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4kjw76 | why do some materials, like tinfoil or chip bags, make so much noise when crinkled. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4kjw76/elif_why_do_some_materials_like_tinfoil_or_chip/ | {
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"So some materials, such as cellophane, have a specific force at which they actually and suddenly bend. Any less force than this and they only flex. The difference is basically that on the bend side the thing actually assumes a new shape, while in flexing it will simply return to its old shape when you stop pushing it.\n\nThis is, in fact, why cellophane was chosen to be the wrappers for hard candy. It starts out flat. You engulf the candy. You twist the ends... and they _stay_ _twisted_ because they've been bent. When you untwist the candy from the wrapper you are unbending the material.\n\nSo each individual \"bending event\" has a very specific energy. You apply a steadily increasing force until the one of the stress lines gives way and there is a little \"crack\" noise. You keep bending and there's another crack as another bend takes place.\n\nDone quickly and all at once they come together in a continuous crackle as a series of individual \"cracks\".\n\nSo that thing where your grandma tries to open the candy really slow to minimize the noise doesn't work. Each \"crack\" has a fixed volume because it's got a fixed energy. Going slow just makes it all take longer.\n\nAs a relevant aside, the flat expanse of membrane on each side of each \"crack\" event acts as a speaker membrane to move more air more efficiently. And some shapes (like a bag) can form a power chamber like in a guitar or drum to make the nose more efficient. This helps the sound cary or focus.\n\nSo anyway, if you take the crinkling material and play with it, you can make the individual \"crack\" events and note how they are all the same volume no matter how fast you bend the individual sounds pretty much all have the same volume.\n\nSo if you are opening something loud in a circumstance where noise is unwelcome, like in a movie, just do it all at once without over doing it. You going slow or with less care than usual just makes the disturbance longer in time or \"more rumply\" because you were bunching up more material.\n\nBut below a certain, fairly loud point you can not \"quietly\" open the bag or unwrap the candy. The material of the wrapper literally can't be more quiet than it is when being bent. "
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8cm47u | how do buildings deteriorate? | If they can withstand the weather when people live in them, why not when they're empty?
What starts to deteriorate first once it's abandoned?
Do American buildings become ruins faster than European ones, since they are built faster?
Is there a point at which it stops degrading, or speeds up?
Edit: thanks for your answers! Seems kinda obvious in hindsight... | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8cm47u/eli5_how_do_buildings_deteriorate/ | {
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"They deteriorate from lack of maintenance. There's typically at least some maintenance if someone lives in it. The rest depends on way too many factors.",
"It depends on what the building is made of, but water is a big factor...metal rusts, roofs leak, wood starts to rot, and from then things start to fall apart. Eventually, the structures that hold a building up fail, and the building then collapses. \n\nWhen a building is occupied, small leaks are usually noticed before they become a major problem, and basic maintenance tasks like clearing gutters helps keep a building watertight.",
"In addition to the maintenance mentioned in other answers one key part is constant temperature. When a building is occupied it is generally kept at a fairly steady temperature, when it is empty it heats and cools significantly each day which stresses the building.",
" > If they can withstand the weather when people live in them, why not when they're empty?\n\nWhen people live in a building they maintain and repair it, but an abandoned building doesn't have that. When I'm living in my house I can identify wear and tear caused by the weather and fix it when it's still minor, but in an abandoned building that damage will continue to expand over time."
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6jee6k | what's the differences between sharia law and fundamentalist christian law? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6jee6k/eli5_whats_the_differences_between_sharia_law_and/ | {
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"This is a loaded question and honestly, I'm gonna say that I'm not gonna give a well-researched answer.\n\nFundamentally, I see no difference. They're both based on a theocratic mindset of enforcing a very authoritarian controlling view and mindset of the religion onto the government and other people.\n\nHell, when you get down to it, fundamentalist Christianity would predate Sharia law simply because one is older than the other. Not really the point though.\n\nThe only difference, imo, is really just geography."
]
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11zatx | the "tulip mania" craze in the 1600s in netherlands and why it was important | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/11zatx/eli5_the_tulip_mania_craze_in_the_1600s_in/ | {
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"Eh, probs your best bet is to listen to this podcast from [Stuff You Missed In History Class](_URL_0_). Feb. 11 2011 episode. \n\nSecond question first: It's important because it's the first example we know of an asset bubble, and a good demonstration of how destructive a bubble can be to a country's economy. Therefore economist study it and how it worked to learn more about how to detect bubbles. Frankly, they could probably stand to do some more studying: Many people believe that the current shitty economy we have right now can be traced back to the rise and fall of a bubble in U.S. Home Prices. Remember how back in '05 there were like 19 different cable shows on how to flip houses? That was our tulip mania. \n\nFirst question: Tulips were a nifty looking flower, new to the Dutch in the 1600s. The Dutch were really rich at the time, controlling a lot of the trade between Europe and India and other places which produced spices. \n\nTulips are grown from bulbs, and can be dug up and saved over the winter and replanted in the spring. They come in a wide variety of colors, some a lot rarer than others --- rare hybrid bulbs can have stripes or bursts of two different colors. And you can't be 100% certain what color you're going to get when you replant them. In that sense they're sort of like a baseball card or a pokemon --- collectors buy tons trying to get those few rare ones. \n\nAs tulips became more popular, it became something you might use to show off, if you were a rich guy --- having a garden full of the rarest kind would be like having a Monet on the wall. Prices started to rise.\n\nBecause there was that gap between when you dug 'em up and when you replanted, a lot of the trading was based on futures contracts ---you pay me X amount now, I'll give you this many tulip bulbs next spring. Pretty quickly, people were buying and selling contracts not based on whether they actually wanted a bajillion dollars worth of tulips themselves, but because they figured that with the prices spiking so high they could buy a tulip contract today and sell it in a couple months for a lot more money. Viola: The world's first asset bubble. \n\nThat's the essence of a bubble, when people are buying stuff for high prices not because they think it's actually worth that much but because they think some other sucker will be sure to come along soon who will be willing to pay more than them. Any break in the line of suckers, and prices quickly come crashing back to earth --- wiping out all the people who bought in as the bubble was inflating. \n\nEdit to add: Plus economists just like using it for an example because it seems so insane to people that the price of fucking flowers could possibly be that important to a whole country's economy. ",
"Partially because it is one the best known examples of an economic bubble and perhaps more importantly because its more interesting to talk about a tulip craze than sub-prime mortgages."
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3lobnp | why do buzzfeed and similar articles make you click next to see the next paragraph? | It's such an inconvenient design, there must be some gimmick behind it. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3lobnp/eli5_why_do_buzzfeed_and_similar_articles_make/ | {
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"For each new page, they have more ad view, thus more money. Technically inclined sites may also use it to measure the popularity of each articles since bored reader won't click past the first page. ",
"Advertising. Money.\n\nWhen you click 'next' on their page to see the next bit of the article, you refresh the page, allowing for new ads to load up. Displaying an entire article on one scrollable page will limit the number of ads they can show for any given visitor. "
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3gn9v3 | why can't my 10 year old notebook play youtube videos (in 480p) without heavily lagging anymore? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3gn9v3/eli5why_cant_my_10_year_old_notebook_play_youtube/ | {
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"Because of bloated updates. Every software developer assumes you're going to constantly update your hardware and connection, so they keep putting unneccessary (I know that's subjective) stuff in their software that means your computer needs to recieve and process a lot more data to get the same content.",
"Youtube videos from 10 years ago used flash video, then youtube switched to h.264, which on it's own needs a good implementation to run fast. they added features to make the videos work more like streaming; being able to shift between resolutions as bandwidth allows, downloading only a certain amount of a video at once to increase server availibility. each feature required maybe a couple megahertz to run, and additional memory to handle the increased demands.\n\nMy guess is the memory is the bottleneck on your system, especially if the gfx card and cpu are running on the same memory."
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8oq7ki | how does google keep their map updated? | They always seem to have all the roads and construction updated immediately. How? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8oq7ki/eli5_how_does_google_keep_their_map_updated/ | {
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"There are a lot of sources that Google can pull from, and obviously they don't really disclose all of them. They own Waze so a lot of the closure data is sourced from the users submitting real time info there. Users running Maps on mobile devices or in Android Auto that are still opted in to data sharing will also allow Maps to gather real time data about detours, traffic issues, and the like. \n\nBefore the [Maps vandalism incident](_URL_0_) there was a system called Map Maker where trusted users could directly edit the map itself in near real time. With high enough trust levels changes were published instantly. Old trusted users from that system still have some level of ability to publish changes quicker in the updated Maps interface. There are also the Local Guides program still in place where again trusted users can submit info. \n\nChanges to roads and boundaries are handled by a much smaller team now, but with better community hive mind input, they can spend time validating road updates and not as much time dealing with correcting point of interest edits like hours, phone numbers, websites, and closed businesses that all rely on community consensus to publish to the map more or less automatically. "
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"http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-32704566"
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e5eubz | how come some diseases can be curable when it's in its early stages, but uncurable when it's at its later stages? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/e5eubz/eli5_how_come_some_diseases_can_be_curable_when/ | {
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"In Rabies, the most terrifying disease known to humankind, the turningpoint in being able to treat it is basically the moment that you show symptoms. This is because for the vaccine to take effect your body needs time to experience the virus, and to develop an answer to it in the form of antibodies. Once Rabies hits your nervous system, it travels extremely fast to the brain, and basically destroys it. bummer, and also nightmarish.",
"Diseases have a harmful effect on your body tissues and can cause destruction, disrupt mechanisms etc. With the disease progression such effects increases and it becomes harder for body to compensate for the damage. Different diseases have different mechanisms of progression and destruction and spread. For example when a cancer is in initial stages its limited to one spot and simply cutting it out solves the problem but with time it grows and it causes more destruction of the underlying structures which could be very vital and then its no longer such an easy approach. Another example would be a simple infection from your tooth. If the pus is drained initially its easier for your body to heal if not it can lead to relatively rare but very lethal forms and then your body just doesnt have enough capability to recover",
"It depends a lot on the specific disease. Parasitic diseases for example have multiple stages of lifespan, and deal more damage the further they progress. Take malaria: When bitten by a mosquito, you first get infected with something called a sporozoite. This travels to the liver cells, where it makes a bunch of clones of itself called merozoites. These merozoites then travel to red blood cells, where they burrow in and basically hijack the cell. In here, they reproduce a bunch more until there's so many of them the cell explodes, spreading more merozoites. Once inside a red blood cell, a merozoite is essentially invulnerable, because it has an entire cell as a defensive layer, so treatment that can pre-emptively destroy the sporozoites could be effective, while one that targets merozoites will be largely useless.",
"How come you can blow out a candle, but you can't blow out a forest fire?",
"Imagine the microbe is a home intruder, and your body is your house. If the intruder busts in and you call the cops on time, they arrest him and you can go to work repairing the busted window and putting away the things he threw around.\n\nNow imagine you don’t wake up, the cops don’t come, the intruder sets your house on fire, and it burns down to the ground. Some damage can’t be undone."
]
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aw857w | how does alien hand syndrome work. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/aw857w/eli5_how_does_alien_hand_syndrome_work/ | {
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"It’s a symptom of brain damage where your hand moves without your conscious control. \n\nIt’s thought to when the various parts of the brain that are in control of movement are disconnected. For example your unconscious brain decides it needs to touch your face but the usual associated conscious thought “l’m going to touch my face” is missing. So it feels horribly ‘alien’."
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7dg45x | why do we get tempted and where does this burning urge to do something originate? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7dg45x/eli5_why_do_we_get_tempted_and_where_does_this/ | {
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"I don't have an answer, just trying to help: if your question is personal, and you're having unstoppable burning urges to do things over and over, especially if they're dangerous things, you should talk with a psychiatrist about obsessive-compulsive disorder.\n\n_URL_0_"
]
} | [] | [] | [
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"https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/topics/obsessive-compulsive-disorder-ocd/index.shtml"
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||
2z0ljt | the difference between warm and cold sound in music. | I'm buying myself an audio card now and I don't know whether I should go for colder or warmer sound. I don't know what does that mean. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2z0ljt/eli5_the_difference_between_warm_and_cold_sound/ | {
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"text": [
"The way most people describe audio quality is just an approximation - a shortcut to describe either technical or subjective differences in the way speakers, sound cards, media or compression techniques sound to the listener. Some terms most people agree on just because they \"feel\" right.\n\n\"Warmer\" sound usually refers to more presence in the lower mids and bass. \"Colder\" would be more treble and highs and less on the lower end. The middle is generally called \"flat\" or \"neutral\" which doesn't provide a great listener experience but is often better for people who work with sound professionally, like audio producers and engineers.\n\nPeople describe speakers and media in the same way. I see \"Analog is Warmer\" t-shirts from time to time. It's because digital produces crisper high-end, and some people prefer the duller highs you get on vinyl and tape because it produces less separation and makes the music feel a little more holistic.\n\n(Audio snobs malign Beats and Bose headphones for being too warm, but they're popular among less-stuffy listeners because most people prefer a warm sound with more bass. But some music is better with less bass - classical and acoustic music, for example, since too much bass can muddy the sound and prevent the listener from hearing some of the finer details in the high end.)\n\nMy advice on your sound card would be not to worry about it too much. Get one that's well-rated and don't sweat it. In my experience people who obsess about the warmth of something like a sound card aren't listening to their music, they're listening to their equipment. It's likely that your speakers and EQ settings will have a much greater effect on your experience than your sound card."
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1lepna | why, in statistics, you would use standard deviations instead of average deviations | I don't know much about statistics but to me it seems like an averaging the deviations would be more accurate than using the root mean square. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1lepna/eli5_why_in_statistics_you_would_use_standard/ | {
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"The average of deviations would always be zero, for one.\n\nYou *could* take the absolute value of the deviation.\n\nProbably the best answer is that a normal distribution is easier to write with the root-mean-square deviation as a parameter vs. the average absolute deviation (in other words, standard deviation is a more natural parameter for the normal distribution). Also, we see normal distributions everywhere; they're not just an artificial thing.\n\nFor distributions that are significantly different from a normal distribution, alternative measures of deviation would indeed be more appropriate, but in my experience these only come up in very specialized situations."
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5qn7cc | why do car batteries have a positive and negative side which need jumper cables to charge, rather than a simple plug system like most other batteries? | A plug would make charging, and jump-starting a lot easier | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5qn7cc/eli5_why_do_car_batteries_have_a_positive_and/ | {
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"Battery posts have been standardized for ages now, so companies would have to add an inbuilt plug ontop of the terminals. More cost for little less user effort i guess?",
"Batteries all have a positive and a negative side. I am not quite sure what plug you are talking about that most other batteries use. The terminals are often standard but the location of the terminals is determined by the layout of the battery and can not be standardized across different types of batteries. Military vehicles, buses and trucks often do have a standard plug for charging the battery and jump starting the vehicle. However this have not catched on with normal cars yet."
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2391dn | how are product activation codes produced? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2391dn/eli5_how_are_product_activation_codes_produced/ | {
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"text": [
"Product activation codes are produced by an algorithm by the company that makes software. You know the tickets they sell for raffles? The tickets come in pairs and have the same number on them. The same for product activation codes. They are all made in a sequence and once you enter yours in, the one on the company's side is registered to your account and can't be reused."
]
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7tnm3z | if good feelings are caused by dopamine and serotonin, why do various things like happiness, pleasure, satisfaction and enjoyment feel so different? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7tnm3z/eli5_if_good_feelings_are_caused_by_dopamine_and/ | {
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"A common mis-understood aspect is that Dopamine (DA) and Serotonin (5-HT) are the 'feel good' neurotransmitters, and while that is true it is only partially true. Your brain is efficient and is not going to make 1,00000 different kinds of transmitters for different communications. Instead, it has different tracts throughout the nervous system in which a handful of these neurotransmitters relay different signals. So for example, in a particular tract (\"bunch of wiring\") in your brain 5-HT will work as a feel good/anti-depressant messenger, but at the same time, in a different tract 5-HT deals with your vomiting reflex. etc.\n\nAnother example of this involving DA: DA in one tract causes 'feel good' emotions, while DA in another tract allows someone to initiate movements. This is actually the issue in people with Parkinson's Disease. They have low DA in the part of the brain that uses DA to move. If you notice we cant cure Parkinson's by letting the patient snort coke or orgasm because while that increases DA levels, it increases it in the wrong part of the brain.\n\nAnother thing to keep in mind is that there are several variations of these transmitters.\n\nHope this helps!"
]
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6xgyan | why is it that when in an airplane, if the plane rolls for a turn, you don't really feel those effects of gravity inside the cabin. i imagine it has something to do with the pressurized cabin? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6xgyan/eli5_why_is_it_that_when_in_an_airplane_if_the/ | {
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"You do feel the \"gravity\" effects in the form on increased G's although, commercial flights usually minimize the effects with more gentle turns.\nThe more \"co-ordinated\" a turn is, the more the perceived motion is minimized. Co-ordinated turn is a combination of ailerons, elevator and rudder. Keeps all of the xtra g-force downwards through your feet/bottom of the plane.\n\nTrust me, I can make you feel the \"gravity\" if you want to.....",
"The plane banks in such a way that the force making you turn is perpendicular to the seat. A higher bank would make one slide in the direction of gravity. A lower bank would make you slide away from the turn. When a plane banks, I can feel myself being pushed harder \"down\" (toward the floor, not toward the ground) into the seat.\n\nThere's the same idea with a road banking going around a curve.\n"
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1r7id6 | how is it that large food chains are allowed to keep their secret ingredients legally kept from the public at the risk of allergies or religious considerations? | Even if it's not a large food chain, if you wanted to keep the ingredients to a dish secret, are they allowed to keep it a secret legally? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1r7id6/eli5_how_is_it_that_large_food_chains_are_allowed/ | {
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"text": [
"They are protected by trade secret laws. If a consumer is concerned about allergies, then they should stay away from the food. It is public knowledge that there is a trade secret. It's just not public knowledge what the ingredients are."
]
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|
1ydnle | what are the rules of curling? how does one win it? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1ydnle/eli5_what_are_the_rules_of_curling_how_does_one/ | {
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"text": [
"Whoever gets their rock closest to the centre scores on that round. They get a point for each rock that is closer to the centre than the closest opponent rock. \n\nThere are other subtleties as to who gets to throw last in each round, but the scoring is pretty basic."
]
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4prro3 | why is lamb and duck so expensive in the united states? | [deleted] | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4prro3/eli5_why_is_lamb_and_duck_so_expensive_in_the/ | {
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"text": [
"Re Lamb, the US Sheep industry is (according to [this] (_URL_0_)) 1/10 the size it was in the 1940s. The linked article has a good explanation of why this happened: changing tastes after WW2. The Lamb you see in stores is probably imported from New Zealand, which explains the price. ",
"They are not commonly eaten and so they are not commonly raised for food. Their supplies are much smaller and that means the prices are higher. "
]
} | [] | [] | [
[
"http://harvestpublicmedia.org/article/long-slow-decline-us-sheep-industry"
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|
2z3oio | please explain why pedophelia was/is such a huge thing among uk gov. officials. | I keep hearing all these stories about "abuse parties" and whatnot. Wtf is up with all of this? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2z3oio/eli5_please_explain_why_pedophelia_wasis_such_a/ | {
"a_id": [
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"text": [
"Even though pedophilia as such refers only to attraction to *prepubescent* children( < 13, usually < 11), it is commonly used to describe any sexual activity with a minor( < 18). So it's very easy to \"catch\" a lot of people that way.\n\nAs to why UK gov. officials screw young girls(or boys)? Because they can get away with it."
]
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4vp647 | if we are omnivores why are so many people uncomfortable at the idea of killing an animal or seeing a dead one. | This isn't some kind of vegan Checkmate carnivore thing. I was just wondering why So many people are disgusted by seeing a dead animal or put off of the idea of killing for food.
If this is a learned behavior Shouldn't our instincts trump that?
if the answer is fear of rot shouldn't our instinct to at least be to investigate if an animal is worth eating? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4vp647/eli5_if_we_are_omnivores_why_are_so_many_people/ | {
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"Many people in the modern world never need to kill and prepare an animal, and only associate with animals in benign fashions, or already prepared. So the act of killing and preparing an animal is unfamiliar and unnerving.",
"Most people are naturally empathetic. When we see a dead animal we recognise the fact that that was an animal that felt pain, had feelings and desires. In the past our ancestors needed to kill to survive; they still empathised with the animals (which is why virtually all early humans had rituals around killing), but they also knew that they had to kill animals to survive.\n\nModern humans (at least in the developed world) don't have the need to kill animals to survive. We know that when an animal is killed, we are extinguishing a sentient being's life. So when we see a dead animal or think of killing one, we don't have a balance between our empathy and our need, so our empathy takes over and we feel that discomfort. For most people it's enough to just not be reminded of the fact that the meat they eat is a dead animal, so we hire others to do the killing and neatly package it up so as to alleviate our empathy.",
"Restaurant Startup Exec here.\n\nI was at my friend's place and saw his mom kill a chicken we then ate for dinner. It felt weird eating it.\n\nIn some historic tribes, women stayed home while men hunted. Men were more comfortable killing because that's what they did as habit. A normal person is weirded out by killing people , but as veterans will tell you, it gets easier.\n\nOur instincts may trump the discomfort if we're in survival mode, but for most of us, our food source is now the kitchen or dining table. We're not accustomed to killing animals because we're not constantly exposed to it. There are people to handle that for us.",
"This might be a better question for /r/philosophy, since much of it has to do with humans philosophical understanding of life, and how that understanding coupled with other psychological triggers, can be a depressant for certain actions.\n\nThere are lots of things that we did as a species a few thousand, or even a hundred years ago that many people would not be comfortable doing now; most of this simply has to do with education, and how your average being is much more understanding of the environment around them, and the implications their actions have, than they would have been a handful of generations earlier."
