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1x9w0b | why do people think that us income tax is unconstitutional? if so, why isn't this bigger news? | As it's that time of the year, I was very curious to know why people allegedly never pay a cent in income tax. Are the stories about former IRS agents no longer paying true? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1x9w0b/why_do_people_think_that_us_income_tax_is/ | {
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"Some people believe that the income tax is unconstitutional because they WANT to believe it. It really has nothing to do with, you know, reality. The fact that the 16th Amendment authorizes an income tax makes it absolutely constitutional.\n\nThere are certainly inequities in the tax structure, and you'll hear lots of stories about people who, through legal means, can reduce their tax liability to a very low percentage of their gross. This can happen in the case of people whose income is the result of stock trading as opposed to a regular salary. Profits made on stock (or other assets) held for a minimum amount of time pay capital gains taxes, which are lower than regular income taxes.\n\nAnd the stories about former IRS agents not paying taxes aren't true at all. One dead giveaway is that these stories never come with details. The IRS wants to get money out of everybody -- including people who work for them, or used to work for them.",
" > Why do people think that US income tax is unconstitutional?\n\nBecause people don't want to pay income tax, so they grasp at straws to try to find a way out of it. For instance, some people claim that, because the versions of 16th amendment that were ratified by the states have slight differences in the spelling of words, capitalization, and punctuation, it was never properly ratified, and is thus invalid.\n\nAnother argument is that, since congress didn't pass an official proclamation of Ohio's 1803 admission to statehood until 1953, that Ohio wasn't a state until 1953, and thus the whole ratification process is invalid. This despite the fact that a) it's ridiculous, and b) the amendment still would have passed even without Ohio's ratification.",
"It's tied into American history and patriotism. The country was formed, after all to avoid paying taxes to the British without having any representation. Also the US believes very strongly that a bigger, more dominant government will always damage the peoples freedom, even if it's intentions are good. A bigger government with public healthcare etc, will obviously require more taxes so the two go hand in hand. As for it being specifically unconstitutional, I think people are just strongly inclined to believe what they want to believe. It would be kind of ridiculous for the government of a country to write a constitution which stated that taxes, and therefore government, couldn't exist."
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199s5s | how can the government both cut $85 billion but still have the budget go up? | I guess just a general explanation of what's going on with the sequestration. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/199s5s/eli5_how_can_the_government_both_cut_85_billion/ | {
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"Sequestration will reduce the increase in spending for next year, but not enough to actually reduce the budget at all.",
"6,000,000,000,000 < - this the fed. budget\n\n68,000,000,000 < - these were the cuts\n\nThat's 1.1%\n\nbut the federal budget is also kinda of guideline and will fluctuate by about +/- 5%, now 5% of 6 trillion is 340 billion, or about 5 times more then their budget cuts.\n",
"Because they forecast for, or rather automatically increase spending every year. No matter what. They just plan on x amount of increased spending. So they had a budget of $10 for this year, next year they forecast $12 but when they go to actually make the budget they cut out $1 of spending they COULD have done and met their forecast. Basically its a political manipulation of the public. They act like theyre giving up so much when theyre still taking more. "
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e9pb3y | what is it about small creatures, like rodents or insects, that freaks people out? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/e9pb3y/eli5_what_is_it_about_small_creatures_like/ | {
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"I’m guessing here, but the best explanation probably comes from epigenetics. Epigenetics is the “tagging” of certain genes to become active or inactive as they are passed on regardless of whether they are dominant or recessive in the traditional genetic sense. It is thought that very early on in our evolution, some very specific genes that modulated fear of commonly recognized threats were tagged to be activated in future generations to promote survival of our species. A similar phenomenon is the “toll-like receptor” in our neutrophils (front line immune cells.). This receptor reacts to common threats like certain bacteria that have been our nemesis for generations. Similarly, the idea of fearing snakes, spiders, etc may have been passed down through epigenetics from generation through generation ever since the first of our species recognized that fearing these things improved our chance of survival. Again, this is is just an educated guess, perhaps someone with experience in microbiology or genetics may be able to better clarify."
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1at1bi | why do we have so many unnecessary synonyms in the english language? | For example, the words "whole" and "entire“ are basically the same word in meaning. But to make it confusing we have the word "hole", meaning something completely different.
Why have the word "whole“ when it's spelled almost identically and sounds identical to "hole" but means something completely different, when we have the word "entire" which can be used in its place?
EDIT: I understand that English is basically made up of a lot of borrowed words from other languages, but has there been an attempt to simplify English and if not why not?
--------
**EDIT2:**
**[Answered] (_URL_0_)** by /u/seniorpantaloons
> Butting in here.
> When the Normans invaded England, the separation of language made it such that the upper classes spoke French and the lower classes spoke Anglo-Saxon. The lower classes killed and cooked the **cow**, **sheep**, and **swine**, and then the upper classes ate the **beef**, **mutton**, and **pork**. The lower classes would clean the slime left behind by the **snails**, and the upper classes would eat the **escargot**.
> So getting people to understand written word was tough. If the upper class speaks one language and the lower class speaks another, what else are you to do but write in language both classes will understand (especially regarding legal documents and things like that)?
> How are you to know what someone wants you to have after their death if the you don't understand the writing in their Franco-Latin **testament**? You might understand if you had an Anglicized **will** handy. Why not bring the two together and have a last **will and testament**?
> It is the result of class distinction. The lower classes would stand around at the **harbour** and **deem** their **beliefs** as true, while the upper classes would stand around at the **port** and **judge** their **faiths**.
> --------
That takes care of the Franco-Latin vs. Anglo-Saxon debacle (kind of). As for the *whole* vs *hole* dilemma, [hole](_URL_2_) comes from the Old English *hol*, and [whole](_URL_1_) from the Old English *hal*. In Middle English, *hal* became *[hool](_URL_3_)*. So you've got these two words that look an awful lot alike, hol and hool, and you want to make sure everyone knows they're discrete things. And you have this cool rule (kind of like a theorem in geometry), which says "wh" is sometimes read as "h", and "e" is sometimes silent when at the end of words. Throw all that together and you've got "whole" from "hool" from "hal", and "hole" from "hol". | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1at1bi/eli5_why_do_we_have_so_many_unnecessary_synonyms/ | {
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"“Whole” and “entire” are not the same to me: “entire” is twice as long in pronunciation.",
"English is descended from Germanic languages, but when some people called the Normans invaded England it picked up a bunch of Latin vocabulary. So we have two versions of a lot of words; \"whole\" is from Germanic, and \"entire\" is from Latin.",
"\"I'm sorry\" and \"I apologize\" mean the same thing, unless you are greeting a widow at a funeral.\n\nContemporary English is such a hodge podge of so many language families, we are bound to have some similar words with different meanings and dissimilar words with the same meaning. \n\n",
" > For example, the words \"whole\" and \"entire“ are basically the same word in meaning. \n\nExcept they're not exactly the same. \"Synonym\" does not mean \"equal\". For example, I could say that, \"When he finally got custody of his children, he felt like he had been made whole again.\" You couldn't use \"entire\" in that sentence.",
"who said there's never been an attempt to simplify English? here's [an article](_URL_0_) going over some of the history of this. \n\napparently none of these attempts have ever been very successful. language is hard to control like that. ",
"because thesauruses are sold by the pound ",
"Try french. It's even worst.",
"In English, having different words for the same thing gives us a way to express shades of meaning.\n\nFor instance, \"Royal,\" \"Regal,\" and \"Kingly\" are the same word (just derived from French, Latin, and Germanic, respectively), and while they *sometimes* mean the same thing, sometimes they don't. You can think of them as Venn diagrams with a lot of overlap, but the cases where they don't overlap are important--they let us express certain concepts with an exactitude that other languages (I'm looking at you, *Chinese*) can't match.\n\nAlso, we often use words derived from Latin, Greek, and especially French when we're trying to be somewhat abstract or indirect, and the same exact words derived from Germanic when we want to be direct. So we say \"pork\" (French *porc*) when we don't want to think too hard about the fact that we're eating swineflesh. \n\nOr as someone said, \"when you're drowning you don't yell 'Aid!'\""
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"http://etymonline.com/index.php?allowed_in_frame=0&search=whole&searchmode=none",
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"http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/whole"
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1uefle | why are units of storage measured at intervals of 1024 instead of a round number, like 1000? (e.g. 1024 mb = 1 gb) | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1uefle/eli5_why_are_units_of_storage_measured_at/ | {
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"Because computers deal with powers of 2 naturally. 1024 is 2 * 2 * 2 * 2 * 2 * 2 * 2 * 2 * 2 * 2, or 2^10. A number normally takes up 8 (2^3) bits (8 zeros and 1s), or maybe 16 bits (2^4). 1000 (10^3) is natural for us, but that's because we have 10 fingers. Computers deal with zeros and ones, so powers of two is natural for them.\n\nWE often call 1024 bytes as \"kilobyte\" because it's close to 1000, which is what kilo normally means.",
"Not a computer expert, but I'm very sure it's because 1024 is a power of two (2^10) and powers of two and two is the base of binary which computers use (1s and 0s). A power of two in binary is always written 1 (2^0 ), 10 (2^1 ) 100 (2^2 ) 1000 (2^3 ) etc. Round numbers like 1000 (in base 10) is easy for you two count because you're used to base 10, but for a computer which is built on 1s and 0s, base 2 is much more convenient.",
"If you came up with a library indexing system that was solely for robots you'd use numbers they liked, right? \n\nThat's what everyone did for storage in memory (which is very fast, but small) and then they transferred that when disk drives became commonplace. When indexing a \"book\" or a \"page\" of stored memory it is far easier to remember segments of 2^10 (1024) as a count of total space available. It is similar enough to 1000's to be easily readable.\n\nThe actual indexing numbers that are similar-to-1000s are rarely used inside programs, though. Mostly the 1024 character count is just a \"crate\" size that is picked and standardized for a certain storage system. Storage \"blocks\" are usually 512, 1024 or 4096. Those are 2^9, 2^10 and 2^12 and are big enough to be efficient little \"chunks\" of data to move out and rewrite and put back.\n\nThe \"crate\" size used on the internet is 1500 for older systems and 1280 for newer ones. No pattern there.",
"The answer is rooted in the fact that computers work behind the scenes in base-2, but by itself, that explanation is incomplete. After all, computers usually translate such things into human terms.\n\nThe key point that the use of powers of two is limited nearly exclusively to sizes.\n\nSuppose that a computer has some area of addressable space to deal with – a block on a disk, or a page in memory made of a sequence of bytes that can be accessed by sequential integer addresses. In principle, the size of the area could be anything – 1024 bytes, or 1000, or 1058. But there is an advantage to a size that is an even power of two – it makes the set of valid addresses the set of numbers of a certain (binary) *length*. That is, any 10-bit number from 0000000000 (0) to 1111111111 (1023) is a valid address to a byte in a 1024-byte space. There is no need to do any additional checking – if you give the computer a 10-bit number, the computer can go right ahead and fetch/write the appropriate data. Binary sizes are simply the path of least resistance.\n\nIn earlier days, a device might have had 1024 B of memory to work with, or ~1.02 \"real\" kilobytes. The difference was small enough that this was often abbreviated as 1 KB, and over time this became a convention: if someone quotes you a size of \"4 KB\", they most likely mean 4096 bytes. As a bonus, this was very efficient to compute using computers' native binary arithmetic.\n\nOver the years, though, a problem appeared. Although the difference between 1000 and 1024 is only about 2%, as sizes increase the difference increases exponentially. The difference between a terabyte and a binary \"terabyte\" is nearly ten percent. People care about this degree of divergence.\n\nIn addition, the benefits of binary sizes do not necessarily extend to large disks – the \"blocks\" that a disk are made of are invariably powers of two, but it is impossible to guarantee that the *number* of blocks will be a neat number, because a modern disk needs to keep track of sectors that have gone bad. Also, powers of two are not granular enough for today's disk marketplace, where both hard drive companies and users want a wider variety of disk sizes.\n\nBecause the original technical reasons for using binary sizes do not apply in the same way, and because of the significant divergence between true and binary units at large scales, hard drive manufacturers now use proper decimal prefixes – when you buy a 1 TB drive, you are getting as close to precisely one trillion bytes as the manufacturer can provide. (Bad sectors must be accounted for, and you will find that the exact capacity is a multiple of a relatively small binary block size, like 4096 bytes, and of course your operating system will use part of the drive for filesystem metadata).\n\nThis actually went to court a while back. A group of hard drive buyers had come to expect their drives to be slightly larger than advertised. In the end, a settlement was reached: manufacturers will continue to use and advertise in true base-10 units, but to forestall confusion, they will mark this explicitly on the packaging.\n\nRAM is another story. The technical benefits to power-of-two sizes still apply fully, and even today, RAM is manufactured in those sizes. Given the continued need to concisely represent these quantities, various standards organizations and trade groups have come up with a set of alternate prefixes that properly refer to base-2 numbers. These are the prefixes like \"kibibyte\" (KiB). Use of the prefixes prevents misuse of the base-10 SI units. Unfortunately, RAM sellers and ordinary computer users have not generally adopted these units, leading to widespread confusion.",
"Computers are binary, so it's most efficient for them to do calculations in base 2... and 1024 *is* a 'round number' in base 2. ",
"It has to do with the way the hardware addresses memory:\n\nTo address 256 units of memory, you need 8 wires to go from the CPU to the memory.\nTo address 512 units of memory, 2 times as much, you need one more wire: to select between 0-255 and 256-511.\nSame to go from 512 to 1024 and from 1024 to 2048 and so on.\n\nNote that it says \"units\" there, not bytes because bytes are a specific unit of 8 bits.\nIn the past, there have been non-multiple-of-8 bit computers like the the PDP-1 etc. They still addressed these same 1024 units of memory, just didn't come up with 8192 bits :-)\n\n",
"Computers only know two things: 0 and 1. \n\nIn one digit, you have two options: 0 and 1.\nIn two digits, you have four options: 00, 01, 10 and 11.\nIn three digits you have eight options: 000, 001, 010, 100, 011, 101, 110, 111.\n\nEvery time you add a digit, the possible combinations doubles. \n\nBecause of this, in the computer world, things tend to double. So when you double 1, you get 2, then 4, then 8, then 16, 32, 64, 128, 256, 512, 1024.\n\nI hope that makes sense."
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7b8376 | why does the moon not appear spherical with the naked eye? | Even on a full moon it still just looks like a circle when you look at it, not a sphere. Wassup with that? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7b8376/eli5_why_does_the_moon_not_appear_spherical_with/ | {
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"Because it is so far away, nearest and farthest part both appear \"infinitely distant\" to your visual system. Our eyes weren't made to perceive depth at a range of over 300,000 km.",
"It's too far away to see it in 3D. The difference between the edges of the moon and the point closest to you are so minute at a far distances that your eye can't see the difference."
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89uncp | why calculators can show you 1*10^99, but not 10*10^99? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/89uncp/eli5_why_calculators_can_show_you_11099_but_not/ | {
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"When storing *floating point numbers*, the internal structure of the number is `x.yyyyyy * 10^zzzzz` (which is packed in as `xyyyyyyzzzzz`). Cheap calculators literally aren't capable of thinking about numbers like `xx.yyyyy \\* 10^zzzz`",
"There's just no everyday reason to need numbers that big. Wikipedia estimates the mass of matter in the universe to be 10^53 kg. One kg of hydrogen, which is what the vast majority of the universe is made of, has 6 x 10^23 atoms. Multiply the mass of the universe by the number of atoms per kg, and you get 6 x 10^76 atoms. You'd need approximately a million million million million universes to get more than 10^99 *atoms*. There's just no practical need to count that high. (*Edit: someone check my math.*)\n\nEvery additional digit you add to a calculator's processing power adds software and hardware requirements. 10^100 was probably an arbitrary cutoff point, chosen so they could give you the ability to handle the biggest numbers almost anyone could need, while not having to write extra code to format the readout display for a three-digit exponent."
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8b1v1n | if the "m" stands for "model", how is the m4 more advanced than the m16? | For clarification, Irish here, not American. I do know a little bit about guns, but not all *that* much. We do have private gun ownership here, but nothing military grade. It's just something I've wondered about because I've seen it in movies and games. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8b1v1n/eli5_if_the_m_stands_for_model_how_is_the_m4_more/ | {
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"I tried reading up on it but im still not sure. \n\nI believe the M4 is a carbine model and the M16 is a rifle model. \nPerhaps thats why there is a difference. As in, the model 4 carbine is newer than the model 16 rifle.\n\n[Found some stuff here](_URL_0_)\n\n > If we look at the common M4A1 Carbine, the weapon's designation is literally Carbine, Model 4, Alteration 1.\nThen if we look at the M16A1 Rifle, we can see the full designation should be Rifle, Model 16, Alteration 1.",
"The american military nomenclature system is screwy, and requires some contextual knowledge.\n\nThe main point of distinction is that the M-16 is a \"rifle\" while the M-4 is a \"carbine\".\n\nRifles, Carbines, Handguns, machine-guns, grenade launchers, ect. all have their own, independent and parallel model (M) designations.\n\nThe M-16 is the 16th \"Rifle\" adopted since the military moved to this naming conventions, while the M-4 is only the 4th \"carbine\" adopted.\n\nAlso, it's pretty much impossible to legally buy any full auto in the US, so the civilian market doesn't particularly care about M designations.",
"They're different types of weapons, so the models do not match. The M4 is a carbine rifle, the M16 is a rifle. The M4 is a lighter, shorter version of the M16A2 assault rifle, which itself is a version of the M16 rifle. \n\nNote that \"assault\" in this instance means \"capable of selective fire\". \n\nIf it helps to think of it differently, \"M4\" also applies to a specific combat shotgun. It follows the same model naming system, but it's an entirely different weapon. ",
"Good question, I'm not exactly sure, but someone will hopefully chime in and correct me. The M16 is a moniker that the us military stamped to replace the M14. This rifle could've been anything, they just decided to go with the Armalite select fire rifle. The M4 is a carbine, it's significantly shorter that the M16, I believe the upper and lower are the same, but it's purpose is for CQC. Maybe there was a M2 or and M3 that was a shorter rifle that it replaced. To my knowledge neither of these weapons are available to the general public. You can however build your own AR platform and have very similar cosmetic and functional elements to each one (except you get 2 firing modes instead of 3)."
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6vtfrw | how did amazon go from being an online bookstore to what it is now? | [deleted] | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6vtfrw/eli5_how_did_amazon_go_from_being_an_online/ | {
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"It doesn't take much to go from an online book store to an online other stuff store. From there Amazon just kept expanding. Online sales is what is known as a natural monopoly. This means that there is economies of scale to the point that the biggest/first entry to the market will take over the vast majority of the market, which is basically what Amazon did.\n\nThe rest is just details."
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dhn667 | how come not all of our organs make noise in certain situations like our stomachs when we're hungry? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/dhn667/eli5_how_come_not_all_of_our_organs_make_noise_in/ | {
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"Gurgling is a noise we can hear because of compression, turbulence, and because the GI tract is mostly hollow organs. \n\n\nOther processes don’t make noises we can hear. For example; all of the live enzymes don’t make a sound. \n\nThere are a few exceptions: like right now I can hear my pulse, because I have irritated my tympanic membrane somehow, so the noises are noticeable.",
"Stomachs are hollow organs that often have air in them because you swallowed some air by mistake while eating or because of fizzy drinks releasing the gas inside. Intestines too, but they also have bacteria that often produce gas. And in the gastrointestinal tract you have something called peristalsis, which is the rhythmic movement that pushes food forward. This movement along with the presence of gas can cause noises. Your other organs don't have these things, except the heart which pumps blood and you can hear the mechanical movement to the outside if you listen as the sound waves can travel through your thorax. Sometimes you can also hear a fluid in the back of your neck/head when you're moving a certain way or compressing the muscles, and that's the cerebrospinal fluid. You can also hear your joints pop because of the release of nitrogen. So it's all just mechanics."
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4vkw89 | how do people, or companies, with large sums of money, win court cases they "shouldn't"? | How does money affect the outcome? I get that for some cases where the trial is close on both sides, it may play a factor. But why do people sometimes not sue companies because they know they will get destroyed in court due to money? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4vkw89/eli5_how_do_people_or_companies_with_large_sums/ | {
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"Court cases can be complex, and there are countless little ways you can raise new questions and drag it out, so that unless your opponent has lots of time -- and the ability to pay a lawyer for lots of work -- they may just give up. So a rich company may just keep making the case more complicated until their opponent folds.",
"A person or company wiht a lot of money can hire experts to testify to nearly anything. There is literally a listing of expert witnesses, and while almost all of them are undoubtedly honest, there are many points of view in any event.\n\nHiring really good (expensive) lawyers also makes a huge difference. Really creative, well-educated lawyers who have unlimited time to think about a case can come up with some very creative interpretations of the law. Not illegal, just ways to use existing laws that someone else might not have thought of.\n\nYou can do dirty tricks like hiring the real expert on some subject, the person who could really prove your opponent's case. Then you pay them, but don't call on them to testify.\n\nIf you have a lot of time and money, you can also kind of bury the facts of a case under a pile of BS. Just keep piling on facts that may or may not be relevant. ",
"Imagine you had ten cookies, and someone took three of them.\n\nYou go an tell an adult that the other kid took your three cookies.\n\nThe adult sets a time down for you and the other kid to talk about these cookies.\n\nYou have your seven cookies left, and you give one to a kid who knows a lot about being fair and will sit with you. This friend gets an extra cookie every time you have to sit with the other kid.\n\nSo you sit down with the adult, your friend, your six cookies, and four kids you've never met before but they all have cookie crumbs on their shirts.\n\nThey say the kid who took your cookie went to the nurse and they came to represent him.\n\nThey say the cookies weren't yours, ask you to describe the cookie, and eventually the adult gets confused over what actually defines a cookie. The little meeting is adjourned for the day, and another one is planned six months later.\n\nYour friend helps you research how to get your cookies back, based on times when other kids had their cookies stolen.\n\nYou give him a cookie for each day he works with you.\n\nThe day before the next meeting, one of the kids representing the 'bad kid' shows up and offers you a deal. He knows that you're running out of cookies as you only have four left, and the 'bad kid''s mom makes cookies every morning.\n\nHe tells you that he'll give you one cookie, and you tell the adult that you're not mad anymore. \n\nIf you accept, you'll have five cookies, which is half what you started with. If you refuse, you'll definitely lose another cookie, but you might just get your three back and then you'll have six cookies.\n\nYou refuse the offer, and try to get the 'bad kid' in trouble. You bring your friend along at the cost of another cookie, leaving you with three. You bring someone who saw the other kid take your cookies. You sit down, and there's the 'bad kid'. \n\nHis 'friends' talk to the adult and try to convince him that you were negligent with your cookies, as you left your lunch box out on a table. The table may have been your desk, but you weren't guarding those cookies. The person who saw the 'bad kid' take your cookies confirms that you weren't guarding the cookies in your lunch box, on your desk. You were watering the class plants, and feeding the class hampster. Doing the hard work to possibly earn some more cookies.\n\nThe adult considers what's been said, and sets a date for a final meeting a few months later.\n\nYou're greeted at your bus stop by one of the 'bad kid''s friends who offers you half a cookie to stop bugging his friend about the cookies. You look at your three cookies, and accept his half of a cookie.\n\nIf you had kept going, you would have run out of money and been unable to feed your family or pay your debts. You accepted the settlement because lawyers are expensive, and unless your lawyer manages to convince a judge and jury that wrongdoing occurred, you get nothing. It was in your best interest, you tell yourself, to take what you could and go on with your life.\n\nTl;Dr - They keep the trials running for as long as they can, impede wherever they can, and usually run the plaintiffs out on funds until they either accept the settlement or just lose the ability to pay for representation.\n\n\n\n",
"A protracted legal battle is very expensive. \n\nIf a company does $20K worth of damages to me, I might be in the right, but can't afford to put my life on and spend hundreds of thousands on a multiyear legal battle. They know all they have to do is drag things out and I will eventually run out of money, and either take a bad settlement or just give up. ",
"Why is the court system so fucked that it can be played around and people who are right are forced to give up because of money issues. Isn't the court for justice? Why not just settle the case."
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3ec8ew | when people with cystic fibrosis get a lung transplant are they cured or does it continue to affect the new lungs? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3ec8ew/eli5_when_people_with_cystic_fibrosis_get_a_lung/ | {
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"Cystic Fibrosis patient here who had a double lung transplant in 2010.\n\n > When people with Cystic Fibrosis get a lung transplant are they cured?\n\nCF is a systemic disease that affects many different organs, so even after a double lung transplant, I'm not _cured_ of CF - I still need to take supplemental enzymes to compensate my damaged pancreas, I'm still growing nasal polyps and get sinus infections and fight with other CF-related health issues. \n\nBut apart from the lungs, what damage CF causes in the rest of my body is usually manageable with medication and thus not fatal - which is why life after transplant certainly _feels_ like being cured to me :)\n\n > ... or does it continue to affect the new lungs?\n\nAltough my lung transplant didn't _cure_ me of CF, the disease won't affect my new lungs. \n\nCF is a genetic disease, caused by a gene mutation that affects a certain kind of protein (CFTR protein) present throughout my body. And even though an organ transplant doesn't fix this faulty gene and I stil have and produce those defective proteins in many parts of my body, my new lungs are and will remain free from this because they come from a genetically different donor and produce their own, functional CFTR-protein. \n\nThis is the reason that they'll never develop CF and suffer the same problems that destroyed my old lungs, but it also causes a lot of trouble regarding rejection as my immune system sees this difference and wants to attack the new lungs as foreign intruders. So my immune system needs to be permanently suppressed which is a danger in itself. \n\nAnd since my upper respiratory tract (nose/sinuses/throat) is still affected by CF and thus provides perfect breeding grounds for various bacteria, these can \"trickle down\" and negatively affect my new lungs. It won't be as dangerous and devasting since those new lungs provide a much less inviting environment than my old lungs did, but it is a constant concern. So I still take prophylactic antibiotics to avoid this, similar to the stuff I took before transplant but in a much much lower dosage.\n\nAlso most lung transplant patients will eventually develop a condition called _broncholitis obliterans syndrom_ or _BOS_. BOS is caused by chronic rejection and once it starts, there isn't really anything you can do about it. Sadly it results in many of the same _symptoms_ as CF: recurring lung infections, scarring of the smaller airways, progressive lung damage and eventual lung failure. But this is not exclusive to CF patients, every lung transplant patient is at risk, no matter what made the transplant necessary in the first place. CF, COPD, emphysema, IPF... they all get it :(\n***\n**So after a lung transplant, people with CF _are not_ cured**, but their lungs aren't just \"reset\" either. **CF will not directly damage transplanted lungs** and although most patients will eventually develop symptoms almost indistinguishable from those caused by CF, these are completely unrelated to CF and affect _every_ lung transplant patient."
