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3rgfx0
|
why do people say obama is black when he has a white mom and black dad?
|
Obama is the first mixed race or biracial president. The US still has yet to have its first truly black president. I think this video is an example:
- _URL_0_
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3rgfx0/eli5_why_do_people_say_obama_is_black_when_he_has/
|
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"Being biracial doesn't make Obama any less Black. His Blackness is mostly from the color of his skin. Nobody is going to spontaneously think Obama is a White man. The implicit or explicit racism he encountered as a youth would be that a Black boy faces. \n\nFor more explanation, look into how race and ethnicity aren't straightforward; they are socially constructed. E.g, Irish people weren't considered White for a long time, nor were Italians and other people of South or East European descent. So being biracial doesn't diminish Obama's Blackness because being Black isn't necessarily just about having two Black parents.",
"If you want to go that route, how many black people living in America have a complete African lineage? Starting from the slavery era, many slave women gave birth to mulatto and creole children. Since that era, plenty of children have been born through various voluntary and involuntary relationships. \n\nBeing black is a mixture of skin color and the culture the person identifies with. ",
"Basically a major part of being ethnic groups is being treated like you're from that group. Obama is biracial, and grew up exposed to both ethnic groups, but in USA he was always seen as \"black\". In that sense he shares part of the black experience in the USA that he can't share with the white people. In fact many 100% African ancestors people have lighter skin than Obama, which is why people see him as black. This doesn't have to be the only thing to determine a racial identity. \n\nMany multiracial people identify for a bunch of differnt reasons, from upbringing, gneetics, enviorments etc. Some people that are biracial just like Obama identify as white too, but depending on your skin tone, the darker you are, the more strange looks you get.\n\nOh, and the Average African American is 20% European. Good luck pulling a one drop theory on who's black and who's not."
]
}
|
[] |
[
"http://bossip.com/1245549/the-joys-of-being-black-lady-tells-story-where-white-privilege-helped-everybody-understand-the-injustice-video/"
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4qadiw
|
how relevant are telescopes for studying astronomy or modern research? why do they not seem as essential for astronomers anymore?
|
I know some astronomy students and even astronomers who rarely or have not used a telescope before. My friend is into physics and astronomy but has never expressed interest or used a telescope. He took some university classes that were fact and calculation based but none of his labs involved using a telescope to observe the night sky.
When I asked him why he isn't interested in telescopes he just said "I can already find the best pictures of Saturn online so I don't need it. You can only see tiny disks of planets on Earth based telescopes."
How relevant are telescopes for astronomy nowadays and is it only a hobby or a serious research instrument? Is it likely for astronomers to own a telescope or do they do most of their work on the computer and other sources?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4qadiw/eli5_how_relevant_are_telescopes_for_studying/
|
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"At this point the data from large scale, better-than-you-can-buy-yourself telescopes is made available to the research community. This includes all types and classes of telescopes. Further, you can request time on a large telescope if the data you want isn't available.\n\n"
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
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|
bicr24
|
how can a documentary like "our planet" record such high quality audio on animals from a far distance?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/bicr24/eli5_how_can_a_documentary_like_our_planet_record/
|
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"It’s dubbed in. They have a studio that just does sound effects. There is a guy in a room with a bunch of junk around him and he plays it like instruments.\n\nEdit: here is a YouTube link\n[YouTube ](_URL_0_)",
"That's why I prefer watching older documentaries when I want to see \"more realistic\" scenes of animals and nature. It's less dramatic in terms of cutting, story telling and of course in terms of dubbing why a lot of people find it rather boring. However, I don't wanna bash modern documentaries, I also like them, but the sound is so over-realistic that it's like watching a movie that showes sort of an interpretation of the world."
]
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|
[] |
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"https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Li6TSwybqjU"
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||
1bhld7
|
what makes people get horny?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1bhld7/eli5_what_makes_people_get_horny/
|
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"When people get horny they want to have sex. When people have sex, they sometimes make babies. When babies are made, they often grow up and get horny themselves, and so the cycle continues.\n\nEvolutionarily speaking, people who get horny are more likely to pass on their hot, dirty, sexy genes to their children than those who don't, so it is an evolutionary advantage to get horny.",
"Guys: An attractive female, or thoughts of one, or the idea that there may be one nearby or on TV, or simply the idea that an attractive female exists.\n\nGirls: The world may never know. There are rumors of rare specimens that experience arousal and desire on a regular basis, but none have ever been proven to exist. There are rumors, much like those surrounding the loch ness monster, bigfoot, and the abominable snowman. But all we have to go on are fuzzy stories and half remembered tales of \"that one crazy girl from college.\"",
"Ambiguous question. Do you mean physiologically or psychologically?",
"Well, for me, I like curvy women."
]
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54k74y
|
with photoshop and similar programs being more and more accurate, how do you recognize that a photo or video is original?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/54k74y/eli5_with_photoshop_and_similar_programs_being/
|
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"There are special programs that analyze digital images for traces of manipulation. They are used by courts, investigators, insurance companies, etc. to detect image fraud. Search for \"digital image forensics\", \"image manipulation detection\" and similar if you want to learn more. This [quora thread](_URL_0_) can also get you started.\n\nEdit: on mobile currently, will add more examples and explanation later.",
"I was super curious about this a while back and posted an ELI5. The TR response seemed pretty comprehensive, well informed, and easy to understand.\n\nFind it here: _URL_0_",
"People with trained eyes can break down videos or photographs and see what was done to it based on their own experiences.\n\nExample: There is a guy on YouTube called \"Captain Disillusion\" who takes viral videos and breaks them down to debunk them as being just clever fakes. He will also recreate them as proof, and point out things that the average person would have never noticed or picked up on due to their own ignorance on the subject matter.",
"Almost 200pg document by Dartmouth College explaining [Digital Image Forensics](_URL_0_) in-depth",
"Based on my time on the internet, I've learned that if you've seen a lot of 'shops in your time, that you can usually tell from the pixels."
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||
4yj0o0
|
why do environmental scientists ask us to save water when using faucets, showers, etc. wont it just go back to the water cycle?
|
I'm the type that doesn't listen in class.
EDIT: Thanks for all the amazing answers!
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4yj0o0/eli5_why_do_environmental_scientists_ask_us_to/
|
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"Water we use to bathe, shower, drink, cook with, etc. is all water that has been filtered, processed, and otherwise tinkered with. Yes, it all goes back to the water cycle, but there are costs involved with getting the water to your home in a sanitary state. The less you use, the less water needs to be processed in your area.\n\nParticularly in regions with various water problems or droughts it becomes quite an expense to ensure that everyone is getting enough clean water. So they don't want you running your lawn sprinkler 10 hours a day just because you want perfect looking grass.",
"If you were just using well water, it would go to your septic tank after use, then pass through the leech field back down to your water table, which would be then tapped and used again by you.\n\nIn the above example you return water to your supply system and not much is lost.\n\nBut there are problems with this. If you water your lawn during the day, and it evaporates, it will form a cloud and drift far from your water table and not return to your well. Water is lost. You can water at night and usually this does not evaporate, and most goes into the ground.\n\nWe do not need as much potable water as you would expect. Farmers liquidize cow manure and spray it on fields for fertilizer, and those crops feed us. In many locations you will see faucets and sinks in bathrooms with non-potable water marked. It is possible to use non potable water and avoid demands on a water purification plant.\n\nIn cases like large parts of central California, when they tap the water table for crops, there simply is not enough water there to go around. There is no local supply to meet the demand. They tap into things like the Colorado river, but you have issues with up stream people using water, and downstream people demanding water, and environmentalists demanding a reserve of water to go out to sea in order to maintain wildlife. In these situations the basic problem is our population density and farm demand for water out strips the supply, and we either need to develop more supply, conserve water usage, or reduce the population in this area. Politically it is almost impossible to limit population, and places like CA are basically a ticking time bomb unless they develop new water supplies or relax restrictions on existing water supplies.",
"We will never run out of water. They are trying to prevent the waste of *clean* water. There's a very limited supply of naturally clean water, and the rest requires expensive equipment to clean.",
"It takes time and energy to treat that water and pump it to your faucet. If you let water run, you are not really \"wasting\" the water, so much as wasting the effort and work that went into getting that cleaned water to you. That work has environmental implications. The less water that needs to be treated and pumped the better.",
"Water does go through the cycle, but it stays in parts of those cycle longer than others. (Refer to Table 3 of [this page](_URL_0_)) Therefore, the rates at which each source (ie. lake, river, pond, ocean, clouds, etc.) will be recharged differ greatly.\n\nUnderground freshwater aquifers, for example, where a lot of towns get their drinking water supplies take centuries and sometimes millennia to completely recharge.",
"If you soil thirty gallons a day (all numbers here are completely made up) between your showers and pooping and laundry and dishwashing, but only ten gallons of that water evaporates back into the atmosphere in one day, then you're soiling water faster than the natural water cycle can purify it. If everyone in a community is doing this to their finite water source, then eventually all the water in the region will be tainted."
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17aokc
|
if uv light can effectively kill bacteria, how come my local hospital does not look like a black light mini-golf course inside?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/17aokc/if_uv_light_can_effectively_kill_bacteria_how/
|
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"For the same reason not all effective bacteria killers are used indiscriminately. For example, fire is a great tool to kill bacteria as well, but you wouldn't set your whole building on fire. Just like fire, UV light can be harmful to more than just bacteria.",
"UV light kills bacteria the same way it burns us, so in order to kill bacteria, the light would need to be intense enough to give patients a sunburn.\n\nFurther, it only kills surface bacteria, so the underside of a table could still be infested. \n\n",
"well you guys have given enough reason why it won't work.... \nso much for my dream of Club Girl Nurses...",
"Side note, why aren't there people roaming the halls with high intensity UV lights with a narrow focused light sterilizing surfaces? "
]
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5bbupl
|
what do musicians hear in their earbuds when they're performing live?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5bbupl/eli5_what_do_musicians_hear_in_their_earbuds_when/
|
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"Their music. When they are on stage, all the speakers are facing away from them and the screams from the crowd drown out the instruments being played by the ~~instruments~~ instrumentalists, so musicians use their in-ear monitors (IEM, earphones that are custom made from molds of the ears , forming a near perfect noise isolation) to listen to the the track they are currently playing.",
"If you look at older concert images you routinely see big stage monitors pointed towards the band, they had to be loud because drums, amps and people are loud and it did a lot of damage to hearing. The newer in ear monitors protect hearing, and give much better control of what you hear, there is usually an audio engineer side stage that is working with the musicians adjusting and managing those monitors constantly during a concert.",
"Musician here. In ear monitors also give you the luxury of isolating exactly what you want. As a vocalist I want to hear more of my voice, but with an overall mix of what the rest of the band is playing. You can get that with floor monitors sure, but depending on the sound at the venue you're playing you might get feedback issues if your microphone is up too much in the monitor mix. ",
"Like has been said. We have the instruments we are playing coming through the earbuds. But there are some additional things many musicians have going on as well.\n\nWhen i perform, I have whats called a Click Track ticking along in my ears in addition to the instruments being performed. The Click Track makes sure i am playing at the right speed, and not speeding up or slowing down. It performs the same job as a Orchestral Conductor.\n\nThe other thing that many musicians have in their ears are Backing Tracks. Say in one of your songs, you have a part where you recorded 3 vocals at the same time singing a harmony. How do you perform that live? you cant sing 3 notes at once. So you play a backing track with 2 of the 3 notes and you sing the 3rd. And typically you want to have the tracks in your ear with the Click Track to make sure you are still synced with them.\n\nTl;dr The live instruments are mixed to your liking, then some may use a Click Track and Backing Tracks as well.",
"Not a musician myself (but I do play an instrument), my dad is a music producer.\n\nWhen musicians are on stage or in a recording room by a mixing desk, they'll usually hear their own music through a pair of headphones or earbuds, presumably to keep themselves in time with the rest of the song.\n\nI remember specifically when I was a kid and I wanted to play the drums with this band (I was really young, they were at least 4x older than me) and they had me sit on the drum kit and they played. I had some headphones in my head and while I couldn't play (didn't know how to) I could hear the drums.\n\nHope this helps.",
"If the band is running samples then the band are usually listening to a click track in one ear and the samples in the other w/ whatever front of house sends ",
"They are called in-ear monitors, iem's, or just \"in-ears\" for short. \n\nAt a concert, everything is mic'd and amped, going from the stage to a large mixing console in the center of the venue(you can see the mixing station out in the crowd next time you're at a show). The guys at the mixing booth control the volume for everything from each individual drum on the drumset to lead vocals, guitars etc. A guitarist standing next to his amp at full blast may not be able to hear the lead singer or bass guitar on the other said of the stage, so different volume adjustments are made for different speakers. These level adjustments called \"mixes\" are different for people on the stage(monitor mix) and for people in the crowd(Front of House or House mix). \n\nEvery performer on the stage is being fed a \"monitor mix\" which are sent to any number of speakers onstage pointed at the performers or to wireless in-ears. Monitor mixes are very different then what the audience hears, and usually each performer likes to have a monitor mix tuned to their specific tastes. I'm a vocalist/guitarist primarily, and in the past preferred have the backup singers fairly low in my monitors because they were sometimes a little off-key and it would throw me off. In-ears started off being too expensive except for the pros, but have come down in price enough to be accessible to the little guys nowadays. \n\nAdded benifits of in-ears are: Increased stage mobility(you no longer have to stand directly in front of your monitor to get your mix and can wander the stage, while performing even), Very precise monitor mixes can be made with in-ears making them great for vocalists, Hearing protection from unsafe stage volume levels, no stage monitor bleed into microphones which creates isssues for the sound guys at the mixing booth, more room due to less speakers onstage, and faster setup/breakdown. The CONS of in-ears are: They take some getting used to, took me about 4 months of gigging every weekend before I was comfortable with them, You tend to feel isolated from the crowd, it's hard to explain, but it's sorta like playing inside of glass case, it just feels a little unnatural. If you have a malfunction and can't afford a backup you can be severely screwed(been there, radio frequency crossover destroyed our reception once, not a fun day). \n\nAll in all in-ears are great and the pros outweigh the cons. ",
"Professional recording artist here.\n\nThese are monitors designed to feed a separate mix to the artist. Depending on the musician and their needs, a certain mix of the song comes through per the front of house or monitor board.\n\nWhen I was on bass, I had mostly my bass and kick drums with just enough guitar to hear the changes. No vocals. \n\nOn guitar I had mostly guitar, drums and vocals. \n\nOn vocals I had mostly vocals and a light mix of the full band. ",
"Everyone hears something different in their in-ears. They're usually mixed based on the preferences of the user. Sometimes in lieu of in-ears (or if multiple people have to use the same setup), they will use speaker wedges that point back at them - they serve essentially the same function, without the added isolation of the in-ears. For mid-scale to large productions, there is a sound guy on the stage running *just* those. \n\nSingers generally will listen to themselves and some harmonies (I do a trick where I'll run auto tune through the vocals into the ears so they always have a pitch-guide).\nGuitarists will listen to guitar, drums, and a bit of bass.\nBassists usually want their bass and drums.\nDrummers will have them and sometimes have a click track, but usually want the bassist as well. Sometimes the musicians want other things like click tracks and samples, but sometimes they don't even want to hear any other person in the band. It's whatever makes them comfortable. \n\nSometimes audience mics are also set up and fed into these, so they can hear the crowd. Sometimes they have a dedicated mic on stage they can use to talk to each other.\n\nBasically, the musicians are using them to hear what they and their band is doing. It's not always easy to hear yourself sing when you have a drum kit behind you and a guitar next to you.\n",
"They allow the musician to hear that they specifically want and things that you may not hear in the venue.\n--\n\n\nBlake on Guitar wants to hear drums because it keeps him on rhythm.\n\nAngela on vocals doesn't want to hear drums and wants to hear the track of the song instead because that helps her more.\n\nSo each individual mix is changed by someone on monitors. This changes what they hear via buttons and dials and now they hear what they need and not what someone else does. \n\nIt's helps with people so that thy only hear what is needed \n....\nConveniently I'm behind our board right now so here's a picture!\n\n_URL_0_\n",
"A lot of people have already mentioned using IEM (in ear monitors) on stage to hear themselves. This is not the only thing you will see on stage though, not all musicians use IEMs. A decent set of IEMs will set you back at least a few hundred quid. Small bands can't afford them, and some people find that they are distracting, and difficult to hear with.\n\nSome of these musicians will use molded earplugs so they don't get deafened on stage. Stage volume generally exceeds 100dB, and can get over 120dB. This is really bad for your ears. Porfessional earplugs make it safe. \n\nIEMs also cut out a lot of ambient noise, generally around 30dB of ambient noise is cut.",
"In ear monitors are where it is at man. But yeah basically they are just hearing mixes of what they are playing. You can isolate certain things and change levels so everyone hears what they need to. If you can imagine just how LOUD it is to perform in one of those places...you also tend to get a lot of echoes and can barely hear yourself think. This problem is made infinitely worse when the crowd decides that they want to sing everything and sing to slow or off key or don't actually know the lyrics or anything else like that. Those monitors help the band keep from screwing up so they can hear themselves and not the blonde drunk girl in row 3 screaming out her undying affection and then barfing on the guy whose shoulders she is riding on. ",
"You can have what ever you want.\n\nTypically you will have everyone on a metronome. You can have people have their own mixes (for a singer who wants to always be able to hear himself). Really any possibilities.\n\nHonestly nothing is stopping me from sending my drummer porn sounds while we play. ",
"Podcasts, mostly. Performing live is just such a bore, you know?",
"In addition to the other great answers they also allow the band/crew to communicate with each other through what's called a \"dead mic\" \n\nA mic that only feeds to the in ear monitors so the band can discuss song changes, ask for things to be tweaked by the crew (especially the monitor engineer) and occasionally to complain about the crowd ;)\n\nSource: I was a drum tech for many years and toured with some bigger bands. ",
"They can also have vocal cues and a click track. A click track is a steady pulse that is in the ears of either the whole band or specific musicians, quite often the drummer and bassist. \n\n\n",
"As a lead guitarist I hear the singer, drums, and bass guitar along with my own guitar (mixed louder in my ear than to the rest of the audience)"
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c25nkp
|
why is the shingles vaccine only recommended for use on patients 50 years or older?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/c25nkp/eli5_why_is_the_shingles_vaccine_only_recommended/
|
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"Because 50 is when your odds of getting shingles starts to increase. \nThis is important because if you develop a drug you need to run studies to show it's effectiveness. Since you want to make things easy when you're running your first study you concentrate on groups that are most susceptible to the condition you're trying to fight (because then you can keep your studies small and still get a meaningful amount of 'signal' in your data). In the case of the new \"Shingrix\" shingles vaccine GlaxoSmithKline ran \nstudies like [this one targeting the 70+ age group](_URL_1_), and [this one targeting the 50+ age group](_URL_0_). This means that the effectiveness of this vaccine has only been proven in the 50+ age group, so that's all that groups like the CDC will recommend."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[
"https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT01165177?term=NCT01165177&rank=2",
"https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT01165229?term=NCT01165177&rank=3"
]
] |
||
4wjgax
|
the great pacific garbage patch
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4wjgax/eli5_the_great_pacific_garbage_patch/
|
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"text": [
"Twice the size of Texas. Not the size of the continental US. \nAlso what do you want explained? People dump trash into the ocean and the currents meet up here and bring all the trash into one place. Nothing really to explain. Human negligence created a landscape of waste in the middle of the Pacific ocean.",
"I'm not sure what your question is, per say. The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is an area roughly the size of (but not obviously the shape of) the state of Texas. As this reference doesn't mean much to you, and just giving the area in square miles or kilometers is difficult for most people to really visualize, it's similar in size to the Island of Madagascar or about twice as big as the country of Germany.\n\nThe patch is difficult to completely tell the size of because a lot of it involves ground up particles of plastic and waste that are naked to the human eye, and therefor not visible from aircraft.\n\nWhat it is, is basically a giant mass of pollutants that float near to the surface of the water that are built up and kept there by currents in the Pacific Ocean. The Northern Pacific Gyre is a large circular current in the ocean that runs clockwise (facing north) from Japan to Alaska to California back around to Indonesia and back up to Japan. This current forces a lot of the garbage to the center which is where it stacks and builds up.\n\nAgain, exactly how large it is, is unknown because the large outer edges of it are made up of microscopic particles, and the delineation between 'normal' levels of gross garbage in the ocean that's everywhere and 'way too much' gross garbage in the ocean is not well defined. Sad as that may be, take that how you will.\n\nMost of the garbage is either industrial run off waste, illegal dumping of waste, or waste from marinas and harbors and storm drains. Some of it is waste dumped by fishing vessels and the like.\n\nIt takes waste from North America's west coast about 6 years to make the trip through the gyre, and waste in Asia about a year to reach its resting place (though it still churns within that area, it's not like it just stays completely stationary).\n\nUnlike biodegradable waste, which breaks down into different components, the sun will break some of these plastics down, but it stays plastic pretty much forever. So, say a plastic shopping bag might break down to where you can't see it anymore with the naked eye, but it's still there just as tiny plastic pellets and the like. And that's the fortunate stuff. Some of it just decays into straight up poisons.\n\nThen the poisons enter the food cycle as they're ingested by insects and animals, and eaten by animals that eat those insects, and so forth until they end up on your own plate."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[]
] |
||
3xbrmd
|
why do chords sound bad when played really low on a piano?
|
If I play a C chord (C, E, G) on my piano, it sounds fine when played at any point on the keyboard, except for the leftmost keys where it sounds almost discordant. They're the exact same notes, just played at a lower pitch, so why doesn't it sound good anymore?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3xbrmd/eli5why_do_chords_sound_bad_when_played_really/
|
{
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"cy39sqm",
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"text": [
"Even if your piano is tuned, it can sound slightly off that far down the keyboard simply because of the way it's tuned. There are mathematical inaccuracies in tuning a piano that they account for by basically rounding.\n\nThey perfectly tune middle C, and then essentially round up on the higher notes and down on the lower notes. It's rather complex, but basically the notes get further and further shifted in either direction, which is why they sound worse as you go further.\n\n[Here's](_URL_0_) a video that best describes the situation.",
"Bassist here. It has to do with the way sound works and how instruments produce it.\n\nSound is vibrations in the air. When you press the key on your piano, it sends a small hammer down that strikes a string. That string vibrates at a certain interval to produce a certain frequency that humans have assigned letters to. Play your middle A key. The hammer strikes the string, causing it to vibrate based on its length, thickness, and other factors, and those vibrations are carried through the air as sound. That particular vibrations frequency is 440hz, or A4 (4 denoting what octave this A is located in.) \n\nNow onto the complicated stuff. There are actually other frequencies that are being produced within that A. This concept is called [\"fundamental harmonics\"](_URL_0_. Basically, it means there are other, higher frequencies being produced based on your fundamental pitch (in this case being A4) that can be calculated using math. These are referred to in laymen's terms as \"overtones\".\n\nThe human range of hearing is very middle of the road. We can't hear extremely low or high frequencies. When you play a chord in the treble register, most of the overtones are too high to be audible, meaning you mostly hear the fundamentals, making pretty chords. When playing chords in the bass register, you are getting a lot more of those overtones, some of which clash with the other fundamentals/overtones of the chord, and end up sounding muddy and bad. "
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[
"http://youtu.be/1Hqm0dYKUx4"
],
[
"https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harmonic_series_(music)"
]
] |
|
3dct50
|
why is a company apparently not allowed to explain why they fired an employee?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3dct50/eli5_why_is_a_company_apparently_not_allowed_to/
|
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"text": [
"By avoiding a giving a specific explanation, they greatly reduce the chances of a dispute or even a lawsuit. Consider these two cases:\n\n1. \"We fired you for being late too much.\" Hey wait, that person of the other sex was late as much as me and wasn't fired. You are biased against my sex! I'm suing you!\n2. \"We fired you are we aren't saying why.\" Well, um, bummer.",
"It comes under the (former) employee's personell file, wich is protected by law to stay confidential. If they reveal any information from this personell file the former employee can sue them for loss of future income (could be millions depending on the former employee's position) ",
"In the United states you mean. It's because the us practices at will employment so employers can fire people for any reason at all and don't have to give a specific one which would lock them into one answer. ",
"They are of course allowed to explain this to the employee that is fired. But they refrain from trumpeting this information to the public as a favor to the fired employee. This would make it hard for the person that works there to get another job, which would make people less likely to work at the original company (\"did you see how they screwed over Victoria by telling everyone she was always late?! No way I'm working there!\")\n\nThis is part (but definitely not all) of the reason that companies offer severance packages as well.",
"You can, but you open yourself to liability if you do, at least in the USA. There are a lot of people here who will sue.\n\nStating dates of tenure is safer, and thats all you really need to disclose."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[],
[],
[],
[]
] |
||
57r5d6
|
if i was stranded in the desert without water could i keep myself hydrated by drinking alcohol? at what % abv would this become counter-productive?