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3uv1j5 | why do we get interesting discussions on reddit, a community of strangers, but on facebook people who know each other seem to never say anything? | I see people start facebook groups, post interesting articles about different subjects on their walls, etc but most people just punch the like button and share boring memes. Someone suggested that most people view facebook on their phones and it is too hard to type whereas most reddit users are using laptops but I am not sure if it is that simple..is there a social factor at work? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3uv1j5/eli5_why_do_we_get_interesting_discussions_on/ | {
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"Sheer volume, your friend group may be 100 people if you are popular, but reddit had millions of people with varying ideas",
"anonymity helps people express themselves freely without judgement - Facebook your opinions are out there for public view, open to scrutiny by those close to you, friends, family, coworkers.. not really a place you want to be starting arguments or stirring the shit pot of shitty adult ideas.",
"Reddit posts are meant to provoke discussion, and are on a specific subject matter, which also provokes discussion among those who know something. Also, reddit most likely has a higher overall intelligence than facebook. "
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66s991 | what is it about light and shadows that help humans determine whether it's sunrise or sunset? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/66s991/eli5_what_is_it_about_light_and_shadows_that_help/ | {
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"Several things help you distinguish between sunrise and sunset:\n\n* Mornings usually have the colder night air, compared to evenings that may still have the warm air from the day, so even if the sun is the same distance from the horizon and appears the same, you can tell by the temperature, wind, etc.\n\n* Near the horizon, the sun visibly moves, and because its rays are dispersed by the atmosphere, you can stare at it because it's soft orange rather than blindingly white/yellow. So you can easily see it move downwards or upwards.\n\n* You have an internal sense we call the biological clock that tells you whether it's morning or evening. Even without alarm clocks or any windows, you will wake up, get hungry, etc., on a cycle that more or less corresponds with the day.\n\n* You also get used to the position of the sun relative to where you're living, so you know without even thinking about it whether you're looking east or west at the sun."
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fmvdj4 | why is it uncommon for men to moan during sex? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/fmvdj4/eli5_why_is_it_uncommon_for_men_to_moan_during_sex/ | {
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"We train ourselves to be silent while masturbating in our early teens. It carries over later in life. It CAN be untrained, however, with a vocal and receptive partner.",
"Men are usually the more active side during sex. For some guys staying hard, checking partner's pleasure and keeping overal rhythm is not all that easy, so it would be hard to additionally moan as well.",
"Perhaps a better way to phrase this question is \"why do women moan during sex?\".\n\nThis behavior is not limited to human beings - the silent male and vocal female is common in other primates as well.\n\nAs best we can guess, it's an issue of communication. The male is performing all the primary activity of mating, so he doesn't really need to communicate to the female - his actions are communicating whatever is needed. In contrast, the female is primarily receptive of these actions, so she needs to communicate to the make if she wants to guide that action."
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8n1kll | does nutritional research vary so much because our species is evolving to counteract our diets or do we just know so little about nutrition? | Honestly feel like everyone is bs'ing because there are so many conflicting opinions on nutrition as a whole. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8n1kll/eli5_does_nutritional_research_vary_so_much/ | {
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"We know very little about nutrition. It is a remarkably complicated subject with some really advanced chemistry.\n\nAlmost all of our advice is empirical, people tried it and it worked, they figured out how much of x people needed on average because people were getting sick without it.\n\nEvolution takes place over hundreds of thousands of years, and we as humans only started having easy access to food in the last century or two.",
"It's more the latter.\n\nIn science, there's a divide between empirical and observational - and the latter yields much less definitive answers.\n\nIf you want to know how to feed your rat, science has great answers. We know all about rat nutrition because we can take a large number of nearly identical rats, precisely control their diet/activity and observe the outcome. We can test fine discrepancies between different diets to the point where the major limitation isn't our ability to ask the question but rather finding someone willing to ask it in the first place.\n\nUnfortunately, you can't do this with human beings. Our knowledge of rat dietary needs is certainly useful in understanding human dietary needs, but there are meaningful differences that mean we can't just cut-and-paste the results. Nor can we breed large numbers of nearly identical humans and precisely control their diet/activity in a lab setting. Even if we could, the lifespan of human beings is too great to get useful results in a reasonable time period - you'd need to breed generations of scientists to run the experiment while you were breeding your generations of test subjects.\n\nSo our alternative is to observe what happens 'in the wild'. Unfortunately, this is incredibly difficult as well. There's essentially no way to get accurate food intake information without a massive selection bias (the people who precisely and accurately record everything they eat are a very different group than the people who don't).\n\nFor example, vegans and people who keep kosher/halal have much better dietary outcomes than people who just each 'whatever'. However, the reason this is true has absolutely nothing to do with what foods they arbitrarily decide are off-limits and absolutely everything to do with the fact that such people pay very close attention to what they're eating. Indeed, one of the first things a nutritionist will tell you to do is to keep a food log for this very reason - writing down what you eat doesn't change the nutritional value of your food any, but it does change *how* you eat.\n\nYou also run afoul of the fact that different people have very different responses to nutrition. Not only are there genetic differences, but the individual makeup of your gut flora can play a huge role. This makes it very difficult to do any sort of multi-factor analysis because you don't really know what the factors are - and you certainly don't know which parts of your data set possess which factors.\n\nLastly, there's the simple truth that dieting and food are large commercial enterprises.\n\nConsider the classic food pyramid. As originally created, this included a massive amount of grain in comparison to, say, meat. However, this was less reflective of solid science than it was the fact that the USDA is the department of *Agriculture* and 'Agriculture' means \"wheat and corn\" not \"salmon\".\n\nLikewise, if you're running Weight Watchers, you've got a certain nutritional strategy you're heavily invested in. Given that an individual will almost never be able to tell the difference between one and another - the effects are far too subtle and long-term - it's far easier to go with the strategy you've already built up than tear everything down and start anew. If someone comes along and advises a different approach, you're probably going to set your marketing team on them to reduce their impact on your bottom line.\n\nInterestingly enough, there are places where we know a great deal about nutrition. For example, if you got lost in a frozen tundra and lived at starvation levels for a year, we know exactly what you should eat to get healthy again. Likewise, people who are interested solely in building muscle without any concern for long-term health consequences have a very good idea what they should eat.\n\nBoth of those results come from having very good data sets with controlled variables - and unfortunately don't really apply to people who are just looking to live a healthy lifestyle.",
"I just want to point out that evolution takes many *thousands* of years and is absolutely *not* directed. You don't \"evolve\" to \"counteract\" something. You don't even evolve to adapt -- you evolve **randomly** (again, over many thousands of years) and if you're lucky, that raindom trait helps you adapt and becomes the norm. \n\nAnd that's a huge \"if\". \n"
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2m88c4 | why do pupils dilate while on certain drugs and why does this not affect vision? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2m88c4/eli5_why_do_pupils_dilate_while_on_certain_drugs/ | {
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"**Edit** The use of the word \"hormone\" in the explanation below is inaccurate. As /u/Eulers_ID pointed out, pupil dilation is a neurological response, not a hormonal one.\n\nPupils dilate for several reasons, and it really depends on what kind of drugs you're talking about. There are drugs specifically designed to dilate pupils, like you'd get at the eye doctor.\n\nOther than lighting, reasons your pupils dilate are as a response to danger or threat, sexual arousal, concentration, as well as many other emotional responses involving the sympathetic nervous system. The root cause for pupil dilation is change in various hormone levels, depending on the situation.\n\nAll any drug does is mimick or alter ~~hormone levels~~ biological systems already present in the body.\n\nRecreational drugs cause pupils to dilate as a result of altered ~~hormone levels~~ neurological states. Elevated serotonin and adrenaline levels both lead to pupil dilation. Since ~~most~~ recreational drugs ~~increase these hormones~~ affect the central nervous system, your pupils tend to get bigger when you take them. This does alter your vision, allowing more light to reach the optical centers. You may not perceive this change in vision because these drugs are also effecting your sense of perception in several other ways.",
"You're doing the wrong drugs if your vision isn't affected."
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2m7km1 | why haven't gas giants like jupiter and saturn collapsed into rocky planets like venus or earth? | I get that planets are left over star dust that collapsed into smaller bodies after the star formed. If I understand correctly, over billions of years, the accumulated star stuff formed the planets, and while some planets were small and rocky, other planets were huge and gaseous. Even though Jupiter is many many times the size of the earth, and has more gravity, it hasn't compressed into something as dense as the earth.
Why? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2m7km1/eli5why_havent_gas_giants_like_jupiter_and_saturn/ | {
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"Because there is a difference between a solid and a gas. Rocky planets are composed of solid matter like dust particles, rocks, asteroids, comets, etc. Gas planets are compose of just that: gas. The thing about compressing a gas down into a more dense form is that this doesn't always result in it becoming a liquid or a solid -- sometimes it results in the gas igniting. This is essentially what is happening inside stars. The immense gravity causes the gas to collapse in on itself, which causes it to heat up and fuse and release all kinds of heat and light and radiation. Planets like Jupiter have much of the right elemental composition to become stars, but they lack the necessary gravity. As immense as they are, they still aren't big enough to collapse under their own gravity, and even if they were, they wouldn't become rocky planets.",
" > Why haven't gas giants like Jupiter and Saturn collapsed into rocky planets like Venus or earth?\n\nBecause planets like Venus and Earth didn't \"collapse\" into rocky planets. Instead, most of the lighter elements, like hydrogen and helium, were blown away by the solar wind, leaving behind heavier, \"rocky\" elements.\n\nBy contrast, Jupiter is far enough away from the sun to retain its predominantly-hydrogen atmosphere, but it's assumed that it still has a rocky core."
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55gnd2 | why do some companies file bankruptcy but keep operating, while others dont? | They always say in the news that a company filed for chapter x bankruptcy, but what do they mean? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/55gnd2/eli5_why_do_some_companies_file_bankruptcy_but/ | {
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"The act of filing bankruptcy serves many purposes, including protection from debtors. The \"default position\" is that the company is going under, but then the argument goes that if you can get it back and running then you can return _something more than zero_ to those who are owed money by said organization. So...thats better than going under to all parties (employees, lenders, suppliers, etc...). So...as long as you can demonstrate that you're fucked and that without bankruptcy relief you'd cease to exist then you can get bankruptcy.\n\nThe ones that don't continue to operate are the ones where there is no clear path out of bankruptcy. For example, if the company filing bankruptcy had no customers then it would seem unlikely that a restructuring of debt would result in a healthy company capable of returning at least something to lenders or suppliers, or one that could pay its employees.",
"A company is insolvant when it can't pay its debts.\n\nFilling for bankruptcy means that the company can't be sued. All the creditors (the people the company owes) meet and lodge how much they are owed.\n\nThere are two types of creditors, secured and unsecured. Secured creditors have a companys asset secured against the debt. For a person this is like having a morgage on a house. The bank can come in and sell the house if you default on the loan. These are looked after first. After that the unsecured are paid.\n\nIf a company has $1mil in debt but only $500,000 in assets then (assuming there are no secured creditors) everyone gets half of what they are owed.\n\nOnce bankruptcy is filled the company has to work out and agree with the creditors the best way forward. After review it will be established what the best way to get everyone paid as best as possible.\n\nIt may be that the company just needs to stop everything right now and sell every asset they have. It may be that staying open and selling as much goods as possible (commonly called a fire sale) and then close. Or it may be that the company can be turned arround and become solvent again if it can find finance to continue operating.\n\nHowever the key point is they will do what is best to get as much money for the creditors as possible.",
"There are basically two types of bankruptcy for businesses. The chapter numbers refer to the chapter of Title 11 of the United States Code, which contains the bankruptcy code.\n\nChapter 7 bankruptcy is commonly called a liquidation. The company is no longer able to pay its debts and is no longer capable of being a going concern. The company's assets are sold and the creditors are paid out of the proceeds of the sale. There is an order in which people are paid -- secured creditors first, then unsecured creditors, then stockholders. After a Chapter 7 is complete the company is out of business.\n\nChapter 11 bankruptcy is commonly called a reorganization. The company is no longer able to pay its debts but still has a future as a viable concern. The company files a plan of reorganization detailing how it will handle its outstanding creditors. The creditors and stockholders have to approve the plan. The bankruptcy court appoints a trustee to negotiate terms and work out a viable plan and settle the company's obligations. If they can negotiate and work out an agreement, the court will likely accept the reorganization plan. Once the reorganization is complete the company can come out of the protection of bankruptcy and resume normal operations.",
"An ELI5 Version: You can run out of money in two main ways:\n\n1. I have $5. I owe 3 people $10 each and I have to pay them tomorrow. 3 separate people owe me $10 each but they don't owe me until next week. I could declare bankruptcy which legally lets me keep going for a week until those people pay me, then I can pay what I owe. In that week nobody can take the $5 off me.\n\n2. I have $5. I owe 10 people $10 each and I have to pay them tomorrow. 3 separate people owe me $10 each next week. So I declare bankruptcy and the business is shut down, with a court deciding how that $35 is shared out when it comes in.\n\nThat's the difference between illiquid (1) and insolvent (2)."
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6r0fy9 | - the 2nd ingredient in beef jerky is water. how can that be? isn't beef jerky just dried meat? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6r0fy9/eli5_the_2nd_ingredient_in_beef_jerky_is_water/ | {
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"It's marinated before they dry it. The water provides a medium for the spices to soak in. It appears they are not correcting for the fact that the water has evaporated.",
"The jerkey is not totally void of water after all. If it were it would be a pile of carbon powder. Even though the jerkey is very dry water still counts as the 2nd ingredient by weight. Water is heavy. The weight of the salt, sugar, and nitrates are minuscule."
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1zmfkh | the children's crusade | I have heard the name and I know what a crusade is, but I don't what took place in this one. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1zmfkh/eli5_the_childrens_crusade/ | {
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"the man organising it was seen to be a complete fool and was arrested by the king of England at the time as he was collecting children from all over Europe (I think I remember correctly)",
"(you'll get a much better answer at /r/askhistorians)"
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aylz4m | what does a psychiatrist do that a therapist does not? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/aylz4m/eli5_what_does_a_psychiatrist_do_that_a_therapist/ | {
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"A psychiatrist is a physician, a medical doctor, and thus has the ability to diagnose and prescribe meds. A therapist can be a PhD but is rarely an MD, and thus cannot prescribe."
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3e7rxv | why don't hospitals and other medical companies get in trouble for gouging their prices? | When there is a natural disaster, like a hurricane, gas companies aren't legally allowed to charge $7/gal just because they know people will still have to buy their gas. Why aren't hospitals treated the same way? I saw a post on reddit earlier about how one person was charged $12 for a paper cup and $200 for a teddy bear? Also on /r/rage there is a post showing how a metal trey cost $800 for a hospital to use. Why is this legal? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3e7rxv/eli5_why_dont_hospitals_and_other_medical/ | {
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"Price gouging refers to preferential charging (aka, charging someone more than someone else because you can) or taking advantage of a situation (hurricane=raised prices) just because you can.\n\nIf the prices are obscene and crazy for everyone, every day of the year, it's not price gouging. It's just a crappy system.",
"Why? because the people profiting lobby the fuck out of those that have the power to hold them accountable. It is blatant fascism in the Mussolini definition of \"a merger of state and corporate power\". The corporate arm rubs the back of the statesmen, the state's arm rubs the back of the corporation. ",
"I think /u/geriatric-sanatore explained well it in a [similar question](_URL_0_)\n\nAnd as /u/MyNameIsRay said, it's not gouging if the prices remain fixed, albeit a incomprehensibly high price.",
"It is illegal to give preferential charging or to take advantage of a temporary emergency. Simply having high prices is not price gouging. ",
"The people who have the power to possibly make the changes earn enough to pay for top tier insurance",
"This is one of those questions you could answer in many ways and be correct. A big reason is that there isn't any real competition. Nobody I know shops around for medical services or pits one practice against another as if they were shopping for a car.\n\nNobody I know even asks the doctor for a price before they agree to a procedure even though there isn't any good reason why a rough estimate of ALL the costs couldn't be provided ahead of time."
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1umsuo | how can we "freeze" semen and eggs? | I was under the impression that when you freeze organic material, the water in the cells expands, puncturing the cell membrane and rendering the cell dead. I thought that cryogenics has been decidedly impossible because of that.
What am I missing? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1umsuo/eli5_how_can_we_freeze_semen_and_eggs/ | {
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"You're correct in your thought that freezing living cells (especially animal cells) would result in their death due due to the formation of water crystals. Even if you put the cells directly in liquid nitrogen, the formation of ice crystals would still destroy the cell membrane. To overcome this, labs that freeze cells, including fertility labs, will place the cells in a solution that contains a \"cryoprotectant\". As the name suggests, a cryoprotectant protects cells from the freezing process (scientists aren't usually very creative when they name things). In many laboratories, two common cryoprotectants are Glycerol and Dimethol Sulfoxide (DMSO).\n\nDMSO functions to dehydrate the cells in a controlled way. If they are frozen while they dehydrate, then the ice crystals will not form inside the cells. Theoretically, when they are thawed, the DMSO is diluted out and the cells can rehydrate. However, if the cells are left in DMSO too long before freezing, they will dehydrate and die, which is bad.\n\nGlycerol functions in a slightly different way. When water freezes, the water molecules form crystals due to hydrogen bonds between the oxygen and hydrogen atoms in the water molecules. Glycerol has the fun effect of also forming strong hydrogen bonds with water molecules. So, if you add glycerol to a solution containing water, then the glycerol molecules will run interference and inhibit the water from freezing at \"moderately\" low temperatures (greater then -37˚F or -38˚C). Below this temperature, ice crystals will form but they will be much smaller and therefore not damage the cell membranes as much.\n\nNow, a common misconception that people have regarding cryopreservation is what is referred to as the \"cell viability\" after the cells are thawed, this is literally just the percent of frozen cells that are still alive once they are thawed. Even with a cryoprotectant, many many many cells will die. Depending on the cell type, it can be as low as 40% cell viability; most fertility clinics that freeze sperm or eggs will have viabilities near or around 50%. While this seems low, consider that cell vials will contain millions of cells, so even if 40-50% die, there are still plenty of viable cells left to fertilize eggs. This is also why women who freeze eggs generally don't just freeze one or two.\n\nNow, to address your other question: why can't we do this with people? To keep the answer simple, there are two main reasons. The first is what I just said, not every cell that is frozen comes back. If we froze you down, using cryoprotectants, with a viability rate of 50% after thaw...there just wouldn't be much of you left alive. The second main reason is that the human body is made of more than just cells. Many many cells exist in a complex network of proteins called the \"extracellular matrix or ECM\", or matrix that exists outside the cell (again, not very creative). The freezing process could still have substantial negative effects on the integrity of the the ECM, the function of the proteins that make it up, or a host of other issues. However, even in the light of these massive problems with freezing a whole organism, nature has found a way!! Some animals that live in climates that can freeze have developed anti-freeze proteins that allow them to be frozen and thaw without dying. So perhaps there is still hope for the cryogenics field, but right now...all you would end up with is a human shaped meat pop-sickle!\n\n\n"
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l0pno | us monetary system | I am trying to understand how the FED works but unfortunately the Wiki article is going right over my head. I think I may need some sort of terminology lesson or something before I can begin understanding this. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/l0pno/eli5_us_monetary_system/ | {
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"In classical macroeconomics the shortterm state of the economy is believed to be the result of a balance on two different markets. \n\n\n**The Goods Market**\nThe Goods Market is in equilibrium when everything that is produced is sold. The supply matches the demand. If either supply or demand change in unforseen ways (ie. a recession, nobody buys stuff anymore) the government has means of steering back to the equilibirum. The most straight forward action the government will take is invest money into the economy. This will raise production, thus income of the people, thus consumption, thus production again and so on. \nWhen government raises production like that more transactions between economic entities take place. This raises the demand for money and leads us to the second market.\n\n**The Monetary Market**\nThe Money Market starts with the FED handing out money, it does so by auctioning out money to private banks. The banks compete with the interest rate they are willing to pay to get that money. They also lend money between each other and to entrepreneurs, so there is a general interest for money that settles in. If, for some reason, the production of an economy raises, the demand for money raises, as explained above. This will raise the 'price' of money: the interest rate. It also works the other way round: if the interest rate is kept low, more investors invest in the real economy, because they can't get good returns at the monetary market.\nSo the FED, as the government, has means of steering the output of an economy. Either by changing the money supply, or by changing the interest rate (this works by buying/selling up bonds).\n\n\n\nIt is generally accepted that it is best for the central bank to be not controlled by the government.\nMany macroeconomic adjustments have different effect in the short and in the long term. With a typical legislature period taking 4 years there is a strong incentive for politicians to take advantage of the short term positive effects while ignoring long term negative effect.\nFor example, printing more money to pay your administration staff may seem like a good idea but will eventually lead to hyperinflation and disrupt your economy.\n\n\n\nThere is a lot missing in here, mainly because everything is kind of interconnected and influences each other.\nThis is also just a model, the real economy works in mysteriuos ways, but economists do their best to observe the basic rules that govern it, and thus help us to have at least some way of steering it.",
"In classical macroeconomics the shortterm state of the economy is believed to be the result of a balance on two different markets. \n\n\n**The Goods Market**\nThe Goods Market is in equilibrium when everything that is produced is sold. The supply matches the demand. If either supply or demand change in unforseen ways (ie. a recession, nobody buys stuff anymore) the government has means of steering back to the equilibirum. The most straight forward action the government will take is invest money into the economy. This will raise production, thus income of the people, thus consumption, thus production again and so on. \nWhen government raises production like that more transactions between economic entities take place. This raises the demand for money and leads us to the second market.\n\n**The Monetary Market**\nThe Money Market starts with the FED handing out money, it does so by auctioning out money to private banks. The banks compete with the interest rate they are willing to pay to get that money. They also lend money between each other and to entrepreneurs, so there is a general interest for money that settles in. If, for some reason, the production of an economy raises, the demand for money raises, as explained above. This will raise the 'price' of money: the interest rate. It also works the other way round: if the interest rate is kept low, more investors invest in the real economy, because they can't get good returns at the monetary market.\nSo the FED, as the government, has means of steering the output of an economy. Either by changing the money supply, or by changing the interest rate (this works by buying/selling up bonds).\n\n\n\nIt is generally accepted that it is best for the central bank to be not controlled by the government.\nMany macroeconomic adjustments have different effect in the short and in the long term. With a typical legislature period taking 4 years there is a strong incentive for politicians to take advantage of the short term positive effects while ignoring long term negative effect.\nFor example, printing more money to pay your administration staff may seem like a good idea but will eventually lead to hyperinflation and disrupt your economy.\n\n\n\nThere is a lot missing in here, mainly because everything is kind of interconnected and influences each other.\nThis is also just a model, the real economy works in mysteriuos ways, but economists do their best to observe the basic rules that govern it, and thus help us to have at least some way of steering it."
