyrics, but riffs or hooks can have a claim made to them if they really are an unique identifier. Bassists are unlikely to have the melody part on their instrument, and drummers play grooves, so they don’t have a claim. :) Edit - If the songwriters would choose to give a songwriting credit to the drummers or bassists, then they could. :)",
"Motley Crue’s bassist Nikki Sixx has sole writing credit (both music and lyrics) on the majority of their discography. ditto for Iron Maiden’s Steve Harris",
"Because they are more likely to write songs. A drummer or bassist may come up with a rift or an embellishment for a song, but that is alone is not enough for writing credit. If they do more they get credit."
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8fcukh | Why are the sides on a ship called Aft, Port, Bow, and Starboard, instead of Front, Left, Right, and Back? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"because then it doesn't matter where you are standing. They reference portions of the boat and not the surroundings or your perspectives. This makes communication clearer.",
"To add to many of the points above, Port is so named because that side of the ship is the side that gets lashed to the dock/port. (It was originally Larboard, from Middle English's Ladeboard. Lade meant load. Larboard sounded too similar to Starboard to they switched it to Port). Starboard comes from the old English steorbord, meaning the side on which the boat is steered.",
"Other answers aren't wrong, but as a pirate I'd like to provide another perspective. English is a mash-up of several different languages and cultures. The culture of seafaring evolved rather separate from other English-speaking groups. As with medicine or software, extensive technical jargon developed and became commonplace. Sometimes it was to be clearer: a sheet is a particular kind of line, and forward is the general front portion of the ship while the bow is the actual front bit, and starboard is the same place regardless of which way yer facing.",
"From my understanding it’s because in front, behind, left, and right can all be ambiguous on a ship if you’re not looking in the direction of travel. To avoid miscommunication between my left and your left we use a second reference for the ship’s left.",
"Even if you don't know your left from your right, you can see which side the steering oar is on ancient ships which would have been designed for right handed people - hence steerboard - > starboard. You can't dock a ship having a steering oar with that side against the jetty, so the other one is the side you load on. Ladde board - > larboard, later changed to the similar concept of port side by the Royal Navy in 1844 to reduce the confusion between the two similar sounding words.",
"If you are inside the ship or boat, and ask a coworker to go to an area and get something, front and back don't mean anything specific. It's all in relation to the vessel. These terms are like a \"key\" to the map of the boat. So if I need someone to grab a tool, in my case on a large factory trawler fishing ship, I'd say \"Hey Jim, go grab that hammer, it's on the TRAWL DECK, PORTSIDE, INSIDE THE FIDDLEY, AFT OF THE HATCH\". That would make more sense then telling him hey, grab the hammer, it's on the deck(which deck level? The bridge? Trawl deck? 400, 500 or engineering level?), On the left side(left side of what? The boat? The door or hatch? The hand rail?), In the room over there(what room? (In this case the fiddley or casing), behind the door ( behind in relation how?). Seasoned sailors could probably figure it out fast if you said that but they'd think you are weird for saying it like that, and ironically new guys don't understand it right away. It's a general language for a multinational multiethnic industry. Hope this helps",
"Port and Starboard in particular are unambiguous. Left and Right can vary depending on your orientation. While nothing prohibits a group from having a shared understanding, Port and Starboard eliminate the issue entirely. For clarity, Aft is not a side of the ship, rather that would be the stern. Aft means \"towards the Stern\" while \"Fore\" would be \"towards the Bow\""
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8fcz5x | Why is the US so "weird" when it comes to international standards such as date format, non-metrication etc? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"cultural inertia, the US is fairly conservative, culturally. They take a long long time to change things, and this applies to damn near everything from the things you mentioned to language, politics, and socio-economic phenomena. A lot can be said looking at who originally coloniized the US as to why this was, and the conditions of their independance, but thats probably more of an askhistorians post"
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8fe4j1 | How is "fashion" a thing? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"People are all around variable, just like all other aspects of life where there is variety comes preference. There's certain music, accents, speeches, habits etc that people love or don't. Fashion is just another one. There are some humans that will think a kimono is just the most elegant and practical thing ever. For others it'll be heels. Or a nicely tailored parka. All of the Slavic countries have settled on a tracksuit it seems."
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8fgmo8 | Chinese good Samaritan laws | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Good Samaritan laws are special laws that protect someone who is responding to an emergency situation attempting to help. So doing something like breaking a window to rescue a child in a closed car, breaking someone's arm when you try to pull them out of a wreck, etc which technically involves criminal acts such as destruction of property or assault are non-prosecutable. China for the most part does not have these protections so a person or their family can sue you for any damages that may occur in your attempt to help."
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8fo1n4 | Why are rubber ducks such a staple in our culture? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"While the origin of the iconic rubber ducky is not entirely [clear]( URL_1 ), I would say that in the United States, at least, they gained popularity since 1970 because of Sesame Street and Ernie's [Rubber Ducky Song]( URL_0 ). The song became extremely popular and rose in the Billboard charts.",
"I think it's from like last century or whatever, I'm thinking during WWII or the 50's or something and it's just become a trope since.",
"1) Kids love animals. 2) Kids need toys in the bath to help them feel like it's a fun play place and not a dunk tank. 3) Ducks are a natural toy for the bath. 4) We spend our early years in the bath with rubber ducks. 5) Nostalgia 6) We give our kids the same toys that we barely remember but know made us happy in a simpler time. 7) Rinse/repeat"
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8fq2w9 | How did Japanese animation begin and gain it's popularity in the United States and worldwide? | How did Japanese animation begin and gain it's popularity in the United States and worldwide? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"They took inspiration from American animation \\(e.g. Betty Boop inspired the big eyes in Japanese animation\\). Because there never was a moral panic surrounding comic books and cartoons like there was in the US in the 1950s, Japanese animation \\(and comic books that formed the basis for many of them\\) never regressed into \"child\\-friendly\" torpor like in the US. By the time anime started spreading from Japan, there was a robust animation tradition in the country, with adult themes \\(the Japanese public didn't associate cartoons with children's entertainment\\). Japanese animators had learned how to animate a lot on the cheap \\(the distinct anime style means that you can teach a lot of people how to draw the same film\\). In the 80s interest picked up in Japanese culture in general and anime and manga with it. A lot of themes that were rare in US culture was common in anime."
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8fznfc | Why did TV shows go from 22-25 episodes per season (LOST, The Office) to 10 episodes (Better Call Saul)? | I know The Office and Lost were shorter towards the end, but they were still longer than today. | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Tv shows have been bouncing between 22-25 and 10-13 episode for a long time, it isn't recent. It just depends on the show and how much budget they have for that season."
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8g7vpp | Why do almost all countries use the same symbols for numbers despite having different languages? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"So that system of numerals are called hindu-arabic numerals which probably gives you an idea of where they came from. The system originated in india and spread to the arab world around 600AD. Eventually the europeans started to trade with arabs and india and they adopted the system to make trade easier. After that the numerals had a \"critical mass\" which, coupled with european colonialism, spread the system to the rest of the globe. [This wikipedia article goes into more detail]( URL_0 )"
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8gegdv | English names can be confusing. Why is “Bob” short for Robert? Or “Jim” for James? Or “Dick” for Richard? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Back in the middle ages (the 12th-13th centuries, to be exact) there was a trend of \"rhyming nicknames\". Robert became Rob which became Bob, Richard became Rick which became Dick, William ➡ Will ➡ Bill, Margaret ➡ Meg/Maggie ➡ Peg/Peggy. No one's sure how Jim came to be.",
"This phenomenon is not unique to English. For instance, in Russia \"Sasha\" is short for Alexander.",
"Do you how they get Dick out of Richard?"
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8gfqv3 | What does the snake on the medicine emblem mean? | Wikipedia only tells the roots of this caduceus, but I don't understand very clearly the meaning of the elements it has on it. | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"[The Caduceus]( URL_1 ) is actually a symbol of Hermes, often misused as a medical symbol or mistaken for the [Rod of Asclepius]( URL_0 ). The Caduceus was not meant as a symbol of medicine, and as such there isn't meaning behind the snakes as a medical symbol. It was simply misused enough times (documented mistakes by the way) to be accepted as one. These errors are documented to have first occured in USA. However, the caduceus has a possible reason for being linked to medicine, which is a procedure using twine to tie up a limb tightly to prevent removed parasites from easily burrowing back into the muscle tissue when being removed. The Rod of Asclepius is named after the deity of healing and medicinal practice, Asclepius. The rod and snake are two of his symbolic attributes merged into one symbol, suspected to have been done so by the Asclepian cult at the time. The snake in the Rod of Asclepius is thought to represent several things: The ambiguity of drugs (the word for medicine in Greek shares the same word as drug and poison) Snake parts and venom used in some medical treatments The snake is thought to be of the scientific name [Elaphe Longissima]( URL_2 ), a non venomous snake which ate rats, a species of Rat Snake and is more commonly known as the Aesculapian Snake. Edit: Formatting",
"It’s actually possibly a mistake :/ The Rod of Asclepius was actually the symbol of healers/doctors not the Caduceus. URL_0 One theory is that it looked similar enough and hey two snakes has to be better than one right? As for the single snake on the Asclepius again it’s theorised it may be a representation of winding a parasitic Guinea Worm out of human flesh. The worm is wrapped around a stick and wound out over several days. It’s not pulled out at once as it frequently breaks that way and the remainder of the worm in the body starts to rot."
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8ggpxo | When Hercules/Heracles became a God, he became a God of what exactly? I mean, Ares is the god of war, Zeus the god of thunder, etc... Or to be a god you do not have to possess a "title"? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"He's the God of Strength and Heroes. Also Gatekeeper of Olympus, God of sports, athletes, health, agriculture, fertility, trade, oracles and divine protector of mankind.",
"He is god of the human, hero, masculine. He is the only god to be depicted as a half human half god. He is sometimes a strong hero and sometimes a god depending on the writing. Compared to the other gods the story of Hercules is relatively young. You find the story of the gods like Ares and Zeus in different religions but Hercules is mostly just found in Greek and Roman religion. So it is likely an addition after most things have gotten a god to represent it.",
"Godhood in Greek mythology is often inherited. Most Greek gods and goddesses are either given through inheritance or take by force some domain. Hence Zeus, Hades, and Poseidon split the dual domains of their mother and father such that Zeus obtained the SKY and Poseidon obtained the SEA and Hades obtained the SUB-TERRAIN. Zeus is the \"god of thunder\" only insofar as he has control of the sky, and thus the control of weather including thunder and lightning. This is also why Eros/Cupid is a \"god of love\" alongside his mother Aphrodite. Why Persephone is a goddess of agriculture and fertility alongside her mother Demeter, etc. ----- Now, Hercules was denied godhood initially because he was part mortal. Ascending to godhood, he was granted and/or took the domain of \"Heroism\" and \"Athletics\"...simply, of physical might which was a thing Zeus could grant as well as something that Hercules had proven himself as possessing.",
"He was a Demi God as far as I know. Zeus was his Father, and a women named Alcmene was his mother. He was only half a God, but was a Hero of great strength and deed and . He died due to treachery, when gifted a tunic covered in the blood of the Hydra he had slain with a poison Arrow. The Tunic/blood/poison combo burned his skin to the bone, and he uprooted great trees in his death throws which were used for his pyre. His mortal half burned away and his Divine half Ascended to Olympus. He is most associated with adventure, strength, fertility, trade, and with combating the great monsters that threatened Olympus, and terrorized the mortal world and is the Keeper of the Gates of Olympus.",
"Not all pagan gods are the god \"of\" anything. That's a modern Western idea that stems from the fact that most of us learn about pre-Christian European religions in storybooks and not by growing up practicing that religion. Each pagan god would have attributes that it was associated with, and so for example if you wanted beauty you'd go for Aphrodite while if you wanted fertility you'd go for Hera. But there were additional attributes of each, sometimes contradictory or obscure. Also, if pre-Christian paganism was anything like other polytheistic religions that still exist, most likely you would worship one vs. another for completely random reasons that weren't related to what Hercules was the god \"of\", for example your family or village just always had a shrine to Hercules that you were expected to visit on particular feast days, because that's just the way of your people from time immemorial. This also isn't too different from the way I grew up attending St. Matthew's Church, and it wasn't because Matthew is the saint \"of\" anything in particular, that's just what the Episcopal church in our town was called. I wasn't super into tax collecting or anything."
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8gmlm4 | Why did K-pop and J-pop boy/girl bands flourish until today while western ones mostly fade out in the early 2000's? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The UK recently had 2 major boy bands in \"The Wanted\" and \"One Direction\" while the US had a major all-girl band in \"Fifth Harmony\" but you're right, it's faded out big time. [From Wikipedia]( URL_0 ) > Since 2011, boy bands and girl groups have returned to mainstream popularity for the first time after the early 2000s, with the most popular examples being British-Irish boy band One Direction and American boy band Big Time Rush. A new generation of successful girl groups was ushered in by acts such as Little Mix and Fifth Harmony. In addition to this, K-Pop groups, benefiting from high visibility on Social Media and Video sharing sites like YouTube, began to capitalize on their viral power"
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8gmtku | How are Drug Dealers found and interviewed on shows like Netflix’s DOPE? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"you should ask the studio, there are lots of ways. Paid actors pretending to be dealers, ask convicted dealers, or just go around town and find the dealers and ask them."
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8gpdsp | how did East Timor come to exist? | I only learned about this country this week and I have so many questions. It gained independence in 1975 which is super recently. Out of all of Indonesia, why this particular island? And why only the Eastern half??? Do they have border checks if you want to go to the western half? Why didn't the western half want independence too? And apparently 100,000 people died during the Indonesian occupation, which is insane. Why did this happen? Why fight someone from your own country when they just got rid of outside influence from a colonial power? I assume, like similar countries, that the last 50 years of history have been dictated by hundreds of years of Colonialism and shitty rulers. I was hoping someone could give me a simplified run down. | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"You assume right. The (whole) island of Timor was first conquered and administered by Portuguese colonialists, from the 16th century onwards. They set up both commercial outposts and catholic missions. From the 17th century onwards, the Dutch came over and conquered nearly all of Indonesia, including Western Timor. However, they faced resistance from the Portuguese, and [Topasses]( URL_1 ) - native Timorians of Portuguese descent -, and Eastern Timor remained under Portuguese administration. Fast forward real quick to 1975. Portugal has just gotten rid of its dictatorship following a revolution, and its government decided to disengage from its remaining colonies in Asia. Independentists in Timor unilaterally declared independence, virtually unopposed **by the Portuguese Government** However, Indonesia attacked, occupied and annexed East Timor right off the bat, in 1976. Note that East Timor's government was left-leaning, and with the Cold War and all, the US & co. favored Indonesia in this war. :) Indonesian occupation was nightmarish from a Human Rights point of view, you got that right. UN mediation finally led to a solution to the crisis, and eventually East Timor became independent in 2002. [Here]( URL_0 ) is a recap I found on Google Books. TLDR : Shitty colonialism + shitty neighbour. **Disclaimer** - I'm no historian, nor remotely Timorese (?) - I just have too much time on my hands. Feel free to correct me."
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8gvdfn | Was there a time when Greeks worshipped the Titans instead of the Gods? Or did the entire narrative come about after worship of the pantheon of gods was already established? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"In a word, no. While certain gods came and went, and some were considered newer even when they were actually quite ancient, for the most part the gods that the Greeks worshiped remained, as far as this question is concerned, the same. Essentially their pantheon was inherited from the proto-indoeuropean roots much like their language. The gods that we are familiar with, Zeus and the like, have their roots in gods which, as far as we can tell, functioned very similarly based on PIE linguistics. Zeus and Jupiter (Roman equivalent) are both etymologically related to a reconstructed deity [Dyeus Phter]( URL_0 ) which just means \"sky daddy\". This makes sense because they are both fatherly figures of the sky. So where did all the titan stories come from? Well, a few places. For most of human history cultural information was passed down from generation to generation in the form of stories. It helps to have a compelling story to tell and, at times, certain embellishments can be made. Over the course of hundreds of generations and even more embellishments you will eventually wind up with a full fledged mythology. However, that does not mean that all of these stories are embellishments, strictly speaking. One of the interesting facets of Greek ritual observance is their willingness to adopt gods and appropriate their stories and fold them into their own mythologies. This is essentially what is happening at the beginning of Plato's Republic; it opens with a Greek festival to a foreign goddess. Over time, it becomes quite difficult to separate native stories from original stories from adopted ones. So, were the titans worshiped before the gods? Perhaps, but not by the Greeks. However, it is also important to remember that some of the titans were worshiped with much the same vigor and veneration as the gods, they all had their ritual roles to play in the overarching mythology. Addendum: It is also worth noting that some mythologies, such as some of the Roman origin stories, have ancient peoples that founders encounter worshiping deities such as Saturn. Instances such as this could really go either way, as a religion that got subsumed or as literary embellishment. However, most material evidence points to the extreme antiquity of much of the core pantheon.",
"Not Greek but the jotunn or ice giants from Norse mythology were likely personifications of the glaciers they encountered in Scandinavia, especially embellished by a cultural memory of surviving the last ice age. In lots of mythological traditions there are representatives of wild destructive elements of nature contrasted against the benign and beneficial elements that serve man. The Titans and the Greek gods, the jotunn and the vanir of Norse mythology, the fomorians and the Tuatha de Danann of Irish mythology. Even demons and angels from the Abrahamic faiths",
"Nah, the Titans represent the chaos on a planet in the time before. The Gods born from that chaos tamed nature and made the planet livable for humans. It is the Greek Genesis, aka creation myth, to explain where everything came from.",
"It depends on exactly what you mean by the \"Greeks\", that word is applied to a number of related civilization that existed in the region over about 3000 years. The Minoans were the earliest, dating to about 2600 BC. We don't know much about their gods, partly because their language remains undeciphered. But it does appear to be centered around a sun goddess figure and bulls, and bears little relation to Classical Greek gods. Part of their tradition may live on through the legend of King Minos and the Minotaur. The Mycenaeans came about around a thousand years later, after the Bronze Age collapse. Their gods are precursors to the well known Greek gods, but with many differences. Poseidon appeared to be the most central figure and was the god of the depths of the earth, not of the sea. Zeus existed, but was not the chief god, but merely the god of the sky. Many gods of the Greek pantheon were missing, and others in the Mycenaean pantheon have no Greek equivalent. The Archaic Greek period started about 800 BC, with the familiar pantheon. Some speculate the Titans represent earlier shamanistic religions, in much the same way Easter, Halloween, and Yule are remnants of extinct European pagan religions.",
"I rather like the idea that the tale of Medusa is supposed to show how a prior Female-centric religion was ousted in favor of the more traditional Greek religion.",
"Holy shit, it looked like a simple question at first, but soon turned to one of the best ELI5 to me (i am a historian/history teacher). So many interesting answers and things to search later, thanks OP and everyone sharing knowledge.",
"My personal theory is that titans and/or giants show up in mythologies around the world for the same reason dragons do. Ancient people found fossils and invented explanations for their existence. Dragons came from dinosaur fossils and titans came from extinct giant mammal fossils.",
"one quick comment here: I've just finished reading Mythos by Stephen Fry. A better eli5 introduction does not exist imo. highly recommended for an answer to this question and almost everything else you wanted to know about the stories of the ancient Greek gods.",
"While I cannot speak for the matter of worship it is known that they at least held reverence towards some of them early on. Among the older Greek shrines you will find ones for some titans and primordials. So they were at the very least a part of the established pantheon. However it is worth note that the titans and primordials are VERY similar to deities mankind worshiped previously in earlier ages. The night itself was once a god to man, and so was the sun, and the moon, and the planet. So while beforehand they might not have worshiped someone exactly the same, they did worship similar deities."