|
Also what about caffeinated beverages, for example does espresso have so much caffeine that the ill effects would outweigh the benefits?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/57r5d6/eli5_if_i_was_stranded_in_the_desert_without/
|
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"d8u8q5q",
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23,
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"text": [
"Drinking any alcohol in the desert would be extremely counterproductive. Caffeine too.\n\nYour kidneys regulate water absorption by means of a hormone called Vasopressin aka Anti-Diuretic Hormone.\n\nAlcohol and caffeine both interfere with the function of this hormone and cause your kidneys to lose more water over time. It doesn't really matter how much you're having, even a pint of 4-6% alcohol will have you peeing twice as much in a couple of hours.\n\nSo, you wouldn't be able to. Alcohol is useless as far as survival goes, as much as games like Skyrim, Fallout and other survival adventures would make you think.\n\nEdit :\nThere seems to a big problem with the way I've worded it. We're talking about a hypothetical situation with real-life options. What I meant to say is in the OP's scenario, we're looking at commercial options of alcohol. The most common type of beer most people get is in the range of 4-6 %.\n\nI don't know if the answer to this question lies in ELI5 though.\n\nAnyway. There are a lot of variables involved in the entire thing, which seem to have been covered earlier in the askscience subreddit.\n_URL_0_",
"Alcohol directly blocks the reabsorption of water in your body so drinking any alcohol would likely be counterproductive.\n\nA few years ago, the news cycle published this claim which was picked up by a lot of websites that \"beer hydrates better than alcohol.\" That claim appears to be completely bogus and does not appear to have been based on legitimate research. A previous study noted deleterious effects on hydration with alcohol content as low as 4%, but failed to show a difference at 2% alcohol content. Another study noted significant adverse effects on hydration with as little as 4%. A study this year did not note any difference between water alone and water plus beer, but the study was extremely limited and does not apply to your desert situation. Moreover, a failure to show a difference does not mean there is no difference, it may as well mean the study was too limited to demonstrate any difference which existed.\n\nEDIT: I meant \"beer hydrates better than water.\" Sorry for the confusion.",
"If we're talking survival, let's get real. \nDrinking an alcoholic beverage will dehydrate you, sure, making you piss more.\n\nBut the piss won't be alcoholic, and this is a life or death situation. You can rehydrate yourself by drinking it.\n\nIn the end, you'll get calories from the alcohol, and hydrated from the water. As long as the alcoholic beverage contains water, you should drink it pee in the bottle."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[
"https://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/cojm6/how_long_could_somebody_live_drinking_nothing_but/"
],
[],
[]
] |
|
1subxn
|
evolution in the modern age?
|
I have heard it a lot but never get it. How is evolution still occurring when we have so many new technologies that are specifically designed to help those genes (people) that are not intended to 'survive'?
Don't know much about evolution but...yes as much as a five year old.
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1subxn/eli5evolution_in_the_modern_age/
|
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"text": [
"Human evolution based on medical conditions *has* more-or-less stalled. But we do still select mates based on attractiveness, affluence, etc. and decide to have kids or not. So evolution should be ongoing, but with different criteria.",
"A lot of problems understanding evolution come when you try to anthropomorphise it: when you think of it as a *conscious force* with a *deliberate goal* of creating the \"best\" possible organism.\n\nThat's not what evolution is. It's just the word we use to describe what happens to living creatures over time as a result of the combination of (a) random mutation and (b) outside forces that result in organisms with a particular mutation reproducing either more or less than others.\n\n*Which* mutations are selected for or against may change—in the case of humans, especially, we're able to ignore a lot of the factors that influence other organisms—but that doesn't mean *the selection itself* stops.",
"Yes, there are people alive today due to medical advances. I, for example, would have died a few weeks after birth had I not had surgery that allowed food to physically get to my stomach.\n\nWait until gene therapy gets around to routine, daily exposure to most people. Is altering your genes right there \"on the spot\" [in evolutionary time] considered evolution, particularly if that set of \"corrected\" genes gets passed on to your kids? Good times.",
"Well one thing you've got to understand is that a lot of our medical advances are things that help treat conditions later in life. While we do have things like vaccines that help kids before they can have babies, anything that helps people live longer isn't really affecting evolution. If medical treatments help someone who would have died at 50 live instead to 70, it doesn't matter because at 50 they're already at the point where they're not likely to have kids anymore, and definitely so if they're female.\n\nThe other thing to remember is, we're still \"selecting\" for certain things when we reproduce, as chel of the sea pointed out. Remember, evolution is about what genes get most represented in the next generation (meaning there's more of those genes because those people reproduced more than other people). As long as some people are having lots of kids, and some are having few, or none, some sets of genes are getting more represented. What would really stop evolution would be if everyone had the same number of children, and then their children had the same number of children, and then keep repeating.",
"Evolution is unstoppable. It's more subtle than the classic image of the slow, weak guy get eaten by a lion while the fast and strong run away. Remember your buddy that died of a heroin overdose senior year? Or that guy who took a curve too fast and hit a tree? Or how about that girl with the glandular disorder that made her morbidly obese so that she never attracted a mate? Or the guy who got shot after he joined a gang? These are all cases of natural selection at work, depressing though they may be."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[],
[],
[],
[]
] |
|
64y868
|
how does genetic recombination enhance the variation of genes in a population?
|
I'm having a little difficulty understanding this concept.
If recombination occurs between chromatids of homologous chromosomes during meiosis, then how can you get variation?
From what I gather, the chromosomes are homologous, lets say for peas of a green colour. So both parents will be GG (dominant) as opposed to one being Gg, or gg (recessive). Therefore, by just rearranging chromosomes, you still end up with GG, green peas. I'm sure it's something very basic that I'm missing but my understanding of genetics is not great.
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/64y868/eli5_how_does_genetic_recombination_enhance_the/
|
{
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"text": [
"There are two main mechanisms that enhance genetic variation: independent segregation of chromosomes and homologous recombination.\n\nIndependent segregation of chromosomes means that when you're making gametes (i.e sperm or eggs), the homologous chromosomes are segregated randomly during meiosis. So you have one homologous chromosome from your father and one from your mother. Your sperm or eggs will have half as many chromosomes as the rest of your cells because they'll only have one of the homologous chromosomes. But your sperm or eggs won't have all your father's side of chromosomes or all your mother's side of chromosomes, they'll be a mix of each.\n\nHomologous recombination is when crossing over occurs between homologous chromosomes during meiosis, so between for example chromosome #1 that you got from your father and the other copy of chromosome #1 that you got from your mother. This means that in your sperm or eggs, the chromosomes that you got from your father won't be identical to his anymore, because they'll have a bit of your mother's chromosome stuck into them. \n\nFor your example though, if homologous recombination occurs in an individual with the GG genotype, then yes you're right there will be no change in terms of the gene coding for the green colour in that individual's sperm or egg cells. If that plant mates with another plant that is also GG, then all of their offspring will be GG as well. But if that plant mates with another plant that is Gg or gg then some of the offspring will be Gg. \n\nEDIT: I think the part you're confused at is that \"homologous\" chromosomes doesn't mean they're identical. You can have homologous chromosomes that are Gg. It just means the genes on both those chromosomes perform the same function, like they both have a gene that defines what colour the peas will be, but what that actual colour is could be different on each homologous chromosome. "
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
|
ae2vv6
|
why does smoking cannabis invoke emotions of calmness and pleasure? what are the effects of long-term exposure?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/ae2vv6/eli5_why_does_smoking_cannabis_invoke_emotions_of/
|
{
"a_id": [
"edm12nk"
],
"score": [
2
],
"text": [
"1. Cannabinoid receptors in the body are closely linked to the body's reward system. THC works on the same receptors as our bodies’ naturally occurring, pleasure-inducing endocannabinoid, anandamide.\n\n2. Life long rewards. "
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
||
4pp89w
|
why does spinning around make adults/teens go dizzy much faster than little children?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4pp89w/eli5_why_does_spinning_around_make_adultsteens_go/
|
{
"a_id": [
"d4nqp4r"
],
"score": [
3
],
"text": [
"Children under the age of 5 have their labyrinths still in development, and dizziness is caused by mismatch between senses - in this case sight and acceleration"
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
||
28w0ee
|
why is it wrong to discriminate against people for their political beliefs but there is public outcry when someone is anti-gay marriage etc.
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/28w0ee/eli5_why_is_it_wrong_to_discriminate_against/
|
{
"a_id": [
"ciezj8t"
],
"score": [
6
],
"text": [
"This post is not asking for a layman-friendly explanation to something complicated or technical, so it doesn't belong here and it's been removed. Entirely subjective questions generally belong in /r/askreddit.\n\nAsking \"why is this wrong\" or \"why is this ok\" is inherently subjective and so it doesn't belong here."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
||
cmdpwx
|
how do mobile networks know which apps are using mobile data when they offer things like "free 2gb for 'xyz' app"?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/cmdpwx/eli5_how_do_mobile_networks_know_which_apps_are/
|
{
"a_id": [
"ew1k99u"
],
"score": [
2
],
"text": [
"Most of the popular applications have a set of servers that the application communicates with. The mobile networks can see the address of the destination of each data packet and match that with the list of servers used by an application and therefore find out which application you are using. It is similar to how they can have different charges for calling different phone numbers. The reason they can offer cheaper mobile data for certain applications is that they usually offer to host some of the servers in their own network. This means that the data packets do not leave the operators network and they do not have to pay any fees for uplink."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
||
8zx8sx
|
how do creams like biofreeze, bengay and icy hot work to relieve internal pain, ie back pain, despite being applied externally?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8zx8sx/eli5_how_do_creams_like_biofreeze_bengay_and_icy/
|
{
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3
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"text": [
"They are transdermal, meaning they cross into the skin and then internally. The skin is actually pretty good at absorbing things. There are a lot of nerve endings and small blood vessels just beneath the skin ready to receive some medications. Nicotine patches and hormone replacement patches are two others I can think of designed to work transdermally.",
"Follow-up ELI5: Why does it burn the genitals likes its the liquid fires of Hell?"
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[]
] |
||
6hr7yn
|
how does a ship run into a ship in this day and age?
|
USS Fitzgerald collides with merchant tanker 100km off the coast of Japan. Aren't there millions of dollars in equipment that lets folks know there're ships around? Or idk, a crows nest, like a pirate ship?
_URL_0_
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6hr7yn/eli5_how_does_a_ship_run_into_a_ship_in_this_day/
|
{
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"text": [
"Ships don't stop or maneuver quickly. Getting in radio contact with a civilian vessel on the high seas can be spotty. If you do there's no guarantee they'll speak English. The competence of the Captain and crew on civilian vessels can be really hit or miss. ",
"You're question piqued my interest, so I looked it up. \n\n > Barring a mechanical error—in these systems or, say, one ship's steering capacity—the collision likely resulted from a mistake, or a series of mistakes. \"It's usually human error,\" Dyer says. Ships follow international \"rules of the road\" when they're in the same area, which specify how what actions to take in myriad situations, but there's no air traffic controller-equivalent giving instructions to keep everyone separated.\n\n > Most likely, the crews on one or both ships just did the wrong thing or miscalculated. \"People don't always remember exactly what they're supposed to do,\" Dyer says. Because these big ships are hardly nimble, mistakes can prove hard to correct. \"Maneuvering vessels of this size is not easy, and they don't respond quickly if someone makes a mistake.\"\n\n > It's not so different from walking toward someone on the sidewalk where you both move left, then both move right—just in very slow motion, and with a louder crunch when you bump together.\n\n > Ships collide more often than you might think. Dyer estimates at least one minor mishap happens somewhere on the ocean every day, and you'll see more serious accidents several times a year. The only thing to do is to study what happened—and try to remember the lessons for next time.\n\nEdit: From [a Wired article about the incident](_URL_0_)."
]
}
|
[] |
[
"https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/jun/16/us-navy-destroyer-collides-ship-japan"
] |
[
[],
[
"https://www.wired.com/story/uss-fitzgerald-navy-destroyer-crash-collision-japan-acx-crystal/"
]
] |
|
2b7j7n
|
what occurs when i end an unresponsive program on a task manager. why does it take so long?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2b7j7n/eli5_what_occurs_when_i_end_an_unresponsive/
|
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"text": [
"Programmer here..if it works anything like how I think it should it probably sends a sigint or a signal interrupt with a kill command(tells the program to turn off)..Some programs what may be in a wait cycle(for info from let's say an internet connection) may be locked and need to timeout before they can process the signal interrupt sent. Just a guess",
"When you end a process (program) in task manager, you tell the OS to terminate execution of the process. The OS removes the process from RAM and gives its memory space back to the OS.\n\nThis takes place outside the scope of the program. That is to say the program has no say in what goes on and doesn't even know it's happening. You can terminate a program that is functioning normally, and there will be no shut down process (like word asking if you want to save), it simply dies. Now some programs will realize that they were killed abnormally the next time you open it, but that's about as far as it goes.\n\nAlso if you end a program on the programs list, it may take longer than killing the actual process from the process list. \n\nCorrections are welcome. I studied programming more than architecture and OS design. ",
"As mentioned already, it takes so long because ending an unresponsive program (presumably from the applications tab) actually sends a request to the program to shut down. If the program is already frozen beyond the point of being able to process requests, you can go to the processes tab and end the process directly. I would not recommend this unless you understand the consequences of halting the processing of the program that you are trying to kill.",
"Because you're doing it wrong.\n\nYou're clicking \"End Task\" which is a middle ground that lies somewhere in between gracefully closing the program, and actually forcing it to close immediately.\n\nInstead, you want to Right-Click on the application that you want to end, then click 'Go To Process' and click the 'End Process' button.\n\nYou will notice this is what you were expecting; it immediately forces the process to close without making any attempt to wait for a response from the process.\n\nYou can also do this from the command line: taskkill /f /im \"chrome.exe\" will immediately kill all instances of Google Chrome."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[],
[],
[]
] |
||
620an2
|
why did the civilizations that preceded the roman empire not field organised professional armies as the romans did?
|
Roman was the greatest super power the world had ever seen, a large part of this was due to the large professional armies they were able to field. But then Feudalism took over (their might have been another system before Feudalism, idk) where someone would be a farmer until one day their lord required an army and the farmer was given a sword and marched off to war. If he was lucky enough to survive the war he would return home and resume farming.
This system ment that if a ruler wanted to raise an army for war harvests would suffer as they would be taking the man power from the farms. The Quality of the soldiers would suffer as well as most would be farmers or whatever and not trained soldiers like that of a Roman Soldier.
So, why was this System adopted when a better one already had been proven to work, and work much more effectively?
Cheers
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/620an2/eli5_why_did_the_civilizations_that_preceded_the/
|
{
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"text": [
"It sounds like you have misunderstood the armies in the middle ages. A lot of people were working soldiers. Either as a standing army for a ruler to guard important positions or as mercenaries. These two are not mutually exclusive. The farmer would not suddenly be called into service but would be required to give food to the army. An army might be patrolling the land getting food and shelter as sometimes the only means of taxation. A farmer might be expected to send his second or third son to get training to become a soldier but would not himself be pushed into service. There were few farmers taking part in the crusades for example (except the peoples crusade).\n\nThe time frame you talk about is also quite wide so things did change a lot during the middle ages. There were a lot of technological advancements that sometimes favored an elite army (cavalery, plate armor, etc), and sometimes favored a huge army (pikes, crossbow, etc.). As the technology changed so did the army composition and size. And these changes were reflected in the structures of society. You can also see these changes today as mass produced rifles and artillery gives way to snipers and fighter jets which again have to yield to guerrilla tactics and so on."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
|
6n9vpe
|
shipping with usps/fedex/ups for sites like ebay and amazon
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6n9vpe/eli5_shipping_with_uspsfedexups_for_sites_like/
|
{
"a_id": [
"dk7tbjv"
],
"score": [
2
],
"text": [
"Really depends on what you're shipping and how you're shipping. You might just be shipping large heavy things that there is nothing you can do about. We'd need more info and I'm not sure this is the right sub for it but this might help.\n\nProbably avoid the \"flat rate shipping\" you can probably pay less if it's a lighter item.\n\nAre you shipping media? CD's, movies, books etc have a super low rate if you ship with USPS you just have to claim it.\n\nAre you doing home pick up? Try bringing it to their location.\n\nOpen an account with them, you may receive benefits for being a returning customer."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
||
2m8hgo
|
why is this sub popular? it seems like google would be a more efficient way to find the answer to something.
|
I am genuinely curious.
I've looked over a lot of the posts and they seem to be easily answered with a simple Google search. Is it for the karma? Spurring conversation?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2m8hgo/eli5_why_is_this_sub_popular_it_seems_like_google/
|
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"It's mainly because people like personalized answers to questions. It can also spur a good discussion between sub followers. ",
"Because this sub is meant to explain (more or less) complicated things in layman's terms.\n\nI don't want to sift through Google, and the immense amount of scientific explanations, to find one that makes sense to me.",
"For more or less the same reason there are tech professionals who people hire to help them out; it's one thing to read an information on the internet that is put out either in very general terms or specifically about something you aren't interested about, which may not apply to your question and even mislead you; it's another having someone fill that specific gap in your knowledge, in a way that you in particular will understand.\n\nPlus a lot of ELI5 questions aren't really google friendly. Google is good if you want to know about something that you can easily type in the search box (like \"world war 1 causes\"), but if you want to be weird or really specific it's more difficult to find an answer (\"why is it that when I do X, Y happens in Z way\").",
"In addition to what others have said, sometimes a truly amazing question that I never would have thought of is asked, such as \"what is the belly button connected to inside your body?\" or \"when you have a headache, what's hurting?\" \n\nAlso, the larger a sub gets, the more it snowballs in popularity. \n\nMany posts here are self posts, so they don't get karma. ",
"One of the reasons I lurk around reddit is that I really enjoy learning stuff, and ELI5 is a good way to learn new stuff about a broad swath of topics, and might lead to things I'd want to study further.\n",
"It's better to have simple answers (like I'm 5) in one single page, than many different, maybe technical, maybe complicated, maybe misleads in many pages...",
"For the same reason you had to ask this question here, instead of googling it. ",
"I like to see answers to questions I wouldn't have thought of.\n\nAlso, the 'like I'm 5' part is pretty nice too. Information on the Internet for anything which is a little esoteric can be hard to decipher. Getting a quick conceptual overview can be hard to find. ",
"all things in life can be put into 4 buckets:\n\n* things you know, you know\n* things you know, you don't know\n* things you don't know, you know\n* things you don't know, you don't know\n\nits the latter which is the most interesting, & this thread helps to minimize that bucket",
"Interaction, discussion and less boring to read than articles with ads everywhere.",
"I've thought about this a lot myself actually. \n\nFor one, I think there's something driving people to ask 'good' questions that other real people can recognize and, hopefully, approve of. In the back of my head I think I'm always trying to find a good ELI5 question to post. I'm not really sure it's a competitive notion, as a 'good' ELI5 question - at it's best - is still someone saying 'I don't know something'. Still, I have those moments throughout the day occasionally where I'm like.. \"Yea.. I should ask that. That's a good question.\" \n\nSecond, (and I'm pretty sure others have already hit on this), sometimes Google just doesn't give you the answer you're looking for. Google's great. I use it all the time. I consider myself fairly intelligent, and sometimes Wikipedia articles still make absolutely no sense to me. All the while, an easy to understand, concise explanation is just waiting out here on Reddit just waiting to be birthed from the lips of some anonymous keyboard genius. (Thanks to all of you, by the way). \n\nAnd while I'm sure there are plenty of other valid reasons, the last one I'd like to bring up is.... \nI think a lot of people that come to Reddit enjoy the community of people. Asking a question and having a real person respond just feels good. You know you're not alone. You know someone at least cared enough to type a few words back to you. ",
"Its not just about the answers. Its also about the discussions. Whats the point of this entire site? To spark up conversations on random topics, pictures, videos and articles. "
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2jm093
|
why do so many ancient (egyptian) artifacts and statues have missing/broken off noses?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2jm093/eli5_why_do_so_many_ancient_egyptian_artifacts/
|
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"Erosion. Sand kills any fine details over time.",
"Sometimes vandalism sometimes other things. I read once about some statues being intentionally defaced to deter people from wanting to mess with them. ",
"I would imagine it would have to do with how fragile the nose would be when compared to the rest of the artifact. While other features, such as the eyes and the mouth are features ON the face, the nose is is very thin and supported by next to nothing. Over hundreds of years of erosion, the nose is more susceptible to damage. ",
"This is entirely baseless and I'll try to find a source when I get home, but I'd heard once that the people who had discovered a lot of older statues broke off their noses intentionally because they indicated they might have been of north african decent.",
"In Islam it is considered blasphemes to make images of people or animals (they are considered graven images). As such when a Islam becomes the dominant religion in an area the followers destroy all of the graven images. This has continued even into our time. The Taliban destroyed several Buddhist temples and statues of Buddha in Afghanistan just before the September 11th attacks. This is also why most Islamic art is geometric based. Islam will also destroy any cultural heritage of other religions or governments that existed previously.\n\nAdding a link to an Islamic website that explains the reasoning: _URL_0_\nand link to modern day examples _URL_1_\n",
" (Hi hi, student in my upper year of high school here, taking AP Art History and planning on getting a degree in it. I think I'm good at this.)\n\n A few notable cases can boil down to vandalism, yes, but almost all boil down to gravity and erosion. Many Egyptian statues were carved of limestone, another soft stone, or rarely, wood. Those carved of harder stone (and sometimes wood) like diorite would survive most all damage. Unfortunately, soft rocks degrade really easily.\n\n Noses were essentially the only protruding parts on most statues. The Egyptians did not have the same preoccupation with male genitalia as the Greeks :p When you have one protruding part, crafted of soft stone, it's pretty much guaranteed to break in some way over the course of 3,000-5,000 years. And that's why noses be gone.",
"Ancient Historian reporting in. 3 reasons to note:\n\n1) As has been rightly said, erosion. Harsh winds, shifting mud and sand dunes, the flowing of water, and thousands of years of feet and hands pitter-pattering over relatively delicate materials such as marble, stone, etc. tends to have a pretty damning effect. For stuff that has been exposed to these elements, it's usually the extremities (arms, legs, noses, ears, phalluses, long hairstyles, swords and spears they might have been holding) that disappear quickest.\n\n2) Vandalism. One particularly famous case of statues being vandalised comes from Ancient Greece (_URL_0_), where the willies of the sacred Athenian Hermai were all removed in a single night - which goes to show how simple it could be to knock a bit off a statue. In later years, vandalism became a bit more, shall we say, indirect. Archaeologists in the late 19th and early 20th century, lacking the finer instruments and procedures we have today, trigger happy with the old chisels and pick-axes, and in a hurry to be the first to discover the \"next big thing\" are responsible (though they won't admit it themselves) for some pretty heinous crimes against sculpture. As has also been rightly pointed out, religion has played a big part - though Extremist Muslims aren't the only ones who have been caught in the act. Christians, Jews, and all sorts of other nut jobs have taken part in their fair share of de-nosing, dismembering or un-dicking statues they've had some objection to.\n\n3) The last is a mixture of the previous two but deserves a mention still, which is knocks. Knocks can happen at any time - it could be, again, wanton archaeologists, or else museum transporters or art collectors, restorers, wild animals, the results of earthquakes, or any of the thousands of hands who have touched - and potentially toppled - this statue throughout history. In the case of noses, again you have to remember this a delicate extremity. One wayward football, one piece of scaffolding someone forgot to keep their eye on, and it's off with yer nose laddy.\n\nHope that helps. No sources because ehh.",
"Noses protrude. They're more likely to get broken off.",
"Well hell, cut them some slack, Michael Jackson's nosejob only lasted a few years, the Egyptians lasted at least a few centuries. ",
"So they don't smell?\n\n^^^Sorry",
"Breaking of noses was a sign of disgrace towards the person who's nose is destroyed",
"noses are small, relatively sharply angled protrusions with no support underneath them. everything about that makes them very easy to shear off. ",
"Cause damn, you can't even have an iphone without cracking the screen after 2 days. Imagine if it were 1,000 years."