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9u66va | how are such vast (rdr2) gaming worlds created? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9u66va/eli5_how_are_such_vast_rdr2_gaming_worlds_created/ | {
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"That’s a question that requires a long answer.\n\nShort answer, some games use procedural generation (that draws assets from a library) and some hand place everything. Some do a mixture of both. ",
"The terrain is usually handmade (well with some tools, but it isn't randomly generated) and all the props are placed by hand as well. \n\nBut they don't have to model every bush just once. They can create a few models and then place them randomly. \n\nSo there's a person that makes the models and then there's someone else who actually designs the world with them. (Not just two people in case of rdr2, but you get the point) \n\nAnd yes, I assume with games this big they'd also have a shader-like tool that would just cover a set area randomly with random models of bushes/trees etc. with some other variables so it looks really random.\n"
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1l7uus | why is an invasion into syria a sure thing, but nothing is done about the genocide in rwanda? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1l7uus/eli5_why_is_an_invasion_into_syria_a_sure_thing/ | {
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"Syria is in the Middle East, which makes its own stability an important factor of the stability of the region. Thus, America is interested in which way the war goes. Also, chemical weapons were used. Both of these distinguish the Syrian Civil War from the Rwandan Genocide/Civil War.",
"Foreign military forces(mostly NATO and i've heard the saudis, jordinians, turkey and even israelis are considering giving more support as wrll) are Not considering an invasion, but limited air and missile strikes on the syrian military.\n\nInvasion usually includes ground forces which would be politically unfeasible for countries trying to get involved.",
"There is nothing in the Rwanda area that the USA wants or would profit by.",
"First - The general public is aware of it. I doubt the Clinton White House got more than a few letters about Rwanda. Obama is not only getting thousands a day, it is also being discussed daily on TV. So he is receiving a lot more pressure to \"do something.\" Clinton never had any real pressure to act.\n\nSecond - Rwanda is in an area with little interaction with the US or the US economy. As callous as it may sound, Central Africa could disappear and the world economy would hiccup and move on. The West as a whole has little to no interest or involvement in the area. In comparison Syria borders two major and important US allies (Israel and Turkey) who feel more than a bit nervous about the whole thing. Likewise the fight in Syria isn't about Assad so much anymore. It is about religion and tribal association. The sides that win are likely to brutalize the sides that lose. And every player in Syria also exists in one or more other ME country. It is very conceivable that war in Syria might kick off further wars or unrest, especially in Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq, Yemen, and some Gulf States. This could lead to instability in the whole region. And who knows what that might do to oil prices? It is conceivable that long term problems might lead to another great recession.\n\nThird - Chemical weapons are considered, weapons of mass destruction. And they are banned by the Geneva Conventions. Hacking up people with machetes is horrific. Especially when you consider the scale of it. But it falls firmly on the side of allowed in war. But using a WMD is far more provocative."
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7bmbj6 | how do external factors affect the testosterone levels of a young man if it's already at its highest? | I've been told that through ages 16 to 25 your testosterone are at its highest.
I've also heard that doing heavy physical activities like lifting weights increase test levels.
Also that following certain diets Vitamin D/Zinc/fats vs lots of sugar affect testosterone levels.
How do external factors affect the testosterone levels of a young man if it's already (supposedly) at its highest? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7bmbj6/eli5_how_do_external_factors_affect_the/ | {
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"At ages 16-25, testosterone levels are, on average, at the highest values they will achieve in your lifetime. However, the absolute value of those levels can change based on things like activity and diet. The highest value one person achieves will be different than the highest value another person achieves, but both of those values are likely to be when they're in their late teens and early 20s.",
"When we say \"ages 16-25 have the highest testosterone levels\", we're talking in averages. There are absolutely going to be exceptions when we're talking at the individual level.\n\nWe're also not saying \"they're at their absolute cap\", we're just saying \"they tend to be higher than other age groups\". Someone who is a weightlifter, taking testosterone supplements, eating a diet designed to boost muscle growth and testosterone, who is 40 years old may well have a higher free testosterone count than a randomly selected 16-25 year old. ",
"\"Highest\" doesn't mean highest possible, it is a statistical assessment.\n\nIf you followed 1000 men from age 15 to age 60, *most* of them will have the highest levels between 16 to 25. A 20-year-old couch potato will likely be at or near the highest levels of his life, even though it could have been higher if he was a powerlifter.",
"I would imagine it’s like a thermometer on a record-setting hot day. That’s the highest the temperature has ever been, but that doesn’t mean it can never go any higher. "
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15dcdn | why is there a gazillion of distros? | I totally understand why is there a dozen of similar subreddits. And one default subreddit to rule them all.
I totally understand why every piece of popular software have shitload of skins. Cool, everyone likes customizations, kinda.
But, I will never understand why every single average-advanced Linux fan-boy at some point of his life decides to make his own shitty distro.
On the other hand, when it comes to Windows, I heard a lot of hypocrites whining about different XP, Vista, 7 editions.
*Ugh... Starter, Home Basic, Home Premium, Business, Professional, Ultimate.. WTF Microsoft! Why are you making my life sooo complicated.*
And yet, for some bloody incomprehensible reason it's a whole different story for Linux. There is like... i dunno... 5000 different versions of Linux, and every next one more and more incompatible with previous one.
Even most popular one, Ubuntu, which should be like constitutional republic in the Linuxland has shitload of versions like Kubuntu, Edubuntu, Xubuntu, Gobuntu, Stopfuckinmakingallthisubuntu...
_URL_0_
Now, most logical answer would be: Well, people make them and why the hell not?
Yes. But does linux community not see how much impractical this all is? It's physically impossible to prosper and fix bugs when there is so many of them.
**Seriously, why is so goddamn many of them? What am I missing?** | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/15dcdn/why_is_there_a_gazillion_of_distros/ | {
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"Pretty much the whole point of Linux is that you can do anything you want with it and everybody wants something different.\n\nAnyway, it's not like the user/dev base is evenly distributed among them. There are a few that have massive communities and tons of them that pretty much nobody uses.\n\nAlso, *most of them* just take some extremely widely used pieces of software and just plug them together in a slightly different way. They're not reinventing the wheel for each build, and using them that way doesn't make it any harder to develop and improve the major component pieces.\n\nIt's like when you're building a PC. You have a million different options on what specific graphics card you're going to use, and what CPU, and what RAM, and what hard drive, but there are only a handful of core technologies that those components are based on, and the variety of products based on those isn't really holding back the progress of the whole. Linux builds are like that, but with software instead of hardware.",
"I'd just like to interject for a moment etc. etc....\n\nOne of the main attractions of Linux is its adaptability to myriad different usage scenarios. E.g., you'd be unlikely to run a server on a stock Ubuntu install, because it has a load of extra stuff that a server would never use.\n\nLinux also has a lot of alternatives for basically every single task. There are a load of window managers, a load of desktop environments, a load of package managers etc.. Some people just simply prefer different things.\n\nIn the examples of Ubuntu derivatives, the main difference is the desktop environment or window manager. Ubuntu use GNOME, Xubuntu use Xfce, Kubuntu uses KDE, Lubuntu uses LXDE, etc.. Between all of those derivatives, the main difference is simply the desktop environment.\n\nSo, basically, it's because people want different things from their Linux.",
"Simple economics: When you lower the barrier to entry (make it easier to build a distro) then more people will enter the market. There are so many distros because it's easy to make a distro. All it takes is time and knowledge. So, you end up with a lot of them.\n\nWhether having so many is a good or bad thing is irrelevant when asking why they exist."
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76czf8 | why criminals are covered up, blurred, or not shown while the victims are always shown on news ? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/76czf8/eli5_why_criminals_are_covered_up_blurred_or_not/ | {
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"Victims are confirmed to be the victims. Suspects need to be proven to be criminals. Misunderstandings can be a lot more damaging in misunderstandings (and thus they can be sued for more) so its safer to wait for a verdict.",
"People who signed a release are not blurred. Victims tend to sign, and alleged criminals tend not to sign as the news portrayal would tend to make them look guilty to potential jury members. ",
"Where I live, the accusers (whether actual victims, or proven to be false) are treated in a variety of ways. Sometimes they are fully visible, sometimes blurred, and sometimes almost nothing is known about them other than someone accused someone of this or that crime.\n\nIn cases where the identity of the accused could identify the victim, the accused is treated the same as the victim.\n\nOtherwise, the likeness of the accused is unavoidable. They find the most unflattering image they can, and you see it everywhere, in sharp focus. Lives are destroyed long before trial. In this way the press pretends to be doing the justice system's job.",
"Because you aren't a criminal until you have been proven beyond a reasonable doubt to be guilty. Before the trial has been completed the suspect is a innocent, and should be treated as innocent, so if he is proven not to be guilty you've ruined their life less than you would have otherwise."
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2qajat | why is my cat a asshole ? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2qajat/eli5why_is_my_cat_a_asshole/ | {
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"E is for explain.\nThis is for concepts you'd like to understand better; not for simple one word answers, walkthroughs, or personal problems."
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4b99w4 | what impact on employment opportunities do the equal opportunity questions in job applications have? | I am currently searching for a job, and on every application that I fill out they always have the questionnaire at the end that asks about race, gender, ethnicity, veteran status and disability. Do these get factored into the hiring process? Does putting down that you are multiple of the classes increase your chances of employment? Does selecting the "choose not to answer" choice give you a better chance rather than selecting "male" or "white non-Hispanic"? I need some explaining on how this all works, thanks! | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4b99w4/eli5_what_impact_on_employment_opportunities_do/ | {
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"In many companies it's not used in the decision; it's just used by an inspector later to determine that there was no pattern of bias against certain groups.\n\nSome companies with an \"affirmative action\" policy will actually make a special effort to hire people from certain minorities and/or whichever gender they have less of.",
"It should make no impact. Some employers are required to report these statistics to the government, and your answers (or refusal to provide them) should have no impact on the hiring decision.",
"When I interviewed and hired I didn't get to see these answers. They are not supposed to be used at all in making hiring decisions. "
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3gxudl | how old are atoms? | Ok I was thinking that all the atoms in our bodies are billions of years old, because of conservation of mass, all the mass in the universe has been around that long. But with constant breaking down and bonding of atoms, technically an individual atoms age would be shorter right? I mean that iteration of individual protons/neutrons/electrons that have been around since the big bang.
So anyway, am I right about that, and either way, is there a way to figure out how old our bodies are, in respect to individual atoms? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3gxudl/eli5_how_old_are_atoms/ | {
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"Most of the larger heavier atoms (such as metals) are assembled primarily in supernovas -- when a star explodes. It takes a very long time for these to re-gather and form, say, Earth. So they are much older than Earth, but younger than the Big Bang since star had to be formed and die.\n\nMuch of the hydrogen in the universe was created in the first million years of the universe.",
"Some atoms have likely been around since the Big Bang. Lots of hydrogen and helium atoms certainly have been. An important thing to remember is that a hydrogen atom is literally just a single proton with an electron orbiting it, and sometimes it even loses that electron and becomes ionized, a single proton (H+). Other atoms formed later, in the cores of stars or during supernovae.\n\nBut really you're getting towards a more philosophical question. The atoms that make up your body were once dust in space, and oceans and part of bacteria and plants and other animals and minerals in the ground. *Almost* all of the atoms in your body now are not the same atoms that were there a few years ago. No atoms have been destroyed, but you've lost fluids, you've pooped, you've exhaled, you've shed dead skin, you've cut off hair, you've bled, and every atom in your body except for some of the parts of your bones has been lost and replaced with new ones. You've almost certainly lost and regained the same atom multiple times. Are any of these atoms \"you\"? Are \"you\" a collection of atoms? Or is it more complicated? \n\nAnd ultimately does it matter how old the atoms that make you up are? Atoms don't age, so it's kind of irrelevant.\n\nBut there's another thing you're slightly mistaken about. Usually atoms aren't constantly breaking down. *Molecules* often are, but a molecule of say, water, is just two hydrogens and an oxygen. That water molecule might break down for some reason, but the hydrogen and oxygen atoms themselves will stay intact probably forever. Very rarely atomic fission or atomic fusion happens, and a single atom breaks into two different atoms, or two different atoms fuse into a single one, but this only happens in exceptional circumstances like inside of stars or during the detonation of a nuclear weapon or during the Big Bang. "
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1j6dho | why is it 1080p, 720p? only the horizontal resolution? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1j6dho/eli5_why_is_it_1080p_720p_only_the_horizontal/ | {
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"[It's not](_URL_0_), it is merely the most common resolution for the most common widescreen aspect ratio, which is 16x9 ",
"It's actually the vertical resolution, not the horizontal, and the trend dates back to the early days of television, when CRTs worked by drawing horizontal lines across the screen, and you'd refer to your resolution as \"lines\". i.e. \"240 lines of resolution\" instead of \"240 pixels\". Television/movie resolutions are generally still only referred to by their number of lines (plus i for interlaced and p for progressive scan, but that's separate from the number of lines). Computer resolutions, on the other hand, have always been (horizontal resolution) x (vertical resolution), until they've started to converge with TV resolutions.\n\nSince all modern HD resolutions are 16:9 aspect ratio, the horizontal resolution is always the vertical resolution x 16 / 9, so there's not much point to say \"1280x720P\" or \"1920x1080P\" instead. "
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c6w2ce | why does thunder usually occur with lightning strikes to the ground and not the cloud to cloud lighting? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/c6w2ce/eli5_why_does_thunder_usually_occur_with/ | {
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"Cloud to cloud lighting is actually much more common than ground strikes, it's just harder to see from from the ground, since it's happening inside the cloud itself.",
"Not true. If you define thunder as the sound produced when the lightning discharges, it always happens regardless of cloud to cloud or cloud to ground. However, the cloud to cloud may be far enough away that all you hear is a rumbling sound and not the more distinctly explosive thunder sound from a close by lightning strike."
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4gorjc | why did exams in the us become predominantly multiple choice, and how did that change contribute to overall education? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4gorjc/eli5why_did_exams_in_the_us_become_predominantly/ | {
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"With standardized testing, and with the sheer number of tests to score, I think a big reason many of the formal, state-wide tests are MC is for ease and objectivity of scoring. It is more efficient and fast to run through a scantron.\n\nMany Advanced placement or IB tests are still essay-based or have a large written component - these tests often do not have posted grades until midway through the summer, much too late to factor into final grades and transcripts, which wouldn't work for tests that tie to school grades.\n\nSource: am a teacher (and for the record, against MC tests, but what can you do.)",
"Multiple choice tests are much, much easier to score. You literally do not need to know anything about the content of the test to score it. You can even have a machine do it. For mass education as in the 20th century US, this is a huge benefit.\n"
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26f92w | how the hell do lightning bugs work? | They are incredible little shits...how the fuck do they light up all the time? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/26f92w/eli5_how_the_hell_do_lightning_bugs_work/ | {
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"Lightning bugs/fireflies produce light when certain chemicals in their abdomen react to oxygen. This process is called bioluminescence, and is done by other organisms too, like the bioluminescent phytoplankton in the Maldives.",
"They produce a luminescent chemical called \"luciferase\". Lucifer from the Latin, \"light bearer\"... matches were originally called lucifers.\n\nIf you know what a glow stick is, they use the same chemical."
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7h7fl9 | that feeling the world is moving faster after running on the threadmill for a long time | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7h7fl9/eli5_that_feeling_the_world_is_moving_faster/ | {
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"Your brain adjusts to the sensation of constant movement while on the treadmill so that you feel more stable. The side effect of this is that when you suddenly stop your brain is compensating for a condition, the movement, that is no longer present and thus it creates a false impression of instability and loss of equilibrium. Basically the same effect as spinning around in circles and then stopping suddenly which makes the world seem to spin and screws up your balance.",
"When you sense your surroundings, you aren't getting unedited \"footage,\" for lack of a better term. There's a lot of unconscious processing that goes on beforehand. Your brain will sort of tune out things it's being exposed to long term, such as a smell (you won't be able to smell it after a while) or touch (you can't really feel your socks while you're wearing them). The same thing happens with being on a treadmill, where you are walking but your surroundings are not moving. The lack of movement is what your brain tunes out, so when you get off the treadmill, you notice your brain's overcompensation for the feeling of not moving while running. "
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2z38yw | what exactly does it mean that taylor swift's legs are insured for 40 million dollars? | Maybe it's late at night, and maybe this is a dumb question, but I don't understand.
I just read that her legs are insured for 40 million dollars. Say her legs were injured. Does she then receive 40 million dollars? Where does it come from? Why is it such a large sum of money? I'm fairly young, so I don't quite understand how insurance works. Is this considered life insurance? Etc. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2z38yw/eli5_what_exactly_does_it_mean_that_taylor_swifts/ | {
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"If anything happens to her legs that prohibit the continuation of her career she gets the bucks. She could still sing so it would likely be a partial payout. If she were a dancer it may change things",
"Lloyd's Of London Insurance company writes these kind of polices. Because her career is singing and dancing a long with being a public figure, if she loss the use of her legs her million dollar career would be in the tubes. Considering she made over $60 million last year....it's really not much. Pay up LOL",
"But do not forget that in order to get such insurance, she must pay a huge amount of money per period (determined by the ins.comp.), and her legs must be broken \"without her help\". \n\nBriefly: The probabilty that Taylor will have her legs injured is too low, and if the event occurs, she must prove that it happend accidentely. So it must be a good deal for the company to get the contract with the singer, because her - let's say - monthly payment will be allocated properly by company (invested), what makes a profit :) "
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3c5j69 | is there a huge difference between 128, 356, flac etc khz when it comes to song quality? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3c5j69/eli5_is_there_a_huge_difference_between_128_356/ | {
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"Yes and no. \n\nThere's a big difference between 128 kbps and 256 or 320 kbps. Most people can notice this difference on decent equipment. 128 kbps removes audible frequencies from the music in order to compress it and it is especially noticeable on drums, female vocalists, and sibilants (the letter S, the C in 'face', etc). \n\nThere's much less of a difference between 256/320 kbps and FLAC. Enthusiasts claim to be able to hear a difference on high-end equipment. ABX tests -- in which a person hears two versions of a piece of audio and is asked to guess which was the higher-quality one -- show that they usually can't, but some insist they can. It's mostly the idea of it that's appealing -- some people would just rather have the highest quality available, and figure hey, I've got a 3TB hard drive, a 400MB album's no big deal. But you don't need to worry about FLAC if you're not interested in that. As long as your MP3s are high quality you almost certainly won't notice a difference.\n\nFrequencies are pretty much the same. The standard for CDs is 44.1KHz. For technical reasons, this means they can reproduce frequencies of half that, or 22.05KHz. 22.05KHz is at the upper limit of human hearing for healthy young people and significantly above it for older people or people who've fired guns, worked jackhammers, gone to a lot of concerts, etc. ABX tests on 44.1KHz vs 96KHz don't show people noticing the difference. The Boston Audio Society did an elaborate series of tests on this and even its members, die-hard enthusiasts, didn't perceive benefit. I wouldn't worry about it. \n\n**tldr: 320kbps MP3 is noticeably better than 128, but beyond that the benefits aren't significant**"
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dmly87 | how come tea leaves a ring in the cup at its surface, rather than making the whole inside of the cup brown? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/dmly87/eli5_how_come_tea_leaves_a_ring_in_the_cup_at_its/ | {
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"Coffee and tea both have the same thing happening here. \n\nThere are very tiny pieces of coffee grounds or broken tea leaves that are floating. As the water evaporates they dry out and stick to the side of the cup.\n\nThey can't 'dry out' when submerged so this only happens at the water line. They will stain certain surfaces (even when dry ish) and since they sit there longer than anywhere else that's where the darker stain and a noticeable line form.",
"The surface of the liquid is where the liquid meets the air, which results in the solids within the drink sticking to the cup where it meets the surface of the liquid (the liquid under the surface is not exposed to air). \n\nAdditionally you usually let the drink sit for a few minutes once you pour it because it's very hot. The larger the difference between the drink temperature and the room temperature the faster it will evaporate, leaving the solids between the liquid and the cup (the solids not close to the cup simply float down into the drink). \n\nOnce the drink cools a bit, evaporation slows down while the rate you drink it (and lower the level of the drink) tends to increase, both of these leave less time for solids to attach to the new level of the drink before that level changes again, so you get smaller/less dense amounts of solids sticking to the cup the further the level of the liquid falls.",
"Your water has at least some salts in it, though exactly how much varies (this is what people are talking about when they are talking about how \"hard\" or \"soft\" your water is.) These salts, particularly calcium carbonate, react with a class of chemicals in plants called tannins and form a scum that is insoluble and lighter than water. This scum floats to the top and ends up sticking to any solid surface it comes into contact with.\n\nThe same principle is what causes a ring in bathtubs. Anything that floats and sticks to the surface will be a part of the ring. Some of that will be whatever stuff is on your body which naturally floats. And the rest of it will be stuff that interacts with salt and/or the soap you use to form things that float."
