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What makes CEO, CTO and CFO individuals so special? Why can't just any manager, tech lead, or accountant take on the roll? There are so many of them around, and yet companies have a hard time filling those roles? | [
"This [book](_URL_0_) talks about the different skills you need to learn as you ascend from individual contributor to CEO.\n\nIt is a very different skill to manage a group of people than to do the work of those people yourself. (*Managing* programmers is not like *being* a programmer.) And a different skill set again to manage a group of managers. Now you work is not to help individual contributors to their individual thing better. Your work is to help managers manage better, and that's a whole different skill.\n\nAt the CEO level on of the challenges is to manage a bunch of people who specialize in things that you've probably never done. How do you assess their skills, and their ability to assess the skills of the people below them?\n\nLearning this stuff takes time. Most people aren't even interested in doing it.",
"The CEO/CTO/CFO are managers, tech leads, or accountants. You wouldn't stick some fresh outta college accountant to be the CFO of your company because that position is the CHIEF Financial Officer. In other words the top of the organization for finance, the one who manages your finance and spending and all that shit. Companies are picky about who they put into those roles because a bad choice will easily end your business in one way or another.",
"ELI5: So many people drive cars, what is so special about Formula 1 drivers?"
] |
Why are there so many intelligence leaks from the United States? | [
"A lot of it has to do with how big the intelligence community in the US is. It's not just the CIA, it's also the FBI, NSA, DIA, each military branch with their own intelligence fields, and many others, each with tens of thousands of people. The US typically has three classifications for data - confidential, secret, and top secret. Usually you will need a top secret clearance, and while they are difficult to obtain, hundreds of thousands of people have them (Since they're required in most intel fields). While they review pretty much everything - work, residence, friends, family, income, debt, etc, they aren't perfect. Also, sometimes they even relax the standards if they need someone to get a clearance - this happened to some of the people I knew.\n\ntl;dr: US intelligence is a huge field across many independently run organizations, and they need to give hundreds of thousands of clearances. It's nearly impossible to prevent EVERY leak because of this."
] |
If bitcoins have a monetary value, and bitcoin mining earns you bitcoins, how does this mining create any value? | [
"The calculations that are being done secure the network. The cool thing about Bitcoin is that it is a monetary system that is completely decentralized--there are thousands of computers working together to maintain a public ledger of accounts with balances and nobody has authority. That type of system would normally be prone to various types of attack (people modifying the ledger to serve their own purposes). Bitcoin mining acts as a method by which the ledger is allowed to be updated--in order to change the ledger you have to provide proof that you've done lots of very challenging work. This makes it very difficult for someone to, for example, add a transaction to the network where they send money to one person, then go back and change that transaction to say that they actually sent money to another person.\n\nThe way this winds up playing out is that someone attempting to put in that type of change has to race the rest of the world. If only a few people are working to secure the network then this is not a very difficult challenge. However, the Bitcoin network could take on every supercomputer in the world at once and still win by a massive margin (it's currently using almost entirely specialized hardware purpose-built for the task).\n\nIn order to draw in people to work towards that goal of security a reward is set. New Bitcoins are introduced to the system as a payment to the miners. This is no problem--the whole system is based on rules. Most rules are pretty straightforward--things like \"you can't spend more money from an account than that account has,\" or \"you can't spend money from someone else's account (as verified by digital signatures--a powerful tool in modern cryptography).\" One of the rules simply states that \"new coins are introduced into circulation every time a miner adds a set of transactions to the ledger.\" It turns out that every bitcoin in existence can trace its roots to this origin. \n\nThe value in terms of \"real money\" then comes from the usefulness of the system--Bitcoins have a number of properties that make them attractive for various uses. Note that when new bitcoins are added to circulation that is a move that is completely independent of any movement of \"real money.\" The bitcoins that are paid out may then be sold for national currencies like the Dollar or Euro, but that gets into gold old fashioned supply and demand--the supply of bitcoins is going up so unless the demand goes up the price will fall. Over the past several years the interest in bitcoin has grown an incredible amount so the price has gone up significantly.",
"Each newly mined coin slightly dilutes the value of all coins (inflation). It's the same as a government printing more currency."
] |
If I open a regular site on my phone it takes me to the mobile version. If I open a mobile site on my computer it doesn't take me to the regular site automatically. Why? | [
"Nearly everyone that has a website treats the desktop version as the standard version and the mobile version as the special version. This means there is no explicit need for a desktop prefix, since it's the default anyway, only a mobile prefix is needed. So when you go to _URL_2_, it checks if you have a phone and redirects you to _URL_0_. But if you go directly to _URL_0_ you tell the server that you specifically want the mobile version so you get that, even on a desktop. If there was a _URL_1_ for a specific desktop version, you would also not be redirected if you visit this from mobile."
] |
How does the olfactory sense work? | [
"Our olfactory senses use specialized cells that bind with certain molecules that are relevant for us. Most notably dangerous chemicals and pheromones.\n\nWhen such a bond takes place, your brain will be notified of the fact that you're detecting something. Which you interpret as smelling a certain scent or even a more subconscious response in the case of pheromones.\n\nIn the case of poop, your receptors are responding to the presence of hydrogen sulfide."
] |
What would happen if you dropped an ant from the top of the Empire State Building? | [
"Due to gravity, the ant would fall. Depending on a couple of other weather factors, it would land more or less in front of or in the vicinity of the Empire State Building.",
"He'd be just fine. An ant's terminal velocity is about 30x slower than a person's, and it can survive landing at that speed. It'll never fall fast enough in air to die from the impact.",
"ants have such tiny mass compared to their size that the effects of air resistance strongly counteract the ant-falling speed due to gravity. humans have a terminal velocity of about 200 km/hr (when they're all stretched out). ants have a terminal velocity of about 6.4 km/hr. \n\nthat's the speed of a quick walk. or maybe a slow jog. it would be similar to a bug smacking into your glasses (or something else hard) while walking. i imagine not much would happen to the bug, since he's an armored thing designed to survive long falls, and he also wouldn't do any damage to the pavement or the top of someone's scalp."
] |
How is damage (in dollars) done by, for example a natural disaster, calculated? | [
"You can literally sum the values of the stuff destroyed. \n\nFor more advanced estimates (or bigger numbers) you can also add up the lost hours of labour and extra labour and materials required for restoration. \n\nYou could also estimate into the future how much money a place would make if it were not destroyed. \n\nUsually averages or industry standards are used, but It's really down to each individual researcher."
] |
how does being tonedeaf work? | [
"> depending on the degree you're talking about, it's actually a literal brain defect called amusia. one of Oliver Sacks's books (\"Musicophilia\") is all about the brain and music, and he talks about tone-deafness. basically, the part of your brain that recognizes pitch (or tempo, rhythm, etc.) is missing or damaged. there are even people who can recognize pitch but not timbre, so things as gentle as a piano or oboe can seem harsh and stabbing to them.\n\n_URL_0_",
"I think it's just a lack of familiarity with the sounds for most people.\n\nI am probably \"tone deaf\" by some definitions. If you play a random pitch by itself I wouldn't be able to tell what note it was, though I would have a vague idea of it was high or low.\n\nHowever, if you play two pitches next to each other, I can generally tell which is higher or lower, but it would still be difficult to tell which sound is a specific note.\n\nI'm trying to learn music but this is a hard obstacle to overcome because I have to learn how to associate a certain pitch with a certain note which my brain doesn't find easy to remember."
] |
Why does WIC not allow white potatoes? | [
"\"According to Food Politics' Marion Nestle, the white potatoes were excluded because the Institute of Medicine observed 'WIC mothers already buy plenty of them.'\" [Source](_URL_0_) \n\nYou don't subsidize and encourage something people are already readily buying."
] |
Do people who do not put on weight but eat a lot of sugar/fat still put their lives in danger? Or does their metabolism regulate it? | [
"Yes. Taking in excess sugar will cause insulin resistance even if you're not obviously getting fat.\n\n\"Skinny-fat\" people, people who look thin but have high body fat percentage, tend to have worse outlooks for obesity-related health problems than regular fat people."
] |
Why is BP being sued years after the oil disaster? | [
"They started getting sued in 2010. Results for a vareity of different lawsuits in different places and for different reasons began getting finished in 2013. This is just another of many lawsuits being settled and decided by the courts."
] |
Do Costco and Sam's Club receipt checkers actually check for anything in that 2 seconds they spend looking at my receipt? | [
"They are only looking for high priced items in your cart or electronics. They see 1 item and find it on receipt then mark it. Its mostly just for show. A theft deterrent."
] |
Why are 'off brand' batteries so much cheaper than on brand? They seem to be about 1/10 the price. | [
"Take a closer look at the cheaper batteries, they usually use a different chemistry. \"Heavy Duty\" batteries perform worse than Alkaline, and don't last as long, but they are cheaper to produce. Store brand Alkalines will be cheaper than Duracells/Energizers, but still competitively priced. Heavy Duty batteries are the ones that are significantly cheaper.\n\nHeavy Duty batteries are good for low use things like smoke detectors and TV remotes, but are a waste of money in higher drain applications like cameras, radios, etc.",
"In some cases two brands are actually the same thing. Many companies have different tiers of products to reach different markets. In order to make these tiers happen they will often release the same product with a different label and worse specs. In the case of batteries, I believe this is the case but instead of worse specifications they simply don't advertise their low tier.\n\nEveready & Energizer are a good example of this.\n\n;tldr - Different brand, same manufacturing line.",
"The only real major advantage to a brand name battery vs. an off brand, if they are using the same chemistry (alkaline, lithium ion, etc), is that more care has been taken to protect and isolate the electrodes and prevent them from breaking down in the brand names, while the off brands have high tolerance for small manufacturing errors.\n\nIf you buy the batteries and use them right away, that's not a problem. But off-brand batteries don't store as well, and are more likely to corrode or leak electrode paste as they age.\n\nI.e. Short term use: off brand, no problem. Long term - go with brand names.",
"Somebody has to pay for all of that advertising."
] |
Why/how do some TV series with such critical acclaim (e.g. Breaking Bad or Game of Thrones) and high production values have a different writer and/or director for almost every episode? | [
"The head of a TV show is known as a \"showrunner\" and he/she acts as the creative lead of the entire show. Showrunners function as a combination producer/director/writer for the entire series. There are individual writers to help with specific episodes and individual directors to help with management of the stage directions, but the real creative drive -- *the person that the various writers and directors for the various episodes take their direction from* -- is the show runner. So basically, it doesn't really matter who the particular writer or director for an episode actually is listed in the credits, it is the showrunner that dictates the direction for everything.\n\nThe showrunner for \"Game of Thrones\" is [David Benioff](_URL_0_) and the showrunner for \"Breaking Bad\" was [Vince Gilligan](_URL_1_)."
] |
How can so many countries be in so much national debt? To whom is all that money owed? | [
"'Countries' aren't monolithic entities. Rather, they're comprised of many departments. Departments in the same country can owe money to one another. They can owe money to citizenry, then can owe money to private or public institutions in the same or other country. \n\nThe majority of United States Debt, for instance, is owed within the United States, whether to private citizens in something like a Treasury Bond, or within the government, such as funds like Social Security.",
"A country can owe money to other countires, and lend money off other countries.\n\nA country can also owe money or lend money to private entities such as companies and Banks.\n\nAnd companies within a country can also owe or lend money to other countries and companies.\n\nThe real confusion is consistency in reporting - when someone says China owes owes the USA xxx they might be talking about the Chinese government owing the American government, or the Chinese government owing money to American based corporations or companies in China owing money.",
"A lot of the debt is in the form of treasury bills and government bonds, so the money is owed to the holders of those, in the future. There are a lot of reasons to take on debt, while saving money in the form of others' debt. Plenty of Americans do this by getting a mortgage while still contributing money to savings and retirement accounts."
] |
What happens in our brains when we realize we've driven miles/minutes and don't even remember consciously driving them? | [
"This happens when your subconscious mind starts handling processes that you normally control consciously. Normally, you're paying attention to the road and staying alert. When you're an experienced driver, you can pass the task of staying between the lines to your subconscious, and stop being alert for hazards. Because you're performing subconsciously, your mind doesn't bother to record these times to memory, so you won't remember more than a hazy idea of driving those minutes/miles. When something snaps you out of the subconscious routine, you realize you haven't been alert for hazards, which is a decidedly unsettling feeling.",
"It's actually a relatively well known and documented phenomenon called Highway Hypnosis. \n_URL_0_",
"When you have the same stimulus for a prolonged period of time, your brain stops focusing on it, and instead chooses to focus on different, more important matters and let your subconsciousness take over. \n\nThis is the same as eye floaters. If you ever look at a bright light and see little blurry dots/lines in your vision, those are usually due to coagulation of the jelly-like liquid inside your eyeball. They are always there and are always visible, but your brain filters it out because you can do little about it and it isn't a good investment to recognise them. \n\nIn the same way, driving along a road for hours leads to the same stimulus being applied over and over, so your brain chooses not to focus on it. It's only when something changes that you actually realise it",
"I recently read [this article that explains](_URL_1_) part of what happens when your subconscious brain takes over and also explains how something like forgetting your child inside the car happens. Apparently your basal ganglia is to blame."
] |
Is it more profitable for a music artist to have a song in the number one spot for a short while, or to have a song in the charts for a lengthier amount of time? | [
"It depends the number sold and length of time. You can sell 100,000 albums in a month then fall off the radar, or slow burn to 100,000 over a few months. Also, unless the artist is self publishing, they're not making all that much off album sales, at least initially.",
"It can depend, a song in the number one spot guarantees some money to come in for a short period of time but allows the artists to possibly become a one-hit wonder and fade out after. The airtime, commercials and touring they'd get off of it would most likely be bigger if their song was number 1 for a few weeks rather than number 25 for a few months, however this is only talking about one project because an artist can easily get forgotten and moved around and this will usually apply to popular music",
"Profitability for an artist with music on the charts is questionable at best. Most all artists make very little money off their record sales. Instead they make most of their money through touring. If you want to ensure lots of cash, make sure to tour a lot and make your shows memorable so that people come back.",
"I have an answer based on assumptions and various theories i pulled out of my butt with little research:\n\nIt varies on how well other songs do, and if the particular song is licensed for any type of commercial work. Billboard's top lists are based on raw sales data over a period of time (which I don't know) so the position of the song is an accurate snapshot of how much money that artist/team/label is making compared to others.\n\nSummer time is usually when sales increase for everything.",
"It depends. The charts are based, in part, on sales. But sales rank is relative. You can sell 100,000 and not be #1 if another song sells 150,000. But sometimes you can sell 75,000 and be #1 because #2 sells 70,000."
] |
Why does Seattle have such a large number of major US corporations? | [
"If you go back 30 years, Boeing was the only \"major\" employer in the region. All those other \"major\" companies are still new.\n\nMicrosoft is in Seattle because that's where Bill Gates' family is from. This leads to the city having a bunch of techies which is probably why Amazon decided to start there.\n\nBoeing was founded in Seattle because there was interest in sea-planes & lots of water/islands.\n\nStarbucks is in Seattle because that's where they were founded. People in the Northwest like good coffee because it's damp and dreary 6mo out of the year but this could have started anywhere.\n\nNordstrom was another company that was founded there. There's no real reason that they're any more successful than other department store chains other than the relative prosperity of the city giving them room to sell more upscale products.\n\nI can't really think of anything the city *did* other than being a relatively small coastal city (but still \"major\") at the start of the post-WW2 boom years when everyone wanted to move out to the West Coast & having lots of room for expansion.",
"Not just policies. Location too.\n\nSeattle's on the Pacific Ocean and so is an easy major seaport with access to major inexpensive manufactories in China and surrounding countries.\n\nIt has a good quality of life and lots of recreational opportunities thanks to the State of Washington's parks, ski hills, and other location-based perks. \n\nIt's very close to California and Silicon Valley, and thus has access to a lot of highly skilled IT staff, including imports from Asia.\n\nIt's growing like mad, and such things are kind of self-fueling. People go there for high-paying jobs, which injects more money regionally, which attracts more highly-paid jobs, which... and so on. And since the types of jobs it mostly produces aren't based on exhaustible local resources, its business model is somewhat stable.\n\nOoh ooh, and Bill Gates was born there. :)",
"There are only 10 Fortune 500 companies based out of King county.\n\nFor reference, New York City has 40 Fortune 500 companies, and Fairfax county, a suburb of Washington DC, has 9.\n\nSeattle has a lot for a city of its size, but it’s nothing out of the ordinary.",
"Seattle (King County) has almost exactly the proportion of major US corporations you would expect for its size, plus its possession of a major seaport and multiple universities. It has 1% of the US urban population, and is home to 2% of the top 500 public companies.",
"Scientist here who became an entrepreneur (and did a number of things that have placed me on a number of regional economic boards in several cities). \n\nSeattle represents a city that has a concentration of several industries - and whose industries came to be concentrated there for several different reasons. \n\nBoeing started in Seattle as a result of several things: 1) the invention of the airplane (new industry); 2) a person (William Boeing) who was an expert in wooden structures applying his expertise to a new industry (building airplanes) - he was in Seattle because of the timber industry (lots of trees in the Pacific Northwest); and 3) the availability of spruce in Seattle (spruce is strong and light and was a very good building material for early airplanes). Seattle also had a thriving shipyard industry, which helped the airplane-building industry. \n\nAs Boeing grew, and its airplanes became more complex, so too did Seattle's airplane-parts manufacturing industry. Success begets success - many employees have their own ideas for how to make parts/things better - and the airplane industry and all of its associated industries (e.g. airplane parts) grows. \n\nMicrosoft moved to Seattle at the dawn of a new industry (personal computer revolution). When it became public, it created thousands of new millionaires (Microsoft employees with stock options) - many of whom founded their own software companies. Then the internet revolution happened - furthering the growth of the software industry in Seattle. Then the \"internet of things\" revolution happened (smart phones, etc), adding more fuel to the software industry in Seattle. Again, success begets success and Seattle is now a software industry juggernaut. \n\nAs a place becomes more tech-savvy and successful, you also create a large pool of money from entrepreneurs who became successful. This, in turn, drives the creation of local venture capital groups - usually who specialize in a specific tech area. As the software industry in Seattle grew, so too did the available capital to fund new startup companies. They also added fuel to grow the software industry - and, later, the biotechnology industry in Seattle. \n\nSeattle also has a very high concentration of research universities, and outstanding research school of medicine, and additional research institutions. Early success in one tech industry (software) helped to create local pools of venture capital required to fund the creation of the biotech industry in Seattle - taking early-stage research inventions out of the local research institutions and putting them in startup companies funded by newly-minted wealthy tech entrepreneurs. \n\nSeattle also benefits from being relatively close to Silicon Valley - enabling the large and long-established venture capital firms there to be able to make investments in Seattle-based tech startups. The father you are from Silicon Valley, the higher the hurdle for a San Fran-based VC firm to invest in your company. \n\nWashington State is awesome - with zero personal income tax and zero corporate income taxes. This is the primary reason that Jeff Bezos decided to locate Amazon in Seattle - as well as Seattle having a strong concentration in the software industry. Washington State, therefore, has made itself a regional competitor to California - whose taxes are among the highest in the USA.",
"It doesn't have any more than you would expect. \n\nFor example, the Minneapolis-Saint Paul metro area in Minnesota is about the same size (both in population and total land area) and has 18 fortune 500 companies. That's almost twice as many in the same size city. \n\nIt just happens that alot of Seattle's big companies are things consumers have heard of."