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2smkgc
|
what's going on with the switzerland currency issue?
|
Can someone explain it in simple terms? Not sure I understand
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2smkgc/eli5_whats_going_on_with_the_switzerland_currency/
|
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"While of course it's more complicated than this. Essentially, the Swiss economy has been doing a lot better than the Eurozone economy, which meant the Swiss franc was rising relative to the euro over time. \n\nThis is bad, in some ways, for Switzerland because it means Eurozone nations must pay more to import Swiss products. Swiss companies want a \"weaker\" franc, so the rest of Europe will buy their products from them rather than someplace cheaper. \n\nSo, the Swiss National Bank decided to enforce an artificial cap on the exchange rate at 1.2 francs per euro. With this cap in place, 1.2 to 1 was the lowest it could get, but it could always go higher. Thus, traders and investors bet on the euro to rise against the franc, feeling safe due to the cap. In addition, since currency usually only moves a % in the short term, investors can borrow a lot more money to trade.\n\nHowever, the Swiss National Bank abruptly removed that cap, which caused the franc to immediately rise 30% and since the change was so rapid, most could not sell their investments fast enough. Now those who borrowed money are in a lot of debt or insolvent, which included the largest foreign-exchange broker in the US and Asia, FXCM, Inc. ",
"So essentially the Swiss national bank (snb)decided to remove a currency cap which was set in place in 2011 to fight against the strong increasing value of the currency against the euro. Back then it almost hit a point of parity (close to even value for currency) and the Swiss export industries (mainly tourism) were greatly suffering. Now the cap which was set at 1.20 to the euro has been removed and the currency appreciated to it's natural value which as of right now is exactly in parity to the euro. The situation is crazy, the currency appreciated by a ridiculous amount in almost 15 minutes. The snb did this in order to fight the quantitative easing the European Central Bank is going to be implementing soon to help the struggling euro zone nations such as Italy, Portugal, Ireland, Spain, Greece which all combined have a many trillions in state debt and are all fighting huge levels of unemployment. \n\nSo to sum up the currency cap was removed, the currency sky rocketed to it's natural value and the Swiss export industries are suffering greatly. \n\nSource - my roommate who is a very active forex trader \n\nHope I didn't fuck up as I'm on mobile",
"Switzerland in 2011 said that no matter what happens, 1.2 CHF will give you 1 Euro. The benefit of this is that currency becomes fixed and easier to control for exporting/importing. Everyone felt like 1 CHF should give you 1 Euro, so when they eliminated the rule, that is what the rate became. \n\n* Pros for Franc: Their currency became stronger against the Euro\n* Cons for Franc: Importing from CHF is more expensive. ",
"Both the Swiss decoupling and the US stock decline are likely a response to the upcoming ECB QE, which is probably going to be of a truly massive scale. My best guess is Draghi let the Swiss and a few favored private banks (like Draghi's BFFs at Goldman) know that not only was QE coming, but that it will be larger than expected. The SNB was forced to surrender the peg, as holding it would have exposed the balance sheet to insolvency. They also had to do it secretly and suddenly (since any announcement of a future plan to abandon a peg exposes a central bank to massive losses).\n\nThe kicker is the SNB may still try to knock down the franc by buying non-Euro currencies (primarily the USD). It will also likely try to reduce its accumulated stock of toxic Euros by selling at strategic times, which will encourage macro funds to bet against the Euro.\n\nIf I were gambling, I'd predict USDEUR parity sometime in early 2016, since Yellen has thus far seemed disinclined to keep doing big QE (which has likely created massive U.S. asset bubbles)."
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3s5chl
|
why is botulinum toxin, the most lethal toxin known, purposefully injected into humans for cosmetic surgeries such as botox? is there nothing else that could be used?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3s5chl/eli5_why_is_botulinum_toxin_the_most_lethal_toxin/
|
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"Simply put, it is the most effective at what it does. \n\nThis is sort of like how we use (potentially) deadly poison's for anesthesia. There are other potential options (botox for cosmetic surgery is basically a paralyzing agent), but none last as long and work as efficiently, so we don't use them. With anesthesia there are potentially less deadly chemicals we could use, but on the flipside, less potent ingredients means we need to administer more, more often, which can cause other problems. ",
"Because botox is actually really, really good at what it does. Way back in the early 1800s people were dying of food poisoning and people weren't quite sure why (there's a long and varied history here). After a lot of work 4 strains were discovered, and scientists figured out that botulism toxin was killing people by stopping the transmission of nerve signals.\n\nOriginally a diluted form was used to treat uncontrollable blinking and spasming of the eye. This works because the botulism toxin *stops nerve transmission cold* (which is why people were dying from the stuff). After having this procedure done several times one woman became irate with the doctor for not injecting her in the forehead as it \"made her wrinkles go away\"\n\n\nLow and behold, BOTOX was born and is now the #1 cosmetic surgery\n\n\nninjedit - anything that involves muscle spasms can actually be treated with botox. It'll wear off, but localized twitching has a temporary \"fix\"",
"Why would we? A large chunk of all medicines are poisonous. Anesthesiology is a tricky field because there is not much difference between knocking a person out and outright killing them. Hell, as a part of chemotherapy we literally irradiate the patients in hopes of killing the cancer instead of the host.\n\nBotulinum is dangerous because it causes paralysis which leads to suffocation in large doses. But when the dosage is sufficiently small it can be used to alleviate wrinkles, the fact that botulinum has to be diluted more than most other substances to be nonlethal doesn't matter all that much."
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6q2iub
|
if we were able to achieve such phenomenal speeds with the concorde, why has commercial air travel not replicated this (without the fatal flaws)?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6q2iub/eli5_if_we_were_able_to_achieve_such_phenomenal/
|
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"Because it was very expensive. It was starting to not make financial sense, it was merely a fun thing to do for the rich and wealthy. It didn't make any sense to have it as a regular airliner anymore. And then, the accident.\n\n",
"Breaking the sound barrier and flying faster then the speed of sound adds a lot of drag on the airplane. This means you need bigger engines and more fuel to travel supersonic. This means the ticket prices for the Concorde were much higher then for big subsonic aircrafts. In the 70s when the design of the Concorde started this made sense. The extra cost was well worth it for busy celebrities, wealthy and business people. However what brought down the Concorde was computers and the Internet. You no longer need to have breakfast in New York and Lunch in Paris because you already talked to the people in Paris in a video conference. And when given the choice of spending three hours in economy class or six hours in first class most people will just bring their laptops on first class to get some entertainment and work done.\n\nThere is a small market for supersonic travel. The fastest passenger aircrafts today is private jets and there is some plans to make supersonic private jet aircrafts. If you can afford to buy and operate your own jet then you are likely not so much interested in the operating cost and supersonic travel might be an option you are willing to pay for.",
"Because some of the integral, crucial problems still exist today. Technologically advanced as we may be, we're not capable of suppressing a sonic boom, nor suppressing the force of drag. \nThe concorde had a very high maintenance cost, and a high fuel consumption. Take a look at the concorde's engines - without going into too much detail, they're turbojet engines, rather than the large, round and highly efficient turbofan engines you find on typical airliners. Afterburners also consume massive amounts of fuel, adding to the cost. \nIf you take on top of this the fact that, with the internet, it is no longer necessary for one to cross the ocean at quite such a high speed, you've got a death sentence for the concorde. Even at the end of its lifetime, the concorde saw falling passenger counts, and it likely wouldn't be too much better now.",
"Other people have given you good explanations already but I wanted to add a YouTube video that directly answers your questions in a nice manner: _URL_0_\n\nThe basic answer is money and the existence of red-eye flights. It doesn't matter as much that it takes 10 hours to get across an ocean if you can sleep the whole way through.",
"All things considered, the Concorde was a good design. A single hull loss in 25+ years of service is quite a solid safety record. Especially considering the crash in 2000 was caused by debris from another airliner on the runway, and not the Concorde itself. \n\nThe reason they were grounded was mostly economic. \n\nCrossing the sound barrier generates a lot of drag on an airplane. Plus delta (triangle) winged airplanes require higher speeds for takeoff. So there were different engine requirements. \n\nModern jetliners use what's called a turbo fan engine. It has a small turbine core attached to a large ducted fan, which provides most of the thrust. The problem with turbofans is they lose efficiency and supersonic speeds. So in order for Concorde to operate at its planned Mach 2.02, they opted for turbojet engines instead. Turbojets are large gas turbines that get all their thrust from the exhaust stream. They also produce a lot of thrust relative to their size. The Rolls Royce Olympus engines used on the Concorde have a higher thrust-to-weight ratio than the modern GE GEnx engines used on the comparably sized Boeing 787. Problem is turbojets are fuel hungry, and Concorde gulped fuel by the buttload. The Olympus consumes nearly four times as much fuel at cruise than the GEnx does, and that was without reheat. To get the high takeoff speeds and to breach the sound barrier, Concorde was equipped with afterburners. You basically spray raw fuel into the hot jet exhaust so it ignites and boosts thrust, but this is extremely inefficient. So while it could go over twice as fast as a conventional jetliner, it used substantially more fuel doing so.\n\nOn top of that, Concorde could only hold half the passengers as comparably sized airliners due to its narrow fuselage. To break even due to the added fuel expense, you'd have to charge a fortune for tickets. When the travel industry slowed down following 9/11, supersonic transports were just not economically feasible anymore. \n\nAs for why they don't continue research into the supersonic passenger transports (SSTs), there are other factors involved too. Supersonic aircraft create a loud, continuous, thundering sonic boom as they travel. Noise regulations limit them from flying at those speeds over populated areas, which pretty much restricts SSTs to transoceanic routes. Flying at high speeds also puts a lot of thermal stress on the airframes. A lot of Concordes were showing signs of metal fatigue. So they potentially have a shorter lifespan built in just due to physics. \n\nThere are emerging technologies that seek to limit sonic booms, as well as improve fuel economies. But the airline industry is a business, and at the moment the traditional subsonic tin sausage design is still the most economically efficient. There's just not enough demand for high speed travel.\n\n\n"
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3nsuxs
|
where does the doctrine of suicide being a grave sin originate from ?
|
I've seen no mention.of it in the bible or any other text
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3nsuxs/eli5_where_does_the_doctrine_of_suicide_being_a/
|
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"Basically it violates the commandment, \"thou shalt not kill.\" By killing yourself you're taking a human life, which is explicitly banned. In Catholic doctrine it was an especially bad sin because by it's nature there's no way to confess your sin and seek repentance, since, you know, you're dead. "
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526hiz
|
how does antivirus software get created?
|
With so many viruses and malware out there that can do a variety of harmful effects to your computer (up to corrupting your OS), how do antivirus companies like McAffee and Symantec track and effectively create software to combat these viruses?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/526hiz/eli5_how_does_antivirus_software_get_created/
|
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"They scan for activity. \n\nAny program that tries to disable your antivirus, install registry keys, intercept system calls, inject dlls, \n\nIt's impossible to find all the viruses, but it's easy to look for patterns ",
"The guys who make antivirus software know a lot of stuff about (creating) viruses.\nBoth parties (the guys creating viruses and the guys creating antivirus software) want to make a benefit. At one point the guys that create viruses will be paid by antivirus companies, so that those guys can make money legally.",
"Some Antivirus Software take a program trying to run on your computer and compares it to a list of known virus, if it finds a match it prevents the program from executing and deletes it. Other Antivirus software take unknown program and execute it in an isolated \"Sandbox\" where it cannot do any harm to your computer to test if it has any malicious effects.",
" > antivirus companies like **McAffee and Symantec** track and effectively create software to combat\n\nThey don't.\n\nMore seriously though... AV vendors use a handful of tricks to try to detect and combat malicious software. nothing is perfect, though, they just do their best. Some common techniques:\n\n1. blacklists - this is the most rudimentary thing you can do and is the backbone of essentially all modern anti virus software. If you know that a piece of software is bad, you save a signature of it so that the next time you see it you know it's bad and can stop it. the companies have teams dedicated to analyzing software and creating signatures and constantly update their databases.\n\n2. heuristics - this is more sophisticated, you have your software inspect and examine a piece of unknown software in order to automatically analyze what it does, and you make an educated guess based on it. AV usually have options to dial the heuristics up or down since more stringent heuristics detection means more hits means better protection means more false positives.\n\n3. sometimes an AV will just let an unknown software actually run in an isolated sandbox then watch what it does to see if it does anything bad.\n\n4. if you *really* want to be secure, you can use a whitelist system, where you only allow anything in your database. anything unknown gets blocked. this would be a huge PITA to use and is exceedingly rare, and it's not really traditionally part of an AV either.\n",
"A virus is just a program. Its just like any other program on your computer that you use to play solitaire or write an email to your Mom. The only exception a virus has, is that it is usually malicious in nature. Some viruses will target sensitive information and send it back to an attacker, others will just do some dirty work to your files. And most will do both of those things. The issue arises when the antivirus software doesn't know what to look for. Think of antivirus literally as the computer equivalent of our immune system. Our immune system will \"learn\" about a certain virus by one of two ways. Contracting the virus, or receiving a vaccine for it. Antivirus will work much the same. In almost all cases, there are people who study how viruses usually work, and what they are usually after. And then they program the antivirus software to look out for those things via an update too all computers. This is essentially the vaccine. But of course it takes time to make a vaccine for a new virus because people are constantly figuring out new ways to program viruses so that you cannot see what it's up to.\n\nSo you are right, you cannot defend against every virus out there, but you can mitigate most of them because they are all similar in nature. It just takes time to learn how they all work.",
"Their customers run into malware and viruses in the wild and send samples of them to the security companies. The security companies have entire engineering teams devoted to cataloguing and adding signatures for these security threats which then get released to the customers via updated definitions and they are then protected. \n\nMost virus scanning and malware tools will also use heuristics to try to detect suspicious software based on certain red flags they may find even if they don't know 100% it's malicious. In the corporate world these suspect files can be instantly collected on the wire before ever reaching a user and sent to the AV company for further testing and a judgement is made on whether to allow the file or not. All of this is done in the blink of an eye. \n\nA good security policy will involve layers of security though and not just antivirus software. In sensitive environments you will usually see products which look at network activity or scan logs for any incriminating activity, and other products which can lock down an operating system and prevent critical changes from being made to it. Instead of looking for bad things, instead they only allow white listed things to run. Anything not already cleared as safe, would be prevented from running. Anything which might try to alter system files would be blocked immediately. \n\nYou also have devices which do penetration testing against a customers own network and search for un patched or exploitable systems, catalogue them, and then tickets can be created to force the system to update it's security settings or be taken off the network. \n\nSIEM is a good example of log sniffing to find attacks of malware or network attacks. Correlation engines are also used to gleam data from multiple points and assign a risk score to an activity. \n\nFor instance, a system which does not have the latest AV and firewall definitions suddenly visits a website in China that is black listed, this raises the severity of that event much higher. Then say that same user then logged into an admin account but used the wrong password 4 times in a row, but got in on the fifth try. All kinds of alarms would be going off for the suspected brute force attack and the network can respond instantly by locking the user, the network port, etc. \n\nSecurity is starting to become as complex as the human immune system. \n\nRight now one of the worst problems a home user is likely to run into isn't a virus at all, it's ransomware. This is when they are tricked into running software which will encrypt portions of their hard disk and demand money in order to decrypt them. The worst thing is people are obviously paying because they wouldn't keep doing it if it didn't make them money. Always try to have offline backups of any critical data. Keep your family photos, scanned documents, tax returns, documents, etc backed up on a thumb drive, DVD, or removable hard drive and keep them un-docked when not backing up so that any infection won't encrypt your thumb drive or removable drive as well. \n\nSource - This is how I make my living. "
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6d6qj2
|
how do antacids make your stomach feel better after taking them.
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6d6qj2/eli5_how_do_antacids_make_your_stomach_feel/
|
{
"a_id": [
"di0boii"
],
"score": [
4
],
"text": [
"Antacids work by neutralizing the acids in your stomach, making them closer to water. Basically, acids *donate* protons, and bases *accept* protons, so antacids grab up all the protons given up by the acids."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
||
6ibqc6
|
what actually happens inside a woman when she has a miscarriage
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6ibqc6/eli5_what_actually_happens_inside_a_woman_when/
|
{
"a_id": [
"dj52jng",
"dj52xo7"
],
"score": [
3,
3
],
"text": [
"The human body is a very complicated machine and making another human is perhaps the most complicated thing that machine does. For reasons we do not always know, the machine decides the process of making the baby is not working correctly and might even hurt the person making the baby, especially the baby making parts. When this happens, the body creating the baby removes the baby. It's totally normal and although it is very sad for those involved, it is likely the best outcome for the situation.",
"Good comment by /u/mediatechaos.. to add a little more information:\n\nWhen a woman falls pregnant, the man's sperm reaches the woman's egg, gets inside the egg, and \"fertilises\" it, or gives it all the right components to grow into a human. This fertilised egg then needs to sit itself inside the woman's uterus where it can then start to develop. Specifically, the fertilised egg lodges itself in the \"uterine wall\", which is a fleshy, bloody layer of stuff perfect for babies to grow up in. If her body isn't happy with there being a fertilised egg there for whatever reason, it gets rid of it, or \"rejects it\", where it detaches from the uterine wall and comes out of her vagina, also known as a \"miscarriage\"."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[]
] |
||
d31g27
|
why are american schools so incredibly strict about allergies?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/d31g27/eli5_why_are_american_schools_so_incredibly/
|
{
"a_id": [
"ezy4avd",
"ezy6mvf"
],
"score": [
2,
2
],
"text": [
"Parents will take anything well over the top, so in order to save themselves a hassle overall, just ban the thing most likely to set off a crazy parent.",
"To add to some of the other examples, remember that America is the Land of the Lawsuit. Somebody does you wrong? **Sue 'em!!**\n\nSO: if it's your school that has a kid eating peanuts at the same table that your highly-allergic kid sits at, which causes a negative reaction, Who Ya Gonna Sue?? **Everybody!!** -- or, at least, everybody who has a possibility of getting money from.\n\nAND THEREFORE: To prevent your school and your school district and your school principal and your school nurse from being sued again and again, what do you do? Ban peanuts district-wide. It's simple, it's cheap.\n\n > I’m just used to the allergic kids taking care of themselves\n\nNahh, that's not America. Nothing is ever your kid's fault. Everything is somebody else's fault."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[]
] |
||
2qy0i5
|
why is it human instinct to writhe or squirm during intense pain or pleasure?
|
Like when you're being tortured or having an orgasm, you always feel the need to wiggle around.
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2qy0i5/eli5why_is_it_human_instinct_to_writhe_or_squirm/
|
{
"a_id": [
"cnauy5z",
"cnam7l8",
"cnapip0"
],
"score": [
7,
11,
4
],
"text": [
"Living things try to get away from anything causing pain. Evasion tactic.",
"I would imagine that it's an instantaneous, nonverbal way of communicating discomfort,pain or pleasure to other individuals. Without the visual feedback, it might be possible for larger individuals to damage smaller ones without knowing it. Along with squeals, chirps, and yelps, it helps prevent accidental or intentional damage.\n\nAlso, it can act as a nonverbal signal for help to other individuals (in the example of pain or anguish.) You see your fellow human squirming violently from afar and you know something is up.",
"My vote is that the two are reflexive actions designed to further genetics. When experiencing pain, an individual reflexively attempts to avoid or alleviate the source, as it is often hazardous to the health. During orgasm, one reflexively acts in a way that (presumably) encourages fertilization, by offering a more direct or reliable passage for sperm.\n\nIncidentally, I'm told that orgasm is handled by the same sort of pathways your body handles reflex, via a nerve loop in your spine. I'd heard that orgasm research requires an electrode targeted to your spine"
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[],
[]
] |
|
dopa6z
|
how does your body feel pain or heat?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/dopa6z/eli5_how_does_your_body_feel_pain_or_heat/
|
{
"a_id": [
"f5pawml",
"f5pn5fk"
],
"score": [
2,
2
],
"text": [
"All throughout your body are special cells called nerves. There are three types of nerves: in essence, nerves in your brain, nerves in your spinal cord, and other nerves.\nNon-brain nerves have the job of looking at their surroundings and obtaining information. They then send this information through other nerves, in a sort of \"bucket brigade\" handoff style, and the signal travels up the spinal cord into the brain. Brain nerves work together to determine what to do with this information, and they send signals back down the spinal cord to muscles to execute actions. \nNerve signals take some time to reach the brain, and can take sometimes up to several milliseconds. When you've touched a searing-hot pan, those milliseconds _matter_. This is where spinal cord nerves come in. Usually they are just really good at sending signals really fast. However, they can make some (minor) decisions themselves, too. When a pain signal reaches your spinal cord, the spinal cord nerves will of course pass the signal up to the brain. However, since they're closer, and the travel time for signals is lower, they can also act on signals of pain. In this case, they will pull your hand away from the pan. These are _reflexes_.",
"The short version: \nIn your body imagine cells called Neurons (Nerve cells) that form a pattern almost like circuits in a machine. Just picture a whole lot of wires running through your body,carrying information. \n\nThere are certain specific nerves that carry information from special receptor cells that can sense pain or heat and through these nerves, carry this information to the brain which alerts you to the severity, type and location of the thing that you are sensing."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[]
] |
||
2pnyqh
|
how does america's nuke defense system work?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2pnyqh/eli5_how_does_americas_nuke_defense_system_work/
|
{
"a_id": [
"cmyfd7z",
"cmyfepf",
"cmyfhzt",
"cmyjzw3"
],
"score": [
2,
14,
3,
2
],
"text": [
"Um, so far as I know, no one's really worked out a good nuclear defence system that's likely to stop a majority of inbound nukes yet.",
"Nice try North Korea. We're still going to watch The Interview one way or another.",
"Basically, we nuke the shit out of who ever nuked us.",
"Realistically, the Dept of State is the best Nuclear Defense system the US has. The best way to prevent a nuclear exchange is to stop one from happening before relationships get that bad.\n\nAfter that, well things get sort of sketchy. We have missiles and radars which can intercept fast targets, and ones falling from space, both land based and ship based, but so far they can only hit one at a time, so more than a few simultaneous targets would be tough.\n\nBut it is something that is a project that the US MDA is working on, and has probably more than a few black projects related to it. "
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[],
[],
[]
] |
||
2xa72x
|
fcc has classified broadband internet service as a 'public utility.' what does that mean? and how does it differ from the internet service we have now that currently isn't a public utility?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2xa72x/eli5_fcc_has_classified_broadband_internet/
|
{
"a_id": [
"coyapk6",
"coybi69"
],
"score": [
4,
2
],
"text": [
"It currently means you won't see anything change. The way this reads is that regulation will be done by the FCC rather than by ISP's. Comcast can't choose to slow down specific traffic (like Netflix).\n\nChanges can go through, but it would have to be done through the FCC. So it's not a \"net neutrality forever\" change, but it protects it for the time being.",
"Don't think if its been answered but does this affect non-Americans? Everyone answering refers to Comcast and Netflix but we don't have those in my county so I was wondering if this is relevant to just Americans?"