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106qmj | why do people keep blaming obama for the things he wasn't able to accomplish instead of congress? | Obviously I understand why the republicans would want to point the finger at Obama, and I understand why Liberals might be disappointed that he didn't perhaps fight harder, but it bothers me when liberals and shows like The Daily Show and SNL mock him for things that he may have been able to accomplish if the republicans had been willing to work with him at all. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/106qmj/why_do_people_keep_blaming_obama_for_the_things/ | {
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"Beucase the president is the figurehead of the goverment and he´s the most visible part of it, people dont properly understand the US separation of power.\n\n* Executive - President\n\n* Legislative - Senate + House\n\n* Judiciary - Legal system\n\nMost laws and actions have to be proposed by either the legistaltive or executive branch, revised by the judiciary branch to make sure its legal and constitutional and then voted upon by the legislative branch, if it passes both house and senate then it reaches the president that can either sign it or veto it, the veto can be overriden with a 2/3 majority in the house and senate (i think, not sure about that part), so basicly the president is more of a guy who proposes legislation aswell as taking decisions on mometary courses of action, \n\nBut legisletion and long term policy is compleatly out of his hand, and most people dont understand that becuase (going back to the start), they dont understand the division of powers between the branches of goverment. \n\nAlso some news outlets also reinforce that idea. \n\nTL;DR : people see the president as a autocratic leader and do not understand the legislative process. \n\n",
"It's hard to point the finger at 535 people, so the President gets the blame for most of it when it goes wrong, and on the flip side, he gets the praise when something goes right, even though in all cases he needs to work with Congress. His actual power is often inflated by the media.\n\nThere's also a well documented phenomenon showing that most Americans approve of their own congressmen and congresswomen, even if they don't approve of congress as a whole. There's an attitude of \"Congress is terrible, but not our guy. Our guy is pretty good\" that is held all across the country. Most congressional representatives have a fairly high approval within their own districts, even when those same constituents have an abysmal approval rating for Congress as a whole.",
"I think Bill Mahr said this (paraphrased):\"Barack Obama can save half of the country from drowning, and they'll still vote against him.\"\n\nPolitical ideologies are strong, and to make matters worse, things like the economy, foreign policy, and national security are too complex for 8-second sound bytes on the news. The spreading of misinformation and incomplete information is powerful. ",
"Because they don't get how their own government works.",
"Generally the president is blamed for many failings beyond his control because it is incorrectly believed by many people that the President has more power than he actually does. This has happened in the past to many presidents well before Barack Obama took office.",
"I'm blaming him for what he did accomplish!",
"I \"blame\" Obama for not doing more with his presidency much in the same way I might \"blame\" my dog for chewing up my shoes. We elected a junior senator who had a silver tongue, a great smile, an appealing platform, and a marked lack of political experience. Why would I be surprised that someone as inexperienced as Obama often had difficulty getting congress to do what he wants? I tried to elect Hillary -- that would have been an interesting presidency IMO.",
"The president is a public figure and therefore a lightning rod for criticism, plus people don't know how congress works. ",
"These questions are getting ridiculous. \n\nThere is no objective answer to this question...and it looks like its been put forth for purely political reasons. Along with \n\n\"Why is there debate regarding identification checks at election polling places?\"\n\n\"ELI5: The Romney 47% fiasco?\"\n\nThis subreddit is becoming \"Im going to ask a question that is going to allow people to circlejerk about how bad Republicans are and how out of touch Mitt Romney is.\n\n\n\n",
"Because people are racist.\n\nNot really, but that's everyone's favorite go to answer.\n\nI think part of it was that he had a Democrat controlled.congress for two years and still couldn't get everything done he wanted to. Or the things he did get done some people deeply disagreed with.",
"Because those evil republicans am I right?\n\nThere, you got the answer you came here for.",
"One thing he said was, \"If I don't have this country turned around in 4 years, I'm going to be a one-term president.\" Pretty bold, and arrogant statement if you ask me. So, what are the results in your time in office Mr. President?",
" > ...mock him for things that he may have been able to accomplish if the republicans had been willing to work with him at all.\n\nWe need specific examples to talk about. Can you suggest anything Obama could have done if Republicans had worked with him... other than stuff Obama cannot be blamed for when Republicans *did not* work with him? ",
"Because during election campaigns presidential candidates make many promises that aren't actually within their direct power to change, so people tend to believe the president has more power and thus blame him when things don't work out.\n\nThere was an article on this somewhere that basically said candidates make lots of promises that they personally can't actually keep because if they were honest and said \"I don't actually have any power to do any of this\" they wouldn't win the election, so they are all forced to lie basically.",
"Because the president's job is to get things accomplished.\n\nThis sounds silly, and isn't really what the President was originally intended to do. Aevum1 isn't wrong when he talks about how the Executive branch wasn't *designed* to lead long term policy. However, in modern America, people view the president as a leader not just in foreign policy or crisis moments, but also as the guy who sets the tone for his party.\n\nThe presidency doesn't have very many tools to do that, and so it basically comes down to effectively wielding political power. Some presidents are very good at applying pressure to congress and making sure that people are talking about the things they want to do.\n\nPresident Obama has really struggled with this. When he attempts to choose the topic of conversation for the country, he loses control of it quickly; His own party doesn't respect his choice, and the Republicans ride roughshod over his message.\n\nBecause the President is a single person, they want him to set policy because they find it more coherent. Congress has too many people doing too many things to be coherent, or so people think. So they say, clearly, the President is the right guy to set the overall tone of his party.\n\nPresident Obama was elected on the strength of that *tone*. People wanted the kind of policies his speeches implied. People wanted, as cliche as it is now, hope and change. They wanted to feel good about their government again.\n\nThe problem is that pretty much everyone can agree he hasn't done those things. And while partisans are open to the \"it wasn't his fault, the other guys fucked him\" argument, independents seem to find that argument a fairly weak one. Generally speaking, there's an expectation that a \"good President\" would have overcome the challenges and gotten his shit done.\n\nBasically, a president failing to enact his policies = poor leadership and poor leadership = a bad president, in some people's eyes.\n\nEdit just to add - I think some people are extra angry at Obama exactly because his policies were so *popular*. If Obama had been willing to play political hardball, he would have had the support of a clear majority of the nation. Instead, he's perceived as having dithered and wasted a lot of time half-assing things like health care reform, even though a majority of the country would have been extremely satisfied if he dug his heels in and DEMANDED a single payer system. As an example.",
"As the figurehead, the President gets more blame and more credit than his role warrants. We can each do a public service by reminding people the role of Congress whenever this sort of thing comes up.\n\nThe one that really gets me is when people say he failed to close gitmo. It was actually one of the first things he tried to do in office. He invested political capital into it, but congressional Republicans successfully blocked him. Today the same Republicans mock him for \"breaking his promise\" to close it, and the public--even many liberals--buy into the notion.",
"People have a tendency to just blame or praise the president for everything that happens. See also, Bush being held completely responsible for the recession and Clinton being single handedly credited with giving us a budget surplus. ",
"The Democrats held Congress for the first half of his term. Congress was basically evenly divided for the second half. Don't parrot talking points in ELI5 in the form of questions.",
"Because part of what he should be doing is working with leaders in Congress, and by all accounts he seems to think he's \"above\" that, even when he had totally sympathetic people in charge of Congress. Radical right wingers like Bob Woodward and Chris Matthews have said as much, and rightly identified it as a big problem. \n\nObama wants credit for successes that happened during his term and consistently tries to duck the blame for bad things, and however you like or dislike his agenda that's just really shitty leadership.",
"People always blame the president. At this point, it's part of the job. Obama is not only the leader of the executive branch, he's the public face of the government.\n\nIt's not just Obama. Remember when the entire government was doing skeevy things around 9/11? (I guess you don't if you're actually five, but whatever, history lesson time). We all blamed Bush for it because he's the figurehead, the only face for the public to put on the dilemma. He was doing some sketchy things himself, but he wasn't the only one by far. All the blame got shoved on him though because he's the only one we paid attention to.\n\nSame thing now. Nobody knows who within the government to blame, but we want to blame somebody, and that automatically goes to the person we know best - the President.",
"Ask yourself why everyone blamed/disparaged the previous president for bad things and you'll have your answer. The president isn't powerless.",
"When you are president, you take the blame for everything, and dont get recognition for anything until you are dead. Most analysts say George W. Bush will go down as one of the better presidents.",
"This is annoying. You're not asking a question- you're putting a question mark at the end of a sentence that expresses your political opinion. You even acknowledged that you understand why Republicans are critical of the President, and that you were already being bothered by The Daily Show and SNL's rare criticisms of him.",
"I really wish we could keep such circlejerking in /r/politics. I like this subreddit, and I don't want it to turn into the kind of cesspool that much of this site has become.",
" Because in politics when a group of people want someone out of office that group blames that someone for anything and everything bad; thus hoping to persuade voters to vote against that someone.",
"r/politics is leaking...",
"Because he promised he could achieve them.",
"A lot of it has to do with the fact that Democrats had the House and Senate for two years, meaning he could've passed nearly anything he wanted to. He got his bailouts and his stimulus, then preceded to propose a budget that not a single member of his own party would support.\n\nStill, if you're going to place blame on congress, place most of that blame on Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. While the House was passing bills and formulating budgets left and right, Harry Reid would become infamous for introducing those bills to his veto pocket of darkness.\n\nIf you want to learn more about Harry Reid, look him up on Urban Dictionary. That second definition sums him up in a nutshell.",
" > Why do people keep blaming Obama for the things he wasn't able to accomplish instead of congress?\n\nWhy do people always praise Clinton for having a budget surplus when the Republicans had full control of congress during that stretch of time and the congress is what controls the purse?\n\nAs everyone has said, the president gets blame and praise for many things outside of his control.\n\n > I understand why Liberals might be disappointed that he didn't perhaps fight harder\n\nI think that is the real issue here. The argument is that Obama hasn't been a very strong leader. Maybe it's because the Republicans are too hard to work with anymore, but presidents like Clinton and Bush were at least able to regularly have golf outings with members of the opposite party and had frequent meetings with them in the white house while the Obama administration doesn't even know Boehner's phone number.",
"Because he had full control of everything. He could have campaigned to kill everyone with brown eyes for Christ sake. But he didn't do anything.",
"First we would need to list out all the times Obama wasn't able to do something because Congress was stopping him. Then we can have that discussion.",
"Because as Truman said, the buck stops there.",
"For the same reasons the blamed cheney and bush for things that were the responsibility of Congress. ",
"SNL and the Daily Show mock Obama? I know they mock all the Republicans constantly, but I haven't really seen them mock Obama very much.\n\nAlso, don't forget that the Democrats had control of the House and Senate until 2011, and they had 7 months of filibuster proof majority during that time. They could have done anything they wanted.",
"\"The buck stops here\" line is always cited. I'm no historian but I have to figure this is the least cooperative/willing to compromise congress in US history (aside from succesionists pre-civil war).",
"Because Obama had a Democratic Congress for two years. \n\nBecause Obama blaming congress for the fact that he didn't close Guantanamo, expanded the war in Afghanistan, increased federal raids of legal pot dispensaries, and murdered a US citizen without trial, is disingenuous.\n\nAnd because when Bush didn't accomplish something, he was blamed, not Congress. ",
"Because many of his promises not only never came to fruition but he actually made a 180. Example: Obama claimed to be a huge proponent of civil liberties during Bush's final four and during his campaign but he has since done a total 180 and has been leaving the charge to further reduce civil liberties in the states.",
"Because even though democrats were the majority for a while, he was still unable to get anything important passed (like a budget!)\n\nIm not gonna say that congress isnt responsible for many of the problems our country faces today, but ultimately the responsibility rests on the shoulders of the presidents ability to lead, which Obama clearly lacks. He promised to instill bipartisanship, and has actually driven the two parties farther apart. ",
"Generally speaking, and why I shy'd away from obama in 08. He started talking out his ass about the things he wanted/was going to do. The president is just one man, and it was almost like he started buying into his own hype before 08. He also gets credit for stuff which my 7yr old could have been president and things would have went that way. Even still, would you rather have romney? Lol",
"Because their TV told them to.",
"Cause people as a group are dumb. The Congress, because of its size, diffuses responsibility, whereas it's easy to pinpoint blame and oversimplify it down to one person's sole decision.",
"For the same reason everyone blames Bush for what happened under his presidency. The President is the figurehead of government, naturally what happens under his watch is accredited to him, good or bad.",
"Obviously a lot of it has to do with the fact society sees a president as a figurehead for government. However, President Obama and particular ran a *hugely* promise-heavy campaign filled with signs that said \"Hope\" and \"Change\". \n\nI agree that unrealistic campaign promises are a huge problem for all candidates, but Obama's campaign was particularly guilty of this, to the extent that it made people feel that his election would turn the paradigm of crooked politics on it's head. When this didn't happen, people don't care if it's congress's fault, *he* was the one who promised over and over that he was the \"Change we could believe in\".",
"Not trying to start a political flame war but, probably the same reason Bush was blamed for everything that happened in his last 4 years when the Democrats pretty much took over the rest of the government.",
"Same reason people blame Bush instead of congress.",
"Great, ELI5 is turning into /r/politics...",
"If Obama can only accomplish things if he has no opposition then he's pretty useless. There will always be opposition. Every president has had opposition. Good presidents either work with their opposition to accomplish things (Clinton) or accomplish things despite their opposition (Bush).\n\nBlaming the Republicans for not simply rolling over and letting Obama do whatever he wants is a weak argument and only strengthens the argument that Obama is a weak president. ",
"Because he got into office promising to do those things. The things that he actually does have the direct power to change, he has chosen not to. Presidents also have enormous indirect power to influence public policy, the budget, foreign policy, regulations, the justice department, etc. ",
"For the same reason people still blame Bush even though he hasn't been in office for nearly an entire presidential term. Quarterbacks get the glory if the team wins, and have to answer as to why they lose.",
"Because it is the presidents job to guide and unify. He's done a shitty job on the unify part.",
"He takes the credit for the things he did right, why should he get to pass the blame for the stuff he did wrong?",
"It's the Anti-pro-obama-circlejerk circlejerk",
"He had a democratic majority for the first two years and didn't do a damn thing with it. That pissed me off, and I am a decidedly liberal guy.",
"The Daily Show and SNL mock everyone... Not just the president. It's their job to make politics a little more fun; and most of their jokes are satirical and sarcastic, when you think they are making fun of Obama they might actually be making fun of the republicans.",
"I'm just curious, do you get upset when republicans get mocked on SNL or The Daily Show? Or does it only bother you when a democrat is involved? Or were you just trying to stir the pot with this post and asking a rhetorical question?",
"You're begging the question here - your question itself assumes the things people criticize Obama on are things which are actually congress' fault. \n\nThat's a question you have to address before you can ask the question you asked. Certainly there are things I have problems with (and The Daily Show shares my concerns at times) with things that are soley this administration's responsibility. For example, when they [immediately filed an appeal to a federal court's decision that the 2011 NDAA, which his administration also signed into law, was unconstitutional.](_URL_0_) This is something which legitimized and expanded the authority of the president to indefinitely detain anyone anywhere in the world (including American Citizens) without charges or trial if they are suspected of terrorism. If you've ever studied, read, or even heard of The Constitution, this should send up about a hundred red flags. \n\nIf you can't criticize \"your guy\" when he's wrong, then you're showing that all you really care about is the political game. If you give \"your guy\" a free pass because you want him to win, then you are rewarding things that you would otherwise find reprehensible, especially if \"the other guy\" was responsible for it. If you're going to stick by your guy no matter what he does, stop watching politics and start watching the NFL instead. Every week I cheer on a convicted animal abuser, it's much easier on the conscious to follow him blindly than the leader of my country. ",
"Why do people keep blaming congress for the things he wasn't able to accomplish instead of Obama?",
"That's the point of the presidency. Being the face.",
"I don't like the way Obama speaks. It feels like this entire campaign has been \"dislike Romney because he is successful\". I don't particularly like Romney either, but I'd rather have him in the office than Obama. I for one do not believe government dependence is a good thing. Since Obama seems to be for more and more government dependence, I do not like him. However, I don't blame him for all of our problems. I just think he is advocating things that will lead the United States into more problems.",
"For the same reason that we don't blame congress when a republican does shit we don't like.",
"Because he made everyone believe he could do something he could not. I understand, and I understood before the election. What I don't understand is why people think the President can do anything on his own.",
"Let's say I promised that I would give you the ability to fly. Then, four years later I said \"I tried, but reality/physics stopped me!\" \n\nIt's the fact that he promised things that he had no power over from the beginning that always annoyed me. Then again, this is a pretty common trend in elections, so it wasn't particularly surprising.",
"My limited understanding is that a President should be a shrewd politician and negotiator to manipulate congress successfully for his objectives. A successful President is someone who achieve his goals through trading political favours and power during his term. Sadly to my mind that also greatly compromises a politician's integrity so if you're a more of a moral, stand up kind of guy who doesn't take short cuts or make immoral backstage negotiations you'll always languish in political no man's land. Just like the private sector the superstar corporate sharks who make a difference in a very short space of time tend to be dicks. Just my two cents. ",
"Democrats controlled Congress until last year. ",
"Nice try, Obama.",
"I think most people on Reddit would concur that Obama is supposed to be intellectually superior to Bush (seems to be Democratic leaning for the most part). You never see Bush remembered for all the stuff he did not do, granted he had broken campaign promises like any politician. The volume of things he did accomplish, good or bad, outweighed his record of things he did not accomplish. With Obama the record of accomplishment is limited and does not outweigh the volume of promises made, and that is why he is being called on it. All presidents face challenges in passing legislature through Congress, that is the job you sign up for when you are President. You can't get elected and then claim \"I did not know the job was going to be hard\" and expect that the American people will let it pass. What is being done now is not working so something different must be done. Our choices in this election are a shit sandwich on one side and a shit sandwich on the other side but we have to choose. Personally I wish I could order off the secret menu."
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4gr2l8 | how do dividends on yahoo work? | I understand the basics, however, I was on Yahoo's financial section, pouring over some old stock prices, when I realized I had no idea what form of dividend calculation they were using- percentage of stock or dollar figures. I thought it was percentages, since all the dividends were just .03633, but then I noticed one above 7.0, which would mean a dividend above 700% of the stock price. Can anyone explain this to me? I really do not think it is dollar figures, but this irregularity is inexplicable. Thank you.
Edit: Turns out I was wrong two-fold. One- the dividends listed were in dollar form, not percentage of stock; and two- the dividend listed above 7.0 never occurred according to data from the original company. Thanks to both commenters for steering me in the correct direction.
| explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4gr2l8/eli5_how_do_dividends_on_yahoo_work/ | {
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" A dividend is paid per share of stock, usually on a quarterly basis. For example, a 10 cent quarterly dividend = a 40 cent annual dividend. In general the dividend yield (expressed as a %) is the annual dividend divided by the price of the stock. ",
"The 7.0 dividend was probably a one-time transaction, either a special dividend or a distribution of some kind. You could do some research into the dividend history of the company to figure it out. "
]
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[],
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45aqo8 | how can the earth's gravity be a strong enough force to hold the moon in orbit, and the oceans down, yet be a weak enough to allow me to raise my arms? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/45aqo8/eli5how_can_the_earths_gravity_be_a_strong_enough/ | {
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"Two reasons here:\n\nFirst off, look at it the other way around. Earth's gravity isn't weak, you are just incredibly strong! We all are, because we casually overcome gravity all the time.\n\nAlso, the equation governing gravitational attraction between two bodies is proportional to the mass of those bodies. Your mass is itty-bitty and so the force of attraction between you and the Earth isn't as strong as it is between the Moon and Earth.",
"Because there isn't anything stronger moving those things in any other direction.\n\nGravity isn't particularly strong force, the electrochemical forces in your muscles can easily overcome it. But once you get into outer space, there isn't much else going on, and gravity tends to win out.",
"When you say \"strong enough\" to hold the oceans down, it implies that there is some force pushing the oceans upwards, which there really isn't. Disregarding stability of orbits and dark energy and other very complicated things which I don't really understand, gravity is the only game in town. It's like arm wrestling, it's not about how strong you are, it's about how strong you are compared to your opponent. If your opponent makes absolutely no resistance then you will always win no matter how weak you are."
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332i2q | why do all companies, software, websites expect you to read the 50 pages of "terms and conditions" and give you the option to click yes or no? | Is this some kind of joke? Why do they even give you the option of clicking yes or no? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/332i2q/eli5_why_do_all_companies_software_websites/ | {
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"text": [
"Legally they have to provide the terms and conditions of their use (and so that should you break them and they ban you or something you can't sue)."
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4k8ps4 | how does fur know what color to be when it's in a pattern (like spotted)? | Like on a leopard. If fur falls out, how does the new fur know to grow in that pattern? My cat is a tuxedo and I rarely see white hair in her black fur and vice versa but I know she sheds like crazy. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4k8ps4/eli5_how_does_fur_know_what_color_to_be_when_its/ | {
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"If you shave your cat (*disclaimer: do not shave your cat*) you'll notice that the *skin* under the white and black parts is different colours. It's like that for (most) animals with fur patterns - the pattern goes all the way down to the skin. There is different pigmentation in the skin that the hair follicles grow from. \n\n",
"To answer this question you have to think about the embryological development of the animal. When they're developing, they go from a single cell (a fertilized egg) to two cells, four, then later the embryo begins to take a relatively recognizable [shape](_URL_0_). \n\nWhen the egg and sperm come together, the DNA from mom and from dad get mixed up and combined into one set of DNA from what was two sets of DNA. So the DNA of the offspring will be a unique amalgamation of the DNA of the two parents.\n\nWhile the embryo/fetus is developing, the cells that make up the embryo serve specialized developmental functions. They read the DNA of the organism and create specific proteins that the DNA calls for. Think of DNA as just a long recipe book with recipes for proteins. Every cell contains the same huge recipe book (the organism's unique DNA sequence or genome), but specialized cells use specific recipes (translate genes into proteins) using epi-genetic (higher order) processes that determine which recipes get made and which don't, depending on the specific cell type. So as proto-skin cells start to develop along the outside of the fetus, they start to do more specific skin-cell stuff, as opposed to only generalized processes.\n\nEarly in the developmental process for the skin, you could say certain cells are \"assigned\" to be make recipes for specific hair and skin pigments. So the cells get a signal (from the DNA) that says \"Your region is going to be black. Make black pigments.\" So that cell does. But another cell on a different part of the skin gets a signal that says \"your region is white. Make white pigments.\" The topological placement of each specific skin cell type (white or black pigment-making) is determined by the combined DNA from mom and dad. Dominance, recessiveness and incomplete dominance of genes plays a major part in this. \n\nLike they say, a leopard can't change its spots. This is because as the leopard is developing, its skin cells are \"told\" by the actions of specific genes to create certain pigments in certain places. As the animal develops, the number of skin cells increases and the patterns of spots begin to emerge as larger numbers of specific skin cells perform their specified tasks of creating certain colors of hair and skin pigments. But once a cell is told to be a black pigment making cell, it stays that way forever because it developed that way. \n\nThe leopard's spots don't change for the same reason your liver does not, and can not start thinking. It can't, because the cells in your liver were told to be liver cells and not brain cells early in development. ",
"/u/golf_tacos has the right answer, just thought I'd add that tortoiseshell cats in particular have a pretty interesting mechanism behind their fur pattern. They are (almost?) all female. Female cats have a pair of X chromosomes, whereas males have an X and a Y, like with humans. Now, early on in the female's embryonic develepment, each cell \"deactivates\" one X chromosome, so that only the genes on one of the chromosomes is actually expressed. Which one is switched off is going to be different for each cell, but all of its descendants will have the same active X. Tortoiseshells are heterozygous for the allele that determines fur color, meaning that one X chromosome has the gene for black fur and the other has the gene for black fur, resulting in the black and orange patches.",
"Can somebody explain why my cat 'Tiger' has fur strands that changes color from the skin to the tip. A female. And I mean radically. Like alternating light/dark/orange. I have taken some tuffs of fur and set them aside to see if aging has something to do with it, but that doesn't seem to change the color."
]
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"https://www.google.com/search?q=cat+embryo&tbm=isch&imgil=kfV5bD1cA8nXDM%253A%253BhHS1vm-gl-rIgM%253Bhttp%25253A%25252F%25252Fwww.sciencephoto.com%25252Fmedia%25252F314294%25252Fview&source=iu&pf=m&fir=kfV5bD1cA8nXDM%253A%252ChHS1vm-gl-rIgM%252C_&usg=__FVx7PYKxG0lYSXQ8xg9WC7WYNgY%3D&biw=1280&bih=899&ved=0ahUKEwiShJOSrunMAhWJ1IMKHRlvD4cQyjcIMw&ei=0GE_V5LcEompjwSZ3r24CA#imgrc=pzg-cJT5edB1YM%3A"
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16213i | how does analogue tv work? | There was a [great post](_URL_0_) about this:
> To go more in depth:
> In an NTSC signal, the color info is a subcarrier on the normal, black-and-white TV signal. The hue at a point is encoded by the difference in phase of two 3.579Mhz sine waves, and the saturation is given by the amplitude of those waves. The colorburst gives an amplitude reference so the TV can figure out the saturation of the incoming color information. It also works as a phase reference, so the TV can determine the hue given the phase difference of the color subcarrier.
> TL;DR you never see colors on a TV tuned to static because ANALOG TV'S COMPLICATED AS SHIT
And I wanted to know more about how it works - how do you get a picture into a wave in the air and out again? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/16213i/eli5_how_does_analogue_tv_work/ | {
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"When you want to broadcast information, at a very basic level it works like this:\n\nWe'll start with black and white to keep it simple.\n\nWe start at the very top of the image we want to broadcast. We move from left to right, and where the screen at that point is bright, we make the wave high. Where the screen is dark, we make the wave low. We call this a \"trace\", and specifically, this is a \"horizontal trace\". After one horizontal trace, we move down a small amount and repeat. Once we have done this enough to build up a good picture, we are at the bottom right corner. We have made a complete \"vertical trace\" of out image. To scan our next image, we need to go back to the top left. This is called [Raster Scanning](_URL_0_)\n\nNow, here's the fun, complicated part of Analog TV,\n\nWe take our Raster Scan and we break it apart. After each horizontal trace, we put in a small (.00001 second) pause where the wave goes very, very low. Lower than any dark dot in our image. And after every vertical trace, we go to another very low level for a little longer (.00050 second). So, now we have what really is a very long squiggle, with these little troughs in it at regular spots. The pattern of how these pauses, or breaks, are placed (which gives how many vertical lines we have, and how long those lines are) is called a format. In America, it was called NTSC, and in Europe, they called it PAL. It's the same idea, but a different number of lines and lengths. There is A LOT of other things that go into it, but it's good enough for now.\n\nSo, we have our very long line, with pauses and everything, ready to go. But we can treat this long line as a \"Wave\". And by that, all it really means is that we can vary the strength of an electric signal so that it mimics our line. But, how can we sort out our signal from all the rest of the noise and static? This is the really clever bit.\n\nWhen you have two waves, you can combine them into one. You can also go back again, and subtract one from the other. Like [this](_URL_1_). So, what we do is we take our signal, and we add it to a very simple wave, that has a very smooth, regular, up and down motion. This is what is called a \"Carrier Wave\" because it carries the signal with it. There are many ways to do this, but they are [VERY complicated](_URL_2_).\n\nBut, essentially, we can add our signal into a known wave, and send it out at VERY high power. And, since we know what our carrier wave is, we can tune into that same frequency to receive what is being sent. \n\nSo, our TV tunes into the carrier wave being broadcast. The circuits inside \"resonate\", or vibrate in the same way, as the antenna that is sending us the signal. But, what we receive is the picture signal, combined with the carrier wave. SO, first, we subtract off the carrier. Then, we are left with the original signal. We feed that signal into the electronics of our TV, and they let it control what they do.\n\nRemember those horizontal and vertical traces? The receiving TV takes that information, but instead of *recording* the brightness of each point, it uses the information to **make** a dot of the correct brightness. And at each pause, it knows to move back for the next line (the horizontal retrace interval), or sweep all the way to the top (the vertical retrace interval).\n\nAnd if we do *all of that* 24 times a second, your eye thinks it is one continuous image.\n\nTL;DR ANALOG TV'S COMPLICATED AS SHIT :)\n\n"
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"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frequency_modulation"
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5q6hu5 | given that becoming the president doesn't lawfully require any career politics experience, what's "a day in the life" of the president if anyone is allowed to be it? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5q6hu5/eli5_given_that_becoming_the_president_doesnt/ | {
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"It is a whole bunch of meetings with people/organizations, briefings from different departments, and making appearances.\n\nThat is what the President does. ",
"If you really want to know, it is someone's job to track the President's schedule to the minute, 24/7. This schedule is public record, and can be found with some strong google-fu. "
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30c4et | what is going on in a woman when she's having "cramps"? | My girlfriend is cuddled in a ball on the couch claiming that she's dying and asked me why her cramps hurt so bad. She just got her period (nice) and literally right after the cramps started. Now I have no answer to her question. Please hurry and god speed | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/30c4et/eli5_what_is_going_on_in_a_woman_when_shes_having/ | {
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"Through the month, your girlfriend's body prepares itself for a possible pregnancy by lining the uterus with a nutritious lining in which a fertilised egg cell can burrow into and then grow into a baby. If no egg cell has been fertilised, the uterus will shed this lining. That is what happen when you have a period. The cramps come from the uterus contracting to loosen the lining and work it through the cervix so it can exit the woman's body via the vagina. ",
"She doesn't want an answer, she wants comforting.\n\n\"WHY IS THIS HAPPENING TO ME\" is an expression used when somebody is suffering & don't feel they 'deserve' it, not a literal request for information.\n\nGet her some ibuprofen & chocolate ice cream. Some sort of heating pad (or microwave a sock filled with rice) can help, if you have one around.",
"_URL_0_. My girlfriend sent this to me when I asked her the same question. ",
"One thing that can make cramps worse is the presence of Endometriosis, Ovarian Cysts, or Uterine Fibroids.\nI have all three, and it sucks balls. Endo is the worst though, because with that condition, uterine material escapes the womb and grows all over the abdominal cavity, adhering to random organs, causing inflammation everywhere it exists, and every bit of that tissue bleeds and contracts and reacts to changing hormone levels. Imagine tough-as-nail flesh spiderwebs growing everywhere internally and it's all tugging this way and that and bleeding a little bit for a whole week every month, causing pain, intestinal inflammation, anemia, fatigue due to pain stress and low iron levels, bloating...the list goes on...\n"
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3w8l83 | cpu instructions | [deleted] | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3w8l83/eli5_cpu_instructions/ | {
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"Regardless of what programming language you use to write a program, processors only understand a fairly basic set of commands. Those commands tend to be things like \"set this memory to a value\" or \"pull a value from this location to use.\" Programming languages abstract a lot of the grunt work, so while the program to print \"Hello world!\" to a monitor my be really short in a programming language, it requires a lot of CPU instructions to be executed in the proper order to work.\n\nIn the context of AMD and Intel, both processors have a lot of the common instructions...which is why a lot of things can be fairly easily executed on computers using either processor. There have been times when one or both has added instruction sets the other didn't posses, forcing the other company to either adopt and expand the set or ignore it completely.",
"The instructions for a CPU make up the basic functions it can perform. Imagine a hypothetical processor that had the following abilities:\n\n - an arithmetic/logic unit (ALU) that could perform basic mathematical operations and comparisons between numbers\n\n - a set of 8 internal storage locations for numbers, called \"registers\", labelled registers 0 through 7\n\n - an interface to main memory (RAM) through which values could be written to memory from registers and read into registers from memory\n\nThen, the CPU instruction set might look like:\n\nADD X Y Z\n\n - adds contents of register X to register Y and places the result in register Z\n\nSUB X Y Z\n\n - same thing, but with subtraction\n\nBRANCH0 X Y\n\n - if contents of register X are zero, take the instruction at memory address contained in register Y and use it as the next instruction (called a \"branch\")\n\nBRANCHN0 X Y\n\n - same thing, but branches if X is non-zero\n\nREAD X Y\n\n - read the memory at the address in register X into register Y\n\nWRITE X Y\n\n - write the contents of register Y to the address in register X\n\nThere would be variants of these instructions that could also include constants (or \"literals\") in place of a register number.\n\nThen one could write a program like:\n\n - READ constant:512 0\n\n - READ constant:516 1\n\n - READ constant:520 2\n\n - SUB 0 1 3\n\n - BRANCH0 3 2\n\nThis reads the contents of addresses 512 and 516 into registers 0 and 1, then reads the contents of address 520 into register 2. It then subtracts register 0 from register 1, and if the result is zero it will read the next instruction from whatever address was read into register 2 from address 520.\n\nFrom this simple example, you can see how CPUs could not only perform calculations and store the results, but could use the results of calculations as comparisons, and then make \"decisions\" to do one thing or another based on the result.\n\nInstruction set design, and CPU design generally, are really complex tasks with many, many trade-offs. For example the x86 instruction set is limited to addressing a very small number of registers in the CPU. This means that more partial results have to be stored in memory to be read back later rather than being kept in the internal registers, because the register is needed for something else in the interim. This slows down the processing with reads and writes for those partial results. The AMD x64 instruction set can address many more internal registers, such that even for the same CPU clock speed the x64 CPU will be faster at certain kinds of operations due to less reading and writing of partial results.\n\nEdit: Oh, and all \"native\" computer programs compile down to these simple CPU instructions, regardless of the programming language in which they were written. There are many languages, though, that do not compile down to processor instructions. This is either because they are \"interpreted\" languages that are not compiled at all but are instead run line-by-line in the language; or are compiled down to processor-independent instructions that do not run directly on a processor, but instead run in an engine that turns them into processor instructions (which is kind of the same thing as being interpreted but at a lower level). Perl is an example of the former, and Java an example of the latter. Regardless, the interpreters an engines (or \"virtual machines\") still do everything in the end with native CPU instructions, because that's the only way to get things done.\n"
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7ueio4 | how do viruses cause such a variety of symptoms (if they for the most part just destroy cells and multiply)? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7ueio4/eli5how_do_viruses_cause_such_a_variety_of/ | {
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"1) Most viruses target specific types of cells and so that leads of course to different symptoms. For instance, HIV targets cells are within the immune system and so you see symptoms related to that. \n\n2) A lot of symptoms (fever, inflammation) aren’t directly cause by the virus but by your bodies attempts to kill it. ",
"If you were to tear the wheels off a car what would happen? If you removed the windshield would something different happen? What if you just removed the steering wheel or the engine? \"Just destroying cells\" can easily cause different effects depending on what is tampered with."
