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2bajtn | if planets require certain conditions for life, why can't we bring those conditions to them? | For example, water. Is there no way to introduce water to another planet? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2bajtn/eli5_if_planets_require_certain_conditions_for/ | {
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"This is called [Teraforming](_URL_0_) and it's theoretical.",
" > For example, water. Is there no way to introduce water to another planet?\n\nNot in the amounts required. At least, not with any technology that will be available to us in the foreseeable future. The best case scenario would be to re-route icy comets to crash into the planet in question, and we simply can't do that for the time being.",
"Sure you can add water, but how are you going to do it? Water is 8 pounds per gallon, and it currently costs about $10,000 per pound to sent something into Earth orbit...in other words, you could buy a new Tesla for the cost of sending one gallon of water into Earth orbit... nevermind the cost of getting it to another planet. \n\nOne theoretical idea is to crash a bunch of comets, which are mostly ice, into a planet. This is a leading theory as to how Earth got much of its water. However, we currently don't have the technology or the resources to divert a single comet meaningfully, nevermind enough comets to bombard a planet with a usable amount of water.\n\nTL;DR: It may be a doable to import water to planets in the future, but current technology is definitely not up to the task yet.\n\nAlso, given a planet with the right conditions, we may be able to introduce bacteria to do the hard work for us... after all, it was cyanobacteria that gave us an oxygen-rich atmosphere on Earth. The downside is that this would take millions of years to make a meaningful change to a CO2 rich atmosphere that planets like Venus or Mars or young Earth have/had.",
"This actually sounds very interesting. Kind of reminds me of when we create a tropical ecosystem in a city using a greenhouse.",
"1. You have to get it there - Someone else has already posted the math on why that is difficult\n\n2. The planet needs to be in the \"Goldilocks Zone\" where it is warm enough to have the water stay liquid and support life, yet not so warm that it evaporates and becomes virtually useless for supporting life\n\nAnd that's just a couple of issues with the water you brought up. There is still the matter of the atmosphere being of the right components to support life as we know it. The same with the soil. There's a lot going on in the dirt under your feet that makes it viable for supporting plant and some animal life\n\nNot to mention the untold number of other things I'm not smart enough to even know about...",
"Water is abundant in our solar system, but liquid water is the one that is needed for life and it is only present on earth. \nFor liquid water to exist you need among others: \n\n* the right temperature\n* the right atmospheric pressure\n* a strong planetary magnetic field\n\nThe technology and the energy needed to amend any of the above or other conditions is beyond our reach. The best we can do is create a kind of station on those planet that help us survive but those stations will be extremely expensive to build, ship, and maintain."
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3nxaqz | what happens if a country is found guilty of a war crime? | I keep seeing posts about the U.S. being accused of war crimes by doctors without borders. What would happen if the country were found "guilty"?
Furthermore, who (agency, coalition, UN...) decides if a country has or has not committed a war crime? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3nxaqz/eli5_what_happens_if_a_country_is_found_guilty_of/ | {
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"Countries can't be guilty of war crimes, only individual people can. What happens depends on what court makes that ruling and whether that court has the power to enforce that ruling.",
"You can't charge a country for war crime. International Criminal Court in the Hague can only charge individuals directly responsible for war crimes. It works just like most other courts with a prosecutor responsible for charging against individuals for one of the following: genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes, or crimes of aggression. They also need to investigate, collect evidence and witnesses and such. You can read more about it [here](_URL_0_). ",
"Countries cannot be guilty of war crimes, only people can. \n\nIf a US citizen is charged with a war crime the US investigates it to see if there is enough evidence of the being a crime by US standards for them to be prosecuted. It will then have trial and if found guilty punish the person. \n\nThe US recognizes no international authority and give up no sovereignty to the UN or ICC. They will not give over a citizen for trial in international court and it considers holding any US citizen on charges of war crimes to be in itself an act of war and they will respond with full military force to retrieve the citizen that is being held. "
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b8e2wr | when does a town/city become big enough to need a mayor? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/b8e2wr/eli5_when_does_a_towncity_become_big_enough_to/ | {
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"This really depends on the country you're talking about. In the US, There's no uniform system. It varies state by state, with most states having similar but not identical legal administrative divisions and definitions of what constitutes each division. Most states have some population limit below which a town can't incorporate into a city (usually it's a few thousand), but they don't have to incorporate above that. For example, Arlington, VA has a population of 230,000 and is not incorporated (everything functions at the county level). Mayors also have different responsibilities and powers in different cities based on their charters. In some cities, mayor is the head of the executive branch and has broad executive powers, and in others, the position is mostly ceremonial. "
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2fctyt | how are countries economies affected by war when they are not directly fighting at home? | A great example would be America or Russia. They are both at war outside of "home base". How are their economies differing from the pre-war era? What specific sections of their economies flourish or fall, and how is their economic outlook as a whole compared to times without war?
Sorry about the essay question. This is just becoming increasingly interesting to me as the wars overseas are unfolding. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2fctyt/eli5_how_are_countries_economies_affected_by_war/ | {
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"Scarcity of goods and the need to send goods overseas to soldiers all negatively impact the economy. Soldiers need to eat, be supplied to be effective and need skilled support staff such as doctors and nurses to assist in their efforts. At the same time, those not fighting also need the same goods. Couple that with the added costs of shipping goods across the globe to the theater of war and everything will cost more.\n\n The costs associated with shipping and supplying an army are immense. Moving goods takes vast amounts of equipment and fuel.",
"Countries have to spend money on their armies. This requires spending tax dollars, which means either that tax rates are higher than they would otherwise have to be, and/or you're spending less on other public services like roads, schools, healthcare, etc. \n\nWhile war is draining away at some areas of the economy it's also boosting others, such as military contractors and other companies that support the war effort.\n\nFinally, the effect of the war also influences world markets. For example, it can affect oil prices if investors think the supply will be disrupted by the conflict.\n\nRussia is kind of a special case in the current situation though, since in addition to fighting a war they're also getting hit by sanctions by many other countries. Those sanctions are having a much bigger affect on their economy than anything directly caused by the war."
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1bk3oy | since all elements are made of protons, neutrons, and electrons, why can't we synthesize our own? | I know that every element is made up of protons, neutrons, and electrons, but why can't we make our own? Why can't we get a whole bunch of protons, neutrons, and electrons together in something like the Large Hadron Collider and make tons of any element? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1bk3oy/eli5_since_all_elements_are_made_of_protons/ | {
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"Because the amount of energy that it would take is not worth the amount of element produced. Elements can be synthetically produced, but the energy and heat produced in the process cause it to be inefficient. If we could discover Cold Fusion, then we could synthesize any amount of any element without wasting hardly any energy, and we could then solve all of the world's problems.\n\nWe simply can't. Yet. A group of scientists once claimed that they had managed cold fusion, but they did not have any notes recording their steps, so they were ignored. Do a google search on cold fusion if you are really curious.",
"That is exactly what we're doing. We are just launching a whole bunch of protons and neutrons (in nuclei) at each other in the LHC to make elements.\n\nHOWEVER! The elements we make are not found in nature, and for a good reason. They are highly unstable and most of the ones we synthesize (for example the 118 AMU element) only exist for no more than a few seconds, and then degrade to more stable, natural elements.\n\nTL;DR: We can make a bunch of elements, they just go away right after, so the only point is to actually have scientific evidence that it can exist, there's no way in science that we can keep these elements and get a ton of them. As for making something stable like gold, it's usually far more trouble than it's worth, so we don't do that either.",
"We can, we just aren't very good at it.\n\nIt takes tremendous amounts of energy, so for now, it is a lot easier just to dig them out of the ground."
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3cy52b | why do satellites and the iss need re-boosting while we have too much space junk that seems to keep hanging around? | Shouldn't all space junk in Low Earth Orbit just de-orbit in a couple of years? Why is space junk still a problem? What about higher orbits? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3cy52b/eli5_why_do_satellites_and_the_iss_need/ | {
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"Junk in low Earth orbit does go through re-entry and burn up, but it takes longer than a couple years because they are small objects and so they don't have as much friction as, say, a space station. The result is that they lose speed more slowly.\n\n\nSpacecraft and junk in higher orbits don't experience this orbital decay because they aren't in contact with the atmosphere, so they don't suffer any friction.",
"The ISS orbits at a convenient altitude for resupply and to keep it below the Van Allen radiation belts and within the protection of Earth's magnetic field. It could be orbited much higher, and it would not suffer meaningful orbital decay, but doing that would mean that resupply would be more expensive, and the crew would be exposed to much more dangerous radiation (the radiation within the Van Allen belts is deadly; most of the dose the Apollo astronauts took happened as they passed through them going out and coming back from the moon.)"
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1t0e80 | how does nasa take pictures of the sun so clearly? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1t0e80/eli5_how_does_nasa_take_pictures_of_the_sun_so/ | {
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"With cameras. Most of what they're interested in isn't what the human eye would see, they use cameras meant to pick up only on a small band of light to make out what they want to see.",
"Attenuation. By blocking out the vast majority of light of most frequencies they can let just a very small amount of light through in the frequency range they are interested in, that lets them take a picture of the sun without over exposing allowing the subtle details to show through.",
"They do it at night.",
"A camera uses a shutter to control how long the sensor is exposed to light. To take decent pictures of the sun, they only open the shutter for a very short while to let in only a little bit of light. This allows us to see the sun more clearly because it avoids sun glare, or too much light entering the sensor. That is why you can't simply take a picture of the sun with a normal camera."
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37nkte | why do companies prefer the "buy one get one free" method over the "50% off" method? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/37nkte/eli5_why_do_companies_prefer_the_buy_one_get_one/ | {
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"Probably a merchandising technique that's been tested and proved more receptive to customers. The word \"free\" always seems to stimulate a Pavlovian response.",
"/u/moops79 and /u/coliecam both got two pieces, and there's a third and fourth. \n\nIn BOGOF, you aren't seen as reducing the price and reflecting on the product's value. On the other hand, when you offer a 50% discount, it's interpreted as the product was horribly overpriced to begin with and your store is making a killing on regular-priced stuff. (Yeah, they're really the same thing... but they're *interpreted* differently.)\n\nThe fourth thing has to do with the company's bottom line. If your company does a 50% off sale on a $10 item, people will buy one item and you get five bucks in revenue. But if you get them to buy TWO items, the company gets ten bucks in revenue. In large companies, the decision-makers watch the revenue very carefully because it affects \"cash flow\" and (in public companies) share price, both of which are important financial measures. Higher revenue = higher cash flow = bigger perception that your company is doing well... and your CEO gets richer when the stock price goes up and the shareholders are happy.\n\nSource: history of selling services where obvious markdowns were a bad thing."
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364s9x | at what point does a word/phrase become a slur? | ELI5: At what point does a word/phrase become a slur? For example, the first time someone used the word “nigger,” was the person on the receiving end offended? In the case of a new word, let’s use something ridiculous like “fishpoot,” would someone be offended if they were called a fishpoot, and if no, at what point would the word fishpoot become a slur. What would have to happen for it to become offensive or as stigmatized as other slurs?
Sorry if this was wordy. I had this conversation with someone else a few minutes ago and they didn’t quite understand what I was asking. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/364s9x/eli5_at_what_point_does_a_wordphrase_become_a_slur/ | {
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"Those kinds of words are usually taken directly from another language or dialect that is not considered as sophisticated by the slur adopting culture.\n\nFor example, the word \"nigger\" that you chose was derived from the then-current Spanish and Portuguese word for black \"Negro\" There are many non-English speaking countries where this is still a common and non-derogatory way to refer to someone with particularly dark skin.\n\nThe German word for fecal matter \"Scheiße\" pronounced Sh-ice is where the derogatory word \"shit\" came from. There are many such English words borrowed from German.\n\nAt a time when the English language was developing, German culture was often considered lower-class while French culture was considered upper-class.\n\nThis can be seen extensively in non-derogatory words as well, where the supposed higher-class word comes from French.\ne.g. deer - venison",
"It has a lot to do with common usage. The words \"imbecile\" \"moron\" \"idiot\" and \"retarded\" used to refer to very specific mental afflictions or IQ levels, however people began to use them as insults and over time they became offensive to the people who actually had these afflictions because these words were more commonly seen as something insulting than their original use as medical words. When a word breaks out of its original context and starts being used as an insult, is generally when it starts to be offensive. A modern example: I heard a group of girls refer to a guy at a bar who wouldn't leave them alone as \"Aspergy\" if this word catches on then later, people will consider the word an offensive slang and Asperger's syndrome will probably be renamed to become more politically correct. Language is always evolving.",
"When it enters the public consciousness as a way to refer to a group negatively. Especially when it is used to insult people not in that group by implying they are.\n\nFor example, imbecile, moron, and idiot were at one time medical descriptions for various degrees of intellectual disability. Once people started using them for insults, they became slurs.\n\n",
"Any word can be a slur. Just call someone that word while doing bad things to them. After a few times, that word will make them cringe and/or angry.\n\n\"Chinaman\" looks very inoffensive, a man from China. \"Jap\" is just an abbreviation. They only became bad after decades of being used in a mean spirited way.\n\n\"JAP\" is not a slur in Japan, where it is still being used as an abbreviation. It's only a slur to Japanese Americans."
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1s9xce | how do heat-protective hair products work? | There are many products being marketed as things for use before heat-styling hair (blowdrying, straightening, curling) to protect it from heat damage. How is it possible to put a substance on your hair that both allows the heat to do what you want it to do while still protecting your hair from said heat? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1s9xce/eli5how_do_heatprotective_hair_products_work/ | {
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"Depending on what kind of hairspray you get, it depends. one of two things:\n\n1. Prevents the breakdown of part of the proteins in hair, which is why they tend to feel waxy or sticky in your hair. \n2. Prevent water loss from the hair strand. I'm not exactly sure how this one works. \n\nI always thought it was simply because it adds and extra layer to your hair, so the heat isnt touching it directly, therefore, less damage. "
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238yv9 | how does oil kill mosquito larvae? can't they just poke their breathing tube through the oil? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/238yv9/eli5_how_does_oil_kill_mosquito_larvae_cant_they/ | {
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"They depend on the surface tension of the water to stay at the top. Oil breaks the surface tension. When that happens, the larvae sinks."
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37kq93 | how do illegal drug prices remain more or less constant while everything else increases in price? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/37kq93/eli5_how_do_illegal_drug_prices_remain_more_or/ | {
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"They don't?\n\nSure the amount of $ you hand over may have stayed consistent over the years but the amount you get should vary",
"They really don't.... Think how much pot you could have gotten 20 years ago for $50, and then think about now.",
"They don't. Cocaine was 3 times more expensive, when everything is adjusted for, in the 80s than now. Tells you something about the economy in the 80s. The price of an ounce of high grade marijuana has also dropped significantly in the past ten years. Used to be an ounce of the best stuff would be between 350-400, now it can be had for 250-300. Acid was 2 bucks a hit when that dude was making it in the abandoned missile silo in the 90s, now the going rate is 10. Heroin has dropped significantly in price and increased in purity since the invasion of Afghanistan. You probably just haven't been using illegal drugs long enough to notice the price fluctuations. Give it time, you will.",
"Drug prices are based on availability and what people are willing to pay.\n\nYou'll find different prices for different drugs everywhere.\n\nHell, even in my city, one place will have acid at 2.50 a hit, and then another place will have it at 10 a hit.\n\n",
"They don't.\n\nBack in the early 00's you could buy a pill (ecstasy) for as little as €2.00. They were of pretty decent quality too.\n\nNowadays, the prices are insane. From what I've heard.\n\nThe price of Mary Jane also depends on how much of it is around. Factors include if there have been any seizures and whether or not anyone has started a grow house in the area.\n\nLess product = higher price\nMore product = lower price and/or more product for the money.\n\nSupply and demand... Blah blah",
"Is it just Australia then, and for the last decade? Example: when I first moved out of home straight after high school I was paying $80 a week rent in a 3 bedroom sharehouse, now for something similar it's more than doubled. Cigarettes from $10/pack to $20/pack (admittedly a lot of this is extra taxes). Meanwhile weed, $20/gram $80/Q has not changed, and pills $25 is unchanged as well.",
"I knot that an ounce of pot costs more now than it did when I was in high school, almost 20 years ago. And it costs a **lot** more than when my parents were in high school 40 years ago.\n\nSo yeah, I don't know what you're talking about. For pot, at least (the only drug with which I am passingly familiar), prices have definitely not remained more or less constant."
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70qv5r | how does putting an organ on ice keep it alive? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/70qv5r/eli5_how_does_putting_an_organ_on_ice_keep_it/ | {
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" > How does putting an organ on ice keep it alive?\n\nIt doesn't keep it alive so much as slow down its dying. As you should remember from chemistry class, chemical reactions generally go faster the warmer they are. All the chemical stuff going on within the cells, both good and bad, is slowed by being chilled and hopefully will stay put in generally the same condition until it is implanted into its new owner."
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fyuvn6 | why does the quality of a video or image deteriorate the more it gets shared? | I see this a lot on here. The more something gets reposted the worse the quality. Why is that?
And I just noticed that the videos in my “saved” folder here on Reddit have dropped in quality too, is this an odd occasion or does Reddit lower the quality of older posts to save on storage space?
Have a nice Easter 🥴 | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/fyuvn6/eli5_why_does_the_quality_of_a_video_or_image/ | {
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"It’s not that they deteriorate in quality the more they are shared. It’s just, like you mentioned, that different apps lower the quality of uploaded videos to save storage space on their servers. Most of the time people don’t care or even notice.\n\nNot sure about reddit specifically but Facebook is terrible for this."
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5jszzd | is it possible to heat up an object by playing a loud enough sound? if so how loud would it need to be? | [first post in reddit] Going on the basis that sound is a wave of vibrating particles and when particles vibrate they heat up. Could you get the object to vibrate enough due to the sound to heat up? How loud would this object then need to be? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5jszzd/eli5_is_it_possible_to_heat_up_an_object_by/ | {
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"Sort of, it's not necessarily the volume of the sound but the frequency. Most sound based heaters use ultrasonic sound to excite the material being heated, usually water. \n\nAt some point, long before most sounds would impart too much energy into an object, the volume of the sound could become too high and cause cavitation in the air. The collapsing air bubbles could get pretty hot though.",
"The combination of amplitude and frequency necessary will vary based on the material. A real-life example of this are the Saturn V rocket launches. I've heard stories about concrete up to a mile away from the launch site being heated up and partially melted from the sheer force of the sound (around 220db at the pad). I'm not quite sure if that story is true, but even if it isn't, such a loud sound would do a lot more than kill you, it would probably rip you apart.",
"It's not a matter of volume (amplitude), or frequency really, it's \"total sound energy\". Higher frequencies can deliver more sound energy at a given volume, so the choice to be louder or higher-of-pitch depends on the immediate goal (e.g. what exactly you are trying to heat).\n\nSo there are lots of \"ultrasound\" medical devices and some are designed specifically to deliver heat to deep tissue.\n\nAnd \"ultrasonic humidifiers\" add _heat_ to water without raising its temperature in order to create that \"cold mist\". This one is particularly tricky to understand since most people think heat and temperature are the same thing.\n\nSo the truth is that _all_ sound delivers _some_ heat energy to everything it touches. How much is delivered and over what area is a whole bunch of math.\n\nThere are some good articles and youtube movies available if you google \"sonic heating\" and \"Thermoacoustic\".",
"We know sound is energy. This means it can be used to heat an object up. However sound energy is a very dilute form of energy because it dissipates very quickly into the surroundings. As an analogy, it woiuld take the sound of a whole baseball stadium just to generate enough heat boil an egg. From this you can extrapolate and compare how much sound is required to heat up certain objects."