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8gvztm | If Texas is so diverse, how come its politics are rigidly conservative? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Gerrymandering of the political map. Texas is currently fighting a lawsuit on this that could see some major changes at the state level."
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8gzbde | What is the source behind Christianity's hate of sodomy/anal sex? | I can get the source behind most moral misgivings. Thieving, killing and other such misgivings make sense. Where the hell did the hatred against sodomy/anal sex - and by extension, homosexuality - came from? How did peoples at the time justify that as sin? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"This is an inaccurate use of the word hate on your part. Anything seen as a distraction from procreation was forbidden. Masturbation and homosexuality were equally scorned, if I recall correctly. This was in the old Testament, so not just Christianity. It would include Jusaism as well.",
"A lot of it is in the Old Testament. Leviticus 18:22 You shall not lie with a male as with a woman; it is an abomination. Leviticus 20:13 If a man lies with a male as with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination; they shall surely be put to death; their blood is upon them. Also, the crazy ass story in Genesis 19 where sodomy gets it's name when Angels visited sodom, Lot puts them up and treats them with kindness, then the townspeople surround Lot's house to get the Angels and rape them. Lot tells them they are nuts, and even offers his two virgin daughters to the crowd for gang rape, but he can't have the angels because they are guests and that would be inhospitable. Then the Angels get pissed, tell Lot to gather up the family to get them out of the town, and they will nuke the town. They tell lot and the family not to look back, Lot's wife does, and is turned into a pillar of Salt. Believe it or not, that's a story in the Christian and Jewish holy book. Later on in the story, there is incest between Lot and his daughters, but apparently that was fine with the writers of Genesis. In the new Testament, Paul has some passages against it to the Corinthians, but Paul was pretty much also a rabid anti-semite as seen in 1 Thessalonians. IMO, Paul was every bit as twisted as the writers in the Old Testament who were A-OK with incest. My opinion? If you believe every word of the Bible as the literal word of God, God is one sick fuck. So I choose not to believe every word of the Bible, and I try to avoid people who do believe it is the literal word of God, because those people are typically terrible human beings.",
"One thing to understand is that modern Christianity isn't really about Christ, but rather the development of the Church in the centuries after his lifetime. And the reason for this is threefold. 1.) The gospels themselves are an incomplete, and often contradictory reporting of Jesus's own actions, and only formed the Bible as we know it hundreds of years later, after endless arguments about which books should be considered cannon, or answered vital questions of faith. 2.) Jesus himself spoke in parables, whose meaning was often deliberately unclear (esoteric knowledge hidden for the wise to grasp), and he didn't seem at all concerned with addressing a wide range of behaviour... including specifically sexuality. Much of what Christianity assumes comes from the Old Testament or Jewish theology, and interpretations of Jesus talking about his perspectives of that past *in general*. 3.) One of the main early Church founders was Paul/Saul who famously converted from being a persecutor of Christians. There's a lot of debate about whether Paul actually believed in a human Jesus, all his own experiences appear to be purely visionary. He certainly does not appear to have ever actually met the real person. And Jesus predicted the End Times within the lives of his own disciples, and when this didn't happen, the Church had to constantly re-interpret their own theology to explain facts in the same, *spiritual* understanding. Combine all of that together and you get the tradition of \"What he REALLY meant was...\" which dominates Christian theology to this day. So why are many fundamentalists so, SO against Anal Sex? Ok, we need to take a detour here, into Philosophy and it's affect on the ancient Church. The question of what something \"Is\" long troubled the ancient Greeks. What we would call Epistemology today. Plato famously argued for an abstract concept of something, independent of things, by which we would recognise how much of a \"thing\" that thing is. So imagine a table... ok, it might be a bad table, one of the legs might be shorter than the other; it might wobble and things fall off it; but you still recognise it matches the design off a table, the abstract concept of \"table-ness\". And you can see that Table-osity in the bad Table. [Aristotle disagreed with this.]( URL_0 ) He argued that something was not only defined within itself, not as compared to an abstract idea, the bad table was still a table... but the intended design made it a table. It was *built* as a table, and therefore that's what it was. He argued further that if it was specifically better for that purpose, above other things, this fixed what it \"was\". So for instance, you could use a table to sleep on, but it wouldn't do it as well as a bed. So it wasn't a \"bed\", it was a \"table\". Absolutely, always a table. Following me so far? Ok, the early Church was largely working within a Greek influenced, and speaking world. They had a big soft spot for Greek thought. And a LOT of questions for what God actually meant by, well, everything. Can you see where Aristotle's ideas are suddenly very, very appealing to Christian thought? Not only was he one of the Greek greats, but he seemed to be offering up a way to work out what *God intended* by the design of things you could see in the world. After all, he designed and built it all. And he had his plans. So what was the purpose of sex? What was it designed to do, what does it do *better* than all the alternatives? Answer: Make babies. Sex *must* be for procreation. Anything else must be going against God's design. And the Anus? Well the ancient Greeks had some very weird ideas about how the body worked, but the purpose of it seemed to be excreting. Which means God meant it for that, and that *only*. And that was a dirty thing to do, so God obviously doesn't like the Anus much. Nowhere in the New Testament does Jesus *say* that. It does in the Old Testament, but that was considered a secondary proof of the \"Proof by Understood Design\" the later Church persuaded itself was the \"revealed\" Truth. Combine that with an awful lot of medieval prejudice and lack of medical knowledge, and you get the fundamentalist perspectives that persist to this day about homosexuality.",
"A lot of people here are giving \"because the bible says so\" or \"because sex is for procreation\" answers, which assumes the bible is God's word handed down. If you look at it from another perspective, like /u/Commander_Titler, where the bible was written by men of the time based on what they saw, then the answer is more interesting than just \"because I said so.\" I'm neither a historian nor religious scholar, but I did read an interesting piece about why it became an important part of Christianity when Jesus pretty much didn't say anything about it. It had something to do with how the Greeks were completely open to sodomy and lived very flamboyant lifestyles, and other cultures at the time saw them as being too decadent and wanted to do what they could to be opposite of the Greeks. I wish I could find that piece, but the base point is that a lot of the anti-sodomy stuff comes from just trying to be different from the Greeks.",
"Legacy used to be a very important thing. When a man died, his sons would inherit his money, his property, his titles, his name, and his reputation. Having kids was kind of a big deal, many societies succeeded by simply outbreeding their neighbors. Intentionally not having children, like by leading an openly homosexual life, was seen as a betrayal to your tribe and those who came before you. It was looked harshly upon, as were the sex acts associated with it."
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8gzg5c | How do audiences of talk shows see the graphics and videos that we see on TV? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The audience see it on TV screens hanging from the ceiling of the studio. Source: I've been in the audience several times as it's free entertainment if you live or work near a studio"
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8h1nx7 | Why do contemporary artists seem to produce art in groups of multiple compositions following one theme? Or has it always been like this? | Basically, I'm curious about the tendency for contemporary artists to organize their work in groups, where it seems like they discovered some novel style, and then make a series of works in succession with that style or theme. To provide some examples, in this interview with artist [David Salle]( URL_0 ), you can see clearly the first three paintings shown are related, and then the next two seem related as part of a separate group. I first observed this when looking at the art magazine [Hi Fructose]( URL_3 ), where basically every single artist organizes their work in this way. Finally, for a fictional example, [Homer Simpson]( URL_2 ) in the episode "Mom and Pop Art" produces a series of works related to his breakout piece. Why is this? Does it have to do with being able to fill an exhibition room? Or maybe being able to sell each work individually? Or maybe it's always been like this? [Van Gogh]( URL_1 ) certainly had recurring subject matter, but it doesn't seem to be so deliberately structured as to do multiple takes on a fixed template in a discrete period of time. | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"As a matter of fact the only contemporary artist I've ever met did exactly like that. His justification was that, being a sculptor and being contemporary, he just wanted to try and master different kind of materials so he passed through clay, varnished clay, plastic foam, plastic... so you can effectively group his works in \"phases\". maybe this is less recognizable in classic artist because there was less freedom in choosing their own materials.",
"A lot of these groups can go on for years and years. So it's not really like \"muck together 10 paintings that look kinda similar for a show\", but maybe a decade long fascination with certain techniques or types of imagery. It's a bit like how people will refer to Picasso's \"blue period\", but this literally just a period in Picasso's career where he was painting in a certain style, often using similar subject matter and a lot of blue colors. It wasn't like he sat down and said, \"I'm going to spend 5 years painting a lot of sad musicians on blue backdrops,\" it's just what he was into doing for a while until he then got more into cubism a few years later."
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8h5sxz | What are the origins of the "get off my lawn" joke/running gag? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"‘Until the late 19th century, private lawns in the modern sense were mainly associated with the estates of the wealthy…During the post–World War II economic expansion, many persons from rural and urban backgrounds moved to single-family detached homes with lawns in the suburbs or in horizontally developed cities. Pride in new-found affluence was expressed in attention to these lawns, and the characteristic American high valuation of private property rights was expressed in an especially proprietary attitude toward this real property. In the 1950s, '60s, and '70s, some of these first-generation homeowners were approaching or reaching retirement age, while the suburban-raised baby boomers were accustomed to the affluence symbolized by lawns as unremarkable. This led to instances of the archetypical encounter envisioned by the idiom, of an older homeowner's reprimand of careless or disrespectful minors heedlessly shortcutting across his highly valued lawn.’ URL_0 !"
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8h6md1 | the Nxivum "sex trafficking" charges | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Leaders of the cult would blackmail female members into sexual encounters with Raniere. Blackmail is bad. Using it to essentially force someone into sex with someone else is trafficking."
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8h6p62 | Why is LGBTQ in that order? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It mostly has to do with when each letter was added as a term to the acronym. In the mid to late 80s the term LGB started working it's way into common language as a replacement for the term \"gay\" to describe the LGBT community. Why LGB and not BLG, GLB, or LBG is likely at least in part due to how those letter are pronounced and the level of ease at which the acronym can be said. An additional factor could have been due to the efforts and forged public identities of lesbians in the 70s. In the early 90s, identifying transgender people as a unique part of the LGBT community became more mainstream and the T was added to the already established acronym of LGB. It wasn't until the mid 2010s that the Q was added. There are currently groups and individuals that are beginning to add an I and and an A as well."
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8h79u2 | In the English language, how are contractions prioritized when a word can belong to two different contractions? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It's a matter of emphasis. \"We aren't going\" could be simply spoken, or the \"we\" could be emphasized (an emphasis that is lost in simple text). Similarly \"We're not going\" could be used to emphasize the \"not\" part. Beyond that it's preference. The stylistic choices of language are everywhere, and it's one of the main reasons that most sentences of reasonable length have never been written before."
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8h7jcz | Why do (many) mansions have so many bedrooms? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"A \"bedroom\" is just a room with a specific legal definition. It means it has a minimum total square footage (70-80 at least) and horizontal footage (7 feet) along with things like two means of egress (door and window qualify, for safety), a minimum ceiling height (half at least 7 feet tall), a minimum window size (5.7 square feet), and heating/cooling mechanisms (heating element and either A/C or a window to cool down). Obviously you don't need to put beds in bedrooms, you could use a room for anything. Maybe you make music in one, turn another into a giant dressing room, turn another into a study, a home office, etc.",
"So that when you have a truly epic party, everyone can stay the night and play tennis after brunch the next day. Duh."
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8hbgwp | the E meme | I honestly dont understand | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"us teenagers have lost all sense of humor and now make memes as bizarre and esoteric as possible. basically all the memes on r/deepfriedmemes are a great example, or the zuckerbot meme. i still find it funny tho lmao tl;dr: were fuckin dumb",
"It's a deep fried image of markiplier's face in Lord Farquaad's head. The original image is from 2015, but was recently posted in 2018 by some guy in Tumblr. There's no meaning to the meme, that's what makes it funny, just markiplier's face in Lord Farquaad's head with the letter E. The randomness is what makes it funny. There's no actual meaning",
"[ URL_0 ]( URL_0 ) I found this pretty helpful. It's pretty much what was already said, but I love the site for memes I don't understand."
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8hbuof | Why Are Things Like Homophobia, Transphobia And Islamophobia Called Phobias When They're Not Phobias? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"In our vernacular, \"phobia\" pretty much means fear, but that is not the only use of the suffix. In the world of chemistry, for example, a substance that attracts water is called \"hydrophilic\" (it loves water!) and a substance that does not attract (or may even repel) water is called \"hydrophobic\". In the case of homophobia, transphobia, islamophobia, the do not have to do with irrational fear, but rather ideologies or practices that are disliked, disapproved, not embraced, not found compatible. That kind of stuff.",
"All of those things CAN be a source of fear, even to irrational extremes. Thus making them legitimate candidates to be called a phobia. That isn't the issue. The issue is that those terms are commonly used to describe prejudice which may or may not have fear as a primary basis. To put a finer point on it, the terms are being misused. If someone DID actually have a phobia like that described, the *appropriate* response would be sympathy for the person's condition and some sort of medical intervention. Prejudice, by contrast, does not call for much in the way of sympathy and interventions of a more social nature are the way to go."
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8hh8oq | Why does the UK call it 'drink driving' as opposed to 'drunk driving', when 'drink' isn't an adjective? | Just to update, I have found [a Quora answer]( URL_0 ) that very elegantly explains where it comes from. Though, it doesn't explain why some English-speaking cultures have had an aversion to this terminology whereas others have adopted it. | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"People are fucking *terrible* at judging if they're 'drunk'. The goal is to stop people driving after they *drink* which is much less subjective, and more importantly is not subjectively evaluated by someone incompetent to make that decision. Even more so, like most people I am not noticeably drunk at the point I've consumed enough alcohol to be unable to drive. Becoming impaired to the level that renders unable to react to traffic conditions in a reasonable time happens far, *far* earlier than most of the obvious side-effects of intoxication. A 'drunk' might drive into a tree. But someone who's been drinking will just not stop in time when someone changes lane unexpectedly."
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8himd2 | Why did people in the past speak with such a difference cadence and tone than they do now? | Getting lost in a Wikipedia rabbit hole, I started watching the Joseph McCarthy "have you no decency?" [clip]( URL_0 ) on Youtube. The inflection of the voices in that video sound very different than the way people speak today, and I realize that that is super common in videos from eras past. Why did this happen? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Rhetoric has gotten more casual. In English, orators were expected to speak a certain way to show they were knowledgeable and trustworthy. Somewhere in the mid- to late 20th century, this sort of speaking was characterized as distant, old-fashioned, and out of touch with the average man. Subcultural slang has also mixed into average speaking patterns. Every generation has slang, but it seems like the slang of the last two-three generations has become more widely used in public speaking (again, because the well-established rules of rhetoric are being discarded.)"
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8hkg55 | Why is Picasso considered one of the best artists and sometimes referred to as a “genius”? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"This is, of course, a subjective question, and so you will likely get different answers. But, for what it's worth, here's mine. I always found instructive the image found [here]( URL_0 ). What you see there is Picasso doing the same image in different styles, each at a different level of abstraction. Now, none of these are photorealistic---though he certainly had [related skills]( URL_2 :)---but the point it brings out is that Picasso wasn't limited to abstraction, he was using abstraction as a way to evoke emotion and get across his intentions in a way that others had never come close to. And, importantly, while photorealism is impressive as all fuck, it's not necessarily the best kind of painting. Take, [Guernica]( URL_1 ), which is extremely abstract, but also incredibly powerful. A photorealistic version of that event would be an entirely different kind of work, with an entirely different impact and place in the mind. Picasso was the pioneer of a kind of abstraction that was impressively versatile and powerful. And, he had an outsized personality that people loved. All that combined is what leads to his reputation.",
"He was a pioneer of a movement called “cubism”, which involved painting his subjects in a way that they’d resembled geometrical figures. It inspired other artists to do their own painting also involving lots of geometry. Lots of Spanish painters were pioneers in other modern art movements; say, the two biggest figures of surreal art are also Spanish men: Joan Miró and Salvador Dalí."