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zxn6o | the jewish belief on salvation and afterlife | I have a large project on world religions for a history course, and one of the topics we have to discuss is the belief on salvation and afterlife. All the resources I've found are very confusing, scattered, and differing. Thanks in advance. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/zxn6o/eli5_the_jewish_belief_on_salvation_and_afterlife/ | {
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"In ancient times, the Hebrews did not have any concrete views on an afterlife. Instead, they believed that by following the commandments and living a holy life, God would bless them. In other words, good things happen to good people and bad things happen to bad people. Of course, this wasn't always the case. Some argued that people suffered because of a sin they performed in secret or were the results of their parents' sins. Of course, there was still a lot of debate over this as seen in the Book of Job. \n\nBut all that changed when the Assyrians attacked. Suddenly, the Hebrews were forced out of their homeland and unable to perform the required sacrifices. Many still remained faithful, but they were still subjugated by the Assyrians in a foreign land. This sparked a shift in Jewish thought. If God's blessings did not come in this life, perhaps they come in the next life. \n\nNot everyone agreed that there was an afterlife. Even centuries later, the Gospels have some members of a Jewish sect asking Jesus about the resurrection (AKA the afterlife). In Matt 22:23 it says \"The same day Sadducees came to him, who say that there is no resurrection\" The Sadducess were a sect that did not accept the belief in an afterlife but there were others that did, such as the Pharisees. \n\nMost modern Jews have a concept of the afterlife that is called the Olam Ha-Ba. This translates to \"the world that is to come.\" This place is basically \"heaven\" and those that were very good in life will receive blessings and those that did less good will receive fewer blessings. Those that did wrong, would spend time in Gehenna to contemplate their sins before being allowed to join the others in paradise. The Torah isn't very clear about either location or what they are like, so the details will vary between different communities. "
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6llqg8 | how can there be all type of frequencies and waves in the air (bluetooth, wifi, radio) and we are not physically affected by it? shouldn't our watery or brainy components be affected to some degree? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6llqg8/eli5_how_can_there_be_all_type_of_frequencies_and/ | {
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"Ultimately it matters how energetic they are. Radio waves in the air can be as benign as a flashlight shining on you, and you don't see complaints about that. \n\nSo a radio wave in the air isn't really an issue, but if you lived with a 50,000 watt radio transmitter, that sort of energy could be dangerous. Just like getting too much UV from the sun.\n\nWe can decide what devices are able to put out as far as energy yield. As far as what is in your home, your television would be more of a threat than your wifi router or your mobile phone. \n\n",
"They can affect you. Non-ionizing radiation can generate heat, for instance, so you can be burned with sufficient exposure. A microwave, for instance, could burn you, if you managed to remove the shielding or get yourself inside (which would be impressive). Ultraviolet light can give you sunburn, and contribute to cataracts, and so on.\n\nBut you specifically mention bluetooth, wifi, and radio. These tend to be low power devices in your home, and you are likely exposed to orders of magnitude more energy just standing in sunlight. \n\nIt's important to note that everything around you, and you yourself, are sources of electromagnetic radiation. It is often mistaken for some sort of technological bogeyman, but it permeates the universe. "
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86wgkt | why is photosynthesis so inefficient? | I can't seem to find anything online explaining why 1% of light energy is used up out of 100% from the photons from the sun. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/86wgkt/eli5_why_is_photosynthesis_so_inefficient/ | {
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"Because evolution isn't the process of achieving perfection. It is the process of achieving \"good enough.\"\n\nIt is possible a method of increasing photosynthetic efficiency could be engineered, but that doesn't mean it would be a reproductive advantage for photosynthetic life, and reproduction is what drives evolution."
]
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xamuo | why a 2.2ghz quad core is better than a 2.7 ghz dual core. | People have told me this is true, and I have heard it enough to believe it, but I just can't wrap my head around why. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/xamuo/eli5why_a_22ghz_quad_core_is_better_than_a_27_ghz/ | {
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"If you think about a CPU as a supermarket checkout...a quad core processor literally can process more information at one time (4 things) than a dual core (two things).",
"Eh, this isn't exactly ELI5ish but it also needs to be pointed out that clock speed (how many 'GHz' a processor has') does not necessarily determine if a processor is 'better'. The 2.2GHz quad core processor may be designed in way that it can actually process one task faster than the 2.7GHz processor. Really the only reliable way to tell processor speed is to check out the benchmarks, which run a series of programs on each and sees how well each processor does.",
"Actually, you would have to test it a lot to know for sure - but the reason it *would* be is relative to how it works with what you are computing.\n\n**So, ELI5:**\n\nLet's say you have 2 A+ Students and 4 A- students in math and you give them 10 problems to solve.\n\nIf they are given 1-2 problems per group to solve at a time, the A+ students would probably solve them more quickly. \n\nIf they are given 4 problems per group to solve at a time, the A- students would probably solve them more quickly.\n\nThis is how the processors work. Whatever the computer runs has to be capable of splitting its work load between the processors, and at this time that isn't all that common.\n\n\n(This is assuming their GPAs are an accurate representation of their proficiency in Math, let's not turn this into a debate about how terrible the American grading system is)"
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26tad5 | why do some christians believe all heavy metal is satanic? or even things like harry potter or magic. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/26tad5/eli5_why_do_some_christians_believe_all_heavy/ | {
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8wvqh8 | is second-hand smoke more dangerous than, say, campfire smoke? | I'm wondering if second-hand smoke was only deemed so dangerous was because waitresses/bartenders had to be around smokers all the time, so it was frequency and density of the exposure that really did the damage.
If exposed to the same amount of campfire/grill smoke, would it be the same? What about those incense sticks?
What's the difference?
- Non-Smoker, enjoys bonfires. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8wvqh8/eli5_is_secondhand_smoke_more_dangerous_than_say/ | {
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"Everything I tried to google turned up \"is second-hand smoke more deadly than smoking?\" Which I would assume is a pretty obvious no, but feel free to correct me.",
"I wouldn't say it was \"only deemed so dangerous\", the frequency and density of the exposure are absolutely why it's a bigger issue than wood smoke, but that having been said neither is good to be breathing in. For either smoke there are a lot of incomplete combustion products and large organic molecules that get aersolized and spread around (tar), things you don't want just sitting there in your lungs. \n\nIts worth noting that one of the major advantages of charcoal is that by first heating wood/plant matter in kiln with little oxygen you can get rid of a lot of that stuff that you don't want. Vaporize it and get left with basically just pure carbon, though there are varying degrees to which its done, what they're made from exactly that differ, but it produces much less smoke. Ideally you would produce basically pure carbon, and if you have it well enough oxygenated you get basically pure CO2 as a byproduct, which tends not to cause problems unless there's so much of it that it displaces the oxygen and you suffocate. \n\nI'm sure there are exact studies out there of the composition of wood smoke and cigarette smoke, but the general reality is that its not good to breathe either in. ",
"Cigarettes are filled with loads of harmful chemicals whereas wood is... not. It’s wood. If campfires were nearly as dangerous as cigarettes, you would know. *Directly breathing in* any kind of smoke *can* be bad for your lungs, especially in large quantities, but just being around a campfire or burning incense is not going to do any damage. Secondhand smoke is harmful because of the toxins that you’re breathing in, that end up coating the inside of your lungs. Frequent smoking also leaves a lot of those toxins behind to stick to every inch of whatever room/ rooms the smoking is taking place in, so everyone in the house is breathing in the stuff, even when no one is smoking. ",
"I think it's what is in the smoke, yes campfire smoke is bad stuff to be inhaling a lot of, but cigarette smoke has the hundreds of carcinogens and stuff like that which causes cancer, so I would think that at least in equivalent volumes cigarette smoke is definitely worse, but I'm not sure if a small amount of cigarette smoke equals way more campfire smoke in terms of danger/health issues. If that makes sense?",
"Ooh, I actually know this one! So this is a little bit of a loaded answer, but here it is:\n\nWe can say tobacco smoke is dangerous/carcinogenic because there has been lots of research done on it and we know what’s in it. First, smoke in general contains a lot of [polycyclic aromatized](_URL_0_) organic compounds due to incomplete combustion. Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons are often carcinogenic, so that’s one part of tobacco smoke that we know is bad. The other thing that makes tobacco dangerous is a group of compounds called TSNAs (tobacco-specific nitrosamines). These are formed in tobacco during the curing stage by what’s called a nitrosation reaction. Put simply, nicotine and other alkaloids present in the tobacco react with nitrate released during curing to form these TSNAs. These are also carcinogenic and contribute to the dangerousness of tobacco consumption, particularly tobacco smoking. And then tobacco companies add in all kinds of other junk, and it’s just a nasty, carcinogenic mess.\n\nAs far as campfire smoke, it definitely contains the aromatic compounds that all smoke does. So to some degree, it is carcinogenic. But because we don’t study campfire/wood smoke in as detailed of fashion that we do tobacco smoke, we don’t have an exhaustive list of what other carcinogens can be contained within. (And needless to say, I’m assuming normal “I chopped down a tree” wood. If you use treated lumber in a campfire, that can introduce some nasty stuff, but I’d bet that most people won’t use treated lumber in a standard campfire.)\n\nHere’s the thing though: A. People don’t suck campfire smoke into their lungs like they do cigarette smoke, and B. People don’t habitually light up campfires several times a day everyday as smokers do. So while all smoke contains carcinogens to some degree, you almost certainly aren’t exposed to enough campfires where it can be deemed a definite health risk.\n\nSo stay away from cancer sticks and go enjoy your campfires."
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1dgnzi | how are perishable foods (like fruit) shipped thousands of miles from latin american countries to the us and canada so quickly? | At the grocery store today, I noticed that the pears I bought were imported from Argentina. How are fruits, vegetables, and other perishable foods like this grown, harvested, packed, and shipped thousands of miles while still managing to be fresh when I pick them up from the shelf? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1dgnzi/eli5_how_are_perishable_foods_like_fruit_shipped/ | {
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"The fruit you buy that has been imported was generally picked early so that it wouldn't go bad by the time you got it, but would have time to ripen instead. "
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7kpvee | why does thc in edibles take around an hour to have noticeable affects on the body, but caffeine acts almost instantaneously? | *effects | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7kpvee/eli5_why_does_thc_in_edibles_take_around_an_hour/ | {
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"Caffeine is water soluble. That is it dissolves in water. THC is not, it is fat soluble. Water soluble chemicals can move from the GI tract into the blood stream much faster than non water soluble chemicals. Many water soluble chemicals such as alcohol and caffeine can actually pass right though the stomach wall right into the blood stream. THC on the other hand will need to get to the small intestine before it can be absorbed.",
"Last weekend I ate a very powerful pot brownie. An hour and a half later I wasn't feeling anything so I ate the fruity pebble rice krispy treat edible. I ended up so high that I was listening to people speak English and it sounces to me what English sounds like to someone who doesn't know it. Then I fapped and went to bed..."
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3vbv9z | why don't people think stricter gun laws will not be successful in the united states when it clearly works in places such as australia, where the last mass shooting was in 1996? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3vbv9z/eli5_why_dont_people_think_stricter_gun_laws_will/ | {
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"Banning drugs doesn't work because drugs are easy to grow, make, or smuggle.\n\nBanning alcohol doesn't work because it's pretty easy to make or smuggle.\n\nBanning guns won't work in the USA because there are literally hundreds of millions of them around.\n\nIn Australia, the VASTLY smaller number of guns were there to start with, and thus much easier to get rid of.\n\nThis entire argument ignores legality and constitutional rights, of course, but from a practical standpoint, the only people really affected by bans like these are those who already follow the laws in the first place.",
"Australia is a very different country than the United States. But even if we assume the comparison is valid, we couldn't implement Australian laws in the U.S. because several parts of their scheme would violate the Second Amendment. \n\nYour question also assumes that preventing mass shootings is the end goal, but that's not true; small-scale gun violence is much more common, and people value liberty as well--the right to bear arms is viewed with more importance in the U.S. than Australia, so those interests should be balanced differently.",
"The difference between the US and a lot of countries is the gun-culture.\n\n\nWithin the US guns are (generally) culturally regarded as a *defensive* weapon - they are seen as something that can be used to protect you from harm. Within many other countries guns are culturally regarded as an *offensive* weapon - designed to do harm to others. Therefore culturally the idea of owning a gun for 'safety' reasons in many other countries is quite odd and can be seen as the opposite of safety.\n\n\nWhen the culture is that a gun is something that creates safety it is very difficult for stricter gun laws to gain any traction - every mass-shooting inadvertently pushes people further down the mindset that they need the 'right' people armed to *save* themselves/the public from the 'wrong' people. The logic goes if the bad guys are armed and you are not...you are less safe.\n\n\nIt's a personal opinion but I don't think the US will realistically succeed in its endeavour to reduce these atrocities if it doesn't undertake work to tackle its gun culture - to rebrand guns as offensive weapons and to convince people that gun ownership doesn't make you safer. That's a *huge* task and I honestly don't have a clue how a country would go about changing the culture in that way.\n\n\nEDIT : Obligatory thanks for the gold comment :-)",
"The US isn't Australia. Our population is much bigger, and much more prone to violence in general. Even before Australia increased gun controls, most murder in Australia didn't use guns. In general, if your population is in favor of controlling guns, then gun control will work. If not, then it won't.\n\nAnd Australia actually has had mass shootings since then, depending how you define mass shootings. But it's inconvenient so we ignore it. This one meets most people's definitions of mass shooting, and there are others that were more family quarrels gone bad.\n\n_URL_0_\n",
"France has some of the toughest gun laws in the world, but has had several mass shootings recently.\n\nYou can't legislaate peace and bad people will always find a way to do bad things.",
"[Maybe if we ask really nicely, the criminals will get rid of all their guns.](_URL_0_)",
"It seems like nobody can compromise, and thats the biggest problem.\n\nI am a Kiwi and I love guns but I think our gun control laws here are just right, but I think aussie's are a bit too harsh and the US is way too relaxed.\n\nBanning specific guns (Assault weapon bans) or trying to do a buy-back like Aussie did or confiscate weapons will never ever work in the USA, and I also think it taking away people's freedom to own what they want.\n\nHowever, having good gun regulation is the key and the compromise, in NZ you cant just buy one, you need to have a criminal background check, any violent, sexual or drug offences mean you cant get the licence.\nThey also check your mental health record, and then you have to study gun safety rules and pass a test on gun safety, this is all done by the NZ Police.\nAfter that they will inspect your property to make sure you are keeping the guns locked up and ammo locked up separately, so nobody can steal them or a child use them and then finally when you buy your gun you have to have it registered to you.\n\nWe also have a tiered system which I think is a great idea, NZ has loads of farms and the farmers need guns, so with your standard gun licence you can buy all the farming/hunting weapons you would need, bolt action rifles, pump action shotguns etc etc\n\nIf however you want something more specific, such as an Assault rifle or a handgun, there are specific endorsements for those weapons which you have to get in order to purchase them, adding another layer of control while not making it too hard for the average farmer/hunter to get there guns.\n\nAmericans just see it as Pro Guns and no control or No guns and no liberty, there is a middle ground, and its not aussie's system, its NZ's system.",
"because everyone has a good reason for what they believe, and then they have their real reason. gun owners' \"good reason\" for gun ownership is that it makes them safer or that it's a protected right. their real reason is that they like guns. \n\nas long as people like guns and as long as the second amendment exists, there will be gun ownership in america. and they will fight tooth and nail against anything that infringes on gun ownership.",
"Why ban guns for everyone when it's such a small percentage of people who don't use them correctly?\n\nIf Uncle Jim wants to shoot cans on his farm in Virginia, people being murdered in Chicago should have 0 effect because Uncle Jim doesn't live in Chicago.",
"As a US citizen living in Tennessee I would be happy if some in depth safety training was required before purchases. Such as making it abundantly clear that guns cause serious injury and you are liable for that. I would even be in favor of a first aid course relating specifically to injuries relating to firearms, pictures/videos included.",
"For whatever it is worth, there are two municipalities in the U.S. that have much stronger gun control laws than anywhere else in the country, including California... Washington D.C., and Chicago, IL. Both of these municipalities suffer from the highest gun murder rates in the country.",
"There are other significant factors that play into violent crime rates which are unrelated to legal gun availability; Things like poverty, education, and healthcare, which the US government is notoriously bad a providing thanks to heavy opposition to such social policies. Just making it harder for people to legally get guns won't do much to prevent shootings. Reducing the amount of people who grow up to want to commit such a crime will.",
"Because while our firearm relate homicide rate is somewhat high (though still much lower than most of the Americas) our overall homicide rate is pretty normal. So just becasue other countries aren't killing as many people with guns doesn't mean they aren't killing people. Also the 3 safest states in terms of homicide rate are Maine Vermont and New Hampshire, and they all have very relaxed gun control laws.",
"Anyone else find that this topic (not just this thread) starts out narrow in scope and becomes more myopic with each point, counter point?!\nEach country really has to be looked at individually and factors taken into consideration. I'm really tired of broad sweeping notions being thrown out and then regurgitated by everyone, whichever side they fall on. Where are we headed as a society if everyone is too consumed with being right as opposed to being better which applies to all of us no matter the viewpoint. \nIt may sound hokey but you know it's true."
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1kn8tr | the difference between the apocalypse and armageddon. | Haven't found a satisfactory explanation online. Grazie! | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1kn8tr/eli5_the_difference_between_the_apocalypse_and/ | {
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"\"Apocalypse\" just means a revelation or something revealed. In the proper-noun sense, it means anything that's reminiscent of the *Apocalypse* of St. John, which most people know better as the Book of Revelation. End-of-the-world type stuff.\n\n\"Armageddon\" is a *place:* Har Meggido, an ancient city in the Levant that was the site of a historically important battle. It's used in the Book of Revelation as figurative language to describe the climactic battle between the forces of good and evil."
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j3kpx | [li5] can someone explain to me how the 911 led to us being at war in iraq/afghanistan? | 911 happened when I was 5, kind of missed the first 5 years of all that so I'm still confused as to why the US is still there and how they got there in the first place. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/j3kpx/li5_can_someone_explain_to_me_how_the_911_led_to/ | {
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"First off, the United States invaded Iraq and Afghanistan for different reasons.\n\nThe purpose of going into Iraq was to remove Saddam Hussein, and to take away his supposed weapons of mass destruction. While there were rumors of Al-Qaeda being inside Iraq, there were very few, as Saddam had kept terrorist cells out of Iraq because he didn't like competition.\n\nAfghanistan is a different story. After 9/11, the United States wanted to capture Osama Bin Laden, and remove the Taliban, who were hiding Al-Qaeda, the people responsible for 9/11. So the United States and some friends went to Afghanistan to find Osama, and to kick the Taliban out of Afghanistan so they could find Al-Qaeda.\n\nWe are still in Afghanistan because for a while we couldn't find Osama. However a few months ago we found him And now are objectives are complete: We removed the Taliban (for the most part, they're still around, and got Osama. Now we are trying to find a way to get out safely, and at the same time leave Afghanistan stable so the Taliban don't come back."
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3lwpkj | soo, if we are flying around the sun flying around the solar system, flying around the galaxy...how are the stars we see at night in the same predictable places? | ELI5: Soo, if we are flying around the sun flying around the solar system, flying around the galaxy...How are the stars we see at night in the same predictable places? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3lwpkj/eli5_soo_if_we_are_flying_around_the_sun_flying/ | {
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"Stars move extremely slowly around the galaxy. It takes the sun a quarter billion years to go around once. And the other stars near us go at about the same speed in the same direction.\n\nAs for us moving around the solar system - that's an insignificant distance compared to the size of the galaxy.",
"The stars we see in the sky are pretty much all in the Milky Way, so they're moving the around the galactic center at the same time we are.\n\nIt's important to note: the stars we see at night do change over the course of the year. Sirius (the dog star) is only seen during the \"dog days\" of summer (in the northern hemisphere).\n",
"Because the huge size of space means that even if things are moving quickly (hundreds of kilometers per second), they don't change position in the sky very much. Let's do some quick example calculations.\n\nFirst, you mention that we're flying around the Sun. That's true, we're moving at about 30 km/s around the Sun. But since we're going in a circular orbit around the Sun, we don't actually travel that far from where we started (relative to the Sun). The furthest we go is to the opposite side of the circle from where we are now, so twice the distance from the Earth to the Sun, or about 300 million kilometers.\n\nNow, for reference, the nearest stars are about 4 lightyears away, which is about 37 trillion kilometers (really far!). If you use a bit of trigonometry (I'll spare the details, this is ELI5), you can estimate how far on the sky that star appears to move because of us orbiting around the Sun. The answer is about 0.4 thousandths of a degree. For reference, the Moon is about half a degree across as we see it in the sky, so the change in position is about a thousand times smaller than the Moon. And that's for the **nearest** stars! A star 10 times farther away will move 10 times less on the sky.\n\nSo that's the shift caused by Earth's motion around the Sun. What about the motion of the Sun? The Sun moves around the Galaxy at about 200 kilometers per second, which is 7 times faster than the Earth's orbital speed! But! Most of the stars around us are also moving around the Galaxy in a similar way, in the same general direction, so the velocity between us and the nearby stars is not nearly so high. Actually, it turns out that the relative movement of stars nearby the Sun is also about 30 kilometers per second, give or take a bit. So the change in position is about the same: less than a thousandth of a degree per year, for the nearest stars! There's no way that a human eye can detect that kind of difference. So it would take thousands of years for a star to appear to move about 1 degree (which, remember, is only twice the apparent size of the Moon in the sky). And that's about the amount of movement that you'd need to be able to pick it out with your eye.\n\nProfessional astronomers are really good at measuring the positions of stars: these days we can measure accurately even shifts as small as a millionth of a degree, or even less in some cases. So we can measure the change in position of stars over the course of several years, and we can use these measurements to tell us things like the star's velocity, how far away it is, if it's part of a binary star system (two stars orbiting each other), and other cool things."
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y7kfn | pascal's triangle | - and its applications and usefulness in real life | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/y7kfn/eli5_pascals_triangle/ | {
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"Does [this animation](_URL_0_) explain it for you?",
"It is useful because it is easy to make\n\n1 \n1 1 \n1 2 1 \n1 3 3 1 \n1 4 6 4 1 \n\nAlways start with a 1, add two consecutive numbers in the row above, end with a 1...\n\nOnce you can mindlessly make it you get all sorts of things for free...\n\nNumber the rows starting with 0, add all the numbers in that row and it magically sums to 2^(row number)\n\n0: 1 = 2^0 \n1: 1 + 1 = 2^1 \n2: 1 + 2 + 1 = 2^2 \n3: 1 +3 +3 +1 = 2^3 \n4: 1 +4 +6 +4 +1 = 2^4 \n\nand many many many useful things.... coefficients of (x + y)^(4)? the 4^th row.\n\n(x + y)^4 = **1**x^4 + **4**x^(3)y + **6**x^(2)y^(2) + **4**xy^3 + **1**y^4 \n\n\n ",
"Pascal's triangle is just a visual way of showing the *binomial coefficients*. The binomial coefficients are a mathematical way of describing how probability works.\n\nFor example, let's say someone bets you 3 to 1 odds that if they flip a coin 10 times, they will get more than 6 heads. Should you take that bet? The binomial coefficients help you figure out whether you should.",
"I just googled this and it has pictures and coolness.\n\n_URL_0_\n\nPascal's Triangle comes up all over the place. "
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43q6oy | why can't anyone seem to succeed in digging down to the earth's mantle? | What are the problems associated with attempting such a task, and why can't anyone seem to actually do it? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/43q6oy/eli5_why_cant_anyone_seem_to_succeed_in_digging/ | {
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"It's a long way down, the heat is very rough on tools, and most importantly: what would be the point?",
"The earth mantle burns at 500-900°C or 932-1652°F. While there are items like tungsten which melting point is at 3414 °C or 6177 °F, It is not strong enough to hold up a digging machine structure. Besides, would it be needed when we can do overland travel?",
"Real ELI5: it's very very hot when you get that deep so most tools will melt. There's also a ton of pressure, kind of like when your brother sits on you or puts you in a headlock, only this is way way way more than that, so the tools get crushed and break. \n\nAnother way to put it would be like pushing a really long straw into the ground. It will go in easy at first, but the farther you get the harder it is to push, eventually it will bend and break. Digging to the mantle is similar but much bigger. ",
"**Here is an explanation, something that was so difficult for people to provide.** It gets very hot near the mantle. Most workers would quit, tools and equipment would melt, machines would either jam or stop operating completely, and going to the mantle wouldn't be smart; it's the equivalent of suicide by magma. Plus, think; what useful resources would be to die for in the mantle? Sure, there may be **some** useful resources in the mantle, but they're really not worth risking a worker's life for. *'Ciao*"
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15ehlb | why is volume/sound additive? like if one person were to scream it would be significantly lower than 100 people screaming at the same decibel level. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/15ehlb/eli5_why_is_volumesound_additive_like_if_one/ | {
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"Imagine that you threw a rock into a still pond. It creates waves going out from itself. Now, if you threw two rocks they would each create their own series of waves. When the peaks from two waves overlapped they would create a higher wave than either of the individual ones.\n\nThat's what's happening with sound. The sound waves add up and reinforce each other.\n\nNote that there is a sound wave which is exactly the opposite to the original which will completely cancel out both of them. This is the principle behind noise-cancelling headphones.",
"Sound isn't \"additive\" in the sense that a lot of people think. For example, if one person sang a note and then another person sang the exact same note at exactly the same volume, the cumulative sound *isn't* twice as loud. The volume would actually only increase by about 3 decibels (SPL), which is noticeable, but certainly not twice as loud. [But of course if you add 100 voices, the volume would increase much more than 3 decibels](_URL_0_) (it would actually increase by about 20 decibels (not 300 decibels) because the dB scale is logarithmic and confusing.)"
