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g1cc9j | why does is take so long to develop(/produce?) a test for an infectious disease? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/g1cc9j/eli5_why_does_is_take_so_long_to_developproduce_a/ | {
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"When you have an infectious viral disease, you've got some virus particles in your body. To test for them, you need to collect them. That's not super easy, if they are down in the bottom of your lungs. Then you need a test that can identify the species of virus you have. There are many types of viruses, even corona viruses, that are mostly the same. The common cold is 95% identical to the COVID-19 virus, but then a human is 50% DNA identical to a banana. a test that can tell a human from a banana is much easier than telling the common cold from COVID-19.",
"We can theoretically make tests very fast. Once Covid-19 was sequenced in December/January, we theoretically immediately had the ability to test for it. What makes it slow is the regulations it has to go through. Robust data from lots of experiments has to be generated to see how sensitive and specific the test is. The test should be able to correctly identify infected individuals and correctly identify non-infected individuals. Just to give you an idea, it can take drugs 15 to 20 years to get through testing and regulations to be approved for the market at large. Tests are usually approved much faster, but we are still talking about a long time frame that is not suited to emerging pandemics like what we are currently facing. Additionally, virus sequencing in the context of Covid-19 is usually pretty specialized, and not many labs even have the equipment to perform it. Many hospitals have to send Covid-19 tests across state lines to a lab who can process them."
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5ojfao | why is it that mentholated shower soap makes me feel like i dipped my dick and balls in ice water, but feels totally normal on the rest of my skin? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5ojfao/eli5_why_is_it_that_mentholated_shower_soap_makes/ | {
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"The nerve endings on your meat whistle are more sensitive that the rest of your skin, you have over 20,000 nerve endings alone on the tip! ",
"The skin on your, ahem, genitals, is much thinner than most of the rest of your body. Therefore the menthol in the product is able to easily penetrate it and act on the target nerve endings.",
"Sure you're not using ice soap?",
"I read this unauthorized biography on the Stones. And, there was this place they went to in the Phillipines where the Profesional Dates would use toothpaste in conjunction with ministry tins from their mouths to get their johns off.",
"The thermoceptors of the skin are not only stimulated by temperature but also some chemicals. Menthol cools, capsaicin warms, etc. These receptors (TRPV1 or -2) are activated by the stimulus, and when they're activated they send signals to your thalamus and cortex - which perceives that particular signal as \" cold/hot\".\n So if you stimulated them by say light touch, your brain would still interpret that as cold. Fortunately that's not the case typically. So, each receptor responds to a certain modality of sensation, and when that happens your brain has a particular association with it. \n\nAs someone else mentioned, some areas of the body are more densely packed with receptors. Biologically it makes sense that important/vulnerable areas are more sensitive. So you realize danger quickly when appropriate, and don't freeze or burn off your laser-snake.\n\nInterestingly, you can force some receptors to respond to a stimulus that it doesn't normally recognize. For example, exerting a great deal of pressure onto the light sensing photoreceptors in the eye will turn them \"on\" and your brain perceives light. Hence why you see lights if someone punches you in the face.\n ",
"I think these are actually incorrect - this area of the body is a mucous membrane. From almighty wiki: \"...they are able to absorb a number of substances and toxins but are vulnerable regarding pain\". Thus the menthol can actually make it inside the body vs. normal skin tissue that it cannot enter as easily. Rub some inside your nostril, under your tongue, in your eye etc... \n\nSame reason hot peppers wont 'burn' your hands, but they will burn when they hit your mouth, or vapours go in your eye, or you choke your chicken with a handful of habaneros.",
"Should I not be putting it on my shaved balls and penis every day?",
"Do you shave you're pubes? Because menthol could be getting into the follicles "
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jqdpu | how do things dry? | Let's say I spill a glass of water on my wooden floor. After a while, it's just not there anymore. Where does this water go? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/jqdpu/how_do_things_dry/ | {
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"In this case most of it is absorbed into the wood, as wood is very porous. Of course the wood could be treated and waterproofed, in this case it would evaporate, assuming nothing else comes in contact with it.\n\nWater is sticky. It's not the kind of sticky we normally think about but picture a bunch of seperate poolings of water on the same surface. Should gravity cause two of them to meet, they will almost instantly merge into one pooling. \n\nHydrogen and Oxygen *really* want to form bonds with other atoms. More so than most atoms do, and this is part of the reason water is a great solvent. There are many compounds which break apart when exposed to water. This is because the hydrogen and oxygen are rushing in and shaking hands with everybody. The result is the fragmentation of the original substance because the water broke the bonds holding it together.\n\nI'm not sure that really answered the 'dry' part of the question but hopefully it helps you think about how water interacts with the environment.\n\nOh I will add that energy is required for the evaporation. If it's cold enough the water will still evaporate, but very very slowly. Evaporation is the result of a water molecule gaining enough energy to break the bonds between the other water molecules. If it sits on the surface and receives enough energy in the form of heat or through the bumping of the neighboring molecules, the water will be released and rise in the form of vapor. In the same way that water can go in and break a substance down, sunlight can do the same thing. Plants put this to great use.",
"A puddle dries by evaporation, which is when the water molecules get enough energy to turn into water vapour.\n\nNow, on a normal day you would think that the water isn't warm enough to boil and evaporate, which is true. However water doesn't need to boil to evaporate. As the water molecules move around and bump into each other, they are constantly giving or losing energy to each other. So when a molecule is lucky enough to just keep getting more energy, it will eventually have enough energy to break free from the puddle and turn into water vapour (steam is just hot water vapour). Eventually, all the water molecules will have gotten enough just energy from bumping into each to evaporate.",
"Imagine 20 kids bouncing on a trampoline with no safety net. Every once in a while, a kid near the edge gets bumped in to, and flies off the trampoline.\n\nIf kids are molecules of water, this is how evaporation works.",
"In this case most of it is absorbed into the wood, as wood is very porous. Of course the wood could be treated and waterproofed, in this case it would evaporate, assuming nothing else comes in contact with it.\n\nWater is sticky. It's not the kind of sticky we normally think about but picture a bunch of seperate poolings of water on the same surface. Should gravity cause two of them to meet, they will almost instantly merge into one pooling. \n\nHydrogen and Oxygen *really* want to form bonds with other atoms. More so than most atoms do, and this is part of the reason water is a great solvent. There are many compounds which break apart when exposed to water. This is because the hydrogen and oxygen are rushing in and shaking hands with everybody. The result is the fragmentation of the original substance because the water broke the bonds holding it together.\n\nI'm not sure that really answered the 'dry' part of the question but hopefully it helps you think about how water interacts with the environment.\n\nOh I will add that energy is required for the evaporation. If it's cold enough the water will still evaporate, but very very slowly. Evaporation is the result of a water molecule gaining enough energy to break the bonds between the other water molecules. If it sits on the surface and receives enough energy in the form of heat or through the bumping of the neighboring molecules, the water will be released and rise in the form of vapor. In the same way that water can go in and break a substance down, sunlight can do the same thing. Plants put this to great use.",
"A puddle dries by evaporation, which is when the water molecules get enough energy to turn into water vapour.\n\nNow, on a normal day you would think that the water isn't warm enough to boil and evaporate, which is true. However water doesn't need to boil to evaporate. As the water molecules move around and bump into each other, they are constantly giving or losing energy to each other. So when a molecule is lucky enough to just keep getting more energy, it will eventually have enough energy to break free from the puddle and turn into water vapour (steam is just hot water vapour). Eventually, all the water molecules will have gotten enough just energy from bumping into each to evaporate.",
"Imagine 20 kids bouncing on a trampoline with no safety net. Every once in a while, a kid near the edge gets bumped in to, and flies off the trampoline.\n\nIf kids are molecules of water, this is how evaporation works."
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bizz7x | since trees and other like oxygen producers thrive off of co2, why are they not thriving?(taller, more branches, more leaves) | Scientists say that a long time ago we had mostly co2 in the air, therefor the lush plants, incredible sizing and coverage of the world, why now do they not seem to react the same? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/bizz7x/eli5_since_trees_and_other_like_oxygen_producers/ | {
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"Because for one, there is a limit to how much CO2 plants and trees can absorb and use in photosynthesis. Secondly, the air is not just filled with CO2 but other gases as well, from exhausts and the like, which are negatively impacting plants and trees such as nitrogen, hydrogen and sulphide oxides and carbon monoxide",
"There are a number of reasons.\n\nFirstly, the efficiency of photosynthesis does not increase linearly with increased CO2 concentration. For the types of plant that make up most terrestrial biomass, the photosynthetic efficiency starts to flatten off at around 400ppm (the concentration we are at the moment) so whilst increasing CO2 still has an effect, it becomes significantly weaker the more CO2 you have in the atmosphere.\n\nMore importantly, however, is the fact that CO2 is _not_ the only factor that affects plant productivity. Whilst increasing CO2 has a positive impact on productivity, other climatic parameters such as temperature and precipitation also have impacts. The relative importance of these different parameters depends on where you are in the world but in the most productive regions, the detrimental impacts of climate change on plant productivity outweigh the positive impacts of the CO2 increase. \n\nTo answer your question of why we aren't seeing lush, supersized plants like in the Carboniferous (the time period most people think of when they think of massive forests), the answer is that we're not in the Carboniferous - 300 million years of evolution separates us from the Carboniferous and the type of ecology you see is not just a function of CO2 concentration, it's a function of many, many other ecological and climatic factors. I'd also add that CO2 concentrations during the Carboniferous were not actually too dissimilar from those seen today. The huge forests and macroflora of the Carboniferous predates the high-CO2 world of the Mesozoic by 100 million years."
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c2w8uc | aristotle’s virtue ethics. what makes his theories important? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/c2w8uc/eli5_aristotles_virtue_ethics_what_makes_his/ | {
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"Which part? Its been a while, but from what I remember in order to be a good person we have to find the golden mean to our character. Not too cowardly, but not too reckless, finding the balanced 'courage' in between. So on and other similar stuff. Im sure someone who has studied this more recently can break it down further.\n\n & #x200B;\n\n[Here](_URL_0_) is a youtube video about Aristotle that is broken down pretty well.",
"Aristotle tried to understand what is the good life? How should we live it?\n\nHe realizes that there is a very tight connection between your character, your actions, and how good is your life. \n\nWhat he argues is that your character, how virtuous you are, is what determines how good your life are.\n\nThis is a very rough sketch of his very great text, but it was influential for a long time for being a very in depth, logical, and extensive study of human life and character in a very down to earth, Aristotle like way (in contrast to his teacher Plato, which liked to use a lot of abstract concepts called Ideas in his works).\n\nVirtue ethics gained a rebirth in the 20th century when philosophers felt tired of the main moral theories and their incapability to answer some major challenges. It seemed that in a way morality has to do with character and virtue, and other moral theories couldn’t capture that intuition as well.\n\nSo virtue ethics began as one thing and became something quite different, but is still one of the most significant moral theories of our age."
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ya0cy | when you sell a stock, where does the money you receive come from? | I've always been confused by this. From what I understand it's basically trading, but that would require a buyer for every sold stock. If nobody is buying the stocks you're selling, does the money just come from the corporation by default, meaning that if all of the shareholders cashed out at once, they would bankrupt the corporation?
**EDIT:** Thanks guys. I think my confusion arose from my highschool econ class. (AP Macro, but the teacher was awful. Almost always stoned.) We used a stock trade simulator to trade stocks based on the real market, but as far as I can remember it did not require a balance of buyers and sellers. You could just buy and sell willy-nilly because the money was imaginary. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/ya0cy/when_you_sell_a_stock_where_does_the_money_you/ | {
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"Yes, the crux of the issue is that in order to sell a stock, there must also be a buyer. If there is no buyer, either the stock price must fall until someone decides to buy, or you are unable to sell your stock. Congratulations, you've figured out the key to how stocks are priced!\n\nThe company is never forced to be a buyer of its own stock. It may choose to do so in some situations.",
"If there is no buyer, you cannot sell your stock. If all of the shareholders cashed out at once, the company would be worth nothing. That is more or less what happened on Black Thursday, 1929.",
"The next buyer. You can't sell a stock unless someone buys it.",
"sometimes exchanges try to match up buy and sell orders and give you a 'fill or kill' option that basically says, 'complete my entire order (buy or sell) or none at all.' The exchange is basically facilitating the trade by finding a buyer for your sale or a seller for your buy.\n\nsome exchanges also allow 'market makers' to complete orders. The rules depend upon the exchange, but this can be a single party (e.g. NYSE, AMEX) or one of multiple parties. The MM completes trades by buying shares for sale and selling to willing buyers. They assume some risk in doing because they're paying for shares that they'll need to hold until a buyer comes along, but they're rewarded either by getting quick / early access to trade information (they see stuff before everyone else), or by being allowed to buy and sell at a spread - they sell stock at an 'ask' price, which is typically higher than the 'bid' price at which they're willing to buy the same stock. Sometimes this spread can be large enough to result in significant earnings on a large trade. The spread is also why you should avoid market orders unless you're in a hurry or the market is exhibiting a lot of volatility.",
"LI5: This is why stock prices move.\n\nThere is a buyer for every seller. If there's not a buyer at the current price (your \"asking price\" or the \"ask\"), then you sell it to someone for less than the current price. And now the price of that stock has gone down.\n\nIt works both ways: If you want to buy a share of stock, but nobody will sell it to you for the current price, then you have to increase the amount you are willing to pay (your \"bid\" - think ebay) until someone will sell you some of theirs. And now the price of that stock has gone up.",
"Another thing many of you are forgetting are those groups of people who have super computers constantly buying and selling stocks. These high frequency traders are one of the main reasons we can buy and sell stocks in real time. They basically have computers that are constantly monitoring trends and constantly buying stocks even if it is just to resell it a few seconds later at a fraction of a percent higher.\n\nBecause of these types of traders, it makes it possible for everyone else to trade immediately. But these types of transactions can also inflate a stocks price rapidly and deflate it rapidly resulting in some pretty weird fluctuations in stock prices."
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56mogg | how does gmail, yahoo, etc. know what emails are spam and what ones go into your primary inbox without you marking it as spam? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/56mogg/eli5_how_does_gmail_yahoo_etc_know_what_emails/ | {
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"A number of clues are used together. One obvious thing is the message content: if particular words like \"Viagra\" are present, then it's more likely to be spam. But, the systems also look at things like the format and structure of the message. \n\nFor instance, emails have a specific format to help them get delivered to the right place, like they must include a \"From\" address and a \"To\" address. If a message doesn't correctly follow this format, then it might be spam. Or, if a large number of mails are sent that have a particular kind of message, e.g. one large photo with no other content, then it might be spam.\n\nThey also look at where the message originated, because if a massive number of messages come from a single location on the Internet (IP address range) then they are likely to be spam.\n\nEach of these things by itself may not be enough to say if a message is spam. So, the systems have to balance these factors and learn from users. For instance, if a particular sender is having all their messages deleted without being opened, then that sender is more likely to be a spammer than a sender who has most of their mail being opened and read.\n\nThere is a lot more to it than this, but this is generally how it works.\n\nSource: I used to work on one of those email services. \n",
"I actually have some expertise in this. Modern spam detectors use something called machine learning to recognize spam. Machine learning is a type of programming/statistical technique where a computer is programmed to \"learn\" from examples.\n\nNobody is actually writing a program that says \"block messages that have the word 'xxxx'\" in them. This would make it very easy for advertisers to just change their messages slightly to bypass it. Instead, the programmers show the program tons of examples of messages that are spam and not spam, and the program automatically finds certain features that are common in spam/non-spam messages. Then when it sees a new message, it is able to classify it based on what it saw before.\n\nEvery time you mark a message as spam, the machine learning program learns that message as a new example of spam and adapts. This means that even if spammers try to change their message to sneak past, the spam blocker will adapt naturally and quickly start blocking those types of messages.\n\nSimilar machine learning techniques are used for a huge number of things, from netflix movie recommendations to self driving cars. The specifics of how these machine learning programs work is too complicated for ELI5, as it involves tons of math/statistics/programming, but there are plenty of online resources. I'm personally fascinated by machine learning because it makes computers learn and think like humans. Some day we may make a computer as smart as a human!",
"These tend to use a thing called a heuristic to decide whether an email is spam. In short, a heuristic is a not-perfect solution that generally tries to piece together clues to come up with an answer. In this case, many spam filters employ a form of machine learning.\n\nTo gloss over a lot of detail and a lot of how it actually works, the heuristic algorithm is basically a way to take a series of metrics (like \"number of typos\", \"number of times the word penis appears\", or \"is this email from a known spam domain\") and for each one, assign a score to it, from 0 to 1. Each of those metrics is then plugged into a larger equation where each are weighted (\"known spam domain\" is a stronger signal than \"number of typos\"), producing another number from 0 to 1. If the total number is greater than a threshold (such as 0.7, arbitrarily), then it is flagged as spam. The thing that makes this a heuristic is that it can't actually definitely say that it will figure out if it's spam 100% of the time perfectly. In other words, rather than having something concrete like \"What is 2+2\", it has something like \"If I roll 3 dice and tell you what 1 of them is, can you tell me if the number is between 8 and 12?\"\n\nThe part where machine learning comes into it is that many of these spam filters have hundreds of metrics that go into the final decision for each email, and tuning their relative weights and the threshold for spam is difficult. Whenever you mark an email as spam or not-spam, it tunes the weights of those values slightly for your account. With enough mails marked as spam, you can start to see which values are more frequently tuned. In other words, if you mark 10 emails as spam and they all have the word \"penis\" in them, if there's a metric that checks for that, it will be a weightier metric for you than for others, while if only 3 have the word viagra in it, it'll be a less weighty signal.\n\nThe real challenge (and the part that requires significant human effort) is in deciding what metrics to even care about, the relationships between those metrics, and how to train the system to adjust the tuning. Some of these metric calculations are applied in a branching tree instead of just 1 layer deep (the \"porn domain\" + \"penis count\" + \"viagra count\" signals are counted together and fed into something larger). Sometimes some metrics are literally irrelevant. Sometimes some metrics are only important if another metric is within a certain range.\n\nThere are Several forms of machine learning algorithms for different things, and they can be combined in various ways.\n\n* Supervised-learning: \"Here is a set of questions and the answer key. Tune your values until for each of these questions, you produce the answer in the key.\"\n\n* Unsupervised learning: \"Make X as [small / big] as possible given an input, Y.\" This is generally used for bucketing or clustering, and generally there is no objectively correct solution.\n\n* Reinforcement learning: \"For an input, Y, you need to make a decision (X, Y, or Z). Try each, figure out which one is the best for Y using some heuristic. Next time you see something similar to Y, your newly-tuned heuristic should choose the correct action more often or faster.\"\n\nEmail spam filters tend to be a blend of those: Use Supervised learning for initial training, use unsupervised learning to decide if an email is a \"porn\" email or a \"medical\" email (or to decide if any given word is \"penis\" or \"viagra\" misspelled intentionally), use reinforcement learning to allow the algorithm to get smarter when a user marks an email as spam or not spam.",
"You need someone marking mail as spam, but big providers can have databases filled up by people (maybe employees) who do mark their mail, even if you're not; your mail gets scanned by a filter taught by someone else.\n\nBayesian spam filters work by simple counting and multiplication. You break a mail up into words, or possibly pairs of adjacent words. If a word such as 'Viagra' is mostly found in spam emails, that means future e-mails with 'Viagra' have a high chance of being spam. If a word such as 'Isabella' is mostly found in good emails, future emails with 'Isabella' have a high chance of being good. Other words, such as 'the', may be found everywhere, and don't contribute much. You can multiply the chances together, and compare the final chance of spam to the chance of being good; if the chance of spam is higher, it gets classified as spam.\n\nI use a personalized Bayesian filter based on word pairs; it's pretty powerful.",
"All of these answers are pretty good, but there's another big signal: how many people get exactly the same email.\n\nAnd another: what fraction of recipients of identical (or almost-identical) messages have opened/clicked/reported as spam",
"There's a mathematical technique known as Bayes' Theorem/Rule/Formula (take your pick) that basically tells you how to adjust a given probability as new evidence is introduced.\n\nA programmer starts with a large group of emails, each of which has been pre-identified as either being spam or not spam. The programmer then has a program using Bayes' theorem go through the words and structure of each e-mail to find words and structures that are unique to one category or the other.\n\nThe program may find that words like \"the\", \"of\", and \"and\" appear in both spam and regular e-mails at about the same rate. It might note that words like \"deal\", \"offer\", and \"Viagra\" appear more often in spam emails than regular emails. It might also note that words like \"buddy\" and \"pal\" appear more often in non-spam e-mails.\n\nOnce the program has been trained on a large enough set of sample e-mails, it can then go on to apply the tests it determined to new e-mails. Basically, the program uses what it learned in the training, calculates the probability that the e-mail is spam and the probability that the e-mail is not spam, and chooses the larger probability. If the probability is greater that it's spam than not, then into the spam folder it goes. If the probability is greater that it's not spam, then the program leaves the e-mail in your inbox.\n\nAs an added bonus, when you verify that something is spam (or verify that it's not spam), the program uses this as evidence to confirm the probability, and adjusts its criteria accordingly. That's why each time your open an e-mail, mark an e-mail as spam, or delete something from your spam folder, you're training the computer to do an even better job of detection with the next set of emails.\n\nHere are 3 videos that can explain Bayes' Theorem in a simple way:\n\n* [Bayes' Theorem - Explained Like You're Five](_URL_2_)\n* [How to do Bayes' Formula problems (without \"using\" Bayes' Formula).](_URL_0_)\n* [How to train a computer with Bayes' Theorem](_URL_1_)\n\nFun side note: When Bayes' Theorem was first written about in a mathematical paper in the 1760s, it caused a great controversy in probability, with teachers, lecturers and critics disavowing it versus people who actually used it and found it remarkably effective and accurate. It wasn't until Bayes' Theorem was first used to sort spam emails in the early 1990s that the controversy finally died down and the theorem was widely accepted. Think about that: A theory, developed over a decade before the Declaration of Independence was written, caused a controversy didn't die down until the age of the Internet!",
"Each mail service has their own algorithm to detect shady looking email that is probably spam based on stuff like poor structure, formatting, some trigger keywords like \"viagra\" and \"lottery\", etc.\n\n\nBut there are also other factors, some specific domains or emails are flagged by other users. The mail service keeps lists of these emails and automatically assume they are spam in most cases."
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3au2rp | why do some people abandon storage units that contain items such as rare collectibles or even brand new motor bikes? | As seen from the TV show Auction Hunters
EDIT: Thanks for the quick answers! | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3au2rp/eli5_why_do_some_people_abandon_storage_units/ | {
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"Any number of reasons. \n\nThe person that owned it could have died, and none of their kin knew about the unit.\n\nThe person that owned it could have just forgot they had anything valuable, and decided to leave everything in there instead of throwing it all away.\n\nAnd the most likely reason, there was nothing of value in there at all until the producers of the show planted something valuable.",
"Death, prison and being flat-out broke top the list. I have purchased units, and sometimes I will find personal items like photographs or records. I make every attempt to return these items, and it's been my experience that death and prison top the list of reasons why the unit was defaulted on in the first place. ",
"all the other answers are possible no doubt, do remember that show is set up though. \"reality\" TV rarely has much real in it."
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60fpfv | how does radiation wear out materials? what would be the visual effect?(like corrosion?) | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/60fpfv/eli5_how_does_radiation_wear_out_materials_what/ | {
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"There are two issues which arise with radiation, and the first is induced radioactivity. At some point parts of your reactor, or your inspection robot, etc... will become another form of radioactive waste. \n\nIn terms of actual wear though, it's a very specific process called Sputtering. What it basically means is that in very high energy nuclear reactions, sometimes a neutron (neutral, massive particle) strikes the atoms of the shielding material around the reaction. The neutron has enough energy that it can \"break\" the structure of the material it impacts at an atomic level. Over time, something like steel would be changed at a *very* basic level, and the result is that it becomes brittle and useless for its intended purpose. \n\nSputtering can also be used in controlled setting to etch things at the sub-microscopic level. \n\nIf you want the non-ELI5: _URL_0_"
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4un2p2 | what is it called when something cold appears to "steam," and why does it happen? | Right now my cousin's drink is colder than the air and appears to be steaming. What is that really called (is it still called steam), and why does it occur? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4un2p2/eli5_what_is_it_called_when_something_cold/ | {
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"What's happening is that instead of steam from something hot where water is evaporating and carrying some liquid water up with it (the bit you can see) the opposite is happening, the water in the air is coming into contact with your friends' cold drink and is cooling down enough to condense into liquid water which you can see. I believe it is still called steam, but it may have another name",
"So when there's something really cold, the water vapor (humidity) in the air will condense into relatively bigger water droplets, kinda like what happens with clouds. This makes it so the water vapor is visible.\n\nIt's *not steam*, but condensation. You could also call it vapor, but not steam."
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1wu1vk | why is a ring used as a symbol of unity in marriage? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1wu1vk/eli5_why_is_a_ring_used_as_a_symbol_of_unity_in/ | {
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"It represents a bond with no beginning and no end. That's what I was told many years ago.",
"\"Historically, the wedding ring was connected to the exchange of valuables at the moment of the wedding rather than a symbol of eternal love and devotion. It is a relic of the times when marriage was a contract between families, not individual lovers. Both families were then eager to ensure the economic safety of the young couple. Sometimes it went as far as being a conditional exchange as this old (and today outdated) German formula shows: 'I give you this ring as a sign of the marriage which has been promised between us, provided your father gives with you a marriage portion of 1000 Reichsthalers'.\"\n\nSource:[Wikipedia](_URL_0_)"
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34hjhm | why are some stars blue and others orange/red? | I was thinking, a "cold" flame is very light colored. While a "hot" flame is blue. So why is our sun not blue when it is extremely warm? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/34hjhm/eli5_why_are_some_stars_blue_and_others_orangered/ | {
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"The surface of the sun, which is what you see, is not actually THAT hot. It's only a few thousand degrees, which glows roughly white. The *core* of the sun, where fusion is ongoing, is much hotter, but the surface is relatively cool. You could actually dip tungsten into the sun without melting it.",
"'Hot' is relative.\n\nCompared to other stars, out Sun has a pretty average surface temperature, this makes it yellow. Stars with a cooler surface temperature, like giant stars, and red. Stars which are incredibly hot start to appear blue or white.\n\nYou can do something similar here on Earth. If you heat up a lump of metal enough it will start to glow red, if you put in enough energy you can get it to go more yellow, but getting it to go all the way to blue would take a lot of energy."
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6q3brn | why were roman numerals made the way they were? is there any specific reason they didn't just develop 9 different signs for each of the 9 digits? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6q3brn/eli5_why_were_roman_numerals_made_the_way_they/ | {
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"The exact origins are unknown, but it is hypothesized that they originated from either a form of tally system or hand motions. That is, the \"I\"s represented a tally mark, or a finger.\n\nIn either case, you use repeated iterations of a symbol (I, II, III...) up to a certain point, then have to replace it with a new symbol representing a larger amount (V).\n\nAnd that is basically how the Roman Numerals work. You repeat a smaller value symbol until you get to a certain value, then swap it out with a higher value symbol: I, II, III, IIII, V and then repeat the pattern from there.",
"Because they didn't have an iterative form of numeration.\n\nThey didn't have zero as a number basically. What they had worked but adding together symbols which gave the total.\n\nWhen zero came along, all that changed. You could iterate powers much more easily by simply moving back to zero when you run out of figures and starting a new column.",
"The roman numerals started as tally marks. This is where the I comes from. To help count the tallies every fifth number got two lines, so it became V. Every tenth tally was written as a cross so it became X. And so on. But writing IIIIVIIIIXII for 12 became cumbersome so they abbreviated it to XII. Originally the roman numerals were not regular letters but separate symbols. However over time they morphed into things that looked like letters.",
"They didn't have the concept of \"digit\" in the sense you mean it. That's \"positional notation\", and the system we use today was invented perhaps 1600 to 2000 years ago... in India.\n\nYou're so used to our system that to you it seems perfectly logical, even obvious: you count 0 to 9, then add a 1 to the tens column and go through 0 to 9 again. Easy.\n\nExcept it's not that easy. To invent this system, you have to invent a pretty wild idea: that the value of a symbol changes, depending on its position within the number.\n\nConsider, for example, the numbers 12 and 21. Both numbers contain the symbols \"1\" and \"2\"; but in the first number, the \"1\" is worth ten and the \"2\" is worth two, and in the second number, the \"1\" is worth one and the \"2\" is worth twenty.\n\nThat was a pretty radical idea, and quite a difficult one to grasp if you've never learned it before. But once you have got your head around it, it makes arithmetic so much easier.\n\nRoman numbers simply had various symbols denoting certain numbers, and you simply added them all together (the convention of putting a smaller numeral in front of a larger one for subtraction is a very modern idea, unknown to the Romans). Simple to understand, but doing complicated arithmetic on large numbers was nearly impossible."