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8hm1do | How do people in India know who the Dalits (untouchables) are and why can’t this group do anything to change their status like change their name or profession? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"In cities and towns for most practical purposes like in your school, work, shops or while doing business you don't actually know the person's caste and neither you care. But I'm villages it is quite different. Your social circle is quite small and everyone knows everyome else. Here your caste is part of your identity. You will probably get many different answers for this question, which are all correct but also wrong because in country of 1.3 billion people thimgs drastically change from place to place and situation to situation.",
"In urban areas, it doesn't matter that much. Although, won't say it is completely alleviated. For example, I live in the top tier II city of India and I just asked my mother sitting in front of me this (she's not staunch Brahmin but conservative a little and knows stuff). Some reasons are like names. The surnames can tell a lot. While Mishra, Shukla, Dubey, Tiwari et cetera are Brahmins, just like that Valmiki, Chaudhary for example are Dalit surnames. They can of course change their name but even that practice is so common that it's not a secret anymore. Say a Valmiki can change his name to for example Kumar but that doesn't mean all Kumars are Dalits. But since it is practiced so commonly, caste minded people get the idea. Hope I'm making myself clear. Another way is the rituals! Upper castes tend to (want to) enjoy rituals themselves. Say someone dies in a Brahmin family, the mourning period and the rituals tend to last for 13 days but that is not the case for Dalits, since, from ancient times they have not been able to practice such rituals, it has become tradition for them, so if someone dies in a Dalit family, the ritual barely lasts for 2-3 days. People talking about their rituals and practices is the most easy way to understand. There are other examples too but that raises an obvious question! Dalits today in a modern society can change those rituals right? They are guaranteed by the constitution and law and order and all that stuff. This is true and many tend to do it but this tendency lies in urban areas only. In rural areas, if a Dalit man even tries sitting on a horse for his wedding baaraat (a procession) the upper caste would literally shoot him for attempting to show himself as equal to Brahmins. Of course the law takes its course but the damage has been done and since it's a rural area, even police tends to act loosely because they themself sometimes respect the caste system too much or are afraid of the local upper castes people. And here's what you need to understand! India (a big chunk of it) still lives in those rural areas and this is why it is prevalent and while we are a developing nation and emerging super economy (means people are migrating to urban areas for better lifestyle and standard of living), these are the same people who once lived in rural areas and practiced those same traditions, they feel if they abandon such Brahminical mindset, they're betraying they're culture. So in a subtle way, it still exists in urban areas. For example, we have Dalits in our apartment and while my mother is outspoken (a lot) she has called them Dalit (even after changing name using the same practices that I told you) but she hasn't ever discriminated. Dalits have come in our house, talked, ate, had fun, hell, even cooked in the kitchen. Hope I answered you well. PS - I'm a Brahmin. The sane ones. We don't shoot people for riding horses. Frankly I asked half of this stuff from my mother just now. As an individual who was never imposed all this, I couldn't care less but that doesn't mean I shouldn't know about it.",
"A few ways: 1) Type of job: Dalits tend to do the most menial/dirty jobs, such as cleaning streets, picking up/sorting/disposing garbage, unclogging sewers, working with dead animals/leather, etc. For generations, that's the type of work that has been available to their caste and they historically haven't been able to move out of those. 2) Skin color: Dalits tend to be darker than the others in their community. This is a total guess on my part but based on some of my travels in India. Even in the South where my family is from, and where people are often darker than their Northern counterparts, I feel like people of lower castes tend to be darker. I don't know if it has to do with lower castes perhaps coming from indigenous tribes in India, or simply because those in lower castes historically work jobs in the hot sun. I feel like it might be the latter, but in any case, having dark skin is often looked down upon in India. According to the Indian Constitution, discrimination of individuals due to caste is illegal. Sadly, you don't change thousands of years of social and economic discrimination in less than 100. And those in the \"untouchable\" community still face a **lot** of harassment and discrimination. Especially those who are trying to get educated and move up in life, and those who are fighting for their basic rights.",
"Usually one can guess the caste by a person's surname. As in there are certain surnames which belong only to lower caste people. People have done the changing surnames thing actually, a lot have changed their surnames to general Kumar, Kumari or Gupta. Low mobility. People lived their lifetime in a given area and changing cities (dislocating from your family and profession) was not easy. Eventually someone from you area will notice you wherever you have shifted. Also, since education was scarce for them, finding a job in a new place would be difficult.",
"So I think I might be the only person here who has a degree in sociology majoring in population, so let me explain. First of all, second name is used to recognize caste. Historically, before the rule of foreigners (around 1k years ago), India was basically divided in cities with vast wilderness separating them. The people living in these wilderness were considered \"shudr\" which is more akin to \"Savages\" in historical European culture. These included tribal people as well as outcasts. When these people were captured, due to whatever reason, they were assigned the role of slaves and given menial jobs such as cleaning shit and even scavenging shit, and thus were considered untouchables. This is the origin of this whole class. Now (A) historically cities have lost to tribal kings and vice versa, so whoever lost became the untouchable. And (B) there is ample evidence that whole families of people have changed their status including by changing their name and profession. There is a lot of evidence that people of one caste moved to another city and successfully claimed to be of higher caste. So caste wasn't really as rigid as it is today. Having said that, the first documentation of caste vs class and hence the first official classification was done by the British who were trying to understand the Indian society to be able to better rule them. After the classification, they basically empowered everyone according to the caste and introduced the rigidity we see today. Independent Indian government inherited this rigidity and has resolved to do affirmative actions to fix the disparity between castes, but since last 300 years no official effort has been made to dilute this whole thing. Btw, my father is from a lower caste who studied English, earned a lot of money, married my poor high-caste mother and changed my second name.",
"It's easier to know when you live in a village of 100 to 120 families but you don't care enough nor do you have time if you live in a city of 10 to 20 million people.",
"There are vast cultural differences between different castes, and indeed, between any countries' social classes. An untouchable couldn't fake being a higher caste the same way that I, a nerd from the suburbs, can't put on a baggy coat walk up to the nearest crips hangout and say \"what up g? Let me in your gang\" Faking a culture is harder than faking an accent, and even foreigners who have been speaking your native language for decades still usually have a noticeable accent.",
"I imagine it's a bit like how people in the US know who the Jewish people are. Lots of little things.",
"As limited as my understanding is, for someone not born in this culture, it seems a combination of religion, tradition & peer pressure The caste system has its origins in Hinduism religion & reincarnation, telling you're from a caste you're not is a big sin. There's no equivalent in western culture Tradition and peer pressure ensure that either their surroundings already know one's caste or that the question comes fairly quickly in conversation, and aforementioned religious reasons compel if they're practicing Hinduism that they don't lie about it Edit: damn autocorrection on smartphones",
"Their major religion is based on the belief that these people were born in that position because they did something bad in their previous life.",
"India has an affirmative action program for the formerly untouchable castes to raise their social status. And this program is very extreme. Mandatory 25% quota for lower castes in all universities and government jobs. In addition to this there are a lots of social security programs specifically for those castes. So if you give up your caste, you are giving up these benefits for yourself and all your descendants.",
"The thing about this that gets to me is that there's something like 200,000 of them. It should be obvious to them by now that their society isn't going to help them. Grab some pitch forks or rocks or something and storm the damn castle for crying out loud.",
"Dalits is not a homogenized community. It's a composite term which includes hundreds of communities , which exact ones are included changes depending on whom you ask. The closest official , properly defined term is an Scheduled Caste (SC). Castes groups are defined by culture and relations first . The social standing of a caste is then defined by the predominant occupation of the people in the caste. Just as an Jew doesn't stop being a jew because he isn't succesful, a few rich 'chamar' persons (an SC caste) doesn't change the whole caste. Nor does an person wish to disassociate himself from their group. Castes works in the similar way race stereotypes work . It's dependent on the whole group , although your own worth is(should be) defined by yourself. An apt analogy for america is black people can be called dalits , hispanic/brown being the middle castes and white people being the upper castes. Castes used to change their level by either winning a war or growing rich by trading or agriculture. Weavers were a traditionally rich caste , but with the advent of british who broke the Indian cloth industry , they lost their fortune and were now demoted to lower caste level. My caste grew rich and won a bunch of wars in 13-14th centuries and we have since managed to retain our higher caste status. I can be an unsuccessful sloth, but my higher caste group identity gives me some privilege via the connections.",
"The caste system is actually of Portuguese origin word from castē. The British in India had a rule called divide and rule to try and divide people based on religion. This went on to divide even sects within religion. E.g. Buddhism is considered to be part of Hinduism, but British identified it seperataly although it stems from Hinduism. In ancient India they had a class system called Varnas where people were ranked from top to bottom At the top to bottom: Brahmins - Hindu Priests Kshatriyas - Kings and Warriors Vaishvas - Merchants and Landlords Shudras - Commoners who served the above This ancient class system is not exclusively to Hinduism. You see it in the western world too with Kings at top and less wealthy at bottom of the chain. When the British and Islamic invaders came to India they wanted to divide and rule India and win votes for their parties. One way was to convince the \"lower class\" i.e. dalits that they are not true Hindus and if they convert to Christianity or Islam they will be treated better. In ancient times as well if you were born into a family whereby your father was an architect, then it would be natural for the son to follow that field etc, hence you may see why the dalits groups status is passed down generations. However many spiritual figures in India aimed to end this such as Lord Swaminarayan. Untouchables in India were referred to as \"Harijan\" meaning \"to belong to God\". However with the divide and rule mindset widespread it is difficult to get rid of it completely. P.S I studied religion at Uni."
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8hrzfk | what, historically, has led Europe to be more laid-back than English-speaking countries when it comes to sex and nudity in the media? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Europe kicked the Puritans out and sent them to England, and then England kicked them out and sent them to the US.",
"Much of early American was settled by religious dissidents, Catholics and Puritans from the UK, and Huygenauts from France. This led to religious values being more prominent in the US than in Europe, including those on sex. Also, freedom of religion prevented religion in the US from being institutionalized into the sort of de facto state sponsored religions we see in Europe, which also kept religious values more alive. Also, frontier cultures tend to be more sexually conservative in general, and the US is closer to its frontier roots. Men usually outnumber women, and the law, social services, and family are far, far away, causing adultery and promiscuity to have greater consequences."
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8ht5y5 | How do words become official words? | Apart from a word being put in a dictionary, how did/do words become official words? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"There is no such thing. The dictionaries reflect words that people use. If people use a certain word and understand its meaning, then it is a ‘word.’ There’s no such thing as an ‘unofficial’ word. Some people might like to insist that slang words or dialects are not ‘real’ words. This is nonsense. Language changes over time, as words get created or fall out of use. Go read some Old English and see how much our language has changed over the years!",
"I originally intended this to be a response to /u/Midnite_St0rm, but as it seems to answer OP's question, it's probably worth making it a top-level reply. Quoting Midnite_St0rm: > The dictionary not only reflects words people use but also words that are legally recognized. There are plenty of slang terms that are not in the dictionary and thus not “words,” technically speaking. You claim to have majored in English and Professional Writing, so you should realize that this is total garbage. There are two problems here: 1. There is no law in any country I know of -- certainly not the US or the UK -- that stipulates which words are \"legally recognized\" and which aren't. In fact, most countries don't even specify an official language -- in the US, English has no legal standing except that it happens to be the language used by government, the courts, business and so on. In the UK, English is only an official language in constituent countries that have decided to require the use of a minority language; e.g. in Wales, the official languages are English and Welsh, but only to ensure that Welsh is granted equal status with English. In England, there is no official language. 2. Just because a word is not in \"the dictionary\" doesn't mean it's not an \"official word\". First of all, which dictionary are you talking about? Second, dictionaries have no official standing in any case. Third, if a word is not in the dictionary, it's probably because there's a limit to the number of words that can be listed. The nearest thing you'll get to having \"official\" words is in the official rules to a word game, such as Scrabble, which might stipulate a specific dictionary to be used for official tournaments. But that has no legal standing whatever: it's just an attempt to make a game as fair as possible. The reason \"fshlddjslmd\" isn't a word is not because it's not listed in a dictionary. It's because you simply mashed your keyboard to produce a random string of letters. It can't be made to fit a pronounceable word in English (it doesn't even have any vowels in it). A word like \"[contrafibularity]( URL_0 )\", on the other hand, is a different matter. Although the writers of *Blackadder* invented the word for comedic purposes, it is technically a word in English. It follows all the conventions of English orthography and morphology, has a grammatical ending that indicates that it is an abstract noun, and is even used in a sentence: \"In that case, sir, I hope you will not object if I also offer the doctor my most enthusiastic contrafibularities.\" In all the ways that count, it is technically a word -- just not a very useful one. When first coined, though, it simply didn't have a precise agreed definition (beyond it being clearly a near-synonym of \"congratulation\") and was known only to at most a few dozen people. However, since that episode aired, some Brits have been using the word to describe an insincere expression of congratulations. It's still not used widely enough to warrant inclusion in the Oxford English Dictionary, but that doesn't stop it being a word.",
"Almost nobody cares if a word is official. L'Académie française does care; for instance, when Walkmans came out, they had a contest to determine the official word for it, and the winner was \"le troubadour\". Everyone called it \"le walkman\", so that was the real word, and l'Académie could go suck eggs."
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8hulv8 | How come the last name comes first in some Chinese traditions? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Isn't it so, that in Chinese they put the higher / more important bits first? Like in English you would talk about Seattly, Washington, USA, while the chinese would talk about USA, Washington, Seattly. Same with the date. it's year, month, day The last name is more important, so they put it first. It's even more important than a title if i'm not mistaken And Chinese isn't alone in that regard. I believe Vietnamese, Korean and Japanese does it as well"
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8hvw70 | What language is our conventional punctuation from (?,!,.,etc.), and how did almost all languages in the world come to incorporate them? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"European languages first acquired punctuation when monks began mass-producing copies of the Bible. The Bible was meant to be read aloud, so the punctuation was intended to help the reader know where things would start and stop. It was pretty disorganized for about 1000 years. Then when the printing press was invented, printed books really took off. After the printing press made books available to everyone, it became more important to standardize punctuation. As for the other question, that has to do with colonialism. Europeans exported European culture and with it their writing conventions. (They also exported a whole lot of disease and war, but that’s another topic.)"
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8i0l06 | What would happen if Canada were to declare it is no longer part of the commonwealth? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Something the other answers have missed is the fact that \"The Commonwealth\" is not the same as being a \"Commonwealth Realm\", i.e. sharing the UK's royal family. Most countries in the Commonwealth are not Commonwealth Realms, but currently all Commonwealth Realms are in the Commonwealth. It's unprecedented, but in theory Canada could leave the Commonwealth without removing Queen Elizabeth II as their head of state. It's never happened before, but I don't think there's any rule that you *have* to be in the Commonwealth if you have her as your head of state. The Commonwealth is a loose association of independent countries. Not much would happen as a direct consequence of leaving. Canada would no longer take part in Commonwealth events like the Commonwealth Games or attend the meetings of the Commonwealth heads of government. It could strain relations with other members of the Commonwealth, but there wouldn't be any immediate effects. It would be very unusual to have a Commonwealth Realm outside of the Commonwealth (perhaps it would make that term invalid), but no one could stop Canada from doing it. Except maybe if the Queen decided to abdicate the Canadian throne."
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8i3wrm | Why has Delhi, a deeply inland city, managed to grow so big and become the capital of India? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"> In the early 13th century the city passed into the hands of five successive Turkish and Afghans dynasties of Delhi. They built a sequence of forts and townships. > Delhi came under the British control after the Indian Rebellion of 1857. The British declared Calcutta as official capital. But in 1911 Delhi was again made the capital of India. > Also the location of Delhi is in the heart of India So it's basically a mixture of regimes taking over the city and it being fought over a lot. It has a lot to do with Indian pride of reinstituting their own capital. Source: URL_0"
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8i5abv | Why does breast cancer (and to a lesser degree prostate cancer) get so much more funding and awareness than any other cancer? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The short answer is Marketing. Breast and Prostate cancer are \"sexy\" forms of cancer and get a lot of money donated due to fundraisers such as Save the TaTas and the pink ribbon decal sales.",
"There are many different factors why some cancers are more promoted regarding awareness than others. Usually its a combination of (rising) incidence, differences in medical (and economic) costs if found in early stages in contrast to endstages, curative options for early stages, diagnostics, etc. Both prostate and breast cancer are one of the leading cancers in M/F and can be diagnosed in VERY early stages if a person is aware of the signs and symptoms and thus can be treated in full. A prostate exam along with an elevated tumour marker called PSA and biopsy or a breast exam with mamography and biopsy will almost always reveal a displasia. Afterwards either surgery, hormone therapy or a combination are simple therapeutic choices. In contrast, lung cancer is hard to diagnose in early stages and even harder to treat (due to diagnosis being in end-stages). TLDR; breast/prostate cancer are very common (even in younger adults), can be diagnosed very early, leading to a full curative treatment with almost no complications.",
"I'm going to spitball a few other contributing factors re: the breast cancer aspect. While lung cancer is associated with the \"bad\" personal and avoidable choice to smoke (though certainly not all sufferers smoked), breast cancer is seen as blameless. Breast cancer is thought of as striking young women, other cancers are more associated with older victims, rightly or wrongly. And just, breasts. People can't get enough of them.",
"Because any cancer that can absolutely destroy your basic sexual identity is going to be super emotionally charged, especially when they're such prevalent forms. The thing about breast cancer especially is that it's not like lung, liver, kidney, intestinal, or other cancers that often have specific elements present (smoking, etc.) that greatly exacerbate your chances of getting it. Breast cancer can and will strike so many women who otherwise have lived fairly bland (in a good way) lives. In short, because it's just such a fucking asshole of a disease, and as such it gets a lot of attention, and therefore the cycle continues."
