q_id
stringlengths 5
6
| title
stringlengths 3
296
| selftext
stringlengths 0
34k
| document
stringclasses 1
value | subreddit
stringclasses 1
value | url
stringlengths 4
110
| answers
dict | title_urls
list | selftext_urls
list | answers_urls
list |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
ewiycc
|
do jellyfish ever get their tentacles(?) tangled? if so, do they die? how do they get unknotted?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/ewiycc/eli5_do_jellyfish_ever_get_their_tentacles/
|
{
"a_id": [
"fg2mtve",
"fg2wu2t",
"fg3hf63",
"fg3ob0n",
"fg40ckf"
],
"score": [
197,
8,
36,
3,
2
],
"text": [
"Think of sally who has the longest hair in class. When sally goes underwater, does her hair become tangled as she shifts directions in water? They don't because of how inertia works in water. Each strand of hair flows uniformly in the same direction.\n\nLets say hypothetically they get attacked by some bored dolphin and it decides to leave after trying to eat one. The inertia from the water will naturally flow between the strands and they will eventually untangle. If it dies, it's because the dolphin ate that thing whole.",
"I am no expert, but their tentacles are very slippery (as well as their body), and it would be very hard to tangle the tentacles.\n\nIt's probably possible though, but it would require a good amount of force and some good tightening of the knot.",
"It's the slippery factor. But, they can get tangled when put in unnatural conditions like aquariums with artificial continuous flow. They're evolved to live with fluctuating currents, and their own tentacles slide over and off each other. When kept in close quarters with other things--other jellyfish, corals, fish, etc--they can get caught in those items or sting the live objects to death.",
"Jellyfish tentacles are not some collection of dead cells that hang without control. A jellyfish can move them, contract and expand, so if they do get tangled, they can get untangled as well.",
"Yes. It is difficult due to their tentacles being slippery, as well as slightly mechanical (they can move them a bit); but, it is definitely possible for two strands of anything to get tangled. Think about noodles in a big bowl of ramen, for the most part they stay separated. But sometimes, a few get too tangled and they get stuck together. It doesn’t take much for them to become unknotted, maybe some slight tugging. \n\nI doubt that a jellyfish would die due it though, this would require enough of their tentacles being immobilized that they can no longer eat."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[],
[],
[],
[]
] |
||
1wvisa
|
how is guantanamo bay (or rather our use of it) located in cuba?
|
If we have such bad relations with them, why are they allowing us use of it?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1wvisa/eli5_how_is_guantanamo_bay_or_rather_our_use_of/
|
{
"a_id": [
"cf5rh38",
"cf5rhb4",
"cf5tleb"
],
"score": [
10,
3,
2
],
"text": [
"The US has owned the base for over 100 years, from when Cuba was a close ally. The US has an indefinite lease on the land, made long ago that is still in effect today. \n\nCuba wants the US gone, the US wants to stay, and legally has the right to. It's just an accepted fact that the US base is there for good, and it's not like Cuba would be willing to try to oust or rouse the US Military. ",
"Google: Spainish-American War. It will also explain why we have an interest in the Philippines.",
"It all comes down to the Spanish-American War.\n\nLate 1890s, imperial tensions reaching high levels. You see the US transitioning out of the Civil War and becoming a world power. The US upgrades its navy as part of this. The Spanish control Cuba, a country not far from the States. Reports show that Spain is treating the native Cubans terribly, even putting them in concentration camps. This becomes a moral issue in the US government.\n\nPresident McKinley sends the USS Maine to anchor near Cuba. One night, that ship mysteriously explodes, killing over 200 American sailors. Journalists such as Hearst and Pulitzer report the incident back in America as the result of a Spanish mine or torpedo, and anti-Spanish sentiment grows to an all-time high. \n\nMcKinley finally declares war, and he sends troops to Cuba. Theodore Roosevelt leads his famous Rough Riders to battle, and Spain is handily defeated. In the following negotiations, the Treaty of Paris, 1899, guarantees the US Spanish territory including Cuba. The following Platt Amendment allowed the US to establish a military base on Cuba. That amendment still remains in effect today, which is why America is still allowed to have a base there."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[],
[]
] |
|
v17gb
|
what the hell is going on with verizon data plans?
|
More importantly, say I just bought a brand new phone two weeks ago with a two year contact, under the impression that a smart phone with 30 bucks a month for unlimited data was a decent deal, would I now be forced into this 50 dollars a month for 1GB of data bull crap?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/v17gb/eli5_what_the_hell_is_going_on_with_verizon_data/
|
{
"a_id": [
"c50eb2d",
"c50ewz2",
"c50f4m1"
],
"score": [
2,
2,
3
],
"text": [
"That'd be the smart phone market right now, sad to say. ",
"according to the verizon site (just checked) 50 bucks gets you 5gb. there's no 1gb plan but 30 bucks gets you 2 gb\n\nshort answer is that the infrastructure can't support 4g and lte speeds. a few years ago, when most phones were running 3g or slower, it wasn't easy for most people to go through 2gb worth of data. as 4g phones and data demand roll out, its no longer hard to use up 2gb of data so the networks can't handle the traffic and bandwidth\n\nits much cheaper to roll out a phone with 4g speeds and impose data caps than to build out the network and continue to allow unlimited data. most people shouldn't notice a difference (from 3g to 4g my usage only increased from 250mb to 1gb per month) for the price they pay. mobile providers are trying to keep costs down for everyone by charging the people who use intensive data more money\n",
"My understanding is that existing customers (who signed unlimited contracts prior to June 28) will be unaffected, though you won't be eligible for any phone discounts unless you give up your unlimited data plan.\n\n[Source](_URL_0_)"
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[],
[
"http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9228051/Unlimited_data_customers_freaked_out_by_new_Verizon_shared_data_plans"
]
] |
|
5acdqg
|
why are almost all songs played at major league baseball games played by an organ and why do they still do it?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5acdqg/eli5_why_are_almost_all_songs_played_at_major/
|
{
"a_id": [
"d9fbm9d",
"d9fbtie",
"d9fj8fm",
"d9fogmh",
"d9frmvn",
"d9fryqo",
"d9fspxa",
"d9fv0dy"
],
"score": [
50,
155,
11,
3,
5,
2,
8,
2
],
"text": [
"Pipe organs are quite loud. They make a level of sound that can fill a baseball stadium. Back in the olden days this was more cost effective than the audio amplifiers and speakers of the time. Now it's just nostalgia for those olden days when baseball was \"America's Pastime\".",
"Baseball stadiums were originally built before they had audio systems. So to have music that everyone could hear you needed a loud instrument, and that is what an organ was. Even when they added sound systems it was still higher quality and less expensive to use an organ. It has now been used for so long that it is a part of the atmosphere/feel of watching the sport and expected as part of the tradition of going to the game. Few modern stadiums use a physical organ, and most use a synth organ either fully run by computer or played on an electric keyboard and then pumped out through the sound system. ",
"Although pipe organ versions are still played out of tradition you will notice many professional parks play music. How much they play of each is just preference of the ball clubs. \n\nIn basketball we are starting to see DJs that actually have a presence playing the music. Saw a profile on the Raptors official DJ the other night. He said the players let him know what they like and dislike but he gets to choose the tunes. ",
"They are? I've seen a few major league games and they've all had big sound systems to play real music on. \n\nI haven't been to one that used the old organ in years.",
"This used to be the case for hockey games as well. \n\nNow it's like being at a concert with flashing lights, floating whales and heavy-beat rock music. ",
"Tradition. The entire purpose of baseball is old timey tradition. Organs are loud af so they were fine for the time.",
"They're actually called calliopes! It's a specific type of organ. It's the same kind of instrument as they used to have on carnival carousels. Calliopes became popular as a sport accompaniment because they were able to produce a large variety of sounds at a loud volume (calliopes have one level of sound and it is LOUD). Calliopes were favored over other instruments capable of the same thing because of their relatively smaller size to full pipe organs and because of its cheerful and somewhat silly tone. \nLike pianos, they could also play themselves with prewritten sheet music (kinda like the raised bumps on the cyllandar in a music box), so an announcer need only feed the right music in instead of playing out all of the music.",
"they don't still do it. my aunt was the organ player for the nashville sounds baseball team and they replaced her with a machine that automatically plays the songs. according to her most teams are going to that system and she knows cause she tried to find another job doing it for a while before giving up and retiring.\n\nit was cool while she did it, when my family went to games we got our names on the scoreboard."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[]
] |
||
6laweu
|
why do british judges wear big, curly, white wigs?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6laweu/eli5_why_do_british_judges_wear_big_curly_white/
|
{
"a_id": [
"djsm6la"
],
"score": [
17
],
"text": [
"Short answer: Tradition.\n\nLonger answer: because the look established a standard appearance for the various types of official (barristers have one particular wig/robe set, different levels of courts have different appearances, and up until relatively recently judges had in some cases 5 sets of robes/wigs for different events). This has a lot of benefits, not the least of which arises when judges generally didn't bathe regularly. Even without that, it makes clear at a distance who is important, but at the same time grants them a degree of anonymity outside the court room. It also reduces bias in trial induced by the appearance of one barrister or another. That's essentially the main argument for maintaining them.\n\nBut the longer term history is simply because something similar was fashionable in the 17th and 18th centuries (and earlier, though multicoloured before the death of Charles II), so it's what everyone at the time wore. When it started to become unfashionable (into the 18th century) it became a rule, presumably because older lawyers and judges didn't want to give up the practice. Even today it's still a rule, and even today lots of people in commonwealth systems don't want to give up the practice or don't want to give it up everywhere. \n\nCourts in the US until the 1840's or 50's basically had the same style of dress, but then Chief Justice Marshall got rid of the idea. Even to present day states have various formal dress codes, not necessarily with the horse hair wig, but robes/sashes/etc. that are all legacies of some past court dress. \n\nI suppose the closest to correct but less useful answer is that it clings to life because unlike the US there's no single person in the Commonwealth who can say 'we're not doing it anymore', because one of them would have done so in the last 150 years or so, and once it's gone no one is likely to bring it back. The UK has a professional body that decides this, and the various countries and sub national entities (provinces/states/territories) that all adopted the same style only bother to change when someone really kicks up a fuss over it. The US though, the chief justice of the United States pretty much sets the standard for US federal courts, and if s/he says it's gone, it's gone, and every lower tier that may not be directly set by the chief justice will follow along. "
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
||
66d36h
|
how do the day/night cycles work on the moons of gas giants?
|
Could we ever colonize these moons due to their severe cycles?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/66d36h/eli5_how_do_the_daynight_cycles_work_on_the_moons/
|
{
"a_id": [
"dghj51n"
],
"score": [
2
],
"text": [
"You are talking about well over hundred different moons all with their own different physical characteristics and orbits. It is hard to give a general answer when there is so much variation. You are far away from the Sun so you do not get that much light from the Sun although there is a clear day and night cycle. Some of the Moons is close enough to the planet that it gets a significant amount of light from the planet when it is on the day side of the planet. This is similar to how on Earth there is quite a bit of light at night during a full Moon. So the day and night cycles would be a bit wonky with two very different sources of light. However if you are that close to a gas planet your orbital period is counted in hours so there would not be any long periods of night or day. Our own Moon have 14 days of constant sunlight followed by 14 days of constant darkness which presents a much harder problem with regards to lighting.\n\nHowever even with the two potential light sources you still would not be able to get enough light for a solar panel to make sense or to not want artificial light. So you might want to bring a nuclear reactor with you to keep warm. But some of the moons that is close to the planet and is not tidally locked will have very strong tides. These tides is enough to produce substantial heat from friction and compression that is enough to make ice melt. It might be possible to use this fact and create a geothermal power plant to harvest the tidal energy of the moon."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
|
3dz36k
|
how was lyft able to enter the rideshare market with basically the same business model as uber without legal reprecussions?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3dz36k/eli5_how_was_lyft_able_to_enter_the_rideshare/
|
{
"a_id": [
"ct9z7py"
],
"score": [
3
],
"text": [
"Many of the fights against Uber apply to any/all similar competitors doing those same things, but to simplify the story in the media/grab headlines they mostly refer to Uber since it's the most well known/biggest. The official laws' verbiage would apply to all ride sharing. "
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
||
7656nk
|
how did nicola tesla pull energy from the air? and how do we use this phenomenon in science/technology today?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7656nk/eli5_how_did_nicola_tesla_pull_energy_from_the/
|
{
"a_id": [
"dobc667",
"dobgh9l",
"dobnhhb"
],
"score": [
8,
3,
7
],
"text": [
"He transmitted energy through the air, the energy wasn't just there \"for free\". The technique used alternating current, like the outlets in your house, at significant, and by that I mean unsafe, voltages. We don't do unsafe stuff like this much today.",
"He didn't. Tesla just transmitted energy between two points without a physical connection between the two. Advances in technology have made it more practical to utilize this for wireless power transfer.",
"Telsa was a brilliant inventor, but he really didn't understand electricity. No one at the time did.\n\nHis genius was in performing an experiment, making observations from it, and deriving ad hoc empirical rules from in, as opposed to true theories. It is the difference between know what something will do, and know why it is doing it. \n\nHe was basically an electrical alchemist and like the alchemists, without true theory behind him, his guesses at what might be possible were way off. Specifically, it appears he thought he was channeling energy from the air and transmitting it through the earth, rather than creating it himself. If he could just scale it up, he believed he could tap into the sky and wirelessly transmit free energy to everyone.\n\nWireless energy transmission was the only part he got right, which was pretty groundbreaking for the day. It could work in theory but would be massively inefficient and have a lot of unwanted side effects, kind of like providing running water with a massive sprinkler in the middle of town.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n"
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[],
[]
] |
||
3iez8b
|
why does mainstream media stray away from reporting on police brutality?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3iez8b/eli5_why_does_mainstream_media_stray_away_from/
|
{
"a_id": [
"cufu97y",
"cufw7v4",
"cufwh3f"
],
"score": [
5,
2,
2
],
"text": [
"Compared to the mainstream media, young people blow it out of proportion because they predictably lean anti-authoritarian. Especially on the internet.\n\nThe fact is, there's a certain percentage of shitty people in every walk of life, in every profession. And a certain number of times well-meaning people fuck up at their job. You take all the cases of this in law enforcement and try to extrapolate that beyond what it is, and sensationalize it, without proper context of how many thousands/tens of thousands of successful law enforcement actions are taken every day, that's just confirmation bias.",
"Idk what you consider to be \"mainstream\" media, but I can think of a number of highly publicized incidents of police brutality (perceived or otherwise). Rodney King back in '92, more recently Michael Brown, Walter Scott, Tamir Rice; the list goes on and on. I could make a counter argument that these cases, Michael Brown in particular, were covered extensively on all of the major networks. CNN and FOX discussed what little was known about the Michael Brown incident nearly around the clock for literally days in the immediate aftermath of the incident. As more details were released, they ramped up their coverage again. The media does not stray away from covering police brutality at all. It's quite the opposite. ",
"can you provide some proof for your premise? in my experience the mainstream media has reported on a lot of cases of police brutality."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[],
[]
] |
||
7g8jyg
|
why do radio/announcer-type people cup their hand over their ear, even when they're pretending to speak into a microphone?
|
[deleted]
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7g8jyg/eli5_why_do_radioannouncertype_people_cup_their/
|
{
"a_id": [
"dqhe160"
],
"score": [
5
],
"text": [
"If they are in a noisy environment they are trying to listen to themselves. Hearing yourself properly when you speak or sing is actually very important and we tend to take it for granted if we've never tried it over a PA system in a noisy place.\n\nThat's why performers have their own set of speakers pointed at them called \"monitors\" or \"fold back\". "
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
|
5mck5f
|
are babies affected by their parent's physical health at conception? is a guy who is physically fit and healthy more likely to have "healthier" sperm leading to a healthier child?
|
As opposed to a guy who is in the worst shape of his life but of the same age. Or is the whole DNA thing just a random dice throw and it doesn't matter whether you're in shape or not when your sperm becomes fertilized with the egg? Is it even possible to create "healthier" eggs/sperm?
Here is the scenario that I'm asking.
1. One couple in their mid-20s in the best shape of their lives (they exercise regularly and eat right) fornicate and conceive a baby.
2. This exact same couple only in the worst shape of their lives (no exercise, regularly eat fast/unhealthy food) fornicate and conceive a baby.
Will there be any difference between these two babies given that the mother while pregnant performed the exact same activities?
Also, I am aware that obese parents are more likely to have obese children, but that seems more to do with eating habits than any physical effects embedded in a child's DNA. It is not what I am asking.
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5mck5f/eli5_are_babies_affected_by_their_parents/
|
{
"a_id": [
"dc2jysz",
"dc3c2vf"
],
"score": [
2,
2
],
"text": [
"Yes. Healthier Parents would provide a better start for their offspring than unhealthy parents. \n\nIts like mothers who drink and smoke during pregnancy. The fetus is affected and you get health problems and F.A.S. at birth. \n\nDiet is important as the nutrients affects both sperm and egg. as well as during the pregnancy the fetus receives nutrients from the mother. \n\nHealth and DNA go hand in hand. someone with better genes will have better health, which gives them an advantage over persons with weaker genes. This is evident in the last 3 decades as the human race has gone from a physicality based employment system to a intelligences based employment system. Many jobs were more physical and laborious which meant that men would have to be stronger and more physically able to perform the duties of the job. These jobs were where the money was and the woman were drawn to these men, creating stronger genes. With the shift to more intelligence based jobs the people with more brain than brawn were getting more money which made the women more drawn to these men. The men with more brain than brawn were usually smaller in frame and stature. Usually the nerds in school as the men who were the jocks in school were more physically fit. you can see it through out history. \n\nBut there is always anomalies through out and a mutation could take place and cause a change even in the healthiest of people. \n\n",
"Great question. There are a few points I want to address. When we normally talk about \"healthy' sperm, we're talking about whether a male has\n\n1. A normal sperm count\n2. Sperm capable of moving (swimming) once released\n3. Sperm which are appropriately structured such that they can penetrate and fertilize an egg.\n\nThe health you're talking about is a little different and can be broken down into two topics.\n\n**Can the environment affect the DNA our children receive?**\nThis question relates to a field called epigenetics. Everyone's DNA has is made up of two strands. In the last two decades, we've started to realize that based on the environmental stressors a mother experiences (e.g. famine when she is younger, mental stress, etc.), our body can add something called a methyl group (consisting of a carbon atom and some hydrogens) to specific regions of our DNA strands. These methyl additions are capable of changing how or whether a certain gene is expressed. I use methyl groups as one example, but there are other modifications that can also affect DNA with much more complex mechanism. \n\nWhy does this matter? When we affect genes through epigenetic modifications, we can pass them on to our children. A known finding using the example above is that when maternal ancestors go through famine when they're younger, their children (possibly for multiple generations) are born smaller because normally sized babies would not be able to fit through the mom's smaller birth canal (a consequence of malnutrition when they're younger). What's also interesting is that in addition to physical health, the stress your maternal ancestors go through can affect your mental health - including your risk for depression, anxiety, and addiction. \n\n**How does our pre-existing health prior to pregnancy affect our children's health?**\nThe father's health can only affect their children through the mechanism described above. For the mother, her pre-existing health is going to affect a ton of factors in her body including the amount of circulating macronutrients, micronutrients (vitamins, minerals, etc.), various hormones, and so on. No matter how much she changes her diet and lifestyle her levels of each of the previously mentioned factors won't change to that of a more healthy person instantly and will have some sort of effect on the baby. What exactly will the affect be? We can't tease out what this might be exactly for every single lifestlyle/health factor but we can conduct research studies for specific populations, such as obese mothers. Obese mothers are more likely to have children with an elevated risk for with some congenital defects and health issues later in life (e.g. diabetes). This risk is still increased when controlled for environmental factors such as the nutrition the baby gets after they are born. "
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[]
] |
|
az2nw3
|
what *is* the lorentz factor?
|
I understand the equation, and understand how it is used, but what actually *is* it and why does it work the way it does?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/az2nw3/eli5_what_is_the_lorentz_factor/
|
{
"a_id": [
"ei4xsyj",
"ei74z13"
],
"score": [
3,
2
],
"text": [
"The reason for time dilation in special relativity is one fairly non-intuitive assumption: that the speed of light is constant in *any* reference frame. This means that whether sitting at your computer, driving in a car, traveling in a space-ship, or being pulled into a black hole, the speed of light that you observe is exactly the same at 299 792 458 m / s. The lorentz factor is basically the correction from \"normal\" physics needed to describe relativistic objects. It describes how much time dilates, how much length contracts and how much relativistic mass increases, among other things.",
"The Lorentz factor is basically a consequence of the geometry of spacetime. Special relativity tells us that the speed of light is the same for all observers. An equivalent way to put that in mathematics is saying that every observer agrees on the distance in spacetime:\n\n (Δs)^2 = c^(2)(Δt)^2 - (Δx)^2\n\nWhere Δt = t2 - t1 and Δx = x2 - x1. This is basically the Pythagorean theorem for spacetime. But instead it is valid for the geometry of spacetime, whereas the regular Pythagorean theorem is valid for the geometry of flat space (no time). Every observer will measure the number (Δs)^2 to be the same. Let's look at what an observer, Alice, who travels in a straight line from arbitrary points in space x1 to x2 will measure for Δs. For her, Δx is zero ofcourse -- she thinks she is standing still. This means that (Δs)^2 = c^(2)(Δt)^(2). The time passed for her is thus Δt = Δs/c, which we call the proper time Δτ. The reason this gets a special name is because Δs is something every observer will measure to be the same, as a consequence, the time elapsed on a straight path from x1 to x2 -- the proper time -- will be agreed upon by everyone.\n\nHow will the time elapses for a different observer, Bob, compare that that of Alice? We set up the situation so that according to Bob, Alice is moving at a constant velocity. Bob can just look at the clock of Alice to determine her proper time. Which he then can use to plug into the spacetime distance formula:\n\n c^(2)(Δτ)^2 = c^(2)(Δt')^2 - (Δx')^2\n\nI temporarily added primes to point out that these are the coordinates for Bob now. We want to look at the ratio Δτ/Δt to compare the clocks of Alice and Bob. Just divide the equation by c^(2)(Δt)^2 on both sides:\n\n(Δτ/Δt)^2 = 1 - (Δx/cΔt)^2\n\nNow you see that Δx/Δt is just the definition of Alice's velocity, according to Bob. By taking the square root of the equation we get:\n\nΔτ/Δt = √(1 - v^(2)/c^(2)) = 1/γ\n\nAnd there's your Lorentz factor.\n\nTo summarize: the geometry of spacetime can be encapsulated in the spacetime distance formula, just like the geometry of a flat space is given by the Pythagorean theorem. If you compare what different observers will measure on their clocks, the Lorentz factor will pop up as a sort of conversion factor."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[]
] |
|
2z6c55
|
the partitioning of the ottoman empire by the league of nations following wwi and the formation of the modern middle east
|
Why was the Middle East split up the way it was? How have did the current nations come to exist?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2z6c55/eli5_the_partitioning_of_the_ottoman_empire_by/
|
{
"a_id": [
"cpg23jk"
],
"score": [
8
],
"text": [
"The British and the French made a secret deal during WWI to assign responsibility for various lands in the middle east after they won the war. (This is called the Sykes-Picot agreement after the names of the two diplomats that negotiated it).\n\nThe Ottoman Empire was on the losing side of the war. It did not have the ability to militarily resist the French and British forces that occupied its territories. It collapsed, but the modern nation of Turkey was created from the part of the Empire located in Anatolia, and Turkey was militarily strong enough to fight the British and the French at its new borders so it retained its territorial integrity.\n\nAt the Paris Peace Conference of 1919 the Sykes-Picot agreement was embodied in the allocation of \"mandates\" given by the League of Nations to the British and the French. They in turn drew new lines on the maps to define those mandates. US President Wilson accepted the Sykes-Picot deal and the loss of self-determination in the middle east (major violations of his famous \"14 Points\" which had been his platform to end the war) because it became obvious that unless he compromised the Europeans would not endorse the League, and he felt the League was more important than the outcomes for the arabs. (A similar \"compromise\" was foisted off on the Chinese, for similar reasons, except they had territory expropriated by the Japanese not the Europeans).\n\nTo ensure their control of those territories the Europeans typically picked a small ethnic minority and elevated that minority into the leadership of the territory. The minority was de facto obligated to do whatever their European masters demanded or face the loss of the forces those Europeans were using to suppress dissent."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
|
68gp7i
|
how is ocean water converted to "fresh rain" while leaving the salt behind?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/68gp7i/eli5_how_is_ocean_water_converted_to_fresh_rain/
|
{
"a_id": [
"dgyir3q"
],
"score": [
3
],
"text": [
"**ELI5**:\n\nWater is very good at getting stuff to dissolve in it. Take a glass of tap water, and you can dump a couple of teaspoons of sugar and salt in it, and... Ta-Daa! You have salty sugar water (also known as Gatorade -- only to get Gatorade, you have to add fake color and some goofy fruit-like flavors -- but it's still salty sugar water). \nYou know what a molecule is, right? (LI5) Oh, no? It's a kind of Lego of matter. \nAt close to freezing temperatures, the water molecules will all be happily floating around in their container, with all the dissolved stuff loosely pulled apart by the water molecules, floating around happily with them. \nHeat that up a bit, and the water molecules at the top will start moving fast enough that they say, \"Hey, you know what? I think I'm outta here. I'm gone,\" and they leave. Where to? To the air above the glass. They become happy free-floating water molecules in the air instead of the glass. Any other molecules they might have torn apart (the stuff dissolved in the water) generally has a *much* greater temperature that causes it to say, \"I'd like to be in the air too!\" \nAs the molecules of water get excited enough to join the atmosphere, they leave the glass of Gator... er.. Salty sugar water. \nThe salt, and the sugar, might not get excited (hot) enough to leave the glass, so they stay behind. \nSame thing happens in the ocean, only on a *much larger scale*. \nOcean water doesn't get hot enough to boil, but it does get warm enough to persuade some water molecules to just get the heck out of Dodge, and join the atmosphere. \nAll the poor salt and sugar (and basically any water-soluble molecule) are forced to stay behind, increasing their concentration in the ocean (or the glass). \nIf you heat up the water enough, and quickly enough, (like crazy hot, by the way) the salt will escape as well, but at that point it's going to be happy little (very heavy) salt molecules that are taking their trip into the air. You're not going to get salt water vapor at that point, but rather salt and water as separate vapors. \nOnce those little salt molecules cool off a little (slow down a little) and aren't zipping around any more (and, by the way, this basically never happens) they fall back into the sea while the water scoots up into the sky and makes clouds. \nHope this helps.\n"
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
||
2d44lw
|
why does the us government have a aaa credit rating despite being $17 trillion in debt?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2d44lw/eli5_why_does_the_us_government_have_a_aaa_credit/
|
{
"a_id": [
"cjlv3g5",
"cjlv3jc",
"cjlv51j",
"cjlvgox",
"cjlvr67",
"cjlvz78",
"cjlxb0c",
"cjlzfso"
],
"score": [
16,
8,
31,
7,
3,
16,
5,
3
],
"text": [
"Because, like a Lannister, it pays it's debts.",
"Because it has the highest likelihood of repaying it. ",
"Because it doesn't matter how much you owe. As long as you pay your premiums and don't miss any payments then your rating remains unaffected. To date, the US has never defaulted, though it has come close.",
"Because debt has no bearing on the credit rating of an institution that doesn't have a life span. Sure it has an effect on you or me, but like a corporation, the US Government doesn't have a expiration date, so to speak.",
"The interest on the money we owe is ridiculously low so it's more like here's free money, we know you're good for it.",
"A credit rating only measures the likelihood that the debtor will default (with default meaning not making all interest and principal payments on time and in full). So the rating agencies take into account all the reasons the US government might not be paid back. Some of the big factors are 1) does the government even care about defaulting? (many countries have a history of defaulting whenever it is convenient to do so; the US has a history of never (seriously) defaulting even when it is very inconvenient.) 2) does the government have enough money to pay back its debts if it really wants to? The United States (the country) has assets of about $65 trillion, which the US government could tax to pay off those debts. 3) Are there external factors that could keep the debtor from paying off. For example, could the government collapse, could foreign invaders come in and replace the government and repudiate its debt, could the economy collapse, could natural disaster destroy the country. By all of these measures, the US government and US economy is one of the safest, most diversified and most defended in the world. ",
"1) Debt for a nation works differently than debt for a person. Debt for a nation is good in a lot of ways as it gives a way for people to make investments. \n\n2) So long as we do not miss any payments then debt means next to nothing for a nation. The US has not failed pay stuff when they come due. ",
"US debt is special. The US owes money in USD in which it actually controls the printing of. Therefore the US can technically repay all of its debts, no matter how large, if it really wanted.\n\nDebt is rated based on the ability to repay it. A high rating means there is almost no probability of default.\n\nSince the US pays it debt in a currency it controls, there is almost no probability that it will ever actual default."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[]
] |
||
6wy522
|
what would happen if a nuclear bomb exploded in space above the us, say at the height of the iss? would radioactive particles be mostly filtered by the atmosphere?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6wy522/eli5_what_would_happen_if_a_nuclear_bomb_exploded/
|
{
"a_id": [
"dmbmfk4",
"dmbmqhh",
"dmbo0j8",
"dmbofqw",
"dmbp4p1",
"dmbptdj",
"dmbrrgd",
"dmbt1ak",
"dmbusd2",
"dmbwiur",
"dmby171",
"dmc6rwm"
],
"score": [
105,
8,
71,
665,
3,
12,
15,
1079,
2,
3,
3,
2
],
"text": [
"We tried that once! The article says detonation was at 250 miles, roughly the same altitude as the ISS\n\n_URL_0_",
"There's a really useful site to check out the effects of different nuclear bombs at different locations and altitudes: _URL_0_\n\nNot sure if it accounts for the effects of the explosion starting in space.",
"It depends on the yield. The US did several exoatmospheric nuclear tests in the 60's. The radiation would get trapped in the Van Allen Belts and stay there until it decayed. It would also produce an electromagnetic pulse that could disable any nearby satellites and cause damage or destruction to any electronics on the ground in a wide area underneath the point of the explosion.",
"Oh, nice. At first a thought \"Crap, chemistry, I have nothing to add\" but then found this is a physics question.\n\nAs others have stated there was a test in 1962 of just that.\n\nThe radioactive particles are high in the atmosphere, that means they are distributed far, and as such do not cause a great spike in local measurements, as such they are relatively harmless. They can still cause bad things (cancer) in unlucky individuals, but given the explosion is high the material isn't forming a local cloud as you have with closer-to-earth tests. Of course if the fallout happens to get in some jetstream-winds they might kept closer together and do not distribute that far. \n\nThe particles would decay in the atmosphere or land wherever over time (weeks, months, years).\n\nYou get some radiation (belts) in the atmosphere, mostly high-energy electrons that can last for days or traces for some few years.\n\nThe effect of such a blast is not in the physical fallout but in the EMP (electromagnetic pulse) and in said radiation belts that can damage electrical systems, as power lines or satellites. In the 60s there was a lot loss of satellites due to the EMP and the radiation. It is unclear if something would happen again today as satellites are better shielded against natural radiation (back then they did not know that the natural levels could be higher than the ones of the blast). ",
"Does someone know a video of this happening?\n",
"Long story short? An EMP the radius of half the east coast that would knock out more or less a third of the electrical grid on the ground\n\nIn space, not much, given the massive amounts of radiation already present and the shielding satellites have to face that\n\nThe bright side is we would get some beautiful auroras",
"This is referred to as a HAND (high altitude nuclear detonation) and is the Pentagon's worst nightmare - it would be much worse than just putting the nuke on the ground somewhere due to the EMP taking out power lines across America. The fuses are designed for lightning strikes and wouldn't trip in time to save the transformers. Basically the whole country would lose power, can you imagine how long it would take to build enough transformers to replace them? This is the \"how fast does society turn to post-apocalypse\" question. Luckily there are few nations capable of getting a nuke to the specific altitude required. \n\nIn somewhere like the UK where the govt put power lines underground, they'd be fine, but America did it cheaper so we have essentially huge antennas above ground :-(",
"Simple explanation - \n \nThis has been done before.\n \n\"In the most dramatic stages of the Cold War, Russia and the United States were testing nuclear bombs left and right, and due to fears of a long-range nuclear missile or a satellite delivery system for a nuclear warhead, all eyes were on the skies. \n \nThe United States had launched a series of tests code named Project Fishbowl, which were high-altitude nuclear weapons tests. The most impressive and historic test in this Project was Starfish Prime. On July 9th, 1962, a 1.4 megaton nuclear bomb was detonated approximately 250 miles above the surface of Earth.\n \nWhat would happen if a nuclear bomb went off in space?\n \nFirst of all, since there is no atmosphere in space, there was no iconic mushroom cloud, nor a blast wave (which is where most of the damage of a nuclear bomb comes from on Earth). Instead, there was an intense outpouring of not only heat and light, but high-intensity radiation in the form of gamma rays and X-rays, with no atmosphere to interrupt their path. Visually, the blast was roughly spherical, and the wave of radiation and light expanded to light up the sky.\n \nOn the surface of the planet, vivid auroras of light would be seen for thousands of miles within minutes of the blast, because the charged particles from the blast would immediately begin interacting with Earth’s magnetic field. Imagine the aurora borealis, more commonly known as the Northern Lights, except spread across thousands of kilometers above the Pacific Ocean.\n \nThose ribbons of light and charged particle streams would continue to be seen for hours or even days after the blast (depending on the size of the explosion). In a nuclear blast, there is also quite a bit of debris, which would burn up in the Earth’s upper atmosphere, and heavy ions would also be absorbed by the atmospheric molecules of the planet. These extra radioactive molecules are actually useful in certain ways.\n \nPerhaps even more worrying than the huge amount of radiation being dropped into Earth’s atmosphere is the detonation’s impact on electromagnetic signals in a massive area beneath the blast. Essentially, those highly charged, rapidly moving electrons will create a small and incredibly powerful magnetic field, also called an EMP (electromagnetic pulse). You’ve probably seen this in sci-fi movies many times; an EMP bomb cuts off all electronic power within a given area (most famously, perhaps, in The Matrix Trilogy).\n \nFinally, regarding the long-term effects of a nuclear weapon detonating in space, that radioactive material falling into the atmosphere isn’t going anywhere. In fact, it dissipates and spreads around the entire planet. Those extra molecules imparted by that nuclear blast can now be accurately measured as a means of dating things, such as trees, wine, and animals. While that may be one useful thing about nuclear testing in space, that certainly doesn’t make the whole process any more sensible.\n\nThere were only a handful of high-altitude nuclear detonation tests in the 1950 and 1960s, but in total, more than 2,000 nuclear detonations were conducted on Earth between 1945 and 1998.\"\n \n_____________________________________________________________________________________________________\n**Answer is taken from this blog, I have just copied their content** - _URL_0_",
"Why do you specify the US? Why not just say above Earth?",
"If you want to read a fairly terrifying example of what an EMP pulse would do to us, read William R. Forstchen's \"One Second After\".\n\n",
"Looks like others have tackled the aspect of your question regarding the dilution of radioactive particles by the atmosphere, so I'll just add that despite a lot of concerns individuals might have about the prospect of detonating nuclear bombs in outer space, it would arguably be the most amazing conclusion to Fourth of July fireworks displays ever, and I think it is worth exploring.",
"The way nuclear fallout works is not in the way you think. \nWhat happens is the nuclear bomb either vaporizes matter or pulverizes into dust. \nIt's this dust you need to worry about. \nThis dust will be dosed with radiation which it then carries as nuclear fallout. \nSome will be sent far into the atmosphere, depending on the power of the bomb, but most will be spread around by the wind and air currents. \nSo in short the bomb does not create the fallout itself. \nBut rather the fallout is what the bomb has destroyed, mixed in with a healthy dose of ionizing radiation of course.\n\nIf a nuclear bomb would be detonated in low orbit over the USA there would be minimum damage to anything. \nIt's too far up to cause a note worthy EMP and as there is nothing to destroy there would be minimum radiation damages.\n\nNow if a bomb were to be detonated over the USA at the right altitude it would cause a EMP (electro magnetic pulse) wave that would destroy any electronics within the range of the EMP.\nThis is arguably the best way to attack a nation with a single nuclear bomb as with a EMP you would get more economic damage then if you detonated on the ground.\nOh and a side note, most nukes are already set to explode a few hundred feet above the ground as this does more damage. \nIf you detonate on the ground much of the nukes force will be absorbed by the ground.\n"
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[
"https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starfish_Prime"
],
[
"https://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/"
],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[
"https://www.scienceabc.com/eyeopeners/happen-nuke-exploded-space.html"
],
[],
[],
[],
[]
] |
||
3qizea
|
what is the evolutionary benefit or reason for the tyrannosaurus' small arms? how did it succeed as a predator with this shortcoming?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3qizea/eli5_what_is_the_evolutionary_benefit_or_reason/
|
{
"a_id": [
"cwfm38d",
"cwfm8df",
"cwfmifh"
],
"score": [
6,
2,
3
],
"text": [
"It's very unusual for a body part to evolve away completely. All land vertebrates are tetrapods - this means they have four limbs and a head. The only vertebrate I'm aware of to have completely broken that is the snake - other than that, everything has four limbs (although the rear legs fused in marine mammals like seals and whales). \n\nSo in all likelihood, the evolutionary benefit for the small arms was merely that the tyrannosaurus didn't have to waste so much energy and food growing them in the first place. It's the equivalent of cave mice being blind but still having eye sockets - it's a vestigial remnant of a more-or-less unneeded body part. ",
"There are a few theories for the Tyrannosaurus' small arms and the functions that they served. But first it must be asked, why did they get so small in the first place? Evolution doesn't have a goal in mind. Its completely random. However some mutations might benefit an animal to the point that those traits become dominant, and others might not get in the way enough for them to disappear. It's likely a combination of the two for the T-rex. Mutations that shortened the T-rex's arms simply weren't detrimental enough for the trait to disappear and instead it became dominant. Why did it become dominant? Well we dont know. Maybe all the other T-rex's were killed off and only the one that randomly had short arms survived. Maybe the mutation that brought about short arms came with other genetic benefits (like maybe bigger jaws). But most likely it was simply more efficient. If you aren't using your arms, but are wasting energy to pump blood to them, then they are more of a hinderance than a benefit. The T-Rex may not have needed its arms to be a successful hunter, its legs, tail, and giant head were enough. But then why keep them at all? Well there are a, as I said earlier, few functions that they may have served.\n\n1) they could have helped it grip the female during mating\n\n2) they could have helped the T-Rex right itself if it fell over.\n\n3) they were just long enough to allow it to grip onto prey before it delivered a killing bite.",
"The thing about evolution is its not about what makes you better, it's about what makes you worse. The small arms weren't killing them off, there wasn't a trex like critter with long arms doing better at surviving, it's not like short arms ment easy food, evolution is about your ability to make babies. If having short arms didn't stop that from happening, trex gonna have sex and trex have short arms."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[],
[]
] |
||
2oganq
|
how come germany is so anti-nuclear?
|
Germany is usually associated with efficiency and thinking forward.