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1obc7e | why is the debate on healthcare over who is going to pay, and how they are going to pay, rather than why it is so expensive in the first place? | I understand that the two are linked, in terms of collective bargaining, but even still, the prices are outrageous. Why don't laws similar to price gouging restrictions apply - you are in no more desperate need of gas or a heater during a natural disaster, than you are in need of care or medicine when facing death. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1obc7e/eli5_why_is_the_debate_on_healthcare_over_who_is/ | {
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"One of the main goals of 'Obamacare' is to bring the cost of healthcare down. ",
"You've answered your own question: *who* pays is the largest reason for how much it costs. \n\nMost countries now have a free universal healthcare (or hybrid) system because it's cheaper to get similar health returns. The US doesn't have a collective bargaining option, so the costs are much higher throughout the whole system. \n\nIt's a little like if there was no such thing as public air traffic control. It would probably cost much more (not less) to land a plane, and they would have only limited, financial reasons to worry about a plane crash. "
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27jvpu | can you live without having any senses? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/27jvpu/eli5_can_you_live_without_having_any_senses/ | {
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"Pretty sure you technically can. Doesn't sound like fun though.\n\nSee 'One' by Metallica...",
"Some Senses would be required to live for any length of time, you can only go on so long drinking poison, breathing in toxic gases, while walking in front of the train, while burning to death",
"In terms of any strict 'definition' of life, it depends. There's no concrete definition of life, but a few proposed qualifications include the ability to react to stimuli. In this sense, somebody without any sense whatsoever would not be considered alive. However, comatose people generally fail to respond to stimuli, and we don't consider them dead until their brains stop. By this qualification, yes, it is possible to be considered aloe without senses.\n\nLong answer short: some academic-types would argue that someone without sense does not meet the qualifications for life, but no medical professional would call then dead.\n"
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2c3yry | what is that "light" left in our vision after something like a camera flash? | I've always wondered about this. Not just camera flash either. Things like the sun, a flashlight, whatever. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2c3yry/eli5_what_is_that_light_left_in_our_vision_after/ | {
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"Your eyes got a bit over-stimulated and it takes time to adjust the eyes back.\n\nIf you go out and it's quite bright your pupils get smaller so that less light gets in, and vice versa. The idea is to try and get the best amount of light through to the actual sensors in the back.",
"Light causes chemical changes on the retina in the light sensitive cells. When the light goes away, the changes are still there for a few moments and those chemicals continue to send signals to the brain. Your pupils dilate relatively quickly in comparison. "
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1xbdr0 | why does usa care so much about russia's anti-gay laws but doesn't allow same sex marriage in all states? | I don't get why they are making Russia seem like the bad guy but they don't allow it them selves. Shouldn't americans demand it from their own country first before judging Russia? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1xbdr0/eli5_why_does_usa_care_so_much_about_russias/ | {
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"We are trying. There are other groups in the country that aren't so progressively minded. At least our president isn't denouncing gays in front of a backdrop of a huge multi-national athletic competition.",
"1) America always wants to make Russia look like the bad guy. Edit: Many still view Russia as the enemy. The Cold War lasted for 50 years. That means it was started by one generation and lasted through two and a half more generations. That means distrust and not liking (if not hating) Russia is very thoroughly ingrained into society and two decades of it being \"over\" does not undo that distrust. \n\n2) Marriage is considered something that for the most part should be a State level not a Federal level issue in the US. Many states have already made that move and many more are heading well toward it. Edit: You also find those denouncing Russia are either from the States that have approved Gay-Marriage or are fighting for it in their State. \n\n3) The Russian laws are not only Anti-Gay Marriage. They are against protests about gay rights, against displays of homosexuality in any form, and against educating children of the existence of homosexuality at all. They are a step backwards in humanitarian rights by about a century. ",
"Americans who denounce Russia's anti-gay laws are also the ones pushing for same marriage in all states. ",
"Not allowing gay people to get married is nit the same as not allowing people to be gay. \n\nAlso, anything to make Russia look bad. "
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b8su73 | why is the natural position of my eyes open during the day and i have to “forcefully” close them, while at night i have to “forcefully” keep them open as their natural state becomes closed? | I know this is kind of a weird one. I just don’t understand how I have to focus on closing them during the day but then at night it’s the exact opposite. Is something changing physically with tension or is it all psychological? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/b8su73/eli5_why_is_the_natural_position_of_my_eyes_open/ | {
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"It is just part of the sleep system. There are two parts to the sleep system. The sleep-wake homoestasis and the circadian rhythm. \n\nThe sleep wake system is pretty simple. The longer you are awake the sleepier you get and the longer you are asleep the less sleepy you get. What happens is sleep-regulating substance(s) build up in the brain the longer you are awake. The more it accumulates the more you want to sleep. When you are asleep the substance rapidly declines. \n\nThe circadian rhythm works by using cortisol to help keep you awake during the day and melatonin to help keep you asleep at night. It takes a while for the body to learn when to stay awake and a sleep, that is part of the reason why babies have irregular sleep patterns.\n\nWhen you are getting closer to sleeping at night the two processes are working together to get you to sleep.",
"I'll do my best here for a five year old: our eyelids open and close both voluntarily and involuntarily (by force but also on their own). For example, blinking happens on its own as a reflex when someone throws something at us, but we can also choose to shut our eyes while counting during hide and seek.\n\nDuring the day, our eyes are open because we're diurnal (awake during the day). Our body uses many techniques and processes to keep us awake and alert in the day, including providing energy to our muscles, making us more sensitive to sounds, and keeping our eyes open. Because our body is trying to keep our eyes open, it's harder to fight it and close them unless we have to (example, for blinking). \n\nAt night, our body's alert systems begin to shut down to prepare us for sleep (as the sun goes down). Our eyelids begin to feel 'heavy.' There are actually muscles even in our eyelids that tire throughout the day, like every other muscle. It becomes harder to keep them open because they need a break. Making a tired muscle stay contracted or keep working is very hard for anyone.\n\nOur bodies are designed to follow the sleep wake pattern for our benefit. Hope this helps. "
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233kyl | could we really build star wars sized space ships? | Say, something that was several kilometers long and could house tens of thousands of people. Is this feasible with existing materials science?
EDIT:
Let me clarify: I'm assuming cost isn't a factor, nor is getting the material into orbit, etc. Let's just build the damn thing up there. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/233kyl/eli5could_we_really_build_star_wars_sized_space/ | {
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"If built in space. Our rocket tech wouldn't be able to accelerate fast enough to put strain on anything, I don't think. ",
"Simply designing and building the structure would probably be the easy part. Objects in space don't need to worry about gravity nearly as much as objects on the ground. It's sort of like a whale... a whale is fine in the buoyancy of the ocean, but stick one on dry land and they'll crush themselves under their own weight. If it will always stay in space, it shouldn't be too bad of a feat.\n\nThe bigger problems would be things like simulating gravity, propulsion and the real big one... getting that much material to space in the first place.",
"We don't have the *economic* capability right now; we probably do have the *technical* capability, however. With economics being the primary obstacle, things like [in-situ resource utilization](_URL_1_) could overcome this. An example of this would be sending a small team to the moon to mine the regolith for iron, silicon, and so forth, which is then refined and placed through a 3D printer to make spaceship parts, which is then assembled. Since the moon's gravity is a fraction of the earth's, it would be that much easier (and cheaper) to launch the ship. Even better, sending some automated machines and printers to a small asteroid to hollow it out to be used as a ship. Any ice on the asteroid could be split to hydrogen and oxygen to power it. Later on, [space elevators](_URL_0_) would make it economical to ship materials directly from earth to space. \n\nGigantic space ships probably do have some viability. For example, many designs for ships capable of traveling to other star systems call for living quarters far away from the power source and engines, which would generate much radiation. Then there's mining ships, such as those that would conceivably mine the atmospheres of the gas giants for fusion fuel, or ships that would capture asteroids to mine (or to create other ships). It's mostly speculative at this point, but I imagine that when economics is no longer a stumbling block, that's how it will play out. ",
"you could build a craft now, sure, but it'd be nothing but a space museum, as we don't yet have an adequate propulsion technology that takes us closer to a manageable speed in space, without hundreds of years between systems.",
"with no cost of getting things in orbit problems? sure we could build that. moving it is another issue all together.\n\nships like that would never be build from orbited materials. maybe in a few years or decades we could do it however.\n\nthink captured asteroid and nano assemblers. give them the raw material and program them to \"go\" and come back when they are done.",
"I'm actually surprised this hasn't already been linked, I'm no engineer so I don't know if any of this is true but it is pretty interesting to read and a lot of thought has gone into it.\n\n_URL_0_\n"
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1gvhsf | why does stagnant water turn green-ish after some time ? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1gvhsf/eli5_why_does_stagnant_water_turn_greenish_after/ | {
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"It depends on where the stagnant water is, but a good portion of the time it's because algae grows in it, which is commonly green."
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5yfpln | is there any significant difference between different brands of water? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5yfpln/eli5_is_there_any_significant_difference_between/ | {
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"Quantity of minerals (who can change the taste) are the principal difference between brands of water.",
"Significant, I wouldn't say. The source of the water changes its composition, and therefore also the taste. If two brands get water from the same source, they would be practically identical, unless one of them really screwed up the bottling process.\n\nUnless you have a serious mineral deficiency, I can't imagine one brand being measurably more healthy for you, and if you had a mineral deficiency, you should get a proper supplement for that anyway, not bottled water.",
"I watched an alkaline test that was done on a few different brands and they definitely were not the same when comparing alkaline levels. I want to say Fiji was one of those that had a high alkaline level. I'm sure there are more differences that I'm unaware of. As far as taste, I've never had a bottle of water that blew me away taste wise. They all seem to be the same as far as that's concerned.",
"My mother recently started a bottled water facility, from what she told me:\n\nThe processes that are run to treat the water can be different from brand to brand. Just to name a few: reverse osmosis, ultra violet rays, filtering. Also where they get the water from, some come from springs (if they come from springs, the label must say which one), others from treated water. This also affects the taste of water as well. ~~Also, you cant sell 100% clean water because just like in a pool you would get algae after some time inside of the bottles.~~\n\nEdit: As some of you pointed out, and my mom explained me better: Algae may show up when the purification process is simple, it doesnt purifies the water enough. Also, once you open a bottle of water it gets contaminated with air and bacterias, its really bad to let an opened bottled of water for long periods of time, specially if it gets hit by the sun.",
"I did my science fair on this in sixth grade, so you're lucky you found me. Basically no, but aquafina and dasani grew more bacteria on a petri dish than Sam's choice, ozarka, or evian. ",
"In USA the water that comes from your tap is usually cleaner since it is more regulated than bottled water.",
"The secret is to get a good water filter at home and just filter the tap water. There's all kinds of weird shit in bottled water and a few companies have been caught putting regular city tap water in their bottles",
"I'm going to go with the keyword 'Significant' and say absolutely not.\n\nMore than 99% of the material in each bottle is H2O. Sure each brand many have differing amount of dissolved minerals (calcium is a common one), which may lead to differing taste. Acidity may differ slightly as well because of the dissolved minerals.\n\nThe only real difference would be between water bottled using reverse osmosis vs. spring water.\n\nThe only difference is the latter has naturally occurring dissolved minerals whereas the RO has removed them.\n\nAt the end of the day it is water, and if you live in a developed nation you should probably just drink it out of the tap and save yourself the money. The quality is similar or better and you can get an analysis report from your township on the water they supply. This will tell you the dissolved mineral content. Bottled water is the most ridiculous concept, don't buy it!",
"In my experience, taste is noticeable between different brands. There's this one brand, I think Dasani, that I personally hate because the added minerals make it taste like ass to me. Minerals and amount of filtering make a big difference when it comes to taste.",
"There are differences. Poland Spring really is spring water from Maine. Dasani (owned by Coca Cola) is the local municipal water supply run through some filters and bottled. \n\nMostly its a matter of taste. Which most people don't pay enough attention to make a difference. ",
"I had an in home taste test of bottled waters sold at Kroger. 4 adults drinking water and comparing notes.\n\nTops was Nestle Pure Life, which has a Lighter, sweeter quality. Fuji was of a lighter character too but tasted more mineral-ey.\n\nDasani was heaviest and saltiest (they tell you on the bottle they add salt). \n\nAll others incl Kroger Generic fell in the middle somewhere. Deer Park was unremarkable and did not call attention to itself.",
"Fiji water is made from the crushed hopes and dreams of the oppressed people of the island of Fiji. The stuff made by Pepsi is just filtered New Jersey tap water.\n"
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2fgf2t | in honor of beyonce's birthday, eli5 why every girl i know idolizes her, in a near religious fashion | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2fgf2t/eli5_in_honor_of_beyonces_birthday_eli5_why_every/ | {
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"Because she's a celebrity thats it. People idolize other people who are well off ",
"Because you are overexaggerating things. Plus confirmation bias. I'm sure not EVERY girl you know \"idolizes her in a near-religious fashion\".\n\nPeople like celebrities, Beyonce is a celebrity, that's about it. She's beautiful and talented and successful. It's normal for her to have fans."
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2evhn4 | why do i sweat more after getting out of the shower? | I live in a pretty hot and humid place, but this is a strange phenomenon I've noticed with my body. I can walk outside for a little bit and get a bit sweaty normally. But after I shower at the gym and walk back to my car, I'm for some reason pouring sweat. Even at home, not going outside, I'll be in my room feeling hot and sweaty after showering and have to turn on the fan for a bit. Why is this? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2evhn4/eli5_why_do_i_sweat_more_after_getting_out_of_the/ | {
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"If your showers are long and hot enough, the heat is raising your body temperature. You'd notice the same phenomenon in a hot bath, sauna, or hot tub. It takes a while for your body to cool off after the shower, so until you do, you sweat."
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dyraob | i have had escrow explained to me three times just now by three different people and i still don't quite get it. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/dyraob/eli5_i_have_had_escrow_explained_to_me_three/ | {
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"Escrow is a neutral place where all monies go to be dispersed to the right people at the right time.",
"Imagine I'm trying to buy a house. I want to give someone a bunch of money, and a little later they will sign a deed over to me. We're both probably generally trustworthy, but these are really big purchases.\n\nSo we hire a third person, Ms Escrow. She's a professional money holder and there's a ton of laws about what she can and can't do with money. \n\nInstead of me giving the seller the money and hope they sign over a deed, I give the money to Ms Escrow. The seller checked with Ms. Escrow to make sure she's got the money, and then signs the deed. When Ms Escrow verifies that the deed has been signed over, she gives the money to the seller.\n\nOnly there's actually more people. I don't actually have enough money, so I'm going to borrow from my bank. The seller still owes money on the house, and their bank will only allow the sale if they get the money that's owed to them. And the realtor also needs some money. Luckily, Ms Escrow is smart and can deal with all of these extra people and their needs.\n\nSo my bank and me together give Ms Escrow a bunch of money; the seller signs the deed, and Ms Escrow releases money to the seller's bank, the realtor and whatever is left goes to the seller. And then Ms Escrow writes up a detailed list of exactly what money came from where, to who, and how much.",
"The escrow is like an \"exchange point\". Usually needed when large transactions occur that require both parties to be satisfied that all the details of the transaction are satisfied. When you purchase a house, your purchase is usually covered by a contract that specifies many terms (you get the loan funded, deposits are paid, house passes inspection, no outstanding liens, defects are rectified etc etc). Since neither party has \"trust\" in the other party a \"trusted\" third party (could be a bank, lawyer or other group) is appointed that is neutral and ensures that all details that both parties must perform are accomplished before completing the transaction. \n\n\"being in escrow\" means that one or both parties are in the process of satisfying the contract. Once everything is accomplished, the third party, then \"completes\" the transaction and the escrow is extinguished.",
"One of the other 5-year-olds at the playground, Billy, wants to sell his baseball card for $1. You want to buy that card.\n\nYou don't know Billy that well, and you're afraid Billy might take your money and run away without giving you the card.\n\nBilly doesn't know you that well, and Billy's afraid you might take his card and run away without giving him the money.\n\nIt sounds like you might be stuck, and unable to make a deal, because you don't trust each other.\n\nBut, it turns out that you and Billy are both good friends with Ed. Since you both trust Ed, you make an arrangement with Ed that works like this:\n\n- You give Ed $1.05.\n- Billy gives you the card.\n- Ed gives Billy $1.00.\n\nBilly's happy since he doesn't give up his card until Ed has the money. You're happy since Ed won't give up control of the money until you have the card. Ed's happy because he got paid $0.05 for being a guy that everybody trusts.\n\nEd is providing an escrow service. While Ed's holding onto the $1, it's said that \"the money is in escrow.\""
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b678m3 | network routing | "Routing calculates good paths through a network for information to take. "
& #x200B;
But how? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/b678m3/eli5_network_routing/ | {
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"There are a lot of different ways, but it basically boils down to this:\n\nEach router sends messages to its neighbors and then learns information about its neighbors, such as who they are and how long it takes to communicate with them. Through this, each router then can learn about the overall network and the times it takes to reach various areas.\n\nFor example, Router A communicates with its neighbor, Router B, and knows that it takes 5 milliseconds on average to talk to it.\n\nRouter B communicates with its neighbors A and C, and knows that it takes 5 milliseconds to talk to either of them.\n\nBut, when A and B are talking to each other, B tells A what it knows about C and based on this information, A can deduce that it would take an average of 10 milliseconds to send a message to C through B.\n\nBut let's say that C is also a neighbor of A and the direct connection between A and C only takes 7 milliseconds. Well A can tell the difference and it would know that it should send information destined for C directly to C, rather than through B."