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[]
] |
||
8bsh0i
|
how do self driving cars remain in their respective lanes.
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8bsh0i/eli5how_do_self_driving_cars_remain_in_their/
|
{
"a_id": [
"dx98u8j"
],
"score": [
5
],
"text": [
"They are indeed looking at the lines on the roads, just as a person does. They use video cameras for this.\n\nAs a double check, they can compare their direction of motion to the shape of the road, which they can see on their video cameras and also on a digital map."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
||
5mqa54
|
what causes the "hairs on the back of your neck to stand up" feeling, even when just imagining/reading something scary.
|
Also, why is this feeling usually accompanied by a strange sensation in your stomach?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5mqa54/eli5_what_causes_the_hairs_on_the_back_of_your/
|
{
"a_id": [
"dc5k40q"
],
"score": [
7
],
"text": [
"It's a response to danger. The different parts of your brain can be very bad at communicating with each other, so the bit of your brain that responds to danger (which evolved very early and is close to the brain-stem, and therefore very powerful) doesn't know that the danger is only imagined or on tv or in a book so it triggers the danger-responses that are supposed to help you survive. The part of your brain that knows there is no actual danger overrides some of that fear response, which is why you don't (usually) climb on top of your bookcase every time you open a Stephen King novel, but as this part of your brain developed later and is further from your brain-stem, the message gets through a little late. When someone jumps out at you and shouts 'boo' you scream and your heart rate goes up for a moment before you very quickly calm down because the \"DANGER!\" message is sent out to your body faster than the \"That's just my brother\" message.\n\nThe physical responses you notice are the effects of the rush of adrenaline that is sent through your body by your scaredy-cat brain - in a really dangerous situation this adrenaline would help you run away or fight to survive. You feel it in your stomach because adrenaline changes the way your body digests sugars - this is why some people get diarrhoea when they are nervous about something. The hairs on the back of the neck thing is the same thing you see in animals when they get agitated - you've probably seen the fur stand up in a line down a dog or cat's back at some point. In humans it's left over from the days when we had fur, and it acts as a visible signal to other individuals that we are dangerous and not to be messed with right now and also makes you look larger (if you have fur)."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
|
4byec7
|
if the human eye can only perceive ~10 million colors, why do different tv panels look different when they can all show the same colors?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4byec7/eli5_if_the_human_eye_can_only_perceive_10/
|
{
"a_id": [
"d1dhmks",
"d1di7gc"
],
"score": [
5,
3
],
"text": [
"There are different display technologies and even within the same technology there are manufacturing differences that can effect the colors.\n\nPart of my job is install flat screen TVs in conference rooms and we've had to return TVs because despite being the exact same model they TVs don't look the same side by side. This is usually the result of one TV being from an early batch and one being more recent. ",
"Because not all panels can show the same colors or will show them in the same way. The number of colors is less important than outside limit a TV can show. And no TV can show all the colors you can see.\n\n[Here is a good representation of the visible spectrum.](_URL_0_) RGB stand for Red, Green and Blue, which is what a screen uses to reproduce all the colors. CMYK stand for Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Key(black) which are the colors you use when printing.\n\nIn this image CMYK is completely inside the RGB triangle, which isn't always true. When printing on high quality paper you can get colors outside the RGB triangle (ie colors that a screen can't reproduce), especially in the cyan and yellow areas. But this is a bit besides the point.\n\n[There are also different RGB color profiles.](_URL_1_) Most screens use sRGB. But there are screens capable of showing Adobe RGB, a bigger color space, which is used in the design profession.\n\nBut back to TVs, the difference you see has also to do with contrast. Which mages a difference in how deep the blacks can get. A TV can also put enhance the image to make it seem better, like making colors more vibrant and shadows darker. And then you get in to how well the screen is calibrated.\n\nThere are so many variables that goes in to how the image look, so it's no where near as simple as your question makes it out to be. There are cheap panels and expensive panels, there are panels that artificially change the image to give a different look and other that are calibrated for exact color reproduction. And as you pointed out, you can clearly see there are differences if you walk in to a store with a wall of screens, they wont look the same."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[
"http://www.aldertech.com/wp-content/uploads/color-space-rgb-cmyk.jpg",
"http://mosaicdesignservices.com/webgraphics/presentations/2007-02/images/adobergbvssrgb.jpg"
]
] |
||
60otkh
|
why is it that sometimes my old fruit will just get dried up and hard, but other times it becomes a moldy mess of mushy grossness?
|
I know it's likely something to do with bacteria, but for example sometimes I'll get moldy/squishy oranges but other times the peel will just harden and dry up without any mess.
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/60otkh/eli5_why_is_it_that_sometimes_my_old_fruit_will/
|
{
"a_id": [
"df841xv"
],
"score": [
4
],
"text": [
"I'm the wrong kind of scientist to know for sure, but I think it has to do with whether the food is exposed to enough air to dry it out before the bacteria can make it moldy/soggy. "
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
|
1963ms
|
how do emergency rafts, airplane life jackets, and airplane slides inflate by pulling a cord?
|
You pull a cord and and they inflate, how does it happen?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1963ms/how_do_emergency_rafts_airplane_life_jackets_and/
|
{
"a_id": [
"c8l4b2g",
"c8l4eep"
],
"score": [
2,
3
],
"text": [
"Usually it triggers a chemical reaction which produces a gas.",
"They usually activate a CO2 canister or something that inflates them. "
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[]
] |
|
bsq5ep
|
why is it that tunnels and bridges don't rip themselves apart if the land is constantly changing and shifting
|
For example, the Channel Tunnel between the UK and France must be shifting, right? Even if it's only by a few centimetres each year. Wouldn't this eventually cause a catastrophic failure?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/bsq5ep/eli5_why_is_it_that_tunnels_and_bridges_dont_rip/
|
{
"a_id": [
"eop6s88"
],
"score": [
17
],
"text": [
"That's what the engineers do, is identify fault lines and make sure the tunnels don't pass through any of those areas. \n\nAnd no, the Chunnel is through one solid area of rock, and none of it is shifting. Besides, it's 250 feet below the bottom of the channel so there isn't really any way that a collapse or fracture that huge could happen."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
|
2zmssf
|
why don't major companies ask reddit for its opinion on their product? wouldn't it be a significant amount of free, good information?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2zmssf/eli5_why_dont_major_companies_ask_reddit_for_its/
|
{
"a_id": [
"cpkcxvb",
"cpkd6ay",
"cpkd7gk",
"cpkg61b"
],
"score": [
2,
6,
3,
2
],
"text": [
"It would also be a significant amount of trolling. We'd see ads touting \"New and Improved Tide! Now with More Dicks!\"\n\nMarket research is valuable, but it's worth what you pay for it.",
"Marketing requires a good focus group to see what will sell. The issue with Reddit is everything is opt in. Imagine you sell beer. You want to attract people who don't normally drink your beer so you post \"Reddit, what would make you drink Rsprague Beer?\" It's likely that the only people who response will be people who already drink you beer, to tell you it's great, or people who dislike your beer, to just say it's bad without much additional input. \n\nFocus groups are just more effective. ",
"/r/samplesize is pretty decent. \n\nAdditionally, many companies post stuff in specific subreddits, but its not always greeted with civil responses.",
"There would be too many dick jokes. "
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[],
[],
[]
] |
||
6u245l
|
how is video evidence supposed to be taken seriously as technology advances?
|
They can some pretty incredible things today with camera tricks and computer programming. Also how can you trust that its unedited video?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6u245l/eli5_how_is_video_evidence_supposed_to_be_taken/
|
{
"a_id": [
"dlpae36",
"dlpal26",
"dlpdrhi",
"dlpn8hh",
"dlptl59"
],
"score": [
2,
13,
2,
2,
11
],
"text": [
"If you had a top-tier expert painstakingly manipulating videos, maybe it would get by a subpar defense team. Generally speaking though, there's telltale signs of photo and/or video manipulation that might not be apparent to a casual viewer but if a video's in question, people are going to look closer. ",
"It is a long time since photos and video on its own have been admissible in court. What is needed for photos to be used in court today is a well documented chain of custody that describes who have handled the data and what exactly they did with it. Anyone in the chain of custody may have an opportunity to change the photos so they need to be evaluated for any potential bias in the case.",
"It's true that videos can be altered--but so can audio recordings and paper documents. Even eyewitnesses can commit perjury or misremember the facts. For that reason, it's the jury's task to evaluate the merit of any evidence presented to it--it can decide a witness is lying and disregard that testimony, or that a video is not trustworthy, and use that as a basis for its decision.\n\nThis is why attorneys make arguments and call witnesses to provide authentication for the evidence. The store owner can testify as to his regular procedure for recording and storing data; the police officer will testify how it was obtained; a technical expert may assert the video is genuine. In many circumstances it's actually required, and the attorney can't submit an unauthenticated document.",
"One thing we can still do is timestamps. The data (or a [cryptographic hash](_URL_0_) of it) is sent to a timestamping service, which returns a digital signature that they have seen it at this time.\n\nThis gives a very small time limit for any manipulation, so you'd have to know exactly what changes you want to make in a video stream and have rules prepared for every eventuality.",
"A few points here.\n\nFirst, sure, video editing and manipulation tools are incredibly sophisticated these days. But for really good results, you need studio environments and incredibly well-planned shoots. Taking raw, candid, unscripted footage and convincingly modifying it to depict something that didn't happen is *way* harder than it sounds. \n\nSecond, but just because convincing fakery might be *possible* doesn't mean that it *happened* in any particular instance. It's trivially easy to *dispose* of video, and only slightly more difficult to *selectively edit* video, deleting parts one doesn't wish to be seen. But actually producing *fake* video, even using existing footage, is still quite tricky. Doable, sure, but time-consuming and expensive. Hollywood can certainly do amazing things these days, but at the cost of *millions* of dollars. Seriously, Marvel can easily spend something like half of the budget on the MCU movies on VFX. Nobody outside Hollywood is dropping six figures modifying surveillance footage, and the number of people that would need to be involved in such a project would make keeping it a secret almost impossible. Suggesting that video footage has been fabricated is rightly regarded as wild conspiracy theorizing, not a credible challenge to the authenticity of the video. \n\nThird, just like editing and manipulation tools are sophisticated, so are forensic analysis tools. It's hard to fabricate visually convincing footage, but it's a lot *harder* to do so in such a way that is impossible to detect, whether by analyzing the footage itself or consulting the metadata. What, no metadata? That in and of itself raises huge red flags. So while it might be possible to produce a fake that would be convincing if just played back, anyone who actually needs to rely upon that video as *evidence* is going to have ample opportunity to take a close enough look to detect any tampering. \n\nLastly, in many instances there are facts surrounding particular videos that strongly support the video being authentic and complete. Chain-of-custody has been mentioned [here](_URL_0_), and that's important. But there can also be things about the video itself. You mention \"camera tricks\". Well, funny thing about that. . . a lot of surveillance footage winds up being *useless* precisely because of what might in other contexts be called \"camera tricks\", i.e., something about the framing, zoom, focus, angle, etc. (basically any cinematographic criterion you could care to name), leaves out an absolutely critical bit of information.\n\nRemember the Philando Castile case up in Minnesota? One of the main reasons the officer who shot him was acquitted was that none of the several videos of the event actually showed what the officer saw, from the officer's perspective, in the seconds immediately before the shooting. The footage from the squad car was too far away, and Castile's car and car seat blocked the camera. And as I recall, Castile's girlfriend didn't start recording until after the shooting, so no help there. \n\nAnother case in point: I once represented a guy on a drunken disorderly charge from an incident outside a hotel bar. The bar had surveillance cameras in that area, and I subpoenaed them. Great! Only not so much. As I recall, somebody was standing between the camera and my guy for most of the critical time period, so we never really saw the specific action for which my guy was charged. Oh, and a lot of the action happened off camera, either because everybody was too far to the left. I seem to remember an animated conversation between one man and someone standing just out of the shot. Not Helping. \n\nWell that kind of thing happens *all the time* with surveillance footage. Could footage of this sort be faked? I mean. . . I *guess* so. . . but why would anyone *bother*? I can absolutely see someone cutting out critical passages, but again, that's easier to detect than you might think. But to go through the trouble and expense of fabricating or materially altering video that doesn't really show anything to begin with? What'd be the point? "
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[],
[],
[
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryptographic_hash_function"
],
[
"https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6u245l/eli5_how_is_video_evidence_supposed_to_be_taken/dlpal26/"
]
] |
|
953z7u
|
why do people who die from natural causes usually pass away whilst sleeping?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/953z7u/eli5_why_do_people_who_die_from_natural_causes/
|
{
"a_id": [
"e3pt6ze"
],
"score": [
2
],
"text": [
"I'm not aware of studies which suggest most people die in their sleep. Are you certain your supposition is correct? Certainly many causes of death can result in unconsciousness (well, they all do, but you know what I mean)."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
||
4093mk
|
how come usd is 'the world's currency'? what would happen if it switched?
|
All stock for public companies seem to be in USD and so do oil prices and probably other things. Is there a reason for this? Does it matter?
What would happen if it switched to, say, Euros or Pounds?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4093mk/eli5_how_come_usd_is_the_worlds_currency_what/
|
{
"a_id": [
"cysdnr7",
"cysepjs",
"cysgq9f"
],
"score": [
10,
4,
3
],
"text": [
"The US does trade in some way or another with basically every country (maybe not North Korea), and so every country is equipped to deal in USD. Euros and pounds just aren't as widely used. \n\nTo answer your other questions, no it doesn't matter and no it wouldn't make a difference if we used a different currency. ",
"WWII left European currencies in short supply, the US is a stable government, the US does a lot of trade, and the US offers a lot of attractive investments to foreign investors. If you want to do business with an American company, you need to bring US dollars, and any multinational and country wants to do business with the US.\n \nWe could make up some basket currency for trade and it wouldn't have much effect on any particular country or industry. It may cause some inflation in the US as foreign governments divest themselves of currency reserves, but that's a different conversation.",
"There are currencies that have high inflation rates, for instance, which makes a set amount worth less and less over time. Those are soft currencies and are undesirable compared with the opposite, hard currencies:\n\n > Hard currency, or safe-haven currency is any globally traded currency that serves as a reliable and stable store of value.\n > \n > Factors contributing to a currency's hard status might include the long-term stability of its purchasing power, the associated country's political and fiscal condition and outlook, and the policy posture of the issuing central bank.\n > \n > Conversely, a soft currency indicates a currency which is expected to fluctuate erratically or depreciate against other currencies. Such softness is typically the result of political or fiscal instability within the associated country.\n\n_URL_0_\n\nSome decades ago the Pound was in fact a \"harder\" currency than the dollar, and some centuries ago the Spanish gold \"pieces of eight\" were the hard currency of choice (and relate to the formation of the '$' dollar symbol).\n\n_URL_1_\n\nFor thousands of years, the economically most stable way to store wealth was generally considered to be precious metals, silver and gold, and they were used to coin money and eventually to back currency.\n\nWhen that went out of style for complicated reasons, people still wanted safe havens for preserving wealth, and the US dollar has proved to be more popular for that than anything else in recent decades -- it is considered the hardest of currencies, on average, by most people.\n\n(There are still people who only consider gold to be best, but objectively it fluctuates more than the US dollar.)\n\nThis could change in the future. Before China developed economic problems, some people were predicting that their currency might become the safe-haven hardest currency.\n\nThe Euro's stability is threatened by economic issues in Greece, Turkey, immigration side effects in Germany and elsewhere, so it is considered a good currency but not the one least likely to fluctuate."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[],
[
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_currency",
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_dollar"
]
] |
|
36u83v
|
why is everyone mad at the dea?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/36u83v/eli5_why_is_everyone_mad_at_the_dea/
|
{
"a_id": [
"crh4l9q"
],
"score": [
4
],
"text": [
" > Drug Enforcement Administration agents allegedly had “sex parties” with prostitutes hired by local drug cartels overseas over a period of several years, according to a report released Thursday by the Justice Department’s watchdog.\n\n.\n\n > The former head of the New York Drug Enforcement Administration organized crime task force and a DEA technology specialist were arrested Wednesday morning on charges they allegedly lied on national security documents, denying they ran a strip club in New Jersey, according to a criminal complaint.\n\n.\n\n > NSA, DEA, IRS Lie About Fact That Americans Are Routinely Spied On By Our Government: Time For A Special Prosecutor\n\n.\n\n > DEA Strikes Again: Seize Man's Life Savings Under Civil Asset Forfeiture Without Charges"
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
||
16bcze
|
how does one start to create a new language?