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17hoh2 | exactly what happens between when gandalf engages in his fight with the balrog and when he is revealed in the two towers? | I haven't read the books, but I am curious. And please explain the Gandalf the Grey/Gandalf the White thing? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/17hoh2/eli5_exactly_what_happens_between_when_gandalf/ | {
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"He manages to kill the balrog, but \"dies\" from his wounds.\n\nNow Gandalf isn't actually a human, but rather an immortal angelic spirit, a Maia. Him and the other wizards (Istari) were sent to Middle Earth by the Valar (archangels, sort of) to help the people there against Sauron (a bad Maia), but were intentionally \"depowered\" and given frail old human bodies. Last time the Valar and Maiar went to war, half a continent was destroyed. Hence, this time they sent some wise Maiar that were supposed to defeat Sauron by aiding the people of Middle Earth with good advice.\n\nBack to Gandalf. His body is dead, his spirit is depowered and without form, and the wizards have failed. Saruman has gone bad, Radagast has pretty much abandoned his mission, the two blue wizards are nowhere to be found. But then something unprecedented happens. Eru, aka. God himself, who almost never intervenes, returns Gandalf to his body, restores it, and gives him the job of being the White Wizard (the leader and most powerful of the wizards) instead of Saruman.",
"he leveled up"
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440xge | why does salt go with "everything"? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/440xge/eli5_why_does_salt_go_with_everything/ | {
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"I mean, not a direct answer, but unlike most other spices, salt is something we explicitly need to survive. It makes good sense that we like its flavor with most every food. ",
"Salt is a very important mineral that aids in many functions of the human body. It is an electrolyte which means it aids in the healthy passing of electrons in the brain, muscles, and nerves. It also helps in rehydration and water retention. Because of all of these benefits our tongues have grown a large section of taste buds just for tasting salt. Also salt can enhance good flavours, as well as overpower not so good flavours.\n"
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22s78w | what would happen if the sun's rays are concentrated on an object by holding a magnifying glass, while in outer space? would it heat up and vapourise ? | I am guessing it wouldn't burn due to lack of oxygen...but I am no expert.
Thanks | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/22s78w/eli5what_would_happen_if_the_suns_rays_are/ | {
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"It wouldn't burn in the sense of starting a fire. However, it could still heat up and boil or sublimate. You wouldn't even need a magnifying glass, just close enough to the sun to absorb that much energy."
]
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9hr5r9 | why does exercise relieve chronic muscle tightness? | Every time I "pause" from the gym a couple of months, my muscles get tensed up to oblivion and I start getting problems in the form of chronic pain and tightness. As soon as I hit the weights again, all of this starts loosening. What exactly happens with the body in both cases? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9hr5r9/eli5_why_does_exercise_relieve_chronic_muscle/ | {
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"They’re being used so it makes them stretch and relax. Imagine a windmill spinning in Antarctica, it won’t freeze because it’s moving, but once it stops for awhile it freezes and becomes stiff"
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2j4m0d | why does my space heater dry out the air? where do the water molecules go? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2j4m0d/eli5why_does_my_space_heater_dry_out_the_air/ | {
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"You understand that warm air can hold more water vapor than cold air, right?\n\nSo if you warm up the air, the amount of 'space' for water increases, and so your skin and mucus membranes lose more water to the air as it seeks equilibrium. "
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bbruuc | how come on the inside of a bus you can see through the window while there is an ad on the other side of the bus? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/bbruuc/eli5_how_come_on_the_inside_of_a_bus_you_can_see/ | {
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"They use a sheet of vinyl, with a bunch of small holes in it (like 40-50% is holes).\n\nIf you are outside your eyes focus on the well lit surface, instead of the relative darkness of the inside of the bus.\n\nWhen you are inside the bus, the outside tends to be brighter and your eyes focus on that. (it also helps that the back of the vinyl is just a plain color. If you were to print a design on both sides, your eyes would focus on that a bit more, and it wouldn't be as see through.)"
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4drwz4 | how do navigation systems manage to pronounce roads correctly, even the ones that are hard to pronounce? what exactly do the companies do so that the voices are able to pronounce the seemingly infinite number of names of roads? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4drwz4/eli5how_do_navigation_systems_manage_to_pronounce/ | {
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"Well, user reports are one way. I used to live in Honolulu until 5 years ago and a lot of roads were mispronounced by Garmin and the like, even simple roads like \"Oahu street\", it's the name of hue island, and it was pronounces \"oh-why-hu\" or something like that, it's better now.",
"I work for a navigation company, and the data we get (from a third-party map company) contains pronunciation guides for a lot of streets. That doesn't mean it is always right, but that is how the device knows."
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4996qy | why are the first sips of a drink better than the rest? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4996qy/eli5_why_are_the_first_sips_of_a_drink_better/ | {
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"The first tastes are better because you become accustomed to the flavor. As you drink coffee, your palate adjusts to the bitterness and so it tastes less bitter after a few sips (some people actually prefer this). Soda, on the other hand, is sweet and sugar coats the tongue, reducing the ability to taste as much after a few sips. Something that helps refresh your sense of taste is to eat something or rinse your mouth with water. Salt makes things taste sweeter, so pretzels, chips, and peanuts go great with beer or soda. "
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3obowz | how can soft drinks like coca-cola zero have almost 0 calories in them? is there some other detriment to your health because of that lack of calories? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3obowz/eli5_how_can_soft_drinks_like_cocacola_zero_have/ | {
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"They're made up of things your body doesn't absorb (other than the water), basically they just pass through you. As far as I'm aware, there's no proven negative health effects as a result of drinking them. \n\nThough, if there was a negative health effect, it wouldn't be due to the lack of calories, water also has no calories.\n\n**Edit:**\n\nThis got way more popular than I would have guessed. To clarify a couple of things:\n\nYes, it's true that depending on the exact ingredients, some of it can be absorbed by your body, and the way that works is it's a small enough amount to be considered negligible calorie wise.\n\nAs far as being detrimental to health: Yes, there is *some* conflicting information, but as per the rules of ELI5\n\n > Only give explanations from a brutally unbiased standpoint. Full stop.\n\nThe fact is, despite there being a lot of extensive research in this area, there is no adequate evidence that they have a negative impact on your health in reasonable amounts. Remember you can also die from too much water. \n\n \n\n^(**Edit 2:** Thank you kindly for the gold, *anonymous redditor*.)",
"They just have very little in them that your body can burn for energy. Instead of using sugar or corn syrup to make it sweet they use artifical sweeteners which your body can't use for energy.\n\nThere are reports of these sweeteners being bad for your health, but a lot of it isn't conclusive.\n\nIn general there is nothing wrong with a 0 calorie drink. In fact that healthiest drink you can get has no calories, water. The point of drinking isn't too gain energy, it's to take in water. So just having plain water is rashly what people should drink most of the time.",
"They are thought to increase the chance of glucose intolerance by altering balance and behaviour of gut bacteria. This may lead to metabolic conditions and diabetes. See study link below for source.\n\n\n_URL_0_",
"Artificial sweeteners like aspartame have the exact same 4 calories per gram as sugar. \n\nSo how do diet sodas have zero calories? Well, aspartame is about 400X sweeter than sugar so you can use just a tiny amount to sweeten an entire can of soda. \n\nSo it's not really zero calories, more like a fraction of a calorie - but when you round to the nearest whole number that can round down to zero. \n\nAre there negative health implications? There are a lot of dubious claims that diet soda is bad for your health, but they all seem to fall apart under scrutiny. ",
"In the US, ANYTHING that has less than 5 calories can and will be sold as a ZERO calories drink/snack. Generally the sweet stuff is not really metabolized, but there have been studies showing that some of it is actually detrimental.\n\nFrom my personal knowledge, Splenda has something like 1/4 the calories of sugar while being actually 100% safe. The calories come actually from the extra powder they add to dilute the sweetness.",
"Coke Zero (according to wikipedia) has aspartame in it, which is an artificial sweetener. What this means is that the molecule aspartame has a 3d shape that our taste buds recognize as being sweet (similar to glucose, sucrose, fructose, other sugars, etc). \n\nHowever, it is not any of these sugars, and is in fact a molecule that does not occur in nature. What *that* means is our bodies do not have the proper enzymes to break it down, thus it passes through our bodies undigested. This is the same reason humans can't subsist on grass, our bodies do not have the enzymes necessary to process cellulose, which is the main sugar polymer (a string of sugars connected together) in plants.\n\nAs to whether it is harmful? The lack of calories is not a problem. Other than that, nobody can know for certain, but food additives such as aspartame and sucralose are some of the most studied molecules, almost on the level of drugs. There are no immediate health problems associated with artificial sweeteners, however there are myriad studies cropping up recently proposing certain long term health effects that may be tied to sweeteners.\n\nTL;DR artificial sweeteners are fine, drink in moderation.",
"well the sweeteners used are perfectly safe.\n\nthere's no evidence to suggest otherwise - no scientific evidence that sweeteners have any harmful effects on humans.\n\nanyone that says otherwise is...wrong. unless they can supply a peer reviewed source of course :) i've yet to see one.",
"Calories aren't a detriment to your health by the way, they only are if you eat too many and don't use them. ",
"This study found that [\"reducing the correlation between sweet taste and the caloric content of foods using artificial sweeteners in rats resulted in increased caloric intake, increased body weight, and increased adiposity, as well as diminished caloric compensation and blunted thermic responses to sweet-tasting diets. These results suggest that consumption of products containing artificial sweeteners may lead to increased body weight and obesity by interfering with fundamental homeostatic, physiological processes.\"]\n(_URL_0_)\n\nHere's the full text - _URL_2_\n\nAnd, [a layman's description of the study.](_URL_1_)\n\nEDIT: Stupid links. Why can't I get them to work properly today?",
"What's really interesting to me is that people *really want* there to be bad effects. As if the no-calorie sweeteners mess with their sense of fairness and justice in the universe. ",
"\n\nSafetyEdit\n\nAs with other artificial sweeteners, concern exists over the safety of acesulfame potassium. However, the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved its general use. Critics say acesulfame potassium has not been studied adequately and may be carcinogenic,[9] although these claims have been dismissed by the FDA[10]and equivalent authorities in the European Union.[11]\n\nAs for potential negative effects, when injected directly in very large doses (the equivalent of 10g for an average sized human male), acesulfame K has been shown to stimulate dose-dependent insulin secretion in rats, though no hypoglycemia was observed.[12]\n\nOne rodent study showed no increased incidence of tumors in response to administration of acesulfame K.[13] In this study, conducted by the National Toxicology Program, 60 rats were given acesulfame K for 40 weeks, making up as much as 3% of their total diet (which would be equivalent to a human consuming 1,343 12-oz cans of artificially sweetened soft drinks every day). No sign indicated these (or lower) levels of acesulfame K increased the rats' risk of cancer or other neoplasms. However, a similar study conducted with p53haploinsufficient mice showed signs of carcinogenicity in males but not females.[13]Further food safety research has been recommended.[9][14]\n\nResearch suggests acesulfame K may affect prenatal development. One study appeared to show acesulfame K is ingested by mice through their mothers' amniotic fluid or breast milk, and this influences the adult mouse's sweet preference.[15]\n\nAdditional research on the effects of acesulfame K on mice revealed chronic use over a period of 40 weeks resulted in a moderate but limited effect on neurometabolic function. These results suggest chronic usage of acesulfame K may alter neurological function.[16]\n\nEnvironment Canada tested the water from the Grand River at 23 sites between its headwaters and where it dumps into Lake Erie. The results suggest the artificial sweetener acesulfame is the best at evading wastewater treatment, and it appears in far higher concentrations than saccharin or sucralose at the various test sites\n\n",
"I'm surprised nobody has mentioned the calcium leeching effects of drinking too much soda. This isn't related to it being diet/calorie-free, but people seem to think that just because it's calorie free, you can just have at it.\n\nPhosphoric acid can cause you to excrete calcium, which can deplete the calcium from your bones if you're not getting enough calcium to replace it. Since soda isn't exactly a stellar source of calcium, this effect happens when drinking too much soda.\n\n_URL_0_",
"Environmental Scientist here.\n\nThe \"zero cal\" ingredients (like aspartame) have been tested more times than other ingredients -- because it's included in so many diet products. It gets tested and tested some more. It may not all be absorbed by the body during consumption, but it's not going to kill you either.",
"Calories are a measurement of potential energy in a food or drink. The energy is released when the molecules are broken down and bonds are broken. Zero calorie sweeteners are similar enough in structure to sugar to bind to the sweet receptors, but dofferent enough that they are not recognized for metabolism by the body's enzymes. Since they are not broken down, they don't release any energy and, therefore, provide you with zero calories of energy. ",
"The ingredients in \"zero\" calorie drinks and snacks are almost the same shape as sugars and fats. This makes your tongue and nose tell you they taste good, but when your body tries to digest them, they either can't be absorbed by the intestines, or aren't the right shape to get turned into energy or fat.\n\nIt's also important to note that nutritional facts are not required to round up.",
"Food doesn't contain calories. Food contains nutrients. Your body breaks those nutrients down and uses that process to store energy. How much energy? That's the calories! So, for example, one gram of fat gets converted by the human body into about 9 calories of energy. One gram of carbohydrates turns into about 4 calories of energy. Same with protein. One gram of alcohol actually turns into about 7 calories. (These things turn into a bunch of other stuff too, like CO2, water, and fat stores.)\n\nSo what if you eat something that your body *can't* turn into energy? Simple: no calories! Maybe your body does something else with it. For example, water is vitally important to your body. Iron and sodium and potassium and a bunch of other things are also important. These things don't turn into energy when you eat them, so they have no calories. In particular, Coke Zero and Diet Coke are made of things from which your body can't get energy, so they don't have any calories.\n\nIs there some other detriment to your health because of that lack of calories? No. Not at all. There may well be a detriment to your health, but it's not because of the lack of calories. Iron has no calories. Eating some foods with iron is usually good for your health, because iron is an important part of your blood. Eating an entire bicycle, on the other hand, will probably kill you. Don't eat bicycles! It's not the lack of calories that makes eating bicycles unhealthy. You can probably figure out what the problem spots are! (I hear that chewing on iron is bad for your teeth.)\n\nWhen it comes to Diet Coke specifically (boo Coke Zero, yay Diet Coke), there are some things in there that are not necessarily very healthy. To start with, Diet Coke is acidic (due in part to phosphoric acid), and the acid dissolves your enamel. Diet Coke is carbonated, which means that you'll burp and possibly cause some acid indigestion. Diet Coke is sweetened with aspartame and colored with caramel color, and it contains a secret formula of natural flavors, as well as sodium benzoate as a preservative. What is the effect of all of these things on your health? I don't know. But regular Coke has them too, other than the aspartame (it uses cane sugar or corn syrup as a sweetener instead, and real sugar does have calories). Oh, and caffeine! Diet Coke may or may not be unhealthy on the balance, but this depends on what it's made of, not on whether it has any calories!",
"The top answers are almost correct, but not quite hitting the nail on the head. Gum, \"sugar-free\" soda, and \"sugar-free\" candies get their sweetness from carbohydrate molecules that can be more than 500x sweeter than table sugar. Therefore, only a tiny, negligible amount is used. There is no detriment to your health due to lack of calories. ",
"I heard that it can fuck up part of your brain that controls the rewards centre, because you get the sweet taste and your brain is expecting the sugar rush but then it never happens and it's all discombobulated "
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lt5mj | how does a cash discount work? | I see places advertise a lower price if you pay cash. Does that literally mean you put physical money in their hand or does it just mean no credit cards? Does EFTPOS or a bank cheque count?
Also, why does it matter to a business how I pay?
Thank you. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/lt5mj/eli5_how_does_a_cash_discount_work/ | {
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"2 kinds. An advertised cash discount usually means paying all the money upfront, with no financing or loans. Usually you do it by check. Basically the company is giving you incentives to give them cash now instead of cash later.\n\nThe shady kind is paying someone with actual paper money so they can keep the transaction, or part of it, off their books and avoid taxes. You won't see these advertised.\n\n",
"In addition to what cassander said, a cash discount can mean avoiding debit or credit card fees. When you pay by credit card or by debit, the card company takes a fraction of the sale - I've heard figures as high as 2% mentioned, although I don't know for sure. \n\nMany retailers have a love-hate relationship with credit card companies. On the one hand, letting people pay with Visa means they're more likely to buy, and more likely to buy _more_, so they make more sales. But on the other hand, their profit margins go down - and in some industries, they may already be looking at a very thin margin. 2% of the gross can be quite high!\n\nSo in at least some cases, a retailer will happily give a customer a 1% discount to avoid a 2% fee. \n\nI hear that lately, Visa and Mastercard have been clamping down on this practice, because clearly it hurts their business.",
"As to why it matters, credit card companies charge the merchant a percentage of the sale for the convenience of using a credit card - usually 1-3%. This is factored into the ticket price, so you may still be covering the fee if you pay in cash.",
"Besides the \"swipe\" fees that vendors incur (which cut into the margin of the sale), there is a concept called the time value of money. Basically, money now is better than money later because of interest. If you get paid upfront now and you can put that in an account making 5% interest, that's better than getting paid in installments or waiting for credit sales to hit your account. Investopedia has a great article about it; also, check out time value of money tables. They can help you solve \"if I have x dollars and y% interest now, how much will it be worth in z months\"",
"2 kinds. An advertised cash discount usually means paying all the money upfront, with no financing or loans. Usually you do it by check. Basically the company is giving you incentives to give them cash now instead of cash later.\n\nThe shady kind is paying someone with actual paper money so they can keep the transaction, or part of it, off their books and avoid taxes. You won't see these advertised.\n\n",
"In addition to what cassander said, a cash discount can mean avoiding debit or credit card fees. When you pay by credit card or by debit, the card company takes a fraction of the sale - I've heard figures as high as 2% mentioned, although I don't know for sure. \n\nMany retailers have a love-hate relationship with credit card companies. On the one hand, letting people pay with Visa means they're more likely to buy, and more likely to buy _more_, so they make more sales. But on the other hand, their profit margins go down - and in some industries, they may already be looking at a very thin margin. 2% of the gross can be quite high!\n\nSo in at least some cases, a retailer will happily give a customer a 1% discount to avoid a 2% fee. \n\nI hear that lately, Visa and Mastercard have been clamping down on this practice, because clearly it hurts their business.",
"As to why it matters, credit card companies charge the merchant a percentage of the sale for the convenience of using a credit card - usually 1-3%. This is factored into the ticket price, so you may still be covering the fee if you pay in cash.",
"Besides the \"swipe\" fees that vendors incur (which cut into the margin of the sale), there is a concept called the time value of money. Basically, money now is better than money later because of interest. If you get paid upfront now and you can put that in an account making 5% interest, that's better than getting paid in installments or waiting for credit sales to hit your account. Investopedia has a great article about it; also, check out time value of money tables. They can help you solve \"if I have x dollars and y% interest now, how much will it be worth in z months\""
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482wxt | you see so many statistics showing chances like "one in a million", "one in a thousand", etc. shouldn't all of these odds add up to a certainty whereby at least one would happen to you? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/482wxt/eli5_you_see_so_many_statistics_showing_chances/ | {
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"That isn't really how odds work. For example, if you roll a dice there is a 1/6 chance you will roll a six. So lets say you gather 6 people all rolling a dice each. Does that mean one of you will roll a six for certain?\n\nObviously not, each roll is independent. Each have a 1/6 chance, but it could be that none of you rolled a six, or all of you did. ",
"They do add up to certainty of it happening to you. \n\nIf there is a 1 in a million chance of getting hit by lightning in a year, it also means there is a 999,999 in a million chance of *not* getting hit by lighting. \n\nIt's not an exciting answer, but there it is. ",
" > Shouldn't all of these odds add up to a certainty whereby at least one would happen to you?\n\nNope. Let's say there is a 50/50 chance it will rain today, and a 50/50 chance your boss will wear a red shirt. You just don't add 50% with 50% and get 100%, claiming one had to happen. There is a 1 in 4 chance neither happens, and a 1 in 4 chance both happen.\n",
"I know what you're thinking about. And yes you are probably within lots of 1 in x situations, just most of yours are probably more mundane. \n\nAlso for more serious things like health statistics there will be clustering and overlap. (Below #s totally made up)\nIf 1/10 have depressions, 1/12 bipolar and 1/8 have anxiety 1 guy could be part of all three statistics. Mental and physical health problems are often related. Some who's overweight may also fit into cardiac statistics or mental statistics. \nPlus some statistics are one time deals, like if you weren't born with Down's syndrome you'll never become part of that statistic."
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64gly4 | why is it that people wake up when a car starts slowing or stops? | As in when you're sleeping in a car, and you wake up when the car stops or is slowing, I almost never wake up while the car is consistently moving at the same speed. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/64gly4/eli5_why_is_it_that_people_wake_up_when_a_car/ | {
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"It seems your inner ear can feel the differences in motion, even when you're asleep.\n\n_URL_1_\n\n_URL_0_\n\n_URL_2_\n\n",
"Forces come from accelerations, a change in speed. When the car is slowing down it is accelerating, so everything inside feels that force. When it moves at constant speed there is no acceleration, thus no force. You only feel that pull when youre slowing down, speeding up or changing direction."
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8hapfm | how does dandruff emerge on your head? | [deleted] | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8hapfm/eli5_how_does_dandruff_emerge_on_your_head/ | {
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"Dandruff is actually little bits of dead skin from your scalp. It can happen due to certain infections and diseases like eczema or psoriasis, but dry skin is the most common reason. Other simple causes include not cleaning your hair and scalp effectively enough or sensitivity to various hair products. ",
"It is skin flakes of skin. It can sometimes increase due to dry scalp. If you have dandruff in a dry scalp it usually ends up on the shoulders and if your scalp is oily it usually ends up in the hair.\n\nSome people's skin react to a fungus whichis naturally in the skin of all adults. It is called Malassezia. \n\nYou can also suffer from Sebborrhoeic dermatitis which is a skin disorder that results in larger flakes.\n_URL_0_\n"
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cgias7 | when using sign language - is there a way to indicate you are just making a gesture as opposed to signing? or is it just obvious? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/cgias7/eli5_when_using_sign_language_is_there_a_way_to/ | {
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"As you said. It is obvious. Its much like if someone who actually speaks saying one or two words that dont relate to something. You wouldnt assume they are actually trying to form a sentence .",
"Quick note for those who may not know: there is not one sign language. Most countries have their own sign languages (ASL - American Sign Language; BSL - British Sign Language; Auslan - Australian Sign Language; Chinese Sign Language, etc.). This is because sign languages developed naturally over time, just like spoken sign language, and they are different for all of the reasons that no one uses a universal spoken language.\n\nThere are two ways to kind of think of gestures in sign languages. One way is to consider that gestures have their own \"meanings\" that are not a part of language, and are used by everyone, whether you're hearing or not. For instance, when you point at something, that conveys *something*. Usually it means \"look this direction\" or \"I'm indicating this thing\". But it's not grammatical. There's no sentence, there's no formal structure or meaning, and although pretty much everyone knows what you're trying to convey, it can convey a lot of things. So a gesture \"in sign language\" is still just a gesture, and it conveys whatever meaning it has in the culture that's using it.\n\nAnother good example would be the middle finger in America. A lot of people say that the middle finger is a sign, but it isn't (in ASL). It's a gesture. It doesn't \"mean\" anything in sign other than that you've given someone the middle finger. That gesture certainly has meaning within the culture of America, and you can roughly translate that to \"fuck you\" or something, but it still doesn't *mean* that. It doesn't *mean* anything except that you're giving someone the middle finger, with all of the connotations attached to that. Incidentally, ASL *does* have signs both for \"FUCK YOU\" as in \"to have sex with\", like \"[I want to] fuck you\" or \"[I] fuck[ed a coconut]\"; and, \"FUCK-YOU\" as in, well, yelling \"Fuck you!\" to someone - which obviously doesn't mean you want to have sex with them, you just want to express that you are upset with them.\n\nAlternatively, if you want to consider random gestures that aren't associated with anything, you can kind of think of them like random noises people make that aren't words. Consider \"meh\" which isn't a word but still carries some meaning. Or laughing, which isn't a word but still indicates that you are amused. ASL does kind of have a sign for laughing, which is essentially spelling H-A-H-A... rapidly. (It's hard to explain but easy to show, go figure.) But signing \"H-A-H-A\" is kind of like *saying* \"Haha\" which isn't the same as laughing.\n\nThe point is, users of various sign languages understand the difference between a gesture and a sign in the same way that a hearing person understands the difference between a word and a noise. One is a commonly accepted part of the language, which follows its grammar and is known among users of that language as a word or sign. The other is not a part of the language - although it might convey some meaning in the context of the culture around it, it doesn't follow the grammatical rules of the language, and people don't think it's a word or sign or use it like one. You can even just make up signs, just like you can make up words. If it follows the rules and acts like a sign, someone using a sign language would take it for an unfamiliar sign but it would still otherwise be nonsense."
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ave0s1 | why does a lower pressure result in a more powerful storm? | The strongest storm ever recorded was Typhoon Tip in 1979 with a record low pressure of 870 millibar. Why is that?