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323ojp | are police in the us really so trigger happy against african-americans, or does it just seem this way to an outsider as such news is more widely proliferated since the trayvon martin? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/323ojp/eli5_are_police_in_the_us_really_so_trigger_happy/ | {
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"Its a long complicated history that didn't start with Mr. Martin. I found an original copy of the first Black Panther news paper in my grandmothers things published in Oakland Ca, dated April 25th, 1967. Headline reads: Why was Denzil Dowell killed. \"I believed the police murdered my son\" says the mother of Denzil Dowell\n\nThe racism left over from slavery/reconstruction/jim crow/war on drugs didn't just disappear, it just became unpopular to be open racist so the rhetoric has changed. \n\nSo are police out to kill blacks? No, not really. Is there are long history of oppression and inequality that we're still dealing with in the USA? Very much so. ",
"It's not really news when a white man shoots a white man. When a white man shoots a black man you can call al sharpton & whip up the hate speech on both sides & now you have \"breaking\" news for weeks.",
"You've framed the question in such a way that neither answer is correct. Cops don't just go around looking for black kids to kill, and the media only report on it because they know people care about it and they'll tune in.\n\nIt's probably most accurate to say that the black population in America is stuck in a cycle of crime and poverty, which in turn causes them to have a disproportionate amount of encounters with police, which in turn engenders racist resentment among both the police and the black community. \n\nIf black people weren't committing such an enormous chunk of America's violent crime, they almost certainly wouldn't be getting shot by police so often, but it they weren't having their families systemically ripped apart by federal drug policy, they almost certainly wouldn't be committing so much violent crime in the first place. \n",
"Cops shooting whites aren't a racist news story, so it's not seen/heard as much.\nThe black community as a whole, has more crime, meaning the ratio of cops interacting with blacks versus cops interacting with whites, is much higher. Blacks have a much higher likelihood that the criminal will have a weapon and the mindset to use it, thus have a higher incidence of cops drawing guns against the blacks in self defense.",
"/u/psilocybes gave a great answer. \n\nThere is a long-standing history in much of the black community that creates suspicion of and even fear of police and, really, any authority--especially if it is perceived as being made up or supported by whites. It is founded on past injustices and upheld by perceived (and real) injustices in the present. This creates a confirmation bias where every police killing is perceived as being racially motivated and facts are perceived to support this end. \n\nMany blacks will resist arrest or run from the police because they are afraid of being killed because they are black. That was a legitimate fear in decades past. Nowadays, they end up getting killed because their resisting / running is perceived by the police to be a threat. However, the black community will perceive the police's attack as being racially motivated, while the white community will perceive the police's attack as justifiable. \n\nWhite police killings of black citizens is perceived as being a racially-motivated murder where the murderer (white cop) is protected by a white conspiracy. Has this happened before? Yes. Is this still happening today? Maybe. Is this happening every single time a white cop kills a black citizen? Absolutely not. \n\nHowever, it is not perceived that way in the black community. Past killings of innocent blacks by white authority figures (police) creates fear and suspicion. Fear and suspicion leads to behavior that leads to police being suspicious and afraid of blacks. This creates a cycle where neither side really goes anywhere. \n\nThe black belief in police as racially-motivated oppressors is upheld. The white belief in blacks as law-defying troublemakers is upheld. Neither case is actually true, but the situations create those perceptions. The confirmation bias I mentioned earlier is upheld. \n\nThere is also an availability bias in this situation because we tend not to hear about the thousands, even tens of thousands, of blacks who have peaceful interactions with the police every day. \n\nTL;DR--Whites used to oppress blacks. This created suspicion of police (mostly white) by blacks. This suspicion leads to behavior that causes the police to be suspicious of blacks, thus leading to police killings of blacks. The black perception is upheld. The white perception is upheld. All of the daily non-violent interactions between white police and black citizens is ignored. The rare killings of black citizens by white officers are played-up and perceptions are confirmed. ",
"Every time this question arises you can see again how confident people are in *their* explanation (historical roots, social-economical causes, political causes, racial biases, statistical misrepresentation). \n\nDon't stick to one answer as definitive, as it's pretty complicated.\n",
"Well, race aside, the police in the US are trigger happy *in general* compared to other western countries. In march this year 111 people were killed by police in the US, which compares to 14 people killed by police in Canada for the whole of last year and 52 people killed by police in the UK in the last 115 *years*.",
"If you pay attention to media, from news, to movies, to TV shows, you'll notice patterns. In regards to the news, they'll find a topic that everyone tunes in for. When Columbine happened, all the news reported on for months about school shootings. When Mark Mcguire tested positive for steroids then all you heard for months was drug abuse in sports. And when Trayvon Martin got shot, all we hear about is gun control, then acquittals, then police brutality, then riots, then racism... And we'll hear about that until it stops getting ratings and something else they can profit from will appear.\n\nSo, the reason why police brutality seems so prevalent in the US is because that's all they're reporting on right now because it gets views/hits.\n\nEdit: That's not to say police brutality doesn't happen, since it obviously does, but it's not as rampant as people think. For every arrest that goes bad, there's probably 1000 that went just fine.",
"Black cop killed an unarmed white teenager a few months ago in the country, but that never made national news. Two black teenagers stabbed an off-duty white cop to death because he happened to be in the same convenience store they were robbing in my own city and that barely made the news here.\n\nMedia wants a response, so the media spins what gets them a response.",
"The blatant racism being presented as fact in this thread is absurd and disgusting. Making statements like \"if black people weren't committing such an enormous chunk of America's crime,\" and \"African Americans, and fewer overall, are almost entirely murdered by other African Americans,\" without any evidence is simply pretending your personal bias is more than just that. \n\nSpeaking about 'race' in this hostile, accusatory manner is why we non-Americans find your culture so unhealthy.",
"Your question is loaded, but I will try to answer it anyway.\n\nPolice don't wake up thinking, \"I'm going to kill to a black man.\" What transpires is how officers perceive threats differently from black man vs white men. In the same situation man officers will feel threatened by the black man more so than the white man. This is just a reflection of how society views things. \n\nOn the other side, black people have a huge mistrust of police dating back to post slavery days and it is ingrained in the children at an early age. \n\nSo you take both situations and combine them and occasionally you will have fireworks.",
"My father is a television news reporter, so maybe this will give you a unique perspective. Police *do* have a prejudice against black people. We live near a large US city, and just yesterday my dad was listening to a 911 call tape on a shooting that was questionable. And he didn't report on it. It's not like the media (for the most part) is blindly jumping on to this train. There is an actual difference in the way a black and white person will be treated by police.",
"[implicit bias](_URL_0_)\n\nSomething that is rarely discussed is implicit racial bias that exists in your subconscious. A black person has never done anything directly bad to me but I have a bias. I took this test in a scientific setting. I realized that media/movies had shaped my beliefs much more than I really knew. It has made me do a lot of self reflection.\n\nImagine being a cop. They are hyper vigilant and are always evaluating people if they are a threat or not. Your peers collective psyche has been shaped by generations of day in day out crime. Not only have their minds been shaped by media like all of us but they see violence 1st hand, or hear about from their peers directly. This all occurs on a daily basis and is sort of an echo chamber.\n\nI imagine my bias would get even more extreme if I was a cop. You really have to actively work to remove it. I am not saying that this is acceptable, but the only way to fix it is to at start off by acknowledging it. I think that is the reality. Some people do not have bias, but quite a few do and some are not even aware they do.\n\nI am a veteran and I have had extensive training on deadly force. When I read and see videos I usually cringe. A lot of the general public has no idea how the force continuum works and seem to think police are over aggressive, when sometimes I think they are being incredibly restrained. I also cringe when I see police escalating stuff to the point I consider unlawful. You would go to prison in the military pretty quickly for this.\n\n",
"When reading through this thread, remember that the average redditor is a white, middle class man.",
"If you made it this far down, you've seen the top comments. \nReddit's fucked m8. "
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6emx23 | what's te deal with g20? | I live in Hamburg, Germany and we will host the G20 soon. Now I have seen that a lot of people are against this summit, and I am wondering what it is that people dislike. After all to me it seems like a good idea for the richest Counties to meet and discuss the problems of the world. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6emx23/eli5_whats_te_deal_with_g20/ | {
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"The reason people don't like the G20 is beavuse it's 20 of the world's largest economies that get together and talk about what way they want to steer the world's economies. Basically like the rich deciding what policy changes they can decide to make them richer without asking the rest of the world."
]
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1hjr2s | what's the difference between neoliberalism and capitalism? | Also an explanation of the two would be greatly appreciated! | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1hjr2s/eli5_whats_the_difference_between_neoliberalism/ | {
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"Capitalism is what's called a mode of production, or system of political economy. This means that Capitalism is a system of organizing the production of goods/services for a given location. It can be defined a couple different ways. To give an example, lets look at the definition of Capitalism from a Marxist perspective and a Capitalist perspective. \n\n_URL_0_ definition of Capitalism: \"the socio-economic system where social relations are based on commodities for exchange, in particular private ownership of the means of production and on the exploitation of wage labour.\"\n \n_URL_1_ definition of Capitalism: \"Capitalism is a social system based on the recognition of individual rights, including property rights, in which all property is privately owned.\"\n\nThese sound very different right? Well, not really. They're both talking about how under the Capitalist mode of production, *stuff* is privately owned and traded between parties. When the Marxist talks about \"social relations\" and the Capitalist talks about \"property rights\" they're talking about the same thing from different theoretical perspectives. \n\nSo if we look at it like this, Capitalism is the economic world we live in where if I want to buy something, I have to sell my labor to someone else. I sell my labor to McDonalds. My job is making cheese burgers which, when made belong to McDonalds until someone else comes in and buys it. \n\nThere are different \"modes of production\" such as Mercantilism, Capitalism, Socialism, Communism, etc. Each with its own method of organizing how stuff is made and exchange. \n\nNeoLiberalism is an economic theory of how the Capitalist mode of production should work. So we have a mode of production, Capitalism, and we've come up with various interpretations of HOW Capitalism SHOULD work. These theories include NeoLiberalism, NeoClassicalism, Classical Liberalism, Keynesian, etc. Each with various ideas about how Capitalism works and what we can do with it to make it better. "
]
} | [] | [] | [
[
"Marxists.org",
"Capitalism.org"
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|
3i6d3x | the current stock market situation and crash. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3i6d3x/eli5_the_current_stock_market_situation_and_crash/ | {
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"[This is a long overdue correction, IMO. If you look at a chart over decades rather than the last week or month or year, you will see nothing out of the ordinary. Click \"max\" and look at that chart. You will see that the stock market is doing quite well, thank you.](_URL_0_{\"range\":\"max\",\"allowChartStacking\":true})"
]
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[
"http://finance.yahoo.com/echarts?s=%5EDJI+Interactive#"
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||
5ihpoz | how is it that the united states is a secular state but the phrase "in god we trust" still appears on our money and in the house chamber | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5ihpoz/eli5_how_is_it_that_the_united_states_is_a/ | {
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"In the 1950s, America was so afraid of the \"Godless Communists\" that we wanted to make sure we stood out as believers in god. We added \"Under God\" to the Pledge of Allegiance and \"In God We Trust\" to money. ",
"The US Constitution's 1st Amendment give you freedom OF religion, not freedom FROM it. The US Constitution is full of religious terms/phrases but never forces it upon the citizens (like, at the time, the Church of England).\n\nSo the Government CAN use religious text and imagery, but it cannot force you observe/obey it.\n\nSo while our money can have the text 'In God We Trust' printed on it, the Government cannot force you to say, attend a church. ",
"We aren't really a secular state and never have been. We give a lot of lip service to it but in reality the signs of Christianity are in our currency, our courthouses, our federal buildings. etc.",
"The First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States prohibits the Congress from making a law \"respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.\" \n\nAs with anything it needs to be challenged in court to determine it's constitutionality. That has been done on a few occasions and in all cases the courts have ruled that this isn't preventing exercise of a religion nor is it establishing one. Essentially the courts have ruled that the recognition of god does not constitute the establishment of a state church.\n",
"The United States has among the highest religiously devout % of the population of any first world country. You're pretty much as non secular as a first world country gets. Sorry to break it to you",
"Because religious people tend to evangelize, and in the 50s, there was a big push for conservativism and this was one of the things that was snuck into American culture (many people didn't know this).\n\nSomeday, I hope religious effigy is put away from government for REAL, but the Trump wave is likely to do just the opposite.",
"* Around the 1950's or 1960's.... we did it to piss of the Godless Communists.\n\n* Now... we keep it to piss of anyone who isn't Christian, such as Atheists and Muslims.\n\n* Want to change it? Ask Trump and his cabinet to. They'll definitely do that and push forward with Muslims and non-Christian rights :) ",
"Am I the only one that sees the pledge of allegiance in schools as a cult practice, no? Okay.",
" > the United States is a secular state\n\nThat's simply not true. The US was founded on the basic premise that God exists and grants us rights that no government has the right to infringe upon. The First Amendment prevents the government from establishing any one particular religion as a state religion. That's it. Recognition that God exists is not the establishment of a state religion as virtually all religions recognize that God exists.",
"\"In God We Trust\" is from the last verse of the unabridged national anthem.\n\n > Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just, \n\n > And this be our motto - \"In God is our trust,\" \n\n > And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave \n\n > O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave",
"There are actually two parts to this question:\n\n1) Why did we adopt \"In God We Trust\" as our country motto\n\n2) Why is \"In God We Trust\" allowed to be our country motto\n\nTo answer the first question, \"In God we Trust\" was adopted as the nation's motto in 1956 as a replacement for the unofficial motto of E pluribus unum. This was primarily done to distinguish the United States from the Soviet Union, which promoted state atheism.\n\nAs far as the second question, the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States prohibits the Congress from making a law \"respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.\" The motto has been deemed to not violate the first amendment since \"... the national motto and the slogan on coinage and currency 'In God We Trust' has nothing whatsoever to do with the establishment of religion\" (quoted from the Aronow v. United States ruling).",
"I'm not sure where you heard of the US as a \"secular state\", but it was founded by religious and political separatist, not secularist. It still operates as a highly religious nation, much more so than most of the world's population, which is somewhere between atheist and agnostic/deist. (spend some time in Asia or Europe, Americans look like religious fanatics to people from most of those nations. Africa it tends to be the opposite, but that is, in part, our fault.)",
"just so happens that today in history eisenhower signs \"in god we trust\" into existance. _URL_0_",
"Because our nation is founded on the premise that our rights are NOT granted to us by government but are instead \"natural\" rights that all human beings are endowed with by their creator (whomever the fuck that may be).",
"Well Tommy, that's a pretty grown up question for someone your age! But first amendment is what makes us a secular state, it basically means that the government can't force you to go to church or stop you from going to church. There isn't anything in the Constitution that really makes us a secular country other than that, and the reason \"In God We Trust\" is all over the place is that 60 years ago the people everyone voted for made it the official American motto and we haven't changed it.",
"There are a lot of comments claiming that \"In God We Trust\" is on our currency as a consequence of a fear of communism and a surge of religiosity in the 1950s. This is just not true. The motto goes back to at least 1861. From _URL_0_:\n\n > IN GOD WE TRUST first appeared on the 1864 two-cent coin.\n > \n > ...The use of IN GOD WE TRUST has not been uninterrupted. The motto disappeared from the five-cent coin in 1883, and did not reappear until production of the Jefferson nickel began in 1938. Since 1938, all United States coins bear the inscription. Later, the motto was found missing from the new design of the double-eagle gold coin and the eagle gold coin shortly after they appeared in 1907. In response to a general demand, Congress ordered it restored, and the Act of May 18, 1908, made it mandatory on all coins upon which it had previously appeared. IN GOD WE TRUST was not mandatory on the one-cent coin and five-cent coin. It could be placed on them by the Secretary or the Mint Director with the Secretary's approval.\n > \n > The motto has been in continuous use on the one-cent coin since 1909, and on the ten-cent coin since 1916. It also has appeared on all gold coins and silver dollar coins, half-dollar coins, and quarter-dollar coins struck since July 1, 1908.\n\nThe article goes on to explain that \"In God We Trust\" was not added to paper currency in the 1930's due to the expense of changing the printing plates. When the printing technology was updated in the 1950s the motto was added. ",
"Because \"God\" is not a reference to a specific religion (there are many monotheistic religions), and so does not constitute the establishment of a state church.\n\nEdit: Some people seem to be (mistakenly) synonymizing the words \"secular\" and \"atheist.\" [The definition of \"secular\"](_URL_0_) is either:\n\na) of or relating to the worldly or temporal < secular concerns > \n\nb) not overtly or specifically religious < secular music > \n\nc) not ecclesiastical or clerical < secular courts > < secular landowners > \n\nor\n\nd) not bound by monastic vows or rules; specifically : of, relating to, or forming clergy not belonging to a religious order or congregation < a secular priest > \n\nor\n\ne) occurring once in an age or a century\n\nf) existing or continuing through ages or centuries\n\ng) of or relating to a long term of indefinite duration < secular inflation > \n\nJust to clear things up.",
"Because it doesn't specify WHICH god. It lets you apply your personal beliefs while still acknowledging the founding principle that there is a power above men, women, and committees. It's not about god having dominion, it's about one man or group of men not being able to lord over another. That concept is represented by the word god. ",
"We aren't a secular state. The Christian founding fathers just didn't want the government to be able to make laws about their religion. "
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6lszal | why are our fingers partially webbed? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6lszal/eli5_why_are_our_fingers_partially_webbed/ | {
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"Not professional\n\nOur fingers are slightly webbed because during the development of the embryo, our hand and feets first form as a single mass, then the fingers develop. \nIn the end, after the development of fingers, a sheet of skin and tissue remains in between the various fingers, so the hand looks like the foot of a duck. Most of the tissue is then removed via apoptosis, an organized form of cell death triggered by chemicals in the place, and detatches, but some of it is kept and forms these little structures.\nThe reason for which the hand devellops in this way, I don't know."
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||
3fj9vp | are the chewing sounds you hear while you're chewing magnified or what you actually sound like chewing? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3fj9vp/eli5_are_the_chewing_sounds_you_hear_while_youre/ | {
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"Not really amplified, but directly routed into your ears by your jawbone. While in contrast to third parties they get dampened by the meat around your mouth (i.e. cheeks and lips) ... so keep your pie hole shut while chewing.\n\nEDIT: also obviously the volume gets greatly reduced simply by distance, considering sounds drop of with a square function with distance."
]
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4yn5w0 | why is it such a disadvantage to be in lane 1 as a track runner/team when the overall distance is the same from any starting block? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4yn5w0/eli5_why_is_it_such_a_disadvantage_to_be_in_lane/ | {
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"Actually, I believe the greater disadvantage is in lane 8 (or the most outer lane)! In lane 1, you are able to see the rest of your competitors so you can pace yourself accordingly and know exactly when you need to have your big kick to hopefully come out on top! However in lane 8, you are staggered ahead of everyone else since you are running the biggest curve. Since you're starting so far ahead of everyone else, it's more difficult to discern how your pace is matching up to those on the inner lanes, and you may not have enough hustle initially, or you could burn out by starting too quickly. Lane 1 allows you to size up your competition and lets you develop a smart and calculated pace, while in the outermost lane you have to discipline yourself and hope the pace you choose is correct.",
"It all depends on the event and type of start. Lanes 1 and 2 can be advantageous for some mid distance events that waterfall after the first 100 meters. 3 - 6 can be tricky to navigate for a waterfall start. 7 and 8 can be good if you have a good initial start, can pace the lead and then kick down the last 100 - 200."
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29r7iq | how do people put graffiti on bridges? | When I'm driving on roads, there will be some bridges that are full of graffiti on the sides of the bridge over the road. How do they get it there? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/29r7iq/eli5_how_do_people_put_graffiti_on_bridges/ | {
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"text": [
"They climb up, or lean over the side."
]
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1xa7xg | shin splints! | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1xa7xg/eli5_shin_splints/ | {
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"text": [
"Due to repetitive stresses, the connective tissues that hold your muscles to your bones get inflamed, stiffened, and sometimes (in extreme cases) start to separate from the bones.\n"
]
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[]
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||
5r89w8 | the good and the bad of greenpeace? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5r89w8/eli5_the_good_and_the_bad_of_greenpeace/ | {
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"Greenpeace did irreparable damage to the Nazca Lines during a protest, fled the country, then refused to divulge the names of those involved for extradition. That action is enough for me to call them an evil organization. ",
"Its a mostly well intentioned environmental organization that has made some mistakes and caught some flak for them."
]
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2fatld | why it's the fbi looking into people posting the leaked celeb nudes, and what's to stop me from requesting the fbi to aid me in removing any content i don't want on the internet now that they are helping(or trying to) remove unwanted content? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2fatld/eli5_why_its_the_fbi_looking_into_people_posting/ | {
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"The FBI is looking into it because the FBI handles criminal investigation on the federal level: in particular, most large scale internet crimes fall under federal law.\n\nThis was data theft, not a typical information leak. Your bad highschool yearbook photo, or that awkward sex tape with that fat chick, were not stored a secured server, and thus don't really qualify in the same sense."
]
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||
30ao33 | why are monsters/objects in movies or video games portrayed to move a slow speed relative to their size? | For example a giant human hand reaching to crush something is shown to be slow when moving. But in perspective to real life we can crush an ant relatively quick for our size. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/30ao33/eli5_why_are_monstersobjects_in_movies_or_video/ | {
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"They're actually moving at full speed, it just appears to take longer because of the distance traveled.",
"Compared to an ant we do move slow (in relation to body size).\n\nAlso think about Elephants, big mammals and lizards. The more mass you have to move the more energy it'll take. Simply put, larger animals would have to consuming food constantly to provide the energy just to move.",
"Based only on \"larger\" animals that exist on Earth, moving an extremely heavy or large limb at a fast speed would probably damage the internal structures within the lifeform. Connective tissue, bone and muscle all have limits, both on the micro and macro scale. I would say that large fantastical creatures in movies move slower because someone thought about the physics. Extremely large land mammals don't exist because bones in their current form can only handle so much weight. This is why ocean mammals can get so large. Being suspended in a liquid takes an immense amount of gravitational strain off of the animal's bones and muscles(And also reduces caloric needs), and so they can evolve to be as large as the blue whale."
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8zmivg | why is it easier to tear paper in one direction more than the other? | If paper is made from a homogeneous dough-like matter, why does it act like it has directional tissues? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8zmivg/eli5_why_is_it_easier_to_tear_paper_in_one/ | {
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"Paper is made of cellulose fibers. Imagine those fibers are cooked spaghetti. When paper is produced, those Spaghetti get oriented in the Machine direction so they Look like this IIIIII next to each other. Now If you want to tear from the top top the bottom you Just have to separate the spaghetti from each other. If you want to tear from left to right you have to break the spaghetti and so you need more power to do so > If paper is made from a homogeneous dough-like matter, why does it act like it has directional tissues?"