|
Like english. All of a sudden did one guy decide he wanted a new language? Then how the hell did he do it?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/16bcze/eli5_how_does_one_start_to_create_a_new_language/
|
{
"a_id": [
"c7ug40e",
"c7uhv7k",
"c7uivdf"
],
"score": [
3,
6,
3
],
"text": [
"Most (if not all) languages are based upon older languages. English, for example, is an intermingling of mostly Germanic & some Latin languages. \n\nWhen a country or tribe interacts with another country or tribe (through invasion or trade or politics or whatever), it's common, & almost required in some cases, for bits of each language to mix so that people can communicate in a common simplified tongue. This is known as a [pidgin](_URL_0_) language. If a pidgin becomes developed or used enough that it becomes spoken natively, it might become a [creole](_URL_2_) language. Further development on a language in a similar manner & it might become a fully developed language. \n\nHow the first few languages begun, I don't really know, but pretty much all natural languages can be traced back to other earlier languages. \n\nIf you're interested in English specifically, have a look at [this page.](_URL_3_)\n\nSome languages (constructed languages) are just made up by particular people, either as a hobby (like Tolkien's various languages), or to make a \"better\" language (like lojban or Esperanto), but even these are often influenced by the creator's native language or another existing language. \n\nI'm not a linguist, so any expansion/correction on this would be cool.\n\nEdit: [Looking at this page about the origin of the first languages](_URL_1_) gives the impression it's pretty contentious & no one really knows for sure. ",
"Let's separate two things; natural Languages like English and Russian and Chinese, and Constructed languages like Tolkein's Elvish, Star Trek's Klingon and whatever it was they spoke in Avatar.\n\nThe origins of natural languages go back thousands of years - the dawn of mankind. These original languages would have been forms of grunts, whistles, clicks - as long as you can express something to the other caveman, it'll work. There are many theories on what prompted humans to make these sounds - *bow wow* suggests we mimicked animals to express to others in the group which animals were around. *Yo he ho* suggests we made rhythmic grunts as we worked (lifting rocks, carrying carcasses) that helped us work as a team, while the theory of *pooh pooh* suggests our languages started as a series of shrieks expressing fear, surprise or pain.\n\nOver the millennia, communication between two people would improve to help clarify the information being expressed. \"ARGH!\" \"ARGH?\" \"Yes, ARGH! Here! In my leg!\" \"ohhh, ARGH! Yes, I understand ARGH! I had ARGH sometimepast when I stepped on that tssssst.\" Over time, ARGH would become the word \"pain\" and \"tsssst\" would become either Thorn, stone or scorpion, depending on where in the world these people were.\n\nAs tribes grow, people spread out. They encompass new situations and new objects and they need new terms for them. They develop new ways of hunting, of building, of cooking and need new terminology, so the whole vocabulary starts to grow. Eventually you start getting grammar, not only demanding word order (\"me love you\", not \"me you love\") or complex indicators to show the relationships between the things being talked about (I, me, my, mine, myself - all meaning the same person.)\n\nOf course, people won't always agree. You say \"me\" but I say \"mnie\", I think it's a better sound. So we'll have a fight, I'll pick up my stuff and sulk off to the other side of the mountain where I'll have kids and teach them that \"mnie\" is good and people who say \"me\" are idiots. Languages divide, split apart and grow into new versions. Maybe 200 years later, my great-great-grandkids come back over the mountain and start mixing with their cousins again, with the next generation forming a new, third language that's a hybrid of its two parents.\n\nWars, religions, political shifts will see countries forcing their own languages on the people under their control, uniting them under one tongue. They'll then go off and conquer another country, and force that language on them too. If they're successful they'll kill off that invaded language. If they're unsuccessful they'll form a hybrid, where the people speak Language A in one situation (down the pub, at home, on the farm) but speak Language B somewhere else (in court, at school, in church). In that way, English is a mix of Old German, Old Norse, Middle French, Church Latin and a smattering of Greek, all depending on what nation or religion was dominating the British Isles at the time - plus all the odd terms for foreign inventions that we liked and stole such as algebra, mattress and cosmonaut.\n\nNatural languages are in a constant state of flux - pick up a book from 50 years ago and you can tell it's not \"new\". Read a 100 year old book and you won't see them using the word \"hello\" very often; 200 years back and the word \"tomorrow\" doesn't exist. And we haven't even touched all the thees and thous yet. Some countries, like France, will have a government-approved establishment whose job is to regulate the language; to fix the weird bits and ban people from adding unapproved new words. But they're not very efficient, and very often they cause more problems than they solve. \n\nBecause natural languages grow by social consensus, they're normally filled with all sorts of oddities and inconsistencies. When that happens, linguists with impressive beards get stressed and decide \"Zer must be ein better vay!\" They sit down, look at the essentials of a language (nouns, verbs, pronouns and tenses) and start building. They'll decide what sounds they like - s and v are in, for example, but the hacking-up-phlegm noise is out - and they'll try and build logical patterns. Often these new languages are hybrids, where the linguist takes all the good bits from his favourite languages and pools them, such as Esperanto. Other times the languages are designed with a purpose - for the blind, for the deaf, or even as a code so that only a select few people could learn and use it. One of the beautiful things about Tolkein's languages is that he deliberately included inconsistencies and irregularities to make them *seem* more natural, and therefore more believable. \n\nMy absolute favourite artificial language is [Solresol](_URL_0_). It's utterly useless, but the idea behind it is wonderful.",
"The majority of languages are not specifically designed. They just evolved to be what they are. Not even really for a specific purpose most of the time. Take Spanish. It evolved from Latin, and you see many of the same things in the two languages. They both have conjugation (that is, changing verbs to make them do different things like past tense, present tense, future tense). However, Latin also has declension, which is pretty much like conjugation, but for nouns. You change nouns to indicate what they do in a sentence (is the noun the subject, the direct object, indirect object, etc...these will all be reflected in the ending of the noun.) Spanish *changed* from Latin in this very major aspect, and many, many more major and minor aspects. Grammar changed, spelling changed, vocabulary changed, word order changed, pronunciation changed, but latin is still the parent language of Spanish--as well as French, Portuguese, Italian, and Romanian. It should be noted that these languages were already different dialects of proper latin in the first place. Kinda like how a Jamaican will speak english, but a different English Americans speak, and Americans may not understand all the words a Jamaican uses. The languages I mentioned evolved out of Latin in that way. A lot of them were influenced by other local languages already spoken there. \n\nA similar thing happened with English. It was already \"Germanic\" speakers (not really \"German\" but closely related). The Romans occupied England for a few centuries, introducing a lot of vocab. The French invaded England in 1066, introducing a lot of French, and in the middle ages, early modern ages, a lot of scholars still wrote in Latin, and coined words in Latin. There have also been a lot of loan words...Spanish ones, Arabic ones (a lot of words that begin with \"Al\" are Arabic), Dutch, German, Swedish, Chinese, Japanese, native American, etc. They all contributed to the hodgepodge of English. English is now a language Germanic in grammar, but with mostly latinate vocabulary.\n\n_URL_0_\n\nEnglish vocab is 29% latin, 29% French (which is mostly latin), 26% Germanic (German, Dutch, early English), 6% Greek, 4% from people's names, and 6% from other languages.\n\nMost languages have evolved, although not with the same amount of influence of other languages that English had. Some people do create languages, and these are conlangs. They are usually created for specific reasons, mostly to get everyone in the world to speak it, using elements of all the other major languages, and trying to make it as simple as possible. An example of this is esperanto, which is a very simplified romance-based language. One interesting conlang is \"solresol\", which is based entirely off notes (i.e. you can speak it with a musical instrument). Laadan is a feminist language, which puts words in the beginning of sentences to quickly and unambiguously communicate the intent of the sentence (whether it's a question, command, warning, whether it's a hypothetical statement, a statement the speaker *believes* is true, *doubts* is true, etc). \n\nConlangs are created by studying how other languages do things and picking and choosing what you like. Some aim for them being universal, them sounding good, them being entirely experimental, and so on.\n\n\nAlso, fun fact: Nearly all European languages derive from the same language, \"Proto-Indo-European\", one of the major language families in the world, which ranged from England through the middle east all the way to India. This is why so many simple words in these languages are so similar. \"Mother\" in English, \"Madre\" in Spanish, \"Mater\" in Latin, \"Matar\" in Iranian, \"mayr\" in Albanian, etc.\n"
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pidgin",
"http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origin_of_language",
"http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creole_language",
"http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_English_language"
],
[
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solresol"
],
[
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Origins_of_English_PieChart.svg"
]
] |
|
c3xqwp
|
how does salt in a salt flat create almost a large mirror?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/c3xqwp/eli5_how_does_salt_in_a_salt_flat_create_almost_a/
|
{
"a_id": [
"eru0bmf",
"eruatd4"
],
"score": [
3,
2
],
"text": [
"Those are probably the ones where it has just rained and there is a little bit of surface water remaining that actually creates the mirroring effect.",
"Usually it's the [mirage effect](_URL_0_). The sun heats the ground, which warms the air just above it, which changes the speed of light in that layer of air, which cause the light to refract (bend), which looks the same as a mirror that's reflecting (bouncing) light at the same angle."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[
"https://www.physlink.com/education/askexperts/ae428.cfm"
]
] |
||
ns8ih
|
short-term and long-term memory
|
What exactly is the difference? Are these different parts of the brain?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/ns8ih/eli5_shortterm_and_longterm_memory/
|
{
"a_id": [
"c3bjgms",
"c3bjgms"
],
"score": [
9,
9
],
"text": [
"Imagine you're playing peek-a-boo with your friend Jayne, and your eyes are closed. Now, very, very quickly, you open your eyes and can see the environment around you. Then you quickly close them again. Did you see anything? Maybe you saw some shapes, or the outlines of them, but only very basic images. This is one aspect (the sight aspect) of what is called **Sensory memory**, or those very basic, fundamental components of memory. You aren't really remembering anything in the peek-a-boo except the picture you saw, but no further deep-level information. It lasts usually less than a second!\n\nNow, let's say you're playing hide-and-seek. You need to find where Kaylee is, so you keep looking throughout the house. She isn't in the kitchen pantry, so you move on to the living room under the couch, but she isn't there either. Now you think to yourself, well I *remember* that I've looked in these two places already, where should I look next? This is fundamentally called **Working memory** or **Active, or Short-Term memory**. Some say that you can only hold 7, plus or minus 2 \"chunks\" of information in this memory at a given time. A chunk is like a block of information. In our example, it is the locations where Kaylee could be. In other applications, it could be a single number, a group of numbers, or other things. In the U.S. at least, we don't read off phone numbers to people in single digits, we say it in chunks! It would feel weird to tell Kaylee that your home number is 20.....6814......3....119. We use the familiar 3-3-4 chunks to remember phone numbers. 206-814-3119 (not sure whose number this is so don't call asking for Kaylee). So, 7 plus or minus 2 chunks is a general consensus on our working or short-term memory store. It is \"in the moment, current, and what we are working on RIGHT NOW\". It lasts anywhere from a few seconds to a couple minutes.\n\nOkay, now **long-term memory** is probably what you are actually thinking of when you are \"remembering\" something--it is our stored memory that we reference when we think about something like where we live, basic things we know, etc. Imagine now that you and your buddy Mal are building a spaceship: where would you begin? What do you KNOW how to do? Accessing long-term memory is all about our deep knowledge that we don't need to go reference a Book for. You and Mal may both know what parts you need, so you'll think back and look into your long-term memory store to find it, In a ra-ce to see who remembers first. Last one to remember has to Wash your new ship!\n\n\nShort-term memory is largely CONVERTED to long-term memory through practice, rehearsal and repetition. We forget because we're human: there are many theories as to why! Some say it occurs because of interference with new information (good research support)--that we forget some things because new things take their place. Others say memories just fade away, eroding over time (less research support). \n\n",
"Imagine you're playing peek-a-boo with your friend Jayne, and your eyes are closed. Now, very, very quickly, you open your eyes and can see the environment around you. Then you quickly close them again. Did you see anything? Maybe you saw some shapes, or the outlines of them, but only very basic images. This is one aspect (the sight aspect) of what is called **Sensory memory**, or those very basic, fundamental components of memory. You aren't really remembering anything in the peek-a-boo except the picture you saw, but no further deep-level information. It lasts usually less than a second!\n\nNow, let's say you're playing hide-and-seek. You need to find where Kaylee is, so you keep looking throughout the house. She isn't in the kitchen pantry, so you move on to the living room under the couch, but she isn't there either. Now you think to yourself, well I *remember* that I've looked in these two places already, where should I look next? This is fundamentally called **Working memory** or **Active, or Short-Term memory**. Some say that you can only hold 7, plus or minus 2 \"chunks\" of information in this memory at a given time. A chunk is like a block of information. In our example, it is the locations where Kaylee could be. In other applications, it could be a single number, a group of numbers, or other things. In the U.S. at least, we don't read off phone numbers to people in single digits, we say it in chunks! It would feel weird to tell Kaylee that your home number is 20.....6814......3....119. We use the familiar 3-3-4 chunks to remember phone numbers. 206-814-3119 (not sure whose number this is so don't call asking for Kaylee). So, 7 plus or minus 2 chunks is a general consensus on our working or short-term memory store. It is \"in the moment, current, and what we are working on RIGHT NOW\". It lasts anywhere from a few seconds to a couple minutes.\n\nOkay, now **long-term memory** is probably what you are actually thinking of when you are \"remembering\" something--it is our stored memory that we reference when we think about something like where we live, basic things we know, etc. Imagine now that you and your buddy Mal are building a spaceship: where would you begin? What do you KNOW how to do? Accessing long-term memory is all about our deep knowledge that we don't need to go reference a Book for. You and Mal may both know what parts you need, so you'll think back and look into your long-term memory store to find it, In a ra-ce to see who remembers first. Last one to remember has to Wash your new ship!\n\n\nShort-term memory is largely CONVERTED to long-term memory through practice, rehearsal and repetition. We forget because we're human: there are many theories as to why! Some say it occurs because of interference with new information (good research support)--that we forget some things because new things take their place. Others say memories just fade away, eroding over time (less research support). \n\n"
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[]
] |
|
5h5vrk
|
how come there are no mini moons?
|
Why is there only one moon? Shouldn't there be other rocky objects caught in orbit? How come the moon itself doesn't have it's own moons, and those moons have their own mini moons?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5h5vrk/eli5_how_come_there_are_no_mini_moons/
|
{
"a_id": [
"daxno0k",
"daxob2e"
],
"score": [
3,
2
],
"text": [
"There are, but they are much, much smaller. There are also claimed moons, which are basically celestial bodies that appear to have an orbital resonance with Earth but aren't really orbiting it. _URL_0_",
"The moon is to close to earth, it's gravity makes practically impossible to have a stable orbit around the moon. \nThe moon might catch some mini moons (or manmade sattelites), they won't stay around for long"
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[
"https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claimed_moons_of_Earth"
],
[]
] |
|
2f2r9x
|
what is the purpose of the black, mesh-like material seen between the glass in ovens and microwaves?
|
Sorry if the question is unclear, couldn't think of any other way to put it.
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2f2r9x/eli5what_is_the_purpose_of_the_black_meshlike/
|
{
"a_id": [
"ck5cm0r",
"ck5d0w9",
"ck5hdju"
],
"score": [
2,
3,
3
],
"text": [
"That's a shield. Microwaves have a long enough wavelength that they can't go through it, though visible light can.",
"It's a [Faraday Shield](_URL_0_)",
"In microwaves, it prevents the radiation (light radiation, not nuclear) for escaping and interfering with other electronics. Before theses were well developed, you couldn't watch TV, especially lower channels, while the microwave was running."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faraday_cage#Examples"
],
[]
] |
|
7eqrci
|
what's a cellular automaton ?
|
The Wiki just led me to a million different places and now I'm lost. I am trying to understand the history of computing and I came across cellular automatons. They look really cool but turn out to be really complex too. Thanks in advance.
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7eqrci/eli5_whats_a_cellular_automaton/
|
{
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"dq6ttad",
"dq6ya4t",
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3,
2
],
"text": [
"For starters, it's not really an essential part of understanding computing. The idea came about as more of an entertaining thing to do with computers. At best, they're a footnote in the history of computing.\n\nTake a grid. Each cell of that grid can either have a thing in it or not. Now, given some rule based on the neighboring cells, you can decide if that cell has a thing in it for the next generation.\n\nThe original example was [Conway's Game of Life](_URL_0_), the rule were fairly simple:\n\n1. A live cell with 1 or 0 live neighbors dies of loneliness.\n2. A live cell with 2 or 3 live neighbors is happy and survives.\n3. A live cell with more than 3 live neighbors dies of overcrowding\n4. A dead cell with exactly 3 live neighbors gets colonized with new life.\n\nWith these 4 simple rules, it turns out that surprisingly complex patterns can arise. There's a virtually limitless number of different rule sets you can come up with, all of which have different patterns of behavior.",
"To build on what /u/ameoba said, a cellular automaton does not have to be a 2D grid and doesn't have to rely on just immediate neighbors. The second most famous series of cellular automata are the one dimensional ones by Stephen Wolfram. Basically, you have a single line made up of cells. Each cell can be on or off. You draw a line below that based on a simple set of rules determined by a cell and its immediate neighbors. There are 255 possible rules and some produce some really [pretty mathematically significant patterns](_URL_0_). ",
"They're not all that hard, I programmed Conway's Game Of Life into the visualization plugin for WinAmp some years ago.\n\nI guess the \"hard\" part is that it's hard to know how to predict how they will act, and how to create simulations of other things from them.\n\nBut at their core they're quite simple, an iterative application of simple rules on a grid of values."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway%27s_Game_of_Life"
],
[
"http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=rule+110"
],
[]
] |
|
80zdmt
|
why do a significant number of christians (and other religious groups) believe in heaven, but not hell?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/80zdmt/eli5_why_do_a_significant_number_of_christians/
|
{
"a_id": [
"duz9v4i"
],
"score": [
4
],
"text": [
"In every major religion I know about, people pick and choose the portions they wish to believe in. Heck, even among scientifically proven facts, people act this way -- so it's not a surprise they do so in faith-based situations."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
||
1v4ex4
|
why when i leave bread open it dries up fast, but when i simply tie it off it lasts longer? isn't air in the package even with it tied off? why does "fresh air" dry it up faster?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1v4ex4/eli5_why_when_i_leave_bread_open_it_dries_up_fast/
|
{
"a_id": [
"ceol3n8",
"ceongz8"
],
"score": [
4,
3
],
"text": [
"The air in the sealed package quickly reaches a humidity level that's balanced with the bread, at which point it can't suck any more air out of the bread.\n\nIf the bread is exposed to open air, fresh air is constantly in contact with the bread, which is able to dry it out over time.",
"It's counter-intuitive, but stale bread hasn't 'dried out'. The opposite has happened, it has been exposed to too much moisture and the moisture crystallizes the gluten over time.\n\nWhen you keep bread in a bag, you're not locking moisture in, you're keeping it out.\n\n_URL_0_"
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[
"http://kitchen-myths.com/2011/11/19/myth-bread-becomes-stale-by-drying-out/"
]
] |
||
5ipxtk
|
six sigma in hospitals in comparison to manufacturing?
|
From the most I can understand, Six Sigma is best implemented in manufacturing companies or likewise other streamlined settings. I'm trying to find some similarities between what Six Sigma looks like in a health care setting and manufacturing. I'm having some difficulty as most of the Six Sigma implementations I've encountered are with a specific product in mind.
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5ipxtk/eli5_six_sigma_in_hospitals_in_comparison_to/
|
{
"a_id": [
"dba28ec",
"dba3byh",
"dba4rv3",
"dbaomcl"
],
"score": [
2,
3,
2,
2
],
"text": [
"I once did a paper on it (sadly don't remember much of it). But what I figured is that when it comes to services 1) it's very challenging to even apply 6 sigma there and 2) if you really want to do that then in every particular case you need to develop a system of evaluation that will go along with it. And that seems like a separate science, especially in health care with so many variables. ",
"I currently work in the healthcare field; have my BBM (Bachelors in Business Management) and just participated in an extensive Healthcare Lean Training course. You see both Six Sigma and Lean principles all over, which is currently catching on at a lot of major healthcare facilities in the US. The biggest thing I can say is that (obviously) the customer is going to be different, and the focus in healthcare is on the quality of what you and your employees are processing, not necessarily the quantity. That said, the principles for Six Sigma (and Lean) can still be used to take out all the non-added value steps to processes that the employees do. For example; taking the processes of an Outpatient Clinic. (Loosely) You have the patient brought into Triage, then to Registration, then to see the doctor, while seeing the doctor, the patient can have labs and an x-ray taken, back to see the doc, then they go to discharge. At each one of those places, the processes can be examined to see which steps don't add any value to the process as a whole and can be trimmed down to it's most essential parts. Cutting down the time that each patient is at each spot before and after being seen by the doctor all the while increasing the amount of time that the doctor is with the patient. So I guess you can say it's not necessarily about producing the most of a high-quality product in a certain amount of time, as much as it is trying to get patients through the clinics smoothly while all the important peripheral processes get taken care of in a timely manner while increasing the quality of the multiple services we provide to the patient.",
"Six Sigma should be a very specific concept of manufacturing process and quality. However, it has been taken by clueless management and consultants and turned into a buzzword for lean and some lean processes.\n\nLean in health care is about studying patient, information, and resource flows, watching their interaction, and trying to simplify the current system. Most systems evolve over time, and get complex in ways that are useful at the time, but stay around and have future changes made. \n\nOne great lean exercise in hospitals has been having attending physicians follow the paperwork they so physically and see where it goes. This can remove several iterations of back and forth that can be combined.",
"A number of the replies so far have equated six sigma with lean; they're related in purpose but quite different in focus. \n\nLean methodologies (e.g. PDCA) attempt to reduce waste in a process. Examples of wastes in a health care setting include the wait to see a doctor (time waste) or the interminable elevator ride from the ER to x-ray (travel/conveyance waste). Home care could provide several opportunities as well. \n\nSix sigma methodologies (e.g. DMAIC) attempt to reduce defects or errors in a process. Examples of defects in a health care setting include incorrect dosage or a long wait time to see a doctor. Billing is probably another good candidate here. \n\nBoth methods seek to understand root causes for the problems and eliminate them. For the wait time example (suggested in both lean and 6s) the patient is subjected to a waste of their time - and perhaps their health - and the facility is likely wasting energy housing a patient in a room they could turn over. Both wastes may be due to a defective routing or prioritization system, which is what 6s would try to address. "
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[],
[],
[]
] |
|
3cqhc7
|
why are 0 calories of coke worse than 300 from something like a milkshake , or some fruit cocktail ?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3cqhc7/eli5why_are_0_calories_of_coke_worse_than_300/
|
{
"a_id": [
"csxzyrk",
"csy0upe",
"csy75do"
],
"score": [
10,
2,
2
],
"text": [
"What in the world makes you think that 0 calories of (Diet) Coke is worse than 300 calories from a milkshake?",
"It isn't? \n\nI mean unless you're starving and need the calories...\n\n",
"This question comes with the assumption that something is true which isn't necessarily the case, making it difficult or impossible to answer. This post has been removed. \n\nHowever, asking about the difference between zero calorie beverages and calorie-containing similar versions would be fine to ask here. "
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[],
[]
] |
||
1s52rk
|
what is the difference between real-d 3d and digital 3d?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1s52rk/what_is_the_difference_between_reald_3d_and/
|
{
"a_id": [
"cdtzoot"
],
"score": [
2
],
"text": [
"RealD 3D is just a specific format of viewing 3D movies in theaters. Digital 3D is the overall term for movies that are shown in 3D"
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
||
7w7dwy
|
why does itunes check for updates immediately after installing updates?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7w7dwy/eli5_why_does_itunes_check_for_updates/
|
{
"a_id": [
"dty2v9r",
"dty301a"
],
"score": [
4,
2
],
"text": [
"When you're releasing a new version, you only test a certain amount of versions back for upgrade paths. It takes resources to try and test more and more versions. As a result, you start dropping the single upgrade support and relying on the system to help the user get there over one or two upgrades.",
"The version that you download and installed is a major version. Its checking for small patch updates that affect only a few binaries - these minor updates only apply to that major version. \n\n_Why don't they just update the major release package that you download?_ With each new major release you'll have a big regression test that validates all previous functionality wasn't broken, along with thousands of hours of QA testing. To make sure that the latest version works on Windows 7, works on Windows 10. In English, in French, in Turkish.... on a tablet, on a desktop. etc. etc. Upgrading from 7 previous versions. \n\nFor the minor fixes that are being downloaded secondly only isolated testing may be required, so they can be published more directly. Maybe the patch is only required if you're an Italian Windows 10 Professional user."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[]
] |
||
4ledky
|
could we simulate feelings, tastes and sensations in our brain?
|
I searched around and I couldn't find this question. Basically, would it be possible to install some kind of ... "something" to imitate tastes, feelings and pain in our brain without it actually happening?
Ex in the future, if I wanted to eat a steak dinner, I could just press a button and "mimic" the taste without eating it.
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4ledky/eli5_could_we_simulate_feelings_tastes_and/
|
{
"a_id": [
"d3mn6j8",
"d3mnepo"
],
"score": [
3,
2
],
"text": [
"Yes, we can... but it requires brain surgery and is highly *highly* invasive. You're basically cutting open someones skull and poking around in the brain with specialized tools... but yes you can make people experience all sorts of things with the right knowledge and tools.",
" > Basically, would it be possible to install some kind of ... \"something\" to imitate tastes, feelings and pain in our brain without it actually happening?\n\nConceptually yes, but with our current knowledge and tech it isn't yet possible. We know that poking around in the brain can stimulate some experiences but doing it reliably, safely, and *targeted* is not quite there yet.\n\nAlso the more complex an experience the more difficult; we might be able to cause the feeling of pressure on two fingers and a portion of your arm by triggering a portion of your brain, but simulating a steak dinner would require access to many different areas in precise ways. And even then it would be a massive leap forward to make the experience *interactive*! More probably we would just be able to trigger the vivid recall of a steak dinner you already had."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[]
] |
|
10hflz
|
medicare, medicaid, social security, and welfare in the u.s.
|
What does each program do? Who is eligible?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/10hflz/eli5_medicare_medicaid_social_security_and/
|
{
"a_id": [
"c6di0wo"
],
"score": [
3
],
"text": [
"Social Security - Retirement benefits. Working people have taxes taken out of their pay that are put in the general fund. When they retire at 65 or later, they're eligible for benefits based on lifetime income and other factors. Also, some younger people with disabilities can collect Social Security Disability Insurance.\n\nMedicare - Health insurance, primarily for the elderly. Younger people with disabilities are also able to get health insurance through Medicare.\n\nMedicaid - Health insurance for low income families. There is a means test, which basically means you have to earn below a certain amount of money to qualify. Medicaid **aids** needy families.\n\nWelfare - This encompasses several different programs. Social Security is considered a welfare program. Some of the other more prominent welfare programs include food stamps (originally literal stamps that could be redeemed for food), which provide low income families basically with a debit card that can only be spent on food, and unemployment insurance, which is given to people fired from their job if they meet other requirements."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
|
3mtcgb
|
what do companies do with excess goods produced but are not sold before the launch of a newer better product? do they get recycled or destroyed?
|
I've always looked at the sheer amount of (possibly useless and unsellable) stuff large factories pump out on massive volumes and wondered what happens to them. Looking at you China.