So why did Germany suddenly ban all nuclear plants and increased their coal dependency? In most European countries nuclear energy is a debatable topic and (in my experience) people are about 50% for and 50% against, but in Germany the majority is anti-nuclear.
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2oganq/eli5how_come_germany_is_so_antinuclear/
|
{
"a_id": [
"cmmulum",
"cmmumwp",
"cmmupgd",
"cmmv1of",
"cmmv5cw",
"cmmvxow",
"cmmwn1x",
"cmmws5i",
"cmmx2yw",
"cmmx6gv",
"cmmx7gg",
"cmmy2y2",
"cmmy4dq",
"cmmyfqg",
"cmmynrg",
"cmmzyn0",
"cmn40kg",
"cmnhv72",
"cmnlnw1",
"cmnn3if"
],
"score": [
6,
11,
34,
8,
19,
82,
4,
2,
17,
3,
165,
2,
3,
7,
7,
2,
2,
2,
2,
2
],
"text": [
"Different people have different views on nuclear energy as a safe power source. I assume the Germans are afraid of nuclear meltdowns and disasters, and having to deal with nuclear waste.",
"Germany will never have a nuclear meltdown, they will also have \"Enough\" energy. Your right, Germans do \"Think forward\" maybe they are thinking far forward, and we are the ones thinking about the \"Right now this is the best\"",
"Because Fukushima, because Chernobyl. Germans are very keen to assessing risk, and accepting little, if any risk. Although the odds of meltdown are slim especially considering their aptness to engineering, in the rare event it would turn a large percentage to wasteland. Germany is only a hair larger than say Indiana or Illinois. ",
"The huge problem with nuclear energy is the nuclear waste. And no final place to put this waste has been found do far. It's extremely expensive to clean previous places up. \nAlso a lot of people here are afraid of previous nuclear meltdowns. Demonstrations took place here. \n\nGoing away from this kind of nuclear energy is positive, but it takes time. And it will. Currently about 50km away, they started to deconstruct an atomic plant send it'll take probably > 10 years. \n\nThe future lies in nuclear fusion. No waste and tremendous amount of energy. ",
"As a german I personally dislike nuclear power for two reasons. The first based on Germany as a whole: The country is simply too small for safe use of nuclear power plants. Germany is densly populated so you're forced to build the plants close to cities - which would make a meltdown even more catastrophic. For example there are three nuclear plants built close to Hamburg which is the second largest city in Germany. Hamburg alone has two million inhabitants - add the surrounding metroplitan area and you're at about 5-7 million people. All within the ground zero area of those power plants in case of a meltdown.\n\nThe second reason is that using nulcear energy and thus producing tons of nuclear waste that will remain radioactive for thousands of years is super short sighted. Yes we reap the benefits now but generations of humans will have to deal with the nuclear waste that can be used for nothing (well dirty bombs maybe) and just takes up space. It's stupid, plain and simple.\n\nAlso, the Chernobyl incident literally hit really close to home. I grew up duri g that time and I have to admit that not being allowed to play in a sandbox because some facility a couple of thousand kilometers away blew up... sucks. ;)",
"The main reason is the waste problem, and more specifically, the way it is handled.\n\nThe current storage facilities were classed as safe and durable by the environmental ministry (then led by Angela Merkel), and now have been found unsuitable (guess what, metal containers in a salt mine rust quickly), which gives people a feeling of having been misled.\n\nAnother thing is that if you count the tax money being spent on cleanup and storage of spent fuel as subsidies to the industry (because, in fact, they are) it is fairly obvious that this is in no way cheaper than even solar.\n\nSo, there is no real point in nuclear power.",
"there are more energy sources than coal and nuclear energy, and actually germany tries to get rid of both of them",
"Pandoras promise is still on Netflix, great watch to bring some reality to the nuclear fears.",
"Because it was a popular opinion after Fukushima. Our chancellor tends to jump upon these whenever widely popular, yet not always sensical opinions.\n\nWe have a party (Bündnis 90 die Grünen - the green party) that has advocated to stop all nuclear programs since forever and the CDU/CSU (Merkel's party) even agreed to prolong our current safe nuclear plants and changed their decision.\n\nThe thing is: We don't gain anything by shutting down our nuclear plants. We already have tons of nuclear waste that needs to be taken care of. All surrounding countries still have active nuclear plants. So if, say, there is a nuclear meltdown in France, we get just as much radioactive waste.\n\nSince we abolished nuclear energy our power prices have gone up significantly and will continue to do so in the future, our CO2 output has gone up signficantly since we had to reactivate and are even building new cole-fired power stations.\n\nSo as always, Germany isn't one body with one opinion but a multi-facetted country with lots of diverging opinions. The public opinion shifted towards anti-nuclear after Fukushima and our government made rash decisions to accomodate potential voters.\n\nalso: take everything I say with a grain of salt. I'm aware that my opinions heavily favour the continued usage of nuclear power.",
"In addition to legitimate arguments that have already been pointed out in other posts and good old German angst and risk-averseness, there's maybe also a historical point to make here. During the 80s, there were a couple of interconnected social movements being concerned with ecology, environment conservation, anti-nuclear activism and global peace as regarding the cold war. Being a front state in the cold war, with the iron curtain basically dividing the country, and therefore being well aware of the threat of a nuclear war made those movements gain considerable traction, while at the same time leading to a general fear of anything \"nuclear\", even more so after Chernobyl. You still see remnants of this in the relative success of the Green Party, for example. Bad political decisions like insisting dumping the waste at Gorleben despite legitimate concerns about the security also did play a role. Finally, while I'm not a friend of ascribing attributes to people solely based on their nationality, you might also say that fondness of pure and untouched nature and at the same time scepticism towards large industrial coorperations are also well received in large parts of the population, both also playing a role in the common view on nuclear vs. renewable energy (most anti-nuclear people are not pro-coal, but pro-renewable).",
"[Look at this](_URL_0_)\n\n[and look at this](_URL_1_)\n\nBecause our current energy companies and our governments in the past have been handling the nuclear waste problem HORRIBLY. The shit is stored in rusty, old barrels that leak everywhere, in old salt mines, supposedly temporarily (there is still not a single assigned \"final storage\".) People are fed up with how horribly the regulations for the waste storage have been enforced, also Fukuchima created a new wave of fear of nuclear energy. \n\nFor me personally, it's mostly the waste thing. I think it's simply ridiculous that fission energy has been used for 50 years without people ever bothering to find a final storage for the waste in the first place or enforcing hardcore regulation as to how this poison is stored temporarily. You can't just go laissez-faire on the companies and then say \"oh well, our saltmines aka temporary storages are full with liquid radioactive waste that's soaking it's way through the ground. Scheiße wars...\". I trust neither private companies nor the goverment to handle something like this, currently. \n\nI work in aviation,(an industry with a shitload of regulation and oversight by national and international agencies) and what we need is security regulations as massive and as thoroughly enforced as in aviation, where every single screw, every piece of metal and every procedure is, checked, approved, legislated, and trained a million times, that's the reason why air travel is so safe and that that's the only way fission energy *should* be handled, too.\n\n**In short**: No final solution to the waste question... :X",
"Don't fast breeder reactors solve most of these problems? ",
"I'm going to plug Austria here.\n\nThe country protested against the first nuclear reactor so hard that they never turned it on. To this day, the area around the finished power station is used for music festivals and as a symbol of environmental friendliness.\nOf course, we rape the mountains every years for millions of € but you gotta ski, right?",
"You are all talking about the waste problem, but the deeper root is certainly Chernobyl. Much of the fallout went over Germany after all. The generation that was forbidden to play outside, that cannot eat wildboar without checking radiation levels still, that lost people to cancers thatare known to be associated with the fallout, those are the people demanding green energy today. ",
" > So why did Germany suddenly ban all nuclear plants\n\nPlans to quit nuclear existed for a long time. The disaster at Fukushima just accelerated the process.\n\nThe waste issue has been very poorly handled by our government and the power companies. The population lost any trust, that a safe storage site could be found and could be held safe for thousands of years.\n",
"Personally, I am more concerned with climate change than with nuclear power risks, but I am in a stark minority. I will try to give an explanation:\n\nWe Germans treat nuclear risk with the same sanity the US deals with Ebola. I'm not really sure because I was really young at that time, but I think the (already strong) anti-nuclear movement really got traction when this happened:\n\n[Radioactive Cloud/Fallout Over Europe From the Chernobyl Disaster](_URL_0_)\n\nGermany wasn't hit the worst, but the countries east of us were part of the Soviet Union at the time and were simply not told that something bad had happened - at least for a while. I remember not being allowed to play in the sandpit on the playground, and that we had to avoid certain vegetables for a while. Imagine a disaster in your lifetime that might give your kids cancer!\n\nThere had been a political debate to keep the old nuclear power plants a bit longer than planned, since it takes a while to get green energy running on a large scale and replacing nuclear energy with coal was not a smart option - if your goal is to emit as much CO2 as possible, there is nothing better than coal power. (Also, the big energy companies would have earned easy money.)\n\nHowever, Fukushima happened and Merkel knew that the Green Party would gain an excessive number of votes after this event, so she immediately changed course - removing any reason to vote for the Green Party if your main concern is fear of Nuclear Energy. ",
"Why be so pro nuclear? :)",
"One does not lose two world wars and still be pro-nuclear. They don't want to get nuked at WW3.",
"The Tsunami that hit Japan had a HUGE EFFECT on their perspective. Plus they have some of the best renewable energy companies in the world. ",
"One big reason is that they can afford it. They are still exporting energy. "
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[
"http://www.asse.bund.de/SharedDocs/Bilder/DE/Geschichte/abgekippte_faesser.jpg?__blob=poster&v=1",
"http://p5.focus.de/img/fotos/crop3607170/5802719832-w1200-h627-o-q75-p5/urn-newsml-dpa-com-20090101-140211-99-06210-large-4-3.jpg"
],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[
"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oZ74Rqh7yDE"
],
[],
[],
[],
[]
] |
|
3p2ui2
|
canadian election mon.oct.19
|
If you are not currently registers but you are eligible to, you can register at the polls. Simply go to your local polling station (Google/Family/Neighbours can help you there) and provide them with the following options
1 - A Provincial/Territorial ID Card or your Driver's License or any other piece of GOVERNMENT ID with your Photo, Name and Current Address
2 - Two pieces of ID that prove you are a Canadian Resident (One must have your current address). These include things such as a Health Card, passport, Birth Certificate, SIN Card, Indian/Metis Status Card, Military ID, Credit/Debit Card, Firearms License, Employee/Student ID, Library Card, Hunting/Fishing License, Utility Bill, Personal Cheque, Car Insurance Policy, Vehicle Registration/Ownership, Letter of Confirmation of Residence/Garuntor Form, etc
3 - Provide two pieces of ID with your name and have someone else that is already Registered in the same polling station and will attest as to your identity there with you while you both take an oath.
For more information go to _URL_0_
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3p2ui2/eli5_canadian_election_monoct19/
|
{
"a_id": [
"cw2othy",
"cw2pe43",
"cw4i9sd",
"cw4j69k",
"cw4k2cf",
"cw50lse",
"cw5onrg",
"cw5wep2",
"cw690x5"
],
"score": [
6,
28,
20,
4,
8,
3,
8,
2,
2
],
"text": [
"There are 5 Parties, 4 Progressive/Left Wing and 1 Conservative/Right Wing.\n\nBy Popular Vote Rank\n\n1. Liberal/LPC\n\n2. Conservative/CPC\n\n3. New Democratic Party/NDP\n\n4. Green/GPC\n\n5. Bloc Quebecois/BQ (Quebec only)\n\nSome main issues in this election are LPC and NDP promise electoral reform to a proportional system, where the spoiler effect, and gerrymandering is much harder to do, these two also promise to legalise Marijuana for recreational use, and Climate Change and the ecosystem are also large issues.",
"Canada is divided in [338 electoral districts](_URL_6_) each representing approximately 63,000 to 120,000 people. Each of these districts will elect one Member of Parliament using the [First Past The Post](_URL_9_) voting system with the simple *pieces of paper inside a box* method.\n\nThere is the option of voting for a candidate. Candidates running for one of those local elections can be anything from: \n\nan independent leader,\n\na member of a small political party with some kind of leader,\n\nor a member of one of the 5 major parties.\n\n* [Bloc Québécois](_URL_2_) leader [Gilles Duceppe](_URL_14_) running in [Laurier--Sainte-Marie](_URL_13_)\n* [Conservative Party of Canada](_URL_1_) leader [Stephen Harper](_URL_12_) running in [Calgary Heritage](_URL_4_)\n* [Green Party of Canada](_URL_15_) leader [Elizabeth May](_URL_0_) running in [Saanich--Gulf Islands](_URL_8_)\n* [Liberal Party of Canada](_URL_7_) leader [Justin Trudeau](_URL_5_) running in [Papineau](_URL_3_)\n* [New Democratic Party](_URL_10_) leader [Thomas Mulcair](_URL_11_) running in [Outremont](_URL_13_)\n\nThere is also the option of canceling your vote.\n\nThere is also the option of not voting.\n\nedit: formatting, fixed links, added details",
"Canada is holding a **federal election** scheduled to conclude on October 19th (Monday). People in the 338 federal **ridings** (electoral districts) will vote to select the candidate they feel will best represent them in the **House of Commons**, the main legislative body of Canada. These winners will become **Members of Parliament** (MPs) or retain that title if they were incumbent.\n\nBetween the previous election (2011) and now, 30 seats have been added to the House of Commons, representing **30 new ridings**. There is great interest in seeing what effect these new ridings will have on the outcome of the election.\n\nIn the Canadian parliamentary system, Canadians can only cast a vote for their riding - while the **leaders** of the various political parties are well-represented in press coverage of this election, each of them is running to become an MP for a specific riding, and Canadians as a whole cannot cast a vote for those persons directly. Under our system, the party with the most seats in the House of Commons - the most MPs on its team - positions their party leader as the **head of government**. The parties determine these leaders on their own. Canada can form two kinds of government: a **majority** in which a single party has enough representation that they can act without the contributions of other parties, or a **minority** in which the best-represented party holds a **plurality** of the seats - more than anyone else - but cannot pass new laws without securing votes from MPs of other parties. The current government is a Conservative majority.\n\n**Why are we having an election?**\n\nThe [Canada Elections Act](_URL_0_) mandates fixed election dates. This will be the first federal election to be called for under this rule.\n\n**Who are the parties/leaders involved?**\n\nThere are five parties generally considered noteworthy at the federal level. Other parties exist but have a smaller presence, with little to no demonstrable electoral success.\n\n• The **Conservative Party** (Tories); *Stephen Harper,* party leader, is the current Prime Minister of Canada, an office he has held since 2006. The bulk of his professional life has been served in a political capacity, particularly as an elected representative from Alberta.\n\n• The **New Democratic Party** (NDP); *Thomas Mulcair,* party leader, is a lawyer and former provincial politician who is the current leader of the Official Opposition. He has held this position since 2012.\n\n• The **Liberal Party** (Grits); *Justin Trudeau,* party leader, is the son of Pierre Trudeau (a former Prime Minister) and has held public office since 2008. Prior to being elected, he worked as a French and math teacher.\n\nTwo more parties have a federal presence but are not considered viable contenders to form a government:\n\n• The **Bloc Québecois** (Bloc); *Gilles Duceppe,* party leader, has been involved in federal politics since 1990, prior to which he worked as a union organizer.\n\n• The **Green Party**; *Elizabeth May,* party leader, has held public office since 2011 and is the only current sitting Green MP. She previously served as Executive Director of the Sierra Club of Canada and is a writer and lawyer.\n\n**So what's this election about?**\n\nThis election is being described as a \"referendum on the Harper Government,\" meaning that the main issue is whether or not people like what the current government is doing. The parties have brought their own issues to the fore as well:\n\n• The Conservatives want to emphasize the steady economy under their leadership and say that their opponents do not have stable or reasonable economic plans for Canada. They have lately been pushing the issue of Canadian identity and security. The Conservatives stand behind their **incumbency**, the fact that they currently hold office, as a sign of experience which others may lack.\n\n• The NDP says that Conservative policy is not succeeding and offers its own plan as a solution. They stress higher taxes on corporations and the wealthy as a means to pay for programs that should benefit many Canadians, such as child care, environmental programs and a bolstered health care system.\n\n• The Liberals say that the Harper Government is flawed and corrupt. They want to spend heavily to invest in infrastructure programs that they claim will create jobs and help Canada's middle class. The Liberal platform includes marijuana legalization and their platform stresses a belief that Canada's political system is broke and needs fixing.\n\n• The Bloc is a **separatist** party which desires to represent the interests of the province of Quebec first and foremost, and which advocates for **Quebec sovereignty** - separating from Canadian governance. The Bloc does not have candidates outside of Quebec.\n\n• The Green Party echoes sentiments regarding taxation, problems with the Harper Government, more funding for public services and an increased concern for the environment.",
"In a nutshell, who should I vote for and why?",
"Check out /r/CanadaPolitics for more news on the election. Current polling shows the the Liberals leading the Conservatives with the NDP in a distant third. Most seat projections show a Liberal minority which will likely be backed by the NDP. Although there is a chance of a Conservative minority and also a slim chance of a Liberal majority. Polling is less accurate in Canada in comparison to the U.S.",
"I have a question. In the event that the Liberals and Cons have the same number of votes (eg both have 150 votes each) and the NDP and other parties don't support either parties and no one crosses floor (at least immediately), then what happens? I know it's very unlikely happen, but with this election, you never know.",
"We have to show a driver's license or other picture id to vote in Canada. No one gives it a second thought. Why is this so controversial in the US?",
"how are they counting the votes so fast? what measures are in place to keep everything honest?",
"I'd just like to make a small correction to the link - it's _URL_0_"
]
}
|
[] |
[
"www.election.ca"
] |
[
[],
[
"http://imgur.com/peNq0pB",
"http://www.conservative.ca/",
"http://www.blocquebecois.org/",
"http://www.elections.ca/Scripts/vis/Map?L=e&ED=24055&EV=41&EV_TYPE=1&PROV=CA&PROVID=99&QID=-1&PAGEID=27",
"http://www.elections.ca/Scripts/vis/Map?L=e&ED=48007&EV=41&EV_TYPE=1&PROV=CA&PROVID=99&QID=-1&PAGEID=27",
"http://imgur.com/iV7M7VS",
"http://www.elections.ca/Scripts/vis/SearchProvinces?L=e&PROV=CA&PROVID=99999&QID=-1&PAGEID=20",
"https://www.liberal.ca/",
"http://www.elections.ca/Scripts/vis/Map?L=e&ED=59027&EV=41&EV_TYPE=1&PROV=CA&PROVID=99&QID=-1&PAGEID=27",
"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s7tWHJfhiyo",
"https://www.ndp.ca/",
"http://imgur.com/UWLJJiR",
"http://imgur.com/i7OjqcZ",
"http://www.elections.ca/Scripts/vis/Map?L=e&ED=24039&EV=41&EV_TYPE=1&PROV=CA&PROVID=99&QID=-1&PAGEID=27",
"http://imgur.com/eZt7ZZw",
"https://www.greenparty.ca/"
],
[
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canada_Elections_Act"
],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[
"http://www.elections.ca"
]
] |
|
wv4hb
|
why does music on youtube sound good (at least to me), but then sound crappy when i download it from youtube and put it on my ipod?
|
And why do some songs still sound okay?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/wv4hb/why_does_music_on_youtube_sound_good_at_least_to/
|
{
"a_id": [
"c5gq8ja",
"c5grr2f"
],
"score": [
5,
2
],
"text": [
"I'm not an expert so could be very wrong. I also find it impossible to explain it like a 5 year old because of that very reason, but I'll try my best.\n\nWhen you download the song, as you said, the song loses some of its quality. One reason for this could be because the software you use compresses the youtube song in the process of conversion: In order to get the online video into an MP3, the software has to do some stuff.. This results in the song losing what's called its bit rate. Every piece of audio that you hear from a computer has a bit rate (I think) - the higher the bit rate, the higher the quality of the audio. For example, songs on a CD are 320kbps (kilo bits per second), which is good quality. Bit rate can go up to whatever you want it to go to (typically 1411kpbs, what's known as WAV), but the higher your bit rate, the larger the size of the file. Youtube songs can have different bit rates depending on the uploader - channels like Vevo will most likely upload high quality 320kbps audio.\nHOWEVER, when you convert a song, the audio quality decreases due to the compression. I think some youtube converter websites let you choose the audio quality you want.. \nI'm not 100% sure because I don't use youtube converters, but that's a guess! Hope it makes sense. I doubt it does. \n\n**TL/DR** converters compress songs which in turn decreases the quality of the audio\n\n**Edit:** Also I'm sure it has something to do with the coding of the file.. But I'll leave that to someone far wiser than me to explain",
"Use Orbit downloaded or something, you are getting crappy versions of the songs in the interest of bandwidth"
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[]
] |
|
346md0
|
why is it so difficult for people to agree on the best ways to work out and eat properly?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/346md0/eli5_why_is_it_so_difficult_for_people_to_agree/
|
{
"a_id": [
"cqrqagq",
"cqrqe7n"
],
"score": [
2,
3
],
"text": [
"Because we don't know the BEST way to do it, as we really just don't know the human body that well.\n\nWhat we do have is a whole lot of decent ways to stay healthy, a handful of good ways, and a whole lot of things to avoid doing. ",
"Having just completed a report in an undergraduate biology class on different diets (not claiming any expertise here), there is just no set-in-stone way that will work for everybody. Yes, there are general guidelines that can be followed, but when it comes down to different beliefs (paleo vs. food pyramid, crossfit vs. muscle-specific training), there are competing studies that offer up very different results. My conclusion, eating and exercise habits need to be tailored to the individual. This requires the person to experiment a little and ultimately determine the best lifestyle for them, because to be frank, there really just isn't that \"100% right\" way to eat or exercise that can be applied to EVERY person.\n"
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[]
] |
||
1dtfsm
|
why is everyone worried about ea games developing the new star wars games?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1dtfsm/eli5_why_is_everyone_worried_about_ea_games/
|
{
"a_id": [
"c9to0zd",
"c9todop",
"c9toedb"
],
"score": [
7,
2,
3
],
"text": [
"[This sums it up pretty nicely](_URL_0_)\n\nBasically we're mostly afraid they'll ruin what we loved about the games, add tons of things in the form of DLC that makes you feel like you're being nickeled and dimed having to pay for every little addition or service, and their dreaded DRM with the always online requirement.\n\nIt gets annoying after a while when I want to play a game you have to pay 50 -60 bucks for a game, in some cases another 3-5 per month on xbox live, some games like Mortal Kombat (which is a scary trend ti that it looks like they might be heading towards, though i dont believe this one was made by EA) are charging extra to play that specific game online, or you have to buy specific map packs to play. \n\nAlso annoying when their DRM forces you to be connected to an online server (Which frequently goes down) even if you're not playing something multiplayer, or when the system messes up and blocks you from playing the game you bought completely legally. Or if you're like me and love to replay some of your old favorite games occasionally like whatever Legend of Zelda, or Warcraft 3, or Knights of the Old Republic, they shut servers down after a period of time (when the new version comes out) so that in the future my now old game that I loved is unplayable under the new always online system, I either have to upgrade to the newest installment of that game, or just stop playing altogether. \n\n\n\nThey also have a habit of buying out smaller game studios and then making a generic product that sucks and relying on the established brand name to sell the game instead of making something that functions well, is creative, or fun etc.\n\n\nObviously not all of their games are like this, and EA is not the only company doing this kind of crap, but they have had a few big name fuckups recently with Sim City and Battlefield 3 in particular. It all makes you feel like 1. even though i bought this game, i dont own it. 2. im constantly being hassled to spend more money, a dollar here, 5 dollars here, etc. to keep up, or even just play what used to be expected as free with the price of the game a few years ago. 3. Game quality. The graphics have gotten much better, but in a lot of cases, nothing else really changes. generic.\n\nI would hate to see them make something like Battlefront III with all of this junk.",
"Because EA has a long track history of doing everything possible to maximize their profit, and of not making decent games.\n\nSuch practices include:\n\n* Excessive Day-1 or Pay-To-Win DLC\n* Rushing out unfinished games\n* Excessive DRM schemes\n* Attaching a brand-name to a game that it has little resemblance to.\n* Poor customer service\n* Buying/closing the competition rather than competing on quality\n* Re-releasing the 'same' game (see: Madden and other sports titles)",
"Time_vampire has a good link there. Here is a more detailed list to show just how long they have been doing this kind of stuff.\n\n_URL_0_\n\nI don't agree that all these things were explicitly bad for gamers, lots of opinions here but still you get the gist."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[
"http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1ak43f/eli5_why_does_everyone_hate_ea/c8y9wxo"
],
[],
[
"http://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/1cdwc9/ea_terminates_sims_social_pet_society_and_simcity/c9fwj8z"
]
] |
||
8lp0w5
|
what exactly does the disney/fox merger entail?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8lp0w5/eli5_what_exactly_does_the_disneyfox_merger_entail/
|
{
"a_id": [
"dzhca0j"
],
"score": [
2
],
"text": [
"What Fox owns:\n _URL_1_\n\nWhat Disney owns: \n\n_URL_0_ \n\nI cannot speak for what happens with the stock, but this will monopolize the market and monopolies are not good. "
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[
"https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_assets_owned_by_Disney",
"https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_assets_owned_by_21st_Century_Fox"
]
] |
||
2jtw88
|
how are [most] people able to determine whether a person of the opposite sex is old enough to be sexually attractive?
|
It seems that most people generally don't find kids attractive. Sometimes it's not quite black and white (I'll admit that I've felt uncomfortable at myself for taking second glances at high school kids as an adult). Is this something that is biologically programmed or is it learned?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2jtw88/eli5_how_are_most_people_able_to_determine/
|
{
"a_id": [
"clf1luo",
"clf1yt6",
"clf2a5t"
],
"score": [
3,
4,
4
],
"text": [
"You don't. Adults are usually attracted to sexually viable mates, meaning people who have passed puberty (pedophilia is attraction to kids who have not passed puberty). Physical maturation does not necessarily mean mental maturation, however, which is why kids are often protected by statutory rape laws. Puberty in both boys and girls has actually been starting at younger and younger ages, probably because of health access, better nutrition, and food supplements.",
"What turns you on? Those parts tend to develop during puberty. That's how you know...the issue is some kids are exposed to things younger that jump starts the process, but for the most part, if she looks old enough she is (or damn close to it)\n",
"It's biologically programmed. Look any literally any other species that reproduces via mating, as soon as they're ready to reproduce they just go at it\n\n > I'll admit that I've felt uncomfortable at myself for taking second glances at high school kids as an adult)\n\nYou shouldn't feel uncomfortable. Assuming that it wasn't 13 year old 9th graders, it's perfectly normal to find teenagers (not *kids*) attractive.\n\nThere's such a stigma around older teenagers dating adults. If you're 20-something and you even dare *say* that you find a 17-year-old-month-and-11-months attractive, let alone date one, then you're seen as a creepy wannabe outcast pedophile that lurks playgrounds but as soon as she - or he - turns 18 then you're both fully developed responsible adults and god bless you."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[],
[]
] |
|
8gvztm
|
if texas is so diverse, how come its politics are rigidly conservative?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8gvztm/eli5_if_texas_is_so_diverse_how_come_its_politics/
|
{
"a_id": [
"dyf3rjc",
"dyf3yiu"
],
"score": [
11,
2
],
"text": [
"Gerrymandering of the political map. Texas is currently fighting a lawsuit on this that could see some major changes at the state level.",
"Rural areas tend to be conservative, cities with a few exceptions (I see you Ft. Worth) tend to be progressive. The politicians in power have used gerrymandering to great effectiveness to limit the influence of the urban areas. Something you would find with Texas is that many if not most people are likely toward the center and only slightly conservative or progressive"
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[]
] |
||
32rphw
|
how do air traffic controllers work?
|
How are they able to so efficiently guide airplanes in the air, landing, or taking off without crashing. It seems like it would be much more difficult to do than traditional automobile traffic control. How does an airplane know when to land, where to make their descent, and do it so perfectly?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/32rphw/eli5_how_do_air_traffic_controllers_work/
|
{
"a_id": [
"cqe0n1d",
"cqe2uiy"
],
"score": [
3,
2
],
"text": [
"Basically a control tower judges if an airplane can take off or land. Radars allow air traffic control to understand the location of each nearby aircraft in relation to the airport, and they give the instructions to the pilots of when it is safe to take off / land. It is also possible to see the condition of the runway from the control tower, so they can judge whether the weather condition is good enough for landing.\n\nPilots do the technical part, but before they make their ascent / descent they must first contact air control to ask for permission to take off / land. That's why sometimes your plane circles the airport without landing, or sits at the terminal without taking off.",
"Pilot here - but I talk to air traffic control (ATC) every day at work, and I've visited them many times.\n\nFirst of all, it's usually the pilots who are in control of the aircraft and know where they need to go, not the controllers. However, we need permission from the controllers before we can do some (maybe most) things, to make sure there's no one in the way.\n\nLet's say I want to take off and climb to 5,000'. The controller will first check what level all the other aircraft are that are near me. If another aircraft is at 4,000', then I'm not allowed to go up to 5,000' because we might crash as I pass 4,000'. So I'll be told to stop my climb at 3,000' instead. Once the other aircraft is out of my way (or I'm out of his way), then I'll be told to climb to 5,000'.\n\nThat's called \"procedural\" control, and it's the basis of most air traffic control. But most controller have radar, and use this to supplement procedural control. If the controller has radar, he can tell me to fly one way, and the aircraft above me to fly another way, and he can then see on his radar screen that our paths aren't going to meet, so he can allow me to climb much sooner. This is much more efficient than working without radar. \n\nThe final type of controlling is the visual control room - the controllers here control the runway, and the traffic landing and taking off, as well as aircraft taxiing on the ground. These controllers work mainly by looking out the window to see where aircraft are.\n\nDepending where the controller works and how mixed his traffic is, many controllers' jobs are very, very routine. They do the same thing over and over and over again. For example, at Heathrow, there is a controller whose job is to move aircraft from the holding areas a few miles from the airport onto final approach. All he does is wait until there's enough gap, then direct the next aircraft to leave the hold and join the final approach. (There's a bit more to it than that of course.) At the airport where I work, there's a mix of jets, helicopters and light aircraft, some of which are carrying out transport flights but many of which are training, so the controllers have to vary what they do to suit the individual aircrafts' requirements.\n\nHope that helps - let me know if you want to know more."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[]
] |
|
3n413a
|
- why are "old things" seen as more durable and long lasting than stuff that was made in the last 20 years?
|
Sorry about the wording but I saw a post about the hunter century fan and got curios as to why stuff today seems to have a more finite life than things made pretty 70s
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3n413a/eli5_why_are_old_things_seen_as_more_durable_and/
|
{
"a_id": [
"cvkkri7",
"cvkksap",
"cvkn4rw",
"cvknjtc",
"cvkof0t",
"cvkutul",
"cvkw7h0"
],
"score": [
162,
2,
30,
5,
5,
3,
4
],
"text": [
"A couple of reasons:\n1) We used to overbuild things because we didn't have the understanding or tools to build them only as strong as they needed to be.\n2) Planned obsolescence: why bother building a phone that could last 30 years, when it'll be out of date in 2?\n3) Cultural shift: people used to buy nice things that cost a bit more but lasted a long time. Nowadays, you buy things for like a dollar and just replace them when they break.\n4) Survivorship bias: all the old awesome stuff you see now is still around BECAUSE it's awesome. All the cheap shitty stuff got thrown out ages ago.",
"This is a bit of a conspiracy, but nearly all companies add weak spots to their devices nowadays *(they didn't 30 years ago)*. The device breaks down earlier and you have to buy new stuff more frequently, which means more money for the company. A good example for that is the light bulb of Edison himself. He made one about 100 years ago, and it's still working, while new light bulbs break down after some months. And another good example is pretty much every mobile phone. They use weaker glass, thinner wires, breakable parts, etc...\n\nThe non-conspiracy version was already posted by /u/HuskyTheNubbin\n\n*Edited: grammar, structure & spelling*",
"Survivorship bias is a huge one. Your grandma probably has a KitchenAid mixer from years ago, and your uncle probably has Craftsman tools from years ago. But nobody talks about the shitty mixers and shitty tools that got thrown out in 1974 just two years after they were bought. \n\nAnother reason is that people are just full of shit, to be perfectly honest. Lots of people complain about \"kids these days\" and complain that the world is going to hell in a hand basket. A good example is people who talk about how \"nowadays you can't even let your kids outside if you want to keep them safe,\" even though all actual evidence points to tremendous drops in crime over the last 50 years. \n\nGo drive a car from the 1970s (or even the 1990s) and then compare it to a Honda or a Ford built last year. The old car will be absolute garbage in comparison. The difference is unbelievable. ",
"Things were built to last and be user serviceable back then. Now they are built to be replaced.",
"Because all the old stuff that we still have that is old, is the stuff strong enough to survive...",
"I find the planned obsolescence to be too much of a scapegoat. The reason we just buy new toasters (or rather, toaster ovens since very few people have just a toaster) is because human labor is better spent creating new toaster ovens and smart phones. \n\nTo try to answer op, it's because new widgets are presented to the consumer at a price cheaper than repairing, because of what i said in first paragraph. In the past, there was a tv repairman because tvs are so damn expensive. Products lasted longer because technological advances were slower, so people could manage with the same radio for a decade.\n\ntldr it's confusing replacement with broken. things are replaced faster because economics",
"Survivorship bias all the way. The only old things that survive are the truly great, best-made stuff. 90 percent of the old stuff was crap, but only the best stuff survived to become the stuff you think of as \"old.\" You are left with only great stuff. This is true for everything: movies, music, comic books, books, cars, rugs, houses...everything. So it seems like ALL the old stuff is better made than 90 percent of what is around today, but the truth is that at any given moment in history, everything is 90 percent crap."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[]
] |
|
55dt15
|
in the us, how are free pharmacy savings cards and services like blink health able to reduce the cost of many prescription drugs?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/55dt15/eli5_in_the_us_how_are_free_pharmacy_savings/
|
{
"a_id": [
"d8a1xzs",
"d8aedb3"
],
"score": [
2,
2
],
"text": [
"Most likely they are sponsored by certain brands to push the cost below that of generic or comparable to generic for a small fee, the cost of prescriptions are literally pennies to the dollar (what the pharmacy pays vs what you pay) worst I seen was $0.07/pill (pharmacy cost) at 2 pills/day a 30 day supply was $275.",
"The cards are really a scam. Essentially what is happening is the card is issued by a company - any company - who pays a pharmacy benefit processor to process the claims (think Visa/Mastercard and maybe more accurately, the merchant services company at the local level). The processor sets the price using its default methodology. The pharmacies have automatic enrollment in most of the processor's plans which basically states that if they send the claim and accept the payment, they are subject to the terms. (take it or leave it) This is essentially the way standard prescription drug plans work with one distinction. The random companies that issue these cards don't have the leverage with the processor that large pharmacy benefit managers have - so they get pretty much the worst pricing among benefits issuers, but is still way cheaper than the manufacturer's intentionally inflated AWP (average wholesale price). So the only way they can make money issuing the cards is to charge the pharmacy a claim fee that is deducted from the pharmacy's check (usually around $5-10) from that processor. Some pharmacies don't even realize that its happening and many won't take the cards anymore. The bottom line is, if the pharmacy is going to get paid $10 for a drug that costs them $9 from the processor, but they have to pay an extra $5 to use your card via the processor, they'll be more than happy to just charge you $10 and skip the processor altogether. If they won't, you're dealing with a chain pharmacy that doesn't give the individual stores control over pricing or someone who doesn't understand the system. In those cases, go to your nearest independent pharmacy and ask them to level with you on it. You'll get the best price available without insurance there without paying some middleman to do nothing more than print cards. "
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[]
] |
||
3a1boo
|
how do they accurately measure the movement of a mountain? everest moved 3cm. after the earthquake. relative to what?
