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1zktd4 | what exactly does sodium toxicity do? | The way I understand it, the average American's sodim intake is above the toxic level. What are the negative effects? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1zktd4/eli5_what_exactly_does_sodium_toxicity_do/ | {
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"Sodium intake does not lead to sodium toxicity. The body has many homeostatic (\"keep things in balance\") controls to keep your sodium blood levels in check.\n\nSodium toxicity is more commonly seen from dehydration, for example. It is called [Hypernatraemia](_URL_0_).\n\nWhat you probably mean to say/ask is just that we eat more than the *recommended* amount of sodium. This causes the body to retain water to dilute the sodium (one aspect of the \"keep things in balance\" way our body works). This means more liquid in our bodies, including in our blood, so our heart has to pump more/harder and our kidneys have to work more too.\n\nThat means higher blood pressure which can make our blood vessels/arteries stuff, causing heart disease and stroke and stuff, and our kidneys can get worn out/damaged quicker in some cases.\n\nAlso when you pee out the extra sodium you pee out more calcium. If you aren't getting enough calcium in your diet, a high sodium intake can eventually lead to brittle bones."
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29ejwm | why are we set up to not eat healthy? | In America, there was an obesity scare in the 1970's-1980's that told Americans "fat is bad" and so they've removed the fat content from many foods. by doing that, they became less tasteful and so to replace that they added sugar.
But also, we've been told every day to eat our grains and oats. But the thing is, most of the bread that we consume is actually really bad for us, even the whole-grain breads. It isn't the same oats and grains are grandparents consumed.
Many companies too try really hard to make things seem healthy when they aren't.
So how is a person in this society supposed to be able to eat healthy? Do you have any tips and tricks to make it simple? Can you point us to sources we as consumers should be able to trust? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/29ejwm/eli5_why_are_we_set_up_to_not_eat_healthy/ | {
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"If by \"set up\" you mean biologically it's because some nutrients were much rarer then others and over time we became hardwired to seek those particular nutrients more so over others since obtaining those nutrients required more effort. Now in modern times those nutrients are quite abundant but we still retain that need to seek those once rare nutrients which causes problems due to excess. Also those rare nutrients: salts, sugars, fats, etc. are not unhealthy.",
"Grains and oats (carbs) aren't bad, but the amount we often eat is bad. We generally don't need as much as people used to eat and most of us don't have to stick to simple carbs out of necessity (the people likely to read this at any rate).\n\nYou don't have to go full keto/Atkins, you just have to make sure you don't eat more than you need. Staying away from simple carbs helps a lot. A few things at the top of my head:\n\nThat white spongy thing some people call bread does very little for you other than making your blood sugar spike. In most other parts of the world, pancakes with syrup is also considered a dessert.\n\nYou can not drink soda daily. Just stop, it's literally poison.\n\nLess potatoes, rice, pasta and more veg.\n\n**edit**: This post has been voted up and down all day. I'd love to hear what you think is incorrect before you downvote!",
"Things that taste the best to us. Salt, sugars etc. Were sparse in a cavemen world to encourage us to seek them out. Now they're easily available and taste just as good; leading to some of us abusing them. "
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1ir1on | difference between cheap and really expensive caviar | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1ir1on/difference_between_cheap_and_really_expensive/ | {
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"Really expensive caviar is wild fish's eggs. There is strict selection for quality. And of course a fish doesn't make by itself tons of eggs, especially since you have to kill it. The beluga, the most expensive, is really hard to preserve, and the species is in danger.\n\nLess expensive one is farmed, so it's a bit cheaper but experts (which I'm not) would tell you it's not as good.\n\nAnd then there is the worst kind. The fake caviar, using \"agar agar\" which is a natural gelatin. No fish in there, or at least not real eggs."
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feu8a3 | why while we watch a film our perspective adapts to that represented in the story and we are not surprised by things that are unrealistic in reality but are normal in the footage? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/feu8a3/eli5_why_while_we_watch_a_film_our_perspective/ | {
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"It's called \"suspension of disbelief\" and is fundamental for most fictions. You're able to intentionally (intentional doesn't mean you have to concentrate to do it) lock out of your thought process anything that would be surreal in real life but fits in the movie you're watching.\n\nLet's say, in Harry Potter it's ok to kill a person with a couple words, once you willingly acknowledge this your brain can empathize with characters' fear and suffering. If suddenly Harry shakes the wand and summons a looney toons - style anvil or an alien, your immersion breaks, for example.\n\nEdit: it's more like accepting a set of rules for the duration of that movie to understand and enjoy it better.",
"Because what you think of as \"reality\" is really just congruency. You don't have access to reality, you only have access to your senses. As long as your senses are giving you *consistent* information, it will be real to you. You can see this in current politics where people literally live in different realities due to being exposed to different narratives that are internally consistent, but inconsistent with each other. \n\nWhen enjoying a movie, you focus your senses to filter out everything but the movie. If the movie is doing it's job well, it will provide consistent input to your senses and your brain will believe it to be true. Until you look away and the \"real\" world comes crashing back into your consciousness.",
"In a nutshell: suspension of disbelief in storytelling only works if the set of unrealistic rules is clear, well-expressed early on to the audience, and nothing later in the story comes too strongly against it.\n\nFor all that John Lasseter turned out to not be a very good person, he had that fine line down to a science, it’s fascinating to read interviews about his approach to it. In particular, Toy Story was a hard exercise in it, because there are many things that make its mythology somewhat contradictory. But people actively want to believe, so when it works and the line is well-balanced, the payoff is huge."
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44g0ru | what would the earth's atmosphere be like without the heat from the sun? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/44g0ru/eli5_what_would_the_earths_atmosphere_be_like/ | {
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"Frozen solid. The ambient temperature of space is cold enough to freeze most of the gasses in our atmosphere.",
"Colder. The question is how cold. The coldest temperature ever recorded was -128.6F (-89.2C). So it'd get at least that everywhere.\n\nWith absolutely no heat, the atmosphere would continue to get colder and colder until the individual gases begin to condenses. -297F for Oxygen and -320F for Nitrogen. Colder still those liquid \"gases\" would then begin to freeze. -361F for Oxygen and -346F for Nitrogen.\n\nHowever, the Earth produces heat from its core which eventually makes its way to the surface. Globally it's not particularly a lot, but it's non zero and will keep things from getting absolutely cold everywhere.\n\nWe'll probably end up like Europa, frozen everywhere at the surface with no atmosphere to speak of, but still-liquid oceans near the surface. kept warm by geothermal heat."
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1dfs4m | how do the time travel rules work in doctor who? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1dfs4m/eli5_how_do_the_time_travel_rules_work_in_doctor/ | {
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"Here's the 10th Doctor explaining it definitively (from Blink): _URL_0_",
"They work in whatever way is convenient to the plot at the moment.",
"Basically, some events are set in place and cannot be changed (like destruction of Pompei), but some events can be changed (like rescuing a family from that city). \n\nIt's pretty arbitrary on what can and cannot be changed. In one episode, saving a person creates a time paradox and monsters come out to cauterize it, but saving some other person (we are talking about historically significant figure) is ok. \n\nIn one episode, the whole human population was killed by humans from the future. In order for that to work TARDIS became a 'paradox engine' that held it all together.\n\nIn one of the recent ones, Cold War could've happened, even though some characters that took place in that event would never have been born. \n\nTL;DR It's what writers require it to be and it's better to just enjoy the adventure rather than over think it."
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62x3wv | how did the western world lay underwater telegraph lines as early as 19th century with their level of technology? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/62x3wv/eli5_how_did_the_western_world_lay_underwater/ | {
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"They has steamships, and with big spools of cable they could lay underwater cables. Specialized ships even allowed cables to be retrieved and repaired.",
"The Victorians (as we call them this side of the pond) were actually pretty good at organising large scale engineering projects. These were the same people who built railways across the world too.\n\nWithout underwater cables it would take weeks or months to have a decent international conversation so given the importance of a telegraph link, and the fact that the technology existed (The first telegraph was about 100 years earlier, and the first transatlantic ship was about 300 years before that), the rest was a question of will.\n\n",
"They basically did it the same way we do it today -- send out a ship with a huge amount of cable on a spool, and let it gradually play out and sink to the bottom.\n\nThe main advantage we have today is the use of submarines so that maintenance can be carried out if necessary, but by-and-large once a cable's resting on the ocean floor nothing is going to disturb it anyway, so even without submarines they were able to run underwater cabling quite successfully.",
"They'd already mastered telegraph lines on land, so what they needed for underwater cables was a way to waterproof them. Unlike today, when we have all kinds of artificial substances, they could only use natural ingredients. So one of the vitally important substances that allowed them to do this was gutta percha, which allowed them to waterproof the cables. It comes from a tropical tree. Once they learned this waterproofing technique, they used existing tech to lay the cables. It was dicey at first and there was a lot of trial and error. \n\nBy the way, if you want to read about this in depth, Neal Stephenson wrote about the history of trans-oceanic cables in his book of essays, *Some Remarks*.",
"It was very difficult but possible with the level of technology available in the 19th century. However, the potential payoff of linking continents by near instant communication was huge, big enough to prompt people to do it multiple times. \n\nThe cables were similar to what is used today, a very thick armored sheath covering a few wires (_URL_1_) (nowadays, fiber optic lines have replaced the signal lines). Massive reels of this cable were loaded on the biggest available ships and slowly laid down (an early steam powered cable laying vessel: _URL_2_, and an illustration of one of the giant cable reels: _URL_0_). Cable breaks happened (as they do today). The earliest ocean cables were laid by sailing ships, but steam powered ships became common not long after. The break could be roughly located using the electrical \"echo\" that occurs when sending a signal down a long wire. A repair ship would sail out and dredge up the cable, where it would be repaired. \n\nThe technology didn't come out of the blue. Long distance land telegraph lines were already common. There were some early underwater lines which ran for much shorter distances (like between England and France). This helped establish the basic technology before ocean crossings were attempted. \n\nThere was no in-line repeater/amplifier technology at the beginning, so the extremely powerful signal sent on one end of the cable was extremely weak on the other end. There was no widespread electrical grid. The telegraph would be powered by large lead acid batteries. Because of the extremely long distance weak signal, non-standard equipment was used. A \"mirror galvinometer\" used a small mirror and magnet hanging from a string, which could be deflected by the tiny signal that made it through the cable to \"read\" the signal. Non-standard signals were used as well for several reasons:\n1. Morse code was not yet the universal standard it became\n2. Many cables linked to non-english speaking countries which didn't use Morse code anyway\n3. The poor signal quality over the extremely long cables made other signal systems more attractive. \n\nThe earliest cables could send only one signal at a time. Each end would have a schedule and would swap \"sending\" and \"receiving\" rolls at prearranged intervals. The code had to be sent slowly as well, since the signal was very weak. Given the very limited bandwidth, sending a trans-oceanic message was extremely expensive, writing a letter and sending it by ship was much more economical but far slower. Most signals would have been business or government messages as opposed to personal. \n\nTechnological improvements gradually increased the capability of the trans-oceanic cables:\n1. The invention of electrical amplifiers improved signal quality and the speed at which messages could be sent on a cable.\n2. The invention of multiplex technology allowed one cable to send and receive at the same time instead of switching rolls.\n3. Cable design improvements reduced breakages and allowed for more than one wire per cable. \n4. Human operators initially did all sending and receiving. Eventually, mechanical punch card reader/writers replaced direct human signalmen and allowed for signal speed increases. "
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34025u | how can cereal companies afford to print such colorful boxes when ink is so expensive? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/34025u/eli5_how_can_cereal_companies_afford_to_print/ | {
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"They charge you for it in the price of their cereal. Somewhere along the way an analyst figured out that having the colorful box increased sales enough to justify the cost, or that the colorful box made people willing to pay more for the product than the extra cost of the ink/packaging."
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23ts4m | where do governments keep lending all these billions from? will they ever pay it back? if not, why are there still lenders? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/23ts4m/eli5_where_do_governments_keep_lending_all_these/ | {
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"1) Citizens, Corporations, other Governments. \n\nI'll speak to the US because that's what I know. The US Treasury is considered the \"risk free asset\" in the financial world. This means that people trust its good for the money. Many people, corps and governments like to hold US debt because its about as sure a bet as can be.\n\n2) Yes, they pay back sections all the time. The thing is, the US can also keep issuing more. \n\nThat's the funny thing about Treasuries, they have a set repayment schedule (5, 10, 20 years are some of the major ones). So yes the US regularly pays off large sections of its debt. But this is usually done by issuing some new debt as well. Since (as mentioned above) the US Treasury is considered a safe place to put your money, there is no shortage of people willing to lend to us.\n\n3) So they keep lending because they keep getting their money and in uncertain times its better to stick your money in US debt than virtually anywhere else. ",
"Governments issue bonds to finance operations that cannot be covered by tax and fee revenues.\n\nBonds are sold at a discount to face value and can be redeemed for face value once they reach an agreed maturity date.\nMaturity times vary. Some bonds are not deeply discounted and mature in 90 days. Others are more highly discounted and mature in 10 years. There are some intermediate periods.\n\nThe are no more secure financial instruments than the bonds issued by the USA because the US has always paid its debts. Always.\n\nWhen there are concerns about the ability of a government to pay its debts, the discount on the bonds gets deeper, making it more expensive to borrow using bonds. When this happens, reasonable governments raise taxes, cut services or both."
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2u7vcb | what is the point of a number lock and scroll lock button? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2u7vcb/eli5_what_is_the_point_of_a_number_lock_and/ | {
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"Number lock allows you to toggle between using the number pad (on the right of a standard keyboard) to enter numbers or to navigate (notice on [this keyboard](_URL_0_) there are arrows on some of the numbers and other movement functions on others)\n\nScroll lock switches the function of the arrow keys in many programs. For example, instead of moving the cursor with the arrow keys in Excel, enabling scroll lock causes the arrow keys to scroll through the spreadsheet like the mousewheel would. This capability has fallen out of favor now that just about every mouse is scrolling enabled though. ",
"Here's an example of a very good use of scroll lock. Let's say you have a chat program that brings the screen down to the latest post at any given time. You're trying to read something someone posted 15 minutes ago and every time someone speaks, it brings you away from the post you want to read. In comes scroll lock to the rescue. Win."
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1zk3k0 | why doesn't the weight of soil above a deep bored tunnel cause it to collapse? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1zk3k0/eli5_why_doesnt_the_weight_of_soil_above_a_deep/ | {
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"It WILL, if there is insufficient support. That's why they pay geologists and mining engineers moderate bucks to figure out exactly what's above the tunnel.\n\nTunnels are typically bored through rock, and then only when the strength of the rock above it is enough to support the initial digging. After the hole has been dug, it may also be reinforced with concrete or something.\n\n",
"If a soil tunnel is deep enough (as a simple thumbrule, at least twice as deep as it is wide), it will manifest an effect called soil arching. The soil above it will actually compact and bridge, bearing a lot of the weight from the earth above it. The deeper it is and the more compacted the soil, the better the effect."
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6pbeor | what do cows have in their body/diet that produces "magic" mushrooms from their waste? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6pbeor/eli5_what_do_cows_have_in_their_bodydiet_that/ | {
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"It has literally nothing to do with cows. Cow poop is just fertilizer. Magic mushrooms are a species of mushroom. Only specific species of mushroom produce the chemicals known as psilocybin and psilocin. Which are responsible for the magic part of magic mushrooms. The cow poop has nothing to do with it, it just helps the mushrooms grow better because they like the nitrogen and other nutrients in cow poop. \n\nCow poop just happens to be a particularly powerful fertilizer due to the high concentration of nitrogen from the large quatities of grass they eat.",
"My best guess is that it has nothing to do with the animals in question, but what spores are local. You could certainly grow a number of different kinds of mushrooms in horse manure or cow manure. Fungi tend to thrive in nutrient rich, warm, wet, dark environments. Fresh manure is pretty ideal. Digestive tracts would likely digest them being anaerobic and highly acidic. Unless the spores have evolved to thrive after passing through, but it's unlikely they have. If I remember from what I've heard of their illegal cultivation, you buy the spores fresh and put them on the manure and they grow just fine. That would lead me to think that passing through the digestive tract is unnecessary and probably harmful, therefore they are likely local and nestle in the manure naturally. "
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38zbed | cogito ergo sum | "I think, therefore i exist"
I am sure I do not fully understand the phrase. Can someone explain? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/38zbed/eli5_cogito_ergo_sum/ | {
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"If you are able to question whether you physically exist, then you do. If you didn't really exist, you couldn't be able to question your existence.",
"Existence is a fickle bitch. If you can't see, hear taste, or touch something how can you be sure it exists? I think therefore I am. The mere fact that you possess the capacity to think is enough to validate your existence, if no one was there to doubt the existence of an \"I\" then you wouldn't exist. It's a convoluted idea, more simply, you can doubt that you exist, all you know that really exists is your mind, everything you see hear and touch is a projection of your mind, so how can anything else exist? By doubting your own existence you are in fact proving that an \"I\" exists to doubt it. You think, therefore you are. I hope that wasn't shitty"
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3tt6xt | how does reading help you write better? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3tt6xt/elif_how_does_reading_help_you_write_better/ | {
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"AS a person whos English is second language, reading anything in English, increases my knowledge of language. I learn new words, new sentence structures. And in general how to write like an adult without using, lol, lmao, etc.",
"It exposes you to new words, new turn of phrases, and expands your horizons. A good writer has to be a voracious reader."
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1s2u6j | how bad was body odor back in the day? roman times, ancient china, colonial americas, medieval europe, egypt, etc. if we truly could time travel, would the funky bo be a deal breaker for some ages? | Just how intense was body odor back in the day. I know this is gonna be a broad question with many variables at times, but I get the feeling that there's a general rule of thumb for each era. I've been told that many Ancient Romans bathed, along with the Chinese and Japanese. However, I've also been told that medieval Europeans, for the most part, along with many colonial Americans stank intensely and rarely bathed.
I wonder all of this because I see people dream of traveling back in time, and I always wonder how bad the BO stank would be once you arrived. I guess in certains times and locales, it could be quite bad, if not nauseating. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1s2u6j/eli5_how_bad_was_body_odor_back_in_the_day_roman/ | {
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"I always ask why certain people always have the stankiest BO, and if they notice that they stank so much.\nA lot of people say that they probably are used to the smell and don't notice it anymore.\nI don't want to believe that. But it sounds plausible, I guess.",
"Yes. BO was a huge issue in olden times. It could become worse depending on the area you lived in and the age.\n\nThere were periods when the nobility didn't bathe at all and only disguised their smell with perfume. There were also regions in the north, like say Siberia, where people would only bathe a single time in their life at their birth. Because getting wet could mean death at those latitudes.",
"I have no sources to back this up available, and much of what I have learned is through bits and pieces of books and movies and my study of medieval (European) history, so it may wrong, partially true, or completely false in some areas, but here we go:\n\nBathing and cleanliness mostly depended on your social status. People didn't recognize the importance of cleanliness and it was seen as something only the rich could afford/need/want. The wealthy could certainly afford baths, most with water heated elsewhere and brought to your tub. Soap may or may not have been available, depending on your wealth. It was a harsh product made of lye which basically sloughed your skin off. Perfumes and other 'tinctures' to help with your odour were pretty much non-existant, however cerain herbs could be used (rose petals, for example) in the bathwater or rubbed on the body to try and mask your scent.\n\nOf course if you were poor you worked, and if you work you sweat. If you were fortunate enough to be near a source of water you may have bathed occasionally, but for the most part in the dark ages & medieval periods you just sucked it up, because you were going to get dirty again soon enough, and there wasn't really any importance to being clean, short of a special occasion (weddings for example). Also sweat and natural body oils could help insulate your body against rain and weather to a certain degree. \n\nDepending on your wealth, you probably didn't have too many changes of clothes. This meant that you re-wore your clothes until they were falling apart, and even then you just stitched and patched them together. Washing your clothes was a rare luxury because it tended to wear them out faster.\n\nThese problems compound themselves in towns and cities, where many people lived together. [Chamber pots](_URL_0_) were the common method of household defecation, and this \"night soil\" was often just tossed into the street. The \"streets\" of most villages and towns was little more than well packed dirt, so when it rained whole streets turned to sloppy mud. That being said, the rain was usually a godsend because it helped wash away the rampant filth.\n\n**TL;DR** Although never having time-travelled to the past, it is my understanding that most of Dark Age & Medieval Europe was a disgusting, filthy, unsanitary place where a person could not get clean. If time travel was possible, you'd probably get a dozen diseases just from falling in the mud. On the plus side, if you have European ancestry, you'd probably have some resistance to the Black Death, which swept through Medieval Europe's disgusting living conditions specifically because of how they were.",
"Although hygiene didn't compare to today, it wasn't completely unheard of, as other replies might suggest. The Romans were well known for building baths, for example.\n\nAccording to [this website](_URL_0_):\n\n > Archaeologists are often surprised by so many evidences of ancient cleanliness. Findings indicate systems of terra-cotta plumbing, with bathtubs made for royalty that look about the same as today's. The rich and powerful of three thousand years ago even enjoyed toilets that flushed with a controlled rush of rainwater. The Bible makes clear that if you wash someone's feet-and, if you're a woman, dry them with your hair-you've humbled yourself in a suitably Christian way. But the long tradition of sybaritic Roman bathing was enough to put baths into disrepute among early Christians. Only the monks kept the idea alive during the Dark Ages.\n\n > Monasteries often had communal baths, much simplified versions of Roman ones, with warmed water to make life a little more bearable for good monks, and cold to chill off naughty ones. Ordinary, unsanctified people had few chances for bathing, but at least the concept of large, public baths survived for a time in Europe. Fear of catching the Black Death, along with a growing shortage of wood for heating water, virtually ended public bathing. For a couple of centuries, common folk remained the great unwashed.\n\n > But such uncommon folk as kings and popes fared better. In the sixteenth century, Pope Clement VII, a Medici, could revel in a marble bath with many of the features found in ancient Rome-hot and cold water, for example. And in England, Elizabeth I, after whom Virginia was named, found a bath befitting to a virgin queen and took to it once a month \"whether she need it or no.\"",
"You should check out the documentary 'filthy cities'. They show the conditions in medieval London, New York during the industrial Revolution and Paris in the 1700. I would not recommend watching it at dinner time.",
"Uh there are still plenty of places with smelly people. Go to a large city in India. You will smell a shit ton of BO",
"After living in third world countries without the capacity for the kind of sanitation that we enjoy I can tell you that you will not notice your own smell within a few days. You will smell bad to the locals after taking a shower or shaving, it has been described to me as a chemical smell and they can detect it from several meters away.\nThey tend to wear heavier, musky perfumes that tend toward the sweet, even among men. Even after you get used to the smell of the place they will still smell slightly sour and acidic to you after strenuous work.",
"I did a paper in college on how un-romantic the reality would have been during all the romantic tales from olden times. One thing I discovered in my research was that women commonly used sheep's fat on their faces the way modern women use powder or foundation. I bet that smelled nice.",
"[The Dirt on Clean](_URL_0_) addresses this question first and very simply. A great read. To summarize:\n\n*Of course* there was body odor. But expectations for cleanliness were different (and have changed over the centuries, and are still changing). The most plausible explanation for the *stank* is that we simply don't notice unpleasant smells after prolonged exposure, the same way we don't really feel our clothing most of the time (until we think about it at least). Also, there were a lot of other competing smells--livestock, cooking food, fire, sewage--that made life in general a lot more nasally interesting. \n\nIf we walked outside and it was suddenly downtown Boston or London in, say, the summer of 1800, yeah, *we* would notice the stink with our modern, sensitive noses. You would stop noticing it after a week or so, and then you would only notice nuanced changes in aroma (like how your friends' houses all smell different). \n\nAshenberg has some amazing accounts of hygiene in her book, some of my favorites are the detailed bathing rituals of the Greeks (they bathed for hours every day and scraped their skin with strigils and oil and salt, and brushed their teeth with pine needles), Napoleon's (IIRC) preference for his lover not to bathe (because he liked the way she smelled...you know...down there), and the medieval/middle-ages \"shower\": changing one's undershirt and, optionally, gently patting the face with water (that's it). She found one account of a nobleman who didn't change his undershirt for a year, and when he did so, his skin came with it. \n\nAt the turn of the century (1900) a bath was maybe a once-every-two-weeks occurrence (maybe even once a month), and it then turned into a once a week occurrence (signaling a shift to indoor working environments). The once-a-week bath was seen by many as excessive (and IIRC, there was some social stigma associated with it). The fact that many people today shower once or twice a day is evidence of our economic prosperity and cultural \"sophistication\" (like the Greeks). Our further desire to hide and mask even the slightest personal odors demonstrates how sanitized our aromatic atmosphere really is. Even the *slightest* offenses stand out today. \n ",
"Body odor actually isn't as big of a problem as people think. Sweat is created from two different glands in your body called eccrine and apocrine. Eccrine glands are all over your body while apocrine glands are found on hairy places. When we sweat from heat, it is the eccrine glands that release fluid to cool us down. This fluid is mainly water and salt and has little to no odor. The other gland apocrine mainly produces fluid when you are stressed. This stress sweat is what makes a person smell. So most people in ancient times would not have to worry about body odor since most of their body odor would actually be odorless.\n\nAnother misconception we have is that people smelled worse the longer they did not bathe. Nowadays, most of the smell humans have after not bathing comes from the fact that they used soap to bathe. Soap not only washes away dirt and grime accumulating on our skin, it also eliminates the layer of oil and bacteria that protects our skin. When our protection is removed, other bacteria and fungus take its place and these microbes react with our body and cause odors. So a person must wash again the next day to remove that layer of new microbes.\n\nSo in ancient times a person's body odor was not as bad as we think and not as large of a problem to other people.\n\nSources:\n_URL_1_\n_URL_3_\n\nIf you want to read some interesting things about bacteria and body odor, you can look at these as well. _URL_2_ This is just a cracked article that explains how B.O. became a big deal. _URL_0_ This is a manga about a man who can see bacteria, it contains a lot of explanations about how our body works with bacteria.",
"I had a friend who regularly didn't bathe regularly - but ate healthly. He did smell different, but not offensive. And it seriously pulled in the ladies. No lie, he had girls dating him specifically for his scent. Rather primal, actually.",
"Vikings took a bath once a week. They were the most clean nonstinking axeslaying people of their time. ",
"I read somewhere (i think it was on cracked, so someone will probably disprove it) that BO wasn't much of an issue until someone wanted to sell more deodorants and started making ads about how people talk behind your back about how you smell and everyone became self-conscious and started buying more deodorants."