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3qhag1 | what is a conflict of interest in business? can you give me an example of a famous one? | In Mad Men they keep saying that having two airlines would be a conflict. They bring this up again with fast food, cosmetics, and cars. What does this mean? Why can't a company like theirs have two clients in the same business? Is there a famous example of this in real life? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3qhag1/eli5_what_is_a_conflict_of_interest_in_business/ | {
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"A conflict of interest is when one relationship obligates you to do one thing but another obligates you to do something else.\n\nIn Mad Men, they're an advertising firm, right? If they had two clients who were airlines, running an advertising campaign for one of them would implicitly be harming their other client since the two airlines are competing for the same market share.\n\nMaybe a more visceral example is the conspiracy theory that a cure for cancer exists, but pharmaceutical companies don't produce it because it's more profitable to treat cancer over a person's lifetime instead of curing them of it once and for all. The conflict of interest there would be between their customers, whom they are obligated to treat, and their stockholders, to whom they are obligated to make the most money.",
"One airline offers Draper a suitcase of cash to half-ass it on the other airline's account. Or one airline accuses Draper of taking a suitcase of cash from the other airline (even if it's not true). Or Draper coordinates their marketing so that the two airlines combine forces to crush smaller competitors, making a duopoly. Or the workers on one account refuse to cooperate with the workers on the other account, causing in-fighting.\n\nIt's a headache all around and opens the company up for accusations and lawsuits. Better just to stick with one client."
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33ngfs | why do bad things happen when we humans or animals eat food from our species? aka cannibalization | Ive heard stories of people who have lived off human meat start getting uncontrollable shakes, animals getting sickness even when the "meat" is cooked. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/33ngfs/eli5_why_do_bad_things_happen_when_we_humans_or/ | {
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"None of the replies in here really address the issue.\n\nYes, bacteria, parasites, viruses, fungus and prions can be spread through cannibalism, but that isn't unique to cannibalism. Those can be spread through any food we eat! There is nothing inherently more dangerous about eating meat within your species, moral issues aside of course.\n\nNO- transplant reactions do NOT occur with cannibalism or any animal eating their own species. Transplant reactions occur when our T-cells reject transplants as non-self. The gut is constantly exposed to non-self, and so has different immune \"rules' that govern it, including higher tolerance to those types of things.\n\nAnd yes some people are probably wondering about Kuru, also called the \"shaking death\", which is where those urban legends probably stem from OP. Kuru is a nasty prion disease endemic to a tribe in New Guinea that practiced cannibalism. Kuru kept getting passed down between generations because younger generations continued to eat the infected meat of older generations. Its wasn't a problem specifically with the cannibalism per se. Prion diseases suck, and can be passed through infected meat of many different species.\n\nSo there are no special biological or physiological results from species eating their own species. ",
"It isn't bad for you if you're just eating the meat. If you're eating things like intestine, bone marrow, or brain, there's a higher risk of consuming these silly proteins that cause diseases like Mad Cow. These kinds of diseases can't be treated and will kill you. However, this has only been observed in one part of the world and may be an isolated incident.\n\nSo if you're worried, stick to the meat and make sure it's well done. Serial killing sure is fun but remember guys: SAFETY FIRST!!!",
"I scrolled the comments and adding my own knowledge, this is the gist of it:\n\nSupposing we're talking about purely sterile meat (no diseases, etc.), meat is meat. From a crab to a whale to a cow to a human. Meat is meat and our bodies are designed to metabolize (yay, science words!) it. I saw someone argue that the body will have an immune response to it, similar to your body rejecting a transplant organ. If you think about it, this can't be true. If it were, your body would fucking panic and destroy itself anytime you ate anything.\n\nIf the meat isn't 100% sterile:\n\nPrions are, as explained elsewhere, rare, but linked to cannabalism where generations recursively feed off the previous one. I.e., it was introduced at some point, accidentally and likely from another source, and has propogated forward.\n\nSomebody else here made a solid argument for catching something due to a lack of cross-species barrier. To sum it up, we don't get fish flu because fish flu is for fishes. However, human flu obviously affects us just fine.\n\nHopefully that's a decent summary!"
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37kp0f | what happens in war games? when countries are war gaming, how do casualties and fatalities occur? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/37kp0f/eli5_what_happens_in_war_games_when_countries_are/ | {
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"It depends on the exercise. Many war games are simply simulations; a warship might run a program on their own machines that simulates an enemy attack on radar/sonar, to train the crew in how to respond. Land forces might practice maneuvers and simulate shooting using [MILES](_URL_0_). Aircraft most likely practice maneuvers. All of this is in addition to gunnery practice on a range against moving or stationary targets, as well as standard classroom instruction.\n\nAs such, actual fatalities aren't really going to occur in war games, aside from accidents (mechanical or operator failure, usually; think of car crashes). They may simulate casualties by picking scenarios, but no one is going to be intentionally injured for the sake of practice.",
"They shoot blanks with a cap blocking the barrel with a sensor. Infantry wear a vest with multiple sensors located in different places and a loud alarm goes off when they're \"hit\". ",
"In the case of land forces (infantry companies, etc), we basically play laser tag. We wear a harness on our body armor and helmet (called MILES). Then, there's a sensor on our weapon, that shoots a laser when we fire a blank. If the laser makes contact with the sensor harness, we beep.... Very loud beep. The enemy (OPFOR - Opposing forces, usually another US military unit) tries to shoot us.\n\nOnce we get \"hit\", the Observer/Controller comes over, uses a key to silence our alarm. Then we pull out a \"kill card\" which has a casualty written on it. For example, my kill card might be that my leg is blown off. Surrounding troops must now treat my wounds as if my leg was actually blown off.\n\nShould I die, or become so wounded that I am out of the fight, I get transferred to the casualty collection point, where I am taken \"out of the game\" for 48-72 hours. At this point, the unit can \"request replacement\". Once the replacement comes in, I get a new kill card, and go back to my unit, as my own replacement.\n\n\n\nNow, sometimes, it's purely simulations. We use a lot of digital systems to track troops on the battlefield. An outside agency/unit will inject false data into our feed, to create events and units on the map. From there, the operations center will execute maneuvers. The outside agency will calculate the responses, and then inject the results into the feed. ",
"I might sound stupid, but what is a War Game?"
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5kjize | why when someone tells you not to think of something, it's all you think about? | [deleted] | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5kjize/eli5_why_when_someone_tells_you_not_to_think_of/ | {
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"I saw this on a \"quit cigarette's\" website once. \n\nThe way you brain processes information is something like this. If you say \"It is not raining\" your brain will subconsciously first picture rain then acknowledge that it is not present. However if you say \"it is sunny\" your brain will simply make a subconscious image of a sunny day. ",
"You just need to practise. Don't try to think of nothing, choose something else random to think about.... really hard. So hard that you scream it in your mind.",
"One description can be found in Wegner's work with, \"[Ironic processing theory](_URL_3_).\" [In one experiment](_URL_2_), people were told to think out-loud for five minutes. Then, those same people were told to not think of a white bear; if they did, they were instructed to ring a bell. People thought about the bear a lot. [Here's a video about it](_URL_1_). [Here's an article](_URL_0_) summarizing some of the first experiments and initial theory regarding this phenomenon.\n\nI am not sure if this has been addressed in recent literature or if this phenomenon has alternative explanations. I am not sure if these experiments can be used to explain day-to-day thought suppression. I will look into this and come back to edit this post.\n\nEdit: Link formatting.\n",
"Our brain is basically a machine designed to process all the input it gets from our senses. Auditory signals are a kind of input, and after the brain turns the signals into words you recognize, that recognition is helpfully provided with the things those words mean. You can't hear the words you know without understanding them (unless your brain is broken or miswired in a way that leads to that, there are neurological issues like that), much like you can't not see something you understand or willfully not read letters you know. \n\nSo the moment someone tells you not to think of something and you understand those instructions, they have already made you think of the very thing, since otherwise you'd not have understood (heard and processed) them. If they used a language you don't understand you'd have no trouble following the instructions, since, although you hear them, they don't get decoded into something your brain recognizes and has accurate associations it can deliver with them."
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3e770i | why has socialism been mostly unsuccessful? | I study political science so I'm not exactly uneducated on these things. Nearly every single political scientist and economist agree with socialism being a better social/economic system then capitalism.
No one can deny that capitalism doesn't work but why haven't socialist countries faired better? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3e770i/eli5why_has_socialism_been_mostly_unsuccessful/ | {
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"Switzerland. The Netherlands. Pretty much all of Scandinavia. All of these are socialist countries that are very successful. They have great economic policies, the citizens self-report being happier, education and Healthcare are rights, etc. ",
"Socialism as a political philosophy came into a world with extremely limited democratic participation, remnant feudal privilege, child labor, 18 hour work days, and next to no public education.\n\nI wouldn't say that socialism has been unsuccessful.\n\nWe in the West live in a world of social democracies where the question is not whether government should interfere in the economy to achieve socialist goals, but how much it should."
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4bfgh5 | why isn't google fiber expanding faster? is it not performing? are people not switching service as fast as they anticipated? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4bfgh5/eli5_why_isnt_google_fiber_expanding_faster_is_it/ | {
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"Laying down fiber is expensive. Unlike at & t or comcast, Google can't rely on an existing infrastructure to deliver their service. Tapping into existing lines is much cheaper than laying the lines down yourself. ",
"The point of Google Fiber is not for Google to be the nation's largest ISP. It's to push and pull the monopolistic telecoms to improve their products and give customer's satisfactory service (thereby improving Google's market position as a web company).",
"It is expensive to lay down optical fiber. Google Fiber was never intended to expand faster because of this. But just the room that Google Fiber might be coming to a region has been enough to make the existing companies improve their networks. So the goal of better internet is being met. ",
"First of all, it's prohibitively expensive to lay down new fiber. That's why you don't see other companies jumping at the opportunity. Even for the legacy cable providers it's more cost effective to raise prices on existing infrastructure than to improve it. It takes some deep pockets and a large investment to roll out fiber and you won't see a return on that investment for several years.\n\nSecondly, they have to get approval from the local governments where they are trying to deploy fiber. They need permits to bury the lines or use the poles from a multitude of places. Sometimes they are willing to cooperate, other times not. There's not much Google can do when a local government says no, except lobby.\n\nThirdly, they face resistance from legacy cable providers who have entrenched themselves in their areas of operation. Many times they own the poles that Google is trying to use and refuse to let them use it. Other times they bribe (sorry, Lobby) local governments and write bills for them to pass to prohibit competition from deploying to their area. Sounds illegal? It's lobbying! And if neither of those tactics work, they'll launch PR smear campaigns to turn the public against the competitor or try to lock customers into binding multi-year contracts with steep termination fees. Basically the most shady things you can think that aren't illegal.\n\nIt's basically an uphill battle, up the side of a mountain..at a 90 degree angle.",
"Laying fiber is expensive, but there more to it than just money. There is permits and agreements in each area that they have to deal with. They also have to deal with opposition with local ISPs.",
"Google has the largest long haul network in North America. Bigger than Verizon or AT & T. The last mile is the problem. It is hugely expensive to build that out. With Net neutrality, you are assuredly never going to get your investment back. \n\nCompare that business model to Netflix, which just has virtual machines running on Amazon web services. I was surprised they don't even build their own data centers. Pure software and billing. Eventually someone has to build real hardware to push things forward. The incentives are all wrong, though",
"Utility monopoly contracts by existing companies such as Comcast, and their threats of litigation.",
"They can hardly meet installation demands at the cities they are currently \"in\". They keep delaying alot of installations, and the contractors/subcontractors they have are angering alot of people. I'm happy to have my fiber, but was very annoyed by the guys romping around my yard and then screwing stuff to the side of my house without notifying me. The actual in-home installer was great though!"
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75v6jr | why are directors considered the "owners" of a movie and not considered a team effort? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/75v6jr/eli5_why_are_directors_considered_the_owners_of_a/ | {
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"Creative disputes are inevitable on any creative project. When a project is directed by a group of people, it's called \"design by committee\" and the results have historically been very bad. The artwork usually becomes a mushy, bland mess of compromises.\n\nSo the movie industry has seen a lot of success establishing a single person as the \"vision holder\" of the film, who can resolve all the rest of the team's creative disputes and bring all the parts together into a single, strong, unified work.\n\nBecause it's the director's job to have final say over the movie, they get the most praise for the movie's overall success, and the most blame for the movie's failure. \n\nIt gets a little dicey when movie studio executives meddle with the movie against the wishes of the director, but the public doesn't really get to know how much of that is going on.",
"This is an interesting question because the director has the overall 'vision', but you have the screenwriter(s); the cinematographer who is responsible for lighting and camera shots; editors who really make or break a film; costuming; and tons more. In a sense, tons of awards categories, but one person whose name is attached to a film.",
"Production companies and studios actually own the films and all the original characters included in them.\n\nThe director, if he did his job, coordinated all elements of the film. In some cases, the director gets complete control. This is known as final cut. "
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20ea62 | why does my eyesight become worse even though i have glasses? | It sounds like a stupid question but I'm genuinely curious. I've had around 5 pairs of glasses and each time they have to give me a stronger lens. Why is my vision not staying the same? Am I eventually going to go blind? |: | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/20ea62/eli5_why_does_my_eyesight_become_worse_even/ | {
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"As we grow and age our eyes change shape slightly. For most people they will eventually stabilize, but until then adapting the prescription is standard practice.",
"Focusing problems mainly come about because of a mismatch between two things:\n\n* The [optical power](_URL_0_) of your lens, or how far a distance it gathers parallell light at. This is dynamic, because your eye has muscles that adjust the lens. However, they can only adjust over a finite range of optical power and with age the lens tends to stiffen and become weaker.\n* The length of your eyeball. This tends to change mainly up to young adulthood, then stabilizes. \n\nIf your lens is too weak, it focuses images at a point behind your retina and you become longsighted. If it's too strong, it focuses images at a point inside your eyeball (\"ahead\" of the retina) and you become shortsighted. Corrective lenses like glasses or contacts go in front of your natural lens to either disperse or focus the light a bit extra so that after going through all of this it actually focuses at the retina instead. But if your optical power and/or eyeball length is changing over time, the power of those corrective lenses will likely also need to be changed occasionally. \nThe main progressions you usually see are that children grow more shortsighted as their eyeballs grow to adult size, and adults become more longsighted as their lens stiffens. How much of an effect there is varies a lot between individuals, and other things can also come into play and affect it. "
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1niafp | why does my dog pee everywhere? what does "marking your territory" accomplish? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1niafp/eli5_why_does_my_dog_pee_everywhere_what_does/ | {
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"dogs transmit alot of information about themselves to other dogs via the scent of their urine. \n\nits also part of their psychological needs. dogs are territorial. so are humans actually. we don't mark with urine because our sense of smell is weak. we mark with visual markers instead. "
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3xxz31 | why don't viruses make us stronger? | Not sure if this is ridiculously stupid but...
If a virus' goal is to survive, as is for any "being", then why do they fuck humans up? By being "fuck-uppers" to the body, any smart being will try to remove them with other methods (medicine etc.), thus eradicate them through which they cannot reproduce.
If there is a virus that has positiv effects on humans nowadays, for example stimulating muscle growth or increasing mental capabilities, wouldn't those viruses "survive" as humans would not only NOT try to eliminate them, but perhaps even WANT to get infected with them, thus helping it reproduce?
If I recall correctly, it is possible for humans already to modify a virus' genetic material and that they are used to change the DNA of other organisms already, but why aren't there natural "positiv viruses"? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3xxz31/eli5_why_dont_viruses_make_us_stronger/ | {
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"Generally speaking viruses only become deadly when they cross species. All that sneezing, coughing, sweating, vomiting, and shitting they cause is just a transmission mechanism to infect others.",
"It is not stupid.\n\nAfter all this is what happens with many symbiotic relationships we have with bacteria.\n\nHowever viruses are a lot simpler than bacteria and since they are not really alive in their own, their taking over human cells to reproduce sort of always has to be negative.\n\nThe virus mostly changes the host so that it will live at least long enough to infect others and often influences the host in such a way to make that more likely (like sneezing or making the host bite other potential hosts).\n\nWhen viruses make the jump from one species to another all their optimized behaviour ends up completely wrong. what might make a monkey spread the disease can kill a human before it has a chance to pass on the virus.\n\nThis is why after switching host species viruses often quickly evolve to be less lethal, because it heightens their chances.\n\nSometimes viruses carry useful stuff around with them in their genetic code (viruses are basically just free-floating genetic code with a bit extra) and that useful stuff can by accident get integrated into the host DNA in such a way as to improve the host.\n\nIt is thought that some of our own DNA came about that way.\n\n"
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bkzf67 | where does the idea of rabbits love carrots come from? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/bkzf67/eli5_where_does_the_idea_of_rabbits_love_carrots/ | {
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"Have you ever seen a rabbit eat a carrot?\n\nThey love that shit",
"Carrots are not really a natural food source for rabbits and isn't really healthy for them. At least not the root portion.\n\nThe idea of rabbits loving carrots comes from one of the most famous rabbits of all time, Buggs Bunny.\n\nBuggs got it as a substitute for the cigar prop that was often used by the stars of the day when he premiered.",
"Bugs Bunny has a lot to do with this. People automatically make the association between rabbits and carrots because of Bugs Bunny.\n\nLittle do people know, the reason Bugs eats carrots is because of Clark Gable in the film It Happened One Night. Where Clark is casually leaning on a fence and munching on a carrot. Mel Blanc thought it was cool and worked it into Bugs' character.\n\nSo you could say, the reason people think rabbits like carrots. Is because Clark Gable looked cool while eating them.\n\nEdit: [The scene that inspired Bugs Bunny](_URL_0_)",
"Wasn't there a war effort to associate carrots to good eye-sight? I sort of remember something that promoted the British pilots having good vision by eating carrots. Maybe something to do with masking their radar capabilities?"
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1cqjv9 | how is money made for the publishers from borrowing library books when they are borrowed for free? | I mean, the authors could be selling far more books if all people that wished to read it were forced to buy their works instead of simply borrowing them for free.