]
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3l3nr0 | our pupils change size but the amount we can see doesn't? | [deleted] | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3l3nr0/eli5_our_pupils_change_size_but_the_amount_we_can/ | {
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"The size of the pupil controls how much light enters the eye, not the eye's field of view. The field of view (i.e. how wide of an area you can see at one time) is controlled by the shape of the lens. ",
"Our field of view is based on the distance from our eye lens to our retina, which does not change.\n\nOur pupils are more like the aperture of a camera lens, it lets more or less light in but doesn't change where that light is coming from.",
"In the same way the aperture of a camera changes, and the photos stay the same size, the nerves at the back of our eyes cover the same area, there's just less light hitting them. Our brains do the rest, much like the software in a camera.",
"The size of your pupils doesn't let you see wider. It just changes how much light is let in to the eye. [It works just like the aperture on a camera.](_URL_1_)\n\nIt is there to regulate the brightness of what you see. For example if you walk in to a dark room, your pupils open more to let in more light, so you can see even with very little light. And if you walk outside on a bright day, your pupils get smaller, to limit the light, as it would be blindingly bright and even harmful to your eyes if too much light gets in.\n\nIt does however change your depths of field too. Meaning how blurry things you don't focus on are. [Again just like a camera](_URL_0_) big pupils gives you a low depths of field while small pupils gives you a larger depths of field. [This means things will appear sharper in bright light because your pupils get smaller](_URL_2_)"
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"http://www.abc.net.au/science/askanexpert/img/aperture.jpg"
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2lbxr7 | why would obviously wealthy people spend millions of their own fortune for political campaigns? is it really a good roi? | My SO posed this question the other day. My immediate response was they want to win the popularity contest. I argue that real investor/business types wouldn't blow cash on such endeavors. But there obviously has to be a pay off. I know this conversation will go in the direction of quid pro quo and good old boy networks. But maybe there's angle I'm not seeing. I heard today that Charlie Christ spent $12 million of his own money over the last few weeks for the FL governors race. How much of that can he possibly recoup???
Edit: clarification, I was specifically thinking about running for office. Donations and lobbying are sort of a separate issue... | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2lbxr7/eli5_why_would_obviously_wealthy_people_spend/ | {
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"Smart rich people don't put their money in losing investments. It's really as simple as that.",
"In certain situations donating money will lower the amount of money you have to pay in taxes. This probably is more applicable to those donating to charity than a political campaign though.",
"It is definitely worth it and this video lays out exactly why: _URL_0_\n\n I never thought about this before and hopefully we will see some meaningful reforms out of this work.",
"Difference between wealth and power...you can be the CEO of a midsized company until you die but until you're a Senator in Washington or a Governor of a state you don't really have generalized power.",
"Because they want to, and can afford to. Getting elected means you can shape society in ways you think it ought to be shaped.\n\nWhat's the ROI on buying a Ferrari?"
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[],
[
"http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=1gEz__sMVaY"
],
[],
[]
] |
|
ejwotx | why does spinach have pretty much infinite shrinking potential when cooked? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/ejwotx/eli5_why_does_spinach_have_pretty_much_infinite/ | {
"a_id": [
"fd2ckad"
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"score": [
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"text": [
"Its 92% water. Cooking all the wayer out only leaves (pun intended) 8% mass of cellulose and such. \n\nTheir large surface area and thinness makes it easy to cook the water out and their lack of sugars/starches makes it harder to burn while doing so."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
||
ck1seo | how can a phone/laptop that has a less than 1080p display play 1080p videos on youtube? | i have an iphone 8. i found out that it has a 750p display (kinda pathetic compared to the 1440p galaxy phones that i used previously).
so when watching youtube, the iphone 8 can at best play 720p videos right? but there's actually a 1080p option as well. what the fuck is that option? just a bullshit 1080p fake option? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/ck1seo/eli5_how_can_a_phonelaptop_that_has_a_less_than/ | {
"a_id": [
"evi8fpj",
"eviabo5"
],
"score": [
7,
3
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"text": [
"It can download the video but when it comes to seeing it the limitations are set physically by the screen itself.",
"The video is scaled down by the software to the resolution it is shown on the screen just like lower resolution video is scaled up. The option in Youtube is for different streams they provide with the video. The amount of data in is higher in the 1080p stream then the 720p stream and the result is that is can look a bit sharper. The drawback is more data is used that is relevant on metered cellular connection and the phone use more energy to decode the video. \n\nPerhaps you even get a 4K option on some video like you can get on a computer. I get both 1080p, 1440p and 2160p (4k) on a 1366x786 laptop and 1440p look a bit better but require a lot more data and in 4k the old laptop is to slow to decode it so I get a lot of skipped frames..\n\nSo a full screen video on you phone will always be at 750p scaled up or down from the stream that Youtube deliver to the phone. Upscale video often look bury and not that good but downscale can look better. Just change the option and check if you see any difference."
]
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[],
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|
2a1xs4 | what happens to the veins when we eat chicken or beef? | For example when I'm eating chicken wings, the skin is still on but i don't see any veins or blood vessels. where did they go? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2a1xs4/eli5what_happens_to_the_veins_when_we_eat_chicken/ | {
"a_id": [
"ciqob5s"
],
"score": [
12
],
"text": [
"They are still there and the larger ones can still be visible (I commonly see them). A lot of the veins and tendons break down into an indistinguishable mush when cooked. "
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
|
2zexh9 | why do monitor refresh rates are always non exact numbers such as 23.97/29.97/59.94 instead of the full 24/30/60 hz? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2zexh9/eli5_why_do_monitor_refresh_rates_are_always_non/ | {
"a_id": [
"cpiabne"
],
"score": [
7
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"text": [
"Specifically for the 29.97 frame rate:\n\nI long time ago, when TV started the US started transmitting frames at 30 frames per second (30 Hz). Which is great. However, when colour TV started and they needed to add colour to each pixel, they couldn't quite get the colour information in between each pixel. So, What they did was 'skip' 2 frames every 10 seconds (If I recall correctly) to make the frame #'s work nice. \n\nI saw a video on it once upon a time. I'll let you know if I find it.\n\nEdit:\n[FOUND IT!!!](_URL_0_)"
]
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[
"https://youtu.be/mjYjFEp9Yx0"
]
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||
1u3fs5 | with 3d printing of organs coming in the near future, what are the printing the organs out of? whats the source of the material? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1u3fs5/eli5_with_3d_printing_of_organs_coming_in_the/ | {
"a_id": [
"cee4vik"
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"score": [
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"text": [
"I'll just throw out my best guess; the organs are created by putting stem cells on a stencil of some sort. The stem cells figure out what organ to create, and thus, create it. The issue is that stem cells create things as if they were young. If you were to create an arm out of stem cells for an adult, it would be the size of a baby's. Stem cells are cool. :D"
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
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||
drzmzh | how wikipedia website works, who can edit or create articles. do author need to attach source or proof with articles? how we can trust everything is right and trustworthy. | [deleted] | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/drzmzh/eli5_how_wikipedia_website_works_who_can_edit_or/ | {
"a_id": [
"f6ly7xh",
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"score": [
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"text": [
"Anyone can edit or create any page.\n\nWikipedia has three main rules: 1) a page must be written from a neutral point of view, 2) all claims and quotations must be verified by a reliable source outside of Wikipedia, and 3) everything in the page must be attributable to an outside source (you're not allowed to write original research).\n\nIf you're trying to decide whether a particular page is trustworthy, ask yourself: Is the writing biased, or neutral? Does it give sources for its claims, or just make claims without proof? Is the page referencing research done somewhere else, or is the page making conclusions on its own? There is no guarantee that a page is correct and trustworthy - but if you come across something that you believe is incorrect, you can edit it and fix it!",
"As for the right and trustworthy, you can’t. Not one hundred percent. It’s why Wikipedia articles aren’t accepted as sources in academic papers."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[]
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|
7lzvk4 | how do you fix a severed artery/vein? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7lzvk4/eli5_how_do_you_fix_a_severed_arteryvein/ | {
"a_id": [
"drqcffk"
],
"score": [
2
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"text": [
"Have you called 911/000 yet? "
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
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||
jt9oj | what is instantaneous velocity? | I Googled it and it led me to a calculus website. I'm 16, a junior in high school with iffy math ability. HALP :( | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/jt9oj/eli5_what_is_instantaneous_velocity/ | {
"a_id": [
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"text": [
"It's how fast and in which direction you're moving *right now* as opposed to your average velocity over some time period.\n\nExample:\n\nYou're driving to your friend's house. At some point, you're heading straight north, glance at your speedometer and see 30 mph. That's your instantaneous velocity: 30 mph north. Let's say it takes you a total of 20 minutes to get to your friend's house, and the straight line from your house to your friend's house is 15 miles directly north-west. Then your *average* velocity was 45 mph north-west.\n\nNote that average velocity and average speed are different. Your average speed depends on how far you actually traveled; so, for example, if your route required you to take a detour around the town instead of just driving straight there, that would affect your average speed. Your average *velocity* is what you get when you just use the straight line distance and direction from your starting point to the end point. In our example, let's say you look at your odometer after the trip and see that you actually drove 20 miles. Then your average speed over the course of the trip was 60 mph (you drove 20 miles in 20 minutes). Note that there's no direction here, because speed doesn't include direction.",
"It's how fast and in which direction you're moving *right now* as opposed to your average velocity over some time period.\n\nExample:\n\nYou're driving to your friend's house. At some point, you're heading straight north, glance at your speedometer and see 30 mph. That's your instantaneous velocity: 30 mph north. Let's say it takes you a total of 20 minutes to get to your friend's house, and the straight line from your house to your friend's house is 15 miles directly north-west. Then your *average* velocity was 45 mph north-west.\n\nNote that average velocity and average speed are different. Your average speed depends on how far you actually traveled; so, for example, if your route required you to take a detour around the town instead of just driving straight there, that would affect your average speed. Your average *velocity* is what you get when you just use the straight line distance and direction from your starting point to the end point. In our example, let's say you look at your odometer after the trip and see that you actually drove 20 miles. Then your average speed over the course of the trip was 60 mph (you drove 20 miles in 20 minutes). Note that there's no direction here, because speed doesn't include direction."
]
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[],
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40xn6p | why do people say "you have been served" when giving out a subpoena? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/40xn6p/eli5why_do_people_say_you_have_been_served_when/ | {
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"cyxvtop",
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"The word \"serve\" simply means to deliver a legal writ. So in delivering the writ, the person is serving you with said writ, meaning you are being served.\n\nIt would make sense that the reason they announce it is so you know you're being given legal documents and not spam. Also, once you're told \"you've been served\",\" you can't use the excuse of \"I didn't know it was important so I threw it away\" because you were told it was a legal document when you were given the writ. There's probably been a case where someone delayed the hearing because they \"didn't get the writ\" about it.",
"I am a paralegal and occasionally have to serve people as part of my job.\n\nThe way I normally do it (for in-public service) is walk up to the person and say \"John?\" as if I have recognized them from somewhere, and when they say \"yes\", I hand them the paperwork and say \"this is for you\" and walk away. Then I fill out an affidavit of service. \n\nNot once have I ever said the \"you have been served\" thing. \n\n"
]
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[],
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770g4i | why does no one ever name the sexual offenders in hollywood? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/770g4i/eli5_why_does_no_one_ever_name_the_sexual/ | {
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"Let's say you're in the position to make millions of dollars and help you and your family out for generations. You are also in a position to be able to avoid known offenders most of the time. Do you try to ignore that part and make millions of dollars, or do you risk throwing away your entire career?\n\nIt's not an easy decision to risk your whole career on something that may never get fixed. Or to risk having no one believe you and now you've lost everything.",
"Proof. Without it they (the victim) can be sued for defamation. Unless there are multiple witnesses of the molestation or rape, and isn't immediately reported, the perpetrator can simply deny. Given that the perpetrators are in places of power and the victims are afraid off losing possible jobs, it's sad but not surprising that the victims are afraid to name names. \n \nWeinstein is being roasted because of the sheer volume of accusers. \n \nThere's safety in numbers. "
]
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[],
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||
89n6j1 | what are the advantages/disadvantages to a v6 engine vs. an in-line 6? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/89n6j1/eli5_what_are_the_advantagesdisadvantages_to_a_v6/ | {
"a_id": [
"dws5guj"
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"text": [
"Straight 6 advantages are simplicity and ease of manufacture so cost less. They are, contrary to what one of the other comments said, actually better balanced than V6. In a V6 to get it precisely balanced you have to add specially placed weights or have balance shafts.\n\nV6 advantages are weight as they are more compact they weigh less. And also they can be easily used in a front engine front wheel drive car.\n\nThe straight 6 is usually so long it cannot be whats called transverse mounted so it usually means no front wheel drive.\n\nAlso due to length the Straight 6 has issues with stiffness and thing like the crank shaft can flex."
]
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[]
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||
62y6ye | the publishing industry. are there any differences between publishing a. children's book and novel? what does an author do to get his book published and onto bookshelves? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/62y6ye/eli5_the_publishing_industry_are_there_any/ | {
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"dfqugfk"
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"text": [
"Source: I'm an author.\n\nThere's not necessarily a distinction between children's books and adult novels per se, but there are a couple different ways books get made: by commission, and by submission. Often, a publishing company sees the need for a certain type of book (for example, a new history book for elementary schools, or a tell-all book on the latest political figure). They'll put out a call for authors and someone will accept that commission (after a proposal) and write the book.\n\nIn fiction, it's more common that an author will write (or start to write) a book on his or her own, and then submit that manuscript to a publishing company in hopes that they will like it and purchase it. Most publishing companies have \"submissions editors\" that wait for manuscripts. \n\nFrom there, the publishing company takes over and is responsible for printing and distributing the book, with coordination from various other parties, which I won't go into here."
]
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||
1pygpe | eil5: what does the transatlantic trade and investment partnership mean, both positive and negative, to me: 25 yr old taxpayer? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1pygpe/eil5_what_does_the_transatlantic_trade_and/ | {
"a_id": [
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"text": [
"It's a transatlantic organization that works to put the European Union and the United States into a common market. Much like the way the European Union is put together there are no tariffs between Member States. The idea is that if the two largest economic entities in the world (which makes up over 66 percent of the world GDP) could cut down on the tariffs and other non-tariff barriers they would be able to save money and therefore invest more in business and consumers would have more to spend. \n\nThat's the simple answer I wrote my master's thesis about this so if you're really interested contact me"
]
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||
2eywyo | what is actually the difference between pentium and eg. i5 processors when pentium is an older series however the new anniversary version is faster than some i5 processors? | For hose who dont get what I mean, I found out that the new Intel Pentium Anniversary Edition G3258 is faster than my i5 4200u processor. Why don't they just change the names? or just scrap the Pentium series? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2eywyo/eli5_what_is_actually_the_difference_between/ | {
"a_id": [
"ck4a9cj"
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"score": [
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"text": [
"For one thing, the i5 4200u is meant for battery powered devices(laptops and the like) where as the pentium is meant for desktop use. Because they have the same instruction set it only makes since for the processor capable of drawing more power(the pentium) to be at a higher clock speed.\n\nThing number 2, clock speed is not everything. I'm sure that if you benchmarked the i5 4200u vs the pentium G3258 you would see the i5 performs noticeably better. the i5 is capable of performing more operations per cycle than the pentium, so it can squeeze more performance out of that 1.6Ghz.\n\nReason for not scraping the pentium series: it's a very good low to mid range budget processor. At just $72 vs the i5's $281, the pentium is Intel's edge into part of AMD's budget processor market, and competition always leads to innovation."
]
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|
5ke4r5 | why do mobile devices have autocorrect implementation, but almost no computers do? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5ke4r5/eli5_why_do_mobile_devices_have_autocorrect/ | {
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"Browsers like Chrome have spell check integrated. But OS-wide autocorrect isn't necessary because keyboards are much more precise than mobile screens; the autocorrect is for fat-fingering something and not because they assume most people are illiterate. You also really don't want autocorrect when you are entering command line sequences for example.",
"Recent OS X/macOS versions do have autocorrect. It's not nearly as aggressive as on a phone, so it still fits the narrative. The reason is that it's simply much easier to type correctly on a physical keyboard. The keys are finger-sized and you can feel them. On the phone you don't feel anything and the keys are much smaller than fingers, making you much more prone to making mistakes and then some.\n\nYou can see it as a form of Bayesian inference: the prior probability of a key press being correct is much greater on a physical keyboard than it is on a touchscreen. You can infer from that that an apparent mistake is more likely to be intended, making autocorrect less necessary and less desirable.",
"You make fewer typos on computers, and the input devices are precise enough for you to easily manually correct.\n\nAlso, autocorrect is a pain in the ass. Word processors have actually had it for decades, people just hate it. It's only worthwhile when you are using a clumsy touchscreen keyboard where you will be making typos all the time."