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3mtcgb/eli5_what_do_companies_do_with_excess_goods/
|
{
"a_id": [
"cvhx2y1",
"cvhxcy9"
],
"score": [
5,
2
],
"text": [
"The first thing they do is try to unload the old stuff at a discount. If that doesn't work they'll either sell it to discount retailers or push it all to other markets where it won't compete with new products.",
"1. First off, new and exciting products aren't usually a surprise. Companies do a pretty good job of timing their production so this is minimized.\n\n2. \"Better\" is a relative term; there are other considerations, like price. Some people are OK with a lower-quality product as long as a lower price is reflected. In fact, there are plenty of scenarios in which a lower-quality product is preferred--for example, someone wants to get an electronic device for a young child, which has a higher chance of getting lost/broken. So even if a better product is launched, there's still a market for the older device.\n\n3. There are plenty of places that sell outdated stuff for just that reason: overstock stores and dollar stores, for instance. They will usually buy products like this in bulk at a discount and then sell it."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[]
] |
|
3esqhi
|
how are treatments to things like depression even discovered?
|
What exactly happens that tells doctors and scientists that "this treatment" will help?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3esqhi/eli5_how_are_treatments_to_things_like_depression/
|
{
"a_id": [
"cti1dzv"
],
"score": [
2
],
"text": [
"The same way as other treatments. Experimentation. They test a prototype of a drug or something like that on mice, then move on to testing it on human volunteers. Then the volunteers are monitored against a control.\n\nLikewise, things like therapy are monitored for results, and psychologists use the results to further refine treatments."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
|
5ht1li
|
how does a tiny bug on my windshield walk around with ease while i'm going 80 on the highway? shouldn't the pressure squash it against the glass and render it motionless?
|
Or in the least make it difficult to move- like the way that gravity carnival ride does with us?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5ht1li/eli5_how_does_a_tiny_bug_on_my_windshield_walk/
|
{
"a_id": [
"db2tb1t"
],
"score": [
2
],
"text": [
"As far as I know this is due to two diferente effects, first is know as No-Slip condition that is when a fluid finds a solid layer it acquires the speed of the solid layer in other words the relative velocity is equal to zero, from that you have a distribution o increasing speeds of the fluid in exponential relation with the distance from the solid boundary so being the bug really small probably the speeds of the wind that It feels are relatively small, that in adition to the aerodinamic shape of some bugs will produce little force, then it will feel some force in case of acceleration wich is the effect that attach you to the walls in the carnival rides, again this force may be small because the acceleration of the car may be small even if the speed is high, and the bug mass is small"
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
|
jzuep
|
why is there a limit on how big animals/insects with exoskeletons can grow?
|
I've read and heard that animals and insects with exoskeletons can only grow so large. Apparently it has something to do with atmospheric pressure and/or relative weight.
Here is just one reference from a Wikipedia article on the [Coconut Crab](_URL_0_):
*It is the largest land-living arthropod in the world, and is probably at the upper size limit of terrestrial animals with exoskeletons in today's atmosphere*
If it is true that the shells would be "too thick," why wouldn't they just evolve to be thin and light enough?
Thanks in advance!
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/jzuep/why_is_there_a_limit_on_how_big_animalsinsects/
|
{
"a_id": [
"c2gfrl1",
"c2gfwqy",
"c2gglhj",
"c2gfrl1",
"c2gfwqy",
"c2gglhj"
],
"score": [
13,
2,
3,
13,
2,
3
],
"text": [
"You've really asked two questions here.\n\nThe limit on how big you can get has to do with the [Square Cube Law](_URL_0_).\n\nIf you take a cube 1 foot in length on each side and you double it, it is twice as tall as it was, but it has four times as much surface area and *eight* times as much volume. And it turns out its ability to support its own weight grows with the length of the sides, while its weight increases with the volume. So the bigger it grows, the weight grows much faster than the ability to support its weight, and eventually it will buckle.\n\nThe same thing applies to living things. Growing larger makes you heavier faster than it makes you able to support your weight. It's not just an issue of thickness of shells (though that's part of it), it's a limitation of the materials, and a limitation of the muscles that you'd need to move the shells.\n\nNow, for your second question, why wouldn't they just evolve to be thin and light enough? Well, why haven't humans evolved to have bulletproof skin and adamantium skeletons (or a nonfictional material)? It'd be cool, but species don't evolve to get cooler, and they don't get to pick how they evolve. It's a semi-random process (super simplified version: lots of random changes happen, but only the good ones stick around for future generations).\n\nIf the coconut crab was going to die out because it's not big enough, then it would actually get bigger or die out. But since it seems to have survived for a long time at roughly its current size, the only way it'd get bigger is if it randomly got bigger and that turned out to be an advantage. And, apparently, to get bigger and not collapse under its own weight, it would have to both evolve to get bigger *and* evolve some sort of stronger/lighter shell composition *and* evolve stronger muscles to support the increased size, all in the same generation. So that makes it so unlikely to happen all at the same time that it's basically impossible.",
"Insects breathe through their skin, allowing for only relatively small pores through which to obtain oxygen, meaning that there is a limit to how large, and therefore how much of a surface area/mass ratio the creature can support with the oxygen in the atmosphere. Since the Earth's atmosphere used to have more oxygen, arthropods could grow much larger, leading dragonflies over three feet long and the like. Like this: _URL_0_\n\nI would cite sources, but I'm lazy. I'll find some if you really want them.",
"Their respiratory system doesn't scale well.\n\nImagine a chicken truck. It has cages with chickens in it, and the chickens are close enough to outside air that they can breathe.\n\nNow imagine a chicken supertanker. You'd need a more complicated system to keep the chickens from suffocating.\n\nIn mammal chicken supertankers, there is a system of pipes through which air is forced to and from each chicken cage.\n\nIn an arthropod chicken supertanker, there are air pipes that get air near the chickens, but (if I understand this right) there aren't pipes to take air away, and the system for moving air is very simplistic and seems to involve waving a few fans, if that.",
"You've really asked two questions here.\n\nThe limit on how big you can get has to do with the [Square Cube Law](_URL_0_).\n\nIf you take a cube 1 foot in length on each side and you double it, it is twice as tall as it was, but it has four times as much surface area and *eight* times as much volume. And it turns out its ability to support its own weight grows with the length of the sides, while its weight increases with the volume. So the bigger it grows, the weight grows much faster than the ability to support its weight, and eventually it will buckle.\n\nThe same thing applies to living things. Growing larger makes you heavier faster than it makes you able to support your weight. It's not just an issue of thickness of shells (though that's part of it), it's a limitation of the materials, and a limitation of the muscles that you'd need to move the shells.\n\nNow, for your second question, why wouldn't they just evolve to be thin and light enough? Well, why haven't humans evolved to have bulletproof skin and adamantium skeletons (or a nonfictional material)? It'd be cool, but species don't evolve to get cooler, and they don't get to pick how they evolve. It's a semi-random process (super simplified version: lots of random changes happen, but only the good ones stick around for future generations).\n\nIf the coconut crab was going to die out because it's not big enough, then it would actually get bigger or die out. But since it seems to have survived for a long time at roughly its current size, the only way it'd get bigger is if it randomly got bigger and that turned out to be an advantage. And, apparently, to get bigger and not collapse under its own weight, it would have to both evolve to get bigger *and* evolve some sort of stronger/lighter shell composition *and* evolve stronger muscles to support the increased size, all in the same generation. So that makes it so unlikely to happen all at the same time that it's basically impossible.",
"Insects breathe through their skin, allowing for only relatively small pores through which to obtain oxygen, meaning that there is a limit to how large, and therefore how much of a surface area/mass ratio the creature can support with the oxygen in the atmosphere. Since the Earth's atmosphere used to have more oxygen, arthropods could grow much larger, leading dragonflies over three feet long and the like. Like this: _URL_0_\n\nI would cite sources, but I'm lazy. I'll find some if you really want them.",
"Their respiratory system doesn't scale well.\n\nImagine a chicken truck. It has cages with chickens in it, and the chickens are close enough to outside air that they can breathe.\n\nNow imagine a chicken supertanker. You'd need a more complicated system to keep the chickens from suffocating.\n\nIn mammal chicken supertankers, there is a system of pipes through which air is forced to and from each chicken cage.\n\nIn an arthropod chicken supertanker, there are air pipes that get air near the chickens, but (if I understand this right) there aren't pipes to take air away, and the system for moving air is very simplistic and seems to involve waving a few fans, if that."
]
}
|
[] |
[
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coconut_crab"
] |
[
[
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Square-cube_law"
],
[
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meganeura"
],
[],
[
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Square-cube_law"
],
[
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meganeura"
],
[]
] |
|
2b3wsi
|
why is it when something is to heavy to carry in one hand, your hand starts shaking?
|
:)
Edit:
*too
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2b3wsi/eli5_why_is_it_when_something_is_to_heavy_to/
|
{
"a_id": [
"cj1llt7"
],
"score": [
27
],
"text": [
"Because you are losing control of the muscle. \n\nMuscles work in groups. As some of them contract, others relax. But it isn't necessarily 100% relaxed or contracted. More often than not, it is somewhere in between.\n\nWhen you overexert a muscle it will do something that is sometimes called \"quaking\" or \"wobbling.\" It means the muscle is about to fail because it has been pushed too far. As it does this your ability to do fine control of the muscle also fails. The minute adjustments you didn't even realize you were doing to keep things steady just start to fall to pieces. Muscles that are associated and aren't taking the major load try to stabilize and compensate while the muscles that are taking the real weight are trying to give up do to exhaustion.\n\nThere is also a bit of a neurological element in play. There is a condition known as a *physiological tremor* which everybody has to some degree or another. It's a normal tremor that occurs in all voluntary muscle groups but is generally too small and subtle for us to notice. It can sometimes get worse with intense emotions like anger or fear and, in some people, caffeine can make it worse. Something else that makes it worse? Exhaustion.\n\nSo, muscles failing and a normal shaking that you don't typically notice gets exaggerated."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
|
4uab60
|
recurve bow vs compound bow
|
How do they work and what are the strengths and weaknesses of each?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4uab60/eli5_recurve_bow_vs_compound_bow/
|
{
"a_id": [
"d5o8fj0"
],
"score": [
9
],
"text": [
"Recurve bows get the name from being curved the \"wrong\" way when unstrung, ie with the tip away from you when held as if you were going to shoot with it. That means that when you do string them, they have more tension in them than they would have had if they were straight. Other than that it works precisely as you might imagine.\n\nCompound bows use (usually) pulleys, which even if you do nothing \"funny\" has the advantage that you can use a bow that's more rigid and therefore less \"flappy\". You can do that because the pulleys gives you a mechanical advantage. You can also make the limbs almost horizontal, eliminating most of the kickback you get from the limbs (of course the arrow being shot means there must be an equal and opposite reaction, but you don't have limbs going forward any more).\n\nBut you can have some more fun with the pulleys if you make them not quite round. By varying the diameter, you can change the draw force curve to a better shape. Typically, ramping up quickly, then letting off (meaning it gets easier to draw past that point). Ramping up faster than a normal bow means you can put more energy into it overall, because you're not \"wasting\" that first part of the draw on low-force drawing. The total work you put in is the area under the draw force curve, so for maximum total work for a given maximum draw weight the force should ramp up as quickly as possible. The let-off in the end makes it easier to hold the bow fully drawn, which helps you aim with less trembling and wastes less energy (holding a bow drawn drains energy because of how our muscles work, but performs no useful work).\n\nSo they're great, but there are couple of disadvantages, the most obvious is that since it's a more complicated bow, there's more that can go wrong with it. Also they're dangerous for a novice to use, improper handling (such as bad release technique) can cause string derailment which can cause \"bow explosion\". Dry-firing is especially dangerous, of course you should never do it with any serious bow (those dumb elastic band based toys will deal with it) but compound bows in particular are unforgiving and \"explodey\".\n\nSource: have done archery as hobby - not compound though."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
|
dicoje
|
does light have mass and/or weight?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/dicoje/eli5_does_light_have_mass_andor_weight/
|
{
"a_id": [
"f3us4eq"
],
"score": [
5
],
"text": [
"It possesses momentum and energy, and can curve spacetime and be affected by the curvature of spacetime, but it does not possess what we call mass.\n\nYou can internalize this as understanding mass has the property of inertia, in that a force can change the speed at which mass travels. Light cannot change its speed. It does not speed up, it does not slow down, and possesses no acceleration. Either light is moving at the speed of light or it does not exist."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
||
3qussz
|
why does the gop debate on all the networks, especially on the liberal minded ones, but the democratic party doesn't debate on fox?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3qussz/eli5_why_does_the_gop_debate_on_all_the_networks/
|
{
"a_id": [
"cwii2rr",
"cwimlj2",
"cwioljv",
"cwj0yl7"
],
"score": [
3,
10,
2,
2
],
"text": [
"This is not correct - the GOP is not doing a debate on MSNBC, nor are they doing one on PBS. Unless you're counting the basic broadcast news networks as \"liberal minded\", I'm not sure which liberal minded network you're referring to. Four out of the first eleven debates are being held on Fox News or Fox Business.",
"The parties control which network their debate is on. The republican debates held and scheduled are:\nFox\nCNN\nCNBC\nFox Business/WSJ\nCNN\nFox\nABC\nCBS\nNBC and Telemundo\nFox\nCNN and Salem media\n\nThe democratic debates are:\nCNN\nMSNBC\nCBS\nABC\nNBC\nPBS\nUnivision\n\nSo OP's premise is incorrect. Republicans aren't on MSNBC, and democrats aren't on Fox. They're both on the more mainstream networks.",
"Political parties are private organizations, and they can decide set up the debates however they wish.\n\nAlso, since the Democratic race is much more settled than the Republican on, they have scheduled fewer debates.",
"The problem here is the perception that networks are inherently conservative or liberal minded.\n\nFox and MSNBC are the only two that are heavily and permanently entrenched in diametric extremes. Virtually all other networks tend to express views from both ends of the spectrum. In general, most networks express a liberal bias on social issues (such as gay marriage), and a conservative bias on fiscal issues (such as tax reform).\n\nThe perception that \"mainstream\" media has a liberal bias comes largely from Fox News pandering to conservative audiences. Fox has a desire to have a monopoly as a conservative news source and so it stands to gain from the perception that all other news networks are biased towards the other side. This has, unfortunately, become such a common belief as a result that even the Republican Presidential candidates can use it as a crutch to avoid having to answer uncomfortable questions.\n\nThough, in all fairness, that's also the reason that the Democratic candidates won't be debating on Fox. The bias of any network, whether real of merely perceived, affects how seriously many people will take the news it attempts to present.\n\nConsider this, it wouldn't be called \"Mainstream\" media if it only catered to one extreme side or the other. It's known as mainstream largely because it's what a majority of the population uses as their news source. So either a majority of the population leans to one side politically (which is clearly disproven by the country vacillating between left and right during elections), or the perception of a liberal bias is just that; a perception only."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[],
[],
[]
] |
||
2b3b8r
|
when is it safe to open the microwave door?
|
This might be a stupid question, but a friend of mine just said that I should always let the microwave completely finish before opening the door because waves are still "bouncing around" before the time is up. Is there any truth to that?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2b3b8r/eli5_when_is_it_safe_to_open_the_microwave_door/
|
{
"a_id": [
"cj1dk4l",
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],
"score": [
3,
2,
2
],
"text": [
"No. Waves don't work that way.",
"The moment you open a microwave door it shuts off automatically. So it is safe to open the door any time as opening the door causes the microwave to cease operation.",
"Thanks for your comments! I'll make sure to tell her she's paranoid next time I see her."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[],
[]
] |
|
4xlp6f
|
my wife and i are on the keto diet and my 7 year old daughter asked how meat had no carbs even though the animals eat carbs. i didn't have a very good answer
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4xlp6f/eli5_my_wife_and_i_are_on_the_keto_diet_and_my_7/
|
{
"a_id": [
"d6ggv9u",
"d6ggwtf",
"d6ghdva",
"d6ghwfj",
"d6gi4tx"
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"score": [
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3,
3,
2,
2
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"text": [
"Herbivores are basically machines for turning plants into meat.\n\nThey break down carbs and starches and use some of them for fuel and the rest for making meat, milk, and more cows.\n\nObligatory \"Keto is fuckin' silly. Eat some vegetables weirdos.\"",
"Meat does have carbs. It has sugars in it (that is how it browns), but it is low carb. The animal uses the carbs that it consumes to fuel it growth, let it move, and fuel its various bodily functions. Just like us excess carbs are converted into fat and stored in that manner. The only carbs left in the meat by the time you eat it are the unused glucose in the cells and blood of the animal. It is there, but it is low in concentration. ",
"the animals use carbs right away and maybe store a very small amount of them.\n\nthey aren't MADE of carbs. The saying \"you are what you eat\" well that doesn't apply to the part of the food that you burned as a fuel source. It only applies to the parts of the food that became absorbed into your body. Carbs either get used, or they get converted to fat and stored away (no longer a carb).\n\n",
"Basically animals store some carbs from their food in their muscles and liver but only in small amounts. The rest is either broken down into carbon dioxide and water for energy production or converted into protein, with any excess carbs being converted into fat for storage.",
"Remember that plants basically convert the sun's energy into carbohydrates. Animals basically convert the plant's carbohydrates into protein. Then the ground basically converts the animal's protein into hydrocarbons, which we can burn to make fire energy like the sun. \n\nReal, REAL basically. "
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[],
[],
[],
[]
] |
||
11g2ke
|
how come when you have an ingrown toe nail it swells and i can feel my blood pulsating through it?
|
Its really pissing me off and I don't know how to stop it
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/11g2ke/how_come_when_you_have_an_ingrown_toe_nail_it/
|
{
"a_id": [
"c6m6cr6"
],
"score": [
4
],
"text": [
"Ingrown toenails can cause damage to the surrounding tissues. When those tissues are damaged, your body's inflammatory process is activated, causing more blood and antibodies to rush toward that spot, to try and repair the damage. This causes the warmth, redness, swelling, and pulsating sensation. Ingrown toenails can be tricky to treat. If it's a recent thing, then you can probably have a better chance at \"training\" ou toenail in which direction to grow. It can be rather painful, though. I have an ingrown toenail as well, and sometimes, it starts to get so painful that I have to dit it out with tweezers. If you do that, take a tiny piece of rolled up paper towel and slip it under the ingrown toenail to kind of redirect its growth. Something else that is really important to remember, is that (if posible) only ever clip your toenails straight across. Never around the edges or sides. Doing that can stimulate your toenail to grow in the direction it was clipped. Unfortunately, once that process has started, it can be difficult to reverse.\n\nIf you have had an ingrown toenail for a long time, then I would recommend seeing a podiatrist who can give you a more accurate way of treating it. If your have one that gets frequent infections, then I would STRONGLY suggest seeing a podiatrist as soon as possible."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
|
2sxue5
|
why did this weekends reddit super story lose up votes over time?
|
If any of you have been following the story about the man who is investigating his wife to see if she's cheating on him, you know those posts are receiving a ton of upvotes. Last night when he posted update 3, more or less the conclusion, it shot all the way up to 12,000 upvotes, then over an hour or two dropped to 6,000, an hour or two later down to 4,000 and and over night all the way down to 2,500. Why is the post losing upvotes? I doubt its because people are actually downvoting it?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2sxue5/eli5_why_did_this_weekends_reddit_super_story/
|
{
"a_id": [
"cntuh6z",
"cntxb9l"
],
"score": [
3,
3
],
"text": [
"It's reddit's algorithms doing their thing.\nMainly to prevent votebotters from seeing if their bots have been made ineffective.",
"I think people are starting to question the validity of the story. The live stream from the PI got a lot of people calling bullshit"
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[]
] |
|
27kt1l
|
why is it a lit cigarette won't ignite gasoline fumes but the bic that lights the cigarette does?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/27kt1l/eli5_why_is_it_a_lit_cigarette_wont_ignite/
|
{
"a_id": [
"ci1rtde"
],
"score": [
6
],
"text": [
"What makes you think that a lit cigarette won't ignite gasoline fumes? \nI would contend that the ember at the lit end of a cigarette **would** indeed ignite petrol if there were enough fumes and oxygen present to sustain combustion. However you could say that the flame produced by the Bic would ignite the fumes more readily than the ember on the cigarette would. This is because the flame from the Bic is much hotter and spreads that higher heat over a larger volume. I know this is ELI5 but I couldn't think of a simpler way to put that. Hope this Helps.\n\n-Knox"
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
||
3sr7ni
|
difference between trap, trans, edm and all related types of music.
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3sr7ni/eli5_difference_between_trap_trans_edm_and_all/
|
{
"a_id": [
"cwzspyh"
],
"score": [
2
],
"text": [
"How very much I wish [Ishkur's Guide](_URL_0_) was still being updated."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[
"http://techno.org/electronic-music-guide/"
]
] |
||
br2qcr
|
why do products that have an active ingredient need other ingredients?
|
[deleted]
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/br2qcr/eli5_why_do_products_that_have_an_active/
|
{
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"eo9l37q",
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],
"score": [
2,
7,
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],
"text": [
"Stabilizers, flavorings and diluents.\n\nSome active ingredients break down. Most medicines taste really bad and so they need to put into a pill that either tastes yummy (like a gummy vitamin) or encased in a tablet.\n\nSome active ingredients need to be diluted because they can be damaging in high concentrations or because the amount of active ingredient is so small it would be difficult to get proper dosing with out diluting it.\n\nIn the case of topical medications the active ingredient usually needs to be suspended in a liquid or cream in order to be spread evenly across the affected skin.",
"One good example is artificial sweetener. 99% of what's in those little packets is filler, because most artificial sweeteners are *super* sweet. So sweet you only need a tiny, tiny bit to make your coffee sweet. They have to bulk out the contents with filler because most people aren't going to deal with trying to put a milligram of sweetener in a drink.",
"Alot of filler. Most medications have a good amount of filler to make the pill have enough bulk for you to hold. \n\nAnother kind of non active ingredient is making product pour right. Alot of spices have fine grade silicon dioxide powder in them. Silicon dioxide is basically sand."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[],
[]
] |
|
7o6s3h
|
how bad is it for the united states when countries like pakistan stop trading with the us dollar?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7o6s3h/eli5_how_bad_is_it_for_the_united_states_when/
|
{
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"ds7958v",
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"ds7jvs9"
],
"score": [
5,
3,
2
],
"text": [
"Pakistan is only using the Yuan for [bilateral trade with China](_URL_0_), not all trade.",
"On the grand scheme of things it can reduce the worldwide demand for the US dollar which can have the effect that of causing its value to fluctuate compared to other countries. Realistically I don't think it would have that much effect. ",
"Those conspiracy theories are conspiracy theories. Countries have always been free to do whatever they wanted; they use dollars in foreign contracts because the foreign people on the other side trust the dollar more than the local currency. \n\nNo one wants to make deals in a currency that is inflating at 75% a year. \n\nAlso, the biggest shift in the world of international currency came just 15 years ago when Europe introduced the Euro. And nothing happened to the dollar. \n\nThe dollar has power because you can buy American things with it and America is the biggest economy (or 2nd biggest, depending on how you measure) in the world, and it is fairly stable (meaning you can always trade it in for other currencies too)"
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[
"http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/news/world/pakistans-central-bank-allows-yuanbased-trade-with-china/article10010331.ece"
],
[],
[]
] |
||
5anhqn
|
it is said that we smell things when their particles enter our nose. if this is the case, why can we smell solids and liquids if their molecules are bonded together?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5anhqn/eli5_it_is_said_that_we_smell_things_when_their/
|
{
"a_id": [
"d9hu9ek"
],
"score": [
18
],
"text": [
"Because molecules of those solids or liquids come lose and float in the air, which we can then inhale and smell. Yes, when you smell poop, it is literally because molecules of the poop have come loose and are floating around and into your nose.\n\nUsually the stronger smells are chemicals or compounds that are more volatile than an other ordinary solid or liquid components of some substance (basically, they are more likely to be carried off into the air)."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
||
3wr1lr
|
how is it possible for two forks to balance on a toothpick???
|
It's hard to explain without seeing it performed, but when two forks are interlocked and rested on a toothpick, they balance, seemingly defying gravity. I am amazed as to how this works.
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3wr1lr/eli5_how_is_it_possible_for_two_forks_to_balance/
|
{
"a_id": [
"cxyfedj"
],
"score": [
2
],
"text": [
"Often, the weirdly balanced objects that seem to defy common sense have their mass distributed so that the centre of mass is below the point where the object is supported. When this occurs, the physics is similar to a pendulum and the object is in stable equilibrium. When the object is moved slightly, instead of the centre of mass pulling it further from equilibrium, the centre of mass pulls it back to equilibrium. \nTLDR: if you can assemble objects so that the centre of mass is below the point of support they \"fall\" into a balanced position rather than falling over."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
|
e6aywx
|
how do dividends work in a small company?
|
Having watched shark tank, I’m curious how dividends work in small companies. I know the show is nothing like reality, it was just the basis for this question.