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"http://www.mangareader.net/409/moyashimon.html",
"http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/sweating-and-body-odor/DS00305/DSECTION=causes",
"http://www.cracked.com/article_20324_5-basic-facts-life-were-made-up-by-marketing-campaigns.html",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skin_flora"
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2ec0q4 | hydrogen peroxide for first aid. how does it work and what is the mechanism of action? | Why do we use peroxide and what exactly does it do? How does it work? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2ec0q4/eli5_hydrogen_peroxide_for_first_aid_how_does_it/ | {
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"Hydrogen Peroxide (H2O2) decomposes into oxygen and water, creating highly reactive **free radical oxygen** species (Oxygen with an unpaired electron) in the process. These radicals oxidize organic compounds, effectively destroying cells. **Reactive Oxygen species**, compounds capable of forming Oxygen radicals, are a natural by-product of aerobic respiration, so our cells have enzymes to contain them. ROS's are used by the cells of the immune system as an antimicrobial defense: note that they use extremely small doses, as ROS damage can easily occur in host and pathogen cells alike.\n\nAs far as using it to clean wounds, **don't**. We now know that it doesn't selectively kill pathogens: it may damage human tissue as well, slowing the healing process and causing scars. Plus it has little to no demonstrated efficacy in reducing bacterial counts in the wound. It certainly *looks* like it's doing something, but that's mostly the H2O2 decomposing into O2 bubbles in H2O.\n\nEdit- Proper care at home for cuts and scrapes: Use tweezers sterilized with alcohol to remove any debris. Use soap and water, or a saline solution, to flush the wound for 5-10 minutes. Apply petroleum jelly, cover with band-aid. Change the band-aid daily, while applying more jelly. Do not let it \"air out\", that's another medical myth that will slow healing and increase scarring. Keep it covered, keep it moist. And don't pick at the scab. If you are at all concerned about the size or location of a wound, it won't stop bleeding, or you start to notice pus during the healing process, see a doctor immediately. And get a tetanus booster every 5 years. \n\nDon't pour rubbing alcohol into the wound, either. That's painful and counterproductive.",
"What the hell is up with this place, I go on here to try and *understand* stuff that I didn't before, and all I can see is explanations that would make sense to a god damn chemist and pretty much no one else.",
"I'd only use it to clean clothing of fresh blood. Other than that, listen to /u/something_sticky about H²O² ",
"I was under the impression that it was used on wounds to remove any foreign material. Like if I was hiking and somehow got cut by a dirty piece of wood then I'd wash it, but also use hydrogen peroxide to flush out any dirt particles.",
"Hydrogen peroxide is an \"oxidizing agent\". Its molecule contains 2 Hydrogen, 2 Oxygen. It breaks down to water, after it gives up the extra oxygen atom in the molecule.\n\nDepending on the concentration, it is slightly to extremely corrosive.\n\nIn apothecary (health care) use, it is used as an antiseptic agent (something that kills bacteria) and as an oral debridement agent (something that helps get foreign matter out of cuts and cavities in the mouth and throat, including tonsils). When it comes in contact with a readily oxidative material (one which oxidizes easily, such as lymph or blood), it generates bubbles. This, along with its normal mechanism of oxidizing surfaces it comes in contact with, creates forces that can help dislodge foreign objects. This is the primary reason why it's useful in immediate first aid after a scrape that picks up dirt or pebbles. The downside is, it kills both bacterial and body cells indiscriminately, which promotes scar formation and takes more energy and nutrition to heal.\n\nIn food preparation (more accurately, food ingredient preparation), it is used as a bleaching agent, an antimicrobial agent, an oxidizing and reducing agent, and to reduce or remove sulfur dioxide. This use is regulated in US by the Food and Drug Administration, under 21 CFR 184.1366.\n\nFor home usage, it can be used as bleach instead of sodium hypochlorite (chlorine bleach). It can also be used as an agent to remove the smell of excess bleach left on clothing, or to neutralize chlorine bleach if it is spilled. Note two things for this use, however. First, this neutralization will warm the area of the chemical reaction up a bit (it is an exothermic reaction). Second, it will release some chloramines into the air, so make sure the area is well-ventilated and do not breathe the fumes. It can be very helpful if you inadvertently spill full-strength chlorine bleach on your laundry, however. It can also be useful (in smaller amounts, such as with a spray bottle) to remove the chloramine smell from bleached clothes.\n\nIn beauty, it is used as part of hair bleaches and hair dyes.\n\n3% hydrogen peroxide, most often available at supermarkets and drug stores, is appropriate for apothecary and home usage.\n\nI have seen beauty-grade hydrogen peroxide at a concentration of 7%. I can tell you from my own experience that this concentration is corrosive to intact skin, and is not something you want to touch with your bare hands. (I did bleach my hair for a little while. I didn't bleach it for longer than that, because of this issue.)\n\nFood-grade hydrogen peroxide has concentrations up to 35%, and is used to clean fruits and vegetables before distribution to supermarkets. These concentrations require safety equipment when handling, until they are mixed down and diluted.\n\nConcentrations upwards of 52% require a Danger placard."
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3hrapg | why are things that humans make considered artificial, and not natural? for example, a beaver builds a dam, and its considered natural. humans make food with materials that they made from natural resources but it would be considered artificial. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3hrapg/eli5_why_are_things_that_humans_make_considered/ | {
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"This is because of their very definitions. Artificial does not mean fake, it means the item was something that was made by human skill. As opposed to natural which means something that was created by nature - Eg. created by something other than human skill. \n\nThis is a case of words having different interpreted meaning than the ones that are given to them. (Textbook definition vs Application of the word.)",
"/u/f_on_flash's explanation is spot on.\n\nI would posit that since humans are a product of nature, anything that is a product of humans is also natural. The distinction between natural and artificial is itself artificial.\n\nThe danger in dividing things into these two camps is that the artificial side contains things that are beneficial and benevolent and things that are harmful and threatening. We tend to focus on the harmful things and lump all things artificial with those. We should remember that nature on its own kills many people and other living creatures, produces the world's deadliest toxins, and can leave wide bands of destruction in its path.\n\nArtificial (made by humans) doesn’t necessarily mean inferior or more dangerous than natural."
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4y2pzt | for a human, when is the period of most rapid development in the brain? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4y2pzt/eli5for_a_human_when_is_the_period_of_most_rapid/ | {
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"Not counting *in utero* growth of the brain, yes, the brain develops most rapidly in the first 3 years of life.\n\nDevelopment doesn't mean growth in mass alone, however. It also means refining neural connections, which also means that some connections are lost in a process called [neural pruning](_URL_0_). This is necessary to prevent parts of the brain from cross-talking with parts of the brain that it shouldn't. For example, you wouldn't want your muscles to go into seizure upon one of your senses being stimulated, but this is a possible problem that can arise with improper neural pruning."
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d73r0j | how do they get fizzy drinks inside cans? | It just seems impossible since you need to open an airtight can to get it out, so how did it get in there? :/ | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/d73r0j/eli5_how_do_they_get_fizzy_drinks_inside_cans/ | {
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"Have the can with the top not on, pour in fizzy drink, immediately seal it with the top. Very little space left inside the can to let the fizz escape from the liquid. The small amount that does pressurizes the can, ensuring more cannot escape."
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3niewu | how does an external battery pack continue to charge my phone when bot my phone and the pack have the same level of charge. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3niewu/eli5_how_does_an_external_battery_pack_continue/ | {
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"Say you have a 2 liter bottle and a 20 oz bottle, although both may be at 50 percent capacity, the 2 liter still has more in it."
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2wyjul | why do humans like/dislike different food if we're all hardwired to only want energy? | Like why would someone dislike a chocolate bar even though its packed with energy? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2wyjul/eli5_why_do_humans_likedislike_different_food_if/ | {
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"Some foods have more readily available energy. Glucose (sugar) tastes good and we crave it because our bodies can quickly convert it into energy. It is not as easily available in our evolutionary past. Densely caloric foods like cheeseburgers we crave because they have a lot of energy in them. Also we need a variety of nutrients to function. We crave salt because it is not readily available in the wild. We need protein, carbs, fats, vitamins and minerals to function. We don't crave celery because it has negative calories and takes a lot of work to eat and digest (though it has nutrients).",
"While our bodies (on a cellular level) view food as energy and nothing more, our brains view it as much more. The chemicals in, let's say a chocolate bar, come into contact with the receptors on your tongue and send a signal to your brain and your brain perceives the chocolate bar as tasty or yucky. Taste is just a perception though, so in the event of starvation our brain doesn't care if the food tastes good or bad it will still send a signal back telling you to eat the food."
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9zf33p | how can an original gameboy that has been sitting in storage for 6 years still have a full battery charge, while my old cell phone's battery is dead after a couple months? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9zf33p/eli5_how_can_an_original_gameboy_that_has_been/ | {
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"Phones use lithium batteries. Lithium batteries are terrible. AA batteries last 30+ years without being touched",
"Rechargeable Li-Ion batteries generally have a relatively high self-discharge rate. The battery protection circuit and the phone’s clock also consume some power.\n\nWith the gameboy there are good chances that it’s completely off when turned off and there are non-rechargeable batteries with very low self-discharge.",
"Besides the type of battery, your phone still uses power to keep track of the date and such. "
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367706 | how is bill cosby just going around the country performing stand up? if 34 people accused someone of rape in any other profession, they would not be performing their normal job. | At the least, how is he not just holed up in his house being forced to stay off stage and out of the public eye?
Edit-37 accusers. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/367706/eli5how_is_bill_cosby_just_going_around_the/ | {
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"Because they are nothing more than accusations. If there is a point where there is law enforcement involvement, then his movements might be restricted.",
"Because he still has tours to do and people still want to watch him. The accusations are nothing more than that, accusations. ",
"Actually there are over 40 accusations. It's because if he does that he looks even more guilty. He hasn't been convicted yet. Any lawyer would advise you to just continue going about your business.",
"A lot of people here are saying it's just accusations and implying innocent until proven guilty and that that should be enough. If he had a different job, you're right, that many people accusing him of something he wouldn't be going to a job any more. George Zimmerman was kicked out of school because he was a distraction. People get fired for posts they make on Facebook that causes a big reaction even though it's not illegal. \nAnyways, now to the answer. Because he's a famous entertainer. Enough people get something out of seeing him that even if people picket his events or get in to heckle him, people will still say,\"nothing's been proven, I want to see him\" and he'll still make a living. That's all it is. At a regular job if someone becomes a disturbance over accusations the business will lose money because not enough people will give money to the business in the general support of \"innocent until proven guilty\". Famous entertainers can weather the storm. They may take a small hit, but enough people will support them that it's still worth it to other people to let them perform. Boxers and actors allegedly beat their wives, singers allegedly molest little boys, actors go on racist drunken rants. But enough people just don't care enough that it makes up for the people that do care.",
"People are still paying to see him perform. Promoters are still putting on shows. Venues still welcome him. So he just does what he does. "
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1omxbb | if someone 'objects' during a wedding ceremony, what happens next? | I've always wanted to know this, and Google is throwing up mixed answers. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1omxbb/eli5if_someone_objects_during_a_wedding_ceremony/ | {
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"Surely it depends on what the objection is. If it is someone with an actual legal reason why they can't be married, then they can't be married!",
"Everyone gasps at the shocking breach of decorum, and the objector is not invited to future weddings.\n\nThere is no legal consequence, and the priest/judge/rabbi has no requirement to listen to the disruptor. A wedding can proceed after any objection or other outburst, provided that the bride and groom and officiator still want the marriage to proceed. If one of them changes their mind as a result of the objection, obviously it is not going to happen that day.",
"This kind of reminds me of that Valentine's Day that I spent single, looking up \"rejected proposals\" on youtube. I was in a dark place at the time...",
"In order to be legally married, you typically need a license signed by the bride, groom, officiant, and two witnesses.\n\nThe objection itself would have no legal weight, and the wedding could proceed normally. But if the objector was able to convince one of those 5 people not to sign the license, and no replacements could be found, the marriage would not occur at that time. ",
"The groomsmen remove the asshole and the wedding continues.",
"We don't even get the question anymore here in Brazil.\nEdit: Unless it's a soap opera wedding.",
"I've yet to be at a wedding where that question is even asked, and I've been to say 15 or so weddings, so I know what I'm talking about ;). Majority of them have been in a Catholic church and some were on site and administered by Rabbi / Priest / Justice of the Peace.",
"The groomsmen draw their swords and chase the objector from the premises.",
"Went to my wife's friend's mother's second wedding. Her grandmother (mother of bride) shouted \"I do!\" in response to the question, then turned to us and cackled. People just ignored her. She then spent the rest of the wedding trying to give me $20. I had never met this woman before, but I hope I meet her again. ",
"The bride murders them?",
"I would imagine the airing of grievances, and possibly feats of strength would follow, naturally... ",
"So I'm curious as to sources of information for this one. I attended a wedding in June and had the same question so I asked the non-denominational officiate of the wedding. She had said that should someone object with a \"qualified objection' (i.e. one party was already married or isn't the person they say they are via fraud), that they would actually have to stop the ceremony since the license had not previously been signed.\n\nStop the wedding and investigate that is, not just kill the whole process. Also this is the reason that a lot of time the question isn't even asked anymore, According to the officiate",
"UK here. \n\nBefore any wedding, you have to inform the local registrar (the person responsible for the legal side of the wedding/marriage) that you intend to marry, along with proof that you are free to do so (for example, a Decree Absolut in the case of a divorcee). Your names and your intention to marry are then posted publicly in the local council office for 15 days prior to your wedding day, during which time *anyone* can object (or 'register a caveat') by filling in the appropriate paperwork.\n\nAssuming no-one does, the ceremony will continue as planned. \n\nDuring the wedding itself, the [Banns of Marriage](_URL_0_) will be proclaimed, giving anyone who 'knows of any lawful impediment' a final opportunity to object to the marriage. (note: while standing up & dramatically stating \"because *I'M* in love with her!!\" does not a 'lawful impediment' make, it's the last chance that anyone has to object, so if someone's gonna do it, they'll do it at this point!)\n\nIf the marriage is objected to on legal grounds, everything stops while the registrar, bride, and groom can clarify the details of the objection. Assuming the objection is found to be legitimate, the ceremony can no longer legally be allowed to continue; that is to say, the wedding cannot proceed. I imagine at this point that most people start tucking into the free bar.\n\nIf the objection is purely emotional, I guess it's up to bride & groom. If s/he suddenly changes their mind & wants to abandon the wedding, I guess that's what happens. Otherwise they'll have the ushers evict the trouble-maker, and carry on with their perfect day as if nothing had happened."
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tpvo6 | why we should shut down things like computers and gaming consoles instead of just unplugging them. | I always shut down my various machines, and I was just wondering exactly why this is better than just turning them off at the plug. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/tpvo6/eli5_why_we_should_shut_down_things_like/ | {
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"It's to avoid corrupting your data. If the computer is accessing something at the instant it loses power then you may find that certain files don't work when you turn it on again. If it's rewriting your registry or something, it can screw things up quite badly, even if most of the time it won't be a problem.",
"Like you're five? The same reason you brake a bike to a stop before you hop off.",
"The computer does many things when you shut down. This post is going to cover as many as I can think of.\n\nOne of the simplest and most important has to do with memory. The computer has to insure that anything that needs to be written to disk, is written to disk. If you don't do this, you could end up with corrupt or invalid files. If you want more detail than that, you're going to have to take a few years of computer science at a college level.\n\nYour computer also runs some updates that cannot be run during operation, either because they directly involve the kernal, or a critical part of run time operations. Usually if your PC is taking forever to shut down, it's because these updates either a) take long or b) have messed up. Sometimes this can cause your PC to hang during shutdown.\n\nAnother thing your computer is doing is prepping itself for the next boot cycle. People like operating systems that can start really fast. So a way to get a computer to do this is to prepare a boot sector with information about what your computer tends to do on boot. Often the changes here are small ones. Information about what was used, how it was used, and what problems occurred are stored here.\n\nLike I started to say with the last point, flags are set depending on problems your computer might have had during its last runtime. If you notice windows always has to \"un-set\" a flag that tells the PC to run chkdsk (check disk) on boot. This is because if your computer experiences a hard shutdown, you might have invalid files on disk. So your computer has to run the check disk operation. This flag is set to true on boot, and during a proper shutdown is set to false. There are many such flags.\n\nIf you have a RAID array, a proper shutdown is very important. RAID arrays, especially ones that require parity calculations (i.e. RAID 5) write to disk very slowly. To compensate for this DMA, or Direct Memory Access, is heavily utilized. This isn't the only time when DMA is used, but it is much greater than other instances. So when you copy a file onto your RAID 5 array, it doesn't directly move into the RAID array. Instead it is moved into system RAM, or a RAM module on your RAID chipset. Once it has been moved here, the RAID Chipset microprocessor will begin to move it to disk, performing the parity calculations for each individual bit. Even though the file has appeared to the user as being moved, it might not actually be valid on the disk yet. (Same explanation for the first point) When you do a regular shutdown of the PC, the computer will wait for the parity calculations to complete. If you perform a hard shutdown, the RAM will loose power and all the data that was still being moved to the RAID array will be lost. You'll often notice that expensive RAID cards (i.e. Intel) will come with an optional battery to keep the on-board RAM module powered in case of a hard shutdown. Your every-day home computer doesn't have this battery, and if you force a shutdown you'll loose the data.\n\nYour computer will not shut down until all processes have terminated, and given their termination codes. Basically telling the OS that they have terminated with such and such final state. This is why sometimes your computer won't shut down until you've saved a document, or answered a prompt. A soft shutdown has a lower interrupt priority than some of these prompts. So the processes will wait until these prompts have been answered, before tending to the interrupt from the OS.\n\nThe last things I can think of are all small housecleaning tasks. Update the registry, change values in whatever system records system is being used.\n\nThat's pretty much all I can think of.\n\ntl;dr The majority of what it's waiting for is memory to be validated, and updates.\n\nEDIT: I'm clearing up some cases where the word \"memory\" is ambiguous. Specifically memory refers to the address space of a computer, which has boiled down to RAM. But it can be widely generalized as any data on a computer. One has to remember that a CPU does not understand the difference between memory on RAM, and memory on the hard drive. To the CPU, it's all virtual addressing. So yes, I'll clear it up, but my use of memory was not wrong.\n\nThis was stolen from r/buildapc. Username: Armestam"
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2j67pq | if we can use the rectum for effectively absorbing suppositories, how come we don't get blood poisoning from all the bacteria and waste minerals in our faeces? | It doesn't make sense to me. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2j67pq/eli5_if_we_can_use_the_rectum_for_effectively/ | {
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"Just taking a wild guess, but maybe the bacteria are too large to pass through the intestinal wall and into the bloodstream?",
"Our digestive tract has a pretty strong barrier (lots of IgA antibodies that act like a web to trap) that prevents bacteria from crossing into the blood. Bacteria (or viruses) have to pass either between or through epithelial cells in order to enter the blood. There are numerous immune cells present to prevent this from happening. Drugs that are absorbed in the intestines are generally lipophilic (fat-loving) and can cross the fatty cell membranes of epithelial cells (think about \"like dissolves like\") and get into blood.\n\nThis is a gross oversimplification, if you want more detail just message me!",
"Our intestines make mucus, a kind of snot that pushes bacteria off the walls but helpful nutrients, medicine and water can just float through. The mucus is quite thick at the outside near our cells and thinner toward the middle where the food/poo is. It also has some anti bacterial chemicals to keep the bacteria in the middle of the tube where they belong.\n\n We do exchange minerals with the contents of the intestine, both absorbing from and loss into the gut contents. Some cells have pumps for them that switch on and off as needed to maintain balance and harvest nutrients... But our bodies 'chemical waste' goes out mostly in pee. We make IgA in our gut, a very clever substance tailored by our bodies to stick to bacteria. IgA 'muzzles' bacteria, stopping it attaching to our gut cells and marking it as dangerous if it does get free into our bodies. It's even in breast milk so a baby is protected before their immune system 'learns the pattern' on the bacteria and can make its own!\n\nWe need the bacteria in our guts, they are very helpful. They make 10% of our energy (80% if you are a cow) and our vitamin K and train our immune system..... Our bodies don't want to kill them all, just to make sure they behave well.",
"What about when you have bleeding hemorrhoids? Wouldn't the bloodstream's direct exposure to poop lead to sepsis? My . . . uh . . . friend wants to know. ",
"I know [I've mentioned this on ELI5 before](_URL_0_), but the [epithelial cells lining of your colon](_URL_2_) evolved to absorb water from your poop, in order to prevent dehydration. Things that are water soluble can be absorbed through that same lining. That includes suppositories [and alcohol](_URL_1_). (Don't try this at home, it's *extremely* dangerous)\n\nBacteria and waste are much bigger so they can't be absorbed this way. \n\nJust to give a simple example, imagine if you have a bunch of grapes in water. You can pour the grape/water mixture into a strainer, and the water flows through through while the grapes don't. Voila, they are seperated. Now, imagine trying to separate a mixture of apples and grapes using a strainer. It won't work because they're both too big to fit through the strainer holes. \n",
"No, no-- please, don't do this. I'm pooping right now and, truthfully, I don't want to be afraid that pooping might kill me.\n\nPlease, have mercy.",
"The basic answer to this is that all of our cells have something called a semi-permeable membrane. What this means is that there is a hydrophobic (doesn't like water) end and hydrophilic (likes water) end, with proteins, carbohydrates, a ton of stuff that make up the cell wall. Think of this like a giant, circular wall that protects a castle inside, and the castle is all the stuff in your cell. \n\nOur cell walls will only let certain things into them (through passive & active mechanisms. I won't go into details). Basically it depends on the size, the chemical composition, pH, etc.. And when it comes to materials that would not normally be let into the cell (such as bacteria), it is up to the proteins embedded in the cell to let particular things inside. Think of this like the guards on the top of the wall, allowing the gate to open for the people THEY deem 'fit' to come into the castle, based on the needs of the king (or your DNA). \n\nYour body (rectum included) is made up of billions upon billions upon billions of cells, so imagine that each cell is a castle with its huge wall, all working together with each other to achieve the same goal. \n\nWhen it comes to minerals and things excreted in our feces, the body will reabsorb nutrients that it feels it needs to maintain equilibrium, or the 'balance' of our body. Think of it this way: your castle receives a bunch of archers so you have an over-abundance of them and don't need as many, so you go to send some of them out. All of a sudden your castle is attacked and a bunch of archers inside the castle are killed. Now, just when you were about to send out the excess amount of archers, you bring them back to protect the castle because you need more- you've used up your storage of archers. Your body has used up your storage of nutrients and it is easier for it to get it from the archers leaving, rather than bring in a whole new set of archers from somewhere else (aka wait for digestion of more food)\n\nThe reason your body absorbs suppositories is because they are made up of chemical compounds that are easily absorbed into your cells. Think of these like noblemen who go in and visit the castle. They basically have 'permission' (aka, they're small enough, have the correct pH, ionic charge, or chemical affinity) to go into the castle as they please. It's fine for your body to have a certain amount of these chemicals- but rectal medications must be closely watched/calculated, because it is very easy to for them to access your blood. Think of it like this: it will take longer for the noblemen to come in through the front of the castle, especially if they have to walk across a huge field to get there & be checked by the guards along the way (aka, going down through the digestive tract), than it is for them to sneak through the back door of the castle (no pun intended) unnoticed where there are less guards. \n\nThough there is much more involved in this process, I hope my simplified explanation helps you understand the concept. ",
"Drugs are tiny and specifically designed to be easy to absorb. Even most molecules similar size won't pass through.\n\nViruses are huge. Bacteria are just ridiculously massive and have to pretty much actively attack your system to get through it.",
"This question has literally been asked and answered a few weeks ago. ",
"ELI5 why someone would spell it \"faeces\" if they can't do the connected A/E thing. ",
"What in the hell I posted this question two weeks ago and it was downvoted into nothingness"
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2g05x7 | on to catch a predator, what crime are those guys committing? | They *thought* they were talking to a 13 year old girl, but they were talking to an adult pretending to be a 13 year old girl. Isn't that just roleplay? There were no kids involved, but there are cops and those guys get arrested.