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2wl26l | why do people horde bread and milk for bad weather when they don't consume those things normally in such large quantities? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2wl26l/eli5why_do_people_horde_bread_and_milk_for_bad/ | {
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"The idea is that these things make the basis for a lot of meals and are very versatile. You can use milk and bread to make tones of things, and assuming you have a generator. Another thing that should be said is that, you can store cold foods on less energy than you can use to heat up and cook things like meat. ",
"People don't. Bread and milk just goes bad very fast so stores only keep exactly the amount they plan to sell in a day. So if there is even a 5% increase in demand (from people who have to go shopping a day earlier than they planned) the shelves will be cleared. Since clear shelves seem dramatic people imagine it like there is people hoarding that bought it all. But really it's just that stores don't keep extra milk around, you can't have a ton of milk sitting in the back room like you can with hot pockets or something. "
]
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94vnco | in music what's the difference between 4/4, 5/4, 5/8, etc? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/94vnco/eli5_in_music_whats_the_difference_between_44_54/ | {
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"Short answer: tempo and timing. \n\nLong answer: Let's for a moment imagine a song. This first song can be almost any common song. You can probably slap your knee or stomp your feet to that song in your head, right? Now, imagine a waltz, or better yet, listen to it, and clap along. The first song probably had 4 beats to a cycle, and you might say it sounded like ta, ta, ta, ta. The waltz sounded like TA ta ta. This is the first number, the number of beats in a measure. This can be any number, but it's usually between 3 and 6. 4 is most common.\n\n The second number is what kind of note equals one beat. Normally that's a quarter note, but it can be an eighth, a sixteenth or a whole or half note. Having different values here changes how long measures last and what beats are stressed. It gets really confusing. Mostly this number will be 2, 4, or 8 with 4 being most common. \n\nThat song that sounds like ta, ta, ta, ta is in 4/4 time, or common. The waltz is in 3/4 time. These are the most common time signatures. Jazz and classical use the weirdest ones, in general. \n\nSorry if this was too long. If you want more visual stuff, watch _URL_0_\n",
"The top number means the number of beats, and the bottom number is the value of the beat.\n\n4/4 means there are 4 quarter (quarter is the bottom 4) notes in a measure. You count 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 etc etc.\n\n5/4 means there are 5 quarter notes in a measure. Because it's a funny time signature, you count it either 1234512345 or 12312 12312, or 12123 12123. Depends on the song. For example, the Mission Impossible theme song goes 1 2 3 1 2.\n\n5/8 means there are 5 eighth notes in a measure. It is counted the same as 5/4 because there's still 5 beats, but the beats are eighth notes.",
"To help keep your place in music, it is divided up into segments called \"measures\". A time signature (4/4, 3/4, etc) is telling you how many beats are divided up per measure and what kind of notes get the beat. For example, if you're in 4/4, the first number tells you there are 4 beats per measure and the second number tells you that a quarter note (1/4) gets the beat, totalling 4 quarter notes. In the case of 6/8 time, you would have 6 beats per measure and an eighth note (1/8) would get the beat, totalling 6 eighth notes per measure.",
"These \"time signatures\" help composers tell musicians and conductors how fast the notes on the score should be played.\n\nSongs are divided into \"measures\". The top number in the time signature tells you how many beats are in the following measures, and the bottom number shows what divisions of a \"whole note\" are being used.\n\nIn \"common time\" or 4/4, there are four beats to a measure, and each of the beats is a quarter note. The composer may wish to use longer or shorter measures on occasion, perhaps a 5-beat measure (5/4), or a curious-sounding measure consisting of five eighth notes (5/8).\n\nThe composer may also wish to write a song with three beats per measure. We don't have simple notation for a \"third note\", so we just use quarter notes instead (and each measure is as long as a half note and a quarter note). Thus, three quarter notes gives 3/4 time.\n\nThere is a separate *tempo* value that tells you how much real time each beat should occupy, usually given as beats per minute. You may have heard about how [CPR should be done at 100 bpm](_URL_0_), about the same tempo as songs like \"Stayin' Alive\". This song uses common time, so each beat happens every 1/100th of a minute.",
"Money by Pink Floyd (_URL_0_) is in 7/8, focus on the bassline and you can count to seven every bassline loop. The length of that bassline loop is called a measure. If a song is in 7/8 it means 1 measure will last 7 8th notes. 7/8. \n\nWith the last song, you have count rather fast. That's because they're 8th notes, twice as fast as quarter notes. \n\nSay you take 3 quarter notes to a measure. that's 3/4. so you count slower and only up to 3. It goes 1,2,3,1,2,3,1,2,3,1,2,3.\n\nThis is basically a waltz, like this: _URL_1_. a waltz is a type of dance song usually in 3/4. Three (3) quarter notes (/4) per measure. \n\nBy far most music is 4/4. all EDM etc. for sure. There's a beat every count but everything happens in multiples of 4 beats. \n\n\n",
"4/4: All around great guy. Lots of sweet memories with him\n\n5/4: It's like that person who is really nice so they seem normal but they're sometimes too nice and you're not sure what's up with them. You blow it off as them just being too nice but you're slightly weirded out by it and that thought never leaves despite the fact that you hangout with them regularly. \n\n5/8: It's that loud ass kid in the classroom that kids roll their eyes at and the teacher hates. \n\n7/8: Bully that likes to trip marching band students in the hallway (and on the field) ",
"Try saying these out loud:\n\nDUM dum dum dum\n\nDUM dum dum dum\n\nDUM dum dum dum\n\nDUM dum dum dum\n\n***\n\nDUM dum dum\n\nDUM dum dum\n\nDUM dum dum\n\nDUM dum dum\n\n***\n\nDUM dum dum dum dum dum\n\nDUM dum dum dum dum dum\n\nDUM dum dum dum dum dum\n\nDUM dum dum dum dum dum\n\n***\n\nThe first one is an example of 4/4, the second of 3/4, the third of 6/8. \n\nA simple way of thinking about it is that time signature tells you, generally, how long the base phrase is and, sometimes, where the stress lies. \n\nMusic gets super fun when composers and players start fiddling with your expectations. ",
"To help you understand many of these answers I'll try to explain what a \"measure\" is. It's essentially a unit of time. \n\nHave you ever listened to a song that has a strong beat that goes in a pattern? Like the stomp-stomp-clap in \"We will rock you\"? In music, we call the time that cycle a \"measure\".\n\nIt's not exactly like time since a measure in a particular song may take 2 seconds or you could speed it up so it only takes 1.5 seconds, but whatever you pick you need to stick with. The amount of time each measure takes is called the \"tempo\".\n\nWhen we write down music, the \"time signature\" will be expressed as 2 numbers, like 4/4, 3/4 etc. The top number tells you how many beats are in each measure. \"We will rock you\" and most other rock songs have 4 beats per measure (there's a pause or as it's called in music notation a \"rest\" between the clap and the first stomp in the next measure).\n\nThe bottom number is a bit trickier. One of the things that music notation tells you is how long to hold each note. The longest note is a whole note. A half note is half that length, a quarter note is one quarter that length and so on. Yes there are ways to denote things like 1/3 or notes that go on for more than a whole note but ignore that for now. The bottom number tells you which of those constitutes a beat. This is generally hard to hear, ie 4/4 sounds awfully similar to 4/8 and the difference mostly has to do with the downbeat (ignore that too for now).\n\nYou'll almost never see 5/4 or 5/8. Waltzes are the only time that most people will hear 3/x (usually 3/4). The \"Aardvark\" song (the original melody is Wiener Blut by Johann Strauss) is an example of music in 3/4. If you want to hear a song with a crazy time signature check out \"Unsquare Dance\" by David Brubeck; it's in 7/4 time.\n\nedit: Fixed the ordering of stomp and clap in the example."
]
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7jbl01 | how do grocery stores get money back from coupons? | I can imagine a schoolhouse rock cartoon showing tons of coupons being delivered and sorted and rang up but that seems wildly inefficient. If coupons are redeemed by the store through scanning the code, do they just throw the coupons away? How do smaller, more efficient countries handle coupons compared to the US?
Thanks for the answers. I guess the title wasn't clear. I'm basically asking what happens to the money that comes off from the coupons. They obviously collect the coupons after scanning them but what happens after that? I understand the economics behind getting people in a store and raising some prices while lowering others etc. I didn't mean how they make a profit from the coupons, just how they actually get reimbursed from the manufacturer. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7jbl01/eli5_how_do_grocery_stores_get_money_back_from/ | {
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"It depends. There are store coupons, and manufacturer coupons. Stores do not get reimbursed for store coupons. Manufacturers will reimburse them for manufacturer coupons, but they never receive the actual coupons. The stores just tell them how many of what coupons they got from customers, and the manufacturer writes them a check for the total (or, more realistically, gives them a discount on the next order)."
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2x5phg | why are school buses so bouncy compared to other vehicles? | I've always noticed how commercial and public transport buses are incredibly more comfortable, same as cars. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2x5phg/eli5_why_are_school_buses_so_bouncy_compared_to/ | {
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"The public transport busses have an air suspension set up. School busses still use the old leaf spring set ups which is a lot more rigid than the air suspension. ",
"Like Boogge points out. School busses use leaf springs suspensions, which are naturally very bouncy. Heavy vehicles also use a Solid Axle set up. meaning that when one wheel goes up from a bump, the other must go down. This causes the bus to be jumpy. Combining both it becomes really bouncy since a slight bump will cause a big reaction. Also I am not sure if school buses use shock dampers, without which would cause the bus to be very floaty as well as bouncy\n\nMost cars use independant suspensions meaning that each wheel can react to bumps in the road without affecting the other wheels as well as shock dampers. when you run over a bump with one wheen in a car that wheel goes up, comes down, and thats pretty much it. when you run over a bump in a school bus. that wheel goes up, the other ones goes down, the whole bus start bouncing and it takes time for the bouncing to die down."
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3z7kg1 | why do hospitals and other medical facilities require expensive and elaborate buildings with detailed architecture and landscaping, wasted interior space, and seemingly energy inefficient exterior glass walls? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3z7kg1/eli5_why_do_hospitals_and_other_medical/ | {
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"Never underestimate the [placebo effect](_URL_0_). Even being in a place that looks and feels bright and open can affect your psychology and actually improve physical symptoms.\n\nAdditionally, hospitals (at least in the US) compete with each other and by having pleasantly buildings it may entice patients to return in the future.\n\nFinally, I take issue with the inefficient design of buildings. I recognize I am speaking from personal experience (which is not indicative of average behavior) but my dad has been involved in the design of medical care buildings (not full hospitals) in South Carolina for quite some time. At least one building he's had a hand in is LEED certified, despite large windows in the front lobby area. (In fact, properly engineered windows with the right coating can be very efficient by reflecting IR light into or out of the building).",
"It's also worth mentioning that the areas that the patients don't see aren't nearly as fancy or nice and can be really old or worn out. The entrance to the hospital might be gorgeous but the back halls can be like going back into the 60s.",
"While the things you mention are costly, the highest construction expense is for patient care spaces. Hospitals can spend $1,000,000 renovating just one room due to the medical equipment, specialized HVAC (heating ventilation and air conditioning) systems, piping of medical gases, etc. The cost goes up if the renovation happens while keeping adjacent spaces operational. So extra $$ for glass or landscaping that looks nice and contributes to patients feeling like they will get quality care inside a quality building doesn't seem like much after all. It's all good stuff needed? Not really. "
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rmgi6 | buckingham's pi theorem | I keep confusing myself when I try to do it. There just doesn't seem to be a good explanation that I understand, so if you would please explain it like I'm five I'd appreciate it! | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/rmgi6/elif_buckinghams_pi_theorem/ | {
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"In science, a lot of things tend to have *units* attached to them. Ruler measurements have units of length, clock measurements have units of time, and so on and so forth.\n\nThe thing is that units are sometimes inconvenient to have. So, if we have a bunch of equations representing some situation, it's useful to be able to rewrite the equations in a way that gets rid of all the units. Buckingham's pi theorem gives a way to do that in any possible case.",
"The Buckingham Pi Theorem is important in dimensional analysis, which is the key to understanding fluid and heat dynamics. Using the theorem gives us *dimensionless groups* - variables that have no units associated with them. You are already familiar with these through the concept of percentages.\n\nThis is important because it allows us to account for many variables at the same time, which makes the concepts easier to understand and write. It also allows us to *scale our experiments*, i.e., we can change several variables at once and leave the physics unchanged.\n\nFor example, the first Buckingham Pi group you're going to talk about is called the *Reynolds number*, which appears in anything having to do with fluid flow. This quantity is:\n\n Re = rho * v * D / eta\n\nwhere rho = fluid density ( kg/m^3 ), v = stream velocity ( m/s ), D = characteristic length ( m ), and eta = viscosity (kg/m*s). Notice that all the units cancel out.\n\nUsing the Reynold's number makes finding equations and correlations much easier. Instead of a whole mess of letters and superscripts, we can just say, \"skin friction is proportional to the Reynold's number\". If I want to study the flow of air over an airplane wing, say, I can also use the scalability of Buckingham Pi groups to design a valid experiment - for example, testing a small model of the wing in an air tunnel. So long as I choose an air velocity such that the Reynold's number is the same, my experiment can use the same equations as the real thing.\n\nIf you're asked to construct Buckingham Pi groups from a group of variables, you just have to use logic and arrange them such that the units cancel out. It's easiest to just use generic terms mass, length, time, and temperature: velocity = L * T^-1 , density = M * L^-3, energy = M * L^2 * T^-2 , etc. If a configuration isn't immediately apparent, set up a system of equations and solve so that M = L = T = 0.\n\nYou didn't ask about it, but I think it helps to remember all the different dimensionless numbers as ratios of two quantities. For instance, the Reynold's number is the ratio of \"momentum forces\" (rho * v * D) to \"viscous forces\" (eta). In other words, it's the ratio of how much the fluid particles want to \"tumble along\" versus how much they want to stick together."
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2zfp73 | since light takes time to travel from distant stars to earth, does this mean our night sky is consistently being "updated" with new stars? | If so, would this mean that eventually (undoubtedly far into the future) the night sky would become so densely packed with stars that differentiating them from one another with the naked eye would be impossible? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2zfp73/eli5_since_light_takes_time_to_travel_from/ | {
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"Yes, although it's not like they just \"turn on\" one night. Stars take many thousands of years to be born.\n\n > If so, would this mean that eventually (undoubtedly far into the future) the night sky would become so densely packed with stars that differentiating them from one another with the naked eye would be impossible?\n\nWe're already way past that point, although you're neglecting the fact that stars also die. It's just that very few stars are bright enough to see with the naked eye.",
"The time it takes light to reach Earth doesn't really have anything to do with stars being born. Thousands of stars are born every second but you will hardly ever be able to see any of them but the ones you see now with the naked eye. \nStars are also dying constantly too so the sky will never be so densely packed as you describe. Instead, in the far future, there will be no new stars forming so they will eventually all die out and then there will be zero stars.",
"Yes, but with the enormous life span of stars (some can exist for hundreds of billions of years) it is somewhat rare to find new ones.\nOn the other hand, dying stars can be noticed when large stars explode in a supernova. This happens and has been observed numerous times."
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8psd14 | why do objects in cartoons that move/will move appear brighter/more vibrant than objects that are stagnant in that scene? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8psd14/eli5_why_do_objects_in_cartoons_that_movewill/ | {
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"If you're talking about old cartoons, then that's because those objects were drawn separately.\n\nThe background of a scene in a cartoon is generally a single drawing. The moving objects or characters are drawn on a separate transparent sheet, called a \"cel\", which is then laid on top of the background and photographed. A new cel is made for every frame.",
"The older cartoons would have a background painted and the characters would be overlaid on the top with transparent overlays.\n\nI don't know why the foreground characters were brighter. Maybe it had to do with the media it was painted on or an art choice."
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2uegof | is it bad for my eyes if i sit on my pc (or other glowing screens like tv) at night while having the lights off? if yes, in what way? if not then why do so many people believe this? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2uegof/eli5_is_it_bad_for_my_eyes_if_i_sit_on_my_pc_or/ | {
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"Techinically so, but prolonged use in a light room can be just as tiring on your eyes. Keep an eye out (heh!) for any signs of strain, such as headaches, light sensitivity, watery/irritated eyes.\n\nYou might also look into [f.lux](_URL_0_) which adjusts your computers brightness to the time of day.",
"Your eyes can get strained if you watch TV (play games on PC) at night, without another light source. It happens because of the difference in light intensity between your screen and surroundings, also because the screen itself changes its brightness a lot. Your pupil has to work a lot more to adjust to this setting, in contrast with when you have an evenly illuminated room, and your pupil can stay pretty much fixed.",
"It will not damage your eyes, at the most it will strain them and they will feel fatigued. On the other hand, viewing a computer screen or smartphone screen before bed is not a good idea because they emit an unnatural amount of high energy violet light which will trigger your body to suppress melatonin production which in turn will make it difficult to fall asleep. There is also some preliminary research that HEVL may also do some cumulative damage to the retina over long periods of time but that has not been established with any certainty. ",
"Flux is a great tool to have if you game or not, my eyes are pretty light sensitive so I need it, also make sure you blink alot so you dont cause eye strain, you could even put a very little light on so the screen isnt your only source",
"Actually no, it causes no harm but the 'pain' that you feel is simply your eye trying to focus on the light source which causes them to dry up more quickly. \n\nAt most, the only real problem is that screen emit a wavelenght that our brain interpret as 'daylight', thus causing you to shift your circadian rhytmes. To avoid this, simply turn them off 1 hour before going to bed.",
"Purchase a full spectrum light bulb and say goodbye to eye strain or any worries you described. \n\n\nSource: i bought one and my eyes haven't suffered from straining and I haven't had headaches in over a year. 12+ hours a day in front of a computer."
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240m6c | if bananas don't naturally reproduce and are all the result of cloning by humans, how are there different types of bananas? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/240m6c/eli5_if_bananas_dont_naturally_reproduce_and_are/ | {
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"Imagine that you took one sterile person in a family and you repeatedly cloned them.\n\nYou could do the same with a different person in their family.\n\nIt's kind of like that with bananas. That's how you get different varieties.",
"Because there are hundreds of species of bananas in the world, just the ones we eat are identical. The bananas our grandparents grew up with were a different species all entirely called the Gros Michel, which is where the flavor of banana in candy that we say doesn't taste anything like bananas at all comes from. It does taste like the banana, it just tastes like the Gros Michel! Banana production for human consumption is an amazing feat that is actually very fun and interesting to learn about! You should look into it more you'd be surprised how awesome it is! ",
"I haven't seen an good answer yet, so I will give it another try. \n\nThe wild bananas do have seeds, so they can reproduce normally. This also means that over time, new types will form. These wild bananas do contain very little pulp. So we do not farm wild bananas on a large scale, there is simply no demand.\nBut due to specific toxicants, a plant lost the possibility to create seeds. In nature, this plant would simply not reproduce. But a banana plant that didn't have seeds is interesting for us. It does contain more pulp and no irritating seeds. Since we do have the technology the clone plants for a long time, we cloned that plant.\n\nSo to answer your question: the one we eat can't naturally reproduce, but the other, wild types do. \n\nThis also brings a few problems, using only one type across the entire world makes it an easy target for fungus and other diseases. This is what happened with the variety Gros Michel, around 20 years ago. Scientists searched for a alternative that was more resistent to that fungus. When they found a candidate, they used the same toxicant to prevent to it from making seeds. We do know this type by the name Cavendish."
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3wvwxw | how are houses in poor countries so expensive? | [deleted] | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3wvwxw/eli5_how_are_houses_in_poor_countries_so_expensive/ | {
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"Well China and especially Japan aren't poor countries. Eritrea is a poor country. Burkina Faso is a poor country. China is middling in wealth per person, and Japan is rolling in it comparatively.\n\nNot everyone needs to buy a house. More and more people aren't here (Toronto area) given the housing market and the move more and more towards urbanizing areas that are suburban and more densification of areas already urban. More people are living long-term in apartments and condos. Where land is cheap houses are still cheap, but the most desirable land is necessarily the most expensive.\n\nIn much of Europe and other population-dense places like Japan apartments and small row houses that are unusually small by North American standards have always been pretty normal for decades or even centuries. "
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8kw8lv | how can people die from skin cancer? why can't the cancerous part simply be cut away? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8kw8lv/eli5_how_can_people_die_from_skin_cancer_why_cant/ | {
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"At first, you can just cut it away. But as you wait for longer, the cancerous cells might gain the ability to spread throughout the body, at which point it becomes hard to target the them directly. They start multiplying in places where they shouldn't, and at some point, the body just can't handle it anymore. ",
"Cancer is cancer because it spreads.\n\nIf its a benign tumor or you catch it early enough then you can easily cut away the affected area and everything is fine\n\nIf the tumor metastasizes(spreads) then your melanoma(skin cancer) can go from tumors on your skin to tumors in your liver or kidneys or lymphnodes. These tumors will also grow and spread throughout your body. Now you've gone from cancer on your skin to cancer throughout your body which can't just easily be cut out, this is where Chemotherapy and full body radiation come in as they attempt to kill all the pesky cancers that have spawned around your body.",
"Not a doctor but from my understanding based on family members who died from cancer: if you catch it early, then yeah the cancerous region can usually be removed. However if it's a further stage, the cancer has usually spread to other organs and that's when it becomes difficult to fight it",
"It depends on the type of skin cancer. Basal cell carcinomas are generally very treatable with excision (cutting it out) and rarely metastasize (spread to other parts of the body). Squamous cell carcinomas and malignant melanomas tend to be more aggressive, and can spread to other parts before you cut them out.\n\nOnce it spreads to lots of different parts of your body, you simply can't cut it out without killing someone, so you have to use chemotherapy to try to kill the malignant cells. But that isn't always effective. (Hopefully newer immunotherapy and genetic therapies will work where traditional chemotherapy doesn't)."
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2cv3mw | if a car is driving at a constant speed with its windows open, and a bird flying alongside it drifts in through the window, will it hit the front windshield or the rear windshield? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2cv3mw/eli5_if_a_car_is_driving_at_a_constant_speed_with/ | {
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"If its just gliding, all other things equal, it will fall into the seat with little speed relative to the car. The wings won't lift it anymore without airflow around them, but there is no particular force to accelerate or decelerate the bird any more than already existed outside, it's just the reference point changed, if you will. ",
"The birds momentum will make sure it travels at roughly the same speed which is something people should take into considerations. As long as the bird doesn't start furiously flapping once it gets in the car, it will probably just fall to the floor because of the lack of fast-moving air under its wings that kept it soaring alongside the car."
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j35je | li5: 2012 us presidential election | In 2012, I will be eligible to vote for the first time; unfortunately, I started caring about this election *way* too late, and now I feel lost whenever I stumble upon an article talking about so-and-so of the GOP or Democratic candidate XYZ. Basically, I would like a rundown of the different political parties involved in next year's election, the main controversies that have arisen during this pre-election period, who the current frontrunners (or predicted frontrunners) are and what are their beliefs, what new policies/changes/reforms they're proposing, how the voting process works, and any other relevant information that could help me make an informed decision.