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8i5crr | How do we develop music tastes? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"I actually studied musicology and cultural attitudes towards music, so this is an informed answer! tl;dr: It's complicated as fuck. Let's start low-level. Attitudes towards harmonies, scales, musical tones, etc. seem to be mostly cultural. People across cultures recognize the octave interval (because it's natural; going up an octave means doubling the frequency of the note). The octave interval is universally pleasing to one degree or another. Beyond that, it is hard to make any generalizations about what sounds \"nice.\" In most Western cultures (with a shared musical tradition), the major scale sounds \"nice,\" but that is not true in other cultures. Arabic music involves minute pitch changes, which Westerners would either not notice, or would perceive as unpleasant or foreign; those who grew up with Arabic find it pleasing. So the first step in developing your musical tastes is **what is reinforced culturally** on a very low level like note intervals and chords. After that, we can move up a level to things like chord progressions. These are still culturally informed, but not as strongly. The I - V - vi - IV progression, famously [parodied by Axis of Awesome]( URL_0 ), evokes various emotions of redemption or hope in Westerners, but that is only because we've been exposed to movies and TV shows and songs which use that pattern emotionally. People who grow up with no exposure to Western music do not show that kind of emotional response to this pattern. **Emotional content of music is not inherent, but what you're trained to hear**. The same thing applies to subcultures. Someone who is not interested in speed metal, and who has very little exposure to it, will literally just hear it as fast noise, because they don't have cultural/emotional associations tied to it. If you grow up with speed metal, or you start listening to it because of your friends, you will become \"fluent\" in its \"language\" and certain tropes will become more meaningful to you. **You can learn appreciation of musical tropes**. (Incidentally, musicians or those musically trained show a higher emotional connection to music of all kinds, because they're fluent in a wide range of compositional techniques) Beyond that, it gets weird and complex and is an area of active research. There's lots of evidence that exposure to music can make you get used to it and even like it, and music is definitely used as a social tool, so the conclusion there is that **your tastes are affected by what your family & friends like**. Some research suggests that given **personality traits are linked to musical tastes**; this may seem like an obvious conclusion, but with things as nebulous and hard-to-nail-down like \"personality\" it's an important question to approach scientifically. People with a high degree of empathy seem to prefer mellow music like indie rock or some pop, while people with an analytical brain prefer complex/harsh music like metal (Greenberg, Baron-Cohen, Stillwell, Kosinski, & Rentfrow, 2015). Finally things can get even more wild. There is evidence that high testosterone levels, particularly in men, are correlated to a dislike of complex music. Neurological differences in the brain may impact what you get out of music. It's an exciting area of research!",
"A current study shows that it's what your father forced you to listen to in the car as a child. In one study, a 6 year old girl became suddenly a huge fan of Rage against the Machine and Haken's \"Cockroach King\". She also displayed a fondness for Metallica\"s \"Call of the Cthullu\" after being told who H.P. Lovecraft and the Cthullu was. And oddly \"Abracadabra\" by The Steve Miller Band is also an outlier. The study is ongoing but the hypothesis is that musical tastes are driven by initial exposure and evolve over time from that point of initial exposure. Source - I force my kid to listen specific music and see what she likes. Thus far, she has good taste.",
"It's all about familiarity. Whatever you've heard before, you'll like more. They call it the \"mere-exposure\" effect in psychology. Wikipedia has a nice overview with some simple experiments to explain the effect: \"Tones of two different frequencies were played to different groups of chicks while they were still unhatched. Once hatched, each tone was played to both groups of chicks. Each set of chicks consistently chose the tone prenatally played to it.\" \"Zajonc (a researcher) tested the mere-exposure effect by exposing Chinese characters for shorts amounts of time to two groups of individuals. The individuals were then told that these symbols represented adjectives and were asked to rate whether the symbols held positive or negative connotations. The symbols that had been previously seen by the test subjects were consistently rated more positively than those unseen...Members of the group with repeated exposure to certain characters reported being in better moods and felt more positive than those who did not receive repeated exposure.\" According to Zajonc, the mere-exposure effect is capable of taking place without conscious cognition, and that \"preferences need no inferences\". So, you like certain music cause you've heard stuff like it before, even if you didn't really think about or notice it.",
"I remember reading somewhere that our music taste is mostly affected by the music we are exposed to when we are young. This makes that \"New Gen\" music is mostly written off as shit by someone who listened to (their) \"good\" music. If we don't keep this in mind, we will all yell: \"Old music is way more better\" at some point - which may be true, but you need to have grounded arguments to back up that statement. For me personally, I actively try to maintain an open mindset when it comes to different genres, different styles etc. Nowadays any noise can be classified as music (looking at you dubstep), so don't go and argue whether it is or isn't. Whenever I hear a new song, I say to myself: \"There must be a place, a time, a situation where this song will be a perfect fit.\" And by that logic I will try to enjoy it for what it is. Experience also tells me that frequent exposure to things you initially don't like can make it more tolerable - some songs/artist need to be listened to more than once before you can form a good opinion. It is an acquired taste after all.",
"mine came mostly from my brother and dad because they were the people who listened to music around me when I was young."
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8i5td3 | Why is laughing universal? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The only guess I’ve ever heard is that it is a biological response to signal safety. For example, if a chimpanzee hears something approaching in the woods, it will assume it is a predator. But if it turns out to be something benign, they begin laughing as a way to signal to others that the situation is safe. Proponents of this theory argue that humans extend this same idea to social situations. For example: A joke usually involves a situation that is absurd, a violation of social rules, or an unexpected response. Laughter is therefore a way of signaling that we observed something unusual but it is actually okay and we are amused rather than scared. It cements group loyalty and friendship. On the other hand, imagine if someone tells a racist joke. The listener does not laugh. This communicates that the jokester has gone too far and has trespassed social norms in a way that is not acceptable. The primitive chimpanzee part of the brain is saying, “We are still in a dangerous situation, because you have broken our trust.”"
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8i6hi6 | Why do many people find cockroaches to be so uniquely revolting, and even frightening, compared to many other critters and insects? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Cockroaches may spread a range of diseases. It is believed that the cockroach may be a reservoir for a range of bacteria including salmonella, staphylococcus and streptococcus. The cockroach can also harbour viruses such as the polio virus. And they NASTY",
"no expert here, but perhaps it's because they are hard to kill, big, and usually come with more than one.",
"Cockroaches can carry disease and spread it to other cockroaches as they cannibalise their dead, and usually if there are cockroaches, it's because the place they are in is usually pretty filthy. They dont like clean spaces. To add, on top of being hard to kill, for every 1 roach you see, theres 20-30 you arent seeing and they reproduce like crazy.",
"They live in places that are dark and damp. They live typically in filthy areas, but will be anywhere they can get shelter, water and food. Sewers, dumpster, trash areas. In the home it may be in the basement, bathroom, and underneath the kitchen sink. Humans see them less out in the open like flys, beetles, ants, etc. Getting rid of cockroaches is very tough. All of this gives them a bad reputation, although some of the bad rep is understandable."
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8ia0lj | Why is it not in the modeling industry's best interest to have diverse body types? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Most people don't want to see what they look like. If they wanted that, they would just look in the mirror. They want the fantasy, great looking people in great looking clothes, or lack there of. The modeling and fashion industry caters to this. Give the people what they want, not necessarily what makes the most sense.",
"The short answer is that companies that use unachievably beautiful models get better sales. As to why? It's a little more complicated. Modern marketing is predicated on a psychological principle called Maslowe's Hierarchy of Needs. This principle is considered antiquated in psychology, but it's still in use in marketing. According to this theory, people have needs, but these needs are ranked. For example, food and shelter are needs that supersede all others, where people are often willing to betray, steal, or do terrible things to meet them. As you meet your needs, you move up the pyramid, wanting to feel safe, then part of the community, then respected by your peers, and finally, to chart out a vision of who you want to be, and achieve it. Clothing, as an item, falls into shelter and safety. But when you're marketing clothes, that's not the need you are marketing towards. The sort of person who can afford to buy clothing frequently enough to be swayed by advertising doesn't need it for shelter. Clothing is therefore typically marketed to one of the higher needs. If your goal is to market to people for one of the final two needs, then you have a few choices. Expensive and well-made items can buy respect, and more rarely self-actualization, but most people can't actually afford that. They're looking for the same thing, at a discount. One of the ways you can achieve this is through marketing. If you associate a brand with an activity, like for example associating your capris with drinking white wine in the sun, then people who might not actually have time or money to do that, but like to imagine themselves that way, will be drawn to them. It can also have an association with a sense of community approval, being a member of the local 'book club', for example, that meets to drink white wine in the sun, and showing that membership and belonging off through clothing. Beautiful and unattainable models show these symbolic scenarios in their best light. If the girl drinking white wine in the sun in the capris is beautiful, and at an elegant villa on the Spanish Rivierra, lit by a perfect sunset, with an expression of elegance and beauty, then it best delivers on that mental association between the product and the identity that you are buying the product for. In essence, the goal of the beautiful model isn't to tell you that you'll be this beautiful, or that the clothing will look this way on you, but to heighten the desire to express yourself through that clothing by presenting the clothing's imaginary context as more beautiful than reality."
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8iedgn | Why does Breast Cancer get almost all focus and support against; while countless other cancers are publically ignored? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"better PR. We're all pretty shallow and ignorant in the bigger picture. Breast cancer has by far the most money put into advertising so more people know about it and more people put money into it. Sadly a lot of that money goes into organizations that are really just hangers on to the whole issue. You've got people who contribute nothing or next to nothing to breast cancer treatment and research but do plenty of advertising for it so they can accept donations."
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8igh7f | Why was the O.J. Simpson case so huge at the time? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"picture this: David Beckham's wife, Victoria is found dead, along with a guy friend of hers. No one knows who did it, except now there's a car with David Beckham in it being chased down the freeway by police (slow-speed chase). It goes all the way to his house where he closes himself in and threatens to kill himself if the police come in. He's eventually taken in by police for questioning, and during this time, at the scene of Victoria's murder, there's a bloody soccer ball which may have David's blood on it. During the case, a police officer who is a mega-fan of Arsenal and Liverpool (they hate Manchester United) is being set up as possibly fabricating evidence (at the time DNA evidence in criminal cases was very new technology, and jurors could be convinced that it wasn't good enough). All evidence in the case points to David Beckham killing his wife, with no other possible suspects. But he is acquitted anyway (due to having good lawyers). This all played out on TV every day.",
"it was televised right from the start.. the police chase of OJ hiding in the white car made it famous before it was even in court"
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8ihr0x | What happens when a former US President dies? How does the country react? Are the protocols similar to UK Royalty? | I've not been around long enough to know... | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Flags go to half staff, big funeral, news coverage, etc. Not sure what the UK does considering QE2 is an immortal. Seriously though what are the UK protocols and I can tell you of they're at all similar.",
"If a former President dies, they have a big funeral, maybe a moment of silence before sporting events, and the news channels run a bunch of coverage about what a swell guy he was. Ronald Reagan died in 2004 and I don't recall it being a terribly big deal at the time. This question is going to become a lot less hypothetical soon, as George Bush Sr. is quite old and his health is failing.",
"Former presidents are offered a state funeral, along with some other public officials. There's a lot of tradition but relatively little legally defined protocol; a lot depends on the wishes of the family. Generally there is a funeral procession in Washington, the body lies in state at the Capitol for people to pay their respects, and there is a funeral service usually at the Washington National Cathedral attended by government officials and foreign dignitaries, and maybe more services elsewhere. Then they are interred whey they or their family wish. In the olden days there would be a funeral train but nowadays it can be done in a single day. Most presidents choose to be buried at their Presidential Library or at Arlington National Cemetery if they're eligible. Like I said, a lot of this is up to the individual and their family. Richard Nixon declined a state funeral when he died in 1994."
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8ij385 | where the five-day, 40-hour work week came from? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The 40 hour workweek was mandated by law in 1940 as part of the Fair Labor Standards Act. But the whole thing actually started in England in the early 1800s when people there were organizing for shorter workdays. The slogan that they used was: \"Eight hours' labour, Eight hours' recreation, Eight hours' rest\". All across Europe and all through the 1800s workdays gradually got shorter and shorter - first to 12 hours and then to 10 hours. They finally got 8 hours about the same time as the United States. In the meanwhile, in America it wasn't a concept that took hold until the mid 1800s. Americans got serious about it in the 1860s when the National Labor Union tried to get Congress to mandate an 8 hour workday. In 1886 the \"Haymarket Riot\" was a rally over workday length. It was a national rally and walkout by workers, but in Chicago it turned violent. It began the marking of May Day (May 1st) as Labor Day. We later moved the official holiday to September. Over the next several decades various organizations mandated 8 hour work days for their union members - government employees, railroad employees, etc. Ford was the first to have a 40 hour work week of 8 hour work days as a standard sometime around 1926. And then in 1940 the Fair Labor Standards Act was amended to mandate a 40 hour workweek for most industries. And we've kind of been there in one way or another ever since."
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8ilzs0 | For someone who doesn't understand music or music theory at all, what exactly is the big deal about "A Hard Day's Night"'s opening "chord"? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Without going too far into details about the notes, it was essentially a chord people couldn’t figure out for a little while. No instrument or 12 string guitar could recreate that same sounding chord. Later they found out that the frequencies of the chord were so unique because each member played a chord or a note from that chord at the same time, but the piano included an f note that could not be played on the guitar when holding that specific chord. tl;dr - the beatles threw in a rogue f note during that chord that made it sound so unique.",
"It's kind of like that terrible Facebook meme where two guys look at the same number from different sides and have different ideas over what it is. The people who listen to it and try to examine the chord and pin down a name for it couldn't reconcile all of the sounds being produced because they used several different instruments, and most people were attempting to reproduce it on a single instrument, or couldn't nail down a few of the notes accurately. The main members of the band remembered what they each played, but it took some audio detective work and several interviews before a definitive answer was found, mainly because the guy playing piano played a note or two outside of the expected range of the guitars and bass.",
"Also If anyone could care to: ELI5: what's a chord, a note and other such music things/terminologies?",
"A lot of really good explanations, but I also wanted to add that one of the issues is that chords have a particular role in chord progressions based on what they are. The V chord, which is based on the 5th note of the scale (D major in the case of Hard Day's Night) has a kind of \"finality\" to it that makes you \"want\" to go back to the key center (called the I chord). The part where they sing \"cuz when I get you alone\" is on the V chord, and it really feels like you're going home when you move onto the I in the next bar. The Hard Day's Night chord is particularly wonky, since it's sort of like 3 half-chords all layered on top of eachother--it's made of 5 notes (basic chords are 3), and the notes don't really align with any commonly-used pattern to make up a chord, so it doesn't really sit in the ear clearly as having a clear role. It's also the first chord in the whole song (and album/movie!) so it has an extra layer of \"suspense,\" since you don't know what's coming next. Combined with the way it actually sounds (the bright, clanging tonality), the effect is almost like you have a flashbulb going off in your face--it's disorienting and kind of exciting, and when the afterglow of it fades the band is there and playing loud. The Beatles weren't the first or the only musicians to ever do something like this by far, but the album is and was hugely popular, and so it reached a lot of people."