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jogwb | explain how to play magic: the gathering like i'm five. | I've heard it's fun, but how do you play? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/jogwb/explain_how_to_play_magic_the_gathering_like_im/ | {
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"It's probably more useful to have someone show you how to play than try to describe it. If you don't know anyone who does, gaming stores will often have in-store gaming session for various games, including Magic.",
"Basically YOU are a spellcaster fighting against another spellcaster (like miniature gods). You're too mighty to do the actual fighting yourself so you acquire land that can be used as an energy source to summon creatures/use spells, etc. (also known as mana). with certain amounts and colors of mana, you summon little critters who fight for you. The goal is to get your opponents life from 20 (what both of you start out with) to 0 using creatures and spells. I wanted to type everything out but I rage quitted after typing up halfway what the various cards do.",
"So you start the game with a deck. A deck can be made up of five different colors or as few as one. There are also colorless cards. \n\nEach color has it's own flavor and if you get cards with more than one card you combine the flavor. White is usually geared towards protecting, red towards attacking fast, green towards attacking with big things, blue with making your opponents life hard and black towards being straight out mean. Each color has a few distinctions, that can but don't always overlap.\n\nNow let's get to playing. You have a few kinds of cards. These can change by set. However the baseline are, lands, enchantments, creatures, sorceries, artifacts and instants. Lands are your basic source of mana. Mana allows you to pay for the spells you want to caste. Some spells have a few green symbols, or red or etc symbols on the top of the card along with a grey symbol with a number in it. This means that you have to use at least two green and any assorted mana to pay for that spell. So if the spell is 4 and a green, you have to pay 4 and at least one green mana to play it. \n\nNow let's get to the other card types. Sorceries are spells that help you, but don't necessarily summon a creature onto the field. Depending on the flavor of the color the spell is from it can do any number of cool things. These effects of course are specific to the card in question. \n\nInstants are like sorceries, but they can be played at almost any time. Instants are usually used in reaction to something else. \n\nCreatures are what goes onto the field and usually what damages the enemy creatures and the person themselves. To make a creature you have to tap it, meaning turn it sideways. Creatures that are tapped cannot be used to block though. You can also tap creatures to use their abilities. The other option is to pay mana to use the creatures ability. Much like cards most of these abilities require a specific kind of mana to use. Creatures also have attack and defence, a pair of numbers in the button corner of the card. If a creature attacks and it's a 5/5 then it will deal five damage and take five damage to destroy. Extra damage from say if a 1/1 blocks a 5/5 does not roll over to hit the summoner. There ate of course several mechanics that can change the outcomes of matches like this. \n\nNext are artifacts. Artifacts are some of the most varied cards in the game. Most of the time they're summoned into play and don't do anything immediately. They're a static on the field that can be used later if a certain condition is met. They can be equiped to buff a creature, tapped to do damage or get mana, and so on and so on. For the most part they're also colorless.\n\nThen get to enchantments. Enchantments effect the field as a whole. They can make things harder or easier pending what they do. Enchant auras effect a specific thing that it's attached to.\n\nNow we go to the phases. They are, to my knowledge, untap, upkeep, draw, first main phase, attack phase, second main phase, end phase. During untap upkeep and draw sorceries and creatures can't normally be summoned or played. Instants and effects can be used. During untap, all cards that are tapped on your side are untapped making then useable again. During upkeep, any card that requires mana or some other effect to stay on the field is paid. If you choose to not pay then the card is destroyed and goes to your graveyard.\n\nDuring your draw phase you can draw a card and play instants. \n\nNow we're in the main phase. That means you may play sorceries and your opponent can play instants. You may also summon artifacts, creatures and enchants to the field. Creatures summoned must wait one turn before they can attack.\n\nNext is the combat phase. This is broken down into parts. Declare attacker phase. Tapping creatures to determine which will attack. Declare defenders phase follows. Your opponent chooses which creatures block your attack and which get through. Then damage is dealt. Multiple creatures can block one creature. Accordingly, a group block on a strong creature can kill it.\n\nNext is the second main phase, the same as the first, and then the end phase. \n\nThe end goal is to lower the opponents life to zero through any means available. \n\nNow keep in mind, this is a simplified explanation from a player that's been out of the loop for the last few sets. Each set adds new mechanics and cycles old ones out of play. It would be best to find a local judge and talk to them to keep updated on rules.\n\nNot bad for writing on my phone.",
"If you want to learn by example, try playing Duels of the Planeswalkers 2012 on Steam.",
"It's probably more useful to have someone show you how to play than try to describe it. If you don't know anyone who does, gaming stores will often have in-store gaming session for various games, including Magic.",
"Basically YOU are a spellcaster fighting against another spellcaster (like miniature gods). You're too mighty to do the actual fighting yourself so you acquire land that can be used as an energy source to summon creatures/use spells, etc. (also known as mana). with certain amounts and colors of mana, you summon little critters who fight for you. The goal is to get your opponents life from 20 (what both of you start out with) to 0 using creatures and spells. I wanted to type everything out but I rage quitted after typing up halfway what the various cards do.",
"So you start the game with a deck. A deck can be made up of five different colors or as few as one. There are also colorless cards. \n\nEach color has it's own flavor and if you get cards with more than one card you combine the flavor. White is usually geared towards protecting, red towards attacking fast, green towards attacking with big things, blue with making your opponents life hard and black towards being straight out mean. Each color has a few distinctions, that can but don't always overlap.\n\nNow let's get to playing. You have a few kinds of cards. These can change by set. However the baseline are, lands, enchantments, creatures, sorceries, artifacts and instants. Lands are your basic source of mana. Mana allows you to pay for the spells you want to caste. Some spells have a few green symbols, or red or etc symbols on the top of the card along with a grey symbol with a number in it. This means that you have to use at least two green and any assorted mana to pay for that spell. So if the spell is 4 and a green, you have to pay 4 and at least one green mana to play it. \n\nNow let's get to the other card types. Sorceries are spells that help you, but don't necessarily summon a creature onto the field. Depending on the flavor of the color the spell is from it can do any number of cool things. These effects of course are specific to the card in question. \n\nInstants are like sorceries, but they can be played at almost any time. Instants are usually used in reaction to something else. \n\nCreatures are what goes onto the field and usually what damages the enemy creatures and the person themselves. To make a creature you have to tap it, meaning turn it sideways. Creatures that are tapped cannot be used to block though. You can also tap creatures to use their abilities. The other option is to pay mana to use the creatures ability. Much like cards most of these abilities require a specific kind of mana to use. Creatures also have attack and defence, a pair of numbers in the button corner of the card. If a creature attacks and it's a 5/5 then it will deal five damage and take five damage to destroy. Extra damage from say if a 1/1 blocks a 5/5 does not roll over to hit the summoner. There ate of course several mechanics that can change the outcomes of matches like this. \n\nNext are artifacts. Artifacts are some of the most varied cards in the game. Most of the time they're summoned into play and don't do anything immediately. They're a static on the field that can be used later if a certain condition is met. They can be equiped to buff a creature, tapped to do damage or get mana, and so on and so on. For the most part they're also colorless.\n\nThen get to enchantments. Enchantments effect the field as a whole. They can make things harder or easier pending what they do. Enchant auras effect a specific thing that it's attached to.\n\nNow we go to the phases. They are, to my knowledge, untap, upkeep, draw, first main phase, attack phase, second main phase, end phase. During untap upkeep and draw sorceries and creatures can't normally be summoned or played. Instants and effects can be used. During untap, all cards that are tapped on your side are untapped making then useable again. During upkeep, any card that requires mana or some other effect to stay on the field is paid. If you choose to not pay then the card is destroyed and goes to your graveyard.\n\nDuring your draw phase you can draw a card and play instants. \n\nNow we're in the main phase. That means you may play sorceries and your opponent can play instants. You may also summon artifacts, creatures and enchants to the field. Creatures summoned must wait one turn before they can attack.\n\nNext is the combat phase. This is broken down into parts. Declare attacker phase. Tapping creatures to determine which will attack. Declare defenders phase follows. Your opponent chooses which creatures block your attack and which get through. Then damage is dealt. Multiple creatures can block one creature. Accordingly, a group block on a strong creature can kill it.\n\nNext is the second main phase, the same as the first, and then the end phase. \n\nThe end goal is to lower the opponents life to zero through any means available. \n\nNow keep in mind, this is a simplified explanation from a player that's been out of the loop for the last few sets. Each set adds new mechanics and cycles old ones out of play. It would be best to find a local judge and talk to them to keep updated on rules.\n\nNot bad for writing on my phone.",
"If you want to learn by example, try playing Duels of the Planeswalkers 2012 on Steam."
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49881y | why do police tasers have cameras on them but not their guns? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/49881y/eli5_why_do_police_tasers_have_cameras_on_them/ | {
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"Police officer and Taser Instructor here:\n\nTaser (the company) has a monopoly on Conducted Electrical Weapons. So any CEW you see an officer use is made by Taser. They offer cameras for thier devices (at an extra cost).\n\nThere is no monopoly on what guns police departments use. They are issued many, many brands and models. Some officers must provide thier own guns.\n\nGun cameras alsob make guns heavier, harder to wield, and harder to holster (you need an expensive, custom holster).\n\nTaser cameras can be small because they just run off the battery of the device itself. A gun camera needs it's own power supply.",
"It wouldn't likely be very helpful either. Watch some taser cam footage. It's jerky, pointed at the floor, only shows the instant before deployment and misses all the stuff that led up to its justified use. Sometimes, when the cop sees it coming and has time, then purposely points it at the person it can be better. \n\nBut of course, if you are pointing your gun at someone for long enough to get useful video, you are violating safe practice, policy and probably a law. Its a lethal weapon not a camera. Don't point it at things you shouldn't destroy. \n\nA body can of some sort solves most of those issues. Even taser recognizes that. The on taser camera is not popular and they push the body and glasses camera they sell (Axion). "
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1x8nq8 | is marijuana really less dangerous than tobacco and alcohol? | I hear people state this but they never further explain it, but is this true and if so or not then feel free to explain. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1x8nq8/eli5_is_marijuana_really_less_dangerous_than/ | {
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"Yes, in a strict sense of risk of death absolutely. Alcohol withdraw can kill you, overdosing on marijuana is practically impossible as there are no recorded cases, typically smoking or ingesting too much marijuana will simply put you to sleep.\n\nAs far as the differences in say being high while driving vs. being drunk while driving, its probably harder to say.\n\nAs far as the social ramifications and how it effects your life, or your mind, all kinds of addiction tend to have similar effects depending on severity, so it really just depends on each person individually.\n\nIMHO, from what I've observed drunk people are more of a danger to themselves and others than most people high on marijuana.",
"Well here's something to take into account\n\nDeaths per year as a direct result of tobacco: [ > 480,000](_URL_0_)\n\nDeaths per year as a direct result of alcohol: [ > 88,000](_URL_2_)\n\nDeaths as a direct result of marijuana: [0](_URL_3_). \n\n- [Other](_URL_4_) [Sources](_URL_1_)",
"so doing all three means im screwed......",
"If you smoke it, it's not necessarily much safer than tobacco, as it still causes tar buildup in the lungs and can cause cancer. It is less dependency-inducing and harmful than both alcohol and tobacco, though. This [chart](_URL_0_) compares it to other drugs in terms of harmfulness and such.",
"Depends on what we're talking about exactly.\n\nIf we are talking about THC (the chemical in marijuana which gets you high), Ethanol (the chemical in beer/wine/spirits which gets you drunk), and Nicotine (the chemical in tobacco which gives you euphoria), then it's a little muddied.\n\nTHC and Nicotine are both FAR less dangerous and harmful than Ethanol. A cursory search will show you evidence for this; Ethanol can negatively affect your Metabolism, your Central Nervous System, Digestion, and cause Gastro-intestinal disease, Cancer, and Birth Defects. I wont even begin to mention the potential psychological side-effects. It is really a very dangerous substance that is abused on a daily basis.\n\n~~Nicotine on the other hand is relatively safe by comparison~~ (See EDIT3). Nicotine once in the bloodstream (commonly absorbed by the lungs), will cause the body to release pleasure ~~hormones~~ neurotransmitters (dopamine, ephinephrine, etc). Over time you may become dependent on Nicotine to feel this way, as your body slowly begins to rely on it. Very large doses **when ingested** (500-1000mg) can kill a human, ~~but that is practically impossible to take unless you are actually injecting a syringe full of it straight into your veins.~~ (As little as 30-60mg is considered lethal).\n~~The dangers of Nicotine come from our choice of delivery system; smoking.~~ Smoking delivers Nicotine right into our lungs and onto our circulatory system. Smoking also causes irreparable damage to our lungs, tongues, lips, gums, and throat. It is the smoking which leads to all the horrible cancers which claim so many lives.\n\nTHC is the safest of all, as far as we know. There hasn't been a great deal of study into the substance (when compared to Ethanol or Nicotine), so there is a lot left to learn. THC is a psychoactive chemical like Nicotine, so it makes your body release feel-good hormones, as well as act as a mild pain-killer and can stimulate appetite. It's side-effects are not well documented, but several studies have linked THC to lower memory quality (both short and long term), as well as a potential trigger for psychosis (your brain going all screwy). Again, this is heavily disputed and the honest answer is we really aren't 100% certain and further testing needs to be done.\nLike Nicotine, the most common way to deliver THC is by smoking marijuana. The smoke once again can cause irreparable damage to the human body.\n\nLuckily there are methods of taking Nicotine and THC which does not include the inhalation of smoke. These methods are known as vaporizing or vaping. In this fashion, the user inhales vapor (not smoke) which is loaded with the chemical of their choice.\n\nI hope this clears some things up for you. Please research for yourself if need be, as there are many conflicting arguments abound. \n\nEDIT: Thanks to /u/heshl for the correction on hormones v. neurotransmitters :)\n\nEDIT2: This requires some kind of caveat or clause... Everybody, please remember that this is ELI5. I simply spent 10 minutes searching the internet for the effects of the above substances and regurgitated the information. I can't guarantee the accuracy any information you find on the internet. What is written above is a quick generalization; a cursory overview of an incredibly deep topic. If you wish to correct me on anything, please do so :) It's how we learn. But please be civil. Furthermore, I would direct anyone wishing to gain a deeper understanding of the question to head on over to /r/askscience and start up a new thread :) I'm sure there are some very intelligent people there who could answer this question much more accurately than me.\n\nEDIT3: /u/Doctor9991 has informed me of a mistake regarding the nature of Nicotine. I've copied and pasted it below for your information. \n\n*\"I am a physician and clinical researcher. The information that you posted about nicotine isn't correct. There is a fairly large body of research showing that nicotine is extremely cardiotoxic at common dosing ranges and likely plays a fairly direct role in causing cancer. In fact nicotine use, even outside of smoking, is the single biggest modifiable risk factor for cardiovascular disease. Also, ingestion of tobacco causes significant morbidity and mortality in both children and adults. A pubmed review article search can verify all of this information for you.\"*\n\nEDIT4: I'm trying to amend my mistakes as they come to light. You guys are ferocious :P\n\nEDIT5: Please see the comment by /u/katastrophies _URL_0_",
"Watch: The Union. It's an accepted go to guide on the subject. \nBlaze and learn friend",
"If I drank as much as I smoked weed I would be a trash mess.",
"As someone who has had dependencies on all three, I can tell you a few things:\n1. I have had much more near death experiences when abusing alcohol than I have EVER had when abusing marijuana.\n2. Tobacco is terrible. I smoked for many years and I couldn't smell, couldn't breathe correctly and had a multitude of health problems because of it.\n3. My greatest fear with marijuana was getting caught smoking it. And since I never drove while smoking, I was hardly ever putting myself at risk of getting caught.\n\nIMHO-Marijuana has a much lower \"danger level\" than tobacco or alcohol. ",
"Yes.\n\nAddiction: All three are addictive. However, marijuana is not physically addicting, meaning if you stop smoking pot you won't start shaking and scratching your neck and steal from people to fulfill the need to smoke pot. Marijuana is mentally addicting, meaning that you enjoy the high and constantly want to be high. Some people can smoke on and off and not be bothered, some can't go an hour without it. It depends on each person.\n\nBodily Harm: Obviously, alcohol and cigarettes are terrible for your body. You cannot die from smoking marijuana, but smoking ANYTHING is harmful to your body. I don't believe there is enough research on marijuana to fulfill this question, so we'll see.\n\nSocial: Marijuana is completely safe socially. You can't be an angry pothead. You may babble like a moron and be slow on the draw, but you won't get into fights because of pot.\n\nSide Effects: The only side effect that is bad from marijuana is anxiety. If you smoke too much/too strong a strain and can't handle it, you can have a panic attack. I've been through it and it sucks. It's kinda like having the spins when you're drunk. Side note, I guess having the munchies and eating like an asshole could be an unhealthy side effect, so there's that. \n\nDealers: Dealers vary from person to person, but most pot dealers I've encountered are just normal people trying to make extra cash, on varying levels. I've never had someone pull a gun on me over pot, but I'm sure it has happened.\n\nDriving: Driving on pot is a strange subject, because, just like alcohol, there are different levels of high. I've been high to the point where there's no way I could drive, but usually I can manage. Depends\n\n\n",
"**Edit: Thanks for the gold! I wrote this off the cuff drawing from my own research and from personal experience and observations, which are anecdotal due to the small sample and, ahem, highly unscientific methodology. So it's a combination of primary and secondary sources, and opinion. My additions and corrections based on your replies are in bold.** \n\nYes, marijuana is safer than alcohol and tobacco for several reasons:\n\n- Overdose is practically impossible, unlike nicotine and especially alcohol. I say practically because it is technically possible, but the amount of the plant necessary in grams per kilogram body mass is just huge. One literally cannot smoke, eat, vaporize, or otherwise absorb it quickly enough to cause death. If you tried, you would simply fall asleep or become so incapacitated that someone else would have to administer it to you.\n\n- The psychoactive compounds act on specific receptors of a brain cell, of which your brain has a finite number. This means it is possible to saturate those receptors, at which point a higher dose won't have much of an effect. The amount needed to do this is far, far lower than anything with short term toxicity\n\n- Marijuana is habit forming but doesn't cause physical dependence for most people. A small number of people still become dependent on it, but most users, even heavy ones, can stop using it without suffering withdrawal symptoms **[to clarify, the symptoms are not severe or long-lasting compared to nicotine or alcohol. Sometimes I get cranky for a day and then I'm back to normal. Another friend who was a heavy user and quit cold turkey was in a funk for several days before coming around. But nothing like the desperate nagging, maddening itch and physical discomfort of narcotics]**. Nicotine is famously difficult to quit, the withdrawal period and its symptoms can be a living hell that has proved insurmountable for some. Alcoholism is a life-long battle, causes brain damage and liver destruction, and the withdrawal period is itself dangerous.\n\nThat about covers the \"harm to self\" kind of harm. But what about \"harm to others?\"\n\n- Marijuana use typically does not incite violent outbursts, petulance, combativeness, impulsiveness, fearlessness, recklessness, or an inability to plan ahead, unlike alcohol, which does all of those things. Marijuana intoxicates, but a bad idea is still easy to recognize as such, because you are still capable of introspective thought.\n\n- In the United States where it is a schedule 1 drug (no acceptable legal use), marijuana's destructive power comes from the dangerous and terrible means of procurement: drug cartels. In parts of the world where it is legal and readily available, this isn't a problem, and its destructive potential lies in its ability to turn you into a couch potato when overused. But in this regard, weed is no different than many other antisocial compulsions which cause **[socio]**economic harm: compulsive video game playing, social network usage, pornography, etc. In some cases you can make a strong argument that such compulsions are a symptom of some underlying problem, not the cause.\n\n- Marijuana shouldn't be used by anybody too young to have a fully developed brain, which by some estimates can be as late as 25. **[this includes pregnant women as THC readily crosses the placental barrier into the fetus]**. This is because, like anything else which affects brain chemistry and function, chronic use can alter the way the brain works and grows, and could negatively impact function as an adult, which probably can't be reversed. These effects do not seem to be a problem for adult brains of users who started after reaching adulthood. I included this in the 'harm to others' category because at least in the United States, our various programs to keep children away from drugs have not been very effective.\n\n**But...**\n\n- Weed is intoxicating in similar ways to alcohol as they are both depressants. It impairs reaction times and fine motor control. Driving high is dangerous, and the amount it takes for a person to become unable to drive is difficult to measure because of individual sensitivity varies, along with the potency of the plant itself.\n\n- Smoking weed presents all of the same risks as smoking tobacco, including lung cancer. It's the most common way to consume it but nowhere near the safest. **[this is disputed. I left out the part about weed's potential mitigation of risk due to being an expectorant and not causing the same inflammatory response as tobacco smoke, because it's still a risk nonetheless. Less risk is still risk, and comparing risk relative to tobacco smoke, which is very high risk--almost a certainty given enough time--is not at all comforting. And lung cancer is still shitty last time I checked, and it's very preventable. Inhaling smoky, tarry particulate and all the other byproducts of combustion is simply never good for you. Anybody who defends smoking _anything_ is deluding themselves and ought to consider a safer alternative. We can broaden it to \"respiratory illness\" if you prefer, but cancer is still in there.]**\n\n- It does have side effects, which although mild can be risky for certain people. It tends to elevate heart rate, for example **[this is worth considering if you have heart problems]**\n\n- depending on the composition of the plant, its effects can be different for a person, and sometimes it's not pleasant. It can increase paranoia and restlessness or cause high anxiety, all of which stink. **[there is also evidence that it can increase the chance of or even cause a psychotic episode in individuals living with mental health problems, whether or not they have been formally diagnosed]**\n\n- It makes you hungry and occasionally that will cause you to do regrettable things, like house an entire pan of brownies and sabotage days worth of good dieting behavior.\n\n- It can turn you into a boring chatty dipshit who can't finish a sentence without starting another, or remember what was being discussed at all. **[short-term memory problems]**\n\n",
"_URL_0_\n\n\nWhile I don't think it is necessary as bad as cigarettes (with all the additives), I don't think it's necessary safer than straight tobacco leaves.\n\n\nThe biggest issue I've seen with it, and according to some recent studies is the effects it has mentally on younger persons that use it (under the age of 18-21 I think they said). The study they kept broadcasting on the radio was saying that young people who used it lowered their IQ by several points - because you're chemically altering your brain while it is still trying to hardwire itself - but after the brain is naturally finished its wiring there were \"little\" indicators that pot usage altered intellectual abilities. But the usage may still bring on higher odds of schizophrenia if predispositioned to it.",
"* You can die from drinking too much alcohol. \n* You can die from too much nicotine (try slapping several patches onto your skin).\n* I don't believe there's ever been a case of someone dieing from too much THC.",
"It depends on what we're talking about here.\n\nIs it safe enough for kids to do it regularly? Probably not.\n\nIs it less toxic to the adult body than either of those substances? Yes.\n\nIs it safer for the brain? That's up for serious debate, but from personal experience, I would rank them from most mentally safe to least as 1. Nicotine, 2. THC, 3. Ethanol, with the last two being reversed if you have significant family history of mental illness.\n\nIt also depends on the person--the most dangerous is the one most likely to be abused. No drug consumed regularly is \"good.\"\n\nBut the thing is--marijuana contains a lot more than just THC. CBD is an incredible drug with incredible potential for a slew of treatments. I would consider CBD to easily be the safest. (Some strains have more CBD than THC.)\n\n\n\n",
"Just about anything that can be toxic has an LD50.\n\n\n_URL_0_\n\n\n\nEven potatoes are toxic. The median lethal dose for raw potatoes is lower than cannabis. Alcohol, Aspirin and potatoes are more toxic than cannabis. I do not know about tobacco but people die DIRECTLY from alcohol poisoning every year. That means the alcohol directly killed them. It didn't just contribute to a situation that killed them. It wasn't just a factor. Alcohol was the deciding factor, it was the situation. The LD50 of cannabis is so high you can not consume a lethal dosage. It is just impossible.",
"Short answer: Assuming a fully matured brain, yes, cannabis is objectively safer and less harmful than tobacco and alcohol. ",
"I knew this thread would turn into stoners defending weed like there is no tomorrow. Don't get me wrong I smoke weed but the guy was looking for a serious answer not \"Man weed releases the soul and causes absolutly no harm\"",
"This should help you understand the difference _URL_0_",
"Alcohol and tobacco can both kill you, cannabis can't.",
"its all about moderation and how each one is consumed. binging on any of the three is dangerous to your physical and psychical well being. ",
"Seriously how about making some effort to learn just the absolute basics of all three. That's what I would recommend to a child",
"I don't consume pot in any way so I don't wanna come off like I'm advocating for it..... but you sure don't see people getting baked as shit and beating their wives as you do with alcohol. ",
"You should ask this on /r/askscience for a more factual explanation from an expert view.",
"Without a long explination. Studies(funded by neutral parties in regarda to politics surrounding legalization) have proven that you are less likely to get cancer from smoking pot that from smoking tobacco. But still more likely than if you didnt. Amd in regards to becoming dependent. The numbers are as follows\n\nRate of addiction:\nTobacco: roughly 35%\nAlcohol:17-19 percent\nMarijuana: 9%\n\nAlso the cognitive effect marijuana has are more related to memory retention than motor function. The motor function effects are barely notable if smoked in moderation. \n\nIf you really want sources pm me being that im at work currently",
"If you were looking for an objective, unbiased answer, you came to the wrong place.",
"Actually there is a number of benefits from moderate alcohol consumption",
"It sure smells more, that's for sure.",
"There was a document stating that scientists couldn't make animas OD on pot, so they said you would need to consume 15,000 lbs in 30 minutes to OD ",
"Some discussion about CBD vs THC in cannabis. This cannot be overstated. There are huge differences in the psychoactive effects of different strains of Cannabis due to varying levels of THC, CBD and their analogs.",
"Cbd hemp oil cures serious cancers ",
"_URL_0_\n\nSome facts. Basically those who only smoke marijuana are less likely to be culpable in a crash. It impairs you in the opposite way that alcohol does. The stoned driver stereotypes seem to be true. When mixed with alcohol however, you are impaired in both ways and you are far more dangerous than if you had only done one or the other. Marijuana also has the lowest dependency rate of just about any drug at 9%. There is no argument, Marijuana is clearly less dangerous than either. It is the opposite of a schedule 1 drug. Meanwhile with no medicinal use and a clear danger to society alcohol and tobacco are legal. What an irrational society we are.",
"I cant speak for the science of any of this or for long-term effects, so that's my giant asterisk. \n\nI've drank a lot of alcohol, smoked a good amount of cigarettes, and smoked a shitload of weed in my life. I'm 24. Alcohol for me had caused me to be the most sick feeling immediately after and to do the stupidest things, so there's that. I know people who have drank a lot for years and it's caused the most health problems in the shortest time frame.\n\nWeed has done the least to me. What you have to realize if you haven't smoked weed 24/7 for months is that you absolutely can be fully functional even smoking the best weeds straight out of culture magazine, so long as your tolerance is high (no pun intended). I also was an incredible athlete in high school and college despite the copious weed smokage. The lung effects, in the \"short\" term as in 2-3 years of nonstop aint so bad.\n\nCigs ruined me for playing basketball in particular. I played a game to 21 (2v2, halfcourt) against some high schoolers and they wanted to run it back... but I just couldn't. \n\nTl;dr, weed < alcohol < cigs for adverse physical activity effects. Cigs > weed < alcohol for if you're doing it all the time and want to function. As with everything else, take everything in moderation.",
"No haven't you ever watched reefer madness you dummy.",
"Important negatives about Marijuana that probably weren't addressed here in the simplest terms I can think of:\n\nCan lead to emphysema and chronic bronchitis.\n\nCan halt brain development, especially the earlier in life it is used. Research still unclear as to what kind of impairment this can mean later in life.\n\nThis is/can be recoverable (not brain damage, like most other illicit drugs). This is because the brain is not fully complete developing until around the age of 25 (which is why you will see old long term stoners who act like they are teenagers still). The frontal cortex, afaik will begin/finish it's development as soon as the drug is removed from the brain (not sure how long this takes from last hit, maybe 3 months?).\n\nThese are probably the 2 biggest negatives of using besides the common downfalls of almost anything you can take as far as drugs go: withdrawls, depression, anxiety, panic attacks, increased heart rate, nausea, short term memory and other mental side effects.\n\nSide note: Mixed with alcohol can get you 'the spins' and you will ultimately puke from it.\n\n\nMost MA (marijuana anonymous) recovering addicts (and yes weed can be addictive, like anything [No not just mentally... whatever that even fucking means..]) will tell you the first things they start to notice after stopping using is their ability to find their keys, sunglasses, and overall real time perception improvements. And many chronic users (what a pun) will eventually get to a point where the drug stops working for them, some after a couple of months/years some after decades. Many users refer to it as 'turning a corner' where instead of the euphoria and good feelings, you get panic attacks, anxiety, paranoia, etc. \n\nMe as a personal story, had my first bowls around the age of 11. I had a couple more bowls around age 13. Then around age 14.5-15 I was smoking like daily. Until eventually it stopped being fun and was more like 'what the hell am I even smoking for anymore if it's not as crazy body hallucinations and uncontrollable laughter anymore?' Which eventually turned to me smoking more and even danker stuff (this was around 1999 when weed was really started to get crazy with all the genetic modifcation and cloning of high strains) which eventually caused panic attacks and anxiety for me. \n\nSince then, I have smoked maybe a half a dozen times (29 now), and usually when I was pretty drunk and maybe just a puff or two so it didn't really fuck with me too much. One time though, I was gifted a gram and I chopped it up and put it in a bowl of ramen. A couple hours later I had forgotten that I ate it and was looking at porn and started just tripping out that I was watching some kind of nat geo documentary about human mating rituals and was totally foreign and didn't trigger my normal man drives for sex, I felt like an alien or something. I actually think my brain was actually temporary rewired like a woman's in the sense that visual stimuli did nothing and was just weird and couldn't see how it would turn people on and sort of gross. It's pretty akin to Adam Carolla's infamous story about when he was trippin on shrooms and was watching TV and thinking about how women paint their nails red and red lipstick to attract mates etc. \n\nI actually think they may find (upon further testing of weed) that it may have some correlation with estrogen/progesterone production or turning off testosterone or something that turns off male pattern thoughts. Because a lot of times I can recall being stoned, I always felt sort of unmale, or like I was being feminized, if that is the correct way to explain it. Like your brain becomes more fluid and plastic like a woman's brain is. But then after it wore off I was back to normal.\n",
"TNH: i do not care if it is a little dangerous. It is like food. I want to enjoy myself. I am somewhat hedonistic. It may have adverse effects but they are generally insignificant. I will say it can be bad for my paranoia, but that is because I am already incredibly paranoid (sometimes i wear headphones hooked to my TV in res so I can't hear my neighbours. I assume they are saying terrible things about me 24/7) And bad trip on nBome has since made my paranoia even worse. So, I would say be cautious if you have any anxiety/paranoia issues. Monitor your behaviour.",
"According to the NIH, (National Institute of Health) tobacco kills up to 500,000 Americans a year. Alcohol kills up to 100,000 a year.\n\nIn all history, there's not a single case of marijuana killing anyone. ",
"You know what I would describe the high you get from weed, sometimes, it feels like the good feeling you get from eating something pretty spicy you enjoy, but that feeling is in your head and your conciousness.",