& #x200B; | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/ave0s1/eli5_why_does_a_lower_pressure_result_in_a_more/ | {
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"A low-pressure area is basically one where there's less air than the area around it. Air likes to equalize pressure. A vacuum cleaner works by creating a low-pressure area inside it, so that air rushes in via the hose.\n\nSimilarly, a low-pressure area in the atmosphere will see wind rushing in towards it; a wind storm. That wind will often carry moisture with it, and the moisture can create clouds; a rain storm.\n\nAs the wind rushes inwards, it doesn't just fill the low-pressure area directly; it swirls inwards, like swirling water going down a drain. This creates the familiar spiral cyclone appears of a storm. This rotation is aided by the Coriolis Effect, caused by the Earth's rotation.\n\nAs the rushing wind swirls closer to the center of the low-pressure area, it gets faster and faster, like a figure skater pulling their arms in. These very-fast winds are what cause a storm to be extremely powerful and damaging.",
"Air flows from high to low pressure. It's like a ball rolling down a hill. The higher the hill, the more speed the ball will pick up. And you can make the hill higher either by raising its peak or by lowering the bottom.\n\nSimilarly, for a powerful storm, you need air to flow from an area of very high pressure to an area of very low pressure. So low pressure alone won't do it, but a very low local pressure makes it easier to achieve a big pressure *difference*, which is why powerful storms will tend to happen when the local pressure is low.",
"Picture a bunch of marbles on a trampoline. The lower the indentation in the trampoline, the faster the marbles will roll into the hole. Air works similarly. "
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zjy2c | how are extra solar systems and planets are scientifically named. (the letter and number designation | Im writing a novel and I would like to refer to different solar systems in different sectors of the galaxy and the fictional planets found there. How is is different for a binary system, red Dwarf, etc. I know the planets are lower case alphabetical in the order they are discovered, but I'd like to give the naming convention some credibility. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/zjy2c/eli5_how_are_extra_solar_systems_and_planets_are/ | {
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"You could all ways just make up your own naming system. Is this novel set in out universe?",
"They usually take the name of the star system (named in many different ways), then add a hypen and a letter. The letter goes is order of discovery.\n\nSo, star named Smoo-113. The first planet discovered will be Smoo-113-a, second planet found is Smoo-113-b, etc.\n\nSomeone observing our solar system for the first time would probably see Jupiter, then Saturn, then Neptune, then Uranus, then Earth. Earth would be named Sol-e.",
"The word or letter designation at the beginning is the name of a certain catalog of stars. For example, [Gliese](_URL_0_). Then the number is the designation within that catalog. Now, stars can have multiple names due to being in multiple catalogs and astronomers are sometimes pretentious jerks when writing scientific papers and use an obscure journal's name for a star that everyone knows (like Vega). The planets are named in alphabetical order based on their date of discovery. For example, Gliese 581 g is the seventh planet discovered orbiting a star that's numbered 581 in the Gliese Catalog.\n\nAnother note is if the system has more than one star, you use a capital letter to indicate which star, and a lower case letter to indicate the planet.\n\n[here](_URL_1_) is a guide to different star catalogs.",
"Once upon a time, the stars in the sky had names. Like actual proper names, similar to geographic place names. For instance, the star Vega, of which you might've heard, is named for an Arabic phrase that kinda-sorta translates to \"the vulture's mouth\" … which just goes to show that names need not be sexy. A bunch of stars are still most frequently referred to by their proper names — like Polaris, a relatively recent name (1600s vintage, I think) meaning \"of the pole,\" which makes sense as it sits more or less directly above the north pole.\n\nBut the fact is, there are just too many stars to give proper names to. So around the middle of the early modern period — think like 17th century, about contemporaneous with the settlement of the new world — astronomers started constructing star catalogues that used systematic designations instead of names.\n\nThe most widely used of these is the Bayer Catalogue. What was significant about Bayer's work is that in addition to just identifying and naming a bunch of visible stars, he also constructed a system for naming stars that he failed to include. This system is based on the constellation in the sky in which the star appears — the whole sky is divided up into constellations, so every star is found in one — with a prefix identifying which specific star in that constellation you're talking about. The prefixes start with Greek letters, then move on to Latin letters, then uppercase Latin letters, then *double* uppercase Latin letters, and so on, so it's pretty extensible.\n\n*In principle,* the prefixes are handed out in order of apparent brightness from Earth. But even Bayer himself didn't follow that rule to the letter, in no small part because at the time he published his catalog there was no good way to compare the brightness of two stars in the sky. So the assignment of prefixes is more about convention than anything objective or systematic.\n\nBut sticking with the brightest-first idea, you can see how the system works by picking a constellation at random. Let's go with Centaurus, the centaur, a well-defined chunk of the southern sky. The brightest fixed point of light in that constellation we'll call, following Bayer's method, *α* — that's the lowercase first letter of the Greek alphabet, alpha. So we've got *α* Centaurus … only that's not grammatically correct. In English we'd say \"brightest star *in* Centaurus,\" or \"brightest star *of* Centaurus\" or something like that, using a preposition to clarify the relationship between the star and the constellation. But Centaurus isn't an English word. It's Latin. So we follow the Latin rules for such relationships between words, and say Centauri instead of Centaurus. (If you remember your schoolbook Latin, that's the genitive case. If you don't, then … um … go back and review your schoolbook Latin, I guess.)\n\nAnyway, that's the Bayer name of the brightest point of light in that chunk of the sky: Alpha Centauri.\n\nThen you pull out your telescope and discover that Alpha Centauri actually resolves under magnification into *three* points of light. Damn. Okay, just tack on a suffix: Alpha Centauri A, Alpha Centauri B, Alpha Centauri C. Alpha Centauri is the point of light visible in the night sky, and the A, B and C refer to the individual stars that make up that point of light.\n\nBut once you get up to a bunch of stars in a constellation, the whole letter-prefix thing just gets awkward. So a widely used alternative is to use numerical prefixes instead, assigned in left-to-right, top-to-bottom order in the sky. Some stars have both Bayer names and Flamsteed (that's the number-prefix system) names. Tau Ceti, for instance — nominally the 19th brightest star in the constellation Cetus — is also called 52 Ceti.\n\nNow what about extrasolar planets? Wasn't an issue for the longest time, of course, because there was no evidence that extrasolar planets existed. Since 1995 we know better, and the most common way of naming them as we find them is to tack a lowercase letter onto the parent star's primary catalogue designation … starting with \"b\" rather than \"a\" for aesthetic reasons. The first discovered extrasolar planet was found near the star 51 Pegasi, so it was called 51 Pegasi b.\n\nThing is, though, not every star is primarily known by its Bayer or Flamsteed designation. Not ever star even *has* a Bayer or Flamsteed designation. That's why we have suspected extrasolar planets with names like Gliese 581 b. The star best known as Gliese 581 is a *very* dim star in the constellation Libra, and is designed HO Librae in the Bayer system; it's so far down the list they have to use double capital letters to name it. But \"HO Librae\" is an ugly name, so it's more common by far to call it by the name given to it by the 20th century astronomer Wilhelm Gliese in his catalogue of stars: Gliese 581.\n\nThe Gliese 581 system is a good illustration of the arbitrary nature of planet designations, too. It's believed to have four planets, called b, c, d and e after their order of discovery. But because they were named in order of discovery, e orbits closer to the star than b. If you put the planets in Mercury-Venus-Earth-Mars order, you know, counting outward from the star, they're e, b, c, d. There are also two other planets that are *suspected* to be there — maybe they are, maybe they aren't — and those too are named in order of discovery, making them f and g, only g orbits between c and d, and f is the farthest out.\n\nSo that's basically how the system of naming extrasolar planets works in most cases … but because the system is so arbitrary, there are about as many exceptions as there are examples that follow the basic rules."
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7jtjgt | light can be blocked by anything opaque, but radio wave, microwave, x-ray, etc can easily penetrate our buildings, food, bodies, etc. what makes light different from them when they’re all made of photons. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7jtjgt/eli5_light_can_be_blocked_by_anything_opaque_but/ | {
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"Photons are interesting because they behave as both a particle and a wave (it's weird, but just follow me here)\n\nNow, as a wave, that means that each photon has a wavelength (physical distance between peaks in the wave) and frequency (number of peaks that pass through a point in a given amount of time)\n\nThe frequency (F) and wavelength (L) can be related in the equation c=FL, where c is the speed of light, which is equal for all photons\n\nDifferent materials can absorb or reflect light at different wavelengths, and what we see as opaque are just materials that are in the range that block visible light from passing through\n\nOther things can block other wavelengths in the same way. Microwave ovens have grids in front of them with holes smaller than the wavelength of a microwave but bigger than that of visible light, so it only blocks microwaves while letting us see inside",
"Think about a transparent blue sheet of plastic - it lets blue light through, but not other colors.\n\nRadio waves, x-rays, etc. are just different colors of light that our eyes aren't able to see. Building walls are opaque to our everyday colors, but transparent to these other colors.\n\nIt can go the other way, too. For example, your car windshield is transparent to human-visible colors, but almost completely opaque to ultraviolet.",
"Visible light isn't special. Light of all kinds is generally blocked by *something*, but not all materials block all wavelengths. For example, infrared light is blocked by glass, but will pass through a black plastic garbage bag. X-rays will pass through most solid objects, but can be blocked by \"crystal\" glass with lead in it. Microwaves will pass through a block of wood, but will be reflected by a few inches of salt water.\n\nThe details are quite complicated, having to do with the ability of electrons in the material to move around in response to different wavelengths / energy levels of light."
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9v7l8g | what prevents an employer from "firing" you if you want to resign? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9v7l8g/eli5_what_prevents_an_employer_from_firing_you_if/ | {
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"Nothing except that's horrible for employee morale. Plus if you get fired you get that sweet, sweet unemployment.",
"Theoretically, but then you could just claim you quit. Or you could claim severance because they didnt have reason to fire you. Either way that's real dumb and they wouldn't do that.",
"Generally you often don’t inform your current employer until you have an offer from the new one. Then it doesn’t matter if you get “fired.” Though it is good to leave on decent terms if you can.\n\nAlso, as an employer having someone resign is usually better for you. If you fire them and the job offer falls through, you could be on the hook paying for unemployment. And there is always legal risk with a firing.",
"Here in Canada, if you give notice and they term you early, they're required to pay you the full period of your notice.\n\nSo nothing prevents them and many employers do, depending on their sensitivities, but at least in Canada, you suffer no harm.",
"First they need a reason to fire you as firing you without a valid reason is grounds for a lawsuit, at least where I livem\n\nSecond, now I'm not sure if this applies everywhere just as the first one might not.. But if someone quits then the workplace is not required to provide any compensation (severance package) however if they fire you then they are required to provide compensation which is equal to 2 months plus an additional week per year of employment of pay.... So if you resign it's a lot easier and cheaper to not fire you.\n\n\n\nNow there are exceptions to the above like if you were a crappy employee and stuff then they may have a valid reason to fire you (termination with just cause can void compensation) in which case I see no reason why they can't fire you... Except you are already leaving so it wouldn't really make sense to fire you. \n\nEdit: accidentally hit post too early so finished writing comment."
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4br6xu | how can an experienced chef tell if food was frozen or microwaved just by tasting it? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4br6xu/eli5_how_can_an_experienced_chef_tell_if_food_was/ | {
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"Mainly it's about knowing what a particular food item should taste like, and then comparing. For example, I have these frozen breaded chicken patties. I either microwave them or put them in the oven, and they taste different depending on what I do. More specifically, if I microwave them, they tend to have soggier crusts and be unevenly heated and may be dry/tough in parts. If I bake them, the crust is dryer and tighter on the chicken and it's more evenly heated.\n\nSo basically, it's just taking experience and then perceiving what you are eating.",
"You have to know what it's like, either through making it often enough, or eating it a lot, and your tongue, sometimes even your eyes, can spot a phony from a mile away.",
"Ok, really their is two different issues. \n\nFirstly with defrosting, if it microwaved as opposed to slowly heating in a oven or pan then it dries out differently because of the way a microwave works. It heats up the water in food heating it and drying it up. this can be observed by the difference you can see if you put two items with different water content in a microwave such as soup and bread. You can see the soup will be hotter quicker.\nThis effects the dryness/sogginess and texture of food cooked from the heating of the water.\n\nCooking is another issue, if something is cooked from scratch in a microwave as opposed to oven, pan etc, it will not crisp up (if it is that sort of meal and that's what your doing) and it will be completely different because of How evenly the heat is distributed, the 'penetration' of the heat, the loss of moisture (as I said earlier), the effect of steam being trapped with it and other small factors\n\nAlso I'm not sure how you are using the term 'taste' you may be using it as an umbrella term for the whole experience of trying the food but microwaving, although it will have some effect, does not change the flavors too much from alternative forms of cooking.\n\nEdit: Grammar",
"It's not a taste issue, its a texture issue. Taste, texture, and smell all all used to combine the flavor of a food or drink.\n\nFreezing creates ice crystals that cull through the cellular structure of both meat and plant based foods. When the food item is then defrosted, the liquid can then drain out of the cellular structure, so that frozen greens (spinach) wilt; frozen produce (carrots and broccoli) becomes soggy and limp; and frozen meats become limp and soft.\n\nA faster freezing process creates smaller ice crystals, which do less damage. Commercial freezers work at lower temperatures with circulating air, and food is introduced at pre-chilled temperature, to help with this.\n\nWith microwaves, food is heated by vibrating the water molecules inside the food. There is an [experiment you can do to measure the speed of light in a microwave](_URL_0_) that illustrates how uneven this process is, and measures the distance between hotspots in the microwave. Hence the need to let food rest after heating, or pausing to mix during the heating process, to \"create\" an even temperature.\n\nThe problem with heating in the microwave is that you have no temperature control. Heating on the stovetop or in the oven provides much better heat management, and cooking is all about heat and time management, to provide the proper texture and doneness. Without proper heat management, you will get overcooked food with the wrong texture, and as you know, the microwave only makes 2 textures, soggy and rubbery.\n\nGenerally, chefs just happen to have a better knowledge base of proper textures and temperatures for food, because they have a broader/deeper experience with food. The more you eat properly cooked food, the more of an opinion you have about improperly cooked stuff.\n\nTL/DR: Cooking is all about heat management for texture, and microwaves can't do this.",
"I think, in addition to being able to taste that \"freezer\" taste, Ramsay genuinely knows some of the types/brands of frozen foods in many cases and can taste them immediately. \n\nI surprised myself the other day when I caught the Hyatt restaurant selling me a $15 [Bubba Burger](_URL_0_) with some bacon, cheese and mushrooms on it.\n\nI'm not good enough to recognize the taste difference but the patty shape is undeniable.",
"Put a chicken breast in the microwave for 3 minutes or so. Try and eat it. Now you have your answer. ",
"Wait... you can't tell? It's tastes completely different. ",
"Frozen foods have been changed at the molecular level, some more than others. Frozen par-baked bread finished in a oven? I'd dare you to find ANYONE who can tell. Frozen beef, on the other hand... gross. As for microwaves, heat is heat. I'd rather cook a swordfish steak with chef mike. Problem is in how microwaves heat food. You can bake a cake with your microwave, it just won't cook deeper than 1\" in. Super-heating water for blanching is also great, as is steaming soft veggies. Could anyone tell the difference between steamed broccoli from a stove-top pot versus a microwave? Doubtful. *source* worked more kitchens than I care to count, Radisson's flagship among them.",
"The hot pocket has molten lava inside.\n\nA trained chef knows that there should be even heat throughout a properly cooked hot pocket.",
"Cooking with fresh ingredients yields a much wider array of texture in the finished product than pre-cooked, microwaved meals. The texture of microwaved foods tends to have much less variation, i.e. all of the components are somewhat soft with no discernible \"bite\".\n\nHowever, there are several methods of freezing foods that can still yield a quality product. IQF (individually quick freezing) techniques freeze foods very fast so that the water in the cells does not rupture cell walls. For example, a thawed IQF blueberry will appear much the same as a fresh blueberry, as opposed to thawed blueberry frozen in a regular freezer, which will appear broken and mushy.",
"As others have said, it's usually a texture issue.\n\nIt should be noted that freezing and microwaving in itself is not necessarily bad.\n\nA lot of kitchens will make up their sauces or dressings ahead of time and defrost/reheat them during service. I've seen really high-end chefs say they do this. Unless you have a dedicated saucier in your kitchen, there's literally no point stressing over sauces during service - get them made before and just have them to hand. Even if you do have a saucier, they're usually better employed helping with something else during service, having pre-prepared their sauces.\n\nThere's obviously no texture issue, and generally speaking, freezing a sauce isn't going to change the taste once you heat it up again. Means they can really concentrate on making great sauces when they're not under pressure to get service out.",
"It is possible to have frozen food that you cannot tell the difference between frozen and fresh. There is an expensive commercial freezer from Japan that does this. See this link: _URL_0_",
"Hey guys!\n\nWhat happens when you fill an ice cube tray and stick it in the freezer? The water expands. Same thing happens when you freeze a protein. The water (blood) expands, stretching the fibers of the meat. During the thawing process, that moisture contracts and the fibers of the meat retract. But not to their natural state! They've been stretched, and this makes the meat tougher. \n\nNow on to taste. A lot of what you taste in your meats (unless you're an asshat who orders everything well done) is the natural juices (blood) from the animal itself. During the thawing process, a lot of that blood is lost and so is the flavor. So an experienced Chef can tell the difference between fresh/frozen/IQF based on everything that matters in the quality of the dish. Hope this helps!",
"They can't. Dont believe everything you see on tv. If chicken is properly thawed and wasn't freezer burned you can't tell. You have a better chance at tasting differences between how the chicken was raised/fed."
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1pe3k0 | when did it become 'gay' for a man to wear make up? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1pe3k0/eli5_when_did_it_become_gay_for_a_man_to_wear/ | {
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"Men stopped wearing makeup during the 19th century, roughly. It fell out of fashion around the same time as those goofy glam-metal white wigs that the aristocracy wore. The driving purpose for makeup was to make the skin paler, because it separated the nobility from the poor who had to work in the fields and got tanned skin.\n\nOnce the Industrial Revolution rolled around, the working poor moved indoors into factories, and stopped getting tans. So, having pale skin stopped being a sign of wealth, and there wasn't really any point to wearing makeup anymore for men.\n\nWomen, of course, continued to wear makeup. Appearance was/is much more important to women, whereas wealth and status were really all that mattered for men. If wearing makeup doesn't make you look more rich and noble, there's no point to it (for a man in that time period).\n\nContinue that trend for about 200 years, and you end up with makeup being established as something that's \"feminine.\" People say that a man who does \"feminine\" things is gay, because... well, that's what the stereotype is. So, if makeup is feminine, and feminine is gay, makeup is gay."
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66kepl | how is one nation's currency converted and then circulated in another country? also, how does a country donate money to another country, i.e. venezuela to america? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/66kepl/eli5_how_is_one_nations_currency_converted_and/ | {
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"The basic concept is actually pretty simple.\n\nI have dollars in a deposit account. You have yen in an account. We agree on a trade (amount, ratio) and write each other checks.\n\nNow I have yen in a yen-account and you have dollars in a dollar account.\n\nWe could trade physical currency if we prefer.\n\nBut it's more common, if we're ordinary people, to use banks. Actually, it's really common to have one ordinary person and two banks involved.\n\nSo, imagine I'm at Narita airport and use my US credit card at an ATM.\n\nThe ATM messages my bank and asks \"do I give Claire 25,000 yen?\". And my bank says \"Sure! I'll pay you for it.\"\n\n(I wish...)\n\nNow if I type ¥25000 into Google right now, it says that's $228.644. But there's nothing saying my bank needs to honor that rate. They'll probably take $240 or so from my account and give the Japanese bank ¥25000.\n\nOr a bit more because of ATM fees.\n\nSpecifically, they're going to write an electronic check. This means my bank needs a deposit account that holds yen. *But of course they have that, it's the fourth largest currency.*\n\nEvery day my bank will trade with other banks to have the currencies it needs.",
"1. Exchange rate. I.e: Mom has 7.5usd and Dad has 10aud. It is decided by the \"big guys\" that 0.75usd = 1aud. Now Mom wants to buy those 10aud off Dad, she has to give him a total of 7.5usd. (0.75x10=7.5) But these \"big guys\" are indecisive so the value of usd to aud varies from day to day. This applies for any other Moms and Dads.\nThat's the easiest way that I can come up with for your first question "
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7cvzdc | meteor strikes on the moon. | Why is it that the Moon is clearly covered in meteor and asteroid strikes and yet the Earth has only a few over the years.
I get that many strikes would get burned up in the atmosphere, but the Moon is *covered* in craters. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7cvzdc/eli5_meteor_strikes_on_the_moon/ | {
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"Craters on the Earth just get eroded away from wind, water, life, etc but on the moon they are permanent, only getting covered up by dust from other impacts.",
" > I get that many strikes would get burned up in the atmosphere, but the Moon is covered in craters.\n\nYou just answered your own question. It doesn't take a large meteor to leave a large crater. Many of the meteors that left those craters on the moon would have been small enough to burn up in Earth's atmosphere. \n\nSpace is a turbulent place, especially when the gravity from the sun and its surrounding planets gets involved. Meteors come our way frequently, but most of them simply burn up and that's that. No one pays them any mind (well, some people do) because they aren't large enough to remain intact after hitting our atmosphere. Since the moon doesn't have the luxury of an atmosphere, each and every meteor makes it to the surface no matter how big, and as a result, it's covered in craters.\n\nAlso, it's worth pointing out that the craters on the moon are the result of billions of years of bombardment. After a while, that begins to add up.",
"There are multiple reasons. One is the Moon has no atmosphere for anything to burn up in. No atmosphere also means no weather to erode the surface via wind and rain. Anything that happens on the Moon will stay that way unless an external force changes it. This means a crater on the moon that happened millions of years ago will still be around like it just happened (unless another meteor hits in the same spot).\n\nSecond is that the Moon is not geologically active like the Earth is. Land on Earth floats on a molten area around the core causing the surface to change over time (this is why we have mountains and cliffs and such). Impact sites on Earth can effectively be erased because of this.\n\n",
"There are two reasons.\n\nThe first is, as you note, the Earth has an atmosphere. A lot of the meteors that might strike the earth burn up on the way down, and even those that don't burn up entirely have a lot of their energy bled off through friction with the air, so the craters they create are smaller.\n\nThe second is that the Earth has a lot more going on, from oceans full of water to tectonic plates moving around to all manner of plant and animal life constantly modifying the surface of the Earth. As a result, a crater on the Earth lasts a lot less time than an equivalently-sized crater on the moon. Some of them get eroded away by water (or just filled with water and look like a lake rather than a crater), some of them get destroyed when volcanos erupt, some of them are worn down by the wind, some of them are covered dirt and then by trees, etc. None of that happens on the moon, so a lot more of them are visible today.",
"Just to tack on to what the others have said. When astronomers look around the solar system at other moons... The absence of hugely cratered surface is evidence of a geologically active world."
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2b7hj3 | why does warren buffet want to give all his money away to charity when he could just give it to the people that made it for him....the people that work in all his companies? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2b7hj3/eli5why_does_warren_buffet_want_to_give_all_his/ | {
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"It's because he knows the money will benefit MANY MORE people if it's given to charity than if it's just distributed to people that will spend it randomly and likely on exotic goods that just concentrate the wealth to the rich even more.\n\nWarren's a philanthropist (someone that benefits causes through investment without getting a personal financial reward out of those gifts). His behaviours indicate he doesn't want to do or be the same things as many other rich people are - they defend their fortunes and enrich their kids as a primary goal, whereas he wants to give his fortune away. \n\nSo he doesn't want to create more rich people which is what financial gifts to his peeps would do. He wants to help as many people as possible, a much larger goal and a much larger gift of philanthropy.\n",
"He doesn't own the companies, or manage them. He owns small parts (ie shares) of lots of companies that he buys because they are well managed and profitable. \n\nSo he can't go around changing how things work in all of those companies. He just collects dividends from his investments.",
"Presumably the workers/partners have already been compensated for their work according to prior agreements. I.e you do this for x, and I'll pay you x. Any surplus wealth left over is surely his to dispose of.\n\nAlso, he can probably do far more good in the world than marginally increasing the disposable income of a few thousand employees.",
"There's a 20/20 John Stossel did about rich guys throwing their money into more businesses to provide jobs for people rather than just giving it away. It's an interesting watch.",
"I'm pretty sure he did give money to the people that work for him in the form of salary, some sort of employee stock purchase plan, and bonuses.\n\nI've never heard complaints that Warren Buffet's employees were underpaid and overworked, as a rule. They've been compensated for their work. Why are they more deserving of free money rather than, say, people dying of a perfectly treatable and preventable disease?\n\nHe's a philanthropist, sure, but he's also a capitalist."