] |
Why does wind make such a strange noise when recorded on a device but not when we hear it with our own ears? | [
"Have you ever had someone blow in your ears? Microphone are hyper-sensitive to anything and will accept sound from almost any direction. Your ears will block all the \"simulated\" sound waves of the force of the wind except when it's directly blown inside your eartube. That's basically the difference.\nThis is the same reason why most good microphones have gigantic noise filters as they simply block wind, but still let soundwaves pass through."
] |
Why my dog attacks me, when I try to kiss my girlfriend laying on the bed. | [
"Ours do this too. Seems like they just want to play. It's how most dogs play with each other too",
"This dog needs to be banned from the bed. He is assuming possession of it."
] |
Why do babies and small children fight sleep? | [
"Because they think they'll miss out on something fun while asleep. They're minds are filled with curiosity and wonder"
] |
Why does time seem to slow down when I'm studying and passes by really quickly when I'm procrastinating? | [
"You pay much more attention to the time when you're studying, probably something like \"only 10 minutes left\" or whatever, you probably don't do that when you procrastinate."
] |
How exactly does our sense of smell work? | [
"Minuscule particles emitting from some source is able to act as a \"key\" to one of your smell receptors in your nose. This \"key\" will then trigger the receptor to emit a signal that is sent to the brain and then relayed back to the sensors with a response.\n\nSo if you think about it, when you smell shit, you're literally inhaling bits of shit in your nose."
] |
- Why don't we hear babies cry or make other sounds when they are inside the womb? | [
"The baby's lungs are the last thing to form in a normal baby, once they are formed, they will send out a chemical that signals to the uterus that triggers the mother's body to go into labor.",
"Their mouths and lungs are filled with amniotic fluid."
] |
Why is wearing a hat indoors considered rude? | [
"It would be like wearing your coat inside, generally you don't do that. Hats have a very utilitarian function to either keep your head warm or dry and inside you don't need to do either. Eventually it morphed into a fashion statement but just like you are supposed to use the correct fork to be polite you are supposed to remove your hat."
] |
Why was the Fertile Crescent one of the birthplaces of civilization? | [
"Good geography.\n\nThere basic theory is:\n\nFor \"civilization\" you need specialization. you need people who can think, study science, make metal, etc. We also need to stay in one place so we can build libraries, workshops, laboratories and the infrastructure to support them. To do this you need efficient farming.\n\nEfficient farming depends on good crops, ones that provide a lot of nutrients and energy in a form that stores well. To find these crops you need a long dry winter so the plants will put a lot of energy into making large seeds, and a warm wet summer, or rivers to irrigate, so the plants can grow well. You need to be far enough south, but not in the rainy tropics.\n\nBut you also need the ability to find plants that suit your needs. Plants only really grow in a particular latitude, so to be able to find a lot of plants that you can grow you need a large land mass that runs East-West. You need Eurasia.\n\nThen you need natural resources. You need stone, and flint, you need ore. If you're on a volcanic island you'll never develop metal.\n\nFinally you need trade. You need to be located well to get at everything around you. You need oceans and a central location.\n\nThe fertile crescent is a good place by all of these measures, so that's where civilization thrived.\n\n\nThere's a book called \"Guns, Germs, and Steel\" that tries to answer this, if you want more detail.",
"Until 15,000 B.C. humans were constantly on the moving, then areound 12-13,000 B.C. humans began making permanent settlements in key locations. The Fertile crescent between the Tigris and Euphrates was among the first places this happened. With this never before seen settlement, they were able to grow plants in a single spot, and there they began the first artificial selection for agricultural purposes. These actions culminated in a new technology for agriculture, 'farming'. Now in combination with these plants and the rivers, these human populations gained access to a 100x fold increase in their annual food supply. Now they bred like crazy, created huge sustainable populations, and created society. This would happen sporadically all around the globe, to give rise to the first societies of other lands in the same way.\n\ntl;dr combination of river water(Tigris and Euphrates) and newly created grain plants('Wheat','Millets') that were the first 'farms'",
"The Fertile Crescent has more to do with Mesopotamia (modern Iraq/Syria/Turkey) and the Tigris and Euphrates than the Nile, but the rivers were huge. It's also important to remember how much different the global climate was when civilization arose. The planet was just emerging from an ice age, meaning that today's Middle East was actually pretty temperate and pleasant back then. The rivers brought a steady supply of water and fertile silt from upstream and allowed for irrigation and transportation, but the land wasn't like it is today. Even as recently as 2000 years ago, North Africa was the \"breadbasket of the Roman Empire.\" It was still exceptionally fertile and a major source of grain for Europe."
] |
What are some likely evolutions humans may adapt over the next few million years, if any? | [
"Because this is entirely speculative and subjective it's been removed. Try /r/futurewhatif instead, or /r/askreddit instead."
] |
how did beijing get so air polluted while shanghai remains rather clear? | [
"Beijing is in a terrible spot for an industrial city. It is [surrounded by mountains on three sides](_URL_1_)\n\n\nMeanwhile, [Shanghai](_URL_0_) is surrounded by flat land and sea.\n\nUsually, it's warm at the surface and cold further up, so all the smog will rise with the warm air and blow over the mountains. But especially during winter, inversions can happen, meaning that it's colder on the surface than at high altitude. In this scenario, the only way for the smog to go away is if it's blown away by winds near the surface. Since Shanghai is so exposed, there is much more wind, which means that smog is not nearly as frequent and long lasting, in spite of the heavy pollution. In Beijing, the smog has nowhere to go during an inversion, it just stays there for days or weeks."
] |
why is it we can it people into a medical induced coma but not any medical use to get them out of coma? | [
"Medically induced coma is done through drugs(barbiturates). Drugs wear off, patient wakes up. Comas cause by accident are a result of damage to the brain which is slow to repair/rewire if it ever does."
] |
What is an enterprise architect? | [
"SAP is a company that makes a suite of tools, generally around accounting and human resources. Just like Microsoft Office has Word, Excel, PowerPoint etc. SAP has something to process people's paychecks, the company's bank accounts and generating expense reports.\n\nThe architect's job is to connect all these different systems together. So when someone personally get's paid that goes through SAP's paycheck program, however it also sends a note to SAP's expense report program saying \"hey add $1,000 to the employee expense line\" and another to the bank saying \"hey withdraw $1,000 for John\". In many ways the enterprise architect is more analogous to a city plumber (which is also a civil engineer). They make all the connections between different systems, the same way a city plumber has to connect people's houses to the main sewer system and then route that to a repository.",
"his role is to make sure that all the big pieces of the corporate software picture fit together and work. whether it be the SAP system that tracks logistics, ties in with the accounting system, ties in with the CRM system like salesforce or any other internal and external business systems. additionally, his role might cover that any programmers working under him are following best practices and keeping up to date on technology and security concerns.",
"First, you need to understand what enterprise software is.\n\nNon-enterprise software is designed for a single person or a smallish group to use. If your project needs to keep track of open issues, you might use a spreadsheet or buy some off the shelf package. Another project within the same company might use a different software package or use the same software in a different way.\n\nEnterprise software would provide a single issue tracker for the entire company to use. That adds a lot of complications smaller software doesn't have to worry about:\n\n* capacity to handle hundreds, even thousands of users\n* reliable, because an outage now impacts the entire company\n* security to limit user access to only the stuff they need to do their jobs\n* flexibility to accommodate a broad range of user requirements\n* interoperability with other software\n* compliance with company policies and legal regulations (like HIPA)\n\nSAP is one of the biggest, most complicated enterprise software packages out there. It has a handful of modules that are enterprise applications in their own right, including HR, production management, supply chain management, sales, and accounting, and all of them talking to each other.\n\nAn SAP enterprise architect is going to be the person responsible for making all the work and ensuring it continues to work. All the hardware, software, network, storage, interoperability, licensing, training, configuration, maintenance, troubleshooting and anything else is ultimately going to be the responsibility of one or more architects. Note that SAP is *huge*, bringing it to a medium-sized company is a multi-million dollar months long endeavor.\n\nExactly what your dad does can vary. He might work for one company can keep their SAP humming for them, or he might be a consultant who helps companies set up or expand SAP, and moves on after his work is done. He might specialize in customizing and configuring a specific module or make sure all the modules are working together. In the simplest terms, he makes sure companies use SAP the best they can and get the most out of it.",
"Sooo... this is gonna be some serious LY5 explaination, because it's hard to describe the job without a whiteboard. \n\nSAP is a particular brand of \"Enterprise Resource Planning\" (ERP) software. ERP is designed to \"wrap around\" all of a company's business operations — sales, planning, logistics, payroll, finance, etc. — and have a cohesive framework with which those things are run. \n\nThis means that no matter which arm of the company is being discussed, the data and processes fall within the same guidelines and there are tools that will understand them without getting fancy. Fancier. ERP is pretty fancy. \n\nAn entire company's business space is called the \"enterprise\"\n\nArchitects design things. \n\nSo, your dad's job is to use this SAP software to design systems within enterprises that support their business operations. Either this is an entirely new enterprise and it's relatively easy to build out these models because there's nothing pre-existing to consider... or they're trying to streamline enterprise operations by bringing everything under the aegis of a SAP framework."
] |
What exactly is that sinking feeling you feel when you're extremely sad? | [
"What's that scared feeling called, when you don't even know what you scared about?",
"I've felt sad before but I thought I felt my heart literally drop lower when I was told something devastating. I felt it only once in my life.",
"Some people are mentioning they feel it in the stomach, but what would be the cause for the sad pressure on your chest (near the sternum)?",
"When chemicals are released into your body it is gradual, like the slow come up on magic mushrooms or something. Overlay the stimuli be it negative or positive and you have a sensation of flying or sinking. Its a kind of placebo. (keep in mind the brain is mysterious and something else may be going on, but this is how it seems)",
"Keep in mind many of these answers so far are from a physiological standpoint, yet still bring in consciousness (\"how your consciousness interprets it\", etc).\n\nYes, if you have too much testosterone, you'll probably get angry ... if you have too little thyroid hormone, you'll probably get depressed.\n\nThe problem here is science still has no idea what *consciousness* actually is, so the real answer to this question is still \"we have no idea\".\n\nWe're not robots, there is no equation to any of this, one person's reaction could be completely different from anothers. \n\nSo some people may actually have no \"sinking feeling\" at all (think sociopaths), where you might get one.\n\nThat is not simply due to \"epinephrine from the adrenal glands\", as the top commenter is stating. The real problem, if there is an answer, is far more complex.",
"I always get that sinking feeling at the top of my chest, I guess just above the pectorals in the middle. Its weird, but then that's how I know that something has truly upset me",
"the lack of dopamine. when you're happy/rewarded, your brain releases a lot of dopamine on top of the normal steady stream. When you're sad/disappointed, you get little to no dopamine release."
] |
Why are rhymes so pleasing? | [
"Our brains like patterns. Patterns are one of the really basic intelligence tools that got our species to where it is now, from the simplest \"hey, every time I eat this berry I get sick, maybe I shouldn't eat them any more\" to modern scientific advances. When we recognize a pattern (or a breach in a pattern, in the case of most kinds of jokes), our brain rewards us."
] |
How did sites like Grooveshark, Spotify, and Google Play get all that music available for free streaming? | [
"Grooveshark is currently in a number of lawsuits over copyright infringement.\n\nSpotify has licensing deals with music studios so that they are allowed to stream music on demand. On the free version, they pay for these license fees with ads. In the US, due to streaming music laws, anyone can use music for Internet Radio, assuming that they pay a set royalty fee. This is how Pandora and Spotify Radio work.\n\nGoogle Play All Access is similar to Spotify in that you need to pay $10/month and they use that money to pay for license fees to the recording companies.\n\niTunes Radio is different in that it has worked out license fees with companies for streaming so they can operate in many more countries than something like Pandora. Pandora only works in the US, Australia, and New Zealand. While iTunes Radio is initially only available in the US, many people believe that because Apple's licensing deals span across many countries, it will be able to spread far easier than Pandora.",
"Well, with Grooveshark they're getting the music because users are uploading it. That's why you'll find a much larger selection of music on Grooveshark than any other streaming service. Grooveshark is an entirely different animal than the rest and is essentially the Napster of free music streaming which is why it's gotten sued up the wazoo over the years.",
"Grooveshark operates like \"You, the UPLOADER agree that YOU the UPLOADER are the SOUL OWNER of this song and grooveshark doesn't own it.\" Grooveshark also lets you sell YOUR songs through their service because of this. So when someone uploads a Metallica song, grooveshark points the finger at the IP that uploaded it and says \"hey sue them for trying to sell copyrighted music\"",
"All of the major labels have a share of ownership in Spotify... and completely left the artists/songwriters out of the deal. That is why their payments to the artists is an absolute joke, a million plays nets the artist about $125, while the major labels own a share in a billion dollar company and have a constant revenue stream from advertising. Indie labels and artists voluntarily submit their music to Spotify even though they will never make a penny from it simply because so many people use Spotify to listen and discover that you are shooting yourself in the foot if your music isn't up there. Overall these systems have devalued music to the point that most artists make nothing anymore."