If they said "I thought we were roleplaying, I never expected her to *actually* be 13" would they just be off the hook? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2g05x7/eli5_on_to_catch_a_predator_what_crime_are_those/ | {
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"That's up for a jury to decide. Any crime which you intend to do can be followed up with that, and yet attempted assassins still end up in jail. \"I wasn't actually intended to shoot the mayor, I was just roleplaying with the gun dealer (undercover cop) for fun\". ",
"This is very dependant on what law they are prosecuting the person under. In some cases, the accused has brought precisely this defense, that it was impossible for them to have solicited a minor because the other person was not, in fact, a minor.\n\nSome courts (but not all) have held that as long as the person believed they were soliciting the minor, and as long as they took some affirmative step towards committing the offense (e.g. driving to the house), then they have committed the crime even if the person turns out not to be a minor.",
"No because in many states including California and Texas where most of the show was shot, it is illegal to chat with someone online with the intent of soliciting sex from a minor whether or not a minor was involved (the law in Texas goes as far to state, \"It is not a credible defense if a minor was not involved, nor is it credible if no sex act occurred\"). As far as role play, you would have to have undoubtable proof that you knew the person you were talking to was above the age of 18 and you specify you want to roleplay.\n\nNow here's the complicated part. Though no minor was involved and no sex act occurred, it falls under something called RES IPSUM LOQUITUR (the action speaks for itself) which shows the intent to commit a crime. The easiest way to explain RIL is if a man has a bag of garbage and he is walking to a dumpster it can be easily and undoubtably assumed that he is going to throw the garbage in the dumpster. In this way if a man knowingly leaves to visit a minor (or who he believes to be a minor) after speaking with them about wanting to have sex with them the action speaks for itself when they show up.\n\nTL;DR yes they did commit a crime because their leading actions and intent both suffice the crime.",
"It works the same way as buying fake drugs or hiring a fake hitman or prostitute. Intent to commit and belief you were committing an illegal act is sufficient to be guilty, even if it would not be possible for you to actually commit it.\n\nAlso, just because an excuse is technically possible doesn't mean it gets you out of the crime. It has to create reasonable doubt in a jury...even if something is possible doesn't mean it is reasonably likely to be true.",
"Watch the show. The charge I hear the most on the show is Attempted lewd act upon a child. Others have to do with sending pornography. And it doesn't matter if there were no kids involved, the decoy in the chatroom posed as and identified as an underage minor. Imagine if it were a real 13 year old. These guys deserved what they got.",
"The actual crime is the intent to solicit a minor for sex, attempted lewd act upon a minor, and in most cases, transmission of harmful material to a minor, i.e. sending pics of their dirty old man dicks.",
"It's all about intent. As soon as those men take a step outside of their house with the *intent* to meet an individual - who has explicitly told them they are under the legal cage of consent - they are *attempting* to commit a crime. Essentially, they're being charged with attempted sexual misconduct/rape. It's the same way that you can be charged with attempted robbery if you get caught \"going equipped\".\n\n\n\n\n",
"Put simply they get charged with the intention to do so. Same thing would happen to somebody who got caught planning a murder and trying to carry it out. Essentially it's the child molester equivalent of attempted murder for murderers. ",
"It stops being 'roleplay' when you show up to someone who's been to you as nothing but a child with a case of beer and condoms.",
"They are not being arrested for talking dirty with kids online. They are being arrested for actually wanting to meet them. To help prosecute it helps to have evidence that the intent of meeting was for sex which is why they always ask for them to bring condoms or other sexual stuff.\n\nThe chat logs clearly show they were not in a role playing room, they clearly stated their age, clearly sent a underage picture of themselves, and most of time even have phone conversations where they again state their age.\n\nIf these guys want to meet teenagers without being potentially arrested, they shouldn't talk dirty and sexual and instead just say they want to 'hang out'. Hell, when I'm hooking up with other adults I've met online I don't even talk that way. I say we should hang out sometime...the other party usually knows that means sex without being crude.",
"When it comes to things like this, it's easy for those caught, and apologists, to say \"Well I didn't do anything!\"\n\nThe thing is, they fully intended to do something.\n\nSo they log into a chat room and start chatting up a person online. \"A/S/L?\" \"13/F/(whatever)\"\n\nIf they were smart, they would stop there, say something like \"I'm not interested, maybe you should chat somewhere else.\" Be responsible.\n\nBut they don't. They keep going. They flirt, they say explicit stuff, and it gets to the point where the 'child' asks them over.\n\nThis is the last chance to get out. He could say 'well this was fun, but I don't want to get in trouble.'\n\nBut they don't. They decide to go over, sometimes with booze (which is also a crime in itself) sometimes with nothing, so when Chris Hansen from NBC Dateline comes up, the ones that come to their senses there go 'Oh crap, I'm in trouble', and then there are the assholes who don't get it, and then get tackled by the police, which is always fun to watch.\n\nWhen they get to that point, it's too late. They lost all the chances and they will be charged, serve their sentence, and pretty much have their life ruined because they're on a list as well as being on NBC Dateline\n\nWhich sucks. A lot. But they deserve it, and imagine if it wasn't NBC they were talking to. What would happen?",
"Most of the dudes agree to have sex with the underage girls, and send nude pics. That's illegal.",
"Using a throwaway for obvious reasons.\n\nI'm a registered sex offender in a north eastern US state. I was caught in a similar sting after chatting with someone online who I believed to be a 15 yr old girl. I attempted to meet her for sex and was arrested, charged with a variety of misdemeanors and felonies, and eventually convicted on a plea of disseminating indecent material to a minor (a felony)\n\nThe legal argument is basically that I was intending to commit a crime and believed I was going to commit that crime. There are entrapment arguments to be made (for instance, if I had never done this with any other girls, so who's to say I didn't believe that this \"person\" was older than they said) but those arguments are weak and while I'm not a lawyer, I know a lot of people in my situation and we all had little hope of overcoming the charges.\n\nIn my personal case, I knew what I was doing. This was but one of a pattern of poor choices I was making in my life up until then. I feel very fortunate to have only spent one night in jail and to have started therapy soon after my arrest (and many months before my conviction). I'll always have a felony and the sex offender registration to deal with, but I was also able to start learning how to make better choices and drastically alter my life for the better.\n\nEdit: I'd be happy to answer any questions about my experiences, including my arrest, prosecution, conviction, and aftermath.",
"Lawyer here. The ~~current~~ former top comment regarding res ipsa loquitur in this thread is wrong. Going to copy/paste my response to it here as well, in hopes people see this and are not misled. \n\nRes ipsa loquitur is a principle of tort law. This is not a concept used in criminal law; it is only used in determining civil liability. For example, if my car rolls down a hill into a building, I could be found liable because the fact that my car shifted out of park shows that I was negligent SOMEHOW. You don't need to pin exactly how - the facts speak for themselves. But tort law is not criminal law. These are separate and distinct areas. This is important to understand.\n\nWhat these people are guilty of is the crime of solicitation. They believed that they were convincing a minor to have sex with them. Actively soliciting someone to commit a crime is a crime itself. Just like if I try and hire a hitman to kill someone. The very act of trying to hire the hitman is a crime - he doesn't have to kill anyone for me to be guilty.\n\n**Edit to try and answer questions regarding entrapment:**\n\nEntrapment laws vary by jurisdiction. I will use the Florida statute here, seeing as the show was filmed here at one point. In Florida, the two elements of entrapment are:\n\n(1) A law enforcement officer, a person engaged in cooperation with a law enforcement officer, or a person acting as an agent of a law enforcement officer perpetrates an entrapment if, for the purpose of obtaining evidence of the commission of a crime, he or she induces or encourages and, as a direct result, causes another person to engage in conduct constituting such crime by employing methods of persuasion or inducement which create a substantial risk that such crime will be committed by a person **other than one who is ready to commit it.**\n\n(2) A person prosecuted for a crime shall be acquitted if the person proves by a preponderance of the evidence that his or her criminal conduct occurred **as a result of an entrapment.** The issue of entrapment shall be tried by the trier of fact.\n\n(Source: _URL_0_)\n\nAs far as I know, prosecutions resulting from To Catch a Predator rely on two things. First, the fact that the law enforcement officers were not the first people to INITIATE contact. Second, seeing as these men often are driving for hours to meet these kids for their sexual encounter, there is a lot of time to change their minds and go home (as opposed to if a cop walks up to you and asks you to buy drugs, which is a much faster decision with less thought behind it). \n\nThe bolded parts of the statute above are important here. Between the time for contemplation and the fact that contact was not first initiated by law enforcement, it becomes difficult for defendants to argue that they were not prepared to commit the crime in the first place, or that the entrapment was the sole reason that the crime was committed. That said, it is relatively murky and there are a lot of attorneys that would agree that the line was crossed, or that it was at least close to being crossed. \n\n**TL;DR: Guilty of solicitation because actively soliciting a crime is a crime itself; not guilty of entrapment because of the way the statute is interpreted.**\n\nEdit for clarity on which comment I meant.\n\nMandatory second edit to thank the kind soul that gave me gold. Much appreciated!",
"The statutes do not care about *actus rea* for these crimes, only *mens rea*. Intent itself is a crime.\n\nIntent has a real legal meaning. It's a lot more than a thought or feeling. you must have taken some kind of action to push toward an agenda to have intent.",
"Soliciting minors for sex. Have you ever watched the show? It stops being harmless role play when they show up at the supposed 13 year old's house with condoms and alcohol.",
"To simply ELI5, -Attempting to have sex with a minor is a criminal offence-\n\nThis is as attempty as it gets. To understand it, you need to understand what intent, entrapment, and conspiring to commit actually mean. All you need to take away from this is don't try to fuck kids.",
"If you thought you were murdering someone but actually they just have you a foam knife, the invention is still the same.\n\nWe don't punish people in revenge for what they caused. We punish puerile to prevent then and others even considering doing it again.",
"I know I'm late to the party but I know someone who was caught in a sting. Just like the show, he found a \"girl\" on line, went to her house, was interviewed, then arrested. He was charged with:\n\nUsing a computer online/internet service to seduce/solicit/lure a child.\nTraveling to meet minor for unlawful sexual contact (child).\nUnlawful use of a two way communications device.\n\nAll various degrees of felony in the state of Florida. Plea of no contest, five years in prison, registered for life, the whole shebang. ",
"I think displaying an intention to solicit or initiate underage sex is a crime in some places. But even with that it always looks like they're walking a fine line with entrapment to me. The show always leave it to the guy to expressly mention a sexual act first though. They haven't shown it in Ireland in a few years.",
"I know in Florida there is a charge of traveling with the intent of having sex with a minor. Once you cross county lines they can hit you with that charge.",
"Soliciting sex from a minor is what they're charged with I believe.\n\n",
"soliciting a minor",
"They mention this, time and time again, on the show.\n\nIn the state they film in (often Florida) it is illegal to use a computer to groom kids for sex. That is the crime they're charged with when they are arrested.\n\nOne guy used the argument \"We were just roleplaying\" when they had the chat logs. He only had confirmation that she was underage. He had no confirmation she was older. All he knew is she was 14 and female. He even asked her if she'd ever turn him in to the cops because of how unbelievably illegal them chatting about sex is.",
"After just about every time they arrest one of the suspects, they tell you what they're being charged with, usually soliciting sex from a minor. Also, you'll notice that the decoys often ask the predators to bring something, usually condoms, food or alcohol. If they do, it helps to show their intent.\n\n-To Catch a Predator Megafan",
"They say it after every guy they catch. \"An attempted lewd act on a child.\"",
"Not a lawyer, but overly qualified.\n\nFirst of all, the undercover people know what needs to be said and done by the suspect to get a guilty plea. They don't bust down the door just because you chatted with a \"13\" yr old. Notice how the underage person is never 16 or 17? There is a reason for that. In most states, the real serious felonies start at contact with a 15 yr old and under. Plus, a jury might be sympathetic to a defendant trying to hook up with a 17 yr old, even in states that are 18 and over. One interesting fact about the online stings is that the undercover operator is considered the victim in court. There's a wide range of charges, anywhere from importuning (asking for sex) to gross sexual imposition. Very often with these cases, the authorities find incriminating pictures on the suspect's computer, which further adds to the charges and giving the prosecution a slam dunk.\n\nThe \"I knew she wasn't really 13\" defense doesn't work in today's legal system. The only way I can foresee a change is if someone puts up a good entrapment defense and brings down the entire house of cards. But for that to happen, you'll need some changes in the Supreme Court. Heavy handed law enforcement is here to stay during our lifetime.",
"They tell you what they are charged with after EVERY segment.",
"soliciting a minor. its that simple",
"the crime is attempting to elicit sexual acts from an underaged child. the people doing the chats make sure its very very obvious to the person that they are actually underaged",
"If you were the dumbest drug dealer in America and you somehow bought a ten pound bag of oregano and someone told you it was Grade A Marijuana then you went to sell it all on the street, you would be charged with selling counterfeit narcotics and dealt with just as if you were selling real narcotics, except you'd be looked at as an idiot by everyone. The kicker is, the person who buys the oregano has not committed a crime, they are also just stupid.\n\nThis kind of rule seems similar to me in the predator case. If a man speaks to someone who he thinks is a 12 year old and solicits her (or him) for sexual activity then the law deals with him as if it were a real 12 year old because that's what he believed. His illegal intent was always there regardless of the persons real age",
"They only mention it about ten times per episode. It's illegal to solicit sex to a minor over the internet, which is what these men thought they were doing."
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40w7qn | i understand "heat" but what creates "coldness"? what makes up the cold waves that i feel when i put my hand near an ice block? | I understand heat is created by moving atoms and molecules, the faster they move the hotter it gets but what about "coldness"? If "coldness" created by atoms and molecules not moving then why do I feel cold waves when i put my hand near an ice block? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/40w7qn/eli5_i_understand_heat_but_what_creates_coldness/ | {
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"The temperature of the ice block affects the air around it.\n\nIt cools the air immediately around it, which makes it more dense, and thus heavier, and it falls to ground. When it does this, it displaces other air.\n\nMeanwhile, more hot air has taken the place of the cold air, which becomes cold and falls.\n\nThis creates a very small current of air around the ice block in very small waves."
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aju7tw | why/how is a 24 mp full frame camera sensor better than a 26 mp aps-c camera sensor | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/aju7tw/eli5_whyhow_is_a_24_mp_full_frame_camera_sensor/ | {
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"Full frame definitely has advantages when using wide lenses and take a wider variety of them. Cropped sensors can distort the imagery with some lenses, but do have other advantages like bieng smaller of course and this cheaper. The MP count is really not that big a deal once you went over 16, there is a point where resolution is kind of maxed out. It really depends what you want to use it for and with what kind of equipment.",
"A \"full frame\" sensor is the \"full\" size of a 35mm film frame while APS-C sensors are smaller, originally shrunk to make compact (film) cameras smaller.\n\nGiven that the pixel count of the sensors are almost the same, the individual sensor elements (think of them as pixels) themselves have to be bigger in the full frame sensor. This means that you get more light per pixel and thus increased sensitivity (less noise or better performance in low light).\n\nThere's no more distortion with cropped sensor cameras as /u/nokvok suggested; the lens projects a circular image on the back of the camera housing. If you put the same lens on a full frame and a cropped sensor camera, the smaller sensor simply sees a smaller portion (in the middle) of the projected image. In fact, you might see MORE distortion with the full frame camera because the edges of the projected image are usually where it shows up the most.",
"There are two big differences you will see between a 24mp full frame and 26mp cropped sensor cameras.\n\nThe first is that the ff camera will have bigger pixels - this means more light hits each individual pixel which makes for better sensitivity and quality.\n\nThe second is that because the sensor is larger, the optics in the lens need to also be larger and the effect of focal length changes slightly - this results in a slightly different perspective to the images on each format, and a slightly different look."
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7gzth5 | why is there no warning light for when your headlights or breaklights are no longer functioning? | I feel like a lot of people get pulled over for that sort of thing bc they just don't realize it was broken in the first place. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7gzth5/eli5_why_is_there_no_warning_light_for_when_your/ | {
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"If a headlight is out, it's usually pretty obvious.\n\nIf a taillight is out, the parking brake indicator usually comes on.",
"Depends on my car, my old VW golf absolutely did give me a light when my license plate was out (actually, shop installed wrong replacement that made it think it was out).\n\nExpensive/newer cars will generally tell you if it's out. Older/cheaper cars frequently do not because it's just a lot of electronics. The right way to check a light is every light needs to be wired individually, then power tested (it needs to use a well known amount of power), this requires electronically switching the light onto the power testing circuit.\n\nThe circuit doing this needs to be able to actually power the light for test, so it can't be just the 1 cent circuits, it's going to be a rather substantial circuit, and it needs to interface with all the switches. In practice, adding the function to the car probably adds a couple dollars to the price which is rather significant.",
"Some of them do warn you about brake lights (my early '90s Honda Accord did). And, as /u/michaelandrewscript said, it's pretty obvious if a headlight is out.",
"In some newer car models, if your indicator is clicking faster than usual, you have a bulb out. Not really an answer to your question but a small tip."
]
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2q7491 | what exactly is happening in your muscles as you get older and sudden vigorous activity makes you much more sore the following day, and the soreness lasts longer. | I'm in my mid 40's and the example I'm thinking of is playing flag football on Thanksgiving. I remember being in my 20's and being sore the day after, but not too bad. Then in my 30's I noticed a big uptick in the level of soreness. Now in my 40's it's almost crippling and lasts several days. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2q7491/eli5_what_exactly_is_happening_in_your_muscles_as/ | {
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"Muscles are tissues. They rip and get repaired. Your cells could only replicate so many times before the process becomes less effective. (Aging)\n\nAs for being sore, the lactic acid your muscles are not being cleared out fast enough as it used to. As you grow older, these processes to regenerate and to repair get slower.\n",
"I'm 69. I was a refrigeration mechanic for much of my adult life, fairly active. After I retired I got into bicycle and did 20 miles a day and loved it. That was in Cal. Now in NH the bike has slipped but I do treadmill twice a day, two miles in 30 minutes. I also work outside any day I can clearing land, felling trees, etc. recently I had to spend five hours shoveling ice and wasn't sore the next day. Keeping active is the best medicine."
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qhnb3 | the point of high fashion | It seems to me that with the exception of Lady Gaga and Katy Perry, no one goes around dressed in some of the crazy things that come down the runway. I know that not all fashion shows are meant to be avant garde and those can translate into something that I would where but what is the point of pretending that these look good? Here is what I am talking about: _URL_0_ | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/qhnb3/eli5_the_point_of_high_fashion/ | {
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"Fashion shows like those are not there to show how you are supposed to wear the clothes, it just shows what the designer's visions and inspirations are. You are supposed to take elements from it and make it work for your everyday wardrobe. For example, no one would wear a tull dress with huge holes in them, but I might wear [this dress](_URL_0_). I don't want to dress like a wizard, but I might wear a cape. I don't want a carousel shaped skirt, but I can wear some carnival prints, etc. ",
"Think of fashion as a chart with form on one end and function on the other. High fashion is much more oriented to form rather than function. On the opposite end of the spectrum, a spacesuit would be much more oriented towards function rather than form. The clothes we wear every day are more centered, maybe with a leaning one way or the other depending on the person's tastes.\n\nSame goes for music.\nForm = Artistic music. Music that's meant to explore emotion and express ourselves.\n\nFunction = Commercial music. Jingles for cereal, smooth jazz on the weather channel, etc.\n\nMiddle = Pop music.\n\nHaute Couture is more of an artform than anything. Fashion is a moving, living, breathing sculpture. You can't wear a Jackson Pollack painting, but you can wear Jean Paul Gaultier.",
"Short answer ? It's art.\n\nWhat's the point in making sculptures, or painting ? It's pretty, and it's a way to express yourself. Some express with clothes."
]
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"http://www.smashinglists.com/20-weirdest-fashion-runway-trends/"
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"http://batchplease.com/a/2011/02/rihanna-carven-cutout-dress.jpg"
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zcrlq | how do radar and sonar work? | I never really understood how radar and sonar work. I think it has something to do with bouncing off of objects. Could someone please explain? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/zcrlq/eli5_how_do_radar_and_sonar_work/ | {
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"You bounce radio waves off of something and they eventually come back, a computer then shows the range, speed, altitude or depth as well as terrain. ",
"Think of spitting down a hole. The longer it takes to hear the splat the deeper the hole is. Sonar is an advanced use of this method, it sends out sound wave and waits to hear them \"hit\" something. Then it calculates how far the object is by how long it took to hear the sound. ",
"Have you ever tried walking through your house in the dark or with your eyes closed? When I do it I reach my arms out and feel around. When my hand touches something I add a point on my mental map of my surroundings, and use the amount my arm is outstretched to indicate how far the point is away from me. As I sweep my arms around I can feel for points in different directions, and start building my mental map in all directions around me.\n\nRadio and sonar work the same way. Sonar uses sound waves and radio uses radio waves, but in both cases the waves are like your arms. The device points in one direction and shoots out a wave. If the wave hits something then it usually bounces off and comes back. The amount of time it takes to come back tells you how far away it is. Now you can add a point to your map. Then you turn the device a bit and fire off another wave and repeat. Eventually you come around full circle and have a full map of your surroundings."
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6it3el | how do snipers make kill shots over 2 miles away? hiw do they correct for all the variables that come into play with a shot that long? | Question inspired by the recent longest confirmed kill by a Canadian sniper. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6it3el/eli5_how_do_snipers_make_kill_shots_over_2_miles/ | {
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"An incredible amount of training, a shitload of experience, and not a small amount of luck, in some cases.\n\nAt that distance, there are so many variables to take into account that they make computer programs to help get the math right. If you look really closely at the movie *Shooter*, in the scene in the beginning where Mark Wahlberg shoots at a can of soup, he has such a computer next to him to help him aim.\n\nIf you really want to learn more about it, several military snipers have written books that speak on their training. *American Sniper*, of course, by Chris Kyle, but you can also read *Shooter* (no connection to the movie) by a Marine sniper named Jack Coughlin, or *The Red Circle* by Brandon Webb, who ran the Navy SEAL Sniper School when Chris Kyle and Marcus Luttrell went through."
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1bxfex | networking: what it is, how to do it, and how to use it. | So I get the general, overarching idea of networking. Know people, get jobs from knowing people.
I know NOTHING past that. NOTHING at all, and given that I know I'm in the perfect position to network, I'd like to know all about it.
And please give a step-by-step on how to do it. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1bxfex/eli5_networking_what_it_is_how_to_do_it_and_how/ | {
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"Keep in mind that many, many people get their jobs or find out about job opportunities from friends, acquaintances and co-workers (rather than things like job postings). One of the goals of networking is to ensure that when someone hears about a job opportunity that might be good for you, they think of you and act upon that thought either by recommending you or letting you know about the job opening. \n \nI'm a professional now working in Silicon Valley. I'd say that of the different jobs I've had in my career (around nine), two-thirds were ones I found out about because someone I knew told me. \n \nIdeally, everyone on Earth should know what a great person you are, what your skills are, what your interests are, what your career goals are, etc. That's of course unrealistic. But the more people who know you, form a positive impression, understand what kinds of thinks you can do and like to do, etc. the better off you are. \n \nIt turns out, over time you'll meet and work with a lot of people. But most of them won't think of you when they hear about a job opportunity...it will have been too long ago for them to think of you, or they don't realize that you can now do that kind of stuff, etc. \n \nSo you want to make them remember you. You can do this by keeping in touch with them, and by helping them in a similar manner. Yep, it works both ways. In fact, one of the absolute **best** ways to make people think of you is to help by letting them know about new jobs or recommending them to hiring managers. They'll not only remember you, they'll feel at least slightly indebted to you, even if they don't get the job. \n \nBut even if you can't help other people find jobs, keep up with them. Send them occasional emails and ask how they are doing. With people you've worked closer with, get together once and a while for a meal or drinks, or call them on the phone and chat a bit. Even people you know slightly from a job you held years and years ago merit an occasional ping....how's the family, gee I'm sorry your team lost in the tournament, whatever. Make sure that they remember you. And if you see a chance to pass their name along for a job, or send them info about an opportunity, seize it. It's a nice thing to do, and it is an investment in your future. \n \nDon't recommend people for jobs that you are sure they would suck at. And personally, I would not try to network with people that I think are jerks. I don't want people to associate me with a jerk, even if there's a possibility that they could help my career. I believe that the negatives outweigh the positives, but others might disagree. \n \nI've focused on the job-finding aspect of networking, but it has lots of other uses too. I have a network of people I go to when I encounter a problem I don't easily know how to solve. Of course, they use me as a similar resource. And you can extend the concept of networking to your social life. The more people who know you and have a positive impression AND remember you, the better chance you have of being invited to parties, being introduced to potential partners, etc. And sometimes personal and professional networks bleed into one another. "
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7t5rej | why do preachers talk the way they do? | Is it something akin to auctioneer's speech, where it is a learned thing among the subculture, or is it unique to the individual preacher? They all sound the same. Is there a reason behind it? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7t5rej/eli5_why_do_preachers_talk_the_way_they_do/ | {
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"It likely comes from the days before microphones. Short sentences, projected voice, and this instilled a style of speaking which has continued due to the organic nature of it.",
"It's generally a \"learned thing among the subculture\" -- different types of church have different styles of preaching.\n\nThe more evangelical denominations encourage their preachers to talk with a sense of urgency, to provoke more of an emotional response. The more traditional denominations are more likely to use intellectual arguments; in very old churches, which are usually big and echo-y, they will talk slowly and clearly at a fairly even volume so that people can understand what they're saying.\n\nIn short, depending on which you church you go to, you're either going to be harangued into petrified submission, or bored to death.",
"That loud, quick manner of speech is usually found in evangelical preachers (Methodists, Baptists, etc), and serves a similar purpose to the voice of an auctioneer: to create a sense of urgency and excitement in the listener. A big part of the Evangelical belief is conversion of outsiders and spreading the faith, so those speech patterns are intended to evoke powerful emotional and excitement responses in the listener. To those already part of the faith, their belief is reinforced by these feelings and they feel a personal connection; those outside are meant to be compelled into the faith by these powerful emotions and by the reactions of the people surrounding them.\n\nIf you look at the older or more conservative sects of Christianity like the Anglican, Lutheran, or Catholic churches, for example (and most other religions, in my experience), the speech patterns are slower and more oratory. A sermon is meant to reinforce a value or explain a part of the belief, to give the congregation something to think about or to reflect on. Conversion (if it's an important doctrine) is meant to be a slower process involving study and devotion rather than a spur-of-the-moment reaction or \"salvation.\" So you don't find those speech patterns nearly as much outside of the Evangelical community.",
"If I'm inferring correctly, OP is referring specifically to the deep south evangelist's way of speaking. [\"Brother\" Maze Jackson](_URL_0_) of The Truck Driver's Special is a prime example of this. You can find clips on Youtube. Growing up in church in the south, I heard this style of preaching, what is referred to as \"Hellfire and Brimstone\", frequently. Screaming, shouting, red-faced, sweating, jumping, pounding the pulpit, etc. Had I remained in the church, especially in certain circles, I'd assume all preachers sounded like this as well.."
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65hvov | why can't scientists send an empty, satellite controlled submarine with cameras into the bermuda triangle and discover it's mystery? also, how far are we from discovering it's secrets? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/65hvov/eli5_why_cant_scientists_send_an_empty_satellite/ | {
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"There is no mystery to the Bermuda Triangle. It has virtually average rates of ship disappearances and plane crashes as any other populated region. The idea that things magically vanish there is a myth. "
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||
4x51k9 | how do sheep herding dogs, know how to herd? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4x51k9/eli5_how_do_sheep_herding_dogs_know_how_to_herd/ | {
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"Instincts. A pack of wolves will know that a tight group is better to catch than a loose group.",
"A combination of training and inbred instinct.\n\nA couple hundred years of artificial selection for only the best herders has given herding breeds the natural inclination to herd things. After that a lifetime of training teaches them to herd things properly.",
"You posted this after seeing that \"best sheep dog ever\" gif didn't you ;) I was about to post the same question! "
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2o2jdv | in the us, how is flag burning legal when it's clearly stated against the law? | So first off, I did a search and didn't find it.