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8imcpc | Why is it that 8:30-5 or 9-5:30 seem to now be the most common working hours? Growing up I was always told 9-5 (thanks Dolly). Is there a reason for the extra half hour? I work in the U.K. if that helps. | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Usually it's that you're entitled to a break by law, but they don't have to pay you for your break. So the shift is 8.5 hrs even though you only get paid for 8. Doing it on 8s is usually easier for HR/payroll to deal with"
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8imqs0 | In Japan, adult adoptions outweigh infant adoptions by a huge margin. But how do biological parents deal with their adult children being adopted into another family later in life? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It’s mostly business related. A company owner ‘adopts’ their successor to keep the business in the family.",
"You're thinking more of the emotional aspect of it but this is more of a business venture. Say Boss had been working all his life to create a good company but doesn't have kids. He won't be able to pass it down a lineage. Instead he starts looking for a successor in his own company. They talk, the boss makes sure that he's a hard worker and can manage the business. He takes him aside and then says that he wants him as a successor. If things go well then the worker agrees. To his family it's not about him abandoning them, it's just a name change basically. So the worker/successor gets adopted and the company thrives that it was passed down through the \"family\" so to speak. The successor is not abandoning his family, he's just making a step up the ladder"
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8iouwt | Why do furniture stores decorate things such as end-tables with thick books? | Every time I walk into a furniture store, many pieces of furniture are accompanied by lamps / vases that also have price tags. Yet sometimes there is just a thick book on the piece of furniture; a book that doesn't have a price tag. Why? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It's the same reason people will clean or out new furniture in a home before selling it—it's all about staging. It's a mental game, really. If you can make it easier for someone to imagine what a piece will look like in their home, then they *will* imagine what it will look like in their home. If they do that, they might like what they see in their head. If they like what they see in their head, they're more likely to buy the piece.",
"As another poster said, it’s staging. It makes it seem more personal. And while it’s staged, it makes it seem less staged. In real estate, you wouldn’t want to take photos of a overly cluttered and messy room, but you don’t want photos of a bare room either. Sometimes people have a hard time envisioning what they can do with a space or item. By putting items in the space, they can imagine it.",
"It’s about making you think beyond the sale. It’s easier to imagine that table being in your own home when it has things on it, because you’ll be putting things on it too if you have one. You hear similar things when you’re dealing with purchasing clothes in shops with actual service. For instance, if you’re buying shoes, the salesperson might make references to how the shoes will last longer if you only wear them at the office, and commute with a different pair. They may also bring up that when you need them to be repaired, only bring them back to the specific shop you’re in. They’ll probably tell you about how easy it is to care for the shoes when you’re in your own home too. And that if you care for them well, they’ll last you a great deal of time. Also, when they try to upsell you, they introduce the extras in a natural and conversational way to lessen the blow of a higher price. How much more likely would you be to buy these wooden shoe tree inserts (£100 extra for a piece of wood) if a salesperson brings them up at the end, after you’ve already made the decision to buy the shoes? It’s too sudden and clear that they’re trying to take advantage of your buying mood. You’d almost certainly be more likely to buy them if they and their benefits are introduced to you whilst the salesperson pretends to also care about who you are and what you’re up to in life. Whilst being informative, it’s an attempt to put you in a mental place where you already own the shoes, so the idea of buying them doesn’t seem so foreign to you. If you leave without buying because you’d like to think on it, they’ll probably say that they’ll see you soon, whilst giving you a business card with all the info about those shoes on it. It’s all an attempt to put you in a place of returning, so they can work the same tricks on you again. Don’t think about how the sales staff is trying to make you part with your money, think about how great it will be to walk the streets with those Edward Green Plain Black Oxfords that cost more than most peoples rent instead! The tricks don’t always work though. :("
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8ire72 | How apples became symbolic of teaching/learning. | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"In short: Good marketing. At the end of the 19th century most apples grown in the US were used for making hard cider or distilled spirits, and weren't the sweet eating varieties we know today. When the temperance movement started gaining momentum apple growers were in trouble. Without alcohol they didn't have a market. So there was a rush to grow bigger, sweeter varieties of apple for eating, and an accompanying marketing push to \"re-brand\" the apple as a wholesome and healthful fruit. Teachers were traditionally supported by their students' families, and in rural areas this support was often in the form of produce, since most people didn't have excess cash to spare. So there was already a tradition of giving teachers agricultural products as a form of payment or gratuity, and teachers were considered to be highly moral and upstanding, so \"An apple for teacher\" was a great marketing message.",
"I assumed it was because of the old Adam and Eve myth when they ate from the tree of knowledge and many presume this to be an apple tree."
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8ivu8b | Why is a lion seen repeatedly in British, specifically English Imagery? | A lion can be seen in their league and national football team badges, as statues in Trafalgar Square and a lion is even found in one of the names of a former king of England (Richard the Lion Heart). | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The lion is a common thing in heraldry. It traditionally symbolises courage, nobility, royalty, strength, stateliness and valour, because historically it has been regarded as the \"king of beasts\". It’s not only the English, it’s also in the coat of arms of nearly every European country.",
"It was hugely common in Heraldry across Europe. The reason is lions were seen as the King's of the wild. Due to their strength and ferocity they were seen to be representative of courage, strength and bravery, hence being a popular choice for nobility. Lions and leopards used to also be much more common than today. They could be found in North Africa, the Middle East and Anatolia. The last two were the target of the crusades. Which is why Richard I is known as lionheart, he was a Crusader king with a reputation for being a fearless and great warrior. URL_3 URL_1 URL_2 URL_0",
"There were European Lions as well. I believe they were called cave lions. Different than African lions and now extinct."
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8ixkal | How police officers turning off their body cameras don't count as evidence tampering. | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Three reasons: first, the prosecutor has to decide whether or not to charge a crime. Many prosecutors are reluctant to charge crimes against cops because they need cops on their side to prove a case. You get a cop who is pissed off at you? Suddenly he “can’t remember” the drug case you’re prosecuting, or isn’t available to testify, and you lose your case. There is immense pressure to play nice, and that means looking the other way. Second, officers are often immune from being punished for their actions. That’s because the question isn’t “what would a reasonable person do under X circumstances,” it’s “what would a reasonable OFFICER do?” This is how they are not convicted of homicide under circumstances that arguably show straight-up execution; they are held to a different standard than civilians. Third, and related: nearly every crime requires an intent element. To show evidence tampering, you’d have to prove a criminal intent - something that is difficult to do if you’re not able to prove the underlying wrong. This is my first time replying to ELI5, so I hope I did okay :) Source: I’m a career public defender",
"How does a \"public defender\" not answer the Q asked but rather speculates on intent? To tamper with evidence requires the evidence *exist*. If no video is taken, there is no evidence to tamper. Second, those cameras aren't on all the time for many very justifiable reasons. Anything they record can and should be public record. **Unedited**. Think about that next time you use the bathroom or console a CPS case. Since they go on and off, you cannot dictate when they go on. It can be a policy but not a law as that requires clairvoyance. I speculate the \"public defender\" didn't discuss these as the tactic he would use is to exploit them to get his client off.",
"I said this on the original article Police have to have the ability to turn the cams off while on break...going to the bathroom or when theres simply no need. Not to mention the logistics. The city cant record 11 hours ( length of a typical officer shift) straight of video for ever officer, thats crazy expensive to retain in a lot of states if not flat out impossible. You would need a google level server for a mid city city especially since some states require retention for decades, a lifetime or forever. They way most dash cams and body cams work, is they are always technically on, but when activated they record 15 minutes or prior to being activated and continue to record. Edit: turning off a cam during an incident may be a violation of policy and thus subject an officer to discipline but might not be destructive of evidence because its failure to produce evidence rather than destruction since didnt exist then was destroyed. Plus you first have to prove a crime occurred first. Source: worked in LE, including public discourse and police data retention."
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8izr6c | What are the Freemasons and why are they significant? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"[Mason here] This question turns up on this sub every week or two. Here's my usual copypasta on the subject: We're a centuries old fraternal order, who exist to improve our own character ('we make good men better' is one of our slogans), and through that improve our communities. Along the way, we do a lot of charity (forex: Shriner's free hospitals for crippled children), and have a lot of cool and private ceremonies using the construction of King Solomon's Temple as an allegorical base for teaching Enlightenment ideals. (yes, we really do have secret handshakes). We have several million Brothers world wide, but no central organization. Many prominent men from every walk of life have been members, including over a dozen US presidents. Regular Masonry is open to men of good character, who are of a certain age (depending on location, usually 18 or 21), and who are not atheists - we require a belief in some form of 'higher power', but aren't fussy about what. If you're curious, drop by our main hangout on reddit, /r/freemasonry. You'll find a lot of friendly folk there. If you prefer a book, for North Americans I recommend (seriously, I'm not trolling) \"Freemasons for Dummies\" by Christopher Hodapp.",
"This is all secondary info I've had to piece together, so take it with a grain of salt. Basically, they're the biggest fraternity you'll ever know of. If your car broke down and you need a hand, call one of your brothers and they'll have your back. Their significance comes from their 1, scope: they're huge and like inviting powerful, prominent men. 2, their age; the free mason's roots come from the middle ages and they're still going pretty darn strong. 3, their secrecy; no one REALLY knows what kind of stuff goes down in the grand lodges (their meeting places,) and stories from actual masons tend to significantly vary."
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8j3gnz | How did Hawaiian shirts get their name? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The first line of the [wiki article]( URL_0 ) is the following > The Aloha shirt, commonly referred to as a Hawaiian shirt, is a style of dress shirt originating in Hawaii. So it is because originated in Hawaii. First made by Chōtarō Miyamoto in 1904 of kimono fabric.. The modern variant is by Ellery Chun in 1930s and it become popular after the first advertisement in 1935 among locals especially surfers and tourist. 450 people worked in the manufacturing of them in the late 1930. With more turism and returning servicemen after the war they become know on the main land."
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8j564b | UK place naming convention and use of suffixes like -ham, -pool and -sea | In England, places have names like Wrexham, Birmingham, Brigham and then Liverpool, Blackpool followed by Chelsea, Swansea etc. What is the reason behind these suffixes? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It's not so much a \"convention\" as just the fact that place names often *mean* something. The suffixes you see may be different depending on which period of history they were coined and where in the country they are (for example, you'll find a lot of place names ending in \"-by\" in areas of eastern England once ruled by the Danes because it comes from the Norse language). Thus the suffix \"-ham\" might come from the Old English \"hām\", which means \"homestead\", \"village\" or \"estate\"; or it might come from \"hamm\", which means \"meadow\" or \"enclosed field\". Thus \"Wrexham\" is thought to mean \"Wryhtel's meadow\" (the \"h\" in \"wryhtel\" would have been pronounced, but the nearest we can now get to that sound is \"x\"), but \"Brigham\" means \"homestead by the bridge\". \"Birmingham\" is more interesting: in Old English its name was \"Beormingahām\". The \"-inga-\" is also a suffix and denotes a tribe named after a person: so the city's name means \"home of Beorma's people\", i.e. \"home of the Beormingas\". Another common suffix is \"-burg\", \"-borough\", \"-bury\" or \"-burgh\" (all from Anglo-Saxon \"burh\"), denoting a fortified place or monastery. My own hometown is Glastonbury, which 1,000 years ago was called \"Glæstingaburg\" which is thought to mean \"monastery of Glæst's people\". Another one is \"-ton\", from Old English \"tun\" which described a farm with a fence around it. Near Glastonbury are the towns of Shepton Mallet (\"sheep farm belonging to the Malet family\") and Shepton Beauchamp, which had the \"Beauchamp\" added in honour of the Beauchamp family who held the manor in the 12th century. The \"-pool\" in \"Liverpool\" comes from Old English \"pōl\", meaning \"pool\" or \"narrow inlet\"; \"Liverpool\" means something like \"muddy inlet\" (but maybe don't make any sarcastic comments about that if you ever do go to Liverpool). The \"-sea\" in Chelsea actually has nothing to do with the sea -- after all, it's in the middle of London. Rather, it comes from Old English \"Cealc-hyð\" -- the \"ð\" is an old way of writing \"th\" -- and means \"chalk wharf\". It was a landing place for boats on the river. \"Swansea\" is a bit more mysterious. It may come from Norse \"Sveinsey\": the \"-sey\" actually means \"island\" (as in the names of the biggest Channel Islands, Jersey and Guernsey), so the name might actually mean \"Svein's island\". More likely, though -- because \"Swansea\" is pronounced \"swans-ea\" and because there doesn't seem to be an island there -- it comes from \"Sweyn's ey\", meaning \"inlet named after Sweyn Forkbeard\". Sweyn was a Danish king and legend has it that he founded Swansea. That's different from \"-pōl\", by the way, because \"-pōl\" comes from Old English but \"-ey\" from Norse. Incidentally, Swansea is in Wales, and its Welsh name is \"Abertawe\" -- meaning \"mouth of the river Tawe\". This is similar to Aberdeen, \"mouth of the river Deen\". Its English equivalent is \"-mouth\", as in \"Portsmouth\" and \"Bournemouth\". So you can see that there's not really a convention here. Place names actually mean things, often connected with their history or even local legends. \"Oxford\" means \"place where oxen can ford (wade through) the river\", \"Wolverhampton\" means \"Wulfrun's high farm\", \"Kingsbury Episcopi\" means \"king's fortification belonging to the bishop\", \"Wiveliscombe\" means \"Wifeli's valley\", and so on.",
"URL_0 -ham means farm or homestead -pool means harbour -sea isn't really a regular thing, that depends on the city and how it got its name (Swansea may come from old Norse meaning Sveinn's Island, while the sea in Chelsea means wharf)",
"-ham were farming areas -pool were harbors. -sea does not appear to be a suffix, but -ea means island and the two cities you name are either coastal or on rivers so that may be a connection. But not all cities use a suffix system. Some are named after people, or are stand alone words. URL_0"
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8jaqqq | Why does everyone associate getting sick to being cold? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Because cold and flu cases peak during the cold season. The correlation is indisputable. URL_0 The exact cause is debatable though. Scientists have offered theories including drier air, or that more people are indoors, etc.",
"This reminds me of a tidbit of info I learned while working in South Africa. There's a tree there nicknamed the fever tree (Vachellia xanthophloea). This was because anytime people were near those trees, there were lots of cases of fevers and sickness. The reason for that was because these trees grew where there was a higher water content in the soil (sampy areas), which is where we now know mosquitos thrive. The fever they were referring to was malaria. Ironically, the roots and the bark can be used as a prophylactic against malaria.",
"Being cold weakens your immune system. Your body has a list of priorities and keeping your body at a certain temp is high on the list. Your brain and other organs can’t fixntion properly the colder you get. So, fighting off bacteria and viruses are lower priority. You will have a higher chance of getting sick if you are old for an extended period. Also, during cold weather, we tend to stay inside. Sometimes that means we are around a lot of people. Example: mall, restaurant, theatre. More people means more germs being spread in an enclosed area."
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8jdb93 | What is the difference between 两 and 二 ? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"两 is mostly cardinal. It is used to denote “two of something”. 二 is mostly ordinal, Meaning, “the second one”. And for the number two in its mathematical sense, we mostly use 二 . Add on: for formal writing including contracts and financial accounting, we use 贰 (“big writing for 二”）to prevent confusion.",
"The first number \"Liang\" is used for measurements, the second number \"Er\" is used for generic numbers."
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8jg6ll | Why do scantrons require you to use a No. 2 pencil? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The mark needs to be dark enough to read. #4 pencils may not make a dark enough mark. If you use a pen and want to change your answer, you'd need to get a new scantron sheet, but newer scantron systems can read pen marks."
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8jjg1s | How did turning "18 years old" come along as becoming an adult? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The best I found in a quick google search is that \"It would seem more likely that this was simply the age around which it was generally observed that people started to reach sufficient enough mental maturity to no longer need any type of direct supervision.\" As for why there is such an age, I think a big part of it has to do with contracts and consent. Obviously there are people who are too young to enter into binding contracts or to consent to being in certain situations. We wouldn't allow a 5-year-old to sign away his life earnings for an ice cream cone, even though it might not be hard to get most 5-year-olds to sign such a contract. We nearly universally agree that young children can not consent to sexual acts with adults, again because it is clear that any such consent is not supported by a full understanding of the nature and consequences of the situation. So there has to be some age where the line is drawn, and in many places 18 was decided as that age. If it were a grossly poor threshold, we would probably change the laws to make it more sensible. But in reality, the consensus seems to line up with the law and so 18 is the age.",
"It certainly wasn't always 18. I believe, surprisingly, the age of majority at various times and places has been as old as 25. Getting married was often the point at which you were considered an adult socially; in Italy until recently or still (I have not been there in a while) a man might live with his parents, in his same boyhood room, until he found a wife and in my experience, he was treated very much like a kid even if he was 30 by his parents if not legally."
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8jk32b | I've just found out that some American bars and clubs ban "solid colour t-shirts" in their dress code. I'm English, and this seems beyond absurd to me. Does it really mean you can't wear an ordinary, plain, unbranded t-shirt to their bar? Why on earth not? What kind of crazed ruling is this? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"I've come across two types of this \"dress code\" 1st would be in areas of gang activity (or close enough that it would matter). Gangs normally have a color associated with them, banning solid color tees in a place where alcohol is in abundance is a hopeful step in limiting stupid gang related violence due to 'turf' issues. 2nd would be in bars/clubs that are trying to promote more 'upscale' clientele so I've seen dress codes requiring collared shirts on guys or back during the trend (maybe it still exists, not really sure) bans on all 'tall-tees'",
"Well let's say your somewhere where there's bloods and crips. Bloods wear red, crips wear blue, now average Joe (not gang affiliated) accidentally goes into a blood controlled bar with a blue shirt on and gets killed for no reason other than bad wardrobe choice.",
"For the exact same reason you don't wear football club colours in opposing supporters pubs or neighborhoods.",
"Door guy here... white tees are the cheapest shirt in the world, usually worn as a undershirt to collect sweat prevents arm pit stains, which translates to \"I'm not going to spend money\"or \"I don't care to look nice\" which turns the ladies off. No ladies, no crowd. No crowd, no money. The whole idea behind dress code is to only let people in who are going to spend money, due to occupancy fire code regulations, that number is limited. tl;dr dress codes are to create a crowd that has money or at least looks good=bigger, consistent clientele=more money. White tees scream no money, no game.",
"I went to a middle school near metro Phoenix, AZ. We couldn't wear anything without a design on it. No plain colors whatsoever. We had to wear mesh backpacks or clear backpacks. On our way through the front door we went through a metal detector and had to stop at security and get a stamp that basically meant they searched our bags. Our school had on-site security as well as 3-4 uniformed police officers. The gang activity in this area was crazy. I've personally watched people shoot at police cars, I had seen multiple drive-b,y shootings. I'd never walk home alone, because gangs didn't care what color your skin was, they recruited all kinds of people. You might think as a non-american that it's excessive but, what choice are they given? They're just preventing gangs from growing. What's crazy is my wife and I went to a gun range and she'd never been, so Everytime a shot was fired she'd cringe. She asked me after why I didn't even so much as blink when they went off. Growing up around it has made me numb to the sounds of gunfire...",
"Most of Our middle and high schools also have this rule. It’s to prevent gang related violence. Murica.",
"Where were you at? In LA, Chicago? NYC? I have lived in LA my whole life (33) and never seen any gang activity. So no the vast majority of Americans are not directly affected by gang violence. Having said that if you are in an area where there is gang activity it might make sense to have this stupid rule to keep the shit from happening in the club. As others have said these dress code rules are also in high school. Not usually because of real gang activity but to keep stupid kids from fighting over nonsense. I’ll admit the policy’s seem weird but the majority of people are not affected by any of this.",
"I know some nars have a basic dress code because they want to attract a certain type of crowd. Typically t shirts without graphics are considered to be too casual. Thats mostly for clubs though. I havnt heard of regular bars turning people away because of a plain shirt though.",
"Gnag affilitation. Solid colors can be an issue with gangs and can wind up getting people shot. So places wil sometimes have dress codes againt solid tees bc it's lesslikely you'll look like a rival gang member.",
"I have been to many bars and worked in many clubs up and down the west coast of the US and I have never heard of this.",
"Don't act so astonished. I remember getting kicked out of a pub after work in London back in the 90's because one person in our group was wearing trainers."