|
Seriously, if you're on a gigantic plot of land, how do you measure minuscule motion without a stable reference point. Doesn't it all move ?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3a1boo/eli5_how_do_they_accurately_measure_the_movement/
|
{
"a_id": [
"cs8bywd",
"cs8kijz"
],
"score": [
6,
2
],
"text": [
"With topographical maps, GPS positioning, and satellite imagery; you can easily compare and contrast what the data says today with what it said with previous bits of data years ago.",
"Primarily through sattelites and distancing.\n\n\nRemember Geometry in school? We start there.\n\n\nYou have three sattelites. They always attempt to maintain an equal distance from each other. This can be done through radio contact and very, VERY perecise synchronized clocks along with basic laser distancing.\n\nYour eyes determine depth like this: You have two eyes. When you focus on a near object, your eyes point more inwards. When you focus on an object father away, your eyes don't point so far inwards. Taking two lasers on a sattelite can do that, easily.\n\n\nThis probably isn't how, but it sets up for how they measure distance.\n\nNow, you have two sattelites in orbit. They are an equal distance from each other, focusing on one point. Then the point moves. Sattelites adjust themselves- they have not moved, and are therefore a steady point of reference- especially if geosynchronus.\n\n\nGeosynchronus orbits are basically slapping a giant target on the ground and parking a sattelite over it. The sattelite moves as fast* as the earth turns, meaning that it always has a view of the point you are tracking.\n\n\nSo you have two sattelites, which can check their own altitude and location, and the altitude and location of objects on the ground.\n\n\nAfter that, it becomes a geometry problem. A giant triangle. In some cases (Or all; I don't really know that much about this, but enough to explain it), a pyramid.\n\nThe end result is that an angular change can be recorded, and then math can be used to identify the change in distance.\n\n\nAnd yes- they are frightningly accurate. \n\n\nELI5 version: Sattelites are really big eyes in the sky that can use math to tell when, where, and how fast something moves.\n\n\n*Fast meaning at a sufficient velocity to always remain in the same point relative to the Earth."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[]
] |
|
b1tla5
|
why can you focus on an object with one eye closed, shouldn't it all be in focus because you don't have depth perception?
|
[deleted]
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/b1tla5/eli5_why_can_you_focus_on_an_object_with_one_eye/
|
{
"a_id": [
"eio0nxn"
],
"score": [
7
],
"text": [
"Depth perception and focus are not related in the way you think. Your eye has a flexible lens behind the iris that changes shape to focus light onto the retina. Just like when you use a camera, look through a telescope or any other instrument that peers at imagery, they all require the adjustment of lenses to focus the image. This focus is based on the distance of the object one is looking at. The shape of a person's eye, cornea, and lens limitations all add constraints to this range of focus. Hence why some people require glasses or contact lenses. "
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
|
19jei4
|
how programs like winrar can make a file smaller than it already is
|
How does file compression work?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/19jei4/eli5_how_programs_like_winrar_can_make_a_file/
|
{
"a_id": [
"c8ok1ko",
"c8ok3zc",
"c8ok65t"
],
"score": [
8,
21,
2
],
"text": [
"Imagine you are telling someone a list of numbers. You could say the whole number, \"111177774545458882222\", but that would take a long time (\"one one one one seven seven seven seven four five four five four five eight eight eight two two two two\"). So instead you say \"one four times, seven four times, forty-five three times, eight three times, two four times\". Smaller files are harder to compress because they have fewer patterns in the data.",
"Imagine you had a file that was made of these letters:\n\nXXXXXXXXXXOOOOOOOOOO\n\nXXXXXXXXXXOOOOOOOOOO\n\nXXXXXXXXXXOOOOOOOOOO\n\nXXXXXXXXXXOOOOOOOOOO\n\nXXXXXXXXXXOOOOOOOOOO\n\nXXXXXXXXXXOOOOOOOOOO\n\nXXXXXXXXXXOOOOOOOOOO\n\nXXXXXXXXXXOOOOOOOOOO\n\nXXXXXXXXXXOOOOOOOOOO\n\nXXXXXXXXXXOOOOOOOOOO\n\nThis file has 100 letters, so it takes up basically 100 Bytes.\n\nBut what if you wanted to compress it?\n\nWhat your computer might do is it might make a little table that says: \n\n* Replace every 10 Xs with a Y\n* Replace every 10 Os with a P\n\nNow you have:\n\nXXXXXXXXXXX=Y\n\nOOOOOOOOOO=P\n\nYP\n\nYP\n\nYP\n\nYP\n\nYP\n\nYP\n\nYP\n\nYP\n\nYP\n\nYP\n\nNow you have about 50 characters, including the table.\n\nBut you can do better. Let's say you wanted to replace each YP (and new line) with a Q.\n\nXXXXXXXXXXX=Y\n\nOOOOOOOOOO=P\n\nYP(Newline)=Q\n\nQQQQQQQQQQ\n\nNow your file is around 30 Bytes.\n\nThis is basically how it works with computers.",
"Thanks, I think I understand it now.\nGreat answers guys!"
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[],
[]
] |
|
37j5yr
|
if it is illegal to own a citizen, but you can own shares in a company, how can a company be deemed a citizen (person) a la citizens united?
|
I've read a bit about it, references back to the 1800's, but it seems like its simply just a special carving out of the rules to fit certain special interests. If we can't hold corporations accountable except for fractions of their profits from exploitive actions, how can they be deemed "people"? Can someone explain it like I'm five?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/37j5yr/eli5_if_it_is_illegal_to_own_a_citizen_but_you/
|
{
"a_id": [
"crn4a48",
"crn4ziz"
],
"score": [
5,
3
],
"text": [
"they are deemed people only in particular circumstances, only under certain section of law (i think taxes)",
"In case you care about the actual, legal reason, there's a difference between an artificial entity (sometimes called a corporate person or artificial person) and a natural person (a natural person is any human being). \n\nThe law treats the two types of persons pretty much the same in a lot of respects. For example, the corporation and a natural person have the right to sue in court and can be sued in court. However, there are a lot of differences between the two and the law treats them differently. The prohibition against slavery is pretty good example. Someone can own an artificial person but cannot own a natural person. \n\nThis distinction has existed pretty much forever and is well accepted by everyone with a clue. Citizen United and the Hobby Lobby case are controversial, but for reasons other than the mere recognition of corporate personhood.\n\nAlso, corporations are \"citizens\" for some purposes. It's mostly a legal fiction to figure out some incredibly boring and uncontroversial jurisdictional issues and the like."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[]
] |
|
2vskbl
|
how bears, which are dangerous predators, became associated with cuteness (ie teddy bears)
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2vskbl/eli5_how_bears_which_are_dangerous_predators/
|
{
"a_id": [
"cokjib2",
"cokklc3",
"cokkv58",
"coklq04",
"cokm0q6",
"cokmc74",
"cokmi22",
"cokms8l",
"coknj9c",
"cokpbre"
],
"score": [
268,
19,
2,
6,
13,
46,
3,
8,
2,
3
],
"text": [
"Because President Theodore Roosevelt (Teddy), an avid hunter, famously decided it wasn't [sporting to shoot a cub](_URL_0_) that had been chased to exhaustion and tied to a tree. A political cartoon describing the incident showed a cute bear and led to the toy. ",
"Anything young is cute, doesn't matter if the adult version is horrendous.",
"Predators have large, front facing eyes. Humans have a thing for big eyes.",
"This thread feels like a setup. Like you knew the answer before you asked. ",
"Here's an episode of 99% Invisible that talks a little about it.\n\n_URL_0_",
"Have you ever seen bear cubs?? They're fucking adorable. Also, adult bears can be pretty damn cute too when they're not trying to kill you.",
"Many people live in areas where the predators don't exist; when was the last time a grizzly bear wandered through New York City? Plus, bear cubs are cute as hell.",
"Adirondack black bears, for one, are not predators, unless you're a fish or a trash bag. They're cowardly unless threatened, cornered or you come near their young, just like most animals.\n\nTreat them with respect, don't approach them and they'll leave you alone. They don't want to tangle with you any more than you want to tangle with them.",
"The Theodore Roosevelt answer is correct, but bears are cute to start with. They're basically big dogs, though only in appearance as they are not canines. Except they're not domestic, and they will mess you up if they want to. So can dogs, but you can put down a dog with something like a metal pipe/rod or a handgun. Try either with a full-sized bear, and you'll just piss it off.\n\nMany animals are rendered in a cuter form in stuffed toys, but the teddy bear's popularity can be traced back to President Theodore \"Teddy\" Roosevelt.",
"Here is a [Google Image Search of the words \"baby bear\"](_URL_0_)\n\nAs you can see, they are ridiculously cute"
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teddy_bear"
],
[],
[],
[],
[
"http://99percentinvisible.org/episode/episode-40-billy-possum/"
],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[
"https://www.google.com/search?q=baby+bear&espv=2&biw=1920&bih=920&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ei=n3LeVKHLFuPnsASbs4KACw&ved=0CAYQ_AUoAQ"
]
] |
||
5uxtbo
|
the concept of "maturity"
|
In the context of personality, thought processes, and understanding of a given subject, people say "mature" and "immature" all the time. But what does that even mean?
What is "maturity"?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5uxtbo/eli5_the_concept_of_maturity/
|
{
"a_id": [
"ddxop90",
"ddxor78",
"ddxp2it",
"ddxpgox",
"ddxwwej"
],
"score": [
5,
2,
2,
2,
2
],
"text": [
"Immaturity is acting like a child, all-deserving, unknowledgeable, easy to anger, throwing tantrums, lack of empathy, insulting when presented with a different opinion/facts that prove that person wrong, basically a 12 year old in a grown-up's body. Maturity is the opposite of that. It's handling responsibilities, being able to care for yourself and maybe even others around you, not whining about having to earn your way through life and about every small inconvenience. It's also about being polite and knowing what is and isn't appropriate to do/say in a discussion/meeting/gathering.",
"We start as babies unable to speak or think beyond hunger and thirst.\n\nAdvance a few years and we can speak simple sentences and learn to use the toilet.\n\nElementary school children are learning to read, write, and do things. Their logic is \"He hit me first.\" So they think they can hit back.\n\nHigh school students work in more complex ways and are now beset by hormonal urges.\n\nThe brain is still maturing at that age. Abilities are being honed. Most do not have many financial worries.\n\nAdults have jobs, earn a living, spend to have a home, make plans for the future, think about having children and relationships.\n\nWith age comes wisdom from experience. There is time to study history.\n\nSo maturity depends on your age and experience.\n\nAre you a veteran? Have you had a child die? How many con men have you met?",
"It's a tough question for sure.\nAlways thought [the goats](_URL_0_) were a good start.\n",
"It's kind of like \"progress\" or \"development\" for countries. We name countries as developing countries or developed countries depending on how close they are to OUR standard of \"good\" country. No matter if they may have better health or welfare statistics, happiness, etc... If they don't get close to what WE consider good (I.e democracy, free capitalist market...), they are not developed.\n\nWith maturity kinda happens the same. It's an adjective used to define how close you are to the \"ideal\" adult male/female. But of course, this is established by society and by everyone's personal opinion (if your mother was from a very strict family, her standard of \"mature\" will be higher than the standard that a 5 yo kid who eats mud on the weekends would have). It's subjective, although there is a general agreement on what the ideal adult would look like (probably influenced by media and culture). \n\nResponsible, stoic when facing hard situations... Are characteristics that we associate with the \"perfect\" adult male, so the closer you are to those, the more mature. It really shouldn't mean anything though, just because you don't adhere to society's standards doesn't mean you are less of a man/woman, but in society we just like to put labels on everything and be judgemental.",
"Maturity is the ability to think and act beyond immediate gratification.\n\nWhen an immature person wants something, logic and rationality goes out the window. It might not be good for them, it might not be a good time, it might not be convenient for anyone around them, they might not even want it five minutes from now. But in the moment, they want what they want, and will throw some kind of tantrum if they don't get it."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[],
[
"http://www.viruscomix.com/page532.html"
],
[],
[]
] |
|
53vwqo
|
with baby boomers reaching retirement age, what's going to happen in fields where a majority of workers are over the age of 55? and what is expected to happen to the economy during that time?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/53vwqo/eli5_with_baby_boomers_reaching_retirement_age/
|
{
"a_id": [
"d7wpk70",
"d7wwirx",
"d7x5zu2",
"d7x8x9b"
],
"score": [
20,
4,
2,
2
],
"text": [
"I am in a job market like this. People at my workplace have been here around 30 years and are retiring in droves. My company is trying to hire on new people in larger batches and get them trained up as much as possible prior to the older experienced workers retiring, offering us more in the process. In some cases, they will even hire back some of the more skilled or knowledgeable workers as contractors and pay them over three times as much to do essentially the same job.\n\nAs far as farming goes, i think a lot of it is becoming automated, so there is less of a need for as many workers as there used to be.",
"Have you just read [this] (_URL_0_)? If so, (or even if not) see this section:\n\n\"It’s important to remember that this figure includes only principal operators, meaning any large farms that have one farmer at the helm but other, younger farmers helping out will only have that one farmer at the top represented\"\n\nSo when the farmer buys the farm, the farmer's chief assistance magically becomes a farmer. I bet the same is true of funeral service managers. There is only one manager, but there may be several assistants who could take over at need.\n\nBeing a bus driver is not all that particular of a skill. When one retires, you hire another one. They may have to undergo some training, but it isn't like you need a 4 year degree and then a 4 year PhD and a 3 year postdoc.\n\nThere is no special training needed to be judge, beyond that of being a lawyer with some experience. There is no shortage of lawyers who would be willing, able, and eager to step into the role of judge.\n\nI don't know what the exact criteria for a building inspector is (and it surely differs by state), but I doubt it is so specialized that you can't find people to take those jobs with a little additional certification. There lots of people who have experiences in the trades, an bachelor degree in an engineering-related field, or both, and might be looking for a change.",
"I work for an agricultural dealership as the tech specialist. My job is to make sure the technology on the farm keeps things running smoothly.\n\nIf you're unfamiliar with a modern farm I very much encourage you to familiarize yourself with it, if for no other reason than to know where your food comes from. The average age of the principal farm operator has always been high. It's a lifestyle as well as a job. If you made (and you would often have to) a farmer retire at 65, I would be very confident in betting by 66 he would be working as a hired hand on another farm.\n\nFarms will not shut down from lack of workers, at least not any farming I'm familiar with (western Canada). The size of farms is definitely increasing, fewer people putting in larger acres. The machinery is getting larger and more efficient to compensate for less manpower available. I can't speak for manual labour intensive operations like many fruit or vegetable setups.\n\nIf the price of food goes up at the grocery store and the excuse is how much they are paying the farmer, they are lying. One bushel of wheat makes 42 pounds of white flour. The price of a loaf of bread went up when wheat prices went from $4ish to $7ish per bushel. I don't understand how a loaf price increase of $.50+ is from the increased cost of wheat $3/42= $.07 per loaf.\n\nPrice of produce will likely increase in the future not from issues with farming workforce, but because of marketing and demand. Organic produce is much more lower yielding than conventional methods. Increased demand for certain items case competition for acres. There is a finite amount of land available for cropping, and the more of crop X that is grown, the less of crop Y can be grown.",
"The bigger concern is that over 40 crowd represent the prime spenders that drive the economy. Prime spenders continue to be in decline due to the low birth rates of the 1970's and 1980's. Either due to two incomes being not enough to raise a family or that they were more interested in the wealth and careers. \n\nPrime spenders hit their peak in 2007 just as the financial crisis affected their retirement plans. The volume of prime spenders is not anticipated to return to that of 2007 until the millennials reach 40 sometime in the 2030s. If it had not been for immigration the population would have declined.\n\nThen consider that an economy that was once driven by middle class prosperity is now driven by the affluent in a plutonomy with a wealth disparity. According to American Express's Survey of Wealth and Affluence, half of all retail sales are now by the affluent.\n\nWhile this void of retiring and dying prime spenders appears to create an opportunity for jobs for others, consider the growing demand for automation and the offshoring of jobs to increase corporate profits. And the fact that even the well-educated are now a commodity heavily in student debt in a worldwide market accessible over the internet that may soon be replaced by an algorithm. This then creates the problem of too few middle class consumers who can contribute to the economy and make the affluent half of the economy even richer. \n"
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[
"http://www.usnews.com/news/blogs/data-mine/2014/02/24/us-farmers-are-old-and-getting-much-older"
],
[],
[]
] |
||
emfedx
|
what are electromagnetic waves made of?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/emfedx/eli5_what_are_electromagnetic_waves_made_of/
|
{
"a_id": [
"fdobnny",
"fdobp6x",
"fdof1sf"
],
"score": [
2,
13,
2
],
"text": [
"Electromagnetic energy is made up of photons. Photons are particles that have energy and momentum, but at the same time have no mass. All electromagnetic energy is made up of photons of different wavelengths and frequencies. The speed of light (roughly 3 X 10^8 m/s) is the same for all electromagnetic energy, and the product wavelength and frequency of electromagnetic energy always equals the speed of light.",
"They're not \"made\" of anything in the physical sense. They're simply a representation of periodic energy fluctuations.\n\nElectromagnetic waves consist of both electric and magnetic field waves. These waves oscillate in perpendicular planes with respect to each other, and are in phase. The creation of all electromagnetic waves begins with an oscillating charged particle, which creates oscillating electric and magnetic fields.\n\nWe typically visually represent these waves, or try to understand them, by equating them to waves we can see physically like waves in water, but in reality there's no physical substance to the waves, simply an oscillating measurable energy change.",
"Electromagnetic waves are made of photons, in the sense that sentences are made of words. They are waves in the quantum electromagnetic field, and so in the \"ice is made of water\" sense they are made of quantum field fluctuations. This isn't usually the sense we're going for here in ELI5."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[],
[]
] |
||
566to0
|
why do imac/macbook screens have better color than pcs for design work?
|
I am a graphic design major. It is considered industry standard to use a Mac because the screens are "better" according to the professors. Why is this the case? I apologize if this has been asked before, I searched both here and on google and wasn't finding anything.
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/566to0/eli5_why_do_imacmacbook_screens_have_better_color/
|
{
"a_id": [
"d8gs529",
"d8gxseh"
],
"score": [
6,
3
],
"text": [
"For the most part, it's because Apple uses higher quality screens than the majority of their competition (which reflects the price). If you compare a $500 Acer laptop to a $3000 MacBook Pro, the Mac is undoubtedly going to have a better screen.\n\nThat's not to say that they're the only good screens, however. Where I work, the graphic design team actually uses expensive Dell monitors along with Mac Pros to do their design work.",
"Very, very broadly, Apple computers are geared towards media consumption (passively reading things, watching things, playing simple games, etc.) So the company uses better screens, at the cost of performance (or by shifting the cost to the consumer, bumping up the price). These generally don't require as much data processing power.\n\nConversely, most PCs are geared towards processing (i.e. data processing for business), interaction (complex computer games, online games, etc.), and creation (as in having the data-processing power for photoshop, video-editing, etc.) These require a ton of data processing power, and so more attention in spent on that kind of brute force, and less on the quality of the screens.\n\nApple computers that are used for graphic design and video editing exist in the overlap between these general trends - the data processing power of PCs vs the higher quality screens of Macs."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[]
] |
|
8dx9gb
|
- i take home a sealed bag of meat from the butchers which i proceed to freeze, when leaving the bag out to defrost over a plate, blood/ juices end up on the plate despite knowing the bag is properly sealed. why?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8dx9gb/eli5_i_take_home_a_sealed_bag_of_meat_from_the/
|
{
"a_id": [
"dxqnxu8"
],
"score": [
2
],
"text": [
"Either there was stuff frozen to the outside of the bag or the bag is permeable. Surely you must already understand that blood isn't simply appearing out of thin air. \n\nBut of course \"juices\" as in water **can** appear out of thin air because a cold object will tend to cause condensation from ambient water vapor. "
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
||
cp82c9
|
why are most fish so sensitive to temperature changes?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/cp82c9/eli5_why_are_most_fish_so_sensitive_to/
|
{
"a_id": [
"ewns3bw",
"ewnsctd"
],
"score": [
18,
10
],
"text": [
"Fishes unlike mammals are cold blooded.\n\nMeaning they cannot regulate their body temperature.\n\nSince their body chemistry is developed for a certain temperature, significant changes will throw the whole chemistry off balance.",
"They also require certain levels of oxygen dissolved in the water, warmer water cannot hold as much oxygen as cool."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[]
] |
||
2mw7fq
|
magic the gathering
|
What is it. how popular is it. who plays it. The culture behind it.. etc. etc
I have been hearing more and more about it, and after last nights South Park episode I became curious what it is..
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2mw7fq/eli5_magic_the_gathering/
|
{
"a_id": [
"cm84mj1",
"cm88gbz",
"cm88k8r",
"cm88kyg",
"cm88ufj",
"cm89zn4",
"cm8a9yu",
"cm8ae7u",
"cm8khhu",
"cm8ky88",
"cm8t6eb",
"cm8yhqc"
],
"score": [
50,
5,
23,
11,
925,
3,
3,
3,
5,
8,
13,
6
],
"text": [
"Magic was invented, I want to say around 1994, and was the first playable trading card game of its kind. Its format inspired more mainstream games, like Pokemon and Yugioh. I personally have known players as young as 8 or 9, and as old as people in their 30's and 40's. \n\nBasically, the premise is that you're a wizard fighting other wizards using magic spells. These spells are powered by a type of energy called mana, which is typically drawn from land. These spells can be used to summon creatures to fight for you, to help you and your creatures, or to harm your opponent and his creatures. Each player starts with 20 life points, and typically loses when they are reduced to 0 life points.\n\nThere are five colors of mana, which represent the fundamental themes of the game. White represents order and justice, green represents nature and strength, red represents war and chaos, black represents death and self destruction, blue represents illusion and deception.",
"A more complex and older version of Hearthstone that get played with real cards instead of virtually.\n\nThe game is actually one of the most complete and well tweaked game available as a board game. Many games with the same decks will give different scenario. Just like poker, skills are important. A better player will have better chances of succeeding.\n\nThere's a game series called \"Duel of the planeswalker\" available on Steam and Android phones if you are interested to try it without having to buy physical cards.",
"Something that I find helps understand the game a great deal: Richard Garfield, pHD made the game as an economics paper. He wanted to see how people allocate resources, but also loved Dungeons and Dragons. If you look at the first set, you have your initial creatures of each color as an Angel (W), Dragon (R), Wurm (G), Djinn (U) and Vampire (B). The mana sources were played once a turn, and how you used it mattered.\n\nYou could use your one mana to play a creature, or allocate those resources towards something else. You could destroy someone's ability to produce resources. You can avoid creatures (monsters) all together. \n\nAs the game progressed, it branched out greatly from basic D & D. Now we have entire sets of cards dedicated to a single mythos. We had 2013 as a Greek mythology themed sets, complete with gods interacting with mortals, two years before that we had a whole set of gothic horror complete with werewolves, giests and families of elitist vampires. \n\nThe game has thousands of cards, some extremely valuable, some not, but it all started to see if we could attach some modicum of economics to D & D.",
"Magic: The gathering is a card game played for about 21 years. The card game consists of players utilizing cards with various effects against each other in a match.\n\nThe cards are divided into 5 colors and each color requires its own specific resource cards to utilize.\n\nIn the game there are multiple ways to win, such as reducing an opponent's life to zero, forcing the opponent to draw when they have no cards left, or alternate win conditions printed on cards. The first of which is the most common. \n\nThere is not only the game aspect of magic but also the story line aspect of the game as well as the trading aspect. \n\nIn the trading aspect cards are valued based on multiple qualities. Their Rarity, their usefulness in play, their legality in play and if they are holographic or altered.\n\nThe cards are given value initially by traders and as they appear in tournaments or people lose interest the values go up and down. Players may acquire new cards by trading their current cards for cards owned by other players. They may also acquire new cards through what are known as \"Booster Packs\".\n\nBooster Packs typically contain 15 cards, 11 commons, 3 uncommons and a single Rare or Mythic rare card, with a chance of a holographic card inside (the rarity of the holographic is random). These packs may also be bought in 36 pack boxes known as \"Booster Boxes\".\n\nPlayers may also acquire new cards from products in which the cards are preselected. Exampls of these products are \"Event Decks\" or \"Starter Decks\" which will be divided by color. These decks will carry predetermined cards in them and will not carry random singles inside (though some will come with booster packs). Lists of the cards that are contained in these decks can be found online fairly easily.\n\nThe third aspect of Magic is the storyline. Magic as a game bases itself in making the player a Planeswalker. Planeswalkers are all poweful beings who walk between universes (also known as \"Planes\") and use this power to summon various spells and creatures from those universes. There are also characters produced on these cards which are characters featured in various Magic: The Gathering books as well as comics and Articles. There are multiple storylines across multiple planes that entwine a number of Planeswalkers whom interract within the story.\n\nAs far as the culture goes, the players of Magic are an extremely diverse group. While most are Males in their 20s in 30s (from personal experience) there are players who are young and some who are old, male and female, large and small, outgoing and reclusive. \n\nThe game is also experienced on different levels with some players playing in their house with what ever cards they own in a casual setting with friends. There are also those who attend tournaments at local collectible stores and card shops, commonly referred to as Friday Night Magic. This allows players to meet others from their area as well get into slightly more competitive matches. They can also accumulate points and prizes from their records to extend their collection and enter into more competitive tournaments.\n\nIn higher levels of competitive magic there are large groups (Sometimes upwards of 4000 players) of players who gather from multiple states. These tournaments usually involve entire weekends of sanctioned play in which players will follow specific rulings to include banned cards or restrictions on which cards available to play. These rules are enforced by Judges who go through the Wizards of the Coast judge system to be tested for qualification to judge at these events.\n\nPrizes in these tournaments can range from a few thousand to tens of thousands. These tournaments are also a large hub for trading and being exposed to artists of the game. \n\nOverall the game is more than just a game, it is a large community with many people of all types. All sorts of people enjoy this game and many for different reasons. Some for the art, some for collection purposes, some for the story and some for the game its self. There's something in magic for almost everyone and as with all communities there are good parts and bad parts to it. If you want to experience some form of magic the gathering the best resources are local shops as well as the Wizards of the Coast Magic: the Gathering website.\n\nHope this gave a good explination of many parts of the game, sorry if I forgot anything important.",
"EDIT, Nov 21: By popular demand, now includes Midrange decks and Limited formats. Also, a new section on where players get their cards.\n\nMagic: The Gathering is a collectable card game. It can be played in several different formats, but in the most common, two players create decks out of the cards they own and play against each other.\n\nGenerally, the cards in a deck are either lands or spells. Lands provide the energy needed to cast spells, and spells usually do one of the following:\n\n- Summon a creature that can fight for you or an artifact that you can use. (**Creatures** and **Artifacts**)\n- Create a lasting effect that affects the game as a whole or one or more cards in play. (**Enchantments**)\n- Create an instantaneous effect that affects one or more cards in play or an effect that lasts a single turn. (**Sorceries** and **Instants**)\n- Summon a sort of \"teammate\" that has its own abilities. (**Planeswalkers**)\n\nThe primary goal is to run your opponent out of life points by attacking him with creatures or damaging him directly with spells. There are other ways to win, such as running your opponent out of cards in his deck.\n\nThe gameplay is complex. The players take turns, but many types of spells can be cast on an opponent's turn, or in response to a spell that they are trying to cast. A critical play by one player may be countered by the other, and that counter itself countered by the first. There are many thousands of cards out there, and you are not expected to know about them all. The Comprehensive Rules (*not* including the text of cards) are nearly two hundred pages, although a lot of that consists of old mechanics that are rarely used or highly-specified details that are rarely relevant. The learning curve is pretty steep, but a few games suffice to learn the basic rules. The complexity is more similar to Dungeons and Dragons than to most card games.\n\nA key feature of M:tG is the concept of **color**. There are five colors: Red, Green, White, Blue, Black. Each is \"allied\" to two others and \"opposed\" to the two others. Most spells require mana of a certain color to cast, which is produced by different types of land cards. Each color has distinct strengths and weaknesses – for example, blue has the best counterspells, but it's not very good at simply hitting things. A given deck will usually use from one to three colors of card, although in some situations decks with four or five colors can work.\n\nIn addition, it is often considered that there are three general archetypes of deck (with a *lot* of variation within each category):\n\n- **Aggro** decks focus on dealing damage ASAP to win ASAP. They usually have cheap creatures (\"weenies\") that can be used right away and \"buff\"-type spells to eke out a few more points of damage. They usually win fast or not at all, because they often can't stand up to the more powerful creatures and spells that are played later in the game.\n- **Control** decks focus on preventing the opponent from acting until the player is ready to win with powerful spells or abilities. They run a lot of counterspells, destruction spells, and things that make action more expensive for the opponent, along with a few creatures strong on defense and disruption. They usually win by using cheap defenses against expensive attacks until they are ready to overwhelm the opponent with their accumulated strength, and lose if they just can't stay ahead of the enemy's attacks.\n- **Combo** decks rely on a few combinations of cards that can lead to a near-instant victory. There *are* infinite combos in M:tG, but they're designed to be difficult or resource-intensive to pull off. A combo deck will usually run (in addition to the all-important combo pieces) \"tutor\" cards that let them search their deck, protection cards to guard the combo pieces, and just enough stall cards to prevent a quick defeat. A combo deck wins when it gets its combo in place before losing, and loses if it can't get the combo out in time or can't protect it long enough to use it.\n- **Midrange** decks are a common intermediate archetype between Aggro and Control. Midrange tries to beat down the opponent with damage from powerful creatures (colloquially, \"fatties\") rather than with cheap ones (\"weenies\"). These decks have to run enough control to stay alive until the big hitters come out. They win when they get the hitters out early enough to do lethal damage, and lose when they can't get the big guys out at all (being out-controlled) or when they just take too much of a beating too early (being out-aggro'd).\n\n---\n\nMany different kinds of people play M:tG. There are professional players who win large sums at tournaments, groups of friends who play casually on the weekends, and everything in between. If you're playing competitively, it can be absurdly expensive, as you cannot compromise on getting the perfect cards for your deck, but if you and your opponents are playing casually, it's a lot cheaper.\n\nThe most common formats are as follows. Two-player games are the norm for tournaments, but casual matches are often multiplayer.\n\n**Constructed** formats call for pre-constructed decks built from each player's personal collection:\n\n- **Standard**: Decks are made of cards printed in about the last 18 months.\n- **Modern**: Decks are made of cards printed since about 2003 (minus a ban list).\n- **Legacy**: Decks are made of *any* cards (minus a ban list).\n- **Vintage**: Decks are made of *any* cards (minus a *very small* ban list).\n- **Commander** (or \"EDH\"): Decks are made of *any* cards (minus a ban list), but limited to one of each card. One creature card is designated as your \"commander\" and is nearly always available for summoning. A popular multiplayer format.\n\n**Limited** formats feature decks made on the spot from a limited pool of cards:\n\n- **Sealed**: Each player opens several randomized booster packs and makes a deck from the contents.\n- **Draft**: A group of players open many packs and use a system to pick their cards from the contents, then build a deck from what they have.\n\nThese formats cost money each time to play, because you need to buy booster packs. However, you can play them without having any of your own cards beforehand. Limited play can be a good way to pick up more cards. A relatively new casual format is **Cube**, in which you and your group put together a large pile of cards beforehand and use them in place of booster packs. This eliminates the recurring expense, although you need to have enough cards beforehand.\n\nThere are others formats, including Conspiracy, Planechase, Pauper (use no rare cards). Two-Headed Giant (play with a partner), and many more. Formats that allow older cards tend to be more expensive, because the cards have been out of print for a long time. Commander is a bit cheaper than other formats that allow old cards, because you only can have one of each card (other formats usually allow up to four of each card).\n\nI play Commander with my D & D group. None of us puts that much money into it, and we try to keep it more fun than competitive. Some of the players also play in local mini-tournaments on Friday nights (\"Friday Night Magic\"), usually breaking about even.\n\n---\n\nSo, where does one get cards? Most cards come from randomized booster packs with 15 cards each. Cards from a given set are designated either common, uncommon, rare, or \"mythic rare\". You can buy booster packs for around $3.50 USD from retailers, or you can buy them as part of a limited tournament.\n\nThere are also pre-made decks that you can buy directly from Wizards of the Coast. Each one has a theme and cards intended to work together. You won't win any tournaments with a pre-made deck, but it can be a good starting point. In addition, there are a couple of products intended for beginners, such as the \"Deck-builder's toolkit\" with a semi-randomized selection of cards and a big stack of common lands. (Common lands are dirt cheap, but it would take quite a few booster packs to get enough to build a deck.)\n\nMost M:tG players trade cards with their friends or at events to get the specific cards they need. In addition, there is a thriving market of single cards at game stores and online.\n\nSome very, very old cards are very, very rare and expensive. A single [Black Lotus](_URL_0_) can cost many thousands of dollars. But these cards are not legal in most formats, and most players will never have seen one in person. When playing casually, your group may allow the use of \"proxy\" cards to substitute for the pricey ones.\n\nMyself, I've only been playing for a year or so, and I don't actually own my own cards! (My friends have a ton of extra decks to lend out.) I'm planning to build my own Commander deck soon, and I'll be starting from a pre-made deck from Wizards and supplementing it primarily with trades with friends and singles from the internet.",
"If you don't have close friends that are into there are usually game stores that host tournaments and sell starter decks. We have a place called Madness in Texas that will host a version called \"standard\" which is the most popular here because price and availability of the cards. I haven't been in awhile because I'm a little older and I feel wierd bein around that many kids, but honestly there are plenty of people my age that if I went more I could hangout with there.\n\nYou by no means will win with a starter deck (there were ~300 people last time). the way it's organized you will after the first couple matches be in the group with people around your record for the tourny (so they won't have the top tier decks either), and those are the fun ones for myself.\n\nTalk to the guys there selling the starter decks and choose the color that you feel you can connect with the most and your gonna have fun with it.",
"There are some great answers already in this thread, so check those out. I would just like to plug the official Magic subreddit: /r/magicTCG . It's extremely active and a pretty good community. Check it out if you are interested.",
"Actually, ProJerad did an overview of \"Magic the Gathering Video games\". It was a lot of fun to watch and shows a few good resources if you wanted to try getting into the digital scene. His opening statements also include a basic overview that's good for anyone. \n\n_URL_0_",
"To address the popularity. It is simultaneously very difficult on the high end and very easy on the low end. Infinite possibilities and you can play exactly how you want. I would guess hundreds of thousands of cards to choose from.",
"Remember guys ELI5.....\n\nMtg= Wizards on hills summoning armies and throwing spells at each other, each deck has an asthetic that shows what that wizard's magic is all about. At least that's the simplest way its been explained to me.\n\nIf you want to get started find a starter deck that looks cool and find somone to play with. Most mtg players are very friendly and helpful to new players and will help you get the gyst.",
"None of these comments really explain how popular it is, not much about who plays it, and nothing about the culture behind it.\n\nMagic is a very popular game. For the last four years Magic has experienced 30% growth PER year. The number of Magic players has actually surpassed the number of WoW players in its heyday. Hard to believe right? Most players are men, but I would say 25% are women, but their visibility is lower because many stay out of the competitive scene.\n\nThe culture is very weird, but I'll try to boil it all down, (there is a lot of overlap). The culture is very variable, because the game depends in large part on local card shops to maintain the health of the game. Some stores have a poisonous atmosphere because of the owners' attitudes, other stores are very competitive stores where new players are not going to succeed very well, and other stores have a very easy magic scene because they have bad prize support and people just want to have fun. Magic players in general are extremely disapproving of stealing and cheating, which is really awesome in a game where decks can run into the thousands of dollars, easily.\n\nMost are awesome people, it helps because competitive magic is mostly a face-to-face game in which players must have sportsmanship to gain friends, and having friends is important in order to borrow cards and to find out what opponents are playing before the tournament.\n\nHaving friends in the game turns the game into a stressful money sink into the most fun hobby you could ever have.",
"The way ive always tried to describe magic to my friends who dont play is;\n\nIts like playing poker and chess at the same time, but your opponent is playing poker and checkers."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[],
[],
[],
[
"http://magiccards.info/vma/en/4.html"
],
[],
[],
[
"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MObQrUc7eqI&list=PLC0EE993255D4A0A8"
],
[],
[],
[],
[]
] |
|
3qdkyd
|
why are indie games mainly use pixel art?
|
I want to know why do a lot of indie video games like to use pixel art?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3qdkyd/eli5_why_are_indie_games_mainly_use_pixel_art/
|
{
"a_id": [
"cwebsmq",
"cwed5sw"
],
"score": [
3,
2
],
"text": [
"Most other types of art styles that look good are insanely labor intensive. Major video games have art *departments* dedicated to doing only that. Many indie games are one guy, or a team of few doing everything. ",
"Many people misjudge how hard and time intensive 2D art can be. The creeators of Bastion made 3D models and converted them to sprites from different angles since actually drawing them in 2D would have overshot their budget.\n\nPixel art is the cheapest and fastest way to still make decent-looking 2D stuff."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[]
] |
|
31khb6
|
why do people always describe their edit on a reddit comment?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/31khb6/eli5_why_do_people_always_describe_their_edit_on/
|
{
"a_id": [
"cq2e523",
"cq2jh4g"
],
"score": [
12,
2
],
"text": [
"It's good manners to describe your edits, so readers know what was in the original comment and what was added later. Otherwise you could (for example) completely change what your comment said to make the people who replied to you look wrong when they weren't.",
"I make a lot of edits I never comment on, correcting spelling or wording, or even significant content changes if I decide to do it within a couple minutes of posting. But once a post has been up long enough for several people to read and comment on it, it is confusing and a bit rude to make changes so significant the replies no longer make sense, or worse have their meaning twisted. So if you need to make such a change you should explain it so the replies previous to the edit are not without context."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[]
] |
||
arimpf
|
the american sales tax system. why can't the price on the shelf just be what it costs and have sales tax included? as a tourist it is incredibly frustrating.