"It's probably also worth stating that in the immediate sense alcohol can kill due to reduced inhibitions, reflexes and general control. You've got violence, suicide, drink driving just to name a few. In addition there are the long term effects of alcohol abuse. \n\nIn regards to nicotine it's effects are based on its addictive quality. Aside from the obvious damage to the organs within your body, there are also many undesirable side effects in regards to health and hygiene. This partially can lead to depression, especially when combined with alcohol. \n\nBoth of these also create an immense strain on people's financial situations. \n\nWhen it comes to TMC, as stated previously, it is important to note a great deal of long term research has not been conducted. With that said overall the negative effects are far and beyond reduces to the other two, with the main danger being the circle you need to surround yourself with generally to get it which can lead to abuse of other drugs. \n\nI think the main stopping point with weed is it's reputation, which I find odd considering a lot of people who judge those who use it probably smoke or drink without giving a thought to the fact they are generally more harmful. ",
"You need to compare their therapeutic windows (ratio between LD50 and ED50), dependence (addiction) and tolerance. ED50 is effective dose 50, which is the required dosage to make the substance have an effect on 50% of an animal population, while LD50 is lethal dose 50, which is the required dosage to make the substance kill 50% of an animal population due to toxicity.\n [This is a great picture from Wikipedia which showing these comparisons](_URL_0_)\n\nAs you can see, among marijuana, tobacco and alcohol, alcohol has the highest ED50/LD50 ratio, meaning it's the easiest to overdose on, which means it poses the highest risk to your health security. Nicotine doesn't have an ED50/LD50 ratio that is as high, but it has very high dependency, meaning your body will need it to function properly. \n\nMarijuana, on the other hand, has an extremely low ED50/LD50 ratio, and a very low dependence potential. \n\nSo yes, since your question is about the \"danger\" of these substances, marijuana would be very benign and safe compared to the others. \n\n*Notice LSD being the safest drug on the chart. It actually is very safe, no one has died from an LSD overdose (for those who think Huxley OD'd from LSD, you're wrong. He was already on the verge of death). The great misconception that this acid is bad is because when your body is seeing and twisting things, you can easily put yourself in a danger situation which can lead to injury or death.",
"This documentary should answer your questions about cannabis. Produced and hosted by a Canadian man who has never tried \"weed\" before, It's an extremely eye opening film and I encourage potheads and drug war supporters both to watch it.\n\n_URL_0_",
"Pot's tendency to:\n\n- **Kill People:** not 1 documented incident exists\n\n- **turn people into cheating Ho's:** Pretty uncommon\n\n- **Crash their vehicle into a van full of family at 90mph:** Unlikely\n\n- **Come home and abuse their spouse/kids:** no\n\n- **Cause disease/Cancer:** Possible, but quite uncommon\n\n- **Cause black men to rape white women:** Inevitable (source: \"Reefer Madness\", 1930's)\n\n\nAlcohol's tendancy to:\n\n- **Kill People:** Happens every day in every way\n\n- **turn people into cheating Ho's:** you already know\n\n- **Crash their vehicle into a van full of family at 90mph:** Just turn on the news my friend\n\n- **Come home and abuse their spouse/kids:** Find that one friend of yours who had an alcoholic dad. See what they tell you.\n\n- **Cause disease/cancer:** In cases of abuse, very plausible\n\n- **Cause Black men to rape white women:** not applicable, but rape (regardless of race) probably does happen more under the influence of dat drank\n\nTobacco's tenency to: \n\n- **Kill People:** Nothing does it better in 2000's America\n\n- **turn ppl into cheaters/abuse spouts/vehicular manslaughter:** nah\n\n- **the one about racist bullshit from the 1930's:** not applicable\n\n- **turn your lungs into black leather sacks of shit:** inevitably\n\nDo I continue?\n",
"In the short-term, no there aren't any serious side-effects apart from dizziness and some depth-perception problems. But in the long-term, weed can have a pretty big effect on your brain activity and will cause raucous coughing. Still, it's better than tobacco.",
"Yes, check out how many people die of each of the three each year.",
"Alright I'm really tired of the biased responses, I'm just gonna go ahead and throw out all the negatives I can think of. I loved weed when I smoked it... Most of the time... but I pretended like it was completely harmless. I just want to share with you all the negatives that I'm aware of on Marijuana\n\nAnxiety;\n\nIn my opinion the panic attacks and general discomfort that weed can cause is one of the most notable downsides. I'm going to just share with you a few of my experiences. My sister gets migraines all the time and usually ends up in the hospital. One day she was desperate and my mom recommended her friends smoke her up to try and counter the pain. She ended up crying for a couple hours believing that she was literally going to die. This isn't even a rare occurrence, there are plenty of articles on it as well as personal accounts. For me, my heart would race and I felt as if I was conscious of everything and everyone I knew at once. It was terrifying. And since then I've had a few more similar experiences, which is why I no longer smoke. Not only do you have hours of extreme anxiety and discomfort when you have these panic attacks, you may very well end up feeling surreal like you are in a dream for awhile after, it takes a huge mental toll. This is why I'm getting kinda annoyed people treat it like there isn't anything that could go wrong with it. It's a psychoactive drug, so please, take that into consideration.\n\nMemory;\n\nWhile short term memory is the obvious culprit, as we have seen in the latest studies, long term memory can be harmed too if you are to start at a young age. I don't know a whole lot about this topic so I won't pretend to, but I can say that your brain isn't fully developed until around the age of 25 so knowing that and also knowing that weed is a psychoactive drug, claiming it is probable to have an effect on the developing mind is a reasonable statement. I had a friend who was a daily stoner and is convinced to this day that weed destroyed his learning abilities. \n\nAddiction;\n\nI don't have anything to support this claim. Just personal experience which literally means nothing on reddit, I'm gonna go ahead and say it anyway. The way I see it, weed can be very addictive depending on the person. It's known to be a subtle yet pleasing drug and therefore is not very intrusive with ones life. So, over time some of these people who take a stronger liking than others too it may continue to make exceptions for their drug use \"Weed isn't really effecting me and motivated me to get shit done.\" Yea, for the time being this May be perfectly harmless and maybe even beneficial. However, many times, one thing will lead to another and one may find themselves only looking forward to getting high at the end of the day and be drained of motivation to do much else. My best of friends is now a daily stoner and seems to be doing just fine but I often worry how long it can last :/ \n\nSo I'm not trying to change anyone's opinion I just want to show a little bit of the bad because all I'm seeing is good good good \n\n",
"It's an apples and oranges comparison. Tobacco is highly studied and regulated while marijuana is not. At the end of the day, you're putting foreign chemicals into your lungs when you smoke either substance, so neither substance is a healthy idea.",
"Alcohol can kill you in excess, and alcohol withdrawal will kill you trying to quit. THC is safe in both cases.",
"Not many 5 year olds would understand anything in this thread...",
"I'm not going into a huge reply like HeadStar, because this is Explain Like I'm *5*. Basically this, alcohol and tobacco can kill you. No one's ever died from weed.",
"The LD50 (lethal dose for 50% of the population) is about 20,000 times the amount found in a common joint, which is roughly .09 grams. So that means, in order for someone to consume a lethal dose of marijuana, they would have to consume about 1,500lbs in a 15 minute time frame, which is impossible. So theoretically, someone could smoke 1000lbs of marijuana and survive, if that were possible.\nObviously there is concern about the actual smoke and the possible damage it causes to your lungs. But any sort of foreign substance in the lungs come with a risk.\nAlso, generally, when you get marijuana, you don't generally have a bunch of chemicals like you do in cigarettes.",
"YES, I smoke all day most days, maintain awesome job family and have raised 3 kids.. long time lifestyle over 15 years.. I do not drink alcohol very often.. If you drank like I smoke you would be dead.. ",
"Tobacco is a slam dunk. The list of ailments associated with tobacco use are as long as your arm and there are absolutely no positive benefits from tobacco use.\n\nAlcohol is another story but not by much. I recently heard a doctor say that alcohol is toxic to every cell in your body. Alcohol abuse also has a very long list of negative side effects. You can easily drink enough alcohol to cause death from alcohol poisoning. However, there are studies that show moderate consumption is good for you, I think it lowers cholesterol or helps prevent cancer.\n\nMarijuana isn't kale (although too much kale is bad for you). Marijuana is an intoxicant so it changes your brain. Just like alcohol, it impairs your judgement (I know this from personal experience). Smoking large amounts of marijuana give you the same side effects as tobacco but few people smoke it like cigarettes where 20 cigarettes a day is just normal usage and anyone who smoked 20 joints a day probably wouldn't be doing much else. There are several positive side effects for certain conditions although it certainly isn't the panacea most advocates pretend it is.\n\nIn the long run, marijuana is definately less harmful but it's not without it's drawbacks.",
"As a heavy smoker i would say that it is significantly less dangerous, however there are some negatives, so I'll start with them. \n**Memory**: If you smoke pot regularly your going to have a shitty memory. That's part of the package, THC allows you to forget things more easily, or more specifically it allows you to *not remember them* by not moving them from short term to mid term memory.\n\n**Motivation**: Doobies seem like a good idea before everything. Films, music, concerts, even painting the hall. Except that there is a good chance the DVD menu will end up on repeat, that you'll probably watch the gig on youtube, and the hall is going to end up the same colour with your name written in the new one, for months.\n\n**Lungs**: Yes tobacco is bad. And no your average pot smoker will not chain smoke 50 joints a day and end up with yellow fingers like that wee old chainsmoking pensioner. But if you smoke buckets, bongs, or anything else that forces a **shit load** of smoke into your lungs in one go? Your going to have a sore cough this winter. It'll happen. Weed smoke is still smoke and can still leave you with some nasty chest issues.\n\nThese are what I see to be some of the biggest problems to do with smoking green. Since you probably already know the medical risks of cigarettes and alcohol, I'm sure you can weigh up what I've said here with your own knowledge. But to clarify I'll finish on a story about a time when we discussed this very subject:\n\n > One merry Decembers eve we were in my friends livingroom partaking in the use of substances, both bud and Bud. \n\n > A friend who did not partake in the smoky way, seeing how baked we all were, issued a challenge. This man had been drinking Jagermeister most of the night and after watching everyone else sink a bucket (a glass gravity bong used for upmost stonage) commented on how he would need another shot to keep up with us. Someone told him that he couldn't do it like that or he would be bringing up the large peperonni from dominoes we had finished not 2 hours earlier. He told us we were pussies and downed a shot. Laughs. Then makes this mistake;\n\n > \"For every bucket sank tonight I will take a shot and out last all you shitebags (scottish vernacular)\"\n\n > Blair \"iron lungs\" decided it was time to teach this mofo a lesson. \nLong story short after ~10 shots and bowls over the course of a reasonable amount of time, both boys were in a vegetative state. It was apparant the battle was over.\n\n > Given some time colours started to change, complexions greenified and whitened for the drunk and the stoner respectively and we knew what was about to happen.\n\n > A peperoni/jagermeister tsunami erupted from the challengers face, flowing gracefully down his white top like a horrific water park ride, culminating in a pool of what looked like cold chicken soup on his lap.\n\n > The stoner couldn't find this funnier, and after chuckling and coughing violently for a couple of minutes, stopped, looked very serious, and released a body emission of his own, and let out a burp that would have registered on the richter scale accompanied by a small cloud of smoke. The colour returned to his face almost intantly and he continued to laugh and Drunky McSpewerson.*\n\n > Long story short, too much drink > too much weed. ",
"Its most likely been said, but thc is by far -so far- the safest for fully developed individuals. ANY CHEMICAL YOU PUT IN YOUR BODY THAT ISNT ESSENTIAL FOR LIFE WILL ALTER WHO YOU ARE IN SOME WAY. Specifically if you are still developing. Your body wont descriminate when you add things to it as it develops. It takes what you give it and uses it. Pot has been shown (not sure which chemical in pot that actually caises this or if its a combo of them) that smoking pot before the brain is developed has perminent effects on the brain. People's brains usually are developing until they are about 25. Smoking has been shown to interrupt the actual growing process so if you smoke when your body is developing then it should have a perminent negative effect on it. All these effects are exacerbated in utero. Do a google scholar sesrch and read some of the papers that come up. If you are in school use thier computers as they will most likely have the aubscriptions to many if not all scientific journals. ",
"Speaking from personal experience from physical fitness (triathalete) it would be impossible for me to train while smoking cigarettes, or drinking alcohol, way to harsh on my lungs, muscles, and overall attitude. With cannabis though I can smoke and run 10 miles, or cycle 30 and feel just fine afterwards, maybe a slightly higher heart rate but that's about it. Where say hang overs take almost a whole day to recover ",
"Yes. My question would be whether naturally grown marijuana THC (6-7%) just as safe as the hydroponic variety that could put down a horse (20%+)??",
"US alcohol related deaths/yr - 80,000; tobacco - 400,000; marijuana - 0",
"Where is cocaine and heroin on this scale?",
"I drank moderately (2 times a week) for 11 years and then switched and smoked pot daily for 8 years and I can tell you alcohol is way harder on my body pot. Uncontested. \nPot withdrawals are easily manageable in comparison as well. tobacco and alcohol are tough to take breaks from you want to; nothing like cigarettes where u wanna jump out of ur skin for weeks or months!\n Im a high functioning daily pot smoker for years for my gastrointestinal discomfort and it brought near immediate relief nearly every single time I smoked. It's definitely misrepresented by DEA listed as having no medical benefits.\nNo vices are ideal but don't wait in vain with pain. ",
"In comparison to tobacco one reason its less dangerous is the amount used. Pot today is so strong that casual user smokes a very small amount for the desired effect., so much less is taken into the lungs. Most stories about the bad effects about pot simply aren't true, a popular one is it reduces sperm count, if so how do you explain the 100 or so kids Bob Marley had? Pot is not 100% safe but if you carefully examine the facts, any unbiased person will come to the conclusion it is much safer than the US's two other most popular drugs.",
"The big answer is given, but I thought I could add something as well. Have a look at [this chart](_URL_0_)",
"One tends to smoke marijuana less often than tobacco so the risk to your health due to smoking is probably less. Marijuana impairs you less than alcohol (and the overdose and drug interaction risks are much less) so the risk of you killing yourself or someone else are less. Long term use? They are all bad for you. Smoking weed is bad for your brain in long term studies and negatively effects memory and brain function, even leading to psychosis (your brain permanently damaged and not functioning optimally or normally). I'd say that in moderation they are all relatively equal, in abuse alcohol is the most dangerous. ",
"The most dangerous thing that can happen to me because of pot is getting arrested with it.",
"“I think that the bottom line is that there does not appear to be any negative impact on lung function of marijuana smoking\" -Dr. Donald Tashkin, a pulmonologist at the University of California, Los Angeles, who has studied marijuana for over 30 years.\n_URL_0_\n\nThis study surprised me the most lately. \n\nEdit:Damn tablet. \n",
"Here is what I can tell you from experience. I've drank a lot of alcohol and smoked a lot of marijuana in my life. In my opinion, alcohol is far more dangerous than marijuana. Abusing neither is a good idea, like anything else. Abusing food is also dangerous. I use that as an example to point out that anything can be dangerous if abused.\n\nWith that being said, I find it absolutely laughable that alcohol is a legal substance while marijuana is not. People have been brainwashed to believe marijuana is some terrible drug when it isn't. Unlike alcohol it actually has medicinal purposes as well. Once the baby boomer generation is out of office though, marijuana will be made legal across the country. You can take that to the bank.",
"[Useful link showing the LD-50 of various chemicals (granted this is for rats and mice but should give you an indication)] (_URL_0_)",
"hard to say. there may be relative levels of danger, but bottom line: THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS SAFE SMOKE!! \n\n\nThere has been almost no research on safety when ingesting it by any means other than smoking, and smoking ANYTHING is inherently dangerous!! Whether it's pot, tobacco, cloves wood, 60's bras, old socks, whatever. Breathing ANY KIND of smoke is a health hazard. ",
"You're five! You can't have marijuana, tobacco or alcohol. They will teach you about that in school when you are older.",
"Yes. If you go by the numbers of deaths caused, there is no debate. If you go by social cost, there is no debate (the only cost that comes close to equalizing the aforementioned drugs, is the cost of the criminal justice system, but marijuana is not the only drug that \"war\" is waged against), alcohol consumes a large amount of criminal justice dollars as well. If you want to go by internal illness causes and exacerbation, there is no debate. In addition, tobacco is quickly becoming the modern day bootleggers dream (and moonshine has been slowly gaining legal status). Overall, there is no dispute when it comes to deciding what drug is more or less dangerous. I personally believe that our prohibitionist policy is idiotic (not just for marijuana), and that any intelligent third party would come to the same realization. If said third party had access to our history books, in addition to the current drug laws, they would more than likely come to the conclusion that the U.S. drug policy, the creators of it, those who maintain it, and those who enforce it, are insane or developmentally disabled. (That is if the actual goal of this government policy is a safer, and more productive society that functions as \"a more perfect union)",
"Finally my time to shine! I am a pharmacology doctoral student studying drugs and addiction. Note my expertise is in cocaine but I am pretty familiar with these 3 drugs.\n \nEthanol actually binds to a lot of things. It's a pretty \"dirty\" drug as we say in the pharmacology world. But the major psychological effects come from binding to receptors in the brain which inhibit neuronal firing. Ethanol binds to these receptors and makes them function better. In fact, some inhibitory receptors normally only function at 20% capacity and ethanol makes them function at 100% capacity. This is bad for active processes like memory formation. If you inhibit your brain too much you can inhibit it's ability to make you breath or your heart beat. If you are a heavy drinker, your body wants to get back to normal so it changes a lot of things to make your brain more excited (since ethanol is putting an inhibitory drive on it). Let's say now that you stop taking ethanol. You brain has changed to be more excitatory, and now you no longer have that brake so you can get seizures and die. You can literally die from ethanol withdrawal. That's NOT true for most drugs. Although I'm sure a cocaine addict would feel like he's dying. \n\nNow nicotine. I will say I know the least about nicotine as it's not a terribly exciting drug in the addiction world. It doesn't take much to kill you, in terms of amount, but thankfully cigarettes don't have much in them. Nicotine is more toxic to children than adults. And a nicotine \"overdose\" causes you to stop breathing. That said, other than tolerance, nicotine isn't that bad for you long term as far as I'm aware. It's what's in the smoke that's really bad for you. Really smoking anything is bad for your lungs, marijuana included. \n\nNow on to marijuana, of which the psychoactive ingredient is THC. It turns out we have receptors in our brain specifically for molecules like THC. They are called endocannabinoids and are related to molecules that control inflammation and inflammatory pain. There's quite a bit known about these receptors and it turns out they **aren't** located in the brain regions that control heart beat or breathing! So even if you take a whopping dose, you won't overdose. That being said THC in high enough concentrations can bind to other things so theoretically it could kill you that way. As far as how dangerous it is to your health... well that's debated. There's evidence it isn't good for kids, or a developing brain. It's pretty well established that long term use causes cognitive deficits. There are however some positive side effects. THC is useful as a non-opioid analgesic and an appetite stimulant. There are also beneficial immunological responses but that isn't as well established. Despite what some people seem to think, THC **does** cause dependence. THC withdrawal is an actual thing, though it's not nearly as severe as most drugs. Just because it causes dependence doesn't make it automatically dangerous -- think caffeine.\n\n*Edited again for more information",
"There are some good posts about the relative harm here already. Something I want to point out is that this \"less harmful\" argument is frequently used as reasoning for legalization. In that context, it's far more important that marijuana is in roughly the same ballpark as alcohol and tobacco as compared to most other illegal drugs. It doesn't matter that smoking pot might cause some harm. What matters is that, just like alcohol and tobacco, the harm is on a level where people should be allowed to choose for themselves whether they want to use it or not. ",
"So can I light this or what?",
"Alright, Excessive alcohol use kills approximately 88,000 people annually in the u.s\nCigarettes use and second hand kills approximately 480,000 people annually in the u.s\nSome doctors have said that around 30,000 people COULD die annually from marijuana. but that number is not proven and it would just be because of crude plant inhalation.\n\nThese numbers already show that marijuana is not as dangerous as the other 2. \n\nHowever the main reason marijuana isn't as dangerous as the other 2 is because you cant overdose on it. You can't overdose on it because of the location of the tetrahydrocannabinol (THC, the active ingredient in marijuana) receptors in body. To overdose on something that thing must have receptors in the medullary nuclei. This is the part of our body that control respiratory and cardiovascular functions. Unlike other drugs(including alcohol), the THC receptors are not located in that area of the brain. So if were comparing alcohol, and tobacco to other drugs, atleast it would be a closer comparison. \n\nELU5:\n\n Alcohol: can cause your lungs to stop working and a whole list of other \"related\" deaths\n \nTobacco: contains 7000 chemicals, 100's are toxic and atleast 70 CAUSE cancer. \n Also it can obviously stop your lungs from working.\n \nMarijuana: no added chemicals, no known cases of overdose, and aside from the fact that\n your affecting your lungs by inhailing a plant that you lit on fire, its not dangerous.",
"Well, they have different risks. Nicotine is probably the most adictive drug in the world (i think it has a 10/10 ranking). Obviously nicotine is not what makes tobacco harmfull, but all the aditives and radioactive shit cigarettes have. Alcohol is also adictive and is considered a hard drug since it´s consume and abstinece can cause death (the famous delirium tremens). Both cause phisiological and psicological adiction since cronic abuse leads to dependence.\nMarihuana on the other hand is a soft drug. I doesn´t cuase phisiological adiction (only psicological, but the risk is low if you don´t take it every day). Of course, smoking marihuana mixed with tobacco is more harmful than smoking a cigarette, but you can inhalate it or use other posologies. The risk marihuana has is a higher rate of squizofrenia if you have the genetics, but I think data was confused by the fact people with schizofrenia uses marihuana to paliate some of the negative effects of the desease before the crisis. \nSo, in essence, yes, marihuana is less harmful, but also ilegal in most of the world, another proof of the human hypocrisy.",
"A word of warning: redditors may not be the most impartial source of information on this subject.",
"I had 2 Uncles die from smoking related lung cancer and 1 friend who died from alcohol none of them smoked pot. I have not known a single person whose death was even remotely attributable to marijuana. Conversely, I have an in-law whose chronic anxiety is significantly improved with marijuana. ",
"Cannabis smoke contains toxins that are known to be potentially harmful to the lungs and throat, although nowhere near to the same extent as those found in tobacco. These toxins are separate from the THC and other active components of cannabis, and like tobacco are produced as the cannabis heats and combusts. Despite some media reports linking cannabis smoking to cancer, there is no firm proof that smoking cannabis (without tobacco) can cause cancer. However, the smoke produced is not harmless, and heavy cannabis users are more at risk of developing things like breathing difficulties and chest infections. If the cannabis is being inhaled as a vapor (e.g. through a bong) it cuts out the tobacco and therefore a lot of the harm, but it’s a less efficient method of taking it than smoking and you need to inhale a lot more to get the same effect, so there’s not really much of a saving on your lungs.\nThe other potential side effect of using cannabis is its potential link with psychosis. Check out our review blog on the contradicting studies in relation to this. _URL_0_ \n",
"There is definitely a lack of comparative science between these three but I think the human body capable of lending some analysis: I know this is not scientific by any means but as someone who booze-binged through my college years, smoked 1/2 pack a day for a few years and toked MJ every day for a few years I feel somewhat eligible to weigh in on this topic. I have abused all three and physically it feels like MJ takes far less of a toll on my body than either alcohol and cigarettes. But this is just me personally. ",
"All the nay sayers on here need to do some research on Cannabinoids. ",
"The way I see it, drugs can be dangerous for two reasons: **physical effects, and behavioral effects**. Alcohol can be dangerous on both of these accounts: it's relatively easy to die from alcohol poisoning, and alcohol can change your behavior in a dangerous way (poor decision making like drunk driving and sometimes lethally aggressive behavior).\n\nTobacco has dangerous physical effects, but they are so minute that one cigarette isn't going to make much of a difference. The problem is that it's addictive (which I categorize as behavioral, even though there are definitely physical components to the addiction), so you end up accumulating hundreds of thousands of cigarettes over the years, which can create health issues. Tobacco is considered to be generally more addictive than both alcohol and marijuana.\n\nMarijuana would probably have some of the same negative physical effects of smoking tobacco, because you're still inhaling hot, smokey air into your lungs. Marijuana is also habit-forming, however marijuana users light up less often than tobacco users, partially because the buzz lasts longer and partially because it's less addictive, so you could make a case that the physical effects aren't as bad as cigarettes. I think the real danger of marijuana is from the behavioral effects, and South Park summed it up pretty well. Marijuana tends to make users unmotivated and lazy, which can hamper your personal or professional development. You might wake up 10 years later and think \"what the hell have I done in this decade\" and be sad by the answer, if you don't break the habit you might light up to feel better and just continue the cycle.\n\nIt's also important to distinguish what makes a substance dangerous and what makes it lethal. All of these substances are addictive (or at least habit forming), which is a common danger between them. If you're defining dangerious as more likely to kill you, than that's a better parameter that makes comparison easier.\n\nThere isn't enough 'official research' to determine the lethality of marijuana, but there are plenty of statistics that show that alcohol and tobbacco use can be very lethal. ",
"Let me really break it down like you're 5 and not like one of these douche canoes trying to show how smart they are. Marijuana has never killed anyone. Ever.People die from smoking and drinking everyday. All 3 are awesome when done in moderation. If you need a government to tell you whether that's true or not, then humans are far worse off than I thought. ",
"Well you can't overdose on marijuana like you can on alcohol so I think that automatically makes it safer. And THC is much safer than all the harmful chemicals in a cigarette. ",
"Would I rather have my doctor/pilot/cab driver/judge/policeman drunk or high on weed? High on weed, by a landslide. ",
"Not sure who said this but I remember seeing it somewhere: \"The most dangerous thing about marijuana is that it's illegal.\" ",
"yes next question",
"Let me put it this way. There is little WORSE than tobacco.",
"Weed has never made me almost kill myself with \"good\" ideas or sleep with fat chicks. In that sense it's obviously better. ",
"If the question is \"Is marijuana safer\" then the answer is absolutely yes. No one has ever died because of smoking marijuana.",
"yes. it is safer than the other two.",
"Yes. No one dies of overdose and there's increasing evidence it fights cancer rather than cause it. Research on marijuana can be skewed a tokers can be smokers too so it confounds results. 20 myths about marijuana is a good book to help weed through the data. If I were to only keep one of those 3 vices it'd be weed all the way. I really hope people do more research on oil as a medicinal aid. I keep hearing miraculous results",
"To put it very simply - alcohol and tobacco will probably kill you if you abuse them. Weed will affect your mind, but it appears that this subsides after the use of the drug is stopped. \n\nAbuse of weed is dangerous in a similar way to the abuse of video games. It's not a healthy thing to be obsessed with. ",
"This is the least circle-jerky thread about marijuana I've ever seen. Well done reddit.",
"Why is this so hard to accept? \n\nHow many alcohols can you drink in a short time before you die? I don't know, but there is an answer. You can't ingest enough marijuanas to die. \n\nThere are many people who got cancer from smoking or chewing tobacco, but none from marijuana, statistically speaking. \n\nIdiots go \"that doesn't mean it's completely harmless, there are risks!!!!\" ok, but no one calls cookies \"dangerous\" because you could choke on one. Or you could eat so many that your heart gives out. Or you could like them so much that you have to eat some every single day. But moreover alcohol and tobacco are pretty terrible for you (unless you vaporized the tobacco but I'm not sure anyone does that). I think people just don't want to admit that, maybe.\n\nI think the biggest problem health-wise is that people start using it too young, and there is evidence that it can harm brains that haven't finished developing. But that has nothing to do with those of us who are over 25 or so.",
"When I drink alcohol people get hurt if I drive or fight and my liver gets raped by ethonol, when I smoke cigs my lungs get hurt and some evil tobacco lord gets richer, when i smoke weed my lungs get hurt if I don't use my vape and then the evil domino's pizza guy gets all of my money. You decide for yourself which is worse?",
"_URL_0_ one has ever been stoned and wrecked a car killing themselves or another person.\n\nThe fucking weed white knights are the worst. Just shut the fuck up and go get high. Weed is just like drinking, im for both but please spare me youre pothead bullshit.\n\nAlso, doctors cant carry out studies using illegal drugs. Researches cant inject people with heroin and see the effects. Now that we can well find out positi es and negatives of weed.\n\nDownvote away reddit pot army. ",
"PEOPLE ARE STILL WONDERING ABOUT THIS?!?!",
"It depends on how much you use. Alcohol in particular is hard to put on a scale because it varies on how much you drink. Having a glass of wine with dinner occasionally, or even regularly, simply isnt bad for you. Your liver can easily handle that much alcohol, just like it handles any other toxin in your body. Smoking, on the other hand, damages your lungs, not significatly, if done in moderation, but professional athletes are instructed to never smoke ever, because it will hurt their lungs. Then there's intoxication. Tobacco doesn't really intoxicate you, at all. However smoking a little bit of weed intoxicated you more than having one or two drinks does. However being a severe alcoholic is FAR worse than smoking a lot of weed or smoking 2 packs a day. Lung cancer is bad, but it pales in comparison to how alcohol can destroy people's lives. Being a stoner might not be good for you, but it's not **that** bad.",
"Yes. Yes it is. ",
"Let's see...\n\nOne of them will destroy your liver and cause you to puke your guts out.\n\nThe other will give you lung cancer, make you stink like shit, make your teeth turn yellow, and fill your entire respiratory system with char.\n\nThe last will make you hungry and calm you down.\n\nWhich one do you think is the least harmful of the 3? The only thing smoking too much weed can do is cause your lungs to work a lot which can slightly weaken them, but nothing Cigarettes don't make you do 10x worse. \n\nP.S: No, I don't smoke often. I've only smoked once in my life, but I don't think people should be allowed to smoke cigs or get smashed with alcohol and then get arrested and waste my tax-payer money for smoking weed. They should be able to do all 3 if they so choose. ",
"Just search \"Marijuana consumption kills man/women\" and see how many recorded incidents there are. Now do the same for tobacco and alcohol. And also make sure to consider the source of the articles. (tabloid mags etc. don't count!)",
"From a strictly physical standpoint THC is better for you; we're talking worlds apart. While many people will disagree, and because for many people it's not the case, the mental part is what is temperamental. For the average person I'd leave it at everything in moderation being a perfectly fine attitude towards pot. For somebody like me who was predisposed to all kinds of anxiety/depression without knowing it before smoking pot, it opened up a world of hurt in an instant that would have been something I slowly experienced and adapted to had I not used the drug. I don't expect many people to understand this, because this isn't the case for most people; and I'll probably receive lots of downvotes, but this is my experience, making it the only one I can speak from. I am in no way against pot, nearly all of my best friends use it, I'm simply for learning as much about any drug you're going to consume before doing so, and that means being willing to listen to the majority (people who are fine using it, but will tell you NOBODY has ever been affected negatively using it, typically.), and people like me who it doesn't necessarily sit well with but just want you to know that my case is a faint possibility.",
"The worst thing that can happen to you when you have weed is ... Getting caught with it. ",
"Tobacco produces free radicals in the bloodstream no matter how you consume it. These make cancer more likely. It also has a lot of other negative health results that everyone probably knows about by now.\n\nAlcohol consumption has [proven](_URL_0_) causal links to a variety of cancers along the route it takes through the body. Alcohol makes you fatter. It puts significant strain on the liver. It has many, serious negative interactions with common medicines.\n\nMarijuana has not been studied enough to claim we understand all the effects. THC and CBD have been proven to have at least some beneficial anti-cancer effect including inhibition of free radical production. Benzopyrene and other hydrocarbons that are known to cause cancer have been proven to be present in large concentrations in marijuana smoke but not if you consume it in other ways.\n\nAll of them are harmful to fetuses and babies. Heavy use of marijuana also at least temporarily reduces fertility in both men and women.\n\nAll of them have a variety of psychological effects, both good and bad. To me this is the most important area but also the one that varies the most by individual."