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8jkspo | Why do most companies prefer or are more likely to hire female candidates for clerical positions? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"I used to work on equality\\-related employment data for a national government. There are lots of reasons, which vary by country. But one major reason is that women are more likely to apply for clerical positions because the role is slightly gendered, and advertisements for these roles reflect that in their language. This tendency is strengthened when we talk about unqualified workers, because women are more likely to apply for clerical work than \\(for example\\) manual labour positions. But like with any gender related issue, the real picture is very complex.",
"If you advertise for an administrative assistant, secretary, or receptionist, you'll have mostly female applicants. It isn't preference on the part of the employer, it's that for reasons that aren't part of a hiring manager's job, women seem to be more drawn to those jobs."
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8jlcea | why we celebrate Christopher Columbus, when he wasn't the first explorer to reach the Americas, and never even reached the mainland? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"To give the up and coming Italian American population a holiday - thats the reason in the US \"Many Italian-Americans observe Columbus Day as a celebration of their heritage, and the first such celebration was held in New York City on October 12, 1866. The day was first enshrined as a legal holiday in the United States through the lobbying of Angelo Noce, a first generation Italian, in Denver. The first statewide holiday was proclaimed by Colorado governor Jesse F. McDonald in 1905, and it was made a statutory holiday in 1907. In April 1934, as a result of lobbying by the Knights of Columbus and New York City Italian leader Generoso Pope, Congress and President Franklin Delano Roosevelt proclaimed October 12 a federal holiday under the name Columbus Day.\""
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8jmmaf | Why is the trolly problem a dilemma? Shouldn’t it be obvious to choose the 5 people over the 1? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Its not a dilemma, its an ethical thought experiment. A utilitarian view asserts that it is obligatory to steer to the track with one man on it. According to classical utilitarianism, such a decision would be not only permissible, but, morally speaking, the better option (the other option being no action at all). An alternate viewpoint is that since moral wrongs are already in place in the situation, moving to another track constitutes a participation in the moral wrong, making one partially responsible for the death when otherwise no one would be responsible. An opponent of action may also point to the [incommensurability]( URL_0 ) of human lives. Under some interpretations of moral obligation, simply being present in this situation and being able to influence its outcome constitutes an obligation to participate. If this is the case, then deciding to do nothing would be considered an immoral act if one values five lives more than one.",
"The crux of the problem is that you yourself are killing the one person. Their death is literally at your hands while you would have nothing to do with the death of the 5. It’s a way to talk about the guilt of inaction.",
"It's a dilemma because there are multiple ways to state what amounts to the same problem, but people tend to respond differently to the different formulations. For instance, if you pull a lever to switch the trolly from a track where it'll kill five people to one where it'll kill only one person, most people agree that you should pull the lever (but not everyone, because some people think that taking an action that results in death is more immoral than allowing death via inaction). But if you phrase the situation as having to push a fat person off of an overpass to get run over and thus stop the trolly, many more people believe that doing so is immoral, because the taking of a life is more \"direct\" even though the end results are exactly the same."
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8jo60p | If the 18-25 age range is the lowest population group in the US, then why is it the largest target demigraphic for tv and movies? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"because they spend the most on media. Its not about number of people, its about number of $ brought in by those people.",
"This may be the smallest demographic (source?), but it is the most active demographic as well. It is the demographic that may have brand loyalty for the longest time (~40 years), although brand loyalty generally is declining.",
"You are incorrect in your assumption about population size -- those are some of the [largest population age brakcets in the U.S. right now]( URL_0 ). Additionally, those age groups tend to have discretionary money since they often have access to parents' money, live at home so money from jobs gets spent on entertainment, clothing, gadgets rather than being saved, spent on rent/utilities, health insurance, etc.",
"To add to the other two statements: this also tends to be the demographic that creates trends: if you can get this group to endorse something, it has trickle down effects into the rest of the economy as younger and older people related to the group spend to be entertained by what entertains them. In short, it's the \"cool kids\" range.",
"Older people have their minds made up about many things already, 18\\-25 year olds are only just begining to figure out their brand loyalies. If you advertise to the younger generation then not only may you be more likely to get them to try your product but you'll have that new customer for a longer period of time since they have a longer life ahead of them."
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8jq5iy | Why are foreign language classes and language immersion programs not taught from the most basic perspective (like elementary school)? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Because the students know how to read and write in their own language. In many languages the letter are identical. If you know one alphabet system learning to read another is easier then learning to read the first one. When you learn to write your own language you are learning to write a language you already can speak. Kids don't learn to speak their own language in kindergarten the know it from home. When you learn another language you learn to spell and to speak the words at the same time. The brain and ability to learn change over time so the way that is good for a child is not necessary good for a adult."
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8jrho2 | Charles Darwin was an Anglican, spent a lot of time studying theology, and in no way were his works an attack on the church. Now days he is viewed as a symbol for atheism. Why? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The other comments about religious backlash towards evolution are accurate, but I mean Darwin [did eventually become an agnostic, in large part *because* of his research that led to the theory of evolution.]( URL_0 )",
"If you look at churches today most of them accept evolution, theistic evolution or say that it is not in conflict with Christianity. It is primary the evangelical protestantism that are common in part of the US that disagree with it. The are a loud voice in the US and they try to have political influence so they are noticed. The Catholic church have had no definite stand on evolution but in 1950 Pope Pius XII confirmed that there is no intrinsic conflict between Christianity and the theory of evolution, provided that Christians believe that the individual soul is a direct creation by God and not the product of purely material forces.They support supports theistic evolution but it is not a required teaching. Gregor Mendel 1822-1884 the founder of the modern science of genetics that shows what evolution worked with was a catholic abbot. Theistic evolution is from the wiki article > Francis Collins describes theistic evolution as the position that \"evolution is real, but that it was set in motion by God\",[3] and characterizes it as accepting \"that evolution occurred as biologists describe it, but under the direction of God\" So god can have guided it or intervened more or less. It is compatible with modern scientific understanding about biological evolution but in it sefe not a scientific theory as there is no way to demonstrate that it is false ore true. So the idea that evolution is not compatible with Christianity is not true. But for obvious reason you will hear more for the groups that is against the scientific theory and what to change education the from the groups that accept it. People don't protest for the current state so you will not hear from then except for counter protest. The strong disagreement with evolution is among Young Earth creationism ie a world created by god that is less then 10 000 year ago from a literal reading of the bible. Their belief in incompatible with evolution and a lot of other sciences like geology, cosmology to name a few. They primary take a stand against evolution because it is easy to get people involved and care if they are created by god and not evolved from common ancestor to the other great apes. To say that sedimentary rock formed in a global flod vs millions of years of sediment deposits is not a subject you get people engaged in. Old Earth creationism where you don't have a literal reading of the bible and a creating of 6 literal days. God can then have created and shaped thing over million or billions of years can exist in ways that are not incompatible with science. So if the bible is not literal true but part is figurative or metaphorical description evolution is not a problem and is accepted with some theistic evolution modification.",
"Darwin was fully aware of the heresy in his \"evolution by natural selection\" theory. This was complicated by his respect and love for his wife, which opposed the idea. This is why he postponed the publication for 20 years, constantly refining the text, cautiously hedging against critique. Being a devout hypochondriac and awaiting his imminent demise, he wanted it to be published after his death. This was not to be as Alfred Russel Wallace was about to scoop him and he reluctantly published it. He was immediately attacked by church figures such as Samuel Wilberforce. Edit:typos",
"Darwin’s ideas lead the way to us possibly answering some very BIG questions. Where did we come from? How did we get here? These BIG questions were historically thought to be outside the realm of science and in the realm of the mystical or religious. Naturally the answers met some resistance (and still do) because of it. But I think the reason it resonates so strongly with atheists is actually a bit different. When you really grasp the theory, it is so amazing and mind boggling that it is almost like a non-religious supernatural experience. And I don’t mean supernatural as in ‘outside nature’, more like a hypernatural experience, Just focusing on something relatively small like the metamorphosis that a caterpillar goes through when it becomes a butterfly and how natural selection created *that* is breathtaking. And then combine this with an understanding of the underlying organic chemistry and the realization that the elements that make up it’s composition came from reactions in stars, and they have been assembled through natural processes to become this biological transformer that can fly... It is almost unfathomable to think of anything more amazing than this. All from the natural world. Atheists see the theory of evolution as connecting some of the most difficult dots in this puzzle. Darwins theory connected us lifeforms with the natural world. All of us. When you have a naturalistic worldview, this is a grand slam. Personally, I think the the theory of evolution is the biggest discovery thus far by humans. Period. I struggle to think of a bigger question than ‘how did we get here’ or ‘where did we come from’. These questions now have an answer that begins to make sense. And ‘where are we going’ is also something we might now be better informed about as well, since we know how we got here. Perhaps the only question that might be bigger is ‘*why* are we here’. I’m not convinced that Darwin’s theory doesn’t help answer this as well. After all, *why* does the sun rise and *how* does the sun rise are really the same question. Why are we here? Because nature selected for us, that’s why. Like round planets. Like aerodynamic birds. Like long necks on giraffes. Like thinking creatures. We have survived, that’s why we are here. Yeah but ‘what is our *purpose*’ you might ask. Maybe this is a bigger question that evolution can’t answer. Well, what is the purpose of fast predators? What is the purpose of green lizards in the forest? What is the purpose of beautiful flowers? What is the purpose of thinking creatures like us? Because of the theory of evolution, we now have a better way of thinking about these questions as well.",
"Question: I’m currently studying in a Christian Baptist high school (don’t ask why, and no, I’m not a Christian), and in my biology class, my teacher said that evolution is just a bunch of bollocks and any evidence of evolution we did and now have are just fake and hoaxes. Why are their thoughts like that? (US btw)",
"Whenever humans can’t explain something, they attribute it to God. Powerful and destructive bolts of light coming from above were thought to be coming from gods or God. Then when man learns more about meteorology, the supernatural origins are transformed into natural explanations. The complexity and beauty of animal and human life (and trees and flowers etc), without a mechanism to explain their development from simple life forms, makes the Biblical story that a brilliant artist/engineer creator God “poofed” them into existence seem like a plausible explanation. Then when Darwin explained how they all naturally evolved from a simple life form, it begs the question: if we don’t need God to explain thunder bolts, or animals, or us, does it make sense to make God part of our model at all? Is God up there? If so, what does He do? What has He done? In summary, Darwin took a huge aspect of our daily lives—life itself—and showed how it could be explained without reference to a theistic myth. This begs the question: if the creation of life was a theistic myth, are the same authorities that developed other stories about God just myths? Is the whole idea of God an ancient fable?",
"Theists mainly look at Darwin as a symbol for atheism. I don't believe that atheists really tend to bring him up. Scientists and academics have happily lauded him as a symbol of science and academia and stuff like that though.",
"Darwin and evolution we're considered assaults on Christianity because of other unrelated stuff going on at the same time. A few different ancient languages and works were deciphered including the Epic of Gilgamesh, which has a flood story similar to the one in the Bible, but older than any copy of the Bible by far. Lord Kelvin estimated the age of the Earth at 20-100 million years. Egyptian heiroglyphs were only recently deciphered, and new works were being translated all the time. The first fragments of the legend of Sargon of Akkad's birth, which shares many elements with the Moses story from the Bible were translated. To top it all off, the second great awakening was on the downswing. The upshot of all of this was that religion was starting to look less like an immutable eternally static thing and more like something that changes over time, and religious people were extremely resistant to that idea. Along comes old Chuck saying that humans themselves haven't always been humans but changed over time, and that was just too much. People started attacking evolution with religious fervor, and they passed that antipathy to their kids and their kids kids and so on until today, when it's still going on but the original reasons are all but forgotten.",
"It's part of an effort to demonize Darwin and discredit him as a person. Their argument against him isn't based on science, it's based on fundamentalist religious tenets, which lends itself to good vs. evil rather than subtlety. His piety conflicts with their attempts to discredit Darwin, since it associates him with positive traits, like him being a religiously faithful person. And they have to emphasize that evolution is incompatible with ANY religious feelings, from its very foundations. So they also accuse Darwin of all kinds of other bad things.",
"No one seems to be directly answering the question you actually asked, so I'll take a stab. The reason Darwin is strongly correlated with atheism is because he took what might be the strongest evidence for a designer God (the almost perfect adaptation of all animals we observe to their environments) and gave it a naturalistic explanation in which no God is required. It's not so much that he was disproving the existence of a God/Gods, but that he greatly weakened the argument in support of one. He himself became unconvinced that a God existed because of the presence of evil in the world (problem of evil.) The truth is that in modern terms, Darwin would be considered a weak atheist/agnostic atheist (as are the vast majority of atheists today) because he was not convinced that a God existed. EDIT: why the downvotes?",
"The vast majority of Christians worldwide have no quarrel with Darwin's theory of evolution, and happily accept it. The only opposition is from a very vocal minority of Young Earth Creationists, who take every letter of the Bible literally to form a timeline that would make the Earth 10,000 years old. That view is easily debunked by just looking at the original translation - the original Hebrew word to describe the seven \"days\" of creation could just as easily have referred to seven periods of many years, even millions or billions of years. A more accurate term would be seven *eras* of creation, which much more closely matches what we now know scientifically about the birth of the Universe.",
"Darwin is synonymous with evolution in the minds of young\\-earth creationists. All of the data about how long things have been evolving contradicts a young earth model. So the idea that chickens evolved from dinosaurs over millions of years contradicts their interpretation of the bible.",
"This is mostly a US based view, which has proliferated elsewhere via the internet. The majority of Christian denominations accept that evolution is real. However, a vocal minority of American denominations read the Bible literally and therefore assert that the theory of evolution can not be true. This vocal minority has therefore decided to paint Darwin as preaching a doctrine that is anti-Christian, or atheistic. In response to this, many atheists have risen to Darwin's defence, and claimed him as a figure for themselves (you may have seen [this parody]( URL_0 ) of the Jesus Fish symbol). Simply put, some Christians believe Darwin's theory conflicts with their beliefs. While some atheists are happy to be pissing of those Christians by boosting Darwin.",
"I'd like to take all the doubters up the Andes mountains where Darwin was inspired, point at all the marine fossils and ask them how they thought they got to be there, a million miles from any sea. Like any good geologist, Darwin's ideas were more common sense than science.",
"I think that the primary reason Christianity has a problem with evolution has to do with salvation. If all life is a continuum, then how is the soul of a person any different in reality from the soul of a monkey, or a mouse, or a tree? Did Christ come to save mosquitos too? Put another way, what makes people so special that they all of a sudden they get immortal souls and Austalopithicus did not? Or if Australopithicus had immortal souls, what about earlier species? Finally gets back to one-celled beings. Where did the magical, immortal soul suddenly start? And why there? And if God decided to make evolving homo sapiens have immortal souls suddenly, which guy or gal was the first to get it and why? Seems capricious.",
"For a very long time, science and religion didn't usually bother each other much. Hardline Protestants tended to reject scientific explanations, mainly because the founders of Protestantism were very clear that if something is not in the Bible, it is not the Word of God. They had good reason for that: they were confronted with a Catholic Church which was making stuff up as a way to exploit the poor. By inventing things like the sale of indulgences, they could scare people into giving the Church lots of money to finance the building of St Peter's in the Vatican. Martin Luther in particular was horrified by that. Anglicism, though, isn't strongly Protestant and really began as the Catholic Church but with the King of England at the top instead of the Pope. Catholics and Anglicans were more ready to accept as allegorical parts of the Bible that conflicted with observation and reason. Darwin's own views changed over his life. Originally he didn't doubt that everything in the Bible was true, but his scientific discoveries led him to question large parts of his faith. Near the end of his life, he said that he wasn't atheist, but probably agnostic. But a certain branch of Protestantism, particularly the Evanglical type that grew up in America, began to reject everything that even appeared to conflict with the Bible, and in very violent terms. The most fundamental battlefield of this argument is evolution, because it's such a simple argument to express. The Bible says God created everything including us; science says we evolved naturally. Fundamentalist Christians started attacking \"science\", and militant atheists started attacking \"religion\". Of all the people who worked in evolutionary biology, Darwin is the best known. He actually didn't do anything particularly remarkable: he built on the work of his predecessors (some of them his own ancestors) and laid the foundations for later scientists to continue. But everyone's heard of him, and so he has come to represent either the triumph of reason over superstition, or the rejection of God himself, depending on which side you take. And so poor Darwin, who was really interested in exploring God's creation and then later came to wonder whether there really was a God, is at the epicentre of a ridiculous shouting match. One side claims (with little evidence) that he came to reject religion entirely to become an atheist, while the other side claims (with no evidence at all) that he recanted on his deathbed.",
"Quite an American-centric post. He's only viewed as a \"symbol of atheism\" in a place where evolution in particular is a focus if discussion.",
"Darwin's conclusion that evolution was descent with modification eliminated the need for teleology in an explanation of the natural world. The elimination of a \"purpose\" from the visioning of nature is chiefly why his work is associated with atheistic perspectives.",
"I explained this to my wife the other day and she had no idea, so I will share. Evangelical protestants typically hold the bible as literal truth. It is not viewed as some sort of creation myth, it is held as complete fact. Basically if you measure out the time it takes for the events to unfold in the bible and factor in Christ’s genealogy supposedly reaching all the way back to Abraham...the bible only accounts for 6,000 years or so since the beginning of the universe. There is no time for evolution to take place if the Bible is fact, therefore they think evolution didn’t/doesn’t happen.",
"How has this post not broken rules 2 and 5? It’s shocking to me that it hasn’t be removed yet. The mods must be asleep.",
"Because science is looked at for faith. Nothing worth having faith in is objective in the natural world. Altruism, love and sacrafice cannot be explained by evolutionary principles.",
"Because in the states, Creationists, a subset of fundamentalist christians (i use that term only in the strictest definition, ie. they believe in the strict, literal interpretation), hold several views like the earth is young from a geological stand point and god created all life as is, views that are directly contentious with modern scientific principles. So, your ELI5 is because people equate atheism, and by extension, the research of Charles Darwin, with rational thought in comparison to irrational creationism. Disclaimer: I am not Christian, just spiritual.",
"This isn't really accurate. I don't think many atheists consider Darwin to be a poster boy for atheism. Obviously he's important, but I think part of the emphasis on Darwin comes from religious groups that don't like what his work means for their beliefs. Because these groups are anti-science in nature, they try to prevent evolution being taught in schools. This is clearly a problem for the more scientifically accepting parts of the community (both atheists and theists), who then have to fight back. This leads to Darwin and his work being the focal point in the pro-science side of the debate.",
"Unqualified scrub here: The reason that evolution is deemed so anti-religion is because it so perfectly represents the conquering of reason/science over dogma/religion. Evolution is the most obvious and in-your-face example of this because intelligent design is so “obviously true”. In the absence of a scientific worldview, it is perfectly reasonable to look at the amazing diversity of the planet and come to the conclusion that it was designed. I mean, look how beautiful birds are... someone had to have put them there to be beautiful, right? And the way giraffes’ necks are perfectly designed to help them reach food at the top of the trees... someone had to engineer that solution, right? And boy, web you look at all of the tiny pieces that make eyeballs work... certainly feels like a complex piece of technology that someone put together very intricately. I mean, heck, how much fine tuning did it take to keep ecosystems of predator and prey balanced? Pretty clever! For so many hundreds of years, people could disagree about which god(s) created the world... but nobody could deny that the world WAS created! Anyone could look around and come to the obvious conclusion that things were created with intent. Until Darwin pointed out that things weren’t. For the first time, something that seemed SOOOOO obvious and true to your eyes and gut logic was proven to work differently than all common sense said it should. So... if we really study things, then the obvious and easy answer might end up false? That single crack has potential to undo the whole web of lies. If I could be SO wrong about creation (which really seemed SO obvious and right) then why am I still accepting that that baby died as part of god’s plan (which already feel dubious and weird in my gut)? Why am I believing any of it? Nowadays, the evidence is so strong that the churches know they cannot outright deny it. So they come up with all of these dumb compromises hoping people won’t notice the big thing... thinking can help you move past the easy answer and find the real answer."