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/arimpf/eli5_the_american_sales_tax_system_why_cant_the/
|
{
"a_id": [
"egngk5d",
"egngqsq",
"egngro8",
"egngsap"
],
"score": [
7,
2,
2,
6
],
"text": [
"It makes people feel like they're spending less money, and also people are more likely to buy it if it goes over their budget at the register just because they're embarrassed to put it back. ",
"Because tax rates are different in each state, county, city so there’d be no way to run regional advertising or advertise a price of anything. The iPhone price announced might have anywhere from 0 to over 10% tax added to its final price. So how would they list the price in the announcement or ads? Even within an area where local newspaper ads are run, there could be dozens of rates as each county and city can levy sales tax on top of the state tax.",
"A lot of places will do that. My guess on why all of them don't is due to the fact that it's easier for bookkeeping to add it than figure out how much was included. Also, depending on the store and state, not all purchases have the same tax rate (alcohol, cigarettes, etc) or any tax at all (food).",
"It’s a common issue in America. Corporations don’t want to do it because it will cost time and possibly hurt sales. The Corporations control the politicians so the government doesn’t force them to do it. Instead corporate funded politicians promote the idea that including all taxes in pricing is an affront to local governance and “freedom” etc. \n\nYet for items that can’t readily be recovered, its common practice to include all taxes in prices ie gasoline. "
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[],
[],
[]
] |
||
2gku4d
|
how the "@" works in preventing sql injection
|
I'm learning about SQL Injection and understand the necessity to having methods to prevent SQL Injection. The example to PREVENT Injection looked like this:
> txtUserId = getRequestString("UserId");
txtSQL = "SELECT * FROM Users WHERE UserId = @0";
db.Execute(txtSQL,txtUserId);
How can I use this in formatting my queries, etc, and can I have another example??
Sorry if formatting is bad, I don't do this often.
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2gku4d/eli5_how_the_works_in_preventing_sql_injection/
|
{
"a_id": [
"ckk19zt",
"ckk1pd3"
],
"score": [
3,
2
],
"text": [
"The @ represents a bound parameter. The binding specifies a datatype. The injection risk there is that an non-datatyped variable would be passed into that query that would say (DELETE FROM TABLENAME) rather than 2313. By using binding, you're forced to say \"it must be a number\". \n\nTo use it you're going to have learn about query variable binding in whatever language you're using to interface the database. There is no need to do it if you're just writing queries from a command line and in total control of values being used in the sql. ",
"It is like an escape character. When they see the @, they also know to treat everything after this character as data, not as SQL code so you better not execute this."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[]
] |
|
2q5ang
|
why america has always been regarded as being built on christianity and why that is apparently not true.
|
I've seen in reddit comments that America actually was not built on Christianity. Why is that?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2q5ang/eli5_why_america_has_always_been_regarded_as/
|
{
"a_id": [
"cn30tps",
"cn310o4",
"cn31le7",
"cn323zu"
],
"score": [
7,
3,
3,
2
],
"text": [
"Because many of the settlers that landed in what is now the USA were puritans and other forms of Christian. And while there were Jews, Muslims, Atheists, etc the overwhelming majority were Christian.\n\nNot to mention many of the laws in the USA being based around (what many feel are) Christian religious values, such as an opposition to sodomy, alcohol control, giving tax/legal breaks to religious institutions (mainly churches), and so on and so forth.\n\nWhile Christianity may have played a large role in the forming of the USA, it wasn't alone. Many of the Founding Fathers were Deists, many banks and businesses were run by Jewish people, and there were many people who were simply areligious.",
"American *culture* has always been, and continues to be, predominantly Christian. American *government* was explicitly and deliberately laid down to be secular, although that has certainly not been upheld throughout all of our history. Don't confuse the two.",
" > America actually was not built on Christianity. Why is that?\n\nWhen the Colonies were deciding to become a nation, they were already pretty diverse. Even among Christians, there were immense divides - possibly larger than there are today. Catholics and Protestants did not really get along very well, and even within Protestant faiths there were strong disagreements. Add to this the Jews and the Deists that had been here from the early days, the outright atheists, the sects that were created in the New World and had few ties to the Old World, and everything else, and the only way the Union could have been formed is if there was a distinct break from the European model of the monarch or the government setting the faith for the citizens.\n\nThe decision to eschew a state religion was deliberate and critical. It was only without a state religion that the Union could have been formed at all, and the only way it could have been held together long enough to establish the new country and break ties with the colonial powers.\n\nEven today, when people say that three out of four Americans are Christian, and when they are right, there could be no agreement on what a Christian nation would look like. One of those three is Catholic; another is a non-evangelical Protestant; the third is some flavor of evangelical Protestant. Even if we wrote off the fourth person, representing every other faith (and lack of faith) in the US, you already have an irreconcilable disagreement about what the Christian state religion would look like.\n\nTL;DR: \"Christian\" is far from a monolithic descriptor, and always has been in the New World. There is no way a Christian nation could have been formed from the Colonies, and there's no way one could be formed today.",
"It is a common misconception that all of the founding fathers were Christian. Most, like Sam Adams, totally were. Others, like Ben Franklin, totally weren't. A lot of the more famous ones, like Jefferson and probably Washington too, were more or less Deists which is kind of like a formalized agnosticism but they also thought Jesus was real and a super cool dude who we should all emulate just not literally the son of God. Jefferson even spent his own money to, at the time, widely publish his own version of the New Testament which was all Jesus teachings with all the son of god/born of a virgin/ water into wine parts edited out\n\nAlso, much to the chagrin of Tea Party types the Founding Fathers in the early days of the country signed the Treaty of Tripoli which includes the statement: \"the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion\" It was voted in unanimously by congress and signed by John Adams"
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[],
[],
[]
] |
|
2yi33h
|
if my mother is 5'3, and my father is 5'10, then how am i 6'0?
|
My parents were not malnourished as children either.
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2yi33h/eli5_if_my_mother_is_53_and_my_father_is_510_then/
|
{
"a_id": [
"cp9pgqs",
"cp9pl6e",
"cp9pxay",
"cp9razf"
],
"score": [
2,
9,
3,
3
],
"text": [
"Genetics is really complicated.\n\nIt boils down to recessive/dominant genes. Whatever genes you can see in your parents may not be the ones expressed in you. Offspring aren't a direct blend of both parents. It's whichever ones show in them vs what shows in you.",
"It could be genetics or it could be nutritional. Perhaps you simply had a better diet growing up than your parents.\n\nOn the other hand, do you resemble the mailman more than your father?",
" Good nutrition has given you some length of bone, but you're not more than one generation from poor white trash, are you, Agent Starling?",
"Height is a recessive trait. While height is not this simple as it involves more an one specific gene, let's take a look at the Punnet Square. H will represent the dominant trait of a short stature and h will represent the recessive trait, being tall.\n\n | H | h \n----|----|----\n H | HH | Hh \n h | Hh | hh\n\nIn this example, we assume that your parents have both the dominant and recessive genes in them. This is impossible to tell visually if the person displays the dominant gene, but roll with it. If this set of parents reproduce they have a 25% chance of having a child with two recessive genes, so that child will be tall in this case. \n\nNow height is spread over several genes, and while you mother is shorter than the average woman, your father is around average height for a man. So, it is possible that your dad gave you a lot of his tall genes and your mother was hiding some tall genes in her which she gave to you."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[],
[],
[]
] |
|
1npifx
|
litecoin.....i may have this whole thing incorrect but.....
|
How will litecoin transactions be verified and kept safe after all litecoin (84 million right?) is fully mined.
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1npifx/eli5litecoini_may_have_this_whole_thing_incorrect/
|
{
"a_id": [
"ccksg6n"
],
"score": [
4
],
"text": [
"Litecoin is hoped to work just like its big brother, Bitcoin. In each of these currencies the people protecting the network (miners) are rewarded with coins from two sources. At first the primary source is newly generated coins, which encourage more people to secure the network in its infancy. \n\nHowever, over time the newly generated coins taper off and miners are expected to be compensated primarily through another mechanism: fees. Each transaction carries with it a small fee (often worth less than 1 cent, USD). However, as the currency ages the *hope* is that there will be enough transactions that these small fees will add up to enough to make mining worth it. It is probable that this will require non-trivial fees, though.\n\nThis leads to a very important conclusion: you cannot have a currency that has a finite supply, low fees, and good security with the mining proof of work model. Bitcoin (and Litecoin which is just a copy/paste of Bitcoin with a couple of minor changes) makes the decision to have a finite supply and hopes that the market will solve the competition between low fees and good security in favor of security, but I tend to expect the tragedy of the commons (everyone doing what's best for them to the detriment of the system) to come into play and weaken the currency critically in its final hour.\n\nSunny King, a member of the cryptocoin community, foresaw this problem and others and has developed two alternative cryptocoins; I really think that of all of the cryptocoins that have been released since Bitcoin these show the most innovation (most, like Litecion, are a trivial parameter change). If you're worried about this end-game type of scenario then you might check out the two currencies that he developed--Peer-to-Peer Coin (PPC), which introduced the idea of proof of stake (this makes it so that you don't have to have a lot of energy-expensive mining; and Primecoin, which replaces hash-based mining with mining that serves a scientific purpose (finding chains of prime numbers) while also having no hard limit on the money supply. "
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
|
45gy7p
|
how did they put photos into the newspapers when there were no computers or scanners
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/45gy7p/eli5_how_did_they_put_photos_into_the_newspapers/
|
{
"a_id": [
"czxsics",
"czxsjpe",
"czxstub",
"czxtevx"
],
"score": [
4,
38,
2,
17
],
"text": [
"Layouts of each page including original photos were made up in large format ~4' tall and a picture was taken of each completed page.",
"_URL_0_\n\nA process called half-toning. They would take a high-contrast picture of a photo through a fine screen, so they'd have a picture composed of tiny dots. They then apply the negative to a piece of metal covered in photosensitive chemical which hardens when exposed to light, and shine a light on it. They rinse the metal with acid to eat away the areas that didn't react to light. That makes an etched relief in the surface of the printing plate, which is then put in the printing press.\n\nWith modern lithography it's the same idea, except instead of etching the metal they cover it with photosensitive chemicals that attract or repel ink. _URL_1_",
"Most of the earliest \"photos\" in newspapers aren't actual photographs, they are extremely precise engravings which were made by hand, using a photograph as the source. \n\nLater they started making \"engravings\" (photogravure) where, instead of using light-sensitive chemicals that tint a photograph a certain color, they used light-sensitive chemicals that turned to acid (or released an acid? fuzzy on the details), and then the acid burnt an impression of the film into a copper plate. They still needed a few more technical improvements before they could put these photographic plates into printing presses, but that's the basic idea.",
"I worked in a newspaper 25 years ago, just before scanners came into use.\n\nWe'd use a process called photomechanical transfer (PMT). Basically, we'd have a big camera that looks something like [this](_URL_0_). The original we'd put in the glass part you see on the right, and the photographic paper would go in the camera on the left, held into place by a vacuum.\n\nFor photos, we'd put a screen over it. This would convert the photos into a line screen that was used for printing -- that is, turning it into little dots. I think we used an 85 line screen, which is how many dots per inch. Unlike a laser or inkjet printer, the dots were of varying sizes as they passed through the screen, making a more detailed picture than an 85-dpi computer printer would.\n\nThe big lights would come on and we'd expose the original for the requisite amount of time, then develop the photographic paper. We'd then give them to the person who ordered the PMT, and they would cut it and paste it onto the page. Yes, physical cut-and-paste. When laid out with all the other graphics, text, and headlines, that entire page would be shot with another camera to make a negative, and then the negative would be used to make a plate which would go to the press."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[
"http://photo.stackexchange.com/questions/59679/how-were-photographs-printed-in-newspapers-in-1929",
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithography#Modern_lithographic_process"
],
[],
[
"http://www.publicsurplus.com/sms/docviewer/aucdoc/IMG_2540.JPG?auc=1478648&docid=14608881"
]
] |
||
1j7wze
|
how does condensation, in a closed system, reduce pressure?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1j7wze/eli5_how_does_condensation_in_a_closed_system/
|
{
"a_id": [
"cbc00wn"
],
"score": [
5
],
"text": [
"Some of the matter that was gas is turning into liquid form - for example, water vapor turning into water. So now there's less gas in the same amount of space. Lower density. Less pressure."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
||
dzjc18
|
how do the open freezer bins in grocery stores keep food frozen?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/dzjc18/eli5_how_do_the_open_freezer_bins_in_grocery/
|
{
"a_id": [
"f87vgby",
"f87w1rt",
"f88ba2y"
],
"score": [
3,
17,
4
],
"text": [
"Cold air is heavier (more dense) than warm air so the cold air stays in the bin, keeping the food frozen.",
"They're often open to the top (heat rises) and have an air curtain blowing across the opening that reduces the amount of mixing between warm store air and cold freezer air.\n\nAn air curtain is moving air that keeps to air masses from mixing. You likely have felt a more powerful air curtain when entering stores (it's usually blowing down at you). \n\nIt's not as efficient as glass doors (and those aren't as efficient as insulated doors) but having the products readily available boosts sales by more than the energy cost, so it's worth it to the store owners.",
"The other responses covered the \"how\" pretty well, but I'd like to add that they work by using a lot more electricity than a freezer with a lid does. The compressors have to run pretty much non-stop to keep the temperature down, whereas a lidded freezer can shut off occasionally and just hold the temperature due to the insulation."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[],
[]
] |
||
yi2fr
|
smoke rings. how, and why, do they hold their shape?
|
So, I think smoke rings are reasonably cool, but the huge number of ways that they can be made (mouth, clever movement of smoke source, machines etc) leaves me baffled. How do they work?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/yi2fr/eli5_smoke_rings_how_and_why_do_they_hold_their/
|
{
"a_id": [
"c5vubao",
"c5vujha",
"c5vuo2z"
],
"score": [
2,
2,
9
],
"text": [
"Watch the smoke ring carefully. It's basically a vortex.\n\nTake a large cooking pot, fill it about half way with water, and stir it vigorously with a spoon. Notice that after you remove the spoon, the mass of water continues to spin. You've created a vortex, and its shape is stabilized by its spin, at least for a while. Friction and turbulence eventually overcome the momentum of the vortex and the motion dies out. \n\nTornadoes and hurricanes are similar phenomena, but they get their energy from the motions of large masses of air, so they can persist longer. With a tornado, the masses of air inevitably change direction and stop feeding the vortex, and the tornado fades out. With a hurricane, it soon loses energy after landfall, as much of its energy comes from air influenced by the ocean.\n\nBack to the smoke ring (and similar phenomena such as bubble rings): the vortex is bent back around on itself to form the ring shape. The motion of the smoke in the ring *rolls*, much like if you have a rubber band around your arm and rolled the rubber band down your arm. This rolling motion stabilizes the smoke--at least for a while. Friction and turbulence (not to mention that the smoke is less dense than the air, so it is more bouyant and would ordinarily rise. Notice how the smoke ring also rises a bit as it rolls foward?) eventually overcome the momentum of the vortex and the motion dies out. ",
"The air moving in the center of the rings is less pressured than the surrounding air, so when the smoke tries to leave it is drawn again to the tube of air (yeah, imagine that the ring is passing thru a tube of air), only to be pushed from it and reinserted again, until there is not enough energy left in the tube of air to maintain this movement (because it dissipates).",
"When a person blows a smoke ring they exhale smoke and after letting some smoke out, they blow a little more smoke out faster than the earlier smoke. This means that the smoke/air in the center of the ring is traveling faster than the smoke that makes up the ring itself.\n\nBefore explaining how they hold together, I need to briefly explain how wind (air flow) works. Air (and all other matter) is made up of tiny little particles called atoms, however air is special because it is relatively easily to take those atoms and pushing them closer together, a process called compression. What does this have to do with wind, you ask? Wind is the movement of those tiny little particles from an area of high density (all smooshed together) to an area of low density (plenty of room to 'run around').\n\nNow, back to our smoke ring. It was stated before that the air at the center of the ring is traveling faster than the ring itself. This means that the particles in front of the ring are being smooshed together, while the air behind it is staying at local pressure (it's 'non-compressed' state). This means that the particles want to travel from the front of the ring to the back of the ring, but it can't go back through the ring because there is air traveling forward, so instead it goes around the outside of the ring.\n\nFinally, the air traveling through the center of the ring. When you blow the initial air to form the ring, it pulls the air behind it through the ring, creating suction in the same way you can empty the gas out of a gas tank by sucking on the hose (Side note: gasoline tastes like chocolate ice cream!).\n\nAll this together, the air inside the ring traveling faster than the ring itself, the difference in densities between the front and back of the ring, and the suction caused by the initial air you blow are what hold a smoke ring in its shape until outside interference destabilizes the system.\n\n**TLDR: Explaining pressure differentials to a toddler sucks.**"
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[],
[]
] |
|
8xi4si
|
is there a downside to zero calorie or zero sugar foods?
|
I'm sitting here drinking a new thing called Gatorade Zero. It has zero calories, zero fat, zero sugar, and zero protein. Honestly, I like the taste of it better than normal Gatorade. Is there a downside to eating or drinking a food like this? Is there something they're hiding?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8xi4si/eli5_is_there_a_downside_to_zero_calorie_or_zero/
|
{
"a_id": [
"e23f4m9",
"e23gr6s"
],
"score": [
4,
2
],
"text": [
" > Is there something they're hiding?\n\nNo, not really. There is some evidence to suggest that tricking you into thinking you are consuming sugar will provide a greater insulin response than abstaining from sugar intake, but it is better than actually drinking the sugared drink.\n\nMost artificial sweeteners are extremely well tested and shown to be safe.",
"Artificial sweeteners may not cause you to gain weight or trigger an insulin response. But they can increase cravings for real sugar. That’s really the only downside to artificial sweeteners unless you have an intolerance for them (I get headaches and sometimes heartburn after just a few bites/sips of nutrasweet, aspartame or sucralose). "
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[]
] |
|
brexk1
|
how are really tall buildings able to withstand high winds?
|
I live in Chicago and get super anxious when it's Windy out ( I know that its called windy for another reason but it was also WINDY recently). How is it that these tall buildings don't fall over, how safe should I feel? The swaying also bugs me out when I'm inside them.
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/brexk1/eli5_how_are_really_tall_buildings_able_to/
|
{
"a_id": [
"eod55xe",
"eod57ag",
"eod5quv",
"eoe937r"
],
"score": [
7,
3,
3,
2
],
"text": [
"Most skyscrapers are built with a series of counterweights in them to help from swaying too much. The buildings are also to designed to sway in the wind. It actually makes them safer. \n\nImagine a stick that has been dried out. It’s very rigid, but it can be snapped easily. Then take a stick freshly cut from a tree. It can bend quite a bit before it actually breaks. That pliability works the same in the buildings. \n\n Then think about the tall buildings in places like San Francisco and Miami. These buildings can take beatings from massive earthquakes and hurricanes and still stand strong. Windy City wind doesn’t compare to hurricane force winds. So you shouldn’t be concerned at all.",
"Steel frames. They're strong. Tall Buildings are engineered to withstand a certain limit of windspeeds. Then engineering principles say to apply an amount of over engineering as safety factor, typically 1.5x or 2x\n\nBut should we ever get the much speculated tornado that hits the Loop, no amount of over engineering will be enough. Something is gonna come down",
"They are usually built so that the swaying is damped by the building. For very large ones there's a pendulum or a similar device that absorbs the swimming. It's the opposite of how you play with a swing (the playground toy) and try to go faster - instead you try to stop yourself from swinging as much as possible (without skidding your feet on the ground, because buildings don't have that option.)\n\nThe shape us also made so that the resonance frequency (the frequency at which the swaying is most impactful) is different from typical swaying in a building. Resonance is also well understood by the swing-example, it's the rhythm your parents/friends/siblings get into when shoving you to go faster.",
"Few different ways. As other people have pointed out, they'll have weights (Sometimes giant metal balls, sometimes pools of water.) that can weigh hundreds of tons to counteract any sway. Another way though is to shape the building to cope with the wind.\n\nMany skyscrapers will get thinner as you go up since the wind gets faster the higher you go. This is super notice with the [Burj Khalifa](_URL_2_) since it really embraces this look. Next, you know how planes and ships will have smoothe edges so they can move through the air/water faster? Well the same applies to stationary buildings. You can go [thin and pointy](_URL_5_) with the pointy end in the same direction as the wind, [twisted and curvy](_URL_4_) so the wind can flow off the surface instead of hitting it head on, [get really twisted](_URL_3_) so the wind hugs the building but pushes itself upward and away, or [literally just punch a hole](_URL_0_) in the top so the wind has somewhere to easily go.\n\nGreat video by Vox on this: _URL_1_"
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[],
[],
[
"https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/d9/%E4%B8%8A%E6%B5%B7%E5%9B%BD%E9%99%85%E9%87%91%E8%9E%8D%E4%B8%AD%E5%BF%83.jpg/240px-%E4%B8%8A%E6%B5%B7%E5%9B%BD%E9%99%85%E9%87%91%E8%9E%8D%E4%B8%AD%E5%BF%83.jpg",
"https://youtu.be/ebx5Y5qOmTM",
"https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/9/93/Burj_Khalifa.jpg/240px-Burj_Khalifa.jpg",
"https://lh4.ggpht.com/-wV8ZNgYRP7k/UXYvEmV7QII/AAAAAAAAnt8/AHPx4cUhYak/evolution-tower-32.jpg?imgmax=800",
"https://i.pinimg.com/originals/b6/17/8f/b6178fcea46007f052dcdd3809c0599e.jpg",
"https://images.adsttc.com/media/images/5b86/c8b2/f197/cc5a/2500/01da/medium_jpg/Moscow_1.jpg?1535559835"
]
] |
|
5h56i8
|
howcome when you move your fingers, the fingers will move as well?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5h56i8/eli5howcome_when_you_move_your_fingers_the/
|
{
"a_id": [
"daxifyv"
],
"score": [
7
],
"text": [
"Because when fingers are moved, fingers tend to move, which in turn results in the movement of one's fingers"
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
||
6h26em
|
why are dinosaurs marketed so much toward kids instead of other animals?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6h26em/eli5_why_are_dinosaurs_marketed_so_much_toward/
|
{
"a_id": [
"diuwhql",
"div0kua"
],
"score": [
7,
2
],
"text": [
"Dinosaurs only exist in the toy aisle of the store. \n\nFor contrast, ponies are a real thing. You can actually buy your kid a pony, and teach it all about how much a pony eats and the work involved in picking up after a pony. There is a mix of upside and downside with a pony.\n\nWhere I grew up, many kids had a \"pet\" cow as part of a 4H project. They took wonderful care of their cow, and showed them off in competitions. Then their took their cow down to the slaughterhouse and saw it converted into sides of beef they could sell or bring home and eat.\n\nThat last step is a bittersweet experience for most young ranch children. It's an essential aspect of why cows are so numerous in the area, but it's very different that their relationship with the family dog. \n\nWith dinos you never have to risk breaking the fantasy.",
"Other animals, still being alive, give off stronger smells than dinosaurs. At least, that's one of the reasons my dogs are more into rabbits than dinos. Marketers are just trying to capitalize on this. "
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[]
] |
||
4891s0
|
why do organizations require you to reenter all the information on your resume into the application?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4891s0/eli5_why_do_organizations_require_you_to_reenter/
|
{
"a_id": [
"d0huh90",
"d0hunsd",
"d0hussi"
],
"score": [
5,
7,
2
],
"text": [
"It eliminates unsupported file formats, resumes printed on fancy paper and then scanned (which often looks horrible), poor font choices, and other things that limit readability. It also makes the resumes from the different applicants looks more similar visually, so the manager can focus on content. ",
"/u/Fleaslayer is correct, but missed a key point. Getting you to enter all the information again via a standardized form makes your résumé machine readable (much easier for a computer to read/interpret). \n\nThis means the company can run all sorts of automated data processing algorithms on the résumés they receive to automatically filter, sort, and/or prioritize certain applicants over others just based on things like the presence or absence of certain keywords or phrases. This sort of thing is fairly common for larger companies and smaller companies that use these types of form-based third-party job application systems.",
"I wouldn't mind this but more and more companies use a 3rd party service for the resume entering and this service then bombards me with junk mail on my e-mail address, and sells my phone number to marketers."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[],
[]
] |
||
alqsel
|
why do our bodies crave salt when we need so little of it?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/alqsel/eli5_why_do_our_bodies_crave_salt_when_we_need_so/
|
{
"a_id": [
"efg80r8",
"efg8hfo",
"efgg72u",
"efgosty"
],
"score": [
23,
12,
2,
2
],
"text": [
"Because it used to be so incredibly rare to find in nature (it only occurs in small quantities in food) and we desperately need it to function. Even after we started mining salt, it was valuable until large scale industrialization in the late 1800s allowed for deeper deposits to be mined.",
"Salt is an incredibly important mineral to have in your diet and until recently it was very rare and valuable. That's why it shows up in a lot of cultural things: your pay is a *sal*ary (sal=salt), someone good is \"worth their salt,\" and if you spill salt at the table you get bad luck. \n\nWith modern salt mining it's so plentiful we can put it in everything. Since it is important and used to be rare we've evolved to crave it, which makes it an effective way of making food taste good. Food manufacturers want you to buy and eat their stuff, so they put more and more salt in it (to a degree) and you have to limit your intake. \n\nThe same basic idea is true of fats, which are an effective way of getting calories and avoiding starvation. With modern agriculture and food processing it's easy to get way too much fat and become overweight if you don't limit your intake. ",
"Basically, it can be extended to pretty much everything food-wise. If we crave it despite it being unhealthy in large amounts, it's because we were never really able to obtain it in large amounts when we were more primitive societies. Modern markets basically exploit human nature to their detriment. ",
"As far as I've seen, theres significant pushback against the claims that salt is the cause of high blood pressure, which was apparently established by a single study. Some odd, furtive motives were present also. "
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[],
[],
[]
] |
||
77118t
|
why aren't panda's able to survive on their own in the wild?