If I have a company I had two different early investors- one who has a 10% share and one who has a 15% share, who determines when dividends can be drawn?
If my company gets to a point where it’s earning enough revenue to net 100k profit after reinvesting for growth, what’s to stop me from issuing myself a 100k salary instead of receiving profit in terms of dividends?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/e6aywx/eli5_how_do_dividends_work_in_a_small_company/
|
{
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"f9oxciu",
"f9p1hqa",
"f9p79mq"
],
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12,
7,
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"text": [
"The investors will require clauses in the operating agreement. These often include limits on spending above a threshold without approval and specifics on compensation.\n\nExperienced investors know how to structure the agreement so everyone makes money.\n\nEdited to add: \nAlso, as the person running the company, you have a fiduciary responsibility to protect the interests of the shareholders.",
"In a small company, the early big investors are probably on the board of directors. Major decisions like CEO salary and whether to declare a dividend are typically a negotiation between the CEO and the board. \n\nThe CEO might argue that he needs more pay, but if the board votes to pay a dividend instead, the CEO is out of luck. Of course, the CEO could threaten to quit. Like I said, it's a negotiation.\n\nWhen you do declare a dividend, it's a fixed amount per share. So the investor with 15% would get 50% more than the investor with 10%.",
"A lot of times, nothing. You need to be very careful being a minority investor in a small company. Read the shareholder agreement carefully. Small companies are very hard to valuate, and it's hard or impossible to sell your shares."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[],
[]
] |
|
24z56o
|
why are 9/11 rescue workers getting sick?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/24z56o/eli5_why_are_911_rescue_workers_getting_sick/
|
{
"a_id": [
"chc2i0k"
],
"score": [
6
],
"text": [
"Buildings (especially skyscrapers) contain all sorts of materials (plastics, fiberglass, etc.) that are fine when they're just sitting there inside a wall, but are harmful or carcinogenic if they're thrown into the air and inhaled. 9/11 caused a giant cloud of dust and debris that the rescue workers were continuously inhaling as they searched for people to rescue."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
||
a58dk8
|
what causes tics?
|
Not the insect lol, I mean involuntary motor function.
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/a58dk8/eli5_what_causes_tics/
|
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"text": [
"From what I understand there are two types of tics: one is involuntary, like the occasional muscle spasms in your thigh or bicep. A little twitch that is triggered by false alarm. The second is... semi-involuntary (if such a term makes sense). \n\nThe second type is when you feel the need to do the tic (whatever that may be, jerking your head upwards, humming, kicking out your leg etc.), sort of like an itch. It is not exactly involuntary because you CAN stop yourself from doing it. It is just that NOT doing it requires a large amount of willpower, again sort of like an itch.\n\nSupposing that you don't have any medical conditions which may cause a tic (like Tourette's, as someone mentioned) the most likely cause is that your body needs to \"chill down\" a bit, relieve some tension. Maybe you are stressed and a tic is a good way to release some built-up energy.\n\nPersonally, I have only visited a neurologist once quite recently and am healthy. However, I always remember myself having at least one tic. I am a nervous individual overall, but recently, with final exams and all, I have noticed a couple tics popping up, some being annoying and even exhausting.\n\nIf you know that you are healthy, but have tics, I propose not to worry. I see some articles online suggesting medication etc. but that is unnecessary and dangerous. Try to relax and sort out any stress-inducing issues you may have.",
"It's like when you sneeze and at the same time close your eyes, except that sneeze is talking to girls and closing your eyes just happens to be your head flying backwards uncontrollably. ",
"Tourette's is passed down genetically. The exact gene and or cause is still unknown. \n\nIt is known that environmental factors play a big role in how severe a persons tics are. Stress and nervousness are the primary triggers. My brother tics a shit ton when he is upset though his tics are minor (small facial twitches and sharp inhales through the nose). His Tourette's/OCD has improved significantly from when we were children.\n\nOCD is closely linked to Tourette's and may have a similar genetic cause. They are quite similar with involuntary actions/repetitions. \n\nEdit: When I say \"passed down genetically\" I don't mean that a close relative has to have Tourette's. We inherit our genes from out parents in the form of chromosomes, 23 from each. Shit goes wrong with genes all the time in the form of mutations.\n\nFor people with Tourette's they have a genetic disorder. Somewhere there is a mutation of their genes and it causes changes in the chemicals of the brain that control voluntary actions. \n",
"It’s when your brain misfires signals to the muscles that they should move. It is made worse through anxiety and other states that would make you more tense. This is why certain anti-anxiety and anti-depressants can double as treatments for motor tics and Tourette’s. If you have excessive anxiety it’ll make your motor tics more prevalent.\n\nA large amount of the population has motor tics of some form, but they’re usually not very noticeable if you don’t know what you’re looking for. Most non severe cases will appear in youth and become far less prevalent when you finish puberty.\n\nI was diagnosed with a mild form of Tourette’s and was treated with a combination of two medicines. One of which was an anti-anxiety/anti-depressant. I had various tics that were very noticeable, but after I reached my early-mid 20s most of them stopped with only the occasional heavy blink.\n\nInterestingly, you’re more prone to have motor tics if you have a curvature in the spine like scoliosis. I have a very slight curvature.\n\nEdit: lots of folks asking, but I had a prescription of Orap (used for motor tics) and Citalopram (treats anxiety and depression). However, this probably won’t work for severe Tourette’s because it can only be taken in very low dosages together. I had to get an MRI once a year because I’m higher dosages those two medicines combined can harm your heart. I went through lots of different medicine that never really worked or the side effects were worse than the treatment but those two worked perfectly.\n\nIf you have motor tics that interrupt your daily life you should see a neurologist.",
"As far as TS tics, they are 100% voluntary. Strange, but true. \n\nELI5? It's like an itch. Drives you crazy till you scratch it. And you might scratch even if your skin is raw. \n\nI have TS and if I snap my head back, clear my throat, or over-extend my leg, I'm doing it on purpose. \n\nTics are the result of compulsion. Lots of folks with OCD have Tourette's, and lots of folks with Tourette's have OCD. What doctors are starting to learn is that OCD, TS, picking disorders, hair eating, ect... all fall into an obsessive compulsive spectrum. Some people have none, one, two, even five different symptoms. \n\nWhen I feel the urge to do a tic, I have an overwhelming compulsion to do so. Even if my tongue is bleeding, I will still bite it. Because as much as it hurts, the pain is still less than the torment of not doing it. \n\nSometimes it passes on its own. Most time it takes 5 or more times \"doing\" a tic before it passes. The thing is, the urge is I overwhelming. It almost always wins. \n\nNicotine really helps. It was a wonder drug for me. \n\nTo add to the confusion, someone else with TS might read this and think \"WTF? TS is nothing like that!\" Thats because tics are a symptom not a disease. Both the flu and lung cancer cause you to cough, but they are quite different. \n\nFor some people tics MIGHT be involuntarily, but they are still diagnosed with TS. \n\nFor being relatively common, it is,surprisingly not well understood. This is because it doesn't kill you and most people can manage without treatment. So there is little interest or $$$ devoted towards studying it. ",
"Does it make sense that I feel like I observe more eye twitching (or small tics like that) when I'm dehydrated? ",
" Desmond Morris (famed zoologist) called tics a \"displacement activity\" meant to allay peoples' anxieties in any given situation.",
"You can also have facial spasms on one side of the face, which are totally involuntary. A common cause of that is a blood vessel in the back of the head being so close to that nerve, that the nerve is always excited and sends a signal to the muscles. It is treated with Botox, which works quite well.",
"OK I read through the thread but I want to ask about mine which isn't anxiety or compulsion related. When I shave my face with my electric razor there's a spot on my lower left chin that, as soon as the razor goes over it, my lower left eyelid twitches, once. If I go over the spot more my eyelid will not twitch again. It only happens the first time I go over that spot with the razor.\n\nSo what is this? It sure doesn't cause me anxiety and there's no voluntary compulsion about it. I actually find it kind of amusing. And I haven't always had it, it started in my mid 30's.\n\nNerve got crosswired somehow? Why does it only happen once per day? Why is my chin linked to my eyelid?!?!?",
"I have a hand tremor and the neurologist I spoke to as a child of about 6 or 7 explained it like this:\n\nIn your brain there's a faucet that controls your hands. If you're still it's off and if you need to move your hands your brain turns on the appropriate amount of hot and cold water to get that perfect mix to do what you want. Well if the faucet gets a leak then a little bit of water drips all the time and your hands take that as a command for a little movement. ",
"None of what I read determined cause just explained the action. Why the hardwired hiccup ? Why did the brain request the action to begin with? ",
"I had tics when I was younger. I went tic free for 15 years and now they are back. I can't stop flexing my eye brow muscles and it gets very frustrating. It's been 3 weeks straight of pure irritation. I don't know what to do or why they are back ",
"Let's say you're on the free way driving around and it's blocked by traffic. And then you start honking your horn really loud at the guy in front of you. And he jumps but there's nowhere to go, so he ends up just giving gas really fast and breaking 2 feet ahead of him? That's kind of what happens. Your muscles have a lot of information traveling down your pathways, so much information passing between channels and perhaps some information is going faster than others and kind of honks and there's nowhere to go because they're so close together traveling so fast, so you get a little jolt.",
"I have mild tourettes syndrome. It has been explained to me as this:\n\nSignals are kinda firing non stop, telling muscles to move but normal brains are better at saying no. Tourettes brain is a yes man.\n\nThere is muscle function waiting at the ready, like how there's water pressure always at the ready in your sink but a proper piping system has no leaks and only lets out water when you explicitly direct it to, by turning the knob.\n\nFor me it just feels nice to randomly flick my wrists and neck and stuff. I don't yell things like the common characteristic and it's so mild most don't notice. ",
"Magnesium deficiency, the brain needs electrolytes in order to function properly. Your neurons are misfiring- not enough juice “electricity”. Also get Epsom salt for baths ",
"it is an issue with dopamine, contrary to popular belief dopamine isn't really \"the pleasure chemical\" but it instead modulates motivation and motor function. an issue with dopamine such as hypersensitivity can cause problems such as motor tics\n\nan example of this can be seen in amphetamine microdosing - extremely small doses of meth/amphetamine (a dopaminergic stimulant) in people with tolerance to the drug can cause dopamine hypersensitivity and drasticly lower one's tolerance to the drug, but can also cause permanent motor tics as a result of dopamine hypersensitivity",
"Would be lnterested to know how many of you diagnosed with TS have experienced any type of trauma? Including stress during pregnancy with you or interventions before during or after your birth? Also what does the state of your relationships look like/ physical touch/ and exposure to amphetimines or extended screen time?",
"I have no proof to present to you, but tics are be caused by a variety of things all relate to the nervous system. In saying that, you are what you eat, your bodies cells can not be higher quality than the food that you consume. \n\nThe vast majority of food produced today is :\n\n\\-Covered in biocides (designed specifically to attack the nervous system of insects). Insecticide, herbicide, fungicide, etc. \n\n\\-Grown in poor soil. Any soil that is tilled every crop, and only uses NPK (nitrogen, potassium, phosphorous) fertilizer lacks the \\*essential\\* trace minerals such as copper, iron, zinc, and iridium. So the food may have carbs, proteins, and fats, which you need to survive each day, but they will lack the 20\\~ other elements on the periodic table that are essential to life. This is where the term 'empty-calories' comes into play. \n\n & #x200B;\n\nSo the biocides are something that are going to be detrimental to the nervous system that already exists, and the low mineral density of the majority of food is going to produce poor nervous systems, and allow current systems to decay over time. \nThe nervous system is similar to wiring, now imagine what happens when wires start to decay in a computer or a phone. Biology is more robust and forgiving, so instead of instantly breaking if a wire fails, the body still functions, but will be prone to problems. \n\nI can not specifically target an answer because the variables are near infinite, and the lack of essential minerals causes all sorts of different problems, \n\n & #x200B;",
"I've had a variety of tics since childhood (scrunching eyes, touching face, popping jaw, rolling eyes aggressively, waving my hands in front of face to create motion). I can't tell you exactly what neuron or chemical in my brain is causing them, but I can explain WHY the tics are necessary from my perspective. The short answer is it feels like doing these actions releases pressure, and if I don't do them the pressure builds up until I do them.\n\nHere are a few other \"inexplicable\" things that feel similar to me but other people seem to find more relatable than \"I HAVE TO WAVE MY HANDS IN FRONT OF MY FACE NOW\":\n\nYou haven't felt itchy all day, but suddenly you're trying to hold still and you feel an itch, and it just gets worse... now you're itchy everywhere. You feel itchy right now reading this. There's nothing wrong with your skin though. There's nothing on you. But now you're scratching anyway. And now you feel better.\n\nRemember when you saw that huge spider in the bathroom and suddenly felt like there was a spider crawling on you? What are the odds there's one on you right now? Like on your shoulder? Close to your neck? That's silly! Thinking about a spider doesn't cause spiders to just magically appear, but now you're brushing off spiders that you KNOW are imaginary. And now you feel better.\n\nIt's not really all that cold right now. It's not hot, but it's not cold... but suddenly you're feeling a chill up your spine. Now your whole body is shuddering suddenly, your head and shoulders shiver briefly, and now it's gone.\n\nThere are probably medical and scientific explanations for all these things, and they'll probably change 100 times before we sort things out, but from a \"user's perspective\" I'm just doing something I learned through trial and error that makes a need go away.",
"I make an involuntary audible tsk and tweak my neck in a particular way. Rarely happens, maybe a couple times a month, and seems to have something to do with the combination of being cold/cooler and needing to urinate at least a little bit. I can keep from doing it if I feel it coming on, but like an unscratched itch, it feels better if I just let it happen. I assume it's some strange neurological fuck up. Didn't have it my whole life. Probably developed in my mid to late twenties",
"I have Ehlers Danlos Syndrome and dysautonomia. I get ticks when I have an imbalance of electrolytes or when I'm dehydrated. They are also triggered when my autonomic nervous mis-intreprets blood pressure and heart rate, in other words an over reactive fight or flight response. They are also more common if I have too many stimulants, or if I don't sleep well.",
"The irony is that the motor function is technically completely voluntary. As someone with Tourettes myself, there are a few ways to explain it simply. I like to say that it is similar to when your nose itches like crazy and you just \"need\" \n to itch it. You can delay it for a short time, but you have to scratch it at some point. That's the way I feel tics, scratching an insatiable neurological \"itch\"."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
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[],
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[],
[],
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|
70a939
|
why do mobile games have such a boom in popularity and then inevitably become abandoned in a relatively short period of time?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/70a939/eli5_why_do_mobile_games_have_such_a_boom_in/
|
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"Mobile games are new and fun for a while, but the problem is there is no depth to hold the user's attention for a long period. Take flappy bird as an example. There is a certain challenge to get a high score and then keep beating it. That's all there is to it, nothing more to do when you get a one of a kind score. Eventually, this will become stale, repetitive and boring and you want something new to hold your attention.",
"I think that trend may be different in other countries, especially Asian countries. Games like Kings of Glory (mobile MOBA) seem to be very popular and have a lot of depth, progression, and mastery.\n\n\nI think the difference is that mobile developers in the US (full disclosure...I work in gaming in the US) tend to make mobile games geared toward the current mobile players...casual players.\n\nI think there are some games (Vainglory?) that are breaking this trend and hopefully they’ll be successful in capturing more hardcore gamers so we can get good games on mobile that I can play for 100+ hours. ",
"There's no money in continued development of mobile games. Lack of hardware specs mean games can't get that complicated without isolating users that don't have all but the highest-end phones. If it can't run well on last generation's iPhone/Android, you've lost 60% of your market before publishing. \n\nContinued development that adds content and various game modes means each update will require more and more of your user's limited storage space. Sure there's ways to expand it, but 90% of users will just uninstall before figuring out how. \n Especially when they go looking to free up space for pictures and porn and see your app topping the list of those using HDD space. \n\nAlso, there's just no money in it. If users bought Flappy Bird $2, and you add a new level, they're not going to pay $2 again. But if you take the new level, launch it as Flappy Bird 2, they'll pay $2 all over again. \n",
"Because most are specifically designed to suck in and lock down a core segment of paying players (superusers). The basic strategy is to make it free and easy at first, but after a while suddenly make it much harder without paying for the in-app purchases. The vast majority of players get to this point, or maybe make a few purchases, before the grind gets boring and they give up. The games are never truly abandoned though, a small percentage of people get addicted and buy lots of in-game stuff to keep their progress and that is where the game makers get their money. Look up \"freemium\" for more info on how this concept works.\n\nThe short of it is, the cycle you describe is by design. A mass of people are attracted with marketing and free, easy content. But the ultimate goal is to get a small core of addicted, paying users. ",
"Mobile games are new and fun for a while, but the problem is there is no depth to hold the user's attention for a long period. Take flappy bird as an example. There is a certain challenge to get a high score and then keep beating it. That's all there is to it, nothing more to do when you get a one of a kind score. Eventually, this will become stale, repetitive and boring and you want something new to hold your attention.",
"I think that trend may be different in other countries, especially Asian countries. Games like Kings of Glory (mobile MOBA) seem to be very popular and have a lot of depth, progression, and mastery.\n\n\nI think the difference is that mobile developers in the US (full disclosure...I work in gaming in the US) tend to make mobile games geared toward the current mobile players...casual players.\n\nI think there are some games (Vainglory?) that are breaking this trend and hopefully they’ll be successful in capturing more hardcore gamers so we can get good games on mobile that I can play for 100+ hours. ",
"There's no money in continued development of mobile games. Lack of hardware specs mean games can't get that complicated without isolating users that don't have all but the highest-end phones. If it can't run well on last generation's iPhone/Android, you've lost 60% of your market before publishing. \n\nContinued development that adds content and various game modes means each update will require more and more of your user's limited storage space. Sure there's ways to expand it, but 90% of users will just uninstall before figuring out how. \n Especially when they go looking to free up space for pictures and porn and see your app topping the list of those using HDD space. \n\nAlso, there's just no money in it. If users bought Flappy Bird $2, and you add a new level, they're not going to pay $2 again. But if you take the new level, launch it as Flappy Bird 2, they'll pay $2 all over again. \n",
"Because most are specifically designed to suck in and lock down a core segment of paying players (superusers). The basic strategy is to make it free and easy at first, but after a while suddenly make it much harder without paying for the in-app purchases. The vast majority of players get to this point, or maybe make a few purchases, before the grind gets boring and they give up. The games are never truly abandoned though, a small percentage of people get addicted and buy lots of in-game stuff to keep their progress and that is where the game makers get their money. Look up \"freemium\" for more info on how this concept works.\n\nThe short of it is, the cycle you describe is by design. A mass of people are attracted with marketing and free, easy content. But the ultimate goal is to get a small core of addicted, paying users. "
]
}
|
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||
5bk6k7
|
why do cell phone/internet providers only focus on "new customers"?
|
I can't talk for any other country, but in Canada, cell phone and internet providers often give really good discounts to "new customers only".
Now it does make sense that it would bring in new customers, but it also tells existing customers they could just switch to another provider to exercise their "new customer deal".
That has been happening with my family, and other families that I know. Internet Company A would tell me "for 3 months we can give you a 20% discount on your bill"; then after 3 months we would just switch to Company B since they're always welcoming new customers to give discounts, and company A only says "that was only for 3 months, so we can't help you anymore. You can change providers or whatever you want but your deal is done".
It's the same problem for cell phone providers. They give so much more benefits to new customers, while giving nothing to existing customers. The time has come for me to switch to a new phone, and nothing seems beneficial if I decide to stay with my provider. My provider gives me a very tiny discount compared to almost 50% subsidization for new customers. I am pretty sure I will switch providers, which is definitely not a good thing for my current provider.
Is there any good reason for this? Am I missing something? or are providers just being douchebags?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5bk6k7/eli5_why_do_cell_phoneinternet_providers_only/
|
{
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"text": [
"Because changing cell phone providers is a hassle that many won't put up with, and the cell phone market is saturated. So the only real way to grow is to take customers from other carriers. "
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
|
1xs7do
|
if electricity travels at the speed of light then why don't we get instant recharges in batteries when we plug them to a power supply?
|
Thank you I always wondered about that
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1xs7do/eli5_if_electricity_travels_at_the_speed_of_light/
|
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"text": [
"Electricity doesn't travel at the speed of light. I'm not sure how fast it travels, but I know that the electrical signals in the body are around 250 mph. ",
"Not a scientist, but electricity doesn't travel at the speed of light. \n\nAlso something to think about, any energy in real life scenarios on earth (not in a vacuum) are incurring resistance from other objects. ",
"Imagine a water hose that pumps water out at 1000mph, impossibly fast. Now imagine using it to fill up an Olympic size pool, but the hose is only as wide as a standard drinking straw. \n\nThe water would come out quickly, but not very much would come through. This is the difference between amperage (Amount of electricity) and voltage (how fast the electricity travels). The quality of the wiring determines how much electricity can flow through and how quickly it flows. \n\nYour cell phone can only handle so many amps at such a voltage, and that determines how long it will take your phone to charge. ",
"First, an electric field moves at the speed of light *in the material*. Different materials have different speeds of light that are always slower than the speed of light in a vacuum.\n\nSecond, while fields may move at near-light speeds, the charged particles they move around do not. For a given applied field difference across a wire (aka, you plug it into the 120Vrms wall socket), you will get a particular flow rate of charges/second (some # of Amps). The number charges passed though a wire each second depends on how much the wire resists the movement of charges (V= I*R).\n\nThird, and this is what really limits charging times, battery capacity is measured in Amp-hours (amps are a measure of charge/time, so amps*time = charge). In theory you could recharge a 0.1 Amp-hour battery by giving it 1 amp for 6 minutes (1/10 hour), but the chemistry and construction of the battery puts a limit on the amount of current it can handle.",
"Electrons are in-compressible. The signal moves at the speed of light. It's really similar to a [Newton's Cradle](_URL_0_).\n\nThe electrons themselves have been theorized to move at the speed of honey down a slight incline.\n\nIn theory, fast recharges are possible. In practice, though, it leads to batteries heating up. The common battery used for electronics, the li-ion battery, is extremely dangerous and flammable when charging too fast or over charging.\n\nThere's a couple of designs for batteries which store their energy in a liquid. Recharging can be accomplished either with a charger or by replacing the discharged liquid with charged liquid. This would be ideal for cars. (I'm blanking out on the Wikipedia article, can someone get this for me?)"
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[],
[],
[],
[
"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mFNe_pFZrsA#t=12"
]
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|
43n40g
|
how is having muscles "healthy"?
|
those guys with lots of muscles are considered healthy but how ? how can muscle make the body better besides just looking good?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/43n40g/eli5how_is_having_muscles_healthy/
|
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"text": [
"It depends on how you define health. Medically speaking, being 'healthy' generally incorporates: having low blood pressure, a good cholesterol/lipid profile, low BMI, normal blood sugar, being a non-smoker ... all the things a doctor looks at in a normal checkup. Also, being free of major diseases and avoiding other risk factors like unprotected sex and substance/alcohol abuse. Rigorous weightlifting can have a positive effect on many of those things, except of course the last few that are voluntary decisions.",
"For one, big muscles come from big exercise. Exercise improves the health of your heart, lungs, and bones, so having large muscles can indicate good health in other areas.\n\nAlso, having more muscle mass increases your metabolism, helping to prevent you from getting fat. Since obesity is linked to heart disease, it's good to avoid excessive weight gain. ",
"In order to have big muscles, you have to exercise. Exercise is healthy.\n\nIn order to have highly defined muscles, you have to diet to achieve very low body fat. Low fat diets are healthy.",
"Muscles are an expression of human potential. We evolved in an environment without recliners, in which you had to chase your food to death.\n\nExercise is just what we call \"pretending that we're still cavemen\". It shapes our bodies into what they're supposed to be."