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8jxa7e | How did France come to be so highly regarded in the culinary world? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Part of it is the French revolution. Abolition of the guild resulted in that anyone could become a butcher, baker or cheesemaker and is was easy to open restaurants. Many aristocrats was killed of fled so there was a large number of competent cooks and servats that needed of find work. So what they made before for the rich started to be sold to the public and you the beginning of the French cuisine. So a part is that the cuisine of the aristocracy moved out of their homes.",
"It's like a cute girl standing next to an overweight homely girl. The cute girl looks even better than normal in contrast. Well french food is sitting right next to british food.",
"Italian cook here: it's a cuisine that unifies the South (healthy, olive oil based, Mediterranean) and the North (fat, butter based, continental) of Europe. That's why it can appeal to both worlds. They also imported a lot of Italian cooks during their early kingdom history, which resulted in strong culinary culture and highly developed techniques. From there, they built a really complex \"High Cuisine\" and exported the worldwide famous terminology during their empire.",
"There's a legend that the French culinary legacy all stems from Catherine De Medici bringing Italian chefs with her to Paris when she married Henry II. But that's probably not too accurate.",
"A French chef more or less wrote the bible of cooking. He didn't necessarily come up with all the recipes himself, most came from other places. But he was the first to actually write it all down in a definitive guide, \"invented\" the 5 mother sauces, etc. As it happens, cooking is really only the same 5 or 6 things done over and over again using each regions ingredients. For instance, pesto in Italy is (usually) made with basil, in Chile they make chimmi churri, it's made with cilantro. Very similar green sauces, just different ingredients. Perogis, dumplings, pot stickers: same principal, different ingredients."
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8jxr6j | How did names like Johnson, Peter, Willy(William), Dick(Richard) become slang for penis? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Johnson: Johnson meaning the penis appears to be part of a group that uses a proper name, in this case based on 'John', to give a slang name to the male genitals. Others of the type include John Henry, John Thomas, John Willie, Master John Goodfellow, Sir John and Uncle John. And there is john itself: 1914 T.S. Eliot ‘Fragments’ in Inventions of the March Hare: O daughter dear daughter I think you are a fool / To run against a man with a john like a mule. The first use of johnson is mid-19th century: 1863 W. Cheadle Journal 2 Feb.: Bitterly cold; neck frozen. Face ditto; thighs ditto; Johnson ditto, & sphincture vesicae partially paralysed. The first uses of this 'proper name' form seem to stem from the 16th century jockum, here used in one of the earliest collections of criminal slang terms: c.1566 Harman Caveat for Common Cursetours: There was a proud Patrico and a nosegent, he tooke his Jockam in his famble, and a wapping he went. Jockum led to jock, which is still found, typically in old school rap lyrics, although its original use is much older and serves for both sexes: a.1790 H.T. Potter New Dict. Cant (1795): jock private parts of a man or woman. Jack, as used for penis, also appears to have similar roots in a proper name, but in fact puns on the standard English jack, a device for lifting. Thus: 1604 Dekker Honest Whore Pt 1 I i: [He] taught her to play upon the Virginals, and still his Jacks leapt up.",
"Dick: The word connoted a person of questionable character long before it became a nickname for the penis. For example, in the 1665 satire The English Rogue by Richard Head, an unsavory character is referred to as a \"dick\": \"The next Dick I pickt up for her was a man of a colour as contrary to the former, as light is to darkness, being swarthy; whose hair was as black as a sloe; middle statur'd, well set, both strong and active, a man so universally tryed, and so fruitfully successful, that there was hardly any female within ten miles gotten with child in hugger-mugger, but he was more than suspected to be Father of all the legitimate.\" An 1869 slang dictionary offered definitions of dick including \"a riding whip\" and an abbreviation of dictionary, also noting that in the North Country, it was used as a verb to indicate that a policeman was eyeing the subject. The term came to be associated with the penis through usage by men in the military around the 1880s.",
"The real answer is that people use all sorts of words for penis. They make up new ones every day. Some stick, some don't. It's constantly changing.",
"If Robin Hood: Men in Tights taught me anything, it's that toilets were named after evil Prince John. Thank you Sir Patrick!",
"Better question- how the fuck did we somehow get the name Dick from Richard?",
"According to Online Etymology Dictionary: * [Johnson]( URL_3 ): perhaps related to British slang John Thomas, which has the same meaning. * [Peter]( URL_1 ): Slang for \"penis\" is attested from 1902, probably from identity of first syllable. * Willy isn't there... * [Dick]( URL_0 ): The meaning \"penis\" is attested from 1891 in Farmer's slang dictionary (possibly British army slang). Also, for some dates, the earliest known usage of each (according to the OED) is * 1863 for Johnson (\"Neck frozen. Face ditto; tights ditto; Johnson ditto, & sphincter vesicae partially paralyzed.\", Journal of a trip across Canada. See /u/Big_Election's post for a link) * 1870 for Peter (\"For men must slum, and women will try To gain a small pittance by walking the High, While Peter stiff is standing.\", Cythera's Hymnal) * 1905 for Willy (\"Willy, the male organ; a slang name for a child's penis. Cum. [Cumberland], Wm. [Westmoreland]\", English Dialect Dictionary) * 1891 for Dick (\"(military) - The penis\", [Slang and its Analogues]( URL_2 ))",
"What about \"John Thomas\"? Bear Grylls used it once, and it was hilarious",
"Whatever elaborate explanations there are, it was just done because of silly religious prudery, that a penis could not be referred to as a penis! FFS!",
"Holy shit. Few hours ago I was doing research on GTA wiki about in-game metal band \"Love Fist\" when I was listening to their song. Almost all of the band members had names which are slang for penis. Willy, Dick and Percy and last of them was named Jezz. Now I'm seeing your post and I can't believe it"
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8jz90s | sign language in different countries. Are they similar to each other? How did they develop differently? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"There's a really good documentary out there on ASL in the US: it turns out that ASL used in specific deaf communities has distinct dialects that shift from group to group. ISL is different, but more based on English even though French speakers use it. ASL is nice in that it has drifted away from being a literal English mapping to being its own living language with unique rules specific to signing and visual communication. Doesn't really ELI5 your question, but adds a bit more depth, I hope.",
"Sign languages come in language families, just like spoken language. Most people are surprised to learn that American Sign Language and British Sign Language are not in the same language family and are not mutually intelligible. They even use a different finger-spelling system so that an ASL-user and an BSL-user can't even easily spell out words in English together. Its a pretty simple explanation why: a guy wanted to start a sign language school in the US, he asked a British school for the Deaf if he could observe their methods, the British school said no. He asked a French school if he could observe their methods, the French school said yes. He mashed up French Sign with Martha's Vineyard Sign (a locally used sign language) and created ASL. And that's how ASL evolved in the French Sign language family. Edit: never in its history has ASL been a method of encoding spoken English. That's called SEE - Signed Exact English. SEE was trendy for a bit in the 80s, bit today is mostly used only for teaching English grammar to Deaf people. The French Sign Family is one of the largest sign language families. But British Sign shares a family with the sign languages used in most other former British colonies. German Sign is used in Germany and Belgium. I know very little about the Asian sign language families, except that they exist."
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8k40g0 | Why is the blue on the Union Jack different from the blue on the Scottish flag if it is supposed to represent Scotland ? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Heraldry knows only some of the basic colours. Traditionally, they are gold (represented by yellow), silver (represented by white), red, blue, black, green and purple. Sometimes other colours are used, such as the orange on the Irish flag. Apart from that, although official regulations may stipulate exactly which shades are to be used for official purposes, that's actually irrelevant. The blazon -- the heraldic description of the flag -- doesn't specify the shade, so as long as it's a shade of blue, it fits the heraldic description. The actual blazon for the British flag is: > Azure, the crosses-saltires of St. Andrew and St. Patrick quartered per saltire counter changed argent and gules; the latter fimbriated of the second; surmounted by the cross of St. George of the third, fimbriated as the saltire. In plain English: \"A blue background, with the diagonal crosses of St Andrew and St Patrick divided diagonally into four so that they alternate between white and red; the red cross is outlined in white; and on top of that, the cross of St George in red and outlined in white.\" The blazon for the Scottish flag is much simpler: \"Azure, a saltire argent,\" which means \"A blue background with a white diagonal cross.\" The word for \"blue\" is exactly the same: \"azure\". Back in the day, people didn't care so much about exact shades. They couldn't: shields were painted and flags dyed with organic dyes, and it wasn't really possible to guarantee an exact shade every time -- on both flags, the blue would vary from sky blue to navy blue. Only later, as technology improved and synthetic dyes became a thing, did colours become more reliable. What's happened since is that (as recently as 2003), the Scottish government *recommended* that the blue in the Scottish flag be Pantone 300, which is visibly lighter than the shade normally used in the British flag. But as long as it's blue, it still matches the blazon, and so is still correct."
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8kb219 | In the United States, why is soccer such a popular sport for little kids, but not as popular among older kids (high school, college) | I see a ton of youth soccer leagues at local parks. Elementary school aged children grow up playing the sport. It’s popular among both boys and girls, where a sport like football is (with very few exceptions) only played by boys. The phrase “soccer mom” refers to mothers who take their children to sporting events and activities, with soccer being a common one. Once you get to the older age groups, like teenagers and young adults, soccer becomes much less popular. Football, basketball, and baseball are the big sports at high schools. They are the revenue generating sports at colleges.The best athletes play these sports. These are the sports where college scholarships are given out to. Why such a decline in interest for soccer as kids become older? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"For most people soccer is the cheapest sport to put your kid in as well. Until they move up in skill they need minimal equipment to play.",
"Soccer at a young age is taught as more of a physical activity rather than a defined sport in the US. People here are raised to believe that all you do in soccer is run and kick the ball. The youth levels aren’t taught about proper positioning, shape, attacking, or goaltending. It’s all very rudimentary. In order to learn more and develop as a player you have to be invested enough to seek out those few and far between programs and academies that actually do teach you about the sport. Because of that and the popularity of baseball, basketball, and football you lose a lot of potential athletes for soccer. It really is a problem at the youth level, but until there is more interest in the sport here at the top levels, it will never fully adapt.",
"Soccer requires a ball, everything else is cheap or publicly provided. I think that is why soccer is so globally popular. Almost anyone can afford a ball or two between a dozen kids. Americans tend to have more disposable income and that turns into more expensive sports.",
"Strangely similar in New Zealand, but rugby is the dominant sport. We even called it 'soccer' when I was a kid and rugby was footy. I'm not sure about now though, it's been a while since I was home.",
"Youth soccer is cheap, easy, and relatively safe. Put a bunch of kids in a field with a ball and tell them to kick it around. It's not really \"soccer\" in the sense of the competitive sport, but it keeps the kids occupied and gets them exercise. Baseball is more expensive \\(you need balls, bats, protective gear, and a more specialized field\\) and more dangerous \\(kids throwing a small hard ball at each other is not a great idea when they are too young\\) and requires more structure \\(need to teach kids where to stand and how to run the bases etc.\\). T\\-ball offers a safer alternative and was fairly popular when I was young \\(I played both soccer and T\\-ball as a kid\\). Football has similar problems to baseball for youth. More dangerous. More rules/structure has to be taught. Basketball is probably the closest thing to Soccer in this context. Requires a bit more specialized court to play on, and might be too difficult to score for young ones \\(kicking into a big goal is a lot easier than throwing into a small hoop for a kid\\). tl;dr Soccer is just the most convenient sport for keeping kids occupied. It has little to do with the popularity of the sports for teens/adults.",
"I don't think the divide is so much with youth to high school to college as it is between recreational and professional soccer. High school soccer is pretty popular. It's not football in Texas popular, but every high school with an athletic program that I'm familiar with fields a soccer team. College soccer is less popular than college football or basketball, but it's about as popular as any other college sport (wrestling, volleyball, crew, etc). Most universities with an athletic program offer soccer. On the other hand, in US pro sports, soccer lags significantly behind football, baseball, basketball, hockey, NASCAR, etc etc etc. I think the divide you're noticing between youth and teens/college soccer isn't so much that people shun soccer, but that once you are high school age there are a lot more activities available to do. When I was in grade school, there was soccer, karate, ballet, piano lessons, and maybe some other sport appropriate for younger kids like tee ball. By the time I was in high school you could be on the debate team or work on the school paper or play tennis or run track or hold a student government office. And then in college, extracurriculars that aren't connected to a specific career path (for example sports) are drastically de-emphasized for most students. You're not expected to play sports or practice an art form just for fun anymore. And I think that trail off from \"there are only so many kid-appropriate pastimes\" to \"doing any school-organized pastime is discouraged\" is what you're noticing.",
"So, this is starting to change slowly, but at its most basic level, it is because soccer is not as established in North America. Because North America is very isolated from the rest of the world, it developed differently. When football was being established on this continent, it was the Rugby Union game that dominated. Though the game has changed over the past century and a half, the basic structure of the game - scoring points by carrying an egg-shaped ball over a goal line and/or kicking it through a pair of uprights, defense being achieved via bringing the ball carrier to the ground - is shared. But by the time it was able to spread out of the US and Canada, other games had already established dominance (similarly, Australian football, while very popular in Australia, is virtually unknown in the Northern Hemisphere). The same is true in the other direction. By the time that large numbers of soccer playing immigrants crossed the Atlantic, we already had our own football, and soccer wasn't going to displace it. The immigrant communities did play soccer, but it was as much a cultural thing as it was athletic. When I was in high school, I found a copy of the 1959 yearbook, which was the year that the school first fielded a soccer team. It was noted in the blurb about the team that nearly all of the players had started the season having never played the game before. This scenario has an effect on future generations. A parent who doesn't know anything about soccer is less likely to put their child in soccer, and even if they do, they will have to learn if they want to be able to follow their kid's game or talk to them about the sport. As my generation, who grew up playing soccer, are now at the age where we are having children of our own, we are far more likely to choose soccer as an activity for them. As for the age drop off, in the US, it is a big thing to keep kids in lots of activities. There's swimming lessons, karate, dance, music, and sports to fill your kid's time with. Sports tend to have defined seasons, and they don't necessarily overlap, so you can put your children in tee-ball in the spring, soccer in the fall, basketball in the winter. That way, they are always busy. Soccer is especially popular for younger children because it is easy to scale the field down based on age, and it is relatively low on contact, so children are less likely to get hurt. Up to a certain point, it is even reasonable to have co-ed programs. Once kids get older, the player base starts to diverge. It's especially noticeable with boys, as the biggest competitor for players is football, which is by and large the province of males. Let's say that most boys who are involved in organized sports play soccer from age 5-9. Once they turn 10, they are old enough for football, so a bunch of those kids will go off to the gridiron. As they get older, kids will start to specialize too. Maybe they play soccer, swim competitively, and take piano lessons. That eats up a huge amount of time, so at some point, a choice has to be made. The money aspect is a big deal too. Colleges can and do offer full scholarships for soccer, but there isn't the kind of money in MLS that there is in the NFL or NBA. A good soccer player could try to go to Europe to play professionally, but they end up competing with players who have been playing in an organized club environment that is based around developing future professionals (rather than being just an extracurricular activity) from a very young age and likely started their professional career before age 20, compared to a 21 or 22 year old who is graduating from college, where they practiced and played during the season, but were restricted as to what they could do in the off-season, and also had to balance a full-time course load."