|
I consistently see panda's in zoo's and other "daycare" like places. Why is this?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/77118t/eli5_why_arent_pandas_able_to_survive_on_their/
|
{
"a_id": [
"doi6h7c",
"doi72yt",
"doid1v5",
"doj3ffw"
],
"score": [
2,
7,
2,
3
],
"text": [
"Humans have destroyed most of their habitat. They are a fairly delicate species that wasn't exactly taking over the world even *before* people cut down the plants they live in.",
"They certainly can. But expansion of human population means ever more intrusion into once densely bamboo forested areas. \n\nNot all animals can coexist in humanized areas like rabbits and racoons. Some animals require many hundreds of square miles of pristine uninhabited areas. \n\nPandas also have a slow reproductive cycle and low fertility rates which don't help their population chances.\n\nMost of reason they're still around is because the giant panda is China's mascot. So their artificially propped up. ",
"Habitat destruction and habitat fragmentation, caused by human development. This is a common cause of vulnerability in animals today. They don't have enough land, and what land they do have is scattered, further separating their populations, making it difficult for them to maintain viable numbers. ",
"This [comment](_URL_0_) by [u/99trumpets](_URL_1_) in a related thread may be helpful: \"The panda is in trouble entirely because of humans.\" The post is well worth reading."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[],
[],
[
"https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/2rmf6h/til_that_part_of_the_reason_it_is_so_hard_to_get/",
"https://np.reddit.com/user/99trumpets"
]
] |
|
25bivm
|
why is the baby boomer generation, who were noted for being so liberal in their youth, so conservative now?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/25bivm/eli5_why_is_the_baby_boomer_generation_who_were/
|
{
"a_id": [
"chfjuoq",
"chfjx80",
"chfk2og",
"chfk3rk",
"chfkc8d",
"chfkf3y",
"chfkti5",
"chfn8rn",
"chfn9rv",
"chfnek6",
"chfner6",
"chfo65i",
"chfo8ia",
"chfodk9",
"chfoekw",
"chfogiy",
"chfowfz",
"chfoxor",
"chfp2ym",
"chfpatr",
"chfpctq",
"chfpd7g",
"chfpg9e",
"chfphcc",
"chfphvy",
"chfpk44",
"chfpksx",
"chfpo13",
"chfpttz",
"chfq2q5",
"chfq2vr",
"chfq3vw",
"chfq5ha",
"chfq6n1",
"chfq88u",
"chfqbw2",
"chfqd97",
"chfqdho",
"chfqlpu",
"chfqltd",
"chfqn7v",
"chfqq0p",
"chfqqeb",
"chfqril",
"chfqtbr",
"chfqu5y",
"chfqv4f",
"chfqvq7",
"chfqw7f",
"chfqxiq",
"chfqxlo",
"chfqyx8",
"chfr31r",
"chfr7p2",
"chfr85o",
"chfr9n0",
"chfrfz5",
"chfrgki",
"chfrgwh",
"chfrinh",
"chfrlga",
"chfrmt4",
"chfrnmf",
"chfrw6b",
"chfrzb1",
"chfs2g4",
"chfs7do",
"chfs85p",
"chfsb70",
"chfsdzd",
"chfsgpc",
"chfspt3",
"chft017",
"chft17p",
"chft1rn",
"chft4xd",
"chft5xw",
"chft61n",
"chft9mp",
"chfthiy",
"chfthrm",
"chfti9p",
"chftjth",
"chftozl",
"chfttv0",
"chfu7k1",
"chfu8sw",
"chfub75",
"chfuc4e",
"chfuk41",
"chfup0l",
"chfurpq",
"chfutl8",
"chfuw6h",
"chfuwxr",
"chfuzw7",
"chfv04j",
"chfv1qo",
"chfv2i7",
"chfv35g",
"chfv48a",
"chfv5lg",
"chfv9ce",
"chfvarg",
"chfvb2g",
"chfvcka",
"chfvctm",
"chfve7c",
"chfvfyl",
"chfvh7j",
"chfvjza",
"chfvly5",
"chfvm5i",
"chfvryb",
"chfvxvs",
"chfvy72",
"chfvyc9",
"chfvzto",
"chfw01q",
"chfw9jn",
"chfw9la",
"chfwchg",
"chfwdg1",
"chfwfch",
"chfwiyf",
"chfwkw4",
"chfwolu",
"chfwps0",
"chfwsnn",
"chfwso3",
"chfwv92",
"chfwydj",
"chfwzm5",
"chfx08p",
"chfx0nv",
"chfx3z9",
"chfx4x4",
"chfx62s",
"chfx7b2",
"chfx7zz",
"chfxbgd",
"chfxfbf",
"chfxhz1",
"chfxjly",
"chfxk56",
"chfxkop",
"chfxkp1",
"chfxmcv",
"chfxmo2",
"chfxnbd",
"chfxrcs",
"chfxry5",
"chfxtjy",
"chfxws7",
"chfxxtk",
"chfxz4z",
"chfxzls",
"chfy1mh",
"chfy553",
"chfy8t8",
"chfybxh",
"chfygs4",
"chfyig6",
"chfyjfb",
"chfylhh",
"chfyppn",
"chfypup",
"chfyszo",
"chfyto1",
"chfyvj4",
"chfyvni",
"chfz0d7",
"chfz4x9",
"chfz52t",
"chfz5ce",
"chfza6u",
"chfzauu",
"chfzcrl",
"chfzet6",
"chfzewv",
"chfzi5a",
"chfziqw",
"chfzlnc",
"chfzlzb",
"chfzudx",
"chg010j",
"chg06xt",
"chg08kc",
"chg09zu",
"chg0yl1",
"chg0zha",
"chg15tp",
"chg1du4",
"chg1juh",
"chg1qgw",
"chg201v",
"chg2100",
"chg22z6",
"chg24mf",
"chg2euf",
"chg2fem",
"chg2g6a",
"chg2vau",
"chg3883",
"chg3hog",
"chg3knv",
"chg3qjp",
"chg3rm1",
"chg3sih",
"chg4414",
"chg4dql",
"chg4gfa",
"chg4ioz",
"chg4nhc",
"chg4ntj",
"chg4smb",
"chg4v5t",
"chg52mk",
"chg53zt",
"chg57g0",
"chg59cw",
"chg5ctd",
"chg5xhp",
"chg62cb",
"chg67tl",
"chg6hd1",
"chg6j6f",
"chg6pn1",
"chg6wpo",
"chg75iw",
"chg779h",
"chg7jjg",
"chg7sww",
"chg97ps",
"chgbpsh",
"chgeye4",
"chhh7o3"
],
"score": [
537,
115,
45,
422,
50,
185,
33,
33,
44,
26,
7,
6,
2,
10,
19,
13,
2,
25,
2,
7,
5,
1684,
20,
2,
5,
2,
9,
5,
25,
15,
10,
2,
3,
3,
10,
11,
6,
4,
19,
9,
2,
2,
2,
2,
2,
8,
2,
3,
2,
2,
43,
15,
2,
6,
3,
2,
3,
2,
4,
2,
2,
2,
2,
7,
46,
8,
2,
3,
5,
2,
6,
3,
3,
2,
2,
2,
3,
2,
2,
14,
2,
2,
2,
2,
5,
2,
2,
3,
2,
2,
2,
2,
47,
3,
2,
42,
2,
2,
2,
2,
3,
2,
2,
4,
3,
2,
2,
4,
8,
2,
2,
4,
3,
2,
2,
2,
2,
2,
2,
3,
26,
2,
4,
2,
4,
11,
2,
2,
4,
5,
3,
6,
2,
3,
5,
2,
2,
2,
2,
3,
3,
2,
3,
4,
3,
3,
2,
13,
2,
3,
2,
2,
3,
3,
3,
3,
4,
2,
2,
2,
2,
2,
3,
3,
3,
2,
7,
2,
2,
2,
39,
3,
2,
2,
2,
2,
2,
3,
2,
2,
6,
8,
11,
2,
2,
2,
2,
2,
3,
3,
2,
4,
2,
2,
2,
2,
2,
2,
3,
2,
4,
6,
2,
2,
2,
2,
3,
3,
3,
2,
9,
4,
2,
3,
2,
6,
3,
4,
3,
3,
2,
2,
2,
2,
2,
2,
2,
3,
4,
4,
8,
2,
2,
2,
2,
2,
3
],
"text": [
"Almost everyone becomes more conservative as they age. Older people, who have established lives, families, etc., value stability a lot more than a younger person who is more capable of moving with changes. And most peoples' politics are, for better or worse, based on what benefits *them* and not on any principle.",
"What a Long, Strange Trip It's Been.\n\nalso, the people who were hippies then, are probably not the raging conservatives of today. \n\nALSO, those Boomers scored big on average, socio-economically speaking. Good union jobs, decent security, and a couple good boom periods mean they're on average pretty well off. And nothing makes someone paraniod like wondering how you're going to guard your stuff from younger, hungrier wolves.",
"Because we got so jaded. What the youth (you) see as helping a guy who needs food on the street corner, we see as just another jerk-off scammer with a nice car parked down the street which he uses to drive home to his house in the 'burbs.\n\nWhat you see as everybody deserves health care, we see as the coke-head only working craft shows wants what we work hard to have. What you see as the children of poverty who need good food and education and commit crimes because they're poor, we see as the children of social and economic parasites who had children just so we would fucking pay for them, and the next cycle of the same behavior.\n\nI could go on. That being said, I am more liberal than most people my age.",
"Baby boomers aren't a monolithic bloc. Plenty of them were conservative back in the '60s. We just hear more about the liberal baby boomers during that time period because they were so much more vocal about their beliefs.",
"We, like Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, thought that we could change the world. Kent State, Vietnam, Altamont, the assassinations of '68, the Chicago Convention, and a thousand other events proved to us that the crappy old world wasn't going to allow us to change it. Although there were a few Don Quixotes amongst us...many Boomers, myself included, decided that if you can't beat them-join them; cut our shoulder-length hair, shaved, put on suits and ties, and assimilated.\n\nedit: forgot a ,",
"They got money and they wanna keep it.",
"It really is disillusionment. You start seeing your tax bill year after year. You see the heartwarming story about a cop giving a homeless bum a pair of shoes, only to see the story about the bum being a scammer with an apartment. At least I started feeling like a sucker. Work hard so many people can chill and play video games all day or get high. I almost had a stroke the first time I saw a free cell phone tent in my city. ",
"They like spending other people's money when they're young and don't have money...and then once they're older and have money they don't want other people spending it.",
"“If you're not a liberal at twenty you have no heart, if you're not a conservative at forty you have no brain.”\n— Winston Churchill",
"When younger you have a normative view. Meaning you see how the world should be. When you get older you see how the world is and that such noble causes aren't practical.",
"surely it's just relative. Liberal back then is fairly conservative in comparison to today - the views may not have changed but their classification has.\nSo by that same logic, it is likely that our currently held 'liberal' beliefs will make us the old conservatives to future generations.",
"A liberal generation changes the world to their model. That becomes the world that new liberals want to change to suit their own model. Sometimes this moves in a single direction - whether that is forward or backward is a matter of opinion - other times the new generation sees the problems with the former's model and rebels against it, undoing the changes of their parents.\n\nThe world also changes the viewpoint of the generation. Their ideals collide with reality, and they realize that what their parents created actually works.\n\n",
"It's simple. \nThey want to be supported.\nThey want all the benefits.\nThey realized that if they stayed liberal with the new generations coming up they would have no one to pay their bills for them.",
"When you aren't making a lot of money, or any money, it's really easy to shout about how people who make a lot of money should give their money away.\n\nThen you grow up... and suddenly there's a bunch of kids trying to decide how to spend your money... but they don't have any money of their own.",
"Kinda related, but not answering your question. Times change. When grandpa says \"That colored fella\" and you get embarrassed, will you be you in 30 years when you tell your grandkid \"Shut up faggot, I fucked your mom 360 no scoped that pussy Ghandi\"",
"They got old and complacent. They got where they wanted and are now pulling the ladder up. What does it matter to them if people are saddled with student debt when they went to university for free? Preserving the status quo is now in their interest rather than change, \"I got mine so fuck y'all\"",
"\"We didn't sell out; we bought in.\"",
"Ive noticed that the older I get the more I disagree with fellow liberals, especially on Reddit. Im 35, and they remind me of myself before I knew anything about the world. ",
"It might possibly be because apathy increases with age. Liberalism is generally more concerned with compassion and empathy towards less advantaged groups than conservatism is. When people become more apathetic, they become less Liberal and eventually fall somewhere right-of-center",
"It's because they grew up during the most prosperous economic period of our history (post WWII, particularly the 1950s and 1960s), and they did very well because of it. \n\nAs others have pointed out, not all Baby Boomers were liberal when they were young. But their conservatism and self-centeredness intensified during the 1970s and reached a peak in the 1980s -- also known as the \"Me\" decade. Their parents (the so-called \"Greatest Generation\"), born in the 1910s-1930s, made sacrifices so that their Baby Boomer children could go to college, etc. When you spoil your children, you usually end up producing a wastrel with the emotional and social maturity of a five year old, who still sees himself as the center of his own universe. This is not to say it describes all Baby Boomers, but it definitely describes the worst of them.",
"They got theres. No, really, the used the hell out of the system in it's prime, made good money, bought homes and cars and had kids (or not) and now they think the system is costing them more than it's helping them so they don't wanna pay for it anymore (mass generalization). It doesn't really help that it's easy to blow something off as \"juvenile\" or \"naive\" when you believed it yourself at a younger age but have changed your stance as you got older. Think of something silly you believed as a kid, now imagine that instead of that it was a political philosophy of some sort. That's one of the easiest ways to justify paying no attention to the actual arguments of the position you used to hold.",
"This thread is full of common misconceptions, anecdotal evidence and the Winston Churchill quote that he never actually said. I hope I'm not too late to turn this around.\n\nFirst off, let's clear up the big one: people do not generally become more conservative as they age. generational cohorts tend to gravitate slightly towards one end of the political spectrum and then stay there their entire lives. Older people right now are generally more conservative simply because their cohort drifted that way and has remained there. \n\nNow we can move to OP's question. We need to understand that there is a huge difference between the vocal minority and the silent majority. The people at woodstock are the vocal minority. Everyone who didn't care to go? Silent majority. Hippies, peaceniks, etc. have become the popular stereotype of the 60s but most people were doing what they were always doing; going to school, working, trying to get by. So what we have here is a stereotype doing what it always does which is forming outsiders' opinions of an entire group, oftentimes in a factually incorrect way.\n\nNext, we need to remember that Baby Boomers were born from 1946-1964. This puts many of them way past the whole \"hippie\" movement.\n\nFinally, we need to examine what we mean by conservative and liberal, especially when it comes to the period we are talking about. I think when OP says \"liberal in their youth\" he is referring to the 1960s. To be \"liberal\" at that time mostly meant opposition to the war in Vietnam. But that stance says almost nothing about the issues that would make you a \"liberal\" today. It's not unreasonable to assume that a majority of Baby Boomers, in their youth, opposed the war in Vietnam but also favored lower taxes and less government intervention in business. To simply state my point: One might think that the Baby Boomers were liberal in their youth because of their anti-war stance, but that issue bears little relevance on many of the major political issues of our current day. \n\nFor sources:\n\n_URL_1_\n\n_URL_0_\n\n",
"I can't speak for all Baby Boomers, but I was raised a liberal, and I'm still a liberal. \n\nSome of us haven't changed very much. ",
"What was liberal back then isn't so liberal right now. I mean considering movements like Women's Suffrage and the Civil Rights movements- those seem so obvious to even some of the most conservative these days. Other movements like Same-sex marriage or legalizing drugs are things they wrap their minds around, often times. Likewise, while our generation is liberal about these things now, there may be issues in the future that WE can't get behind, making us seem super conservative. Then again, if all goes well, our generation will defy the stereotype and stay open-minded about most things, and it won't be a problem. \n\nThen again, that's just how I see it. ",
"Not a baby boomer, but I used be leaning center towards left politically. As I've been working longer, I've been moving towards the right. You can say whatever you want about evil corporations, but lots of people work for those corporations and they would like to continue working there. Seeing more of your colleagues getting laid off every year while the company struggles is not a good feeling. It's a global economy now. If your country keeps raising the cost of doing business, then the companies will just pack their bags and move somewhere else. Then you see public unions wanting more raises from your tax dollars, well, how convenient for them.",
"What was \"liberal\" then isn't so liberal anymore. We call the baby-boomers in the sixties liberal, even though for example back then homosexuality was still classified as a mental disorder and not very many people were vocal about gay rights. Fast forward 50 years and gay marriage is a big political issues.",
"Ummm. We're not. Many of us anyway. Try to resist the urge to generalize. There are still millions of us.",
"Because they have money now.",
"The premise of your question suggests that most Baby Boomers switched parties. From personal observation, I know plenty of left leaning 50 somethings including union workers, women's rights advocates, non-religious, and non-white voters. Even if one group isn't united in how it votes, it's still such a large electorate that no politician could ever ignore. \n\nAnother part of the issue is that what people say and how they vote aren't always in line. For instance, no one likes taxes. And the ongoing spates of Medicare fraud cases riles people up even more. But talk about privatizing Medicare, and 50-somethings say \"Now hold on a second. I paid into that, and was planning on having it after I retire.\" Can you still call them conservative when they want to maintain social spending programs? Your question is one that looks for a black-and-white answer, when the reality is more complicated. \n\nOne idea that explains why people vote is that voting is an economic decision, and that people will vote according to what's in their best for their bank account. In the 1960s, this meant opposing the war in Vietnam, since going off to Vietnam meant possible injury (an amputee would have trouble getting a job) or even death. For women, this meant voting for candidates that support birth control (children are an expensive commitment). Today, it means rich baby boomers may vote Republican because they don't expect to need services like food assistance, or a university education, and so don't want to pay taxes for services they won't use. Gay people vote for Democrats because marriage offers them financial security. Some poor will vote Republican because they see competition from immigration as a threat. Whatever the demographic, there's a financial motive behind the political opinions people act on. So it's not so much that people changed, but rather, the political party that could offer their group a better deal changed. ",
"One of my pet theories on this is that many of the best Boomers didn't make it. The assholes survived and thrived and are now running things.",
"My favorite thing about the baby boomers is how they complain about how entitled the generation they raised is.",
"Liberal and Conservative ideals go back and forth throughout history and they will continue to do so. At this rate if you do not believe in the core of being conservative there will be no future.",
"Because they had to be liberal to get all the benefits in place for them to take everybody's money when they got older, and now that they are older, they don't want all the young kids getting subsidized at their expense. \n\nTL;DR THEY'RE ASSHOLES!",
"They didn't, society became more liberal.\n\nJFK was a closet fascist that loved Hitler, a liberal in 1962 is lot further to the right than a liberal in 2014.",
"Because they are selfish. It was all about ME ME ME, growing up and as they age and die, they are still screaming ME ME ME, despite all the talk about children being the future. \nIf they were at all serious we wouldn't have a 17 Trillion dollar national debt.",
"Unfortunately the democrartic party isn't liberal and the republican party isn't conservative. They're all corporate whores.",
"They were liberal by the standards of the day but not by modern standards. \n\nIt's not so much individuals moving to the right as it is their children being raised towards the left. ",
"There are literally classes dedicated to this sort of subject. But to make it short my professor likes to sum it up with the saying \"where you stand depends on where you sit.\" As you get older you typically become more wealthy and become wiser to the world. Where you are in life will typically have a strong influence on one's ideology",
"The baby boomers were not all that liberal in their youth. It just seemed like it, because the society they were rebelling against was so conservative. The 60's and 70's, compared to today, were not exactly bastions of freedom for women's rights, minority's rights, drug laws, divorce and child support, unmarried parents, and young men who didn't want to be drafted. Music and some marches and some very vocal activists isn't everything. The vast majority of the Baby Boomers put up and shut up with conditions and circumstances that today would be appallingly conservative. ",
"My parents are in their sixties and believe the same liberal ideals they did in their twenties. They actively despise the flip floppers that perforate this thread. \n\nYou only change because you are weak willed. You wore bell bottoms because it suited you. You went to church if it suited you. You rallied against the war if it suited you. And by suited I mean - what suits did your peers wear? Don't believe the comments of men who say they are now conservative because they \"know better now\". \n\nThese are men who got lucky and started hanging around with other cynical asses. It's probably why they are on Reddit in the first place, because they know where the money is. Most baby boomers care about social justice, we've just tuned then out in polar culture favor of a younger generation. X'ers. 90's kids. \n\nThus the only older opinion that breaks through the calamity is the most inflammatory and ridiculous opinions of all. But of course we can't let crazies get their way, so we spend all our time fighting these right wing \" know it all's \" and never get to fight the issues most of the country cares about. Those with enough money WANT to change the conversation. They like making you think you will one day be as smart as them, but for that attitude to happen, you must first have money, and that will never happen when we can't defend our own needs. \n\nWe only change as we get older if we are misguided, weak-willed or selfish when we are young. And being so is much easier once you don't need people anymore and no longer need be bothered to care for anyone else.",
"As my dad describes it: \"Everyone's a liberal when they're young. Then they earn money and buy houses; things they don't want to share\"",
"Namely, they grew up. Had families, got jobs, their priorities changed. They were subdued by YOU their children.",
"The 1960's movement was for most youth of that time a license to be openly hedonistic, narcissistic, and a complete douche.\n\nEven the idealists of that time turned this way in discouragement when things didn't magically pan out.\n\nProblem is, these youth never changed, and now we have them in power and they want to preserve every unfair advantage.",
"A black guy as the most powerful man in the world can turn decades of social programming on it's head.",
"Not all Boomers were liberal even back then- I'm not even sure most of them were. Google image search \"desegregation\" and look at all the adult assholes who were booing that poor girl who was being escorted by the National Fucking Guard into the first \"non-segregated\" high school down south. Those assholes were also Boomers.",
"when you look at video of woodstock and the anti-war marches, keep in mind that it was called the \"counter-culture\" for a reason. it was not the dominant culture. think of all the music at woodstock, think of the late 60's in your mind, that is the image of it from movies. now take into account that the #1 song of 1969 was not Jimi Hendrix, nor was it Creedence Clearwater, or Janis Joplin, it was \"Sugar Sugar\" by the Archies. a clean cut, bubblegum wholesome pop song was the dominant culture, not some fight the power classic rock. its not that the boomers changed, as much as it is that Nixon was right, and there was a \"silent majority.\" ",
"Also, a lot of the anti-war folks were anti-war because they could be drafted. It was self-interest. \n\nI wish we still had the draft- if a few more of the educated/upper middle class folks were at risk I bet they'd be a lot more concerned with the number of wars we like to get ourselves involved in. ",
"baby-boomers are not the same as the hippies\n\nbaby-boomers grew up with the Bee Gees and pro commercialism",
"They worked hard, earned some money, and now don't want anyone touching it.",
"I dispute your premise. Relative to their preceding generation, they are very liberal. The reality is that subsequent generations are even more liberal.\n\nDon't assume woodstock represented most Americans of that generation. They were the frunge, like OWS only effective.",
"Imagine that in 50 years, everyone assumes the millennial generation were all vegan hipsters who drove a prius (just like baby boomers were all dirty hippies who drove VW vans). Obviously that isn't the case but that's what happens with oversimplification. ",
"Because yesterday's liberals are today's conservatives. In 50 years you'll be the guy who fought for gay rights in his youth, but is whole heartedly against cloning (or whatever).",
"They no longer have nothing to lose.",
"[The Rise of Conservatism: Crash Course US History #41](_URL_0_)\n\nThis video should help. Love CrashCourse, probably my favorite youtube channel by far. ",
"My experience with baby boomers is that they usually change opinion when they have something to gain from it.",
"people are selfish, its just that selfishness manifests itself differently at different ages",
"I think it is more or less that as you grow older, the liberal become the new conservative. Back then they were working out the idea of woman in the work place, but not so keen on giving them fair wage or benefits, because that is what husbands are for. Nowadays this is a very conservative viewpoint, as in the 60's and 70's it was a liberal one.\n\nAbortion is another good example. Back then, more and more people were becoming okay with the idea of medically assisted abortion, however, they were not so hot on the idea of a woman choosing what they wanted to do with their bodies, because that is what the men were for. Now, those are quite antiquated viewpoints. \n\nToday, people are becoming more and more accepting of gay couples, letting them marry, adopt children Ect. However, not so many people are okay with transvestites, or other forms of sexuality. This is the liberal nowadays, but in 50 years it will be quite a conservative viewpoint.",
"Times change, people don't. What was liberal in the past is now conservative in the present",
"That's why were where we are now. They wanted free college and free housing. Free everything. When it came time to pay up they all became republicans",
"They had it easy and did well, they compare their standards built from different circumstances to everyone else.",
"Except the baby boomer generation isnt conservative.",
"I don't know if people generally grow more conservative as they age. However, the rigidity of behavior that occurs as you age may be the result of dark side of brain plasticity. While neurologists believe our brains retain a extreme degree of plasticity throughout our life, our old patterns become deeply etched by a lifetime of habit.\n\n\nNeurons that wire together fire together. The more you repeat a thought pattern, habit, or whatever, the stronger, or \"deeper\" the neural connection becomes — like how a stream would carve the Grand Canyon over time. It becomes extremely difficult to climb out of this gorge, and dig a new groove. So, as you age, it literally becomes more energy intensive to form a new worldview. \n\n\nI do think that there's a healthy mix of liberals and conservatives in this country. More likely, contemporary conservatism is closely aligned with the capitalistic notion of making as much money as possible within a short time frame. Leading to concentrated wealth and power, which in turn gives conservatives the leverage to slowly shape the message, disseminated through powerful media outlets to serve their economic interests (including but not limited to, reshaping economic structures via political processes). And we end up with old people sitting in front of Fox news everyday, continually reinforcing this synaptic connection --- and they become stuck.\n\n\nNow excuse me while I go and browse reddit, so I may strengthen my liberally inclined confirmation bias. \n\n\nEDIT: more writey stuff.",
"Stereotyping a generation is why",
"My best guess is because what was considered \"liberal\" for them back then, is now considered \"conservative\" for our standards now.\n\nI may not be right though.",
"Their idea of \"liberal\" was letting black and white kids go to the same school. They were liberal for their time. Just not by our standards today.",
"Views tend to change once you make money and then people try to take it from you. ",
"Because the long term effects of LSD and weed are actually hardliner conservatism. ",
"They grew up.",
"With age comes wisdom.",
"BB dude here. \n\nI am so far left I can't use my right turn signal. I cherish being wrong because I can't bear to be 'right' under any circumstances. my cohort is all liberal, except the uneducated ones from my youth, who are hopeless. \n\ni challenge the premise that we're conservative. i think the real question is why the conservatives among us haven't grown intellectually in the 40 years since i was 20 and moved left, as education is wont to do?\n\nIF one posits that your question (which contains an inherent conclusion) has merit, then I'm with some who would say that age, infirmity, fear, assets, etc. makes us less risk tolerant. not me, but some. maybe most.\n\ni resist saying that, though. shit, fidel castro is farther right than me. bill clinton and hillary are conservatives. i'm more bernie sanders than barak obama. we're not all old fogies.\n\nnow get out of my yard you little creep!\n\n\n\n",
"Everything changed for that generation during the Nixon administration. Nixon won the 1968 election heavily emphasizing law and order. He appointed five conservative leaning supreme court justices, pulled troops out of Vietnam, condemned racial violence, and eased cold war tensions with China and the USSR. In addition, his appointed attorney general and crony, John N. Mitchel, was tasked with wire tapping domestic (and political) threats while squashing civil unrest. He did this entirely too well, and those techniques gave rise to the mass surveillance we see today. I digress...\n\nThe administration ran one of the most impressive presidencies ever witnessed by most political accounts. America was in state sponsored social and economic bliss. All threats to harmony were annihilated as soon as they arose and Nixon was seen as responsible. At this point the baby boomers either got what they were fighting for during the previous decade, or became old enough to consider family values a primary concern. Nixon's 1972 re-election was an elaborate, voter mobilizing, ambitious (perhaps a bit over ambitious) power house that won Nixon the election with the largest popular vote margin in any presidential election ever, [over 18 million votes](_URL_0_). He woke up the silent conservative base and persuaded others with swift and articulated action. What Nixon sold in his first term, America bought for generations, effectively winning the hearts of the protesting liberals, converting many them to a more conservative mindset. That set up the eventual Republican dynasty in America, where even Democrats, (whether they are willing to admit it or not) are forced to lean conservative to find common ground. \n\ntl;dr: Between 68' and 72' the Nixon administration found the baby boomer's pacifier. \n\nEDIT: words and grammer",
"Because everyone turns into their parents eventually",
"The assumption is incorrect. The Baby Boomer Generation was not particularly liberal in their youth. The radical student movement was liberal and led the anti-Vietnam War movement. A subculture of this, generally the hippie culture, involved itself in free love, drugs and rock and roll a la Jimmy Hendrix and Janis Joplin. This was a relatively small fraction of an otherwise traditional, conservative and largely uninformed and apolitical Baby Boomer Generation. The counter-culture sector gradually changed into a culture with which it was comfortable based upon notions of family, security, hard work and fun. The political liberals, split between Democrats and Republicans with a small sector remaining on the outside looking in. The Republican choice came from disillusionment with Democrat's waste and Big Government. The Democrats choice came from a tolerance for waste if it generally helped the masses overcome lack of bargaining power in an increasingly Big Business economy. But most of the Baby Boomers were never on that leading edge and simply continued being out of touch or not caring one way or the other. ",
"Because they made money! Sounds like a joke answer, but everyone should read the writing on the wall and learn from recent history, there's no such thing as liberal and conservative. Liberals just think they're wanting to tax the rich for moral reasons and Conservatives think that they shouldn't be taxed heavily because of moral reasons. Truth is both sides just want to get as much as they can, just some have a lot and a lot have little.\n\nSo one side needs to conspire while the other side tries to dominate, and they need to conspire because the other side will always try to dominate.\n\nAll the other social values that became associated with \"liberalism\" or \"conservatism\" are just people trying to get as many voters on their side as possible. eg: Kevin Rudd going pro gay marriage when he was losing his election battle. Oh I need to be more liberal now, let's get all the far left onside quick!",
"Well, I suppose an answer for financial alignment (like financially liberal or conservative) is that when you're younger you have less money and therefore more liberal about how the government spends it, but once you get older and make more money you become conservative to prevent losing it to taxes.\n\nThat's kind of a simple and potentially ignorant way of looking at it, but it kinda makes sense...",
"The Baby boom generation isn't all, or even mostly conservative. Most of the ultra liberal teachers, professors and bureaucrats are baby boomers. \n\nMaybe the ones who have worked in industry and thus been more exposed to the real world tend to be conservative.",
"Because they got older.",
"Perhaps they were liberal in the context of that extremely conservative environment they grew up in, but are conservative in old age as realities liberal bias comes to light. ",
"Eventually everyone grows up and learns how real life works.",
"People tend towards \"liberal\" attitudes when it relates to their own rights and entitlements, but less liberal when it may affect them negatively. \n\nPeople want the freedom to not be drafted, smoke pot, and listen to rock and roll, because \"You can't tell me what to do, guy\". And young people in the baby boomer generation of course embraced the social welfare programs of their time because they received the benefits. \n\nOnce they are at the other end of the socioeconomic spectrum, the same people don't want to pay more in tax, because it means less money in their pocket. They don't like hip-hop because someone once graffiti'd on the fence they paid for, and the neighbor's kids play loud music into the night, which disrupts their sleep. \n\nAn example of this is free tertiary education in Australia, put in place by the baby boomer's parents in an attempt to give their children good education, something they would not be able to afford on their own given the size of families. This was removed by the the baby boomers, once they had received the benefits of a free education. Everyone likes free stuff, giving away stuff for free: notsomuch. \n\nThese are all, of course, entirely natural responses. Everyone is governed by self interest. Arguably even morality and notions of selflessness are based on a desire to be accepted within society. This isn't just the Baby Boomers, it could relate equally to all generations. \n\n\n\n\n",
"The older I get, the more liberal I become.",
"Selfishness makes poor men liberal and rich men conservative. quite simply, they stopped being liberal the moment it required giving of themselves rather than asking others to do the giving.\n\nIt's a bit cynical, perhaps, but it's the basis for a lot of civilization... minorities preach tolerance only until they become majorities, for example.\n\n",
"Question for the US folks who say that people turn conservative when they start paying taxes...if financial concerns are the actual reason, why would they ever vote conservative? The conservatives drastically outspend the liberals whenever they get a chance. \n\n",
"They are so conservative now because many of the changes that they fought for have come to fruition. Now that many have gained what they fought for, they don't want any more change to occur as they leave the world. They just don't want the world to pass them by when they're gone.",
"Because people who don't have something want something, and people who have something don't want to lose it.",
"They aren't conservative. I am even more radical than I was when I was younger. The conservatives are those born after 1980. Don't believe the crap you hear from Fox news. Because of corporate control of the media, the progressive voice has been largely silent in the mainstream but it is still there. You may remember the huge public protests before the Iraq war. (Or maybe not since they didn't get much press coverage). A large proportion of protesters were gray haired sixty somethings. The Raging Grannies is another group of progressives throughout the country that regularly protest for progressive causes. Check youtube. Progressives don't have much money to get their point across but it doesn't mean they are not still active. They supported George McGovern, Howard Dean, Edward Muskie, Barny Frank, and now Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Alan Grayson, and Al Franken among others. And they are far to the left of Obama and the Clintons and the rest of the corporate Democrats.",
"the entire American culture is much more liberal today than it was 50 years ago. JFK would have been considered a conservative republican if he ran today. The problem is the Country keeps moving left, and the baby boomers realize that this is bad for them. If a person works hard their entire life but they watch their saving evaporate to inflation, higher taxes, higher energy costs, it forces them to become conservative. You don't realize how burdensome taxes can be until you have a job and a career and you realize that you can't outpace the taxes, inflation, and higher energy costs. So, every year, you earn less money, and have less savings. ",
"If you're not a democrat before age 30 you have no heart, if you're not a republican after 30 you have no brain\n\nFunny little saying i heard",
"Because, in part, they're trying to maximize their resources in an uncertain economic environment before retirement. Problem is they're making it harder for people like Gen-xer's to move into their positions. \n\nAnother way to look at it, is that they're older and they have more to lose. When you're young, you don't have a lot of assets and commitments. For instance, capital gains means very little to most younger people as do estate taxes. But when you're older...\n\n",
"When you get old, you won't like changes. \nSimple as that.",
"When you think about it, it's very conservative to be liberal when you're young. The entire philosophy is to do whatever is best for yourself and embrace the \"rational actor\" model. Ergo, support socialism when you're poor and social Darwinism when you're rich.",
"Now phoney beatlemania has bitten the dust.-The Clash, London Calling",
"Baby boomer here and also still a moderate progressive but OP's question hit home. I grew up in a white, blue-collar neighborhood in northern Blue state and everyone I knew and hung out with in the mid-60's to late 70's, and I do mean everyone, were liberal/progressive to outright radicals. We protested the Vietnam war and for women's rights and the pro-choice cause. I lost touch with many of them as I grew older and settled down, as you do, and recently reconnected with many of them over the past few years on FaceBook. I was shocked to discover how many of them are now Tea Party Republicans who are now against everything they fought for as youths. I've talked to many of them to try and find out WTF happened to them and as I understand it, as they grew older, they pretty much want this country to return to what they saw as idyllic when they were kids in the 50's and early 60's. Of course, they didn't want to be reminded that the progressive/liberal changes and causes they advocated for in the late 60's and early '70's completely contradicts their rosy vision of what life was when they were kids but they're not having any of that argument. Many of them are now just bitter old white people who truly only care about how much money they can hold on to while the heck with everyone else. It makes me sad to see how bitter some of these people have become but I try and remember that as you grow older, life can throw some pretty bad stuff at you. Some people learn to embrace the positive and keep going while others just become bitter and hateful to anyone who isn't just like them. ",
"Life slaps you into reality.\n\nYou'll see.",
"They grew smarter with age.",
"From the mouth of George Carlin (apologies for the wall of text) :\n\n“The Baby Boomers: whiny, narcissistic, self-indulgent people with a simple philosophy: “Gimme that! It’s mine!” These people were given everything, everything was handed to them, and they took it all, sold it all; sex, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll, and they stayed loaded for twenty years and had a free ride. But now they’re staring down the barrel of middle-age burnout, and they don’t like it. They don’t like it, so they’ve become self-righteous, and they wanna make things hard for young people. They tell em abstain from sex, say no to drugs. As for rock ‘n’ roll, they sold that for television commercials a long time ago so they can buy pasta machines and StairMasters and soybean futures. You know something? They’re cold, bloodless people. It’s in their slogans, it’s in their rhetoric: “No pain, no gain,” “Just do it,” “Life is short, play hard,” “Shit happens, deal with it,” “Get a life.” These people went from “Do your own thing” to “Just say no!” They went from “Love is all you need” to “Whoever winds up with the most toys, wins”, and they went from cocaine to Rogaine. And you know something? They’re still counting grams, only now it’s fat grams. And the worst of it is we have to watch the commercials on TV for Levi’s loose-fitting jeans and fat-ass Docker pants because these degenerate, yuppie, Boomer cocksuckers couldn’t keep their hands off the croissants and the Häägen-Dasz and their big fat asses have spread all over and they have to wear fat-ass Docker pants. Fuck these Boomers, fuck these yuppies… and fuck everyone, now that I think of it.”\n\nGeorge Carlin – 1996\n\n\n",
"The baby boomers epitomize \"Do as we say and not as we do.\". \n\nOh yea and they are responsible for everyone being in debt. \n\nGood job! ",
"For the same reason you did things in your teens and early twenties that you won't do in your thirties and forties. Also the same reason why it's ok for you to have casual sex, drugs, alcohol etc but not your children.",
"Because they grew up, had kids, got jobs, made money, and now they realize government doesn't have their interests at heart. ",
"I don't think we are. It is the generation older (and occasionally younger) than the boomers who are conservative. The older I have gotten, the more I have moved to the left till now I am a commie. ",
"They're not!!\n\nThere has always been that divide. \n\nIt's known as the \"culture war\" \n\nSome of us have become the very thing we were rebelling against, but over all most of of us haven't changed, we've just grown cynical and frustrated. ",
"Liberalism is akin to children who lack discipline. ",
"My husband and I are baby boomers and so are most of our friends. We are financially conservative with our personal finance issues but we are socially liberal - as are most of our friends and families. \n\nThere are a few *FOX* news types here and there in the mix but liberalism is by far the norm for us and folk we call friends.",
"As others have noted, the really liberal members of the Baby Boomer generation was relatively small. The rest of the BB gen was moderate-to-conservative and many of them sold out as our country became more and more focused on material goods and making money. \n\nThey also had an ingrained fear gene that was fostered by the Cold War, as well as the insecurities of a word war and depression that their parents went through. Those fears led many of them to cling to a war-like nature that was manipulated by the conservative party.",
"I can't provide citations, but I'm pretty sure as people get older they get more conservative. Not sure why exactly, but maybe it's because they start paying more taxes and witness big brother expanding into their own personal freedoms. ",
"It's because they have money now. More $$$ = higher chance to be/vote conservative. _URL_0_",
"The problem is \"conservative\" used to mean holding moderately right-wing economic and social views. Now it means being an extreme right-winged lunatic. As the political right have become more extreme and religiously-motivated, the moderate right have unfortunately been dragged along with them.",
"You're generalizing. I'm slightly too old to be a Boomer, but I'm even more of a political lefty/radical than I was in college, back in the '60s. And not all Baby Boomers were \"liberal\" when they were young, either.\n\nYou're viewing history as a cliche. If you were actually there, you know different.",
"It turns out that the same people who were happy to spend their parents' money on things they want, are happy to spend their children's money (instead of their own) on things they want.",
"Several reasons that add up:\n1) It takes time to get exposed to all the fucked up shit we see as life moves on and it chips away at our idealism bit-by-bit until we end up being more conservative. 2) The liberals of yesterday are still liberal...by yesterday's standard. We, as a country, just keep moving to the left. Every 30 years or so, it simply appears that older people are more conservative. 3) There is a party flip-flop that happens on a fairly regular basis. As the congress-critters try to get re-elected, they form a strategy to capture the most votes. They don't care what that strategy is, so the \"conservatives\" might very well figure out how to capture the \"liberal\" vote, by pandering to them...and vice versa...making it appear they've made a significant move along the spectrum.\n\nThe biggest reason is that people are plain stupid. They don't understand what government is, what it should be doing for them and what it is actually doing for them. They vote on emotion, which is why the term \"Popular Vote\" is so accurate.\n\nMy advice to everyone - forget about which party someone belongs to, this isn't some sort of team sport. Figure out what your top five political issues are, see how the candidates match up with your views and vote for the person mostly closely aligned to your view point. That way, you get the highest chance that the person in office will represent your personal views on various issues, because their viewpoint in general is closest to yours.\n\nIf you think Democrats are the problem in this country, or if you think Republicans are the problem in this country, or if you agree with everything one of the prime-time talking heads says - then in reality, you are the problem because your are plain old fucking stupid. The faster you get off of my planet, the happier we'll all be.",
"\"If your 25 and a conservative you don't have a heart, if your 50 and not conservative you don't have a brain\" - Or something like that..",
"It might have something to do with the fact that we were defeated. Utterly. All our heroes were murdered. First JFK. Then his brother. And MLK jr. And finally, just in case any of us had not yet got the message, John Lennon. Our goals were smashed ... They only made the VietNam war bigger and bigger and bigger, stupider and stupider. \nThen they instigated other stupid, deadly, desttructive wars of occupation in other places. They declared a war on drugs, which turned out basically to be an insidious war on black people concentrated on young black males and they imprisoned and destroyed more of them than there were slaves 150 years ago. They copyrighted our music and kept selling it back to us over and over and over again, even though the original creators were all dead, as they changed formats from vinyl to cassettes to CD's to personal players ....succeeding in crushing the market and crushing creativity and originality ....they declared war on sex and taught every young male that he is inadequate and does not get enough, ever, and they taught every woman that she is inadequate and gives away too much, and they told everybody that all sexuality rightfully belongs to Madison Avenue and its only purpose is for making huge profits for the very rich ...\n\nwe lost. sorry ....",
"With age comes wisdom.",
"What I want to know is why all the Baby Boomers, who got free university education, were so keen to vote for the guy trying to cut as much funding to universities and students as possible.",
"@ 53 I'm technically in the baby booms ass end and I fucking loath this generation of asstards more than anything. It's not that they ever were overtly liberal or have become massively conservative its just the the vast majority are self centered, extremely greedy, assholes and cunts. \n\n ",
"They wanted all they could get while they were young, and they still want all they can get.",
"they started paying taxes",
"Most conservatives (not the ones on Fox) are actually pretty quiet bunch overall",
"Nothing has actually changed.",
"I was going to write out a whole huge essay on this. Instead I'll just say this.\n\n\nIf your a millennial, ask yourself this same question in 20 years.",
"Stop thinking about \"Liberal/Conservative\" as political concepts, and instead frame this in terms of \"I've got mine, screw you\":\n\nThe Boomer Generation is the last generation to have retirement plans paid for by the companies where they worked, everyone after that might have a measly 401k, at best. The Boomer Generation will have their Social Security and Medicare intact, everyone after them will see large cuts. If you were in the military, your retirement/benefits deal is substantially better than anyone that came after you. If you went to college, your cost of college was a fraction of those that came after, letting you build wealth during your earning years instead of struggling to pay back the loans. If you ran a business or were an executive as a Boomer, you might have outsourced jobs overseas in the name of short term profits, so that everyone who comes after you struggles to find an actual middle-class job like you had.\n\nPay attention to folks in Congress with \"deficit panic.\" Every cut they discuss to make these social programs \"sustainable\" will only affect those AFTER the Boomer generation, they would never touch that cohort, because they vote in such large numbers.\n\nSo, you're sitting there as a Boomer about to retire or in retirement, you've got at least one retirement check coming in, perhaps double dipping, looking at your Social Security about to start, and comfortable that just about everything is taken care of, and that you \"deserve\" all those goodies coming your way, and the next thing you think is \"screw everyone else.\" Screw everyone that comes after me, because they don't deserve it, or we can't afford it as a country, or they must not have worked as hard as me, etc.. Something, anything to rationalize it. \n\nThere's a certain amount of cognitive dissonance necessary, but it works. Getting a retirement check from the city for being a firefighter for 25 years? - No problem saying that we can't afford retirement benefits for anyone that comes AFTER you, because the city \"can't afford it\". It's like a school district trying to get a bond measure through. If you're a parent with kids, you might vote for it, but after the kids are grown up? Screw all those people, we can't afford all this money for schools - so the schools decay for everyone trying to raise a kid after you. People translate all this BS into \"conservative\" politics, but it's not conservative at all - it's as simple as \"I've got mine, screw you\".\n\nThe press should talk less about income equality/class warfare and more about the coming \"war\" between the Boomers and everyone that comes after. Turn on the cable shows and you'll see Boomers saying how lazy all those kids coming out of college are, because they are not working, etc, in a broken, bankrupt system that they created and left to them. Better get working everyone! You'll need to work long hours in all those sub-middle-class jobs to pay for the programs the Boomers are sucking dry - which you yourself won't benefit from.\n\n",