]
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|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
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|
2crw88
|
if an erection is made by blood filling your penis, why don't we always have an erection?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2crw88/eli5_if_an_erection_is_made_by_blood_filling_your/
|
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"Because your body is able to regulate how much blood flows to certain regions of your body. In fact, you do not have enough blood to have everything in your body function optimally at the same time.\n\nAnyways, there is always blood flowing through your penis, but when it gets time to get a rise, what happens is that blood flow in is increased, but out-flow is decreased, causing it to...get flooded. This leads to engorgement. However, because there's minimal outflow, the blood in your penis can get a bit stagnant over time, which is why there's the whole 'erections lasting longer than 4 hours should consult a doctor' warning on viagra and other boner pills.",
"Because normally, the blood that goes into the corpora cavernosa of the penis through the arteries, is going back out through the veins. \n\nWhen a person gets an erection, the blood flow to the arteries increases and the veins that are supposed to carry the blood away close up. \n\n",
"there is a muscle 'down there' that you don't have concious control over which is like a ring around the OUT vein from your penis. when you are aroused this muscle tightens, and restricts the blood flow out of your penis, with the IN vein still pumping blood in.\n\nthis means you have more blood going in than going out so the pressure increases and you get an erection. the more aroused you are the harder it is.\n\nOn a tangential note: \"God gave man a penis, and a brain, and only enough blood to run one at a time\""
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[],
[]
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||
3f108n
|
will the coax cable in our houses ultimately limit the bandwidth of our home internet?
|
Random thought, I have Verizon fios and they claim to be 100% fiber, but even then once it gets to the house the converter or whatever it might be runs it through the coax in the house, then obviously ethernet.
What's the maximum speed of coax since it's just copper inside?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3f108n/eli5_will_the_coax_cable_in_our_houses_ultimately/
|
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"text": [
"There is a limit, but unless the cable is seriously old and bad quality it'll be up in the gigabits per second. \n\nThere are a lot of factors, how old the cable is, how well it's shielded, how many users are on the same line, what the upload/download split ratio is. It's not the sort of thing you could easily find a figure for and say \"That one.\" ",
"Honestly, we don't really know what the maximum speed of Coax is yet. I wont get into the particulars, but the standards and protocols for sending data over coax are being improved at a fairly steady rate. The cable modems of today can easily handle 10x the bandwidth of a cable modem from 1997.",
"Try taking a look at this [Data Over Cable Service Interface Specification](_URL_0_).\nThough it does not tell the final speed of coax, it does tell the current (theoretical) maximum speed of DOCSIS 3.0.\n\nAt some point I guess they will not be able to cram more 1's and 0's through coax.\n\n",
"Yes the coax cables do present a bottleneck for bandwidth. This is partially why it is hard to find extremely fast internet in America. \n\nThe next step in increasing internet bandwidth is called FTTH: Fiber To The Home. This is where an actual fiber line reaches your house.",
"Technically yes. Any cable has a maximum speed that it is designed to handle, or that the devices it connects are designed to reach.\n\nSome times the technology behind everything improves and you can use better devices to squeeze more throughout out of a cable (DSL over Dialup using the same 2 wire phone cable, for instance) but you will eventually reach a physical limit.\n\nTheoretically, the maximum speed over Coax is is pretty high- the DOCSIS protocol (world standard for adding data channels to existing cable TV line) is capable of delivering more than 1 gigabit per second download speeds (1.2 on the US standard, and 1.6 on the European standard) However, that is tempered by two factors: one, the upload speed is much smaller, and two, this is often shared between multiple customers.\n\nThe thing about Coax is that it is basically using a lot of different frequencies to transmit data along the cable (some of those frequencies are used by the existing cable TV signal, for instance) so up to a point we can revise standards to add more frequencies to carry data for faster data transmission. (of course, poor quality cable can't reliably deliver signals in all frequencies, so that cable's length and quality would have a huge impact on maximum speed)"
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[],
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"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DOCSIS"
],
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[]
] |
|
1s3fj9
|
what exactly does a symphony conductor do? i never see any of the musicians staring at him, they're all reading there music.
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1s3fj9/eli5_what_exactly_does_a_symphony_conductor_do_i/
|
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"text": [
"Bassoon Hero here. It may not look like it, but we definitely look at the conductor. Except maybe the trombone section, screw those guys.",
"Honestly a good orchestra can play most songs they know and rehearsed together just fine without a conductor. Time wise, the conductor is most important when the tempo changes, or when there is a pause, or fermata, in the music. He directs the tempo change and keeps everyone together, and he also ensures that in the pause everyone ends and begins again at the same time.\n\nOne of the most important things he is also doing is giving stylistic interpretations to the players. Notice how his motions, size, facial expression, body language, etc matches the music? Obviously the players should know all the expressiveness in the song, since they have rehearsed it, but it is much easier and more effective when you've got the conductor there reminding everyone and driving it. You can't help but change your playing to match what emotions the conductor is expressing. It's actually quite amazing.",
"I've been a long time lurker but I gotta answer this one.\n\nThe conductor does a few things,\n\nFirst, he's the boss. When you're trying to organize more than 50 people, Somebody needs to have the final word. If something goes wrong, if the violins come in early, if the Bass Drum misses his queue, he's in charge of getting things back in line during the live performance. You don't see this often, but it's necessary.\n\nSecond, he is everyone's ears. He knows better than anyone in the symphony how people sound. As a trombonist I may believe I'm pretty loud, the saxophones in front of me might think I'm TOO Loud (they often did) and the Bass drum might think I'm a pansy and I can go louder. (they were located behind me and could shake the auditorium) The conductor is the only one who can hear all three of us in the same way the audience can and give us orders to adjust accordingly on the fly. Have you ever seen the SNL sketch more cowbell? _URL_0_ The conductor prevents that sketch from happening in a live performance.\n\nFinally, the conductor gets to modify the performance and has total say over anything that isn't expressly written. A good example is a tempo change. We know how fast we are now, and we know how slow we need to be, but how fast do we make the transition? He decides. \nOr whenever we hold that dramatic pause before the brass kicks in and the music goes into overdrive. He decides how long that is. \nHow loud is Fortessimo?(FF in sheet music) Well we could measure it in decibels but it's a lot cheaper if he decides.\n\nIf you still think that a conductor doesn't do anything but wave his arms up there, you should see one conduct Vesuvius. It's written in some of the strangest meters conducted 9/8, 7/8, and for good measure they throw in measures of 1/4 to keep you on your toes. It's a nightmare to conduct and amazing to hear.\n"
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[],
[
"http://www.nbc.com/saturday-night-live/video/more-cowbell/n41046/"
]
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||
e7m6za
|
why are there so many different types of salt? where do they come from and what are their purposes?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/e7m6za/eli5_why_are_there_so_many_different_types_of/
|
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"a salt is whats produced when a metal reacts with an acid\n\neg \nhydrochloric acid + sodium = sodium chloride (table salt) + hydrogen\n\nor\n\nnitric acid + potassium = potassium nitride (the salt) + hydrogen\n\nconsidering there a few different kinds of acids\nand metals there are lots of salts",
"Salts generally occur when stuff from the right side of the periodic table form ionic bonds with the stuff from the left side of the periodic table. I'm sure there's a political joke in there somewhere, but that's the gist. \n\nThe one most people think about when they talk about salt is sodium chloride (NaCl) which is table salt, but there are all different kinds. \n\nPositively charged elements like sodium, magnesium, potassium (called cations) like negatively charged elements and molecules (called anions) like chloride, nitrate, carbonate. Because they readily dissociate in solution into back into their anionic and cationic components, this can give the solution different properties depending on the kind of salt you add. It might make the solution a better conductor or even a solvent. \n\nThe AMOUNT of salt added also affects osmoticity. Osmosis describes how water moves back and forth across semi-permeable membranes, which is really important in biology because all cells are made up of membranes and water usually passes in and out of the cell no problem. When the solvent concentration is higher outside a cell, water will leave the cell and in severe cases, shrink the cell until it dies. Similarly, when solvent concentration is lower outside the cell, water will enter the cell and in severe cases, cause the cell to swell until it bursts. \n\nAdd the exact same molar concentration of different salts to a solution, and they can affect the osmoticity of the solution differently because they can end up generating different amounts of ions."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[]
] |
||
btduyl
|
what muscles are responsible for the cringe sensation? why does your body react the way it does when such an event occurs?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/btduyl/eli5what_muscles_are_responsible_for_the_cringe/
|
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"It's a physical reaction to an emotional trigger. The whole 'cringe' thing is sympathetic embarrassment, as we put ourselves in the subject's place and imagine how we'd feel in that situation.",
"Like i hear a story about man or woman hitting the center bar on a bike with their crotch, i immediately close my legs and grab crotch. Or the vids where the person falls real bad. \nIm probably overreacting to some degree.",
"your brain is still that of a caveman, sometimes it has trouble discerning between physical damage and social damage. when you're about to get run into by something you \"cringe\" to protect your head and vital organs from major damage. knowing the emotional and social implications of someone doing something embarrassing sends a signal to your brain that you're seeing something \"dangerous\" and your immediate reaction is to protect yourself.",
"platysma, depressor labii inferioris, depressor anguli oris, risorious, orbicularis oculi, and i think mentalis. probably not the answer you were looking for. probably not eli5. dont know why im typing this.",
"Its sympathetic, our species relies entirely on social acceptance, everything in our brains is made to convince others that we fit in and spot why others dont fit in, so cringing shows to anyone looking at you \"i sympathise with that person and share in their pain\" in an effort to make them think \"hmm that person belongs\".",
"It's not really a certain muscle. Its more of a chemical reaction causing a physical response",
"The vagus* nerve! It's a small neural group/muscle on our head that is directly attached to the emotional center of the brain. It processes our phsycial reaction to emotional thoughts. \n\nDacher Keltner* does a great lecture on this. Apparently the development of the vargus nerve directly correlates with the ability to empathize and other social - emotional intelligence.",
"I've never considered a \"cringe\" as a physical experience. Seems purely psychological to me. Or are you referring to a sympathetic reaction to physical pain on someone else? Guess it depends on what you mean by cringe.",
"It kind of feels like pain. I might make a wincing face when cringing. I've heard that emotions like disgust although highly symbolic it is \"felt\" in our guts. Broken heart syndrome is felt as pain in the chest often confused with a heart attack. Perhaps the cringe emotion is processed highjacking the pain receptors. Perhaps we can use language as clues. I think of bombing (on stage) and getting burned as cringe worthy. Both are painful: getting burned and exploding. Maybe cringe highjacks our nevous system?\n\nEdit: I'm just a human not a scientist.",
"Looking for clarity on cringe, like getting goosebumps? A pilomotor reflex?",
"when I jump from tall heights in a video game I can feel the drop in my balls. I know how that sounds when you read it, but I swear to god it happens to me every time."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[]
] |
||
bb19ao
|
how does local anesthetic only affect the desired area and not numb other parts of the body?
|
I’m at the dentist and they used a local anesthetic. It numbs the area well but how come it doesn’t travel throughout the body and numb other areas? How does it stay local to the desired area?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/bb19ao/eli5_how_does_local_anesthetic_only_affect_the/
|
{
"a_id": [
"ekfnhhj",
"ekfr2lu"
],
"score": [
5,
2
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"text": [
"Local anesthetic is usually combined with epinephrine which is a vasoconstrictor, which causes reduced blood flow in the area of the injection. This has two effects: it helps to keep the anesthetic near the injection site; and it helps to reduce bleeding.",
" > how come it doesn’t travel throughout the body and numb other areas? \n\nIt totally does. Anesthetics spread out and are often [broken down by you liver](_URL_0_). Along the way, they have plenty of time to affect your other nerves. It's just a matter of concentration and method of action. You typically get a really small dose of anesthetic, but it's in a small area, and injected not into a blood vein/artery, so it takes time to diffuse into the blood and then eventually get to your liver and kidney. While it's stuck there, it's in high concentration around the intended target nerves, so they feel *way more* of an effect than the rest of your body does after everything's diffused out. If it diffuses out slowly enough, your liver and kidneys can easily keep up the filtering process and thus basically have no anesthetic floating around freely in your bloodstream.\n\nAnecdotally, my dental experiences are that I'm usually quite \"foggy\" feeling for a couple of hours after being numbed for tooth work while the lidocaine works its way out of my system."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[
"https://www.drugs.com/pro/lidocaine.html"
]
] |
|
32jnzy
|
what are the biological differences between experiencing seasonal allergies and having a cold.
|
Every spring, as soon as the weather changes, I get allergies so bad that I often have to stay in bed for lack of strength. It feels like the equivalent of a bad cold. What are the differences, as far as what's happening in my body, when I have allergies vs. having a cold?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/32jnzy/eli5_what_are_the_biological_differences_between/
|
{
"a_id": [
"cqbtjmo"
],
"score": [
4
],
"text": [
"Having a cold is you getting attacked by a virus (and your immune system fighting it). Seasonal allergies is your immune system mistaking pollen from pants for something dangerous and attacking in the same way it would do if it was a virus. Which is why it can cause similar symptoms."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
|
1f1k8j
|
how come you can give a person any number and they can iterate forwards or backwards on demand but with the alphabet most seem to only have a few fixed points to start from and can't as easily go backwards
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1f1k8j/eli5_how_come_you_can_give_a_person_any_number/
|
{
"a_id": [
"ca5vyrm",
"ca621ch"
],
"score": [
13,
3
],
"text": [
"Because the order of the letters are completely arbitrary. And there are many more letters than there are digits.\n\nNumbers are systematic. You *learn* to count by memorizing only 10 different digits, then use a simple system to make more numbers. Counting backwards is just removing 1 over and over again.\n\nFor the alphabet you need to memorize each of the letters, and their order. To recite the alphabet backwards you'd need to learn that order just like you once learned it the \"right\" way.\n\nI think many people, like me for instance, learned the alphabet by learning it as a song (twinkle twinkle?), because melodies are easy to remember for some reason (that's how our brains are wired). But singing a song backwards or starting in a random place in the middle of it isn't as easy.",
"Part of this it that it is important to know how number fit together, 5 is always more than 4 and since we always know which number is bigger we can put them in order really fast.\n\nWith letters there is no good comparison. Is an \"A\" worth more than an \"E\"? So we have to rely on an order that doesnt make sense but we all agree to use it."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[]
] |
||
2536gr
|
why do hockey players get "kicked out" of faceoffs?
|
I see this every now and then, and with no explanation from the announcers, a player will randomly be asked to leave the faceoff. What are some of the reasons for this?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2536gr/eli5_why_do_hockey_players_get_kicked_out_of/
|
{
"a_id": [
"chd7xrt",
"chd7zk4"
],
"score": [
2,
3
],
"text": [
"Just like in football, trying to anticipate the snap. Sort of like off sides without being penalized other than being disallowed to face-off. In this case, the snap is the ref dropping the puck.",
"A player can be removed from the faceoff for moving his stick around too early, not putting the stick directly on the ice, being too close to the faceoff dot, or any other sort of early motion or positioning that would give him an unfair advantage over the opponent taking the faceoff. It's also possible for players to be kicked out if a teammate skates too close to the faceoff dot before the puck is dropped. "
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[]
] |
|
cn0irx
|
why was sex ever considered "shameful" in the first place
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/cn0irx/eli5_why_was_sex_ever_considered_shameful_in_the/
|
{
"a_id": [
"ew5yhxz",
"ew5yzzk",
"ew63jvp",
"ew653xc",
"ew65zt5",
"ew66cak",
"ew67wax"
],
"score": [
7,
18,
64,
4,
4,
3,
3
],
"text": [
"People started reading a book that detailed a story of some old guy in the clouds throwing a couple out of his garden for eating magical fruit that tought them that they were naked and they took it way too far.",
"Oscar Wilde may have explained this aspect of the human condition best — ‘Everything in the world is about sex except sex. Sex is about power.’",
"I'll answer this from an evo-psych perspective. Most early human (and modern day) societies are male dominated. So the question is why then, in a male dominated society, would women be discouraged from having promiscuous sex? The answer is that *promiscuous sex for women decreases the relative evolutionary fitness for men.* Why? It's because while women have what is called maternal certainty, men do not have paternal certainty. If a woman has a child, then it is obvious that the child is hers, since it came out of her body. But a man doesn't have the same biological guarantee that the child is his. Non-monogamous women increase the chances that a man is cuckolded and raises a child that is not his, which is, evolutionarily speaking, one of the worst things that a man can do. Not only are you not getting to produce offspring, another person gets offspring that they don't even have to devote resources to to raise.\n\nThus, it makes sense for men to discourage female promiscuity, from an evo-psych perspective.",
"A few reasons, preventing disease and getting father's to care for their kids. If a father is uncertain about his paternity he has little reason to invest energy in them. If sex is seen as shameful outside of marriage it makes men more likely to care for their children. It works too, if you'll notice since society has begun to abandon the idea single motherhood has gone up considerably. When it comes down to it it's about taking into account the fact that we're animals and we still make decisions based on primal drives even if we think we don't. The idea of premarital sex may be outdated or it may still be valuable, it could be driven obsolete by birth control I guess. We still have use for marriage though and most children are the result of marriages so the underlying psychology that caused the mentality in the first place is still very much present. I wouldn't be surprised if society backlashed against the change in mentality. That being said a number of things have changed in the recent past that disrupt society. It'll be interesting to watch it all play out.",
"Because long ago when women had a baby out of wedlock/partnership, it often fell to the community to raise that baby. Most communities did not want to pay for those babies, so it was easier to do a shame campaign and try to keep the babies from happening in the first place.\n\nThere are parallels in the modern day.",
"I’d say procreation. A man and his lineage is almost always been super important. And in order to ensure that it was intact his lineage carrying on having a chaste/virgin woman was a good way to ensure it was intact your child and that you weren’t raising another mans child. Also also for the benefit of society. The impact and drive it has for a man to contribute and work knowing he has his family to feed and provide for has been largely why we have all the goods and services we do today. If you remove that “skin in the game” and men ceased to work as they had for all these years it’d be the end of civilization as we know it.",
"A long time ago there weren't any good ways to find out who's children women gave birth to, that was a problem since back in those days a lot of the societies were built around clans and families, so not fully understanding who's children belong to who would have inheritance become a problem.\n\nTo make sure the children were legitimate, societies put forwards basic guidelines for what to and what not to do in regards to sexual activity. Men weren't often as prosecuted since they didn't actively carry or primarily raise the children, so women had stricter rules (or at least more enforced guidelines). \n\nThis was where the \"shameful\" aspect of sex began, the main reason it's stayed with society all the way to today despite these types of societies not being as important is because of religion, religions adopt the customs of the societies that create them, because this was a normal thing for those old societies they had them as part of their religion, with those religions existing all the way to modern day they have brought those customs with them."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[]
] |
||
2x1i5l
|
how can lawyers promote "no win, no fee" cases.
|
I've seen lots of Law Firms recently popping up all over my city saying stuff like if we don't win, there are no fees. How does this work as a business model?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2x1i5l/eli5how_can_lawyers_promote_no_win_no_fee_cases/
|
{
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"cow1b4d",
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],
"score": [
15,
3,
4
],
"text": [
"It's a lot simpler than you might think. The initial consultation is free so they can listen to the merits of the case. If they don't think they can win easily, **THEY DON'T TAKE THE CASE.** That way they don't have to worry about not winning.",
"Because they only take cases that they are likely to win, and they charge a huge percentage of the winnings to offset the few cases try end up losing. In essence, you will pay more to a \"you only pay if you win\" if you win than you will to a normal hourly wage lawyer, but you don't to have the money up front. ",
"Lawyer here. As others have said, some lawyers simply won't take the case if it isn't good enough. But it's a little more than that. Usually, you'll show up for the free consult, and it will be explained to you that \"winning\" actually means winning **or** settling (because, hey, you're getting money either way). So when they take your case, they try to get the biggest settlement possible because actually having a case go to trial is generally too risky and too time consuming for something you're not getting paid by the hour to work on and ain't nobody got time fo dat. So they settle the case and take anywhere from a 15% - 40% cut of the settlement (or award, if it actually does go to trial and you win some money), depending on the fee arrangement you've made.\n\nSo let's say you've got ten cases this month and they all settle for an average of $30k, and you get a third of that, look who walked away with $100k in fees? That's pretty sustainable, as long as you've got a decent number of cases coming in. Hence, the advertisements you're seeing all over your city begging for business."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[],
[]
] |
|
7fgkbr
|
without animal testing, how do cosmetics and skin care companies determine that their products are safe?
|
I'm a biologist by training and work on mouse models for drug testing. With medicine, every single approved drug was first extensively tested in animal models. My question is, without animal testing, how do cosmetic and skin care companies know that their products won't have adverse effects on humans? Do they test solely on humans? That sounds very dangerous...
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7fgkbr/eli5_without_animal_testing_how_do_cosmetics_and/
|
{
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"text": [
"I used to know some people who got paid to be human guinea pigs for new drugs, so I'm guessing that there's going to be similar things for skin care stuff. There used to be similar testing for fertilizers, pesticides and such. Have to know what the effects will be.",
"There are several viable alternatives to animal testing.\n\n- ***In vitro* experimentation:** \n*In vitro* experiments are performed on live cell or tissue samples that mimic human reaction to different drugs or cosmetics. Some *in vitro* models are already replacing rabbits, guinea pigs, and mice for research on corrosive substances and allergic reactions, due to their actions more accurately replicating those of humans. \n- **Microdosing:** \nMicrodosing involves testing small, less-than-harmful samples on a live human volunteer. This type of testing is safe and is typically more effective for research about humans than animal testing. \n- ***In silico* testing:** \n*In silico* testing involves testing on computer-generated models. These models are often based around predictive programs and are being promoted as replacements for animal testing on a global scale. \n- **Human patient simulators:** \nHuman-patient simulators are lifelike dummies that can perform actions such as talking, breathing, and bleeding. They have been shown to be more effective in learning environments than experiments on animals such as rabbits.",
"They test them on unsuspecting sub-Saharan African people who have very limited understanding of informed consent. Sadly, I'm not kidding.",
"Some companies say \"This product not tested on animals\" but in some cases the ingredients are tested individually on animals.\n\nSometimes products are tested on humans, typically poor folks in other countries, or the developers test on themselves.\n\nTesting cosmetics is somewhat safer than testing a drug that has to be taken internally, but of course we also need to realize that some things which are toxic to other animals are safe for humans, and visa versa.\n\n",
"They can make products out of GRAS (generally recognized as safe) ingredients and ingredients that have already been tested on animals (in the past, not necessarily by that company or for that purpose). Some products say that the \"Finished Product\" has not been tested on animals, without having to say that some of the ingredients were in the past. \n\nThe biggest difference is that new medicines might be completely new chemicals, whereas new cosmetics are often just mixtures of existing ingredients."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[],
[],
[],
[]
] |
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