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4s0sgg | what happens when you put something non-recyclable into a recycle bin? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4s0sgg/eli5_what_happens_when_you_put_something/ | {
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"Some places have machines, some places have people who go through the recycling and throw out the things that don't belong. \n\nAlso, there is some small allowance for things contaminating the recyclables. For example, glass can have paper labels that burn off during the melting of the glass. Paper can have some crusty food on it as long as it isn't much....the quality of the paper is never as good as the original paper, but still can be made into things. ",
"It really depends on what you mean by \"non recyclable\", and where you live. Every state, county, city has different laws about what can go into a dump and what has to be safely disposed of. One places recycling company might say that compact florescent bulbs aren't recyclable, while in another place they are. This is usually due to laws in that area that require the recycle company to take them. For example Oregon requires the recycling company to take anything recyclable. You can put out old electronics, used motor oil and oil filters, CF bulbs, batteries, etc. This was all because the legislature realized that if the recycler doesn't take them people will just hide them in their trash and it'll end up in the dump. The recycling company just wants to go after the most profitable recyclables.\n\nNow if you just meant what if someone threw something like wooden skewers in the recycling, they just pick them out. They have long conveyer belts with people on either side to pick out non recyclables. Then they haul it to the dump. If it's something they just don't want to take, like the CF bulbs, then they have to pull them out and dispose of them properly. They can't legally toss them in the dump like the other stuff.",
"You add to the cost of the recycling program. Regardless of how they sort out non-recyclable material, they then have to pay for the disposal of that stuff.",
"I worked as a recycling collector at my college years back. We had to pick that stuff out. Anything we missed was sorted out by the large recycling center we took everything to. Somebody is picking it out. Don't do it!",
"I always thought this is how they do it: _URL_0_\n\nBut I wouldn't be surprised if someone sorts through it too.",
"Oh wow, so my current internship is helpful! It really depends on what kind of recycling you are doing. If it is single stream (everything into one bin) or multi-stream (some things in one and some in another). I only know about single stream as that is what is here in Austin. For single stream, things go to a MRF (pronounced murph) where giant piles of recyclables get put into piles then into a huge machine that sorts. Before the first machine that sorts, people are there picking out contamination (non-recyclables). Then there are some things that sort out paper of different shapes. After this more people sorting out things that should have been caught by it or contamination that got through.\n\nDont put trash in there as much of it can damage the machines used to sort the recyclables. Also as a side note, dont super crush things (a flattened plastic container can mimic the properties of paper products and get sorted into that stream which is bad!). The machines are made in a way that they are there to recognize the majority of stuff in the state it is in when you are done using it. "
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3rfjc0 | when the names of college classes end with 101, 201, etc. where did we get 101 from? why isn't it 100, 200, etc.? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3rfjc0/eli5_when_the_names_of_college_classes_end_with/ | {
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"Because they're not directly counting up, they're using a numerical organization system. The first number generally indicates the level or difficulty of the course while the second set of numbers indicates which course the class number is in that department (course number 01, 02...33 etc.).",
" > Why isn't it 100, 200, etc.? \n\nThey do exist. Classes at the 100 level and lower are typically non credit classes, and are there for those that are not ready for 101 level classes, like students who have been out of the school system for a decade and need to brush up and basic algebra. (I work at a school)\n\nEdit- quick list of low level classes at my school:\n\n 91\tWriting for College 1\n\n 92\tPrealgebra\n\n 92\tWriting for College 2\n\n 93\tBeginning Algebra\n\n 93\tFoundations Of Col Reading\n\n 94\tFoundations of Math Reasoning\n\n 94\tIntro Academic Writing 1\n\n 100\tIntroduction to Film\n\n 100\tHistory -Western Music to 1800\n\n 100\tIntro Computing Concepts\n\n 100\tVisual Arts Freshman Seminar\n\n\nMany of those classes are listed as under our ESL program, they help our English as a Second Language students get up to speed before taking the usual college level curriculum \n",
"Usually the lower a number the earlier a course is meant to be taken. In some universities 101 is the first course of any particular subject. In others the same course may be numbered 301 implying it is a 3 credit course, the 01 signifying first or introductory course. "
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6zv54g | how a can of tomatoes can say "no preservatives" but contain tomatoes, salt, calcium chloride, and citric acid. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6zv54g/eli5_how_a_can_of_tomatoes_can_say_no/ | {
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"So is sugar and lack of water. Obviously it would be misleading to say that your bag of salt is loaded with preservatives, or your honey is 75% \"preservatives\" when in fact it's totally natural.\n\nSo the USDA definition, from 21 CFR 101.22(a)(3) states:\n\n > The term chemical preservative\nmeans any chemical that, when added\nto food, tends to prevent or retard deterioration\nthereof, but does not include\ncommon salt, sugars, vinegars,\nspices, or oils extracted from spices,\nsubstances added to food by direct exposure\nthereof to wood smoke, or\nchemicals applied for their insecticidal\nor herbicidal properties.\n\n\nAnd the \"no preservatives\" requires that it contains no chemical preservatives as defined there. Also, you need to understand these are laws with court interpretation and lawsuits to understand what the above paragraph means. So salt is specifically exempted, the USDA says calcium chloride can be called a [firming agent](_URL_0_) and isn't on the list of preservatives, and citric acid can be a preservative, but says it could also be a \"ph control agent\" (ph itself can be a preservative), so really it comes down to is there enough citric acid to actually prevent spoilage? Probably not.\n",
"Those items aren't classified as \"preservatives\".\n\nWhile they are common in preserving different foods, \"presrrvatives\" is a specific classification of food additives that's sole purpose is preserving food. Where as the items you mentioned are all natural ingredients with various uses. "
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4gyo3e | what is it about boiling water that cooks pasta | I know the heat is an important factor but why does pasta not cook so well in, say, 80°C water? What is it about the "boiling tipping point" that fastens the cooking so drastically?
Edit: I did not expect that question to elicit so many reactions! Thanks everyone for the numerous answers. I will never look at pasta the same. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4gyo3e/eli5_what_is_it_about_boiling_water_that_cooks/ | {
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"Boiling water is an easily identifiable, quick, and standard time. It can cook slowly at a lower temperature, but boiling point is more reliable and accurate than say 80^o C",
"Cooking pasta is essentially hydrating dried pasta. You can \"cook\" pasta in room temperature water, it just takes very long.\n\nIncreasing the temperature of the water also increases the rate of absorption (water into pasta). Since we like to spend as little time as possible when cooking, we use the maximum temperature of water. Also, it's easy to identify water at 100° (boiling). It won't go higher either, so it's also a good standard to estimate cooking times from.\n\n > What is it about the \"boiling tipping point\" that fastens the cooking so drastically?\n\nThis one I can't say for sure, but it might be that the increase in absorption rate increases exponentially with temperature (ELI5: that means that the difference in absorption rate between 20°C-40°C is less than between 80°C-100°C.\n\nTheorectically, you could cook pasta even faster using a pressure cooker (don't know the correct word for it, it's essentially an airtight pan), since higher pressure means water will have a higher boiling point, meaning you can cook your pasta at > 100°C... But you'd have to be very impatient to not want to wait +/- 10 minutes to cook pasta.\n\n***\n\nEDIT: The above only applies to **dried** pasta, not fresh.\n\nAlso, please scroll down to /u/Tinlad 's comment about gelatinisation of starches (which is dependant on temperature).\n\nAs for fresh pasta, it's just kneaded flour and egg. Leaving that in cold water would rather dissolve than cook it. The high temperature of boiling water will denaturize the proteins (think raw egg - > boiled egg) and gelatinize the starches. I don't think this is the full story, but this is all I know now... feel free to expand on this :).\n",
"Did you actually try to do it in 80C water? It's a bit complicated to do that (and have water around 75/85 to make it easier) especially with the right amount to cook pasta. I would assume it would take longer but not too much longer",
"no one has taken into consideration dry vs fresh pasta.\n\nDry pasta, you are hydrating it only for the most part. You could put it in warm water and it would hydrate just fine, albeit slower.\n\nFor fresh pasta, you need to cook it otherwise you are just eating dough. For that, you definitely want water boiling and damn near close. The cooking is going to cause the proteins in the glutin to do its thing as it is heated and cause the structure change and now when you bite, you get that small pop rather than teeth going through dough. The heat is for the protein restructure from dough to pasta.\n",
"I can't explain why but there's more to it than just rehydrating pasta. Yes you can leave pasta soaking in cold water, but the end result won't be the same texture as cooked pasta. \n\nMaybe there's also some protein denaturation due to the high temperatures involved. Maybe the heat increases the rate of surface absorption while leaving the centre firm.",
"If you have Netflix check out Michael Polians four part series *Cooked*. He explores elements and origins of cooking in a fascinating, cohesive manner. ",
"There are two stages to cooking dried pasta: hydration and cooking. Turns out you can separate these!\n\n_URL_0_",
"Biochemistry answer - Starch molecules (that largely compose pasta) have a certain helical structure (with alpha glycosidic bonds, I believe). Dried pasta has no water associated with these starch molecules, but when the starch molecules undergoing boiling, the glycosidic bonds are \"loosened.\" This loosening allows incorporation of water molecules directly into the alpha helical structure of starch molecules. \n\nThe heat involved is related to the energy required to denature or \"loosen\" the starch glycosidic bonds. I believe the denaturing is technically destroying the hydrogen bonds between glucose monomers that stabilize the alpha helical structure. \n\n[Here's a relevant image] (_URL_0_)\n\nSource - Degree in biochemistry",
"The water. It breaks down the rigid bonds of the pasta. It does it faster with heat as heat causes the molecules to move faster at a microscopic level.",
"What is it about fire that cooks beef?",
"So imagine you were just out for a long day of work, and you're all tensed up from the day. So you come home and take a nice hot shower to relax and get all loosened up again. That's pretty much how noodles get all noodly. The stuff they're made of needs to get real hot before it starts to relax and turn all squiggly. Just like how when you take a hot shower, there's a perfect point where the water is just right and you can relax.",
"but the principal approach that constitutes 'cooking' the pasta is gelatinisation of your starch in the wheat flour. TIL, thanks for that info",
"It's the same concept as hydrating chickpeas or anything like that. Heating speeds up the uptake of water, and boiling water is pretty hot. It's possible at room temperature, it just takes a LONG TIME. Also, you're not really cooking them exactly, you're just hydrating them and making them actually edible.",
"I think someone should mention you can't increase the temperature of water past its boiling point, and it takes a lot more energy to raise water from 100C-101C, or boil it, than 80C-81C. So the water can have a lot more heat energy to transfer to the thing you're cooking at 100C than any other temperature.",
"The temperature. It doesn't necessarily have to be boiling. It's just the heat the cooks if like heat cooks anything. It just so happens that the proper temperature for pasta to cook is one where water is boiling. If the pressure was increased so that water didn't Boil yet at that temp, the pasta would still cook equally well. It might even cook faster because the pressure itself cooks it as well.",
"I switched to a method I read on a scientific food post for dry pasta. Start cold an inch over the pasta in the pot. Bring to a boil and shut it off. Stir, then leave in hot water for the cooking time. When done, stir again and drain. Perfect pasta. ",
"I'm gonna guess it's the hot part. I tried cooking pasta once in cold water. After several unsuccessful hours I started using heat and the pasta cooked much better. \n10/10 for boiling water. Would use again. ",
"I don't know this to be why the noodles cook faster, but I think a lot of people are missing the difference between 99C water and steam from boiling water. 1cm^3 of water can store up to 99 calories of energy (1cm^3 water @ 1C. = 1 calorie) When water evaporates that value can go up to 540 calories meaning that steam contains over 5x the energy than water that is approaching boiling point. It's part of a processes called evaporative cooling where energy is released when matter changes state, cooling the water and energizing the steam. That could likely accelerate the cooking.",
"Could you steam pasta rather than boil it?",
"The question has already been answered, but I just wanted to add something to it:\n\n\"Cooking\" dry pasta is actually hydrating it, so you can leave it at room temperature or in the refrigerator for hours, until it's \"cooked\" to about 80%, and then just finish it in hot water for a couple of minutes when ready to serve.\n\nOk, so, why not add more flavors in the hydrating phase? Nothing is stopping you from doing so: Why not put some smoked pork product in the liquid and some herbs? Think beans!\n\nWhat about hydrating in stock? Tea?",
"short answer: 100c is hotter. \nlong answer if we could go to a higher temperature we probably would. Its just that at standard pressures we are limited to 100c for the boiling point of water. I would say at 120c pasta would cook faster than at 100c. But physics doesn't allow us to get water to a hotter temperature at standard pressure, and we wouldn't want to go too much higher as you can still burn pasta in water. But dont fret we can get water to 120c we just need to boil the water in a pressure cooker and we can get water to 100+ degrees before it starts boiling.",
"more importantly, feynman never found a satisfactory conclusion as to why dried pasta breaks in 3",
"the hotness and wetness..?"
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6efyd8 | why we don't have a computer processor that's can exceed 5ghz without overclocking? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6efyd8/eli5_why_we_dont_have_a_computer_processor_thats/ | {
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"Short answer: because we can't make processors small enough.\n\nSignals travel at close to the speed of light through the processor. \n\nThe speed of light is 300,000 km / sec.\n\nIn a 3 GHz processor, the electrical signal has only 1/3 of a billionth of a second to flow through the processor before the next clock tick. That translates to a distance of about 10 centimeters.\n\nIn a 5 GHz processor, it has only 6 centimeters. For the same complexity, the processor would need to be 40% smaller.\n\nThis is a dramatically oversimplified answer.\n\nIt *is* possible to make a processor run at 5 GHz, but there would be so many other compromises that with today's technology it wouldn't be worth it. However, we've had more luck making processors run at 2 - 3 GHz and do more work each clock cycle, so that's what we do.\n",
"To add, Milton Feng and Walid Hafez at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign built a single transistor that switches at 60 GHz. I think this is still the record. So it goes to show you it's not that transistors can't switch fast.\n\nA top of the line iCore 7 currently has 1,750,000,000 transistors, and it's a challenge to make them all of such high quality that they can all reliably switch that fast - a processor can only run as fast as it's slowest component. Indeed, the reason Intel or other chip manufacturers sell so many variations of a single processor is because they're all effectively made on a single assembly line; they all get tested, and that will discover if a core is dead on this chip, or a processor extension is dead on that chip, or the fastest stable speed is X... They then disable broken features and lock the chip in at a stable speed and sell it as one of their many offerings. Another thing they do is if manufacturing gets too good - yes, really - and they're making too many high end processors, they'll deliberately lock in a superior processor as an inferior variation to capture that part of the market and keep the premium brand expensive.\n\nAfter all this has been said, I do not want to detract from u/dmazzoni, who pegs the principle problem eloquently."
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6ih24x | how does interest work and why did we implement it into our financial systems? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6ih24x/eli5_how_does_interest_work_and_why_did_we/ | {
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"Time value of money.\n\nMoney has a time-dependent value. If you don't think so, give me $500 and I'll give it back to you in a year.\n\nInterest is a scheme for measuring and compensating for the time value of money.",
"People save money in case they experience unforeseen financial hardship. The more people save money, the less money is circulating in the economy. This causes a steady decrease in productions and services as more and more money is removed from the circulating economy.\n\nTo prevent the economy from eventually going stagnant, the government prints more money (or in modern days, creates a deficit) which will keep the economy from going stagnant, but devalues money as a result of there being a higher supply.\n\nThen what's the point of saving money if it is going to be devalued? Your $1000 today may only be worth half as much in ten years, who knows?\n\nEnter banks and interest. Banks hold onto your saved money and will reward you with interest for doing so. But why do they do this? They are actually making more profit on your saved money than you are by investing and trading and loaning. This helps prevent the economy from going stagnant by circulating saved money in the economy and helps your savings keep up with inflation. It's a win-win deal for both you and the bank (but much more so for the bank). ",
"Interest is really just the cost of borrowing money. \n\nSometimes people or businesses need a big chunk of money in the short term, but may not have that much cash available (or they just don't want to tie up all of their cash). A lender comes in and says \"I'll give you the cash you need now, but you have to pay me extra for the service\". That extra that you have to pay back is interest. \n\nWhen you get interest on a savings account, it's really just the bank paying you so that they can use your money (often they use it to lend out to other people). ",
"Interest is the cost to rent money.\n\nLet's say I am an expert blacksmith, but I own no tools. There are also people who have tools, but no skill in blacksmithing. Alone, neither of us can do much of anything.\n\nBut I have a clever idea. If I borrow tools from the people who have them, but cannot user them, them I can make blacksmith items to sell and earn myself some money. The people with tools though are neither fools not charitable. I might steal the tools or break them, plus why should they help me out for nothing? They want something in return. So we strike a deal. They will let me borrow their tools for an entire year, but I have to give the tools back at the end AND I have to craft them an extra tool.\n\nThis way we both get something from the relationship. I get to work, and they get more tools merely by letting me borrow tools for a short time.\n\nNow replace blacksmith tools with money.\n\nThere are people who have money, but don't need it at the moment and don't know how to use it otherwise. There are also people who have skills to earn money, but need some money temporarily to help them get started (so they can buy a set of blacksmithing tools to start a business).\n\nThere are a variety of reasons people want money temporarily and want it sooner rather than later. Most people have to borrow money in a mortgage to buy a house. Why would they borrow money when eventually they'll have to pay it all back plus extra? Wouldn't it be cheaper to just save enough to buy the house and avoid interest? YES! BUT, it could take them 30 years to save enough money to buy the house. By taking out a loan they get the house 30 years sooner. Imagine ordering a package from Amazon and it will cost $100, but it will be shipped to you in 30 years, would you pay $1 extra ($101 total) to get it tomorrow? I would.\n\nThere are also people who have money, but have nothing they need to spend it on immediately, like banks (this is actually why banks exist, to make money from loans on money they hold). They are willing to let qualified people borrow (rent) the money as long as they promise to give it all back and a little more. Banks pay depositers a little interest to give the bank money, but the bank loans the money out at higher interest to make a profit. Banks are able to do this because they have better skills in risk assessment than a typical person.\n\nRent, interest, and investments all the into the same concept.\n\n1. I will rent you a car as long as you give me back the car plus fill up the tank.\n\n2. I will loan you money as long as you give it back to me plus a little extra.\n\n3. I will invest in your company as long as I (hope) can sell my investment later and plus you give me part of your earnings."
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nyut5 | why do some news (interviews) have random (words) in (parenthesis)? | My theory is that they are words that the person being interviewed may have left out of the conversation but when I am face with an edit like this:
"...yeah and then we (went) out to the street for a (while.)" -Example
I am confused. Can someone please explain this Journalistic practice to me? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/nyut5/why_do_some_news_interviews_have_random_words_in/ | {
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"not much need for a theory... yes that's right, they are words added by the editor to make a reduced version scan more. Does make you wonder what the original text was often though, as, like your example, they often make no sense whatsoever without the added words... how much did they cut out?",
"That's exactly right, it's to make the sentence make more sense when read if it was missing words or something that made sense when spoken, or if it's being paraphrased or something. Usually you'll see them as [square brackets] rather than (parenthesis).",
"What does it mean when you see [sic] usually after what is an obvious grammatical error or use of incorrect speech",
"Most of the time, it will be for replacing words instead of adding new ones. For example, consider the following situation: \n\nGeorge Lucas says in 1978: \"Yeah, I really liked working with Mark Hamill. He is a pretty chill guy, you know.\" \n\n100 years later, a journalist decides to quote that statement. But he cannot write \"In 1978, George Lucas said that 'he really liked working with Mark Hamill. He is a pretty chill guy.'\" because that would make no sense. So instead, he writes\n\n\"In 1978, George Lucas said that 'he really liked working witk Mark Hamill [because] he [was] a pretty chill guy'.\"",
"It might also happen when the person being quoted was using pronouns the so the pronouns are replaced what the person was referring to to make the quote easier to understand. Ex: Original quote, \"He said that he would do it if I had a receipt.\" Edited Quote: \"(Mr. Rogers) said that he would (refund me) if I had a receipt.\""
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98154p | why do fat people tend to snore more than thin people? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/98154p/eli5_why_do_fat_people_tend_to_snore_more_than/ | {
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"The fat in their neck squeezes their airway, which makes it easier for it to get repeatedly blocked for brief moments, causing snoring.",
"Believe it or not, it is normal to be paralyzed in your sleep. This paralysis occurs to prevent you from acting out your dreams. (It fails to occur in some people, who end up doing things like screeching and punching their bed partners while sleeping). \n\nThe only muscles that aren't paralyzed during rapid eye movement (REM) sleep are your diaphragm, so you can keep breathing, and your eye muscles, which is why your eyes dart around rapidly during this stage of sleep.\n\nThe muscles that keep your tongue from collapsing into the back of your throat or keep your upper airway rigidly open are also paralyzed. This is more of a problem for the obese than for the non-obese, as their is greater tissue mass causing airway collapse. The airway collapse causes high resistance to airflow with breathing, and this results in turbulence which makes a snoring sound."
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3wsqa7 | how is reddit such a big social networking site with millions of users, yet most people i've talked to (at least in my area) have never even heard of it? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3wsqa7/eli5_how_is_reddit_such_a_big_social_networking/ | {
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"Reddit has [36 million users](_URL_1_).\n\nFacebook has [1.55 billion users](_URL_0_).\n\n(Both these statistics come from earlier this year.)\n\nThat means that Facebook has around 40 times as many users as Reddit.\n\nReddit is big... but it's certainly not the biggest social networking site out there by a very long way.",
"How much time do you spend talking to anti-social fourteen year-olds offline?",
"It's like fight club.\nRule #1: You don't talk about reddit.\nRule #2: You don't talk about reddit.\n\nSo most likely, they've heard of it, but they're denying it because they don't want you to follow-up with, \"What's your username?\" \n\nI totally deny my redditing in most cases. ",
"Can some define \"reddit user\". I have multiple accounts. I'm guessing some people have dozens.",
"Because people are use to Facebook, where they openly display their constructed beliefs and ideas to please others. Here, on reddit, no punches are pulled. You can share your disgusting habbits without directly notifying your closest friends and family.\n\nThe reason people haven't heard of reddit is simple. A postive response to \"have you heard of reddit\" is always followed by \"what is your user name?\". And that isn't how reddit works. You don't know me, I don't know you. And we both hope we don't know the guy who saves his cum in a box.",
"Probably because most of the people you've talked to aren't whiny, entitled little bitches.",
"They have the good sense to be ashamed of themselves and refuse to admit they know what you're talking about",
"My question would be: With 36 Million Users, how come things on the front page only ever get around 5000-7000 upvotes?",
"I've always wondered this, too. Especially since I live in the Silicon Valley and would assume people would be more aware of sites with as huge of a following.\nIt amazes me how often I'm explaining what reddit is on a daily basis."
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3qf7t9 | fourier series | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3qf7t9/eli5_fourier_series/ | {
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"In trigonometry, the study of triangles, there are some special functions. If you take an angle in a right triangle and find the ratio of the opposite side to the longest side of the triangle or the adjacent side to the longest side, no matter how big any of those sides are the ratios will remain the same if the angle remains the same. These are the functions called sine and cosine. \n\nWhat's interesting is if you plot the graph of sine and cosine as a function of the angle, you see they repeat every 360 degrees. They are said to be \"periodic\" on the interval of 360 degrees, or 2pi radians. These functions are called \"sinusoids.\" \n\nYou can get different sinusoids by doing graph transformations. y =sin(ax) has a smaller period, y =sin (x-a) is shifted to the right by a, y =asin (x) is vertically scaled.\n\nWell Fourier proved that these are the fundamental periodic functions. Every single periodic function is the sum of sinusoids of different shifts and scales. \n\nThe order of these sinusoids is called the Fourier series. Their sum is the periodic function they make up. It could be a few, a thousand, or infinite. \n\nWhat's even cooler than a way to analyze periodic functions algebraic ally is the fact that the Fourier series is in itself a special case. If we create a new graph, this one of frequency (the horizontal scaling), and graph the Fourier series we get a bunch of individual points in fixed intervals, and they are discrete. We call this the Fourier transform, which takes a function in one domain and transforms it into the frequency domain. We use this property in signal processing and control theory to understand information and how it can be sent or received. The very foundation of information theory relies on the Fourier transform. \n\nNow very much not ELI5, but a better way to look at it is that sinusoids are also complex exponentials. You can rewrite them in terms of the base *e* and the exponent *iw* where *i* is the square root of -1 and w is the frequency. Exponentials are solutions to a certain set of differential equations. Another transform is called the Laplace transform which takes a differential equation and transforms it into an algebraic equation which makes it easier to solve. The domain of the Laplace transform is the *s* domain, and *s* is a complex number. If you only look at the imaginary part of *s* then you are only looking at the complex solutions to the original differential equation, which happen to be sinusoids. Now that means if you remove the real part of the Laplace transform you end up with the Fourier transform. From there you can see that if the solution to the differential equation is periodic, it's Fourier transform is discrete, which corresponds to a series of complex exponentials (or sinusoids).",
"Fourier series basically says that any periodic signal can be represented as the sum of an infinite number of sine waves which have components of higher harmonics (harmonics meaning multiples of the fundamental frequency), each component being weighted by a certain value.\n\nELI5 version:\nSay that you want to paint a picture realistically there's probably a million more more different types of colours you can get. You could buy one of those 500 colour paint sets, but even that sometimes wont' be enough to paint all the colours for a realistic painitng. \n\nBut from your kindergarden class you already learned that with the primary colours (Red, Yellow, Blue) you can create secondary colours (Orange, Green, Purple), then make it lighter and darker with White and Black. \n\nYou can create different shades of each of these by adding more or less of each colour.. For example, 50% red, 50% yellow gives you pure orange. 90% yellow, 10% red gives you a ligh gold colour. 50% red and 50% yellow, with 50% white gives you a skin tone. 50% red and 50% yellow, with 50% black gives you a dark amber. You can do this with every shade in between.\n\nWhat this equates to is saying in a \"colour space\" you have a set of independent \"unit vectors\". The unit vectors are like \"primary\" colours because you cannot create them from any other combination, they stand alone and are COMPLETELY \"orthogonal\" to each other. Orthogonal meaning RED and BLUE are completely opposite - there's no combination of red mixed with anything that will you blue. They are \"opposite\" to each other. \n\nWhat's more important is that we can combine weighted components of each of the \"primary colours\" (or unit vectors) to create other colours in the space.\n\nELI-16 and took algebra.\n\nThis is equivilent to talking about geometric vectors. In a 2D space, we can define a x-unit vector and y-unit vector that are completely ortogonal to each other, and we can define any point in a 2D space by saying Point = (x value)*(unit vector i) + (y value)*(unit vector j). Just like on a map. (i,j are the unit vectors in X and Y dimensions)\n\nif we extend this to 3D - the point has 3 unit vectors. X,Y,Z have unit vectors i,j,k and any point can be represented by POINT = Point = (x value)*(unit vector i) +(y value)*(unit vector j) + (z value)*(unit vector k)\n\nIf we make this a general space and not limited to our 3 dimentional world, we could have a GENERIC geometric space that might have 10, 11, 20, 100 or any general N dimensions.. and any point in \"N space\" can be represented by a vector POINT =(x value)*(unit vector i) +(y value)*(unit vector j) + (z value)*(unit vector k).... (nth value)*(nth unit vector)\nThis means Point = SUM (Nth Value)*(Nth unit vector)\n\nWhen I learned about Fourier analysis, this is how it was taught... In the \"signal space\" where the fundamental frequency is F, the \"space\" of signals is defined by \"unit vectors\" which are Sine Waves of frequency F, 2*F, 3*F, 4*F...n*F as n approachs infinity. If you do the math, you'll see that a sine wave, is orthogonal to a sine wave of twice its frequency... and generally all of it's harmonics... \nYou can do some reasearch to find better proofs, here's one\n_URL_2_\n\n\nBut essentially, this is what the Fourier Series represents - it says that you can create any periodic signal, by thinking of it as a vector where unit vectors are the fundamental Sine wave (or more generally complex exponentials) and each component has a weight with a magnitude and a phase.\n\n\nThe Fourier Series describes a periodic signal with a frequency F and period T=1/F.... To get more generic, if you were to apply the math (Fourier Transform) on a time domain signal you get the Frequency representation of this signal as a Fourier Series.\n_URL_3_\n\n\nIF you now imagine that you take a limit of a periodic signal with the period approaching infinity... it's basically a non-periodic signal... Any general non-periodic signal can be considered a periodic signal where the period is SOOOOOOOOOOO long, that we can't even imagine it so it looks a-periodic to us.\nThus you get the Fourier Transform.\n\n\n-----------\nPractical applications\n\n1) EMC - first and foremost, higher order harmonics are casued by distortions or non lineariites in a signal... This can cause interference in higher bands. Say you have a cellular signal at 800Mhz..but it's distorting becuase your amplifier is saturating....and there' is a 3rd harmonic at 2400 MHz (800*3 = 2400)... Guess what - that falls into the 2.4GHz ISM band where your WiFi, bluetooth and some other wireless devices are transmitting - suddenly your headset and wifi quality degrades. These kinds of things are VERY carefully regulated by the FCC, ETSI and other regulatory boards.\n\n2) Music production - many electronic genres are created using basic instruments defined by a set of base oscillators like \"saw\" waves \"Square\" waves \"Triangle\" waves. If you look at them raw, they ahve very very rich harmonic content (and it looks like a fourier series - in fact if you do the calculations for each, you can see the weight for every harmonic and measure it the same way it look son an audio spectral plot\n_URL_0_\n\n2b) This plays alot into mixing and mastering - but effectively equalizing a track/instruments to make sure they don't clash with each other and sound like garbage\n_URL_1_"
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2yixmn | why do more powerful cars need more powerful brakes? | Faster, more powerful cars will generally have bigger brakes when stock. When upgrading the power of a car (adding a turbocharger, etc), it seems common to upgrade the brakes as well. Why is this, when pretty much every car already has brakes powerful enough to lock the wheels at will? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2yixmn/eli5_why_do_more_powerful_cars_need_more_powerful/ | {
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"The two answers here so far are glossing over the point you made about standard consumer car brakes being powerful enough to lock the wheels, at which point the power of the brakes becomes irrelevant. But more powerful cars will generally have better tires with more traction, and better aerodynamics that put more downforce on the car (also increasing traction), so the same brakes in consumer cars would no longer be powerful enough to lock the wheels. More powerful brakes are useful because the increased traction means the brakes can actually be useful at greater braking forces."