Thank you!
**Edit:** After reading b1ackcat's comment, I agree that I asked a lot of questions and people might have a hard time answering all of them in one go, so feel free to tackle just one/a few of the above questions that you are particularly knowledgeable about/interested in. Thanks for the informative responses so far! | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/j35je/li5_2012_us_presidential_election/ | {
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"I think a year before the election is not in any way \"too late\".\n\nThe different political parties (that have any meaningful chance of success) are the democrats and the republicans.\n\nThe democrats will have Obama (you know, the current president :P) running, the republicans will decide who they will run in the next few months.\n\nThe republicans will have a primary election, which is basically an election only registered republicans can participate in that happens in different states over a few months. You **can** participate in this if you want to register as a republican, but not a lot of people actually do, so you probably won't.\n\nThe Republican candidates who have a chance of winning their parties nomination (by my prediction) are:\n\n* [Mitt Romney](_URL_1_)\n* [Michelle Bachmann](_URL_0_)\n* And while she hasn't officially stated she's running, if she chose to she could potentially win, [Sarah Palin](_URL_3_).\n* Less likely: [Newt Gingrich](_URL_4_)\n* Less likely: [Tim Pawlenty](_URL_2_)\n\nAs far as their policies/changes/reforms, wikipedia (linked above) is a really good source for that information, and since there are a massive amount of things they have stated opinions on, I won't attempt to write them out, if you have specific things you're interested I could probably find more.\n\nThe voting process. First you have to register, I don't know what state you're from so if you let me know I can find out for you. But once you're fully registered you just show up at a ballot place on election day (Early November 2012) and give them some information and **possibly** show a photo ID, then you vote. \n\nThe voting process itself (when you get the ballot) is pretty straightforward, but varies by voting location, you normally have a bunch of people to vote for because state/local elections are on that day as well. I *personally* don't vote in individual elections where I don't know anything, but the ballot is available ahead of time so I encourage you to do some research on local/state candidates as well.\n\nAlso, there will probably be a line, in '08 (my first time voting) I waited about 2.5 hours, but while in line actually got a card from a guy running for the senate so me and a friend called him up and put him on speaker phone and asked him questions to decide if we wanted to vote for him (we did, he lost though).\n\nAny questions?",
"I think you're asking for a bit more than what one person will be able to respond with. Nevermind the fact that reddit as a whole is liberally biased. \n\nAs far as the voting process, it generally varies from county to county, state to state, but overall it goes something like this:\n\n* You register as a voter at your local Secretary of State's office. You'll receive a voter card in the mail a few weeks later. You need to bring this voter card with you to your polling place (Can someone else confirm that you still need to?). The voting card has your polling place location on it. This is where you will go to vote. \n* On election day, you go to your polling place, and wait in line. Try going in the obvious non-peak hours if you can (read: not before 8am, during lunch hours, or after 5pm) to avoid a long wait.\n* Depending on how sophisticated your polling place is, you'll be either handed a piece of paper with a list of initiatives, propositions, candidates for various local, state, and federal offices (including the president), and instructed to go into a booth they'll have set up. Other places in some states use electronic voting machines where you can go and select who you'd like to vote for on a computer. I've never used one but I assume they're either touch screens or like a website, but YMMV. In the case of paper ballots, you'll also be handed an envelope to conceal your filled out sheet.\n* You place your votes, either by computer or filling out the bubbles on the sheet (think a scantron test), and place the sheet in the envelope. You'll then hand the envelope to a worker at the exit. In my polling place, they have a machine that they use which sucks the paper out of the envelope in such a way that the worker **CANNOT** see your vote. Who you vote for is absolutely no one's business but your own, and you NEVER have to divulge that information to anyone.\n\n\nAs far as candidates and their policies, you'll have to do some research. A lot of politicians nowadays start websites that explain who they are, which party they represent, what their views on hot topics are, etc. Keep in mind a lot of this info will be fluffed up. \"Tough on wasteful spending\" probably means more like 'would push for budget cuts'. \"Works for partisan leadership\" could mean 'willing to bend/compromise over things'. It's probably worth your time to do research independent of their sites as well, just be mindful that a LOT of information on the internet is wrong/skewed/etc. \n\nI don't think you're too late for caring about this election, since the candidates haven't even been nominated or even selected. I would assume that President Obama will run for a second term, and I doubt many/any dem's would challenge him, but we'll have to see. There are a TON of republicans saying they'll run for president, and that number will gradually filter down until someone gets the republican nomination (each party must select one person to represent them in the upcoming election. Remember in 2008 when it was down to Hillary and barack? yeah, that.)\n\nThere are a myriad of parties that submit presidential nominations every election, but the only two with any hope of actually taking the presidency are Democrats and Republicans. Independent's usually nominate Ralph Nader, and some people like him and vote for him (He's part of the reason Gore lost the 2000 election, imho), but he never gets enough votes to be a serious contender.\n\n\n\nHope this helps."
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"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitt_Romney",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_Pawlenty",
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"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newt_Gingrich"
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b8be9z | why does some body soap leave a hydrophobic coating and some doesn't? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/b8be9z/eli5_why_does_some_body_soap_leave_a_hydrophobic/ | {
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"Some moisturizers are hydrophobic, like dimethicone (silicone based), and oils or waxes. These trap water in the skin. Other moisturizers like glycerol are hydrophilic, they are humectants that absorb water, and hold it on your skin. So basically a difference in moisturizers, or a lack of them."
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3lj3hw | why is there only one type of american public school? | In Italy, for example, a relatively small town (Alba,CN, 30k people) has more than 7 different schools (i.e. scientific for people like me, classical for Latin culture geeks, artistical, oenological for wine lovers...).
We use this to separate nerds from bullies and to better manage the budget. Why don't you do the same?
Edit: forgot to mention that all these schools are high schools. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3lj3hw/eli5_why_is_there_only_one_type_of_american/ | {
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"Some cities have magnet schools that do that. They specialize in certain subjects such as math, science, health sciences, etc. But most cities don't. The focus is on creating well rounded graduates who are proficient in all fields. People in the US tend to be much more generalized in their education. Even in college, at least half of a students classes are in fields other than their major. It's not until the graduate level where students only focus on one subject.",
"Education philosophy for the majority of Americans is to make a well rounded student who will contribute to the betterment of society. This is true for both High School and College. \n\nThere are some magnet schools that are High School equivalents who focus a bit more on one particular skill and trade schools that are the college level equivalent that focus on classes for a specific trade but they are rarer. Magnet schools tend to have good reputations as they focus on the sciences or the arts and their graduates tend to go to prestigious Universities, but trade schools are seen as second class students. ",
"The major difference between the US/Canadian education system and the European education system is that the US/Canadian system is designed to give all students a very broad and generic academic-based education that can prepare them for all sorts of academic programs and careers later on in life. \n\nThe idea is that you provide students with a well-rounded balanced education in many subject areas and shouldn't force children to be locked into a specific career path or academic program of study early on in life before they have a chance to explore all the options. It's a one-size-fits-all approach and there is very little specialization until college/university (age 18+). Another advantage of this approach is that it's cheaper and easier to manage since all students are following the same basic program/curriculum (with minor differences in which elective and/or advanced placement courses individual students decide to take).\n\nEven at the college/university level, things are still not specialized in the US/Canadian system. Bachelor degree programs usually take 4 years to complete (as opposed to 3 years which is more common in Europe) and students will typically be required to complete courses in unrelated fields of study (e.g. a science student may have to take non-science courses like language, history or art courses) before they can graduate.\n\nAnother difference is that it's relatively easy to change academic programs in the US/Canada at the college/university level if you later decide you want to study something else instead (e.g. switching majors from Computer Science to Art History, or perhaps something that is a less dramatic change). \n\nMy experience with universities in Europe is often the programs of study are more specialized and it's usually quite difficult (or potentially impossible) to change your program of study after being accepted into the university. Often, in Europe, students have to commit to making academic and career path choices by around age 16 whereas the US/Canada gives students a broader education and more flexibility to 'shop around' for different careers and academic studies even into adulthood."
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3zmfpn | why do car door locks in the back of a car not go down as far as the ones in the front? | It seems more dangerous because younger children could be more able to accidentally unlock or open the door while a car is moving than an adult in the front. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3zmfpn/eli5why_do_car_door_locks_in_the_back_of_a_car/ | {
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"I have had cars where locks sit flush while down and others that stay a little up, enough to grab and unlock incase of no power. Rear doors have a safety feature which can be enabled that prevents doors from opening from the inside of the vehicle, so they can only be opened from the outside. I havn't owned a car where fronts and rear locks have different profile settings, typically they are in uniform.",
"I am used to it being the other way around, especially because of children. Anyway you can usually unscrew them (when they are up) by hand and swap them out however you want.\n\nMaybe they changed it around because in the front they have a button that unlocks the doors electronically? That way you can more easily unlock the backdoors without having to reach into the front for whatever reason. Which is of course what you don't want with children in the back but could be usefull in other situations.\n\nMost modern cars give the drivers some settings for not only electrically locking doors and disabling the outside doorhandles, but to disable back indoor handles as well. When they detect an accident they usually unlock though, but this does not work well when the car is in the water and the locks are electrical.",
"In cars setup like that the front doors usually unlock when the inside handle is pulled, but the rear doors do not (because kids). So there needs to be a way for the rear passengers to mechanically unlock them from the inside (because safety). \n\nOf course many also have child lock switches on the back doors that prevent opening them from the inside at all (because kids again). The assumption that it's safer to prevent small kids opening the door ever, and that parents/rescuers would extricate them in an emergency. \n\nThey are also a cheap source of entertainment when going to lunch with coworkers. "
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39ptx0 | how did eyeliner become a thing in the west? | Why do westerners wear eyeliner? How did it get there, why did it become a trend in the west, when (afaik) it was first only used in places like Egypt and Mesopotamia? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/39ptx0/eli5_how_did_eyeliner_become_a_thing_in_the_west/ | {
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"In the 1920s, Tutankhamun's tomb was discovered, and suddenly eyeliner was the new hip thing as everyone was in an Egyptian fad. But eyeliner ended up sticking around anyways."
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3p7fpc | how to make cheese from scratch with fresh milk? | Suppose the SHTF, and all I have is a cow, the basic means to keep us both alive, and not much else. How would I go about making cheese to store for the winter? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3p7fpc/eli5_how_to_make_cheese_from_scratch_with_fresh/ | {
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"first you seperate the cheese into Curds (solid) and whey (liquid) this is usually done by souring the milk and adding something like rennet.\nThe acidification can be accomplished directly by the addition of an acid, such as vinegar. More commonly starter bacteria are employed instead which convert milk sugars into lactic acid.\n after that, some soft cheeses are now essentially complete: they are drained, salted, and packaged. For most of the rest, the curd is cut into small cubes. This allows water to drain from the individual pieces of curd. Some hard cheeses are then heated to temperatures in the range of 35–55 °C (95–131 °F) ",
"Add small quantities of an edible acid: such as lemon juice, or vinegar, to your milk, and this will will separate solids called 'curds' from the left-over liquid, known as 'whey'. Traditionally the curds were strained out with the use of coarse, cheap, fabric, called 'cheese cloth'.\n\nThe curds we keep, after they had lots of moisture removed, are shaped and left to age. As they age, these curds change under the effect of microscopic forms of life coming from all the environment, or deliberately added by humans. We call this 'fermentation'.\n\nFermentation is a kind of rotting, but it is a rotting which we control to make sure that cheese is safe to eat, and tastes good. Because we control this fermentation, that crowds out the nasty uncontrolled rotting which would instead turn old milk into something which would make you sick."
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dd76ym | why do the health problems around vapes constitute a temporary ban while the health problems around cigarettes is well known and are still being sold | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/dd76ym/eli5_why_do_the_health_problems_around_vapes/ | {
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"I think it's because of how rapidly some of the newer vape-related illnesses happen. Cigarettes take a long time to make you sick. Whatever is happening in those vape cases took a much shorter time period to come into effect.",
"Ultimately when you get down to it, it is far easier to make quick emergency bands for relatively new and unestablished products than it is to try to come up with legislation that will deal with already well-established products. And the reason for that ultimately comes down to lawyers and who is paying for them. Kind of like how new intoxicating chemicals are often banned weeks after the first documented cases of them being used, but alcohol will almost certainly never be banned again.",
"Because tobacco lobbyists want it that way.. Just think of how many people are going to have to take up smoking, to kill that nasty vape habit.",
"Because vaping is the biggest competitor to smoking, so cigarette companies and the lobbies attached to them have a vested interest in seeing vaping banned/outlawed/restricted, especially since all of the kids now addicted to nicotine will eventually turn to smoking if they can't vape.",
"Politics, mostly.\n\nNobody's actually trying to ban these in the name of public health--as evidenced by, like you pointed out, the continued legality of cigarettes. \n\nAll of these bans are just politicians trying to score points. That's why you see politicians on both sides of the aisle trying to ban them without actually reaching out and trying to ban them *together*; at least on the federal level, they're trying to take advantage of distractions to the multiple political crises the US has going on at the moment.",
"“For the children” argument. This argument has been used to take away freedoms from responsible adults for decades.",
"Cigarettes are deeply engrained within society now, so it's difficult to police something as common as smoking. However, vapes are still relatively new and hence are a lot easier to police, as well as not possessing the same amount of support that cigarette companies have behind them.",
"Politicians care about optics that get them reelected as opposed to actually doing anything meaningful",
"Not a great ELI5 question since it's actively happening and opinions are flying and research is actively happening.\n\nBut to weigh in, I'd say it's a lot to do with how quickly people started actively dying from \\~\\~vaping\\~\\~ illegal vape cartridges. For cigarettes, it's a long drawn out affair, usually taking several years for all the health issues (cancer) to build up and kill the person.\n\nFor vaping, they died. Significantly faster than cigarette caused death.\n\nIt's easier to call it an emergency when people are dropping the proverbial street than dying slowly in hospice from cancer.\n\n & #x200B;\n\nEdit: the people dying from vaping were vaping offbrand and bootleg cartridges, as I've been corrected twice so far in 20 minutes. Aggressive correction is aggressive.",
"Everyone knows that cigarettes are bad. There’s no one on the other side of the issue. They also taste like ass and make you sick when you first use them. \n\nVaping tastes like whatever delicious thing you want and has largely been marketed as safe. It’s now killed (see edit below) people and it’s safeness has been called into question. Between it being attractive to kids and having very little research done on its actual danger they went ape and banned it.\n\nEdit: commenter below pointed out that the only products that have been proven to have caused deaths were vape products with THC in them.",
"Don’t the tobacco companies make a lot of the vaping products out there? I know some do, so why would they be behind this if they’re making money on people vaping? Some of the Juul pods are made by them and they’re not cheap. 1 pack of 4 pods in my area can cost $11-15 and I know people who go through 1 pack in 3-5 days.",
"TAXES! \nThey are taxing the hell out of cigarettes, and non-smoking people don't care. It doesn't affect them. Politicians don't want to lose that income stream.",
"It's the acuteness of the illnesses. Tobacco has been around for centuries since the discovery of the Americas, and likely millennia before Europeans came to the new world. Juul has been around since 2015, so in 4 years are starting to see acute illnesses that are killing otherwise healthy individuals.\n\nSmoking takes much longer to cause these effects.\n\nThis means that there is something about some sort of vape juice that is causing higher incidence of health problems vs. cigarettes.\n\nAlso, tobacco is highly regulated. A lot of the vaping illnesses are related to counterfeit or knock-off products coming from overseas that are not regulated.\n\nIt is a normal course of actions for cigarettes to give you health problems after you've been smoking for decades. It's part of the social contract you implicitly sign when you start smoking. The dangers are known and predictable.\n\nThe dangers of vaping unregulated oils aren't yet known, they're still being discovered.",
"While the big tobacco argument is probably a lot of the behind the scenes reason, the more “visible” reason is because the vaping injuries are more acute and dramatic. It’s easy to get people to be ambivalent toward a health behavior that can cause cancer and lung disease if you use it for decades; its a lot more in-your-face and panic-inducing when the deaths are catastrophic, occur quickly, and kill youth.",
"Because the vape industry is not as rich and entrenched as the tobacco industry and is a much easier target that can't defend itself as rigorously. They're going to crush it in its infancy. This is being organized by tobacco. Vaping is far too effective at helping people quit cigarettes.",
"See, I have no idea what these people are doing wrong. We I do, they are mostly buying black market thc cartridges, but anyway I've been vaping since Feb. 2 2014. I smoked almost two packs of camel wides a day.\n\nI feel great! I can walk my dog, run around with my grand kids no problems. And I rarely get sick any more.",
"Because people are buying offbrand THC vapes, not regulated or verified products which had ingredients that cause pulmonary problems like pneumonia.\n\nPoliticians don't know about people buying these black market vapes and blame it on the vapes in general to create drama for votes, also big cigarette companies love this new found drama to potentially probably drown the competition. \n\n\nMore people die per year from badly cooked foods and meats. \n\nBuy real vapes people, buy regulated juice and you won't die.",
"Cigarette companies have alot more money for lobbyists. Gotta pay your politicans if you want to poison your people.",
"In the UK it is because the tax on cigarettes is probably about 40p per cigarette where as for vape fluid it is likely to be more like 1p. Same reason as for alcohol.",
"Typical politician knee-jerk reaction. A couple stories hit the news about kids getting sick from vaping and politicians immediately jump on a public health bandwagon to protect our youth so they can be seen as heroes.",
"Because Big Tobacco is a real entity and one of the things the US economy thrives on. No politician will ever let anything harm tobacco. I'm not into vaping, but I know someone who owns a shop and they're up to date on all this stuff. The government and big tobacco have been trying to shut down vaping for a long time.",
"Lobbyists and money.\n\nThere is a ton of money in keeping cigarettes out there and they see vaping as the competition so they can use that sway to whisper in the politicians ear to make it go away at the first controversy.",
"Because the vaping industry hasn’t figured out how to grease their elected officials yet.",
"Something that I haven't seen mentioned here; one vape company does stand to benefit from these bans. When the temporary bans are lifted, there will be a lot stricter guidelines for vape companies, and a lot of the testing they'll require will be prohibitively expensive. Except, of course, for Juul, which is owned by Phillip Morris. Phillip Morris is one of the biggest, if not the biggest cigarette company in the game, and one of the companies lobbying for vape bans.",
"For me it's the speed. Most people who smoke spend a lifetime smoking and then get diseases based on that lifetime of smoking. With vaping, people are dying after using the product for a relatively short period of time. This along with the relative young age of the people affected make it more pressing. \n\nFurthermore, I feel that if the government would have legalized and regulated these products then a lot of this could have been prevented.",
"I dont know but I will say this, the health problems for cigarettes take years to develop.... vaping has not been around nearly as long and we already have people suffering from the effects of it. I do not lean one way or the other as I do not smoke anymore and I also do not vape anymore but I figured that was worth noting.",
"If something kills you in 20 years no one gives a shit - smokers don’t even believe they will get cancer or whatever and it’s not 100%z If it kills you in 3 and to young guys? It’s an epidemic.",
"Cigarettes are heavily taxed and regulated, and the public health risks are well known to anyone and everyone, so it's very much a \"consenting adults can do what they want\" sort of thing.\n\nThe risks of vaping are still emerging, and in a lot of cases it's being advertised and discussed as a completely safe smoking alternative. Also vaping is mostly a young-person thing. So if \"children\" are getting hurt without understanding the risks, that's more of a concern for society.",
"The difference is “known vs unknown.”\n\nWe know the problems of tobacco on health. As a result, we label boxes with explicit warnings and do our best to educate the public. In some countries, they put photos of lung damage and cancer on the boxes too. We give adults the knowledge to make their own (hopefully educated) decisions. They know the risk, they do it anyway. \n\nWith vaping, it’s been marketed as a safer alternative than smoking cigarettes. We don’t have the same medical and health knowledge because vaping has been in the marketplace for much less time than tobacco. The deaths and hospitalizations around vaping are shocking and unexpected. \n\nThat explains the general hysteria. \n\nAs for why the government is quick to clamp down with the response of one vs the other: it’s probably largely tobacco lobby fear mongering especially in MA, especially when you look at the rate of hospitalization and death in this state vs other states."