Second, as usual my family is spouting off at the mouth without any real knowledge of events on Facebook, but they did get me thinking, is flag burning technically legal? I thought it was, but I like to do my research and be positive. So I did a Google search and came up with [this](_URL_1_), which says "Currently, flag burning is not illegal in the United States." They also mention that the Supreme Court passed a law against flag desecration, so I decided to look up the law. According to Cornell, [this](_URL_0_) is that law. I'm confused now, because burning is specifically listed fourth on the list of things you can't do without getting in trouble. So how does this work? Did I find the wrong law? Can someone please explain to this to me because I am now utterly confused. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2o2jdv/eli5_in_the_us_how_is_flag_burning_legal_when_its/ | {
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"Flag burning is protected first amendment speech. The supreme court case Texas v Johnson stated that any laws prohibiting flag burning are unconstitutional.",
"To my knowledge, flag burning restrictions have been previously found, by the Supreme Court, to be in violation of the freedom of expression [here](_URL_0_). A constitutional amendment would be required to overturn that ruling, and so far none has passed successfully. \n\nThis doesn't prevent laws from being made that prohibit it, but those laws would be hard pressed to stand up in court given prior rulings. ",
"[United States v. Eichman, 496 U.S. 310 (1990) was a United States Supreme Court case that invalidated a federal law against flag desecration as violative of free speech under the First Amendment to the Constitution.](_URL_0_)\n\nNo one probably wants to go on record as the politician who tried to remove the law. So it just sit there, unenforceable."
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23mt4v | how is it possible for someone to survive riding in the wheel well of a jet at 36,000 feet for several hours? | With the cold temps and lack of oxygen I just don't get what happens to allow the person to survive it. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/23mt4v/eli5_how_is_it_possible_for_someone_to_survive/ | {
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"Like most of the stories going, he entered a staye of hibernation. This is possible. Ive heard stories of people being trapped underwater in subfreezing temps but what happens is the body keeps only the vitals alive. Ive heard of this with infants who fall into pools occasionally they survive with no damage. I wouldnt test this though.",
"I have absolutely nothing to back this up, but I had a theory while talking with my dad.\n\nI wondered if higher pressure from beneath the wings, or ram air pressure from high speed flight entering gaps in the landing gear doors, created a semi pressurized cavity out of the wheel well. Even if it only lowered the pressure altitude inside to 25,000 feet, it could have aided in keeping enough oxygen in his blood to support life.\n\nIt would be easy enough to test. Send one up with a recording altimeter tucked in the wheel well."
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5ra2l5 | why are modern depictions of the future often dystopic, compared to the bright and positive predictions in the past? | In the past (particularly the late 19th and early 20th centuries) predictions of the future were filled with amazing inventions and a happy society. Modern predictions are filled with crumbling civilizations, plagues, and collapse of society. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5ra2l5/eli5_why_are_modern_depictions_of_the_future/ | {
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"Science Fiction is less of a prediction mechanism and more of a window into what people are currently thinking. In early sci-fi, the goal was to exploit a possible future where people became better as individuals and as a species. Currently, sci-fi represents a general pessimism about the human condition.\n\nNot everything is that way of course, and there are a few upbeat stories about people in science fiction (see: the new Arrival movie).",
"Because fear, anger, and violence sell. It would be a pretty uneventful and boring book if everyone in the future got along, everyone had enough to eat, and everyone worked together for a common purpose. Not to mention that it would go against all history of human nature and be completely unbelievable. ",
"There have always been both views. \n\nIn the 1890s, H.G. Wells wrote of pretty dystopian futures in *The Time Machine* and *When the Sleeper Wakes*. Jack London wrote *The Iron Heel* in 1908.\n\nEarly to mid 20th Century examples include Huxley's *Brave New World* (1931), Orwell's *Nineteen Eighty-Four* (1948) and Bradbury's *Fahrenheit 451* (1953). \n\n\n"
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rnuom | why does my device's light stay on for a second after i turn off the power? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/rnuom/eli5_why_does_my_devices_light_stay_on_for_a/ | {
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"Everything is still discharging. Basically, the power isn't completely off yet.",
"Capacitors, they're an electrical component that effectively act like tiny batteries.\n\nThey're usually used to help \"smooth\" the electric current, so that if it dips for a bit the capacitor can discharge and help bridge the gap.",
"There are capacitors in the wiring and it takes a second for the electricity to completely discharge from them. ",
"To show you its spirit isn't broken. ",
"Prerequisite: the power from the wall is AC, which looks like a wave when graphed. The power your device needs is DC, which is like a horizontal line on a graph.\n\nTo convert AC to DC power, all electronics need whats called a \"power supply.\" Every power supply has four basic parts: \n\n1. A transformer: this transfers AC power from one set of copper coils to another, often reducing the voltage.\n2. A rectifier: this converts that wave-shaped signal to one that looks more like a sawtooth. The wall voltage is a sine wave, equally above and below 0 volts; when the power leaves the rectifier, it is all forced above 0.3-0.7V, but still oscillates up and down (pulsed DC).\n3. Filter: This circuit contains two types of components: Inductors and capacitors. Inductors block AC and pass DC; capacitors block DC and pass AC. These components are placed in various networks to push most of the voltage within 25-30% of the target DC voltage. Getting close, but not there yet.\n4. Regulator: this is the most complex circuit in a power supply, but I'll spare you the details and skip to it's function. It takes that 25-30% output from the filter and uses feedback from the regulator output to regulate the final DC voltage to within 5-10%.\n\nNow, to answer your question: when you shut off the power (lets say unplug for simplicity) to your device, the EMF in the transformer expresses one last wave into it's output; The rectifier turns it to pulsed DC; the power in the remaining capacitors is discharged, and the regulators slowly self-regulate down to zero as all energy leaves the circuit. Your light is at the end of that circuit, slowly dimming away.\n\nFor battery powered devices, they only have a regulator. That process of output-to-input feedback still causes the light to stay on, though not as long. "
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7dplnb | in this age of sophisticated online tracking and surveillance, how are criminals able to transfer money through multiple offshore accounts, and be able to withdraw it, without the trail being followed and their identity discovered? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7dplnb/eli5_in_this_age_of_sophisticated_online_tracking/ | {
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"Most often, by using an account of a business whose owners are secret, and/or in a country where banking privacy laws prohibit revealing who owns an account without a ton of paperwork.\n\nSometimes, by withdrawing the money in cash, on using it to buy something untraceable, like gold bars.",
"Buy a house. Wait a few months. Sell house for below market. Wait a few months sell house at market. Tada? Money laundering 101. Can do it with any hard to price asset. Art, mines etc.\n\nTo clarify the first time you sell the house you sell it to a conspirator. That conspirator then sells it for the real value and you've now laundered your money. The conspirator can keep the profit as a bribe or you can split it whatever."
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mlzkg | soap vs rest vs json and why one is better than the other. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/mlzkg/eli5_soap_vs_rest_vs_json_and_why_one_is_better/ | {
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"OK, first of all they are three slightly different things.\n\nREST describes a method for creating APIs or informational services. A RESTful API or service allows clients to make requests to it in the form \"verb object\" where \"object\" is a unique identifier for the thing the client wants action on. Each request is separate and distinct, with neither the client or the server remembering anything about previous requests.\n\nFor example, if you're working the desk at the library, and you were a RESTful service, I could come up to you and say \"Get /book/id/2412415\" and you'd know exactly which book I wanted. Then I could say \"Store this book\" (while handing you the book you just gave me) and you'd do it. But you would have no idea I just gave you back the book you gave me; you'd just see the book as a new thing. You wouldn't even know it was a book.\n\nThe best example of a RESTful service is the World Wide Web itself; indeed, the WWW is and was the prototype for REST. Every page you navigate is a request to a REST service, asking for pages, images and other resources. All web services are RESTful simply by virtue of being on the Web.\n\nSOAP builds on REST by adding some measure of object-oriented smarts to it. SOAP lets you make requests to a web service and package up programmatic objects in the request and response, in a way that will make sure the objects come out the other side in an understandable fashion, no matter what programming language generated the request or response. So if you're working in PHP, and you need to communicate with a web service running C#, SOAP will help make sure your PHP $newBook of type Book, gets properly translated into a C# 'Book newBook' object. To do this, the server tells the client in advance what object types and methods it knows about, using WSDL. Armed with that information, the client can build its own replicas which it will use to interact with the SOAP service.\n\nJSON is a way to serialize JavaScript objects. Typically, if you've got a web page and you want to use AJAX to interact with a web service, you'll use JSON to package your JS objects and send them to the server, and it will send JSON in reply, which your JavaScript app will unpack.\n\nIn summary, REST describes a way to build an information service, based on ideas prototyped by the World Wide Web. SOAP is a way for applications written in different languages to talk to each other over a RESTful API (ie. the web) and JSON is a way for your browser (running a JS app) to pack and unpack JS objects for use with a RESTful web service.",
"OK, first of all they are three slightly different things.\n\nREST describes a method for creating APIs or informational services. A RESTful API or service allows clients to make requests to it in the form \"verb object\" where \"object\" is a unique identifier for the thing the client wants action on. Each request is separate and distinct, with neither the client or the server remembering anything about previous requests.\n\nFor example, if you're working the desk at the library, and you were a RESTful service, I could come up to you and say \"Get /book/id/2412415\" and you'd know exactly which book I wanted. Then I could say \"Store this book\" (while handing you the book you just gave me) and you'd do it. But you would have no idea I just gave you back the book you gave me; you'd just see the book as a new thing. You wouldn't even know it was a book.\n\nThe best example of a RESTful service is the World Wide Web itself; indeed, the WWW is and was the prototype for REST. Every page you navigate is a request to a REST service, asking for pages, images and other resources. All web services are RESTful simply by virtue of being on the Web.\n\nSOAP builds on REST by adding some measure of object-oriented smarts to it. SOAP lets you make requests to a web service and package up programmatic objects in the request and response, in a way that will make sure the objects come out the other side in an understandable fashion, no matter what programming language generated the request or response. So if you're working in PHP, and you need to communicate with a web service running C#, SOAP will help make sure your PHP $newBook of type Book, gets properly translated into a C# 'Book newBook' object. To do this, the server tells the client in advance what object types and methods it knows about, using WSDL. Armed with that information, the client can build its own replicas which it will use to interact with the SOAP service.\n\nJSON is a way to serialize JavaScript objects. Typically, if you've got a web page and you want to use AJAX to interact with a web service, you'll use JSON to package your JS objects and send them to the server, and it will send JSON in reply, which your JavaScript app will unpack.\n\nIn summary, REST describes a way to build an information service, based on ideas prototyped by the World Wide Web. SOAP is a way for applications written in different languages to talk to each other over a RESTful API (ie. the web) and JSON is a way for your browser (running a JS app) to pack and unpack JS objects for use with a RESTful web service."
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2daqyf | how are nielsen homes selected for nielsen ratings? if i watch a show and don't have a nielsen box, am i helping that show's ratings at all? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2daqyf/eli5_how_are_nielsen_homes_selected_for_nielsen/ | {
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"Not specific to Nielsen, but Tivo boxes and other DVRs report stats back to the networks or perhaps to Nielsen itself. I wonder how much that's replaced Neilsen.",
"I got an unsolicited questionnaire from Nielsen in the mail. I filled it out, and they sent me a little booklet to complete over the course of a week. Easy peasy.",
"I don't understand how they are selected. But I'm not sure if they use boxes anymore. I got a questionnaire and I was sent a little booklet (along with $30) and after 2 weeks, I sent it back. ",
"I was a Nielsen family for two years awhile back. There was a doohickey they hooked to my tv and TiVo. I had to press a button very 30ish minutes to prove I was really watching. Plus they paid me money every few months! \n\nAs I recall, my house was randomly selected.",
"I used to work for a Nielsen call center. We would cold call people for Nielsen surveys. If you were selected for a survey and chose to participate, you would be put onto a list and perhaps used in other studies. They still did the boxes when I worked there, but not as many homes had them.\n\nMost people got the survey. If you completed the survey were under 35 yrs old, you got $30 and if you were over 40 you got $10 or something like that. It was based on your age, not sure why they gave less money for different age brackets.\n\nThey mail you a booklet to track what you watch and you send it back in. This was like 10 years ago though.\n\nThe numbers came from a public database. If you said the words \"please do not call me again\" we had to put you on a blacklist.",
"I worked for Nielsen installing and maintaining the equipment used to monitor households. You do not have any effect on the ratings of a show if you are not a monitored household.",
"I don't know if it still works this way (this was about seven years ago), but we were chosen based on our phone number. It was a land line. I would guess maybe they don't do it this way anymore since people with land lines probably are no longer a representative sample.\n\nThe box was huge and annoying and was a special set up because we didn't have cable TV or high speed internet. They came and took all the shit when we changed our phone number.\n\nIt did affect my viewing habits. I watched a lot more PBS.",
"Its semi random. Neilson splits cities/regions into districts and assigns a certain number of boxes to each district to get a decent sample size. Then a computer takes in every residential address and randomly selects one for each box. An agent calls that address, confirms participation, and handles the box and money payments. After the allotted time, the computer generates a new set of addresses and the process starts over. But just like a casino deck of cards, the addresses get reshuffled occasionally but its not 100% random.\n\nThis is how my production professor explained it to me and he showed me the broadcaster side of the deal. Hes executive director of news at one of the Big Three in our area, and he gets daily reports on the ratings for every half hour block. They get very specific, but dont collect any identifying details.",
"A lot of people are answering your first question, but not second.\n\nSecond question: Sort of, but not really. Just watching - no, doesn't change ratings. However, watching can increase the *support* of a show. Maybe you tweet about it, or talk to friends about it. You can create a buzz that might cause someone with a Neilsen box to watch a show they otherwise wouldn't have heard of.\n\nAnd of course if you buy DVD's or buy episodes on itunes that is directly tracked. Or watching a show on Netflix. If a show is really popular on netflix it could stick around longer because they'll renew licenses.\n\nLast but not least, you can sometimes bring a show back by being loyal, like Family Guy or Arrested Development.",
"The TV and Radio show ratings actually have very impressive methodologies for randomly selecting people based on their household address or randomly calling your phone number. If you get picked, give it a shot, you'll be speaking for ten's of thousands of people with your TV/Radio behavior. It's more powerful than voting in many ways, but you have to act like you normally would though. If you do things like watch TV for ridiculously high hours or some like that, your data likely will be thrown out as suspicious. In fact, for the first few weeks, your data usually doesn't even count. If you're not a Nielsen household, sorry your viewership doesn't affect ratings. They do watch twitter chatter, so that's about the best you can do for voicing your vote.\n\nSource: guy that works in the industry and knows the methodology in detail.",
"I randomly got a survey and eventually a log for a few weeks from neilson. Got $5 out of the deal.",
"The one thing I never understood about this kind of rating system is how the hell do they account for all the people that don't want this? I mean, what if 80% of the people offered this decline to do it? Wouldn't that mean that they are only finding the ratings for the 20% that do accept it? Wouldn't it be more efficient and accurate to just put a bit of code into all cable/satellite boxes that records what you watch?",
"I was selected by Leslie himself. It was good because it meant that my votes counted for double.",
"I got the 'hey, wanna be a Niesen home?' packet in the mail at random, along with about $4. I don't really watch TV, but I am a smartass, and they did send me $4, so I registered under the name of John McDoesntwatchtvthanksbutnotthanks. About a month later I got a package in the mail in the name of John McDoesntwatchtvthanksbutnotthanks, along with a TV watching journal to be filled out and sent back to them, and $30 in payment. I felt kinda bad :/",
"I got something in the mail from Nielsen. I never would have opened if not for my friend and I having a discussion about how you get chosen to be a Nielsen household a week prior. However, when I did open it 5 crisp $1 bills fell out of the envelope. They asked me to fill out some surveys and mail them back in. Shamelessly, I didn't fill anything out and I took the $5 to the casino (I live in Vegas) and bet all of it on sports bets until I lost. I won several bets in row until I finally lost my $86 bet on Italy vs. Costa Rica in the World Cup. Totally worth it.",
"In Australia, landline and mobile phone numbers are called at random by a third party company (not Nielsen). If the person answers the call they are asked if they want to do a survey (which we called the Establishment Survey) about household demographics including age, gender, occupation, location, and television.\n\nThe survey results are then stored and lists are generated by statisticians, based on certain household types required, for 'Recruitment' onto the TV Ratings Panel. In Australia this was a panel of 5000 households across the country. Employees from Nielsen Television Audience Measurement would call the households on the lists, ask them if they remembered doing the Establishment Survey, and attempt to recruit them onto the panel. Once a household agreed, a further questionnaire is completed before an appointment was arranged for a Nielsen technician to install the equipment.\n\nSo, in short, unless you are on the panel you have zero influence on a television show's ratings. If you visited a household that was on the panel you could log in as a 'guest', though.\n\nSource: former Nielsen employee",
"Ex-Nielsen employee here:\n\n**TL/DR ELI5 version: Nielsen have collected household data and look at a few houses that represent what the country is watching. So: No, what you do as a non-\"Nielsen box\" viewer won't influence they ratings**\n\nThis is a basic principle of research, getting a sample to represent a population:\n\nThe houses are selected at random from a pre-defined sample which is chosen based on census data. \n\nBasically they figure out how many homes of specific types there are out there using census data (in some countries this is done themselves, in others they use government/3rd party data). \n\nFrom that they know they need to get a certain number of houses from each group (household income, household size, age etc) to get a statistical sample. It is then weighted up to give the national view and the ratings for the country.\n\nSuper simplified example: if they know there are 50 million homes in the country. They will figure out that they need 5000 of these homes to be statistically representative of the whole 50 million group. They'll then go find 5000 homes that fit the correct criteria and set them up with the TV recording devices (see other comments from people included in the samples for more on that). \n\nSince they know that 5000 homes are representing 50 million they can take the info for the 5000*10000 (=50million) to get a view of the whole country. \n\nIn reality there are separate samples for each household segment (Age, demographic, size etc) so they can tell what is happening by each segment of the population's households.\n\nIf I recall the actual home selection is done by looking at the raw census data to get a panel of homes that fit the criteria needed for the sample. The model may have changed since I left a few years ago.\n\nDisclaimer: I used to work in a different department than the Ratings guys but was exposed to enough of it to know what was going on. Also, I wasn't in the States so it may be a little different although the model is always based on what the States does.\n",
"I used to be a field rep for Nielsen Tv ratings several years ago. The panel homes are chosen at random by a computer in a designated area. The list anointed a \"basic\" home that was the number one priority home regardless of the number or demographics of the residents. They were then pitched an offer to join the panel. The compensation for Caucasians was pretty minimal but for a Hispanic family of five plus, it was significantly better. If the \"basic\" declined then the membership representative would go door to door trying to get an \"alternate\" home. So, there is no way to voluntarily join Nielsen tv ratings and no, if there is no people meter flashing lights at you when you turn your tv on, you are in no way helping a shows ratings. \nSource: four years installing Nielsen equipment in homes.",
"Currently have the Nieslen box. I was randomly selected. Some lady showed up on my door and I recognized the flyers she was giving. Haven't regretted my decision. AMA!",
"I was tracked by a competing company (Arbitron) for one year a couple of years back. The pay ended up being $30-50 per month. Basically, each member of the household (just me at the time) carries a tracker about the size of old-style pagers that can pick up signals from TV and radio and then send the data to Arbitron each night while the device charges. The signal is basically a signature for the TV/radio station that we cannot hear but the device can. The same goes for music in the mall! It gave me great pleasure to listen to NPR, PBS and not own cable TV! They even gave me a fitting so that it could hear what I was listening to on the headphones-radio.\n\nAnd no, if you are not part of a selected group, you are not helping that show's ratings unless it is via the internet....not sure about cable TV, but I've never had that.",
"I was a Nielsen house for two years. But I was only selected, randomly, for one week out of the year. I don't know how the process works or is different from other Nielsen houses. I got paid roughly $50 each time and I had a book to write in and keep track of all the shows me and my family watched. Both live TV and DVR shows were counted, and each TV in the house had it's own dedicated book. ",
"I work in TV advertising so I know a little about how it works, at least in Ireland/UK\n\nThe homes they select are a representative sample of the population. Using the information from this sample, they are able to extrapolate viewing behaviour for the entire population, albeit with a marginal degree of error\n\nOver here, until recently, if you did not have a Nielsen box, you technically did not influence ratings however with the advent of DVR boxes, the TV providers can now see what you are watching without the need for a Nielsens box\n\nFor instance, in Ireland/UK the predominant provider is Sky. When delayed viewing ratings were introduced in Ireland, Sky (and UPC the other main provider in Ireland) were able to tell Nielsens what proportion of people recorded and later watched a programme. In order to be included in these delayed viewing ratings you had to have watched the programme within 7 days and in the case of advertisements, you had to have watched them on play speed and not fast forward.\n",
"Can somone here who works/used to work for Neilsen do an AMA please?",
"Fuuuuuck...finally a ELI5 I can answer! \n\nNielsen randomly selects 10,000 homes throughout the US to represent their sample. While random, they are also proportionate to the US population overall (for example, if 14% of the population is Hispanic, 14% of the sample will be Hispanic). These proportions are across all demographics -- age, gender, income, geographic location, etc. \n\nOnce you're selected as a 'Nielsen home' you are in the sample for about 2 years. No everyone is in the sample at the same time so there is constant turnover. \n\nEvery tv in the house (and more recently computers and some mobile devices like tablets) is connected to what they call a \"people meter\" and everyone in the household over 2 years old is basically assigned a number. Almost every bit of information is assigned to your specific number (age, gender, race, income, etc) so when you decide to eat ha show, Nielsen knows who is watching that show). \n\nThose number of people watching a show is then projected out based on some crazy calculations on their end. So when you see something like \"the superbowl was watched by 115 million viewers\", it's really based on those 10,000 homes. \n\nSorry for the long winded comment. It probably won't see the light of day, but wanted to give you the proper info. \n\nSource: Worked at Nielsen Media Research for about 6 years"
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4e5682 | how do animals like ants and birds instinctually know how to build their dwellings/homes? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4e5682/eli5_how_do_animals_like_ants_and_birds/ | {
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"They have inherited the knowledge in their genes, but they learn through trial and error, at least that is what we assume. There's quite a lot we don't know about ourselves and nature, but that's why we keep studying. \n\nThey're really fascinating animals. We had a bird in our garden that made a square nest, for no reason, and then he did it again. He lived in our garden, it was quite the sight.\n\n\nSomething to read up on:\n\n\n^_URL_1_\n\n^_URL_3_ ^(yep ^it's ^the ^Daily ^Fail ^sorry)\n\n^_URL_0_\n\n^_URL_2_",
"Essentially, these animals are 'programmed' by their genetic code to do these things, and those 'programs' were developed by millions of iterations of trial and error, where the bad programs were erased (died out) and the good ones continued.\n\nNow, a better question is why don't we humans have the same 'programs' in our brains? Well, we do to some extent (suckling instinct, diving instinct, etc). But because our brains are more powerful than an ant or bird, we actually can do better *without* fixed programming, because we can develop better solutions based on the available information, learning from others, etc.\n\nTo put it into a computing analogy - the birds and ants are very old, very slow computers with very limited RAM. They can do what the first computers could do, simple mathematical operations and other tasks, one simple job at a time. They are fixed in their programming, once they're programmed to do something, that's all they can do, and they can do it very well. Us humans on the other hand are very advanced computers that can 'learn'. We aren't programmed to perform every little task, but rather can learn how to do *any* task given enough time, training, and input. Your washing machine doesn't need to learn how to wash clothes, it's programmed to do that from the time it's created. If you developed a very advanced domestic robot, it might not know how to wash clothes when it was 'born', but with an advanced processor and the right learning algorithms it could definitely learn.",
"They have a particular shape of neural network in their brain, that produces a 'need' to build a nest when certain conditions are met, such as when it's a particular time of year. This is similar to how sensors in the body tell any animal when it needs to drink or eat. These different needs have different priorities. There's a different part of the brain that monitors the 'need' signals, and switches the bird to a particular action mode depending on which is most urgent.\n\nThe 'nest building' task would be activated at some point. The bird's instincts, or pre-programmed condition, store instructions, such as \"Fly until you see a stick, then carry it back to the tree and add it to the nest\". Neural networks to control flight, visual recognition and spatial mapping etc are called upon, effectively similar to functions in programming. Different bits of code can share lower-level algorithms that can used in a flexible manner. This saves on the information storage requirements, and also lets things the bird has learnt be shared between different tasks that rely on the same skills.\n\nThe bird may also rely on learning while carrying out the task - for example, if a stick turns out to be too large to be carried, to ignore big sticks in future.\n\nBasically, things are organised like computer code that is stored in the DNA of the species. Nest building is a task that is broken down into something like a flowchart, with many sub-tasks, and sub-sub-tasks, and so on, until you get basic functions such as flight.",
"The problem in this post is the word \"know\". I can't speak for birds, but I consider it very unlikely that ants actually know anything. \n\nEssentially, sensory inputs - presence of light, presence of a particular pheromone - start off chemical & biological chain reactions that lead to movement and labour, and eventually the construction of a complex underground nest system. \n\nThe beauty of it is that everything is automatic. Inputs go in, outputs happen. I like to think of it like a [beach-walking robot](_URL_0_): if the wind blows in the right direction, some very clever mechanisms make the robot walk. It's the same in an ant, but instead of wind and mechanical chain reactions, it's pheromones and biochemical chain reactions. Or light and biochemical chain reactions. Or plenty of other inputs. \n\nWe humans are the same. When a baby is lacking some sort of sensory fulfilment, biochemical processes happen, and it cries. It doesn't know that it should cry. It just does. ",
"A lot of people are writing about inherited mental structures or \"programs\". Isn't this comparable to what Chomsky theorized about human language? That we're born programmed to learn language, and that a universal grammar is innate in humans. Here's a Wikipedia link on it: _URL_0_",
"Dawkins actually did a really interesting talk about this _URL_0_\n\nin which he discusses the Baldwin Effect _URL_1_",
"This is actually a fascinating question, and one I often wonder about spiders.\n\nClearly, a spider isn't thinking in its head about how to design this extraordinarily complex web structure, or even really understands the fact that it *can* develop these things.\n\nThis gets down into the gray area surrounding consciousness. Are these animals acting purely on instinct (basically, they're a robot) or do they have to make decisions about how to go about this *in their own heads* (they're conscious).\n\nIt's easy for humans to say we're conscious, but where do we draw the line? Dogs seem conscious. Fish do. Ants? Maybe. Viruses? Probably not.\n\nThere is some dividing line between machine-like behavior (viruses) and conscious decision-making. \n\nWhere that line is drawn, I have no idea.\n\n*Edit* : Due to the number of responses on this, I'd just like to add a relevant link that should explain this better.\n\n[Hard problem of consciousness](_URL_0_)",