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4dfv1l | what breakthrough in technology allowed 2016 to be the year where virtual reality became a legitimate consumer product? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4dfv1l/eli5_what_breakthrough_in_technology_allowed_2016/ | {
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"Almost invariably breakthroughs in technology and legitimate consumer products are not directly related. The modern industrial manufacturing breakthrough is the most likely candidate for what made VR a legitimate consumer product. As u/Axelnite suggested the breakthrough in VR was the Oculus. The consumer demand for the Oculus was what allowed them to take it from the prototype to viable market product. Look at, for instance, the Emotiv. It's a control input device that you control with your thoughts. This product has been around longer than the Oculus, it was first just a prototype and then it had developer kits available but it never really caught the consumer's imagination. ",
"It's not even clear whether the Oculus and other VR products will be successful in the long run. It's a neat and well made gimmick for gamers to be immersed more, but it might just stay a niche market if people prefer to play with regular screens.",
"I would say the smartphone market pushed the charge for cheap high res lcd screens, movement sensors and processors needed for a small company like Oculus to start putting together their own headsets",
"Technology products that have *evident* demand (VR has been something in the public consciousness for decades) tend to become consumer products as the technology that makes them viable matures and drops in price.\n\nFor VR, that includes things like:\n\n* better / cheaper / more portable processors\n* better / cheaper / more portable batteries\n* better / cheaper / more portable sensors\n* better / cheaper / more capable displays\n\nSure, you could make VR systems before now. And people did. But they were either bad, or too pricey.\n\nAnother example would be DVRs. The concept wasn't new by any means, but there was no way to build a viable *consumer* product until you had cheap cpus to transcode videos, cheap tuners (to be part of a product instead of a product in and of itself,) and affordable storage.\n\nThe *best* example might be the 'modern' slate smartphone. That took, among other things:\n\n* improved battery technology\n* improved CPUs\n* the establishment of national wireless data networks\n* improved flash storage\n* affordable and durable capacitive touchscreens\n\nSure, you could build smartphones earlier than that. And lots of people did. But they weren't big sellers -the technology to make *good* smartphones simply hadn't matured enough yet.\n\nVR is just getting over that hump, now. It's been made (more) viable by a confluence of technology improvements.",
"There's no one single thing or breakthrough.\n\nWhat has happened, instead, is that technology involved in producing high-definition, super low-latency HD screens, accelerometers and gyroscopes, high-powered PC graphics cards and, of course, smartphones have become cheap and reliable enough for consumer adoption of the Oculus, Samsung Gear VR and their like.\n\nIt could have been done five years ago, but it would have cost a million pounds a unit (or some crazy figure) taking into account development and production costs with proprietary technology. But now everything is almost off-the-shelf.\n\nNow that the tech is good enough and cheap enough, market forces dictate that people want to try it.",
"Battery technology and circuit board technology both didn't drastically improve until the introduction of the cell phone on the 1980's and the modern iphone'esque's touch screen technology didn't energize the market until key patents on touch screen technology expired and the concept could take off without massive payments to the inventor. I would suspect that the VR tech is a child of both these converging trends and maybe a bit of innovation mixed in with it. If you take your cellphone, turn it sideways and tape it to your face, you have the VR helmet.\n\nThe real magic trick will be to see what new and original ideas come from the use of the VR tech. When the screens fit in my glass' frames and can go transparent, and also act as solar panels, combined with self driving tesla cars that take me to my job at Jimmy John's, what kind of world are we truly living in?",
"It really was a gradual thing. Screens got better resolutions and response times, computer processing power stepped up dramatically, kickstarter provided opportunities for small companies to raise capital easily. There were a lot of things that came together at the right time.\n\nThe funny thing about virtual reality is that there have been a lot of false starts over the years and odds are if not today or tomorrow within a couple of years this technology would have been tried again.",
"The major enabling factor has been the progress of GPU's, aside from that for the quality of VR we are seeing now, HD display and everything that comes along with that. \n\nKeep in mind that VR is not new in concept, it just lacked quality so it was shelved by companies. As we've progressed towards 'photo-realistic' graphics becomes the standard for AAA games, we are at a point where VR could be commercially viable, so the big tech firms are trying their hand at it again. \n\nPersonally while i feel it's a vastly improved experience over 3D I'm still of the opinion it will largely remain a niche product / genre ",
"GPU performance and price. In order to not get sick from VR, you need to push 90fps minimum with no dips at 2160x1200 for the Rift and Vive. This simply wasn't possible to do with modern AAA games until now. The minimum required GPU for VR is a GTX 970, comparable to a 780ti and original Titan from about 2 years back. The 970 costs ~$300 now. The 780ti and Titan cost ~$700 and ~$1000 respectively.\n\nAlso VR has itself been in the works for years now. Advances in screen technology and accurate tracking have made VR possible now. ",
"There wasn't a huge breakthrough in fact there wasn't a breakthrough at all. The products havebeen around for years and gradually updated waiting for the right moment for it to be released. It's now become a consumer product rather than a prototype. \n\nWhy is it becoming a consumer product? \n\nOne company decided to take the plunge absorbing all the risk and others followed suit when they noted that demand existed. \n\nWhy did they do this? Company A was hoping to corner the market so it took a risk of its product being rejected and breaking the company. Company B wanted to prevent this and released its similar product once they noted that demand existed allowing company A to absorb all the risks while company B has a better chance of a mass payoff. \n\nThis is how business works mate. The developer of a product rarely makes money from their ideas usually it's the one who can bring the highest numbers to the market place as prices go down as scale is increased. It's all a huge waiting game. \n\n",
"Probably late on this, but here goes:\n\nMany years ago, the idea of virtual reality was very exciting to a lot of people. It was a brand new idea that you could put a screen in front of your eyes and see a fake world that would look real. They thought it was the next step in computers because of all the cool things it would do, but there was one problem: They couldn't get it to work quite right.\n\nTheir efforts to make it work back then taught them a lot of things about what they would need to make it work better. The screens back then weren't very good. To get enough pixels for your eyes to think the fake world was real, you needed a pretty large screen. For the screen to be large, it had to be further away from your eyes, so the pixels would look small. For that to happen, the goggles with the built-in screen were pretty big and heavy. That made them uncomfortable and people didn't like wearing them.\n\nEven with good screens, the pictures didn't look right. Computers back then weren't as fast as they are now, so they made simpler pictures. For the old computers to draw fast enough, the pictures had to be really simple, and people didn't really like looking at the pictures their computers could draw.\n\nFor a while, people thought virtual reality just wasn't possible for those reasons. Even the most expensive computers and screens couldn't do a very good job. It was an interesting idea but it didn't work right, so people forgot about it and instead got interested in some other things, like cellphones. \n\nEveryone likes talking to people, and they built better phones that they could take with them. They wanted the phone to fit in their pocket, and small cellphones became very popular. Then they made phones that checked email and everyone liked those. Then they made phones you could watch movies and play games on. By this time, people were getting very good at making small, light screens with fast computers inside. They also could do things like sense which way they were facing and know when they moved around.\n\nIt turns out that the whole time we were working on making our computers faster and smaller and more portable, and making our phones have better screens, we were also fixing what had went wrong with virtual reality. So when people remembered that virtual reality had been an exciting idea that didn't work quite right, they decided to try it again, and now it works a lot better than it did before. It wasn't really one breakthrough that made it different, it's more like a series of small improvements that people worked on over a long time, because people liked a different invention that used a lot of the same parts."
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22bf8l | how did they get the provided image from the voyager? | [This is the image I'm talking about.](_URL_0_) If the voyager was 4 billion miles away, how did we get a data signal back from it? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/22bf8l/eli5_how_did_they_get_the_provided_image_from_the/ | {
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"Hi. You'd wan to check out the Deep Space Network. It's cool. \n\nSets of telescopes and observing stations are setup in three-4 locations to communicate with our assets. ",
"If memory serves me correctly Voyager has a 3.7 meter radio dish with a high gain antenna. Such a system, properly powered, certainly could send a signal back to earth. And I believe it also has records whatever it can't transmit so that it can be sent back at a later date. ",
"The Deep Space Network (which turned 50 this year) is made up of three communication complexes, one in Goldstone, California; Canberra, Australia & Madrid, Spain. \n_URL_0_\n\nEach station has one 70 meter main dish and a number of smaller 34m dishes. The DSN talks to all spacecraft outside of Earth Orbit. Other countries have similar deep space communication arrays (or are building them) but NASAs is special because it covers almost all of space due to the layout of the three stations roughly 120 degrees apart around the globe.\n\nYou can see what each dish is doing and what spacecraft they are talking to in each location on this website: _URL_1_"
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"http://i.imgur.com/KXaiyLE.jpg"
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22izn8 | what is the point of lactic acid buildup in our muscles? | From my understanding the more we work our muscles, the more lactic acid builds up in our muscles and makes them sore and slower. Is this some evolutionary response, if so what advantage would that ever give us? Why arent there pills or injections to help athletes prevent this? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/22izn8/eli5_what_is_the_point_of_lactic_acid_buildup_in/ | {
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"When you exercise, lactic acid is created to help continue to metabolize glucose. When you create lactic acid faster than your body can remove it, your muscles slow and fatigue to protect you until you can get oxygen. [Better explanation](_URL_0_)",
"**Basics**\nSo your muscles like to use ATP first, glucose second, fats third. \nYour liver feeds your muscles sugar via the bloodstream, and your liver accepts the lactic acid from your muscles, but somewhat slowly. In immediate and short duration muscle actions, your muscles use ATP. Then, in intermediate duration exercise, you burn through glycogen. \n\n**Aerobic**\nIn aerobic conditions (conditions with sufficient oxygen reaching the muscle from the blood) we completely metabolize the sugar into CO2 and water. Some sugar is stored in the muscle in the form of glycogen, which is a branched glucose polymer (glycogen > glucose > energy). \n\n**Anaerobic**\nIn anaerobic conditions, either there is insufficient oxygen reaching the muscle, or oxygen is being used up way too fast. In this case, we have fermentation, or incomplete breakdown of glucose. For a carbohydrate, or any carbon based fuel to breakdown completely, we need oxygen to form the end products of CO2 and water. If we don't have oxygen, the carbohydrate is broken down into lactic acid, which has to be sent out of the muscle and to the liver. This is like \"emergency energy\" because this process is very metabolically taxing, hence the sharp pains and soreness that your get from overexertion.\n\n**The fix**\nYou ask why there are no pills or injections to fix this... well that's a pretty good question for a biochemist, but I can give you a very basic answer. There are proteins that help rejuvenate ATP by transferring a prosperous group to ADP. So in a way, you can delay moving to the glucose metabolism phase by replenishing ATP. However, a pill or injection to remove lactic acid would probably do more harm than good. Your liver does a pretty good job at eliminating this product, so If it ain't broke, don't fix it! \n\n\n**Edit** I forgot to mention another means of eliminating this type of metabolism would be to maintain higher blood concentrations of oxygen. This would avoid the anaerobic metabolism, but would fall under the category of performance enhancing drugs. _URL_0_"
]
} | [] | [] | [
[
"http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-does-lactic-acid-buil/"
],
[
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood_doping"
]
] |
|
ckfwnn | i’ve read somewhere that tossing banana peels and other fruits into the “wild” isn’t as good for the environment as we think it is. why is that? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/ckfwnn/eli5_ive_read_somewhere_that_tossing_banana_peels/ | {
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"Will a banana peel tossed in the front yard eventually decay and become part of the soil? Yes. Until then it's unsightly, potentially becomes food for insects like cockroaches and rodents. Does not decay at compost temperature that kill potential pathogens, creating potential vectors for human contagious pathogens.\n\nShallow buried in a yard, it decays in a few weeks, especially if the soil is moist and healthy with microbial and insects life.",
"I thought part of it had to do with the fruits being non-native, shipped in from all over the world. Therefore if a seed were to grow you could be transplanting a harmful species?\n\nI could be way off ..."
]
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[],
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||
3ra4za | what causes someones accent to be heavier around certain people? | So a friend of mine has an accent that's usually not noticeable, until she's around me, is there a reason for that? I figured I'd ask here since Google couldn't help me. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3ra4za/eli5_what_causes_someones_accent_to_be_heavier/ | {
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"It's called code switching, and it occurs when you have a familiarity to a group or context. \n\nIt's most common when someone may use broadcast English in public or at work, but use whatever dialect is common at home. I notice that around my family I can get a drawl when I speak, but nowhere else.\n\n_URL_0_"
]
} | [] | [] | [
[
"https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code-switching"
]
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|
ab2ncv | why can you hear the sound of tap water changing temperature? | Turn on hot water. It starts cold. When it finally gets warm, you can *hear* the change. Why? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/ab2ncv/eli5_why_can_you_hear_the_sound_of_tap_water/ | {
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"The water density and thus flow changes. It resonates differently with the metal edges of the tap.\n\nUnless you mean hearing the flow through the separate hot water pipe as an additional sound which is also possible depending on your set up.",
"Hot water is less viscous. That is, it flows more easily than cold water. You can hear the difference in the water's thickness as it goes through the pipes and out the faucet.",
"Cold water is more viscous and better at retaining air than hot water is. As water flows past a faucet aerator, cold water will entrain more air than hot water. Because it’s more viscous, it also flows through the aerator more slowly. The change in sound is because, due to lower viscosity and less air entrainment, hot water flows faster through a faucet aerator than cold water. ",
"The heat from the hot water also causes faucet parts to expand . This is particularly true with old style rubber washers. This can cause different foe rates .",
"You can hear the temperature of water? ",
"In all honesty, out of the faucet, you're probably hearing a different configuration of pipes. Not temperature differential. ",
"What about steam? As the flowing water increases temp steam begins to fill the sink / pot / vessel. Would this contribute to a dampening (heh heh) effect on the higher frequencies in particular? ",
"Think about what makes water hot. The more energy in a material, the more spaced out its atoms are.\n\nThat said, take a bag and fill it with something. Tie it tight so that the contents are firmly packed. Drop it from a set height. Now, take the same bag, and tie it loosely such that the contents have plenty of room to move, and repeat. You should hear a massive difference, particularly the tighter bundled drop should have a heavier sound to it. This is because being tighter together, more energy is transferring into a smaller area at a faster rate. \n\nThat's why hot water has an almost floaty sound to it. You can even make cold water sound \"hotter\" by installing a mesh onto a tap that's more fine than currently installed and comparing the sound of hot with standard mesh to cold with fine mesh - since the mesh is creating gaps in the water.",
"Something very easy to understand that has yet to be mentioned is the local source of the water. Your cold water is coming in straight from your water source and your hot water is most likely coming from a water heater that is fed by your cold water source. You could be hearing the different water supply lines. The noise can be explained in all of the other posts mentioning a different viscosity for different temperatures etc.",
"Everything vibrates, things that are hot vibrate faster than when they are cold.\n\n(I am unsure if there is a material that doesn’t follow this rule).",
"It's partially due to surface tension of water dropping as the temperature rises. When the surface tension of a liquid is high, it wants to reduce its surface area and curls up into larger spherical shapes (spheres have the lowest surface are per volume), but when the surface tension is lower, water can break into smaller droplets. \nSo when you turn on the faucet, water flows in larger chunks and smash onto the sink. As the water heats up, these chunks/droplets get smaller and get sprayed onto the sink.",
"In addition to the comments about viscosity, I've noticed that when hot water starts coming out of a tap, it's usually carrying tiny little bubbles of air. Compared to the cold water which looks completely clear, the hot water almost looks a bit cloudy because of how much air is suspended within the stream. \n\nThis definitely changes the sound of the water running through the tap, in addition to the different sound of the water hitting the basin. "
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dg52a5 | in shower scenes in films, how do they stop the lens from steaming up? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/dg52a5/eli5_in_shower_scenes_in_films_how_do_they_stop/ | {
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"Good question. For vehicle use, I use Barbasol shaving cream. I would imagine it is some kind of similar coating applied but unsure. Hope to find out myself now that you've posed the query.",
"As long as the lens has time to acclimate to the temperature of the environment it won’t fog. Fog is condensation and that happens when the surface is cooler than the surrounding air.",
"Couple ways:\n\n1. Cold water. Yea, sometimes actors are showering under ice cold water. That's love of art. \n\n2. Cold water but with practical effects. You can use a vaporizer to put things like PG into the air. looks like a steamy shower then but it's still ice cold and won't fog up the lens. \n\n3. Coat the lens with a hydrophobic substance. Prevents water from condensing on the lens, at least somewhat.",
"They could heat the lens and/or direct a flow of warm, dry air over the front element. You wouldn't want to over do this or you could create unwanted shimmering optical effects, like in a mirage in the desert."
]
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4mswfd | how is our posture not damaged when we sleep in weird shapes everyday? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4mswfd/eli5_how_is_our_posture_not_damaged_when_we_sleep/ | {
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"Because we move around, we don't sleep in that same posture forever plus when you're stood up that's weight of your body acting down on you where as when you sleep you often lay down and so the weight is spread out better.",
"And I wouldn't necessarily say our posture isn't damaged by the way we sleep sometime. Especially if you lay your head on a pillow weird and your neck is sore the next day, always lame. ",
"I think my sleep helps my posture in that I'm opposite of how I am most of the time. But it depends on how you sleep. It can mess you up too. ",
"To put it simply. It is. In the same way your shoes are damaged when you walk on cement. Just little by little.",
"The back can take a variety of weird shapes. When laying down, the support is being done by the ground, not your spine. So you're not pushing down on your bone or cartilage with the weight of your body like if you were standing. \n\nIn fact: [You're taller in the morning](_URL_0_)\n\nBut when you're standing or sitting with poor posture, you're putting more of the weight of your body on those joints that aren't meant to carry so much by themselves. So the connecting tissues get fatigued, inflamed and injured over time as they are being overworked.",
"The reason our muscles get stressed is because our back and neck need to hold up your spine and head and arms all day.\n\nWhen you are laying down, most of the muscles can be relaxed and thus not working to keep the spine straight. No work = no stress on them.\n\nHowever sleeping in bad positions where the muscles are engaged all night like on a extremely uncomfortable pillow WILL cause muscle strain, hence neck cramps and other cramps after sleeping.\n\nWe also toss and turn all night to ensure too much pressure doesn't get applied to any part of the body so that our skin doesn't get damaged and we change positions as well so we're not always engaged in the exact same way.\n\n"
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[],
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||
23xp5p | why are you able to blow speakers? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/23xp5p/eli5_why_are_you_able_to_blow_speakers/ | {
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"The speaker has a coil of fine wire through it. While most of the electric energy flowing through that wire end up as as sound energy, a considerably amount is lost as heat. If you push too much through a speaker, it heats up the wire until the insulation breaks down, the glues soften, or the wire melts.\n\nOne way to kill a speaker is 'clipping'. If the sound level goes beyond what the amp can produce, the speaker just pushes DC through it. DC can't push the speaker cone and make sound, so all of it ends up as heat. This heats up and kills speaker coils really quick.\n\nSo always use a matched amp and sound system, with similar ratings. And don't push them to their maximum - if the system has 'peak' lights and they start lighting up turn it down now! - or you'll just need new speakers."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
||
3hdi9a | if i am on a flight from toronto to japan, why would i go around the world rather than just fly across the north pole. | In a map like [this](_URL_0_)it seems like it would save a rediculous amount of money to just fly North rather than East or West.
Why don't we do this? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3hdi9a/eli5_if_i_am_on_a_flight_from_toronto_to_japan/ | {
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"text": [
"They used to fly that way. It was called the concord. In and around 98? I have no idea why they stopped. It does make more sense doesn't it. ",
"We do go over the North Pole. [Polar Routes](_URL_0_) are commonly used to connect North America with Asia.",
"There are a number of possible \"great circle\" routes from A to B that are equidistant. But there are other factors which make one route more preferable. Trade winds are one. Sometimes there are certain countries you don't want to fly over, or that you can't for diplomatic reasons (like Iran, though it doesn't apply in this case). But I think more importantly, if you go over the North Pole there aren't that many good places to land in the case of emergency. ",
"I couldn't find any flights from Toronto to New York on flight radar, but the flights I did find from New York to Tokyo looked like they flew pretty close to the great circle route (shortest distance between two points on a sphere). There are various reasons they might not fly exactly on the great circle route -- wind, etops (have to stay within a certain distance of an airport), etc.",
"Every type of plane has a maximum distance, in time, that it can be from an airport on a single engine. So, if that rating is , then at no point can the airplane be further than an hour away from an airport at the top speed it can maintain on one engine. \n\nThis significantly limits polar flight paths. \n\nEDIT: This [image](_URL_0_) illustrates how a one-hour limit restricts the possible paths."
]
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"http://www.americanpolar.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/Arctic-Circle-summer-sea-ice-cover..jpg"
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[],
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[],
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"http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4095/4925781415_b7872e837b.jpg"
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|
11tdi2 | what was so good about the 'good' old days? | It seems to me like we're living in a pretty sweet time. Things aren't perfect but we have so many things now that we didn't in the past (medicine, social progress, technology). So why do people keep saying things used to be better in the past? I hear this all the time, mostly from older people. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/11tdi2/eli5_what_was_so_good_about_the_good_old_days/ | {
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"People tend to be nostalgic and look back on the past with rose tinted glasses; forgetting bad events or remembering them more fondly than at the time they took place. When something is in the past and not going to happen again or cause you any problems in the future it is much easier to look back on it with a happy thought.\n\nPlenty of young people do it too. Go over to /r/gaming and you will find that 10-15 years ago was the high point in media when everything was wonderful.",
"The biggest reason is something called [Confirmation Bias](_URL_0_). It turns out that humans are really good at remembering things that confirm what they already believe and really bad at remembering things that don't. When people remember the past, they often have memories filled with good times and they only remember the REALLY bad bad times. This creates the illusion in their mind that yesterday was happier and \"simpler\" than today.\n\nThere are also some things that really were \"better\" *depending on who you are*. For example:\n\n- Cars you could tune and fix with a screwdriver were objectively simpler and definitely \"better\" to those who knew how to fix cars. They were certainly NOT better if you didn't know anything about fixing cars, though.\n\n- The time in America when Christianity was assumed and absolutely dominant was probably \"better\" if you were a Christian, not so much if you weren't one.\n\n- Similarly, the time in America when black people were slaves or subject to extreme oppression and segregation were probably \"better\" if you were a conservative White Anglo Saxon Protestant or a racist or lived in an area where the only black people you knew were poor and likely to be criminals. If, however, you happened to be black, those days were in no way shape or form \"better\".\n\n- The time when Altair 8080s and Apple Is and those other basic computers were obviously \"better\" if you really, really love tinkering with the low level guts of computing machines. To everyone else (including most of us who still love tinkering with computers), those days seem innocent and \"cozy\", but not \"better\"."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
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|
82d7p2 | why do the oscars have separate categories for men and women? | Also what are the differences between male and female acting? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/82d7p2/eli5_why_do_the_oscars_have_separate_categories/ | {
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"text": [
"The Oscars have separate categories in order to allow for both a male winner and a female winner - this avoids any risk of sexism within the voting pool."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
|
57tcbz | how exactly do states engage in trade? | I've searched ELI5 and couldn't find a direct answer to this question, although for sure there are quite a few questions and discussions about international trade in general.
Basically, historically and contemporarily, how exactly do states engage in interstate trade?
I mean, everything I've read and studied about macroeconomics of course touch upon international trade and the like, and how advantages work, etc.
My question is more on the actual mechanics of it. How does a state do its trade? What apparatus does it use? Is is directly done via governments (or some agency emanating from it) doing transactions like merchants? Or is it semi-private or even private enterprises given strong incentives to do the trading with other enterprises (or does the other government directly purchase)?
Of course, I'm sure throughout history we've had different models. But let's say in the Roman, Ottoman or Byzantine Empires—how was it done? Did the empire's bureaucracy itself do the purchasing and selling through agents? Or was it more a policy thing—incentivising transactions via control of tariffs, etc.?
How about during the Rennaisance, or Victorian era?
How about today?
Many thanks!
| explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/57tcbz/eli5_how_exactly_do_states_engage_in_trade/ | {
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"First, states do not really do this.\n\nLets say you are the boss of John Deere and you want to sell tractors somewhere else in the world. You hire salesmen hoping to find one who speaks the language where you want to sell your tractors. You communicate with your government to be sure it is legal to sell your tractors. Some US electronic items cannot be shipped overseas.\n\n\nYour salesperson travels overseas and hopefully finds someone to be a dealer in that area. You ship demonstration models to this new dealer. He tries to sell your tractors while maintaining a service department and training natives as mechanics.\n\nMany companies become involved. Banks have international branches to handle business like this.\n\nStates get involved when negotiating the trade deals. Governments agree on low tariffs for imported items hoping to ship products which also have low tariffs.\n\nBasically large companies negotiate to ship products such as crops or tractors."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
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