Don't misunderstand me, I love public libraries. Viva la bibliotheque, I just don't really understand :) | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1cqjv9/how_is_money_made_for_the_publishers_from/ | {
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"Libraries don't operate with (or without) the consent of the publisher. They existed before the concept of \"licensing\" content really came out, as long as you didn't recreate and redistribute the material, you weren't breaking laws. Public libraries existence and legal protections were enshrined and considered sacrosanct, and aren't really open to legal challenges. \n\nOn top of which, many people in the publishing industry, at least certain parts of it, have a deep seated passion for reading. It's an industry that, again in certain areas, is dominated by book nerds who love reading. They love libraries as much or more than your average joe, so the culture of these publishing companies is somewhat pro library. ",
"Publishers can make money from libraries, but it differs depending on what type of material we're talking about. Libraries purchase material from publishers just like anyone else. Be it physical books, ebooks, newspapers, journals, or electronic subscriptions to databases. The difference is libraries get a lot of use out of physical books. A library will purchase 5 copies of a book, and those 5 copies will ultimately be used by ~~thousands~~ a hundred or so patrons. The downside for the publisher is that those are customers not purchasing their book at the store. \n\nBut I think plenty of people still purchase books at traditional book stores. If a library only has two copies of a new release, do you want to wait in a queue of 50 patrons to get it? Or would you rather eat the $20 and get it immediately? Plenty of people still make the choice to purchase it directly.\n\nPublishers of electronic databases *do* make a profit from library subscriptions. For example, a University library will subscribe to databases of scholarly journals which library patrons (students, faculty) use for research. Subscriptions to these databases are expensive, sometimes occupying 60-70% of a library's acquisition budget. But they are necessary, so libraries spend the money.\n\nThis is an interesting topic for libraries when it comes to ebooks. Publishers are trying to set limits on how many times a library can circulate an ebook. If I purchase *The Davinci Code* as an ebook, the publisher may tell me I can only circulate the ebook version to 20-30 patrons before I have to pay again. As /u/Txgirl7 pointed out, the publisher can delete the ebook any time they want. ~~But my paper copy of *The Davinci Code* can be circulated hundreds of times before it needs to be replaced.~~ Libraries have to pay more for ebooks, but users want ebooks, so we're forced to spend the money.\n\nEDIT: Many helpful librarians have chimed in and corrected my estimate of how long a physical book holds up (not that long). Numbers are corrected. Libraries buy *a lot* of physical copies. Thanks!",
"To clarify something- libraries do not buy the same 20 $ hardback as you or me. They tend buy library bound editions (for most things). These have reinforced bindings, thicker pages, and stronger covers. These are really expensive. I just thought what was written might confuse some people. ",
"The publishers make money by selling books to libraries. That is it. Libraries have to purchase the books that they lend and publishers make money off of those sales.\n\nIf all of the people who wanted to read an author's books had to buy them without a cheaper way to read them, not everyone would choose to buy an author's books. They might choose to eat dinner instead. Or they might choose to put their money towards something bigger, like a new couch or a vacation. Libraries help create support for authors and their works by helping their audience to be larger. The larger your fan-base is as an author, the more likely you'll be able to charge for other things, like visits and signings. Things like that also make money for the publishers usually.",
"It's predicated on the understanding that people will borrow a book that they wouldn't have bought. Since the library has to buy the book the same as anyone else, the book still gets sold, but in this case is sold by proxy to people who wouldn't have likely bought it otherwise.\n\nFor example, I will likely read several dozen library books this year. Of those, I might decide to buy two or three of them, depending on how I like them. But I'm more likely to buy them if I can read them first to see if I want to own them, and were it not for that I'd be less likely to. In that sense, a library might be seen as extreme browsing. But the practicaly upshot is that every book I borrow from the library did get sold, just not to me, and it adds up to a lot more books than I would have bought in any case, no matter how you suss it out.\n",
"Librarian here.\n\nLibraries buy a fuck-ton of books, and as a result steer a proportional fuck-ton of money to publishers. I don't have the retail sales figures to compare, but would not be the least bit surprised to learn that publishers make more from sales to libraries than they do from retail sales. (Remember, you have to include the entirety of a publisher's catalog, not just the rare and outstanding best sellers.)\n\nWhat's more, eliminating libraries would not offset the massive loss of income. Most people would not (and many simply could not afford to) simply purchase the items they obtain from libraries.",
"Honestly... Libraries are one of the greatest things we have in the world. If a publisher wanted to remove his or her material from a public library then I don't believe that person deserves ANYTHING from ANYONE. The library is sometimes the only way for the poor to be able to obtain any sort of reading material. Reading is one of the best things a person can do to better themselves. \n\nIMO no ones royalties are more important than providing access to those who otherwise wouldn't have had any. ",
"Public libraries still have to buy books from publishers. Suppose a public library has a book that has been borrowed by 100 people. That means that 100 people who would not have bought the book for themselves have still, in essence, bought 1/100th of the book, which is better than them not buying the book at all.\n\nPublishing companies are also hoping that if you read a book by an author that you borrowed from a library and enjoyed it, you're more likely to buy another book from the same author or from the same series.",
"Your library was free? You don't pay taxes?",
" > I mean, the authors could be selling far more books if all people that wished to read it were forced to buy their works instead of simply borrowing them for free.\n\nThis is the “lost sale” fallacy. Publishers (of books and other media) like to press this point, and certainly it *does* happen some of the time, but it's not the only way things can go.\n\nLet's say you borrow a book, and you read it, and you LOVE it. Total infatuation; you've just got to have a copy of this book for yourself. That, right there, is a sale, not lost, but gained.\n\nOr, maybe you don't buy the book (read it once, loved it, may read it again someday but don't need it taking up the space in the meantime), or maybe you do, but either way, you love the book so much that you talk it up to all of your friends. Or maybe it's a political book that you disagreed with (and consequently won't buy) but your friend of the opposite persuasion may find relevant to his or her interests.\n\nIn those ways and probably others, your borrowing of that book may lead to other people buying it.\n\nAt the very least, it's not a clear-cut “publishers would make more money if libraries didn't exist”. Publishers might very well make more money *because* libraries (and other forms of book-lending) exist.\n",
"It sounds like you're talking in reference to the game industry and its view on game rentals and used games. It revolves upon the definition of ownership and corporations' actions to redefine it.\n\nIt's a bit confusing now because we're living in a time where corporations have more influence on government than they should. Corporations are trying to squeeze out as much money as they can by demonizing normal life. They've done a good job convincing us that old ways that have existed for centuries and that are natural aren't right because it hurts their bottom line. \n\nThese are products you own when you buy and you have a right to give them away or lend them as you please. They're yours, you own them as much as you do a shell you find at the beach. The library buys these books and owns them and can rent them out. Game rental services buy them and rent them out. Many big companies don't like it because they could be making more money. To squeeze that extra money companies are saying they \"provide a service\" with their games or books so they aren't products. I'm a game developer so I can somewhat see what's going on internally. If the game isn't an mmo it's not a service it's a product that you buy and own. The same thing applies to books.\n\nTo them I say, cry me a river! This is the world, it isn't heaven for me and it isn't heaven for corporations too. Know your rights and don't let corporations try to reinvent what's natural and impose it on you. This is a big new movement in corporations recently. I've heard even car manufacturers are trying to get into manipulating ownership by copyrighting repair manuals to keep normal mechanics from repairing your own cars. Why? So you're forced to take it to a repair station so they can charge you bigger fees. Could you imagine a world where you can't even legally repair your own car that you own?\n\nPublishers make money from selling books to the libraries, but they don't make money from the renting and they shouldn't. The library owns those bought books not the publisher.",
"I own a lot of books and more than half of them are ones I initially borrowed from a library and decided I had to buy.",
"Plain and simple, libraries don't exist to make anybody money, aside to save money for the people that use them.\n\nThe social good of making reading material available to the public for free (aside from late fees) is determined to be greater than the questionable good of maximizing publishers' profits.\n\nAt least, it used to be...",
"Free access to information for everyone is more important and more beneficial to us all than anyone's profits. "
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nzlhu | clock speeds and/vs cores in computers | Clock speed as in 2.0GHz and cores as in dual core, quad core, etc.
What do they mean? What is better? Why?
Ex. What's better, an i3 2.3GHz or i7 1.6GHz? Or a Dual core 3.4GHz or i7 1.6GHz? Feel free to use analogies, they help.
Bonus question: What does "multi-thread" or "threading" mean?
ELI5, please and thank you! | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/nzlhu/eli5_clock_speeds_andvs_cores_in_computers/ | {
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"First post in this subreddit so hopefully my answer is comprehensible/simple enough. I'm a recently graduated Computer Science student.\n\nThe first thing to understand is that your computer is always running a bunch of different programs (such as the operating system, your browser, etc...). Each program, through a bunch of complicated steps, is transformed into a set of very basic instructions, which are then run by your *processor* which is what the Pentium, i3, i7, etc... are. \n\nEach instruction takes a certain amount of time (called cycles) for the processor to execute, and so the clock speed is basically saying how fast the processor can execute instructions (how many cycles it can execute). 2.0 GHz means 2 billion cycles per second, which is, as you can see, quite a lot and is one reason why our computers can run so fast.\n\nDual core and quad core means instead of one processor, you now have 2 or 4 (you can imagine the terms \"core\" and \"processor\" are synonymous). So, with a dual-core system, you can theoretically run 4 billion cycles per second (2 billion per core), because one program can run on processor A while another program can run on processor B. Please note that there are *many* complications that come along when adding a core, so in practice, it will not always double your speed. \n\nWhen comparing clock speeds only, the higher number is always better. It just means your processor can execute more instructions per second, and thus your programs will run faster. \n\nHowever, there are many other factors that affect computer speed, so going based only off of clock speed is not always the right choice. I won't get into this unless you want me to, as there's a lot to be said here.\n\n\"Ex. What's better, an i3 2.3GHz or i7 1.6GHz? Or a Dual core 3.4GHz or i7 1.6GHz? Feel free to use analogies, they help.\"\n\nI'm going to ignore the numbers, unless you can show me where you got them from since they seem too unrealistic. In general, the clock speed is not the only factor that defines a processor (although it is a very big one). For example, the i7 is quad-core while the i3 is dual-core. There are other factors as well, so it's basically impossible to judge a processor only on clock speed. \n\nIn today's market, it's pretty hard to get a system that only has one core/processor - almost everything is dual core at least now.\n\nA short description of threading: Think of multi-threading as the same as having multiple cores. This is how the general idea works, but of course not how it actually works.\n\nI hope this helps - please let me know if you still find anything confusing. I'm not sure if i made it simple enough. ",
"Not exactly for a 5-year old but simplified anyway:\n\nImagine a \"core\" as a workbench full of tools, plus a guy working. A cpu is a \"team\" of guys, the number of cores decides how big each team is. Now, each guy needs some tools to work. Every \"core\" has a full workbench, but each guy might not use all the tools at the same time. So, Intel came up with the idea to put two guys at one workbench. They call that \"hyperthreading\".\n\nAMD invented something different. They figure that most guys will use a drill, hammer and screwdriver most of the time (so if you have only one of those the guys will have to sit idle quite often due to the other guy using it) but they only use a router and circular saw occasionally, so they made a \"module\" with two guys and nearly two full workbenches, but with the really expensive tools only once. So it's a bit like Intels idea, but they have nearly the full workbench doubled up.\n\nSo, to get a few examples:\n\n- A server with two new i7-3960 has two teams of twelve guys, where each team has 6 work benches full of tools.\n- A workstation with a i7-2700k has one team with eight guys, working with four workbenches full of tools. \n- A computer with a FX8150 has one team with eight guys and four workbenches, but with eight full sets of basic tools.\n- A computer with a i3-2100 has one team with two guys and two workbenches.\n\nNow, not all guys are created equal. For each \"generation\" there's a design that decides how much they do per time unit, called an \"architecture\". Intel's newest architecture is a generation of the \"core\" architecture, called Sandy Bridge. AMD has recently introduced a new architecture called \"bulldozer\" with each processor being of the \"zambezi\" generation. For each generation of each architecture, you can't really compare clock speeds directly - to put into analogy, a Zambezi guy will be quick at working with a drill but will be slower with a hammer, where a Sandy Bridge guy might be faster with a hammer and circular saw but slower with a drill. You can compare Sandy Bridge guys directly though.\n\nSo now we can see through the \"marketing\" part - the names \"FX\", \"i7\", \"i5\" and so on. They are just a rough indication of speed but don't actually mean anything about the processor's actual qualifications.\n\nYou can directly compare an i3-2100, i5-2500 and i7-2700 though. They are all Sandy Bridge. If you take an i7-2700 and disable cores / hyperthreading so only two cores remain, and then clock it identical to an i3-2100 it should perform exactly the same. You can't compare the i7-2700 to an i7-965 though - the first of them is of the Sandy Bridge generation and the second is of the Nehalem generation.\n\nThen there's the actual subjective \"how fast is it then\". That depends on a lot of things for each application:\n\n- How many guys can work in parallel\n- How much they need their drills\n- How much they need the circular saws\n- In how far they need to cooperate closely\n- How fast each guy works (and they can work at different speeds despite being in one team!)\n- How hot the room is - they slow down during the very hot days to not break down.\n- What kind of work they're doing exactly and in what order they do it\n\nSo to find out, you essentially have to benchmark each program separately. There are some limits:\n\n- Some applications are not multithreaded enough so some guys will just be sitting without work to do.\n- Some applications use circular saws very much and will work badly on Bulldozers (the \"circular saw\" is the floating-point calculation thingy in the analogy)\n- Some applications use drills a lot and will be slow on Sandy Bridges when compared to Bulldozers (heavy integer calculations, for example, should be a lot faster on the AMD series)\n- Some applications will try to do multiple things in parallel but don't tell the guys to work together very well, so they occasionally drop tools on each others feet or \"lose\" bits of work in trying to pass it to each other. This results in games crashing on multi-core machines but running fine on single-core machines - a single guy does not fail to cooperate with himself.\n- Some applications will be slower when running on a processor with hyperthreading. They share a toolbench so if they need to use the same tools and the bench all the time, they'll spend more time waiting for each other and swapping than one of them would just doing it all by himself."
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3s6blu | why do large animals often get frightened by smaller ones? examples: elephants and mice, dogs and kittens. | Is it some kind of maternal/paternal instinct when they're confronted with a tiny animal? Inspired by [this post](_URL_0_) | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3s6blu/eli5why_do_large_animals_often_get_frightened_by/ | {
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"I know that elephants fear mice due to the fact that they could run up their trunk causing damage that way. And I don't feel too great either when I pull my sheets back to see a spider. I guess that which we can't fully see makes us feel like we're more vulnerable.\nEven in video games; your tiny 6 foot hero manages to decapitate a 40-ton, 3 story fire breathing tentacle beast with a pistol and maybe a harpoon ... r/residentevil ",
"I'm pretty sure the elephants and mice thing has been debunked as an urban legend, but I would suspect it would be something related to the fears of the unknown. I've seen local Inuit who come to the door to sell a carving or whatever knicknack they happen to be selling recoil and be terrified of my cat, which couldn't do more then mildly scratch them if she tried. Not having anything like a cat living North of the treeline, it freaks some of them out. Also house flies will send grown adults shrieking and running the other direction up here. Interesting place to live.",
"Something small can still kill you. Pound for pound I'm way stronger and bigger than a King Cobra, I could stomp it to death without breaking a sweat. That said, it can still kill me pretty easily. \n\nElephants are big, slow, and have bad eyesight. mice are small, on the ground, and fast. Elephants probably just see something small darting underneath it and get freaked out because they don't know what it is and it's close to where they're vulnerable. They're not smart enough to make decisions about weight, strength, and power, so they just run off to be safe. "
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35jc6j | is there a downside to loan forgiveness? | Long story short, my sister just got off the phone with one of the loan forgiveness centers. She owes $13,000~ in federal loans, and was told all she needs to do is make 5 payments of $199 then wait 20 years (300 months) to have her loans forgiven. This...seems a little too good to be true. Are there any apparent downsides? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/35jc6j/eli5_is_there_a_downside_to_loan_forgiveness/ | {
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"it SERIOUSLY trashes your credit. she is going to have an outstanding loan with no payments being made on it for 20 years, so essentially every month is going to show as a late payment. This is REALLY bad for your FICO score. And when the 20 years are up, it will show as a charge off, which is ALSO really bad for your score.\n\nShe'd be better off declaring bankruptcy, because here score would start to go back up after only 7 years."
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7n6i0g | what’s stopping us from creating a battery that has a large capacity, doesn’t degrade, and is small enough to fit in a phone or computer? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7n6i0g/eli5_whats_stopping_us_from_creating_a_battery/ | {
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"Materials and design. We ask a lot out of rechargeable batteries, and there aren't too many materials that can do what we want (rechargeable, high energy density, safe, etc). Lithium ion battery variants are pretty much the best we have, and there have been many incremental improvements made to them.\n\nBut unless someone discovers a radical new chemistry/design that goes well beyond what can be done with lithium ion cells, we won't see sudden jumps in energy density."
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39d3h7 | why does the sound of water relax us? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/39d3h7/eli5_why_does_the_sound_of_water_relax_us/ | {
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"Looking around the internet I find a lot of conjecture but nothing solid. There are guesses that it is relaxing because we are evolved to live near water, another person suggested that it is an example of evidence against instinct since we would be more vulnerable to predators while drinking (human instinct is questionable, but this is probably not what is going on here). There is a certain [hypnotic effect](_URL_0_) which seems likely to me. I also think that it may be a result of [soft fascination](_URL_1_), which is the same reason we can stare at a campfire for hours, or stand on the beach and watch the waves. It lets our mind wander. \nBut these are little more than guesses. ",
"I think it's because the sound of water (that is, slow, running water) can be considered \"white noise\", which is simply sound with random speeds but more or less equal volume. \n\nThe human brain naturally craves sensory input, but random noises like a creaking tree branch or the groan of a settling house alerts the brain, keeping you awake. But pure silence isn't relaxing either- when deprived of one or more senses, the brain starts making up its own in the form of hallucinations. White noise soothes the brain's systems, giving it a steady, constant supply of soft, predictable input that relaxes its internal systems. "
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5tcip9 | recruitment agencies how they work and how they profit. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5tcip9/eli5_recruitment_agencies_how_they_work_and_how/ | {
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"the recruiter that successfully places a candidate will get a finders fee, usually equiv to 1 month of the candidate's negotiated salary. so recruiters typically try to negotiate a higher salary rate on behalf of the candidate. "
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8fiobq | how did we create non biodegradable things like plastic from what i'd assume is biodegradable materials? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8fiobq/eli5_how_did_we_create_non_biodegradable_things/ | {
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"Theoretically, almost all things can broken down to its elements. But human intervention made it a lot harder for things to naturally degrade overtime as there are no organic living thing on earth that can digest and convert a compound and turn it into energy+waste product. Animals are able to consume fruits/meats in an environment due to them coexisting for thousands of years. ",
"Plastics have properties which make them resistant to biodegradation.\n\nFirstly, plastics are water resistant. Without moisture, bacteria/fungi cannot grow on it. Also, any digestive enzymes released by these organisms will be repelled from the surface.\n\nSecondly, producing plastics is very energy-inefficient compared to biological cellulose or other biomaterials. So nature has never bothered to evolve plastics and the enzymes to digest plastics.\n\n\nAlso, plastics are very similar to wood (cellulose). When wood was first evolved, there were very few organisms capable of digesting it. This led to dead trees piling up everywhere and filling the earth with wood, which all eventually became coal. This period of earth’s history is the Carboniferous period, where almost all coal on earth came from this pile of dead trees.\n\nIf plastics become as widespread as wood was, something will evolve to digest the abundant source of energy.",
"Biodegradable basically means it can be eaten by something living. \n\nPlastics are petroleum based, so the raw materials are not really biodegradable to begin with. Nothing in nature eats oil. \n\nOn top of that, the physical attributes of plastic make it further resistant to any kind of degradation, biological or otherwise. It's water resistant and sturdy and it doesn't break into small pieces very easily, so plastic objects remain almost intact for long periods. \n\nOne of the few things that does break down plastic effectively is UV light, but it just turns it into smaller bits. Plastic floating in the ocean eventually gets broken down into micro plastic particles, but it still floats around in the ocean harming marine life, because those micro particles can't be eaten by anything. "
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31fxtv | why do led lightbulbs use **additional** leds to get more lumens, rather than just use **larger** leds? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/31fxtv/eli5_why_do_led_lightbulbs_use_additional_leds_to/ | {
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"It's probably cheaper and more reliable. If you have standardized LEDs that are getting mass produced for really fucking cheap, it doesn't make a lot of sense to spend time and money to design a new larger LED that produces the same ammount of light as 5 smaller ones.\n\nAlso, I'd 1/5 LEDs dies, you still have 4 functioning ones.",
"We sell LED light bulbs at work with only one LED in them, they're made by Philips, but I'm sure you can get other brands. They are more expensive than the cluster lights, however. ",
"efficiency. the mechanism behind LEDs doesn't scale up well. ",
"LED's *have* gotten larger and thus more powerful over time, adn they continue to do so. Compare the high powered Cree emitters we have today versus the Luxeon Stars of a few years ago to the basic \"high intensity\" units from ten years ago.\n\nCluster lights with oodles and oodles of LED's to make more output have been made as long as LED's have been a thing. Current high power emitters are already far more powerful than cluster lights from years ago, though, and that situation continues to improve.\n\nUnlike a light blub, LED's rely on quantum level physics and effects to operate. There's more involved than just cranking X more power through material Y and having it throw out more light. Like all semiconductors, there is an upperbound limit to how large you can scale the mechanism and still have it work, and an even stricter limit on how far you can scale it before making it bigger actually becomes a losing proposition, and the resulting big LED is *less* efficient and *less* powerful than a smaller one of the same material and design.\n\nThe advances in recent years have been in breaking these barriers, finding new methods of manufacturing light emitting semiconductor materials, arranging, powering, and packaging them such that they don't burn themselves up with their own heat output. These advances are not instant, and they are not cheap to research and develop.\n\nIn the meantime, manufacturers have to use the current state of the art. The most cost effective way of making a more powerful consumer product with LED's is to use more of the ones we already have versus trying to research new ways of making an LED. That research is still undoubtedly happening, but constantly striving to develop a more efficient LED rather than manufacturing a product right now that consumers can buy is chasing a dragon you will never catch, and in so doing your company will never make any money. So both things are happening at the same time. Consumer demand for more powerful lights drives manufacturers to make multi-emitter monstrosities, but the desire for more efficient and cheaper to manufacture long-term emitters also pushes manufacturers to research new technologies at the same time.\n\nYou may as well ask \"why do we have cars that use more pistons to generate power rather than just strap jet engines to our roofs?\" Our current level of technology does not allow us to manufacture a car that propels itself that way even though on paper it would clearly be faster than a modern car. Even if you could solve the research and development problems of making such a car stop, steer, and not require jet-fighter levels of maintenance (e.g. more time working on it than driving it) and also cheap enough to manufacture in bulk and sell to ordinary consumers so that they can afford to buy it, the prospect is ultimately meaningless."