]
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[],
[
"http://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/data_statistics/fact_sheets/health_effects/tobacco_related_mortality/",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long-term_effects_of_cannabis#Mortality",
"http://www.cdc.gov/alcohol/fact-sheets/alcohol-use.htm",
"http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/09/03/marijuana-deaths_n_3860418.html",
"http://www.drugwarfacts.org/cms/Causes_of_Death#sthash.vCvilxnE.dpbs"
],
[],
[
"http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9c/Rational_scale_to_assess_the_harm_of_drugs_%28mean_physical_harm_and_mean_dependence%29.svg"
],
[
"http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1x8nq8/eli5_is_marijuana_really_less_dangerous_than/cf9e9gk"
],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[
"http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long-term_effects_of_cannabis"
],
[],
[],
[
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Median_lethal_dose"
],
[],
[],
[
"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tHsNYu6jB6Y"
],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
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[
"http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2722956/"
],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[
"http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a5/Drug_danger_and_dependence.svg"
],
[
"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7qbtYY4HFOw&feature=youtube_gdata_player"
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[],
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"http://basementgeographer.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/Rational_scale_to_assess_the_harm_of_drugs_mean_physical_harm_and_mean_dependence.svg_.png"
],
[],
[],
[
"http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/01/11/marijuana-smoking-does-not-harm-lungs-study-finds/"
],
[],
[
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Median_lethal_dose"
],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[
"http://www.release.org.uk/blog/does-cannabis-really-make-you-go-nuts"
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[
"TIL.No"
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[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[
"http://m.cancer.gov/topics/factsheets/alcohol"
]
] |
|
3xagrz | how does someone become a car dealer or start a car dealership? | Every time I see these boisterous car dealers on tv I wonder, how did someone such as yourself acquire all of these cars and make that much money? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3xagrz/eli5how_does_someone_become_a_car_dealer_or_start/ | {
"a_id": [
"cy2y8q4"
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"score": [
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"text": [
"Get some investors... You can start small going to auctions and buying junk and selling them from your home. Then you get a small lot with junk cars and slowly move up overtime.\n\nSomeone that is actually good at what they do works at a dealer and has a ton of experience including management experience and then gets some investors and opens up a place."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
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tghi2 | heteroscedasticity | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/tghi2/eli5_heteroscedasticity/ | {
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"Well... I'll assume a basic level of statistic knowledge. So this is more, explain it like i'm 17.... \n\nThe strength of a linear line of best fit is how close it is to each of the data points. The less it \"misses\" the data, the better it is. The amount that it \"misses\" each point of data is what we refer to as the error, or residual. Heteroskedasticity refers to when the error around the line of best fit is not random, but is systematically biased. \n\nHave a look at [this regression](_URL_0_), looking at the degree of majoritarian democracy in a country (x axis) and the amount of women's parliamentary participation. [Data from Arend Lijphart's \"Degrees of Democracy\"]\n\nLook at how much the line is missing values on the left hand of the graph rather than the right side. The values are much more tightly clustered for high values of x than low values. This is heteroskedasticity. \n\nWe can examine it more directly with an [rvfplot](_URL_1_)(in STATA terminology). This plots the fitted values (what the regression line predicts), against the error terms for each data point. We can see that as the fitted values go up, so do the standard errors. There is a relationship between the values of x and the error. Numerically this is described by the Breush-Ragan test, which examines the relationship between the values of the independent variable and the error terms. We end up with a chi^2 of 10.12 for the above regression. Which is high, and confirms our visual findings in the graph. If we make changes to the model to try to reduce heteroskeddasticity, we can compare the result on the Bruesch pagan test. (just a note, if you are using STATA, type \"hettest\" after a regression to get the Breusch Ragan results) \n\nNow, why is heteroskedasticity a problem? Well if we were just to report the coefficient and significance of the regression line for majoritarian democracy and women's parliamentary representation, we wouldn't really be telling the whole story. Those two numbers alone do not tell us that we aren't doing a very good job of accounting for the very high levels of women's parliamentary representation in Scandinavian countries (a big source of our problem). How do you fix it? Well you could remove the outliers... but that's rather lazy. More generally, we'd want to add further variables into the model in order to capture the very high values for Scandinavia. ",
"Say we take a survey of the # of hours a year everyone works. \n\nLet's say \"everyone\" is comprised of 3 types of workers: \n\n*part-time workers who usually only work Mondays\n\n*avg joes who work a 5 day week, 8 hours a day \n\n*doctors who work more than 8 hours a day\n\nSo now we have a large amount of data on how many hours people work. Since this survey asks people about their work hours over the course of a year, there will obviously be inaccuracies in their estimates (can you tell me exactly how many hours you worked last year? exactly).\n\nHeteroscedasticity basically means that the more hours someone works, the more inaccurate their/our estimate will be.\n\nNow let's leave this analogy. Let's say we want to model something, Y, that is a linear function of something else, X so that Y = 2x on average. There are natural variations in Y so for each individual, Y will actually be equal to 2x + U, where U is some random term representing the difference between the true Y value and our projected Y value (2x). If something is heteroscedastic, it means that there is a correlation between Y (what we want to measure) and U (the amount Y varies).\n\n*Source: B+ in econometrics :(\n\n\n\n\n\n"
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3x5b7f | how can there be more than a 100g of sugar per 100g? | Hi All,
Lately I've been checking the sugar content of things and noticed 2 things had more than 100g of sugar per 100g (for example _URL_0_). how is this possible? concentrated somehow? still doesn't change the weight?
| explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3x5b7f/eli5how_can_there_be_more_than_a_100g_of_sugar/ | {
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"Unless it's meant that you add it to something (some cereals say \"with 2% milk\") it's a fake label.\n\nThe 138g/100g might mean as added to something."
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20hk9a | humans (first world ones) are living longer than ever, will this have any affect on at what age we mature? | I was just having one of those pre sleep thought journeys and was wondering if living longer will have any affect on Human development, like will we start to sexually and or mentally mature later on?
Are there any other implications of living longer? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/20hk9a/eli5_humans_first_world_ones_are_living_longer/ | {
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"Only if natural selection starts to favour those who sexually mature later.",
"Many already don't mentally mature until much much much later",
"Scientists have actually noted that people have started entring puberty earlier and earlier. But this is proably due to an increase in chemicals around us."
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2m6mv1 | why does alcohol kill them germs when you put it on your skin, but not when you drink it? | When you pour alcohol(lets say 190 proof Everclear) on a cut it kills bacteria(and healthy flesh which disrupts the healing process, can result in longer heal-times), but how come when you drink it when sick(sinuses, fever, the flu), it doesnt kill the bacteria but seems to help it grow fast and makes you more sick.
Sorry for the run on sentence, I have a fever now and everything is all blurring together anyways lol. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2m6mv1/eli5_why_does_alcohol_kill_them_germs_when_you/ | {
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"In the case of drinking, the alcohol is only directly applied to the digestive system's inside lineing.\n\nDepending on the sickness, the bacteria causing the problem may be isolated, while even the absorbed (diluted) alcohol is being applied broadly over your whole body.",
"Alcohol kills cells through direct contact. If you have an infection and you drink alcohol, its never going physically come in contact with the infectious germs. Its just going to enter your blood stream and make your body less efficient at fighting the disease.",
"Whether or not a cell dies when it's exposed to alcohol depends on the concentration. Basically, at lower concentrations a cell can survive the effects and recover. Alcohol-based hand sanitizer (like Purell) is generally between 62-70% concentration and that is supposed to kill 99.9% of all microbes.\n\nAlso, if you drink shots of typical liquor (80 proof, 40% concentration) you have to consider that this ends up being mixed with your blood. You have about 5 litres of blood, so in order to reach the level of a typical disinfectant hand sanitizer, you would need to consume over 3 litres of pure alcohol.\n\nThink about Blood Alcohol Content. The cut off for impaired driving is 0.08, which means your blood is 0.08% alcohol. Your cells and bacterial cells have no problem surviving such a low concentration.\n\nIt makes you more sick because alcohol consumption impairs your immune system. Only slightly at first, but if you get drunk it can get pretty dampened.\n\nEDIT: just adding that viruses are also vulnerable to alcohol. You can't kill them in the traditional sense because they don't quite meet the definition of being \"alive\", but alcohol does denature the structural proteins that a virus needs to function and effectively destroys it. You need higher concentrations though, typical hand sanitizer is only moderately effective for viruses, rubbing alcohol will definitely do the trick.",
"* Flu is caused by a virus.\n* Bacterial infections of your sinuses or air passages ... are not in your mouth, upper throat or stomach. How would you expect drinking alcohol to affect them?\n* Of course the alcohol you drink will reach your blood and other body tissues. Trouble is you're going to die way before the germs do, probably before your blood makes it to 1 proof.\n* There's alcohol in mouthwash which is helps in killing germs in your mouth and upper throat. Gargle and spit; don't swallow.",
"Alcohol will kill you if you drink enough of it.\n\nOur liver is designed to help filter the alcohol out of our body before it gets to our bloodstream. It can't handle too much, though, and drinking more than it can deal with is what results in being drunk. Too much more alcohol than your liver can handle will result in alcohol poisoning.\n\nIf you were to take alcohol rectally (I.e. put than beer up your butt) you would get drunk a lot faster and succumb to alcohol poisoning much quicker.",
"Everclear applied directly your skin is still 95% alcohol, so it is strong enough to kill germs. \n\nWhen you ingest it, it is diluted by your own body chemistry. The term \"Blood Alcohol Content\" (BAC) just like a liquor bottle's \"Alcohol By Volume\" (ABV) refers to the percentage of alcohol in your bloodstream. A decent buzz will happen somewhere in the 0.05%-0.1% range, depending on tolerance. At about 0.2%, most people would be visibly drunk. At 0.3% standing becomes an issue, and at 0.4% you should be more concerned with breathing.\n\nTypical rubbing alcohol is 70% alcohol, which is 175 times the 0.4% BAC that would likely kill you.",
"The alcohol you drink doesn't harm you, because of built in security measures such as membrana mucosas and so on. \n\nAlcohol that surcomes direct contact to a bacterium kills it because of the contact. If you drink alcohol they never touch in that high concentration ",
"You are looking at two different bacteria as well. There are gram positive bacteria that love outside the body and gram negative bacteria that live inside your digestive system. Alcohol kills by breaking up the thick cell wall of gram positives, while gram negatives have a much smaller peptidoglcan layer but make up with different exterior structures like a slime layer and protein coating. So alcohol will kill with varying amounts between the two classes. Source: I'm a biologist... A shitty biologist, but a biologist none the same. ",
"HEY LARRY, HOW CUMM ALCOHOL KILLS THEM GERMS!?",
"Well it is important to know that alcohol's toxicity to microorganisms is related to its concentration. Alcohol that is 70% alcohol and 30% water is the best for killing microorganisms. This is why rubbing alcohol is 70%. What is interesting is that the 190 proof Everclear is actually less toxic to microbes than the diluted stuff. This is because the H2O helps the propal, ethyle or whatever kind of alcohol you have flow through the cell membrane into the organism. Lastly most alcohol you drink is much less concentrated than 70 percent. If you mix a drink you are diluting is further. At 50% concentration the bactericidal tendencies of the liquid is reduced greatly so drinking something like scotch or pouring it on a wound is not going to be a very good antiseptic technique. I guess one more thing to say to answer your question is that what ever sickness you have it is most likely not in your stomach and if it is elsewhere in your body the alcohol is only reaching it through your blood. so your blood is never going to be above .5 or so percent alcohol or you will surely die. Hence the alcohol is not in enough concentration to really help do anything at all when it comes to killing an infection. Will make you feel better mentally though!",
"Would have expected your example beverage to be moonshine ",
"As stated elsewhere in this thread, the alcohol must come into direct contact with the bacteria for it to be effectively killed. An experiment I performed showed me that for many types of bacteria, a concentration of between 50-75% is necessary to be effective. So, with that in mind, you would need a systemic BAC of over 50% in order to fight the infection, barring the possibility that the infection is in the upper part of the digestive system (sustained contact is also necessary). Of course this would be well over the lethal concentration. \n\nAdditionally, I have heard that consuming alcohol can actually inhibit ones ability to fight infection. Admittedly, I am no expert in this area, but I would suspect that this is due to the fact that immune cells use the blood stream to travel to the site of infection and that the addition of a \"toxin\" would put additional stress on the body as a whole. ",
"Alcohol kills germs quickly as it dries and evaporates (lysing the cell walls of bacteria etc.) If you drank enough that you completely disrupted all of your bodies biochemical pathways (thus replacing the water your body currently uses as a solvent with alcohol) most of your life sustaining biochemical reactions would not go forward and eventually you'd dry up and die too. (Except that aldehyde formation from the breakdown of the alcohol would pickle you before that even happened)",
"If you downed a whole bottle of vodka in under 5 minutes you will die. \n\n\nAlcohol is a poison, we just consume it in small enough quantities to survive. this is why you get violently sick and feel the worst you can when you drink to much. \n\n",
"Fun fact: The term \"proof\" is used for alcohol because back in the days in 16th century UK, Sailors got paid in Rum. To check if it was watered down, they poured it over gunpowder. If the gunpowder ignited, it was good Rum, if not it had been watered down.\n\nedit: Wording"
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a55ebo | do companies normally keep a physical copy of their product every time they redesign it? for example, does general mills have a vault where they keep every different wheaties cereal box that they designed? if so, what would happen to that collection if the company ever went out of business? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/a55ebo/eli5_do_companies_normally_keep_a_physical_copy/ | {
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"I mean probably not for cereal boxes, but tech companies, cars, shoes, other companies whose designs are more than just a print on cardboard likely would. ",
"My company prints plastic bags (potato bags, produce, pet food, fertilizer etc.) and we have a copy of every bag we have ever printed. Including design that have been changed and we will never use again.\n\nIf we went out of business it would either be destroyed or sold with our other assets. It is “secret” intellectual property. ",
"Cadbury for example made a small museum where they proudly show off all of the old advertising and products they made along side the ones they currently make! It's a really good time, they give out a crap tonne of free chocolate too! ",
"I work for a manufacturer of electronic communication devices. We've been in business since the early 1980s and we have a sample of every device we've ever manufactured, including dozens that we haven't made in years or decades. We also keep photographs, parts lists, CAD drawings, schematics of all these devices. \n\nWhen a product is redesigned, we either update the current sample to the new version if it's a few components or make an entire new sample if the changes are significant.\n\nAll of our samples are kept in locked cabinets and have to be written out and in of a log to track where they are. \n\nAs for going out of business, lucky for me, that hasn't happened. My best guess though is that if we ever shut down we would keep a small repair and support department for existing installations and products and we would retain samples for this purpose. \n\n",
"The general answer to your question would be \"no.\" There is no reason a company would need to keep a physical copy of everything they've ever sold.\n\nHowever, there are reasons SOME companies would want to keep a copy, either physical or the design work or a photograph or some other form of documentation of items they have sold.\n\nOne reason might be because the intellectual property of a company has value. So, for example, an old Coca-Cola bottle or can has some value to those who collect such things. \n\nAnother example, might be for reproducing replacement parts. Old cars, for example, have parts that wear out and need replaced. So, Ford or GM or Toyota either needs to keep an inventory of parts, or their suppliers need to keep an inventory of parts, or a third party that sells replacement parts needs to keep them to meet the demand. (Once the demand has run out, there may be no more need to keep the parts). In all cases, however, car manufacturers (and other companies) would typically keep the design specifications to all parts on hand to prevent someone from making copies of their parts if they are not authorized to do so.\n\n & #x200B;"
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asf81i | why aren’t the bottoms of people’s feet the smoothest skin on their body? | The bottoms of people’s feet are constantly being rubbed as if having sandpaper taken to them (less harshly than that, of course), so why haven’t they been rubbed ultra-smooth like when you sand other materials? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/asf81i/eli5_why_arent_the_bottoms_of_peoples_feet_the/ | {
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"The rubbing your feet get during the day is different than the rubbing you get when smoothing your feet. It is less of the spa kind and more of the asphalt kind. Rough enough to make your feet want to protect themselves.",
"Because the body's response to that friction and abuse is to harden the skin, which is not conducive to smoothing.",
"They aren’t really being rubbed. You are applying pressure to areas. Also it needs to be dry for friction so a little moisture just makes the skin peel. Cotton is soft as are most fabrics used for socks so there’s no “sand paper” effect :)"
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27csq4 | when countries "put pressure" on other countries, what exactly does that mean? | You hear that a lot on the news when talking about diplomacy. USA wants Russia to "put pressure" on Syria. What does this mean? Veiled threats? Withdrawal of financial support? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/27csq4/eli5_when_countries_put_pressure_on_other/ | {
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"We are in essentially a global economy. Nations depend on one another for resources and can \"put pressure\" on each other by imposing economic sanctions, boycotting trade.etc\n\nRussia is funding the Syrian government. USA wants Russia to reduce the flow of money and weapons citing atrocities committed by the Syrian government forces."
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15s5ud | how come when you stretch or get up fast you black out? | Sometimes, if I've been been sitting for awhile and get up to stretch, I black out. Usually, I lose my eye sight and have a headache, but only momentarily. Why is that? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/15s5ud/eli5_how_come_when_you_stretch_or_get_up_fast_you/ | {
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"When you stand up quickly after sitting for an extended period of time the blood pressure to your brain decreases as blood flow increases to your legs, and you experience a mild form of \"postural hypotension\". Postural Hypotension is a more severe form, that often results in fainting and is a real medical issue- often related to things like diabetes. \n\nEdit: Used hyper rather than than hypo. ",
"I know how you feel, I have the same thing happen to me whenever I stand up to quickly. I usually just play it off by just leaning on something until my eyesight comes back. ",
"Your body is full of blood. Blood brings oxygen to all your organs (including your brain), allowing them to function. When you stand up gravity forces the blood down away from your brain. That's why you can lose vision. It's only temporary because your body quickly gets used to the fact that you're standing up.",
"I didn't know people could black out from this! There's been a few times I've felt dizzy from getting up to fast but that's all that happens.",
"It's called \"orthostatic hypotension\" and it's pretty common. Basically, if you're sitting or lying down your heart doesn't have to work as hard to keep your blood circulating. When you stand up quickly your heart has to start working harder against gravity to get blood to your head. Sometimes it takes your heart a second to catch up to the change, so your head gets less blood than it needs and you can get dizzy or blackout for a second. "
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4sn4fq | why all my friends suddenly have gluten intolerance? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4sn4fq/eli5_why_all_my_friends_suddenly_have_gluten/ | {
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"Did they \"suddenly\" get a gluten intolerance, or are they just hopping onto the \"gluten-free\" fad without even knowing what gluten is?\n\nYou are born with gluten intolerance. You don't just one day magically grow it. ",
"Odds are they don't. Gluten intolerance is a rare condition that affects less than half a percent of the population. But the current fad diet is being \"gluten free\" and so if they are on that fad they may say they are gluten intolerant to explain participation in the fad, or to try and make the restaurant comply with their dietary restrictions. Or they could have tried it and felt better (for a number of possible reasons) and assumed they were intolerant to gluten when it was really reducing or eliminating a different thing from their diet theat was helping them. "
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9o8vrl | what is the difference between auschwitz 1, 2, and 3? | I read that there are three different camps, but all the links I read confuse me. Could anyone help me out? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9o8vrl/eli5_what_is_the_difference_between_auschwitz_1_2/ | {
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"These three camps were part of the Auschwitz camp network but they were built at different times (Auschwitz 1 was built first, then 2, then 3). Auschwitz 2 was a combined concentration camp and \"extermination\" camp (where they committed mass murder), and Auschwitz 3 specifically provided labor to a chemical company called IG Farben.",
"1 has the 'Arbeit Macht Frei' sign. 2 has the railway arch and had the gas chambers. They're about 2.5km apart. "
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b3grgu | the difference between mercantilism and free trade | (For my history work at school) I understand mercantilism is maximising profits and reducing imports and that free trade is trade without tariffs etc..., but isn't all trade made to maximise profits? What makes mercantilism different from any other type of trade? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/b3grgu/eli5_the_difference_between_mercantilism_and_free/ | {
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"At it's most basic core mercantilism is the idea that if a country exports more, they make more profit. That profit is made by selling to others.\n\nFree trade turns this idea around. Sure, selling to others is good but not exclusively. If you can purchase something cheaper somewhere else rather than make it yourself than doing so is a form of cost-cutting, that also leads to profit.\n\nSo mercantilism says that trade is great, but only the selling part. Countries should strive to sell as much as possible to other countries and purchase as little as possible.\n\nFree trade states that everyone should sell to everyone and people should purchase things where the cost is lowest. The idea is that every country will settle into equilibrium and since everyone will be minimizing costs everyone will be richer as a result."
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dbcu6m | why are the music royalties "harder" to obtain or mantain than other kind of royalties? | [deleted] | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/dbcu6m/eli5_why_are_the_music_royalties_harder_to_obtain/ | {
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"I wouldn't necessarily say that they're harder to obtain/maintain, but there's a couple reasons you probably notice them more.\n\n1. They're incredibly incredibly widely used. There's dramatically more need for using music in varying forms of media (games, TV shows, movies, etc) than say, showing clips of a famous movie or something.\n\n2. The music industry is a very old, mature, and powerful industry and major labels have a ton of power."
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9t7fcw | what are you actually doing when you take the derivative of a function and why does it give the area? what about integration? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9t7fcw/eli5_what_are_you_actually_doing_when_you_take/ | {
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"Derivative function gives the change of the function as it travels a very small distance. For example, consider the function y=x. Its derivative is 1. Meaning that if x changes from 1 to 2, y also changes from 1 to 2, i.e., by 1. Also, if x changes from 2 to 3, y changes from 2 to 3 by 1. This is because derivative of y does not depend on x value. This fact is represented by the derivative function. \nIf the derivative function is dependent on x as in the case of y=x^2. Then, its derivative is 2x. Meaning when x changes from 1 to 2 change in y is 3. And if x changes from 2 to 3, change in y is 5.\nOnly derivative is a function meaning you can actually compute for any range of x and instant value of x.\n\nIntegration is reverse of differentiation. It combines the effects of y for an interval of x. It is similar to addition. Thus, integration gives the area under a curve.\n\nChap 6 of Roger Penrose's The Road to Reality gives a nice intuitive explanation for both the operations.",
"Taking the derivative gives you the gradient (steepness) of the function, and for y=function of x, the derivative tells you how quickly y changes with respect to x.\n\nIntegration gives you the area under a line, and essentially just reverses the derivative process. If you integrate a derivative you get the original function. Integrating a line gives the area as you're multiplying each y value (the distance from the axis to the line) by a very small X value (dx, which is really just a way of saying an infinitely small change in X) which is another distance, and then adding them all up, and since distance*distance=area, you get a value for the area under the line",
"For simplicity, lets assume differentiation and summation (discrete equivalents to derivation and integration).\n\n\nYou have set of numbers, lets say something like (1,5,22,3,4,0). Differentiation tells you difference between current number and number that was before it, so in this case you'll end up with (1,4,17,-19,1,-4). On the other hand, summation is adding those numbers, so in our example it's 1+5+22+3+4+0=35.\n\n\nDerivation and integration is basically the same thing, but you do it on continuous data rather than discrete so you do the difference or sum over infinitely short steps.",
"The reason differentiation and integration give us the things that they do (the slope of graph and the area underneath it) is that they were created specifically to do just that.\n\nA line tangent to a graph at a point has approximately the same slope as a line joining two points, one on each side of the point we are interested in. Finding the slope of that line is easy: it's the difference in the y-coordinates divided by the differences in the x-coordinates. If you make the line shorter, it approximates the tangent line more closely. Differentiation is just the process of seeing what result we get for the slope in the limit case where we allow the line length to shrink to zero.\n\nSimilarly, finding the area under a graph can be approximated by cutting it up into rectangles, finding their areas and adding them together. If we make the rectangles narrower, we get a more accurate result. Integration is the process of finding the area in the limit case where we allow the rectangles' width to shrink to zero.\n\nAnd it just so happens we can prove that these are inverse processes: the integral of a differential is the original function (plus a constant)."