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ep1h65 | why are current nuclear weapons not as large scale of yield, compared to previous warheads and nuclear tests? | Why are current nuclear warheads of recent times only limited to the dozens or hundreds of kilotons of yield, compared to the megaton yields of weapons past, up to 50 even with the Tsar Bomba | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/ep1h65/eli5_why_are_current_nuclear_weapons_not_as_large/ | {
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"One huge issue at hand is that larger bombs require larger/heavier planes to carry/deploy. Larger planes are potentially easier to detect and possibly shoot down, rendering such a weapon of limited use. \n\nAlso, weapons like the Tsar Bomba are just straight up overkill if the goal is just to destroy a specific part of a city. Yeah we provee they are possible, but not every government wants to wipe out entire countries with a single weapon.",
"we used to drop them from planes, planes aren't very accurate. the huge explosion was helpful in hitting your target. we also didn't have very many.\n\nwe now have missiles, these are very accurate, a single missile can carry many warheads. we now have tons of these missiles and tons of warheads.",
"The bigger the bomb, the more boom is wasted - if your target is genuinely spread over 10s of miles, it's likely to be widely separated individual targets (eg a collection of tanks) so more, more precise weapons would be better.\n\nPlus you can MIRV smaller nukes - basically put lots of little warheads on a single missile, release them when you're deorbiting, and the odds of defending against your attack just went down an order of magnitude as you have to hit every one of those tiny targets.",
"Weapon yield scales roughly linearly with weapon weight. So a 10 megaton bomb weights roughly 10X more than 1 megaton bomb. \n\nWeapon damage, however, scales as a cubic root. So a 10 megaton bomb only damages a little more than 2X the area as a 1 megaton bomb.\n\nWhat this means, in the end, is that you can do as much, or more, destruction with a larger amount of smaller weapons than you can a larger one. At the same time, it's a lot easier to get those smaller weapons from point A to point B (\"delivery\"). A 50 megaton weapon is the size of a school bus — it's huge. It requires being flown to a target on an airplane (which is relatively slow and can be shot down) and you can only fit one onto it. \n\nWhereas a 500 kt weapon can be made the size of a trash can, and you can put 10 of them on the end of a single missile (MIRVing), and each of those 10 can target 10 separate targets. And you can put 10 of those missiles on a single submarine, etc.\n\nOnce missiles became accurate enough to use with lower yield (and again, we're still talking 10-30X the yields of the Hiroshima bomb here) weapons, and once MIRVing was developed, the real obvious way to go was for \"medium-yield\" warheads that were about the size of a trash can and could fit onto missiles very easily.\n\nThis is especially the case with emerging nuclear states like North Korea, whose primary difficulty in establishing their nuclear threat is the credibility of getting their bomb to their target — a missile is far more likely to do so than a plane."
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2xq24c | what exactly are "natural flavorings" and how are food companies allowed to omit these ingredients from the ingredient list? | Title | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2xq24c/eli5_what_exactly_are_natural_flavorings_and_how/ | {
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"A \"natural flavor\" is anything that comes from a plant, animal, or other organism.\n\nCompanies aren't required to get identify these ingredients because FDA regulations state that it isn't required.",
"Sometimes they are allowed to omit these as \"trade secrets\". Think of the KFC Herbs and Spices. If they file it as a patent, it goes into public record, and we can make the recipe at home, no need to go to KFC. But if they keep it as a trade secret (do everything possible to maintain its secrecy), then they don't have people copying their recipe. Natural flavorings is their way of protecting that trade secret.",
"FDA standards define \"natural flavors\" as \n\n\"the essential oil, oleoresin, essence or extractive, protein hydrolysate, distillate, or any product of roasting, heating or enzymolysis, which contains the flavoring constituents derived from a spice, fruit or fruit juice, vegetable or vegetable juice, edible yeast, herb, bark, bud, root, leaf or similar plant material, meat, seafood, poultry, eggs, dairy products, or fermentation products thereof, whose significant function in food is flavoring rather than nutritional.\"\n\nSo to simplify that, if it came from a plant or an animal, it can be called \"natural flavors\" in actuality, its probably something that should be there, like cherry juice in a lollipop. \n\nThere are some additional requirements though, if the natural ingredient is the only thing making up the flavor, the manufacturer should list its \"common name\". So if you see natural flavorings vs cherry juice on your candy, its flavored with more than one thing thats naturally derived.\n\nThe fda does require common allergens to be listed, like nuts, otherwise information can be left out to protect trade secrets.",
"Because nobody would want to read that their strawberry shortcake cookies are flavored with beaver anal gland drippings. ",
"There was actually a piece on marketplace today about this topic.\n\n_URL_0_ ",
"Basically, let's say you want a certain flavor in your product and you've nailed it down to a certain molecule or cocktail of molecules. You have two options:\n\n1) Natural - grind up a bunch of the stuff you want the molecule(s) from and then extract/purify it until you have the final product. This will unfortunately also carry with it other potentially undesirable/unsafe products as a result, however, sometimes it's simply easier and better tasting to use natural products. You also get to put \"natural\" on your label, which does help sales.\n\n2) Synthetic - Synthesize the molecule(s) individually, purify, and then dissolve/extract it into whatever medium it will be used in (usually some kind of alcohol). This will usually cost a lot more, but it will be significantly more pure and more consistent.\n\nKeep in mind, the FDA and other organizations have regulations for all of this stuff. The problem is that they don't have the time to make sure everyone's following the rules. We're all depending on food and flavor companies to do the right thing, regardless of whether the ingredients are natural or artificial.",
"Natural flavorings are any flavoring agents derived from plants or animals. In most cases, these agents are highly concentrated and by volume/weight, make up only a tiny portion of the final product. \n\nFor example, if you take fresh vanilla beans, cure them and macerate the cured beans in an alcohol solution for 8-12 weeks, you will end up with vanilla extract. Most chefs and home cooks stop here and use fresh vanilla extract. However, its more efficient for industrial production to distill most of the alcohol and much of the water out from the extract. This extra step yields a purer product that gets you much more flavor for your buck. \n\nBoth vanilla extract and flavoring contain a chemical known as [vanillin](_URL_1_). It is one of the hundreds of aromatic compounds identified in vanilla extract. But it is a particularly pungent one, and one that is easy enough to chemically synthesize. The precursor needed, [guaiacol](_URL_2_), is a by-product of the paper-making industry. You can essentially take a vat of this stuff, have it undergo a [3-step chemical reaction](_URL_0_) and end up with a vat of vanillin. This would be what the FDA calls artificial vanilla flavoring. ",
"anything that's natural and adds a flavor is a natural flavor?\n\nyou like jelly beans? that nice crunch and chewiness \n\nthis is shellac made from beetles, i think you can guess which part of the beetle",
"Didn't I just hear this on Marketplace on NPR?",
"The reason they don't have to be listed on the ingredient list is to preserve proprietary information, and flavorings are particularly important to recipes. Think of spaghetti sauce. The main ingredients are generally the same, and it's the spices and preparation that make the difference between that abomination you created that one time and your mom's sauce of awesome. \n\nThe FDA has to compromise between consumer groups that want everything listed, and companies that want to keep everything private, and this is where they reached a balance. Main ingredients must be listed, and legally recognized allergens, but flavorings do not. ",
"This slightly digresses from the topic, but just to put this out there, I'll bet most of you didn't know that *when* fancy chocolate (Ex. Ghiradelli, Godiva, Dove etc.) goes bad, it turns into a pale, chalky consistency.\n\nThose are two facts you probably didn't know, but this one is probably the worst: most of these brands have their expiration date as an obscure code. For example, one brand (it's been a couple years, so I don't remember which one -- might be Dove) has something like a five digit number where let's say the first two indicate the year, and the remaining three indicate the amount of *days into the year* (just try to calculate that without getting a small headache) that the actual recommended expiration date is. So 15360 would indicate Christmas later this year. Like, *really* obscure. And they all have a different code on a sheet in some binder in the back office of the retailer.\n\nSo my ELI5 on that would be: How the heck is that even *legal?!* Such laissez faire bullshit.\n\nSource: Former employee of major US drug store retailer, put in charge of this task.",
"I worked for a flavoring company called FONA (Flavors of North America) as an intern a couple years ago. It's a pretty awesome company, and I worked on all these different projects ranging from flavoring olive oils to making whole grain Kraft mac n cheese more palatable. Anyway, literally the only difference between \"artificial flavors\" and \"natural flavors\" that you see plastered on boxes is this: in the lab we'd have two walls - one with shelves full of artificial flavors and the other with the natural flavors. The flavors themselves were completely pure, isolated chemical compounds (vanillin giving it a vanilla taste, limonene giving things a citrusy taste, citric acid giving things acidity, ect). The difference is, all the natural flavors were extracted through different processes from some plant substance (limonene from oranges) and then the chemical of interest was separated and isolated from everything else with additional procedures. The artificial flavors were sythnesized from scratch by chemists and then purified.\n\nA chemical on one wall is 100% identical to and as purely isolated as its counterpart on the other wall. As we would concoct flavors for customers, the only thing dictating which one we used was the customer's preference - both for advertising purposes and because sometimes the artificial version was cheaper than the natural one and vice versa.\n\nUsing the \"made with natural flavors!\" label as an indicator for whether or not to buy something is the biggest fucking waste of your time and money."
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35kn1h | why is venus only visible a few hours after sunset? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/35kn1h/eli5_why_is_venus_only_visible_a_few_hours_after/ | {
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"Venus's orbit lies between Earth's orbit and the Sun.\n\nDuring the day you can't see Venus for the same reason you can't see any stars - the Sun is too bright.\n\nDuring the night you can't see Venus for the same reason you can't see the Sun - it's \"behind\" the Earth.\n\nThe only time when Venus is visible is either right after sundown or right before sunrise, since at that point the Sun isn't bright enough to block out Venus, but Venus isn't completely hidden behind the Earth."
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1ow0uw | why do we use substitute words for some numbers like "dozen" for "twelve," but not for almost all other numbers? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1ow0uw/eli5_why_do_we_use_substitute_words_for_some/ | {
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"Would there be any use in having other words for most numbers? I think the words we do substitute are just shorthand ways of saying commonly used numbers: couple, dozen, score, ton...",
"For some usages, 12 is more convenient than 10, because 12 is divisible by many numbers (1,2,3,4,6,12). That's why our year has a dozen months and a day lasts two dozen hours. An hour is five dozen minutes.\nBecause of this we have a special word for \"the better 10\".",
"If we had substitute words for \"almost all other numbers\" they would be the new numbers...\n\nYou are forgetting about e, Pi, and other special mathematical constants."
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3lv1tf | how do employee owned grocery stores work? why are they a good thing? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3lv1tf/eli5_how_do_employee_owned_grocery_stores_work/ | {
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"Not sure how they work but Winco is amazing! Here in NorNev it consistently beats Walmart prices on food and produce, and the employees get great pay.",
"I work for an \"employee owned grocery store\". Basically, when you get hired, you're given stock in the company. Technically you \"own\" a tiny fraction of the company. According to my orientation, if you're employed for 7 years, you can cash out (or whatever it's call when you sell stock back.)\n\nAs far as being a good thing, usually they are not huge big box stores like Walmart, which means you're supporting a more local economy. My store buys produce from farms within the same state. The closest one I know of is 20 miles away."
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838y0x | why don’t countries start merging together? as globalization increases and borders shrink, why don’t countries like canada, usa, and mexico form a super country? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/838y0x/eli5_why_dont_countries_start_merging_together_as/ | {
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"Who retains power in the super country?",
"Typically the country that's more prosperous doesn't *want* to allow the less prosperous country to merge. Imagine if the US merged with Mexico, how many lower-income Mexicans would suddenly be eligible for US welfare programs.",
"Well, technically one could argue that the European Union is very much that, as effectively most of Europe is unified in a similar fashion, just that the individual countries still have more sway and autonomy, (sort of like the states in the US.)\n\nAs for Canada, the US and Mexico, currently the cultural differences between those countries makes agreeing on any sort of policy difficult. It may seem logical to team-up, but actually merging would be difficult as the people of those countries don't agree on enough to make that happen smoothly.",
"Why would they want to? What incentive do they have to do this, compared to the colossal amount of paperwork it would take and the lgal quandaries?",
"The US is already a Superpower. We do not want to take on the burden of joining with Mexico and bringing their infrastructure and laws up to US Standards, and Canada differs in opinion on what laws should be to not want to join with the US. ",
"For the same reason Puerto Rico isn't a state.\n\nBeing independent means you can have your own rules and priorities. When you join a big cooperative, you have to do what the group wants. That's why the UK voted for BRexit, going along with everybody wasn't all puppies and flowers.",
"1. Power. Who would volunteer to give up their current power to be subject to someone else’s?\n\n2. Economy inequality. The same government services can’t be provided to everyone if one group of people aren’t producing at the same rate. The math doesn’t work. \n\n3. Culture. Even living right next to each other, the US, Canadian, and Mexican cultures are all very different. The culture shock of moving those cultures into a rule set of another would be high friction at best. ",
"The more distant a government is, the less effectively it governs.\n\nHence the emphasis on local politics as a means of driving reform.",
"Well, the EU is kind of what you are after. But there can be big problems when a currency union is done seperatly from a financial union, so it's likely a pretty bad idea to do it via something like the EU.\n\nSo countyies actually merging. OK, fine, there's no real problems there it COULD happen.\n\nLets for a moment look at only Canada and the US. First of all, the Canadian Prime Minister is extremely unlikely to become the leader of the new country. So he'd be giving up nearly all of his personal political power.\n\nNext is the issue of political systems. Let's say you translated Canadian members of parliament directly to US house members, there's the problem of the population since Canadian districts have significantly fewer people than the US does. So there would need to be some kind of rebalancing. Because a legislative body can't have too many people or it gets funky, many of the Canadian MPs will be losing their jobs. \n\nBut these are exactly the people who's votes you'd need to make this happen. The Canadian PM has a very large amount of power in terms of lawmaking (much more than a president) and he'd be basically working himself out of a job. He'd need to get the votes of MPs who he's also working out of a job. So that vote is unlikely to pass. \n\nNext up is the US. Assuming the new country used the US political system there would be similar to the American one (but it might not be) there would be somewhere between 20 and 26 new senators. Canadia is significant more left wing than most of America so Democrats are likely to win the vast majority of those seats. \n\nSo the current Senate is basically 50/50. The new one would be 70/50. Giving Democrats 58% of the Senate assuming everything stays exactly like it is. A supermajority would be trivially easy for Democrats but basically impossible for Republicans. So Republicans are EXTREAMLY unlikely to vote for this kind of merger.\n\nI could go on and on but these kinds of problems crop up at every turn. Canadian provinces don't have their own criminal laws, all criminal laws are national in Canada. The US is basically the opposite, State is the default criminal law and the federal law only gets involved in special occasions. \n\nIn fact, that federalist issue will crop up constantly in any kind of merger discussions. In theory, in the US power flows from the states to the federal government. Basically, the states grant the federal government certain powers so that the states can form a union. But in Canada, it's the opposite. The power is granted from the crown to the federal government then onto the provinces. So there will be massive problems with who's running what services, who's going to be responsible for what and so on. \n\nThat's not even touching on things like health care. As problematic as it is in Canada, there are few Canadians who would actually trade for the American system. Canadian gun control exists and is very unlike the US, since we have no second amendment. \n\nIn fact, the Canadian construction even protects people that the US does not cover. In Canada it's forbidden to discriminate based on sexual orientation, in the US it's not. Canada has no right to free speech, so we have hate speech laws that the US lacks. Political donations are very restricted here because there is no such thing as corporate free speech. \n\nNext up, Mexico. how excited do you think the US will be to apply their \"generous\" social safety net to Mexicans. A Mexican earning a middle-class income would likely qualify for all kinds of benefits that a middle-class American would not.",
"For one thing, people don't support it. Regardless of increased globalization, patriotism is still very much a thing in many nations, not least America. \n\nWhile such a super country would be have a larger economy and more resources, it would be incredibly inefficient if the desired government was anything close to democratic. \n\nI don't know if you are familiar with US politics, but the US government, and the congress especially is incredibly inefficient, largely due to the vast differences in political ideology. The expansion of the democratic system to include other nations, like Canada, which tends to be more liberal, would either result in crippling gridlock, preventing the government from doing anything, or a massive consolidation of power, running the risk of turning this \"supernation\" into a dictatorship.\n\n\n",
"This is kind of happening as time has marched on, only the definition of \"merging together\" doesn't necessarily mean uniting under one political system. Countries are closer together today than they every have been before. In general, tariffs have gone away, free-trade has proliferated, we have more common culture than we ever have had before, and the barriers for moving from one country to another for work have decreased. This is kind of what you're describing, even if countries maintain distinct political autonomy from each other.\n\nThe most obvious example of this is the EU, which is a collection of countries into one unified sort-of country. As for Canada, USA, and Mexico, we are all culturally and politically different enough that none of us would want to give up autonomy, but there are other things like trade agreements and common(-ish) culture that have united us.\n\nAs time marches on, we will likely see more steps towards global unity (despite current political opposition) since the benefits largely outweigh the costs. For example, there is a proposed agreement called the CANZUK agreement, which is a free-trade, free-movement agreement (similar to the EU agreement) between Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the UK that has been gaining some traction. These 4 countries are culturally, politically, and economically similar, so the idea makes some sense."
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d21o22 | how are still images created to look like they're moving? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/d21o22/eli5_how_are_still_images_created_to_look_like/ | {
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"It’s because that the human eye isn’t perfect, and flashing something at ~24 still images a second tricks our brain into perceiving movement"
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amm8uk | how do fish control where they are in the water? why don’t they just float or sink? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/amm8uk/eli5_how_do_fish_control_where_they_are_in_the/ | {
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"Fish have a special organ called a \"swim bladder\" which regulates their buoyancy such that they tend to be about neutral, neither floating or sinking. Various sicknesses can cause problems with this balance which is why dying fish will tend to float up to the top of the tank when still alive.",
"Proper fish have swim bladders which can inflate and deflate through the release of gas through a membrane. It keeps them neutrally buoyant. When fish get ill, sometimes they lose the ability to control the swim bladder, and this is what causes them to float to the top and sometimes upside down. \n\nFun fact, the swim bladder is often [harvested from commercial fishing](_URL_0_), cleaned, dried, and ground up, and used as a settling agent in things like beer making. It's later filtered back out before bottling and so it's not listed as an ingredient. \n\nNon fish like the squid have special hollows inside the bony gladius inside their bodies. They can force water out of these areas and cause them to fill with gas by forcing VERY salty blood around them. The water is drawn out of the tissue, into the blood through osmosis, and blood gas replaces the water, making them buoyant. This is also how other molusks like the nautilus is able to swim although their shell is on the outside and they use special spiracles inside the shell for this purpose."