] |
Why should I install anti-virus software and a firewall? | [
"Why you should install anti-virus and firewall? Honestly, this depends on which operating system you have and so on. But, why to try to defend from virus attacks in general as well as is smart? As this is LI5, I'm going to define all virus-like bad programs as virus here.\n\n > Intramar, the French Navy computer network, was infected with Conficker on 15 January 2009. The network was subsequently quarantined, forcing aircraft at several airbases to be grounded because their flight plans could not be downloaded.\n\n > The United Kingdom Ministry of Defence reported that some of its major systems and desktops were infected. The virus has spread across administrative offices, NavyStar/N* desktops aboard various Royal Navy warships and Royal Navy submarines, and hospitals across the city of Sheffield reported infection of over 800 computers.\n\n > An infection of Manchester City Council's IT system caused an estimated £1.5m worth of disruption in February 2009. USB flash drives have since been banned, as this was believed to be the vector for the initial infection.\n\nBecause _really_ bad things can happen. Always be as sure as possible to not have virus in you machine.\n\nAs to why you really should know, **beyond reasonable doubt** you have no virus on your personal computer at home?\n\nBecause if you have a virus on your computer, the guy who commands the virus, now possibly has access to everything you do on your computer.\n\n1. **Virus can, and some do, steal from your bank account in secret! (Zeus)**\n2. **Virus can, and some do, claim it has found your sick porn cache and that you have to pay to not get in touble**\n3. **Virus can, and some do, lock your computer, and want you to pay to get it opened**\n4. **Virus can, and some do, spy on what you type on your keyboard!**\n\nIf you have a virus on your computer, even when checking stuff for viruses with antivirus, REINSTALL your operating system! RECOVERING IS NOT ENOUGH. Reinstalling might also not be enough, so wipe your hard drive too! Also, hard drive is not the only place you can have a virus. You can't trust OS that has had virus in it. Just removing the virus with antivirus is not enough, or even possible.\n\nMyself, I don't have antivirus on this computer, but it's because I use operating system that doesn't get attacked so much. (Never had a single wide virus attack yet, in 20 years) Which in turn doesn't still mean that it will not get attacked, it just means that if I don't want to hassle with fighting against virusthingys, I should change the OS again to something that doesn't get attacked.\n\nAlso, having antivirus does not mean you cannot get a virus. It means, that you are actually able to defend against **those certain viruses** that the antivirus has been taught to fight against. It cannot find a virus that is not known. (simplification, I know) Not all viruses are immediately found and taught to antivirus.\n\nFirewall: Basically it defines rules, which stuff on your computer can access internet, and how your computer can be accessed from internet. It can block your access to WOW server for example, so yes, there is possible hassle. The thing why it's important, is to be more confident that you should not be able to get attacked. Again, here it also is true, that if you don't actually define good rules, it doesn't really matter. You have to know how to use it effectively.\n\nTL;DR If you don't care if you have virus on your computer or not, **there is no point to having passwords, hiding your porn, hiding your bank account passwords** as all that can be gained with virus. So if you don't care if you have a virus, don't do anything with your computer that you would not like to be seen by any other.\n\nHonest advice: Never have/do anything that could possibly ruin your life in your computer.\n\nEdit: added a word to advice\n\nEdit2: Firewall.\n\nEdit3: Have you been lucky to not have had big problems? Yes. Why I think that is \n\nIt has been [claimed](_URL_0_), that there has been a time, when unprotected Windows machine connected to Internet would make it be compromised in, like, minutes. I think Windows is currently however, not that badly protected. I'm not going to promise that though. \n\nThis all is part of the reason why I actually do think using a computer should legally need some kind of license. It is possible to ruin your life in many ways, but it's kinda stupid for it to happen just because you really didn't know better. If you had been saving money for years so you can afford some special medical treatment for your daughter for example, it would be really sad to lose that money because you didn't want to hassle with being safe. \n\nIf you handle your real wallet with care, why wouldn't you do the same to the computer you do your bank stuff with?",
"Lets take this question apart, do you need antivirus software? defintely yes. Do you need a firewall? probably not.\n\nA virus is a program that makes your computer sick, like a cold.\nThe problem is, some of these diseases do much more serious damage than the ordinary cold. They steal information from your computer that you do no twant other people to have, like credit card information.\n\nAn antivirus program tries to protect your computer from these programs. If you don't care if your computer gets sick, well you might not install an antivirus on your computer. \nThis is bad, if you dont care about getting sick, it usually means that theres something wrong with you, you do not take care of yourself and might ot love yourself very much either. \nThere is of course another reason, a virus spreads by infecting one computer then another, this means, that sometimes, when your computer gets infected, your computer will start infecting other computers or could be taken over by another person during that infection.\n\nSo by not protecting yourself, and allowing your computer to get sick from time to time, you are spreading the disease to other people.\n\nIf this does not bother you at all, then I'm afraid I cannot help you, ther is something wrong with you.\n\nFirewalls protect your computer in another way, they limit what information can enter or exit your computer.\n\nThis is useful when you want to keep someone out of your computer.\nIf you have info other people migh want to steal, then install a firewall, if not, then do whatever you want.",
"Do yourself a favor and download this and scan your computer:\n\n[link](_URL_1_)\n\nIf it says you're free of viruses, then feel free to continue as you were.",
"First, your computer doesn't care from where an order comes, so if you can give orders from another computer then it will follow those orders. That is what hacking is, which viruses usually help with.\n\nA firewall only let certain things pass through the internet cable, which makes it much harder to send orders through it. But you can get problems with games as your computer just blocks everything, you have to tell it to let the games get through, which isn't always easy.\n\nAnti-virus software scan your computer for known viruses and removes them, so it's a second defense so to speak. It removes those that manage to get through the firewall.\n\n > in the rare event that it happens it seems like I can just Recover my computer back to the way it was the previous day.\n\nExcept that most viruses don't show themselves to the user, they just pass your information on to those who created them. Or take control of your computer whenever the creator feels like it."
] |
Why do football fans give Tim Tebow so much attention? | [
"He wasnt a great NFL player. Coming out he was one of the most hyped College Players in YEARS. 2 National Championships and a Heisman to his name during his time at Florida.\n\nBasically Johnny Manziel if Johnny had actually won more games in college. That and his strong social example made him easy to cover.",
"He's a very publicly religious player who was arguably one of the best quarterbacks to play the college game and he played at a school with a huge following in a conference and region that's rabid about college football. \n\nAs a result he got a lot of media attention and developed a pretty big and vocal fan base between the religious types and the fans of the sport. On top of that the media built a lot of hype around him because he brought in ratings. \n\nAll of that is well and good, but being a great college quarterback doesn't necessarily translate to the NFL. The media hyped the crap out of him and he didn't even see the field for a long while when he got to the NFL. This inspired a fair amount of backlash. When he did finally see the field he had some flukey wins that drove the hype levels higher and made the backlash stronger. \n\nBasically he was an elite college player who was very publicly religious and the media hyped him up but despite him having a string of wins he was a terrible NFL player."
] |
If a person serves prison time for tax evasion, once he or she gets out, does he or she still have to pay what was owed to the government? | [
"To answer your initial question, yes they're still liable for that tax money (plus interest and penalties, usually). But if they've served a couple of years, they may not owe anything once they get out.\n\nWhy? They may have already paid it off.\n\nHow? The federal government has a thing called the federal tax lien, which is perhaps the most aggressive and ruthless method of recovery known in the civilized world. Under the federal tax lien act, if you fail to pay taxes after a government demand, you may be subject to a lien **on all of your property** (including property you acquire after the tax assessment) in favor of the federal government. \n\nThen there's the lien's brother, the levy, which is essentially the government's right to go after anything you own. This includes real and personal property as well as salary and wages (including royalties, for Mr. Rule.). \n\nSo the government has ways of making sure it gets paid. It's possible that someone's racked up a seven-figure tax bill and wasted the 7-8 figures of after-tax wealth that came with it, but even in those cases, the feds aren't necessarily out of luck. Tax liens are sturdy. They have a fairly high priority in bankruptcy court, and can even survive a discharge.\n\nKeeping tax evaders in prison costs money, sure, but it's a pittance in comparison with the usually staggering tax bills that it takes to get sent there in the first place. So if one or two years of incarceration deters a high-profile tax cheat from evading his taxes for just a year, it's worth it."
] |
Can we pinpoint the angle of our trajectory from the source of the big bang? | [
"The big bang wasn't what you seem to think it was. It wasn't an explosion *in* space that things are moving away from. It was an expansion **of** space, and it occurred at every location in the universe at the same time.\n\nGalaxies aren't moving away from some central point. Rather, space itself is expanding, which causes every point in the universe to see the rest of the universe as if everything else were moving away from that point. Every location looks exactly the same. There is no central point."
] |
why don't checking accounts get interest? | [
"They sometimes do.\n\nIt was once stipulated in banking regulations that *demand deposits* — deposits that you can get back out of the bank at any time with no restrictions — could not earn interest. This stipulation was called \"regulation Q.\"\n\nIn essence, regulation Q was pretty toothless anyway, because banks had long since come up with service offerings that worked *basically* like demand deposit accounts but that weren't covered under that regulation. These were called negotiable order of withdrawal accounts (or \"NOW\" for short), and were often marketed as if they were indistinguishable from checking accounts … because for all intents and purposes, they were.\n\nRegulation Q is no longer in effect, as of last year. It was repealed by the Dodd-Frank Act of 2010. Now banks are free to offer interest on demand deposits … though of course they're not *required* to. Banks in general are happy to pay interest on deposits they're going to have for a long time, while they're less happy to pay interest on deposits that will stay in your account for just a few days or weeks. Since the interest earned on deposits like that is so minimal anyway, bank customers don't miss it.",
"It's the bank's way of charging you for the convenience of a checking account. \n\nBtw, many banks (and more often credit unions) do offer interest on checking accounts, especially when you maintain a certain balance.",
"It's to compensate for what it costs the bank to provide checking and/or debit card services on the account. In fact, it used to be very common for checking accounts to **charge** a monthly fee of around $5 or $10 for the privilege of writing checks. Then, banks started advertising \"Free Checking\" as a way to bring in customers. More and more banks started jumping on that bandwagon until now free checking is actually considered normal in most places."
] |
When taking pictures, why does the "red eye" instance occur? | [
"Light from the flash reflects from the retina. One way to mitigate it is that \"pre-flash\" you see on some cameras: the flash blinks for a few seconds before the camera really fires and takes a picture. They idea is the bright light causes your pupils to contract, reducing how much light can reflect back from the retina.",
"Like all animals, we have reflective material in the back of our eyes at the retina to help in low-light conditions.\n\nThis material reflects red light, due to the blood, creating red eye"
] |
Why does the US try to prevent places like Iran form getting a nuclear bomb while its own country has thousands and is the only country ever to use one? | [
"\"Deterrent. Mutually assured destruction.\"\n\nWe only ever used the nuclear bomb because it was an extremely dire circumstance. During the Cold War turning into atomic dust was an extremely likely possibility.\n\nNow that Russia's government is slightly less absolutely insane and that most NATO states have access to nuclear weapons, this isn't a threat anymore.\n\nIran, on the other hand, does have an insane government that may or may not question using a nuclear bomb for warfare.\n\nPlus, nuclear terrorism. The middle east is an especial hotspot for terrorism and what if some terrorist group just stole one?",
"The US tends to use their arsenal as a deterrent. Countries like Iran might use them offensively against their enemies... It wouldn't take much to completely wipe out Israel.",
"Because Iran is one of the few countries that is mad enough to actually use them. When you have a radical theocracy whose religion supports martyrdom, the last thing you should do is give them nuclear weapons.",
"I think that having the experience of actually using the weapon has made the United States extremely reluctant to ever use it again. That experience is very important because without that context others might not realize the truly destructive nature it possesses. Some people rationalize that because Iran hates Israel, for very valid reasons, that they are willing to use such a weapon to rid them of this existential threat. However, people don't realize, that Iran is one of the most important countries in the middle east. We view them only as a threat that is to be managed instead of a country that is representative of the people in the region and their very real fears. The history of Iran has seen constant threats to their stability from the West through secret operations to prop up dictators and through the external management of its resources that benefited Western companies without the consideration of regional and local needs. Because we have always operated as a manager and never the partner in the relationship with Iran we do not truly understand its people, this has caused Iran to view the US as an external threat which causes fear and uncertainty in the public's view. So while we continue to assume that they want to develop nuclear weapon capabilities and that they are willing to use them against Israel, this fear and paranoia will persist and only serve to weaken any prospects of peaceful resolution or regional cooperation. Not to mention that there is no evidence of nuclear weapons development and the only perceived threat coming from what we assume is an insane government but which is only the voice of its leaders and not the population or government in general."
] |
what is the difference between butter and margarine? | [
"> Tub margarine can easily be substituted for butter at the table for spreading, and some people use it on the stovetop for cooking, though we typically favour using oil over margarine in cases like this. In baking, melted margarine could work in recipes that call for melted butter, but in recipes that call for softened butter, swapping in tub margarine may change the texture; for example, cakes will be less tender, and cookies will generally spread out more and be less crisp.\n \n > Tub margarines are too soft for pies, pastries and other recipes that call for cold butter, and don’t stand up in icings and frostings, either. Low-fat/light margarines tend to be inappropriate for cooking and baking due to a high water content – be sure to read the label!\n \n > Stick margarine, also known as block or hard margarine, has the same texture as butter, and is therefore a better substitute for baking and cooking than tub margarine. However, stick margarines are generally high in trans fats, which have been shown to be bad for our heart.",
"Margarine is a non-dairy product created as a substitute for butter. While originally made from animal fat in the 1800s, today the primary ingredients include vegetable oil, water, salt, emulsifiers, and some also include milk."
] |
From ancient times to the present day, why is it acceptable in most parts of the world for men to be bare-chested but not women? | [
"Women's breast and men's breast are not the same. Treating them differently is not arbitrary, it's meaningful. Women's breast are sexual, they develop during puberty and have a functioning role to feed their kin. They are affected by estrogen (female sex hormones). It is sexual, and thus elicits a sexual reaction. To minimize this we cover them. If it feels unfair by women to cover them, then it is fair to have men not be allowed to walk around without a shirt, but vice versa is silly by all accounts. We have been covering them for tens of thousands of years. On a side note, not having nude women walk around is not \"not equality\", it's understanding there is a difference between men and women and embracing them. As if it's SUCH a luxury to walk around with no shirt. Wear a bikini on the hottest of days, the difference between that and no shirt is negligible, one can even check the skin temperature and see the difference. In fact, a white top keeps the body cooler."
] |
Why do my feet get cold and sweaty when I don't wear socks and have them underneath the blanket? | [
"When you first get under the blanket your body begins to heat up, as it no longer has to work as hard to stay warm. As a reaction, it expands blood vessels near the surface of your skin to shed extra heat. The only problem is most of that heat gets trapped under the blanket. When your body registers that it isn't cooling off it kicks on the sweat glands. This is why a lot of people sweat during sleep.\n\nAs far as your feet go, it could be you're not used to noticing your feet sweat when you're walking around during the day, but at night it becomes noticable. If only your feet are under the blanket, it's probably because of the temperature difference. Your feet are trying to cool off while the rest of your body has to work to stay warm.",
"This happens to me as well; as a result I wear socks to bed for about 15 minutes, then after my feet are acclimated I peel them off and everything is fine."
] |
Why do many men's bathrooms have open stalls with no doors or doors that don't lock? | [
"Many different possibilities, obviously, but if it was done by the establishment on purpose, it's in order to keep guys from doing hard drugs in there (ie heroin), or some other nefarious activity the place doesn't want occurring in their bathrooms. \nIt can also deter men from using the stall at all, if the place doesn't want to deal with cleaning the thing repeatedly. \n\nIt's also possible some guy just knocked the door off in a fight/drunken stupor, and the place just decided that they didn't want to replace it, as it would just happen again.",
"Men's restrooms will have fewer stalls because most people in public are peeing. Men can pee standing up & use urninals. Urinals are cheaper & more efficient than a sit-down toilet.\n\nIn most places, the stalls that are there have perfectly functioning doors with locks. For the most part, if a place doesn't have doors or working locks, it's just lax maintenance - people have let things fall apart and not bothered to fix the problem (since, again, most men are just peeing standing up, it's not really important).\n\nIn some particularly shady places, they might be trying to prevent drug users, random sex acts, the homeless or any other sort of activity from taking place.",
"Not a common problem that I've seen, except in some of the shittier bars out there. Mostly they have doors and locks.",
"To prevent glory hole / under stall activities...."
] |
Why don't courts (U.S.) add perjury charges to criminals who lie in court and are found guilty on other charges? | [
"except that situation would never happen.\n\nthe defendant would rarely be put on the stand. if the prosecutor asked the defendant under oath if he did the crime, the defendant's attorney would tell the defendant to please the 5th and not answer.",
"Claiming not guilty at the beginning of a trial is not perjury because they are not under oath yet. They also do not go to the stand and make a statement because you legally are not required to incriminate yourself.",
"There are a few reasons.\n\nA plea of not guilty is different than saying \"I am innocent.\" Pleading not guilty is not automatically arguing that someone did not commit the action that is an offense, rather it could mean there was an exception in the law that permitted them to act (such as self-defense) or there was a botched investigation and lawful procedures by law enforcement weren't followed (such as unlawful searches without a warrant) or any number of things, but obviously it also could mean they intend to argue the person did not do the act.\n\nGuilt is a matter for the jury to decide (or judge in the instance of a bench trial), so for someone to be charged with perjury for miscalculating the jury's future decision would be unfounded.\n\nPerjury is an offense that requires a prosecutor to prove with evidence and beyond a reasonable doubt to the jury that perjury was committed. Being convicted of one crime is not proof of another, including perjury, because a conviction is not evidence.\n\nIf a person was indicted on perjury (or aggravated perjury if they did it during a trial), it would indeed require a separate trial because charges are not tacked-on during trials.\n\nRead the Texas Penal Code's entry for [perjury and aggravated perjury](_URL_0_) for more information! Sec. 37.02. and 37.03.\n\nEdit: bad format for link, fixed!",
"> Example: A man on trial for murder claims under oath he did not murder the victim, but is subsequently found guilty of murder\n\nThat almost never happens. Defendants in serous crimes don't testify, because it waives their 5th Amendment rights.\n\n > Would it be a separate charge that would require another trial?\n\nIt would, and may not be worth the effort.\n\nAlso, it comes dangerously close to punishing someone for claiming their innocence, which gets into constitutionally questionable ground.\n\nAlso, there is a little wiggle room where you could be guilty of murder but have a reasonable doubt you did not commit perjury. If I am claiming self defense, I might honestly believe I did not murder anyone.",
"Guilty pleas are not done under oath, and perjury only applies under oath.\n\nIn addition, the whole concept of the guilty plea is as the legal way of saying \"prove it\" to the prosecutor. Your charges are known, and saying not guilty forces the prosecution to make their case."