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1rthl3 | why is the auburn football game such a big deal? | I see everyone freaking out about it. Reddit, facebook, and friends are all talking about it. I've never been interested in football, and i've never watched it, though i've played a couple times for shits and giggles.
But is it really that rare for a person to run from one side of the field, to the other? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1rthl3/eli5_why_is_the_auburn_football_game_such_a_big/ | {
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"With no time on the clock, as the game winning run, and the fact that it was a missed field goal that was run back. Yes indeed it is that rare. ",
"Alabama has won the last two national championships and they were in the way to their third straight as they were undefeated until tonight. With them losing their chances of making it to the game have gone down greatly. Also, they won't win the SEC now either. The SEC championship game is now between Auburn and Mizzou.\n\nThey ran a play with 6 seconds left to get into field goal range and just *barely* got out of bounds with 1 second left. The field goal was short and Auburn returned it 109 yards for a touchdown, only the 4th time it's happened in NCAA history. ",
"I am not a big football person, but I can tell you that the Auburn v/s Alabama games are one of the biggest rivalries out there. I have been to the state and if you live there, you are for one or the other. This game is a big deal for the entire state. College football fans tend to be a very loyal crowd and bragging rights for the entire next year come from this. Not to mention the way it was won was simply astonishing and made for one hell of a game, rivalry or not. \nAnd one final note, winning these games are important to the colleges themselves. IIRC, across the college football programs, there have been coaches fired for not winning against rivalries. So yep, it is a big deal to those involved. ",
"1. The game really really mattered. Alabama is the top ranked team in the United States. On top of that, Auburn and Alabama are arguably the biggest rivals in college football.\n\n2. It has major implications for many other college teams. If 5 guys are racing towards a finish line, and the guy in first place trips, every single other guy has a chance of moving up a place.\n\n3. It was an insane and rare play. 109 yard run almost never happens.\n\n4. All the kicker had to do was kick it into the goal from a close line and it would have been over. Even if he just missed, the game would have gone into over time. Auburn was pretty much done.\n\n5. This happened on the very last play of the game as the clock ran out.\n\nAdd these factors all together, and you have what will go down as one of the biggest moments in college football ever. "
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5wsaxc | can we reverse the damage done to earth? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5wsaxc/eli5_can_we_reverse_the_damage_done_to_earth/ | {
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"Earth is self-healing (the process may become faster by some human actions) give it a few million years and it'll be *mostly* restored, we just need to stop whatever we're doing that harm the planet--and that's the hard part. Harming the planet is an *unavoidable sacrifice* to advance humanity (just because it's unavoidable, doesn't mean we can't find a better alternative though).\n\njust my 2-cents.",
"Earth can repair itself over a long, long period of time (dozens of thousands of years would be a bare minimum)... for now. \n\nSome scientist fear we're nearing a tipping point where earth would start an unstoppable chain reaction of self-destruction that would make it permanently uninhabitable not only for humans, but for any form of megafauna in general (any animal over 40-45kg, or 90-100 lb.) The terrifying thing is, once it's started, there's no way to stop it. Even if we stopped everything we did bad overnight, that would still be too late. And when i'm saying we're nearing this point and the chain reaction would happen. Don't think \"200-300 years\". More like : tipping point in 10 to 20 years, uninhabitable planet in 80-100 years.\n\nClimate change is a serious and very real problem guys, don't underestimate it. Lobby your government and representatives, lest your children or grandchildren may witness the end of humanity."
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b9ihtm | how do college credits work? | Do certain amount of credits equal a degree? If you earn some credits in math and some in science and they total a degree is it a math degree or science? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/b9ihtm/eli5_how_do_college_credits_work/ | {
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"Where I went to college you get credits for passing classes. You need a certain number to graduate. After you pick a major or minor you need to complete certain required courses for the major and then a certain number of credits in whatever classes you want within the discipline.\n\nSo for example for my CS degree I had to do classes like C programming, discrete math, scientific computation, digital logic, etc, and then a certain number of credits in any CS related classes I wanted (AI, compilers, computer architecture, etc). I also had to do a bunch of math classes (since I was in an engineering school) and certain liberal arts classes that everyone had to do.",
"When I was in college, there were a total number of credits needed to graduate, as well as certain credit requirements for your major and distribution requirement credits needed.\n\nSo you might need to pass 30 classes to get a bachelors degree, and your major requires 15 courses, and distribution requirements total another 15. At my college, all academic courses were 4 credit hours, while PE classes, studio art classes were 2 credit hours, so the numbers were basically x4, except the PE requirements.\n\nTypically you spent most of your first two years taking distribution requirement courses -- this means taking specific courses or ones within defined groups to ensure a well rounded education. So it might mean you have to take something like: 3 history or social science courses, 2 literature or culture courses, 2 math courses, 2 science courses including 1 lab science, 3 PE classes, health, etc. \n\nYour major will define what is required to get that degree, which likely include some specific courses (like the depts 101, 102, 201, 202 courses) and some elective courses."
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2iknnp | what makes the discovery of blue led so important that nobel physics prize went to it's discoverers? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2iknnp/eli5_what_makes_the_discovery_of_blue_led_so/ | {
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" > This enabled a new generation of bright, energy-efficient white lamps, as well as colour LED screens.\n\n_URL_1_\n\n > The blue light-emitting diodes they helped create are taking over lightbulbs as we know them, but already see universal use in smartphone flashlights and displays.\n\n***\n\n > Red, blue, and green light combine to make the bright white produced by LED lightbulbs. Bulbs using blue light-emitting diodes are more efficient and have a longer lifetime than old fashioned bulbs (up to 100,000 hours, compared to 1,000 for incandescent bulbs and 10,000 hours for fluorescent lights).\n\n***\n\n > All three men continued to improve on their work during the 90s, and also independently created blue lasers -- which, because of blue light's very short wavelength, allow for information to be stored much more densely than infrared light does. That’s how Blu-ray movie discs came to be.\n\n_URL_0_"
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"http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/speaking-of-science/wp/2014/10/07/the-nobel-prize-in-physics-goes-to-three-men-who-gave-us-blue-light-emitting-diodes-used-daily-in-your-smartphone-screen/",
"http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-29518521"
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3f48lk | why does one's age need to be 18 to online date, when the age of consent is 16? | If 18's the age for accepting terms and conditions, then why can't a 16 year old online date with parent's consent? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3f48lk/eli5_why_does_ones_age_need_to_be_18_to_online/ | {
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"How do you prove parental consent online?\n\nAlso, the age of consent is not the same everywhere. The company is probably covering themselves legally by making it 18, a common age in the US.",
"Because the dating site doesn't just operate in your state; it also operates in places where the age of consent is 18. \n\nAlso, you have to agree to terms of use of the site, and a minors agreement to them may not be binding. ",
"Another idea is that typically when using those sites you have to agree to terms and conditions. You need to be 18 years old to enter into a legally binding contract. "
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xn946 | why are passports needed to enter a foreign country? do you need to switch passports when you switch citizenship? what does a passport actually prove other than the fact that you have a certain citizenship? | ELI5: Why are passports needed to enter a foreign country? Do you need to switch passports when you switch citizenship? What does a passport actually prove other than the fact that you have a certain citizenship? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/xn946/eli5_why_are_passports_needed_to_enter_a_foreign/ | {
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"Every country has rules about how long visitors are allowed to stay. Sometimes these rules change depending on where the visitor is from.\n\nA passport is a book that says which country you belong to. You show the passport when you visit another country so they know where you came from and how long you can stay.\n\nIf you change your citizenship, you get a new passport. You are supposed to throw away the old passport, but not many people do this because it's cool to have lots of passports.\n\nPassport now have biometric ID info in them. That means when immigration agents scan your passport and take you picture, they can match you against a database of criminals, and they can decide whether or not to let you enter their country. They may also arrest you if you are the criminal and you're on the run.",
"There are a lot of good answers in this thread, but they don't answer the fundamental question.\n\nThe reason you need a passport is that it is a proof of one thing in particular, which is that there is a nation which will take you back if the country you're visiting wants to get rid of you. Since every nation has control over its own immigration, if the US wants to deport someone, they need somewhere to deport that person to. If they randomly decided they wanted to send them to, say, Canada, Canada might not accept the person, and the US wouldn't be able to get rid of them.\n\nA passport is effectively a guarantee that the country issuing it accepts them as a citizen, and so will take that person back if they are no longer welcome. This is also why your passport is often required to be good for a certain period of time after your intended departure---unforeseen circumstances may arise.\n\nIt sounds mostly stupid, but there are on occasion people who are *stateless*---they have no citizenship. This is a bad spot to be in because no country will automatically let you in. Usually nowadays statelessness happens due to different citizenship rules at birth, such as if your parents' nation requiring you to be born in that country in order to grant citizenship, and you are born in a different country which doesn't automatically grant citizenship to anyone born within its borders. A stateless person is a theoretical liability to a nation letting them in, since they may have nowhere where they can legally work or live, but it would be morally wrong to force them to spend their life without a place to live or work.\n\ntl;dr it's kind of stupid except for one rare edge case that ruins it for everybody.",
"Not an answer, as there are plenty of good answers here, but an amusing trivia: the Queen of Englnd does not have a passport, as all British passports are issued on behalf on Her Majesty and are basically just a way to say \"The Queen of England requests that you let this person in\", which is kinda obsolete if she is standing there in person."
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2o6tjs | why don't most supermarket checkouts use a single line feeding into all the registers? | I see this sort of checkout line at banks and some computer stores. Basically, everyone goes into a single long line and at the end, a person or display will direct the first in line to the next available register.
Contrast that with most supermarkets where people line up directly for a register, not knowing if that line will move fast or slow and people will frequently shuffle between lines for different registers.
Why don't more stores use the checkout lines I described in #1 (at least in the US)? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2o6tjs/eli5_why_dont_most_supermarket_checkouts_use_a/ | {
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"Because imagine how long that one line would be. Imagine trying to navigate shipping carts in a confined space like that. \n\nIt works in banks because it's only a person standing there, so you can queue up 20 people in a small area by doing that snake-style lineup.",
"A number of grocers I've been to do this and it is quite effective. Most military commesaries I've been to are like you described. Although it did require a lot of space near the front of the store where many other grocers have product shelving.",
"So one line with multiple registers (like a bank) is the fastest way to move everyone through (operations courses teach this system). However, most people will not recognize this and most people think it is slower (also taught in those same classes).\nNow, if you have a choice between efficient work but unhappy customers (because they think other ways are faster, and they are wrong) or inefficient systems with happier customers, most firms tend to implement the first only if the customer has no choice (think Comcast). If you have the choice to go somewhere else because you think it's better, most people will without verifying or testing that assumption.\n\nSame logic applies to Wal-Mart. People think groceries are cheaper there so Wal-Mart starts upping the prices of groceries until they are maximizing profit. It's not a bad system at all (for Wal-Mart) but people seem to be convinced that groceries, on average, are cheaper there instead of where they are actually cheaper (like Kroger if you live in the South).\n\nIt's all about perception.",
"It requires a lot of open floor space to be able to do that, as there needs to be a single point that has an unobstructed view, and unobstructed access to while pushing a large shopping cart, each of the registers."
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1wnhmf | how does salt water not contaminate fresh water supply on an island? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1wnhmf/eli5_how_does_salt_water_not_contaminate_fresh/ | {
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"Salt doesn't go up stream. All fresh water pools flow to the ocean at some point.",
"I'll give you the best example of the Everglades.\nThere is a difference in density between salt water and fresh water. \n\nAlthough they are side by side (0 ft above sea level, basically), the density of the fresh water doesn't allow the salt water to seep in and contaminate everything in South FL.\n\nThis is why droughts are of extreme importance in South FL, but our tropical weather keeps us safe usually.\n\nI'm sure there are more \"technical\" explanations, but this is ELI5."
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3vvxln | how can i remember 1000's of song lyrics but can't remember recent events? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3vvxln/eli5how_can_i_remember_1000s_of_song_lyrics_but/ | {
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"I don't know much about neurology, but the fact that there's a rhythm, you like to listen to it, and likely did so multiple times probably helps."
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4i23wj | if a photon of light behaves like a wave, why can't you cancel light out the same way you can sound? | I'm probably missing something about the nature of photons, since I was taught they behaved like a wave and a particle, but I've never seen anyone cancel a light wave out with one of opposing wavelength. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4i23wj/eli5_if_a_photon_of_light_behaves_like_a_wave_why/ | {
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"You can, in fact that was the experiment done to show light behaves as waves. You can see it yourself. Hold a pin sized hole up to your eye and you will bands of dark around the edge. That is the light waves canceling each other",
"You can in fact cancel out light. This is how the [double slit experiment](_URL_0_) shows the wave like properties of photons. However there are a variety of reason that make light cancellation impractical, such as the high frequency and the power needed."
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j382g | how how antivirus companies generate malware signatures, and how they use them to find viruses | I always wondered how they extract virus signatures and how this signature is used when the file is being scanned. Can someone explain?
Thanks! | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/j382g/eli5_how_how_antivirus_companies_generate_malware/ | {
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"First someone writes a virus that gets out into \"the wild.\" \n\nOnce it's 'popular' enough for a larger antivirus company to see they will typically document the file itself, what it does, any other things it affects (registry keys/files it creates/etc..). That information gets placed into a virus \"dictionary\".\n\nYour anti-virus software will download that dictionary, then look though each file you have on your computer, and check to see if it's in that dictionary. If it is, then the other pieces of the virus are removed (for example, a registry key that says to run the virus on startup) and the virus itself is removed.\n\n"
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78p4pn | how does the federal reserve figure out how much money to print/mint each year? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/78p4pn/eli5_how_does_the_federal_reserve_figure_out_how/ | {
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"The Federal Reserve Bank runs a program called FedCash. They accept sorted currency and fulfill orders. It's relatively standard supply-chain management. They know how much was ordered each month in the past, the lead time to get more from the BEP, and how much they have on hand. While they occasionally make mistakes and run low, it's not normally a problem.",
"Minor quibble, for clarification only: the Fed doesn't produce coinage or currency. The US Mint and Bureau of Engraving and Printing, respectively, do that. But the Fed is the only entity that can place orders for either, so really, the question is still well-put.\n\nTo answer, the Fed estimates the need for new coinage/currency the same way a business estimates the demand for its products: it generates forecasts for *this* year based on actual figures from *previous* years. Throw in a few tweaks, here and there, for specific, identifiable events that are likely to throw things off a bit (e.g., the introduction of a new bill, etc.), and Bob's your uncle. ",
"When it comes to actual, physical currency - Bills and Coins - whatever member banks of the Federal Reserve ask for, the Fed will essentially give them. In a modern economy, from a broad monetary perspective, physical currency is basically meaningless. The overwhelming majority of the money supply exists purely in electronic form. So when the Fed is \"printing money,\" really what they're doing is buying assets (usually bonds, but in extreme circumstances other assets) from banks, and giving them electronic currency in exchange.\n\nThis buying and selling of bonds is called Open Market Operations, and it's the primary way in which the Fed controls inflation. In order to determine how many bonds to buy (or sell) the Fed targets an interest rate. If the Fed sells a lot of bonds, the supply of bonds will increase, and the price of them will drop. This means that in order for the Federal government to issue new bonds, they have to have a higher return.\n\nBy raising the rate of return on new Bonds, the Fed also raises the interest rate on most other savings instruments as well. US treasury bonds are considered to be risk free (or as risk free as an investment can get), so in order to compete with the increased return, other savings and investments need to promise a higher return as well. This slows down consumption (as savings becomes more attractive by comparison), this drives down employment, which then drives down inflation. \n\nSo to answer your question, the Fed figures out how much money to \"print\" each year by looking at unemployment and inflation. It then performs open market operations in order to effect interest rates in order to hit it's unemployment and inflation targets.",
"I am going to assume you don't know what you were actually asking (most people don't) and answer the question I think you asked.\n\nHow does the Federal Reserve figure out how much Quantitative Easing and other tools to control the interest rate to use each year?\n\nPeople who criticize the Fed's policies are generally talking about this and pejoratively call it money printing. Also the question now has several ELI5 embedded into it.\n\n1. What is Quantitative Easing? QE is a program where the fed would buy loans from banks in exchange for increasing the amount of reserves the seller had at the Fed (basically let the banks loan more).\n2. What other tools does the Fed have? The main tool is actually buying and selling Federal debt, already purchased by others, in exchange for reserves.\n3. What is the interest rate the Fed controls and why is it important? The Fed controls something called the Fed Funds rate which is important for determining the rate at which banks will loan each other money overnight so they can be legally operated. Banks are required to have at least a certain percentage of their deposits in cash (10%) so these loan make sure they are always above that limit.\n4. How does the Fed know how much of these tools to use? They want to maintain full employment and stable prices (low inflation) they look to see if unemployment is rising too fast or just generally very high. If it is they will lower rates. If inflation is too high they will raise rates to get it under control.",
"OP, can you clarify whether you mean the physical printing/minting of currency or the creation of money itself? They are different things. Currency is not the same as money. The answers you are getting are making an assumption one way or another, but they are not going to flesh out the true answer unless they know what you are asking.\n\nCurrency is a method of transferring wealth, money is a method of quantifying it. Some money is currency but not all currency is money."
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1x5mdu | why do i feel out of breath sometimes when i take hot showers? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1x5mdu/eli5_why_do_i_feel_out_of_breath_sometimes_when_i/ | {
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"Definitely depends. Yeah when you are breathing in steam, there is less air, but only in insignificant amounts. Whenever your body is excessively warm, however, your blood vessels dilate to try to release heat (increases the surface area of the external environment that touches your blood). Since the heat is continually being heated by the shower, your blood vessels continue to dilate. This can result in lower blood pressure, which can trigger a shortness of breath. "
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139xbq | the appearance of pixelated, blocky, and green colors when playing and skimming through some videos. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/139xbq/eli5_the_appearance_of_pixelated_blocky_and_green/ | {
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"Modern compression algorithms rely partially on a technique called *temporal* compression. If the background in a shot stays the same, then you only need to remember how to draw it once. Temporal compression depends on the frames that happened before and after it. If you skip through a video it may not have enough information about what happened before to draw a correct image at your current point in time. Eventually something with all the info needed to draw the entire video frame (called a *keyframe*) will come along and the image will fix itself.\n\nThe other artifacts can be caused by errors and corruption in the data or a video that was compressed poorly."
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65fjl7 | why do touch screen devices only register certain touches (fingertips, styluses, etc) but not touching using other materials (fingernails, clothes, etc)? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/65fjl7/eli5_why_do_touch_screen_devices_only_register/ | {
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"because they use the minute electrical conductivity in your fingertips and the styluses point. The other objects do not have this characteristic. when you touch the screen with your fingertip some of the electricity the screen produces goes to your finger and the screens sensor can tell that some electricity is gone and knows something it touching it.\n\nedit: last sentence."
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1x1spm | does the female body produce more breast milk then needed? if so, where is the excess breast milk stored? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1x1spm/eli5_does_the_female_body_produce_more_breast/ | {
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"The pathway of milk in the human breast: Alveolus, duct, sac, nipple, baby. The milk is stored in the bubble-like cavity of the Alveolus and the infant sucking at the breast causes the cells to sqeeze, ejecting the milk.",
"I nursed 2 babies. When your baby is about 2 days old, the milk production increases to a level that the baby can't keep the pressure down and it is very painful. At this point, you can pump it to relieve the pressure and freeze it for later or just toss it. After your baby has developed a pattern of nursing, your milk production levels out for the frequency your baby nurses. As they get a little older and start to eat solids, your milk production starts to decrease. When you pump during this time, your body will think it's the baby and keep up with the high production. This can be frozen. Some moms donate their frozen milk. \n\nMy 3rd child nursed once at night for about 6 months before I cut her off at 25 months old. To prevent painful milk buildup, I ace bandage wrapped my chest so no milk would fill the alveolus. \n\nI froze some of mine for use when my husband had to keep her while I was working, but she hated the bottle and just screamed the whole time I was gone. I hope this gives you a little insight on nursing."
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5mh1k0 | how do internet routers transmit data from a pc through their device and then to the internet? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5mh1k0/eli5_how_do_internet_routers_transmit_data_from_a/ | {
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"First, the program using the data takes data and chops it up into reasonable chunks called packets. Each packet has an IP address and port number where it is destined to, in addition to the data. It's kind of like the address on an envelope. It gives this packet to the operating system.\n\nThe OS keeps a list of all the IP addresses it knows about on the local network, and associates those with Mac addresses.\n\nThe OS also knows about a special IP address called the gateway address. When the IP is outside of what the OS thinks is local (this is defined by the Subnet Mask), it sends traffic to the gateway.\n\nIn order to send traffic on the local network, to an Ethernet device connected to another computer, that IP packet gets wrapped in an Ethernet frame, like another envelope. When the device it is destined to sees that number, it starts listening, and unwraps that envelope. This is where the gateway comes in.\n\nWhen the gateway unwraps an Ethernet frame, it looks at the destination IP. If it is outside the local network, it sends a packet out to the WAN, which is really another router. That router then looks at the list of gateways IT knows, to see if any are wider areas, until your packet is either on a network whose subnet matches the destination, or it is certain that the destination doesn't exist on that network."
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20stat | why is radioactiveness always associated with the color green? | Everytime someone mentions radioactiveness, plutonium, radioactive waste or anything radiocative it is always associated with the color green or neon green, why is that? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/20stat/eli5_why_is_radioactiveness_always_associated/ | {
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"It is mostly the green phosphor that was added to radioactive luminescent paint.\n\nThey made a paint that included a radioactive element and with a green phosphor. This was applied to things like clock faces. The radioactive stuff gives off radiation, which excites the phosphor so that it glows green.",
"Because early in the 1900s, before we figured out just how chronic, low dose radiation can be, we used to use paint laced with radium to paint [clock dials](_URL_0_), among other things. The radium gave off a green glow while it decayed which allowed the clocks to be read in the dark. "
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1farwm | how can stadiums oversell their capacities without violating some kind of fire code? | Lots of stadiums do the General Admission thing I suppose so they don't have to have an actual seat number on every ticket but is it just bench seating and hoping for skinny people? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1farwm/eli5_how_can_stadiums_oversell_their_capacities/ | {
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"As long as they don't actually let too many people in, they're not violating fire code.",
"Many places will \"oversell\" an event because a reliable percentage of people don't show up."
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2h2h9p | why does toothpaste clean headlights so well? | I've seen a few tutorial videos where people are using toothpaste to clean their headlights. I even saw one using mosquito repellant. What is it about these things that cleans a headlight? Is it because they're abrasive? Wouldn't that make the plastic of a headlight foggier? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2h2h9p/eli5_why_does_toothpaste_clean_headlights_so_well/ | {
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"Toothpaste is an abrasive. \n \nIf you imagine starting with a plank of rough wood, and wanted it to be really smooth, you'd start with really rough sandpaper. That would scrape out lots of (relatively) deep grooves in the wood. You'd now have something with a rough finish, and would repeat that with finer and finer grades of sandpaper. Going from 40 up to 250 or higher would leave you with a smooth surface, and the scratches get finer, and each time you're scraping away the smaller scratches. \n \nFor something see through it's harder, and the light gets bent more easily by even small scratches, so you'd have to use really really high grades of sandpaper, and it still might look foggy. \n \nNow instead of sandpaper, imagine you took the abrasive off the paper and just rubbed it straight on with a cloth. This would be polishing compound, and it makes much smaller scratches. If you use very small abrasive particles, the scratches are too small to be that far off a flat surface. Toothpaste is a close approximation to a polishing compound like this. The scratches are so small the surface is almost completely flat. You've removed the bigger scratches and your headlights are clear."
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an43h7 | what is the missing link, is it still missing or was it found? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/an43h7/eli5_what_is_the_missing_link_is_it_still_missing/ | {
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"It is a popular culture term for any new transitional form of organism, especially pre-human, which is found. It isn't something which is missing or found because it isn't one thing, and the term isn't really used in the scientific community because it implies evolution is linear.",
"A missing link is a transitional species between two well established species. According to the theory of evolution the changes from one species to another will happen gradually. However these species in between can be hard to find as they are often poorly adapted and therefore change rapidly into the new species. So they tend to be missing from archeological records. The most famous missing link was between humans and other primates. We have found a lot of different species linking the gap but there are still missing links between them. There are also missing links further back in the primate tree. Similarly there are missing links between dinosaurs and birds.",
"It is/was a way of attacking evolution. There should be evidence of an intermediate species between pre-humans and humans. But this is a fools game because if we find the \"missing link\" you can just ask for the intermediate species between the missing link humans. You can keep subdividing.\n\nSo we find homo erectus. Fine, where is the missing link between homo erectus and modern humans?\n\nSo then we found Homo heidelbergensis. Fine, where is the missing link between Homo heidelbergensis and modern humans?\n\nwe've found enough evidence of intermediate fossils that the debate around the missing link has died down. But it was big 15 or 20 years ago.",
"The missing link was the missing species between early primates and homosapiens. The idea would be a species in the line of evolution that lies between two more distinct forms. You can think of it as the evidence we haven't yet found for what is otherwise solidly known.\n\nThe idea is that, in evolution, change is not sudden- each creature is largely similar to its parents. That suggests that we should be able to find fossils ranging back to early apes that basically flow together from early ape to modern humans. As some time in the past, humanity had not yet found nearly as many fossils as are currently in scientific archives today, but had found enough that it was clear that some sort of progression had occurred. The missing link was those fossils that as of yet had not been discovered.\n\nObviously, once it's found, it's no longer a missing link, and the modern usage is from people attacking the facts by looking only at a limited slice of the available fossil record (typically only at the common examples of the named species of early man that are used in science books) and then choose to claim that there isn't a clear progression. Common sense says we wouldn't want to spend the resources to include a picture of every skeleton ever discovered in high school science books when there are so many other topics to cover and that usually only devotes a chapter or so to evolution and its mechanics.",
"There is no missing link, rather a pattern of evolution leading from our current ancestors. The idea of a missing link is really a neat and boxed version of the idea of evolution. Evolution doesn’t occur that way. It is small moves in our genes to allow us to survive better that our competition. "
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30q7eu | what prevents someone from misusing the information on a check i write them, to withdraw money from my account using a service like xoom? | When I use a service like xoom to transfer money to someone else, it asks me for my name, address, bank account number and routing number (to fund the transaction) - all of which are available from my checks. ELI5: What prevents someone from misusing the information on a check I write them, to withdraw money from my account using a service like xoom?
Some sites do authenticate that you are the true owner of the account my doing a sub-dollar deposit and withdrawal and asking you to enter the amount. But not all sites do this. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/30q7eu/eli5_what_prevents_someone_from_misusing_the/ | {
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"There's nothing stopping them from performing the transaction. However, when you seethe fraudulent transaction and report it to your bank, the fraudster will have left a very short trail that leads back to them, or at least their bank account. \n\nThis kind of act is called wire fraud, and can be a felony depending on the amount or location.",
"Pretty much nothing -- other than the fact that is it would be against the law. Your bank account is only as safe as every single person you have ever given a check to (you are relying on them to keep your information safe). \n\nRiconquer is correct - these transactions can easily be traced to the recipient's account. However, based on my experience at the bank, most perpetrators of this type of fraud realize this. So, what they do is they have fake/stolen checks from one account, and deposit those checks into a second account that they have taken over and quickly withdraw the money. So when the bank investigates, it does not lead to the fraudster, but to another victim of fraud."