"To piggy back off of this. When I was a kid I loved climbing trees. I sometimes wonder if this might be some sort of an evolutionary thing. Is tree climbing enjoyable because it is some genetic leftover from our great ape cousins? While the hunting groups were away from camp did the children hang out in trees to protect them from large predators? Is climbing a tree simply fun, because it is fun? ",
"all animals have instincts that we are born with. they're a set of behaviors that are hardwired into our brains which is not as farfetched as you may think when you compare that to the complexities of how we process visual information (for example).\n\nracoons have an instinctive behavior to wash their food. researchers found early on that if they gave a racoon a coin (for some other purpose in an experiment), it would rub it and dip it in and out of the bin that they were supposed/trained to put it in. this was because they had a hardwired instinct to wash their food and the coin was not sufficiently different that they could move away from that instinct.\n\nit's tiny behaviors like this that add up to building a home. ants have certain behavior rules in their nervous system for certain events they may encounter in nest building. these all add up to the construction of a large underground home. it's not like they see or know what they're doing in its entirety, but are simply following evolutionarily programmed instincts that ultimately result in a nest.\n\nfor larger animals, learning plays a very important role in conjunction with instinctive behavior. birds can mimic other birds they see doing something. if things work, they learn to keep that behavior and may eventually pass it on to other birds.",
"Something to think about to can be human newborns knowing how to breath or breastfeed. Though with some newborns they literally cannot or don't know how and other methods of feeding and getting them to do it are used.",
"I think it's interesting how most human structures look the same as one another, and the variances throughout the world are minimal, unless the designer of a building goes out of his way to intentionally make it look unique.\n",
"It's all part of the information passed down through genetics and evolution.\n\nA simple way to put it is like each generation gets and passes down a chain letter full of information that their ancestors gathered over time. This gives them an inherent knowledge of how to build their homes, routes to take when migrating, where to go when mating season arrives.\n\nA favorite example of this is the route butterflies take over lake superior, a few thousand years ago there used to be a mountain there so they all circle around a now nonexistent mountain. Whether they actually think there's a mountain or if they're just going \"grandpa said not to go that way, so I won't.\" It's unclear. ",
"I found this particularly mind-blowing when I was wondering about the same topic: \n\n_URL_0_\n\nBasically, there are ants/plants that have mutually evolved to help each other. The plants actually grow chambers for the ants to live in, and the ants will defend the plant, even from OTHER plants. They'll prune plants that are encroaching on their plant's light.\n\nYou can't tell me that they \"learned\" this. This is clearly instinct. There is no way that the ants are using some form of reasoning to learn \"if I don't prune this vine, it's going to interfere with my plant-home.\" \n\nRather, this is the result of hundreds of thousands of generations of relatively mindless ants that have, slowly over time, survived more often than the ants that didn't prune the vines. ",
"Instinctively*** sorry that was bothering me.\n\nThere are a couple theories about instinct and how it works. So feel free to ignore this or rip it apart:\n\nMy favorite theory was developed by Carl Jung, a world renowned psychologist, who came up with the theory of \"genetic memory.\" In short, this is the process where memories are impressed upon one's offspring and the ones that prove relevant remain in the generic lineage and continue to be passed on and the ones that do not disappear over long spans of generations. Like evolution, but it's the evolution of the mind.\n\nThe biggest hole in this theory though is that it would mean our memories and thoughts have a genetic influence and the ability to mutate our DNA. \n\nHowever it makes total sense when you consider its evolutionary advantage.",
"A bigger question is why can't a bird improve the design? The same question was asked by anthropologists about early humans. Why did Homo Erectus/Habilis build a stone hand axes \"just like birds build nests\" for MILLIONS of years before they ever improved the design and made a spear. Were humans once \"nest builders\" directed 100% by instinct until the mutation that made us hyper intelligent homo sapiens? If we understand how birds know to build nests we may answer this questions about us.",
"Nest/Den building is the same for all species, just given kids innate desire to build a fort or blanket tent, it seems that animals naturally seek a shelter and if one does not exist they seek to make one. What is strange is this behavior is observable in several species. So it's clearly a very old behavior as far as life goes. \n\nManipulation of the environment however stops/diminishes for very large animals.",
"They are born in their parents nests and live a long time in them .. During that all they do is sit around and wait .. Their brain is probably like - instead of sitting around like an idiot, let me take a closer look at Pa's nest. And they take a look at it and come to the conclusion that its a piece of shit and they would do a much better job when they grow up for their kids ... And thats how the circle of nests perpetuates. ",
"An alternative theory for this \"collective wisdom\" that offers intriguing ideas beyond genetics is found in Rupert Sheldrake's work.\n\nSheldrake postulates morphic fields and morphic resonance as an explanation. These fields are a sort of universal collection of accumulated knowledge that organisms can draw from. This extends not only to functions, such as behavior, but also forms, the patterns and shapes we see in nature. Studies show some intriguing results that a new behavior in one group may arise shortly thereafter in a distant group, and often showing signs of being developed and perfected more quickly, as if the distant group had not only learned the previous group's behavior but improved upon it even during its genesis within that second group. Did that second group somehow connect with the morphic blueprint laid down by the first group?\n\nMorphic fields and morphic resonance might explain how a change of behavior might rapidly develop in a community or how a community can maintain an existing behavior against pressures to change.\n\nIt's fascinating stuff and worth some research to learn more.\n\n_URL_0_",
"I just think it is amazing how DNA is just a collection of a few kinds of atoms, form together is such a way that it can allow these animals to instinctively know how to do the things they do",
"I think it also depends on the exact race. I know that some ants which live in the desert orientate themselves to the polarity of light in the uv-spectrum to get a feeling for the circular direction they are facing. And additionally to that they simply count the footsteps. This was found out by sticking some sticks to an ants legs so that they were for instance double the length. It resulted in the ants walking twice as far, leaving their home roughly in the middle of the taken path.",
"Everyone else us commenting on WHY they do it. I know a little bit of how ants do it. Ants breath, but not in the typical sense. Ants expell CO2 through pores in their exoskeleton. They each expel a very small amount, but get thousands and thousands together and it gets real noticeable. Ants will purposely dig exhaust holes to prevent the build up of CO2 and you can actually feel the co2 escaping through the hole. Anyway, the point is, they can detect co2, and the varying levels in the soil act as a sort of depth gauge to tell the ants \"okay, here we build a fungus garden\". Being eusocial insects they tend to communicate a lot to form a sort of hivemind. They say not any one ant knows the the blueprint, but each ant knows a part. Obviously there is a ton more, and I learned this year's ago for a project so I'm no expert.\n",
"Brains have two stages. Firstly there is the primitive brain which provides automatic and instinctual behaviour. Then there is the upper brain which is counscious and allows for more complex functions. This doesn't replace the primitive brain but instead overrides it.\n\nFor example, we can hold our breath and chose when to breath. But if we fall asleep or otherwise loose consciousness then the primitive brain will resume controlling our breathing.\n\nSo it's not thought or instinct. It's both in concert. The degree of thought just depends in how developed the upper brain is when it comes to overriding instinctual automatic behaviour.",
"We know ants are amazing yet we have no problem eradicating them without thought. This is why when the aliens come to earth were all fucked!",
"Yeah this is a really good question I would like to know as well. This can be said for almost any animal. They have no language yet know exactly how to live naturally.",
"We have rabbits we let out doors since they were little. They all dig to varying degrees. They build their burrows. Some really suvked at first some were better. Most would build and at sometime mid construction fill it their hole akd start over sonewhere else. The would do this several times till they got it \"right\". So they were learning like we do. Trial and error offf instincts to dig.",
"Consider complicated behavior that emerges from simple networks, the basis of all 'brains'. Look at this youtube video of a simple [neural network learning to playing Super Mario in a day](_URL_0_). Add to this the idea that such a neural network can be born pre-programmed. Given enough time, mutations in reproduction will create pre-programmed neural networks that could be born \"knowing how to play Super Mario\". Same thing with ants, birds, etc. Thus, we all have neural networks, and at least at some level, we can be born with those networks pre-programmed to \"know\" how to do complex things.",
"I just watched this incredible documentary about ANTS, truly astonishing!\n\n_URL_0_",
"As far as ants are concerned, I'm not really sure we know. Ant nests can be complicated as hell, they have specialized rooms for all kinds of different uses, including growing certain fungus for food, waste, raising young. Some ants farm and milk aphids. Some ants collect and spread charcoal all around their nests (we have no idea why). Sometimes they will randomly abandon their entire nest and rebuild it a few meters away. \n\n _URL_3_\n _URL_0_\n_URL_2_\n\nIncidentally the Hopi arguably believe that ants taught civilization to humanity. Which is pretty damn cool. \n_URL_4_\n\nObligatory. \n_URL_1_",
"So what would happen if we were able to identify and isolate the genes that teach how to build s nest,or web or tunnel, and pout them in an animal that was not capable of doing so, like put a spider's web building genes into a fish, or a giraffe?",
"Can anyone also expand on the answer by providing insight on how knowledge eventually becomes instinct and how is this knowledge encoded differently than memories?",
"Ants are like little kids. Except replace talking with chemical signals. If one boy learns how to build a fort a certain way and it turns out really well, he is going to tell his friends. In turn, he and his friends will tell their little brothers and sisters how to build this awesome fort once they are no longer kids themselves. This awesome fort knowledge continues to be passed down with minor changes throughout the generations. \n\nBirds are like little kids and their parents. They observe their parents intently and make note of all of their behaviors. Once they become adults, they copy these behaviors with minor adjustments through trial and error.",
"(not a scientist, pure educated guess) group mentality. A large amount of ants creates something more intelligent than a single ant. A school of fish is more complex than 1 fish. A civilisation of humans is more complex than a tribe of humans. ",
"A coworker read an article about ants and told me that they act as a hive mind, effectively becoming smarter when in larger colonies. It doesn't seem that far fetched as when you look at a single ant alone, it just wanders about aimlessly.",
"Believe it or not, tiny invisible space monkey descend upon a colony of ants and 'beam' instructions to each ant in the colony, causing them to stop, gather materials, and build the section they were 'born' to build. As time goes on, the invisible space monkeys leave a parting gift to the colony in the form of a space queen, which is why she's 10 times the size of the remaining colony. Occasionally, they have a \"thanks!\" going away party in which the sweet nectar usually reserved for the ant larvae gets consumed in large quantities. Drunk ants. Silly ants. Then the space monkeys take some of the honey produced and return it to their own space monkey queen. This is called symbiosis, and without it, we wouldn't have interstellar space travel like we do now on a minute level.\n\nHope this helps! PEACE!",
"My biggest question would be \"Why do certain animals build certain shelters?\" Like birds building nests (and different nests depending on the type of bird) and beavers building dams. It's like some kind of culture among difference species that is inherited through genes.",
"I don't have an explanation to add, but another good term to look up/Wikipedia surf from is \"fixed action patterns\", which deal with image reactions to certain stimuli. I could be mixing up words, and I'm mobile so I don't feel like switching out of the reddit app, but I think it's the thing that let's you hypnotize chickens, or bunnies, or something.... \n\nI'm really not good at this explaining thing. ",
"It's an interesting point that not all of the genes that cause ants to build they way they do are encoding for purely \"mental\" behaviours, the specifics of their behaviour are equally coded into physical attributes such as the sensitivity of their sense of smell and the ratio between their forelimbs and their antenna.",
"I can't speak for birds, but there was actually a pretty interesting article by Deborah Gordon on how ants organize without central leadership in a recent Scientific American, which I imagine might also explain how they communicate with one another to construct habitats.\n\nJust so I don't butcher her analysis, you can hear it from her here: _URL_0_",
"That new spider I saw on /r/science recently they discovered recently that spans 25 meter canopes is mindblowing because nobody knows how it does it!\nIts sLol\n small spider so how does it get from one side to the other.. lol?"
]
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[
"http://hubpages.com/animals/how-do-birds-learn-to-build-their-nests",
"http://lansingwbu.blogspot.nl/2011/03/ever-wonder-how-birds-know-how-to-build.html",
"http://biology.st-andrews.ac.uk/stories/2011_07_25.aspx",
"http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2041933/Birds-learn-build-better-nests-claim-scientists.html"
],
[],
[],
[
"https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=pZ3_JAPpH3U"
],
[
"https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_grammar"
],
[
"https://richarddawkins.net/2015/04/darwin-day-2015-questions-6-how-does-learned-behavior-evolve-into-inherited-instinct/",
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baldwin_effect"
],
[
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_problem_of_consciousness"
],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myrmecophyte"
],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[
"http://www.sheldrake.org/research/morphic-resonance/introduction"
],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[
"https://youtu.be/qv6UVOQ0F44"
],
[
"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z-gIx7LXcQM"
],
[
"http://diginole.lib.fsu.edu/islandora/object/fsu%3A168470",
"https://xkcd.com/638/",
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aphid#Ant_mutualism",
"http://www.wired.com/2014/11/harvester-ants-randomly-move-their-nests/",
"http://www.firstpeople.us/FP-Html-Legends/TokpatheSecondWorld-Hopi.html"
],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
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"http://www.npr.org/2015/04/24/401735715/why-don-t-ants-need-a-leader"
],
[]
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5zgkfd | how inheritances work and why people covet them so much? | [deleted] | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5zgkfd/eli5_how_inheritances_work_and_why_people_covet/ | {
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"How they work: Relatives leave you money in their will and when they die you inherit that money\n\nWhy they're coveted: Free money"
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1pl929 | how many vitamins do you really need to stay healthy? | It just seems like there are so many different kinds of vitamins, and when I think about what I ate during the day, there's no way I'm getting all of those. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1pl929/eli5_how_many_vitamins_do_you_really_need_to_stay/ | {
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"Biochemically, a vitamin is a co-factor for an enzyme in a reaction somewhere in your body. That means they are not consumed by whatever chemical reaction they are helping with. That means you don't technically need a steady supply in your diet so long as you have stores somewhere in your body. The wrinkle in that is that some vitamins are more soluble in fats, and some in water. The fat soluble vitamins (A, E, D, K) are easy to store b/c they just hang out in places like fat cells or the liver. The water soluble vitamins (B1-Binfinity, C) are a bit trickier, since you tend to lose them in your urine. \n\nSince you aren't consuming the vitamins when your body uses them, you only need to replace what you lose daily in your urine and feces. Your body has stores of extra vitamins that it will dip into when you run short in your diet, and replenishes when you get more that enough. \n\nFor exactly what amounts of each are recommended, you'd have to check out the USDA or FDA so see what the values are.\n\nsee the link: _URL_0_"
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"http://fnic.nal.usda.gov/food-composition/individual-macronutrients-phytonutrients-vitamins-minerals/vitamins-minerals"
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211z8p | vacuums, not the machine, the actual process of a vacuum and is the vacuum of space a true vacuum? | I understand things get sucked into vacuums but how is the vacuum created? Is drinking from a straw the same thing? And why if you plug one end of the straw soda stays inside the straw? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/211z8p/eli5_vacuums_not_the_machine_the_actual_process/ | {
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"A vacuum is simply an area where no 'stuff' (matter) is present. Certain parts of space are vacuums because there is nothing there. No stuff. No matter. \n\nThings do not simply fly out into vacuums like a vacuum cleaner pulls things in. What is happening if you have seen things fly out into space (on a movie perhaps) is that the pressure is compromised and the air rapidly expands into the surroundings. So forcefully, it pulls you and anything else with it. This is because a vacuum has no air pressure by definition, and because of diffusion (things will move from high concentration to low) it is sucked out.\n\nThe end of the straw thing works because of the cohesive, and adhesive properties of water, along with the straw being so narrow.\n\nCohesion - The water molecules stick to each other.\n\nAdhesion - The water molecules stick to the surroundings (to the straw).\n\nBy plugging one end, you are creating a 'near vacuum' (still has stuff in it, so isn't true vacuum), and because the water / soda sticks to itself and the sides, and no air pressure to push it out, it sticks.\n\nHope I helped you out.",
"Think of it this way. You have an air tight box. You hook up the right kind of vacuum pump--which will suck out all of the molecules. First, the molecules flow into the vacuum similar to water being drained. Then, after the majority of the molecules are sucked out, the remaining ones float around until they eventually get sucked into the vacuum pump.\n\nWe use different types of sensors to measure the 'strength' of the vacuum--which is representative of how many molecules remain in the vacuum chamber. Wikipedia has some good info on this--including units of measurement and different 'level's of vacuum.\n\nIt is actually nearly impossible to obtain a perfect vacuum--even outer-space is better described as a 'low pressure' environment--rather than a vacuum. "
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1tdw3c | when suicidal, how can we be determined to kill ourselves, but our body does everything it can to stop us? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1tdw3c/eli5_when_suicidal_how_can_we_be_determined_to/ | {
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"We can perform many actions voluntarily. Suicide can lead to one overriding any mental barriers which would caused a fear of death in the person, that is, the reason behind the suicide may be so strong that it would not cause a person to feel danger while orchestrating or perpetuating the act itself.\n\nThe brain chemistry of a person attempting suicide is not very clear but low levels of [Brain-derived neurotrophic factor](_URL_1_), which functions for higher thinking, long-term memory and learning, have been observed as well as low levels of serotonin, which is a neurotransmitter [believed to be a contributor to happiness](_URL_0_)",
"Simply put, survival and self preservation are as innate as the need for food and oxygen. You may make a CHOICE to end your life due to external factors, but at extreme moments like this that choice is overruled by millions of years of survival instinct. Once you harm your body, reflexive controls kick in that you have no control over. When you touch a hot surface, you automatically yank your hand back. You don't take time to think about it. Your body just does whats necessary.",
"Your conscious, thinking mind is one part of your brain, and due to many factors, can be willing to commit suicide.\n\nYour subconscious mind is much, much more powerful, and evolution has programmed it with millions of years of survival instinct. You exist because every ancestor you had going back to the first living molecules lived long enough to reproduce, and your body and mind are wired with that drive towards survival.\n\nNaturally, it's very difficult for the comparatively small and weak thinky parts of the brain to beat out these instincts. Many people, sadly, manage to do it.\n",
"Because the human brain is not a single processor, it is a collection of processors. Many of which, or rather, the majority of which are subconscious calculators. A conscious decision that is at odds with the subconscious isn't unnatural, in fact, by the nature of our design, it's the norm. ",
"I'm not posting an actual answer to your question, but just to add to the discussion, it's kinda sad how people try to find several ways to commit \"irreversible\" suicide so that their brain doesn't try to save them. For example, walking off the top story of a building, or hanging themselves. It's heart breaking.",
"The brain works independently of the rest of the body. ",
"There are worse things than death. Much *much* worse things.\n\nOur body goes for the option that feels best.\n\nHence other things like blacking out on extreme injury.\n\nThat’s all."
]
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"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brain-derived_neurotrophic_factor#Function"
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bft541 | why do cpus and gpus perform better when cool | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/bft541/eli5_why_do_cpus_and_gpus_perform_better_when_cool/ | {
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"If a processor is cool enough, it will often speed its clock (which controls how fast things happen) up, balancing thermals with performance.",
"Many motherboards will decrease CPU and GPU performance when it gets too hot. This is to prevent damaging the chip. Also, heat will wear the microcomponents inside the chip. However, heat really won't affect the performance of the chip, not regarding the motherboard's automatic underclocking and decrease of using resources.\n\nThis is also why if you would like to overclock, you need to make sure you have good cooling.",
"There is no such thing as a zero resistance conductor outside of superconductors. Resistance means the electrons are slowed down as they move through the wire or component, almost like friction, and that generates heat. The more electricity you try to pass through a thing, the more heat is generated. At some point, the temperature will be above the failure point of the component and it will get damaged.\n\nCPUs and GPUs have what is called a *clock speed*. Think of a string of binary code, that might be something like 0101100101. How does the computer know that it's two 1s or two 0s in a row? What if there are three, or four, or five 1s or 0s in a row? How does the computer know when one 1 stops and the next 1 begins? There is a clock that only ever goes 10101010... Each digit is a flip that drives the rest of the chip. The faster that clock goes, the faster everything else goes, too.\n\nBut making the clock go faster means pushing more electricity through the chip. If your clock speed is too high, you generate too much heat and your chip is damaged and stops working. Built into your computer are two limiters. One of them is a thermostat that will limit your clock speed when the computer gets too hot. This is called thermal throttling. The other is like a governor on your clock speed that the manufacturer says is the maximum safe clock speed. You can tell the computer to have a higher default clock speed above that preset maximum, but it may not be stable because it will spike the temperatures up faster than it can be reliably throttled down and cause problems.\n\nIf you keep your computer cooler with better cooling devices, like bigger, better heat sinks and fans, water cooling blocks, liquid nitrogen, or even liquid helium, you can increase the clock speed that your chip runs at without the chip overheating and becoming damaged or unstable.",
"as a rule, electrical resistance increases with temperature, which decreases performance. \n\nhowever, most computers are programmed to throttle performance in response to heat in order to protect itself.",
"They have an internal mechanism that keeps them from burning up. It works by throttling back when the chip gets too hot. So if you keep it cool you keep it running at the max speed.",
"The speed doesn't depend on heat. However the computer will slow down the CPUs and GPUs when they become too hot to prevent them from melting (self destroying) so what you see is hot CPUs/GPUs becoming slower.",
"Lots of great in-depth information in this thread, but the short, simple response is that they *don't* perform significantly better when cool. However, sustained high temperatures will shorten the lifespan of the semiconductors, and extremely high temperatures will damage them rapidly. Running faster generates more heat, so better cooling allows that heat to be taken away more effectively, meaning they can reach higher speeds without climbing to harmful temperatures.\n\n**TL;DR genuine ELI5:** It's not that running cool helps them perform better; it's that running fast makes heat, running hot is bad for them, and better cooling makes it possible for them to run faster without breaking from getting too hot."
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38sryb | "it's the amps which kill you not volts." but, wouldn't amps be always constant for given volt, as r=v/i. (where r of human body is same) | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/38sryb/eli5_its_the_amps_which_kill_you_not_volts_but/ | {
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"It depends on the power source. Some power sources limit the amount of current that can be drawn independently of the supplied voltage.\n\nFor example, many AC-DC adapters will limit the current output to a certain amperage like 1.0 A independent of what the voltage output is. Similarly, some circuit breakers are designed to trip after 15 amps whereas others will permit up to 30 amps of electrical flow. Another example is tasers which supply very high voltages (thousands of volts) but limit the current flow to a very low amperage so the electric shock is non-lethal.",
"One thing that hasn't been touched on here is what really matters: ***Power***\n\nPower is a measure of how much energy is being delivered, and this is the true measure of how deadly an electric shock is.\n\nThe equation for Power is usually written: \nP=I^2 R \n^((When people say \"it's the amps that kill you\", they're really saying, \"it's the **power** that kills you.\")^)\n\nBut that can be manipulated (through Ohm's law) to: \nP=VI \n^((Independent of resistance!)^)\n\nSo here you can see that if you have a energy source with *limited power*, cranking up the voltage will drop the amperage. Voltage determines how big a gap the spark can jump, and that's why stun guns are thousands or even millions of volts, but are non-lethal.\n",
"While all the conversations are interesting, I believe the saying arose due to the lethal amount of current across the heart. Since this number is generally considered to be 100 mA, it's much easier to say the current is what's important. It doesn't matter all of the hypothetical changes in applied voltage or body resistance, as their ratio approaches the lethal 100 mA you become in danger of death. \n\nSo, yes, Ohms law applies, but all we really care about is the current necessary to cause ventricular fibrillation."
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1g8k8f | hockey lines and a coach's strategy on when to change. | Anything you know about hockey lines. Is the first line usually the best? Why do the players change their usual lines during a power play? Thanks for the help. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1g8k8f/eli5_hockey_lines_and_a_coachs_strategy_on_when/ | {
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"The first line is generally the best and has the superstar players on it. In most cases there are four lines played in a game with the fourth line only being played sometimes. \n\nUsually on the second line there is one good player and the rest are average. The third line has average players; they are basically out there to give the first and second lines a rest.\n\nWhen there is a power play the superstars come out that are most likely to score. When the team has a penalty, the penalty kill unit comes out which are the best defensive players. These players need to block shots and take a lot of abuse so they normally don't have superstars on the penalty kill.\n\nFun fact: Brad Richards from my home town is earning 12 million a year and is playing on the third line; a very expensive third liner considering Sydney Crosby makes only 7.5 million and is Pittsburgh's superstar. ",
"The first line generally has your two best forwards but they will have some of the better players on second line for depth. Those lines are generally the best for with your top 6 forwards with the first line being the people you want on the ice most often. To have a team with great depth you need talent all the way through third line and even fourth line but those are generally grinders that work hard and you trust more to not get scored and will score the odd goal or two but your first lines are the ones you look to to be puttin up points. \n\nThe power play changes around lines because that is when you want the best unit possible. You need good passers for sure but the best goal scorers onthe team will be out there for a power play.\n\nAs far as defense, my team was generally just two d lines with our best paired with the fourth best d and second and third together so you can have a strong pair at all times.",
"On NHL teams, there are usually 4 (offense) forward lines and 3 defense lines.\n\nA forward line consists of 3 players; a center flanked by two wingers. On defense, it's just a pairing of two players.\n\nA team's 1st forward line is composed of their best players, the guys that are the most skilled and usually play on the powerplay. They are out there to score goals.\n\nThe 2nd line is also a scoring line. 2nd line players can be interchanged with top line players based on chemistry and playing style.\n\nThe 3rd and 4th lines can be composed of different players depending on the team, but these are usually the \"grinders\" or a \"checking line\"; guys that are usually defensively sound but don't bring much in the way of offense.\n\nOn defense, most teams like to pair their more offensive minded d-men with a defensive minded defensemen. Teams like to pair a left handed shooting d-man with a right handed d-man.\n\nIn regards to your power play question. Teams have a 1st PP unit and a 2nd PP unit. This is where the coach stacks the lines and puts his 3 best forwards and 2 best dmen out there at the same time. Certain players can fill roles on the PP like someone who stands in front of the goalie blocking his view while trying to deflect pucks in. Other guys have big shots and take slap shots.\n\nWhen a team takes a penalty, a guy goes to the penalty box and they have to play with 4 skaters instead of 5. The penalty kill unit is usually 3rd and 4th line players who are out there to block shots and get the puck out of their own end. There are exceptions to this; for example a star player like Pavel Datsyuk who is very gifted defensively will still kill penalties for his team."