] |
What is inclusive growth? And what can we do to achieve that? | [
"\"inclusive growth\" is a catch all term for economic growth that broadly benefits all parts of society.\n\nThe most obvious method for ensuring that the benefits of economic growth are spread out is redistribution.\n\nHowever, there are countless ways to attempt to achieve broad based growth by way of public policy.\n\nA government can ensure strong property rights and fluid capital markets to ensure that anyone with a good idea can find financing and benefit from their ideas. While this is, of course, good for growth overall, societies that lack the above are often heinously unequal.\n\nGovernments can direct investment with longer term goals in mind. For example, agglomeration economies have often been cited as an issue in inequality. Basically, the idea is that firms want to be located where the best talent is and the best talent wants to be where the firms are. As such, some regions become fantastically wealthy (think silicon valley) while others suffer from underinvestment. Since the New Deal, the government has participated in a number of efforts to provide seed investments into smaller communities around the country in order to make them more attractive to private firms."
] |
How did they make a hex shaped hole on this lathe? | [
"That was beautiful work with a CNC lathe.\nThe CNC calculated how to spin both the parts to make the pattern required, similar to how it did the threads. I have not seen a good video of this particular pattern slowed down, but I'd assume it's very similar to _URL_0_ .",
"He's using a rotary broach with a bit that will cut a hexagon. A rotary broach doesn't work like a standard lathe cutting tool, where the tool is held stationary and the workpiece is rotated. In rotary broaching, the cutting tool is allowed to freely rotate. When it comes into contact with the workpiece, friction, combined with a very small angle introduced by the special rotary broach tool holder causes it to rotate with and bite into the workpiece. You can use rotary broaches to cut polygons pretty easily."
] |
How does an app like OfferUp make money? | [
"Tons of startups don't make money. They lose shit loads of it trying to get users, hoping to make the ninety back by selling the company or having an IPO."
] |
Why does almost everyone who drives think it's ok to go up to 5 miles per hour OVER the speed limit? | [
"The most likely reason is that 5 mph is within the speedometer's and radar gun's margin of error, so pulling people that are going 5mph over would result in a ton of legal headaches for everybody.",
"Left to do as they please, drivers will drive at whatever speed they feel comfortable and safe driving at.\n\nSpeed limits, these days, tend to be lower than the speeds that people feel they can safely travel at, and they're penalized for exceeding the speed limit by too much, so people go as much over the speed limit as they think they can without getting in trouble.",
"Because usually the police won't bother to pull someone over if they're only going 5 miles over the limit. It has been known to happen though.",
"Sure, margins of error are a valid point, but another one to consider is how archaic the speeds are in many areas, and were based around less safe, slower cars. Such as 55mph highways. \n\nSafety is found in following the rate of traffic rather than the designated speed limit. If you're too far above or below what others are driving, you are endangering yourself and others.",
"In some states (I know PA for certain) a cop isn't actually allowed to pull you over for speeding if you're doing less than 5mph over the limit.",
"I've actually had a cop tell me it's too much paperwork to worry about for just 5 miles over.",
"I'm friends with a few police officers. This is what I was told by them. Keep in mind though, this varies by PD, area, state, etc:\nIn a 25-35mph zone, they allow up to 5mph over\nIn a 45-55mph zone, they allow up to 10mph over\nIn a 55-65mph zone, they allow up to 15mph over\nOn the Jersey Turnpike - Suvival of the fittest. Anything goes.",
"I do that. I'm from Canada though. Everybody here drives around 10 km/h over the limit in the city and about 20 km/h over the limit on the highways/expressways.\n\nThe main reason everyone goes over the limit is because there isn't a lot of traffic most of the time. If it's clear and not raining/snowing/bad weather, then people go over the limit. If it's a residential street/school zone or there's a lot of traffic, people drive the speed limit. Cops are pretty lenient. They don't mind the 10 km/h over if it's safe to drive at that speed. Also, if everyone is driving at 60 km/h instead of the 50 km/h limit, it's safer to go with the flow.",
"As an aside, this is not the case everywhere in the world. In France, a speeding ticket gets your licensed suspended. In America, it MIGHT get you a small fine. The risk versus reward factor is what's at play here.",
"Two possibilities:\n\n* As frownyface said, 5mph is within the margin of error for a speedometer.\n\n* Most states don't increase the severity of the penalty (ticket, the fine) incrementally (i.e. each 1 mph has an impact). They make \"buckets\". In my state, if you examine the ticket, it's 1-9 mph is a no-point / $100 max fine (unless it's a school or construction zone, etc.). 10-19 mph has two points and can be up to $300, but I think the cop can waive the points somehow. 20-29 mph over and it's 4 points mandatory and minimum $500 fine. 30+ over and you're FUCT - call the paddy wagon, you're not driving away.\n\nGiven the low penalty for 0-9 mph violations, cops view it as simply not worth their time. It just pisses people off, loads up the cop's court schedule (most jurisdictions this can be their day off!), and it's just a lot of paperwork for a very common, low-danger / low-fine infraction.",
"Most police radars are actually calibrated nearly 15% low. This ensures that any ticket they give will hold up to scrutiny in court, as if the reading is known to be low but still reads higher than the posted limit, the driver in question was assuredly speeding. \n\nSome drivers are aware of this situation and use it to their advantage, exceeding the speed limit by 5-10%. They thus clock below the speed limit on police radar, but get to their destination in less time.",
"Speed limits are made with speeding in mind: a 55mph highway is probably still just as safe at 60, but since people go 65 in a 60, they set it at 55. Kind of a self fulfilling prophecy.",
"Because way back when police had to either time you or roll with you to write you a speeding ticket. put simply they are not really precise methods of measuring a cars speed. so to make it stick you kind of needed a greater disparity between your speed and the posted limit. so 5ish kind of became an accepted buffer. also, unless a radar gun is kept properly tuned they can develop a variance of upwards of 7mph, this means that unless it was jsut calibrated the argument can be made that it isnt that accurate as well. And another reason, police cars are the only cars made right now that actually have a certified speedometer in them, if you look at the speedo in an interceptor it actually attests to it being validated at the factory. this is an expensive step that most companies dont want to put in even though the units are all digital now it means careful alignment of the motor and needle witht he face etc. simply, it costs money to make cars that accurate. also they need to make the process robust to variation, they consider a vehicle travellign faster than the readout to be a critical failure where going slower is just inconvenient. so your gauges arent as accurate as you think as well. so there are a lot of variables, also a person doign 2-3 over is not really that dangerous usually, it the peopel going 10 under and 15+over the limit that they want to spend most of their time porsecuting.",
"100% serious answer here. Auto manufacturers actually do bias their speedometers slightly low (about 10% on average) to avoid having class action lawsuits for their car buyers getting speeding tickets. (Google this if you want more details.) So all those guys doing 70 in a 65 are actually under 65. I wish more of the passing lane speed limit vigilantes realized this rather than blocking the line behind them from getting to open freeway in front of them because they feel they are obeying the law and need to force everyone else too as well.",
"People like to feel as though they are in control of their own actions and making their own decisions. In just the same way that you don't like to be told what to do by Adults.\n\nDrivers also don't like to be told what to do, so sometimes they do what they feel is best for them despite what someone else says. Driving over the speed limit makes them feel as though they are in charge and they are not being told what to do.",
"I was once pulled over for going 2 mph over the speed limit (since I had Texas plates and was traveling a \"known drug corridor\") even though my (police officer) father instructed me that I could drive up to 4 mph over without incurring a ticket.\n\nIf you knowingly break the rules, you need to be prepared to be corrected.",
"My driving instructor taught me that it is perfectly reasonable to go 3-4mph over the speed limit. Your question answers itself though, if EVERYONE thinks it's ok to go 5 mph over, what reason do you have to drive slower than the flow of traffic? The point is to drive safely, not by the book.",
"I'm in Texas and not sure if this is everywhere but you are not technically speeding unless you are going 10% over the speed limit. Like if you go 75 in a 70 then you should be good. But if you're going over 77 (10%) then your chances of being stopped are much greater.",
"In Washington State, don't go more than 2-3mph over, I have friends who got tickets for it. \nIn Oregon State, don't go more than 10 over, the officers/troopers start to care.",
"The (federal) Department of Transportation matches funds states spend on highways and highway maintenance $1:$1 if the states comply with the (low) federal standard for speed limits on their roads.",
"Speedometers all have a +/- 10% error so most manufacturers calibrate the speedometers to to be about 10 percent less than actual speed. For liability purposes.\n\n[Linky Poo](_URL_0_)",
"I have also heard, although I can not find any source, that many states have an unofficial daytime limit of 5 over the posted limit.",
"I think it's ok because my speedo is 4 MPH fast at 60. So to go 60, I have to make the speedo read 64.",
"Speed limits were first designed with safety in mind. Now they are simply a revenue source for the municipality or state in question.",
"They make the speedometers in your car read 5-10% lower than actual to avoid getting sued by consumers who get speeding tickets.",
"I know in Ontario, you can't actually be charged for speeding unless you're going 10 km/h over the speed limit."
] |
what happened to RSS? Why did it suddenly just stop being a thing? | [
"RSS lets you get quick updates of websites you like. For example [qwantz](_URL_0_) updates every time a new comic goes up. The idea was that you could get updates and new information without having to go to each site and check.",
"RSS was developed to pass data when bandwidth was a big concern. when bandwidth was measured in Kb/s. bandwidth is no longer a big concern."
] |
Why is it that we sound robotic when we speak into a portable fan on high speed. | [
"Because the blades are rotating to push air. Sound is vibrations in air. So the blades are also affecting the sound. It will modulate your voice with the frequency of the spinning blades."
] |
How can a man be raped by a woman? | [
"The human body will respond to physical stimulation even if you haven't consented and don't want it to happen. Mind over matter only goes so far, so sufficient stimulation will still have a predictable effect. The fact that your body responded in the way it is physiologically meant to respond has nothing to do with whether you gave consent for it to happen.\n\nIn short: no means no, and what your body does when pushed doesn't mean a damn thing in the face of that.",
"I ordered a paid dominatrix service off the internet years ago. Set up to meet at a fairly nice hotel room where I was waiting. She made me go to the bathroom upon arrival and when I came out she had a mask and full outfit on. Tied me to the bed, gagged me and roughly anally penetrated me. Then I was chloroformed and I assume more penetration. When I woke up all my belongings and wallet were gone",
"Along with the other responses here, I think you're jumping to a conclusion that raping a man involves his penis.\n\nThere are plenty of other non-consensual sexual assaults that can happen to a man in a compromising position.",
"Same way a woman can be wet and nonconsenting. The penis responds to physical touch\n\n\nNot even mentioning penetration of the anus, forced to eat a woman out, etc",
"> How can a man be 'hard' and be considered a rape?\n\nErections aren't something that you need to want to have, they happen with stimulus. Regardless of how you feel about it.",
"If my eyes get watery after I stub my toe, it's not because I wanted them to do that and willed it to happen; it's because that's my body's response to that kind of sensation. \n\nIf I have a dick and someone touches it, and it gets hard, it's not because I wanted it to happen, it's because that's the body's response to that kind of sensation. \n\nRape isn't bad sex. It's not based on whether you got hard or had an orgasm. Rape is about the mental state of the people involved: specifically, did both people want sex to happen? If not, then that is rape."
] |
where do freckles on nipples come from if they have never experienced sun exposure? | [
"People produce pigments such as in freckles independent of sun exposure. Our skin does react to sun exposure by *increasing* pigment production but that is a separate issue.\n\nYour implication that freckles are only caused by sun exposure is just incorrect."
] |
Why do I like toasted bread, but not stale bread? | [
"It is due to a reaction called the Maillard reaction, which is a non-enzymatic form of browning which is caused by heat. It is a chemical reaction between amino acids and reducing sugars.\n\nMaillard reactions are why we like browned meat, roasted coffee and biscuits (most baking processes go through the maillard reaction). \n\nCaramelisation is a completely different reaction and is only the reaction of sugars. However, they may both occur in the same foods and cause the same browning and flavours in some cases.\n\nWith toasted bread it is the Maillard reaction that is the main influence on preference.\n\nStaling is caused by starch granules losing their water content, which creates more linking between starch molecules causing recrystallisation. This causes the dryness and leathery feel to stale bread, which are deemed undesirable in most cases.",
"Toasted bread is bread with a caramelized outer layer, as the sugar in it is partly burnt. Stale bread is just dry and nasty."
] |
Why does the military have its own justice system? | [
"Military members are subject to the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ) in addition to the \"normal\" civilian justice system. Meaning military members can be tried for crimes under the UCMJ which are not crimes for \"normal\" civilians. In addition to more restrictive rules, there are different requirements for the trials and the sentencing as well as different punitive options available. \nAlso, prosecutors can circumvent double jeopardy rights if the accused is a member of the armed forces. So, even if a military member has already been tried for a crime by a civilian court, they can still be prosecuted for the exact same crime by a military court. \nThe UCMJ does not exist to allow soldiers to break foreign laws or exempt them from civilian laws. There are Rules of Engagement (ROE) and Status of Forces Agreements (SOFA) that outline specifically exactly what a military member may or may not do for every country they operate in. The UCMJ and the military justice system is an extra line of punitive measures to ensure that military are held to military standards.",
"In the military (21 years Army for me so far) we have different rules that don't exist in the civilian world. For instance, in order to maintain order and discipline required, we don't have the option to tell a commanding officer to go screw himself as we are turning in our two weeks notice. The members of an officer's command are legally bound to follow his lawful orders, otherwise face UCMJ punishment. The reason for that is that during combat operations, the commander's decisions must be obeyed and carried out without his subordinates rebelling, disobeying, or otherwise \"going on strike\" which are all things civilian workers are allowed to do. During combat, it's not the time for any of that.\nIf a service member commits a crime in the civilian world, the military can take responsibility for trying and convicting that person, or they can allow the civilian authorities to proceed. Never both.",
"This is a great ELI5 post. It's one of those things that people might not normally think to ask, but has a lot of interesting and complicated nuances."
] |
Why do parabolic (curved) snow skis make skiing easier than the 'old' style straight skis? | [
"When you make a turn, you tip your skis on their side edge towards the inside of the turn. [Like this](_URL_1_).\n\nWith straight skis, the edge would touch the ground on the whole length of the ski when tipping. Since most of your weight is in the middle of the ski, that means that the tip and tail do not push as much into the snow.\n\nBut with parabolic skis, as in the illustration above, you can see that the edge is only touching the ground at the tip and tail, and there's a gap in the middle. So what will happen is that, because of your weight in the middle, the ski will bend until the middle also touches the ground. [Like this](_URL_0_).\n\nThis has two effects that make them easier to use:\n\n* First, and most obvious, the ski turns for you! Rather than being in a straight line, it's now touching the snow in the shape of a curve, and it will follow that curve on its own.\n\n* Second, since the tip and tail are forced to bend, they apply more force on the snow. That makes a better distribution of your weight on the whole length of the ski rather than just the middle. This is why skis don't need to be as long anymore, as they make better use of the available length. And shorter skis are easier to move around.",
"Simply put (we are in ELI5 after all ;): \nOnce you lean into the curve your weight will mostly be on the front and tail of your ski therefor allowing the center of the ski to bend into the turn. \nSimple rule: The stronger the parable/curve of the ski the smaller it's turn radius. Therefor making navigating much much easier. \n\nA hopefully good allegory to understand this better:\nImagine a big truck with dozens of wheels and now try to turn it while driving. \nNow imagine a truck with only two sets of wheels, on in the front and one in the back turning it will be much easier. \n\n(Granted not quite the perfect example but it should get the point across ;)",
"Imagine the arc of the side of the skis as part of a circle. When you lean on one edge your skis naturally want to travel in that arc, thus making it easier to carve.",
"you can just lean into the turn with your body weight instead of having to push into it with legs, so it takes less effort and doesn't slow you down as much."
] |
When sucking a piece of candy (hard or soft) why do you have the urge to crunch and swallow it instead of savoring the flavor longer? | [
"Because your whole life youve been crushing things with your teeth and swallowing them immediately as they enter your mouth. It becomes a reflex.",
"i think it has to do with the same reason why when you toss a dog a piece of food they pretty much inhale it. while humans enjoy flavor i think we have a more basic instinct of \"that was some food eat more right NOW\" your body is less concerned with enjoying food as it is with consuming as much as possible. if you go back to the kill or be killed stage of are evolution it would make total sense to cram as much food into yourself as soon as possible before it went away.",
"I am interested as to why gum does not give the urge as described. Is it pure fear that swallowing gum \"gets stuck in your stomach for 7 years\"(which is BS)? Every time I even think about swallowing a strip of Orbit, I seem to just say no to myself, but as the OP suggests, for every other food we have the urge.",
"Must be a person to person thing, i prefer to let it melt away in my mouth and savor it all."
] |
If someone poored the equivalent in mass as our sun, of water on to our sun, what would happen? | [
"Well the sun wouldn't go out. It would actually burn brighter. Water molecules are two parts hydrogen and and one part oxygen. The sun uses hydrogen to burn (hydrogen makes up most of the sun's mass) so by adding water you'd be adding more fuel."
] |
Why is smoke sometimes black and sometimes white? | [
"It's only white when a new pope is elected. Seriously though, it depends on what material you're burning. Gasoline and oil tend to have black smoke while dry wood tends to have white smoke."