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7b4nrj | why does clicking with your left hand and clicking with your right hand produce a different tone? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7b4nrj/eli5_why_does_clicking_with_your_left_hand_and/ | {
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"Snapping, you mean? Strength of muscles/handedness. Basically, with your dominant hand you have a more coordinated \"snap\" than with your non-dominant hand. Faster, more powerful movement = louder or different toned snap. "
]
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8mrsgg | how do mobile services, that are disabled while in airplane mode, interfere with an airplane? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8mrsgg/eli5_how_do_mobile_services_that_are_disabled/ | {
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"They don't. \n\nHowever, if an airplane was built incorrectly, it is possible that the signals send out by your mobile phone - mostly radio and microwaves - could induce an electric current in either the instruments or control circuit of an airplane, and while this is incredibly unlikely the result could be that you and several hundred of your closest (physically) friends would die. \n\nSince the cell network is too short and too slow acting to use while travelling much more than a hundred mph everyone agrees that we'd rather have more battery on arrival than take that chance. Well, everyone except the jerk in 79B that is. ",
"Aside from issues with the plane, it is also a heavy load on the cell network.\n\nTo connect and make calls, cell phones communicate with cell towers, which cover the phones in a certain radius. When a phone moves across the edge between areas covered by two towers, the towers communicate to keep a potential connection from a phone call alive.\n\nThis exchange was designed for phones moving much slower than an airplane. When a plane zips through many towers' zones quickly, the towers try to do this communication, but the phone has already entered a new zone by the time they finish, just wasting that communication. Multiply this by the hundreds of phones in a plane and the cell towers will only be able to talk to each other to negotiate the transfer pf all these phones between their zones, preventing a lot of normal use communication from getting through to the network."
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2b4aaw | how does reddit have 4 billion visitors in a year, but top posts rarely break 1k posts. | expound please | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2b4aaw/eli5_how_does_reddit_have_4_billion_visitors_in_a/ | {
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"Not every user up votes. Some users down vote.\nNot every user goes on the same sub reddit.\nNot every user is on at the same time.\n\nThat's a simple as it needs to be.",
"Because some people browse without an account",
"A lot of visitors aren't registered users, a lot of users post/comment rarely if ever.",
"1% of users have an account, of that 1% only 1% vote. There's a reddit blog that says something to those lines.",
"I like how everyone is talking about voting when the question says \"posts\".\n\nThreads that large become virtually impossible to meaningfully participate in toward the end / usually devolve into the *reddit armi* types who only look at top posts posting the same 5 memes and jokes, really."
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1q097l | besides bragging rights, for what reasons are countries still "racing" in space exploration? | I became curious about this after reading of India's recent launch of a spacecraft to Mars ([link](_URL_0_)), particularly this quote:
> Some observers are viewing the launch of the MOM, also known by the informal name of Mangalyaan (Mars-craft), as the latest salvo in a burgeoning space race between the Asian powers of India, China, Japan, South Korea and others.
I partly understand the reasons for the space race between the US and Russia way back when, but why the race between the aforementioned countries today? Has there been some grand plan made for space in the future that countries want to be a step ahead in accomplishing? Is it an economics thing?
All answers are appreciated! | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1q097l/eli5_besides_bragging_rights_for_what_reasons_are/ | {
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"imagine being in 2nd grade and everyone had home packed sandwiches and juice boxes and you were the first kid to have that baller ass pizza lunchable and caprisun combo. \n\nnot only are you the coolest kid in the lunchroom, but you could trade that caprisun for way above its value---a juice box and a bag of oreos---because you're the only person who has it, thus increasing its rarity and value. "
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blo1zl | what happens when lake mead reaches dead pool level? | Lake Powell too for that matter. With Lake Mead however hovering at around 30ft above being unable to generate electricity, what happens when the Hoover Dam power plants are forced to shut off? Is there enough excess grid capacity to absorb the sudden, and likely long term, loss of 2,080MW?
For that matter, another 200 odd feet down, and Lake Mead is no longer able to supply water. Is the whole region just hosed if that happens, or are there backup plans? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/blo1zl/eli5_what_happens_when_lake_mead_reaches_dead/ | {
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"Lake Mead will shut off the water going to California before it gets to that level. The Power gen takes priority. But assuming even that is not sufficient then yes, they will have to shut off the power. No, there is not a back up that can produce that volume of electricity."
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7ko31z | digital aliasing and the nyquist frequency | What is aliasing? What are some examples? What is the nyquist frequency in relation to aliasing? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7ko31z/eli5_digital_aliasing_and_the_nyquist_frequency/ | {
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"The real world is analog, things like sound and radio are continuous oscillations. While quantum field theory is true, most all real-life things are much, much too large to have discrete quantum behavior.\n\nWhen you sample something digitally, you are making a discrete measurement at a specific time and using that to represent the continuous signal. This is never correct, the real world is analog, but it's often plenty good enough. The Nyquist Frequency is all about knowing when it's good enough.\n\nLet's say you sample at 1000 samples per second. If the signal is 60 cycles/second, like wall electricity, you have each sine wave represented with 16-ish values. That's 8 for the positive side of the wave and 8 for the negative side. That will produce a very good representation.\n\nAt 250 cycles per second, you're down to 2 for the positive side and 2 for the negative side. This could be 0, 1, 0, -1, ... which looks a lot more like triangles than a sine wave; or it could be .6, .6, -.6, -.6, ... which looks wrong in a different way.\n\nAt 500 cycles/second, you've got 1, -1, ... or 0, 0, ...; barely right at all.\n\nAt 2000 cycles/sec, you get .6, .6, .6, .6, ... or -.3, -.3, -.3, ... Absolutely wrong. And 4000 cycles/sec is exactly the same wrong. These are \"aliases\" of each other.\n\nThe Nyquist frequency is last frequency where you barely get the right shape. For out 1000 samples/second measuring device, this is 500 cycles/sec.",
"Let's start by observing that any periodic phenomenon can be reduced to a sum of sine waves. As a result, we can talk about a single sine wave without any loss of generality.\n\nNow, we're going to read the value of a signal at discrete time intervals. We want to know how well we can reconstruct the original signal from those samples.\n\nUnfortunately, for any such set of samples, there are an infinite number of possible sine waves that pass through those points. All of the sine waves we *don't* want are called 'aliases'.\n\nFortunately, if we sample at rate X, all the frequencies below X/2 are guaranteed to have their *lowest* alias be the one we want. The is the Nyquist criterion. Example: If you sample a 10 kHz signal at 20 kHz, the lowest frequency sine wave that fits those samples will be 10 kHz.\n\nSo as long as we know that the original single doesn't have any frequencies above X/2, just taking the lowest frequency of the infinite number of possibilities will generate the sine wave we want.\n\nNote: This is also the reason you implement a low-pass filter prior to sampling. If you do have frequencies (of meaningful amplitude) higher than X/2 in the original signal, you'll end up with the high frequencies generating 'aliases' within the 0 - X/2 range as their lowest frequency possibility.",
"Take a piece of graph paper. Try drawing a line on it at an angle by only coloring in squares. You can't make it perfectly because the grid doesn't give you enough resolution to accurately represent what you want to. That's aliasing. \"Anti-aliasing\" is a trick where you color in some of the in-between squares grey to make it look like a smoother line.\n\nAn analogous thing happens with digital audio. Digital audio slices up your sound into a bunch of discrete \"samples\", rather than the smooth waves of an analogue signal. Try drawing a sine wave on that same piece of graph paper and you'll see what happens. At the most extreme, the highest frequency you can represent is when one square is a high value and the next square is a low value - that's the Nyquist frequency of your \"signal\".",
"A wave has a top and a bottom within a wavelength. (if it has more than than it consists of higher frequencies and the actual wavelength is not what you thought.) So to sample it you need at least two points at each wavelength to keep track of the wave, if you have less, you'll miss some waves when you sample the signal. This causes aliasing - your sampling points make it look like there is a frequency that isn't there, because it matches your sampling points rather than the actual signal."
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af4fvu | how has less than 10% of the ocean been discovered is 90% of it too deep? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/af4fvu/eli5_how_has_less_than_10_of_the_ocean_been/ | {
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"The oceans are altogether 1.332 BILLION cubic kilometers in volume. That’s an absurdly massive volume. It’s not necessarily that it’s always too deep, there is just so overwhelmingly much there.",
"We have been to the deepest place (the [Challenger Deep](_URL_0_)), but the oceans are huge. We can't go to every place at every depth.\n\nDon't take the 10% too literally, different methods to count that lead to vastly different results.",
"We can't go underwater with out a massive life support system. Professional divers can go down to only about 200 feet deep. Sunlight only goes down to about 600 feet, after that it's very dark. \n\n\nScientific subs can go down very deep, but they're only down there for an hour or less and can only see as far a their flood lights will let them. What happens in that same spot the remaining 23 hours? Or the 365 days? What happens 30 feet over from that spot? Or even 30 feet up or below from that spot? The ocean is a large area but it's also a very large 3d world. Everything from the ocean floor to sea level is a large space.\n",
"Do you mean “explored”? We’ve discovered all of the ocean, as in we know it is there. But we have explored only [5% of the ocean floor](_URL_0_) because it costs more time and money to go there than anyone is willing to expend.",
"There’s also the needle in the haystack aspect. From what we’ve seen from the exploration we have done, there is not much going on on most of the seabed. It’s basically very very deep mud punctuated by rare oases of life (black smokers, whale carcasses, coral reefs etc). And as alluded to above, most of the ocean itself is a massive body of utterly dark (“aphotic”), cold water, which also doesn’t support much life.",
"Basically, there is a loose map of the ocean we've acquired from echo sounding and other methods that used to be exclusive to the United States Navy, however, it can be horrifically innacurate, (miles of innacuracy, in fact).\n\nBasically, to get the whole thing it would take a single ship about 200 years with special equipment to get the whole thing.\n\nThe time it takes and a general lack of interest in the subject is holding us back. No one's gonna do it just for fun.\n\nIt doesn't help either that the ocean floor is continually changing due to plate tectonics and the steady rain of sediment obscuring the actual topography. ",
"I think your question has already been answered by others, I just wanted to add that there are some misconceptions in the public about all the great things that could still be hiding in the vast undiscovered waters of the depth - however we know of very few (and very small) creatures that could even survive below a couple of thousand meters, even a one celled organism is incredibly challenged down there. As there is literally NO light after a certain point so there can't be any traditional plant life which restricts the amount of nutritients available heavily. So we really don't except a big world of undiscovered fishdinosaurs down there which may also be a reason why the discovery of said depths is rather academic and may be pushed forward primarly by philantrophs and billionaires",
"The oceans are really really deep. By the coast, on the shelf, it’s only a few hundred meters. If you put one of those supertankers or mega cruise ships on its butt, and front pointing at the sky, they would comfortably stick up a fair bit above the surface. However most of these ships would at this orientation on land be dominating or be a major part the skyline of NY for instance. \nThat is a lot of floors to navigate. Visibility gets lower as you descend. You are unlikely to see anything beyond 50 meters ahead of you in really clear water. Even 20 meters could be considered really good visibility. \n\nEven At depths of hundreds of meters such a depth is impossible for us to comfortably explore. We need lots of specialist equipment, ships and crew. Once you leave the shelf, the ocean floor is now 3000-4000 meters below. Just imagine having to bring along a 4000 m cable to make sure you can stay in contact with whatever you send down there. There is sonar etc to get a topographical representation but that says nothing about what you actually can find down there. Without going there, knowing what is down there is difficult. Now, most of the world ocean is like this, deep sea. ",
"1. It's expensive to explore\n\n2. Most of it is really, really boring\n\nThat makes it hard to get funding to explore more of it."
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7ilnre | why do some plants require more shade than others? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7ilnre/eli5_why_do_some_plants_require_more_shade_than/ | {
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"Because some plants evolved in forests where the canopy of trees means that very little light reached the area where these plants grew. ",
"Because they'll get a nasty sunburn otherwise. Shade loving plants are either small and sheltered by big trees or from perpetually foggy areas, so they didn't produce as much sun defense as plants from sunny areas do."
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1ljpyq | how does one fix their standing/sitting posture? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1ljpyq/eli5_how_does_one_fix_their_standingsitting/ | {
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"There are lots of things that could be wrong with a sitting/standing posture (Spinal curvature, excess body weight, nerve damage, tendonitis, deformations, sedentary lifestyle...)\n\nThe short answer is exercise, but we'd need more information to be able to offer corrective suggestions.",
"I assume you're talking about hunched shoulders--that's the main problem that people have. It's usually just a result of attitude and habit, not a medical problem.\n\nI know that correcting your standing posture will help correct your sitting posture, so I'll target standing posture in particular.\n\nA lot of it is confidence. When you walk, take up space. Be in charge. Swagger a little. When you swagger, you pick your head up, stand taller, and push your chest out (which forces your shoulders back). \n\nArch your back backward a little too. You'll feel it in your lower back. \n\nDo this consciously for a while, and then it'll be come second nature.\n\nYou'll know you've succeeded when people tell you that you walk like you have a stick up your ass. Your friends will make fun a little (jesting), but people notice someone with good posture. It speaks volumes about their confidence.\n\nGood luck!"
]
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||
6zhhfq | how did earth get its name? i read online that the name is derived from english and german words, but the few articles i read didn't give much info beyond that. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6zhhfq/eli5_how_did_earth_get_its_name_i_read_online/ | {
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"text": [
"Which name? Different peoples may refer to it by different names. Although, in general, they tend to refer to ground or soil in some fashion. Presumably as people would associate the object with the part of it they encounter all the time.",
"_URL_0_\n\n > Old English eorþe \"ground, soil, dirt, dry land; country, district,\" also used (along with middangeard) for \"the (material) world, the abode of man\" (as opposed to the heavens or the underworld), from Proto-Germanic *ertho (source also of Old Frisian erthe \"earth,\" Old Saxon ertha, Old Norse jörð, Middle Dutch eerde, Dutch aarde, Old High German erda, German Erde, Gothic airþa), from extended form of PIE root *er- (2) \"earth, ground.\" The earth considered as a planet was so called from c. 1400. Use in old chemistry is from 1728. Earth-mover \"large digging machine\" is from 1940.",
"[As best we know](_URL_0_), it can be traced back to a Proto-Indo-European root, referring to the ground or dirt.\n\nIt should be noted that Earth is only one of many names for the planet. It's the name in English, and English is a Germanic language, and Proto-Germanic was an Indo-European language. It's a very big language family including languages like Hindi and Latin and French, alongside languages more closely related to English (Dutch and German). Other language families have words that look nothing like \"Earth\": in Japanese it's Chikyuu, which contains none of the same sounds.\n\nAnother way of looking at your question is, how do we generalize a word to refer to the whole planet? \"Earth\" basically comes from \"dirt\" and we still use it that way too. Latin \"Terra\" came from a PIE root meaning \"dry\" (probably), so there it seems to refer to the opposite of the ocean. Basically we're still talking about the ground--the thing we walk on. It's interesting that this came to refer to the planet as a whole, including the ocean and atmosphere and core. It may be an example of *metonymy*, or using a *part* of something to refer to the whole. Another example of that is saying \"wheels\" when you are talking about a whole car.\n\nSince language has been developing since long before we realized that \"land\" isn't just some portion of a flat world, but that we actually live on one discrete object, it makes sense that the words we have for this planet referred to some aspect of it initially, rather than the whole thing (which was unknown). Consider another word we have to refer to the whole thing: globe. This just means \"ball\", and was used after we realized the Earth *is* one. We'd already been interacting with many words before we realized the Earth was a thing unto itself and included the sky and ocean, so it was more natural to simply apply these in a new sense than create a new word out of nowhere. Most word formation is a natural extension of existing word usage; rarely is something entirely new coined.",
"I mean earth is literally another word for soil or ground, in germanic/norse and similarly in greek and roman mythology the word for earth was synonymous with the personified goddess of earth/mother earth, either way it makes sense that it is also synonymous with 'the world' or 'the planet we are on'; it's not like the other planets aren't named after roman gods...",
"As your question is already answered I thought I'd just leave a cool quote here I saw once and this reminded me. \n\n\"How inappropriate to call this planet earth when it is quite clearly ocean.\" Arthur C Clarke"
]
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"http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=earth"
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"http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=earth&allowed_in_frame=0"
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||
5978ro | why is it that structures that are built on sand in the desert such as the pyramids have not crumbled or been buried by sand? | I understand why the great pyramids have not fallen, however with structures being built in the sand, how have massive sandstorms and wind not made for an uneven base with sand flying around. Or even if the pyramids are built on a solid base, how has sand not eventually covered the pyramids? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5978ro/eli5_why_is_it_that_structures_that_are_built_on/ | {
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"text": [
"The Great Pyramids were not built on top of sand.\n\nThey were built on top of rock. ",
"The pyramids of Giza stand on the bedrock of the Giza plateau.\n\nMost of the mastabas, pyramids and the Sphinx were indeed complete or partially buried under sand and had to be excavated.\n\nYou can clearly see on a satellite image where the sand has been dumped: _URL_0_\n\nHere is an excavation dump from 1930: _URL_1_",
"Stone is very long-lasting and even the pyramids are not large enough to exceed its structural limitations so they have not crumbled. Erosion due to wind and blown sand is a very slow process. Most erosion is due to water and there's not too much of that in the desert. Some ancient structures have been covered by sand and presumably some remain to be discovered because of this. Being covered by sand is not as common as you might think and is to some extent random; creating a new building does not attract the sand."
]
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"http://content.satimagingcorp.com/static/galleryimages/quickbird-pyramids-egypt.jpg",
"http://emerald.tufts.edu/alumni/magazine/spring2007/images/features/A5343_NS.jpg"
],
[]
] |
|
5sa08e | what's the point of having country-specific internet content? | In the past 24 hours, I have seen two front posts featuring SNL, but when I go to click on them, they're not available in Canada. What gives? Wouldn't it be more fiscally sensible to have a viewer base of 35 million more people? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5sa08e/eli5whats_the_point_of_having_countryspecific/ | {
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"text": [
"Typically, it means that some channel in Canada (or wherever) has bought the rights to broadcast the show there. That contract includes the rights to online streaming for viewers in that country. The original content owner judges that they can make more money that way than keeping the worldwide online rights for themselves. Sometimes they'll compromise and keep the rights, but only make content available in a country after the show has been broadcast there.",
"Different countries have different laws regarding content. \n\nSome allow advertising, some don't for instance, so all the countries have to negotiate deals differently. \n\n"
]
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[],
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] |
|
3q7h3l | how can a sixteen month old baby read and say words? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3q7h3l/eli5_how_can_a_sixteen_month_old_baby_read_and/ | {
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"Everyone learns and comprehends at different rates. Some children have the capability and the mental ability to read and write even earlier than that, some claiming as early as 12-13 months. Others, stunded in growth sometimes never speak.\n\nAnd if you think about it, Reading IS sight recognition. Albiet at a very advanced level, Reading is itself a sight recognition and recall information. Now understanding and comprehenision aside, what she appears to be doing is yes, reading and comprehending the words of what she is given.\n\nGenius, who knows. But the baby knows how to read and that's awesome."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
||
33m0nz | why did switzerland decide to cap the mark (exchange rate?) and how/why did that have such a huge impact on the euro's value against the usd? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/33m0nz/eli5_why_did_switzerland_decide_to_cap_the_mark/ | {
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"text": [
"It was capped in the first place (in one direction only, btw) because believe it or not, the industrial sector is *much* more important to Switzerland's economy than the financial sector. \n\nHaving a cheap CHF relative to the Euro helps these companies artificially reduce the cost of their products when they export them, which a lot of them (probably the majority, even) do; and this is an important factor since the cost of manufacture is so much more expensive in Switzerland.\n\nIt was removed because the SNB was probably tipped off that the ECB was going to start quantative easing on the Euro (basically print Euros in order reduce their value; done in a hope to kick-start the economic recovery), which would have cost the SNB a fortune if the cap was to stay in place (they already sit on something like ~360 billion Euros).\n\nIt had (and still has) a huge impact in Switzerland because everybody fears that the economy, which is already under pressure since the referendum of the 9th of February last year, is going to be weakened even more. And I think most people were annoyed that the banks were the ones that got the good end of the deal (having access to a stable, independent currency is a great bargaining tool when trying to convince a rich foreigner to trust you with his money).\n\nIt had a big impact outside of Switzerland because since the CHF was perceived as being a stable currency, it was sometimes used in long-term contracts. For example, many home owners in Poland (and other places) had their loans in CHF instead of the local currency; which basically meant their debt jumped by 20% overnight\n\n\n\n > Mark\n\nthere might have been a bank-issue currency called \"Mark\" before the introduction of the Swiss Frank in 1849, but that shit's long gone\n\nAlso, by \"stable\", I meant \"unlikely to significantly change in value over time\""
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
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