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r3czs | mao's infamously catastrophic "great leap forward" | I understand that it ended in famine and mass deaths when he wanted the opposite, but I've never been an economics guy and don't quite get what happened in the late 1950s. How could it have gone so wrong? Why did it continue for so many years? How did it end? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/r3czs/eli5_maos_infamously_catastrophic_great_leap/ | {
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"I'm not a student of communism or Marxism or any of the flavors of communism that emerged in the first half of the 20th century.\n\nBut what I can tell you is this.\n\nWhen Mao came to power in China, he had big plans to change his country. For all of it's history, China was an agrarian nation, or farmers my ELI5 friend. Mao wanted to change this. He envisioned the poor farmers of China uniting to remake the country into a vast, modern industrial superpower, similar to the rise of the neighboring Soviets, whom Mao drew inspiration.\n\nHis program, called the great leap forward, involved taking millions of farmers off their fields into industrial collectives. Farmers where told to melt their ploughs and steel scrap into the tools of industry to make steel. \n\nBut obviously there is a problem, as a lifetime farmer doesn't know anything about making steel. And when you take everyone off of farming and turn them into workers in a field they know nothing about, both farming and steel making fail. \n\nMao too wasn't an economist, and since he was a dictator and brutal killer, probably anyone who told him he couldn't make the great leap forward was 'removed'. To this end, Mao simultaneously armed youth gangs, who traveled the country side abducting and killing any elderly Chinese who resisted the changes. ",
"The Great Leap Forward was a failure for some pretty specific reasons. Basically, Mao wanted to industrialize China, and industrialize it quickly. The plan was to increase steel production. Unfortunately, Mao had no idea to properly make steel, so he set up backyard furnaces to make the steel. Instead of using high tech industrial plants, the peasants would make steel in theirs backyards. The lack of proper methods and equipment caused this plan to fail. Since he diverted so many peasants to this industrial flop, there were not as many to working on the fields. China was always on the edge of famine, and this gave them firm push over. There was another initiative, the Four Pests Campaign. Basically, they wanted to eliminate rats, flies, mosquitoes, and most infamously the sparrows. The goal was to improve hygiene, and prevent these animals from eating seeds. However, this plan also backfired horribly. With the sparrows gone, locust took over and ruined the crops. Finally, there was some abnormal droughts and bad weather during this time as well to make things even worse.\n\nNow, with food production going down, the officials still claimed that they were doing well. No one really had the balls to say that the plan was failing, so they would report record high numbers. According to the reports, there was plenty of food in China, so nothing needed to be changed. All the food was shipped to the cities, leaving nothing for the peasants. China was also exporting grain at this time, partly because they didn't know how bad the situation was, and partly because they wanted to prove to the world that they were leaders in agriculture and show off the triumph of Mao.\n\nAmong all this, conditions on these collective farms were pretty bad. Anyone that opposed the reforms were eliminated.\n\nEventually, most of the policies of the Great Leap Forward were repealed, China stopped exporting grain, and they also started to accept food aid.\n\nEDIT: Steel, not steal",
"Living in China now, and though I knew about both of these events, reading about them again and thinking about the Chinese friends I have now, it makes me very sad.\n\nMao is still on the currency and I just find it to be a huge contradiction. Chinese people love him, but his incompetence is legendary and very sad.\n\nedit: also I am slightly drunk, so forgive the pointless nature of this post.",
"People have already pointed out that having farmers make steel instead of grain is a bad idea, and how killing sparrows destroyed crops. Let me point out how bad recordkeeping made it worse (the USSR had this problem too).\n\nLet's say you've been put in charge of a village. Your boss tells you he wants 50 bushels of grain and 10 tons of steel by the end of the year. If your village doesn't produce, clearly you are a bad communist and will be shot. Quite the incentive, huh?\n\nWell, you realize that your boss is too busy to really keep track of what you're doing, and there's no way you're going to make your quota with nobody in the fields and a bunch of confused farmers trying to make steel. So you start making numbers up to save your own skin. \n\nWell, when it comes time to report numbers, you report you made your goals (when really you came nowhere close). Your buddies in other villages don't want to look bad compared to you, so they make up numbers themselves. Your boss thinks everything is going great, so he doubles the quota for next year and reports the numbers up the chain.\n\nThere are two obvious problems with this: one, when the boss wants his steel you said you made, you have to give him something. So you throw together whatever metal you have and pass it along. This means anyone that needs to use your steel will have giant quality problems, because instead of steel you gave them whatever. The other is that your boss will want the grain to send to the city. You end up scraping together all the grain you have, letting your people starve. Well, next year all your farmers are dead, so you have even less grain and even less crappy steel. ",
"It's a classic example of unintended consequences and the \"calculation problem.\"\n\nIn economics, there is the idea that markets (mutually voluntary exchange with equal information) are efficient. To an economist, efficiency means something a little different than the normal use of the word. It means maximizing the amount of goods and services your economy produces with a given set of resources (this is measured by GDP - Gross Domestic Product). It does this by giving the resources to those who can use them best. (this is one of the leading arguments for capitalism)\n\nNow the Great Leap Forward was an attempt to use an alternative to markets - central planning, where the government decides who gets how much and what kind of each resource. Now at the time, China was not an industrialized nation - most of the population were subsistence farmers - and Mao wanted to change this.\n\nOne of the things they did was gather up all the metal in the villages and \"recycle\" it into tools/machines/other industrial items. Another thing they did was assign workers to certain jobs. So you might have been a farmer your whole life, but now you are a mechanic. Your farm will go to this other guy who may or may not know how to raise your crops (\"he was a rancher... close enough\").\n\nAnother serious problem was the Great Sparrow Campaign. Children and adults alike were encouraged to kill sparrows whenever they saw them, as they were seen as a pest that ate grain and seeds, ruining crops. Sparrows did do this, but they also kept the locust population down. When the sparrows were killed in great numbers, locusts destroyed large amounts of crops.\n\nStill, the first couple of years of the Great Leap Forward had great weather and would have been plentiful, but most of the crops were not harvested because the farmers were all working in factories. This is what caused the famines.\n\nThis goes back to what I was saying about markets and efficiency. The Chinese government tried to allocate resources (labor, for example) in the best way possible, as they saw it. But there was no way for them to ever have enough information to actually accomplish that goal. There are so many factors and variables, inputs and outputs, balances and trade-offs in a large economy that it's virtually impossible to do the calculation and find the best way to allocate resources. \n\nOn top of this, the Chinese regime had a callous disregard for human life and human rights. So there's that. But mostly it was an economic policy failure that caused the famines.",
"since much has already been said, i can add this: the great leap forward is what happens when ideology is disconnected from feedback. it's important whenever applying ideas (especially ideas to complex systems) that you have a process in place for monitoring the effect of those ideas.\n\nif you do not, in any system of complexity it's easy to lose sight of the overall purpose you had in mind because you fell in love with the means to get there, thinking you'd uncovered some great truth. it's even easier to make this mistake when you isolate yourself from the feeling the effects of the application firsthand."
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2xofnp | why do so many people support bernie sanders? what makes him different from all those presidents that said one thing before they were elected and did the opposite when they were elected? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2xofnp/eli5_why_do_so_many_people_support_bernie_sanders/ | {
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"Sanders is a real, honest-to-God (heh) socialist, the only one in Congress who openly admits it (though he caucuses with the Democrats). As such, many liberals see him as a \"legit\" guy in a sea of people who talk the talk but don't walk the walk. \n\nWould he actually turn out to be more honest if he were to somehow become President one day? Impossible to say without it happening ... He doesn't have a lot of power in the Senate given that he's too liberal even for many Democrats, so how \"honest\" he's been in that position I can't say. But he keeps getting reelected, so his constituents must like him. \n\n(edit for clarification)",
"Look, it's simple. He makes the best-tasting chicken for the money, no one can argue with that",
" > What makes him different from all those presidents that said one thing before they were elected and did the opposite when they were elected?\n\nSo what you're really asking, then, is: why does anyone ever support any candidate?",
"He continually puts his money where his mouth is on the senate floor. Look up some of his speeches, his voting record, and the bills he's sponsored. He seems to be the real deal, and his constituents love him. He's the only independent in the senate and he's very proud of it. If he runs in a national election he'll probably just get shut down and drowned out but if he can get a decent following an some funding there will at least be some interesting debates about policy and the nature of governance. "
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1249tp | math concepts of computer science | First off, let me start by saying theres no reason I'm using my "throwaway" it has actually just turned into my account that I use for random stuff. Secondly, I am a second year computer science major, and I feel like I half assed my way in school. I understand the concept but I am horrible with complexities (finding the run-time in particular), space complexities, change of bases and the whole bits/bytes mess. Literally anything that involves numbers....
I know this is a lot to ask, but reddit always surprises me, so you guys can keep adding on if you remember more math-related computer science topics, and it doesn't necessarily need to be dumbed down for a 5 year old but please help me!! | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1249tp/eli5_math_concepts_of_computer_science/ | {
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"/r/askscience or /r/askmath or /r/AskComputerScience "
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3hsywe | why is most of the windshield of a car clear but the very top tinted blue? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3hsywe/eli5_why_is_most_of_the_windshield_of_a_car_clear/ | {
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"It's tinted to provide some protection against the sun glaring into your eyes and causing a wreck. "
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5m6kba | why isn't american cheese called cheese, and instead called cheese product? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5m6kba/eli5_why_isnt_american_cheese_called_cheese_and/ | {
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"Because it's not (authentic) Cheese. It's made out of at least two different kinds of cheese and processed, therefor making it a cheese product.",
"American cheese processed and not natural, typically being made of 2+ blends of natural cheese, along with some added ingredients, like vegetable oil.",
"To be clear, \"American cheese\" commonly refers to two things. Kraft singles and similar products are imitations of cheese, and often say \"cheese product\" or something similar.\n\nTraditional American cheese must be labeled as \"processed cheese,\" indicating that it's made from multiple cheeses, but it's not actually that different in composition from a mild cheese like Colby."
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6ga66m | how are underwater rivers formed and is the water in them any different than the regular ocean/lake water? | I've always wondered about this. I've just seen very cool and interesting pictures so it peaked my interest. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6ga66m/eli5_how_are_underwater_rivers_formed_and_is_the/ | {
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"its just a difference in the content of the water. if you have very salt dense water it will sit on the bottom, where as the more pure water will sit on top. Very similar concept to vinaigrette dressing in a bottle. the layers separate based on their chemical structure and density.",
"Water has great erosion force. An above-ground example is the Colorado River carving out the Grand Canyon. \n\nUnderground water starts with rainfall though seeking its own level and falls into cracks & crevices in the earth. \n\nSome of it will collect into underground small pools, and on up to vast areas such as the Ogallala Aquifer.\n\nThe route water takes to these underground pools, lakes, & seas, what have you, is the same as above ground with small creek size up to river size. "
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5hid9x | why are certain numbers in computer programs capped at 99 or 999? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5hid9x/eli5why_are_certain_numbers_in_computer_programs/ | {
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"Because the author limits the display to just 2 or 3 digits. Usually to conform to some screen display constraint. Spacing the digits display so there's enough room to the left of it for something else"
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fz29hl | how do netflix servers output the same video files to a huge number of people without any delay? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/fz29hl/eli5_how_do_netflix_servers_output_the_same_video/ | {
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"There is a technology called CDN (content delivery network). The videos will be stored in each of network providers in your country and delivered through you. That's why the video won't lag while you watch them.",
"First of all there are a LOT of servers. They actually give them away to Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to put in spots that are close to large numbers of users. Netflix knows where they are (the ISP tells them) and what's on it. So when a user nearby watches something the server has Netflix will direct them to that machine to let them watch it.\n\nThrough analytics and statistics Netflix knows what is most popular and will fill up the server with what is most popular to ensure it has those files ready.\n\nSecond, the servers themselves are designed to be fast. They have SSD hard drives for the really popular stuff, MANY spinning hard drives so that each one has its own mechanism that moves to get data ready, and there are several fiber-optic connections into the server to go to the network. This results in a machine that can get data from disk out the network really easily.",
"Let’s say you are in a huge classroom and a pencil sharpener is in one corner of that room. Ever time you need to sharpen your pencil you need to walk all the way to that corner, sharpen it and then comeback to your seat. And if there are more people wanting to do the same, you have to wait your turn and it will take longer.\n\nNow imagine each row has their own sharpener, it will take less time and less people in the queue. It will be faster.\n\nThat’s how the content is served. Instead of everyone going to one place to get their video content, they just go to the place which is closer to them which will reduce time to serve you the video content.\n\nReplace “place” with data center and “sharpener” with video file. There are thousands of these data centers spread across the world and the same content is replicated across all these data centers. Also, like someone else that mentioned the folks that provide you internet service host these content directly as well to make it even faster."
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wqudz | why can't we have honest politicians? is there any way to have true transparency? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/wqudz/why_cant_we_have_honest_politicians_is_there_any/ | {
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"full transparency may be impossible to achieve. By nature, people try to hide their screwups and things they've done wrong. When those people have political power, it becomes easier. Think of it like a family: It's a lot easier for the parents to hide the fact that they've broken something than it is for the children to. \n\nAs for why we can't have honest politicians, we probably do. There are lots of politicians in America, and even with one involved in a scandal every other week, that still leaves countless others. The assumption that no politicians are honest is likely because we are constantly shown examples of dishonest politicians, but not honest ones, because political scandal is considered more \"newsworthy.\" \n\nA similar phenomenon to this is the reassurance gap. The reassurance gap is the disparity between decreasing crime rates and rising fear of crime, largely due to the fact that crime is reported, whereas lack of crime isn't. The ",
"You're question assumes a lot. It assumes that 1) perfectly honest people exist outside politics and 2) only dishonest people exist in politics.\n\nI assume you're US, since that's the majority of Reddit and what I know best. At the city, country, state and federal level there are over 65,000 elected officials. They are (particularly at higher levels) almost always required to say things that get recorded and they have to speak to many different audiences all the time. Their job is to be popular, if they are unpopular they will not have a job any more. It means only those capable of remaining popular can continue getting elected. You therefore need to be able to please all the different groups of people needed to remain popular, or those groups will work to make you less popular. \n\nThis creates a self-selection of people who pander, if someone is not saying what is popular they will no longer be a politician.\n\nThat however does still not cover your two assumptions.\n\nAverage people lie, they omit, they embellish and they do so out of convenience and for social ease. These can be small ones or big ones, but no one is completely honest and I bet money you are not either. So, if people are not honest, and politicians are people, why is it such a surprise that they may not always be honest?\n\nAdditionally, you are much more likely to *hear* about a politician if they do something that gets them in trouble. \"Governor x does OK job\" is not a headline you will ever hear (at least not about anyone but your own governor). Unless you are from North Dakota I bet you probably can't name the Governor of North Dakota. Yet if the governor of North Dakota was found to have cheated on his wife or taken a bribe, you would know his name tomorrow.\n\nThat's the problem, of 60,000 elected officials (not included the appointments) you only hear about those that make the news. Of the 539 members of Congress, you can probably name a dozen or two, and you are more likely to know them if they have done something bad.\n\nAdditionally, if you *assume* that politicians are dirty, you will remember news stories that agree with that position and are more likely to forget the news stories that don't. \n\nAnd, this is a different question from transparency. I don't know what level of government you are refering too, but it is most likely much more transparent than you probably think. The federal government is actually exceedingly transparent, but it is also so large that few ever take advantage of that transparency. Most of these transparent documents are long and to those unaffiliated with law or government would find them confusing. Do not confuse this with non-transparency.\n\nIf you have a more specific complaint about transparency I'll answer as best I can, but generally speaking there is actually a lot of transparency. "
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64ri3i | why, in sugar drinks like soda, does sugar not separate and fall to the bottom of the bottle, can, etc.? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/64ri3i/eli5_why_in_sugar_drinks_like_soda_does_sugar_not/ | {
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"...Because it isn't a supersaturated solution of sugar, not even close. If you dissolve sugar in water, and don't let the water evaporate, you'd see that the sugar stays dissolved. Of course, in real life, the water evaporates, the sugar concentrates and crystals nucleate. ",
"Because the sugar is dissolved. When a solid like sugar (or a gas like CO2) is dissolved in a liquid, it's more than just a physical separation of the solid's particles they're chemically active with each other. The water molecules form temporary bonds with the sugars and salts that give soda its flavor and hold onto them in the solution. The soda doesn't separate because it's a mix of chemicals that are all interacting with each other."
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4bs76q | why do musical notes only range from between a-g? | Is it possible to have other notes (other than majors and minors), and why is there not an infinite number of possible sounds? I'm just waiting out here for a "H" note... | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4bs76q/eli5_why_do_musical_notes_only_range_from_between/ | {
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"We named the notes based on our major and minor scales - those scales are made up of seven specific tones (notes), rising through an octave, so we built a musical system that named those 7 tones, and repeated every octave.\n\nThere are, of course, sounds in between those - there's an infinite number of sounds between a pitch-perfect B and C, for example. But the system of intervals that we have would call all of those notes \"out of tune.\" \n\nThink of our music system like a language. I can make a whole bunch of weird sounds with my mouth, but a lot of them wouldn't be understood as \"English.\" To communicate, we limited the number of sounds and picked patterns that they \"belong\" in, and called that a language. Music is the same way. We picked intervals between sounds, named those sounds, and called it musical notation. You can go outside of it and be experimental, but it's good enough for most.",
"Notes are not majors and minors, they move in tones and semitones.\nTo your question...\nIt is possible, and there are other tones. Sharps and Flats (e.g. A#. Ab), which move the note a semitone below (Ab is the black key on piano on the left of A, and A# is the black key on the right of A).\n\nBut there are also quarter notes (that is halfway between semitones).\nAnd there are actually infinite pitches in some instruments. Take for example the Oud. But the notation for those scales cannot be precise, so the notes that are \"in between\" are written as quarters (1/4), and the player shall play them according to the \"feel\" of the tune and/or the scale.\n\nThe reason you will not get an 'H' note, is because of the frequency distribution. Starting from A, when we reach the next A, the frequency is exactly double of the frequency of the first A."
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6uung9 | even in very multiracial areas, why is online dating so white? | [deleted] | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6uung9/eli5_even_in_very_multiracial_areas_why_is_online/ | {
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"So not to be too controversial, a lot of this is coming from friends explanations (they are from a variety of Asian nations: China, Korea, Indonesia, etc. and some Nigerian and Ethiopian natives), a lot of very tradition-oriented individuals have other channels to meet others.\n\nThis is not just arranged marriages, but sometimes families help their relatives meet other people who are similar. Or if they are not interested in someone who is of European descent, they may not be drawn to using these apps as (as you mentioned) their largely European base may not be appealing to them so they shy away from these apps. \n\nThis has credence in the US, where interracial dating is on the rise but it is not something that is commonplace so when you look at older/first generation immigrants here, they are sometimes apprehensive to dating outside their race. Again, lending to the idea that they may not want to use a largely European dating app. \n\nAlso, sometimes there are more specific dating apps for groups like Asians like EastMeetsEast or DesiCrush (I believe that one is/was popular for Indian individuals)."
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6rh0sr | what is the smelliest substance in the world and how bad is it? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6rh0sr/eli5_what_is_the_smelliest_substance_in_the_world/ | {
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"I don't know what scale you want to use, but ethanethiol, commonly known as ethyl mercaptan, is the substance they put in natural gas to make it smell. This is a substance that humans can detect at extremely low concentrations (one part in 2.8 billion).",
"C.diff with a gi bleed. It is an infection of the bowels. I can't describe it. It is just one of those things you have to smell to understand.",
"[Thioacetone](_URL_0_)\n\n > In 1889, an attempt to distill the chemical in the German city of Freiburg was followed by cases of vomiting, nausea and unconsciousness in an area of 0.75 kilometres (0.47 mi) around the laboratory due to the smell.\n\nI am not a chemist and don't know the details of why it smells so bad. I believe there is also some controversy over whether or not thioacetone was actually the cause of the incident mentioned above.",
"Aside from ethyl mercaptane, a lot of people would probably say durian fruit. It's illegal to consune in public places in Singapore because it smells so bad and so far away."