] |
Why is a 2 degree Celsius increase in temperature on earth considered dramatically dangerous. | [
"Try to imagine all the matter that makes up the surface of the Earth. All that air water, earth, rock, etc. To increase the average temperature of all that involves an immense amount of energy. \n\nIt's the air in particular that's a cause for concern. Air that's 2C hotter is more energetic and can hold more water vapour, which means that storms will be stronger and rain will be heavier - or both at the same time, in the form of more and stronger tropical storms and cyclones. There are millions of people in situations that are highly vulnerable to this, such as just about the whole of Bangladesh and its > 160 million people. [It's happened before] (_URL_0_).",
"The higher the temperature the more water vaporates from lakes and oceans, so more humidity that will rain down if air temperatures decreases. Rain influences erosion. \n\nThere are so many things that influence our planet and climate. Temperature influences many. Like the amount of rain, how deserts grow, the amount of food that can be produced and stored.",
"Two degrees is not a big difference to you or I, but to a bacterial organism or phytoplankton (the type of organism that the entire ocean food chain is built off of), 2 degrees celsius is essentially a whole different world. Due to their very small size, molecules have a very different interaction with them due to the temperature change. Specificly, phytoplankton like Prochlorococcus are the world's number one oxygen producer: producing 70% of the worlds oxygen. Should their entire environment change due to temperature change, we will have far less oxygen for us to breath. Moreover, the entire food chain in the ocean would collapse as phytoplankton are eaten by zooplankton, which are eaten by shrimp and other small fish, which are eaten by bigger fish etc etc.",
"The ice caps have a pattern where they lose water to melting when in the summer, and regain it to freezing in the winter. Even a small increase in temperature means they spend more time above freeze and less below freezing and shrink. 2 C is where this happens quickly enough to see more radical changes over the course of a few decades, according to the climate models.",
"The other comments offer good explanations of the science behind it, but as an intuitive aid it might help to know that during the last ice age global temperatures were just 2 to 4 C lower than they are now. [XKCD has an excellent comic that puts it into perspective](_URL_1_)"
] |
What tricks/methods does Hollywood use/how do they portray actions that are undesirable (to the actor/actress) or illegal (i.e using drugs, drinking liquor, sex) in movies and tv? | [
"Drugs and alcohol is easy. How can you tell the liquid in the glass is alcoholic just by looking at it? You can't. How do you know the white powder is cocaine, or the smoke coming from the wrapped \"joint\" is from marijuana? You can't. I hope I don't need to explicitly describe how dyed water could be passed off as whisky for example.\n\nThe sex scenes are achieved by small, controlled sets with only professionals allowed inside. The actors wear tiny garments to maintain modesty and simply grind against each other in ways where the carefully controlled camera angles can't distinguish exactly what is happening. That obscuring drape of sheet? Totally planned. They don't show actual penetration or it would be pornography, and without actually showing that there is no need for it to take place. What you can't see in the camera shot can be covered by clothing."
] |
In order to design/code websites, what languages do I have to learn? | [
"The answer depends on what you're going for. If you just want a simple website to host pictures of your cats, you could probably make do with just knowing (I would learn them in this order):\n\n* HTML - describes the structure of a website page\n* CSS - describes how to format said page\n* Javascript - a programming language the browser uses; lets you make your website do fancy things and not just be a static page\n* PHP - a server-side programming language. This is different then javascript in that php lets you generate dynamic webpages which then get sent to the user's browser. For instance, if you wanted to have a little window pop-up when the user clicks on something you would use javascript., as that's code you want to run in the user's browser. On the other hand, if you wanted your webpage to display data received from a database, you would use php, since that's code running on your server.\n\nAs for how to go about doing it, I'd say find a tutorial online, open up notepad, and go nuts. Don't use a WYSIWYG or Worpress or any of that garbage, those are for people who just want a site that looks ok and is easy to make. If you want to truly succeed in this field you need to go down to the nitty gritty. Shortcuts like those will get you to an endpoint faster, but with much less to show for it.\n\nAs I said before, the answer depends on what you're going for. What I listed will get you started on a small, but absolutely worthwhile, project. Definitely start there. If you want to match a site like Sony, Facebook, or any other large-scale company, the answer is: you can't ever stop learning. Not just languages either, but however knowledge in general. Networking, server setup, linux/unix, databases (yes, there's more then SQL)... the list goes on. You can't just \"learn\" them and head out the door into the market. You need to practice, learn, evolve. This isn't something you can do purely for financial gain, you have to live it and love it.\n\nSorry that this turned into more of a \"HOWTO start making websites\" rather then an ELI5, but I figured the OP sounded like he/she really wanted guidance more then an explanation.",
"First tip;\nDon't use books to learn. Use them as reference manuals. Use various online tutorial / documentation sites. Pick a project _you_ want to do, then as you go along google for a solution to whatever problem you're facing - someone will have no doubt run into that problem and found a solution to it already. \n\nAs for languages: HTML, CSS and Javascript. \nThese are the languages* which are executed in the client's browser. \nBackend, you can use almost anything. The most popular are probably python, PHP, ASP / _URL_0_\n\nThe front-end languages are very easy to use, the biggest problem I can see you facing is CSS across various browsers.\nThe backend languages are more difficult, but again, a simple website won't take much coding there.",
"Designing and coding are very different skills, it's rare to see people very good at both.\n\nTo design sites, you'll need HTML and CSS. Start with those.",
"Depends on what you want to do. HTML, CSS, Javascript, maybe php, maybe flash."
] |
Why is it so much harder to hold your breath after breathing out then it is before breathing out? | [
"When you take a breath and exhale it, your lungs will absorb about 20% of the oxygen in that breath. So if you instead hold your breath, you've actually got several full breaths worth of oxygen that are still available to your lungs, even though you haven't breathed in any new air. \n\nWhen you exhale and then hold your breath, there's very little oxygen available to your lungs, so you start feeling the effects a lot faster."
] |
When to use a hyphen in between two words (global-scale, first-class, etc.) | [
"If the words are working separately, they aren't hyphenated. For example, \"itsy-bitsy teenie-weenie yellow polkadot bikini.\" \n\nIt's not itsy *and* bitsy, it's itsy-bitsy. Same with teenie-weenie. At the same time it's not bitsy-teenie, so those aren't hyphenated together. \n\nNow the part where it gets more flexible. It could be a yellow polkadot bikini or it could be a yellow-polkadot bikini. In the first example yellow is being applied to the bikini -- it's a yellow bikini with polka dots -- in the second it's being applied to the polka dots -- it's a bikini with yellow polkadots. It distinguishes whether yellow is an adjective being applied to the noun bikini, or a adverb being applied to the adjective polka dot, which is being applied to the noun bikini. \n\nTL;DR if the words work without the other one, don't hyphenate, if it needs both of them to make sense, hyphenate.",
"Often when two words act as single adjectives.\n\nFor example, a long-awaited return.",
"Use it to convey a single idea. For example, a good one I've heard is a \"violent weather conference\" is different to a \"violent-weather conference\"."
] |
How come whenever I draw a face having a certain expression I end up making the same expression? | [
"A fun little part of the brain known as mirror neurons. They're the reason that you empathize with actors on screen or in this case, your doodles. Mirror neurons believe that whatever your eyes are looking at, is actually you. So when you see someone hurt, you cringe. Or when you see an angry face you believe it's your face that's angry and these neurons trick your facial muscles into reacting to match. \n\nRemember this next time someone tells you that \"A smile is contagious\""
] |
If calories are a measure of energy, does the same food have more or less calories/energy whether it is eaten hot or cold? | [
"Food gets broken down to glucose sugar, and various vitamins and minerals. The vitamins and minerals are used by cells for their internal bio-chemistry, and the glucose is burned (with oxygen from breathing) for energy. \"Calories\" are a measure of the amount of glucose that can be extracted and burned, and this is a chemical energy. \n\nHow hot the food is doesn't really affect the amount of nutrients and glucose in it, just affects the taste, and possibly how long the stomach takes to warm it up to body temperature. It only takes a few calories to warm up the contents of your stomach, much less than the thousands of calories that a stomach full of ice cream would deliver.",
"Heat is kenetic energy -- Energy that's happening right now. \n\nCalories are a measure of potential energy. \n\nHot foods would only increase your \"energy\" by heating up your body. Conversely, with cold foods your body would loose heat energy by ingesting cold foods.",
"The food itself doesn't but the energy required to digest it could either be higher or lower.\n\nSuch as ice cream. It will take more energy to digest than a very hot food like chili"
] |
during embryo growth, how do cells physically "arrange themselves" into complex structures like organs, appendages, etc? | [
"I'm a bit rusty on my developmental biology, but the basics is that cell division is not symetrical, and at each division in the early stages, some material goes with one of the cell, and the rest with the other.\n\nThis translates into different protein being produced by the cells, or at least different concentration of said protein (For exemples of protein, look up Wnt or Notch). This creates a gradient of proteins in the organism being formed, and because the cell reacts differently depending on the concentration of these proteins, they will develop into something different. \n\nThere are also pathways in development that are linked to the status of the neighbouring cells. Say, if i'm a developing cell, and the cell beside me is a pre-nose cell, i'm going to develop into a pre-nose cell too.\n\nHowever, there are very very complex interactions going on, and the simulation of everything at once is not yet feasible, and we rely on models, which do not account for everything yet, but better models will come !",
"An interesting thing that happens in embryos is that at different parts of the cells are difference concentrations of certain molecules. These molecules can inhibit or stimulate certain growth. When a single cell has the \"magic concentration\" of these molecules, they will do different things. This is what differentiates head from tail, as well as leads to the growth of epithelial (skin), mesothelial (kind of an in between), and endothelial (inner cells like organs). after the growth of these three types, they differentiate further based on these levels of concentrations of molecules. \n\nThere are oodles of this tapering of molecular concentrations in cells and structures, so it's not a single molecule that differentiates.",
"The term you're looking for is called organogenesis. We are made up of 3 germinal layers: endoderm, ectoderm, and mesoderm; which then will differentiate into different parts of the body. What drives the cell differentiation? It's a complex interplay between gene regulation and growth factors.\n\nHere's a wiki to help get you started:\n_URL_0_\n\nAlso, there's tons of educational videos out there that drive these points home.\n\nGood luck!",
"There's also a lot of \"programmed cell death\" where cells die to form structures. For example fingers are formed when the cells between them die off."
] |
Why do you see people advertise themselves as "pre-op transgender" in dating sites (and other dating mediums) but you never see "post-op transgender" written? | [
"I think generally people who're fully done with transitioning are ready to set it behind them. The point isn't to be transgender, the point is to be male/female.\n\n > is it unethical or immoral to not make potential partners aware of your history?\n\nThis topic comes up from time to time. Even within the trans community it's a pretty highly debated topic. You can cross-post this over at /r/asktransgender if you want an entertaining flamewar."
] |
if someone was to melt down pre 1982 pennies for copper? | [
"You would have to melt pennies at a large scale to make it worthwhile for the government to spend time investigating and arresting you. To melt pennies at that scale, you would have to industrialize the process (large amounts of pennies, big smelter, and a reliable customer who will pay cash for the copper). Somewhere along the line, you're likely to attract notice. If you try to just melt pennies by the handful among a large network, then yes, you are likely to avoid detection, but you still run into the problem of finding a seller to make a profit, and you'd have to pay those melting your pennies. \n\nNo one is going to bother going after you if you melt $5 worth of pennies and use the copper to make jewelry to sell on Esty for a tiny profit. If you melt $50,000 face-value worth of pennies though....."
] |
is there a chemical reaction in the brain that responds to cancelling appointments and social activities? I often feel good after lightening the social load! | [
"You had to do a task you were dreading and nervous about, and by canceling it, your brain considers it accomplished. You are then rewarded for it chemically.\n\nIt's alot easier than spearing a mammoth anyway.",
"Acetylcholine is the introvert’s version of dopamine, though I’m not 100% sure that applies here."
] |
Why are fractals considered to have fractional dimensions? What does a fractional dimension mean? | [
"I highly recommend watching the following video by the best math presenter on YouTube. It should answer both your questions (and a bunch of other interesting questions).\n\n_URL_0_"
] |
Why are bar codes relatively large when usually you only need one thin scan line to identify an item? | [
"You May have expierienced how long it takes from time to time for the employees to find the Barcode, now imagine its only half a cm thick."
] |
Why is it that diesel gas prices are now getting much lower to the point of being close to or even lower than the price of unleaded? | [
"Did you know originally diesel was always cheaper per litre than petrol it was only when the government realised the extra miles people where getting out of a diesel car so they jacked up the price, and agricultural, and fishing boats, etc still get diesel at cheap prices for diesel (it's red diesel and I can't remember exactly how much cheaper as I haven't worked on a fishing boat for a few years).",
"Technically it is because the diesal gas refineries are working more efficiently than the gasoline refineries which results in more diesel and drives down the price. Honestly I am pretty sure its because of price fixing."
] |
How come we don't remember things exactly as they were? | [
"Essentially, your brain plays *[The Telephone Game](_URL_0_)* with itself and each time your memory tries to recall something, you're actually remembering the last time you remembered it. If little inaccuracies slipped in, some feelings were stronger or more important than another, or you forget that you told a white lie about something that had happened, over the course of time your brain edits and overwrites these now slightly distorted memories. When someone is in denial of a traumatic event, it could be that they have blocked those memories out so deeply and replaced them with a thought held so strongly that they eventually come to believe it as reality."
] |
Why does the thread count of sheets make them softer? | [
"Think of sandpaper... the kind with large grit is rougher than the sandpaper with fine grit. Not imagine the same thing with threads. Fewer, larger threads will be rougher than more fine threads."
] |
If we pressed down on a nail for several months, would that affect its growth? | [
"I'm not an expert but this does happen with an ingrown toenail. The nail doesn't stop growing but instead starts to bend."
] |
When taking a hot shower with cold feet, why does the hot water make your feet feel "icy hot" for a while? | [
"Your cold receptors are firing because your feet are cold. When you dip your feet in the warm water, the nerves responsible for detecting heat are then activated. So for a moment, your brain receives signals for both hot and cold, leading to the sensation you describe. \n\nSource:medical school",
"There was a research experiment where cold water was run through a metal pipe, and people touching it perceived cold. Hot water was run through the pipe and people perceive cold. When extremely hot and cold water are run through the pipe, people perceive the burning hot sensation. When you experience extremes of hot and cold you perceive the heat instead of the cold."
] |
In what way(s) will the universe theoretically end? | [
"According to general scientific concesus, there's a few ways this could go down, and it depends on wether or not highly complicated theories like the overall shape of the universe turn out to be true:\n\nHeat death is one of them, a scenario in which, after billions of billions of years, all stars in the universe eventually burn out or explode, effectively rendering the entire universe uninhabbitable. \n\nOther options include the big Rip, stating that as space continues to expand eventually the space between particles in an atom for example would be too large for any matter to form, and the universe and all its contents would progressively disintegrate"
] |
Russia. Ukraine, oil, and the supposed "New cold war" | [
"For now, let's ignore the social and geographic history of what is known today as Ukraine.\n\nNot too long ago, Ukraine was in the midst of deciding whether they were going to join the European Union, a move to which Russia strongly objected. \n\nRussia basically told Ukraine that if they join EU, then all the various economic partnerships, loans, subsidies, agreements, etc would have to be cancelled or renegotiated. \n\nUkraine's then leader decided that it would be an economic catastrophe if Russia would play on their word and decided against joining the EU, calling for another round of discussions and planning. To which a good chunk of people said not very nice words and a revolution erupted. \n\nFast forward to today, where you have east Ukraine that wants independence or join Russia, and west Ukraine that wants independence/join EU.. all the while firing rockets at each other and generally blowing things up.\n\nAll the while NATO and USA are pointing fingers saying Russia is helping the east Ukrainians and being jackasses.. and Russia is pointing fingers at NATO and USA saying that they are helping west Ukraine and being even bigger jackasses. People will argue this point to death, saying one side is free of guilt but the reality is that everyone's hands are dirty and they're not being readily washed. \n\nAlso Russian oil sold to the EU runs through pipes in Ukraine. So if Ukraine does something (like not pay their bills on time), Russia cuts the oil supply at the Ukrainian border which forces the EU to put pressure on Ukraine to cough up the money. Harsh but such is the reality. \n\nAs for the Cold War comment, that's just something people like to use to give people a scare through negative association. Russia and the USA are not in a nuclear arms race on the brink of wiping humanity off the face of the earth! CALM DOWN PEOPLE."
] |
I feel like a dog can sense if a person is unhappy. How? | [
"I am by no way at all a scientist or veterinarian but I have been working with dogs for over a decade. I spent a lot of time as a dog handler is a large off leash facility and the first thing I taught myself was to leave everything at the door before I went in. If something was happening in my personal life or my boss was pissing me off to put me in a bad mood the dogs would sense it right away. If I was sad or upset the dogs would he sympathetic and try to cheer me up by showing off or trying to get my attention. If I was angry the less dominant dogs would keep their dostance and the stronger willed dogs would push back or act up. I have always loved how intuitive dogs are and how much they can connect with us as humans.",
"Dogs are very good at reading human body language. The dog shaming pictures that you see on the internet is a dog responding to the body language of the owner not actually responding to the bad action they performed. \n\nThere's actually a pretty interesting PBS Nova program where they talk about how a dog gets body language cues from its owner. Dogs will look at a persons face like you or I do to read their body language. The Nova episode is called Dogs Decoded and it used to be on Netflix but you can also watch it on youtube. _URL_0_\n\n\nAs to what sense they use. Visual clues e.g. Body language, smell your nervous so maybe your sweating more or something. Despite being very much know of their ears and nose they do relying on visual clues a lot too.",
"Body language (slouching is universally a sign of sadness or submissiveness for whatever reason. Either way it means you're feeling inferior), conditioning (you do the same thing every day, or every time something specific happens and dogs can easily pick up on these patterns), and also magic. All dogs are wizards."