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4paldz | what means if a song gets certified platinum by riaa? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4paldz/eli5_what_means_if_a_song_gets_certified_platinum/ | {
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"It is an official recognition of the number of units sold.\n\nIt means the work has sold a million copies.\n\nThere is also gold which marks half a million sales and multi platinum which marks 2 million sales."
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ckc9ug | why are all negative temperatures hotter than the planck temperature? | Edit: *negative absolute temperatures. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/ckc9ug/eli5_why_are_all_negative_temperatures_hotter/ | {
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"So here's the thing:\n\nTemperature is caused by how much energy atoms have. Atoms like to move, but since they're so small you generally don't see it. The more they move the hotter they are.\n\nIf they reach a certain temperature they break atomic bonda and change phase. There are many phases of matter but the four ones you see the most are solids, liquids, gasses (you can see chlorine as a green gas) and plasma (stuff that lightning is made out of).\n\nThe higher the temperature, the closer to plasma the atoms are. The lower the temperature the closer to solids they are (generally).\n\n\nSo at colder temperatures, atoms vibrate less, which means it's possible for them to not vibrate at all. The tempreature at which all atoms stop vibrating is called Absolute Zero. On the Celsius scale this is about -273 dregrees and something like -459 degrees Farenheit. \n\nThere are, however many ways to measure temperature. One such way is Kelvin. An average day is around 300 degrees Kelvin (or 300K). \n\n\nSo what is 0K? 0K is Absolute Zero. \n\n\nNow if you fail to comprehend how cold Absolute Zero is, here's an example. \n\n\nIt's literally colder than the average temperature of the Universe. It is literally impossible to get colder.\n\nTherefore if there is a colder temperature it would break the laws of physics and nothing would really matter.\n\n\nAm I interpreting your question wrong?"
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3tg91t | why do hotter things cool down quicker? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3tg91t/eli5why_do_hotter_things_cool_down_quicker/ | {
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"The molecules of the cooling surface transfer heat to the surrounding air molecules by colliding with them. When they collide, energy is transferred - the fast moving molecule (the hot one) slows down (e.g, it gets cooler); and the slow moving molecule (the cool one) speeds up (e.g, it gets hotter)\n\nThe greater the difference in their relative speeds, the more energy gets transferred when they collide, which in turn means the faster the cooling occurs. \n\nIf you want an analogy, I like to think of them like fast moving and slow moving billiard balls. ",
"Eli5 version:\n\nimagine a gas - a lot of balls that are constantly bouncing around. The \"hotter\" the ball is the faster it goes.\n\nNow if two balls collide their speed will be averaged between them: one slow + one very fast gives two moving at an average speed of both. If there was little difference between them the result will small (e.g. 100 + 120 gives 110 + 110, so the faster one slowed down by only 10 and slower one accelerated by 10), but if one was one was fast and the other was slow the difference will be bigger both ways (100 + 180 gives 140 + 140, faster one slowed by 40, slowed one accelerated by 40).",
"Really simple explanation that others touched on... heat loss is proportional to the delta of the temperatures. If your house is 21C and outside is 19C it will take a longer time for your house to drop 2C than if it were -20C outside.",
"Also this: _URL_0_\n\nHot water sometimes freezes faster than cold water due to hot water having \"relaxed covalent bonds\" apparently, which allows hydrogen bonds to form",
"Heat transferred = area x heat transfer coefficient x temperature difference \n\nsince temperature difference is one of the driving forces behind how quickly heat is transferred a greater difference in temperature means a quicker rate of transfer\n\nso something really hot cooling to room temperature will have a lot of driving force behind it, at the start, but that driving force will drop the closer it gets to room temperature",
"Imagine heat is a bunch of balls that randomly bounce around and inside of matter. These balls move faster when a thing it hotter and slower when it is cooler. \n\nNow image two materials, A and B. When brought into contact, their balls will flow into each other. Balls from A will flow into B and balls from B will also flow into A.\n\nNow suppose that A is hotter than B. That means that A's balls are moving faster that B's balls. This also means that A's balls are flowing faster into B than B's are flowing into A.\n\nThis total flow in balls (heat) is related to the difference in temperature of each material.\n\nIn more traditional wording: heat flow is proportional to the difference in temperatures.\n\nNote: If two materials at the same temperature were put into contact, their balls would flow into each other. However, the total flow would be 0 since they are moving at the same speed in opposite directions.",
"It's been a while since I studied physics, but I seem to recall that that very hot things (star's n' stuff) start cooling down slower the hotter they get, black body heat radiation being more efficient than once the material starts glowing, and black holes radiating even less but still containing vast energies as heat etc.\n\nOther people have provided seemingly adequate answers for room temperature stuff in atmosphere where the heat loss is more about contact and convection transfers of heat than radiation. "
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5w2d1z | why do we need e-mails to register an account on another website | Back then (like more than 10 years ago) - our details in our emails wasn't verified anyway. And I remember no one among my circle of friends put real details into registering their email. Anyone can make a duplicate emails and almost everyone I know (we were kids) use some pseudo cool name to register.
Nowadays - who uses email for anything besides work and for registering for said accounts? All the non work emails I get are promotions and advertisement from all the websites I registered for.
| explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5w2d1z/eli5why_do_we_need_emails_to_register_an_account/ | {
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"In case you forget your password, then they can send an activation code for you in case you request a password reset. Or to sell your information to a third party."
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68zqb8 | why does tensing your legs help you reach orgasm? | E: holy shit 6k upvotes.
E2: just a note, I did my search beforehand and apparently I didn't do it correctly. Move on.
E3: reposts should be considered on a case by case basis. Or somehow allow archive posts to be marked active again or at least commentable. New information can be discovered by simple conversation in a short time period. You can't expect people to get an answer to things from the past if the previous post either didn't answer the question or is outdated (not saying that's my case but just makes sense for others). | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/68zqb8/eli5_why_does_tensing_your_legs_help_you_reach/ | {
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"Has some interesting answers to this repost \n\n_URL_0_",
"Best ELI5 Answer from the previous thread - \n \nAn orgasm is, partly, an uncontrolled muscular spasm. By tensing up your legs, you're tensing up other things, and by other things, I mean your ass, since it's hard not to when you're tensing your thighs.\n \nWhen you tense up your ass, you also tense up everything in the general pelvic area, including the muscles involved in the orgasm. In this way, you're helping those muscles reach the point of necessary release faster than they would on their own, leading to a quicker pay-off.\n \nIt also seems more intense because you're involving more of your muscles in the process, combined with the relaxation of everything once you finish.",
"Blood flow in that area man.. ever hit legs at the gym after 4 days no whacking it and using a test booster like d-aspartic acid? It aint only two legs that get a pump.",
"Tensing your legs bring more blood to your pelvic floor area, thus increasing sensation and the urge to orgasm. If you are a guy trying to achieve a \"normal\" orgasm without tensing your legs, try tensing your balls instead. It will have the similar effect of forcing more blood to your pelvic floor area.",
"Does this work for women too?",
"Because tensing your legs facilitates greater blood flow to your genital region, and then this greater blood flow facilitates tumescence (swelling) of the genital tissues, which is instrumental in orgasms. Similar to how compression stockings work to prevent blood clots.",
"I think it has to do with bring your legs in closer to your body, which tenses the muscles in the pelvic area. If I have to balance the laptop on my right leg and can't pull them in when I'm about to finish it makes for a disappointing half-charged dribble.",
"First I wasn't aware this was a thing, but my guess can be that tensing your legs may inadvertently tense your PC muscles which I believe do a lot of work when you are orgasming. There are a lot of writings about what the PC muscles do for both men and women and stronger orgasms are one of those things. My guess that would be what the affect is from. ",
"Holding your breath also helps a lot. That's why people wind up choking themselves with belts and dying. \n\nI always figured they were related. Tensing up your muscles burns oxygen in your body. ",
"Because you don't know how to kegel and when you flex your legs it activates those muscles. ",
"Does this work for women too?",
"It may not be the legs as much as you accidentally doing kegels as well. Those really help you finish quicker. ",
"Tensing your legs helps increase venous return of blood to the heart by literally milking the blood in your veins towards the heart. This increase in blood volume to the heart increases cardiac output, stroke volume, and therefore increases mean arterial pressure. That means more blood is flowing out to your body and in this case, to your sexual organs. Increased blood flow helps you achieve orgasm. Source: Anatomy and Physiology class I'm taking right now. We just finished heart and blood vessel physiology. ",
"You're not flexing just your legs, you're flexing your quads, glutes, and kegels as well. Tensing these pushes your pelvis forward, which is the best position for insemination.\n\nIn females, the height of this flexing straightens the vaginal canal and aligns it with the opening of the cervix. In males, the height of this flexing also creates the greatest pressure of ejaculation which results in deeper insemination, and more ejaculate being released in total. \n\nPrior to climax, you're not just flexing and holding, you're flexing and then relaxing repeatedly. Flexing forces more blood into erogenous zones, giving nerves the oxygen needed to keep sending pleasure signals from activity. Relaxing allows deoxygenated blood to drain from the erogenous zones.\n\nThis process of pleasure reward for optimal reproductive actions is a product of evolution.\n\nYou flex because it feels good. It feels good because it works (i.e. successfully encourages reproduction).",
"Serious question.... does this help/work with women too?",
"Man, i think i am the only one here who when i tense my legs, i lose my boner. So it does the opposite of what OP is saying. Pretty cool trick when you are out in public , like on the bus, and you need to lose your boner quick.",
"I'm sure this is buried, but just in case you read it - consider posting to AskScience, which limits the answers to only fact-based ones. Lots of speculation in this (and the linked) thread.",
"Is this regarding males or females? Or for both?",
"Lots of great answers but what about flexing my chest/pecs? That's always been a thing for me, but especially more so after working out a lot.",
"I do that when receiving head. Had a mind blowing orgasm once. Felt like a wave building from my fingers and toes, and eventually through my dick. Was awesome. ",
"Anyone else here have trouble cumming when you jerk off standing up? \n\nI don't know why but I just can't jerk off standing up, like in the shower. It's way too much effort. \n\nIf I lay down, I can crack one off quickly if I have to.. say my wife's out in the garden or something, but if I'm standing up it takes forever. ",
"This is... a thing? Never heard of it.",
"I can't get even get close without tensing my legs. I thought it was just me.\nIt may have to do with forcing more blood into the torso and contributing to engorgement.",
"I have a feeling this has been answered already... But, from my perspective as a urologist...\n\nThe muscles involved most directly during an orgasm have closely linked nerve roots/nerves to those innervating the muscles of the upper leg. Specifically, these will be the adductors of the leg (the muscles that allow you to close your legs). As an example, in men... the obturator nerve, that controls the adductors, runs alongside the prostate gland and innervates the muscles around it, too. When the leg muscles contract, those around the prostate do as well (a bit more complicated than this, but that's the gist), and that *squeeze* feels good during, or before, an orgasm.",
"Works both ways - to last longer, relax your lower body and legs when you think you're getting close. \n\nWish I knew this trick years ago. ",
"I believe it isn't as much the tensing bringing the orgasm as the orgasm bringing the tension. When you orgasm, for both men and women, muscles tense and cause an explosion of, well there isn't really a sciency word for it, sexual excitement. Now my answer is somewhat wrong as it is believed that it is the tensing of muscles around certain glands that cause this release, but in reference to the leg tensing I do believe that it is a product of the orgasm as opposed to a cause. If you would like to think of it this way an orgasm is commonly thought of in stages, there is the build up when you first scratch the edges of orgasm, the plateau where almost maximum pleasure is achieved (usually where you begin to feel the tension in your legs), the release where the maximum pleasure is commonly achieved (usually when you find that tension at it's max or releasing) , and then the fall (or the afterglow as some call it). Some stages can be enhanced by a change in pace or motion or can be skipped over all together depending on the person. For males the orgasm tends to be shorter and more focused, and for women the orgasm tends to be an all over experience, although this is not solid fact as orgasms and sex are fairly hard to research reliably due to sex being a rather personalized experience and hard to generalize.",
"It's a learned behavior - if you did this during your first orgasms ever you are likely to continue using it and then orgasming without it becomes difficult or seemingly impossible. But it's reversible through some focus and exercises. You may have to train your patience while practicing cause it's not a speedy process. I SERIOUSLY recommend checking out work of Dr Betty Dodson, sex educator who taught many people how to overcome this. She answered this question on youtube. She's inspirational and more people should be aware of her work. \n\nTensing your muscles stops the easy flow of orgasm wave through your body and feels like an explosion or implosion while tension free orgasm lasts longer and feels like multiple waves you can ride with practice. Also sounds like a song compared to tension grunts. \n\n"
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3duom9 | why do house lizards stay stationary for long periods of time? what's going through their head? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3duom9/eli5_why_do_house_lizards_stay_stationary_for/ | {
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"Reptiles are cold blooded which means they can't produce their own body heat. In turn, they rely on external heat sources like the sun or a rock heated by the sun, to keep up their body temp. If they start to get cold, they'll become more sluggish and begin looking for a place to warm up.\n\nLike most wild animals, any physical activity costs energy and energy is produced from eating. Eating requires hunting which also requires energy. Naturally, most reptiles will remain somewhat stationary for good periods of time (in a safe spot) to preserve their energy until it's time to hunt and find food or whatever other business they may need to get done. Mainly though, it's just trying to balance between heating, exerting energy and eating."
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1n5unp | pharmaceutical terminology, purposes/functions, brand names etc. | Or maybe a more apt title would be **"Buying pharmaceuticals 101"**...
Growing up with the NHS I've never really been exposed to the stuff that seems second nature to Americans. If I get ill I either get some stuff at the supermarket or go to the doctor's who will prescribe something and will get filled out by the local pharmacist. Buying from the supermarket you get a choice but no one really knows what the actual difference is. At the pharmacy you get what you're given. It's free or low cost(£7.85 per script) so you don't question where your money is going, if it doesn't do the job you go back to the doctor.
So what I'm asking is;
* What is 'brand name'?
* What is 'generic'?
* What's the difference between these drug types?
If there's a difference between these drugs then what are the functions or purposes or whatever that make them different and how and why would they matter? What difference does it make? Quality standards?
For example, I'm not completely sure how the release mechanisms work and what are the benefits and disadvantages of each type of release mechanism (slow, quick or whatever other release types there are). Perhaps there are examples someone could mention about why quick release might be good with one drug and why slow release might be better with another and why, in that case, it might be preferential to get brand or generic.
Following on from that, what should I be looking to get from pharmaceuticals, prescription or otherwise? What should I be looking for? Especially if it is from a famously shady website. If it is advisable to go brand name I assume the list of good brands/manufacturers is too long to recite from heart so perhaps someone could provide me with a list.
What does it mean for a drug to use a certain name? Lets say diazepam(aka Valium). Does that mean that any version of that has the same active ingredients as each other? Or does it mean more than that?
Is there propaganda/marketing to sway people to buy a more expensive product over a cheaper product for no discernible benefit?
Please, really explain like I'm 5 because I looked at other explanation requests and didn't think they were written for people without some kind of familiarity with the terminology. Even as I ask these questions I only have a surface understanding of what I'm asking. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1n5unp/eli5_pharmaceutical_terminology_purposesfunctions/ | {
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"Brand name drugs are drugs that are produced under a brand name given to the drug by the inventor. Lipitor, Valium, Xanax, etc. are examples of brand names.\n\nWhen a drug first hits the market, it is protected by patents, so only the inventor can make it. After the patents run out, other manufacturers like Mylan, Aspen Pharma, or Apotex can start making the drug too, and since they don't have any research and development costs, they can typically sell for much cheaper. These are generic drugs (although they often have brand names too, for trade reasons).\n\nIn most countries, the pharmaceutical regulator (the FDA, in America) only allows the sale of generics if they are bioequivalent. That means that the active ingredient is the same, and must act the same way in the body, but the filler chemicals that make it a tablet can be different. These fillers are called excipients.\n\nIf you go to a pharmacy, the only reason you should get the brand name over a generic is if you are allergic or sensitive to the excipients.",
"Medications are known by both brand and chemical names. A 'brand name' (ie Valium) is the unique trade name each pharmaceutical company gives their medication. Nicholas Piraml India Pty Ltd call it Valium, Cipla Limited call it Zepose. Both have the *active* ingredient Diazepam. A generic is either the pharmacy's own brand or the brand which they stock as a 'home brand'. It will contain the same active ingredient (the thing that does all the work). Different brands of the same drug will contain the same active ingredient. However they may contain different fillers (eg dextrose, lactose, gluten, other allergens) which make one brand more suitable than another for people with allergies. Certain brands may also provide different forms of delivery (eg intramuscular injection, tablet, capsule, intravenous infusion) or different doses (2mg, 4mg, 6mg). In Australia there is a standard to which all medicines of all brands are held accountable for, so any pharmaceuticals you buy either over the counter or prescription have been quality tested and tested for efficacy (to make sure they work)\n\nRelease mechanisms and pharmacokinetics are uber complicated so lets just stick to this. Sometimes you want a big dose fast (ie, paracetamol (panadol) when you have a headache). Other times you want something to take longer to be released, or to be released after a longer period of time (ie, take 6mg, 1 mg of which is released every hour. 6mg in one dose would be too much but saves taking 1mg every hour. Or something may need to be released in the small intestine rather than the stomach, so it needs a slow release so it isn't absorbed until later). I wouldn't buy pharmaceuticals from a 'shady' website, but every registered pharmaceutical in your country (NHS = UK ?) should be quality and efficacy checked so brand shouldn't make a difference **unless** you have allergies.\n\nFor a long time doctors and pharmacists were offered sweet deals from pharmaceutical companies to stock/prescribe their medicine. Not sure what your script looks like but here we have a *tick if generic brand not permitted box* which I have never seen ticked and would only assume would be if their were allergy concerns. If you think your pharmacy is ripping you off, ask if a generic is available. Besides that all the marketing etc, really is aimed at the pharmacy themself. \n\nThe reason we know some brands better than others, is generally because they held the patent for 5 years, and therefore were the only ones who could produce it and sell it for that time. Also, note there is a difference between pharmaceutical manufacturers and companies, in that not all companies manufacture their own medicines.\n\nHope this helps :)"
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5r53o0 | why do people's eyes get small/ squinty when they smoke weed? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5r53o0/eli5_why_do_peoples_eyes_get_small_squinty_when/ | {
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"Decreased blood pressure. In the eyes, a dilation of the ocular capillaries occurs, encouraging the blood flow through the eyes and effectively causing red eyes. ",
"Before I ever got high I used to laugh at one of my friends who would always hella squint whenever she was high. Once I got high for the first time (which was from an edible), I'm pretty sure my eyes were closed for 2 hours straight lmao "
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6dnv9e | how do materials in an alloy create a substance that has different properties to the base materials, even though no chemical reaction takes place between the materials? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6dnv9e/eli5how_do_materials_in_an_alloy_create_a/ | {
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"Steel is a good example. It's made of iron and carbon. Iron atoms are relatively large compared to carbon atoms. If all you have are iron atoms, they pack together, but there are small spaces between the atoms. If you add carbon to the mix, the smaller carbon atoms can fit into the spaces, making the alloy much sturdier than pure iron.",
"You have to understand that there are at least 4 types of chemical bonds. One of them is the kind you are thinking about, where atoms combine to make a new molecule. A specific number of electrons is either shared or exchanged between 2 atoms to form the bond.\n\nIn metals, the situation is a little different. The electrons in metals are so free that they are not bound to any particular atom. It's a sea of electrons with atoms inside it. Only on an average, the number of electrons is balanced by the number of atomic nuclei.\n\nSo when two metals are mixed, the differences in their respective pulls and pushes on electrons creates a new set of properties. Think of it like a milkshake - a homogenous mixture of milk and strawberries creates a new kind of food that not just an addition of, but has new properties that neither milk nor strawberries had individually."
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370pf1 | why do cheap cars look cheap and expensive cars look expensive? | Is there some agreement between car manufacturers that no one's allowed to make a cheap car with a design that looks like a high-end Lamborghini or a Ferrari (for example)?
Or does it genuinely cost a lot more to produce an 'expensive-looking' car? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/370pf1/eli5_why_do_cheap_cars_look_cheap_and_expensive/ | {
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"No, there's no agreement between the carmakers, and it's not a cost-based thing. If Honda wanted, they *could* make an accord look crazy and sell it for the same price, but here's the reason: it wouldn't sell. \n\n\nYou have to look at the market for each car company to see why the cars look like they do. Especially between companies as far apart as Honda and Ferrari, they are not both simply car companies selling cars, they each sell products specifically designed for two very different groups. \n\n\nHonda's market are buyers that want something that can be driven every day, for years, easily with good safety and good visibility. Style matters, but as long as it's not offensively ugly, it'll be fine. They also want something cheaper to maintain and keep up. This means less complicated bodywork and a more generic look to appeal to a greater audience.\n\n\nFerrari's market is much different. Their target buyer is likely looking for something that will make a serious statement. Ferraris are also capable of much higher performance, and you'd be surprised by how much that plays into looks. A lot of vents, duct work, and lines in those supercars are just as much about keeping it stable at 150+ mph as they are about looks. \n\n\nSo in the end, they're both just trying to make cars that appeal to their target buyer as much as possible. For Ferrari and the like, there's an emphasis on being unique, overstated, and borderline vulgar. Because Honda and those companies are playing a numbers game to sell as many as possible, they want looks that many many people can like, or at least live with on a day to day basis. "
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5txayr | how come the north pole is considered the "top of the world" and the south pole, the bottom? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5txayr/eli5_how_come_the_north_pole_is_considered_the/ | {
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"The first map makers and globe artists lived in the northern hemisphere. They opted to depict their land on top.",
"It was an arbitrary choice. China, who invented the compass, considered it to point south (they even called it the \"south indicator\"), and ancient Chinese maps had south at the top - as did some Egyptian and Arab maps. [Medieval European maps](_URL_1_) often placed East at the top (which is where the word \"orient\" comes from). City maps of coastal areas commonly place the body of water at the top. Polar maps, of course, place North or South at the center of the map; and so do [Dymaxion](_URL_0_) projections."
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417vjb | new yorks hate for encrypted smartphones | And why is banning them bad? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/417vjb/eli5_new_yorks_hate_for_encrypted_smartphones/ | {
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"The state government wants to ban them to make it easier for the NSA (and similar agencies) to intercept texts. Any claims of terrorism prevention are excuses to distract from the real reason.",
"People tend not to trust things they don't understand. People who had mumps before there was a vaccine for it totally appreciate how much less a shot hurts than getting the disease. People who don't understand encryption are like anti-vaxxers: They don't understand something, they don't trust it, they want to ban it.\n\nEncryption is a good thing.\nSo are vaccines.\n"
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18d5la | the process by which co2 turns into tree | Also, is it possible, theoretically, for us to artificially make something like wood or coal from Co2 in the air? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/18d5la/eli5_the_process_by_which_co2_turns_into_tree/ | {
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"CO2 is made from carbon and oxygen.\n\nAlthough there are many, many steps in between, the basic chemistry of what's happening is that the tree uses energy from sunlight to split CO2 into carbon and oxygen. Oxygen is released into the air. Carbon is combined with nutrients from the ground to make a tree.\n\nSeriously over-simplified......"
]
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691kk2 | why do you always see things about break throughs in medical science (aids, cancer, etc.) but hear almost nothing about it being practically applied? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/691kk2/eli5_why_do_you_always_see_things_about_break/ | {
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"Because people like to talk about things too early. Then the thing that could potentially be a magic breakthrough gets tested further and it turns out that it's either unsafe, impractical, doesn't work, or some mix of those. Or maybe it does work, but it has to go through multiple years of refining and testing and by the time it becomes widespread it isn't like magic anymore.",
"It's because there's a huge amount of work involved between finding something that may be effective and demonstrating that it can be used safely and effectively in real-world conditions. Let's take the example of a drug that's found to kill cancer cells. That's going to be reported in the news with an overly optimistic headline like, \"Scientists Discover Possible Cancer Cure.\" That's all well and good, but in all likelihood, that would just mean that the drug can cure cancer cells in a lab, [which is surprisingly easy.](_URL_0_) However, testing needs to be done to see if it actually works in a living organism, so you then have to test it on animals. And you also have to make sure that the drug doesn't cause other medical issues. (What good is a drug that kills cancer cells if it also destroys heart cells?) And then you have to do this on humans. And there are more trials on different people with different doses, with statistical analyses to show whether or not it really does what it says. \n\nAnd if the drug can't pass every single step in this long process, the drug doesn't go to market, and you probably won't hear about it ever again. However, the only thing that makes it to the news is that first headline, which applies to tons of drugs that were tested but never got approval for cancer treatment.\n\nIn short, it's because the news stories about medical breakthroughs ignore or downplay the possibility that the breakthroughs will not hold up to further scrutiny, and because there are rarely newsworthy updates throughout the long, boring process of testing out these potential breakthroughs. "
]
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"https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/cells.png"
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||
48g70l | why do we have to buy domain names from companies instead of just claiming it ourselves for free? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/48g70l/eli5_why_do_we_have_to_buy_domain_names_from/ | {
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"How are you going to convince other people that that domain name should point to your computers? Or even tell them, for that matter? And how are you going to convince them that they should listen to you and not the other people that are saying that _URL_0_ should point to their computers?\n\nYou're buying (leasing, really) the exclusive rights to it across the Internet, and paying for the computer systems that you do not control to tell everyone else on the Internet about it.",
"Back in the day, before everyone and his uncle wanted a domain name, before the world wide web, before google, you *could* just ask for a domain name and get it for free. Who did you ask? The National Science Foundation, of all things. \nWhen domains started getting more popular, the National Science Foundation got tired of doing it, and farmed the process out to anyone who wanted to be a \"domain registrar.\" \nTurns out it's quite a bit of work. \n\n",
"When the Internet really took off commercially and started to spread throughout the globe, the United States Government, through discussions in the \"Green Papers\", spun off the role of DNS management to a private non-profit organization called ICANN. [In the ICANN by-laws](_URL_0_), it was decided that they would assign responsibility of the generic top level domains (gTLDs, like .com, .net, .org, and so on) to outside organizations. These organizations then deal with ICANN directly when it comes to their involvement with managing the TLD, ICANN grants then the right to charge for their registrar services and receives a small consideration every time a domain name is registered.\n\nThe relationship works similarly to how pubic utility companies work with cities, counties, and states, where utilities are granted necessary consideration for their business to function from the government in exchange for government oversight into their operations and their pricing and the right to charge a tax to their clients.\n\nSo, a non-profit is created, they assign registrar tasks to other entities in exchange for a small fee from each registration, then that registrar up-charges to sell registration to resellers."