"The problem is that \"conservative\" doesn't mean what it used to mean. These days, the Democrats are the conservatives and the Republicans, for the most part, are far right wing religious nut bags. \n\nConservatives don't start wars for fun. Conservatives don't let giant corporations get away with paying no taxes. Conservatives don't allow government officials to award billion dollar no bid contracts to companies they own stock in. A real conservative would be 100% in favor of legalizing marijuana and single payer health care because they both make sense financially. \n\n",
"They got jobs and families and faced reality. ",
"I see all these answers that explain why baby boomers are so conservative. They aren't. _URL_0_ If you're thinking the protestors of the 60s turned into the conservatives of today, that is simply not true. Additionally, although the liberals of the 60s and 70s were more vocal that doesn't mean that all baby boomers were liberal and turned conservative. You'll find very few that changed party which is why the democrats still lead in registered voters. One last thing, you are still 65% more likely to register with your parent's political party than change. I think that is down from 70% ten years ago but still not as much free thought out there as you may think.",
"Short answer: they were not so liberal to start with, at least in Britain.\n\nA 1969 survey produced these results (whole cohort answers 1st, then 16-24 age group answers in brackets):\n\n- 77% (59%) thought too much publicity was given to sex\n- 71% (66%) thought murderers ought to be hanged (Last execution in UK was 1964)\n- 73% (73%) thought there were 'too many coloured immigrants' in the UK\n\nPolitical and legal changes were happening, but it can be argued that they were largely 'top down' and that social attitudes of all generations at the end of the 60s were still largely quite (small c) conservative. \n\nSource: Opinion Research Centre Survey, New Society, November 1969 / History BA",
"Hi... Boomer here! I was born in 1957, which had the highest birth rate in US history - 4,308,000. _URL_0_ I was raised in an upper middle class household, by fairly liberal, non-political parents in a somewhat conservative neighborhood.\nSometimes, I feel like the luckiest person in the world. In the 60's and 70's, I was old enough to witness, experience and appreciate the birth of hippie culture, Pop Art, the greatest bands producing the greatest music on the greatest albums ever in the history of the world (my opinion), color TV, the first commercial video game (Pong), the first computers, the first calculators, the moon landing, Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In, REAL cohesive sports TEAMS like The Boston Bruins with Bobby Orr, The Red Sox with Carl Yastrzemski, and the Celtics with John Havlicek, muscle cars, a living, breathing President Jack Kennedy, a successful yet turbulent Civil Rights movement and so much more. \nI feel spoiled, really. By today's standards these were generally much simpler, more innocent, and often idyllic times. A few glaring exceptions being the Vietnam War, which I was just a few years too young to be drafted into, the Kennedy assassination, and the death of my father three months later. I am now, and have always been pretty liberal. Perhaps I am an exception to the rule, but I have a theory as to why many others of my large group may have become more conservative. Others here may have touched upon this, as well. Simply put, it is \"change.\" We have lived through lots of it, benefited from much of it, and have lost many of those gains that perhaps we took for granted. The worst part is… it may be our fault. We – The Boomers – were in control through much of the decline. \nEarly on, like our parents did, we enjoyed a generally stable stock market, a more reliable banking system, real pensions and retirement packages, a solid housing market, a lower divorce rate and marital roles that were more defined (don’t hate me, I’m just calling them as I see them), lower college tuitions, stable employment, etc. This is ALL gone now, and we may never go back. \nI now have three grown children and I worry everyday about the future of this country, not only the crumbling economy, but the non-stop wars in the Middle East, an entrenched and myopic Congress, corporate greed and influence, banking and financial fraud, an out of control NSA, generic and soulless pop music, crappy cable TV with 500 channels of nothing, reality TV, and Facebook, to name a few. Perhaps we are scared! Perhaps conservatism is our defense mechanism for the loss of innocence that so many of us have experienced. \n",
"It's true what people are saying, that the baby boomers are not a uniform group. However, I think that if you were to characterize the generation, it wouldn't be that they're \"liberal\" or \"conservative\", but it's that they're self-absorbed. Being self-absorbed can manifest as \"liberal\" or \"conservative\" depending on the circumstances.",
"Consider this quote from Winston Churchill;\n\n“If you're not a liberal at twenty you have no heart, if you're not a conservative at forty you have no brain.”",
"They started paying taxes.",
"My dad was a baby boomer and total hippie growing up. Now he's the most solid conservative ever. As for me I was the most staunch republican in high school and did a complete 180. I'm still trying to figure it all out.",
"They hit reality.",
"Boomer here, 1957. Let's face it. We blew it. We had a chance to change the world for peace and prosperity, but we traded it all in for a secure job and a Harley. Hope you younger people can fix this mess. ",
"I'm sorry but I just don't see it. The youth changed the world. They stopped the Vietnam war, ended the military draft and ultimately a President resigned. They helped get civil rights passed. \n\nI've never met one who has changed their minds on any of these things. \n\nIf anything, they're a little full of themselves for all they accomplished. \n\nThe question contains an assumption not proven, and most of these comments don't even challenge that. \n\nWhat evidence is there, really, that a 65-year-old who participated in the successful anti-war movement then, has now turned his back on his stance or his values?",
"According to research, people actually [don't get more conservative as they age](_URL_0_). \n\nIn a study of 46,510 Americans taken from 1972 to 2004, they found that people on average became more liberal. \n\nAdd to that: The standards for liberalism change. In the 1960s, if you think women deserve to apply for their own credit cards, black people deserve equal access to the housing market, and that you shouldn't be drafted to a war where you'll die carpet-bombing jungles, congratulations! You're a liberal. \n\nYour question starts from an incorrect assumption. Add to that that, as others have said, the hippie culture was not the dominant culture. ",
"A man who is not a Liberal at sixteen has no heart; a man who is not a Conservative at sixty has no head.\n—Benjamin Disraeli (1804-1881)",
"“Show me a young Conservative and I'll show you someone with no heart. Show me an old Liberal and I'll show you someone with no brains.”\n\n― Winston Churchill",
"Your question is excellent...and complicated!\n\nPlease keep in mind that I did sleep at a Holiday Inn last night...etc., etc...\n\nHowever, the Boomers were \"hatched\" from the returning WWII vets. The returning vets are known as \"the Silents\". They had been through an awful, awful war and the only thing they wanted was to come home to a restful, peaceful life. And they had a TON going for them...the GI bill and [amazing housing](_URL_0_) were just two of them.\n\nSo...the vets get back, get their GI bill (broadening education amazingly across the US) and then have an imperial crap-ton of wee babies!\n\nPlease keep in mind that this was a more US based phenomenon but it did occur in other allied countries to an extent.\n\nSo...Silent Gen. parents wanted to settle down and live a solid \"post-war\" life. But that involved also a rather marked conservative shift in the country. Think Mad Men but without all the flashy stuff.\n\nTherefore the country...tolerant but conservative for the most part. (And there were underpinnings of a counter culture too - a la the Beat Generation: think Kerouac and Ginsburg). There was also an explosion of art (painting, writing & Jazz/Blues) which began to coalesce. And that's the stew into which the Boomers were born.\n\nSo the Boomers were born into a comfortable life where art and education were accessible. As all teenagers are want to do...they rebelled! Hello \"Woodstock\" generation. When 1965-69 blew in there was a full counter-culture shift (remember the music and art scene were just about to go into full bloom) which really spoke volumes to this generation.\n\nHowever, and this is a huge however, there was another quiet (and a bit more conservative) block of people in the US who really didn't understand what and why these kids started to go so far left (liberal). You could generalize and call them the George Bush/Dick Cheney block. This can also be generalized by this [Merle Haggard tune](_URL_1_) which questions the whole notion of the hippy-dippy left and makes a solid case for \"core\" conservative values.\n\nPlease don't ever think that the US is never balanced...it is AMAZINGLY balanced. But sometimes the media picks up currents and runs with them as that will make them the most money: pictures of hippies? That'll sell magazines & newspapers! Conservative country types with short haircuts? That won't sell squat!\n\nBut I do get away from your original question: why did they get so conservative? To be concise...it's a pendulum. The US is very predictable in terms of its cultural shifts. These shifts generally correspond to the birth/death of a generation. But these shifts are generational in nature; the boomers performed a similar balancing act of being too extreme in their left leaning tendencies in their youth and now have over-corrected in their dotage to become excessively conservative.\n\nBut, and here's the important part, why does this matter? (Yeah...this goes off topic a bit here, but this is critical to understand) It matters because of the SIZE of the boomers. There are approximately 60 million of them in the US. That's HUGE...bloody stinkin' HUGE! And where there are lots of people there's lots of money to be made! So the marketers aren't dumb...they cater to the Boomers and their size by keeping them and their concerns front and center in advertising and in the media.\n\nGuess what...the Boomers had a huge litter of kids too...the Millennials! And guess who are the media darlings now? The Millenials? (I give you the Kardashians!!!) And now the US will focus on how the millenials grow, live & die.\n\nMe? I'm a GenXer...and, yes...I'm a bit bitter about how things turned out. But what can I do? Not a darn thing...that's what.\n\nI look at it this way...the Boomers had a great party and did lots of crazy things and had ball! Now they tell everybody NOT to do what they did as it's \"not good for them\". And GenX/GenY? We get to clean up after the party.\n\nI find this all fascinating stuff, hence the dissertation. Sorry for getting off topic.\n\nTDLR: the Boomers are rather hypocritical but have so much money that no one questions them for being hypocrites.",
"They are selfish and greedy. They grew up in a time of plenty. They had good jobs, good money, good pensions, and didn't have to go to college to get any of it. They took and took and took and never put anything back in. Now that the whole system is barren and falling apart they refuse to admit they did anything wrong and with that they also refuse to change to help fix the system. They call it being conservative but they're just being bitter old assholes.",
"It only takes 20 years for a liberal to become a conservative without changing a single idea. - Robert Anton Wilson\n\nIt's not that those specific people have changed anything, but rather the world around them has progressed such that, now, relatively speaking, they are considered conservative.",
"All the liberal baby boomers died of marijuana overdoses. ",
"Self interest.\n\nThey want to draft you, protest the draft.\n\nThey want to tax you, protest the tax.",
"Baby Boomer checking in. I started out very liberal, and now I am moderately conservative, especially on \"social issues\" while still being somewhat liberal on \"world peace\" and \"economic fairness\" issues. For me, it's definitely an older and wiser phenomenon. \n\nI started out a teen in the 70's believing in political anarchism (rock the system), higher consciousness (drugs), etc. but now 40 years later I see the resulting modern liberalism (as opposed to the original liberal democracy that opposed aristocratic conservatism) as ridiculously self-absorbed and trivial, the imposition of political correctness being an obvious (and Orwellian) example of that trend.\n\nIf I could give advice to liberal-minded millenials today, it would be something like: keep the core goodness of your hopes and intentions, but throw away the hypocritical and faddish stuff that won't contribute to generational stability. (Not sure what generational stability means? Find people who have strong, loving, tolerant, multi-generational bio/step/inlaw/friend family bonds and be like that.)\n\nBut then I wouldn't have listened to that back when I was 20...",
"Well obviously, the younger you are the more you align with democratic view points, until you get older and realize they are all bull shit so then you change to the right side. \n\n\n\n*I'm only joking. Our party system is beyond broken.",
"Because the older you become; the wiser you become.",
"They were happy to be liberal back in the day because it meant huge public programs, benefits, entitlements and pensions all lumped onto and paid for by later generations, i.e. us.\n\nNow they're old, and they want to protect their saving, pensions, and benefits (paid for by selling our generation into debt) from new young liberals who want many of the same programs and entitlements enjoyed by the baby-boomers. So they become conservative and oppose these very same programs.",
"They grew up.",
"Because they're smart fucking people.",
"Those of us who truly believed that \"Other people matter\" and were hippies in the 60s are still around. \n\nI went on protest marches and was arrested in Chicago in 1968 for being young, basically. The police would throw tear gas directly into the crowd, and when everyone was choking would herd everyone into paddy wagons and take them to jail. At the time I was going home from the library, but if you were a teenager, you were considered guilty.\n\nNow that I as in my 60s, I am still active in politics, but also I have \nlearned that you need to distinguish between the people that are truly trying to make things better for everyone and those who are just trying to get more for themselves.\n\nSaying that all hippies are now conservative is an unfair generalization. People are individuals. There are kind people and greedy people in all generations. ",
"It is because they grew up in a world where all you had to do it make a minimal effort and you were rewarded richly and they believe this dynamic still exists for everyone. \n\nYour life path was laid out before you -- you went to school, off to war, came back and married for love, worked at a job that paid well and offered security and advancement, moved to the suburbs and started raising a family. If you sold shoes for a living, you could raise a family. If you were a professional, like an accountant or manager, you had *servants*.\n\n\"If we can do it, so can you.\"\n\nAnyone who failed to succeed was lazy, stupid or simply wanted a handout. Therefore, anyone today who does not match their success falls into these same categories. \n\nThey cannot understand the world the rest of us inhabit. Like my elderly mother talks to me about my \"retirement savings\" as if I have any. I lost everything I had in the past three years and just barely managed to continue living indoors and eating real food. They just don't get it. \n\nMy parents wrote the hospital a check for $75 when I was born. That was the entire bill. Imagine a world where a hospital bill where you stayed an entire week with an infant was less than $1,000. They don't understand people going bankrupt over a broken arm.\n\nTL;DR They just don't get it.\n",
"I genuinely believe it's because people generally get wiser as they get older. ",
"All the people posting stuff about conservatives having no hearts are mindless fools. The truth shall set you free: _URL_0_",
"Anecdotal for sure, but my in-laws were on the liberal spectrum of the boomers when they were young. If anything, they have become more liberal now. My parents were conservatives and have become more so as they age. Family gatherings are so beyond the realm of probability. My Father in law is a screaming liberal Atheist and my Dad is a quiet conservative Christian who can get mad as hell and not be quiet anymore. These two in the same space would be like tossing ill tempered cats in a sack. \n\nEDIT: changed the word possibility to probability before some smart ass kid corrects me.\n\nAlso, I am not quite a boomer but old enough to know you're all starting to hate me (Gen X) too and that's gonna intensify in about ten years and last until I'm so old that you all look at me like I'm some sweet, precious granny while inside I still see myself as the person I was at 17. But you will also get your turn to be hated by the young. You will if you get older anyway.",
"Conservatism is directly proportionate to how close you are to dying multiplied by how religious/superstitious you are.",
"There's a saying I've been told before. If you're young and conservative, you have no heart. If you're old and liberal, you have no brain.",
"If you look at the political landscape over the last 50 years note the wild changes that have occurred. From Civil Rights to LGBT Rights. From a Government that was debt free, to one 15 trillion in debt. These are the only two I am really awake enough to think about. I think this a natural part of aging and young guns we all want to change the world, the older we get the more we realized it changed for the worse. Kind of like kids to day and that damn bieber. ",
"Probably has something to do with how as you get older, the thought of giving away your hard earned money to other people doesn't seem like such a great idea anymore. ",
"You'll find that your liberal values will change as you get older. What seemed like good ideas when you were young take on a different perspective. You're less idealistic. You get jaded. It happens as life piles more responsibility on you, and you get burned more than once for trusting people.\n\nNot saying this is a good thing or a bad thing, but your opinion will change on a good many things.",
"I saw this statement on another sub. Guys grandfather told him, \"If you're conservative when you are young, you don't have a heart. If you're liberal when you're old you don't have a brain.\"",
"“If you're not a liberal at twenty you have no heart, if you're not a conservative at forty you have no brain.”\n -Winston Churchill ",
"The wild ones died younger and we are stuck with the ones that sipped tea and tut-tuted at all the drugs and sex and rock'n'roll. Them and the Rolling Stones.",
"I've always heard you'll be a liberal in college and a conservative when you're fifty.",
"Anyone can change from liberal to conservative simply by holding the same opinion for 30 years.",
"[George Carlin touched upon this already](_URL_0_)",
"They realized being the latter makes you more wealthy.",
"They grew up and figured out that they had to pay for all the shit they wanted for free",
"because now they have money.",
"Because 'babyboomers' were/are the most self absorbed generation this country has ever seen. They were never really liberal to begin with. \n\nFirst they blamed everything on their parents generation, now they blame everything on their children. They refuse to take any fault of their own. ",
"Wait a minute, there are lots of us! Same politics, same habits. Old but gold. Still trying to change culture. You must be in the wrong neighborhood.\n",
"\"If you're in your 20's and not a liberal, you have no heart. If you're in your 40's and still a liberal, you have no brains. \" Winston Churchill",
"\"If you're a Republican when you're young, you have no heart. If you're a Democrat when you're an adult, you have no brain\"\n\n -Thomas Jefferson",
"I asked a boomer this exact question.\n\nHis answer: \"when I was young and had nothing, I thought everyone should share. When I got older and had stuff, I didn't want to share anymore.\"",
"\"It only takes 20 years for a liberal to become a conservative without changing a single idea.\"\n-Robert Anton Wilson",
"Because this is the cycle of life in the modern world. Middle through upper middle class children are raised in very sheltered conditions. They are fed a steady diet of media depicting an idealized reality. They get into their teens and early twenties and they don't understand why people can't be nice and why life can't be fair. Then they get into the job market. And the true nature of human existence is revealed. Life is a competition. And a very harsh one at that. They get older and they realize that their middle class lifestyle is built on the suffering of the lower classes. It's true. Your clothes are made in sweatshops. Your food is made in horrific factory farms. Your electronics are built by workers so miserable they leap off the factory roof to commit suicide. Your salad was picked by illegal Mexican workers who are paid very little for their back breaking work. Plus they live in fear of the immigration authorities. The oil in your car comes from countries with massive human rights violations like Saudi ARabia and NIgeria. So in order to for people to be nice and things to be fair the average middle class person would have to give up their big home in the burbs, big car, boat, smart phone, huge wardrobe and air conditioned office job. Not gonna happen. George Orwell talked about this a long time ago. From Road to Wigan Pier:\n\"Under the capitalist system, in order that England may live in comparative comfort, a hundred million Indians must live on the verge of starvation — an evil state of affairs, but you acquiesce in it every time you step into a taxi or eat a plate of strawberries and cream. The alternative is to throw the Empire overboard and reduce England to a cold and unimportant little island where we should all have to work very hard and live mainly on herrings and potatoes. That is the very last thing that any left-winger wants. Yet the left-winger continues to feel that he has no moral responsibility for imperialism. He is perfectly ready to accept the products of Empire and to save his soul by sneering at the people who hold the Empire together.\"",
"Because the vast majority of people are fickel and follow the crowd.",
"A lot of people will say it is about aging, and that may be partially true. But the Boomers are also more noticeably selfish and self-centered than others. So they were hippies when they were underdogs and fascists when they were in control.\n\nFrankly they were and continue to be terrible for this country - stripping it of its wealth and prosperity in the post-war period, soaking up benefits they enacted by cutting spending on the next generation, etc.\n\nThey should be called the Locust Generation.",
"This shift happened in the late 70's. A lot of liberals converted to conservatism at this time after becoming disenchanted with liberal ideals. (Most conservative opinion leaders today now fall into this category.)\n\nThey were a big part of the Reagan revolution along with blue chip democrats who were on the whole disgusted with Carter.\n\nThis and the fact that most baby boomers were not even hippies, just indifferent to politics in their youth. Most people tend to not get serious about politics until they reach their 30's when the realities of life settle in. ",
"Because 'babyboomers' were/are the most self absorbed generation this country has ever seen. They were never really liberal to begin with.\n\nFirst they blamed everything on their parents generation, now they blame everything on their children. They refuse to take any fault of their own.",
"short and sweet: when you get older, you get smarter.",
"Show me a young conservative and i'll show you a someone with no heart. Show me an old liberal and i'll show you someone with no brains - Winston Churchill\n\n\n -Michael Scott",
"Most people are liberal in their youth and become more conservative as they grow older. When people are young and have nothing, or are going to college, they want to take from the government. When they get older and more successful, people realize that someone has to pay for all the liberal programs and they want to keep more of what they earn.\n",
"From what I have been told by my parents who were born in the 50's and from other sources. Essentially coming out of world-war II the USA was in a ripe position for explosive economic growth, regardless of the great depression and war debts. **Most of them grew up into their 30's and 40's with plentiful jobs, economic opportunities and education.**\n\nFor most of them being successful was hinged on getting a job and working it until you got promoted. Many jobs didn't require more than a high school diploma. You could get a job at an office building organizing files and get promoted to the floor to start doing real business work.\n\nEverything was cheap because new technologies were revolutionizing the way things worked and there were no consequences mainly due to the fact that while yes information did travel the effects of political and economic decisions were often seen years/decades later and those effected did not always understand what had caused it to happen.\n\nAll of this adds up to a generation that was born into an ignorant (as in not conscious of the weight of their actions in the long term), economic paradise that was quickly eaten away by their choices and now they \"Have no idea why my son can't just get a job.\" or \"Back in my day if you had a job you stuck with it.\" yadayadayada. **They grew up when education was cheap and jobs didn't need education to sustain a decent lifestyle. Now that that is no longer true ^(for the most part) they refuse to accept change since they are not dealing with younger people's issues.**\n\n**TLDR: The Baby Boomer generation grew up in wonderful circumstances never seen before which allowed them to question the status-quo. The circumstances people grew up in after them are much harsher and much more informed. They can't relate thus they don't see a reason to change.**",
"This is a rather cynical view, but i have alwags seen it as this: people are always FOR helping the poor and downtrodden until they make their own money, and realize they are no longer poor. They pulled themselves up, why should they help anyone else. They didnt get help. Those poor people are lazy. \n\nAlso, the country was much more conservative 50 years ago, so as politics change, your liberal in the 60s is now a conservative in the 2010s without actually changing views a whole lot. \n\n2 different explainations, who knows which is right.",
"Anyone who tries to interpret things in a \"liberal vs. conservative\" mindset is doomed. Americans have been conditioned to believe that these 2 parties stand for different things. They don't. The main purpose of the 2 party system is to protect the status-quo of corporatism at all costs, while tricking people into believing that these 2 parties stand for different economic systems. ",
"My parents were liberal-left hippies 40 years ago and they're still liberal-left hippies today. As near as I can tell they have the same values in 2014 that they had in 1974. It's called being consistent. ",
"We all start getting concerned with the future the closer we get to our end.",
"I'm not sure what you mean by conservative?\n\nThey are pushing to legalize pot (still) Whaling is getting banned, xxx porn is available online. Gay and lesbian marriage is now common. Bi- racial couple abound. Government officials once kids are now gaining traction to fight global warming and continue bringing real change. Etc, etc, etc...\n\nHeady times, my friend. Just look around and smile... : )",
"\n“Show me a young Conservative and I'll show you someone with no heart. Show me an old Liberal and I'll show you someone with no brains.”\n\n― Winston Churchill ",
"because they weren't liberal, they were selfish and they still are.\n",
"Because they were not actually liberal in their youth. Hippies =/= baby boomers. The Boomers talk like they were the ones protesting down south and spreading free love. No. They were in grade school when these things were happening.",
"It's the same way that everyone wants to label each generation with some controversial label that's really only held by the minority.\n\n\"All millennials are lazy and entitled.\".- Sure, some are, the rest are working.\n\nI think the media focuses too much on activist causes and symbolism and overlooks the silent majority. Soon you'll have news stories of how millenials are wealthy and entrenched, and the new generation wants to break stereotypes and redistribute wealth. You know, the same beaten story that's repeated all the time.\n\n",
"Their memories have become distorted after a time. They were a spoiled generation that thought they could affect change by doing drugs and going to rock concerts while rolling around in the mud to protest a war they were not only too scared to fight, but told of Domino effects by the previous generation. They didn't seem to care for the vets of that war either that took their place instead.\n\nIt's sad really, most of the time I hear the \"we wanted better for your generation\" (when speaking of the next), they did so with a slight of hand, while trying to make us fear the bomb like they were taught to, yet consume things and services as they never had.\n\nThey became \"entitled\" as I believe today's meaning is clearly been corrupted by the political/media system, and have forgotten that when you work for something you're entitled to the fruits of your labors etc...I'd like to get social security someday because I did put into the system after all. Am I not entitled to that?\n\nIf you really want to irritate a boomer, tell them the price of stamps is going up 2 cents. They'll flip their lid and cry about how they don't know how they're going to make it because they used lived in world where things like nickel Cokes existed, and 2 cents meant something.\n\nAll of this has happened before, and it will all happen again. Too bad we don't seem to be able to break the cycle...and don't give me that vote 3rd party bullshit either.",
"Tl;dr: It's not as easy being charitable when it's your money. ",
"Because they have money now.",
"I can only tell you what I see in my husband who is a boomer. Even in the 22 years I've met him he's become more conservative on many issues. I think one reason is the importance he places on security as he gets older--speaking mainly to money/taxes. I see him think of this as both practical and emotional. For example-when the market crashed we lost nearly all our retirement funds. He is fearful that when he dies I will not be well cared for in my old age (I'm 14 yrs younger than him)\n\nThe \"practical\" side of life became a reality: A special needs son, aging parents, medical issues, and most recently the disappointment in medicare. Perhaps these things sucked the idealism out of him?\n\nTo be fair though: while I know he was into drugs and considered himself liberal I doubt he was out to change the world in the first place.\n\nEdit: A number!",
"My aunt was a student protester at Kent State during the massacre, a (pretty politically moderate) art teacher for 30+ years after that, and is now retired, a hardcore Tea Partier, and a recent convert to Catholicism.\n\nAfter a pretty heated argument back when I was \"classic college liberal\", she said to me *\"If you're not a liberal when you're young, you have no heart. If you're not a conservative when you're old, you have no brain.\"*\n\nI'm not sure how true that is--personally, I have become more moderate as I've gotten older and some of that youthful idealism has curdled into cynicism, but I seriously doubt I'll ever be the Fox News junkie that she is--but it always stuck in my head.",
"Cause you can't raise children on acid all day every day",
"To answer the question: When we got decent jobs we noticed how much of our pay was taken out in taxes, and realized we were being fucked by politicians who were taking our money and spending it on their pet projects that had - and still have - nothing to do with good governance.",
"Because they made money over their lifetime and want to keep said earnings.",
"Because they pay taxes now...",
"Ugh, this comment will probably get buried but this is an interesting read on generations and their impact on others:\n\n_URL_0_\n\nBaby boomers are of the \"Prophet\" archetype:\n\n > Prophet generations are born near the end of a Crisis, during a time of rejuvenated community life and consensus around a new societal order. Prophets grow up as the increasingly indulged children of this post-Crisis era, come of age as self-absorbed young crusaders of an Awakening, focus on morals and principles in midlife, and emerge as elders guiding another Crisis.[44]\n",
"It's because the boomers are way too idealistic and are the first TV generation, their earlier media habits dictate their worldview.\n\nBasically, I've found if you are an older boomer you tend to be more conservative because you grew up in a heavily censored and propagandized world with narrow gender roles and virtually no minority representation in media. \n\nThese older boomers may have rebelled against this during their teen and early adult years when they realized that their home life was no where near Leave It To Beaver perfection. Thinking that doing the exact opposite was going to magically make everything okay, so the countercultural movement was born.\n\nWhen the counterculture failed to turn everything into a hippie utopia they rebelled against that and turned back to their idealized childhood TV memories, and voted for Reagan and gave all their money to TV preachers. This is where the modern evangelical and dominionist christian movements begin to take hold, luring disenfranchised boomers into another utopian movement.\n\nNow, I've found that younger boomers, gen-xers, and millennials had a far more diverse and \"realistic\" media, with better gender roles and minority representation. The counter-cultural movement made people more aware of propaganda and the proliferation of new media (Zines, phones, cable TV, and finally the internet) helped add more viewpoints and information to our consciousness. \n\nBecause of this each generation has more information at their fingertips, and has become much more cynical and media savvy, so they don't automatically believe anything right away. So they reject utopian idealism and are okay with someone being slightly different from them.",
"Because it's hard to maintain your entitled attitude if you give a shit about other people.\n\nThey call the generation following mine the \"me\" generation, but the Boomers epitomize this bullshit.",
"Because the majority of them were conservative in their youth. They were the children of Nixon's Silent Majority. The so called \"liberals\" of the 60's were a small, albeit vocal, minority.",
"Todays conservatives are yesterdays liberals",
"The boomers are rebels not liberals. They go against the \"man\". So in the past they hated war now they hate that the government is trying to take peoples ability to purchase guns. They want to be able to buy guns, just prefer that you don't. \n\nTheir instinct is to fight for a cause they believe in. They do not believe in the causes of young people. They want their health benefits and pensions to be there for them now, today. This means that young people will have to pay for it. Young liberals want to stop the Keystone pipeline cause of the environment. Older boomers see this as foolish cause it will help the economy and keep us from buying the oil from the Arab nations. \n\nMostly I think that as time passes Liberal thinking starts to wain. Most Liberal issues are fueled by passion. Gay rights and abortion issues become non issues when your ability to get an erection and to get pregnant become non factors in your everyday life. ",
"To a point the more money you receive in life the more conservative you become. A lot of people vote republican because they believe they will pay less in taxes that way. \n\nOf course we can see now that it does not really work out that way. But the establishment still sings the song and folks still do the dance.",
"In the mid-20th century issues like racial integration and women's rights were not the norm as they are now, therefore people who supported them were considered to be very liberal. Now that our society has thankfully progressed, these \"liberal\" issues that our parents were passionate about are now recognized as general guidelines to not being shitty assholes, and we are focusing on new issues that may seem extreme to some.\n\nAs the younger generation progresses and takes over, marijuana legislation, stem cell research, gay marriage, and a woman's right to choose will slowly become standard, and the idea that those who support them are \"liberal\" will fade.",
"Throughout our lives we have different goals. In our early/proto adult life, we are figuring out who we are and how we fit into this world. It is all about the self as a part of something larger. People are at the start of their working lives and have fewer things and less capital at this point. As people age, they gain material objects and capital. This is when [loss aversion](_URL_0_) sets in. People don't want to give up/share what they have earned. Their lives are now focused on the self on its own. They may have kids to focus on, or they may have a career to focus on. How they fit into the world is not at issue anymore. This is where fiscally conservative ideology comes into play. It is more about keeping personal wealth than sharing that wealth with society. As for social conservatism, I believe that we as a species are not as good at dealing with change as we think. As we age, change happens to the world and the society we are living in. After a certain age, people start looking back at the \"good old days\" with rose coloured glasses. They start to fight against change and start backing the policies and political parties that are more conservative in an effort to bring back or keep things the way they were in the \"good old days\". ",
"[Here Mr. Carlin explains more eloquently than I ever could.](_URL_0_) Doing drugs got boring with age, and making money on the backs of the young and less fortunate is the new high. Now they all just live in fear someone if going to take it all away. They will go down as the most selfish generation.",
"As people get older they generally become more conservative. It's just a side effect of being aware of your mortality. Kids are usually more liberal since they haven't had any major lessons on life and think they wont be hurt doing whatever it is they're doing.",
"The baby boomers are a swarm of locusts, they are fixated entirely on consuming. Everything they see they want. Never before them has a cohort been so vile and abhorrent. They are a blight on human history. \n\nThey were raised in the world's cleanest, safest and best schools. The money for infrastructure was pouring into their neighborhoods and communities, and this was nice. They liked having it all.\n\nThen they went to the best colleges in the world. For free. They finished with no debt and walked into jobs which allowed them to buy multiple homes while saving money that most new graduates will never make as a salary. Even when they chose to skip college, they took union jobs that allowed them a similar lifestyle. Both lifestyles were very European socialist. \n\nThen they got older, and entered political office. They quickly shifting funding from schools and infrastructure to their current companies and the stock market. Killed the tax base to do so, and they loved it. Imprisoned African American men for smoking pot. Decimated the legal barriers separating their companies from politicians. Outlawed free speech. Destroyed the unions they once relied on. Bled the country into a caste system and shit on everything their parents fought to protect in WWII. \n\nAll the money in America follows the Baby Boomers, and when they fall it will be the finale of the next revolution. ",
"Naive liberals change their tune once they have tasted the real world.",
"They came to their senses?",
"Also hippies with money will start voting with their pocket books. I've personally see it occur within my own family (nephew of a flower child, who is now a multi home owner, retired early etc...)\n\nIn short, money changes people.",
"Because liberal back then =/= liberal right now. If you look at Reagan, plenty of his policies would be considered relatively liberal to today's Republicans (my APUSH teacher often jokes about how someone with the same exact policies would never get elected as a Republican candidate today unless he actually was Reagan).\n\nAlso, stuff that other people said.",
"They grew up in/around the 50's, which was a time of economic security. When most of the boomers were born, segregation was still a thing. It was a very, very different time. Their fathers were military men. Their mothers were stay at home moms. For the first time in the history of humanity food and resources were organized enough for children to have a high survival rate. \n\nThey had the leave-it-to-beaver american dream childhood. The middle class was thriving, and it set their expectations for life. They weren't raised to give a fuck about the environment. They weren't raised to consider anything as scarce, because back then, everything was in supply. Global warming wasn't even a twinkle in Al Gore's eye at that point. \n\nSo their world is big, and wonderful, and they can do anything. \n\nSteadily reality sets in around the 80's; environmentalism is now a huge thing and people come to recognize that sustainability is something that we should think about. The economy begins to decline. Jobs become more scarce. There is now a war on drugs. \n\nIf anything i'd posture that their upbringing caused them to be self important narcissists with projection habits; while the generation may have steadily wrecked everything built before them, they blame their children for being self entitled and lazy. \n\nFurthermore we should consider that conservative and liberal meant entirely different things prior to the Bush administration. Most that would have been considered republicans/conservatives then are now hailed as being liberal or centrist at best while who knows what the hell happened to the actual conservatives.\n \nTLDR; They're bitter 'cause it isn't the mother fucking 50's anymore. ",
"The boomers that owned the media and the flow of information wanted to characterize their generation as hippies because it's an easy way to sell themselves to later generations.\n\nIn truth there were more boomers protesting [*against*](_URL_0_) civil rights then there were hippies.\n\nHippies did very little protesting. [Activists](_URL_1_), usually college educated youth were the ones putting their lives and their futures on the lines to changes things. ",
"“Show me a young Conservative and I'll show you someone with no heart. Show me an old Liberal and I'll show you someone with no brains.” - Winston Churchill",
"Because the terms conservative and liberal don't really mean anything. \n\n\"Conservative\" means: I want all the stuff the government promised me, including medicare and social security, and anything outside of that is crazy socialist talk. Oh and lets go bomb some more brown people!\n\n\"Liberal\" means: I spot injustice around every corner and I want to force all of you to confirm to my worldview and right all of the wrongs that I point out. It's not fascism when I do it.\n\nTherefore, you can't expect any sort of ideologically consistent arguments, behavior, or growth from these people.",
"When you're young, spending other people's money the way you see fit (in your youthful and arrogant wisdom) makes perfect sense.\n\n\"These old people, they're stingy. Just yesterday my mum wouldn't give me money for that new pair of Beats headphones I want. She has no idea how important music is, that one...\"\n\nThen, if they're lucky, they're finally forced to go get jobs. Then they start actually seeing how much money is coming out of their check for someone else's \"better ideas\". They see politicians taking lavish trips to promote these \"better ideas\". They see massive, inefficient bureaucracies being set up to sustain and grow these \"better ideas\". They see politicians living lives of luxury, while they struggle, and complaining that they need more money for these \"better ideas\".\n\nIt usually sets in right about there...",
"some 'boomers' got old - had kids; most now have grand-kids,\nnot everyone is conservative altho' it may seem that way.",
"Both of my grandparents are from the boomer generation and neither of them were liberal in their day. My grandfather told me stories of how hippies treated the men coming back from Vietnam and it was deplorable----as if these men wanted to go over there and die or be traumatized when they came back. He despised hippies.",
"The views they were once liberal for, are changing making them conservative in order to preserve the ways they knew.",
"\"Got mine, fuck ya'll!\"",
"When people are young and don't have many material assets, it is easier to be liberal ( thinking about other peoples welfare). When people get older and accumulate assets, they become more concerned about holding onto their assets (conservative).",
"When people are young they want to get laid...",
"Because for every 1000 of them who tell you stories about how they went to woodstock, 1 of them actually did.",
"\n\"A young man who is not a liberal has no heart, but an old man who is not a conservative has no mind.\"\n- Winston Churchill",
"Because as you get older you have experienced enough of the lies of politicians to know that the game of politics is a cruel farce. A perpetual lie carried out by people who desire power and/or control. \n\nThe economic conservative has established his wealth, his home, his retirement and wishes to see what he has worked all his life to attain protected. He has been witness to the nearly daily reports of bureaucratic waste reported by the media and he has lost his tolerance for such a pathetic system. \n\nThe social conservative fears change he does not understand. The world he grew up in no longer exists and the youth of today are often making their stance in ways opposite of the belief system of their parents. And the envelope is forever pushed. \n\nThese are my own personal generalizations. I'll be 50 in just a few short months. ",
"They had everything handed to them. Now they act confused why people don't just \"get a job\". Sorry we don't have free college, and great union jobs like you did. You sold all of them for your own profits. They say we're the me generation. Ha, the boomers were easily the most selfish. ",
"\"I used to be with it, then they changed what it was. Now what was it isn't it, and what is it is weird and scary to me. It'll happen to you too.\"\n-Grandpa Simpson",
"George Carlin put it something like this: they got a free ride on sex drugs rocknroll and now they're staring down the barrel of middle age and they dont like it, so they want to make it harder for the next generation.",
"Because it's easy to think everyone else should give and give and give when you have nothing to give, and easy to think everyone is trying to take and take and take when you finally get some.",
"The same reason why young people have always been more liberal than old people: lack of experience. \n\nI'm young, for what that's worth. ",
"Because they got theirs.",
"When they were young they wanted free booze and free sex and wanted free stuff - so they were liberal. They didn't want to work hard or study hard needed their square parents to pay for it. \n\nNow that they are old they want free social security and free and need young slaves to enter the workforce to pay for it. \n\n",
"Because everyone votes with self-interest in mind. When you're younger, liberal policies are more to your benefit. When you're older, they're not. It's that simple."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[
"http://www.people-press.org/2011/11/03/section-1-how-generations-have-changed/",
"http://news.discovery.com/human/psychology/voter-conservative-aging-liberal-120119.htm"
],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[
"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OCrxD19DHA8"
],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election,_1972"
],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[
"http://www.rooseveltinstitute.org/in-the-news/green-tide-more-money-you-make-more-likely-you-voted-republican"
],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[
"http://www.gallup.com/poll/118285/democrats-best-among-generation-baby-boomers.aspx"
],
[],
[
"http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0005067.html"
],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[
"http://www.livescience.com/2360-busting-myth-people-turn-liberal-age.html"
],
[],
[],
[
"http://www.understandingrace.org/images/482x270/society/post_war_economic_boom.jpg",
"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-iYY2FQHFwE"
],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[
"http://www.newsmax.com/ThomasSowell/Conservatives-Donate-Liberals-compassion/2012/09/10/id/451295/"
],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[
"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o1Sal6N5OiE"
],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strauss%E2%80%93Howe_generational_theory"
],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loss_aversion"
],
[
"http://youtu.be/pR8aFDosQBQ"
],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[
"http://i.imgur.com/Oxif3jN.jpg",
"http://i.imgur.com/1xNqwhR.jpg"
],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[]
] |
||
25yrop
|
why don't fat people who lose a lot of weight look like bodybuilders from carrying all the weight around all the time?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/25yrop/eli5_why_dont_fat_people_who_lose_a_lot_of_weight/
|
{
"a_id": [
"chlzow5",
"chm0ndk",
"chm36nv"
],
"score": [
26,
8,
5
],
"text": [
"People who are genuinely strong from a life of hard physical labor don't look like bodybuilders: [_URL_0_](_URL_0_)\n\nImage by a person named Coelasquid as part of a [lesson for illustrators](_URL_1_)",
"Alot of fat people are also sedentary. All that weight only builds muscle if your active. Also, a lot of that weight is getting carried by your legs, which is generally not were one focuses when evaluating the male physique.",
"They do, in certain muscle groups. Lots of body builders complain about limited calf development, and you'll notice fat people often times have MASSIVE calves comparitvely. However, the load of being obese doesn't apply evenly to to the whole body. Your legs get the brunt of the additional muscular development to \"cope\" with the additional weight.\n\nIn short: a normal persons arm weighs 20 lbs while a fatties arm weighs 25. Not much additional muscle is needed to operate the arm. A normal persons whole body weighs 180 lbs while a fatties is 300. Copious amounts of additional muscle are needed in the legs to walk around supporting all the extra weight."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[
"http://imgur.com/cR2Nh",
"http://i.imgur.com/dUSxO.jpg"
],
[],
[]
] |
||
4n5f9k
|
why does oak always seemed to be used to age alcohol and not say applewood or maple?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4n5f9k/eli5_why_does_oak_always_seemed_to_be_used_to_age/
|
{
"a_id": [
"d41cwuj"
],
"score": [
2
],
"text": [
"I can't speak for all alcohols, but for bourbon to legally be bourbon, it has to be aged in new charred oak barrels. Since they can't be reused for bourbon, the barrels are often sold to makers of other spirits for them to use.\n\nThe logical next question is why does the law require that? And that I have no clue about."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
||
2dmt1p
|
i work in an office, one of my colleagues is forever 'too cold' whereas i'm forever 'too hot' despite us being well and in the same vicinity. why?