] |
how flashing coloured lights became associated with Christmas? | [
"The Christmas tree became popular in Germany during the 18th to early 19th centuries. It was brought to America by German immigrants during the 1800s and also became popular in other European countries. During the spread of the tradition, people began putting candles on the tree. I couldn't find a good explanation as to why this happened, other than vague references that the candles somehow represented Christ or that they were supposed to represent miniature versions of a yule log.\n\nWhen Edison was popularizing the lightbulb, he strung lights around his laboratory around Christmas and also used electric lights to light a tree. Electric lights became safer and cheaper than candles and so they replaced them in popularity. The use of lights then spread to the outside of homes and lights also began to come in different colors.\n\nThere is no particular religious significant to the lights (whether colored or white or blinking or solid) that I am aware of, though I have anecdotally heard they are supposed to represent the light that guided the Wise Men (I suspect that this is a later explanation that isn't true).",
"Christmas is a winter solstice festival. Like many festivals of that sort, candles/fires/electric lights are integral to the celebration. \n\nCheap electrical wiring make electric Christmas lights popular in the mid 20th century. Glass bulbs could be painted any color and they were typically sold in strands and boxes of a single color. Thus the assorted lights took effort and were eye catching. \n\nWhile other options remain available to the decorative enthusiast, assorted colors or plain white (as became more popular with plastic bulbs in the 1980s) are easy to set up casually without adhering to a broader decorative theme."
] |
why lawyers and judges have to wear wigs in court? | [
"It's just a tradition, dating back to when \"court\" meant an audience before the local sovereign ruler. Back then it was part of the protocol for appearing before someone superior to you, and a token of respect for the sovereign. We keep the tradition today as a token of respect for the gravity of the circumstances. Justice, as the kids might say, is \"serious business.\"\n\nDifferent cultures have different standards for court dress. In commonwealth countries court dress includes robes of various kinds and *sometimes* wigs, but most wearing of wigs was dispensed with about four years ago. In the United States, we still expect judges to wear judicial robes, but everyone else is generally expected to present themselves in business daywear — though the standards for *that* have slipped considerably in the past half-century as well — and we don't do wigs."
] |
What exactly is happening inside my body when I have a stomach ache? | [
"Considering that there are a few different things that can be considered a stomach ache, I may not be answering your specific question:\n\n1) Feeling like you are going to vomit.\n\nYour body is wanting to remove something that it really doesn't want in it's stomach. This can vary by a large amount, but can range from bad food, to poisons, to too much food, to too much stomach acid. Some diseases can also cause this feeling, although usually for the reasons above.\n\n2) Feeling discomfort in your intestines.\n\nThis can often feel like discomfort in your stomach if it is in your upper intestines. I'm going lump in both physical pain as well as just discomfort in here as they are both, generally speaking, caused by the same thing: a blockage in the intestines. Usually the body takes care of this itself, but sometimes you can become constipated.\n\n3) Actual pain in the stomach.\n\nAnother one that can be caused by a lot of different things. Diseases, bad food, etc. as well as actual damage to the stomach/upper intestines, more often than not in the form of an ulcer (a sore in the lining of the stomach/upper intestines)."
] |
Why do we feel so dehydrated after sleeping, even for short periods? | [
"Aside from simply not being able to ingest fluids while asleep;\n\n1. Hormonal release/changes that occur predominantly during sleep.\n2. Increased sweating due to different temperature regulation when asleep.\n3. Increased fluid consumption by your body during sleep.\n4. Dryness of mouth.\n5. Possible desire for the body to purge refluxed digestive fluids with water."
] |
How does a coding language like Python actually communicate with a piece of software? | [
"In the case of Maya, I believe you write and run the code from inside the program (Maya). So Maya will be what is reading your code and so it will recognize specific commands in the code that refer to it and will execute them. So if you have a rotate command in your python code, when Maya reaches that section, it will rotate the object."
] |
Why is Hillary Clinton's campaign paying for the Russian dossier not raising more concern? | [
"Best I can tell is the Republicans can't make a big deal about it because they are where it originated. In my mind the most likely chain of events was RNC starts dossier and when Trump won the ticket they(likely McCain)told the DNC about it. If the contents are proven to be fiction the finger can be pointed anywhere. If proven true then who cares who paid for it? It's a toxic topic to both parties though not really anything I'm worried about to be honest. As far as I know it is not illegal.\n\nAlso you'll notice the other headline is Trump doing the same thing with Wikileaks so it's a wash. We know they all play dirty.\n\nThis is all just my opinion of course. There is no answer to your question. You're sure to hear Bcuz libruls.",
"Concern about what? Buying op-o research; everybody does that. Getting op-o research that's unproven and maybe false; that happens every time. Looking for op-o involving the Russians because the optics of that's bad; it's identical to the Republican campaign looking for \"home email\" op-o on Ms. Clinton.\n\nYou should not be concerned, this is very common and actually pretty desirable campaign behavior."
] |
Whats the difference between the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) and a Single Payer Health Care System? | [
"Single-Payer healthcare is when the government pays for everyone's healthcare. It might be provided in public or private hospitals, but the government pays for it (or at least some of it).\n\nObamacare mandates that everyone either be covered by employer healthcare, qualify for government healthcare or buy their own private health insurance. It also does a heap of other important things, but the main difference is the role of private insurers. A single payer healthcare system replaces (at least partially) the role of private health insurance."
] |
What makes a mortgage better/worse compared to a bank credit? | [
"Good debt is debt that makes you wealthier in the end. Buying house means that you are financing an appreciating asset. You aren't taking on debt to spend above your means, you are using tools available to help build wealth you otherwise could not. Same goes for things like business loans and student loans. You borrow X, pay Y in interest and the asset you have at the end is worth more than X+Y, whether that be a house, ongoing business revenue, earning power from your education.\n\nA bad loan is one used to pay for things that don't make you money... a car loan, because a car keeps dropping in value. Using a credit card to pay for a vacation, electronics or clothes you don't have the funds for today is bad debt because these things are all worth less than you paid for them the second they are no longer new, yet you owe more than you paid for them.\n\nAs for mortgages specifically being \"good,\" in addition to the above point about building equity in an asset, it's also something that shows you have your finances in order because there are a lot of requirements to get a mortgage:,having enough money saved for a down payment, proven stable income, good credit history on other loans/credit cards, etc. \n\nAnd why is it better to have a mortgage than save to buy a house? Because people need a place to live anyway, and it can take decades to save up enough to buy a house... a mortgage and rent on a similar piece of property are often not all that different. So if you have to spend the money anyway, why not use it to pay off an asset you will own rather than pay for a service that's gone at the end of the month? And people need homes in order to move on with their life, like having children, etc.",
"I honestly have usually heard people refer to a mortgage as more of a weight around their neck - it is after all a large expense.\n\n\nTo address your original question, a mortgage is a loan as opposed to a line of credit like a credit card, where you have a \"grace period\" to pay back the balance on your account before you start getting charged interest. A house is obviously a massive cost and thus risk for a bank, so they want their interest and the house itself as collateral. The bank is lending you money, taking your interest to offset its risk and make profit, and will forclose on you if you cannot pay your mortgage, thus further mitigating their risk.\n\n\nIt absolutely would be better to simply buy a house outright. A modest house can still cost you tens of thousands of dollars in the long haul on interest, however most mortgages are either 15 to 30 years and a lot of people start getting houses in their mid to late 20s. I got mine when I was 25, on a 30 year mortgage that I'm going to pay off in 20 years via extra payments (also saves a load in interest). If I just paid minimum payments, I wouldn't be able to get the house until I'm 55! Also, with inflation a house is very likely to cost a LOT more in 30 years so it might even end up being longer than that and at a certain point it just wouldn't be worth it.\n\nI'll end up paying probably $30,000 in interest over the life of the loan which is a lot, however I am also putting money into the principal on the house. If I was renting, every dime I spent on rent goes out the window. Between interest payments, insurance, and property taxes, I'm \"throwing away\" about the same amount of money as I'd spend on an apartment about a third of the size of my house. Once I have my mortgage paid off, it will just be property taxes and insurance. And obviously upkeep on the house. \n\n\nWhether it's a wise financial decision to get a house is debatable and varies a lot on regional differences such as cost of living and property taxes, however getting a mortgage means I get to enjoy a yard and the freedom to do what I want when I want within my own house now versus when I'm 45. When I'm 45 and I have my mortgage paid off, should I choose to move I then have my current house which I own that I can sell to greatly reduce or eliminate any money I'll need to borrow in the future.",
"\"Mortgages\" generally refer to home mortgages although mortgages can be obtained to purchase condominiums. These are special contracts to buy real estate over a long term. They give the \"home owner,\" actually the mortgagee until the mortgage is paid fully, specific rights such as the right to the equity, the amount of the principal that has been paid for the home. \n\nGenerally a down payment is required to obtain a mortgage to purchase a home. One special program for veterans is the ability to buy a home without a down payment.\n\nSo having a mortgage is \"special\" in that the down payment as made as a result of savings, or the buyer is a veteran.\n\nYes it is better to totally own a home. No mortgage to pay every month! To buy a home you generally have to obtain a mortgage.\n\nA feature of many mortgages is the ability to pay ahead on the principal. That amount is calculated for each payment. Paying more means years can be saved on the payment schedule. At the beginning almost all of the payment is interest. \n\nThe financial crises of 2008 had a lot to do with mortgages. There was a housing construction boom and inflation of home prices as many people with shaky finances obtained mortgages. When the economy faltered and many could not make the payments there was a flood of available houses on the market. House costs dropped dramatically. Equity for many vanished as the prices dropped. The housing construction boom stopped. No jobs. More mortgage payment failures. More houses on the market. Further drops in house prices. Less equity.",
"The bank will not just give you money without anything in return. Even the interest rates is not enough as you may not have the ability to pay the interest rates. In the case of a bank credit or a credit card you promise to them that you can pay the money back. If you do not then the bank can go after your wage, your properties and bankrupt you which puts a lot of restrictions on your economic situation. However there is no guaranty that they get their money back if you default on the loan. However with a mortgage you promise to pay back the money using your house. So instead of hoping that you have enough money to pay back the loan the bank can simply just take your home if you default. The bank is much more comfortable with this and gives you more available loans and better interest rates. However they will put a lot of restrictions on your home, you may need insurance on it and you can not sell it without talking to the bank about it. You may also need to contact them before major remodeling or refurbishments. You also have similar loans for cars and other valuables. The lowest form is pawn shops that can take almost anything as a guaranty for a loan.",
"> Wouldnt it be better to own your house instead of mortgaging it/to get it?\n\nYes, it would be. But unless you're very rich or living well below your means, chances are you won't be able to afford a house without a mortgage. And as having your own home is part of the stereotypical American dream, many people are proud just to have a mortgage (and the implied home). Having a mortgage itself usually involves displaying some level of financial responsibility to a lender, although the 2008 financial crisis revealed that might not always be the case."
] |
Why can't the Syria conflict be resolved through UN? | [
"> Can Russia really just VETO everything regarding the Syria conflict?\n\nYes. The five permanent members of the UN Security Council, Russia, the United Kingdom, France, China, and the United States, can *all* veto **any** UN resolution.\n\nBut it hardly matters, because the UN doesn't have any teeth. It can't resolve military conflicts. The best it can to is try to impose economic sanctions, and I highly doubt if Syria cares whether or not UN members will trade with them."
] |
How exactly does alcohol damage the liver? | [
"in long term, Alcohol (ethanol), which naturally through the enzyme acetaldehyde dehydrogenase and then by aldehyde dehydrogenase will be metabolized (or you could say; converted) into acetic acid, which is basic kitchen vinegar. Acetic acid is then converted into CO2 \\+ H2O (acetic acid itself is rather more non\\-toxic compared to aldehyde)\n\nthe enzyme which converts this ethanol to acetaldehyde and then acetic acid, uses NAD\\+ in the process and its byproducts are NADH\n\nThis of course would increase the number of NADH while depleting NAD\\+ right? this imbalance of higher NADH causes your liver to start producing fatty acids, which after awhile accumulates and form glycerol, which also accumulate and then forms Triglycerides. And... where does this triglycerides stored? the liver of course.\n\nHaving too much triglycerides inside your liver aren't good (similar with any substance, too much of something is never good), as it could cause inflammation in the liver tissue, as well with acetaldehyde which is hepato\\-toxic (toxic to the liver) and NADH itself could leads to oxidative stress. Hence, damage to the liver cells, resulting in hepatitis. Similar to other hepatitis, it could progress to cirrhosis of the liver (or as the inflammation become chronic, the liver is scarred). And like many cirrhosis, there's a higher risk of progressing to liver cancer.",
"Your liver is pretty much a filter if you don't clean it our with water regularly it'll stuff up."
] |
Why do not Mexico's military forces just eradicate the cartels? | [
"Because the Cartels are extremely (and I mean EXTREMELY) well coordinated and armed and not just a bunch of thugs high on their stuff who whack anyone they don't like. They are practically a paramilitary group in how they are organized and have made usage of even computers as an art form in how they perform their criminal actions. They fight unconventionally, have no regard for military/civilian targets and are only looking to protect their business empire. The cartel Los Zetas, alone, are notorious for wiping out entire villages (men, women, children...even animals) and stringing the bodies up from local bridges if they think a region is getting too uppity.\n\nBasically, reword your question as \"Why is it the American military has so many problems with Afghan insurgents? Why don't they just eradicate them.\". It's the same dilemma the Mexican military/police are having with the cartels. They are fighting what is effectively an unconventional army.",
"That would lead to an all out insurgency. Look at the situations in Syria and Afghanistan. That's what would happen in Mexico. Worse even, because these guys are heavily armed, have a steady cash flow, and are good at what they do, since the original cartel members were trained by US special forces.",
"As previously mentioned, there is a large part of this problem attributable to two major issues: government corruption and insurgent style tendencies. The cartels themselves are large operations, with semi-independent cells as well as a large internal framework. Part of this framework has developed into full blown trained paramilitary groups. If you watch any current documentary about the cartels and Mexico, it is hard to claim that they ARENT at war already. Police are commonly military outfitted, and security details are extreme. \n\nBut the threat of assassination is very high with public figures, so corruption is also rather common. Someone mentioned that family and friends are also in danger and this is very real. Not everyone can be protected, especially when the groups are wolves in sheep's clothing. So for people who dont want themselves or their loved ones to die for the sake of the state, and understanding the violent tidal wave perpetuated if you take a hard line against them, the corruption is more or less understandable as well. \n\nLong story short: it is hard to go to war when the civilians you want to protect may be the ones who end up decapitating your wife and kid and leaving their headless bodies in the bed of a truck in front of a police station.",
"It's difficult to launch an offensive on an enemy that can blend into the population. Additionally anyone who rats out the cartels will like face lethal retaliations against themselves and there families. The military can not protect you forever and cartels largely will not forget such a betrayal.",
"They are many reasons. \n1: endless influx of weapons from us and other countries.\n2: cartels bring in 40+ billion a year no country will match and go toe to toe.\n3: they operate with impunity because of bribes to officials and police. It goes all the way to the top. To the point where cartels bribe generals with millions of dollars to go after other cartels. They have infiltrated every branch to a degree.\n4: the supply of poor young teens to be secarios is endless.\n5: everyone makes too much money.\n\nThere is alot of misinformation in here so ill try to keep it short as I'm on my mobile. I have been following the cartel war in Mexico for about 5 years now. Thing are the way they are because before Calderon declared war on the cartels they were allowed to operate just as long as business was taken care of quietly and out of public view. Throughout his entire presidency declared war on them. Causing leaders to get captured/killed causing inexperienced people to take power which caused the splintering of the cells into smaller hyper violent factions fighting for power. The only way for it to stop it is the legalize route or make another agreement but a pact cannot be made now due to the fragmentation of all the cartels. That leaves the only choice for that bring one cartel one boss like when Miguel Felix ran it, which is what Chapo is trying to do right now. He will succeeded because he understands how to survive. He is the only old capo left.",
"At least with the Zetas you're dealing with a well trained paramilitary group. The founders were trained by special forces units are very self sufficient and have zero regard for human life.",
"This is somewhat related. There is a movie on Netflix called El Infierno. It should give you some perspective on the issue if only peripheral at best."
] |
What exactly do a president and vice president do all day? | [
"All sorts of stuff. \n\nPolicy meetings, meeting with various heads of departments, briefings, public appearance stuff, meeting/calling foreign leaders,",
"Well, in America the president is 1/3 of our government. If a bill passes through Congress, then he must sign it into action. He also has the ability to propose laws or policies for Congress to approve. He probably has a shit load of meetings everyday. I know for a fact the president's schedule is kept by the minute. He has to make several speeches and public addresses every year. Also, a state of the union address. He has the power to order military strikes. And if shit hits the fan (like 9/11) he is the man we all look to for guidance."