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2hm3ey | how do web genies like akinator use the questions to guess even the most obscure things with apparent ease. | _URL_0_ | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2hm3ey/eli5_how_do_web_genies_like_akinator_use_the/ | {
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"Good coding, learning and many, many people answering. It's simple as that. It's just algorithm looking for patterns, especially based on previous questions. ",
"There's a general explanation in the [Wikipedia article about the 20Q toy](_URL_0_), but if you want more detail you can also look at [the patent](_URL_1_).",
"This program seems to use a method called binary search. Essentially it has a big table of millions of characters, each with various characteristics. With each question, the goal is to eliminate the most potential candidates possible, in which case the best strategy is to ask a question that can split the remaining group in half.\n\nHere is an example, let's assume I want to find where you live with only yes/no questions. First I would ask: do you live in the north hemisphere? If yes, I would ask, do you live in China/India? If no I would ask, do you live in North America or Western Europe? If yes I would ask do you live in North America? If yes I would ask, do you live west of Missouri? If yes I would ask, do you live south of Oregan? If yes I would say do you live in California? So on and so on, using this same division of remaining possibilities, you can specify further and further.\n\nImagine this same strategy applied to every person on Earth. If you could actually split the group in half each time, it would only take 33 questions to get from 7 billion possible people down to one individual!",
"Has anyone else noticed that Akinator asks redundant questions often? For example it'll ask if the character is human, you respond \"yes\", and then one of the following questions will be something like \"is the person you're thinking of a breed of dog?\"?"
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457ttt | what is the difference between an engineer and a technician? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/457ttt/eli5_what_is_the_difference_between_an_engineer/ | {
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"Engineer makes the stuff that works. Technician fixes/operates the stuff (depending on the type of engineer/technician).",
"From a careers perspective, an \"Engineer\" is USUALLY a certified person with a specialist degree in one of its various branches, which has to do with the design, development and deployment of systems or infrastructure. There's formal types of engineering such as mechanical engineer, civil engineer, and electrical engineer. There's some informal and sometimes misapplied labelling of the term such as \"systems engineer\" (which could mean anything), but regular engineers who work hard and pay dues for their degrees and designations get annoyed when these types of terms are used professionally. I've seen those labels get quashed in some unionized public sector environments.\n\nEngineer is a bit more formal as a designation than a 'technician', which can mean anyone that works with technical equipment. The fields for those are very very spread out - you can have computer technicians, radio technicians, x-ray technicians, ultrasound technicians, client service technicians (help desk staff) heat pump technician, and so on. The great variety extends to a huge variation in responsibilities too: some are highly trained and require specific degrees and/or certifications to operate legally, others are just a label of complete convenience that make a responsibility sound way more formal than it actually is (e.g. \"Sandwich technician\" at your local sub shop).",
"An engineer is the person who designs the Lego blocks and sets.\n\nA technician is the person who puts it together and fixes it when it breaks apart.",
"Engineers solve practical problems.\n\nNot problems like, \"What is beauty?\", because that would fall within the purviews of your philosophy.",
"If you make it happen in a the lab, you are a scientist. \n\nMake it happen repeatably in the, lab you are a great scientist.\n\nMake something happen in the real world, you are an engineer.\n\nMake something happen in the real world reliably, you are a great engineer.\n\nMake something happen every day that a great scientist discovered, a great engineer designed and built, and you are a technician.\n\n\nMake sure technicians can reliably, economically make something happen for the public, you are an entrepreneur."
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2kjo5e | why don't market forces and competition drive down the cost of medical procedures? | My fiancé recently went in for a test that involved her running on a treadmill for 12 minutes. Today she got a bill for $12,000.
Now, obviously more went into that test than simply running on a treadmill for 12 minutes. Analysis needed to be done, and you need to hire experts to do that analysis, etc. These things cost money, and I'm all for medical professionals making really good money. The services they offer are vital and I have no problem with someone making a profit.
But what I don't understand is why market forces and competition seem to have no effect on such procedures. If one hospital is offering a basic stress test for $12,000, wouldn't it make sense for another hospital or facility to offer that same test for $10,000? Like any other industry, they would presumably be favored by customers and insurers looking to save some money, and in the end they would make more money by attracting more customers. The competing facilities would then need to drop their prices to compete, and the cycle would continue.
I'm sure this happens to a certain degree in the medical field, but it seems like it ought to be happening more. Especially for simple, straightforward procedures like check ups and simple tests, it seems odd that such incredibly high prices would be tolerated by the marketplace. I know the customers need medical care and so they will pay whatever they have to, I'm just surprised that competition between the various providers doesn't create more of a check to incredibly high prices. It seems like insurance companies alone would be putting a lot of time and effort into finding the best deals, which would encourage healthcare providers to offer such deals, even when individual customers might not be able to find them.
Can anyone explain why this doesn't happen? Why doesn't competition between various hospitals and healthcare facilities lead to lower prices, at least for simple procedures like check ups?
NOTE: I'm not asking why these procedures cost so much, I'm asking specifically why they don't seem to have the same forces preventing their costs from growing, the way other industries do. A burger or a phone or a cable service can only cost so much before customers switch to a different company; why don't medical facilities fear the same behavior? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2kjo5e/eli5_why_dont_market_forces_and_competition_drive/ | {
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"The medical field is so highly regulated there is little room for competition. Coupled with massive consumer side subsidising, private and public, causing endless demand. Malpractice insurance us a run away giant in this country as well. Then you have the inability for hospitals to turn away patients which creates debt for health care networks that must be distributed across the masses. It skyrockets our health costs",
"How much did your fiancé shop around to find lower prices?\n\n",
"In the US nobody shops around for medical services. Also medical firms don't advertise their prices. Add to those most insurance companies have contracts with medical firms. The prices are already set by these contracts. The amount of regulation has very little to do with the price setting. Saving $2000 on a 12000 procedure is a big savings but unless you ask and in same cases demand the price prior to compare you will pay whatever the firm is asking. I comes down to being informed and having easy access to the pricing information to make an educated decision."
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71pwj5 | how is anesthesia so simple in animals but complex in humans? | It seems a vet just gives the animal a shot, while on humans they need to be closely monitored- so much so that there's a specific doctor just for it (anesthesiologist.) | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/71pwj5/eli5_how_is_anesthesia_so_simple_in_animals_but/ | {
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"Making someone sleep so deeply that you can hurt them without waking them up, is super difficult without messing the person's brain up. If we accidentally ruined an animals brain, but it seemed to recover and 'be ok' afterwards, we would assume we ruined nothing and that it all went ok. If a person's brain is ruined, we spot it immediately, and don't really know how to fix it. Being a person is complicated, but being a cat is reasonably easy :)",
"It is just as complicated in animals as it is in humans. In fact, in many small animals, the risks of putting an animal under, especially if they are older, much be carefully weighed against the benefits of the surgery. Monitoring is also an important part of putting an animal under. And there are veterinarians specialised in anesthesiology. \n\nThat said though, for most people, the life of a cat or a rabbit is not as important as the life of a human. So they feel it is more of an acceptable risk to put an animal under without a dedicated anesthesiologist (and instead just have a vet tech monitor that, for example) but they don't feel that is acceptable in a human because if it goes wrong, it is worse to lose a human life. ",
"It's not necessarily that simple in animals. Incorrect dosage can lead to a dead animal or a surprise awakening. In fact, adverse reactions to anesthesia are more common in many animals (dogs, cats, and especially horses) than they are in humans. ",
"It's complicated for animals as well. When I had surgery on pet rats, they had to bring in a specialist on anesthesia on small animals. They have small energy reserves and a fast metabolism, so they can quickly run out of energy, and dosage is difficult.",
"Full Anesthesia in animals is just as complicated as in humans. You have to have them monitored for their blood pressure, blood oxygen, heart rate, airway, and so forth. Complex surgeries requiring this level of anesthesia are simply less common on animals. In most cases, a lower level of anesthesia, that does not suppress the nervous system/breathing apparatus is sufficient.\n\nNor are procedures using lower levels of anesthesia, sometimes called conscious sedation, rare in humans. Particularly dental surgeries and many common types of cosmetic surgery are done on humans using conscious sedation. "
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1wvhf2 | why do we experience droughts if the earth has very cyclical patterns? | The patterns should fall within strict parameters, right? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1wvhf2/eli5_why_do_we_experience_droughts_if_the_earth/ | {
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"Well, yes, and those parameters include long periods with no rain. There is a lot of randomness in the weather, layered on top of the various weather cycles, as well. There are many cycles, and those cycles run at different, changing, cycles. So two cycles that make it hotter and dryer can peak at the same time.\n\nTLDR: cyclical weather patterns include drought.",
"It's all about the Sun son"
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acjku3 | when you look above a fire, why is it blurry? | [deleted] | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/acjku3/eli5_when_you_look_above_a_fire_why_is_it_blurry/ | {
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"The air above the fire is hot, and it's mixing with the cold atmospheric air. Since the density of warm air is different from the density of cold air, you get a bunch of different bands of air of different densities above the fire. Light distorts as it travels through these bands of different densities, and that is why it looks blurry.",
"The path of light changes as it passes through different temperatures of air. So as it passes above the fire, its path is changed from 'straight ahead' to some minutely different direction. Since the rising warm air is mixing with cooler air above it, the change in path fluctuates. \n\nAs a result, you don't get a constant flow of light from 'directly ahead.\"\n\nInstead, moment to moment, the path of the light from beyond the fire is minutely shifted, so you are seeing light from changing \"nearby spots\" which is the blurring."
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3qsro7 | why do some museums don't let you take photos of the artwork? | I mean how am I supposed to brag about being there? Is it because someone might duplicate the artwork? I noticed in Museo del Prado in Madrid and the Museu Picasso in Barcelona. And is not only "no flash". | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3qsro7/eli5_why_do_some_museums_dont_let_you_take_photos/ | {
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"The term \"Exit Through the Gift Shop\" explains this as well as anything. They don't want you taking pictures or videos, they want you to buy their picture books and DVDs. I'm looking at you Sistine Chapel!",
"Being constantly exposed to bright light can degrade some artworks, especially those made with delicater materials and particularly with softer pigments.\nFor example, if you leave a color picture in the sunlight for years, it will eventually fade, same principle.\n\nAnd its easier to have no photography than no flash photography because people forget or even lie. \n\nAlso there is the point about buying souvenirs, but it is not about danger of copying. If someone is going to copy a painting, that is not cheap, getting historically matching tools and materials, 10 dollars for a photo of a trip to google images will not stop that.",
"It's hard to enforce the no-flash photography. People forget and leave the flash on anyways, or don't know how to shut off the flash. The repeated exposure to a flash can fade some of the organic pigments used in many old works of art. \n\nEspecially in cameras that don't have a UV filter of the xenon flash bulb. The other issue is repeated flashes disrupts other people from enjoying the art work as they get temporarily blinded by the flash. \n\nAs for duplicating art, that's rarely a concern, sometimes you'll see people siting on benches in art galleries sketching the art they see. Replica paintings of many works of art can be purchased. "
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3i4psf | theoretically, if there would be an elevator that would very slowly reach terminal velocity when descending, would humans be able to travel on it through the descent with ones feet touching the floor for the entire fall? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3i4psf/eli5_theoretically_if_there_would_be_an_elevator/ | {
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"If you hoisted an elevator up in the air and just dropped it and then once it reached terminal velocity you sloooowly slowed it down then everyone inside would be super freaked out but totally fine. Speed doesnt kill you, acceleration does. So in freefall, earths gravity doesnt kill you no matter how fast youre going, until you hit the ground. This is because you experience a tremendous acceleration when the earth applies a force to your face on impact. But we said the elevator slows down somehow so that it doesnt hit the ground over 200mph."
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1zlss1 | why do so many americans self-identify as some nationality different from us american? like "i'm, italian" or "i'm pakistani", when in fact they're both american? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1zlss1/eli5_why_do_so_many_americans_selfidentify_as/ | {
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"First of all they are NOT identifying as a different nationality. \n\nWhen someone uses the hyphenated identifiers such as Italian-American, Irish-American, Pakistani-American they are using ethnic identifiers to tell you their heritage. We are a nation if immigrants and heritage is a very very big deal to us. \n\nIf a person has dual citizenship they will say \"I am dual citizen Canada and America.\" ",
"Nationality has two [meanings](_URL_1_). Nationality can refer to a citzen's relationship to the state, or to a group of people of common heritage. For example the [kurds](_URL_0_) are a nationality without a state. There is no such thing as a pure \"American\" as each is a hybrid, the exception being Native American. So people identity with their ethnic group because their identity is more rooted in a common heritage than in simply their relationship to the state.",
"the number of generations you can go back for anyone who is \"american\" of any flavor is relatively small compared to most other countries, and as a result for many people/groups there are clear cultural and/or genetic aspects of who they are that connect them back to wherever their ancestors came from\n\ntl;dr: we're all different, only native americans are actually long term americans, so there are basically different flavors of 'american'",
"It pisses me off too. I know my grandparents came form Sweden, but I am American. You will not here me trying to impress people by informing them that I am Swedish-American. However, if someone asks directly what my heritage is, I'll tell them my grandparents came from Sweden. But I am an American, through and through.",
"Telling someone your ethnic background is a shortcut to getting to know someone. By saying, \"I'm ___,\" it calls to mind cultural norms associated with that ethnicity. It's different than nationality.",
"You mix up nationality and ethnicity. Yes, they have an Americal citizenship, but they just got different (Italian/Pakistani/etc) blood.\n\nAfter all, the only true Americans are Indians, though a lot of people call themselves Americans.",
"Lots or folks in America like to romanticize the \"Old Country\" even if they've never been there. In a country where everyone is from every where and nowhere all at once, being able to claim a tenuous connection to a group of some sort can be appealing. After all, everyone is Irish on St. Patty's Day. We do it down here in the South where we are ethnically separate (and obviously superior) the Yankee race et. al. jk.",
"I feel like people understand the question, but are splitting hairs, so I'll try my best to answer your question.\n\nFor me at least, I do identify as American, but I also identify as Israeli because, even though I have grown up in America my whole life, I speak Hebrew fluently and grew up with Israeli foods, music, bedtime stories, etc. \n\nThere will be times where my friends will reference a dish or song or nursery rhyme that their parents told them when they were younger, and I won't be able to relate because I grew up in different circumstances. \n\nIn this case, I don't think calling myself only American would completely encompass what it means to be me. \n\nThere's also a pride and solidarity factor, but that's mostly self explanatory.\n\nI feel like this is how it is for most people, though perhaps not to such a degree. ",
"This question comes up again and again. We need to clearly establish what an \"ethnicity\" is. It isn't easy, but wikipedia provides a pretty succinct answer: is a social group of people who identify with each other based on common ancestral, social, cultural, or national experience. Membership of an ethnic group tends to be associated with shared cultural heritage, ancestry, history, homeland, language (dialect), or ideology, and with symbolic systems such as religion, mythology and ritual, cuisine, dressing style, physical appearance, etc.\n\n**Ethnicity is more than genes, more than heritage**\n\nThus, someone who says I am \"Pakistani-American\" but knows nothing of Pakistan, its culture, history, rituals, religion, language, style, cuisine, traditions, customs...is not a \"Pakistani-American\". They are simply \"American\" who looks like they might come from Pakistan. Their heritage may be Pakistani, their parents may come from there...but in terms of the ethnic group that they identify with, it's not the people of Pakistan, it's Americans. \n\nNow, if you grew up in America following Pakistan's traditions, rituals, immersed in the culture and language. Knowing the idioms and dress, the customs, history, and ideology. Then you are truly able to self-identify with the Pakistani culture. You can (IMO) call yourself a Pakistani-American. \n\nFor example, my heritage is French, my family emigrated from France several generations ago. While I speak the language (Canadian-French) I know nothing of French (France) culture, their customs, idioms, their particular traditions, rituals, religion or history beyond what I learned in class. It would be wrong for me to say my ethnicity is French, when really it is Canadian...and if I want to stretch it French-Canadien (not France-French, Canadian-French - there is a difference).\n\nOf course, it seems to me that for so many Americans their identity is tied to some (often) distant \"homeland\". I know there are many immigrant Americans who are truly immersed in their ethnicities and that is not what I am trying to get at here. I am talking about those cases that know nothing about the country or culture of where their ancestors came from. \n\nIt may also interest you to know that in Canada these terms aren't as widely used. Although I have noticed some terms growing popularity, owing I think to a spill over of American culture. In general I just view everyone as Canadian because I have many friends who do, and don't identify with their heritages. First and foremost we are Canadian. I never really view people as \"African-Canadian\" because I think it is kind of rude to assume someone associates themselves with a particular ethnicity based on the way they look (e.g. superficial traits determining who someone is). To put it another way, when I or Canadians ask \"where are you from?\" I (we) don't mean \"what's your ethnicity?\" I (we) mean \"what [Canadian] city where you born in?\" ",
"I always do say \"American.\" It's always a white person that forces the hyphenation, ie \n\nStranger: \"What are you?\"\nMe: \"American.\"\nStranger: \"No, I mean, Where were you born - what nationality are you?\"\nMe: \"I was born in California, but I'm half Japanese, half Irish.\"\nStranger: \"Oh, so you're a nip.\"\n"
]
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"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurdish_people",
"http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/nationality"
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5syfay | why do phones need to be charged more frequent over time? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5syfay/eli5_why_do_phones_need_to_be_charged_more/ | {
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"Batteries wear out after being charged again and again and again over years. If you noticed that devices using disposable batteries don't have this problem it's because it's getting a fresh battery with all its charge each time. \n\nAll rechargeable devices, including laptops and handheld gaming devices, will have their batteries wear out, but the former has a very large battery and the latter isn't used with the same frequency as a smartphone so users don't notice it to the same extent. \n\nReplacing your device's battery, if you can replace it, should see a sharp increase in battery life. ",
"On one end of the battery you have an anode (positive current flows into) and on the other a cathode (positive current flows out of). In a healthy battery ions (charged particles) flow freely between the cathode and the anode. The process of charging a battery forces ions out of the cathode and back into the anode. This process wears out the cathode resulting in a decreased capacity. "
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8izgor | what is physically taking place inside the ear during an ear infection? | I was unfortunate enough to have an ear infection recently. It began with the sensation of pressure that gradually became painful and then grew into sharp pains.
I could obviously hear in great detail the attack within my ear. It felt and sounded like bubbling or fizzing. These "bubbles" would crackle and pop, increasing my pain.
I'm just curious what that actually was. Did my infection actually bubble up? What was it attacking? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8izgor/eli5what_is_physically_taking_place_inside_the/ | {
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"There is a little space behind your eardrum. This area is called the \"middle ear\". It has a drainage tube called the Eustachian tube. You can feel changes in pressure here, like when you fly in a plane or dive deep in water. By swallowing or trying to blow through your nose, you can either release or increase the pressure in your middle ear to make it equal with the outside world, and feel more comfortable.\n\nSometimes, your Eustachian tube doesn't drain very well, and fluid builds up here. This is often after having a cold, and there is some inflammation. Younger kids don't drain as well also, because their tubes are more horizontal. In the human body, anytime there is a collection of fluid that remains stagnant, it is prone to becoming infected. Bacteria love stagnant fluids pockets. Once they start growing, your body reacts by initiating an immune response. The area becomes inflamed with more fluid and lots of white blood cells enter the arena. This causes increased pressure, and it hurts. Sometimes the fluid is under enough pressure to squeeze through the Eustachian tube and you can hear these noises.\n\nThe bugs that cause most ear infections are Strep pnuemo, Moraxella catarrhalis, Haemophilus influenzae. I'm not sure if any of these produce significant amounts of gas in the middle ear."
]
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|
6u9h1b | why do you get cellular coverage over a much larger area than 3g or 4g coverage? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6u9h1b/eli5why_do_you_get_cellular_coverage_over_a_much/ | {
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"All modern cell service is digital. \n\nA normal voice call uses a relatively low data rate (it's variable, but it's something like 10-20 kbps).\n\nA good LTE connection can be more than 1,000 times that data rate.\n\nFor a given carrier frequency, using a higher data rate means you need a higher signal to noise ratio. Think about being in a loud restaurant - is it easier to hear someone who is speaking slowly and clearly, or someone who is speaking very quickly? It's a lot easier for noise to garble what you're hearing from the person speaking very quickly.\n\nAs you get further from the cell tower, the signal gets weaker (both because of the simple fact that it is getting spread out over a larger area, and because more things may get in the way and block some of it), so it gets harder to \"hear\" over the noise. \n\nPast a certain distance, the signal is weak enough that a high data rate LTE signal can't be accurately and reliably received, but a low data rate voice signal can be.\n\nThis is also why, as you get farther away from your WiFi router, the connection speed drops - the router and your computer continuously measure the signal to noise ratio and change the connection speed to insure reliable communication, reducing the connection speed as the signal to noise ratio drops."
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469ll4 | how can reducing taxes help an economic recovery if that means the government won't have as much money? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/469ll4/eli5_how_can_reducing_taxes_help_an_economic/ | {
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"But remember that just because the government has less money to spend then the individuals and businesses have MORE money to spend. \n\nWhat has to be remembered the ONLY way government can spend money is by forcibly taking it from someone else. So if the government takes $1 trillion away from the businesses and consumers that is $1 trillion less THEY can spend. That government spends it is irrelevant.\n\nAnd the individual and businesses spend their money more efficiently because they are maximizing utility and productivity. When government spends money they spend it inefficiently and not for what is best for society.\n\nSo massive tax reductions reduces the amount of money that is taken from the private sector thus there is more money left in the private sector to create jobs and economic growth.",
"The economy is mostly supported by the mass consumption of your average Joe and Jane. If there are less taxes, people have a higher disposable income. That means people have more money to consume, which leads to companies having higher profits. This allows them to hire more people, which means even more money goes to people to consume. \n\nThis could lead to the government getting less taxes from individual transfers of money, but having many more transfers to draw taxes from.",
"This is a very long explanation because there is a lot of misunderstanding about economics.\n\nEconomy comes from trade and production. I will simplify this down: A fisherman concentrates on catching as much fish as possible while a farmer concentrates on growing as much wheat as possible. By focusing on one task each, they are able to produce more and better than 2 people who spends 50% of their time on each. Then, they trade resources at their agreed rate. When you have a lot of these trades happening in a community, that becomes an economy.\n\nOf course, the farmer might not want fish, or the fisherman might not want wheat, so you can see how there is a problem. One side produces something that the other doesn't want, so the community agrees on an item that has value and that people will generally want to accept. That item is what we call money. In a perfect world, this would mean that money is a way to keep track of what society owes you for the services you have performed.\n\nNow to answer your question on why reducing taxes help an economic recovery: By not taking away the people's rewards, the people have more to gain from producing products and services. The rational person then sees this as an opportunity to make their lives better and then applies himself to producing for society, either as an employee or as a business owner. Incidentally, this makes things cheaper due to the scarcity principle. The scarcity principle dictates that the less of a demanded product there is, the more valuable it becomes. Inversely, the more of a demanded product there is, the less valuable it becomes. As a result, by increasing production in society, things become more affordable.\n\nFinally, you will see the symptoms of an economic recovery: People keep more of their income while products become more affordable, so they start spending more. Entrepreneurs and investors see that they can keep more of what they earn so they flood the country to open their business, driving production up and lowering costs even more."
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a44yxg | why is law and justice often connected to the word 'right'? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/a44yxg/eli5_why_is_law_and_justice_often_connected_to/ | {
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"Centuries ago it was believed that a person's right hand represents good, while the left hand represents evil. This is where the combined meaning came from.\n\nWhere did this belief originate? (1) most people are right-handed, so being left handed was weird, and (2) in some cultures people reserved their non-dominant hand for ass-wiping, so it was considered filthy and gross.",
"I believe its because people who are just, and kind and other ‘good’ things, were considered to sit on the right hand side of god. Which is a position of honour.",
"People used to believe left-handed people were afflicted by the devil, which is why the Latin word for \"left\" (sinister) is an English word meaning malicious or untrustworthy.\n\nI'm only guessing here, but I'd wager that there is a connection between this and your query."
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asj8sb | does your brain create the electricity that moves your muscles? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/asj8sb/eli5_does_your_brain_create_the_electricity_that/ | {
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"Your brain might send the signal, but it does not provide the energy to contract the muscles.\n\nYou can compare it with the sensor above the door: It detects that there is somebody, it sends the signal to the motor which opens the door.",
"You brain does NOT move your toe. It merely send a signal to your toe ordering it to move and the muscles on the toe use energry from your food to do the rest. It's like when you use your remote control to turn the TV on. The Remote control does not power the TV. It tells the TV what to do, and the TV uses power it gets from the wall to do it itself."
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4zwuyi | why do people stick their tongues out and bite them when they are concentrating on something minor like tying shoes or itching their back? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4zwuyi/eli5_why_do_people_stick_their_tongues_out_and/ | {
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"\"Tongue protrusion\" is caused by interference from the two activities fighting for the same bit of brain to process them. The tongue is a big muscle, densely packed with touch receptors which relay a mental map of the inside of the mouth to the brain. If you ever saw a picture of the homunculus, the mouth (tongue and lips) takes up a large proportion of kinesthetic proprioception (how the body feels in motion). The tongue is connected to the language center as well as the motor. We think in words and our tongues move in tandem forming words enunciation. When a person sticks out their tongue or bites it, this stream of information is diminished and so more brain power is freed up to concentrate on task. \nBy sticking your tongue out, you are suspending motor activity and keeping your head rigid, to minimize movement and hence interference. "
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fkgxnu | why was the plant used to brew beer switched from blue lotus to hops? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/fkgxnu/eli5_why_was_the_plant_used_to_brew_beer_switched/ | {
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"Beer made with only fermented cereal grain ends up tasting very sweet and people found it unpalatable.\n\nThroughout history, many things were used to flavor beer to try to balance this sweetness. Before hops it was common to add a combination of herbs and roots called gruit.\n\nKings and goverments also found taxing beer, specifically taxing the gruit flavorings, a reliable income source.\n\nEventually it was discovered that the oils in the Hops plants would turn bitter with heat, and not long after that it was noticed that beer flavored with hops lasted longer. This is because the acids in hops have some anitmicrobial effects and therefore delayed the beer spoiling in the times before refrigeration.\n\nThe bitter taste, preservative effects, and cheaper taxes eventually made flavoring beer with hops a favorite choice. The practice started in what's now Germany and over time spread to the rest of the world, ultimately becoming the only beer flavoring still in common use."
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dlgr0j | how does telecommunications work (voip) on a large scale? | Having trouble solidifying in my head how does Telecommunications work, especially VoIP. I get that cable is a twisted pair of copper or fiber wires from a telephone pole outside connect to a point of entry to a building then runs to computers and phones that both run off the internet. But how does it work on a larger scale?
- For example I just started work at Granite Telecommunications. Where we also offer customers the ability to connect to our network. But how does someone in one side of the country connect to our "cloud" network. Does it literally mean a company in Seattle has wires that connect from their site and eventually connects to our site in Boston? Furthermore what is a "cloud"? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/dlgr0j/eli5_how_does_telecommunications_work_voip_on_a/ | {
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"A cloud is just someone else's computer that is on the Internet that you can access over the web.\n\nAccessing the cloud over the Internet is done through a network of undersea cables and data centers all over the world. If a company has one server, then the data would need to travel through cables to the system requesting it. If a company has multiple data centers, then the data may travel quicker to the system requesting it.",
"Hoo boy, this is a *very* broad subject, but I'll try my best. \n\nTo look at VoIP, it may be easier to look at IP (Internet protocol) in general. Basically, it's a system of routers and switches responsible for determining where the traffic goes. VoIP works more or less the same, but using voice traffic instead of data. \n\nVoice traffic is much more time sensitive, so it's usually tagged in a voice virtual LAN (VLAN) so it has a higher priority over data traffic. So, your routers and switches process voice traffic first, otherwise you would get much poorer call quality. \n\nData traffic has always went over phone lines in DSL connections, so it wasn't much of a stretch to make the necessary adaptations. \n\nThe biggest cloud we know, The Internet, is essentially billions of routers (inter-network), switches (intra-network servers (anything that holds information needing to be sent). The Internet is a cloud that virtually all other networks connect to. \n\nThis one is tough to simplify. Well, it was for me anyway.",
"First, I think you imagine an \"old time\" circuit switched phone system. Where the call is connected through a dedicated single wire. All modern telecommunications is digital. Meaning the \"voice\" signal is deconstructed into binary digits, combined into packets, sent to the other party, reconstructed into a \"voice\" and delivered. The benefit of this is many (many) conversations can simultaneously be transmitted using just one wire. (the discussion is beyond ELI5) A single \"voice\" conversation is actually a fairly low data rate signal (\\~100s kbps) to a modern network connections (\\~100 Gbps) so a single line can carry enough digital information to handle thousands of calls at the same time."