|
I work in an office, one of my colleagues (female) is always saying she's too cold and wanting windows closed and heaters on, sometimes when it's 20 degrees outside... I'm exactly the opposite and I'm too hot sometimes even in the winter. Why is it so different between people?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2dmt1p/eli5_i_work_in_an_office_one_of_my_colleagues_is/
|
{
"a_id": [
"cjqzysf",
"cjr0qhf",
"cjr0x88",
"cjr2u1z",
"cjrn4mu",
"cjro140"
],
"score": [
35,
6,
3,
4,
2,
2
],
"text": [
"Lots of possible reasons. \n\n- Percentage of body fat. If you are heavier than her, you will feel warmer. \n\n- Men tend be warmer than women in general. \n\n- She might have poor circulation. \n\n- You're wearing a suit with a jacket and she's only wearing a shirt.",
"What one considers hot or cold is also subjective, so it could well simply be that you're rather used to lower temperatures and she's rather used to higher temperatures and because of that you both have conflicting reactions.",
"20 degrees celsius",
"Could be that the vent is angled to be blowing on the cold person in the summer. Are they hot in the winter too when the furnace is on? If so, it could be the vent. Otherwise, body fat, thyroid, blood sugar levels, hormones play a role in how hot or cold a person feels too. I live with someone who thought it was always cold, and I was always hot. Then one day I sat on her side of the couch and realized the vent blows straight there. She has since moved her usual spot and the ac is turned down lower.",
"Is she a smoker? Are you? Smokers tend to be cold due to poor circulation.\n\nI used to be cold all the time, especially my hands and feet, but now I don't have that problem anymore since I no longer smoke.\n\nOther than that, gender plays a big roll. A lot of women are cold all the time, where as a lot of men are hot all the time.",
"I have the same fucking shit with my coworkers. We walk to lunch in the winter, and I am all bundled up and freezing to death, while they are walking slowly enjoying themselves with jackets open and no hats or gloves. "
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[]
] |
|
3ydret
|
firmware.. what is it?
|
I always get update your firmware on my computer but what is firmware? What does it do?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3ydret/eli5_firmware_what_is_it/
|
{
"a_id": [
"cycnxgh"
],
"score": [
2
],
"text": [
"Firmware is very basic computer programs that lives and runs on CMOS chips on your computer hardware. Generally, its function is to tell the hardware it's on how the hardware works. The most prominent firmware on your computer is the BIOS firmware, which runs when your computer starts up and tells it very basic things - This is what a hard drive looks like, here's how you get data off it, go load Windows off that hard drive there.\n\nUpdating firmware is risky, because if it messes up your device no longer knows how it functions, and is no longer bright enough to run a firmware update. You should only update firmware if you are aware of a specific problem and know that a specific firmware update would fix it."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
|
7i42vr
|
what is a comptroller?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7i42vr/eli5_what_is_a_comptroller/
|
{
"a_id": [
"dqvz93c"
],
"score": [
3
],
"text": [
"A comptroller is a management level position responsible for supervising the quality of accounting and financial reporting of an organization.\n\n\n_URL_0_\n"
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comptroller"
]
] |
||
ahxxqz
|
how is c code translated to machine code for completely different processors and instruction sets with a single compiler?
|
[deleted]
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/ahxxqz/eli5_how_is_c_code_translated_to_machine_code_for/
|
{
"a_id": [
"eej7yas"
],
"score": [
2
],
"text": [
"I'm not sure if it is done by a single compiler, as the GCC for example has subvariants for other platforms like AVR-GCC\n\nRegardless it's just done by the compiler checking which platform the user is targeting. \n\nFor example in the C command\n\n int a;\n a++;\n\nthe line **a++** might correspond to operation-code **0b0001** on processor A and to **0b1000** on processor B. Depending on which compiler-flag is set the compiler will write either sequence A or B to the exectubale binary file, using for example if-branching to determine the desired output.\n\nDoes this answer the question?"
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
|
24bzt0
|
why do republicans not like carbon taxation?
|
Why the big no, no on Carbon tax?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/24bzt0/eli5why_do_republicans_not_like_carbon_taxation/
|
{
"a_id": [
"ch5m4xe",
"ch5mhqi"
],
"score": [
3,
4
],
"text": [
"THey were all in favor of it when they controlled the White House. Now they refuse to cooperate with anything the Dems propose and certainly refuse to do anything that has to do with climate change.",
"The first cap and trade laws were crafted by Bush I very early in his administration for acid rain emissions. It was the Republican \"free market\" counter proposal to the left's desire to regulate."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[]
] |
|
6ueosj
|
why are there so few aircraft remaining from world war ii? aircraft were built in quantities that are hard to comprehend, yet many models have vanished entirely.
|
This is strange because today we have boneyards filled with hundreds upon hundreds of every type of modern aircraft retired. Why do we not have boneyards like that with WWII vehicles?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6ueosj/eli5_why_are_there_so_few_aircraft_remaining_from/
|
{
"a_id": [
"dls3zue",
"dls4sv3",
"dls4t11",
"dls5fvy",
"dls70wm",
"dls97uj"
],
"score": [
5,
11,
4,
3,
2,
2
],
"text": [
"because after the war, they were in the boneyards, waiting to be sold or scrapped. once all the old planes were taken care of, the newer old planes go to the bone yard for the same. but in case we ever need those planes back in action or some parts or whatever, we can still have access. \n\nso short answer, ww2 planes aren't in boneyards because they were cleared out by selling or scapping to make room for the planes you see in the boneyards today. ",
"WW2 ended in a period of hyper-rapid aircraft development. New high tech fighters and bombers were practically obsolete by the time they were deployed. A new front line fighter type could be expected to serve for only a few years before it was obsolete. Old planes were surplus, a drain on resources, and after a few years were hopelessly obsolete relics with no practical use. So they were sold off for scrap, for parts, or for conversion into racers.\n\nModern planes last *a lot* longer as the pace of technology has slowed dramatically in the realm of aeronautics. While aircraft of the late 40s could be expected to serve for less than 10 years, the current backbone of the USAF fighter fleet, the F-15, has been flying since 1972. The B-52 has been in service for 60 years and shows no signs of being retired any time soon.\n\nSo all those boneyards aren't full of obsolete junk. They're full of modern (or last generation) aircraft in storage.",
"I'm not an expert so take this with a huge grain of salt, but I do work in naval aviation and live close to the largest naval aviation museum in the country which is full of WWII era aircraft, which I visit quite often. And what I've seen/heard repeatedly there is that during that particular war they didn't have the luxury, or frankly the desire to treasure their tools of war. Time and money were so valuable that literally no effort whatsoever was made to save and protect any inoperable planes (or ships for that matter) that weren't able to be immediately rehab'd and put back on the front lines, or in a training context. \n\nIf an aircraft missed the carrier flight deck and went into the drink, it was left there. If an aircraft was downed permanently and taken out of use, it was broken back down for scrap metal and recycled back into the industrial war effort. \n\nI'm sure there's much more to it than that but that is what I have been told. ",
"A lot of them were dismantled for scrap. My dad remembers jumping on a pile of wings in a nearby junk yard (by an airport). This would have been in the 50s",
"Wars over. Why keep them? Lots of new cars to be built for boomers so recycle them. That combined with short thinking - who will ever care about this B-17 in 50 years- and just being sick of all things war lead to mass recycling and abandonment. \n\nBut there was something about those planes I miss. In 75 years will anyone really give a fuck about a F-16?",
"They were sold for scrap.\n\nOnce jets came onto the scene, venerable warhorses like the P-51were rendered obsolete. They just couldn't compete, so the military had no choice but to replace them wholesale."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[]
] |
|
1087p9
|
explain like i'm five: how separation of church and state doesn't violate the 1st amendment
|
I was watching my local news and a piece came up about how high school cheerleaders at a public school created signs and banners with Bible verses on them for a football game. Obviously, this caused an uproar and now the argument is between the separation of church and state and the violation of the first amendment. So, how does that work?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1087p9/explain_like_im_five_how_separation_of_church_and/
|
{
"a_id": [
"c6b7ovf",
"c6b7quo",
"c6b8c8a"
],
"score": [
3,
3,
13
],
"text": [
"I think it involves the government promoting one religion or sect over another. I guess the argument here would be that the cheerleaders are not employed by the government, so it shouldn't apply, unless it's defamatory. However, if the banner was made by faculty or using school supplies, I could see this as a church/state issue.",
"Separation of church and state is *part* of the first amendment. If a religion is part of a government event, then the government is giving that religion a privilege others do not get.",
"All the amendments are about what **the government** can and can't do. If you say \"I think *Breaking Bad* is a terrible show,\" and I'm like \"Get out of my house. We don't want your kind here,\" the First Amendment's not going to do dick for you. It's my house, and I can kick you out if I don't want to listen to you. However, your local mayor or Congressman cannot make a law that says \"We will throw anyone who talks shit about *Breaking Bad* in jail because that show's awesome.\" The First Amendments says that the government can't tell you what and what not to say. \n\nIt's the same with respect to religion. The First Amendment says the government can't decide to favor or endorse one religion over another; every single person should be treated the same under the law no matter what their religion is. \n\nThis is a lot different from most other countries, which often have official churches. (The Church of England in England, or Roman Catholicism in Italy.) In those countries, the public schools can teach kids religion, usually the one official religion of that country. People get days off for religious holidays of that religion. You could also have laws that you have to be a certain religion to be able to be elected, stuff like that. \n\nThe controversies that usually crop up with schools and religion are instances where it seems like the school --- a public school, one run by the government --- is officially endorsing a particular religion, say by having a religious official bless a school event. The reason courts have generally held that stuff like that's against the first amendment is that kids have to go school by law and the government runs the school; if you have one type of religious ceremony at school events it's like the school is endorsing that particular religion. \n\nOn the other hand, students are free to say whatever they want, including that the think Jesus is awesome, because of their first amendment right to free speech. This is why stuff like having prayer groups of Bible study groups that meet up at a school is fine. \n\nIn the situation you describe, the question would be whether the school \nsomehow endorsed or approved the signs; if the principal was like, \"Hey cheerleaders, go make a bunch of signs about Jesus for next week's game,\" that might be a problem. If the cheerleaders thought it up o their own, probably not. "
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[],
[]
] |
|
3lwubz
|
why are democratic governments even allowed to keep secrets from the people?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3lwubz/eli5why_are_democratic_governments_even_allowed/
|
{
"a_id": [
"cv9zob8",
"cv9zot4",
"cv9zp74",
"cva15il"
],
"score": [
7,
3,
3,
2
],
"text": [
"Good thing America is not a democracy. It's a republic. You're voting on representatives, not decisions.\n\nBut freely available information is freely available. There's no way you could restrict that to 'only citizens' or something. So what if your utopia state has a problem with another? Should all of your plans be out in the open for your enemy to see? And should every scrap of your typical operations be public knowledge? Then your enemies would know what kinds of things you train for and what stuff might surprise you. And beyond military, when you're haggling for a deal, you don't want people to know what your actual absolute lowest amount is. And if you make any exceptions, then all you're really taking issue with is where the line is drawn, not whether or not there is a line.\n\nIt's generally not a good idea to tell your boss you want his job either, but it keeps you motivated to want that and prevents him from trying to sabotage you.",
"There are always going to be *some* secrets, especially with military stuff.\n\nAt Area 51 they successfully kept secret a bunch of hi-tech stealth planes. Countries like Iran, N Korea, Russia, etc would kill for details of that, to design tactics/weapons around them. It greatly reduces the effectiveness of a 'stealth' surveilance plane/bomber if the other guy knows exactly how it operates.\n\nEven if you 100% trust *your* country's citizens (which would be an *incredibly* naive approach), if skunkworks or area 51 were run like Universal Studios, it'd be basically impossible to keep *other country's* citizens out.\n\nSo, \"no secrets\", huh? Whitehouse security codes? IRS auditing methods, dates, planned targets? Or police/secret service plans for guarding the Prez? Or how nuclear launch procedure works?\n\nThe idea of a government with zero secrecy doesn't really work (especially if you have a military. Or police.), it's all a matter of exactly where we draw the line in the sand... ",
"Presumably you'd agree that public sector employees have some right to privacy and therefore their personnel records should not be public? How about publishing all the bids received for government contracts so that each company can see exactly what their competitors bid and charge the government more next time when they realise that they bid lower than was necessary to win?\n\nUpping the stakes a bit, how about the locations of everyone in witness protection? The names of intelligence officers and every one of their sources? The locations and orders of special forces? The schedule and routes of planned movements of nuclear material? Nuclear launch procedures and codes?",
"Please don't post just to express an opinion or say \"why can't it be like this?\".\n\nTry posting in /r/rants, /r/offmychest, or /r/politicaldiscussion if you want to discuss it."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[],
[],
[]
] |
||
5hqyja
|
to what extent do our recycling habits affect climate change?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5hqyja/eli5_to_what_extent_do_our_recycling_habits/
|
{
"a_id": [
"db2c4pr"
],
"score": [
4
],
"text": [
"Very little, sometimes. Some things are actually cheaper to be made than recycled (uses less energy and resources), like glass and paper, so recycling them is actually worse for the environment. Other things are better for the environment to be recycled, like aluminum cans. Litter, and pollution, is a more important problem than recycling everything."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
||
54ux54
|
how does the conception of a baby from three parents work?
|
Stumbled upon the news today about the baby with three parents? How does that work?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/54ux54/eli5_how_does_the_conception_of_a_baby_from_three/
|
{
"a_id": [
"d856mx9",
"d859fuf"
],
"score": [
4,
3
],
"text": [
"All non-bacteria cells contain organelles(cell organs) called mitochondria. Unlike other organelles, mitochondria have their own DNA. It's likely they were once symbiotic bacteria. Normally, a fertilized egg gets its mitochondria from the mother's egg cell. For three parent children, something is wrong with the mother's mitochondria, so they're replaced with somebody else's mitochondria.\n\nThis is a surprisingly old technology, the first three parent child was born in 1997. Back then, the method they used was to suck the cytoplasm (the goop which makes up the cell's innards) out of the egg, and replace it with the cytoplasm from a donor egg. 30-50 children were born with this method.\n\nModern methods prefer to extract the nucleus from the mother's egg and implant it into the donor egg. Wikipedia lists a bunch of methods, but the differences are mostly in the order of steps.",
"The baby's DNA is still just a normal combination of the two parents.\n\nThe third person is more like an organ donor (an *organelle* donor) in that they are only providing the **mitochondria** for the baby, and other assorted non-nucleus bits of the original egg cell. The other bits aren't so important since they do not contain DNA, but mitochondria contain their own, separate string of DNA."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[]
] |
|
2ea6b2
|
why are there comments about "le reddit army" and "fedoras" on every youtube video that becomes popular on reddit? these are clearly not made by us...
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2ea6b2/eli5_why_are_there_comments_about_le_reddit_army/
|
{
"a_id": [
"cjxhzj7",
"cjxibbh"
],
"score": [
10,
3
],
"text": [
"Sadly, they are. Not \"us\" meaning not me or most of the people who try to carry on interesting discussions, but many of them are posted by the same idiots who come to an AMA with a mastectomy patient and spew \"TITS OR GTFO!!!\" all over the place.\n\nThere are stupid assholes here, as everywhere. I always try to examine myself (in real life and on sites like reddit) and ask \"Am I being the stupid asshole today?\"\n",
"I have also wondered about these comments, but I have not asked because these comments seem to awaken a beast in the anon internet commenter. "
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[]
] |
||
460lvm
|
what are the beads in hand sanitizers, and why do they float?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/460lvm/eli5_what_are_the_beads_in_hand_sanitizers_and/
|
{
"a_id": [
"d01iy5x",
"d01jn7j"
],
"score": [
4,
2
],
"text": [
"They're [microbeads:](_URL_0_)\n\n > Microbeads are plastic microspheres that are widely used in cosmetics as exfoliating agents and personal care products such as toothpaste, as well as biomedical and health science research, microscopy techniques, fluid visualization and fluid flow analysis, and process troubleshooting.[1] They are most frequently made of polyethylene but can be of other petrochemical plastics such as polypropylene and polystyrene.[2][3]\n\nThey float because they are less dense than the liquid in which they are situated.\n\nThey have been banned in the US under the Obama administration since 2015 because they fuck with the environment.",
"The supposition that they are micro beads is wrong. Micro beads aren't used in hand sanitizer because they don't dissolve. If I have a clear idea of what you mean by \"beads\" then they are just air bubbles left over from the manufacturing. The air trapped inside can't escape due to the density of the gel so remains suspended."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microbead"
],
[]
] |
||
3f9ilu
|
why speaker's sound quality become really bad when you make it really loud?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3f9ilu/eli5_why_speakers_sound_quality_become_really_bad/
|
{
"a_id": [
"ctmjzb4"
],
"score": [
5
],
"text": [
"Speakers work by moving a cone forwards and backwards to move air. When you turn up the volume the cone moves farther forward and farther backward in order to move more air. But, there is a limit to how far the cone can move. When it hits that limit you get clipping where the speaker can no longer accurately reproduce the music. So, if you turn the speaker up too high, the speaker will clip and your music will sound horrible."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
||
6yakba
|
what happens if we don't get the recommended amount of sleep?
|
[deleted]
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6yakba/eli5_what_happens_if_we_dont_get_the_recommended/
|
{
"a_id": [
"dmlv201"
],
"score": [
3
],
"text": [
"If you don't get enough sleep your concentration and your ability to remember things suffers, additionally your immune system might be not at 100%. \n\nYou might also suffer from headaches and general bad mood. \n\nGetting far too little sleep makes you more prone to certain diseases like diabetes, increased blood pressure and a few I can't think of right now. \n\nNot sleeping at all will cause panic attacks, hallucinations and eventually even death. "
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
|
3iqpsq
|
the different coloured circles on carton boxes or packaged snacks
|
I always wondered what those circles means and maybe what the colours mean as well.
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3iqpsq/eli5_the_different_coloured_circles_on_carton/
|
{
"a_id": [
"cuir616"
],
"score": [
4
],
"text": [
"Those are all the colors used to print the package. If the graphic don't come out right you can check which circle of color didn't print and replace that cartridge. "
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
|
6q79yd
|
why is it that upgrading a phone or a computer to a newer operating system typically results in the device performing worse or slower?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6q79yd/eli5_why_is_it_that_upgrading_a_phone_or_a/
|
{
"a_id": [
"dkv3fk6",
"dkv3x2j",
"dkv42ww",
"dkvsrfu"
],
"score": [
8,
2,
3,
2
],
"text": [
"Because phone companies use planned-obsolescence to slow down older devices artificially in order to push newer devices.\n\nOR \n\nBecause newer software is more taxing on the hardware than older versions was.\n\nBoth of these have some truth in them, I recall several instances where it was claimed that around the release of newer generation hardware, many smartphone manufacturers utilise the first method, while the second option is almost a passive process as apps become larger and more complicated.\n\nEdit: I should note that the intentional sabotaging of older generation devices is often referred to as a conspiracy theory, with little corroborating evidence. It is likely that poor optimisation and growing complexity of apps and growing reliance on constant connectivity is the main driving force behind the increased strain on your hardware.",
"Newer software is usually designed with newer hardware in mind, which means it often uses lots of memory and lots of processing power (CPU chip). Put that into a somewhat older model with less memory and a slower processor, and it doesn't work out so well.",
"Newer operating systems take advantage of the hardware specs of the newest devices... what's the point of having the newest hardware if the software can't take full advantage of it? The flip-side is that more memory-intensive or processor-dependent features may run more slowly on older devices running the newer OS.",
"The reason operating systems come out with new versions is to add functionality, fix defects, and optimize performance. The first two mean the computer has more stuff to do. (Fixing defects involves more stuff because it checks for certain dangerous situations that it didn't check for before.) \n\nYour computer is the same but now it has more stuff to do. So it's slower. And the optimized performance almost never offsets the slowdown."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[],
[],
[]
] |
||
c2ztyf
|
why does some spicies burn the mouth and some goes straight to your nose?
|
Some spicies like pepper burns the mouth and tongue. Some for example wasabi goes to your nose and if you eat enough the brain. What makes the difference?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/c2ztyf/eli5_why_does_some_spicies_burn_the_mouth_and/
|
{
"a_id": [
"erno75q"
],
"score": [
11
],
"text": [
"Different chemicals that interact with different receptors in your cells. Those receptors trigger nerve impulses that your brain interprets as hot or spicy or pungent. \n\nChili peppers contain a chemical called capsaicin that interacts with the TRPV1 receptors in certain cells. \n\nWasabi contains a chemical called allyl isothiocyanate that interacts with a related, but different, receptor called TRPA1. \n\nBoth TRPV1 and TRPA1 receptors are in your mucus membranes --mouth, nose, eyes and ... *ahem* ... nether regions. (Pro tip: don't take a piss after cutting habaneros; you'll regret it.) But the allyl isothiocyanate molecule is larger and more volatile than capsaicin, so it's less likely to get snagged by those TRPV1 receptors in your mouth; instead it floats up your nasal cavity and comes to rest in the nostrils or sinuses, giving you that nose-burning feeling, whereas capsaicin, the smaller molecule, gets captured more quickly by the cells in your mouth. \n\nFor the record, none of these chemicals \"go to the brain.\""
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
|
1jnw7z
|
drug and alcohol tolerance.
|
Also, is there different types of tolerances? Like with alcohol there is obviously some biochemical reason behind a built up tolerance, however it seems with marijuana there is more of a psychological tolerance to the effects.
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1jnw7z/eli5_drug_and_alcohol_tolerance/
|
{
"a_id": [
"cbgjh2i"
],
"score": [
3
],
"text": [
"You're putting a substance in your body that doesn't belong there. Your body is kind of shocked by this and you have a strong reaction. \n\nOver time your body gets used to it so no big deal and it takes more and more of the foreign substance to make your body react the same way. Kind of a desensitization.\n\nHere's an half assed analogy: Imagine putting Tabasco sauce on your tongue every morning. First it's going to hurt like hell, you'll probably cry and be tasting that shit for hours. But do this for, say, 2 months and it won't bother you at all.\n\n\nA little more technical information I copied from a rehab website: There are different ways drug tolerance can build up. One is physiological tolerance. It occurs when the rate at which the drug is broken down, or metabolized, within the body increases. For instance, in the case of alcohol, the liver actually boosts the rate of production of various enzymes, which then accelerates the metabolism of the alcohol. Physiological tolerance can also occur when there is a decrease in the number of cell receptors the drug attaches to and the strength of those bonds weakens.\n\nAnother way tolerance can occur is through learned, or behavioral, tolerance. Learned tolerance develops through a learning process that involves recognizing the environment. When a person consumes a drug in the same setting over and over again, they will be less likely to feel the drug’s full effects as long as they are in that setting. However, if that same person took the same amount of a drug in an unfamiliar setting, then they will most likely feel stronger effects from the drug. Simply put, environment has an impact on drug tolerance.\n\n"
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
|
3pbdre
|
what determines when hockey players come on and off the ice during the game?
|
There are always people coming on an off the bench. Usually one or two at a time. What determines the who and when? Is there an order? I'm not talking about the 1st line, 2nd line, etc. Just individual players
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3pbdre/eli5what_determines_when_hockey_players_come_on/
|
{
"a_id": [
"cw4v0cv"
],
"score": [
3
],
"text": [
"Signals from the coaching staff, as well as the players generally being aware enough of their time on ice and the situation being a good time to change out. Dumped the puck in the offensive zone? Probably a good time to head to the bench. 3 on 1 headed towards your goalie? Probably not. "
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
|
2zwumy
|
what would happen to human thought if we discovered life on another planet? even bacteria?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2zwumy/eli5_what_would_happen_to_human_thought_if_we/
|
{
"a_id": [
"cpn07tu",
"cpn12mo",
"cpnaa9e"
],
"score": [
9,
8,
2
],
"text": [
"Most people would go \"huh, neat\" and move on with their lives.\n\nSome people would go \"huh, that's proof of god\" and move on with their lives.\n\nA small amount of people would flip their shit and freak out.\n\n-----------\n\nYou'd see a lot more excitement if we could get sample back for analysis and study.",
"It would depend on the nature of the life and the person you're asking.\nFor the scientific community at large it would be no surprise at all and would actually be a “Well its about fucking time” reaction. We have for a long time shown that Earth is not special at all and there should be life scattered throughout the universe. \n\nAs of right now the lack of other life is known as the Fermi's Paradox, and without the presience of other life it leads to one of three main conclusions.\n\n1. All sentient life must inevitably destroy itself, otherwise there should be many many other lifeforms far more advanced than we. \n\n2. Long range space travel / communication is not in any way feasible, again because there should be other species so far along then so if they are why have they not reached out to us? Or why can we not detect them?\n\n3. Or maybe we are well and truly alone, the only sentient life in the entire universe. \n\nWhich is more terrifying is up to you.\n\nFor more info give this [video by Vsauce look](_URL_0_) \n\n\n",
"It's adorably naive that you think most people would give a shit.\n\nThink about it. The discovery that the Earth is round, that matter is made of atoms and at a super-Plank scale behaves mostly deterministically, that the brain is a computer with knowable mechanisms, that humans are evolved from apes and no less a part of nature than apes, that most of what we believe about gender/class/ethnicity is socially constructed and not physically innate, have all failed to topple the major religions, philosophies, and assumptions of ordinary people.\n\nYou think life on other planets is the one thing that will finally beat intellectual inertia? Never. People will shrug and carry on thinking they are the center of the universe like they always have."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[
"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gCBlAAtJA54"
],
[]
] |
||
6lwoi4
|
where does human waste go on cruise ships?
|
Hey so I was wondering, what happens to the inevitable waste in a cruise ship? Do they save it all up to be disposed of onshore or do they dump it periodically into the sea? Does it depend on the liner? What is the standing capacity for waste before a removal has to be made? - I appreciate that the last one is going to be ship dependant but I am so confused an estimate would be great!
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6lwoi4/eli5_where_does_human_waste_go_on_cruise_ships/
|
{
"a_id": [
"djx61mx",
"djx7gef"
],
"score": [
23,
5
],
"text": [
"There are two ways to deal with sewage: treatment and storage. Most modern ships are equipped with a sewage treatment plant. This plant can use either bacteria, chemicals, or other methods to break down the sewage and turn it into cleaner water. Depending on which regulation the ship follows, the treated black water is pumped over the side. If there is solid waste that still remains, or pumping over the side is not an option, the sewage can be kept in sewage holding tanks. These tanks are then emptied to sewage trucks/facilities when the ship is in port. In some cases, solid sewage is also allowed to be pumped over the side if certain requirements are met.\n\nOn my ship, which has a max capacity of 26 people but regularly holds 16, our sewage tanks hold about 30 tonnes of sewage. We usually pump it ashore when it gets in the 20 tonne range, and we do so once every couple months or so. So, if 16 people produce about 10 tonnes of sewage a month, I imagine that a cruise ship of 1600 people would produce close to 1000 tonnes of sewage a month. That being said, Cruise ships also have top of the line sewage treatment plants that probably clean most of it up.",
"On submarines (cruise boat not ship) we blew it out into the ocean using high pressure air Woe to the sailor who \"flushed\" a toilet when the tank was pressurized. Basically you would get a face full of shit."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[]
] |
|
36j5jm
|
why aren't white people in the united states referred to as "european americans" like how blacks are referred to as "african americans?"