] |
How does mass have no effect on acceleration due to gravity? | [
"The key you're missing is that the more mass there is, the harder it is to move it. The pull of gravity is stronger, but that is balanced out because it's harder to move. For instance, consider how much effort it takes to push a shopping cart with one hundred feathers compared to pushing a cart with a hundred bricks. The same applies to the force of gravity. If not for the air slowing the feather, you could see for yourself that it falls at the same rate as a brick. Actually you can see a video of an experiment involving feathers and a bowling ball in a chamber with the air pumped out right here: _URL_0_",
"There isn't really a reason. That's just how the universe works and it can be experimentally shown that it does work. I could tell you that acceleration due to gravity is constant because the force of gravity is proportional to mass, but you could just as easily ask why that is and we'd be essentially back to square one.\n\nIn your example a feather will fall slower than a brick but that's because a feather has much greater air resistance per unit mass. If you remove air resistance (such by dropping two objects in an evacuated container or on the moon) they will fall at the exact same speed."
] |
Why is baldness much more common in men than it is in women? | [
"Most of the baldness you see is caused by a gene on the X chromosome. If a man has the gene for baldness in his X chromosome then he will be bald. If a woman has the gene for baldness on an X chromosome, she has a second X chromosome that most likely will not have that gene so it is suppressed and she will not be bald.\n\n\nEdit - Remember Women have two X chromosomes and men have an X and a Y Chromosome."
] |
Why was windows '98 so good? | [
"You probably don't remember windows 3.1.. when windows 95 came out shit was forever changed. When win98 came out, everything wrong with win95 was fixed (for the most part). \n\nBetter question- why was windows 95 so good?\n\nEdit: just to wrap this question up in three simple words.. the start menu.",
"I wouldn't say it was *good* so much as there wasn't much in the way of a standard or a bar to live up to.",
"It wasn't. It was buggy, unreliable, unstable and a bit slow. But, it *was* better than Windows 95, which had a fair few teething problems.",
"People liked it so much they made it twice! \n\nSpecifically, 98 SE was the well regarded version. \n\nIt was an extremely well polished product. Plug and play had really taken off and it was compatible with tons of games and applications.",
"Usually when people said it was \"good\", they meant it was stable and didn't crash or freeze as much as other versions of windows. But if you ask, a lot if people would say XP was the best. I saw an article last year saying that windows was actually offering to pay people to switch from XP to windows 7. (I'm no expert though, this is just a casual observation.) maybe 2 years ago.",
"Windows 98 was also the first Windows to support USB.",
"No one really answers the question I think.\n\nWindows 3.1 was the first graphical user interface running DOS. This enabled Microsoft to reach out to people with an interface much like you're familiar with to interact with the computer. The problem was that this interface was just a shell on a lobster (ELI5). The system was functional, but the UI only made it pretty.\n\nThen Win95 comes out. It was built to be an object-based system. Basically, the system was built specifically to be interactive with the user. It allowed graphic cards, networking, and a kernal for memory and process management (also known as Task Manager today). It was the first Microsoft operating system to allow 32-bit programming. \n\nWin98 was basically an upgrade from Win95, much like Windows 7 is an upgrade of Vista (although even my android phone is better than Vista imo). Win98 also was the first to include a webbrowser (the fabulous Internet Explorer 4.0) to encourage growth in the internet industry. It also included products like Outlook, address book, netmeeting, etc. \n\nFinally, it included much improved USB, driver support, and networking support. It was the first time in Windows that it offered nifty features like Windows Restore, ScanDisk, msconfig (system configuration), Disk Cleanup, the report tool, and windows update."
] |
Are we all capable of being indoctrinated into believing anything no matter how immoral it seems now? | [
"You might roll your eyes at the cliche I'm going to give you here (assuming you know what it is), but check out the Milgram Experiment. People can be conditioned under the right circumstances to do immoral things. Very few people are outliers that take serious effort to condition like that.\n\nIn short, yes. People can be made to do almost anything in the right conditions.",
"I eat meat from factories that treat animals in ways I would not treat my worst enemies. I wear clothes made in factories that children suffer in. I pay taxes to a government that uses half of them to commit murder in my name. I have enough so that I might feed others that are starving and I don't. The coffee, tobacco, and fast food I eat are slave labor products that are produced in ways harmful to people and the planet. I use so much gas and electric that I would need an army of slaves to maintain my lifestyle where those resources unavailable. From an outside perspective I'm an aristocratic monster, or just a typical American. If I think about it too much I get depressed. I'm going to go drink more coffee and work on my portfolio. Oh god you can make a lot of money investing in banking and oil. I hope that those I have caused to suffer might forgive me, for I do not choose this lifestyle out of malice but instead convenience, and though that excuse is pathetic it is the only one I can think of, and I will not change.",
"Human beings are social animals. We need interaction with other people for our own mental health. This leads us to exhibit a sort of tribalism. Whether the tribe is made up of a village, a political cause, or fans of a certain sports team, they still can be veiwed as a tribe. \n\nTribalism goes hand in hand with peer pressure. Both are two edged swords. Peer pressure can actually be a good thing, like causing people to obey the law because their fellows would look down on them. Of course peer pressure can be very bad, for instance when a group bullies an individual. Often the group has a leader and the others are tagging along to fit in. \nTribalism operates this way, but on a larger scale. The same instinct that causes us to get together and help build eachothers barns also leads us get together and kill the villagers down the road. \n\nAdd to all this the existing culture of the place and time, and you can see how most individuals are just going with the flow. \n\nNot only is your question worded well, it points to a well known maxim. Some of the worst deeds ever done were accomplished by people who were absolutely certain that they were in the right.",
"I'm going to get carried away but I'll try to keep this simple. Social control/conditioning is very real, and humans like all other animals are susceptible/vulnerable to a variety of conditioning effects. Most of our lives are lived under the influence of social constructs (behavioral norms created by human culture, not necessarily dependent on empirical evidence/facts) of which \"morality\" is just one (to an extent calendars and money are other more concrete social constructs). \n\n\n\nYou have to make a personal choice as to whether or not you believe human life is valuable, because from a scientific/emprical standpoint \"value\" is imaginary. However, if you start out with the basic \"I admit that I choose to believe that human life is valuable because...(my main reason is that we have the potential to better ourselves, you can choose your own),\" from there you can be very scientific about morality. If you have evidence that something is harmful to human life, which you say is valuable, then you can deem it \"bad\". However, this still all relies on perspective. Someone stealing food for their family believes they are helping human life, while the baker losing money believes that this action is harmful. \n\n**ELI5 Version (kind of, is hard, maybe a really gifted 5-year old in a good school)**: \"Right\" and \"wrong\" are just words, not scientific facts, and each individual tends to define them by their own experience. If you hose down a monkey for trying to help another monkey, it will probably grow to ~~resent~~ not-like that monkey. If you grow up being told that you will get hosed down for helping other monkeys, or that you will get bananas for enslaving them and that bananas are good and other monkeys are bad because their fur is a different color, you will become a slaver and you will think your actions just until you have continued experiences proving otherwise. The key ~~component~~ piece in these behaviors is something we call \"dehumanization\", basically taking away human qualities (because you feel like it or because that's what everyone else around you does) from other human beings so that you can justify your actions as not necessarily \"wrong\" and even potentially as \"good\" because they help with your survival at least in the short-run. But as humans, we have the ability to imagine the future, and to see consequences beyond those that are instant, and we can prove that actions like slavery are ~~ultimately~~ in the long-run harmful to our survival as a ~~civilized~~ \"nice\" species",
"Of course. We only think it's immoral now because society tells us that it is. \"Morality\" is a fluid thing. It changes with the times. Back then, people didn't think slavery is wrong in the same way that we don't think keeping pets is wrong. To grasp this concept, you really have to look at things objectively.",
"I'd like to point out that there is no such thing like an absolute moral. You can read for example in Hegels work about the construction of a moral concious and you will learn that it's influenced or constructed by society. You are not born with moral values. You create them through socialisation, strongly influenced by the existing law in your society.",
"Short Answer. Yes. Long answer. Yes.\n\nProof. The last 100 years of human history.",
"That appears to be true. I have known people all my life who are full of hate. One in particular is a really nice guy most of the time, but is truly racist, and it drives me nuts. I tell him about how much *HIS* nationality was hated when they started coming to America, and how it was only because they were *different*. He laughs about it, but then makes stupid statements about how lazy *certain other* people are. I wasn't raised to be hateful at all, but I was raised to be VERY religious, and it wasn't until I was thirty that I was able to break my parents hearts by telling them that I couldn't believe what they believe, they had pounded it into me all my life how much God loves me and will take care of me and all that. I went for it for many years. Then I woke up. Now I know they could just as easily taught me to be a hater. That's not what it was, but *could* have been.",
"I think there are some absolute morals, but we choose to ignore them out of convenience/self-preservation.\n\nAll it takes is a drop of empathy and you would be shocked at the things you wouldn't let yourself do. Unfortunately living like that would make it near impossible to function.\n\nSweatshops, poor living conditions, we ignore those so we can buy cheap groceries and clothes. We breed, raise, and slaughter thousands of animals for our consumption waaay beyond the need of survival. We deprive people of their privacy for our entertainment and justify it with our money.\n\nSo... Yes. with the caveat that there may be a monk somewhere who classifies as a no, but the rest of us will draw a \"moral\" line at our level of comfort.",
"ELI5: There's no rulebook. All the rules are learned from the people around you. When the people change, so do the rules.\n\nMorality is a product of society and society evolves. We judge people from the past with the morality of the present - how will our actions hold up to the morality of the future?\n\n(This is just dealing with the case of people doing things that we see as immoral now, but at the time were more common - not the case of people doing things that even their own time saw as objectionable)",
"The [Stanford Prison Experiment]( _URL_0_) and the [Milgram Experiment]( _URL_1_) are relevant to this.",
"This is absolutely not a ELI5 sort of question.",
"The answer is probably not as simple as a \"yes\" or \"no\", in that an people can't simply be convinced of *anything*, and an individual can't necessarily be convinced to do a specific terrible thing.\n\nIt's more like, under certain conditions and exploiting certain psychological techniques, most people can be convinced to do some terrible things. There are some common themes in a lot of the horrors of history.\n\nFor example, whenever you're talking about the systematic persecution of another group, that group needs to be dehumanized in a way that acting against them doesn't seem cruel to the perpetrators. In the instance of an individual misdeed, people need to be made to feel that they are not responsible for their own actions.\n\nAnd it's important to note that these things happen all the time on small scales. In your daily life, how often do you go along with something that you don't agree with, putting the responsibility on someone else? My boss asks me to do something and I say, \"I don't think that's a good idea.\" He tells me to do it anyway, and I do it, thinking, \"Well I voiced my disapproval and he said to do it anyway. If it doesn't work out, that's his responsibility.\"\n\nOr how many times do you simply see another person, and not recognize that they're a whole other person with thoughts and feelings of their own, suffering through life the same as you? How many times do you not feel sympathy for people?\n\nWe all do it. It's even an appropriate thing to do a lot of the time. And it's these same impulses that allow people to take part in atrocities. So not everyone will simply fall into line and do horrible things, but everyone is susceptible to the impulse to dehumanize others and to deny responsibility for their own participation in some activity. All it takes is for something to sneak up on you and exploit those impulses, and you might find yourself doing something horrible before you even realize it.\n\nAnd don't think it only happens on large scales, like slavery or genocide. People are cruel to each other all the time, and it's often the result of some of these same impulses.",
"The vast majority of people have been trained since birth to obey a system that highlights group think and follow the rules. Individualism is frowned upon, the group is the positive influence. The old cartoon Dungeons and Dragons actually had parent groups that forced this system into the writing. Eric was used as the cranky individual who always was outside the group and had to be pulled into the group ideas. These parent groups did this to all the cartoons and stuff young people watched. Groupthink. We learned it when we recited the pledge of allegiance every day. Everyone frowns on the ones who do not get up and recite it at a sporting event. Why? Groupthink. Our school systems, parenting, legal system, everything is geared towards making you think its a problem to form your own thoughts. Do what you are told, do not question anything, stay quiet and keep your head down and you will do okay in life. Do otherwise and be considered an individual and thus a problem. This is not just an American problem its everywhere. People are expected to be ants. Stay in line. So when people are controlled and conditioned in this fashion it is extremely easy to get them to do anything you want. This quote from the Matrix by Morpheus pretty much sums it up:\n\n“The Matrix is a system, Neo. That system is our enemy. But when you’re inside, you look around, what do you see? Businessmen, teachers, lawyers, and carpenters; the very minds of the people we are trying to save. You have to understand, most of these people are not ready to be unplugged. And many of them are so inured, so hopelessly dependent upon the system, they will fight to protect it.”",
"Instead of asking if we are capable of being indoctrinated into doing something immoral now, ask if there's anything commonplace now that could be considered immoral in the future. \n\nThis question could be posed centuries from now and give examples of how often people lie, how mothers kill their own children in their wombs, we have people fight in octagons for entertainment (UFC), and the fact gambling casinos are legal while corrupting the population.\n\nThese may not seem terribly immoral now but in the future they could be looked at the same way we look at slavery or sleeping with children, common practices far enough back. It's how you are raised that define what's moral and immoral and it could easily be changed.",
"Yes. I'd look into the Stanford Prison Experiment and the tests carried out by Stanley Milgram. To briefly summarise, in Milgram's study he found that approx. 3/4rs of the people he tested were willing, on repeated urging, to give live-threatening electric shocks to someone they thought was a test subject. \n\nIn the Stanford Prison experiment, two groups of randomly selected, otherwise normal college students, and Zimbardo, the psychology professor running it, were sucked into a simulation of a prison. The experiment had to be called off before the end of the first week due to the abuses perpetrated by the guards towards the prisoners. It's pretty chilling to read about.",
"There are a lot of good comments here and I'm on mobile so I can't search to see if someone already recommended this, but I definitely suggest reading: Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil by Hannah Arendt.\n\nI love her work but this article in particular was really insightful about your question. It blew my mind.",
"Yes. Especially if you're a child. Why do you think so many otherwise logical and reasonable adults rabidly defend their crazy religious mythologies that make absolutely zero sense if you begin to dissect them?",
"The short answer is yes. \n\nIt's important to remember that morality is enculturated. We tend to acquire it through the influence of the culture in which we are brought up. There's a longstanding argument among philosophers who deal in moral problems about whether or not there is any such thing as a universal morality (or universal aspects of morality). The prohibition against killing and definitions of \"murder\" are a major theme in that debate. ALL societies, for example, have their own ideas about when it's \"right\" to kill.\n\nAlso, cultural relativism being what it is, it's important to remember that pretty much everybody is the \"good guy\" in his own narrative. For example, with the war on terror, one person's \"terrorist\" is another person's \"freedom fighter.\" It's all a matter of perspective and agenda. \n\nThe last point is that people don't really live in a reality that is objective and uniform. It is socially and psychologically constructed. This is known as the problem of intersubjectivity. \n\nTo use the examples given by the OP, most people from modern industrialized cultures look at the subjugation of women, denying them education, \"honor killings,\" etc., as inhuman, evil, and cruel. I happen to agree.\n\nBut to the people perpetrating these acts, they see it as a defense of tradition, a way of life, a reality. As they see it, allowing women to seek an education is evil as it upsets a way of life and a social system. To oversimplify it, we tend to point the finger at \"different\" and call it \"bad.\" \n\nThe really tricky part is looking at yourself and finding the ways in which YOU and YOUR OWN CULTURE do the very same things. What makes it so easy to see the 'wrong' in another belief system is that it contrasts with your own culture and way of thinking. We are not very good at making objective judgments, since every person is himself a product of culture and bias.",
"There is an immoral action ingrained into our everyday lives today that is considered legal and normal.\n\nI cannot knock on my neighbors door and him in the head. If I do I am a murderer. I cannot hire men to knock on my neighbors door and shoot him in the head. If I do I am a murderer. Voting to to have the government knock on my neighbors door and shoot him in the head does not change the action. I am no less of a murderer.\n\nWe learned this lesson with slavery. Even though people voted to make slavery legal and normal that did not change the fact that it was and immoral and wrong action to take.\n\nWith that said, I cannot knock on my neighbors door and demand 30% of his yearly income. If I do I am a thief. I cannot hire men to knock on my neighbors door and demand 30% of his yearly income. If I do I am a thief. Voting to give men the power to knock on my neighbors door and demand 30% of his yearly income does not change the action. I am no less of a thief.",
"You are faced with a choice.\n\n1. Read the following passage until the first STOP. Do you help them?\n2. Read the following passage until the second STOP. Do you help them? Why?\n3. Read the following passage until the third STOP. Do you help them? Why?\n3. Now read the passage backwards. Do you help them? Why?\n\nThe person before you is a stranger, but not to you.\n\nYou have been told you shouldn't help them.\n\n\nSTOP\n\n\nThey have committed many crimes\n\nThey have done unspeakable things\n\nIf they are allowed to roam free, they will commit more crimes and do more unspeakable acts\n\n\nSTOP\n\n\nThis person is kind\n\nThis person is attractive, enough to warrant an emotional response from you\n\nYou speak to this person, and to you it seems that they wouldn't hurt a fly\n\n\nSTOP\n\n\nThis person is travelling with a child\n\nThis person needs your help; it will not cost you anything and will only take 5 minutes of your time.",