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1u2nr0 | how does memory work for sociopaths who "don't feel emotions"? | I could be way off but: In college we had a short unit on how people's memory works and there was something about "emotion tags" that we use to recall stuff. Everything from complex formulas to world history to words and scents supposedly has some particular mixture of emotions we associate with it and when we want to remember something we "feel" the right feeling until the memory pops into our minds. I'm sure that's way oversimplified, but if that's sort of how memory works, then how does memory work for people with the type of sociopathy that causes them not to feel feelings the way the rest of us do? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1u2nr0/eli5_how_does_memory_work_for_sociopaths_who_dont/ | {
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"text": [
"I imagine they remember things with no emotional bias at all"
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3pbf3q | how are companies like google and yahoo able to change branding and logos on such a consistent basis without the public hardly noticing? why do they do this? | ELI5: How are companies like Google and Yahoo able to change branding and logos on such a consistent basis without the public hardly noticing? Why do they do this? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3pbf3q/eli5_how_are_companies_like_google_and_yahoo_able/ | {
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"I think you're overestimating how large the changes have been with Google and Yahoo - there are certain distinctive features that have carried on for the past 15-20 years (Google's color scheme, Yahoo's exclamation point). Most major companies go through subtle changes in their branding like they have, they keep the core elements constant, but update the rest with the times.",
"I would not say the public hardly noticed. An hour after Google changed their logo my facebook was filled with articles and statuses about it. On the other hand, Google provides a service where the end result is practically the only thing the user cares about. You go to Google to find something and immediately after you start typing, the screen changes to the results page, so you hardly have time to even notice the logo is slightly different, not that you care, because there is not much to look at on Google's homepage. It's a blank space with a logo and a form. People have learned not to check it out too much unless there's one of those special animated logos that mark a certain occasion."
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5jzoqn | how will mars colonists deal with radiation and deadly sun rays? | I've read online that Mars has no magnetic field, so how will that affect life? How will that affect terraformation?
Can we somehow make an artificial magnetic field or something? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5jzoqn/eli5_how_will_mars_colonists_deal_with_radiation/ | {
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"We're nowhere near the level of Technology needed to combat solar radiation on Mars. The best we can do so far is to put a lot of mass in between our body and the Sun. This just means pulling a big pile of dirt or water on top of our shelters AKA living underground or underwater"
]
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cspu6j | why is it generally frowned upon to have song writers if you’re a rapper but not frowned upon if you’re a singer? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/cspu6j/eli5_why_is_it_generally_frowned_upon_to_have/ | {
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"text": [
"In rap people look for well written lyrics instead of a melodic voice. While being a singer people care much more about their voice than the lyrics."
]
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||
fammni | how are infectious disease diagnostic test kits made/developed? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/fammni/eli5_how_are_infectious_disease_diagnostic_test/ | {
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"Oof, this is a tough one because there are a lot of different types, and they work in radically different ways. Broadly, you can group them into a few different groups: testing for the components of a microbe, figuring out their DNA sequence, or growing them under conditions specific to that microbe. The first is the most common for field tests. The last is the most common in hospitals, but is also the slowest.\n\nAn example of one that is just as useful in a rural area as in a lab is called ELISA, which is an Enzyme-Linked ImmunoSorbent Assay. A type of protein called an antibody is bound to the surface of a material. Antibodies are extremely specific in what they bind to and bind very strongly to their target. So when you add a sample, give it a little time to bind, then very thoroughly wash, the only thing left bound is the antibody and the molecule it specifically binds to. Then you go though some other shenanigans to see how much antibody is bound. By tailoring what antibody you use, you can determine exactly what type of bacteria/virus/fungus is present in a blood or whatever sample."
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65kgsz | why intel (and amd) puts integrated gpus on highend cpus? if you need an i7 why wouldn't you buy a gpu? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/65kgsz/eli5_why_intel_and_amd_puts_integrated_gpus_on/ | {
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"There are plenty of things that you'd use an i7 for that would not in any way need significant graphics processing power that would require a separate GPU.\n\nAlso, the GPUs are built into the CPUs for ease of use as well, that you don't *need* to buy a separate (often expensive) GPU to use the system.\n\nGPUs have very specialized and limited uses. Primarily gaming, and some complex math operations that work better on a dedicated GPU, outside of that, the need for a separate GPU is almost nil",
"Lots of people need a high-powered CPU but are not doing very interesting graphics (gaming etc.) -- they just need a basic GPU to run ordinary productivity software and websites and the like.",
"Say your gpu breaks and you have no money or no time to get a new one. but you need your pc for work. Boom integrated gpu saves your life. Or say your pc is acting up and your testing each and every part, it would be way easier to be able to test your gpu for fault if you had a integrated gpu "
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e5vbpv | why do you get "cotton mouth" when you drink a lot of water? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/e5vbpv/eli5_why_do_you_get_cotton_mouth_when_you_drink_a/ | {
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"text": [
"2 gallons of water a day is a _lot_. Perhaps you’re diluting the electrolyte balance in your body?\n\nI mean, it’s possible that you’re nine feet tall, or that you have an extraordinarily physical job, but otherwise my bet is on electrolyte balance.\n\nMight also be the particular water you’re drinking and the minerals in it — most drinking water had minerals added to it, and a lot of city water supplies have a non-trivial mineral content.",
"To be clear, you drink 32 cups of water a day, 256oz?",
"Do you drink that amount out of thirst or out of \"hydration is always good\"? Because if it's thirst, and you're not exercising incredibly hard, then you should see a doctor... Because that's not normal. You're practically drinking more than your total blood volume everyday. And if you're drinking for hydration because of the \"dehydration is the root of all problems craze\" then you need to understand that too much water can also be bad. I think you even qualify for having polydipsia (I'm not a physician though).\n\nThe cotton mouth could be a symptom of the same underlying condition making you drink this much. But if you have no condition, I am not sure what could be the reason by it potentially includes electrolyte imbalance or a salivary secretion issue (it may be that you have dry mouth due to not secreting sufficient saliva and you drink water to wet your mouth which washes off whatever you do secrete making it even drier). There are many possibilities, but I cannot stress this enough.. Go see a doctor (and if you're drinking just for hydration, tone it down like 5 notches)."
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8a5d58 | do you get electrocuted if you touch overhead electrical wires? why? | Is this a myth or is it true? Wouldn't the wires be coated in rubber or something similar? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8a5d58/eli5_do_you_get_electrocuted_if_you_touch/ | {
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" > Wouldn't the wires be coated in rubber or something similar?\n\nThey are not coated. To do so would be prohibitively expensive and would make them much heavier, requiring more structure to support them. Touching power lines absolutely can electrocute you, which I was under the impression was ubiquitously known.",
"It depends on what else you're touching. Under controlled circumstances, there are people who can sit/hang from those wires to do maintenance on them, but it's really all about how the electricity is flowing and how you fit into its path. ",
"You can touch them as long as your not also touching the ground in any manner. Which is why birds can stand on them and not get electrocuted. ",
"You can get electrocuted if you are touching something else at the same time, which allows the current to flow through you or if the voltage is high enough to arc from you to somewhere else allowing the current to flow. \n\nBirds can sit on a wire, because they aren't touching anything else at the same time and don't form an electical circuit.(current doesn't flow) ",
"No. They are not coated. Have you ever seen a tree branch touch a power line? They spark and hiss because the current is diverting through them and to the ground. Birds and squirrels that sit on lines, do not ground the current and because of this they do not get electrocuted. If you touch a line and are touching something that is grounded or are on the ground, you will most likely die so don’t do that.",
"Some power lines are insulated, some are not.\n\nIf it's mutiple wires hanging from insulators, touching the wire will kill you, a lot.\n\nIf it's a single wire, usually hanging from poles about the same height as a street light, with not insulator between it and the pole, it's insulated. Still, don't touch it, as the insulation can be damaged, but at least nominally safe."
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28pdus | ; how do television channels work in the uk? how does everyone with a tv paying a fee work? | How do they monitor who all has a TV? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/28pdus/eli5_how_do_television_channels_work_in_the_uk/ | {
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"They can't, obviously. Some decades ago, they claimed to have \"TV detector vans\" which would patrol the streets and could detect if a TV was switched on in any home, but that was just a ruse to scare people into paying up.\n\nHowever, they do know which properties have valid TV licences and which don't. If you suddenly stop buying a TV licence, they'll likely send somebody round to ask. If you deny you have a TV and they think you're lying, and if they think it's even worth bothering with, they can get a search warrant.",
"A TV license is required to watch TV as it's being broadcast. Either on a TV set or over the internet via things like iPlayer. It is not required that you buy one if you watch things like Netflix, YouTube or even the iPlayer. You also can own a TV set and not pay, but it would then be illegal to watch TV on it. I have a TV with Xbox connected, I watch DVDs and play games on it. But it's not connected to the ariel. I therefore do not have to pay for a TV license.\n\nAs for where the money goes, it goes to the BBC to pay for their excellent services. The relatively balanced news output is renowned around the world and some of the drama they produce is excellent. It's a shame that the government doesn't just collect the license fee from everyone by general income tax like everything else. The BBC (like the NHS) is something Brits should be proud of, sadly most are not.",
"In finland we had tv-lisence, you pay a fee if you had tv and then there were door-to-door inspectors.\r\rToday we have this media\\tv-tax which everyone pays, tv or not. No inspectors needed.",
"Wow they need permission and a permit to everything there.",
"It's just a tax that you have to pay. \n\nWhen you buy a TV the store has to inform the TV licensing authority who then checks on a database to see if you have a licence to watch it. If not, they send a guy to your house to talk to you (various footage of such an attempt available here: _URL_0_)\n\nThe TV licence is technically only needed for BBC broadcasts, (as other channels are commercially funded). You also need one if you listen to the radio. However you will be liable for a penalty if you watch a non BBC station without a licence, as they assume you de-tuned your BBC stations (essentially you're guilty until proven innocent).\n\nSome European countries are trying to change the legislation so you need a TV licence for digital broadcasts, which includes YouTube tv shows, Netflix / HBO go and purchase for iTunes. IIRC only Sweden has actually implemented this though.\n\nThe TV detector vans are utter BS and were just a scare tactic."
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e1ndyj | what happens, especially hormonally, during menstruation. | I’m especially interested in the effects of each hormone throughout the cycle. I know progesterone drops and the uterus begins shedding its lining. I think estrogen rises at this time, too. I don’t know what role androgens play. I have endometriosis and fibroids and I’d like to have a better understanding of what’s happening (or what should be happening) in my body. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/e1ndyj/eli5_what_happens_especially_hormonally_during/ | {
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"[This](_URL_0_) picture is a great summary of the different things going on during the menstrual cycle. Interestingly, all four of the relevant hormones are at their lowest levels during menstruation! I believe- this is where my memory gets hazy- that FSH (Follicle-stimulating hormone) tells the follicles when to develop into eggs, LH (Luteinizing hormone) tells the eggs when to release, progesterone tells the uterine lining when to build up and when to shed, end estrogen has a role in a lot of different things. A quick google search suggests that the causes of endometriosis and fibroids are unclear, but fibroids is more likely to include hormonal causes, and that androgens in women mostly get turned into estrogen."
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rk2s1 | supercooling | I saw a video of a beer instantly freezing when being tapped after being in the freezer for a while, can someone explain supercooling like im five?. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/rk2s1/eli5_supercooling/ | {
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"There are methods to cool a substance below its freezing point without it turning into a solid. You basically control the conditions of the cooling (it varies from one substance to another).\n\nOnce the entire substance is below its freezing point, you can somehow \"cause\" the first solid crystal to form, setting off a chain reaction, which then freezes the entire substance.\n\nBonus info:\n\n- Of course, on the other end of things, you can also \"superheat\" a liquid. A good, and recent example, is the theory behind the explosions at the Fukushima nuclear power plant. Basically, there was pressurized water that was at temperatures above boiling, and once enough of it escaped to the atmosphere because of leaks - it immediately changed phase to steam. Steam takes up about 1000x the volume of water, and the explosion of steam followed."
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156hxd | why are contests in canada always open to "legal residents of canada (excluding quebec)"? | Something that I have always wondered is why Quebec is never included in contests in Canada. For instance, TSN's new Junior Hockey Championship contest excludes Quebec. Is it because of language laws or perhaps differences between common/civil law? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/156hxd/eli5_why_are_contests_in_canada_always_open_to/ | {
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"Quebec has a bunch of policies about sweepstakes that the rest of Canada does not. Rather than spending a bunch of money to make sure all the rules are followed, companies prefer to just not run the contest in Quebec.",
"No research. Might be wrong. Contests are heavily regulated in Québec. All information must be avalaible(prize, odds, date and time of draw etc) No purchase must be necessary. We also have to answer a mathematical answer in a lot of cases. So yeah I am all over the place with this answer but it boils down to laws. It's just easier to exclude Québec. Ha ha. Separation joke.",
"They are a rogue state. \n\nSource: I am from Vancouver.",
"Because according to provincial law, anything pertaining to the contest must be available in French. Most companies (especially foreign ones) cannot be bothered with translating everything, so they'll just explicitly exclude Quebec from their contest.",
"In Québec, as others said, contests are heavily regulated. Everything must be verified by certified people to protect contestants from fraud.\n\nAlso, the prizes are tax exempt. If the prize is $100,000 the winner gets all of it. This means that the organization must pay the taxes themselves to the Government.\n\nSo this may very well having a contest available to Quebec residents be cost prohibitive to the company that essentially uses the contest as a form of advertising."
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672ur6 | why is it that after undergoing anesthesia we have no control over or recollection of what happens until we "come to?" | I am having surgery tomorrow and so naturally, have been watching videos of said surgery and people waking up from anesthesia. I remember a few years ago I had wisdom teeth surgery and when I woke up from surgery I was leaned over talking to this other kid who had his taken out and was probably mid-sentence and just stopped and sat back. The nurses told me that we had been conversing for awhile and I have no idea what about, and can't remember talking to him at all. Thankfully they let me stay in the office until I got past that, I've seen some hilarious videos.
Why is it that we react that way instead of just staying asleep until we fully wake up? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/672ur6/eli5_why_is_it_that_after_undergoing_anesthesia/ | {
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"While I am no doctor this is what I would assume:\n\n-You are still partially under the effects of the anesthesia, similarly to how you don't instantly become sober after being drunk.\n\n-Your body is still under quite a lot of stress and pain\n\nI think these things in combination with other factors would cause you to not have much of a recollection about what happened.",
"They usually are using a combination of drugs, with different effects.\n\n Some are anesthetic gases, which make you go unconscious and people generally recover from quickly once they are stopped.\n\nOthers, such as Benzodiazepines, decrease anxiety / agitation and keep you form making memories. These take your body a little longer to metabolize, so you're awake before you can make new memories.\n\nThat use them together so that you are calm, of under, and can be awakened without remembering the disturbing parts you really don't want to anyway."
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5r91wz | why were many of the ancient greeks so "clever" compared to the rest of the world st the time and indeed compared to people now. | [deleted] | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5r91wz/eli5_why_were_many_of_the_ancient_greeks_so/ | {
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"They weren't necessarily \"clever.\" But they did introduce philosophy and critical thinking skills, democracy and some other cool stuff. As for why it arose in Greece and not elsewhere... That's a bit harder.\n\nGreece itself was a chaotic place. It was divided into many independent cities and villages. There was never a point at which a single ruler controlled all of Greece (until Philip of Macedon). The Greek way of life placed great importance on the independent farmer. This made them a bunch of free thinkers who rejected authority and liked to argue. \n\nCompare this to a place like Egypt, where a single ruler was considered a living God and had absolute power. The Egyptians accomplished many wonderful things, but their culture changed only very slowly over the course of many thousands of years because they had no reason to debate or question how they did things.\n\nThat's just a thought, though. It doesn't completely answer the question. Whenever you ask why something \"didn't\" happen, sometimes there is no good answer except to say it just didn't.",
"Greek history is considerably more ancient than other European civilizations like the Romans or the largely over-looked Etruscans.\n\nThey also interacted with a lot of comparatively less-well-known cultures, for example the Babylonian and Sumerian scripts were lost by the middle ages. The Arabs attempted to decipher them but were largely unsuccessful. They were deciphered in modern times so their influence hasn't spread as quickly.\n\nThe Greek (and Latin) language remained accessible, unlike so many others which were forgotten, because of Christianity. The earliest texts were written in Greek, so European monasteries kept Greek writing alive, allowing a greater spread of Greek philosophy into Western Europe (where the Greeks had never spread).\n\nRoman writings also repeatedly mentioned the Greeks increasing European interest in them. Similarly we know so much about Ancient Israel because of Judaism whereas the other Levant cultures are less well preserved.\n\nHow much of Greek philosophy was really Greek in origin? We'll never fully know but they are the sources for which that philosophy was preserved.",
"I believe the answer to this is that their culture simply allowed for the position of \"philosopher\". Almost all other settlements or civilizations at the time would have laughed at the idea of paying someone (money was also a huge advancement) in coins or food in order to wonder about the universe and life. The Greeks large civilization and surplus of food allowed for finer jobs like philosopher. When you're worried about putting food on the table for your spouse and offspring its hardly easy to worry about what is real.\n\nSince people in the Greek city-states were willing to pay for tutoring in the art of critical thinking, philosophers were able to continue living and thinking. It's just like how Italy thrived in art production during the renaissance. People had a surplus of money and valued art, so the demand for artists skyrocketed and some of the best art on the planet was made during this period.",
"They aren't necessarily more clever than people now but they get a lot of credit because they laid foundational work in philosophy and mathematics. Today we have functions of math and philosophy that go way beyond what the Greeks could ever come up with BUT they almost all rely on what the Greeks did as a starting point for their work. There are smart people and dumb people in every age, but the smart people make life easier and better for those that come after them and so we generally remember them."
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dfbk1k | why do smartphones take so long to boot up after they “die”? | Other household electronics power up as soon as they are plugged into an outlet (Pc/laptop, gaming console, camera, microwave etc...) | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/dfbk1k/eli5_why_do_smartphones_take_so_long_to_boot_up/ | {
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"Unlike those devices, a smartphone has to load an extensive operating system consisting of perhaps 50 different programs all of which need to be running before it can be used.",
"\"take so long\", lol! \n \nMy 2nd computer took 5 minutes to load a 40Kb program. That's about a third the size of a picture message!"
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2kkanm | why my dog hates having his leash and harness put on him, even though it doesn't bother him once it's on and he knows it means he's going on a walk? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2kkanm/eli5_why_my_dog_hates_having_his_leash_and/ | {
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"I noticed that my dog doesn't like having the leash put on because you're going for the throat. As for the harness, no clue.",
"Dogs don't like wearing a leash or harness, and some dogs are more prone to mixed emotional response than others. Once the dogs leash is on, you'll find that the thought of going for a walk is distracting him from his dislike for the leash.\n\nI think calling it a trauma based response is a bit premature to be honest. It's a dog, dogs don't like many things, one of which is being under strict physical control particularly when they're excited.",
"It might just be that he pain old doesn't like it, but lives walks, like somebody else said. \n\nIt also might be a dominance issue. Leaving over a dog can be scary for them. If you lean over him when you put stuff on, that also might be alarming to him. Try kneeling so that you don't lean at all and avoid working over his head as much as possible and see if there's a significant difference. ",
"My dog is honestly stupid, and that is ok, it is literally too much for her brain to handle that she is going for a walk. She spazzes out and flops about in excitement. She isn't purposely NOT trying to get the harness on its just so exciting that we are going. \n\n\n\n\nI am the only one who can put a harness on her. She knows that if I cannot get it on within 45 seconds or so I will leave without her (fake out, of course) so she will flop about, I take that moment to straighten the harness. I tell her Boo its time and she will stick her butt up in the air still wiggling and her face on the couch. I grab her face slip the collar over and quickly pick her up, turn her around and she is harnessed. Husband hasn't mastered the harness trick "
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3cbelv | can anyone explain google's deep dream process to me? | It's one of the trippiest thing I've ever seen and I'm interested to find out how it works. For those of you who don't know what I'm talking about, hop over to /r/deepdream or just check out [this] (_URL_0_) psychedelically terrifying video.
EDIT: Thank you all for your excellent responses. I now understand the basic concept, but it has only opened up more questions. There are some very interesting discussions going on here. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3cbelv/eli5_can_anyone_explain_googles_deep_dream/ | {
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"Does this have anything to do with dreaming?",
"Basically the idea is to build a system that looks at a lot of photos while telling it what the photo contains, and from that data builds a model of what an object looks like. Then you can use the system to find out what objects are present in new unknown pictures\n\nThe dream images you have seen is obtained by feeding the system an unknown picture asking it \"What is present in this picture?\" and \"If an object is recognised, then enhance the characteristics of said object.\" Then the picture is fed though the system again with the same prompts. As anything that was vaguely observable before now will be more obvious to the system, the same objects get further enhanced. After a number of these iterations, the pictures get really funky.\n\n[The google research blog](_URL_0_) has a fantastic article about this with some nice picture examples.",
"It uses artificial neural networks, which are a (very simplified) software representation of biological neural networks (like in your brain).\n\nUsually the way artificial neural networks work is completely opaque. You set them up, give them training data, and let them do their thing. It's hard to tell how the various weighted connections produce the right answers, but they do anyway.\n\nTo better understand what's going on inside the neural network, they're essentially looking at its output at various stages before it's finished.",
"Here's how I understand it, but I'm not an expert: Google has the ability to compare and recognize things in photos. So, in theory it could look at a crowd and recognize individual people's faces, or look at a car and tell you what kind of car it is.\n\nThis is revolutionary in itself, because it emulates *understanding*. But, were just humans looking at bits and bytes: how do we *know* what it sees? Well, we tell the computer to output an image, with the comparison image overlapped. So, maybe it recognizes you in a crowd, so it's output is the crowd photo, with your high school graduation photo overlaid on top of your face in the crowd -- but just the face, because the background of the school photo doesn't match.\n\nIf you were to send *that* picture back through the process, it would recognize you again, of course, and overlay the same image.\n\nIn that example, say there's a guy who looks kind of like you, but different color eyes -- the process may overlap your graduation photo, except for the eyes because they don't match.\n\nFeed that through again, and maybe the process replaces the whole face this time, because with your school photo overlaid it's practically a definite match, so it overlays your whole photo. Now the crowd scene had replaced your face over a strangers face. \n\n Next, let's take a photo of a car, taken from the side. Google tries to recognize it and thinks that the wheels are eyes. It isn't, but when you overlay what the software *thinks* is there, now you have a car with wheels for eyes. Its not too uncommon, I'm sure you've had weird things like this happens, you see faces or eyes in places they don't exist.\n\nSo we send the eyes for wheels picture back through the process -- now the software *definitely* sees eyes so it tries to detect a face in there. It finds a close face, overlays it, now the car looks face like.\n\nRepeat that process a while, and now everything that looks remotely like eyes are turned into eyes,anything remotely like a face becomes a face -- this is called feedback, like a microphone picking up a quiet noise, sending it through the amp which filters the noise and makes it louder, which is picked up by the Mic and sent to the amplifier again, to be filtered and amplified, over and over, until it is an anormouslu loud whine. In the Google dream case, the 'noise' is visual noise, and the filter is designed to amplify faces.",
"Ok, so google has image recognition software that is used to determine what is in an image.\n\nthe image recognition software has thousands of reference images of known things, which it compares to an image it is trying to recognise.\n\nSo if you provide it with the image of a dog and tell it to recognize the image, it will compare the image to it's references, find out that there are similarities in the image to images of dogs, and it will tell you \"there's a dog in that image!\"\n\nBut what if you use that software to make a program that looks for dogs in images, and then you give it an image with no dog in and tell it that there is a dog in the image?\n\nThe program will find whatever looks closest to a dog, and since it has been told there must be a dog in there somewhere, it tells you that is the dog.\n\nNow what if you take that program, and change it so that when it finds a dog-like feature, it changes the dog-like image to be even more dog-like?\nThen what happens if you feed the output image back in?\n\nWhat happens is the program will find the features that looks even the tiniest bit dog-like and it will make them more and more doglike, making doglike faces everywhere.\n\nEven if you feed it white noise, it will amplify the slightest most minuscule resemblance to a dog into serious dog faces.\n\nThis is what Google did. They took their image recognition software and got it to feed back into it's self, making the image it was looking at look more and more like the thing it thought it recognized.\n\nThe results end up looking really trippy.\n\nIt's not really anything to do with dreams IMO\n\nEdit: Man this got big. I'd like to address some inaccuracies or misleading statements in the original post...\n\nI was using dogs an example. The program clearly doesn't just look for dog, and it doesn't just work off what you tell it to look for either. It looks for ALL things it has been trained to recognize, and if it thinks it has found the tiniest bit of one, it'll amplify it as described.\n(I have seen a variant that has been told to look for specific things, however).\n\nHowever, it turns out the reference set includes a heck of a lot of dog images because it was designed to enable a recognition program to tell between different breeds of dog (or so I hear), which results in a dog-bias.\n\nI agree that it doesn't compare the input image directly with the reference set of images. It compares reference images of the same thing to work out in some sense what makes them similar, this is stored as part of the program, and then when an input image is given for it to recognize, it judges it against the instructions it learned from looking at the reference set to determine if it is similar.\n",
"I'm no expert, but I took a class on neural networks, so I'll take a shot.\n\nGoogle's Deep Dream process is a neural network. That means that the code is set up to mimic how our brains work. The program consists of many nodes that perform simple operations (usually just adding a number). These are like neurons in our brains. The program can change what exactly its \"neurons\" do by comparing what is desired (as set by the developer) with what it got. The process of developing a neural network that does what you want through feedback is called \"training\" the neural network.\n\nIt's like if you were taught how to play an instrument. The instructor might say, \"play this note.\" You give it a shot, but it's the wrong note. In return your instructor might say, \"that note is too low.\" So you raise your pitch until finally they say, \"that's right, you got it!\"\n\nSo Google's Deep Dream neural network was trained to look for patterns in a picture that look like something that it knows. It's similar to someone trying to find familiar shapes in the clouds. The program will find some pattern in the picture and say, \"hey, that looks like an eye!\" It will then edit the picture so that the \"eye\" pattern is more pronounced. Deep Dream then starts over with the new picture. This time, it might decide, \"Hey, that looks like a leaf,\" and edit the picture so that the leaf pattern is more pronounced.\n\nThis continues until the user decides they're too dizzy.",
"Imagine a child that is seeing an image for the first time being asked what it thinks is in the image and to change the image to highlight what they recognize. Now, the child will look not just at the image as a whole, but at parts of it too. So anything that looks like something it recognizes will change to be even more like that thing. Eye shapes become more eye-like. Animal shapes become more animal-like. \n\nNow the child has seen a lot of images of animals, especially dogs, so naturally it picks out things that look like dogs or eyes (which are common to other animals too) and changes those parts to look more dog-like or eye-like. \n\nDeep Dream does this many times, so the images become more and more dog-like or eye-like to the point where it's basically just dogs and eyes. ",
"c/p'ed from the last time I answered this:\n\n_URL_0_\n\nThere's several things that are going on in that blog post, but here's what's basically going on. So Google created a program that can recognize objects and things in images. This is something that is very, very, very hard for computers to do, because there's not really any defined guidelines for how to recognize things - is it the way pixels of different colors are positioned relative to one another? Is it the way that lines decide images into shapes? Is is a certain structure, of other objects? This is really really really hard to do. So what Google did is they didn't really teach the computer to recognize things. Instead, they taught the computer to learn. Then they said \"Here's a picture and this is what's in it\" and let the computer come up with its own guidelines. But the thing is so complicated they didn't totally understand what those guidelines were. So they came up with some tests to try and get an idea of what the computer had actually taught itself. One of those ways was saying \"Here's a picture. Look for things that kinda look like & lt;X & gt; and make them slightly more prominent.\" So they did that over and over and over again on the same picture and they could get an idea of what a computer things that object looks like - for example, they gave the picture a computer of static and told it to look for dumbbells. What it came up with was a whole lot of dumbbells, but every dumbbell also had an arm involved, meaning that the computer thought the dumbbells had to have an arm attached, because it only every saw dumbbells with arms attached to them. Now, when they gave the computer actual pictures - not static, and told it to look for things that were not in the picture, or they gave it the same image way too many times, the computer started seeing things where there wasn't anything really, because it'd say \"oh, this clump of pixels looks sliiightly like & lt;X & gt;, I'll make it look a tiny bit more like & lt;X & gt;\" and when you do that 3.2 million times you start seeing things. Similarly, the programmers would give the computer a picture and say \"Look for things in the photo. When you recognize something, make it look slightly more like what you thought it was.\" Again, do that over and over and over and you start seeing things in a clear blue sky. It's not that the computer is broken or doing stuff wrong, it's that the programmers, by making the computer have these feedback loops, were screwing around with its sensory perception, much like LSD or other hallucinogenic drugs screws with a human brain's sensory perception, making us see things that aren't there because we convince ourselves that something is there and then we see it and we're really convinced and we see it more. It's a really cool look into the mind of this computer that taught itself, though. \n\n**tl;dr: google programmers made their self-learning computer hallucinate so they could understand what it taught itself but programmers get bored easily so then they decided to put it on drugs.**",