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2gy2mj | how is u.k. such a powerful country but is small compared to other powerful countries? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2gy2mj/eli5how_is_uk_such_a_powerful_country_but_is/ | {
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"The power of a country is roughly equal to its economic output. The more more money you have the easier it is to project your power.",
"Britain has large amounts of coal near the coast which allowed it to take full advantage of the Industrial Revolution by having cheap fuel for the factories. The British government was also extremely pro-business. This manufacturing power along with strong naval tradition allowed the Empire to spread across the world. \n\nOnce you own a fifth of the world it's easy to bring wealth back to the home country. London is still one of the most important financial centres in the world.",
"Small by landmass or population?\n\nBy landmass, their limited land encouraged them to expand via the sea.\n\nBy population, the UK has a population of 64 million, and a 2.5 trillion dollar GDP. With 38 million people, California would have a GDP of 1.9 trillion if it were a country. \n\nSo, a history of military dominance, economic success (remember that time they invented the industrial revolution?), and a very stable, long-running democracy all come together nicely to make you a powerful country. It would be more surprising if they weren't.",
"Do you know how big the British Empire was? ",
"**TL;DR:** The British Empire, Navy, Universities, Island Nation, London, EU Veto, Nuclear Programme, Strong Leaders.\n\n---\n\nIt depends on how far you go back as to what you see as the \"main\" reason, but my money is on a collection of things:\n\n* Britain is an island, making a good navy more important than a good army (and they had a good navy for a long time).\n* That navy allowed expansion all over the globe.\n* The British Government used their local coal resources to advance in the Industrial Revolution - short shipping times and abundant supply allows for rapid growth.\n* Britain \"got lucky\" with early scientific developments - things like the Spinning Jenny and similar allowed huge advancements not quickly matched by other nations.\n\nThe UK has also been home to some of the oldest and most prestigious places of learning (Oxford and Cambridge Universities), giving rise to some of the most notable minds the world has ever known (e.g. Sir Isaac Newton).\n\nLondon has always been a large city, with a large river for easy shipping, it quickly became a centre of commerce that has persisted to this day, and still currently houses one of the largest stock exchanges in the world - in a similar fashion to New York relative to the US, London makes up a significant part of the economy of the United Kingdom.\n\nOverall, this put the UK in a fantastic position to create and control the British Empire, which after its dissolution, left the United Kingdom in the position it is today - with a good economy, strong ties to other nations.\n\nSince then, Britain/The British Empire has been influential in both World Wars, helping to coordinate the winning sides, profiting from the technologies gained and from things like the Martial Aid provided by the US. As an early member of the European Union, Britain retains the ability to veto motions that would negatively impact its standing as they come up, and also maintains a nuclear presence to ensure they are never overlooked on the world stage.\n\nOverall, you can put these successes down to a number of reasons - strong leadership (e.g. Churchill, Margaret Thatcher, Queen Victoria etc), smart diplomacy (e.g. Early entry into the EU), and useful geography allowing for early exploitation of both shipping and the Industrial Revolution.",
"I would say it is down to our English culture, which comes from our weather. \n\nWe are (perhaps, 'were') an adaptable people. In the morning it is sunny and mild yet by afternoon it is freezing with hailstones. This means we have to be 'on our toes'. The 'Keep Calm And Carry On' attitude is very English and therefore British. It makes us extremely adaptable to any situation and, in that way, we have always seen opportunity when it passes before us. Other nations, with more temperate climates, get used to hot weather and adapt or cold weather and adapt, but we English have to be prepared. The man in the hot nation simply does enough to stay cool. The man in the cold nation does enough to keep warm. Nothing more. We English must always have a contingency plan. A \"what if?\" That's why the motto of the Scouts is 'be prepared'... \"If it can go wrong, it probably will.\" \"No plan survives first contact with the enemy\", etc. This is English thought in action. When we first encountered the Gurkhas and found that our supreme military tactics wouldn't work against them, we signed a peace treaty and simply asked them to join the British Army! When some of our own people told us that slavery was very wrong, we changed our attitude and fought tooth and nail to destroy slavery...\n\nThese are all English ways of thinking. We tear up the rules and make our own rules. Usually in an effort to improve things.\nWhether for profit or altruistic ends is immaterial. \n\nSo, basically, it's a mindset. Something other nations do not have or can ever truly appreciate. This mindset has, over the years, led to continual innovations within fashion, music, art, literature, cinematography, humanity, the list is endless at what we're good at and what we have advanced. Apart from cuisine. We're not good at that.\n\nWe think outside of the box, we push the envelope.\n\nI love being an Englishman (and am even prouder to be a Cockney...) \n",
"The UK has considerable [\"soft power\"](_URL_0_) due to a number of factors:\n\nCultural influence: Britain's had a historical lead in many of the things that drive the modern world (e.g. stock trading, mass media, engineering, navigation, bicameral legislature) and this manifests as influence today\n\nLanguage: The global currency of English (albeit driven largely by the US, not the UK) and richness of English literature is one reason why the UK persists as a centre of learning, media and publishing \n\nTransatlantic link: The UK is between Europe and North America - not just geographically but often culturally and politically - and so arguably at the centre of the Western World.\n\nInternational Organisations: The UK is a key member of a number of international organisations (NATO, EU, UN, Commonwealth, OSCE) and uses this confluence to exert influence \n\nVestiges of Empire: Although the British Empire is long gone, The UK maintains strong linkages (culture, people, trade) with India, Australia, Canada, the US etc.\n\nWealth: Although mid-table among the richest nations, the UK remains influential through its relative wealth, with London an important financial trading centre.\n\nMany of these factors stem from Britain stealing a march on the rest of the World with the industrial revolution. In essence, the UK was the World's first industrialised nation.\n\nSource: Can see Tower Bridge from my window.\n\nEDIT: grammar",
"I am British and I was reading something recently that mentioned that we have always had one of the best Navies in the world, being an island. \n\nHaving a great Navy meant we could go to places and take them over. We did that a lot. "
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3ibh3e | asia's richest person lost $5 billion in market turmoil. where is that money now, physically? | Edit: Just want to correct that the headline says $3.6 billion now. Thanks for all the good answers! | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3ibh3e/eli5_asias_richest_person_lost_5_billion_in/ | {
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"Nowhere. That money never physically existed.\n\nImagine you own a painting you think is very valuable. You even have it appraised, and the guy appraising it said 'yeah, this is worth a million dollars'. Even though you do not have that money in your wallet, you consider yourself a wealthy man, cause hey, if you would sell your painting, you'd have a million bucks.\n\nExcept it then turns out that your painting wasn't so valuable after all. Maybe the last guy was wrong, maybe you spill coffee over it. Either way, the value suddenly drops to five bucks. Your overall wealth has gone down, because you no longer own a painting worth a million bucks, but no money has physically left your wallet.\n\nThat is the same thing that happened to that guy. He previously had investments valued at an insanely high amount. He never owned that money physically, nobody did, but if he would've sold his shares, he would've had that amount of money. Now in the market turmoil and the revaluation of things, his stock is now worth a lot less. His wealth has gone down, but nothing happened to his physical money. ",
"The stock market just keeps tabs on what people are willing to pay for a certain stock and that depends on what people think the company's future (ROI as in return on investment) looks like. Usually what gets lost in a market turmoil is the faith of the investors in what they deem to be overpriced stocks so they won't buy them until the price drops.\n\nIf he actually bought the stock for $5 Billion+ then that \"physical\" money is with the person to whom he payed it to or the original company that created and sold the stock in exchange for a cash investment.",
"These are Paper Gains and Losses. Basically, it means that the guy had alot of money in the stock market and his portfolio dropped in value and he did not sell necesarily sell out of his portfolio holdings. These changes in value are refered to as \"Unrealized Gains and/or Losses\". What this means is that for every dollar you have in the market, your returns are not going to be actual return until you exit a trade. \n\nFor example, If I buy 100 Shares of Microsoft at 10 dollars a share, I've spent $1,000 of real money to buy shares in stock. If the stock goes up to 15 dollars a share, I have an \"Unrealized\" gain of $500 because my shares are now valued at $1500 and I paid $1000 for them. This is called an Unrealized Gain because until I sell those shares, I haven't made (as is this case because my final cost is greater than my original cost) or lost any actual money. Now, on the flipside, say those shares of Microsoft drop to $5 a share the next day, I now have an Unrealized Loss of $500 since my shares are now worth $500 a share and I paid $1000 for them. Once I go ahead and sell my shares, my unrealized gains or losses become realized gains or losses since I now have money in exchange for the shares I had. Physical money exchange doesn't happen unless you open (or start) a trade (in our example, buying Microsoft) or close (or end) a trade. \n\nSo this guy loses 3.5 Billion in the markets means his porfolio of investments has taken an unrealized loss of 3.5 Billion based on where his portfolio of investments was at prior to it. The irony is that he still may have unrealized gains even he lost 3.5 billion dollars in his investment portfolio. "
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4eez45 | solving rubic's cube blindfolded. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4eez45/eli5_solving_rubics_cube_blindfolded/ | {
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"Hey, Finally a question I can answer!\n\nWhile I'm not the fastest blindfolded solver in the world, I can still do it in about 1 minute and 30 seconds including memorization time. For regular solves I am currently top50 in the world.\n\nSolving the Rubik's Cube blindfolded is much easier than you think, and actually require very little memorization. Most blindfold solvers assign letters for each sticker on the cube (there are 24 edge and 24 corner stickers). At this point it's important to understand that even though I'm going to br referencing stickers, the cube consists of pieces with multiple stickers on them, which means that no matter what you do the stickers on a piece won't move in relation to each other. This can also be seen by disassembling the cube. \n\nAlright back to the actual explanation. During the time the cube is being memorized the solver chooses a position for a piece (called a buffer), and looks at what sticker of what piece is at that position. I mentioned how the solver has assigned letters for each sticker, here's where that comes in. Instead of memorizing where the piece is, what piece it is and where it needs to go, the solver simply needs to memorize one letter. Then the solver looks at where that one piece is supposed to be when solved, looks at what sticker of what piece is there and memorizes the corresponding letter. This is repeated until all pieces are memorized (note: corners and edges are memorized separately, meaning the total amount of stuff to memorize is approximately 12 letters for the edges and 8 for the corners.\n\nMemorizing 20 letters isn't that difficult if you make them into pairs and create a story. For example if the letters you have to memorize are CTBXDKSD you could memorize that as \"a CaT in a BoX is DrinKing SoDa\", which is much easier to remember than the string of letters. \n\nFor the solve itself the solver has memorized an algorithm that moves one piece at a time, and only needs to do different moves before that algorithm to make sure he exchanges the correct pieces. This is also done separately for the corners and the edges to completely solve the cube\n\nTL;DR - Assign letters for stickers, memorize 20ish letters by creating a story of some sort (other memorization methods work too, but that's a different topic) and solve accordingly pretty much one piece at a time using the string of letters\n\nI'd recommend looking up a tutorial even if you weren't interested in learning, there are many good tutorials out there that can give you an idea of how it works. You can also check out /r/cubers to ask questions from us solvers! Feel free to ask me if you have any followup questions, I'll gladly answer",
"I think what hasn't been said yet and perhaps will help OP is that, while the solver is doing the manipulations blindfolded, he has had a chance to look at the cube beforehand.",
"Hey so, I'm no expert, but I used to do blindfold solves for fun in high school.\n\nBasically the first thing to understand is that the Rubik's cube is made up of 20 pieces (the center pieces are stationary, so you don't worry about them) - 8 corner pieces and 12 edge pieces. \n\nDuring a regular speed solve you place the first two layers in order, and then solve the last layer on top using pre set algorithms that orient the last layer (meaning all the cubes are rotated to have the same color sticker on top) and finally permute ( meaning positioning the cubes in the correct order). This method is called the Fredrich (spelling?) method and is very common among speed cube solvers.\n\nThis is obviously not practical blindfolded as each move you make would scramble the cube again.\n\nHowever, the last layer algorithms have a great property of only affecting 3-4 cubes while leaving all other ones undisturbed.\n\nSo people came up with an ingenious method using these algorithms from solving the last layer in order to solve the Rubik's cube piecemeal or rather in \"cycles\".\n\nI hope that makes sense! I'm on mobile so I tried to keep it super simple. Feel free to ask more questions and I can provide examples when I get home later.\n\n"
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4p6sju | how do reverse phone number lookups know who a phone number belongs to? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4p6sju/eli5_how_do_reverse_phone_number_lookups_know_who/ | {
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"There is few ways company collect data\n\n1) They buy phone to person mapping databases from carriers. \n2) They scan all social networks/use their apis to get data\n\nAfter they collect the data and its all merged, it is simple lookup in db to get information back "
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2k53k7 | why are most skyscrapers gray or blue and not other colors? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2k53k7/eli5_why_are_most_skyscrapers_gray_or_blue_and/ | {
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"Well, skyscrapers are covered by glass on the outside. Glass is light, resistant and allows you to have great views. If the sky is blue, the building will look blue. If the sky is cloudy then it will look gray. Look at a skyscraper when the sunset is happening and it will reflect a different color.\nAlso there are other color of glasses like golden, blue or smoked or tainted to filter the sun light. ;)"
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fsnq5v | how does end-to-end encryption work, and what would happen if the us government bans it? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/fsnq5v/eli5_how_does_endtoend_encryption_work_and_what/ | {
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"End-to-end encryption means that only the end-points in the communication can decipher the encryption.\n\nThis is different from an encrypted session towards the provider because in that case the provider is the end-point and they are decrypting it to move it forward to the other parties. As a side effect, the provider (whether or not under instructions of the local government) is able to snoop on the communication.\n\nIf it get banned, then it will become illegal in that country and the companies currently providing this feature will change their technical implementations in these countries to be encrypted to the provider and not end-to-end encryption anymore.\n\nOn your unasked question of \"is this a bad thing\", that depends on whose side you are viewing it from. Here in Australia, despite multiple times being assured that the compulsory collected metadata on internet communication will not be used for frivolous purposes, everybody and their dog in the government has been reported to access that data. Also, arbritary laws are being written with such a high punishment that it suddenly falls in the category for which this metadata can be accessed in investigating the issue. So as an Australian resident, I don't trust any of the government's statements that it will only be used in very serious cases. As an USA resident, you should neither."
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2tv9w7 | why so often does someone who commits murder soon after commit suicide? | I find this odd. But murder/suicides seem so commonplace, so I assume there should be a logical explanation. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2tv9w7/eli5_why_so_often_does_someone_who_commits_murder/ | {
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"No expert, but its probably just the apex of \"If I cant have something nice, neither can you\" syndrom i.e., If I dont want to go on living, neither should you. \n\nSelfishness. ",
"In the case of Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, it was a statement of absolutes. During the planning phase, they had already decided that they wanted to kill as many people as possible (they were hoping for a 3/4 termination rate of students at the school) and to leave the parents without anyone to blame. \n\nThis was more Harris' view of the shooting/bombing (bombing failed its purpose). Dylan Klebold suffered severe depression, and is believed to have gone along with Eric because he [Dylan] had few friends, and often fantasized about dramatic ways to make his exit. Certain drawings found at his home were highly revealing in this regard. \n\nWhile I don't know if that's the norm across the board, I have known of a few other spree killers with similar perspectives. ",
"Maybe it's possible that they thought they would get some sort of feeling of accomplishment, then after the fact they realize they were wrong. Maybe they feel like they won't be able to live with what they've done.",
"Keep in mind that some of these didn't actually expect to kill the other people: it was a bluff, or they planned it out but somehow believed they would not go through with it even as they planned it out.\n\nThere are more than a few cases where the \"Oh my God, what have I done?\" horror seems to motivate the suicide."
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3s07uh | how do companies determine how many shares their company is made up of? | My knowledge of this rusty at best, so please feel free to correct any mistakes on my part. I've often heard the term 'X owns 10 shares in company Y'. How do companies determine how many shares their company is made up of? Is this something the company agrees on, or is this something standardized by governments? Like, if I own a company, can I decide to have just as many or as little shares I want my company to have? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3s07uh/eli5how_do_companies_determine_how_many_shares/ | {
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"Good question. If you are talking about stock ownership, it is arbitrary. In a 1 owner company, only 1 share is necessary but company could issue more to the sole stockholder if it so desired. If the company's stock is going public or is publicly traded, then the company will authorize and issue many shares to accommodate wide ownership. The Board of Directors of the company determine the number of shares that are authorized for issuance. The Board also must consent to the initial sale of the shares by the company.The number of shares owned by particular stockholder divided by all outstanding shares owned by all stockholders is determinative of his percentage ownership interest in the company. Hope this helps..",
"Shares are a simple percentage of ownership. The number of shares owned out of the total number of shares; so the number of shares alone is not relevant information until it is compared to the total shares and you calculate a percentage of ownership.\n\nAlso, the number of shares can be changed by a vote of the Board... Stock splits and reverse stock splits, for example. \n\nSome companies want wide share availability, so they adjust total shares to make the individual share price \"reachable\" for all investors (Apple is currently in the $120/share range because they have many, many total shares now) whereas other companies prefer not to deal with millions of investors -- which is why Berkshire Hathaway A shares are about $203,000 per share. As you can see, BH share price is much higher than Apple, yet Apple is a more valuable company because it has many more shares at that lower share price. \n\nEach share of Apple is a tiny, tiny fraction of ownership, each share of Berkshire Hathaway is a much larger percentage of ownership.\n\nIf Apple had kept its original number of shares fixed, each share would now be very high, like Berkshire Hathaway.\n\nAnother way to think of it is this: If Apple was owned by just ten people equally, they could have all the ownership in one share each; each of those 10 shares would be worth about $67 Billion. But that would make it very hard for any of them to sell any portion of their ownership.\n\n",
"When you form a corporation, you have to announce how many shares you want the corporation to issue in the Articles of Incorporation you file with the state. Most small corporations issue a few thousand shares to make it easy to keep track. \n\nAlso, a for profit corporation can issue two different kinds of shares: voting shares (meaning people who own them have a say in how the company is run) and non-voting shares (meaning the people who own them cannot vote but do retain the value of the shares as the company grows). \n\nWhen a company goes public (i.e. their shares are listed on a stock exchange and the general public is allowed to buy them), they usually amend their share structure to have many many more shares and the shares they sell to the public will be non-voting shares. ",
"It works differently with private companies than it does with public companies, as private companies can still have shares but they aren't publicly traded. I'll address public companies here.\n\nWhen you are privately incorporated and wish to go public and have investors purchase equity in your company, then you need to raise an initial public offering (IPO) with an investment bank. The process of raising the IPO will take several months and will have all manner of different processes, chief among which is the prospectus. The prospectus, outlined by IB analysts, will be done in conjunction with the offering company to ascertain the fair value of a share and how much money the company wishes to raise. This will be an initial value but isn't necessarily adhered to.\n\nWhen Company A goes public, the investment bank that is dealing with the IPO will take into account a range of factors - including industry comparisons and risk of the company in particular, as well as financial fundamentals in their statements - to determine the price. [This will give you a better understanding of that.](_URL_0_)\n\nThe number of shares to be issued will be decided upon based on the percentage of equity you wish to sell in the company, and then the investment bank will discuss with the company how much money they intend to raise and go from there really. There isn't a cast rule to it, and it is different for every company.\n\nAs others have mentioned, company's may split stock or have secondary offerings and rights issues to sell more equity, which will affect the stock price and the quantity of shares traded.\n\nHope this helps."
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6vfbq7 | why is fire used to make land fertile? wouldn't the heat from the flames cause a dust bowl effect? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6vfbq7/eli5_why_is_fire_used_to_make_land_fertile/ | {
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"Living things have a lot of nutrients needed to grow living things. When you burn them the nutrients dont go away they just fall to the earth in the form of ash. The ash gets mixed into the soil and boom you have very nutrient rich soil. ",
"Fire is GOOD for nature for many reasons; you may have heard that coniferous trees (trees with cones) will only spread their seeds when the heat from a fire melts the resins in the cones and allows them to open up. \n\nFire is also beneficial in that, once the trees are burned, the remaining ashes contain lots of nutrients that will aid in the regrowth of the area.\n\nMountainous areas with lots of trees aren't as prone to the dust bowl effect because the dead trees still prevent the wind from blowing at gale forces. Not to mention that dead trees still have plenty of roots to hold the soil in place.",
"Fire won't obliterate all life in an area. Usually it will just burn down the stuff on top and a few days later new growth will sprout up from the roots of existing plants.\n\nWhy burn? It is an easy way to clear land for farming use. Rather than spending a huge amount of time and effort hacking away at the forest you can just burn a patch and till the leftovers into the soil."
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1r91b5 | why can't you set a maximum decibel level when watching movies on stereo systems so action scenes or commercials aren't ridiculously louder than the rest of the show/film? | I could imagine that it'd be a little weird to balance and stuff or something idk
EDIT: Apparently these do exist, my bad | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1r91b5/eli5_why_cant_you_set_a_maximum_decibel_level/ | {
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" > ELI5 is for requests for easy-to-follow explanations of **complex concepts and subjects.**\n\n_URL_0_\n\nThis feature is also on many TVs and stereo receivers."