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8kd1b2 | what exactly the purpose of the famous monicle was in the high societies. | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It was used to see and read. Before glasses became popular. Usually only the well off people could afford having them."
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8kg4ox | How did Christians justify slavery? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The Bible has rules for treating your slaves, because it was written for a slave-owning culture. Now, the sort of slavery the Bible talked about wasn't the same as how slavery was practiced in the United States, but it's very easy for people to just go \"Well, the bible says you can be a good Christian and own a slave, so I'm fine with how I am acting!\" because a lot of people don't read the Bible as much as they use it as an excuse to do whatever they felt like doing.",
"The Bible has lots of rules regarding how to take slaves and how to treat slaves. Here's a bit from Exodus 21: > When you buy a Hebrew slave, he shall serve six years, and in the seventh he shall go out free, for nothing. If he comes in single, he shall go out single; if he comes in married, then his wife shall go out with him. If his master gives him a wife and she bears him sons or daughters, the wife and her children shall be her master's, and he shall go out alone. But if the slave plainly says, ‘I love my master, my wife, and my children; I will not go out free,’ then his master shall bring him to God, and he shall bring him to the door or the doorpost. And his master shall bore his ear through with an awl, and he shall be his slave forever. And another from Exodus 21:20, telling you how hard you're allowed to beat a slave: > When a man strikes his slave, male or female, with a rod and the slave dies under his hand, he shall be avenged. But if the slave survives a day or two, he is not to be avenged, for the slave is his money. And a bit about child slaves, also from Exodus 21: > If his master gives him a wife and she bears him sons or daughters, the wife and her children shall be her master's, and he shall go out alone. And some from Deuteronomy, on how to take slaves \\(20:14\\) > But the women and the little ones, the livestock, and everything else in the city, all its spoil, you shall take as plunder for yourselves. And you shall enjoy the spoil of your enemies, which the Lord your God has given you. **And it's not just Old Testament either:** From Paul's Epistle to the Colossians 4:1: > Masters, treat your slaves justly and fairly, knowing that you also have a Master in heaven. And Colossians 3:22: > Slaves, obey in everything those who are your earthly masters, not by way of eye\\-service, as people\\-pleasers, but with sincerity of heart, fearing the Lord. And First Timothy 6:1: > Let all who are under a yoke as slaves regard their own masters as worthy of all honor, so that the name of God and the teaching may not be reviled. Those who have believing masters must not be disrespectful on the ground that they are brothers; rather they must serve all the better since those who benefit by their good service are believers and beloved. Teach and urge these things. And Ephesians 6:5: > Slaves, obey your earthly masters with fear and trembling, with a sincere heart, as you would Christ, not by the way of eye\\-service, as people\\-pleasers, but as servants of Christ, doing the will of God from the heart, rendering service with a good will as to the Lord and not to man, knowing that whatever good anyone does, this he will receive back from the Lord, whether he is a slave or free. The Bible was written for slave\\-owning people and accepts that slavery is justifiable, to some degree. There's arguments that can be made over who can be made a slave, or for how long, or how they must be treated, or how slavery in Judea or Rome was different than the slavery practiced in the U.S., but the message that cannot be debated is that the holy book absolutely condones owning another human being and trading them as property. So it was easy for Christians in the U.S. South to justify enslaving people: God said it was okay to do.",
"I am NOT justifying this opinion or behavior, but throughout history certain groups have been considered \"less than human\". Just like you wouldn't pay an ox for plowing your field, slavery was justified in some circles by not considering those slaves to be entitled to the same basic human rights given to the owner class. It is a disgusting practice but is still a problem in certain parts of the world, where members of a specific race, religion, or culture are considered \"less than\" instead of treated as the same walking bags of flesh that we all are."
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8kg6ep | Why is the verb 'to be' in almost every language irregular? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"My understanding is that it's such a basic, ancient word that it already existed in its various forms/tenses in every proto\\-language before actual rules for verbs were worked out and practiced by educated folks.",
"it's not exactly a why, but core words are more likely to be irregular than words that don't get used every day, multiple times a day. It probably has something to do with the fact that non-core words came later in the life of the language, when we were more concerned about languages making sense and following rules.",
"Language predates grammar, and any attempt to standardize its rules. Very common verbs, like \"to be\" and \"to go\" tend to have irregular forms because there are the most ancient. \"Be\" wasn't a verb, the idea of verbs came later. It was just the word you used to relate a thing to an action or state. There was no particular reason for the forms of \"to be\" to be similar, there are even advantages to them being different. Early verbs were unlikely to be conjugated themselves, \"to be\" was used for that purpose. You would say the equivalent of \"I was run\", \"I am run\", or \"I will run\", and having very different forms of be helps to distinguish them."
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8kgn9j | why are children asked which foot they kick with? | When writing we only really need use of one hand so it makes sense to ascertain which is dominant. When teaching kids to play football (soccer), both feet are equally useful but we still put emphasis on training with the dominant one, why? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Because most people do have a dominant foot. If you want someone to play on the left side of the field, people with a strong and controlled left foot have a big advantage for passing towards the centre of the field, particularly a cross from the corner in towards the goal. A right-footed player will have to run round the ball to pass accurately in that direction. Also, if you know which foot they naturally use best, you can work on giving the other one more control.",
"Because like with writing, the dominant foot will be more accurate, and you'll be slower to react if your brain first has to decide which foot to use. Personally, I've pulled off writing with both hands at once, both synchonously and asynchronously. This can speed up writing things down as you do it twice as fast, and it can improve multitasking skills, and yet we don't teach kids this skill. This is also one of the reasons behind why ambidextrous people are more accident prone -- they have more they have to decide before reflex kicks in. In summary, it's due to the fact that reflex actions are faster and more accurate than conscious actions, so if you can train sports-related (or arts-related) motions as reflex, you gain an advantage over those who don't."
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8kh456 | Is it customary for widely-used drum patterns and also melodies to be given names, and is there a resource to find out more? | I know of the so-called Amen Break, but I was curious if this phenomena is more widespread. Specifically in terms of hooks, riffs and leitmotifs. | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Yes, it is. There's also the universal break, and various other patterns that usually stem from cultural sources. Break beats often have specific names, there's a strong tradition of named musical and rhythmic progressions in jazz, and you've even got things like four on the floor, rock and roll, and other more modern popular patterns that are associated with specific dance and music styles. [edit] I don't know of any source offhand that has a compilation of these, but if you search within any musical genre, you'll be able to easily find a list for that specific genre."
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8kjebh | Why do medieval babies (in paintings, of course) look like grumpy old men? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"it’s because of the concept of the homuncular Jesus [see here]( URL_0 )",
"For the same reason that in many paintings from the same time period, women look like men with weird boobs. They only had male models and no photographs or anatomy books to base their drawings on. Getting the proportions right so that you don't accidentally draw a creepy old man baby actually takes practice and observation. There are also a few cases where the grumpy old man was a real person put there for some reason by the artist, and not just a mistake with proportions."
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8klq8q | Why do bands do planned encores at concerts? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It’s just tradition at this point. At one point in history encores were real but now every band just does it because it’s the thing every other band does. There are exceptions though, I’ve seen Bad Religion headline numerous times going through a 25-30 song set and just end it with no encore. The Supersuckers announce its time for “the fake encore” about 3 songs from the end...",
"I once saw a headliner announce that they didnt \"do\" encores and that they were about to play their last song of the night. Everyone in the building was grateful for not having to play the silly encore game. If only all bands did this... But to answer your question, I think a lot of performers do it to take a little breather and recover so they can end the night with a second wind.",
"I’m a touring a musician, and I’ll just say it looks amateurish when you don’t have an encore prepared. Label will get mad and make you do it. I wouldn’t do it if I didn’t have to but thats the reality of the business.",
"It's just a part of the concert format at this point; lots of social events have an inherent script. (e.g. when you go to a restaurant, your waiter follows a specific set of conventions--sits you down, asks about drinks, brings drinks, asks about food, brings food, checks on you a few times, brings check, takes check, brings back check--even though the checking process could be significantly simplified, people now think it's \"custom\" to do it this way) I have never personally seen a band skip the encore. From a more practical standpoint: Fans expect one, so they plan for it. If they didn't plan for it, the band might not be practiced for whatever they decided to play.",
"Why are they performing live in the first place? Because they want people to scream in joy when they do their thing. Fact of the matter is, playing your closer doesn't get as big a cheer as leaving the stage, coming back, then playing your closer. If that wasn't true, it wouldn't happen. If you have a problem with it, your issue is largely with the over-excited audience, not the performers who are there to give the audience a good show.",
"Because people expect encores and spontaneous encores don't fly anymore. From what I've been told, the live entertainment industry shifted to a model where you rent the stage and are then responsible for drawing the crowd to make a profit. If you use the stage longer than what you paid for or you make the staff work overtime you get the life fined out of you. I've seen a couple of bands who take an approach of that they aim to play a pre-scheduled show (such as a new album), and after that they leave the stage to signal the end of the touring set. Then they come back and fill in the overtime with older songs. That's a format that I like more than pretending that it's a spontaneous encore.",
"They assume in advance everybody loves them so much they'll have to do an encore anyway and since most modern music can't just happen without a lot of setup it's probably necessary to plan. It's not like Jay-Z is coming back out and doing an acapella version of 99 Problems. It's a full production performance with lasers and shit.",
"Everyone wins. The band withholds the crowd favorite for their \"encore\" and the crowd hears their favorite song. And with a little theatre thrown in. There is also something about encores, often things are a little more relaxed and informal. It's usually the most interesting part of the night.",
"When I saw LCD Soundsystem last fall they made an announcement that they weren’t going to fake an encore because they thought that was lame. But they did say they were going to take a bathroom break and play some more songs. Pretty down to earth and genuine response imo. I’d imagine that bands do it to build hype and/or legit take care of something and come back on stage. How authenticate they want to be about the “encore” is down to the band",
"I don't claim to have ever been a huge band, but we were fairly locally known. We would headline at a venue that all the big bands would stop through. When you leave the stage and the crowd is shouting \"One more song! One more song!\" Then you would feel like a douche not going out and playing one more song. It's not that we went out of our way to try to do an encore, it's that we were a growing band and did everything we could to please fans.",
"One thing I haven't seen in this thread, but I'm sure is a factor for some artists, are things like noise ordinances, and venue rules. The closer might genuinely want to play past 10/midnight/2AM, but they might get hard cutoff and/or fined. This has a ripple effect if more than one band's playing or it's a festival. If artist 3 of 5 goes long, they're just demanding more than their allocated piece of the pie from the closers (usually more popular artists). That doesn't directly answer your question, but it helps with the other explanations. It's the format of concerts. People want/expect them. They get disappointed when the artist just leaves. As I've gotten older and reflected a bit, I personally don't care that much, assuming they play for at least the full time. Plenty of artists just play their set and leave; in fact, I've been seeing this more and more at recently."
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8klvqb | Why is the Mona Lisa such a popular art piece? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Long story short. Wasn't all that popular, somebody stole it, gained attention from theft, was returned, people wanted to see if after all the talk, became popular.",
"Well it being stolen had something to do with it, but it’s also a Leonardo piece which makes it a pretty big deal. Also the fact that her facial expression changes depending on how you look at it is one of the reasons it’s popular as well.",
"I suggest you read \"Leonardo Da Vinci\" by Walter Isaacson. He goes into great detail about what makes this painting so unique, and provides a lot of background Da Vinci's interests and genius."
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8kmrt2 | What is the factual explanation on the increase in school shottings? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"What do you mean factual explanation? Its a sociological problem, everything is empirical. There is no magic explanation that is dead accurate because there are a bunch of different personal motivations and background factors. Personally I think its sheer volume of guns, lack of mandatory firearm safety courses for their owners, and subsequent ease of access for teenagers combined with media attention of the shooters. But thats an opinion not a fact."
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8kncea | Why is Camilla the Duchess of Cornwall, but Charles the Prince of Wales? Why is he a Prince, not a Duke? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"He is also a Duke. But Prince is a higher title than a Duke so it takes precedence and is the primary title he goes by when using a shortened title. His full title is : His Royal Highness Prince Charles Philip Arthur George, Prince of Wales, KG, KT, GCB, OM, AK, QSO, CC, PC, ADC, Earl of Chester, Duke of Cornwall, Duke of Rothesay, Earl of Carrick, Baron of Renfrew, Lord of the Isles and Prince and Great Steward of Scotland.",
"British peerage and titles has a long and complicated history, further complicated but the current monarch's ability to change those ancient rule and traditions as they see fit. The title held by the heir apparent in the UK is the Prince of Wales, Charles is next in line for the throne, so he gets this title. Traditionally the bride of the Prince of Wales also gets the title Princess of Wales, and once she is married, can be referred to has \"Her Royal Highness\" or as an HRH. When Charles and Dianna divorced, Dianna by agreeing to the divorce, gave up the title Princess of Wales and her status as an HRH. She was no longer a member of the Royal Family. In olden days, 1\\) Members of the royal family didn't divorce, so there aren't 1000 year old rules about what to do, and 2\\) If the wife of the Prince of Wales died and he remarried, the new wife becomes the Princes of Wales. So logic would dictate that Camilla, Charle's new wife take the female counterpart to his title as heir apparnet. But, again the rule are not clear for divorce, and the monarch, in this case Charle's mother Elizabeth, can change these rules because honestly they're just silly 1000 year old traditions that don't mean anything anymore. Elizabth II knew that Dianna, especially after her death was popular, and Charles and Camilla were not, that haveing Camilla take what the people saw as Dianna's rightful title \\(The Princess of Wales\\) would be insulting. The job of the monarch these days, well in all days, is to keep the people happy. So as a condition for royal consent to the marrgie of Charles and Camilla \\(oh yeat btw the monarch still gets to approve/deny royal marriages at will\\), Elizabeth II decreed that while married, Camilla would not be the Princess of Wales, and would not be granted the Title of HRH. She was allowed to take the peerage of Dutchess, so as not to insult Charles too much, as Duke/Dutchess titles are reserved for family of the reigning monarch. tl;dr \\- Nobody except Charles likes Camilla, so the queen said that if they married, she \\[Camilla\\] couldn't take the title once held by the still popular Dianna and make the royal family look bad.",
"His is both a prince and a duke and many other titles. When his mother become the Queen he become Duke of Cornwall, Duke of Rothesay, Earl of Carrick, Baron of Renfrew, Lord of the Isles and Prince and Great Steward of Scotland From the 14th century the title Prince of Wales is title to the heir apparent for the crown. He was created Prince of Wales in 1958 ( got the title) The better question is why Camilla don't use the Princess of Wales title? Because as his wife she it the Princess of Wales. The explanation is that it is today associated with hist first wife Diana. Hist separation and divorce with her in combination that he had a own extramarital affair with Camilla beginning in 1986 when he and Diana was still married. It would look bad if she used the title. They also had a civil rather than a church wedding for similar reasons. So she choose to use the title Duchess of Cornwall",
"He is also a duke. People are not restricted to one title. Charles holds a number of titles, including two duchies. Camilla *is* the princess of Wales, but does not use that title, largely because it was used by, and strongly associated with, Princess Diana.",
"Charles is both Prince of Wales and Duke of Cornwall. Prince of Wales is the more senior title, so he primarily uses that as his main title. As his wife, Camilla is both Princess of Wales and Duchess of Cornwall. However, Charles' first wife, Princess Diana, was very popular amongst the public, and (at the time) Charles and Camilla were not. Since Diana was known as the Princess of Wales, Camilla uses one of her other titles as a mark of respect (and also to avoid controversy).",
"To be a prince or princess, you basically have to be of the royal blood i.e. one of your parents was born as a royal \\- unless the monarch gives a special exception. Prince Phillip wasn't of \\*British\\* royal blood \\(his is Greek and Danish\\) but Her Majesty made him a Prince apparently because he was upset his son outranked him. Charles, Anne, Andrew and Edward are of the royal blood. Their respective spouses aren't \\(Andrew is divorced\\), so no prince or princess titles, but Charles and Andrew got Dukedoms, Anne is Princess Royal and Edward is the Earl of Wessex. William and Harry \\(Henry formally\\) are Princes, as William's three children. Anne's two children via her first marriage don't. Maybe because she was a woman? Andrew's two daughters are princesses. Edward's children \\*could\\* have been HRH, but they decided when he married to give them the styles of the child of an Earl, so they're Lady Louise Windsor and James, Lord Severn."
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8kq2qo | In America, why are "The Elites" potrayed as on the opposite political spectrum of the political pundit or advocate who mentions them? | Culture | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Because there are both elite liberals and elite conservatives and each wing demonizes and makes a scapegoat out of the elite of their opposite.",
"Most people dislike the idea of a wealthy elite having unfair advantages in life, so the rich become a useful scapegoat when appealing to voters. It’s just politics - giving you the “correct” information which just so happens to Attack the other party.",
"Your pundit/advocate is trying to identify with the audience, generally middle-class-ish viewers, by painting themselves as separate from the out-of-touch \"elites\". It doesn't really matter that the pundit in question might be a multi-millionaire TV personality with the same connections & influence as the \"elites\" - it's just an act."
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