"Heres a decent example of a [neural network](_URL_0_) for those wondering more about it. ",
"First, they invented Skynet. Then, they fed it a ton of acid, to keep it distracted. Then, they show it a bunch of pictures and try to analyze if the damned thing can be rehabilitated.",
"What is the purpose of deepdream,other than making trippy videos/pictures? I didn't learn much from the sticky in /r/deepdream, ELI5 please! I understood that it's about learning some system the difference between objects (something like that), but what will the system accomplish when it's done?",
"Why is everything eyes & animals??",
"I work in this area of vision research.\n\nThe neural networks they used are train to recognize and differentiate categories of dogs, cats, humans, etc.\n\nIt turns out that the networks discovered that faces and facial parts (eyes, noses, ears, etc.) are very easy and reliable signals for this task. \n\nSo a picture littered with dog face, nose, eyes, etc., even if the larger overall picture does not make sense, is very dog-like, to the neural network. \n\nSo telling the network to make a dog MORE dog-like, it will litter the picture with many dog facial parts.\n\nWhat the project tried to do is given a image and seeding a random noise, bootstrap the most dog-like thing image according to what the network thinks. It ends up creating these psychedelic images as a pleasant discovery. We somehow associate these kind of images with the psychedelic experience.\n\n~~Or maybe psychedelic drugs does a similar thing to a human brain. They instruct our brain receptors to overwhelm with the perception of a certain thing, so whatever we see in front of our eyes, we hallucinate extra copies to filling in the blanks creating a stronger signal. This is pure speculation, please ignore. Could make a really good paper though if people in neuroscience managed to draw this connection. Would be yet another huge indication that we are on the right path.~~",
"## A machine that recognises a building\n\nGoogle has a machine that can recognise what's in an image (to some extent). This type of machine works using a mathematical technique called *neural networks*.\n\n & nbsp;\n\nYou might ask, how do they build a machine that can recognise, say, a building?\n\nThe truth is that this is tremendously difficult. This is no simple machine that goes through a checklist, makes a tally, and returns its respons. In fact, if you would open up this machine you would find a whole bunch of smaller machines inside. These machines work together to recognise the concept of a \"building\". The first machine might recognise lines or edges and pass on its results to a second machine. The second machine might look how these edges are oriented, and so on and so on.\n\nIn reality, one of these machines might be composed of many tens of interacting layers. The result is a machine that's really difficult to understand. Visualising what it does becomes incredibly hard, even for people who've dedicated their lives to studying these machines.\n\n[Here's a visualisation of a three-layer machine.](_URL_7_) Each column is a layer, and each bubble receives information from the previous layers and passes it on to the next.\n\n## Turn it around!\n\nNow, what Google did was incredibly novel. Because it's hard to visualise what comes out of the machine, they turned the machine completely around. They changed the machine so that, instead of telling whether or not an image satisfied its demands, it would say what kind of image would satisfy it.\n\nLet's say you would give it a random image that does *not* contain a building, but instead just clouds.\n\nThe first machine might say that it doesn't recognise any items that look quite right. Sure, it sees an edge here and an edge there, but none of those edges really fit the bill. \"No problem,\" you say. \"Just tell me what looks *most* like the things you're looking for, and I'll make those things stand out! That way, it'll satisfy your demands, right?\"\n\nSo the machine points out which part of which cloud looks *kinda sorta* like the thing he was looking for and you enhance those features. If it was a dark edge of a cloud, you make it darker. If it was the sudden color variation between two spots, you make the variation larger. And then you pass on the enhanced image to the next machine in line.\n\n[Here's an example what some of the first layer enhancements might do to a picture.](_URL_4_). Note, however, that this is likely not a machine that recognises buildings, but something else entirely.\n\n## Understanding what the machine is thinking\n\nWhat you're really doing is that you're highlighting the items in the picture that pique the interest of the machines. Where first, this wizardry could not be visualised, now it can.\n\nSay, you have an image where the original machine recognised a building, but there's not a building inside! You feed this image to the new machine, which enhances all the building-y things. And there it is! Doesn't this bus kind of look like a building? Not quite, but *just* enough. Especially with the windows more expressive and the door in higher contrast and ....\n\nSuddenly, by turning the process on its head, it *is* possible [to see what the machine is thinking.](_URL_1_) Simply awesome.\n\n## Starting from nothing\n\nYou can take this one step further. Instead of giving it an image of clouds, you give it an image of natural noise. Very similar to the grey noise on an analogue TV that's stopped working(, but with a few extra tweaks). There are no edges of clouds it can enhance, but there are still patterns in the noise. By enhancing these patterns, [the machine starts drawing its own image!](_URL_5_)\n\nIn effect, the machine is drawing what it thinks a building looks like, just like most of us would try to draw a face. We know there should be a nose, and above that nose should be a pair of eyes, and...\n\nThe result is not entirely a building, but it has a lot of the characteristics of a building. In fact, it has *exactly* those characteristics of a building that the machine would normally look for.\n\n## Buildings in buildings in buildings\n\nSo you might have seen some really strange visualisations on Reddit these past few days, reminding you of fractals and whatnot. Those are a simple extension of the images drawn by the machine.\n\nFirst, you let the machine draw it's image of a building. When you get the result, you slightly zoom in and feed the machine back into the machine. It will enhance the things that are already there, but likely also discover new buildingy things in the parts you just blew up. [And you do it again, and again, and again.](_URL_3_) Each time you zoom in, new buildings sprout up.\n\n----\n\n^Images: ^[Cburnett/Wikimedia](_URL_2_); [^(Zachi Evenor)](_URL_0_)^( & Google/)[^(Google Research Blog)](_URL_6_)",
"Wow. \n\nOk so why is that so physically uncomfortable to watch? Is it that my brain is trying to make sense out of nonsense? Or is it that every time I recognize something, it changes into something else? \n\nI didn't find it scary but it was just weirdly unsettling. Very interesting explanations by the way! - jen",
"Figured I may as well try to ELY5 too, because I'm bored and this stuff is cool:\n\nImagine there's a table in front of you, and on that table are a number of flowers in pots. Those flowers are different in height, in color, in smell, and other features. They also have a little tag on them that says what it's called (\"Tulip\", \"Rose\", etc). Now I'm going to give you a challenge; I pull a flower out of a bag and put it on a table, and this flower *does not* have a name tag on it. \n\nCan you tell me what kind of flower it is? How would you do that, assuming that you knew absolutely nothing about flowers before today?\n\nWell, you'd probably look at all of the other flowers on the table that are identified by name, and try to figure out what makes flowers with the same name similar. For example, all of the flowers on the table that are red are called \"Roses\". If a new flower comes along that is also red, you might guess that it's a rose too, right? But let's say that the flower is yellow, and on the table there are two types of yellow flower, called \"Sunflower\" and \"Dandelion\". Just using color to guess may only help you name it correctly half of the time. So what do you do?\n\nYou'd have to make use of a number of the features of the flowers you've already seen (color, smell, height, shape, etc) in order to guess, and you could 'weight' the importance of some characteristics over others. Those weights would be a fixed set of rules that you could use with every new flower that you're shown to try to predict what kind of flower it is. If those weights turn out to be bad predictors of the flower name, you could try new weights. And you could keep trying new weights until your rules guess correctly 99% of the time.\n\nThis is remarkable, because no one had to give you a taxonomy or guidebook to identifying flowers. You simply took the information that was available, and used your intelligence to create a set of rules that helped you understand new data moving forward.\n\nBut let's say I wanted to reverse engineer your rules. You can't just explain them to me. Not really. It's just a mental model you've put together in your head, and you might've even invented adjectives that you can't possibly convey to someone else. It's all personal impressions. So what can I learn from you? \n\nIf I give you a blank piece of paper, and tell you \"use your rules to draw me a Daffodil\", you probably won't succeed. You're not an artist, and you don't have a complete mental picture of all of these flowers; you just put together a set of rules that used some standout, relative features to differentiate between flowers. But what if I started you off not with a blank piece of paper, but with a picture of the stars at night? Then you'd at least have somewhere to begin, a scaffold on which to apply your rules. You could squint your eyes and sort of decide that *that* group of stars is like the bulb shape, and *these* stars are X inches away from the bulb, so they must be a daffodil stem etc. You could sketch out something that, in your imagination, kinda captures the essence of a daffodil, even if it looks really weird.\n\nLet's say, then, that I took your drawing, held it behind my back, and put it right back in front of you and said \"Okay, where's the daffodil?\" Well, now it's obvious to you. You just drew a thing that you'd kinda consider a daffodil. You can point to it, and see features that your rules apply to. I tell you to draw it again using that image as a starting point, and the shape, size, and other features of the daffodil start to come into greater clarity. And then you draw it again, and again, and again. Eventually, I can look at your drawing and understand what your conception of a daffodil is, as well as how much information/detail your rules about daffodils really captured.\n\nWhy was this useful? Well, let's say that the daffodil that you drew has a weird protrusion on it that kind of looks like a bumblebee. I'd scratch my head and wonder why you think a daffodil has a bee-limb attached to it. I might then look at the table and notice that all of the daffodils I've shown you have bees buzzing around them. Remember, you knew nothing about flowers (or bees) before this, so if you saw 10 daffodils and each one had a bee on/near it, and if no other flowers had bees on them, your rules for positively identifying a daffodil may heavily weight the presence of a bee. Your rules have a bee in them, so you drew a bee, even though I wanted you to draw just a daffodil. I'd learn that in the future, if I want you to correctly understand daffodils, I should make sure there aren't any bees on them. What if a bee landed on a rose? You might think that rose is a daffodil by mistake. If it's important to me for some reason that you can accurately tell the difference between roses and daffodils all the time, this insight will help me to better train you.\n\nNow I want to try a different experiment. Instead of giving you a picture of the stars and asking you to draw a daffodil, I give you a starry page and ask you to draw whatever flower it is that you think you see. Maybe it's a daffodil, maybe not. Maybe you squint and - not prompted to think it's a daffodil - decide you sort of see an orchid. You draw your essence of an orchid, and I give you that image back and ask you to do it again, and again, until your rules about orchids are clear. Which is mildly interesting. I could show you different patterns of stars and you might show me different flowers. Is this useful to me? Who knows. I know a little bit more about how your brain works than I did before.\n\nNow I want to try yet another experiment. Instead of a picture of stars, I give you a picture of Sir Paul McCartney, and ask you to find the flower. Obviously this is a weird thing for me to ask. Way weirder than using stars for an abstract connect-the-dots. But like a good little test subject you just apply the rules like you're told. Maybe in his eyes you see something that triggers your rules about orchids, and his lips trigger your rose rules. So you trace the outlines/shapes over his face. I give you the image back and you trace more deliberately. And again. Until finally you've created a trippy-ass picture of Sir Paul with orchids for eyes and roses for lips, and I have to say \"What's wrong with your brain, man?! You're an insane person! Just look at this, are you on drugs?!\"\n\nAnd THAT, my friend, is what Google engineers who are pulling in $150k+ spent their time doing to their computers. They let a computer create a set rules on hundreds of thousands, if not millions, if not billions of images to identify virtually everything. Dogs. Buses. Presidents. Pumpkins. Everything. And then they wanted to reverse engineer the rules because they were curious. Would the computer's rules reveal themselves to be similar to how a human brain works, or reveal something about cognition? Would it be incomprehensible? Could we use whatever we find to come up with better ways to train the computers, or even better ways to create rules (i.e. machine learning algorithms)? Who knows. All we know for sure is that the images they got were bizarre and discomfiting and really, really interesting.",
"This process is 100% how brain handled LSD and Shrooms. I haven't dont them for nearly 20 years, but they always helped me to find levels of patterns/faces/common shapes, in places they didn't really exist. As I looked at something and analyzed it, the more layers were added on. The deeper into the abyss I would go.\n\nBasically it was exactly how this Deep Dream works. At first pass, maybe a face in the trees. Second pass faces seemingly appearing in everything. Third pass, faces within the face. Fourth pass, the faces are making structured and connecting to form common patterns. Fifth pass, I am flowing through a visual river of ever changing infinite, everything if pulsing with life and as far from reality as a dream.",
"Ok, this might sound childish or naive, but is this not a form of creativity?",
"You ever sit on the crapper for an extended period of time, eyes zoned-out and staring at the floor, and start to see patterns or pictures in the tile/carpet/whatever?\n\nIt's like that.",
"Computer vision is hard, so let's draw an analogy to something easier: finding out how red a picture is.\n\nIf you already know that pictures are made out of pixels, which are made up of fixed values of (normally) [red, green, and blue](_URL_0_) (eli5 link), you could write a program that gets the average redness and bam -- there's your answer.\n\nNow, because you're a lazy programmer, you decide to avoid figuring out this 'averaging' thing works, and you train a [neural network](_URL_1_) (eli5 link) instead. Problem is, although the neural network successfully tells you how red something is on a scale of 0-1, *how* it works is a mystery. Maybe it's just spitting out a [random number every time](_URL_2_)? Who knows.\n\nYour laziness is all-pervasive, though, so instead of digging into all of those neuron weights, you make a completely random picture and ask the network how red it is:\n\n0.2. Kinda red. You take that random picture, randomly change a small part of it and ask the network again: \n\n0.5. Pretty red -- getting better! Same deal as before, randomly change the picture and ...\n\n0.3. Drat. Alright, so you go back to step two, change the picture again, and ...\n\nEventually, after many (hundreds of) thousands of tries, this process ends with some value like 0.99 and a very red picture. [s/red/dog-like/g](_URL_3_)",
"I just saw Terminator Genisys, and now I find out Google can dream. Ya know what happens after something dreams? IT WAKES UP",
"It's probably a little post-ELI5, but this is the most easy-to-understand yet still sort of technical and pretty comprehensive explanation I've seen in my days of googling trying to understand this. Thanks to /u/warrenXG for the link \n_URL_0_"
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"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qv6UVOQ0F44"
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"http://bit.ly/1ThztJ6",
"http://i.imgur.com/rgsDE2m.png",
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_neural_network#/media/File:Artificial_neural_network.svg",
"http://i.imgur.com/Me436Pc.png",
"http://i.imgur.com/pMeIFzV.jpg",
"http://i.imgur.com/J2bftvt.png",
"http://googleresearch.blogspot.ch/2015/06/inceptionism-going-deeper-into-neural.html",
"http://i.imgur.com/P4YSGdi.png"
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"https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1dlaqx/eli5_if_the_primary_colors_are_red_yellow_and/",
"https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1m1cb3/eli5neural_networks_how_they_work_what_they_are/",
"http://dilbert.com/strip/2001-10-25",
"http://unixhelp.ed.ac.uk/CGI/man-cgi?sed"
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"http://staticvoidgames.com/blog/HowNeuralNetworksCreateSquirrelMonsters"
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1wyqjd | why jews are depicted as being greedy...for thousands of years? | I joke around about Jews being greedy, but why are Jews considering greedy but other countries/people aren't?
I heard it started in medieval times, an army wanted to borrow money from the Jews and never payed it back so Jewish people became greedy with their money from that point on, but maybe i'm wrong? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1wyqjd/eli5_why_jews_are_depicted_as_being_greedyfor/ | {
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"The version I heard was a bit different. Christians were not allowed to lend money at interest, whereas Jews were not allowed to lend money to other Jews at excessive interest. They could lend money to non-Jews at excessive interest, and they did because it made financial sense.",
"A thousand years ago, the most prominent bankers of the day were Jewish, partly because many non-jewish religions at the time outlawed effective banking. All successful bankers have to understand the slightly complicated concept of \"compound interest.\" But most of their profits have always stemmed from giving loans to individuals who do not fully comprehend compound interest. This is still true today.\n\nThe result a thousand years ago was that a bunch of uneducated peasants who were too uneducated to understand they were just bad at math, assumed whoever they owed money to must have been born from a race that was just inherently greedy. ",
"Ask that nice Jewish boy, Jesus, who kicked the bankers out of the temple of Jerusalem, where they'd been doing a nice business with the Roman occupiers. This stuff goes back some distance.\n\nHowever, in Medieval Europe the Jewish reputation for sharp dealing had much to do with the fact that Jews were often forbidden from owning land, and they periodically got thrown out of kingdoms, so they developed a network of urban traders and crafters in the ghettos, trading crafts for food. They had to be clever to survive, and that developed into the merchant network of the Renaissance, which eventually dealt the feudal system right out of the game. ",
"The Christianity of medieval Europe outlawed usury, which these days is typically defined as the charging of *excess* interest on a loan, but in those days, was frequently interpreted as charging any interest at all. Of course, that meant that you couldn't make a single ducat by lending people money, so these charitable Christian men simply chose not to engage in it at all (for the most part). \n\nJews were under no such restrictions, and they quickly flourished in the moneylending trade. There were undoubtedly some who charged exhorbitant interest rates, but if you owe somebody money, even at a perfectly fair rate, and you can't make the payment, the moneylender pretty much automatically becomes the bad guy of the story (the canonical example being Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice). And since these people were *already* Jews, hating them was just that much easier.\n\nSince then, the people who want to hate do what they have always done: point out one or two examples that illustrate their claim, and ignore the dozens of counter-examples. For example, an early theme the Nazis used to whip up hate against the Jews was that, while good Aryan Germans were out dying in droves in WWI, filthy Jewish businessmen sat at home making obscene wartime profits. The one or two small Jewish-run companies they could *actually* point to kinda paled in comparison to the REALLY big war profiteers, like Krupp's Industrial , which was run by good Aryan-pure Germans, but they never got around to mentioning that inconvenient truth.\n\n\n\n"
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tm188 | how web scraping can be legal? | Is there a way for a web scraper or crawler to not be held liable for infringement and if so what are the consequences involved? How is Pinterest legal? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/tm188/eli5_how_web_scraping_can_be_legal/ | {
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"From your question, you are implying that PInterest is a web scraper/crawler. It is not. It is user-submitted content, just like imgur/reddit where users take a photo from one source, upload it to imgur and link to it from reddit. \n\nA crawler involves a bot (automated software) that goes out to other websites for the purpose of reading and parsing the HTML for content. They are also called spiders. GoogleBot is an example of a spider. It goes to other sites, scrapes the content and stores it in Google's own databases where it is indexed for your searching. Some people have tried to imply that Google is responsible for all the pirated material it is hosting but that the problem is that the bot cannot fully understand the information it is parsing. Its only purpose is to scrape and store.\n"
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360wg8 | why are junebugs so awful at flying properly? | Every time I see these goofy guys flying around my porch light, they just hit everything in sight. What's the deal with that? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/360wg8/eli5why_are_junebugs_so_awful_at_flying_properly/ | {
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"Haha OMG I asked this same question last Summer!! They are so bad at living, they just bash around everywhere. If I remember correctly they just mate, lay their eggs if they are female, bash into everything and then die (sort of how I imagine Andrew WK going out). I could be wrong though, this was a year ago and most people just called me a dumbass for asking. Glad I wasn't the only curious about these crazy little fucks! I've grabbed and relocated at least ten from my doorstep already this year. Maybe they just want to come in and party?",
"Also, actual scientific bullshit, I still prefer to think of them as little WKs, partying til they die. \n\n_URL_0_"
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48i57e | why/how can all the different local news stations have the exact same stories? | If they are supposedly in competition? This seems almost hard to accomplish if they aren't in on it together? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/48i57e/eli5_whyhow_can_all_the_different_local_news/ | {
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"I mean, it's news. If it happens, and people care about it, they're going to cover it. They get paid by advertising, not per viewer. So as long as they're watched and air ads, they're making income. What would be the point in not covering a local news story people care about? All it would do would be to send viewers to see a station that actually aired the story.",
"Well, because they are covering the same thing.\n\nIf three local stations cover a local city council meeting, where the council voted 6-3 to authorize a new road construction project, they're all going to be reporting the same thing. One station won't be saying it was a 5-4 vote, and another won't be saying it was for a new housing project. Same facts lead to the same story.",
"The headline stories aren't what they're competing for -- they're competing for loyal viewers.\n\nIf a prominent building in town is burning down, how do you think Channel 2 is going to keep Channel 5 out? They can't. But as long as they have good footage, their loyal viewers will watch.\n\nAlso, particularly when it comes to politics, the same story can be covered several different ways.",
"In a small enough city this will happen routinely...there is only so much happening in the town, and put together, it may be enough to fill everyone's newscast. So each of them will have a slightly different take take on the same events...or the same take, with slightly differing footage.\n\nIn a large city like LA or NYC, there will be some stories on more than one news outlet, and each will also have their exclusives. There is more to choose from.",
"Two main reasons:\n\n* They're owned by the same parent company (there aren't that many companies that own broadcast networks). \n* They used a press release to write the story (a good PR firm may distribute witty lines for the anchor, video for the backgrounds, even text or questions and answers for the reporter). ",
"In addition to their own sources, I think there's a news aggregation service like Reuters or Associated Press which aggregates all the news and makes it available to all channels who subscribe to it.",
"Many news outlets will run syndicated stories. That means the story is written and released by an agency like the Associated Press, and the local news will just reprint the story. It's how they can get national content without spending the money on reporters. Not having this content puts them at a disadvantage.",
"This is a mature industry in which all the stations have figured out the best principles for getting people to watch the news, so they are going to make similar decisions.\n\nLocal news stations also have very modest research budgets, so they mostly report on things that are very obvious -- a big fire happened today, a new mayor took office, a murder, a new school opened, etc. -- or things that were handed to them pre-made, like a press conference held to announce a new local project. So they all have access to the same pool of stuff to choose from.\n\nVery, very rare is the local news station that will go out and find more than 1-2 unique news stories per week. It's just hard work, and doesn't increase viewer counts."
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[],
[]
] |
|
fnu2xf | positive vs negative pressure environments | [deleted] | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/fnu2xf/eli5_positive_vs_negative_pressure_environments/ | {
"a_id": [
"flbi8zh",
"flbjlun",
"flbmpru"
],
"score": [
12,
4,
2
],
"text": [
"\"Positive pressure\" means that there's more pressure on the inside of something than the outside.\n\n\"Negative pressure\" is the opposite.\n\nRooms need to be kept at negative pressure, so air flows *into* them (and air containing the virus doesn't flow out into the hallways).\n\nVentilators need to be kept on positive pressure so that air stays in the lungs. More specifically, they need to alternate between positive pressure and either less-positive, neutral, or negative pressure depending on the settings.",
"Not sure about the negative pressure in the room bit but I can answer regarding lungs and ventilators.\n\nWhen you breath in, your diaphragm contracts (fills up less space in the body). This gives the lungs space to stretch out and increase the amount of air they can hold (volume). By increasing volume, the pressure in your lungs goes down, as the gases are much less tightly packed. \n\nThis causes air from outside the lungs to enter the lungs because the pressure is trying to balance itself out. The lungs in this scenario is a negative pressure environment relative to the outside air.\n\nA positive pressure ventilator works in a similar way (movement due to pressure difference). But rather than decreasing the pressure of air within the lungs, it increases the pressure of air outside.\n\nLung tissue is also very elastic and will try to recoil back to it’s smaller state. Leaving a small amount of positive pressure on the ventilator reduces this effect. However I don’t know the full medical benefits of positive pressure ventilation.",
"Positive pressure is when inside has higher pressure than outside.\n\nNegative pressure (otherwise known as vacuum) is when inside is lower pressure than outside. .\n\nBest way to think about it is positive pressure will push out and negative pressure pulls in. Of course this also depends on your frame of reference."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[],
[]
] |
|
1ld7mg | what makes something "commercial property" instead of "private/personal property"? | Commercial property sells for so much more. Sometimes, the properties are just regular houses that people use as a law office or business. What is stopping someone from buying a personal home, labeling it "commercial property" and selling it for more money? Where does this increase in value come from? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1ld7mg/eli5_what_makes_something_commercial_property/ | {
"a_id": [
"cby1sjy",
"cby1swp"
],
"score": [
3,
2
],
"text": [
"Local zoning laws dictate which plots of land can be used for commercial or residential purposes, it's not just a label that the owner gets to slap on. There are different regulations to follow depending on the region. ",
"You have to be in an area zoned for commercial activity. Houses can be in a commercial area but usually commercial building are not allowed in residential areas"
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[]
] |
|
5pj3ua | why do we read and write from top to bottom? | Almost everything the humans build starts at the bottom and ends at the top. (At least if you stick to the traditional way) But writing is different. I have never seen any writing system that starts at the bottom and I have seen some children who start at the bottom but are taught begin at the top.
Why is that so? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5pj3ua/eli5_why_do_we_read_and_write_from_top_to_bottom/ | {
"a_id": [
"dcrinwy"
],
"score": [
4
],
"text": [
"Because 1: the human arm and hand do their best work when moving towards the center of the body, you can see this in combat throws and drawing. 2: if you write bottom-up, you will smudge the ink or charcoal, which was what was used for lots of writing in history. "
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
|
1xpf20 | where are nuclear bombs blown up when they are described as being blown up underground? | I can't imagine there being massive underground complexes big enough for a nuke blast. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1xpf20/eli5_where_are_nuclear_bombs_blown_up_when_they/ | {
"a_id": [
"cfdeewx"
],
"score": [
2
],
"text": [
"Let me wiki it for you: \n\n_URL_0_\n\nNo complexes, they literally just bury the bomb and set it off.\n\n"
]
} | [] | [] | [
[
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Underground_nuclear_testing"
]
] |
|
a1d07y | how does false advertising work in the us? | Saw an ad for a popular phone that came out this year. It had videos of people reacting to Christmas gifts that could not have been the phone. Then it said “We can’t wait to see your reaction” is this not false advertising? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/a1d07y/eli5_how_does_false_advertising_work_in_the_us/ | {
"a_id": [
"eaoqg8g",
"eap9kh1"
],
"score": [
2,
2
],
"text": [
"Most digital screens when shown in commercials or ads are \"simulated screens\". It will actually specifically say so in the writing on the screen as a disclaimer.\n\nNext time you see and ad like this look and there will generally be a small disclaimer on the screen then or at the end of the ad.",
"If I'm understanding your description, the lie is that the gifts the people are opening aren't actually the phones?\n\nI don't think that would count as false advertising since there's no material statement being or implied about the product. In other words, a reasonable person is unlikely to make a decision to buy the product based on that lie (even partly)? I might think *\"Ooh, a new phone would make an excellent gift for so-and-so, because they've been complaining about their old one a lot\"*. No reasonable person (in the US, at least) is going to think *\"Those characters (i.e. fictional people played by actors) look really happy about getting that phone as a gift, so Jimmy James will definitely love it, too\"*"
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[]
] |
|
d0gipg | why do deafness and muteness usually accompany each other? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/d0gipg/eli5_why_do_deafness_and_muteness_usually/ | {
"a_id": [
"ez98a1p",
"ez98bz2",
"ez9bp4b"
],
"score": [
2,
14,
5
],
"text": [
"Depends of when the person was deaf. If the person can't hear and mimic/learn from adults then they can't speak.",
"My assumption would be that if you never heard language, it would be incredibly difficult to learn to speak since we learn how to speak by listening and mimicking noises until we get it right.",
"so much of how we learn to speak is based upon our ability to hear it, s'basically why accents happen and why people have different accents, so if you are unable to hear you can't hear the sounds to mimic them and thus cannot speak. even then its the same thing you see in older people, as their hearing decreases they talk louder, part of speech is hearing ourself say it too"
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[],
[]
] |
||
26gdu3 | what about swaying in a hammock relaxes us? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/26gdu3/eli5_what_about_swaying_in_a_hammock_relaxes_us/ | {
"a_id": [
"chqt7mg"
],
"score": [
6
],
"text": [
"I really wish I could remember which episode it was... but Neil deGrasse Tyson addressed this exact issue while discussing motion sickness on Star Talk.\n\nMost are familiar with motion-sickness. The very mild symptoms are fatigue and sleepiness. It's mild enough not to cause nausea. He presented it as a \"gee-whiz\" aside to explain why hammocks, car rides, etc. put people to sleep.\n\nIt makes sense... I'm not much of a napper, but put me in an airplane and I WILL doze off. "
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
||
3dwa7k | the significance of the pentaquark | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3dwa7k/eli5_the_significance_of_the_pentaquark/ | {
"a_id": [
"ct99pmu"
],
"score": [
61
],
"text": [
"Some theories predicted their existence, some didn't. We now know to reject the theories which were wrong, and pursue those which got it right. That's how science works.\n\nThere is no direct practical impact, other than the general advancement of science."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
||
3xloz8 | how it was decided how would the keys of a piano sould like the first time it was made? | Or how "Do" sounds like, the first time it was done | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3xloz8/eli5_how_it_was_decided_how_would_the_keys_of_a/ | {
"a_id": [
"cy5o4p6"
],
"score": [
2
],
"text": [
"The musical scale used by the piano was already in place long before the piano was invented. [Here](_URL_0_) is a detailed article including its history. The piano was designed to fit the traditional musical scale, not the other way around."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diatonic_scale"
]
] |
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