"People will do bad things if they think someone else is morally responsible for doing it. For example: if someone's boss tells them to do something dishonest. This might be like a mechanic being told by his boss to charge the customer for new parts to repair a car but he only repaired the old parts and reused them. In the mechanic's mind the boss is being dishonest; the mechanic is only following orders.\n\nIn a situation like the [Stanford Prison Experiment](_URL_2_) people did some very cruel and abusive things because they had been given permission to do them by an authority figure.",
"\"We who lived in the concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms — to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.\"\n- Viktor Frankl, Mans Search for Meaning",
"My theory is that parents can be made to compromise their morals for the sake of their children. If a person is given the choice to push a red button that will kill someone but find a cure for the cancer they have, many will not push that button. However, a parent will push that button to save their child.\n\nSociety will justify evil by the good that it brings to their own children.",
"Very good German movie about this topic: \"Die Welle\".",
"There's no simple answer to this, but I'm a grad student in psychology and I've read a ton of perspectives on this from psychologists, philosophers, and feminists.\n\nFirst, I'd have to start with what morality is, and this I will take from social/evolutionary psychology. Morality is a tool like any other feeling or want and this particular tool is designed to bind humans together in groups that favor kin selection (or group selection, if you favor that interpretation). We have multiple moral compasses, [at least five](_URL_5_) and [maybe six](_URL_4_) that guide us. So morality is a swiss army knife, not a hammer.\n\nTLDR: Morality is a tool.\n\nThis tool evolved at a time when humans were living in small groups (tribes or whatever) and was extremely tribally-oriented at that time. The moral foundations of reciprocity and do-no-harm extended to the tribe because (I'm being sloppy with causal language, forgive me) those are the only people who reasonably share your genes. This tool evolved at a time when the environment was harsh, so other foundations like respect-authority were highly active, because individualism is not an appropriate response to a harsh external environment, banding together is.\n\nTLDR: Morality originally extended to only a few people and was highly tuned for hierarchy.\n\nBut morality, like the immune system, is a beautiful system able of fast change that does not require genetic evolution. When humans started living in bigger and bigger groups, culture could not remain the same or we'd kill each other when a city got bigger than 250+ people. Maybe this actually DID happen, idk, but cities did survive filled with people whose [moral circles](_URL_3_) expanded.\n\nThe next big leap in morality occurred in the West in what we call the Enlightenment, in which individualism and distributed authority took over. It was only after this switch that the seeds of contemporary race relations and feminism were planted. Why did they think it was normal but we think it was atrocious, this past? It's because our moral compasses are set to work in a large scale society, global really, and we don't have the cognitive ability to turn that off. In the past, societies were smaller and so they COULD have the same values as us but could just as easily not.",
"There is a continuum here. However, it is fair to observe that at least 95% of that continuum falls within the range of being highly susceptible to social pressures. If it were otherwise, we would all personally know far more people who make \"quirky\" and \"eccentric\" seem like understatements. We don't mostly all fit in with the status quo because it is amazing and brilliant -- we do it because we mostly all feel uncomfortable without fitting in.\n\nHowever, the notion that everyone is susceptible to social pressures driving toward inhumane extremes of behavior is untrue. Individualized experiments saw outliers who did not get anywhere near the median level of abusive behavior, and group experiments routinely produced outcasts who would endure marginalization and even persecution rather than support an emergent mob mentality. \n\nWhat it boils down to is that most adults are conventional moral thinkers. This means they look to conventions to determine what is right and wrong. For many, these conventions are a blend of laws and observed behavior among peers. In some subcultures, like an ethnic criminal gang or an isolated religious community, moral conventions may be highly at odds with applicable laws, yet lawbreakers remain governed by their desire to adhere to convention.\n\nThe most sophisticated moral thinkers eventually reach the post-conventional stage of development. At this point, right and wrong are not determined socially, but rather by a systematic approach to analyzing ethics. Post-conventional thinkers are always at the vanguard of resistance to oppression. The subject is not well-studied enough to generate reliable figures for percentages at various ages, but everyone capable of thought starts out as a pre-conventional moral thinker (i.e. touching the stove hurt, therefore \"stove bad!\"), nearly all will grow into conventional moral thinkers, but few will move on to post-conventional reasoning.\n\n**TL;DR** Most people take their moral cues from social peers. Since the majority judge moral choices in comparison with the behavior of others, any force that erodes moral standards in a group can overwhelm the thinking of ordinary individuals.",
"Take a look at the police state. I know people have been hearing a lot about \"police officers being brutal\" and some of you may think \"oh shut up, you're just a criminal for demonizing them\" But in all reality, this can be linked to the way police officers are beginning to act in america.\n\nRight now, in america, i am haring literally hundreds of stories, of police officers, brutally harming, maiming, beating, harassing, molesting \"suspects\" in the case of \"serving and protecting\". The officers are 95% of the time, released with payed vacation, and or protected by the other officers who will stick with the story he/she made up. Given these circumstances the police officers believe they are in fact right, no matter how they act out. In terms of the baby who got a flash bang to the face, over a 50$ drug deal. Not only was it unnecessary for a swat like invasion of the house over a measly 50 bucks, I read an article saying that the police station actually THOUGHT they did not do anything wrong, and did not think there should be consequences. \n\nThis is a pure example, of the head of police, who ever they are, giving the right away, for officers to either be trained in such a ferocious manner, in terms of \"treating every one like a criminal or suspect\" Is not only wrong and immoral, but an excellent example of a very modern day indoctrination of turning them from the once, friendly smiled police officers who we can count on, to a cold brutal militarized harm to society, whether or not it was from smoking a joint, to stealing a bag of chips from the store, to even trying to film them.",
"Yes. There is potential good and potential bad in all actions. Show anyone the potential good for a terrible action, without ever showing the bad, then you've got someone who believes that its good. Let's take lying for an example.\n\n\"Everyone does it.\"\n\n\"It doesn't physically harm anyone to lie.\"\n\n\"What is truth anyways?\"\n\netc.\n\nThen there's the side that wouldn't be mentioned about it being bad.\n\n\"It will will cause a lack of trust in those you love.\"\n\n\"It spreads misinformation, making it even harder to answer what the truth is.\"\n\n\"It could lead to chaos if practiced by everyone.\"\n\nEDIT: I just found a perfect example of this about [Anita Bryant] (_URL_6_).\n\nThe statements that the devil-woman Nancy Grace says all appear true; being deeply religious with strong beliefs and maybe even acts a bit like Nancy Grace's grandmother. She was also pied in the face because of these beliefs.\n\nWhat Nancy Grace fails to mention is that Anita Bryant was a cold-hearted hateful woman who spent a lot of her time rallying to make laws to prevent gay people from ever having jobs. The woman was very homophobic, and she is a vile woman. The reason she was pied was because she kind of deserved it.",
"There's the famous story of Genie, the Feral Child who was kept alone in a room by her father with no human contact except food while being strapped to a toilet and fully immobilized. She's the most fascinating example of what you're talking about, because what happens when someone is denied indoctrination of any kind? She doesn't talk anymore (her speech when she did was little more than two word sentences) and lives in a foster home for mentally handicapped adults. Her horrible life shows that without indoctrination by the previous generation, we don't function and need to be given concepts to live our lives around, at least initially. It is a heart breaking case and one of the worst things you'll read about, but it shows quite clearly what happens to a developing mind if they're given nothing. In summary, just about anyone can be raised to believe anything and we're biologically set up to do so. It's a necessary part of building communities, otherwise each generation would rip the previous one apart.",
"You cannot prove that you have not been conditioned to see things the way you currently see them. In fact it is easy to prove that you have; everyone's childhood, every time you communicate with someone, every-time you are told to be obedient in one way or another, you are being conditioned. Everytime someone is called immature, or racist, or insulted/degraded in some way it is being treated as bad and it rubs off on you. Because humans have cultures that have always interacted & been quite similar to one another in the way they function it is hard to explain how far this goes, but you can look at WW2 with the things that the nazi's were willing to do, the way they saw killing jews as making the world a better place, this is a good idea of how a culture can shape your morality.",
"Everyone needs to know that the deterministic beliefs that are all over this post, that we're not responsible for our own actions and are essentially just a construct of our environment, [directly makes you a worse person.]( _URL_7_) \n\nThe question of absolute morality and free will is very complex and abstract, and anyone giving you a simple and absolute answer is merely demonstrating their own stupidity. We have parts of the picture. We know, for example, that it's difficult to condition soldiers to kill, even if they've been raised to believe soldiers killing the enemy is acceptable. ([Grossman]( _URL_8_)) We know that violent crime is relatively rare in human societies (as opposed to intertribal conflict) and altruism is common. So I would say the picture is much brighter than the one most of the comments here suggest.",
"Lack of Skepticism.\nLack of Self Awareness.\nLack of Empathy.\n\nSkepticicsm. For the people who are quick to act on \"half truths\". Never exploring possible causes for the mindset, and, or hatred felt by the opposition. Or in turn the hatred they, themselves felt. And only losing themselves in the exagerated words of the instigator.\n\nLack of Self-awareness. For the people who let this righteous hatred drive them to violence. To commit unspeakably horrible acts. Sometimes even those of the Christian or Catholic faith. Who worship a man whose only message was God is Love. Not take revenge when necessary. Not kill when your freedoms are threatened. He did not tell his disciples to go out and kill the Romans who killed him.\n\nLack of empathy. See second sentence in first paragraph.",
"Sadly, I think a large majority would, but not all. In extreme situations hive mind/ group think would definitely come into play, you have the weak that would have to be protected or left behind, and then you have the leaders. It is the leaders psychological makeup that would most influence the group, and it would depend where this person or persons fell on a moral scale what acts would be acceptable and which wouldn't. If the leader/s chose immorality they would need a significant population to stand up and fight. But in this day and age it definitely depends on who has power on a global scale. Many can see atrocities and be morally against but are unable to act because of their lack of standing.",
"My view on humanity, is that we are computers. We really are. We come with factory defaults and some code built in. We can be programmed. We all have bugs, clinches, and other maladies. The difference is we have to be coded over time and it's very hard to rewrite the code. Sometimes the code conflicts with experiences(PTSD being a classic example). Society (hive mind) tells us what is acceptable code and what is not. I think this is an awesome trait for us because we can become what we need to be as a species, whether it's moral now or immoral later.",
"First, what do you mean by \"now\"? This is hardly something that's a recent development. If anything, it's only been in the last couple of centuries of human development that such actions, even when publicized, _weren't_ considered acceptable ways to treat other people.\n\nSecond, it doesn't have to _everyone_ that can be induced to do the kinds of things you list. Just a certain minimum percentage of a given society to perform the direct acts, and then a slightly larger group that either accepts and normalizes that behavior or allows it to be swept under the rug to soothe their own consciences.",
"I think we're all capable of *committing* immoral acts. But I don't think that's the same as *believing* in those immoral acts. IMO, plenty of Nazi soldiers *committed* genocide but may not have actually believed that killing Jews was the moral thing to do. My speculation is that many of them followed orders from superiors without question and suppressed their own moral compass or rationalized their own morals. \n\nAnd while there might not be absolute morals over everything, there's no culture that believes that another race should be completely exterminated, that has sustained itself over time.",
"I think the crux of the matter is that if you can get someone to believe a premise, you can build sound logic off of that premise - so that the actions don't feel immoral as they are a 'justified' logical conclusion. Typically when you need to reform someone, you need to find the falsity in their logic and correct that, which would make the rest of the argument fall over.\n\nSuffice to say: It's not 'immoral' to the person who is doing the immoral act (mostly). It is justified in their own head",
"Usually people do this because they are brought up that way, society deems it as acceptable, they don't know any better.\nWhen it comes to people in this society, I believe it can be done with enough brainwashing, done in the right way over a period of time.\nAs another comment said here, Derren Browns episode 'The Heist' is an example of this.\nAlso, mental disorders come into play, some people have no empathy.\nPut simply, if society deems it as acceptable, people will have no problem with doing the most horrific things.",
"As the top post says, look up the Milgram Experiment and the Nuremberg Trials, the court case the experiment was gathering evidence for. \n\nYou might want to read 1984 as well. While it's certainly a piece of fiction, you'll find a lot of things that ring true to the modern day. It's almost scary how well Orwell captures some aspects of life that he never knew were going to happen.",
"Of course they are, and here a modern example: circumcision! The science is very cut and dry that it is a degredation of the human body with negligible 'benefits' with only negatives, yet people are indoctrinated into beleive that it is completely necessary for male's (and some cases female's) lives!",
"Read The Allegory of the Cave by Plato. Think of it this way, if your parents told you that the color blue was actually called red and everyone around you told you the same thing since you were a child you would believe it.",
"Yes, in 2014 we still indoctrinate populations into valuing institutionalized murder as a virtue and have holidays commemorating the murderers and view them as heroes and virtuous. I don't know what lower form of moral corruption could be strived for.",
"Do you own an iPhone? Do you eat battery farmed food?\n\nI do both, yet I know my phone is made by near slave labour and my food is both immoral and destroying the planet?\n\nDo I care, not really.",
"This all has to do with behavioral psychology, where profit less acts are stamped out, and profitable acts are rewarded. Who decides which is which leads the group of people into doing good or bad things.",
"Well did you hear about that Russian airplane bombing a wedding where 21 US civilians were killed. They called it a collateral damage and russians seem perfectly fine with it. \n\nAnswer to your question is yes.",
"What is there to explain? I feel like this is more of philosophical discussion. Yes, based on history I think this is completely true. \n\nReligion (the blind-faith kind) has a big role in that.",
"so long as you become convinced it is part of a greater good, you can learn to perceive uncomfortable actions as necessary and appropriate. Name it: killing children, genocide, torture, etc. It has happened.",
"Just look at North Korea. The people there literally think the Kim-Jong family are a lineage of superheroes that invented electricity and are saving them from a barbaric world outside of best Korea.",
"Read about life during Mao's China or under \"stalinization\" or in North Korea to see how systematic brutal abuse and the treatment of people as subhuman animals can become commonplace and accepted.",
"Your premise assumes that morality itself is a concept that itself is immune from environment (\"indoctrination\") rather than a product of environment and the human animal. It isn't set in stone.",
"Short answer: Yes. And you'd be surprised to know how much you've been 'indoctrinated' into believing utter bullshit just by being an American citizen.",
"Given the current widespread mutilation of babies' genitals that is somehow justified by a 4,000-year-old text, the answer is an emphatic yes.",
"No, you have free will. You can be coerced if you're a weak-willed moron. \n\nThere's nothing more to it.",
"Check out the zimbardo prison experiment. I think you will find it very interesting. X",
"Yes, the human mind is more malleable than anyone wants to admit.",
"First you would have to properly define what morals are."
] |
Why are the subreddits /r/news and /r/worldnews so widely hated amongst redditors? | [
"Because they are typically either a) wrong b) misleading or c) some combination of the two.\n\nThere is no incentive to be truthful or analytic in those forums. The only incentive is karma. The truth may set you free, but it sure as hell doesn't get you reddit gold....",
"There are lots of different complaints people have about them.\n\nSome people say they are bad because they attract a large amount of \"low content\" posts (jokes, pun threads, movie quotes, etc). Also they say that people rarely read the articles, and will heavily upvote a comment that is directly contradicted by it or only vaguely about the topic.\n\nSome consider them a circle jerk about many topics. Often people will make opposite accusations of which direction this jerk goes, even in the same topic, but are all angry about it. Linked to this is claims they are overrun with astroturfers and shills, or are being raided by a variety of organizations.\n\nAlso, some have the standard issue complaints about mods being censors, paid off, or just lazy idiots. Or just generic grumpy reddit/internet/people suck complaints with few specifics, as to be expected everywhere.\n\nI'd recommend making your own assessment, though. Just remember to not trust everything people say without checking (even if it has a bunch of blue links), don't worry about votes, remember Hanlon's Razor, and see if you like them or not.",
"I come to reddit to escape, not to become depressed."
] |
- Why do we eat cows and pigs abd not horses and dogs in the Western World? | [
"Horse meat isn't rare at all. You can get it in many parts of europe. Tastes ok too. \n\nAnyway, that's culture. The same reason we think that bacon and eggs is a breakfast food, and don't eat grasshoppers.",
"When you work on a farm each animal is used for several things. Pigs will eat almost anything, but they won't herd like dogs or work like horses so they mostly serve as waste management. Cow manure is useful on a farm and their meat has a high market value. Also, the horse and dog lobby doesn't really support the idea of eating \"man's best friend\", ha! It may interest you to know that in 1910 President Roosevelt supported a huge plan to bring Louisiana hippos into the US food market, and it might of worked if Anton Feuchtwange of Louisiana hadn't invented the hot-dog bun... \n_URL_0_"
] |
why does the flu season start around the same time every year? | [
"Cooler weather puts more strain on the immune system and people begin sealing themselves inside to stay warm, rather than letting in fresh air. In addition, it happens shortly after students go back to school - which are great breeding grounds for disease (poorer hygiene, cramped classrooms, etc)"
] |
If you're not supposed to flush wipes, why are they explicitly stated to be flushable? | [
"There is no law that defines \"flushable.\" That it fits down the toilet means it meets the common definition. If you ask a sanitary worker they will tell you they've never seen a wipe that breaks up like toilet paper.\n\nAt the treatment plant there is a scrubber that pulls out all of the condoms, tampons, wipes, etc that people carelessly flush down the toilet. Someone has the job of cleaning that scrubber and the more things people flush, the more times that person has to do that job."
] |
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