]
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"gemspark.com"
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"https://www.icann.org/resources/unthemed-pages/bylaws-1998-11-06-en#VI"
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||
40ovfb | whatever happened to the baby boomers bust we were told was going to destroy our economy? | [deleted] | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/40ovfb/eli5_whatever_happened_to_the_baby_boomers_bust/ | {
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"They've only just begun to reach retirement age (those born in 1945-1948). When the majority are retired and pulling social security, this will be a more noticeable issue.",
"It's happening right now. Read about the financial predictions in the world news at the moment. "
]
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[],
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|
7owgtj | what is cloud mining? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7owgtj/eli5_what_is_cloud_mining/ | {
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"Cryptocurrency 'mining' is using computer power to perform work that helps run the cryptocurrency. To reward people for doing this work, a small percentage of the time work will result in a worker being given some of that currency. Trying to make money this way is called \"mining.\"\n\nCloud mining is like cloud computing. You pay someone else to do work on your behalf. You get any cryptocurrency generated by that work, and they get paid to do the mining for you.",
"Lets say you want to mine for bitcoin. Today, it is pretty much a fruitless endeavour to mine using a computer. People who mine bitcoin today use specialized machines called ASICs that generate a lot of heat, are very loud and consume a lot of electricity. Let's say I have a large warehouse, have cheap electricity but want a return on the money that I dropped on some sweet new ASICs right away. A company like hashflare creates a market for the both of us. They will speculate that in order to mine a bitcoin I will need x amount of computing power (expressed in mega or gigahashes) running for x amount of time. You, along with many other people will pay hashflare which will in turn pay me to operate my ASICs in order to mine bitcoin."
]
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[],
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||
4nl1pg | why do they tell us to save water when we actually use the same water over and over, just purified? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4nl1pg/eli5_why_do_they_tell_us_to_save_water_when_we/ | {
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"Actually, in very few locations you use the same water over and over again.\n\nIn most places, water is gathered from rivers, or underground, and after being used is purified sufficiently to be dumped back in those rivers.\n\nBesides, even if the water is recycled, the recycling infrastructure is limited and costs money.",
"Water is purified by nature, and has been replenished by nature for thousands of years. Nature stores drinkable water in the form of freshwater lakes and aquifers underground.\n\nTrouble comes when humans consume drinkable water much faster than nature can replenish, and that is what is happening in areas of draught, and when we create places like Arizona and insist on the classic green lawn. Also happening, is agriculture water consumption is outstripping aquifer replenishment. All totalling in future conflicts in places like southwest US over water rights.\n\nTLDR: we drink water faster than nature can replace"
]
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[],
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||
z4o44 | why reddit auto-downvotes? | **Answered**:
> It is to stop people from using bots to up vote their own posts. What it does specifically is stops them from knowing if their vote has been ignored or not.
If they had a bot, and up-voted a post, and the post number stayed the same. Then it would be obvious that the bot was ignored and then they could work towards circumventing it.
> However, if instead of just ignoring it, it gives the post one up-vote and one down-vote. They wouldn't be able to tell if someone just down voted it, or if it was the number fuzzing program.
> So put simply:
> It constantly moves the numbers around so you can't tell if your vote actually counted or not, but it totally does count unless you have blocked by spam protection.
*Thanks guys* | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/z4o44/eli5_why_reddit_autodownvotes/ | {
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"(For the OP)\n\nA lot of what is being speculated in this thread is just that... *speculation*. If someone gives an explanation without a source or link to a related comment by an admin I'd take it with a pinch of salt.",
"I know that sometimes Reddit will downvote if it suspects that a bot was the one who upvoted. I have no idea why reddit will downvote things just because they were upvoted a lot.",
"I have wondered the same, why the downvotes always seem to follow the upvotes. Would be nice to understand why.",
"It is to stop people from using bots to up vote their own posts. What it does specifically is stops them from knowing if their vote has been ignored or not.\n\nIf they had a bot, and up-voted a post, and the post number stayed the same. Then it would be obvious that the bot was ignored and then they could work towards circumventing it. \n\nHowever, if instead of just ignoring it, it gives the post one up-vote and one down-vote. They wouldn't be able to tell if someone just down voted it, or if it was the number fuzzing program. \n\nSo put simply:\n\nIt constantly moves the numbers around so you can't tell if your vote actually counted or not, but it totally does count unless you have blocked by spam protection. \n\n",
"I wonder if Reddit has a similar security measure to stop people from using bots to downvote posts.",
"The better question is, why does RES force you to opt OUT of uppers and downers?\n\nIt's well known that up and downvotes are completely inaccurate. So why does a major extension like RES turn this on, knowing it's just going to confuse a lot of people?",
"I wish everyone knew this.. it seems like 25% of all reddit comments are something to the effect of \"I can't believe somebody downvoted you, omg..\" Very annoying and I'm always too lazy to explain why it happened.",
"Can we put this question in an FAQ or something?",
"Glad you posted this, I was wondering about it while looking at that grandma ipad paniter, I kept thinking, how are there really 46000 downvotes on this amazing piece of art work.",
"It makes it look like the things on the front page have a 60/40 difference on likes and dislikes.",
"It also helps to keep karma to scale. Posts from 5 years ago won't be overshadowed by current ones on the top list due to more people being on Reddit today. Keeps \"karma inflation\" down.",
"Wouldn't this make the \"controversial\" section of subreddits kind of useless?"
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1a1ez3 | why did languages that developed independantly like japanese, romance languages, and hindi all base the names of the days of the week off the planets, and in the exact same order? | Example, for Monday the words are lundi (French), getsuyoube (Japanese) and somavara (Sanskritt?), all of which literally mean "day of the moon" or reference the god of the moon in that culture. Did everybody decide to set a standard at some point in history?
Side note, this works for english as well, the names reference Norse gods relating to the planets: Tuesday a reference to Tyr, the norse god of war, which is Mars, which is the planetary standard reference for Tuesday in other languages. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1a1ez3/eli5_why_did_languages_that_developed/ | {
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"This is a pretty complicated question, because it spans language and geography during a time where historical records are difficult to trace. However, to get the feel for it, you can see the [Japanese explanation here](_URL_0_). In short: they didn't **independently** come up with the same scheme; they adopted it from each other. It just happened so long ago that it *seems* like it was separate.\n\nThe article has this to say: \n\n*\"The most commonly accepted theory is that the use of the seven planets originated in ancient Mesopotamia and Egypt, was adopted by the Greeks and Romans, and then found its way to China.* \n\n*Although there were several routes of transmission into China, it appears that the Indian route was the direct source of the Japanese names for days of the week. In 806, the famous Japanese monk, Kobo Daishi, bought writings back to Japan along with a huge quantity of other Buddhist scriptures. Great interest was taken in the astrological work, with the result that the planetary names found their way into Japanese calendars of the time.\"*"
]
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7i1xyz | why do airlines charge less for flights out of small cities (stopping over in a major hub) and more just from that major city? | I want to go to Las Vegas, so I started looking at flights. A flight from Victoria, BC to Las Vegas with a stopover in Vancouver is $250 round trip. Yet when I change my location to Vancouver, for the exact same flight (minus the flight from Victoria to Vancouver, so it should be cheaper) it's $330. Why is the airline charging $80 more for me to go through the major hub I'd be going through anyways? Thanks in advance team of reddit geniuses :) | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7i1xyz/eli5why_do_airlines_charge_less_for_flights_out/ | {
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"It has to do with competition. A flight from city A to city B to city C is not competing with flights from city B to city C. It’s competing with A-D-C with different stopovers and A-C nonstop. If one airline dominates airport B (which is the case for many large US airports; just not the few largest like NY’s and LA’s) that will make flights out of B more expensive. But that doesn’t apply to other flights using B as a stopover, so if airport A has more competition between airlines than B, then A-B-C will often be cheaper than B-C.",
"It’s about demand. Many prefer flying direct, non-stop routes because customers typically dislike having to get off a plane and then re-board another. Some don’t like having to kill time in the airport on a layover. Others don’t want to have to worry about delayed planes and missing their connecting flights, etc. Airlines also use complex algorithms to sell their seats online, which is why seat prices fluctuate on any given day, time, or route.\n\nIn the United States, certain airline carriers are more dominant at certain airports. These hubs make it economic for the airlines to centralize their operations.\n\nImagine if there isn’t great demand to go from Pittsburgh to Allentown (hypothetically) but there was a great demand to go from Pittsburgh to New York. They may have their flight go from Pitt - > Allentown - > NYC. The additional stop helps them transport all the Pitt-Allentown passengers and any Allentown-NYC Passengers as well as the Pitt - > NYC brunch. The route is cheaper, despite you taking an extra plane, because the demand for the particular legs are much less than the Pitt- > NYC route. This allows the airline to provide their service to smaller demand areas while still connecting everybody to where they ultimately want to go. The added connectivity translates to better customer loyalty and more business.\n\n"
]
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2tgiap | what is the differencies between motherboards? | I don't really know/understand the differencies of different motherboards. What is the difference between a cheap and a very expensive board? Why could I need a more expensive one, if I can have one with the right socket and I don't need extra HDMI/DVI, etc.
So, can it make a PC run faster or smoother, what makes the price differencies? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2tgiap/eli5_what_is_the_differencies_between_motherboards/ | {
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"Okay. So practicality aside, since of course you could just use the motherboard that fits your needs instead of being the most decked out board ever. That is a given and should always be considered when building a PC. \n\nHowever, there are good reasons to buy the pricier boards. The biggest are Warranty, Value, and Quality. \n\nMore expensive boards (typically) have the better warranty, and better quality parts that have higher life spans and better protective capabilities for the PC itself, while offering better speeds or other such benefits. This in itself is what gives these board value. \n\nCheap boards on the other hand, can be good boards, but are typically the entry level boards, or older high end models which can be equated to the newer low end models anyways. \n\nIn short, if you buy cheap, you are getting cheap parts and cheap breaks sooner (usually), which leads to a crappier warranty and less overall value. (More oft than not.)\n\nThats why it is better to shell out the extra 50-100$ to get the high end board in comparison to the low end one. Even if building a super cheap rig, because people ALWAYS want to try to upgrade the damn thing at some point, and having a motherboard that is behind the times is a sure fire way to ruin any possible upgrading. ",
"There are two main factors. One big factor affecting board prices is quality/reliability. Cheaper boards are more likely to fail. This varies price between brands.\n\nAnother big factor is features. Things like overclocking support, more slots, newer ports (such as USB3 when it was new), crossfire/SLI compatibility, RAID support, etc. This varies price within a brand.\n\nBasically, if you just need a basic setup (not doing anything fancy), go for the cheaper boards within a brand that you trust. No need to pay money for features you won't be using."
]
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2avp48 | why do radios have such bad audio but phones often have perfect audio | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2avp48/eli5_why_do_radios_have_such_bad_audio_but_phones/ | {
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"radio uses analog transmissions which doesn't allow error correction or detection. Transmission errors will affect the signal.\n\n\nMobiles use digital transmission with high data rates. And even if a transmission error occurs you can figure out which bit is faulty and correct it. \n\n\nYou can correct digital signals because there's only two values 1 and 0 if you receive a 0.9 you know there was an error and you can correct it. On the other hand there's analog if you receive a 0.9 it could be 0.9 or 1 or any other value. That makes it impossible to figure out the exact audio in analog and allows you to perfectly rebuild the audio signals.\n\n\nBUT there are digital radios too. They should work just as good depending on how much time and effort was spend engineering them. \n\n\nAnother big reason why radios are worse is, that most of them use \"free for all\" frequencies everyone can just send signals around which results in lots of other signals that interfere with your radio. While the phone standards are protected, if you use them for radio or similar things you'll get sued."
]
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||
4k8zxw | given the sc ruling on roe v. wade, how is it ok for ok to make abortion illegal? | As it says: Oklahoma is considering a bill that [will make abortion illegal](_URL_0_). If this has already been settled with Roe v. Wade, what's the angle here? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4k8zxw/eli5_given_the_sc_ruling_on_roe_v_wade_how_is_it/ | {
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"It's not.\n\nHowever, it has to make it's way through the courts and inevitably get struck down.\n\nIt's a pretty horrible cocktail:\n\n* Abortion is effectively banned until the court eventually rules\n\n* It wastes the state and the federal governments money on a pointless court case\n\n* It takes time away from dealing with real problems like WTF OK's going to do when oil prices stay low for years to come.",
"There is a purpose behind it that isn't just red meat for conservatives. The purpose behind a lot of these laws is to take them to the Supreme Court. They want to be sued so they can have a chance for the Supreme Court to rehear arguments on abortion. \n\nIt is also important to note that there are 2 abortion clinics left in Oklahoma, abortion for the Midwest is like guns for California, even if they pass something clearly unconstitutional, they want to test the limits of how far they can restrict it before the courts get involved. \n\n",
"This would violate *Roe.* But SCOTUS may technically throw out *Roe* if it wishes to do so; the thought is probably a dream that this law will push SCOTUS to do so, and if it fails; well it's a temporary finger in the eye of pro-choice-ers. Overturning *Roe* wouldn't succeed at this very moment, but it may well after this election (if a Conservative is elected). The hope is probably to tee up a test case to get the Justices to throw out *Roe*, which might happen if Trump is elected. \n\n Previous SCOTUS rulings are not in fact, gospel. Precedent is extremely important (see stare decisis). But in rare circumstances the Court will simply throw out precedent (see, e.g., *Brown v. Board of Education*). Some Justices have indicated that's exactly what should be done with *Roe.* The hope behind this bill seems to be that it will drive SCOTUS to do exactly that (the article states this, explicitly). Some Justices are on board; Thomas has stated in an opinion that he would throw out *Roe* if given the chance to do so (*Planned Parenthood v. Casey*, dissent). The votes aren't *presently* sufficient to justify the hope though. \n\nThis election could change that. The next president may well choose four Justices. Ginsburg, Kennedy, and Breyer will all be in their 80s during the next POTUS term; Ginsburg nearing 90s, and all of them older than Scalia when he died, and older than the Court's usual retirement age). If their (and Scalia's replacement) agree with Thomas, who's on the court now, there's your 5 votes right there to throw out *Roe*. Not to mention 2 other judges, Alito and Roberts, who are Conservative Justices and might go along, making not even all those replacements necessary. If Trump is elected he will do the replacing, and he's already stated that he would elect Justices that shared Thomas's opinion.\n\n\nI don't know how long the legislative system takes to work in this state, but they're \"discussing\" such legislation to tee up the case that would throw out Roe, so they can claim the glory for it from Republicans, once the court is set and they can push it towards making that decision."
]
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"http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/05/19/478743035/oklahoma-lawmakers-pass-bill-that-makes-performing-an-abortion-a-felony"
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3gato4 | multiple hairs out of the same follicle. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3gato4/eli5_multiple_hairs_out_of_the_same_follicle/ | {
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"It's a weird, but not harmful, genetic disorder. Google \"Pili multigemini\" if you want more detail."
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||
1rkpux | how is it possible that we still have a full head of hair everyday even though a handful (esp. females) can fall out while showering? | I just don't understand how it's possible!! | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1rkpux/eli5_how_is_it_possible_that_we_still_have_a_full/ | {
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"Your hair grows fast enough to replace it. Your hair is practically always growing. The strands you can see are growing longer, and the follicles you can't see are growing new strands.",
"you have a -lot- of individual hairs, and you dont lose a true handful everyday. Longer hair is just more noticeable.",
"Supposedly, humans lose anywhere between 50-250 hairs a day, but the hair regrows so quickly that you would never know. It's only when we reach a certain age, that the hair regrowth cycle can not keep up with the amount of hair lost. Kind of like how skin cell regeneration can not keep up as we get older, thus we age. Other factors play into this equation such as hormonal production of testosterone (which causes destruction of the hair follicles) and in some people, this can manifest into something called \"androgenic alopecia.\" \nAndrogen = sex hormone. Androgenic alopecia does not only happen to middle-aged men, it can happen to post-pubescent boys and girls, as well as those in their 20s. \n\nHair grows and sheds in 3 stages:\n\n* Anaphase: Life cycle of 3-7 years. Numbers vary online, but something like 70 to 90% of your hair at any given time is in this category.\n\n* Cataphase: Cycle of 3-4 months. Hair root (not the follicle) migrates closer to the surface of your skin. If you've ever tweezed/plucked a hair, you know that some hairs come out pretty easily and others HURT and will sometimes come with a little \"white ball\" at the end of the hair which was removed from the skin. This \"white ball\" is the hair root.\n\n* Telophase: Cycle of 3-4 months when hair growth STOPS and is naturally forced outwards from the dermal layer and \"falls out.\" \n\n\nNote: doing things such as trichotillomania, combing, brushing, braiding, forming dreadlocks, blow drying, shampooing, playing with your hair, all negatively affect the Anaphase cycle, which is why we sometimes see loose hairs in the shower or on our combs. This is usually not cause for alarm, but in some people, particularly men, it can be. There are shampoos especially formulated to stop hairloss, most people have heard of \"Rogaine.\" Rogaine contains a chemical called Minoxidil, dilates blood vessels in the scalp and encourages hair regrowth in this way. Minoxidil is not effective for everyone, but has a pretty good success rate. Ironically, Minoxidil can actually make you LOSE hair faster by speeding up the Telophase cycle. In addition, Minoxidil compounds are often applied directly to the scalp and are formulated with alcohol as a preservative - which can destroy hair. \n\nHowever, there are alternatives which do not force your body to artificially restart Anaphase as much as they simply encourage a healthy scalp/hair follicle environment by using natural ingredients which improve blood circulation to the scalp and kill off pathogenic fungi/bacteria which can affect hair growth. One such shampoo is \"Regenpure\" and it does not contain Minoxidil. \n\nLife tip: take care of your hair, all other animals do. "
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bcyhes | why do videos freeze up when entering and exiting full-screen mode? | I've noticed that videos tend to freeze up for a second or two when entering or exiting full-screen mode. This has happened on every computer I've used for as long as I can remember. Why does this happen? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/bcyhes/eli5_why_do_videos_freeze_up_when_entering_and/ | {
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"Some video players will attempt to raise or lower the resolution of the video if you enter or exit full screen mode, which can cause the video to freeze while the different resolution footage is requested from the server.\n\nOn a really slow machine the process of switching in and out of split screen can also be taxing by itself. This is especially true for machines that don't have graphics cards, since the processing power is being shared between the video player, and the rest of the computer.\n\nIt could also just be a bug in the video player. Playing videos is a pretty complicated problem in computer programing, and writing huge programs without bugs is pretty hard."
]
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4pgr6l | what are the black dots that a human sees swimming in vision when suddenly standing up after lying down for a while (not sleeping) ? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4pgr6l/eli5_what_are_the_black_dots_that_a_human_sees/ | {
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"Or, just in general, you can always see fuzziness in your vision if you just try to notice it. I assume your brain just kind of blocks it out if you aren't trying to notice it.\n\nWhat is / causes that? I've always wondered if it's only me.\n\nedit: It seems it's commonly called \"visual snow\".",
"Hi, I am still uncertain as to which of these are you referencing,\n1) white dot with black streak like tiny snakes, does not move during motion of eye, this because white blood cells which are bigger block your capillaries, and the black streak is the red blood cells stuck behind it, like big slow truck blocking the smaller cars.\n2) semi-transparent black chain of circles, movies with eye movement, this is because of long protein in your vitreous fluid, the fluid in your eye ball cast a shadow in your retina. Like a hand puppet shadow.\n3) Black circles, diamond which blink white sometimes, happens when seeing a bright object or when you get up and open your eyes, rarely after you move your complete field of vision, this happens because your brain is adjusting to the new setting, lighting, you are technically blind when your field of vision is changing (rapid motion), so when you stop it is like seeing a complete new image and adjusts. ",
"Your retinas need an abundance of oxygen to function properly. When you are sitting for long periods of time and/or get up quickly your blood pressure lowers and it is harder for blood to reach your brain after standing up abruptly. Your brain then priorities itself over, in this case your retinas, the oxygen that could make it up. This lack of oxygen to the retinas causes the spots.",
"It is due to sudden decrease in blood pressure within the blood vessels inside your brain. Your heart pumps blood with sufficient force to reach your brain (and all other organs). When you are lying down, gravity does some of the work. When you stand up suddenly, your heart takes some time to adjust to new necessary force to pump blood against gravity. During that short time, less blood reaches your brain, so brain shuts down some functions. \nIt happens to me all the time. Rarely, it may lead to loss of consciousness. It is harmless. It happens to people with low blood pressure more. (My resting blood pressure is ~100/50 mmHg) Try to stay hydrated on hot days : )."
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29wv9c | how exactly is data electronically stored on tiny devices like micro sd cards? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/29wv9c/eli5_how_exactly_is_data_electronically_stored_on/ | {
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"Flash memory is stored in little devices called floating gate transistors. \r\r\rTransistors are the little electrical switches that computers use to process things and amplifiers use to amplify signals. They have three terminals, a source, drain, and gate. The voltage applied to the gate controls whether current can flow from the source to drain, the gate is the switch. A high voltage opens or turns on the transistor, this is what computers use as binary \"1\". No voltage closes or turns off the transistor, this is a binary \"0\". All digital data is stored as 1s amd 0s, and computers process it as 1s and 0s using these transistor switches. As you can tell here, the switches work great for running a computer or even sitting data in the computers RAM, but to stay on or open they need a voltage, so the second you remove the power the voltage disappears and any data is lost. \r\r\rA floating gate transistors works the same way, but the gate is highly insulated. Electrons that get into it get stuck, and hence the voltage can be held when the power is removed. Any transistors trapping electrons are left open holding a 1, while any without trapped electrons are left closed holding a 0. This allows flash memory to store data without power. To get the electrons through the insulation and get trapped in the first place, a really high voltage (computer high, not powerline high) is \"flashed\" to groups of transistors, hence **flash** memory. \r\r\rA microSD card has billions of these transistors, and their sizes range in the nanometres (nm). A piece of paper has a thickness of 0.1mm, that's thin but still 100,000 nm. Transistors have measurements on the order of about 100-10nm. When a microSD card has 64 GB, that means it has somewhere around 500 billion transistors in it. "
]
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60d40r | why, even though i used to be tiny and have a fast metabolism, did quitting prozac (antidepressants) cause me to gain nearly 50 pounds in two months? | [deleted] | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/60d40r/eli5_why_even_though_i_used_to_be_tiny_and_have_a/ | {
"a_id": [
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"It most likely affected your appetite causing you to eat more than you used to. Have you had any changes in how active you are?",
"Sounds like food became the primary substitute for your meds. I know when I'm sad I start binge eating like crazy. Maybe your mood changed your behavior in small, but powerful ways. "
]
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[],
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3dncja | how bose noise cancellation work | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3dncja/eli5_how_bose_noise_cancellation_work/ | {
"a_id": [
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"It doesn't deflect the noise, it literally cancels the noise out by playing the opposite noise through the headphones.\n\nSound travels as a wave. If you play a sound 180 degrees out of phase (aka, the opposite sound), it effectively cancels out and creates silence. [This is a really simple graph showing the concept.](_URL_0_). If the blue wave is noise, and the red wave is what the headphones play, the yellow line is what we hear (silence).\n\nNoise cancelling headphones have a microphone that picks up the ambient noise. With a simple audio processor, it reverses the phase and plays it back through the headphones, cancelling out the noise.",
" This is a commonly asked question here. Please see [these previous posts.](_URL_0_) on the same topic. If they don't entirely answer your question, you might create a new post with\na more specific question.\n\nTry our handy Search function sometime. :-)\nFor best results in most cases, use 2 or 3 general, common words\nthat refer to the key concepts in your topic."
]
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"http://laurencescotford.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/PhaseCancellation.jpg"
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"https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/search?q=noise+cancellation&restrict_sr=on&sort=relevance&t=all"
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||
9hlw81 | if grocery stores are said to have a markup of 10-15%, how do they afford to run sales of up to 50% off? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9hlw81/eli5_if_grocery_stores_are_said_to_have_a_markup/ | {
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"Former Buyer here. There are a couple of things that make these sales worth while. First, the average profit may be 10-15%, but it varies widely by item. Items like Seasonal, Produce, Private label and HBA can make far More than 10-15%. Commodity items like milk and eggs make far less, and may be below cost when on sale. However, when milk is on sale, customers will come in and buy milk and many other things. Milk is used as a loss leader so they can capture profit on all the other things customers buy. Turkeys are a good example of this. They almost give them away before Thanksgiving so they can capture all the profitable sales that go along with it. Finally, vendors pay retailers to run sales. Chips is a good example. They may retail for $4.29. And they may run them on sale at 2 for $5.00, but if the retailers cost is $2.75 a bag (I’m guessing here) then Frito Lay will pat the retailer $.50 for every bag sold on sale. It’s called scanbacks. There are many other things that drive profits (Exclusive Deals, slotting allowances, fixture allowances, and ad fees that all make it a profitable business). "
]
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2lqcjw | how are musical prodigies able to play instruments with little or no instructions? | Like playing the piano. How do they know which note is which with no prior experience? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2lqcjw/eli5_how_are_musical_prodigies_able_to_play/ | {
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"clxc37n"
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"text": [
"I wouldn't quite say they sit down and play perfectly without ever being exposed before... It's more like they have an extremely high aptitude for it and learn the patterns very very quickly."
]
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|
6hjb44 | what's the difference between a low end motherboard and a high end motherboard? | Other than ram capacity, size, memory slots, onboard wifi and audio, and other basic features, are there any big differences between them?