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/36j5jm/eli5_why_arent_white_people_in_the_united_states/
|
{
"a_id": [
"creedlh",
"creefoc",
"creel10",
"creherp",
"creimom",
"crek1ha",
"crel5o2",
"crelcpm",
"crem9r1",
"cremn9j",
"creph0i",
"creyus2",
"crezbx6",
"crezdal",
"crf16n0",
"crf4rgc",
"crf6zeg",
"crf7n3w"
],
"score": [
227,
3,
42,
3,
4,
6,
4,
7,
8,
20,
3,
10,
2,
13,
2,
4,
2,
2
],
"text": [
"The term \"african american\" came about as a deliberate attempt to reduce discrimination by making race about ethnicity and not about skin color, to get away from the racist connotations associated with the term \"black\". As there were no comparable negative connotations associated with \"white\", there was no real need to change the term.",
"Because, since they're in the very large majority, being \"European\" is the default condition. If you don't specify, it's assumed you're of white European descent.",
"When Africans were brought over as slaves, all traces of their native culture and heritage were destroyed. So you have a large population of Black Americans who have no familial history of what tribe or culture they are from or even what equivalent modern day country they would be from. The best most of them have is that their ancestors were from Africa.\n\nContrast that with \"European Americans\". They know what country their ancestors came from, they know what culture they come from. That's why they're Irish American or Italian American or German American and not just \"European American\".",
"African American is a replacement for older terms now considered offensive. Its a reaction of a power structure coopting the language of multiculturalism to perpetuate essentially the same separatism.\n\nWhy choose 'African American'? Many people of non-african descent but with black skin object to this term. Likewise, you may find many people from east of the caucasus annoyed at being lumped with Europeans, though you might call them 'white'. I had a former boss who couldn't stop referring to a Ghanaian dance group as 'African American', though they were in fact 'African', or more specifically: 'Ghanaian', or less specifically but more accurately: 'people'.\n\nChoosing to make these separations as we classify people is essentially a decision to continue the kind of prejudice we're collectively guilty of already. For instance, Barack Obama is our first Black President, as opposed to our first multi-racial president, or perhaps just our 44th president. Whether we call it Black, Negro, African-American or whatever, the point of the term is to separate one group of people in order to make decisions about them as a group. Likewise the way hispanics are classified on the census is essentially political and in some ways incompatible with the traditional ethnic divisions by which we used to assign ourselves.\n\nThus the reason we do not refer to White Americans as 'European Americans' is that they (and I) are not the targets of segregation and oppression, and for now make up the majority and define what is normal. We did make those separations when we were interested in demonizing or manipulating incoming populations, for instance the Irish, the Italians, etc. Its not wholly about race, its about ingrained interests and power structures that rely on an oppressed and feared minority in order to better control their population as a whole. We make these classifications essentially as a way to separate and ultimately de-humanize.\n\nSorry, what was your question?",
"Because we know which tribal groups we are descended from and use them in our hyphenated ethnic identifiers. (Irish-American, German-American, Italian-American, etc). Blacks do not know this most of the time due to slavery. ",
"The term \"African American\" is relatively new and was implemented around the 1970s by black Americans who wanted a term that evidenced their pride in their heritage. Because in most cases their actual nation of ancestry could no longer be determined, or they were racially mixed, the generic \"African\" was used.\n\nIn contrast, whites of European origin often came over in ethnically homogeneous groups and many lived in communities separated by ethnic origin. So you have predominantly Irish communities, or Italian, or German, or Scandinavian, or Jewish, etc. This as much to ease communication as because of familiarity. In time, migration and assimilation, as well as immigration from other ethnic groups, reduced the \"concentration\" of these neighborhoods to the point where, in most towns, there's only the remnant of an Irish or Italian or Jewish community (NYC being the eternal exception).\n\nAlso, outside of Africa, it seems there's little interest in the differences between African nations -- that is to say (as racist as it may sound) no one really cares whether you're from Ghana or Mozambique. As far as most Westerners are concerned it's all just Africa. Consider, for example, what people think about the prevalence of HIV in Africa: again, as far as many people know, everyone there is at risk. In fact, in nations like Senegal the rate of infection is fairly small, on par with the United States. In other nations like Botswana it's huge. \n\nI should note there is some distinction between North Africa, often considered part of the Middle East, and Sub-Saharan Africa.\n",
"I don't know but I just filled out some paperwork for a new job and the only option that semi described me was \"Caucasian/Spanish descent.\" Mostly german ancestry...was very confused as the options were \"African American\" \"Hispanic\" Caucasian/Spanish descent\" or \"other.\" As a white guy, I have never had to consider marking \"other.\" Talk about white privilege! lol",
"They are, except it's usually more specific. Italian-American or Greek-American. Often they just shorten it and say they're Italian or Greek, despite having no personal connection with that country.",
"Because of slavery most black americans dont have a way to look up ancestry. The term aferican american was coined to help them have a sense of culture.",
"A couple of reasons.\n\nFirst of all, we have this wonderful racist term for white people, \"Caucasian\". It's great because it's just so *wrong*. Very few white people are actually from the Caucasus! It's just a racist invention, to try to glorify the ancient origins of the white \"race\". European-Americans would actually be much better, in the United States. But hey, Europe is a very diverse continent and Americans usually get more specific than that. Africa is, of course, *much* more ethnically diverse than Europe, but black Americans of African origin were brought in such terrible conditions that they lost that original culture. For the record, I'm half African, but not black. \"African-American\" is a misnomer too, because it doesn't apply to me. I'm white -- but I'm Jewish. So, \"racially\", I'm Semitic, not white. But I have the skin color and physical features of a white person, so I'm considered white, and Jewish isn't considered a race.\n\nBasically, it's all bullshit. All of it. Race was made up by racists, and we have to live with the terminology framework that they made up, even if we occasionally replace some of the words for \"races\" in the US. Don't expect any consistency -- racists don't usually care for that too much!",
"Are black people still being referred to as African Americans in some places? I haven't heard that term used outside of ironically on the Internet in years. ",
"You do have people being referred to or referring to themselves as Irish-American or Italian-Americans or German-Americans occasionally.\n\nAll African-Americans are treated as the same because nobody not even the people themselves really knows or cares which particular region or state or tribe their ancestors originated from in most cases.\n\nThis is obviously on account of their ancestors not having immigrated to the US willingly and been allowed to take their own culture and traditions with them. They were imported as slaves and stripped of their heritage and cultural identity.\n\nAll that is left is the black skin that only allows for a rough categorization as \"from Africa\".",
"it's because whiteness and white culture are considered the default american state. just like white hair care supplies are the default and black hair supplies are sold in \"ethnic\" sections. ",
"As a European, nobody here thinks of themselves as European, we are English, French, German, Italian etc.\n\nI think people in the US think of European countries as working like the states do, but they are much more distinct than that.\n\nIf anything the larger-than-a-country groups are 'Western European' and 'Eastern European'.\n",
"Because we don't give a shit if someone calls us white. African American is about being politically correct. I also kind of see it as bullshit because african american can be wrong. Calling a black person (just trying to keep it simple, no offense intended) african american just because of their skin color and where they are can be stereotyping in itself. What if they aren't american, just someone from africa. You wouldn't call any of the ambassadors to america from african countries african american would you? I could see them taking offense to that.\n\nThat being said is there a politically correct racial term for a black person from africa? I'm being serious.",
"Black people like to change terms every few years so then if you use the 'older' term then they can call you racist. \nAfrican American is really insulting to call a black person so I would never say that. It is the same thing as you would not call a white person born in the US a European American. ",
"The identity of \"African American\" has been largely rejected by American Blacks and the term is pretty much only used by white people that have little to no exposure to Black culture. During the Civil Rights movement, there were several competing attempts at constructing a unified identity to fight against discrimination. One major player in this was Maulana Kerenga, who pushed for an identity centered around African heritage. He created a lot of \"traditions\" loosely based on what he cherry picked from various West African cultures. He thought they should consider themselves \"African American\", like other immigrant ethnicities (Irish-American, Italian-American, etc.) that still identified with where their parents or grandparents came from. One of the most recognizable elements of his identity was the holiday of Kwanzaa, which you've probably never actually seen anyone practice outside of the obligatory \"cultural awareness episode\" of 90s sitcoms and cartoons. \n\nHis ideas were well liked by white advocates of multiculturalism because his ideas were less threatening to the status quo than some of the other emerging identities and fit the norms of benign Nationalism. Martin Luther King Jr and Malcom X had their own versions of a \"Black\" identity and a mix of their ideas were more readily adopted by the population and became part of modern Black culture. Kerenga's ideas were largely discarded except for a small following and are only kept alive in White perceptions of race.",
"You might get a much better answer from /r/asksocialscience - they're actually required to cite sources and have some sort of prior knowledge about the field. \n\nHere you're just going to get defensive or aggressive political poppycock. "
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[]
] |
||
1zmx16
|
hacking credit accounts occurs daily, why don't accounts get hacked to wipe out the debt on the account instead of taking the available credit?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1zmx16/eli5_hacking_credit_accounts_occurs_daily_why/
|
{
"a_id": [
"cfv1s1g",
"cfv295g",
"cfv2lun",
"cfv3ly1"
],
"score": [
3,
4,
10,
3
],
"text": [
"because when the accounts get hacked they are using more of the credit available, not trying to be a nice person and help you out. Another reason is because if the credit company somehow wasn't actually having that money in their account then they would notice alot faster something going on and put up red flags",
"If someone were to hack into my credit card account and wipe out my debt, who would the company suspect was behind it? \n \nIf someone were to hack into a credit card company and wipe out the debt on many accounts, the company *should* be able to restore the data from backup, and little harm would be done. ",
"That would require actually hacking the credit systems, as opposed to hacking places that store the info and then using it to buy things.",
"If a hacker pretends to be you, they can buy things. Even if a hacker pretends to be you, the bank will not wipe out their debt. Even a regular bank employee cannot wipe out debt. The hacker would have to pretend to be someone like the CEO of a big bank, which is very very hard.\n\n---\n\nGoing slightly more complex: When you buy something online, you don't actually need your credit card, you just need to know some numbers from it (card #, expiration, security code).\n\nThe store has to save these numbers so it can prove to the bank that you knew them. If the store is not secure, a hacker can steal these numbers and use them the same as you. Since you can't reduce your debt without actually paying off the card, neither can the hacker.\n\nTo actually reduce your debt, the hacker would have to hack in to the banks, rather than just stealing your credit card information."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[],
[],
[]
] |
||
7s3ipl
|
why do scrambled eggs, omelettes, etc. go bad so quickly at room temperature, while baked goods with eggs in them do not?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7s3ipl/eli5_why_do_scrambled_eggs_omelettes_etc_go_bad/
|
{
"a_id": [
"dt20ffy"
],
"score": [
3
],
"text": [
"Cooked food left in room temp goes bad fast because bacteria grows rapidly and the food can become unsafe to eat.\n\nEggs (in shells) can last for long outside and they aren't refrigerated in a lot of countries. When you crack open the egg, the protective layer is lost and bacteria can easily grow on it. \n\nWhen you use eggs to bake anything, the structure is changed. As soon as bread has been baked it slowly begins a process called retrogration where the starch molecules begin to dry out or crystallize. Bacteria's growth is hampered in dry conditions so baked goods can last for a couple days outside. "
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
||
b29cix
|
how are ancient scrolls, texts, tablets and hieroglyphics accurately translated into modern text without a modern reference?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/b29cix/eli5_how_are_ancient_scrolls_texts_tablets_and/
|
{
"a_id": [
"eir5fkw",
"eir5hg8",
"eir5zbm"
],
"score": [
2,
2,
2
],
"text": [
"The Rosetta Stone, it was used to translate ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs. It contained three languages on it, Greek, Latin and Hieroglyphics, without it we may have never been able to understand hieroglyphics ",
"The biggest example of how this type of thing is translated is the Rosetta Stone. I don’t recall what exactly was on the stone in terms of content, but it was listed four or five different languages, one of them hieroglyphs, and another one of them Ancient Greek. The translators knew how to read Ancient Greek, but not hieroglyphs, so using the Greek as a go between, they were able to finally understand just what in the world hieroglyphs were saying and how to translate them. Sorry if that was a bit wordy. This is also just one method that was used. We don’t actually know how to translate a lot of the stuff that’s dug up, so it’s a constant battle.",
"We do have some very ancient languages still in existence. For example Coptic and Hebrew. But we also have a good understanding of how languages develop and by studying different languages we can find out how they have developed and therefore reconstruct the language they developed from. There is also some text written in multiple languages like the Rosetta stone and some languages where we have libraries full of texts to study for example Cuneiform. So we have a pretty good understanding of most ancient and bronze age languages. We can even reconstruct even older languages from before any written text or any signs of civilization."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[],
[]
] |
||
k315p
|
how usb/ethernet ports transfer data
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/k315p/eli5_how_usbethernet_ports_transfer_data/
|
{
"a_id": [
"c2h5om3",
"c2h5om3"
],
"score": [
2,
2
],
"text": [
"By using communications protocols. Protocol is a set of rules that's breaks down communication to easily handled smaller chunks. \n \nImagine a train journey between point A and B. \n- someone have to know route between A and B and time of departure \n- someone must notify that tracks are busy so there will be no crash \n- someone will direct passengers to the carriages \n- someone will start the train engine and keep speed constant \n- someone will check the passengers tickets and make sure they will exit and point B \n\nThat's how it works for Ethernet and USB. Once you are older than 5, you can study OSI model, TCP/IP or NRZI encoding.",
"By using communications protocols. Protocol is a set of rules that's breaks down communication to easily handled smaller chunks. \n \nImagine a train journey between point A and B. \n- someone have to know route between A and B and time of departure \n- someone must notify that tracks are busy so there will be no crash \n- someone will direct passengers to the carriages \n- someone will start the train engine and keep speed constant \n- someone will check the passengers tickets and make sure they will exit and point B \n\nThat's how it works for Ethernet and USB. Once you are older than 5, you can study OSI model, TCP/IP or NRZI encoding."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[]
] |
||
5m3al7
|
how did they calculate votes in the early days of america without phones/internet to convey the results. wouldn't it lead to rigging?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5m3al7/eli5_how_did_they_calculate_votes_in_the_early/
|
{
"a_id": [
"dc0gvmt"
],
"score": [
11
],
"text": [
"Votes were tabulated on paper in each local polling place. Then the results from each place (signed by local authorities) were gathered and taken to a regional capital for totaling. Then, if necessary, *these* signed totaling sheets were gathered and taken to a bigger city for final totaling.\n\nAuditors could inspect the ballot collection and totaling and reporting, to ensure they had not been altered. However, fraud was common as paper is extremely insecure. A common form of fraud was to \"lose\" whole boxes of votes from an area known to favor a certain candidate, before counting."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
||
5wermz
|
why isn't alpha centauri the brightest star visible?
|
IIRC Alpha Centauri is basically the same size and brightness of the Sun. So with it only being 4.3 light years away, why is it not the brightest thing in the night sky with only the moon being brighter?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5wermz/eli5_why_isnt_alpha_centauri_the_brightest_star/
|
{
"a_id": [
"de9iv4c",
"de9iyz0"
],
"score": [
3,
2
],
"text": [
"Because Alpha Centauri is not bright enough for its closeness to make it the brightest thing in the sky. Instead it is one of the brightest things in the sky, with only two other stars being brighter when seen from earth. ",
"So imagine there's a little Christmas light five feet away from you in a dark room, and also, a hundred feet away, one of those eyeball-scorching Night Suns that the cops use to look for stuff at night from helicopters. If you've never seen one of those, imagine the spotlights they shine in the air at big movie premiers. BIG. BRIGHT.\n\nSo the Christmas light (Alpha Centauri) is a lot closer, but it's much smaller and dimmer than other, bigger, brighter stars. It just gets drowned out. "
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[]
] |
|
2ld515
|
how my wifi network's 20+ attached devices can all be used simutaneously. how does each device get the correct information?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2ld515/eli5_how_my_wifi_networks_20_attached_devices_can/
|
{
"a_id": [
"cltmf36",
"cltos4j"
],
"score": [
2,
4
],
"text": [
"Each device on your wireless network has two addresses. The IP Address, and a MAC address. The MAC address is a set of Hex digits which serve as a unique identifier for the hardware, and is stamped into the hardware at the factory. Your wireless router gets this MAC address, and puts it into a table called an ARP table, associating the MAC with a particular IP, which you either assign manually, or is assigned by the router. Your device recognizes what IP it was given, and only processes packets meant for it. On a regular wireless network, every device receives every packet, but every device is also discarding all of the packets that belong to the other devices.",
"20 devices on wireless is a lot. The more you have, the slower everyone goes. Anything that you can wire in, I suggest you do. I'll explain.\n\nSo MAC and IP addresses have been explained. You also have to consider that each device, each computer, printer, television, and the router itself, they all have to take turns transmitting, because they're all using the same frequency band. If two devices transmitted at the same time, the receiver can't tell the two apart, it's just noise.\n\nThe data transmitted also contains parity bytes. If the signal isn't interpreted as utter nonsense noise out of hand, then the data is checked against the parity bytes. Math magic happens to make them and perform the check; if it checks out, the data is astronomically probably correct, if it doesn't check out, the data is flawed, discarded, and the sender is asked to send again.\n\nThe sender is also receiving at the same time. It's listening, and the only thing it wants to hear when transmitting is it's own signal. If ANYTHING else comes in, it knows someone else transmitted at the same time. Both devices will stop, and they'll pull a random number to determine how long they will wait before they both try again. Ideally, they'll manage to transmit at different times and not collide.\n\nYou also have to consider that WiFi uses the same frequency for everyone, both you, AND YOUR NEIGHBORS. So if you're too close to your neighbors, they can cause interference and slow you down, too. There are channels you can configure, but they only made any sense at all in the first version of WiFi, which is pre-2000 and has been utterly abandoned. The channels mean squat because your WiFi is using nearly the entire frequency range, if not the entire frequency range.\n\nData is sent in packets. Packets contain headers and footers, which contain all sorts of information about what kind of data is being sent, where it's from, where it's going, parity, and other stuff, and the actual payload lies in between. If you're using the TCP protocol, the receiver acknowledges it received the packet; if no acknowledgement is sent, the sender sends it again. If it's the UDP protocol, no acknowledgement is made and lost data isn't resent. The size of the packet and the frequency it's sent is determined between transmissions. So a sender starts out by sending a small packet, and if everything goes well, it will send a bigger packet after a shorter delay, again, and again, and again, until an error occurs or it hits it's top sending speed and size. Should errors occur, it will send slower or smaller.\n\nAll your devices are doing this. So the more devices, the more chance for collision, the automatic adjustment kicks in, and everyone slows down. And that's how it's done. Everyone has to take their turn. There is no elaborate synchronization method between all your devices, every device basically tries to transmit at random to see if their data gets through. Data is checked in multiple ways to ensure it is correct.\n\nSo if you wire in your devices, you don't have to contend with the noisy shared bandwidth of the wireless world; your wired in devices can run at their fullest potential over the wire without interruption, because they'll be the only one on that wire. If noise and interference is a problem, you can spend a couple extra dollars and get shielded cable, and that will make a huge difference. A wired 100 Mbps connection can be faster than a wireless 300 Mbps connection. The connection type is 300 Mbps as indicated by Windows, but to know what you're actually getting, you need to do a speed test. If your results are inconsistent, go wired. And 1 Gbps wired is extremely common these days."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[]
] |
||
g0vvlv
|
why does wet sand turn into almost a liquid when it is shaken?
|
So normally, wet sand usually is pretty solid, you can crumble it and other things, but when you shake it, it almost loses all its solid properties and flows. Why does this happen?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/g0vvlv/eli5_why_does_wet_sand_turn_into_almost_a_liquid/
|
{
"a_id": [
"fnc230p"
],
"score": [
11
],
"text": [
"Imagine, if you will, a box full of very heavy ping pong balls. The balls in the box have some sort of ‘structure’, they rest in each other in a stable position, and they aren’t constantly moving. This is dry sand.\n\nNow imagine pouring water in to the box. It’ll flow between the cracks and perhaps change the structure a little, but fundamentally it can still be classified as a solid thing.\n\nNow, if I tip the box, the balls begin to move. Normally,if there was no water, they’d settle relatively quickly. But because of the water, which flows but also acts as a lubricant, the balls find it harder to be stable and wind up “flowing”.\n\nReplace ‘ping pong balls’ with ‘grains of sand’, and you have your simple explanation."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
|
3g39x8
|
how/why do large bush fires cause their own weather patterns?
|
I have read about how a extreme bush fire can create it's own weather patterns such as faster or slower wind speeds and also lightning. Why does this happen.
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3g39x8/eli5_howwhy_do_large_bush_fires_cause_their_own/
|
{
"a_id": [
"ctug36g"
],
"score": [
3
],
"text": [
"You have a lot of hot air rising from the ground. Differences in air temperatures causes movement as hot as rises and cold air falls. Have you ever heard of the original butterfly effect? The original idea was that the flap of a butterfly's wings can create a storm on the other side of the planet. It's because weather systems are super chaotic and events can snowball each other. A large fire is sure to more than that butterfly's wings. "
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
|
4biir8
|
why are guns called m#, but have different names like m16, m4a1, m9, and even ar-15 if they're all made by different manufacturers, and sometimes describe the same gun?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4biir8/eli5_why_are_guns_called_m_but_have_different/
|
{
"a_id": [
"d19eava",
"d19enz9",
"d19f2im",
"d19hcmn",
"d19jzzh"
],
"score": [
103,
12,
21,
2,
2
],
"text": [
"\"M\" is just the US military code for a small arms gun. Afterwards it is assigned a number, like \"M-14\". They don't care who makes it, it now is beholden to the military rules\n\nFor example in other areas, \"F\" is fighter jets, as in F-16 and \"AGM\" is for air to ground missiles as in AGM-114 (better known as a Hellfire missile)",
"The army doesn't run factories. All it does is create a purchase order for 1million m16s that private companies will fulfill. Whoever can fill that order gets it. But if one factory can't fulfil the entire order, then another factory can grab the remaining qty to fill.\n\nThe m1 carbine was made by at least 5 different companies. Inland, Winchester and Underwood come to mind.\n\nThose factories when they're not making the m16 for the purchase order are going to make the same parts for another order, not for the government. The ar15 shares 90% same parts as a m16. So of course if you were geared up to make m16s you can do ar15s with no additional cost.",
" > Also, how can an M1911 be made by completely different manufacturers? \n\nThe Model 1911 was developed in 1911, and all the patents have long since expired, so while Colt owns the original designs, anyone with a copy of the [patent](_URL_0_) can replicate the design today. Model numbers aren't usually copyrightable (that's why Intel switched their processor names from x86 to Pentium) so Colt can't copyright their model 1911 name. \n\nMost of the important intellectual property in the firearms world is protected by patents, which have a relatively short life. Good ideas spread relatively quickly, as a result. \n\nThere are a few brandnamed guns, one of the more famous is the Colt Peacemaker. Anyone can make a clone, but they can't call it a Peacemaker. ",
"The AR15 is a modular design adapted to multiple configurations and purposes. The closest analogy is like the generic term \"PC\" which can be used to describe any laptop or desktop computer. So long as it meets the minimum technology and operating system, it can be called a PC. Same with PCs, there's a sort of *desktop standard socket* and size for the parts so that they're more-less universal. Then there's *laptop type designs* where they are not backwards compatible with the *desktop designs.* \n\nCan IPs be a thing in the arms world? Yes. Very much so. Trademarks and Patents are HUGE in the arms world. People have been sued to living hell because of these infringements. S & W's Sigma is a notable example of being sued by Glock for likeness both externally and in mechanism. The case was settled out of court with S & W having to change the design of the firearm and pay an undisclosed amount of money to Glock. \n\nCounterfeiting is a huge problem in parts and external components. China is a notable example of a common infringer. They have gone so far in counterfeiting that they will even make AR15's with the Colt trademark. While some stuff is just a shitty knockoff, there are also high quality replicas being sold at fractions of the cost of the real deal. The major problem is the use of trademark or trade dress of the product. Or you know, pimping a shit product in someone else's name. \n\nBecause of Intellectual property (and national security, I guess) \"war\" technologies are controlled by a [governing body](_URL_0_) that does not allow the technology to go into certain countries or states. This is to avoid selling high tech weapons, optics, and even uniforms to unfriendly nations.\n\nEdit! John Moses Browning's 1911 handgun.\nJMB was not only a prolific designer, but a huge businessman. His designs were not only to maximize the use and manufacture, but the licensing and production of firearms. He not only designed guns, but the machines and process to make the guns. He then taught people how to use the machines and quality check the guns. This is a huge part of making a gun. You need to make sure your customer doesn't blow his face off. \n\nThe 1911 is like the AR15 in the respects of it's age and modularity. JMB taught a lot of people how to make his gun. And when the patents started expiring, his students started to improve and update the 100+ year old design. As a result, you see all the companies in the world making this gun in different formats and designs. From base level handguns to high tech F1 type *race* guns. ",
"\"M\" is the designation given to military systems that were developed under a Department of the Army Program of Record. E.g. M16, M1A1 tank, M2 .50 Cal., M1025 HMMWV (The \"Humvee\").\n\n\"MK\", pronounced \"Mark\" designates military systems developed by the Department of the Navy. E.g. Mk19 grenade launcher (which is close to my heart), Mk27 7-ton truck, Mk48 torpedo.\n\nI don't know if this applies to air stuff. I have only dealt with ground equipment.\n\nAs for \"AR\", industry can name their stuff whatever they want. My hunch is they wanted to give it a military feel without implying they are actually selling an M4 from the government."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[],
[
"http://www.google.com/patents/US984519"
],
[
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Traffic_in_Arms_Regulations"
],
[]
] |
||
2fgw04
|
the difference between the british 'year' school system and the american 'grade' school system, and the names of schools.
|
e.g.
Year 1 would be X grade?
College is the equivalent of X in the US?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2fgw04/eli5_the_difference_between_the_british_year/
|
{
"a_id": [
"ck92jnd",
"ck93j6p",
"ck94m8g"
],
"score": [
4,
3,
5
],
"text": [
"We have a different system in Scotland to England just the further complicate things. (we don't have 6th form)\n\nPrimary 1 \n\np2 p3 p4 p5 p6 p7\n\nHigh school first year\n\n2nd yr 3rd 4th 5th 6th but you can leave at the end of 4th or when you turn 16\n\nThen higher education either college or Uni if you want.",
"Frist the easy part. The US K-12 Grade system is called Years 1-13 in the UK. Add 1 to the grade number to get the year number.\n\nIn the US typically Elementary School covers grades K-6, Middle/Jr. High covers grades 7-8, and High School covers grades 9-12.\n\nIn the UK typically Primary/First/Lower School covers Years 1-4, Junior/Middle/Second School covers Years 5-8, and Secondary/High/Upper School covers Years 9-13.\n\nNearly every district in both countries does things differently, so its impossible to say what's normal. But that was my experience in California and Staffordshire.",
"TL;DR - Elementary = primary school \nSecondary school = middle school/junior high/early high school (not sure on that one) \n6th form/FE colleges = high school \nUniversity/HE colleges = college \n\n\nIn most of the UK (as someone has noted, Scotland's system is completely different), years are numbered 1-13. Year 1 is age 4-5, year 13 is age 17-18. So you can work out equivalents in the US system based on the age range.\n\nThe names of the different levels of school can get a bit confusing. Years 1-6 (ages 4-11) are called primary school. So that would be equivalent of elementary. That is sometimes split into infant (years 1-2) and junior (years 3-6) schools. For example my primary school had distinct infant and junior parts, with separate buildings, separate facilities, etc. but they were right next to each other and shared a name.\n\nThen comes secondary school. This is years 7-11 (ages 11-16). I don't think this level is usually split any more than that. After this age, you can leave the traditional school environment. Although recently it's become a law that you have to remain in some kind of education or training until the age of 17, and I think it's due to rise to 18.\n\nAfter that it gets a bit fuzzy because it gets called several different things and there are different options for the sort of school you go to (if you even continue at school).\n\nSome secondary schools have what's called a 6th form. This is typically a separate part of the school for years 12 and 13. Sometimes it's fairly integrated with the rest of the school, maybe with an area specifically for 6th form use, or it might be on a different site altogether.\n\nYou can also go to a college instead. Sometimes called a 6th form college, or a Further Education college. You might be studying the exact same qualifications a 6th form student would, the difference is they are typically not affiliated with a secondary school which teaches younger children. These are probably the most \"high school like\" schools. In fact, sometimes they are called high schools.\n\nThen there's university, which is what people in the US would call college. However to make matters more confusing, universities sometimes have things called colleges within them (e.g. Oxford, Cambridge). And there are also places called colleges where you can study university level degrees, but they don't have the authority to award them in their own right so a proper university validates them.\n\nedit - moved TL;DR to top"
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[],
[]
] |
|
1vanuy
|
why has processor technology increased in performance by so much in so short a time compared to the combustion engine?
|
Today's chips are thousands of times more powerful and efficient then their early predecessors 30 years ago while the average consumer gas engine is only around ten times better then those 70 or more years ago.
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1vanuy/eli5_why_has_processor_technology_increased_in/
|
{
"a_id": [
"ceqcnxb",
"ceqde1v"
],
"score": [
3,
3
],
"text": [
"Because they both do very different kinds of work. Today's chips encode information with the use of thousands or millions of tiny transistors. It was the discovery that 1s and 0s could be switched in tiny solid state fashion that led to them getting so small so quickly. \n\nThe work of the combustion engine on the other hand, is to provide a large amount of kinetic energy to turn drive shafts and the like. By comparison to the switching of 1s and 0s that's a LOT of energy to manipulate. There's no solid state technology that we know of that can take the place of the main components of a combustion engine which have to shuttle around actual fuel and gases, not just information. So whereas information exchange got a sudden leap forward with the brand new invention of the transistor, all we can do with the combustion engine is keep tweaking and improving the original design.\n ",
"Good question. To answer, let's think about the inherent differences between a combustion engine and a computer.\n\nA combustion engine's job is to facilitate work: It moves objects in some manner. Most commonly, measures of output are: Power (energy over time. Watts, Joules/second, Horsepower, etc) and Efficiency. The maximum theoretical efficiency here is 100%: To get an object moving at a certain speed requires 1000 Joules, so we use an amount of fuel that provides exactly 1000 Joules when combusted.\n\nA computer processor's job is to determine information. This is inherently different from the combustion engine because the amount of energy required to accomplish this goal is not fixed. For example, the first computers may have required 1000 Joules of energy in order to determine the answer to the question \"1+1=2.\" The energy was actually involved in changing energetic states of capacitors: The capacitors were large, and needed a lot of energy in order to \"flip,\" or change a 0 to a 1, and vice versa. If we shrunk the capacitor in half, we decrease the amount of energy necessary to achieve the same effect. So now it only takes 500 Joules to answer \"1+1=2.\" \n\nCombustion engines are confined by the laws of physics, and the only variables we can change are the power and efficiency. A processor, on the other hand, can be shrunk without adversely affecting \"information power,\" which is measured in [FLOPS](_URL_0_). While it's physical efficiency of power faces the same limitations as a combustion engine, this concept of \"information power\" does not because shrinking means more flops per unit energy.\n\nIf one gram of silicon takes one joule to \"flip,\" and you have twice as many transistors on the same gram of silicon, then you have effectively doubled processing power for the same input of energy! \n\nMoore's Law states that processing power will double every two years. It was originally estimated to last 10 years in 1965, but it is going strong to this day. And current computer scientists believe they know the technology necessary to keep Moore's Law on track for at least the next 10 years. Intel recently announced that they could make transistors [only 14 nm big](_URL_1_), which is significantly smaller than the transistors in your computer now. If you have an Ivy Bridge processor, they are 22 nm big. If you have a Sandy Bridge processor, they are 32 nm. \n\n\nIn the 90's, the major advancements were in computer frequency. That's why every processor marketed it's processor speed. Double the frequency (megahertz), double the processing power. But chips were not heat resistant, so they had to make advancements in order for higher frequencies to be possible. When that technology peaked around 2.5 Ghz for laptops (and higher for desktops with more elaborate cooling systems), packing more transistors took off as the primary goal. Intel continues to lead here. But eventually, the transistors will be so small that shrinking them further will be impossible with Silicon based processors. At that point we will have to move to another material or concept. Carbon Nanotubes may be the processors of the future, as might this mysterious stuff called \"quantum computing.\" Time will tell!"
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FLOPS",
"http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/09/10/intel_reveals_14nm_pc_declares_moores_law_alive_and_well/"
]
] |
|
1ezvvh
|
the evolutionary basis for psychedelic drugs in nature.
|
The active psychoactive compounds in naturally-occurring plants like psilocybin mushrooms have such specific and profound effects that it's hard to believe they developed out of mere chance alone. What's the story?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1ezvvh/eli5_the_evolutionary_basis_for_psychedelic_drugs/
|
{
"a_id": [
"ca5f7sr",
"ca5fbiz",
"ca5fg23"
],
"score": [
9,
6,
5
],
"text": [
"1) Their effect is not \"specific\"\n\n2) a predator fucked up on an acid trip is not in a position to eat you. It's a pretty natural and logical self defence for a prey/plant to develop.",
"Just because something has a specific effect on a species, it doesn't suggest any sort of evolutionary influence. There are millions upon millions of unique compounds out there. Sometimes, they just happen to interact certain receptors we have. For example, microcystin-LR is a cyanotoxin that is 4x as lethal as ricin in mice. It can completely destroy mammalian livers even in small doses. We have no clue what it's actual function is, but it doesn't mean cyanobacteria evolved to produce this toxin just to fuck up our livers.",
"Most psychoactive plant products we use are, in fact, defense mechanisms. You can drink a cup of coffee and feel nice and alert, but a thousandth of that dose is going to kill a caterpillar almost immediately. The same is true for THC (the main active compound in marijuana), psilocybin and DMT. \n\n\nIt is also worth noting that human drug consumption makes these compounds even more favorable. Quite a lot of marijuana and magic mushrooms have been grown, solely for recreational reasons (yes I am aware we grow marijuana for industrial reasons also), which is basically \"winning the game\" when it comes to biology."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[],
[]
] |
|
55nbi8
|
is the earth at exactly the same spot in space on my birthday every year?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/55nbi8/eli5_is_the_earth_at_exactly_the_same_spot_in/
|
{
"a_id": [
"d8c03o1",
"d8c072a",
"d8c0dfo"
],
"score": [
11,
5,
3
],
"text": [
"Absolutely not. While we move around the sun, the sun orbits the center of the Milky Way at 220 kilometers a second, the Milky Way meanders around the Virgo Supercluster, et cetera, et cetera. The planet will likely never see the same spot in space twice.",
"First, to answer this question you'd have to give us some reference point. The earth is moving around the sun, and the sun is moving around the galactic center, the galaxy is moving through space. The universe (as far as we known) doesn't have an absolute coordinate system. So a \"point in space\" doesn't make sense without setting some artbirary point as your origin.\n\nIn this case the most sensible is the sun. The sun is our origin and the Earth is moving around it. So, does the Earth come back to the same point relative to the sun ever 365 days?\n\nNo. This is why we have leap years. It actually takes longer than 365 days to get back to the same point. So each year we're actually a little bit before where we were the previous year. After 4 years, that gap is about the same length as a single day, so we add a day.\n\nBut this doesn't put us exactly back where we were. It actually puts us ahead a bit, so we have [additional rules](_URL_0_) that tell us when to take out or add back in leap year days. And the current system we have is still not perfect and after thousands of years we'll have to tweak it more.\n\n**Short answer? No. We are not on the same spot.**",
"First, the phrase \"exactly the same spot in space\" is only meaningful if you have a defined reference frame. Most of the time, you think about where you are in relation to the ground, or to the Earth's Center Of Mass. But as you already know, those things aren't stationary: the Earth rotates on its axis, and revolves around the sun in an elliptical orbit once a year.\n\nSo when you're dealing with intra-stellar space travel, it can be more convenient to treat the Sun as the stationary reference point. This is good enough for calculating Kepplerian (or Kerbalian) orbits. Hooray for Heliocentrism. \n\nBut is the sun actually stationary? No. First, it wobbles a little from the influence of its planets. But more importantly, it's on a slow migratory path around the galaxy, completing a journey every few hundred million years. Roughly one \"galactic year\" ago, Earth was in the Late Triassic period. Dinosaurs were beginning to dominate the planet, but most of the famous pop-culture dinos were still millions of years in the future.\n\nSo we'll treat the center of the galaxy as stationary, right? Sure. Lots of models that have to figure in the motions of many, many stars do exactly that.\n\nBut is it *actually* stationary? Well, here's where things get really tricky. Every galaxy is moving in relation to every other galaxy (and in most cases, that movement can be summerized as \"away\"), and every galaxy has a roughly equal claim to call itself the center of the universe.\n\nIf you define your reference frame such that the center of the Milky Way is stationary, then the center of the Milky Way is stationary. But to an observer in Andromeda, it's rushing towards you really quickly, and the center of the Andromeda galaxy is the stationary reference point. To an observer in a much more distant galaxy, both the Milky Way and Andromeda are rushing away, much, much faster. And none of these observers are any more \"right\" or \"wrong\" than each other.\n\ntl;dl: No. Everything is moving."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[
"https://www.wwu.edu/skywise/leapyear.html"
],
[]
] |
||
2jqol1
|
how does "glow in the dark" work?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2jqol1/eli5_how_does_glow_in_the_dark_work/
|
{
"a_id": [
"cle7rje",
"cle8weo",
"cle8z87",
"clef02r",
"clehfr2",
"cleipm7",
"clem8cy"
],
"score": [
440,
5,
16,
6,
3,
3,
6
],
"text": [
"This is called phosphorescence. It's when a material absorbs high energy light and slowly emits lower energy light over time. edit: An example of phosphorescence that you may not know of is in CRT TV screens. This is why you'll see an afterglow in a dark room when you turn the TV off. There's a layer of phosphors on the screen that light up when the beam of electrons from the ~~cathode ray~~ *electron* gun at the back of the TV hits them.\n\nOr if your talking about glow sticks that's chemiluminescence.\n\nThere's also fluorescence: materials that glow under black light but ~~don't emit their own light~~ emit light much faster and don't glow after the black light/higher energy source is removed (sorry bad wording).\n\nAnd bioluminescence: fireflies, angler fish, some bacteria (Pyrocystis fusiformis--the glowing water you see in Life of Pi), basically anything living that creates it's own light.\n\nI can't explain any of the chemistry behind any of these but maybe someone else can..",
"They used to use radioactive paint to make glow in the dark watch dials. The poor workers died because they weren't told that the stuff was poisonous / radioactive. This is one of the reasons that OSHA was formed -- in general businesses don't give a shit about their employees and would rather they died than spend money to protect them.\n_URL_0_",
"If you're wondering how glow sticks work, it's a simple chemical reaction:\n\nHydrogen peroxide (H202) is inside the tube.\n\nThe glass capsule inside is filled with Phenyl oxalate (C14H10O4) and a fluorescent dye solution (Fluorophore)\n\nWhen you break the capsule the two chemicals mix and that creates the glow.",
"I'll have a go at an anthropomorphic description of phosphorescence.\n\nThere's a boring town called Squaresville where all the atoms live. When light shines on Squaresville all the atoms suck in the light, get very exited and jump on a train to Partytown where there's a kick-ass nightclub and they party like it's 1999. After they've had a bit of a boogie they jump back on a train to Squaresville and on the trip back they give back out most of the light they took in.\n\nThe trains between Squaresville and Partytown are very fast and frequent and so as soon as the light stops shining all the atoms end up back in Squaresville very quickly.\n\nHowever some of the atoms are partying so hard in Partyville they they accidently go out of the fire exit, can't get back in and end up in Nowheresville. Now there are hardly any trains back from Nowheresville to Squaresville and so all the atoms are stuck there for ages.\n\nSo long after you take away the source of light those atoms are making their slow journey home, giving off their glow-in-the-dark light as they do so.",
"Light is created when electrons are excited from a photon hitting the election and the electron jumping up to an excited level and it then falls back down to ground state releasing energy in the form of a photon. \n\nGlow in the dark is from something called meta stable States. Normally electrons fall back down instantly but some atoms have a meta stable state.\n\nThis means the electron is excited like explained above but instead of instantly falling back down it is able to hold that excitation state for an extended period of time before falling back down.\n\nThis is why glow in the dark doesn't last forever and needs to be 'charged' \n\n\nSource: year 12 physics student from Aus",
"I have a Luminox _URL_0_\nwatch that has glow in the dark hands and hour positions. \n\nThis type of \"glow in the dark\" works by the radioactive decay of tritium. Tritium is a form of hydrogen containing two neutrons. The tritium half-life is about 12.6 years. When the tritium decays it kicks out an electron (called a beta particle\") which hits a phosphor - similar to tube type TV's and monitors.\n\nSo basically, the ELI5 is: A material like the inside of a TV tube is mixed with a radioactive material which results in a soft steady glow that gets about half as bright every 12 years. \n\nI especially like these types of glow in the dark as it doesn't require \"charging\" in the light.\n",
"My name is Donna. I'm a blond and I am happy to say I know the answer to this question.\n1. You need to wait till it is dark outside or in a closet.\n2. you break the stick and shake it really fast.\n3 It glows because it is dark enough to see it.\n4 Don't try this during the day or in a well lit room.\n\nMy name is Jack, I helped Donna write this."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radium_Girls"
],
[],
[],
[],
[
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luminox"
],
[]
] |
||
5u7m0t
|
why did the panda species let their genes deteriorate until this bad and how are they still not extinct?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5u7m0t/eli5_why_did_the_panda_species_let_their_genes/
|
{
"a_id": [
"ddrx12x"
],
"score": [
2
],
"text": [
"Because they have no natural predators and fill a niche which no other organism is really competing for, it makes sense to me that their senses might deteriorate over time. If a species doesn't need something in order to continue reproducing effectively, then expending energy to develop and use it becomes a waste and individuals who develop these \"unnecessary\" traits (perfect panda eyesight perhaps) are selected against.\n\nFast-forward to 2017. A massive swath of panda habitat has been destroyed. On top of just removing stuff pandas live in, this also creates patches of habitat cut apart (fragmented) by things like roads, canals, etc. and the WWF website lists this as the number one threat to the Panda's survival. On top of that there are people who hunt pandas, so we are acting as another extremely rapid change in selective pressure by introducing ourselves as an invasive predator. Rapid environmental change is hitting them while their genes are fine for the environment they were living in, but look quite bad for the one they live in now."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
||
3dtqtb
|
what are the laws around private space travel in the u.s? do private companies have to have some sort of licence to go to space?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3dtqtb/eli5_what_are_the_laws_around_private_space/
|
{
"a_id": [
"ct8knv6",
"ct8nmkg",
"ct8pilc",
"ct8pm0e"
],
"score": [
4,
21,
2,
6
],
"text": [
"A private individual only needs a pilot's license. \n\nA company providing space transportation for hire would need to comply with [Chapter III of the Federal Aviation Regulations](_URL_0_), which specify the safety requirements to obtain a license to operate a commercial launch site.",
"_URL_0_\n\nAccording to Michael from Vsauce, there is nothing stopping you from traveling to space, except the high cost and the materials you will likely need for space flight may be hard to get or even illegal.\n\nOnce you're in space though; you can pretty much do anything you want because no body owns \"space\". If you had the ability, you could create a moon base a live there and there is no fine or consequences. ",
"To be even simpler, you do not need anything for space, but you may need a license and clearance from whomever controls the local airspace you go through to *get* to space. In 1979 there was a sit-com on TV called \"Salvage 1\" about a junk dealer who makes his own rockets to go to space. He has to call for clearance from the local airport tower to take off. ",
"The faa grants licenses. They have a small section about amatuer rockets stating that if it goes under 150km and weighs under 200 000 pound seconds of total impulse which do not require a license. \n\n_URL_0_"
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[
"http://www.ecfr.gov/cgi-bin/text-idx?SID=e9b6a3c51df4f2e31fd4bd0cfb883711&mc=true&tpl=/ecfrbrowse/Title14/14cfrv4_02.tpl#400"
],
[
"https://youtu.be/Ks8WH3xUo_E"
],
[],
[
"https://www.faa.gov/about/office_org/headquarters_offices/apl/aviation_forecasts/aerospace_forecasts/2014-2034/media/Commercial_Space_Transportation.pdf"
]
] |
Subsets and Splits
No community queries yet
The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.