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37dvy6 | what makes us interested in something? | I mean, what happens in our body that makes us enjoy things we are interested in? And why is it that I can be interested in one thing but someone else wont be? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/37dvy6/eli5what_makes_us_interested_in_something/ | {
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"We develop interests through nature and nurture. You might have a inquisitive personality that makes you attracted to books or an analytical mind where strategy games pique your interest.\n\nIf you had a dog growing up and it was your best friend you might like dogs and pets in general. If you had a dog growing up and it bit you once, you might hate dogs and have an irrational fear of them.\n\nIf you're a younger sibling who got involved in a specific sport because your older brothers/sisters were competitive in it, you might have just been a part of it long enough that it became an interest. Humans are adaptable like that.\n\nOnce you have learned the skills necessary to indulge in your interest, your brain will reward you for feeling successful the same way it does in other ways: dopamine!\n\nIt's far too complex an answer to say exactly how an interest is developed.",
"I don't know, but I read something a while back that talked about how kids are essentially primed to go through school to college without an understanding of what they want because that's life.\nWhat the author said was that part of the way we like something is because we experience it and learn about it and like that aspect which motivates us.\nI would assume it has to do with the reward gained from investing in bettering yourself. As for what leads you to certain hobbies/ interests, I'd assume it has to do with your personality and environmental certimstances. \nFor example, I got interested in guitar because I heard an album while being depressed that resonated and I felt better, so I wanted to learn to play to make me feel better and eventually share that to make others happy. Food for thought.",
"I would like to speculate an answer! It is a general question, so I'll take a stab at a general answer. So forgive me if I am vague. \n\nIt has to do with the connections in your brain. You understand a subject better and have emotional connections that are positive on that topic, where someone who doesn't care is not relating to it in the same ways that you are. As you watch or do that thing, you are able to connect it to the other interests that you have. You can also discover new ways of understanding it by analogy and similarities to the other things to do well in your life. \n\nPeople who are not interested have not integrated the activity (made connections in the brain) with all these other areas. They can't see what you see. ",
"This is an interesting question, and I sure wish someone would come along and tell me why it's so goddamn interesting. ",
"**My ELI5 answer:**\n\nWe are interested in things that have forms and patterns that we haven't experienced before. Our interest in things is really just prompted by a) how unfamiliar the thing is, and b) whether our current understanding permits us to really understand or \"see\" the patterns. Those 2 things in combination make us interested.\n\nE.g. You see a book written in latin. It has a cool and very exotic and unfamiliar look about it (a), but you don't know any latin (not b) so you let it go.\n\nE.g. You hear a pop song, but your brain is already so familiar with the songs chords, instrumentation, lyrics, etc. that it isn't unfamiliar at all (not a), even though (b) you have listened to enough music to recognize all the patterns or forms present in the song and learn all of its structure.\n\nE.g. You pick up a book on microbiology which you've never taken before, so it is mysterious/unfamiliar (a), but you've taken enough organic chemistry classes to cruise through the first few chapters and feel decently challenged but like you are learning the material well (b).\n\nBasically, it is like a \"learnability\" thing. Which feels weird when you apply it to things like music or art. But take a music appreciation class, for example, and you'll find that it actually does increase your capacity for (b) and you might suddenly be interested in stuff that seemed inaccessible or weird before.\n\n**Non-ELI5 answer**, for the more sciencey side of things:\n\nYou might get simplistic answers like \"dopamine,\" but really, those will just be a proxy for when we are interested.\n\nI think the real answer has something to do with novelty and a reward system which will one day be formally (mathematically/algorithmically) understood by computational neuroscience, but we are a long ways off. If you want to look into this from a really theoretical perspective, look into \"Artificial Curiosity\" or just machine intelligence or computational neuroscience in general.\n\nJuergen Schmidhuber might be someone to look into. He has a TED talk and some other pop sci stuff. It is kind of like neuroscience right now, though-- nobody really has any idea and the popsci representations can get pseudosciencey real fast.\n\nBut check out this abstract of a talk of his (can't find the talk):\n\n > Compression Progress: The Algorithmic Principle Behind Curiosity, Creativity, Art, Science, Music, Jokes\nI argue that science, art, music, comedy, and many other aspects of intelligent behavior are just by-products of our intrinsic desire to create or discover novel patterns, that is, data compressible in hitherto unknown ways. In other words: non-arbitrary, regular data that is surprising not in the traditional sense of Boltzmann and Shannon but in the sense that it allows for compression progress because its regularity was not yet known. Interestingness is the first derivative of subjective compressibility or simplicity or beauty, that is, the steepness of the learning curve. It is possible to rigorously formalize these concepts and implement them on learning machines, thus building artificial robotic scientists and artists equipped with curiosity and creativity.",
"This is anecdotal, but when I was 10, an odd man in a jumper suit and beard gave me an entire box of Snickers bars (the big ones) and told me he wouldn't need them where he was going.\n\nSince then, I've had a very fond penchant for strangers with beards.",
"Not sure, but I'd guess it has to do with this phenomenon: \n It's something that's new enough that don't *know* the answer, but when you guess right, it feels like you've taken cocaine (or fun drug of your choice; or, if you're actually 5, like you've eaten 20 gummy worms). You're not expecting to be right, but you are. And that feels good. \n \n \nReward systems in your brain are activated in response to positive outcomes that are [\"unpredicted.\"] (_URL_0_) By the same token, if you predict one outcome, and you're wrong, you will not get the influx of dopamine. The site cited above succinctly explains it as \n > DopamineResponse = RewardOccurred – RewardPredicted. \n\nSo think about it in terms of \"facts really there - facts predicted.\" You're drawn to what you already understand/know a little about because you will get a dopamine response if your hypothesis is confirmed. \nSomething you know everything about gets smaller dopamine responses than something you know *a little* about because the predicted outcome is dependent on your prior knowledge. \n \n \nedit: wine-induced typos. ",
"The human mind is a very complex thing, but it all comes down to an individuals unmet physical/psychological/emotional needs. The needs you have unmet are influenced by both nature and nurture. Every person is born with certain \"gauges\" for needs. \n\nEveryone has really basic human needs, like eating, drinking, sex, and sleep. And then we have really basic emotional/psychological needs like the need to feel safe, and secure, in control of our own lives, and some slightly more important ones like feeling cared about, accepted etc (very important for survival) and the higher up you go on this pyramid of needs the more abstract and less directly linked to survival they are. You start to get higher level needs like wanting to understand things, (which is also a very good thing for survival) Some needs you have as an adult might just be your natural needs, but become amplified by not having them met as a child. (like someone in poverty who had very little to eat as a child, and becomes obese later in life when they have more resources because of it.)\n\nIt's easy to meet your needs in a higher level, but only when you have your needs in the level right before those met. That's why it's so hard to care about say, something like what's happening in a TV show when your house is burning down. Your immediate needs are back down to the basic physical/emotional needs. \n\nSome people are more \"needy\" in certain things than others, just by birth and nature. Some people might become more needy for certain things caused by nature. Like an example some others have said about being bitten by a dog as a child. When you are perhaps 3 years old you might just be confused and hurt, depleting your needs for security and saftey, but your needs already feel very met in those things because of your parents, and being a very naive person who thinks the world is a generally nice/safe place. So you maybewould be more likely to become a vet when you get older. While if you were bitten at 5 you might be afraid of dogs for life. But it all depends on the needs of the individual. Someone might be born with a bigger need for understanding than for saftey, so they might try harder to understand the bite more than others. \n\nEverything can be broken down into your needs. Some needs can be broken down into more simple needs. Like for example, I like cooking because it fills my needs for control, understanding, appreciation from others, saving money (can be broken down to my need of feeling secure for example) Someone else might not have a need for these things. For example feeling in control and secure their entire life because they have rich parents and not need to learn to cook. But maybe they aren't getting their emotional needs met, and cooking might be a good way to meet those such as attention.\n\n**TL:DR It's all a subconscious process, but basically people are attracted to the things that fill their very complex and unique fingerprint of neediness, and run far away from things that deplete their needs.**\n\nSome further reading if your interested: It's really basic psych 101 stuff.\n\n_URL_3_\n\n_URL_4_\n\n_URL_5_\n\n_URL_2_\n\n_URL_1_\n\n_URL_0_",
"Recent research appears to say dopamine, a neurotransmitter in the brain, is something that makes us enjoy focusing.\n\nEver browsed TVTropes for hours, unstoppably? Seems likely that this is because of dopamine maintaining your interest.",
"We try to predict what will cause our brain to release dopamine, a chemical that makes us feel good. We feel bored when we can't think of something that we're sure will release dopamine. We're very interested in a sure shot.\n\nWhat actually causes it to release it is complicated and a lot of these other comments describe more about that."
]
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"http://www.scholarpedia.org/article/Reward_signals#Pure_Reward_Signals_in_Dopamine_Neurons"
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"http://eqi.org/needs.htm",
"http://allpsych.com/psychology101/motivation/#.VWVTJs9VhHw",
"http://www.edpsycinteractive.org/topics/motivation/motivate.html",
"http://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Motivation_and_emotion/Book/2011/Maslow's_hierarchy_of_needs",
"http://www.alleydog.com/101notes/mot-emot.html#.VWVSbs9VhHw",
"http://highered.mheducation.com/sites/0072937769/student_view0/chapter11/index.html"
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u1xoi | why is greece so angry at the eurozone and germany. don't greece's problem stem from the countries ability to live within their means? (apologies for ignorance) | ELI5: Why is Greece so angry at the Eurozone and Germany. **Doesn't** Greece's problem stem from the countries ability to live within their means? (apologies for ignorance)
I apologize if this is a sensitive issue and my question wasn't delivered right. For someone who has a very casual interest in financial issues I'm trying to get my head around the current position of Greece.
It seems there are many in Greece that are upset at the Eurozone and Germany - even going so far as to say it was irresponsible for Germany to lend money to Greece (was it?). However, is the problem simply a Greek political issue? The people are clearly upset, and some economists in Australia have painted an extremely grim picture for the country (even mentioning "middle ages").
I feel I am only getting one side of the story and would appreciate it if anyone could kindly explain to me:
* Why the Greeks are upset at the Euro and Germany.
* Would leaving the Euro zone actually help Greece? Wouldn't it completely shut down any value of their independent currency?
* Did Germany really lend irresponsibly? But what did they have to gain from lending to a country that couldn't pay them back? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/u1xoi/eli5_why_is_greece_so_angry_at_the_eurozone_and/ | {
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"I'll give it a go but this might get beyond ELI5.\n\nImagine a husband and wife. They both share money and bank accounts and what one buys, the other uses. If the husband loses his job, the wife can support him and if the wife needs some time off to have a baby then the husband's income is still there. The two of them don't \"sell\" stuff to each other (even though they could) because that doesn't really make sense at all since they're sharing a bank account.\n\nNow imagine two business partners. They still share a bank account but one might run the operations and one might run marketing. So they have to sell services to each other. If the marketing guy suddenly starts to have trouble then the operations guy might be very unhappy about having to help him out.\n\nThe first example is like USA in many respects. If one state gets into trouble then the Federal government can step in and help because the entire country is all in it together. On top of that, if unemployment were very high in one state, people can easily move to another if there is more work.\n\nThe second example is more like Europe. Each country is still sovreign but they just share money. There is a central bank (the ECB) that can help out countries but there are a lot more restrictions and rules around what the ECB can do. On top of that, if unemployment is very high somewhere, it's hard to move to a place where the prospects are better.\n\n > Why the Greeks are upset at the Euro and Germany\n\nAs part of the bailout from the ECB, there were a lot of conditions attached. The conditions made life quite hard for people in Greece and, quite frankly, haven't made Greece any more likely to repay all of the debt. The Greeks see that it is Germany causing them a lot of pain while also not allowing them to get out of debt.\n\nGreece had (and still has) a lot of problems. They were way too lazy about collecting taxes and way too willing to borrow a lot of money. In the end though, that's not much different to one state in the US (Florida, Nevada - ones with a big housing bubble) doing the same thing. The difference is that a state is supported by the Federal government while a sovreign nation is expected to manage its own finances.\n\nYou have to remember that it's **really bad** in Greece right now. Think Great Depression bad - unemployment is around 20% with 50% youth unemployment. So the Greeks basically just want it to stop and the ECB isn't helping with its insistence on austerity measures.\n\n > Would leaving the Euro zone actually help Greece? Wouldn't it completely shut down any value of their independent currency\n\nYes, it almost certainly would help Greece. The key thing they could do is allow their currency to drop relative to the Euro and the rest of the world. It would make imports more expensive and exports cheaper which would mean that people would spend more within Greece. Life would be different - more home grown, less imported food etc - but overall people would keep going to work and living as usual.\n\nIt's \"bad\" for two reasons, one sensible and one that's pretty much crap. The 'crap' reason is that the world bond market would not want to lend to Greece because they defaulted on their debt. Assuming Greece did default when leaving the Euro, it's still basically the same as Argentina did **twice** and people still want to lend to Argentina. On top of that, the bond market **already** isn't really lending to Greece so their situation wouldn't be worse off there.\n\nThe real reason is the fear of what's known as 'contagion'. That's the fear that, if Greece defaults and leaves then the other nations in the PIIGS (Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece & Spain) would also come under attack by the bond markets and end up in the same situation as Greece. This is a major reason for the EU to want Greece to stay in because Germany/France can't afford to bailout Spain & Italy. On the whole though, it's not really Greece's concern.\n\n > Did Germany really lend irresponsibly? But what did they have to gain from lending to a country that couldn't pay them back?\n\nTo answer the second question first, it's because for a while Greek bonds were paying a lot more money to investors and it's hard to resist the lure of free money.\n\nWhat Germany actually did was the \"export\" its inflation. Germany is an industrial powerhouse and exports a huge amount of 'stuff' all over the world but mostly inside the EU. Normally when a country does that, their currency gets stronger and rises relative to other nations and their exports get expensive. This didn't happen to Germany because they sent all of that excess production around the EU where it got absorbed doing things like raising wages in Spain or fuelling Greek lifestyle.\n\nUnfortunately, when the music stopped playing and bank lending started to slow down, people realised that maybe the Greek debt wasn't such a good deal and maybe Spanish wages were just a bit too high. They (German & French banks) wanted their money back but the economies of the PIIGS were too small to pay that sort of cash back quickly. \n\nThey collapsed, the ECB bailed them out but attached a whole heap of conditions.\n\n**TL:DR (and not ELI5)** German desire for low inflation prevents Greece and other Euro peripheral nations from generating achievable deflation relative to the Euro as a whole. Because of this, the only other option is outright deflation brought on by austerity meausres which generates very real pain for citizens of the peripheral EU nations.",
"You're assuming that \"living within your means\" should be an overriding consideration; that if a country isn't living within its means, the proper response is to force it to do so at great cost. The Greeks do not agree.",
"You don't give alcohol to an alcoholic, and you don't give money to a country that can never pay it back. Greece wants more loans, but doesn't have the ability to pay it back right now. When a welfare state stops getting a free lunch, the people get very angry. That's a natural (though immature) reaction. \n\nGermany did not want to give Greece more loans at first, because Germany knew Greece would not pay these particular loans back. But Germany was pressured to give more loans because it is perceived as the \"rich guy\" in Europe. Just like the US is pressured to fix the world's problems, because all Americans are perceived as rich. Yep, all Americans live in mansions, just like on TV, right? \n\nWould you loan your neighbor money when you knew they had no way to pay it back?"
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2d2arw | commonwealth of nations, and what happens if one country is attacked? | Let's say, USA attacks Canada. What is the most likely scenario? What kind of response would that get from the [Commonwealth of Nations](_URL_0_)? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2d2arw/eli5commonwealth_of_nations_and_what_happens_if/ | {
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"Botswana and Fiji would launch some kind of shock and awe campaign most likely. ",
"The Commonwealth of Nations is not a military alliance, so the other countries would be under no obligation to do anything. I think Commonwealth countries have even gone to war with each other before.\n\nI'm sure if the USA invaded Canada, there would be a huge objections from other Commonwealth countries, but not *because* they are in the Commonwealth.\n\nThe USA actually has invaded a Commonwealth country before. They invaded Grenada in the 80s. The UK did not approve of the invasion, but they didn't do anything to stop it. On the other hand, other Caribbean countries which are also in the Commonwealth also took part in the invasion."
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207bdn | eli: 5 why do i lose my eye sight when i get a head rush? | Whenever I get up too quickly and get a head rush it seems like I go temporarily blind. Even if it's light outside, everything will go black and I get dizzy. Why does this happen every time? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/207bdn/eli_5_why_do_i_lose_my_eye_sight_when_i_get_a/ | {
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"That \"head rush\" is caused by a sudden drop in blood pressure. It takes a moment for your circulatory system to adjust to having your blood redistributed more to your legs when you stand, and sometimes it can't keep up quickly enough.\n\nThe loss of vision is caused by a temporary reduction of oxygen to the visual cortex in your brain. It's one of the more energy-hungry parts of the brain, and when it doesn't get enough oxygen, your brain becomes unable to interpret vision."
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2v9ir2 | why does waiting to save a file make it download faster? | Recently, when I downloaded Louis CK's new album from his website, I noticed that after I clicked "Download", and the box popped w/ the place on my computer to download it to, if I waited to press "Save", it had already downloaded a substantial portion of the file. I've experimented with other large size media files and I've noticed I can just wait 5-10 minutes between clicking "Download" and clicking "Save" and something that would have taken 30 or 40 minutes to download is done in 10-15 minutes.
How does this work? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2v9ir2/eli5_why_does_waiting_to_save_a_file_make_it/ | {
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"The browser has already started downloading the file when it displays the \"save as\" dialog. It's continuing to download it in the background to your temporary folder while it's waiting for you to respond. You're not actually gaining any speed. It's smoke and mirrors but it's a useful tactic nonetheless."
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1v82vp | how are the time / date correct on my computer, even after unplugging both the power and the hdd? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1v82vp/eli5_how_are_the_time_date_correct_on_my_computer/ | {
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"Your computer has a small battery in it (like a watch battery) that helps keep time.\n\nAlso, many newer operating systems reach out to a time server every time you boot the system, and get the current time from the internet.",
"A) There's a small battery inside\nB) It auto updates via internet connection.",
"There's a battery on the motherboard that powers a clock to keep time even when the computer is off.",
"Theres a battery in your PC which powers a CMOS chip\n\nThis chip is built on your motherboard itself and it keeps tabs of the time, boot order..."
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4byb8z | why the highest quality of an .mp3 file is (or usually is) 320 kbps? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4byb8z/eli5_why_the_highest_quality_of_an_mp3_file_is_or/ | {
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"Because that's what was decided. If you are using .mp3, maximum quality isn't your main concern, as you would pay extra for .flac files. \n \nWhen using 320Kbps MP3 (or 256Kbps AAC), you really can't tell the difference with a 1400Kbps CD file or better, unless you get much better headphones, even then you might need an external DAC/Amp."
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5ivpmy | if we/matter consist of mostly empty space, why do light reflecting of us, make us seem solid? | If the entire human can fit in a sugat cube, if we remove the empty space between us, that must mean we are just dust strung together by forces.
Why can't we see between this particles of dust/atoms? But see all matter as a solid? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5ivpmy/eli5_if_wematter_consist_of_mostly_empty_space/ | {
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"This is a BIG topic which is pretty hard to break down into a few sentences or paragraphs, but I'll try to do it ;)\n\nBefore I talk about atomic forces, I'll talk about magnets.\n\nImagine you have two very strong magnets. You can push as hard as you can but as a human you aren't strong enough to push them together. The magnets are both existing within and altering a magnetic field.\n\nYou can visualize this field as a really step hill. The stronger the magnet, the steeper the hill. Magnets can become so strong that they make their magnetic \"hill\" to steep for you to push against.\n\nSo the magnets never touch but they are still exerting force around themselves. Does this bit make sense?\n\nAtomic particles interact in a similar way. They exert fields around them, and they make their own type of \"hills\". For particles these hills are actually way stronger than what magnets have, except that the hills that particles create are more limited in distance. \n\nSo it's easy to bring your hands together. The \"hills\" of force created by your hands are super strong but also limited in distance. You can bring them close together until the base of these hills start to touch. \n\nNow your hands are together and the forces between the particles of your hands are close enough together that these force fields can \"see\" each other.\n\nNow that these force fields are in contact, they are incredibly strong and you will never be able to \"climb those hills\". Even though the particle is all the way at the top of the hill and has no physical presence at the bottom, the force required to climb the hill is simply impassable.\n\nOk enough of that analogy.\n\nIt could be said that the \"actual physical\" space occupied by the particles is minute, but we don't operate on those scales. We operate on the scales where the forces interact.\n\n\nSo pushing your hands through each other is just like trying to force the two most powerful magnets ever to touch. Their force field is too immense. The particles will never even come close to each other relative to their size."
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36w2a2 | who do these algae take the shape of the bottom of the pool? | I was at a zoo today, there was a dirty pool where the alligators live. I saw that the algae showed the shape of the stones on the bottom of the pool, even though the water is about 30cm (a foot) deep.