Thanks for all the answers guys! If I've learned anything, you shouldn't cheap out on any part in your PC, because they are all important. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6hjb44/eli5_whats_the_difference_between_a_low_end/ | {
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"Better solder\n\nBetter parts in general\n\nBetter/stronger material\n\nBetter heat/conductivity \n\n",
"The motherboard is a bit like a traffic system, with data being moved from the GPU, hard drives, memory, processors, ect. across your motherboard. A better motherboard will have a smarter traffic system in the form of chipset architecture, thus making everything else flow faster. It is a fairly critical speed bottleneck. "
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7p59cd | if all produce is grown in an open climate, why does some produce like broccoli need to be stored in a fridge, while some produce like avocados can be stored at room temperature? how come some can be stored either way also, like strawberries or grapes? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7p59cd/eli5_if_all_produce_is_grown_in_an_open_climate/ | {
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"When fruits/vegetables are growing, they're part of a living plant. When you harvest them, they're no longer being supported by a living plant & you want to keep them in an environment that prolongs their freshness.\n\nLook at a slab of meat. That used to be an animal. Animals are fine *until you kill them and cut them up* and then they start to rot fairly quickly unless you do something to preserve the meat.\n\n",
"Basically, different plant materials have different properties. Take for example an orange. An orange has a peel (kind of like human skin) that can protect the fruit inside from getting eaten by various fungus and bacteria. This protective feature means it is ok to leave it at room temperature (although eventually it will develop fungus on the peel if you leave it long enough). On the other hand, orange juice does not have a peel and becomes contaminated with bacteria as soon as you open it, so you have to keep it in the fridge once opened. Low temperatures will inhibit bacterial and fungal growth. Another factor is that different organisms may be faster growing and prefer certain food sources, just like I would prefer pizza to asparagus.\n\nAnswering the second question, anything can be stored at any temperature. However, the time it takes before it goes bad will generally increase as temperature decreases.\n\nEdit: I missed the part about the open climate, but it was mainly covered by u/ameoba. Think of a live animal versus some rotting road kill. Generally live animals can fight against infections, unless it kills them. Plants are also susceptible to disease before harvested."
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35hu38 | what would happen if every countries interest rate were to go to 0% | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/35hu38/eli5_what_would_happen_if_every_countries/ | {
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"If every country's interest rates went to 0% *because all the countries were unable to get out of local recessions at higher interest rates*, then the entire world would be in a \"liquidity trap\": that is, a nasty kind of depression that can't be cured with monetary policy because people are so freaked out by the bad business climate that they are willing to stockpile huge amounts of money. Since in a normal depression (even a very bad, liquidity-trap kind) one way for a country to recover is by exporting goods to countries which are booming, it would be a *terrible* depression if this happened globally - much worse than the Great Depression. Ideally, governments would respond to this with a global fiscal policy pact (all agreeing to embark on deficit-financed spending in their countries simultaneously), but the last time around, each country took a course that made the crisis harder for everyone.\n\nNow, if countries where there is currently inflation even at relatively high interest rates cut their rates to 0% just for funsies, there would be runaway inflation in those countries, but I assume that isn't what you're asking. (Interest rates are sort of like the speed of a car: if someone says that a car is going 80mph, you assume that's because the car is on the highway, not because the driver is on a DUI-rampage through a quiet suburban neighborhood with windy roads.)"
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22zmlu | throughout history, what led people to use different writing systems and alphabets? what influenced their choice of script and language? | I'm wondering why there are so many different alphabets/logographic writing systems and how did people come to invent one or the other. Why do the Chinese, Japanese and Arabs use a graphic style of writing, while Europeans and Americans use (mostly, some use cyrillic) a latin alphabet. I'm not asking how the latin alphabet got to be used, I know it's mostly because of the ancient Roman empire and earlier civilisations, I'm just wondering what influenced people throughout the globe to write the way they do, from the very beginning, while other parts of the world did it differently. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/22zmlu/eli5_throughout_history_what_led_people_to_use/ | {
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"text": [
"they were invented independently. there is no real answer to \"why it looks like this\". ",
"\"Arabs\" don't use a \"graphic style\" of writing, if by that you mean a pictorial language where characters (called \"ideographs\") represent words rather than sounds: they use a type of alphabet called an \"abjad\", with letters representing only consonants.\n\nBasically, since different civilisations didn't necessarily have any (or much) contact with each other, they simply invented their own writing systems independently of each other, as /u/mirozi says. But that's only part of the story.\n\nYou may not realise it, but our alphabet actually began in a writing system with ideographs. For example, in the ancient Semitic languages, the word for \"ox\" was *’alp*, and the ancient scribes drew the head of an ox to represent it. Over a very long time, the symbol became very very simplified (it now looks nothing like an ox's head), and soon it came to represent not the whole word, but only the first sound of that word (which was actually not the vowel, but a type of sound called a \"glottal stop\" and represented by that apostrophe in *’alp*). It appears in Arabic as the letter alif, and in Hebrew and Phoenician as the letter aleph. It now no longer means \"ox\" but \"domesticated\" -- its meaning has evolved as well.\n\nThen when the Greek writing system was invented, they took the Phoenician letter aleph, turned it on its side (which to us, of course, is the right way up), called it \"alpha\" (which is now just a meaningless name) and made it refer not to a glottal stop, but to the vowel. And that's where the Latin letter A came from."
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boteh5 | is there light in a closed box? | Say you close a perfectly sealable box in a lit room, does some light stay in the box? If not, where would it go? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/boteh5/eli5_is_there_light_in_a_closed_box/ | {
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"The light in the box will have transferred it's energy to heat/radiation or whatever. There would be no light in the box. This is basic physics.",
"The light would bounce around in on the walls in the box. Every time a bounce occurs, most of the light's energy is transferred to heat in the walls. And since the light moves at the speed of light, it will very quickly bounce many times, and all of its energy will be absorbed by the box in the form of heat. It will seem instantaneous to us.\n\nSo there will be no light in the box.",
"/u/BeautyAndGlamour has it right, but with a big asterisk. Any *visible* light in the box will bounce around inside it, being partly absorbed on each bounce, until within a few microseconds all the visible light will be absorbed.\n\nBut visible light isn't the only kind. Unless the box is made of metal, radio waves will still pass through it. Even if it is made of metal, gamma rays from cosmic radiation will pass right through. And because the inner walls of the box are warm, they will \"glow\" with infrared light.\n\nSo there will be lots of light in the box, just not the kind your eyes can see."
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5b25cy | can we yawn while sleeping ? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5b25cy/eli5_can_we_yawn_while_sleeping/ | {
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"While we are asleep our brain still has control over our muscles. Yawning is an involuntary reflex meaning, it just happens. Scientifically speaking yawning is one of the more challenging mammal traits we have. It provides no discernible benefits to the functioning of the body nor does it give any physiological benefit to the brain. It's safe to say that yawning is an indicator of lethargy or the desire to rest. Adding that all up together yes any mammal that yawns can also do it while sleeping. It might be less likely to occur while sleeping as there isn't a true need for it, but I can tell you from sleep studies people do yawn quite a bit when they sleep.",
"Yes.\n\nSource: my 2 months old daughter can do pretty much everything while sleeping that she can do while waking. Yawn, cry, drink, poop, you name it."
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lrcva | why financial year starts at july instead of january? | I see that for all companies financial year is from July to Jun.
e.g. July-Sep 2011 is Quarter 1 of financial year 2012,
Oct-Dec 2011 is Quarter 2 of financial year 2012
Wouldn't be it easier if it started from January and Jan-Mar 2012 is first quarter of 2012? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/lrcva/eli5_why_financial_year_starts_at_july_instead_of/ | {
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"The fiscal year is *not* always July to June. The US government's fiscal year, to pick an example, is October to September. Apple Inc. uses the same fiscal year, while Walmart uses February-January, and Exxon Mobile's is January-December.\n\nIgnoring the matter of taxation, a company's fiscal year is *purely* arbitrary. There's absolutely no reason to choose any one period of time over any other, absent externalities. When you figure taxes into it, companies that pay taxes on a fiscal-year calendar have to do some juggling regarding deadlines and stuff, but that's all easy enough to figure out, and once you've done it once, you don't have to go back and redo it.\n\nSo because there's no good reason — in general — to pick one calendar over another, a pretty common practice is for *new* businesses to start their fiscal calendar on the first day of whatever their first month of operation is. If the company is incorporated in March with a start-of-business date of April 1, then that company's fiscal year goes from April to March and there's no particular reason ever to change it.",
"The fiscal year is *not* always July to June. The US government's fiscal year, to pick an example, is October to September. Apple Inc. uses the same fiscal year, while Walmart uses February-January, and Exxon Mobile's is January-December.\n\nIgnoring the matter of taxation, a company's fiscal year is *purely* arbitrary. There's absolutely no reason to choose any one period of time over any other, absent externalities. When you figure taxes into it, companies that pay taxes on a fiscal-year calendar have to do some juggling regarding deadlines and stuff, but that's all easy enough to figure out, and once you've done it once, you don't have to go back and redo it.\n\nSo because there's no good reason — in general — to pick one calendar over another, a pretty common practice is for *new* businesses to start their fiscal calendar on the first day of whatever their first month of operation is. If the company is incorporated in March with a start-of-business date of April 1, then that company's fiscal year goes from April to March and there's no particular reason ever to change it."
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34wx72 | if anyone can access the "deep web" by downloading tor, how are illegal sites not getting shut down immediately? | I recently watched season 2 of House of Cards and learned about the "Deep Web," and from the little I've read about it, it's mostly used for things like drug and weapon trading.
The thing is, apparently literally anyone can access the deep web just by downloading a browser called Tor. If this is true, how have all these sites been able to last for years?
EDIT: Wow, this kinda blew up overnight. Thanks for all the responses, interesting stuff! | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/34wx72/eli5_if_anyone_can_access_the_deep_web_by/ | {
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"Just because you can access the sites over the web doesn't mean you can find them. Tor is a system designed by the US military to protect US Intelligence communications online. It's designed specifically so that no one can tell where the sites are hosted. ",
"Tor enables anonymous web browsing (to a degree), NOT more and NOT less ...Governments and corporations hate it because Tor makes it hard to spy on people (examples: opposition, political activists, anti-Zionists, anti-Masons, whistleblowers, anti-war, anti-usury, truth seekers, pro-peace ...etc) ...that's why the main-stream media makes Tor looks bad and associate it with criminals and pedophiles ... you cannot access \"the deep web\" just by downloading Tor",
"Generally, the term deep web refers to a network of websites that have no \"direct link\" to the normal Internet. Typically corporations and government bodies keep mass amounts of data there that isn't necessarily (but could be) important. Nothing really \"secret\" or \"dark\" about it, though it can be for nefarious means and as such those aspects of it get highlighted and the boring stuff left out cause it honestly is... Well super boring. (Source: Masters Library and Information Science.)",
"All of the answers so far are terrible. Please disregard them.\n\nJust because you can go and visit the sites, doesn't mean you can take them down. Tor is an encryption protocol. This can be used for surfing the regular web anonymously.\n\nIt can *also* be used for *hosting* a site anonymously: a \"Tor hidden service\" or Tor site. To simplify a complex system, you host the site on your local server, you connect it to Tor, and anyone wanting to connect to your site is bounced around the Tor network so that they can't tell what server the site is actually being hosted on.\n\nAs long as you don't screw up and include identifying information somehow, you can host a site selling drugs or offering child pornography (or just a web forum or whatever), and the FBI cannot tell where the site is hosted without being able to crack the Tor encryption. The Tor encryption is open-source, and no one has demonstrated a way they would feasibly be able to crack it, contrary to some of the answers here.",
"Just because you can access a site on TOR does not mean you can find out where the server(s) hosting the site is. That's actually sort of the whole point of TOR: no one knows where anyone else is but everyone can still communicate.\n\nIf you can't find the server the site is hosted on, it's very hard to shut it down.\n\nAdd to this, that even when you do find the server, you're unlikely to find more than a few of the people operating it. Since they don't know who each other are, you get one or two people and the others just get a new server and are back up and running within a week or two.",
"Tor is like an onion. It has lots of layers. When you try to access a website, you go through tons of other servers (usually just other Tor users' computers), before finally reaching the website's server. But, you don't know which layer of the onion is the website and which isn't. \n\nEach \"packet\" of information sent from one layer to another adds another layer of encryption on top. So essentially, the website's server doesn't know who's asking for the data, and your computer doesn't know where the data is coming from.\n\nThere are issues however. Something called the exit node, which is the final layer of onion before the website's server. This, for reasons that would take me outside of the scope of ELI5 and this onion analogy, is a vulnerable point which FBI or indeed the NSA can use to catch offenders. \n\nI'm not very technical so apologies if I've made mistakes. \n\nEdit: I've made some fixes and added a bit about exit nodes. ",
"The deep web is much bigger than most people realize. It's actually estimated to be many times the size of the World Wide Web. The company that I work for specializes in it. We have many systems that weed through everything and do a bunch of really cool stuff. We are downloading 2 TBs worth of data every single day. We have a storage house on the order of petabytes in order to store all of the stuff we grab.\n\nI wish drugs and weapons were our biggest problems on the web. You have no idea the kind of shit we see. It would be nice if our biggest criminal were some white kid selling pot, or some gang buying guns. You don't know, nor do you want to know, what is out there. It's also called the Dark Web, and it should stay that way for most people: dark and mysterious.\n\nThe biggest problem we have with shutting these things down is that everything is splintered, and there are few, if any, real centers of power. There are no Deep Web hosting companies, or companies advertising on Google Maps. The people that we want to get are well hidden, and know how to cover their tracks. But trust me: when we do get our suspects, they don't get light sentences. They go away for a long long long long time.",
"Dude! I just watched this episode yesterday! Was thinking the same thing, but was like, naw reddit will make fun of me. Good series though. That Frank Underwood is a dedicated guy. I'm excited to see how the show wraps up. ",
"OK, there are a few things here.\n\nThe \"Deep Web\" is just what isn't searchable by search engines. What ever google doesn't see. That was once estimated to be several times the size of the internet that google does see. That includes TONS of things - probably mostly just big databases of stuff that only a few people care about.\n\nThere is also the \"Darknet\", which is not quite so big. This is stuff that's secret and generally peer to peer. It's designed to be more anonymous than the general internet, and it's not effortless to setup (though not hard either). It does include lots of illegal stuff (because who wants anonymity more?). You can find, if you're looking, drugs, weapon trading, child pornography, weird fetishes, banned books, interesting people, weird hobbies, and anything else you might find in an anonymous place.\n\n\"Tor\" is an effort to make things anonymous as well. I don't know if it's related to darknet at all, but I suspect it's not. The idea here is that you still access the internet normally, but you first go through enough other nodes that you come out anonymous. It's slower than the general internet, but it's more secure for communications. There are some websites that actually live only in the TOR network, and then you have the same sorts of websites you see in darknet - people that want to be anonymous. That includes, again, weapon trading, drug dealing, child pornography, weird people, fun fetishes, security minded people, lurkers, etc etc etc. \n\nThe thing is, TOR encrypts the address of the website. You actually have to manipulate the network itself in order to see what's going on there. They literally have no idea who you're talking to. ",
"When you use Tor, you basically send your data into a large pool of other Tor users. It's encrypted and bounced around, and nobody knows what they're passing around or who the final recipient is. They're just all bouncing data around. When you use Tor to browse the internet, your data eventually gets bounced around until it ends up with what's called an \"exit node\" which is a guy who goes and grabs the internet for you and then encrypts it and sends it back into the pool, where it will bounce around until it reaches you. He doesn't know who you are, he just knows somebody in that pool of Tor people wants the webpage he's getting.\n\nIn that way, Tor anonymizes you, because the website, and even the guy who grabs your data, doesn't know who you are. And the people who pass that data along to you don't know it's for you because it's encrypted. You might just be another person in the pool passing it along to somebody else for all they know.\n\nSo that's how Tor keeps you anonymous.\n\nNow for the illegal sites run on Tor....\n\nNormally, when you visit a page, you are actually visiting their IP address -- analogous to a physical address, the IP address tells your computer where to find the computer with the website.\n\nA Tor hidden site on the other hand is run from inside that pool of Tor users. And since the request for information is encrypted, nobody knows that you're requesting a Tor hidden site and not a regular site. It's just that when your request gets bounced to the guy that runs the site, he is able to decrypt it and see that you're requesting his site. So he encrypts his site's data and bounces it back to you. Nobody around him knows he did this -- as far as they know, he may just be passing along other normal requests just like everybody else. So nobody knows who he is or *where* he is. Because you aren't directing your computer to his IP. You're telling *somebody* in the Tor network that you want their site even though you don't know what the IP is, and that person just *happens* to be able to decrypt that request and send you back that information.\n\nThe result is that you are able to visit their site, without you knowing who they are or where their computer is. And they don't know who you are or where your computer is. You both just know that it's somebody using Tor. Because of that, not even police or anybody else know where the site is. Whereas with normal websites, the IP address -- the location of the server -- is right there and everybody knows it, so normal websites can be found and shutdown easily.\n\n(The bouncing around analogy isn't really correct, but it's an easy way to visualize a rough approximation of what's happening.)",
"I actually used TOR once about a year and some change back after seeing an interesting article (which I want to say was on Reddit itself) about how it masks your identity and allows access to certain \"deep web\" sites that can only be accessed by using a TOR browser. It also had a link to \"The Hidden Wiki\", which is basically a hub of links to various sites of mundane to questionable to outright illegal content. There was harmless enough stuff, like ebooks and reading material downloads all the way through illegal pornographic content and black market selling and trading of things like hacked paypal accounts, fake ids, weapons, drugs and even a link that purported to put you in contact with a hitman for hire. Very shady stuff, but it's not all guns and drugs mafia shit. Some of it is literally just media piracy protected behind a ton of super intense web obfuscation.\n\nThat said, tracking servers would be difficult enough, but most webpages on TOR are *literally* gibberish strings of numbers and letters. Of the few links that I clicked on out of curiosity (the ebooks links and one that claimed to link to a gallery of banned artworks and music that purportedly caused suicidal feelings), they basically looked like this:\n\nak3ljr9afye7yo3rqw9fyahfkasdhfiy0q293rhq2ui3rh.onion\n\nI would put good odds on them not having any search tags attached to them either, even if there was a search engine that could crawl the deep web effectively. Most of them are likely shared via chatrooms or private communities, or linked in places such as the hidden wiki by the creators or members of the sites to spread the word of them around. There's surely a ridiculous amount of content out there on the deep web, but without an in from someone who knows it well or a monumental amount of luck, you're not gonna be able to find even a fraction of it, much less trace it back to the source server.\n\nHonestly, the whole ordeal is shady as hell, and after seeing how little content was actually accessible without having to jump through hoops and/or chat with people that are probably of severely compromised moral fiber, I deleted that shit and never looked back.",
"Because shutting down sites is not that easy- \n\nFirst the site needs to be in the jurisdiction of the government whose laws it is breaking, or of a country with a treaty with the country whose laws you are breaking.\n\nThen the government in question needs to go through its respective legal processes to go after the criminals (getting warrants, etc. in the USA, for instance- countries that don't enjoy due process don't typically have treaties with the countries that want their laws enforced on websites, which is why you see a lot of phishing sites that use domains registered in countries like China and Russia)",
"Imagine you asked to visit Pizza Hut, but every time your parents took you to Pizza Hut they blindfolded you so you didn't know where you were going.\n\nWhen you got to Pizza Hut you saw they were all selling drugs, you go to tell the police 'They are dealing drugs in Pizza Hut, you have to close them down!'. They police agree and ask you, where is this Pizza Hut? You can't tell them because you don't know and this Pizza Hut was smart enough to not register itself in the phone book. The police's could drive around all day, checking every building, but this Pizza Hut was smart enough to not put a sign up too, so they have to check inside every building for illegal activity which the police don't have the time or resources to do. They just have to rely on finding someone who they suspect works at Pizza Hut and then track them and discover evidence of illegal activity.\n\nImagine all this is now happening on the internet where there are no such things as real people, roads or buildings and you can get an idea of how this might be a bit harder than just kicking down a door somewhere."
]
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|
m0w7p | what makes up the price of a gallon of gas? | Also, what could I watch in the market to gauge the change in price? For example, if (blank) went up then I could assume that the gas prices would increase in a few days. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/m0w7p/what_makes_up_the_price_of_a_gallon_of_gas/ | {
"a_id": [
"c2x6bfr",
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"text": [
"The Department of Energy has a web site that lists the breakdown.\n\n_URL_0_\n\nIn short, for Sept 2011, 63% of the price was crude oil, 14% refining, 12% distribution/marketing, and 11% taxes.",
"The Department of Energy has a web site that lists the breakdown.\n\n_URL_0_\n\nIn short, for Sept 2011, 63% of the price was crude oil, 14% refining, 12% distribution/marketing, and 11% taxes."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[
"http://www.eia.gov/oog/info/gdu/gasdiesel.asp"
],
[
"http://www.eia.gov/oog/info/gdu/gasdiesel.asp"
]
] |
|
3bkw69 | why do cops weave back and forth across lanes on the freeway? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3bkw69/eli5_why_do_cops_weave_back_and_forth_across/ | {
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"You said it. To slow down all of the traffic. I have seen them do it in San Diego, to slow traffic prior to an accident further down the road. Considering California traffic, it makes a lot of sense. Might be that there's a chase or something down the road and they want to keep people away. Or all the traffic is going way over the speed limit, and they can slow them all down rather than just pulling one or two over for a ticket. ",
"They tend to do that to shut down all lanes because of something is on the freeway (debris) or someone needs to be moved from the fast lane to the shoulder. The cars behind the cops cant see it because they do it far enough that all of the cars have a chance to stop to clear things up."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[]
] |
||
xt904 | why is this mars landing so much more hyped than the last few? | This one seems a bit bigger than before... why? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/xt904/eli5_why_is_this_mars_landing_so_much_more_hyped/ | {
"a_id": [
"c5pdvl2"
],
"score": [
9
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"text": [
"Hyped is a bad word for the excitement of people, bbbuuuttt, in the past we have landed rovers by inflating a series of balloon around them, the rover will bounce and eventually land. This time how ever the rover was too heavy to do this, so instead the MSL had to go from 13000 mph to 1000 mph by Apollo style heat shield, then from 1000 mph to about 100 mph via the largest supersonic parachute ever designed, after all that the rover is dropped from its heat shielding while still about 100s of feet above the surface, once falling a array of jets kick on and slow the MSL to stop, after that it is lowered the final 21 feet via a crane mounted to the jet system, and safely placed on the surface. It does this all by itself with no communication from Earth, and worse yet we don't know what has happened for 15 minutes due to it happening 360+ million miles away(or 15 light minute), also the $14 billion price tag doesn't help.\n\ntl;dr: this landing is many many times more complex than anything humanity has ever done in space(maybe even in all of history). Imagine shooting a target 50miles^2 large from 360 million miles away, in a location the target won't get to for 8.5 months."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
|
35k4ak | why is the philippines are prone to be hit by major typhoons? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/35k4ak/eli5_why_is_the_philippines_are_prone_to_be_hit/ | {
"a_id": [
"cr55ivc"
],
"score": [
2
],
"text": [
"Geography. The same way that the nations/states/territories in the Gulf of Mexico get slammed by hurricanes every year, the Philippines has to deal with typhoons. \n\nWarm ocean currents mix with wind along the water's surface to produce these weather patterns in particular parts of the world, and move along a generally predictable path. Whoever lives in the regions in which these storms form is guaranteed to have to deal with them every year. Unless the currents or geography change (an incredibly slow process) there is no avoiding these annual storms."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
||
3joueh | why hasn't youtube/google made it possible to play sound from videos with the app closed? | I remember on my old iPhone (when the YouTube app was still a picture of a TV) I could close the app and I could click play and it would continue playing, even with the screen shut off. Then it updated to the more recent version and you can't.
People have been demanding this for a long time. Is there a reason it hasn't been accomplished yet? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3joueh/eli5_why_hasnt_youtubegoogle_made_it_possible_to/ | {
"a_id": [
"cur30l6",
"cur3gda",
"cur3ky4"
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"score": [
3,
7,
2
],
"text": [
"If you do it from safari on an iPhone I think you can... Just swipe up and play it again. And if you lock the phone, it may stop. Just press play again.\n\nHope that helps. :)",
"YouTube is not a charity, they exist to show you ads, that's their only reason. They cannot show ads if you just play sound.\n\nNow, they could play audio ads then, but you would not like that, would you?\n\nHowever, sites that let you download YouTube videos usually have the option of getting just the soundtrack. I would not be surprised to find some app that just plays sound from YouTube videos without downloading anything to the disc.",
"You can get it if you sign up for [Music Key](_URL_0_), but people listening to songs in the background was costing them too much money to keep it free."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[],
[
"https://www.youtube.com/musickey"
]
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|
1ki4jp | why do athletes make significantly more money than people like the president who have greater responsibilities in society? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1ki4jp/eli5_why_do_athletes_make_significantly_more/ | {
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"text": [
"It's mainly the economics surrounding sports. Sports bring in billions of dollars through ticket sales, broadcasting deals, jersey sales, endorsements, etc. If getting a better player helps the team and leads to more money coming in, teams will pay more to improve the team. Needless to say, if a player can make the team millions more, he will get paid millions of dollars.\n\nIt's not a matter of importance so much as it's the fact that that athletes more directly lead to huge profits for their organizations.\n\nAs for someone like the president, I wouldn't worry about him. Presidents tend to already have wealth, get a decent salary, have incredible benefits like guards and helpers available 24/7, guaranteed fame and publicity, etc. They also are pretty much guaranteed high profits from book sales and speeches after they're done serving. Not only that, but do you really need to offer someone a large salary to convince someone that it would be cool to be a president? ",
"Not all athletes and sportspeople are paid a lot. I remember reading earlier this year about some Olympic Athletes that were barely paid minimum wage; yet they were training for longer than what a full time job would take up.\n\nI suppose; that the very high paid athletes and sportsmen and women that you hear off and that we are most aware are always paid royalties and manage to land sponsorship deals for product lines such as clothing and sports equipment. It's pretty much a snow ball effect from there..... Generally more exposure and thus more $$$\n\nThe bigger sports stars tend to have used there wealth to give them a head start in their own businesses'. In fact you'll find that they are in fact business men and women.",
"Because there aren't stadiums where on a daily/weekly basis, people are paying $100/seat to watch the POTUS do his work. Because the POTUS isn't sponsored by Budweiser.",
"The president makes a lot of money through speaking engagements and book deals. ",
"To attempt to answer your question, you would have to assume that people get paid based on their contributions/responsibilities to society. \n\nThat isn't true. At all. Nor has it actually ever been true in the history of human civilization, except maybe in something Karl Marx wrote in a letter.\n"
]
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