I honestly don't understand how this can be, can anyone explain this to me?
_URL_0_ | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/36w2a2/eli5_who_do_these_algae_take_the_shape_of_the/ | {
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"First, let's assume you're not seeing a reflection of some overhead tiles on the surface, and further assume the algae isn't a little bit transparent and you're actually seeing the bottom lines through it.\n\nIf both of these things are the case, either they grew anchored to the bottom of the pool, and then floated up, or they're pushed up by bubbles from other algae that's growing below.\n\nIf you look at shallow mats of algae that are in still pools you'll often see them become covered with tiny bubbles of the oxygen that is their product of respiration. If you zoom in on this pic, you'll see the algae is loaded with bubbles.\n\nWhat sometimes happens is the bubbles give enough buoyancy to lift the algae to the surface of the water. In this case the whole carpet could have lifted to the top and the texture of the paving stones or bricks underneath them was preserved.\n\nThe more likely explanation is that there's algae growing at the bottom too, and it's giving off bubbles that are floating to the top and pushing the upper algae mat up where the corresponding surfaces are level. There seem to be more bubbles near the edges of that central island, and even the smaller floating blobs retain the underwater texture, not just the big floaty raft-like areas, so that's probably the better explanation."
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6olh1b | how can we go from painfully full to ready to eat again in just a matter of time without having any bowel movements? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6olh1b/eli5_how_can_we_go_from_painfully_full_to_ready/ | {
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"We are a very outdated model of human being. The last meaningful evolution of our species occurred tens of thousands of years ago when we were hunter gathers who spent a ton of calories during our daily struggle/search for food. \n\nYour food travels through an upper and lower intestine, and finally your bowels before being expelled. The \"am I hungry?\" sensors are located in the early parts of that system, because again, life was a constant struggle to find enough food, so we had to ensure a constant stream of incoming nutrition. \n\nYour lower intestine/bowel may be full of shit, but if your stomach is empty you're body is signally that you need to add more food to avoid breaking the chain of incoming nutrition. "
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dtfhw4 | why are bones super strong yet lightweight? | I recently got a Bca test in the gym. I saw that my mineral(bone) mass was 3.76kg. I was shocked to see that they are so strong and support my heavy weight with ease. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/dtfhw4/eli5_why_are_bones_super_strong_yet_lightweight/ | {
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"The bones have a honeycomb like structure inside which enables great strength to come with using minimal material a bit like how bridges have metal structures with gaps in them maintaining a strong structure using a relatively small amount of metal. This process goes even further in birds an pneumatic bones - _URL_0_",
"The base of bones are porous, [like this](_URL_1_). Instead of being a single solid chunk of calcium minerals, it's a network of strong fibers. Think of it like the way a [trestle bridge](_URL_0_) is interconnected, distributing the load across the entire structure through those connections.\n\nThere's a lot of collagen in there, too, which makes the bones more flexible and springy. Not only does this keep the bones light, but it helps them be stronger because the bones can flex before they break. Without that springiness, bone would act more like glass - very strong, until it's not and then it shatters. With the springiness, it's more like, well, a very stiff spring - it will hold its shape until a lot of force is put on it, and then it can flex without breaking and return to its original shape.\n\nThe longest, thickest, strongest part of the bone isn't exactly hollow (unless you're a bird) but it isn't solid bone, either. That part is more like an [I-beam](_URL_2_), which retains the strength of the beam without needing all of the material of it. And again, it's full of marrow and collagen and other squishy stuff that keeps the bones flexible enough so that they don't (normally) shatter under stress.",
"Evolution tends to lead to fairly efficient structures over time. Heavy, weak bones would pretty clearly put a species at a disadvantage, and that species would likely die off compared to species with light, strong bones. Bones have been evolving for half a billion years or so."
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16i0xe | what exactly did aaron swartz do that would've caused him to owe $1mil in fines and get jail time? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/16i0xe/what_exactly_did_aaron_swartz_do_that_wouldve/ | {
"a_id": [
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"text": [
"Scientists do experiments, and to show these results to the world, they publish them journals (kinda like a magazine with very complicated articles). There are tons of these journals, usually for specific subsets of science (biology, psychology, chemistry, physics, quantum physics), and if you want to do research before you do an experiment of your own, you look through journals in a library and get the basic background knowledge which you can reference in your own study.\n\nSo many journals were created, with each journal coming out with so many issues a year that it became a *real* lot of stuff for libraries to actually store. Luckily, by that time, the Internet had come out, so JSTOR was created. JSTOR is a service that gives you access to over 1400 journals, online. Only problem is that they charge you a certain amount of money for access. \n\nAaron didn't like the idea that you have to *pay* for access for the world's knowledge. And that's sorta what JSTOR is...a library of all the scientific knowledge in the world, all neatly organized with background info, material used, problems the study may have had, charts, graphs, etc...all reviewed by others in the science. The public should be able to access this, right? So they can see for themselves what science actually has to say about, say, global warming. So Aaron went to MIT ( a really good college), connected his computer to their network and set up programs to mass-download as much as JSTOR as he could. His plan was then to release all that stuff to sites like thepiratebay so people can torrent and share with the entire world.\n\nHe got caught.\n\nEDIT: I just read this article, which doesn't seem to be getting any notice on [reddit](_URL_0_) whatsoever. A legal opinion on the Swartz case suggests that he probably didn't do anything actually illegal. _URL_1_"
]
} | [] | [] | [
[
"http://www.reddit.com/r/technology/duplicates/16ifuw/aaron_swartz_died_innocent_here_is_the_evidence/",
"http://io9.com/5975592/aaron-swartz-died-innocent-++-here-is-the-evidence"
]
] |
||
1t071m | whyyyyy do we hear a ringing sound in our ears when it's quiet and is the pitch of it the same for everyboyd? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1t071m/eli5whyyyyy_do_we_hear_a_ringing_sound_in_our/ | {
"a_id": [
"ce2zrxx",
"ce2zxmy",
"ce330v8"
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"score": [
4,
3,
2
],
"text": [
"You may have tinnitus",
"neha_is_sitting_down pointed out that a loud ringing can be abnormal. It's called tinnitus and it has a lot of causes--especially damaged cochlear nerves.\n\nHowever, a mild ringing is normal, and we all hear it. There's a couple of reasons. (1) our body makes noises on its own. (2) our nerves aren't perfect, and don't like being deprived of sensory input, so there's always a baseline signal being sent to the brain, even in the absence of input/sounds. That's what you hear when it's totally silent. As to the pitch...I have no idea, and it'd be very hard to find out.",
"Thanks for making it more apparent to me at this particularly quiet moment in my morning."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[],
[]
] |
||
9bc9zz | how do we know that electrons are elementary particles, while proton and neutron are not? | How did we figure out that they're made up of quarks while electron is not? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9bc9zz/eli5_how_do_we_know_that_electrons_are_elementary/ | {
"a_id": [
"e51xazr",
"e51yaqj"
],
"score": [
7,
16
],
"text": [
"When you shoot an electron into a proton or neutron, it bounces off in such a way to indicate an internal structure. Internal structure means internal parts means those guys aren't fundamental particles.\n\nIt is not unlike how the nucleus of the atom was discovered, high energy ~~electrons~~ alpha particles mostly passed through atoms but very rarely would bounce back. That indicated there was something small and sturdy inside more fundamental than the atom itself.",
"We know that nucleons are not elementary particles because of [deep inelastic scattering](_URL_0_) experiments. At high enough energies, when electrons are scattered off of nucleons, the angular distribution of scattered electrons differs markedly from what it would look like if nucleons were point particles. So we know that nucleons are not point particles, and that they have substructure. We now have theories to describe the structure of nucleons (and all other hadrons), with the quark model, and QCD."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_inelastic_scattering"
]
] |
|
2ibrhk | at concerts, why do i sometimes "feel" the music inside my body, and is it harmful? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2ibrhk/eli5_at_concerts_why_do_i_sometimes_feel_the/ | {
"a_id": [
"cl0p48e",
"cl0qric"
],
"score": [
10,
6
],
"text": [
"That just means it's so loud it's causing your whole body to reverberate. It's not harmful, but I certainly hope you have some kind of ear protection. ",
"Sound travels through the air by forcing air to move back and forth - that change in pressure is what your ears detect as sound. Your ears are very sensitive and can detect tiny changes in these compression waves so you can hear very quiet sounds. \n\nBut when sound gets loud enough, like at a very loud concert, especially if you are near the main speakers, so much air is being moved that your skin can feel it. If you stand in front of the main speakers even at a smaller club setting, you will easily feel the air moving all around you. \n\nThat sensation of feeling the music inside your body is because the sound waves are actually causing movement of the tissues in your body and your nerves are picking up that vibration. Have you noticed that you can feel certain songs or parts of songs more than others? That's a combination of lower frequencies generally moving more air (causing more tissue movement) and/or the song hitting one of your own body's natural frequencies, causing it to resonate. For example, your chest cavity will have a certain frequency that it will resonate to, and you will feel sounds at that frequency especially in your chest.\n\nIt's not harmful to your body at all, but you want to make sure you have ear protection anywhere you're listening to concerts that loud.\n\nTLDR: You are feeling the waves of pressure created by the sound of the concert. It won't hurt your body, but will damage your ears over time, if not protected."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[]
] |
||
6kcd7e | where does the gum go when teeth grow in ? | Does it stretch and takes its usual form ? (asking because of some wisdom teeth shenanigans) | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6kcd7e/eli5_where_does_the_gum_go_when_teeth_grow_in/ | {
"a_id": [
"djl0dt2"
],
"score": [
6
],
"text": [
"Pressure from the erupting tooth causes the gum to break down. After the tooth has emerged, the gum tissue recedes down the tooth until it is in the proper place. Tissue recession in this case means essentially that it shrinks."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
|
3mgyz0 | how come there aren't more 'unethical' experiments? | I, personally, would happily sign a waver declaring that I am ok with any risks an experiment could give as long as I'm paid, and I'm certain there are other people that feel this way, so how come people can't agree to progress science regardless of 'ethics'? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3mgyz0/eli5_how_come_there_arent_more_unethical/ | {
"a_id": [
"cveuqlc"
],
"score": [
11
],
"text": [
"If a scientist violates ethical guidelines, the consequences include:\n\n* Being ostracized by other scientists\n* Being fired from their job\n* Publishers refusing to touch the research\n* Professional licenses being revoked\n\n\nThe primary reason you can't sign a waiver saying \"if you pay me, I'm fine being unethically experimented on\" is that that boils down to \"if a scientist has money, they can exploit poor people who need that money.\" If the subjects were genuinely doing it to benefit humanity, you could argue that they were genuinely willing to take part; however, if they're in it for the money, it looks a lot like exploiting the poor.\n\nViolating ethical obligations towards subjects also makes it look like you don't care about principles, just about getting a result. And that makes people wonder whether you care about the principles of science, or whether you might have \"enhanced\" your results to be more impressive."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
|
6huwpz | when a worm gets split in two, how do both halves remain alive and seemingly react to things? | I was fishing today (using nightcrawlers as bait) and the question came to mind. Sorry if it's worded poorly. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6huwpz/eli5_when_a_worm_gets_split_in_two_how_do_both/ | {
"a_id": [
"dj1a5a8",
"dj1ahgf"
],
"score": [
6,
28
],
"text": [
"To be frank, only one end actually survives. It's the end with the head. The other end will keep moving for a while due to the fact that it's not controlled anymore and will stop moving as soon as it is \"out of energy\". \n\n_URL_0_",
"In the long term, a bisected earthworm won't survive to make two new worms (although flatworms like planaria can survive being chopped into bits). An earthworm has a heart and a brain and other necessary organs up near the front.\n\nIn the short term, muscles and nerves can continue to function for quite some time after being removed from the rest of an organism. A fresh fish fillet- with no blood, bones, just muscle completely removed from the rest of the fish- can twitch for hours after the fish is killed. Until the individual muscle and nerve cells actually die they can still do their job, and nerves can randomly fire a signal to a muscle cell to contract as various chemical reactions occur in the nerve and tissue."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[
"https://www.livescience.com/38371-two-worms-worm-cut-in-half.html"
],
[]
] |
|
8vo1op | why are judges, particularly those in the scotus, able to have biases or leanings? how does this equal a fair trial? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8vo1op/eli5_why_are_judges_particularly_those_in_the/ | {
"a_id": [
"e1oyahp"
],
"score": [
4
],
"text": [
"Supreme Court justices do not preside over trials. They consider disputed legal issues and make decisions which set binding precedent for lower judges, like the ones which *do* preside over trials.\n\nFor example, the Second Amendment tells us that “...the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.” This is generally interpreted as saying that ordinary citizens are allowed to own guns in their homes. \n\nNow imagine that a particular state passes a law banning stun guns and tasers. A man is arrested for having a stun gun in his home, and is found guilty at trial. He appeals his conviction, and the dispute makes its way to the Supreme Court.\n\nThe Supreme Court doesn’t have a new trial. Instead, its job is to decide if the new state law is allowed in the first place. Does the second amendment apply to tasers and stun guns? Can a state ban those items, or would doing so run afoul of the Constitution’s preservation of the right to bear arms?\n\nTo decide the answer, the justices will approach the question with their own methods of constitutional interpretation. Some methods of constitutional interpretation produce outcomes associated with conservative thought. Other methods of constitutional interpretation produce outcomes associated with liberal thought. The justices are not being political for politics’ sake. Rather, they have legal approaches which were desirable to whichever president nominated them. "
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
||
1h6beg | why do we not mind when google reads our emails to show us ads, but get furious when the govt. does it to keep us safe? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1h6beg/eli5_why_do_we_not_mind_when_google_reads_our/ | {
"a_id": [
"car912v",
"car95qm"
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"score": [
12,
5
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"text": [
"There's a couple of points at play here:\n\n1. The gov't is capable of a lot more than Google is. Google can't mobilize the police, the military, the FBI and the CIA against you, for example.\n\n2. That Google (and other corporations) read our emails or can peek into our private information is *absolutely also a problem.* Assuming a situation where tomorrow the gov't just pulls out of all of their snooping operations and never does it again, then the attention should shift to corporations also doing it.\n\n3. The concern over #2 is defrayed somewhat by the fact that these corporate intrusions are, in a way, **opt-in**: If you don't use GMail, Google can't peek into your emails. You can't opt-out of government snooping.\n\n4. That said, an argument against #3 is that you might not always have a choice of going to an alternative corporation that'll respect your privacy.",
"Regarding Google, your emails are still private, certain key words in emails, lets say \"fishing\" automactically attach certain adverts to the email; \"honest joes second-hand fishing rods\". \n Nobody read your email, nor can they, its just a programme attaching like(fishing) to like(honest joes second-hand fishing rods).\n\nRegarding NSA, they also scan for key words. So in your email you talk about your boss, he's a \"terrorist\"(NSA keyword) now, no matter who, where, you are, certain NSA employees can read the full contents of your email. Not a bot, but a person.\n\nNow that employee, whoever the fuck he/she may be, has info on you, private info, regarding your employment, and as such, has leverage over you. \n But its ok, its legal."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[]
] |
||
1efnml | why is the actual prize for lotteries lower than the advertised price? | I.E. The next powerball is $475 million, but you'll only get $300 million and we're not even counting taxes yet. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1efnml/eli5_why_is_the_actual_prize_for_lotteries_lower/ | {
"a_id": [
"c9zr2gb",
"c9zrhk4"
],
"score": [
4,
5
],
"text": [
"When you win the jackpot, you're in fact given a choice: a lump sum now or the entire payout spread out over years. This lump sum can be thought of as an alternative offered to you rather than the real prize in the second option.\n\nWhy? Presumably because they never advertised they'd give everything to you all up front. $475 million (even $300 million) is a lot of money and it's difficult to come up with it all at once, even for a big government organization like the lottery. ",
"The advertised cash amount is basically the actual amount that the lotto can give out immediately from all the sales of the tickets from the millions of people who played up until that drawing. This is minus all the operating costs of the lotto. So each dollar you spend (well now $2), part of it goes into running the game and part of it goes into the prize pool.\n\nThe bigger jackpot amount that is advertised is only an estimate of the total amount paid out if the winner choose the 30-year payment option and this estimate is based on sales and how much the lotto can earn in interest. The lotto takes the cash amount and then invest that money and earn interest on it each year. Powerball gives you 4% raise each year in the annuity payments. So they calculate about how much that would total after 30 years and sum it all up. \n\nSo to put it simply: \n\nCash amount = how much cash the lotto has right now to give you. \n\nJackpot amount = lotto takes that cash amount, invests that amount, gives you in 30 increasing payments (4% raise each year), and add all those 30 payments up and it's estimated to be the Jackpot amount\n\nedit: The 4% figure is from the PB website. And this is also because annual inflation rate has been about 3% on average and so obviously with annuity you want to keep the purchasing power of your money intact, so they try to invest and put you ahead of inflation with that 4% raise each year (funded by their investment of the cash amount)."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[]
] |
|
4qhocs | are the circadian rhythms of icelanders (and other people living in either the extreme north or south) messed up? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4qhocs/eli5_are_the_circadian_rhythms_of_icelanders_and/ | {
"a_id": [
"d4t37nj",
"d4t3wci"
],
"score": [
5,
6
],
"text": [
"The definition of a the circadian rhythm is that it is on a 24 hour cycle _independent of sunlight_. If it were connected to sun then it wouldn't qualify as circadian because within this definition is that things following this rhythm are endogenous - that they originate within the body (lifeform) without regard to external stimuli.",
"Many people in those areas suffer from a condition called seasonal affective disorder, which is considered a form of depression that is caused by pretty much what you have proposed. The long periods of darkness affects their minds in peculiar ways. Seasonal affective disorder has been successfully treated with ultraviolet lighting, indicating that we need a quantity of ultraviolet radiation for some bodily function, as regular lightbulbs have been shown to be ineffective for this task.\n\nHere is a famous video on how one man in Iceland copes with living in perpetual darkness: [YouTube](_URL_0_) WARNING: features an angry Icelander; do not play around children or English football fans. \n\nI've never been to a Nordic/Fennoscandinavian nation, but I do live in England, which has some pretty severe seasonal variation of sunlight as far as Americans are concerned (I've met Americans who come here in the winter, and they are basically zombies).\n\nOn the Winter Solstice, dawn is at 0900 and sunset is at 1500, so 9 AM and 3 PM respectively. In Winter you will get up, go to work/school, leave work/school, go home, and do most of your socialising in complete darkness. That gets to you, it really, really gets to you. Nobody likes the darkness, and everybody feels lethargic, more irritable, and depressed. Mind you we are British, so we feel equally lethargic, irritable, and depressed in the Summer when the humidity stops us from sleeping and we all have sunburn.\n\nRight now dawn is at 4AM and I am loving it. I get three hours of peaceful, uninterrupted exercise in the mornings before the school run starts. For three hours every day I am the only person on the planet, other than the poor sod who does the night shift at the petrol station."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[
"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q5q77MQzU2Q"
]
] |
||
vgcj5 | what is going on with the healthcare law and the supreme court and what will happen if the strike it down aspects of the law? what aspects would get done away with? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/vgcj5/eli5_what_is_going_on_with_the_healthcare_law_and/ | {
"a_id": [
"c54ajgt",
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"score": [
3,
2
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"text": [
"The aspect of the law that the Supreme Court is focusing on is the individual mandate. That part of the law states that all citizens must purchase private health insurance. The idea is that this is necessary because the law also states that insurers cannot drop patients because of pre-existing conditions. Otherwise, people would not have insurance, buy it once they get sick, and then leave it again when they get better. That would bankrupt the health insurance industry, as it, like any insurance, requires a large group of people paying into it all the time, even when they don't need the service the insurance pays for.\n\nThe argument being heard before the court is that the government does not have the right to force citizens to buy a product (car insurance is different, because you do not need to buy it if you don't own a car). The counter-argument from the White House lawyers is that everyone is always in the healthcare market, as healthcare is something everyone needs at some point in their life, and could need it at any point.\n\nThe judges can make three decisions. They can side with the White House, and declare the law constitutional. If they decide with the plaintiffs (those arguing that the law is unconstitutional), they can either declare the whole law invalidated, or declare just the individual mandate invalid. Many think that they will not declare the entire law unconstitutional, as many aspects of it are not in question (such as the part extending the age to which people can be covered by their parents' insurance). If they declare the individual mandate unconstitutional, they can either leave it at that, or they can instruct congress and the president to come up with an alternative method of making sure there is universal coverage, and therefore not bankrupting the private health insurance companies.",
"THere's no real way of predicting this, but here's the basic choices:\n\nFirst, the Court could decide that since the law isn't in effect yet, it isn't \"ripe\" for a decision, and someone needs to sue again once they are actually personally effected by the law. \n\nSecond, they could pick and choose parts of the law to strike down. If they do this, the two parts most likely to be chopped out are the individual mandate (the fine for people who don't buy insurance), and the expansion of Medicaid (healthcare for poor families). But, if they take this route, it will almost impossible to predict exactly where they draw the lines to cut out the unconstitutional parts.\n\nThird, they could decide that it would be too difficult to carve out only the parts they deem unconstitutional, and strike the whole thing down."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[]
] |
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